Robert Stone - Children of Light

“Basic precautions, Gordon,” Axelrod said in an aggrieved tone. “A little discretion. You think you have nothing but friends around here?”

“I thought you got to do everything and they didn’t care anymore.”

“Did you, Gordon? I got news for you. Even today there are things you don’t do. You don’t snort in your front window with the shades up. If you do you can find yourself in a seven-million-dollar production without a dime’s worth of insurance. If our insurers, Gordon — you listening to me? If our insurers had these pictures they would cancel our insurance forthwith and this thing could close down today.”

“That’s a worst-case scenario. Is it not?”

“Gordon, Gordon,” Axelrod said with a mirthless smile, “this could have been a bad case. Remember Wright’s picture for Famous? Coke on the set? There was a corporate crisis in New York at Con Intel. The stockholders went apeshit. And it’s not only a matter of insurance. There’s a theory around that ripped people make lousy movies.”

“Lu Anne’s asleep,” Walker said. He rested his cheekbones on his fists and looked down at the uppermost print. “They’re in color,” he said. “That’s far out.”

“What did you think, asshole? That they’d have a black border? Look at yourself. You look like a vampire.”

Walker found the image troubling.

“The drinking straw came out nice. Like a little barber pole.” He looked up at Axelrod. “Who took them?”

“Jack Best.”

Walker nodded. “I thought it might have been Jack. Trying to relive his heroic past.”

“He used to get pictures back for us all the time. If you wanted pictures back you went to him. Half the time he probably set the people up.”

“I was teasing him a little.”

“You were stepping on his balls a little. He claimed his principals wanted five thousand dollars. Depression prices. So I went over and yelled at him and he folded up.”

“Didn’t Walter believe him?”

“Only an idiot would have believed him. You could see his mind work through the holes in his head.”

“It’s sad,” Walker said. “I mean, he taught me how to read a racing form. I’m really sorry.”

“He was some schemer,” Axelrod said dreamily. “He got back those famous pictures of Mitchell Drummond and the kid. What’s-his-name who was the child actor that O.D.’d last year. That was his greatest number. He knew all the mob guys and all the cops.”

“Really sad,” Walker said. “Poor Jack. Tell him he can take my picture any time he wants but I wish he’d leave my friends alone.”

“He’s finished, Gordon. He’s going where Winchell and Kilgallen went.”

“A tragedy,” Walker said. “Do we have all the pictures back?”

“He says he put one print under Dongan Lowndes’s door. Seemed kind of funny.”

“It’s a riot. Confidential closed, so he takes them to New York Arts. Van Epp can run them next to Nelson Eddy goosing chorines.”

“It makes no sense,” Axelrod said. “So I thought, well, he’s senile, he’s out of it …”

“Do we have to worry about what Lowndes thinks of us?” Walker asked. “He’s supposed to be a gentleman. He’ll give us the picture back.”

“Gordon,” Axelrod said, “let me tell you something that’s also funny. I just tossed the gentleman’s room again. I went through his gear as completely as I could without leaving traces. The print’s not there.”

“Maybe Jack was lying.”

“I don’t think so.” Axelrod took a chair in the shade. “I think Lowndes has it. If he was going to give it back he would have done it by now.”

“That’s not very nice of him,” Walker said. “But then he isn’t very nice, is he?”

“Not in my opinion. In my opinion he’s a smart prick.”

“He’s worse than that,” Walker said. “He’s an unhappy writer.”

Axelrod mixed himself a drink from the setup on the umbrella-shaded table beside him.

“It’s not good,” he said. “These shots kick around — sooner or later they end up in print.”

Walker watched the sea-borne rainbow fade into blue-gray cloud.

“It wouldn’t hurt this picture,” Axelrod went on. “It wouldn’t help you much. But I wouldn’t think it could hurt you much either.”

“People would get the impression I take drugs.” He turned toward the bungalow’s bedroom window. The blinds were closed. “But Lu Anne may be in a divorce court presently.”

“Careerwise also,” Axelrod said. “If it got around that in addition to her other problems she had this — you understand me.”

“We should really get the print back,” Walker said.

“Definitely. We should talk to Lowndes. We should get him to do the right thing. I mean,” Axelrod asked, “why should he want to keep it?”

“They’re such depressing pictures,” Walker said, raising one with his thumb and forefinger.

“Some things you do,” Axelrod observed, “you don’t want to see yourself doing them.”

Walker stared at the picture and shook his head in disgust.

“She caught me with it,” he explained. “It’s very hard to say no to Lu Anne.”

“I know that, Gordon. I understand.”

“You know what they say about her, Axelrod? They say her pictures don’t make money and she has no luck with men.”

“I’ve heard that said about her, Gordon.” He finished his drink and pushed the glass away. “She needed that doctor. He could say no to her.”

“It’s very irritating, Lowndes keeping that picture. What a cheap stunt!”

“No class,” Axelrod said. “No self-respect.”

Walker looked out to sea.

“Of course, it might make a good lead,” Walker said, “if he was writing a certain kind of story.”

“You think so?”

“I’m writing for New York Arts ,” Walker said. “Here’s my lead: On the third day after my arrival at The Awakening ’s Bahía Honda location, a package arrived at my feet having been slid under my bungalow door. Naturally I assumed it contained the daily trades … ha-ha, jape, flourish et cetera. Imagine my — and so forth — when upon opening it I find it to contain a photograph of two of the principal artists naked in bed, apparently in the act of scoffing I know not what, tooting up, coke and the movies, sordidness and blackmail, hurray for Hollywood, movies as metaphor, crazy California, decline of the West, ad astra ad nauseam ! You like my lead?”

“It’s a colorful lead. Is there more?”

“Yes,” Walker said, “there’s more. There’s effect. Charlie Freitag — the movies’ answer to Bernard Berenson, the only man in California off the Redlands University campus who wears a bow tie — is deeply hurt. He subscribes to New York Arts. His wife subscribes, his gardener, the people next door across the canyon. His high-class flick is getting the mondo-bizarro treatment in his very favorite magazine. Sun Pix is pissed off at him. Amalgamated Can is pissed off at Sun Pix. It’s a litigious age. Van Epp is scared stiff. He calls in Lowndes … Did you make this up, Dongo? A literal Dutch uncle. The novelist’s — the former novelist’s — mouth is wreathed in a putrid smile. He reaches under his cape. Observe the snap, mynheer Van Epp.”

Axelrod thought about it.

“As a completely blind item,” he said, “it might not be so bad. It might even be a little … good.” He shrugged.

“Man, Lowndes is going to make this location look like Bosch’s Garden. If we were down here making kiddiebop with grown-ups talking dirty and popping bloodbags, they could run that print on the cover of Christianity Today and we could tell them to eat it. But what if the story just reads as production problems? And then your lofty scene dies the death? They’ll blame it on coke.”