Where the Truth Lies (49 page)

FOR THE EYES OF JOHN HILLMAN, ESQ., ONLY

Dear John,

First, if you’re reading this letter, I’m gone. So I really hope you aren’t reading this letter, my friend. But if you are, thank you for all your help over the decades.

John, as you are already aware: for a variety of personal reasons, reasons which I believe justified the effort involved, I have in the last year written several chapters for what might have someday been memoirs of my times with Vince Collins. I purposely wrote them in the style of delivery that the public knew me for back in the fifties, because the times were brash and vulgar, we were brash and vulgar, and this was the way we spoke privately and (with some censorship) publicly as well. It was the way things tasted, and I wanted to invoke those flavors for the reader, raw and sour as they might seem now.

Although I was writing specific chapters for specific purposes, I knew when I began that there was only a slim chance I might complete the work. If I misled you into thinking otherwise, I apologize. Sometimes people are deceptive for what they hope are good reasons. The white lie is, for me, one of the things that keeps society from turning into anarchy.

John, one of the chapters I wrote is already on file in your office and will hopefully serve one of the purposes for which it was intended. A copy of it and two additional chapters are enclosed in this envelope. They might be of passing interest to anyone writing about show business in the late 1950s. The first chapter certainly depicts, in a fairly unflattering way, two rakes having their way with the world and women. I don’t back away from this. The second chapter, which covers a period later in the same year, continues that depiction and also clearly lays out a timetable showing the absolute impossibility of our involvement in the death of Maureen O’Flaherty.

John, the third chapter enclosed here is sealed. It contains my brief, frank, and honest account, voiced again in my language of that period, of certain events that occurred one evening in Miami that ultimately ended my working relationship with Vince Collins. I’ve intentionally made its tone compatible with the first two chapters, so that anyone reading all three (God forbid) will hear the same “Lanny” speaking. Even writers of comedy material for crass showbiz duos have their artistic ego, you know.

John, I have worried that, after my demise, things might someday be said (perhaps even by Vince) that I would not be able to contradict, and it’s been of grave concern to me that only two people now living know the truth. Therefore, without trying to make this more important than it is, I am going to burden you with this knowledge as well. My hope and guess is that you will never need to cite any of it. I leave that to your good judgment, with the request that you err on the side of discretion.

Thank you, John, for your assistance and your friendship.

Warmest regards,

Lanny Morris

I skipped past the second chapter, which seemed to be identical to the one Bonnie had brought to me from Los Angeles, and looked at the third. It was typed with the same Selectric ball that had typed the two chapters I’d already read from Lanny’s autobiography (which apparently was not as far down the road to completion as I’d been led to believe). That manuscript follows.

We knew we wanted to make an early night of it, with the telethon coming up, so Vince suggested we dine in, ask Maureen to join the two of us, and have her maybereally join the two of us for dessert. I told him Maureen thought that, the way we sometimes boffed the same girls, we might be joined at the hip, and Vince said we’d give her the chance to discover otherwise. I said she’d be hip to that (joke).

I picked up the phone and Vince, always my best audience, listened to me order. I said, “Hello, Room Service? I’m holding a service here in my room and I don’t have enough to make up a minyan. Yeah, we’re doing a Kaddish tonight. I’m in Shul Twenty-five-oh-one, oh-two, oh-three, yeah, it’s the Lanny-Man, who else? Now look, can you send me and my pally here three filet mignons done rare, rare, and rare, with béarnaise sauce, the usual stuff on the side. Great, and look, I don’t want you to take this the whole entirely way other, but you have a very sweet girl down there, very lovely young lady named Maureen, and she’s just terrific. Could you do a favor for a tired entertainer and have her bring the order up? Even if you have to pull her off some other room. For the Lanny-Man, okay? No, we got booze but, say, have her bring up three bottles of Moët on ice, okay? She can wheel it all into 2502, that’s the living room. Thanks, sweetheart.”

I knew it would be Maureen’s last call of the night. She got dinner up to us pretty quick. God, was she beautiful. We sat around the table, she sat between us, and she knew where we were going with this. To help us get in the mood I did a Tuinal, and she did one, and Vince, he did two ’cause he wasalways doing one. (No joke.) We got into the second of the three bottles of Moët we’d ordered, Vince switched over to his Jack Daniel’s, and Maureen started unfolding the convertible couch in the living room (we thought it would be fairer to keep the action in neutral territory). She also chain-locked the front door to the living room, to make sure that someone from housekeeping, eager to turn down our beds, didn’t walk in on a Versailles employee having a ménage ŕ trois with the hotel’s headliners.

When I got out of the shower, I was going to bring her my robe, in case she felt a little bashful, since she’d only slept with me before, not Vince. I look through the door of my bedroom and see she’s already stark naked and on top of Vince. So much for bashful! I threw the robe on the bed and ran into the room, half-worried they’d finish without me. But she said we had plenty of time and we all popped another Tuinal to make sure of that.

Listen, she was a beautiful, beautiful little shiksa lay. She had that terrific Irish thing, the hair all downy and auburn. If a pubis could have freckles, she’d have had them. The lips weren’t prominent at all, and like lots of Irish girls, her vagina was placed real high and small. A secret pocket. To enter her was a mysterious privilege.

Vince realized he’d been hogging the action, so he stepped aside for a minute and I was on top of her fast. I know a lot of people like it other ways, but I’ve always preferred the missionary position. I like, maybe I evenneed, to see the girl’s face, to watch the Jekyll-Hyde thing happen. That really turns me into a lead pipe, I’m telling you. I have to see her face, look into her eyes. Unless she’s acting (I like to think I can tell the difference), there comes that moment when a woman totally accepts that she’s going to be fucked, that now it’s being done to her, and in that moment, if a guy takes the trouble to really look at her, he’ll see exactly who she is. I’ll be balling some sophisticated woman with her wiseass manner and a closet full of Dior dresses and she’s in charge of everything, she thinks. Then I’ll look down as I’m going long and steady into her and right there I’ll see a girl who’s lost her mommy at the supermarket, or a little brat who wants punishment from Mr. Man, or a choir girl, or an upper-class junkie who smiles as a Park Avenue doctor injects her with an impeccable fix, or a wild animal who just wants to snarl and bite.

Maureen was just beautiful. We were blurry together, steamy but not sweaty … steamy like from a vaporizer in the corner of the room, soothing. Our movements felt steady and certain. All the teamwork and telepathy that Vince and I shared was coming into play now, and for the moment, I was the main beneficiary. We had only done a threesome once or twice before, with mixed results. But now he was gently primping her nipples into their own small erections and moving her breasts against my chest as if they had a life of their own. It must have felt good to her, because she sighed as it was happening.

Jesus, I felt good. Some of it may have been the pills, but I had that “harem” feeling I’d sometimes had. I was resting on a huge bed with satin covers, veils hung like curtains around me, making everything secret and hidden, the girls’ bodies dressed in pale blues and pinks that you could see through, their faces veiled as well, but you could see their smiles, the sweet, amused smiles of Irish lips, and all their hands were stroking me. It felttoo good, hands everywhere, my back, my ass, my thighs, my balls—

I had been losing track of Maureen’s hands. They were everywhere, magical, like one of those Hindu goddesses. Vince and I had done a routine inFrom Brooklyn to Bali where four dancers crouched one behind the other and the camera angle made it look like it was one dancing girl with eight arms. I felt like I was making love withthat goddess. Maureen’s hands were slow and skilled. She was stroking me at angles it didn’t seem humanly possible she could reach. I looked over my shoulder and saw that two of the four hands moving against and around me were Vince’s.

I said, “Hey,compadre, watch it, will you?”

Vince smiled his bleary smile. “Oops. It’s a little hard to tell who’s who down here.”

“I’m the one with the tan, you dumb dago,” I cracked without losing a stroke of my hips.

He nodded. “Gotcha, pal. And you remember I’m the only one of us who has a foreskin.”

I laughed. Maureen muttered with some urgency, “Shut up, I’m really close. Come on. Fuck me harder.”

Then Vince did the coolest thing. He reached his arms past my hips and slid his hands smoothly under Maureen’s ass, elevating it as if a pillow had been placed beneath her, pulling her into me as I went into her. That did something crazy-wild to her, yeah, and to me. I saw this look of release on her face, like she knew she was now a part of something bigger and stronger and there was nothing she could do but let the team of Collins and Morris perform their routine. Who could argue with the two of us? Wewere bigger, stronger. We were fast on the uptake. We had the best suite in the hotel. We got paid the best. For me, it was as if we were achieving in bed with Maureen what we achieved every night on the stage.

I was completely owned by the moment. Vince’s arms pulled Maureen into me over and over again, and I saw the tendons in his wrists flexing like those of the captain on a rowing team. He was strong. Our breathing, his and mine, was also that of a team, synchronized and overpowering Maureen’s gasps. She couldn’t keep up with us. She couldn’t match us.

I felt Vince shift, as if to get an even harder grasp on Maureen, and suddenly I felt something hard between the two of us. I thought, half amazed, half exultant, “He’s going to try to fuck her at the same time,” and with the pressure building everywhere in my groin, I thought it was almost a hot idea. I wondered in a half second if Maureen could take the both of us, and then reassured myself that if she could be expected to accommodate the delivery of a seven-pound baby, she could probably handle the double thickness of me and Vince. I wasn’t sure how I felt about rubbing up against Vince’s—

I felt a sudden pressure against my ass, as if a clumsy doctor was about to examine my prostate.

“Watch it,” I warned. “You got the end zone, Vince.”

I felt Vince’s strong chest on top of me and his breath damp around my right ear. “C’mon, you’ll love it, pally,” he assured me. “You never felt anything like it.” I could feel him trying to burrow into me. I tried to squirm away but he had Maureen’s body and his own arms pulled up around me like a cage. I was sandwiched between all this hot breathing and panting. Maureen wouldn’t stop; she had her own climax she was going for. Vince said, “Believe me, it’s like from another planet. I’d never hurt you, baby.” I looked over my shoulder as he whispered these things that were in no way sweet nothings into my ear and suddenly I realized how he felt about me.

“Get the fuck off me!” I cursed, but he had me pinned. Maureen grunted beneath us, my weight and his strength pressing her into the mattress.

He crooned, “No, no, no, trust me, baby, it’s like double the sex. If you don’t like it you never have to do it again, don’t say you never thought about this.” He prodded himself further into me, still soothing me, crazy with his Tuinals and Jack Daniel’s, telling me what a good idea this was. “I didn’t think I’d like it the first time either but wait till you feel it, pally, it’s like you never came before.”

In trying to push him off me, I hit Maureen in the face with my elbow. This sort of ended the magic. I was off the bed like I’d found a live eel tucked between the sheets.

“We don’t FUCK, Vince!” I screamed, with the worst kind of scorn and horror and rage in my voice.

Vince had made a huge miscalculation, and he must have been terrified to see the contorted fury in my face. I screamed at him, “We’re buddies, we’re pals, we’re partners, a duo, a twosome. We adore each other, I worship you, you’re my big brother, we hug, we kiss, we love each other, butwe don’t FUCK!! ”

He stared at me, unable to speak.

I cried out to him: “Oh man, Vince … when you say you love me … you don’tlove me, do you?” I waved my arms to the heavens. “Oh God, don’t tell me this is, this is— We don’t fuck, Vince. Shit! Don’t putthat into it, not, not when we’re beating the world! We aren’t British or in ballet. We’re not flamenco dancers or figure skaters or chorus boys, Vince. We’re stars! We live together, travel together, go out together—we’re like firemen, wecan’t bequeers ! People would laugh at us and it wouldn’t be funny!”

I looked at Maureen. Her nose was bleeding, and she was sopping the blood off her face with the end of a bedsheet.

Vince had moved into the bathroom, where he got a towel and wore it back into the room. He sat in a shiny gold tufted armchair in the corner and busied himself with the lighting of a cigarette.

I looked back at Maureen, but I didn’t know what to say, never having been in this situation before. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” she inquired.

“Well, for the bloody nose. It’s not broken, is it?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She tucked a corner of the bedsheet into her right nostril and wadded it in so it plugged up her nose. Obviously, she looked pretty goofy with this sheet like the train of a gown attached to her nostril, but I guess making a sexy impression on us was no longer the number one thing on her mind.