Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

like I probably will, like I usually do with you. What then? You’re untouchable. You know who owns this studio now.”

“Yeah, I know who owns it and I know how much he loves money. Just read it, Buddy. That’s all I ask.”

Fix checked his watch. Eight more minutes to go.

“What’s the story?”

“Sheriff sends up some bad guys and they’re released from prison. Send him a message they’re coming back. Warn him to clear out. He won’t go.”

“Done and redone. Man against the mob. What’s new about that?”

“What’s new is that he’d rid the town of this bunch. If the town stands with him the gang has no chance.”

“And?”

“Town turns its back on him. Leave, say the elders. We want no more trouble.”

“And?”

“Now he has the gang and the town against him.”

Fix smiled. “You’ve been working with Brecht too long, Joe. So the town is the Germans, who instead of standing up to Hitler embrace him. No more trouble.”

“It’s all in the writing, Buddy, the telling, you know that, classic tale with a new twist. Put Gary Cooper in it.”

“I saw Galileo, you know,” he said, referring to Brecht’s play. “Dreck. Why did he make him snivel like that?”

Morton had worked on the revision of Galileo before going to jail for refusing to talk to Congress about people like Brecht. Brecht had written his first draft while on the run from the Nazis, making the Italian astronomer a hero who stands up to the Inquisition, a metaphor for the Nazis. In Santa Monica he realized he’d written a lie. No one stood up to the Nazis.

“To show the monster he was up against.”

Fix sighed and stood up, hands on hips. “Can’t do your story, Joe. Gary Cooper is the last guy who’d do a script with your name on it. Not to mention Howard Hughes, who’s the boss now. Howard’s talking about Cooper for The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand.”

“So forget Cooper. Hughes will love my script. Just get him to read it.”

“Nobody will do a film with your name on it.”

Joe didn’t move. “How do you know?”

“How do I know? Because it’s my business to know, goddam it, because I’m paid to know what the American people will like and to help them like it. Because people think you’re a goddam Commie, Joe; because Congress cited you along with the others like your pal Brecht, who left the country for East Germany just in time. Because you just got out of jail.”

“With my name on it, eh?”

Fix started to say something and stopped. “Hey, you write something I like, give me another name to put on it and we can do business. Hey, I’ve got a still better idea: we’ll put your wife’s name on it. Why not? She’s a helluva writer.”

“What? Me ghost for Lizzie?”

“Ghost, schmost. Get her to write it.”

“What—my sheriff story?”

“No, not your goddam sheriff story. Morality doesn’t sell anymore. What sells today is strength—Superman, good against evil, John Wayne against the Indians and Gary Cooper against the bureaucrats. They want Galileo standing up to the bad guys, not going all blubbery. Look, Joe, I’m trying to help. Get Lizzie to write up the whole Pitts-Murphy-Chili business. Helluva a story. Make a classic noir.”

“I’m not here to shill for my wife. I’ve got my own story. Why don’t you take a look? What do you have to lose?”

“Time, dammit, time, which is what I’m losing now. I can’t touch you, Joe. Read the Waldorf agreement. My hands are tied. Your time is up.”

Joe hadn’t risen. “The Waldorf agreement! I saw your name on that screed. The others I can understand: Goldwyn, Mayer, Harry Cohn—Galileos all. I didn’t expect to see Buddy Fix on that reactionary list of infamy.”

“Infamy? We told it like it is, Joe. We’re businessmen, not moralists.”

“That’s what the Krupps told Hitler.”

The intercom on the desk sounded. Fix ignored it and turned to watch a great truckload of maple trees chug by toward the Brooklyn street at the rear of the lot.

“Here’s how it is, Joe, just as real as those maple trees out there: Anything with your name on it is poison, end of story. Your pal Brecht is the toast of East Berlin—the man who came back when everyone else was getting the hell out.”

“Brecht was anti-fascist, anti-war, anti-Hitler long before we lifted a finger. So he’s a leftist now. So were a lot of people who fought against Hitler.”

“C’mon. You were with the Bolshies before the war. Admit it.”

“So I admit it. The Crash made a lot of people ask questions. Then came the Depression. What about you, Buddy, weren’t you asking questions?”

He was leaning on the desk. “Never. I’ve always been a true-blue Ayn Rand capitalist.”

“And your father . . .?”

Fix froze, pudgy fingers pressing white-tipped into the desk, tie dangling, beady eyes squinting. Joe watched his expression change from anger to surprise to curiosity.

“What the hell do you know about my father?”

“I ran into him on a picket line once.”

Fix grimaced, then burst out laughing. “Yeah, right, well, we all make mistakes, don’t we? At least he didn’t go to jail. Now get out of here.”

“What about my script?”

“So leave your fucking script,” he shouted. “And get yourself a nom de plume or whatever the fuck they call it!”

Chapter 32

“Los Angeles has, young lady, the most perfect transportation system in the world.”

The man leaned forward in the redwood chair and jabbed his finger toward the blazing fireplace to make the point. “I bet you didn’t know that. Most people don’t. They get up and hop a trolley that covers eleven hundred miles of track for a quarter—that’s more than half the distance to Chicago—and they take it for granted. Dumb clucks don’t even know what they’ve got.” He sighed and sank back into the canvas cushions. From the kitchen the coffee gurgled. “Well, they’ll know when it’s gone.”

Fred Barrett had not been that easy to find. An angular, bearded, ageless man on the wrong side of fifty, maybe sixty,