High Risk 1.4

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[concluding chapter one]

Hogan was as good as his word. Casey was for the most part able to avoid thoughts of Desiree Farrell and Eve Adams, if only because he was so busy he didn’t have time for thought. He spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon helping Mitch check out the half-dozen biplanes Straebo and Hogan had between them assembled for the High Risk shoot. Mitch's knowledge of the machines was truly encyclopedic; it even extended to the rigging of the Tommies and Bristol. In France, a squadron had employed different groups of specialists to look after the mechanical and rigging aspects of keeping machines flight-worthy, but here in Southern California Mitch did it all, and with a cheerful efficiency that helped Casey forget that he hadn't worked this hard in years.

Casey also met the other pilots Hogan had hired for the High Risk shoot. Barrett Tillman was ex-Navy, a torpedo-bomber pilot who claimed that landing giant Martins on aircraft-carrier decks wasn't exciting enough. Scott Hamilton had been an airmail pilot; he came to Hollywood, he said, after one too many nerve-wracking bad-weather flights. Both men were in their mid-twenties and seemed to know their way around airplanes. They didn't seem all that thrilled to have Casey among them; perhaps, he thought, they'd overheard Hogan's comments about their flying ability.



Hogan, despite his promise to watch Casey and the others work, spent most of the day either in conference with Straebo or hovering around the production office waiting to talk to the director. Casey's brief experience flying for the movies had persuaded him that a sequence of aerial shots could take hours or even days to plan, so he couldn't bring himself to begrudge Hogan's absence from the work of rigging and fitting out the old biplanes.

From time to time, as he wiped his forehead with a grease- and oil-stained forearm, Casey looked across the Glendale field to watch the cast and crew going through some mysterious ritual that he didn't really understand. Presumably it had something to with the filming they were supposed to begin tomorrow. Whatever they were doing, it looked supremely boring, and most of the times he checked them out, Casey could see one or more of the actors staring back at the collection of airplanes on which he and Mitch were working.

It was a warm day for October—he still hadn't really got used to the California weather—and Casey was desperate to get out of the sun when Mitch told him to take a break from the back-straining work of testing rigging wires. It was cool in the dark interior of the hangar, and Casey propped himself up on the wooden wall at the back, breathing in the smells—the sweetness of high-octane petrol, the nutty tang of burnt castor oil—and just enjoyed the feeling of being back amongst airplanes. He would have found it easy to ignore the voices from the other side of the wall had they not been talking about aviation too.

"We have an opportunity here to grab the audience that made Wings such a hit for Paramount. The public wants aviation pictures right now." Casey recognized Jerry Straebo's voice. The director sounded defensive, suggesting that whoever he was talking to, it wasn't one of his actors.

"We can't build on anything, you idiot, if you don't get off your wobbly ass and finish this goddamn picture!" The second voice was one Casey hadn't heard before; though he could hear hints of some Eastern European ghetto in it, they were mostly dominated by the smooth, confident drive that suggested a man accustomed to command. Casey knew the type. "Do you have any idea how much your delays are costing us?"

"Be fair, Ben," Straebo said. "None of this is my fault."

"What the hell are you talking about? If you'd delivered on schedule we wouldn't be worrying about how the goddamn actors sound! We wouldn't be worrying because they wouldn't be fucking talking!"

"But Hughes is switching to sound. Everyone is switching."

"Everyone isn't on the knife-edge the way we are." Ben's voice was suddenly very cold; Casey, listening, imagined General Haig casually sending ten thousand men to their deaths before wondering what was for tea. "Let me put it to you bluntly, Jerry," Ben said. "You have made a couple of successful pictures for us, and we're grateful. Off the top of my head, I'd say we've cleared almost a quarter of a million in profit on those pictures."

In the pause, Casey could almost hear the wheels of a calculating machine whir.

"Since the beginning of May," Ben continued, "Monarch Pictures has spent or committed to spend one point two million dollars on the creation of sound recording stages and the wiring of theaters for talkies. We have done all of this, much faster than the board wanted to, because you insisted that High Risk was the perfect vehicle for a shift to sound. We agreed to write off the amount you'd already cost us for the silent production of your movie so that you could re-do it as a talkie."

"And I'm grateful," Straebo said. "But don't the dailies justify that extra expense? Conrad's never been better, in my opinion."

"Does that really matter if the budget keeps going up? Hart has never been in a picture that grossed more than three hundred thousand. Your budget is going to go well over three hundred thousand if you don't get all of your stunts done and wrap this thing by the end of the week. And Armstrong looks horrible and sounds worse. You should have replaced him when I told you to."

"Armstrong's not going to carry this picture. People will come to see Hart and Farrell—Desiree's still hugely popular." Straebo sounded close to blubbering to Casey, who was surprised to find himself fascinated at the way these men were discussing human beings as though they were cart-horses.

"Jerry, Desiree's career's been on a downhill slide for eight months," Ben said. "She's getting old. There's talk in New York about—"

"I know, I know," Straebo said. "But she's been good on this one. You've seen that."

"I have to think of the bottom line, Jerry. And the bottom line is, I haven't seen a big hit in what you've shown me so far. Not the kind of hit you need to justify what you're spending. And now you've wasted an entire day without so much as a foot of film to show me!"

"We're learning this stuff as we go along, Ben. It was hard enough shooting talking scenes in the studio; doing it out here is a lot harder than I—than anyone predicted."

"Cut the crap, Jerry. You're supposed to be a professional. Try acting like one." Ben paused, sucked in a breath that sounded like the prelude to a guillotine blade dropping. "So here's the deal: Wrap the picture by next Friday. That gives you a week. No questions, no arguments. You know what'll happen if New York gets unhappy."

The crunch of gravel announced someone's departure. After a few moments Casey heard Straebo curse, quietly and viciously. Then his footsteps, too, faded into the sounds of Mitch and the pilots working on the airplanes.

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