“What does he think I came down here for?”
“He knows, Gordon. Everybody does.”
“Do they really?” Walker said. “Isn’t that something?”
“Wipe your nose good,” Axelrod said. “We should go see Charlie.”
The hotel restaurant had a terrace overlooking the bay. Adjoining it was a blue-tiled lounge with a service bar and a few candlelit tables. Two graying men sat at a table near the door. One was Charlie Freitag, esteemed gentleman producer. Charlie rose when Axelrod and Walker came in.
“Hello, Gordon,” Charlie called. He looked quite surprised. “How was your drive?” He turned to his companion. “This man drove down from L.A. He insisted!”
Walker was always happy to see Charlie Freitag, a pleasant, friendly man, possessed of a fatuous manner and many well-laid plans.
Charlie introduced the man he was drinking with as Howard Robinson. Robinson had the best suntan of anyone there; he wore checkered slacks and white loafers.
“Don’t care to fly?” he asked Walker.
“I like driving in Mexico,” Walker said.
“I could keep you in that for life,” Howard said, “if that’s what you like.”
Walker decided he represented Las Vegas investors, and it developed after a brief exchange that he did. He and Axelrod proved to be old acquaintances and Axelrod was the son of an IATSE enforcer from the days of the labor wars. There were always a lot of hoods around on Walter Drogue’s pictures and Walker had never determined the reason for it.
“Walter told me to greet you on his behalf,” Charlie said to Walker. “He bids you welcome.”
“Ah,” Walker said.
“You know who I think you should meet?” Charlie Freitag asked Walker. “You should meet Dongan Lowndes. Know his work?”
Walker knew it. It was a single novel of great force.
“I’m glad,” Freitag said. “He’s doing a piece on us for New York Arts. It can do us a lot of good where it counts.”
They went toward a dark corner where another party of two were sitting. Walker recognized one as Jack Best, the unit publicity man. Best hated him relentlessly over some drunken misadventure he could not recall.
“Mr. Lowndes,” Charlie said, with the air of a man opening first one expensive cigar and then another, “let me introduce Gordon Walker, who adapted The Awakening for the screen. You know Mr. Axelrod, I think.”
Lowndes when he leaned forward turned out to be a bulky man with a pitted face and aviator spectacles. The hand he offered Walker was big and thick-fingered like a countryman’s.
“How’re you?” Lowndes said. Walker saw that he was drunk and so was Best.
“This is Dongan Lowndes, Gordon,” Freitag said. “Our guest from New York.” He clapped Walker on the shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “we finished the late work today, so tomorrow we can drink and be merry. People are coming for a cookout at eight o’clock. Carne asada under the stars. We’ll talk.”
“Great,” Walker said.
“Claire would have loved to make it, but — you know, she’s busy with groups. She sends her best.”
“And mine to her,” Walker said.
Freitag took a quick rueful glance at his publicity man and went back to his table.
Walker smiled and murmured and made himself small. He was exhausted, propped upright by cocaine; he wanted people to be agreeable.
“We’ve been waiting for your girlfriend,” Jack Best said to Walker. “She just stood us up for dinner.”
“It was very informally arranged,” Lowndes said. He spoke in a quiet lowland southern accent. His diction was just ever so slightly blurred about the edges. “I probably misunderstood.”
“No,” Jack Best said. “She’s like that. A lot of them are. They don’t care about the public anymore.”
Studying Best across the table, Walker blundered into eye contact and suffered the full weight of his gratuitous hatred.
“I figured she was probably with him,” the publicist said, indicating Walker and staring him down.
“C’mon, Jack,” Axelrod said. “Be nice.” He put a friendly arm around Best’s shoulder and squeezed him.
“I liked your novel,” Walker told Lowndes, still wanting to please. “I mean your most recent one.”
Lowndes raised his glass. “My one and only,” he said.
Walker saw that he had said the wrong thing. He had intended to be polite and Lowndes was offended.
“Walker,” Jack Best intoned. “Gordon Walker.” He rose gravely and staggered off toward the toilets.
“I don’t know what he’s got against me,” Walker said to Axelrod when Best was gone. “What’s his problem?”
“His problem is you humiliated him in front of about a hundred people in Colorado two years ago. You don’t remember?”
Walker tried remembering. “No,” he said.
“Too bad,” Lowndes said. “It must make a funny story.”
“I think I’ll have a drink,” Walker said. He had decided that he was not among friends and that there would probably be some kind of trouble. He supposed that had been in the cards all along. “Have they closed the bar?”
The bar was still open; Axelrod found a waiter and they ordered another round. Lowndes ordered for Jack Best.
“He’s so amusing,” Lowndes said. “I thought we should keep him greased.”
When Best returned, he drank a full half of his drink and settled his gaze on Walker again.
“Jack’s been telling us the history of film,” Lowndes explained. “I’ve learned a lot too.”
Lowndes’s tone held a warning for the unwary but Walker decided the hell with it. He wondered if Charlie Freitag really thought that an article about a Mexican location in New York Arts would do any good where it counted. He concluded that the reference was to where it counted for Charlie Freitag.
“For instance,” he asked Lowndes.
“Jack believes,” Lowndes told them, “that Marty was the beginning of the end. It was all down thereafter.”
“Marty who?” Axelrod asked.
“The picture,” Lowndes explained. “The film of that name.”
Jack Best half rose to his feet.
“You,” he shouted at Walker. He turned to Lowndes and Jon Axelrod. “Him!”
“Yeah, Jack?” Axelrod asked softly. “That’s Gordon, Jack. What you wanna tell us?”
“I saw him years ago. I saw you years ago, Walker. I saw you and I was talking to King and I says”—he heaved a sigh and drew breath—“I says looka that guy. I says look. Because the guy — him. Walker. The guy has this stupid shirt on. A fuckin’ hippie shirt on. Hippie shirt. And his hair. And I says — King. King, I says. Is that a boy? Or a girl? And King says.” A mask of bewilderment closed over his features.
“We must infer what King says,” Lowndes declared.
Walker finished his own drink. “No,” he told them. “King says — fuck you, you disgusting little pissant of a flack. You’re not fit to lick the chickenshit off that talented young man’s shoes. You’re a drunken contemptible cipher, a dirty little hole in the world. A crepuscular fool, King says. A homunculus, King says. Go over to Oblath’s and cut your weaselly little rat throat, King says. Anyway,” Walker told them, “that’s the way I remember it.”
“Hey, Gordon,” Axelrod said, “you’re doing it again, man.”
“King?” Lowndes asked. “Vidor?”
“Kong,” Walker said. “Dennis King. Dolores King. Jack knew them all.”
Best appeared to have gone to sleep. Axelrod nudged him and he sat upright.
“The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” he told the people at the table. Everyone watched him. “That’s it,” he shouted. “The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” He choked and his head fell forward. Just before his nose hit the table he retrieved his posture and his face rose up at Walker like a creature from a black lagoon. He was shaken by spasms of what appeared to be laughter. He reached over and seized Walker’s arm and held it hard. “The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” he shrieked. Freitag and Robinson, the restaurant staff all turned to see him. His voice became a croak. “And the Sands … the Sands doesn’t …” He seemed too shaken by his fit of peculiar laughter to continue. “The Sands doesn’t even have a line!”