twice, take the money home and come back the following Sunday. Each time you will receive the negative of one picture and all the prints made from that negative. They will come in the mail. If all goes well, and if you have no clever and silly ideas, we should be through with this whole affair in twelve weeks.
“So damned complicated,” she said.
“Actually pretty shrewd. Two people could manage it with very little risk. One at the drive-in and pavilion to check you or Miss Holtzer out, then after you’ve heard the rings, phone up the road for his buddy to get into place at the designated spot. He gets a chance to see that nobody is hiding in your car. He follows you out of the lot, tails you until it looks safe, then passes you and gets there first and gives a headlight signal to his buddy to use the green lens on the flashlight. Not bad at all. Very difficult to trap them. What went wrong?”
“Nothing. At least not then. I paid. One night there was a red light. I don’t know why. It took thirteen weeks. I got the stuff in the mail. The worst ones came toward the last. Dana made the deliveries. Her nerves are better than mine, I guess.”
She jumped to her feet, flushing. “Don’t be dull, McGee. Close to seven million went into
Winds of Chance
. Risk money. The character who wrote that note knows this industry. He knew how I had to jump. It isn’t like the old days, where you could count on studio protection. Each picture is a separate packaging operation. There are just about ten men these days who can put the really big packages together. If each one of them got a set of those prints, why should they take any future chances on me? Those pictures are poisonous. What’s a hundred and twenty thousand compared to my potential? I liquidated some holdings that weren’t doing so good, and took my tax loss, and paid off. Don’t tell
me
what I should have done!”
It was a good act and I had to admire it. “How can I help you if all you give me is a smoke screen?”
“What the
hell
do you mean!” she shouted.
“All the industry cares about is money in the bank. Your name on a picture puts money in the bank. Just like Liz, Frankie,the Swede, Mitchum, Ava. They have not been dear little buttercups all the way. The days of the Arbuckle effect are long gone, dear. In our culture there is going to be no huge concerted public censure to drive you off the wide screens. If you get a little rancid, the PR people have you endow a dog shelter, and all America loves you. Drop the act.”
The faked indignation was turned off in an instant. She sat again, looked at me with sullen speculation. “Smart ass,” she said.
“What is it, then, that made you pay off?”
“A few little things. A while back I swung my weight around too much. It delayed the wrap-up and bumped the budget, and some people decided maybe they didn’t want to work with me. But I smartened up and settled down. I could read what it said on the wall. You know, like Monroe and Brando. But it left them edgy. Also, there’ve been a couple of little things from time to time. Not as bad as those pictures, but … along that line. It just didn’t seem to be the right time to make them feel any more insecure.”
“And?”
“Boy, you really want everything, don’t you?”
“I’ve learned that it helps.”
“I have a very dear friend. He’s very devout and very conservative and he owns great big vulgar hunks of California and Hawaii. If he can get the right paper signed by the Vatican and get loose, I’ll never have to take any crap from anybody again as long as I live. And one of those sets of prints would have gone to one man who would have felt obligated to give my friend a look at them. And that would have torn it.”
“So those are the real stakes?”
She moistened her lips. “Under community property, onehalf of about eighty million, honey. I am his dear faithful little darlin’. It made the whole thing a lot more … chancy.
Tuesday Embers, Mary E. Twomey
George Simpson, Neal Burger