Gunther had brought his tux downstairs before he came to breakfast. His was on a hanger and didn’t look as if it had been worn. We gathered our uniforms and headed for my Crosley. On the way to Columbia, we dropped the clothes off at Pearson’s Cleaners on Pico, which opened at dawn. They would have to be cleaned before I returned them to Hy’s.
Ten minutes later, we were pulling into the parking lot at Columbia Pictures, where a uniformed attendant recognized me.
“Toby? Son-of-a-bitch,” said Dave Crouch as I rolled down my window. “Last time I saw you was …”
“Burke Reilly’s retirement party,” I said.
“Five years?”
“Six or seven,” I said.
Dave was a heavy man in his midfifties with clickety-clack false teeth and a constant smile. We had both been guards at Warner Brothers. Harry Warner personally had fired me when I’d taken a short right jab at a second-rate cowboy star after he’d tried to saddle a would-be kid starlet who wasn’t interested. It wasn’t so much that I had punched the cowboy, but that I had broken his nose, which set the picture he was working on off its shooting schedule for more than a week. Dave Crouch had simply traded the Warner brothers for Harry Conn and a few dollars more per week.
“You here looking for a job?” asked Dave, glancing at Gunther.
“Looking for a movie star,” I said.
“Who?”
“Cornel Wilde. I hear he’s shooting A Thousand and One Nights.”
“That he is,” said Dave. “Stage Two. He expecting you?”
“Would I be here at eight in the morning if he weren’t?”
“Yes,” said Dave. “You would, but who gives a damn, you know? I’ve had it up to here with Cohn and company. I’m thinking of moving down to San Diego, buying into my brother-in-law Sam’s bar. Right near a shipyard. Goddamn gold mine. Sam’s got a liver thing, and my sister likes cooking for me. Seen Ann?”
“No, not for a while,” I said. “Rose?”
“No,” he said. “Go on in. If someone asks me, I’ll say you showed me a pass. You got a pass right?”
“Right here in my pocket,” I said.
“Good enough for me,” said Dave.
I drove past the gate and headed for Stage Two.
“Rose is his former wife, I take it?” asked Gunther.
“She took it,” I said. “Dave once had a house in Santa Monica.”
Stage Two didn’t look any different from the other sound stages on all the lots of all the studios. Maybe it was a little smaller. Maybe the outside brick walls weren’t as clean, but a sound stage is a sound stage from the outside. On the inside, it can be anything from a crater on Mars to a battlefield in Germany to a Sultan’s palace in fairy tale, which was what Stage Two was when Gunther and I went through the door. The green light was on, indicating that they were not shooting at the moment.
It was the Hollywood I had learned to love and distrust. Around the walls were ladders, lights, piles of electrical equipment, chunks of scenery leaning against other chunks of scenery. In the middle of the sound stage was what looked like the garden of a palace with a little fountain in a pool. Girls in colorful billowing costumes with veils pulled back were chatting in little groups, some of them smoking, some of them sipping coffee.
The garden was painted in bright colors, reds, blues, greens, golds, yellows, in contrast to the black and gray beyond what the camera would see.
In the middle of the garden stood two men. One man wore dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves pulled up. He was holding a script. His companion, in billowing purple pants and a white shirt with puffy sleeves, was looking at the script, nodding his head and saying something. The man in the costume, Cornel Wilde, was tall, handsome with dark curly hair and serious dark eyes.
Gunther and I started toward Wilde when a bald young man, wearing glasses that didn’t quite go with his Scheherazade costume, said, “You guys lookin’ for me?”
He had a cup of coffee in his hand.
“No,” I said.
“No?” he asked. “You sure. Phil Silvers? You from Manny? I’m supposed to place a bet on the Fifth at Aqueduct. Dangerous Antics on the nose? Sure you’re not from Manny? You look like you’d be from Manny.”
“No,” said Gunther.
Silvers pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch.
“You’re not bookies?” he asked.
“No,” said Gunther.
“You wouldn’t want to make a bet? A small wager on the race? Dangerous Antics is seven to one. I’ll take six to one.”
“We are not …”
“Five to one,” said Silvers, shaking his head as if he were making a terrible mistake. “I’m a crazy man, but what can I do? I’m addicted. Four to one. Last offer. I’m breaking my heart here.”
“You don’t…” Gunther tried.
“He’s joking Gunther,” I said.
“Peters,” Silvers said, taking my hand. “You could have given me a few more seconds of shtick. I had the little guy goin’.”
“Very amusing,” Gunther said soberly.
“Take a joke,” Silvers said to Gunther, extending his hand. “It’s free. Toby and I go way back. The Green Pussycat in, what was it, thirty-eight, thirty-nine?”
“Green Door, downtown,” I said. “Thirty-seven.”
“Right, right,” said Silvers. “Guy gets a little snickered while I’m doing my act, see. Starts heckling. Big mistake. You heckle crooners. You heckle ventriloquists. You heckle magicians. You don’t heckle comics. I was on that night. Right?”
Silvers beamed.
“You were on,” I agreed.
“Made the guy look like the shmuck he was. Am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Big guy. Charges the stage.”
Silvers demonstrated, taking a few lumbering steps toward Gunther with his shoulders down.
“Toby here is working nights at the Green Pussycat, see?”
“Green Door,” I corrected.
“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Whatever. Well he gets between the drunken bull and me. Bull rams Toby with his head. Toby rams Bull with his right or left. Down goes Bull. Audience applauds. I grin like this and go on with the act. I took two curtain calls and I wasn’t even the headliner. That was Kenny Baker.”
“And I took seven stitches,” I said.
“Who’s counting?” said Silvers with a shrug. “I’m not counting. You?”
“No,” said Gunther, at whom the question was directed.
“I like this guy,” said Silvers, looking at Gunther and grinning.
Gunther is not easy to confuse, but Phil Silvers was doing a good job.
“Phil …,” I began.
“You can call me Abdullah,” he said. “That’s my name in the picture. Classy, huh?” He winked at Gunther.
“Has anyone been around here this morning looking for Wilde?” I asked.
I didn’t expect a “yes.” I was sure the person who was supposed to meet Wilde was Robert Cunningham, who was stone cold dead.
“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Blond guy. A few minutes ago. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he was in Cornel’s face. Not a good idea. Mr. Cornel Wilde is built better than Billy Conn on whom I lost … it doesn’t matter.”
Silvers looked around for the blond guy and didn’t see him.
The man with the script backed away from Wilde, who waved to a man in black tights and a black shirt. The man had a sword in his right hand.
“Watch this,” said Silvers, holding out his right arm to keep us back.
The crew stopped moving. The girls in costume stopped talking as the man in tights stepped onto the set. A young man stepped into the light and handed Wilde a sword.
Wilde and the man in black began to slowly duel with Wilde circling right and then left, up three stairs, and then a leap over the sword of the other man.
“Like that?” Wilde asked, looking at the man with the script.
“Perfect. Just speed it up a little.”
Wilde nodded.
“Swords,” said Silvers in a confidential whisper. “Wilde was a college champ. Olympic team. Good huh?”
“Very much so,” said Gunther.
“You got class,” said Silvers.
“Thank you,” said Gunther.