Stuart Kaminsky - Now You See It

It was the Hollywood I had learned to love and distrust. Around the walls were ladders, lights, piles of electrical equipment, chunks of scenery leaning against other chunks of scenery. In the middle of the sound stage was what looked like the garden of a palace with a little fountain in a pool. Girls in colorful billowing costumes with veils pulled back were chatting in little groups, some of them smoking, some of them sipping coffee.

The garden was painted in bright colors, reds, blues, greens, golds, yellows, in contrast to the black and gray beyond what the camera would see.

In the middle of the garden stood two men. One man wore dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves pulled up. He was holding a script. His companion, in billowing purple pants and a white shirt with puffy sleeves, was looking at the script, nodding his head and saying something. The man in the costume, Cornel Wilde, was tall, handsome with dark curly hair and serious dark eyes.

Gunther and I started toward Wilde when a bald young man, wearing glasses that didn’t quite go with his Scheherazade costume, said, “You guys lookin’ for me?”

He had a cup of coffee in his hand.

“No,” I said.

“No?” he asked. “You sure. Phil Silvers? You from Manny? I’m supposed to place a bet on the Fifth at Aqueduct. Dangerous Antics on the nose? Sure you’re not from Manny? You look like you’d be from Manny.”

“No,” said Gunther.

Silvers pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch.

“You’re not bookies?” he asked.

“No,” said Gunther.

“You wouldn’t want to make a bet? A small wager on the race? Dangerous Antics is seven to one. I’ll take six to one.”

“We are not …”

“Five to one,” said Silvers, shaking his head as if he were making a terrible mistake. “I’m a crazy man, but what can I do? I’m addicted. Four to one. Last offer. I’m breaking my heart here.”

“You don’t…” Gunther tried.

“He’s joking Gunther,” I said.

“Peters,” Silvers said, taking my hand. “You could have given me a few more seconds of shtick. I had the little guy goin’.”

“Very amusing,” Gunther said soberly.

“Take a joke,” Silvers said to Gunther, extending his hand. “It’s free. Toby and I go way back. The Green Pussycat in, what was it, thirty-eight, thirty-nine?”

“Green Door, downtown,” I said. “Thirty-seven.”

“Right, right,” said Silvers. “Guy gets a little snickered while I’m doing my act, see. Starts heckling. Big mistake. You heckle crooners. You heckle ventriloquists. You heckle magicians. You don’t heckle comics. I was on that night. Right?”

Silvers beamed.

“You were on,” I agreed.

“Made the guy look like the shmuck he was. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said.

“Big guy. Charges the stage.”

Silvers demonstrated, taking a few lumbering steps toward Gunther with his shoulders down.

“Toby here is working nights at the Green Pussycat, see?”

“Green Door,” I corrected.

“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Whatever. Well he gets between the drunken bull and me. Bull rams Toby with his head. Toby rams Bull with his right or left. Down goes Bull. Audience applauds. I grin like this and go on with the act. I took two curtain calls and I wasn’t even the headliner. That was Kenny Baker.”

“And I took seven stitches,” I said.

“Who’s counting?” said Silvers with a shrug. “I’m not counting. You?”

“No,” said Gunther, at whom the question was directed.

“I like this guy,” said Silvers, looking at Gunther and grinning.

Gunther is not easy to confuse, but Phil Silvers was doing a good job.

“Phil …,” I began.

“You can call me Abdullah,” he said. “That’s my name in the picture. Classy, huh?” He winked at Gunther.

“Has anyone been around here this morning looking for Wilde?” I asked.

I didn’t expect a “yes.” I was sure the person who was supposed to meet Wilde was Robert Cunningham, who was stone cold dead.

“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Blond guy. A few minutes ago. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he was in Cornel’s face. Not a good idea. Mr. Cornel Wilde is built better than Billy Conn on whom I lost … it doesn’t matter.”

Silvers looked around for the blond guy and didn’t see him.

The man with the script backed away from Wilde, who waved to a man in black tights and a black shirt. The man had a sword in his right hand.

“Watch this,” said Silvers, holding out his right arm to keep us back.

The crew stopped moving. The girls in costume stopped talking as the man in tights stepped onto the set. A young man stepped into the light and handed Wilde a sword.

Wilde and the man in black began to slowly duel with Wilde circling right and then left, up three stairs, and then a leap over the sword of the other man.

“Like that?” Wilde asked, looking at the man with the script.

“Perfect. Just speed it up a little.”

Wilde nodded.

“Swords,” said Silvers in a confidential whisper. “Wilde was a college champ. Olympic team. Good huh?”

“Very much so,” said Gunther.

“You got class,” said Silvers.

“Thank you,” said Gunther.

“Gotta run,” said Silvers again, using his confidential whisper. “A harem girl wants to share a ham sandwich with me behind the sultan’s tent. See ya.”

Silvers hurried away and Gunther said soberly,

“He is strangely amusing.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” I said, moving toward Wilde who was holding his sword out at arm’s length.

“Mr. Wilde,” I said.

He turned his head and looked first at me and then at Gunther.

“You won’t remember me,” I said. “I used to be a guard at Warner’s. I met you one day on the set of High Sierra .”

“I remember,” he said with a smile. “You were talking to Humphrey Bogart.”

“Right, I was a private investigator by then. You’ve got quite a memory.”

“A gift and a curse,” he said, tucking the sword under his arm.

“A little while ago,” I said. “A man was here. You had words.”

“Yes,” said Wilde very seriously.

“Mind telling me what he wanted?”

“Five minutes,” someone called from behind me.

Wilde nodded. Bright lights came on.

“He had made an appointment to see me this morning,” Wilde said. “Said it would take no more than a minute or two and involved an old friend from college who was in trouble. He gave me the name of the friend. I agreed to see him.”

“What did he want?”

“To blackmail me,” he said. “He showed me photographs, all fakes, of me doing things I’ve never done with people I’ve never met.”

“And?”

“I asked him if he could imagine what it felt like to have a very sharp blade pierce his stomach and come out through his back. He repeated his threat, said he could handle a saber. I told him that they were frauds, that he was a blackmailer and that I was going to call the police.”

“He backed off?”

Wilde furrowed his forehead and said,

“Yes, but he gave up much too easily.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“That he could always get back to me. His exact words were, ‘I’ve got a much better fish to catch and a bigger hook.’”

“And he was gone?”

“They were gone,” said Wilde.

“There was someone with him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“No,” he said. “The lights were on on the set, much as they are now, and he stayed back there in the shadows. But I did see his hands. I got a very good look at his hands. A fencer learns to look at his opponents’ hands.”