Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (30 page)

When Louise exited Cedars, it was to the new house in
Holmby Hillss. Minnie and her husband, who were loyal to Louise, were replaced
by a couple hired by Hal's sister. When I went to visit, I had the feeling that
they were watching me. Always before

I
'd felt that she and
I were together, a kind of non-malicious conspiracy. Now, however, she had
manifestly experienced some kind of breakdown. Dr Hacker still visited her
every week. It was impossible for me to talk with her as I once had. I couldn't
add stress to her situation.

I had
given her the half-finished manuscript of my second novel, about a young drug
addict who becomes an informer. It was missing after the move. This was not a
family unfamiliar with scripts and manuscripts: nobody would throw it out
without at least knowing what it was. I had no doubt that its loss was the
result of malice from someone, but there was nothing I could say or do about
it. The novel was probably unworthy of publication, since my next four were
found wanting, although the last of those will soon be published in England,
and perhaps in America with some judicious pruning and polishing. It was a kind
of a Jim Thompson noir story, unlike the realism of my other work.

I
'd been out of San
Quentin for about a year and it was time for me to move on from the McKinley
Home for Boys. Because of my voracious reading and aspiration to the literary
life, it seemed

reasonable to try for a job in
the story department of one of the studios. Louise thought the same, but she
also thought it inappropriate for her to call Mervyn Le Roy. Minna Wallis,
being an agent, dealt with people at the studios and would make the calls,
although it would be behind the scenes at Warner Brothers, where mention of Hal
Wallis would send Jack Warner into apoplexy. A "story analyst," or
"reader," would be given a book or article, would write a very brief,
no more than a page, comment on its viability as a movie, and then a three- or
four-page synopsis of the story. I was given
The Nun's Story
, which Warner Brothers had
already bought, and with Patty Ann's help did the job, which Louise read and
thought quite good.

I'd gone through four studios
when the head of the story department at Paramount told me that while Minna had
arranged for the meeting, she had also said that she and Hal preferred that he
not hire me. "I don't know what it's about," he said, "but don't
think that she's your friend."

As I crossed the parking lot to
my car, I was certain who had taken and destroyed my unfinished novel. I wasn't
even angry. It confirmed my belief in human nature. And so much for Hal
Wallis's throwaway line about helping me.

I had a first-class wardrobe and
a Jaguar sports car, although it was evident to me that it was a lemon and the
used car lot had clipped me. It was constantly in need of frequently expensive
repair. I had a $2,600 check that Louise had given me and I had never cashed. I
knew how she handled such matters. A man she had put into business with a
janitorial service that now serviced several downtown buildings was a
bookkeeper. Once a month he came over and took care of her accounts. He would
bring the unusual check to her attention, for in 1956 it would equal at least
ten times as much on the eve of the twenty-first century. Although not a king's
ransom, by the standards of the time it was certainly an amount to be queried.
She would simply make it disappear. That I knew.

The clutch went out on my
Jaguar. I cashed the check and forgot about it. I had not gotten it by
subterfuge or deceit: it had been given to me. And there had been no question
of Louise's competence at the time, not that I knew about. I will admit a
slight sense of unease before cashing it, but no sense of having done wrong.

A few weeks went by. Without
warning, she went into Cedars and had an "extremely serious" liver
operation, as Dr Frym phrased it. "The liver is always serious
surgery."

I called Cedars, and they denied
having any Louise Wallis, Mrs Hal Wallis, or any Wallis or "Wallace,"
or any Fazenda. By then the switchboard operator was abrupt and irritated. I
considered calling all the hospitals in Southern California, but the list was
too long, the possibilities too many.

She was under another name, of
course. The name of a character she'd played in some obscure movie.

She called me in about a week.
It had been touch and go, or so I'd been told, but she was both strong and
funny.

She stayed in the hospital
another week, during which period the checks for the various personal accounts
had come back. She told me immediately when I first visited her when she was
convalescing at home on Mapleton Drive that Hal had gone through them. For a
moment I felt as if I'd lost something — but I knew that I'd lost nothing. Hal
Wallis was never going to help me unless he could profit from it, and that was
unlikely, although he would have gotten a loyal friend without avaricious
intent or duplicity from the deal. I would have wagered then, and now, that he
could never have pointed to three men and sincerely proclaimed them his
friends.

It was also obvious that I could
no longer count on or conspire with Louise. She had given me so much that I
fairly ached near tears with gratitude for what she'd done, and only partially
realized at the time that her main gift was to let me look from the outhouse
into the mansion. I was far too wise about too much to accept the future that
the past wanted to mandate for me. Maybe she would help me sometime in the
future, but for now I needed a plan. Obviously I wasn't getting into a studio
story department. I might have been able to get an office boy job at the
Herald Express,
as the afternoon Hearst
newspaper was then named. Vanity of vanities, I could not see myself as an
office boy, thank you.

Yet I needed a job of some kind,
both to pacify the parole officer and to make a living. I had clothes, a nice
apartment without rent and a Jaguar roadster, but no cash flow. I applied for
an insurance salesman job. They were enthused by my manner and appearance, but
I never heard from them again after they discovered my background.

When I realized how slickly the
used car salesmen who had sold me the Jag had taken me off, me who thought I
was half slick, I decided it was a game I should learn. I became a used car
salesman. My first job was at a Chevrolet dealership on Wilshire Boulevard in
Beverly Hills. They hired anyone who walked in the door. It was all commission,
so what did they care? The idea was to sell your mother and father, brother and
sister, friends and lovers. Bring them in and turn them over to a closer.
In'about three days I understood that this was no way to anything.

Then I spent a couple of months
at a dealership that sold Nashs and Ramblers. I don't recall if it was then
called American Motors or something else. It was a terrible year for car sales,
and what we sold was opposite from the swept-wing yachts then in vogue. I made
a little money, but not much. I did, however, learn the game.

I finally went to work for the
English mechanic who worked on my Jag. His business was on 2
^nd
and
La Brea. He fixed foreign cars, especially English, and sold used sports cars
of all varieties. It was the age of the Jaguar, MG and bathtub Porsches. He
only had two salesmen. We worked hours that I liked. I would come in at noon
and stay until nine in the evening. The last three hours I was alone. The next
morning I would open up at 9 a.m. and work until noon, when the other salesman
took over. Then I was off until noon the next day. I had unlimited free use of
a telephone and anyone could visit me about anything in the privacy of my small
office with the loud little air conditioner in the window. I could dress in
jacket and necktie, and no grime got under my fingernails. It was the
conservative '50s, long before anyone even heard of grunge as a style choice.
Even beatnik poets were neat and stylish, albeit with individualized flair.
Another fringe benefit was that every other evening when I locked up, I could
use any of the two dozen or so foreign sports cars on the lot. A bathtub
Porsche one night, a Jaguar or Mercedes SL190 the next. The owner did bring in
a gull-wing SL300 Mercedes, which he asked me not to take. "I wasn't
thinking about it," I told him. "And why not?" he asked. "It's
almost empty of gas." For although Richfield premium was about 20 cents a
gallon, I almost always took a car that was full or nearly full.

In the argot of the underworld,
a car salesman's job proved to be a good front . . .