Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

“Why?” asked Iris.

“He wanted to warn the people in town what he would do to spies.”

“That’s terrible!” said Iris. That’s what women always said. I loved women, I really did.

“And?” said Wattles. “What the hell does that have to do with my picture?”

“Harry!” said Iris.

“I have a condition… sometimes it all comes back. Just now… I think the memory was telling me I shouldn’t kill. Not even for a part.”

I fell silent and waited. I waited to hear Wattles tell me to get out. Instead he muttered to himself, “Is this guy kidding?” Then it was like a cartoon light bulb went on over his head. He thought a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s move on to the next scene.”

I hesitated. Was this the moment when I was supposed to thank him and leave?

“Stick around,” he told me. “Watch the shoot. If you’re not busy later, we can go for a drive.”

The rest of the afternoon passed, as they say, in a fog. I got to spend hours watching Harry Wattles at work, getting genius performances out of second-raters like Jimmy and Bettina. Every direction he gave them transformed the picture from dime store crap into art!

It was late when Wattles said, “I can’t see straight. Let’s start fresh in the morning.”

I was sure he’d forgotten me, but sure enough, he told Celia to find me and ask if I was ready. I watched him give Bettina a kiss and tell her he’d see her later, I watched Iris hurry off, probably into the big-shot producer’s arms.

Wattles and I stepped outside into the dark summer night. A fast, parched wind brought the smell of something burning in the distance.

“Crazy wind,” Wattles said. “Drives you nuts.” The valet brought his car around. A red convertible MG.

“Most guys like me have a driver,” he said. “But I like the feel of the wheel. You trust me, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I said.

“How long have you been in L.A.?” he said.

“Since Okinawa.”

“Right,” he said. “Okinawa.”

He drove down from Pasadena, west on Hollywood Boulevard, then onto Mulholland Drive. The city glittered beneath us.

“Pretty, huh?” he said.

After a while I got up the nerve to ask, “How come you didn’t fire me? You know I won’t to be able to do that scene.”

Wattles drove on, taking the curves a little hard and fast, maybe, but he knew what he was doing. He was silent for so long I thought he hadn’t heard.

Finally he said, “I saw something in your eyes. I don’t want to sound like a sap, but call it respect for human life. I thought, Jesus Christ, if I could bottle whatever that is and sell it, all the world’s problems would be solved. No more murders, no more wars. You couldn’t kill that girl, no matter how much you wanted the job. You couldn’t even pretend. And I admired that, I respected that. It made me admire you. And when I heard about your being a veteran… I have a bad ticker. Skips one beat out of a hundred. But it kept me out of the service.

“Like I said, I saw something in you. It made me want to help out. I can’t rewrite the script or give you another part. But I can help you play this one, and you can go on from there. I could list a dozen big stars, who got famous playing killers. Ever hear of Burt Lancaster? George Raft? Jimmy Cagney?”

“Sure,” I said. “Who hasn’t?”

“It’s something you can work on,” he said.

For a second I had the creepy feeling he was going to give me the name of a shrink who would get me over my traumas. Everyone in Hollywood was suddenly getting their heads shrunk, the most sought-after Hollywood head docs were starting to out-earn the producers. Me, I couldn’t see myself lying on some bearded guy’s smelly couch and boring us both with my problems.

“There’s a class,” said Wattles. “An acting class. This French guy in Santa Monica… he specializes in teaching actors how to kill. Because let’s face it: you watch enough pictures like ours, you might think no one likes anything better than murdering someone. Preferably another actor. But the truth is, and let’s be grateful, it doesn’t come naturally to most people. Not even actors. Good actors. Big talents. Most people don’t enjoy killing, and if you can’t get someone to do the crime and look like he enjoys it, how are you going to make crime films?

“So my man in Santa Monica, he finds himself a niche. He trains actors who have gotten parts or want to play killers. And they need a little help. A gentle push. Training. Motivation.”

“I’d like to take a few classes,” I said. “I used to take classes when I lived with my girlfriend Caroline. She and I took them together.”

“The beauty part is,” he said, “this guy I have in mind—it’s a one-shot deal. One class is all it takes. He’s a master at what he does, like some kind of magician. One class and you come back to the set and do what needs to be done. We won’t have to interrupt production, just juggle the schedule a little. I’ll call the guy for you and set the whole thing up.”

My heart sank. “How much is that going to set me back?”

“I’ll write it into the budget.” Wattles zoomed around a sharp curve. The MG spit and kept going. “I’ll level with you. I already set it up. I called before we left the set.”

“Gosh,” I said. “That’s so generous. I don’t know to repay you.”

“Just go to the class tomorrow, then come back on set the next day and prove me right. I meant what I said about you setting the tone for the picture.”

He asked where he could drop me. I was embarrassed for him to see where I lived, in one of the crappy bungalows at the Flamingo Gardens. I told him to leave me half a mile away, I said I wanted to walk, clear my head. He said he couldn’t imagine that hot wind clearing anyone’s head.

As I got out he gave me the acting coach’s card. He told me to be there tomorrow at ten, and I said I would.

I’d been having nightmares, on and off, since the war. But that night was the worst. Sometimes I was in Hollywood, sometimes in Okinawa. Sometimes the hammerhead shark face of Harry Wattles turned into the fat blubbery puss of Lieutenant Mather. I dreamed that Mather was ordering me to kill someone. Only this time the victim was Iris Morell and not the little old Japanese lady that Mather shot. The little old Japanese lady appeared in another dream. Directing a picture. Wattles, Iris, Bettina, Jimmy, and I were all starring together. This was a nicer dream, or it would have been if half the old lady’s head wasn’t half torn away, like it was on that day I’d been trying to forget.

I woke up with a headache, as if I’d been drinking all night, though I hadn’t touched a drop. I wanted to be clear.

By the time I found the school, the crisp business card that Wattles gave me was gray with fingerprints and creased by all my taking it out and looking at it and putting it back in my pocket, as if I couldn’t remember the few words in simple black type.

Professor Gaston Landru. A Santa Monica address.

There wasn’t even a phone number. That’s how classy the operation was. You had to know someone special to find out.

4130 Eucalyptus was a three-story office building, a pointed roof and a tower like a medieval castle. Peeling yellowed white plaster. I was half an hour early. I drove around the block. Not that I could afford the gas, but I couldn’t sit still.

The classroom was up a few flights that reeked of cheap-carpet mildew. The office—the school, I should say—looked like the place where a seedy PI or loser lawyer would work, in a picture like Not Guilty! On the door a sign in flaking black letters said, MAITRE G. LANDRU.

I knocked. No one answered. I pushed open the door to find a dozen men and women—mostly young, attractive—sitting in a circle of folding chairs. It looked like the AA meeting that Caroline dragged me to before she walked out. The last one of those I went to. I told her, it wasn’t for me.