The Star Stalker

  She kept looking at me. “Yes. But somehow I kept thinking you’d come anyway. After doing what you did, wanting to change the script for me. That was wonderful, Tom.”

  Smiling came easy to me and words were easy, too. “Just doing my job, you know. I thought there should be revisions. Harker disagreed. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I thought—” She hesitated.

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” I said quickly. “Even if I couldn’t be on hand to help, I understand you’ve had the most expert attention. Harker’s a brilliant man, Dawn. He’ll make you a real star. I know the going’s pretty rough at times and you must be awfully tired, but everything’s bound to work out if you obey orders. It’s a marvelous opportunity.”

  She looked up at me, nodding.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “That’s what they all tell me, how marvelous it is. Harker and Craig and Lozoff and Mama. I’m going to be a star and it’s marvelous and I ought to be the happiest girl in the world.” Her shoulders shook. “And now, you—”

  Then her eyes widened, her mouth formed an O, and the stranger was gone. Dawn Powers disappeared.

  I saw Mitzi LaBuddie again.

  I saw Mitzi and she was crying, and then she moved and I moved and she was sobbing against me.

  “It’s all right,” I said, wondering if she could hear my heart. “It’s all right—”

  “Tom, I didn’t know, I thought you’d changed—”

  “I thought you’d changed, too.”

  “I have.” She tried to control her voice, but the time for that was past. “You don’t know what it’s like—the way he keeps after me, night and day, the things he says and does—”

  Something was rising in my throat, choking me. Something I wanted to spit out.

  “—and I can’t do it, Tom, I hate acting. I hate the picture, I hate him and everybody except you—”

  “Night and day,” I said, feeling it rise in my throat, knowing it had to come out. “You hate him, but night and day he’s after you, with you.”

  “What are you trying to say?” She drew back from me on the couch.

  “Nothing. Just thinking about a story I heard once. It might make a good plot for a picture.”

  “Tell me.”

  I opened my mouth and it came out, poured out, spewed out. About the astrologer and Harker and Kate LaBuddie, everything Carla had hinted at. I didn’t see anything as I talked—you close your eyes when you’re vomiting.

  And your heart pounds and your head throbs and your stomach churns and you say, “She sold you to him. It’s true, isn’t it? There’s no apartment, no girl friends. You’re living with Harker in his house, you go to that room of his in the dark where the fake stars make the fake dreams and the two of you—”

  Her fingers raked my face. “It’s not true, it’s not—”

  I grabbed her wrists, twisted them away. “You mean you don’t love him? I know that. You don’t love him, but you’re putting out for him, you’re letting him paw you and play with you, you’re letting him teach you all the tricks it takes to get a dirty old man excited. What do you have to do for him before he’s ready, Dawn? What’s it like when you’re doing it—does he still direct you then, tell you how to—”

  Somehow her hands were free and she came at me, gasping, clutching, her mouth moving against mine, her body straining close. “So that’s why you never came to me! I’ve waited for you so long, darling, I’ve wanted you for so long—”

  “What about Harker?”

  “Forget him. That’s what I try to do, even when it’s happening. Because it doesn’t really happen with him, it can only happen with you, the two of us together, like this.”

  It was all a breathless, disjointed blur of words and phrases, but the language of her body was eloquence enough. And that’s all I cared about as I clung to her on the couch, caressing her, reveling in the richness of her response.

  Behind us a door opened.

  We both looked up then, looked up and saw him standing there. Saw Theodore Harker in all his ebony and ice.

  It was Dawn who made the first move, rising suddenly so I had no chance to restrain her. She stood before the director and she said, “All right. Now you know. So get out. You don’t own me—you never have, and you never will!”

  Incredibly, Harker’s mouth shaped a smile. He glanced down at his hand, clenched around the head of the ebony cane. He was still smiling as he brought the cane up, swiftly—

  I launched myself from the couch, grappling with him, fighting to loosen his fingers as they gripped the cane to strike. He slammed back against the wall, then thrust forward. I was holding his wrists now and it was like holding the twin, throbbing throttles of a dynamo. I could feel the pulsing of power, the same power that blazed in the black abyss behind his eyes. For a moment we struggled together, panting and swaying; both of his hands tightened around the length of the cane as I forced it down between us.

  Then something snapped.

  Something snapped, and our gaze unlocked. My hands fell away from his wrists and we both stared down.

  The ebony cane, broken neatly in half, lay at his feet.

  Harker stooped, very slowly, and picked up the pieces. I backed away as Dawn came into my arms, and we watched as he fitted the two halves of the cane together. I thought that he looked like a child working a puzzle until I saw his face in all its ashen agony.

  Then, suddenly, he was erect; the cane had come together again, balanced across his palms. Once more I was staring at the magician with the magic wand. And he stared at me, stared at the girl in my arms.

  “Get out!” I said.

  His arm rose, lifting the cane. He hurled it past us, hurled it at the reflection in the mirror beyond. There was a splintering crash.

  The echoes still resounded as he turned and stalked out.

  Dawn and I stared down at the shatter of glittering fragments on the floor.

  I picked up the cane and tried to put the pieces together again, but I couldn’t make them fit.

  “Never mind, darling,” Dawn whispered. “Never mind.”

  Then she kissed me and I dropped the broken wand into the shining slivers of silver at our feet.

  FIFTEEN

  PRINCE METTERNICH wasn’t at his conference table the next morning and neither were the cardplayers. There were no diplomats and no poker faces in the group that gathered on the closed set.

  When they called my office I hurried over and found them all waiting—Sol Morris, Nicky, bookkeeper Bernie Galzer, Lozoff, Arch Taylor, and the surprise.

  I had a feeling they’d been discussing me before I arrived, but I could hardly blame them for that. The axe had been hanging over my head for the past twenty-four hours, and when Sol Morris rose and approached me, I almost expected to see him holding it in his hand.

  Instead he smiled and steered me over to the surprise. “Just in time,” he said. “I’d like you to meet our new vice-president, Lester Salem.”

  As we shook hands, I took special care to observe the newcomer. Since then I’ve seen him hundreds of times. I’ve glanced at his picture in the papers, the magazines, the publicity releases. But I still have trouble remembering what he looked like.

  That, of course, was Lester Salem’s secret. He didn’t look like anybody one would remember. He was just a presence.

  This morning he wore a suit that wasn’t gray, wasn’t brown; a pepper-and-salt tweed combination blending with the background. His shirt was white and therefore nonexistent, his tie a blurred blue. He had gray hair, gray eyes, and a pale complexion; even his thin lips seemed unaccented by color. His gestures were unobtrusive. his handclasp offered only a shadow of sensation. His voice, as he acknowledged our introduction, was flat.

  Sol Morris waved me to a vacant chair before the table. “We got started already,” he said, as I sat down, “I been telling them the sad news so you might as well hear it, too. Harker is out.”

  They were all staring at me no
w, ready for a reaction. I shifted in my chair, saying nothing, waiting for the axe to fall.

  Morris nodded. “That’s right. Out of the picture, out of the studio. I got a call from his lawyer last night. He’s selling his stock, everything. After all these years together—through, just like that!”

  Still they stared at me. I sensed their anticipation; the crowd gathered before the guillotine, eyes fixed on the victim just before the blade descends. Well, at least I could die bravely.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Morris,” I said. “I suppose you know the story.”

  “We all know it.”

  “It’s my fault,” I continued. “I had no business interfering. Miss Powers isn’t responsible in any way for what happened. I was the one who—”

  Morris shook his head. “Never mind that. I told you we know the story. Now it all comes out. From Taylor and Lozoff, how you wanted to change the script and Harker wouldn’t listen. From Emerson Craig about what kind of shenanigans went on with the shooting.”

  He pursed his lips. “If anybody’s to blame, it’s me. I shouldn’t have let him close the set, take his word for it that things were going smooth.”

  “Then you understand what—”

  “Sure. I already told you that. It happened, and it can’t be helped. So we don’t waste any more time. Harker wants out and he is out.”

  Lester Salem made a brief sound in his throat. “What about our legal department? Couldn’t we take steps to make him fulfill his contract?”

  Morris shrugged. “Who’s talking contract? God knows I ain’t a genius, but I got sense enough to know you can’t stick a policeman behind a guy and make him turn out a masterpiece. Anyway, I wouldn’t try. He wants to quit, that’s his business. Our business is, what are we gonna do about the picture?”

  He glanced across the table at Bernie Glazer. “You got the breakdown on costs? Okay, let’s hear the figures.”

  We heard the figures. Boiled down to essentials, the film at its halfway mark had run up expenses of a little over three hundred thousand dollars. Estimated cost of completion, including sets and costumes already contracted for, totaled another hundred and fifty thousand.

  Morris sighed. “We got too much tied up already to junk it. If we do, we lose all the money and get a bad name with the exhibitors besides. We promised Daydreams for spring release, we been selling a lot of dogs against it, so we got to deliver. Also, everybody’s going to be watching to see what we do after he walks out. If we quit, they’ll say we can’t get along without him. Right?”

  Lester Salem leaned forward. “Might I make a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Actually, it’s not my idea. I don’t presume to know anything about this business yet, although I assure you I intend to learn.” Salem paused, nodding at Nicky down at the end of the table. “However, I did take the liberty of discussing the problem with your son. He offered what I think is a practical solution, and he was kind enough to permit me to speak for him.”

  Nicky wagged his gum-filled jaws in agreement as Salem continued.

  “As I understand it, this studio is rather unique in that it does not employ the services of producers. Instead, once you and Mr. Glazer have approved a script and worked out a budget, you delegate authority solely to the directors.”

  “That’s right,” Morris told him. “We don’t need that kind of fancy business here, executives all over the place.” He pointed his cigar at Salem. “You know we even get along without supervisors. Nicky is the only one we got, sort of an experiment. But I like to keep things simple, keep the expenses down. I told the bank—”

  “I’m aware of that,” Salem murmured. “And at the time you explained, I was inclined to agree with you. But now I’m not so sure. If there had been a producer assigned to Daydreams, this unfortunate situation would never have arisen. He would have held the reins on Harker, kept costs down and production rolling.

  “Now what I propose is this. Your son tells me he is supervising the Jackie Keeley unit. He is the only one on the lot with this particular background of experience. I therefore suggest you appoint him as producer on Daydreams. At the same time, we can take Herb Weichmann off his schedule and let him finish the direction of the film. Then we’ll control the situation.”

  Morris puffed on his cigar. “I dunno. Weichmann’s a good man, but this isn’t his kind of picture.”

  “Then we can get somebody else, somebody from outside. The director isn’t that important, as I see it. The main problem is coordination—keeping an operation running smoothly and efficiently, without waste motion. Don’t you agree?”

  “Makes sense to me.” Bernie Glazer spoke up, “Probably save us some money if we handled it that way.”

  “Of course.” Salem smiled at him, then faced Morris once more. “Everyone has his function. We have scenarists to do the writing, actors to perform, technicians to handle staging and designing, and a director to put them though their paces. But we need an executive to keep them all in line.” He turned to Nicky. “Your son knows this, Mr. Morris. He realizes what I told them at the bank before I came out here—in spite of all the phoney glamor, if you’ll pardon my frankness in saying so, the movies are a business like any other business. And sensible business methods will get results—”

  “I don’t agree.”

  Salem’s head swivelled. He stared, we all stared, as Kurt Lozoff rose to his feet.

  “I don’t agree,” he repeated. “We’re not in a business. We’re in an endeavor. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, depending on just how well we translate imagination into visual terms on film.

  “This picture we’re taking about happens to be called Daydreams. But that’s a good title for all of them, because that’s what motion pictures are. Daydreams, individually conceived. Not uniform products stamped out on an assembly line.”

  “Please, Mr. Lozoff. We’re not talking theory here. We have a specific problem for which I’m proposing a specific solution.”

  Lozoff shook his head. “I know that. And I’m offering another solution.” He glanced at Sol Morris. “We’re in the middle of shooting now. If we set up another system it will take weeks before we can resume. If we go out and find another director, he can’t just step in and take over—he’ll have to familiarize himself with the production, study the footage already filmed. Meanwhile, costs will mount. So what I propose is this.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s start work again tomorrow morning. And let me finish directing the picture.”

  “You?” Morris put down his cigar.

  “Why not? I know the story. I’ve worked for Harker ever since I came here and I know his techniques. I have studied production methods for years. I directed a film in the east before coming to Hollywood, and I have a few innovations I would like to use in Daydreams. I assure you, I will not fail.”

  Morris shook his head. “You got a point there, about getting started tomorrow and all, but it’s a big project, we got a lot of money tied up—”

  “You’ll be saving a lot,” Lozoff said. “You’ll save by starting immediately. And you’ll save your director’s fee. What would you have to pay a good outsider to come in—fifty, seventy-five thousand dollars?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Very well.” Lozoff’s voice was firm. “I shall do it for nothing.”

  Morris blinked.

  “That is correct—nothing. I will even forego my salary as an actor. If the film nets a half million or over in profit, you can give me a bonus. I’ll leave that up to you. Fair enough?”

  Morris started to pick up his cigar, then changed his mind. “You really think you can do it?”

  “You have my word.”

  Sol Morris sighed. Then his hand went out again. “Shake,” he said. “You got yourself a deal.”

  Salem cleared his throat. “In that case, I’d like to assure Mr. Lozoff of my complete cooperation. I know what a tremendous responsibility he has assumed, and I’m
placing myself at his disposal, to help in any way I can.”

  Lozoff bowed from the waist. “Thank you. But it won’t be necessary. All that remains is for Mr. Post here to assist me on the scenario. There are a few changes in order, I believe.”

  I shot a quick glance at the ceiling. There was no axe suspended there now. I could smile at Lozoff as I answered. “Anything you say—if Mr. Morris doesn’t object.”

  Lozoff nodded. “I have already told him about your ideas for revision. And I believe we’ll have no further problem with Miss Powers’ role once those necessary changes are made.”

  “Go ahead,” Sol Morris said. “It’s your baby.”

  “Then if you will excuse us?” Lozoff bowed again. Morris gestured, the others stared. Only I fancied I could detect a subtle change in the rhythmic motion of young Nicky’s jaws; a new, set intensity in Salem’s waxen smile.

  But there was no time to think about that, now. I was following Lozoff off the set.

  Once outside, he turned to me. “You have a carbon of your treatment? Good—get it at once. We have much to do.”

  “You’re using my story? But that means reshooting—”

  “Don’t ask questions. Get the carbon and meet me in Projection Four in fifteen minutes.”

  That’s how it started.

  And that’s how it continued, through the next six weeks. The Congress of Vienna was disbanded, and we went to work on my version of the script—with a few surprises in the form of Lozof’s suggestions.

  Lozoff had surprises for everybody. He surprised Emerson Craig with his directorial ability. He surprised Dawn by treating her with gentle patience, leading her through their scenes together and watching carefully over the rest of her work. There was no more hysteria on the set, and he surprised everybody by removing the ban on admittance.

  Lozoff surprised Glazer rather unpleasantly, though, by running the costs up well over the budget estimate. The changed sets were expensive, the shooting and reshooting even more so. We had to redo many of Harker’s scenes to conform with the new treatment.

  But Glazer never said anything, and if Salem complained to Morris we were not told. Everyone was waiting to see what the outcome would be.