High Risk 2.2

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[Continuing chapter two]

Conrad Hart lived in Silver Lake, one of the new neighborhoods that had sprung up to the north and west of Los Angeles to accommodate movie and oil money. As Tillman’s Chevrolet negotiated the gently curving streets, Casey couldn’t help staring at the golden palaces, glowing in the light of the setting sun, each of them worth more money than Casey had earned in his lifetime.

“This is nothin’,” Tillman said, noting Casey’s expression. “You should see the dumps in Whitley Heights and Beverley Hills.”

“This is enough,” Casey said.

Hart’s house was a mock-Spanish two-storey that was very carefully built to not stand out amongst its neighbors. At first glance it seemed to Casey as impressive as all of the other houses he’d been staring at. On closer acquaintance, though, tiny frauds began to appear. The roof appeared to be of red tile, but a second look revealed painted metal. The second-floor balconies, faced with shiny, black, wrought-iron, promised a view of Silver Lake itself—did they not seen so narrow that no normal adult would be able to stand on them without pitching forward over the rails. For that matter, the lake itself was no more genuine than the house, being a water storage reservoir for Los Angeles, glorified by the presence of those who were eager to live around any body of water in this near-desert place. Casey had expected to see a wide, curving drive on which visitors could leave their Rolls-Royces and Deusenbergs, but instead the house was fronted with a lawn that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Toronto suburb. A narrow drive along one side implied a garage at the back. Tillman parked on the street.



They were met at the front door by a genuine Japanese house-boy—a man, actually, of indeterminate age and whose face showed no expression whatever—who escorted them to a living room that had so carefully been cleaned as to leave no evidence that anyone human actually lived here. Casey thought back to squadron messes in France, to the parlors of boarding houses he’d shared with other barnstorming pilots: they’d to a one been universes of chaos, populated with loud, slovenly young men who surrounded themselves with free-floating junk. Each had been more inviting than this place.

“I like it,” said Hamilton. “Look at that couch. Is that zebra skin?”

“Thanks for coming, fellows.” Conrad Hart walked into the room carrying a couple of bottles in one hand and a cigarette case in the other. Immediately behind him was one of the young actors Casey had seen today but whose name he’d never learned. “This is Dave Tennant,” Hart said to them. “He’s playing the third member of our little band of aces. Dick Armstrong won’t be coming, but I’m expecting Brett Kerry any minute now. I don’t see why we can’t have a drink or seven while we’re waiting.” He carefully placed the bottles on a low table in the centre of the room. “Tony Cornero’s best,” he said. “One is supposed to be bourbon and the other rum, but I can never exactly tell which is which.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hamilton said, reaching for a bottle whose contents looked like very weak tea. “These days, good booze is whatever you can get.”

“Amen,” said Tennant. “Pour me one while you’re at it.”

“I’ll take coffee, if that’s okay,” said Tillman. The others looked at him for a moment, but Tillman kept a look of blank composure on his face and the others quickly turned away. Casey understood perfectly, and wondered if any of the others did. He poured his own drink, making sure to spray a lot of soda into very little bourbon. He’d learned the hard way that drinking too much the night before flying was a recipe for discomfort at the least, disaster at worst.

He noted that Hart and Tennant also took care with their drinks, so perhaps Tillman’s preference—a word from Tennant to the house-boy, and a pot of coffee quickly appeared—was just another point on a continuum.

“I’d always thought of Hollywood as a sink of vice and degeneracy,” Casey said, gesturing at Hart’s glass—still nearly full as Hamilton poured his second.

“‘Note the orgy taking place on the lawn’,” Tennant said. Hart laughed.

Noting Casey’s expression, Hart said, “It’s a caption from an article about the Hollywood Hotel. A bit of an inside joke, you could say. The papers back East love to write about our lives of sin and degradation.”

“I’ll never visit Chicago again as long as I live,” Tennant said.

“Yes, the Chicago papers really seem to have it in for us,” Hart said. “I remember how puzzled we all were after the Taylor murder. None of us recognized the Hollywood that those Chicago boys wrote about.”

“Maybe Chicagoans feel the same way about Al Capone,” Tillman said. “Or at least the way everybody assumes that Capone’s mob represents what Chicago is.”

“Could be,” Hart said, taking a cigarette from his case and lighting it. Offering the case to Hamilton, he added, “My point is that this is an industrial town just like, oh, Pittsburgh. When we’re working, we can’t afford to stay up all night drinking and taking morphine or cocaine. You fellows saw how early we were at the airport this morning.” Casey nodded. “Well, it’s like that six days a week when we’re working. Up before five, work until the sun goes down—even later, lots of times, when we’re in the studio.”

“Which we are pretty much all the time these days,” Tennant said sourly. “I miss location work.”

“What happened to it?” Tillman asked.

A rapping sound echoed through the house. This place sounds completely empty, Casey thought. It’s awfully big for one man to live in by himself. He’d long since concluded that Hart wasn’t married and had no family, at least not here.

Before anyone could answer Tillman’s question, the house-boy escorted two newcomers into the room. The man Casey recognized as Brett Kerry, who was apparently playing the villain in High Risk. The woman he didn’t recall seeing at the airport today. He was pretty sure he’d have remembered her: she was a short, nicely rounded blond whose face dimpled a bit when she smiled, which she was doing as she stepped into the room, her heels clacking on the polished wood of the floor. Her hair was striking: it looked soft as feathers and was as pale as unbleached linen.

“Lily!” Tennant said, walking to her. “Are you joining us?”

“Just for a few minutes,” Lily said. “I’m meeting someone here.”

“Not me,” Kerry said. “And she wouldn’t tell me who it is, so don’t bother asking.”

“Gentlemen,” said Hart to Casey, Tillman and Hamilton, “allow me to introduce Miss Lily Cross. She has a small but significant role in the opus we are engaged in creating.”

“Significant in that it got her out of Central Casting and into a contract,” Tennant said. “I never did congratulate you on that, Lily.” He raised his glass. “To success.”

“To a steady pay check,” Lily said. “Oh. I suppose I need a drink before I can make a toast. Better make it a weak one, though. I don’t want to end up like Belinda Moore.”

Tillman and Hamilton nearly fell over one another in their rush to satisfy her request. Hart, though, whistled, and Tennant made a strangled meowing noise. Casey cocked his head at Hart.

“Belinda Moore,” Hart said, “was a contract player for Monarch. She had a small part in our picture. Until Straebo fired her last week and hired Lily to take her place.”

“And now I hear she’s blotto all the time,” Lily giggled. “Nobody will hire her, because she’s a drunk. And she’s a drunk because nobody will hire her.”

Kerry ended the uncomfortable silence that followed. “You were an ace in the War, weren’t you?” he asked Casey.

Before Casey could reply, Tillman said, “Hold on a minute. I still have a question waiting for an answer.”

“Which was?” Kerry asked.

“Tennant here said that he missed location shooting. I wanted to know what happened to it.”

“The same thing,” Hart said, “that caused the plague of Broadway locusts to descend on Hollywood.”

“He means me,” Kerry said.

“You at least have some ability to act in front of a camera. Most of your colleagues might as well have stayed on the trains that brought them here.”

“I still don’t get it,” Hamilton said.

“I do,” said Tillman.

“Talkies,” said Casey.

“A toast to the Talkies,” Lily Cross said, raising her glass. Some of its contents slopped over the side and down her arm. Apparently she’d had a drink or two before arriving here.

“I don’t think I’m stupid,” Hamilton said, “but I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”

“When I first started working here—” Tennant was interrupted by raspberries blown by both Hart and Kerry.

“Listen to the greybeard!” Hart said. “The old veteran. How old are you, Tennant? Twenty-four? And how long have you been working in pictures?”

“The point is,” Tennant said, face flushed, “that I started in pictures before The Jazz Singer. Before The Lights of New York. Before all of this damned sound-recording equipment. All you needed to make a movie was a small camera and some lights. My first four pictures were pretty much entirely shot on location, out of doors.”

“Because Monarch’s westerns are so cheaply made they can’t afford studio time,” Hart said.

“True enough, but beside the point.”

Hart nodded. “Dave’s right, for all that we’re teasing him. Movies used to be a lot more mobile, and in every sense of the word. You only have to look at the way the camera moves in a picture like Sunrise to realize how pathetic Hollywood’s become since we started making talkies. I want to blow my brains out some nights when I see the dailies that Straebo’s getting.”

“He was never much of a stylist even when he wasn’t being tied down by all that recording equipment and those Jesus-awful ice-box cameras,” Tennant said.

“Ice-box cameras?” Casey asked. “I don’t recall seeing anything like that today.”

“No, we’re trying something new tomorrow,” Hart said. “The ice-boxes, as Tennant here calls them, are big sound-proof cases, large enough to hold a camera and a cameraman. They have to be sound-proof because otherwise the noise of the camera gears gets picked up by the microphones. Our ice-boxes are on wheels, but because they’re so big they’re almost impossible to move around. So the studio shots in High Risk all look the same.”

He sipped from his glass. “Jerry Straebo thinks he can get a bit more mobility using something new, an idea he copied from MGM. He’s wrapped big padded blankets around his cameras. They’re called blimps at Metro, I hear.”

“Desiree calls ‘em barneys,” Lily Cross said. “I guess that’s because they look like the blanket on that race-horse in Barney Google.”

“Ah, the funny papers,” Kerry said. “Font of American culture.”

“Listen, Mister High-and-Mighty New Yorker,” Tennant said, “some of us like the comics. And while I’m at it, we were doing just fine before Monarch brought you out here, and we’ll do fine after you’ve slunk back home in disgrace.”

“Oh, but I’m not going home, dear boy. I like it here. And compared with Broadway, the work is so easy.”

“Just because a man knows how to talk to an audience on a stage doesn’t mean he knows how to act in a film,” Tennant said.

“It’s true,” Hart said. “Two different skills entirely. Just our bad luck, Dave, that Kerry seems to have a bit of both.”

“What about Richard Armstrong?” Casey asked.

The room got very quiet.

“You are the most surprising fellow,” Hart said. “How did you hear about Dick?”

“Say, this oughta be good,” Tillman said, reaching for the coffee pot.

Casey wasn’t about to admit that he’d been eavesdropping on the conversation between Straebo and Ben—whoever Ben turned out to be—so instead he shrugged his shoulders and said, “When I first met you all, Mr. Straebo said something about blaming Armstrong for all of the delays you people have had on your movie.”

“Straebo was laying it on a bit thick,” Hart said.

“Not to mention kicking Dick while he’s down,” Tennant added.

A horn tootled, a distant sound that most in the room ignored. Lily Cross, Casey noticed, smiled when she heard it. She had just finished gulping down the remnants of her drink when the house-boy appeared in the doorway. “Miss Cross, your ride is here.”


After a brief flurry of good-byes and teasing admonitions not to stay up too late doing whatever it was she was going to be doing, Miss Cross was gone.

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