“It’s Jack Best,” she said. “But he doesn’t look his jack best, ho ho.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” young Drogue said.
“Please don’t be rude to Jack,” his father told him. “He’s got a job the same as you. And he’s been doing stills for us.”
“He’s been underfoot all morning with his stills,” the young director said, going to the door. “Helena saw him trailing after Walker by the beach — like we’re going to sell the movie with Walker’s picture.”
He opened the door to Jack Best, who did in fact appear ill and unhappy.
“Jack, baby,” he said cheerfully, “what’s this we hear about the choreographer at the Sands?”
“Ah,” Jack muttered biliously. “Dumb gag.”
“I didn’t even know the Sands had a line,” Patty Drogue said.
“It doesn’t,” her husband assured her. “Would you like a drink, Jack?”
Jack Best mastered a slight spasm of his jaw. Patty hastened to fix a whiskey and soda for him.
“Dumb gag,” he said. He took the drink from Mrs. Drogue and swallowed half of it. “One too many.”
“So what do you want here, Jack? Where’s your camera?”
Best finished his drink and looked lugubriously about the room. His eyes were bright with the squamous resentment of an old snapping turtle.
“We got trouble,” he said. He was holding a magazine in his hand. He opened it to reveal a photograph that had been inserted between its pages. He put the magazine aside and clutched the photograph to his breast. Everyone in the room looked at it.
“Run along, my dear,” old Drogue said kindly to Joy. “I’ll join you very shortly.” As Joy left pouting, the old man blew her a kiss.
“I can’t believe,” Patty Drogue said, “that you talk to her like that.”
“What’s the pic, Jack?” young Drogue asked.
Best looked from father to son in a state of agitation. He showed his teeth like a frightened pony.
“Miss Verger,” Jack said. “And that Walker. They been shacked up all day.”
The Drogues, father and son, exchanged glances.
“Yeah?” young Drogue asked. “So what?”
Best tried to hand his picture to the old man. His son intercepted it.
“Walker been mistreating you, Jack?” young Drogue asked, turning the picture face up. “He’s such a troublesome guy.”
He looked down at the picture for some time. His wife came to look at it over his shoulder.
“Golliwilkins,” she said. “Gag me with a spoon. And I was so reassuring to poor Lionel.”
The photographs were sunlit shots of Lu Anne and Walker naked in bed. Walker was holding a small shiny rectangle while Lu Anne sniffed at its surface through a drinking straw.
Young Drogue handed the picture to his father.
“So what’s this, Jack? A handout?”
“They got a whole bunch like this,” the aged publicist croaked urgently. “It’s a shakedown.” He turned rather desperately to old Drogue. “Right, Wally? Like when Eddie Ritz had those pictures of Mitch? That’s what it’s like.”
Drogue senior looked from the picture to his old friend. He shook his head sadly, put the print down and walked out of the bungalow.
Finding himself abandoned to the rising generation of Drogues, Jack Best began to shake. The ice in his glass tinkled audibly.
Young Drogue watched him with a bemused smile.
“This is odd,” he told his wife. “I think these were taken very recently. I think they were taken here. On our very own location.”
“It’s a shakedown,” Jack Best croaked.
“I see,” young Walter Drogue said. “What shall we do, Jack? I mean, I’ve heard of these things happening in the business. But I’ve never actually encountered it until now.”
Jack cleared his throat. He looked from side to side in a conspiratorial fashion.
Drogue put a cupped hand to the side of his mouth.
“You can talk here, Jack,” he whispered. “Right, Patty?”
“Righto,” Patty Drogue whispered back.
“It was Madriaga,” Jack told him. Madriaga was the jefe of the unit’s Mexican teamsters, a vicious clownish former policeman. “He come up to me. He was a cop, you see. They went to him. The ones that took the shots. He come to me. They want five big ones. Or they put it out. The reporter that’s here. They would give it to him. And around. Europe. England and France. Worldwide. It’s like before. You could ask your father. When Eddie Ritz had these pictures of Mitch.”
“Bless my soul, Jack,” Drogue said, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” He turned to his wife. “Can you, dear?”
Patty shook her head. “I liked it, though. I liked it when he said five Big Ones.”
“What are Big Ones, Jack?” Drogue asked.
“A grand,” Jack said urgently. “A thou.” His voice rose in panic. “A thousand dollars.”
Drogue took Jack’s empty glass from his unsteady hand.
“Jack,” Walter Drogue junior said, “that’s blackmail. Who would do such a thing? Not someone on our set? Not one of our own?”
Best began to titter and chatter in an almost simian fashion.
“Plenty of them. They ain’t got any — they don’t care anymore. They treat you like dirt. Just look around. They ain’t no good, Walter. They’ll make bad publicity. Shit where they eat.”
“I’m no good at this,” Drogue said dejectedly. “I can’t even follow you. What do we have to do, Jack? Will it involve telling Charlie? Will I have to give you money?”
“I could tell you,” Jack stammered, “if you ask your old man. I can handle them. Shakedown artists. I got ways. Like when they had Mitch’s picture.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” Patty Drogue suggested.
“The inside of a Mexican jail,” Drogue said with hearty indignation. “That’s the place for these dirty blackmailers. How about that, Jack?”
“No,” Jack said.
“No?” Young Drogue picked up the wireless house telephone on one of his bookshelves and began to dial. “You think not, Jack? Think we should pass on that one? A no-no?” When he had finished dialing, he picked up a pen and began doodling on a note pad.
“No cops,” Jack said. “I mean, Mexican cops? I mean, you’d gotta be crazy. You gotta leave it to me.” He stared at the futuristic telephone receiver in young Drogue’s hand. “I can handle it.”
“How would you do it, Jack?” He looked angrily at the wireless phone receiver. He had not obtained a connection. “Fucking thing,” he muttered. The sight of his unhappy public relations adviser seemed to soothe him. “Would you do it like they did it before Marty? Would you do it like they did it before sound?”
“Hey, Wally,” Jack said, “Walter — I never worked before sound, Walter. My first picture was with Dick Powell. That was sound.”
Drogue was dialing again.
“Axelrod?” he said into the phone. “Put him on.”
Jack turned to Patty Drogue. “Dick Powell,” he said.
Drogue sat waiting for Axelrod’s response, holding the miniature receiver in a clenched fist beneath his chin. Jack Best began to stare at the device with such intensity that the young director’s attention was diverted.
“Did you want to see this, Jack?” he asked kindly.
In his confusion and haste to be agreeable, Jack nodded eagerly. He reached out for the sleek receiver with such gleeful anticipation that it was possible to see why he had once been called Smilin’ Jack Best. At the last moment Drogue withdrew it from the old man’s soiled grasping reach.
“It’s a telephone, Jack,” he snarled. Jack cringed. “Axelrod!” he said into the receiver. “I got this grotesque situation to cope with. You want to give me a hand?” He looked at Best. “A man’s supposed to be an artist,” he said ill-temperedly. “Instead you end up as a carny boss.”