To hell with Hollywood

You won’t believe your eyes, I’m willing to bet. A letter in your mail! Who still writes today? I can imagine you from here: “A pervert. He saw me in a movie and he's polishing his whistle while thinking about me, that disgusting old man.” You wouldn't be wrong, at least for the “old man” part. I’m at the end of the line. But that's another story. My lawyer, a brat of not even thirty, wanted me to contact you by e-mail or phone. “That's the way it is now, Mr. Davis,” I said no. Well, to be very precise, I said, “Shit”. I wanted to talk to you, nicely, to tell you about a part of my life. Old people like to do this kind of stuff.

Let’s start by setting the scene: Los Angeles, in the middle of the last century. It’s a long time ago, right? The Hollywood in which I lived in 54 was shining on me. I wasn’t one of the hicks. Losers, who came out from under their bush to conquer the city. I came from elsewhere, where the people who mattered in Hollywood were hiding: the actors under contract, the producers. I ate at Errol Flynn and his wife’s house on Mulholland Drive! I was invited to Joan Langford’s little hops! And one day, I was thrown out of there with a kick in the ass. At the time I’m talking about, I was nothing. I was crashing at a place on Temple Street.

A starlet with whom I had shared some good times, Eva Peters, had just committed suicide. She had jumped off a letter from the Hollywood sign. Like Peg Entwistle in the 20s. And for the same reasons: she couldn't break through. Only difference: Peg had thrown herself from the letter H, and Eva from the L. Perhaps Eva would have preferred to jump from the H, too, but just had bad luck, the ladder had been broken in the early 40s and no one had thought of fixing it. Hollywood was really falling apart. Literally as well as figuratively.

Girls like Eva, you could see hundreds of them. She came from Milwaukee. In these godforsaken holes, you don’t have a sense of reality. As a kid, she was told: “What a pretty girl! You look like Shirley Temple. You could be an actress!” At eighteen, she gets on a bus to Los Angeles. She passes test pieces, “smile, look at the camera”, while assholes groped her ass. Finally, she signs at Paramount, two small roles in comedies. Her contract isn’t renewed. Six months after arriving, she’s working the night shift at the Melrose Place drive-through.

It was there that I knew her. A little bird. But not made for that. She said, “I could always go home.” But she couldn’t. Maybe you know that, too. This feeling of being a fly stuck in a spider’s web. You know you’d have to let it go and get into the line, get a shit job, marry your high school boyfriend, but nothing helps, this town has gotten under your skin. Hollywood and its lights at night. Hollywood and its stars. The promises it whispers in your ear as it sucks your blood. You’re screwed.

Poor Eva! Her pretty little battered body was barely buried when the problems started for me. Locked in my room, in front of my typewriter and my glass of whiskey, I was content with crime writing to sell to a pulp magazine. It didn’t pay much but at least it allowed me to eat. I had some talent for the genre: no banter, lots of fighting and slang words. That was me.

Imagine the scene like an old film in black and white, if you like: I’m in my shabby hotel room when, one day, my landlady knocks on the door.

I didn’t answer, I hadn’t paid the rent.

“Davis!” she screamed through the door. “I know you are there. Phone for you!”

Nobody knew I had moved. Either it was a Thrilling Detective editor who was calling to say they were taking my short story, “The Dead Don’t Talk”, or she was messing with me.

I opened the door and Mrs. Evans appeared. A femme fatale: fifty-five years minimum, black hair, mustache, breasts to the belly. At first, she liked me, the old woman. She made me stew. Gave me big smiles with her big yellow teeth. And then, she finally understood that it wouldn’t be possible for her and me. Since then, no more stew.

“Davis, the weeks rent?” she said

“It’s coming, Mrs. Evans. It’s the editor from Thrilling Detective magazine who’s calling. They’ll publish one of my short stories.”

“If I don’t have it tomorrow, you get out.”

I took the handset. I looked at her insistently. She was unmoved, she didn’t want to miss the conversation. I turned toward the wall.

“Hello?”

At the end of the line, a man’s voice. He spoke through his nose.

“Are you Tim Davis?”

“Yeah.”

“You are thirty-two years old. Originally from New York, in the Bronx, you came to LA twelve years ago. Occupation: former screenwriter for Warner.

“Yeah... Can we get to the point?”

The voice continued, ignoring my remark:

“Are you Tim Davis who was dating Eva Peters, the starlet who committed suicide last week?”

I opened my mouth to correct him, then I gave up.

“Yes.”

No one was interested in poor Eva during her lifetime, but dead, she was blessed bread! The Los Angeles Times had published a double page devoted to her life, her miserable childhood between her alcoholic father and her mother who did odd jobs to support the family. They had rewritten history, stuck me in the role of the teary fiance. They had ignored her other friends. I told you, Eva was a classy girl. Her only fault: she couldn’t say no. So, she had a bunch of “fiancees”, a bunch of losers who were taxing her last few dollars, and a bunch of goons pretending to be agents ready to take control of her.

“Did you also steal the screenwriter Jim Smith’s one dollar coin? I mean... not just any coin. That which had belonged to Harvey Henderson Wilcox, who founded Hollywood in 1886?”

I almost dropped the handset. My hand was limp as if the blood had withdrawn from my arm. If this guy worked for Thrilling Detective, I was the president of the United States. The only people who knew about this story were Jim and his goons.

I have to tell you a little more about this damn affair. After all, it ruined my life. This Smith asshole, my colleague at Warner and former best friend, had squandered all his fortune to buy this stupid dollar coin! He strutted about telling everyone that it was magical. According to legend, Wilcox's father had offered it to him when he was three, telling him that it would bring him luck. He wasn't mistaken! Wilcox had done well afterward.

Three years ago, I borrowed Jim’s coin. Oh, it was just a joke. I was going to give it back to him. But he crossed the line: this fool had hired guys to track me down, redo my face and get his coin back.

I preferred to lie.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I hung up. Old Evans stared at me.

“He didn’t seem like an editor.”

“You’re right. Wrong number.”

I was trying to think about what to do. Not easy with three glasses of whiskey on an empty stomach. If they had found me, I couldn’t stay here anymore. It was because of the articles about Eva in the press, I was sure. It was enough for them to go to the drive-in where she worked, I went there every day. They must have spotted me and then followed me to my home.

“And that tall blond guy, outside,” said Mrs. Evans, “the one who asks after you all the time, is he an editor too?”

Shit! They were already here!

“A blond guy, what fucking blond guy?”

I leaned out the window to look down the street. There was a blond guy down there.

"This is not that kind of house! I never thought you were a writer anyway... seeing how you speak. I will ask you to pay me and leave."

The guy looked up at me. I panicked and ran down the service stairs, accompanied by the cries of old Evans: “Thief! Bandit! Stop him!”

Outside, I walked aimlessly, wary of every person I met. I checked that I was not followed. I went to a cafe. I dreamed of a beer, but too expensive. I ordered a coffee. I was brought something disgusting that I couldn’t drink.

This day was rotten. I was ready to give up the game. Please note, I wasn’t talking about giving Smith his coin back! But I could sell it. I wouldn’t spit on some cash flow right now. Except by doing that, I took the risk of running into a buyer who was commissioned by Jim. There’s no way he’s going to see his coin again! It was safe in Eva’s apartment, but her roommate, another pseudo-actress, had asked me to sort through her things and put the room back up for rent. The urge to melt the coin took me. Melt it and send Jim a lump of metal. The face he’d make!

I was laughing alone in front of my undrinkable coffee when a guy came in. Tall. Blond. He was carrying a briefcase. It was him I had seen from the hotel window. I jumped up and tried to escape. But I was in the back of the room and there was no other way out.

"Mr. Davis, for pity’s sake,” he said, “stop making me run. My name is Robert Langford, I’m a notary. I don’t mean you any harm, on the contrary.”

I recognized the guy on the phone with the nasal voice. He didn’t look mean, but that meant nothing. Maybe two tough guys were waiting in the street. I looked at the owner behind the counter. Eighty years. Nothing to expect from that side. No other customer except the blond and me. I headed for the exit. A guy in his forties, in good physical shape, was waiting in front of the cafe.

“That guy out there, is he with you?”

“Yes,” said the blond. “He’s a detective. He’s the one who found you.”

“OK. I guess I’m done. Well done, that bastard Smith won, after all.”

I dropped into a chair.

“Be nice Langford, get me a beer! You can put it on your employer’s account.”

The blond ordered two beers.

“Listen, Mr. Davis, you’re mistaken. I have nothing to do with Jim Smith.”

“So, who’s your mysterious employer?”

The beers arrived and I downed mine. Blondy pushed his to me.

“Here, you can drink this one, too. My wife hates it when I smell of alcohol. Have you heard of Bill Lodell?”

“Bill Lodell? Is that one of Jim’s guys?”

I drank the beer as fast as the first.

"Not at all. Bill Lodell is a Hollywood magnate. He helped create Hollywood as it is today. He was about thirty, like you, and was at the head of a fine fortune. It’s unclear where he came from or how he had amassed so much money. He was rather evasive on the subject. We don't know about any family. He never married, didn't have children."

“A wise man,” I said.

“He founded Mysteries studio, specializing in film noir, with the success you probably know.”

“Yeah. That's my area, I know.”

“Bill Lodell died last week.”

“Sorry. Could I have another beer? To good old Billy’s health?”

Langford ordered another beer.

“Don’t be sorry. Mr. Lodell died at seventy-nine. He had a good life.”

“Great,” I said.

The beer arrived. I took a big sip but I almost choked when Langford said:

“Mr. Lodell has decided to make you his heir.”

I laughed until my stomach hurt.

“And Smith thinks I’m stupid enough to swallow that? What’s his plan? Can’t he just get his goons to beat the shit out of me, like last time?”

You seem obsessed with this story, Mr. Davis. If I may, perhaps you should apologize and return the coin to Jim Smith.”

I restrained myself from sticking my fist in his mouth.

“Excuse me? My word, are you drunk? I have to remind you that this bastard had me fired from Warner?”

“I’m afraid it was you, Mr. Davis, who got a little drunk. From what I understand, you slept with his fiancee?”

I didn’t know Jim and Lucile were together. I mean, I didn’t know it was serious for Jim. That he wanted to marry her. We don’t marry girls like her!

We met, we slept together, and suddenly I got kicked out of Warner. I couldn’t explain it to Jim. He had ejected me from his life, me, his oldest friend! What was so special about this blonde? All he had to do was go out on Hollywood Boulevard, and it was raining girls like her.

To get back at him, I broke into his house one night while he was sleeping, and I took his stupid dollar.

“We both did wrong, after all. What about a deal?”

“Mr. Davis, for the last time, I’m not here for that. I know all these details because Mr. Lodell asked us to investigate you.”

Langford opened his briefcase and pulled out a bundle of papers.

“Mr. Davis, read this first.”

I read the beginning. “I, the undersigned Bill Lodell, in full possession of my means, bequeath all my fortune, which amounts to a sum of...” My heart missed two or three beats when I saw the figure written... “to Mr. Tim Davis”. I dropped back on my chair. I was almost starting to believe it.

“Why me? Wait... Don’t tell me this guy is... my dad?”

I do not know why, I suddenly thought of a young version of my mother, in an old darned dress, walking on a sidewalk in the Bronx, while a limousine with tinted windows was following her. Inside, old Bill Lodell was looking at her.

Langford chuckled. It looked like he had the hiccups.

“No, no, he’s not. Mr. Lodell met you once and found you very nice.”

“Is that so? At Warner?”

No memory of having ever met this guy. And someone who liked me, it seemed fishy.

“In a way. You were throwing stones at the offices.”

I remembered that. It was right after Mickey and his friends visited me. Furious and covered in blood–but dressed up–I showed up at the office.

“Smith! Come down so I can explain, asshole! Come down or I’ll give it to a beggar, your darling coin!”

I was yelling at his window. Indeed, an old man had come out of a nearby office and looked at me amused.

“What’s up with you, dumbass? Do you want my picture?”

“I insulted him,” I said to Langford. “And you claim he found me nice?”

“You were quite the person he was looking for, Mr. Davis. And the investigation we conducted on you only confirmed it. Only, please refer to the last page. There’s a small clause that you will have to respect.”

“Ah, I knew there was a catch!”

“Not at all, Mr. Davis. It is a clause based on your good faith. If you don’t respect it, your money will come back to us after your death and our law firm will choose an heir. However, you will have benefited from the money anyway throughout your life.”

“Well, what’s this clause?”

“Mr. Lodell asks you to choose an heir. I emphasize that word. The money cannot go to your children. You will have to choose your heir according to certain criteria. You’ll have to find someone... like you. Well, you get the idea?”

“A writer?”

Langford cleared his throat.

He said: “Excuse me... This damn cold won’t leave me alone. No, not a writer. A guy a little... well, you know.”

He took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket. He patted his nostrils and said, his mouth against the handkerchief:

“A... failure, we might say.”

“A failure! I don’t allow you to call me a failure, you and your... your dead boss.”

Luckily, he was dead, that old Lodell fossil, because I wanted to stick a bullet between his eyes.

I think you’ll blame me too. It’s never a pleasure to be treated as a failure. But it wasn’t a joke, I got the money! And with hindsight, my life was indeed a little chaotic at that time. I took Lodell’s studio, Mysteries, and released the movies I wanted. My only regret is that this idiot Jim Smith died before seeing me as rich as a king! He got into a car accident on the way home from a drunken party in the Hollywood hills when I was collecting the inheritance. But I kept his coin. I’ll be buried with it! Jim was right, you see how lucky it was!

I didn’t have children. In any case, they would have received nothing since it was up to me to choose an heir. I checked, and the contract doesn't stipulate that the heir must be male. So, I chose you. You remind me of Eva. Poor kid. To survive in this jungle, you have to have a hard head. Or possess Harvey Wilcox’s magic coin, ah ah! If the studios don’t want you, screw the studios, buy them, to hell with Hollywood! I hope this mail will reach you before you get the stupid idea of jumping from a letter too. You will soon receive news from my notary.

Sincerely yours, lucky girl,

Tim Davis