Brett Halliday: Kill All the Young Girls

Larry Zion, whose only real identification was as chairman of the board of Consolidated-Famous Pictures, drifted along Interstate 95 in the direction of Miami, letting his big Italian car proceed at its own speed. Fewer than thirty of these impressive monsters had been sold in the United States market, almost all to executives or top-money stars in the motion picture industry. A TV talk-show host had recently been seen at the wheel of one, and this was an indication to Zion that it might be time to start looking for another symbol.

But it was a marvelous piece of machinery. Not like people. People were becoming harder and harder for Zion to manipulate, and there was even some danger that his company might be slipping out of his grasp. But the great car, which had cost Consolidated $18,000, was not only the most powerful on the highway, it was fully under Zion’s control; and that was a pleasant feeling. He stepped up the fingertip-pressure slightly. It responded at once. His women used to be like that, but no longer. They balked and asked questions and wanted him to be interested in their ideas. Their ideas, for the love of God.

Consolidated-Famous was one of the three or four great companies that went back to the early days of silent pictures. When Zion was eighteen, he sold them a book he had hired somebody else to write under his name; and the next time anybody noticed, he was a major producer. He was phenomenally lucky; it was his major quality. Luck is the single most important thing in motion picture production. The money has to be committed eighteen months before the public sees the picture, and guessing right that far in advance takes more luck than brains. Zion’s guesses had been so good that for a long time the bankers were shouldering each other aside to be allowed in on his action.

Then all at once the business changed. People began queuing up outside out-of-the-way theaters showing pictures that had been made for nickels and dimes. Consolidated-Famous stopped paying dividends. The bankers were slow about returning Zion’s phone calls. He went on making pictures, that being the business he was in; and he managed in the course of a single fiscal year to lose forty million dollars. Sometimes he pulled out that balance sheet to make sure he hadn’t imagined the whole incredible thing. And there it was — a dollar sign, a four, and an endless string of zeroes.

So the vultures gathered. Every year he had to fight off a challenge for control. The world around him had changed; and Zion, that senile bastard, still thought people went to the movies looking to be entertained. He was too old, it was said; he no longer had the touch. What they were after, of course, had nothing to do with movie production. They longed to sink their teeth in the real estate — the 500-acre backlot in Beverly Hills, the Kern County ranch, the great sound stages built on prime development land.

And then there was the backlog, the huge library of films made during Zion’s reign, which could be peddled to television for the best kind of money, windfall money. Needless to say, Zion had respect for money. It was the way he measured success. But when he sold his pictures to television, he wanted control over cuts and interruptions. A spoiled picture, a slashed picture, was commercially damaged. His opponents didn’t understand that.

And meanwhile, he had gone on producing pictures, which the people soliciting proxies against him knew nothing about. Lawyers, accountants. A magazine publisher. In the magazine business, you printed five million copies at so much per copy, sold them at so much per copy, and hoped for ten percent on your money. Whereas in movies, you could bring in a picture for two million; and if the public wanted to go to see it, you could gross twenty times that in your first year.

But yes, you had to be lucky. And Zion himself had to admit that his luck had been spotty lately.

No streak lasts forever; and if he could wait long enough, the turn would come. But he had never believed in sitting around waiting for his fairy godmother to walk up and knock him down with her magic wand. He believed in making his own luck. The looters were putting on the pressure this year, throwing money around like chewing gum wrappers; and he conceded the possibility that they might win. But they would know they had been in a fight.

He fitted a smuggled Havana into a cigar holder and used the dashboard lighter. The powerful car continued to carry him along the almost deserted highway at eighty, tires rustling on the concrete and the motor giving off its comfortable, nearly inaudible murmur. The stereo deck was playing the soundtrack from one of Zion’s old musicals, the ninth top grosser of all time, made at Zion’s insistence in a year when everybody else maintained that musicals were deadly poison. Seven Academy Award nominations on that one because the public had loved it so much. Keko Brannon’s last completed film; and having started on a new medicine, the sweet, insane child hadn’t given them much trouble for once. The new pills had worked well until she began washing them down with Beefeater martinis. The pert little ass on that girl.

And suddenly, as clearly as though an 8x10 publicity glossy had fluttered up from the roadbed and plastered itself against the windshield, Zion saw Keko nude in one of the pornographic poses she liked to get into; in her judgment, the sexual apparatus and all acts of sex were equally funny. She had been reclining against a table with her legs apart, both hands on her mount, her mouth open and glistening, in a parody of the fan-magazine covers of the time. She wouldn’t have been even thirty now. If she had trusted her talent or even believed that she had any, she would still be packing the theaters. Maybe they had seen the last of that kind of star.

A shadow, a flicker of movement, pulled Zion’s eye to his rear-view mirror. A fire-engine red convertible with the top down was right on his rear bumper.

It was close, frighteningly close. Adrenalin spurted. He stepped up the pressure on his gas pedal, and the convertible faded backward. A girl was driving, her blonde hair whipping in the wind. A blonde in a red convertible — an obvious combination that stirred the imagination. Keko’s cars, speaking of Keko, had always been red. Every movie-goer knew the story of how Keko, coming off a difficult abortion, broke, hungry, and with only one decent dress, had boosted a bright convertible, the first in a long line, and had lain in wait outside the Consolidated gates. Zion drove a Bentley in those days, using a driver so he could get off some of his paper work on the way to his so-called home. And what did the nutty girl do but nudge the Bentley playfully every time it stopped for a light, until finally Zion erupted out of the back seat to demand what the hell she thought she was doing. The answer was that she thought she was bringing herself to the attention of a powerful studio head. And having been brought to his attention, she went home with him; and he tested her the next day and gave her a bit in a gangster movie. A great Hollywood legend, and unlike so many others, it happened to be absolutely true.

The blonde in the convertible behind him now was wearing dark glasses and a blue, blowing scarf. This was a bit odd. Keko, in dark glasses of course, had been wearing a blue scarf that day he first met her. A superstitious person might have worried, but Zion merely thought that it would make a cute opening for a certain kind of picture.

As he drove, he squeezed the grip of a forearm exerciser, counting somewhere far back in his mind, changing hands when he reached fifty. He was a savage ping-pong player, but he didn’t have the full ferocity he needed for his forehand smash. Nevertheless, he seldom lost. His son Marcus had once thought he could give him some competition, but he had never succeeded in creeping closer than sixteen or seventeen points. Zion was in fabulous shape. He slept hard and exercised hard. His sexual episodes, while less frequent than formerly, were still as intense. He weighed the same as during his first marriage, to a New York girl he rarely remembered now. And yet, at sixty-two, he wasn’t one of those people who want to look no older than forty. His only facial adornment was a thin mustache. He had never capped his teeth or worn a hairpiece. Men who had face-lifts were sick, he believed. He was on hormones, but that was for medical reasons.