Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

“Okay, Peggy, what’s up?” Mannix asks. “We were all groovin’ in the club last night,” Peggy tells him, “then, wham, a sudden change.” Joe tries to explain it away: “You know how these musicians are; they’re temperamental cats. Who knows what got into him.”

Cliff likes Mannix , both the show and the dude Mannix. Joe Mannix is his kind of guy. In fact, there’s a part of Cliff that kinda wishes he was Mannix. And if he was Mannix, the first thing he’d do is fuck Peggy. Cliff is also a big fan of the secret-agent character Matt Helm. Not those insipid Dean Martin movies that are beyond asinine, but the books written by Donald Hamilton. As a character, Matt Helm is unconsciously racist, consciously misogynistic, and Cliff loves him. Cliff quotes pulp-fiction heroes like Matt Helm, Shell Scott, and Nick Carter the way the British quote Keats and the French quote Camus.

When he went to see the first Matt Helm movie at the cinema, The Silencers , he irately asked the box-office girl for his money back after the first fifteen minutes. If it made him sick, he could only imagine what it must have done to the author, Donald Hamilton. Dean Martin was a fucking terrible Matt Helm! But if the movies had been done like the books, Mike Connors would have been terrific. Even the drawing of Matt on the cover of the books looks like Connors.

As Mannix and Peggy continue their scene, Cliff puts down the cooking pot filled with noodles and picks up the issue of TV Guide . As Brandy wolfs down her mountain of food, Cliff looks up this week’s episode of Mannix and reads the synopsis out loud:

“‘Death in a Minor Key: Mannix searches for Peggy’s missing boyfriend, a Negro musician who escaped from a road gang. Heading south, the detective faces a run-in with an enigmatic police chief, a bigoted witness, and a ubiquitous interloper.’”

Cliff tosses the TV Guide aside, picks the pot of orange and yellow food back up, and sticks a forkful in his mouth. As he chews, he asks himself and Brandy, “What’s a ubiquitous interloper ?”

Approximately twenty miles away, in Chatsworth, California, on what’s left of the dilapidated western-town movie set known as Spahn Movie Ranch, the eighty-year-old George Spahn sits in his house, in his bathrobe and pajamas, on his couch, watching the same Mannix episode at the same time. He watches the show with his twenty-one-year-old redheaded and freckle-faced caretaker, “Squeaky.” They watch TV like this every night. He sits on his couch in his bathrobe and pajamas, while she lays sprawled out on the couch with her head in his lap. Since George is blind, Squeaky describes the action on the television screen to the sightless old man. “So that nigger that works for Mannix is asking Joe to help find that nigger trumpet player boyfriend of hers from the first scene.”

“Peggy’s a nigger?” George squawks with surprise.

Squeaky rolls her eyes and says, “I tell you that every week.”

Chapter Five

Pussycat’s Kreepy Krawl

Pasadena, California

February 7, 1969

2:20 A.M.

It’s two o’clock in the morning on Greenbriar Lane in a suburban housing tract in an affluent section of Pasadena, California.

Up and down both sides of the cul-de-sac street runs a collection of suburban houses with manicured front lawns with upper-middle-class white people inside. At this time of night, except for a random cat, or a bold coyote who ventured down out of the hills to eat out of trash cans, there is no movement in the neighborhood whatsoever. All the residents of this street seem fast asleep, safe behind locked doors, in their comfy beds with soft-purring air conditioners.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of one dark house with a homey mailbox in front that reads The Hirshbergs are five members of Charlie Manson’s “Family.” Chipped-front-tooth “Clem”; “Sadie”; “Froggy“; one of the youngest Family members, Debra Jo Hillhouse (aka “Pussycat”); and Charlie himself.

Charlie stands behind Debra Jo; his two hands rest on her shoulders as he quietly and softly speaks into her ear.

“Okay, Pussycat,” Charlie purrs, “it’s your time. Time to cross the line. Time to face fear. Time to face fear in the face. And now, honeychile … it’s time you do it by your lonesome.”

Debra Jo reminds him that this isn’t her first “kreepy krawl.” Her spiritual leader acknowledges, yes, she has, but not on her own. He reminds her of “the Family” philosophy of there being strength in numbers.

As he explains it, “That’s why we do what we do, how we do it, and why how we live is ultimately important.” But then he clarifies as his fingers gently massage her shoulder blades under her dirty black T-shirt, “But also important is individual achievement. Testing one’s self. Facing one’s fears. And one only faces one’s fears by themselves. That’s why I’m compelling you to do this, Debra Jo.”

Charlie is the only person on God’s green earth, other than her father, that she still allows to call her by her born name rather than her adopted one.

“I want to do this,” Debra Jo says, not too convincingly.

“Why do you want to do this?” Charlie asks.

“Because you want me to,” she answers.

“Yes, I do want you to,” Charlie agrees. “But I don’t want you to do it for me. And I don’t want you to do it for them,” jerking his head toward the other kids. “I want you to do it for yourself.”

Charlie’s fingertips on her shoulder blades feel the slight trembling of Debra Jo’s body.

“I can feel you trembling, pretty girl.”

“I’m not scared,” she protests.

“Shhh,” he hushes her. “It’s okay. No need to lie.”

He explains to the dark-haired beauty, “Ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ve ever met in your life, and ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ll ever meet in your life, have spent ninety-seven percent of their lives running away from fear. But not you, pretty girl,” he whispers. “You’re walking toward fear. Fear is the point. Without fear , there is no point.”

While Debra Jo’s trembling doesn’t subside, her body under Charlie’s touch does seem to relax. Standing behind her, Charlie leans forward and into her right ear asks in a soft whisper, “Do you trust me?”

“You know I do,” she says. “I love you.”

“And I love you, Debra Jo,” Charlie tells her, “and it’s that love that ever so slightly nudges you toward greatness. I’m in your heart, ‘Pussycat,’ I’m in your paws, I’m in your tail, I’m in your nose, and I’m in your pussycat skull.”

Charlie’s fingers come off her shoulders, and he wraps his arms around the young girl, embracing her from behind. She leans her weight back against him. And they both slowly sway from side to side, shifting their weight from their left foot to their right foot, rocking her like a baby in his arms.

“Allow me the privilege of guiding you through this. And the girl who emerges from that house will be gargantuanly more powerful than the girl who enters it.”

Then Charlie unwraps his arms from around her waist, takes a small step backward, and slaps the ass of her blue-jean cutoffs, moving her forward toward the Hirshberg house.

In 1968, Terry Melcher, record producer of the Byrds, the brainchild behind Paul Revere and the Raiders, and boy wonder of Columbia Records, spent a good amount of time around Charlie Manson and his “Family” when they were encamped at the Hollywood home of Dennis Wilson and sponging off the Beach Boy. Terry Melcher was never quite as convinced of Charlie’s musical talent as Wilson was. When it came to Manson’s musical aspirations, Terry didn’t think Charlie was without talent. Terry’s honest opinion of Charlie’s music was that Manson was very very very not bad .