Though Morgan had muffed the approach to Luara Walden, don’t look on him as a clumsy clown. He usually adjusted his stalk to fit the quarry. Though for the past week and a half he had been ordering Rene around on childish errands, the moment Morgan took one long look at the girl, Rene and his daughter somehow became the special and honored guests of that great star, Kirk Morgan. We all saw it beginning, and if any one of us could have thought of a good way to stop it, I like to think we would have. Maybe we all hoped he wouldn’t be able to get her away from her father’s watchful eye.
I guess he set her up with the greatest of care, because she was so obviously worth great care. Though he had shown absolutely no interest in any part of Equatorial Africa, he suddenly became a tourist in need of a guide. An elderly female relative chaperoned them. She did not have much English, but Therese had more than enough. They saw the view of the city from Mount Leopold. They ferried across the river to Brazzaville. They saw Point Kalina and the Cristal Mountains, the Stanley Pool, the Belvidere and de Bock Park.
I remember talking to Barry Driscoll about it over some midnight bourbon in his hotel room, saying, “I’ve hinted to Rene, but all he says is that Therese is a very good girl and Mr. Morgan is being very kind to her, and it was a boring life for her before we arrived.”
“At least,” Barry said wearily, “Morgan is easy to get along with on the set. Think of her as a sacrifice to creative harmony, Joe.”
“Can you think of her that way?”
“Hell, no! And so maybe he scores and somebody blows his head off, and then what happens to this crummy deodorant series? Remember, Joey, the public worships him. So we are all making money. Go to bed.”
When we had seven shows in the can, and were beginning to roll pretty good, something went clunk in the sound recording system, and we had no spare for it. It is ever thus on location. After urgent cablings, I arranged to get the frammis or whatever it was airshipped out, but it would be three lost days, and so we folded operations.
At midnight, Rene came to the hotel and woke me up. The fabulous and vulnerable Therese was missing. She had outwitted her panic-stricken chaperone. He wanted words with our star, and I knew even before I looked that he would be missing too. All the agitation and concern went out of Rene’s face. He looked sick, tired and old as he turned away.
On the evening of the third day, Mark Weese and I were sitting in my room checking the prop lists against upcoming scripts, when Kirk Morgan came in without knocking.
“Ready to roll in the morning, Joe?” he asked me.
“Yes. And where the hell have you been?”
He gave us a smile of wicked contentment, muffled a theatrical yawn and said, “Place name of Goma, at the Hotel du Grand Lac. Very clean, very comfortable. Good food. Good service. I recommend it.” He slouched over to pour himself some of my liquor.
Mark’s pouched old face twisted into a look of distaste. “How about the French chick, Morgan?”
He turned and sipped his drink, and said, “Tasty. Very tasty. But three days does it, men. A dull child at heart, you know. Once the bloom is off the blossom, they tend to get emotional.”
“Walk out on her?” I asked.
He winked at me. “You insult my honorable instincts, Joey. I just now let her off at her own garden gate. Blubbering and snuffling.” He yawned again and ambled out, taking the half drink with him.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody killed him?” Mark said earnestly.
“Somehow they never do.”
“Poor scared little chick,” Mark said.
“Yeah. Sure. This number sixteen, author, you got a lion cub written in, and Rene says we can get a local leopard cub a lot easier and cheaper. Okay?”
“Okay. And don’t let’s either of us show we feel real sick right now.”
Rene du Palais was at the Regina Hotel early the next morning. It was not as rough as I had thought it would be. He brought a small, round, smiling man with him, and introduced him as Jules Boudreau.
“I can no longer, in self respect, work for you, Meestair Connolly,” he said quietly. “It would be humiliation for me, because what has happened is now known to everyone. Do you not understand?”
“I understand. I am sorry it happened, sorrier than I can tell you.”
“It is my own stupidity at fault. I now think of the many times you tried to warn me. I believe you are a decent man. I could not know that this Morgan could be... so cruel an animal.”
“How is your daughter?”
Only the truly French can shrug with so much meaning. “Unwell,” he said. His voice became businesslike. “I have brought you here Jules Boudreau who will do the work perhaps better than I have done. He understands the things I have been- doing, and he will continue for you. There is some small money due me which perhaps you will give to him to bring to me when it can be arranged. Good-by, sir.”
I said goodby to him and I held my hand out. He looked at my hand and then into my eyes with that anguish no actor can reproduce. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. “I could not yet shake the hand of any of you. I am so sorry.” He turned and fled through the shadowy lobby and out into the white sunshine.
Jules Boudreau was not as good as Rene, but all the worst problems had been solved before he took over, so we made do with him.
The day after we packaged and sealed up number fourteen, Jules took the afternoon off and attended the funeral of Therese du Palais. She had dressed in the wedding gown she would never wear, slipped out of the house at dawn, bicycled to the quays along the Congo River, and jumped in. Some dock workers saw her go in. It had taken them thirty minutes to recover the body.
I was there when Barry Driscoll told Kirk Morgan what had happened.
Kirk Morgan looked mildly astonished. He licked his manly lips, fingered his sculptured throat, swallowed hard and said, “A hell of a silly thing to do. The kid must have been missing some marbles. She wasn’t what you call real bright.”
Barry slowly and carefully called Kirk Morgan a series of graphic, precise and unprintable things. When they began to sink in, the hero face turned dull red, and the hero roared, “You want to make this stinking series, Driscoll, and make a bucket of bills, or you want me to cable Manny and say I can’t work with you and send somebody else? You want to make a little test case? You want to see who gets backed up?”
I saw Barry think it over, and I saw all the spit and steam go slowly out of him. “Okay,” he said softly. “Let’s just get this job the hell done and get out of here.”
“Okay,” Morgan snarled, “and it’s the last of mine you do, pal.”
“I couldn’t be more grateful,” Barry said softly.
So we were pros, and we kept rolling along like pros, and the stack of completions kept getting taller in the corner of my room. I’ve been around long enough to know it was good tight work.
The Ampex tape is nearly two inches wide, and each sequence went into its own dull-finish aluminum reel can, almost as big around as a table at the Blue Angel. The closure all around the outside edge was sealed with tape, and the coded show and script number was put on the center label of both the reel and the can.
I think we were just past number twenty when Nancy Rome made the first comment about Kirk Morgan, one night while we were having dinner.
“What’s with Our Hero?” she asked me.
“I try not to notice him. Should I?”
She frowned. “I don’t known what it is. He seems to be getting... kind of strange and subdued and remote. Barry’s having trouble getting him to project all that famous Morgan charm and energy.”