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“Now, see this pile of ten-dollar bills? That’s the stake, just put by these gents. You’ve stopped the game too long. Do you join or be the skeleton at the feast?”
“Skeleton.”
“Okay. They’re off! There she goes. Queen here, Queen there. Lost! Where? You ready to risk all your cash, fellows? Want to pull out? All of a single mind?”
Fierce whispers.
“All,” someone said.
“No!” Cruesoe said.
A dozen curses lit the air.
“Smart-ass,” said the cardsharp, his voice deadly calm, “do you realize that your static may cause these gentlemen to lose everything?”
“No,” Cruesoe said. “It’s not my static. Your hands deal the cards.”
Such jeers. Such hoots. “Move! My God, move!”
“Well.” With the three cards still under his clean fingers the gambler stared at the rushing storm beyond the window. “You’ve ruined it. Because of you, their choice is doomed. You and only you have intruded to burst the ambience, the aura, the bubble that enclosed this game. When I turn the card over my friends may hurl you off the train.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Cruesoe said.
The card was turned over.
With a roar the train pulled away in a downpour of rain and lightning and thunder. Just before the car door slammed, the gambler thrust a fistful of cards out on the sulfurous air and tossed. They took flight: an aviary of bleeding pigeons, to pelt Cruesoe’s chest and face.
The club car rattle-banged by, a dozen volcanic faces with fiery eyes crushed close to the windows, fists hammering the glass.
His suitcase stopped tumbling.
The train was gone.
He waited a long while and then slowly bent and began to pick up fifty-two cards. One by one. One by one.
A Queen of hearts. Another Queen. Another Queen of hearts. And one more.
A Queen …
Queen.
Lightning struck. If it had hit him, he would never have known.
If MGM is Killed, Who Gets the Lion? (#u30e4601b-d37e-5713-8335-da252d46b327)
“Holy Jeez, damn. Christ off the cross!” said Jerry Would.
“Please,” said his typist-secretary, pausing to erase a typo in a screenplay, “I have Christian ears.”
“Yeah, but my tongue is Bronx, New York,” said Would, staring out the window. “Will you just look, take one long fat look at that!”
The secretary glanced up and saw what he saw, beyond.
“They’re repainting the studio. That’s Stage One, isn’t it?”
“You’re damn right. Stage One, where we built the Bounty in ‘34 and shot the Tara interiors in ‘39 and Marie Antionette’s palace in ‘34 and now, for God’s sake, look what they’re doing!”
“Looks like they’re changing the number.”
“Changing the number, hell, they’re wiping it out! No more One. Watch those guys with the plastic overlays in the alley, holding up the goddamn pieces, trying them for size.”
The typist rose and took off her glasses to see better.
“That looks like UGH. What does ‘Ugh’ mean?”
“Wait till they fit the first letter. See? Is that or is that not an H?”
“H added to UGH. Say, I bet I know the rest. Hughes! And down there on the ground, in small letters, the stencil? ‘Aircraft’?”
“Hughes Aircraft, dammit!”
“Since when are we making planes? I know the war’s on, but—”
“We’re not making any damn planes,” Jerry Would cried, turning from the window.
“We’re shooting air combat films, then?”
“No, and we’re not shooting no damn air films!”
“I don’t see …”
“Put your damn glasses back on and look. Think! Why would those SOBs be changing the number for a name, hey? What’s the big idea? We’re not making an aircraft carrier flick and we’re not in the business of tacking together P-38s and—Jesus, now look!”
A shadow hovered over the building and a shape loomed in the noon California sky.
His secretary shielded her eyes. “I’ll be damned,” she said.
“You ain’t the only one. You wanna tell me what that thing is?”
She squinted again. “A balloon?” she said. “A barrage balloon?”
“You can say that again, but don’t!”
She shut her mouth, eyed the gray monster in the sky, and sat back down. “How do you want this letter addressed?” she said.
Jerry Would turned on her with a killing aspect. “Who gives a damn about a stupid letter when the world is going to hell? Don’t you get the full aspect, the great significance? Why, I ask you, would MGM have to be protected by a barrage—hell, there goes another! That makes two barrage balloons!”
“No reason,” she said. “We’re not a prime munitions or aircraft target.” She typed a few letters and stopped abruptly with a laugh. “I’m slow, right? We are a prime bombing target?”
She rose again and came to the window as the stencils were hauled up and the painters started blow-gunning paint on the side of Stage One.
“Yep,” she said, softly, “there it is. AIRCRAFT COMPANY. HUGHES. When does he move in?”
“What, Howie the nut? Howard the fruitcake? Hughes the billionaire bastard?”
“That one, yeah.”
“He’s going nowhere, he still has his pants glued to an office just three miles away. Think! Add it up. MGM is here, right, two miles from the Pacific coast, two blocks away from where Laurel and Hardy ran their tin lizzie like an accordion between trolley cars in 1928! And three miles north of us and also two miles in from the ocean is—”
He let her fill in the blanks.
“Hughes Aircraft?”
He shut his eyes and laid his brow against the window to let it cool. “Give the lady a five-cent seegar.”
“I’ll be damned,” she breathed with revelatory delight.
“You ain’t the only one.”
“When the Japs fly over or the subs surface out beyond Culver City, the people painting that building and re-lettering the signs hope that the Japs will think Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy are running around Hughes Aircraft two miles north of here, making pictures. And that MGM, here, has Rosie the Riveters and P-38s flying out of that hangar down there all day!”
Jerry Would opened his eyes and examined the evidence below. “I got to admit, a sound stage does look like a hangar. A hangar looks like a sound stage. Put the right labels on them and invite the Japs in. Banzai!”
“Brilliant,” his secretary exclaimed.
“You’re fired,” he said.
“What?”
“Take a letter,” said Jerry Would, his back turned.
“Another letter?”
“To Mr. Sid Goldfarb.”
“But he’s right upstairs.”
“Take a letter, dammit, to Goldfarb, Sidney. Dear Sid. Strike that. Just Sid. I am damned angry. What the hell is going on? I walk in the office at eight a.m. and it’s MGM. I walk out to the commissary at noon and Howard Hughes is pinching the waitresses’ behinds. Whose bright idea was this?”
“Just what 7 wondered,” his secretary said.
“You’re fired,” said Jerry Would.
“Go on,” she said.
“Dear Sid. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Sid, why weren’t we informed that this camouflage would happen? Remember the old joke? We were all hired to watch for icebergs sailing up Culver Boulevard? Relatives of the studio, uncles, cousins? And now the damned iceberg’s here. And it wears tennis shoes, a leather jacket, and a mustache over a dirty smile. I been here twelve years, Sidney, and I refuse—aw, hell, finish typing it. Sincerely. No, not sincerely. Angrily yours. Angrily. Where do I sign?”
He tore the letter from the machine and whipped out a pen.
“Now take this upstairs and throw it over the transom.”
“Messengers get killed for messages like this.”
“Killed is better than fired.”
She sat quietly.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m waiting for you to cool down. You may want to tear this letter up, half an hour from now.”
“I will not cool down and I will not tear up. Go.”
And still she sat, watching his face until the lines faded and the color paled. Then very quietly she folded the letter and tore it across once and tore it across twice and then a third and fourth time. She let the confetti drift into the trash basket as he watched.
“How many times have I fired you today?” he said.
“Just three.”
“Four times and you’re out. Call Hughes Aircraft.”
“I was wondering when you—”
“Don’t wonder. Get.”
She flipped through the phone book, underlined a number, and glanced up. “Who do you want to talk to?”
“Mr. Tennis Shoes, Mr. Flying Jacket, the billionaire butinsky.”
“You really think he ever answers the phone?”
“Try.”
She tried and talked while he gnawed his thumbnail and watched them finish putting up and spraying the AIRCRAFT stencil below.
“Hell and damn,” she said at last, in total surprise. She held out the phone. “He’s there! And answered the phone himself!”
“You’re putting me on!” cried Jerry Would.
She shoved the phone out in the air and shrugged.
He grabbed it. “Hello, who’s this? What? Well, say, Howard, I mean Mr. Hughes. Sure. This is MGM Studios. My name? Would. Jerry Would. You what? You heard me? You saw Back to Broadway? And Glory Years. But sure, you once owned RKO Studios, right? Sure, sure. Say, Mr. Hughes, I got a little problem here. I’ll make this short and sweet.”
He paused and winked at his secretary.
She winked back. The voice on the line spoke nice and soft.
“What?” said Jerry Would. “Something’s going on over at your place, too? So you know why I’m calling, sir. Well, they just put up the aircraft letters and spelled out hughes on Stage One. You like that, huh? Looks great. Well, I was wondering, Howard, Mr. Hughes, if you could do me a little favor.”
