“The ‘new niggers,’ you say?”
“That’s right, both me and you — niggers to the last. Disenfranchised equals ready to fight back against the motherfucking system.”
“Except that you’ll get half the jail time.”
Topsy was waiting for us out in the Nuart parking lot, still in costume and blackface, but wearing a pair of designer sunglasses and excitedly digging through her book bag. I tried to rush Hominy into the truck before he could see her, but she cut us off.
“Mr. Jenkins, I want to show you something.” She took out an oversized three-ring binder and opened it on the hood of the pickup. “These are copies I made of the ledgers for all the Our Gang and Little Rascals movies shot at Hal Roach Studios and MGM.”
“Holy shit.”
Before Hominy could look at them, I snatched the notebook and scanned the columned entries. It was all there. The titles, dates of principal photography, cast and crew, shooting days and total production costs, the profits and losses for all 227 films. Wait, 227?
“I thought there were only 221 movies?”
Topsy smiled and flipped to the second-to-last page. Six consecutive entries for films shot in late 1944 were completely blacked out. Which meant that two hours of prepubescent hijinks that I’d never seen might still exist somewhere. I felt like I was looking at some top-secret FBI report about the Kennedy assassination. I yanked open the binder and held the sheet up to the sun, trying to see through the redaction’s blackness and back into time.
“Who do you think did this?” I asked her.
From her book bag Topsy took out another photocopy. This one listed everyone who’d checked out the ledger since 1963. There were four names on it: Mason Reese, Leonard Maltin, Foy Cheshire, and Butterfly Davis, which I presumed was Topsy’s real name. Before I lifted my eyes from the paper, Hominy and Butterfly were sitting in the cab. He had one arm around her and was leaning on the horn.
“That nigger got my movies! Let’s be out!”
From West L.A. the drive to Foy’s Hollywood Hills abode took longer than it should have. When my father used to force me to accompany him to his black brainiac confabs with Foy, no one knew about the north — south shortcuts from the basin into the hills. Back then Crescent Heights and Rossmore used to be side streets and smooth sailing; now they’re two-lane, bumper-to-bumper major thoroughfares. Man, I used to swim in Foy’s pool while they talked politics and race. Not once did my father ever show any bitterness toward the fact that Foy had paid for that estate with money he earned from “The Black Cats ’n’ Jammin Kids,” the original storyboards of which still hang on my bedroom wall. “Dry off, motherfucker!” Dad would say. “You’re dripping water on the man’s Brazilian cherrywood floors!”
Most of the ride up, Butterfly and Hominy bonded over photos of her and her sorority sisters celebrating the joys of multiculturalism. Denigrating the city of Los Angeles ethnicity by ethnicity, neighborhood by neighborhood. In violation of every traffic law and social taboo, she sat in his lap, their seat belts unbuckled. “This is me at the Compton Cookout … I’m the third ‘ghetto chick’ from the right.” I stole a glance at the snapshot. The women and their dates blackened and Afro-wigged, toting forties and basketballs, smoking blunts. Their mouths filled with gold teeth and chicken drumsticks. It wasn’t so much the racist ridicule as the lack of imagination that I found insulting. Where were the zip coons? The hep cats? The mammies? The bucks? The janitors? The dual-threat quarterbacks? The weekend weather forecasters? The front-desk receptionists that greet you at every single movie studio and talent agency in the city? Mr. Witherspoon will be down in a minute. Can I get you a water? That’s the problem with this generation; they don’t know their history.
“This was the Bingo sin Gringos night we held for Cinco de Mayo…” As opposed to the Compton Cookout, it wasn’t hard to spot Butterfly in that one: this time she sat next to an Asian woman, the two of them, like the other sisters, wearing gigantic sombreros, ponchos, bandoleras, and droopy foot-long Pancho Villa mustaches, while drinking tequila and daubing their cards. Be-ocho … ¡Bingo! Butterfly flicked through her photos. The titles of each bash a dress code unto itself: Das Bunker: The Pure Gene Pool Pool Party. The Shabu Shabu Sleepover! The Trail of Beers — Hiking and Peyote Trip.
Sitting just off Mulholland Drive, on the crest overlooking the San Fernando Valley, Foy’s house was bigger than I remembered. A massive Tudor estate with a circular driveway, it looked more like an English finishing school than a home, despite the giant foreclosure sign bolted to the entrance gate. We piled out of the car. The mountain air was brisk and clean. I took in a deep breath and held it, while Hominy and Butterfly sauntered up to the gate.
“I can smell my movies in there.”
“Hominy, the place is empty.”
“They in there. I know it.”
“What, you going to dig up the yard like in ‘Unexpected Riches’?” I asked, invoking Spanky’s Our Gang swan song into the mix.
Hominy rattled the fence. And then I remembered the code like you remember your best friend’s childhood phone number. I punched 1-8-6-5 into the security box. The gate buzzed, the roller chain tightened and slowly pulled the gate open. 1865, black people are so fucking obvious.
“Massa, you coming?”
“Naw, you two have at it.”
Across Mulholland was a scenic overlook.
Facing north, I timed my run and sprinted between a speeding Maserati and two teenagers in a birthday BMW convertible. A dirt trail peeled down the mountainside and through the chaparral for about a mile or so, eventually leading to a side street and Crystalwater Canyon Park, a small but immaculately kept recreation area featuring a few picnic tables, some shade trees, and a basketball court. Ignoring the sap dripping down its trunk, I sat underneath a thick fir tree. The ballplayers limbered up for an after-work run or two before the sun set. A lone black man, in his mid-thirties, light-skinned and shirtless, paced at center court. He was one of those semiskilled hoopsters who frequented the white courts in ritzy neighborhoods like Brentwood and Laguna, looking for a decent game, an opportunity to dominate, and who knows, maybe even a job prospect.
“Any niggers out here for the attention, get the fuck off the court,” the brother yelled to the delight of the white boys.
The philosophy professor on sabbatical inbounded the ball. A personal-injury lawyer hit a corner jumper. Displaying a surprisingly good handle, a fat pharmacist crossovered a pediatrician, but bricked the layup. The day trader air-balled a shot that sailed out of bounds and rolled toward the parking lot. Even in L.A., where luxury cars, like shopping carts at the supermarket, are everywhere you look, Foy’s ’56 300SL was unmistakable. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred left on the planet. Near the front fender, Foy sat in a small lawn chair, dressed in only his boxers, a T-shirt, and sandals, chatting into his phone and typing on a laptop almost as old as his car. He was drying his clothes. His shirts and pants hanging from hangers hooked onto the car’s gull-wing doors, which were in full flight and hovering above like wings on a silver dragon. I had to ask. I got up and walked past the basketball game. Two players vying for a loose ball tumbled by. Arguing over possession before they got to their feet.
“Who’s that off of?” a player in beat-up sneakers asked me, his outstretched arms a silent plea for mercy. I recognized the guy. The mustachioed lead detective in a long-canceled but still-in-syndication cop show — big in Ukraine. “That’s off the dude with the hairy chest.” The movie star disagreed. But it was the right call.