Росс Томас: The Singapore Wink

“Come on in, Eddie. How are you, wet?”

“Not too bad. How’re you, Marcie?”

“Fine.”

Marcie Holloway was a tall black-haired girl with blue eyes, a wide mouth with an attractive overbite, and a nose that could have been just a little snub and perhaps a trifle shiny if you worried about such things. She carried a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her narrow plaid slacks seemed to be part of a suit and she comfortably filled the white blouse that topped them. She had been living with Christopher Small for almost three years which, in that town, may have been some sort of a record.

I made another inane comment about the weather, she asked if I would like a drink, and I said that I would.

“Chris’ll be out in a minute. Scotch and soda okay?”

“Make it water.”

Marcie disappeared through a door with my raincoat and I sat down on a green divan and studied some of the photographs that almost covered the opposite wall. There seemed to be more of them than I remembered. They ran from the ceiling to near the floor, were framed by thin, black molding, and shielded by glareproof glass. They portrayed Christopher Small and friends and he seemed to have a lot of them. The room also had a built-in bookcase that held six books, some crockery, and a collection of china cats and kittens. There was a color television set in one corner, a stereo unit in another, and twin speakers were strategically placed at ceiling height in opposite corners. The rest of the furniture looked as if it came with the apartment.

Those who have eyes good enough to read the “and featuring” credits on the late show might recognize Christopher Small’s name. He had earned a comfortable living in Hollywood for more than thirty years by playing minor roles in films that called for a cab driver, a reporter, a tough sergeant, a bartender, a number two cop, or — most often of all — a number three or four gangster, the one who gets queasy about the entire setup and takes off in the getaway car before the rest of the gang has had a chance to clean out the tellers’ cages.

By his own rough estimate, Small had appeared in more than five hundred feature films and television productions, but he is probably best remembered for a picture that earned him a brief vogue during World War II. The film had the members of a New York mob deciding, for God knows what reason, that the Germans posed an even greater threat than the cops. The mob enlisted en masse , went overseas, and apparently won the war — only to gulp back their tears at the film’s end as they crowded about their mortally wounded chief while he took his own sweet time to die in Small’s arms, muttering something unlikely about brotherhood, democracy, and peace.

Small’s brief moment of fame occurred in an earlier scene in the film which required him to burst into a farmhouse, his Thompson submachine gun at the ready, and capture what appeared to be the entire German high command with the line: “Freeze the mitts, Fritz!” A radio comedian picked it up and for a while it became a popular saying around high schools and colleges. In the mid-sixties some Merry Andrews at an Eastern university decided to hold a Christopher Small Festival, but nothing ever came of it other than a press release.

Small came through the door that led to a bedroom, shook hands with me, and asked how business was. I told him that it was fine.

“Marcie getting you a drink?” he asked and lowered himself into a green overstuffed chair that matched the divan.

“Yes.”

He turned his head and yelled back at the kitchen: “Make it two, Marcie.”

There was an answering yell which I assumed to be one of assent. Marcie and Small yelled at each other a lot.

“Doing anything?” he asked and I knew that he was talking about the stunt business.

“Nothing,” I said.

“And you’re not pushing either.”

“No, I’m not pushing.”

“You could get something if you pushed,” he said.

“There’s not much demand.”

“The hell there isn’t.”

“Let’s just say that I like what I’m doing.”

Marcie came in from the kitchen carrying the drinks on a hammered aluminum tray. She served them and then curled up on the other end of the sofa, one foot tucked under her rear in what has always seemed to me a most uncomfortable position.

“You getting the usual lecture, Eddie?” she asked.

“Chris still seems to think that I’m neglecting a promising career.”

Small stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. He wore tan, wide-wale corduroy slacks, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and brown loafers. He had let his hair go grey and his stomach pushed a little at the front of the knit shirt, but his face was still the same: lean and long with a pointed chin, hollow cheeks, a strong thin nose, and deepset dark eyes that he could make crafty or frightened or cruel, depending upon what was called for by the script.

“Well,” he said, “you have to admit that you invested a hell of a lot of time to get where you were. Now it’s just going to waste. Your old man would be goddamned sore.”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“He’s sore wherever he is. I remember when you were just a brat — no more than five or six. He used to tell me then how someday you were going to be top stunt man.”

“Sure,” I said, “and for my tenth birthday I got fencing lessons. Just what I always wanted.”

My father had been a stunt pilot, one of the first of that strange breed who descended on Hollywood in the twenties, willing to attempt anything that the writers could dream up for ten dollars and a place to sleep. He never got over the fact that he had flown with Frank Clarke in 1927 when the dogfight for Hell’s Angels was filmed over San Francisco Bay. It was still the highlight in his life when, heading for yet another flying assignment at age sixty-one, he crashed into the tail end of a seven-car freeway pileup, went through the windshield, and bled to death before they got him to the hospital. He left me the twenty-one pre-1932 cars, a house full of furniture, and some odd memories. But as Small said, my father had always wanted me to be top stunt man. He taught me to drive at twelve, fly at fourteen, and by the time I entered UCLA I was an accomplished rider, fencer, gymnast, boxer, member of both the Stuntman’s Association and the Screen Actors Guild, and working regularly.

“I can put in a word for you at a couple of places,” Small said.

“No thanks. It just wouldn’t work out.”

“You ought to try once more anyhow,” he said. “It’s such a damned waste — all those years you spent at UCLA in their film school.”

“Just three years,” I said. “I was a dropout.”

“You ought to try anyhow,” Small said again.

“Maybe he likes what he’s doing,” Marcie said. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to go around falling off horses anymore.”

“I’ll think about it at any rate,” I said in an attempt to mollify Small and end the lecture.

“Let me know if I can help,” he said.

“Well, actually you can.”

“Just name it, kid.”

“I need some information.”

“About what?” he asked.

“Not what, who. A couple of guys.”

“Okay, who?”

“Salvatore Callese and somebody called Palmisano,” I said.

Small made his face go blank. There was absolutely no expression on it — no surprise, no warmth, no anything. He looked at Marcie. “Go see about something,” he said.

“What?”

“Christ, I don’t know what. Anything. Go cook something.”

Marcie rose quickly and started towards the kitchen. Then she paused, and turned to Small. “How about some fudge?” she said nastily.

“I mean for dinner, for God’s sake!”