The Star Stalker

  I took a deep breath. “Salem sent you another version? I never knew that.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I doubt if he planned to tell you—just intended to let you find out when rehearsals started. You’re on his list, boy, same as I am, ever since that night I told him off.” Druse smiled with his mouth, but the dark eyes never smiled. They couldn’t smile; they were crippled, like the legs—the smile had been cut away.

  “I won’t even show you the thing he sent over,” Druse continued. “Take my word for it, it’s terrible. One of those fakes where everything turns out to be a dream at the end. That’s Salem’s thinking for you. He wants to tell people it’s all a dream, wake up and hear the birdies. What he forgets is that people pay their money because they want a dream, and they want to believe it’s real. What he forgets is that we’ve got to live and suffer to make it real for them. He’d just as soon get rid of me—he thinks you can buy a horror star in the open market, just take any old character actor and slap a lot of makeup on his face. I know better. I know you have to pay another kind of price. I gave my feet.”

  He leaned forward. “Tell this to your Mr. Salem. Tell him how I learned about horror. Once there was a little boy, nine years old. His father was crazy, but the kid didn’t know it. Until one day his father grabbed him and held him down on the kitchen table. He tied the kid up tight, see? And then he took a hatchet and cut the boy’s feet off above the ankles. All the time he was doing it he kept laughing, laughing—”

  Druse reached for the bottle. “That’s how I found out about monsters. By becoming one, myself. And it was real, I tell you. I try to make it real for others, now. I try to show them what it means—without Salem’s phoney endings.”

  I was silent for a moment, watching him pour his drink. “Does the Old Man know Salem has another story?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, let’s do it our way, then.” I rose. “I’m going back and tell Weichmann. We’ll talk to Morris at once.”

  “Salem’s going to have his knife out for you, if you do,” Druse warned me.

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Why stick your neck out?” Druse groped for words and his bottle simultaneously. “You don’t owe me any favors, you of all people—” He shook his head and then his mouth smiled again as the sombre eyes stared. “Sorry for me, aren’t you?”

  “That’s not the reason.”

  “Don’t be,” said the mouth, while the eyes mirrored an agony of their own. “I’ve got everything I want. You may not approve of Sin, or the way I’ve fixed the house up here, but it suits me. Maybe my old man wasn’t the only crazy one in the family.”

  The mouth chuckled and the dark eyes glanced toward the fireplace. “This is what I’ve always wanted, ever since the carny days. Harker knows—”

  “Jackie Keeley said you two started out together.”

  The eyes met mine quickly, and then Druse nodded. “True. And as long as you’re interested in my little secrets, here’s another one. I get a kick out of wearing a derby and smoking that goddam pipe, looking like a rube. And knowing, all the time, that I’m really a monster.

  “You understand that, Post? I’m a monster, just the way it is up there on the screen. I’m real, and nobody’s going to change me. Not a fool like Salem. Sometimes when I get to thinking about him, I could—”

  Shaking his head, he barked a laugh. “I’m talking too much. And not drinking enough.” Druse extended the bottle. “One for the road?”

  “All right.” I poured for both of us, lifted my glass to the firelight. “You come in tomorrow,” I told him. “Everything will be straightened out by then. That’s a promise.”

  “Thanks. I’ll drink to that.”

  He drank to that, and I drank my own toast. A toast to a monster, to the man with the silver feet.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I NEVER reported back to Salem at all. Instead I went straight to Sol Morris. I told him all about it, without making any complaints—just gave him the straight story.

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue, then ground his cigar out in the big gold ashtray.

  “Weichmann said you wrote a good one,” he murmured. “That’s enough for me. So start the rehearsals tomorrow. Never mind about Salem. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I don’t want any hard feelings,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t. Leave that to me. Somebody’s getting too big in the britches.”

  Just what kind of a custom-tailoring job was done on Salem’s britches, I’ll never know. But neither he nor Nicky bothered us during the filming of Spider Man; they never showed up on the set. The next time I saw Salem he was his usual nonsmiling self, and he made no mention of the incident.

  Druse came back, turned in an excellent job, and the picture—when it was finally shown—did all right.

  We released it early in 1928, with plenty of exploitation. That was Salem’s innovation. He sold all his turkeys with “showmanship,” and the lobbies of the growing Coronet Chain were now filled with college pennants, palm trees, circus banners, burglar tools, machine guns, model airplanes, boxing gloves—depending on the type of bird he had in the oven at the moment.

  He sponsored Black Bottom Contests and Treasure Hunts and Talent Searches. He had Beauty Parades and Flower Matinees and Personal Appearances and Ukulele Amateur Nights.

  People were talking about his stunts. And people were talking, now, about Joan Crawford and a new cartoon character named Mickey Mouse. We began to hear about the big New York gross on The Jazz Singer—Warner Brothers were pushing another one of those novelties called Vitaphone, with music and voices. It caught on, just the way color did when Doug made The Black Pirate, a few years before. And like color, it was a very interesting experiment but way too expensive, of course.

  In mid-year we finally got a chance to see something really important. Theodore Harker brought out his new picture. That was big news.

  For a week before the premiere I heard about it on the lot. From Hacky, for example:

  “Going to see Mankind?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Where’s the premiere?”

  “Grauman’s Chinese.”

  “He doesn’t look it! Haha!”

  I showed up on the big night, with Lozoff and Madame Olga. It was a full-scale production—searchlights, the red carpet, the radio announcer, the special cordon of police, and the rope to keep back the crowds. We stood in the lobby, watching Theodore Harker make his entrance.

  “That’s Stella Ballard with him, his new discovery,” Lozoff told me. “And George Conway.”

  I nodded, my eyes on Harker as he paused before the microphone and said “a few words” as requested by the master of ceremonies. He had a new cane, and that gave him the old look—no, Harker hadn’t changed. He was still the master magician, and when I saw him everything came back in a rush. The cane moved, the wand waved, and there were Carla and Dude and Maybelle and Dawn. Dawn. Why, it was a year and a half now, almost two—I’d thought I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t. You never forget.

  In the mob just beyond the doorway, people stared and pointed, and a voice recalled me to reality. A girl, asking her boyfriend, “Who’s he?”

  She pointed at Harker. I smiled at the time, but during the course of the picture I recalled the question and I didn’t smile, then.

  After it was over, the Lozoffs and I went to a little place on Sunset for a bite to eat.

  “Well,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Ballard’s a fair actress. But this Conway—he has something. I’d like to use him soon.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I told him. “What do you think of the picture?”

  Lozoff selected a cigarette. “If you’d asked me that question in 1922, you know what my answer would have been. But now, in ’28, I don’t know.”

  “The audience seemed to enjoy it.”

  “You know premiere audiences. And right now there’s a bi
g party at Harker’s place, with everybody gathering around and telling him this is the best thing he’s ever done. But it’s dated.”

  Madame Olga nodded. “I think I understand what Kurt means,” she said. “The love scenes, the orange blossoms, the doves—too old-fashioned.”

  “Well, we don’t have to make everything into a Clara Bow opus, do we? Must it all be hey-hey stuff, redhot mamma and palpitating papa?”

  Lozoff smiled. “Of course not. That’s false, too. And it won’t last. What will last is the mature approach, the honest approach. Telling your story, no matter whether the setting is ancient Greece of modern America, in realistic terms. The technique you find in The Crowd and The Wind.”

  He leaned forward. “The time has come, I think, to take the big step. I am going to see Morris next week and tell him my plans for the coming year. I want you to work with me. I’ll see about getting this George Conway; if not, I have someone else in mind. I want Lucille Hilton for Sonia and Druse for Porfiry. As for you, you’d better get started reading the book.”

  “What book?” I asked. “What are we making?”

  “Crime and Punishment,” said Lozoff.

  “All right.” I stood up. “But better not tell Nicky. He doesn’t like gangster pictures.”

  Madame Olga laughed. “It is good to see you happy again,” she said. “Making the jokes. For a while there, Kurt and I were troubled because of you. After that girl—”

  Lozoff gave her a look and she subsided. But I smiled. “It’s all right,” I answered. “That was a long time ago.”

  “I’m glad.” Madame Olga smiled. “I thought that maybe when you heard about her getting married, you’d be—”

  “Married?”

  “Yes, it was in the papers tonight. Didn’t you read—”

  “Married? Who’s she marrying? What’s his name?”

  “I don’t remember. Please, Tommy, sit down, don’t get excited. I thought—”

  I didn’t wait to hear what she thought. I was out of there, running down the street to the newsstand. I was buying a paper, ripping through the pages, cursing because it was an early morning edition and not from the previous evening.

  Then I was in the drugstore, looking for a phone. I was calling Kate LaBuddie’s number. I was trembling and my hands were shaking, and now my voice was shaking, too.

  “Hello—this is Tom Post. Where is she?”

  “She?”

  “Dawn. Mitzi. I must talk to her!”

  “She’s not here. Mr. Post, do you realize it’s almost midnight?”

  “I’m not asking you what time it is. Where is she?”

  “She’s not here. Really, Mr. Post—”

  “Are you going to tell me the truth or must I come out there?”

  “Well—”

  I slammed the receiver down. Then I was back on the street.

  “Taxi!”

  I opened the door before it had come to a stop, hurled the Vine Street address at the driver and myself into a seat. Then I sat there, shaking and shaking as we knifed through the night. My stomach was churning and my head was churning, too. I kept wanting to throw up, and all I could regurgitate was memories.

  Then I was getting out in front of the apartment house, going into the lobby, pressing the buzzer. I rang and I rang and I rang. I began to curse as I held my finger down and listened to the drone.

  “Answer, damn you!” I yelled. “Answer!”

  Finally the lock clicked on the inner door. I yanked the handle and careened down the hall. Apartment 2-B. 2-B or not 2-B. It is good to see you happy again. Making the jokes.

  I stopped in front of the door, raised my fist to pound. The door opened. Kate LaBuddie peered out at me.

  “Are you crazy?” she whispered.

  “Let me in.”

  “All right, but no noise.”

  “Let me in.”

  She slid the chain off the lock and I entered.

  “I must say this is most irr—irrigelur.” I took a good look at her, then a good sniff. Kate LaBuddie, I suddenly realized, was drunk. I could smell the reek of juniper essence in the untidy front room, and now I could see the bottle and the tumbler on the table.

  Kate LaBuddie peered up at me, trying to push her hair back from her forehead. “What do you mean, breaking in here at this hour?” she began, in a curious mimicry of her usual affected manner. Then, abruptly, the hair slid down across her forehead and the mask came awry, too. “What the hell’s the big idea?” she demanded.

  I wasn’t wearing a mask, either, now. “That’s what I want to know,” I said, and shook her. “Where’s Dawn?”

  “Take your hands off me,” gasped Kate LaBuddie. Then she sat down and began to sob.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was, suddenly and intensely, as I looked at the drunken, middle-aged woman huddling there on the sofa. Somehow, at this moment she bore a mocking resemblance to Dawn. Perhaps it was the way her mouth made a wavering O as she sobbed.

  “Please,” I said, sitting down beside her. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  “Trouble? You’re the one who started all the trouble in the first place. You and your ideas.” The sobs ceased and she began to talk with renewed animation. “If it hadn’t been for you, she’d never have quit the movies. She’d never have left Harker. She’d be a great star today, instead of—”

  I saw the tears coming again, so I did the sensible thing. I stood up and walked over to the table, poured a stiff slug of gin into the tumbler, and carried it back to her. She accepted it without a word and gulped greedily.

  “Feel better now?” I asked.

  “Better? Why should I feel better? I’m a mother, Mr. Post. A poor woman, alone in the world with two innocent children to protect.” She was going into her act again, but I was willing to watch, and to wait.

  “I worked my fingers to the bone to provide them with every oppor—oppratunity. And just when things began to go the right way, you came along and spoiled it all.

  “Look!” she cried, waving the tumbler and sloshing some of the contents on the rug with the force of her gesture. “Is this the home for the mother of a star? Why, we’d be living in a palace today if it wasn’t for you. You took her away from Harker, you took her away from me, you took her away from the movies. And now here I sit, all alone, with Buddie out God-knows-where and Mitzi off with that mis’rable little wholesale grocer. All those years of planning, and she ends up with a wholesale grocer. It’s funny—”

  I didn’t give her time to laugh. “Off? You mean she ran away?”

  “Last night. They drove to Nevada, to get married. Didn’t even ask me along—her own mother, and she didn’t even—”

  “You’re sure they’re married? What’s his name?”

  “Shotwell. Kenneth Shotwell. From Pasadena. He’s fat, he smokes cigars, he looks like a wholesale grocer. And it’s all your fault, all your fault. I tried so hard.” Her mouth began to quiver again, but I no longer felt pity.

  What I did feel must have shown on my face, because she looked up at me and said, “Better help yourself to a drink.”

  I nodded. I found a glass in the kitchen and returned.

  I poured myself half a water glass full of the stuff. I hated raw gin, but it didn’t matter, because I hated everything.

  The liquor burned as it went down, and I poured again.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “See, there’s another bottle. I better open it.”

  She opened it and poured for both of us.

  “You really loved her, didn’t you?” she wheezed, between gulps.

  I nodded.

  “Then why’d you let her go? Why’d you let her quit? She could have been rich—even without Harker. There’d been enough for all of us—”

  “Shut up!” I said.

  She stared at me for a moment as if she hadn’t heard. Then she put down her glass. “Who the hell are you to tell me to shut up, you little bastard?”

  “What’s that?”

/>   Kate LaBuddie laughed. “Guess you thought I didn’t know, eh? Thought it was a secret, huh? But I found out. How’d you think we got to Harker in the first place? I was the one who worked, I was the one who did the planning. I told her what to say—”

  “What are you talking about? The astrologer?”

  “Of course I am. So you do know that part of it. Did Mitzi tell you?”

  “No. Someone else. About how you and some astrologer got Harker’s confidence by telling him a lot of things about himself, about his past, and—”

  All at once I was dizzy. It was the hatred again, it was the gin, and it was something else. Something that came up in a great wave of sound, of voices that shouted bastard, bastard, bastard, over and over again.

  I heard Aunt Minnie’s voice. “We got you from the Orphanage just because it was our chance to—”

  And Jackie Keeley, saying, “Why, I knew Teddy Harker when he was still with it . . . used to travel with mud shows, him and his wife. At least she said she was his wife, little redhead, Connie, something-or-other—”

  Everything fitted, now. Everything fitted into the pattern, and the pattern made a single word. Bastard. That’s who I was, what I was. Theodore Harker’s bastard.

  I stood up. The room was spinning now, but I didn’t care. Let the room spin, let the world spin, let Kate LaBuddie drool into drunkenness and Dawn Powers honeymoon with her wholesale grocer from Pasadena. That was funny, everything was funny, and the funniest thing of all was the spectacle of a dumb bastard, a goddam kid who’d always wanted to find his father.

  I lurched over to the door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kate LaBuddie.

  I didn’t bother to tell her. But I knew.

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT WAS two o’clock in the morning, but the lights still glowed and glared through the windows of Theodore Harker’s house.