The Taste of Fear

After coffee-and-danish in the studio commissary Pollock walked back, past the sound stages in a jagged transverse, to his office in the Security Bungalow. He sat at a desk centered between two windows in what had once been a dressing room for actors. A large make-up mirror rimmed with naked light bulbs faced the door, so that anybody who entered saw his own reflection first.

There was time to kill. He listened to the jets streaking from Lockheed to the Mojave testing corridor, their howl thinning to a scream that hurt like a sliver under the nail. A studio messenger-girl let her bicycle fall prone to the walk, and came inside with the afternoon's last mail. She wore the regulation bolero jacket, toreador pants and Monty beret with a badge on it stamped Courier. Her hair, after the fashion of Kim Novak, was like a casque of well-rubbed pewter; and her breath heavy with Juicyfruit gum. The leather pouch slung over her shoulder was branded Fairchild Films, each i dotted with a silver star in persistent compliment to Brigadier General J. Sidney Fairchild (Ret.).

Pollock smiled, not at the girl gone briefly ape before her own image, but at the Intra-Studio Dispatch which she dropped among the hieroglyphs on his desk blotter. He could still, after seven weeks here, find diversion in these mementos of the studio's martial heyday. As Fort Fairchild it had compounded Army training films; morality-reels on the perils of contracting military gout, and other inspirational footage. For all this, its garrison became ungratefully known as -- Pollock laughed quietly -- the Crotch Commandos. Other relics, the "caps" and "sarges," amused him less. Least of all the major, who billed himself on the front door of the bungalow as Maj. Lennard Erickson, Chief Security Officer.

The two bedrooms had been chopped through to make Erickson's private office, and he appropriated the sole key to the bathroom. His secretary, Miss Toussaint, occupied an alcove in the front room, which otherwise was stacked with locked filing cabinets.

There had developed between Pollock and Cecile Toussaint an easiness; an entente of subordinates to the insolent authority of Major Erickson. Both had access to each other's Form 215-A, Primary Personnel Record, and traded silence for silence about the data on it.

Toward the end of the day she came into Pollock's room, pausing just inside to light her cigarette with a flaring Zippo. "The major," she said. "Just phoned in from off the lot." Her finger ran down a page of her notebook peppered with shorthand symbols. "I wish you could read this, John. It's about you."

"Masonic?"

"Strictly. Between the major and me, and to go no further. So, listen: 'Confidential memo. Do not transcribe... . Is Pollock around anywhere? No? Now listen: I gave him his orders about a special investigation he was to go on tonight, this date, after studio hours... . No, no! He doesn't have to be reminded about it. What I want you to do is keep yourself busy at your desk till you know for sure if he leaves tonight at the regular time or stays on the lot like he was told. Either way I will call you back to check. That's all.'"

"Very good. You read that just like Joanne Woodward."

"He's certainly got his needle out for you, John."

"Jackknife. He's trying to whittle me down to size and stuff the shavings into his Adler Elevators."

Erickson's clear animus developed gradually from the cat-footed suspicion that possesses any corporation executive whose assistant is hired "over his head," as Pollock had been, by the New York office.

During his first week at Fairchild he was Mr. Pollock, Deputy Chief Security Officer. Then it became "See Pollock, my assistant." Yesterday, both he and Cecile heard him at an open telephone: "I'll have my man Pollock check on it."

"Makes it sound as if I slept on a cot outside his door."

"So long as your take-home stays the same, John, I wouldn't mind... . But what about this thing he wants you to do tonight?"

"You know what it is?"

Cecile monitored the intercom every chance she (continued on page 42)Taste of Fear(continued from page 40) got, and of course she knew. Pollock was told to search the lockers and personal effects of the girls in the stenographic pool for evidence that typewriter ribbons and carbon paper were being pilfered. A chintzy enough job, unwillingly done in the past by an old wardrobe matron. But to goad Pollock, Erickson had put a knob on it. "What I'm out after mainly, Pollock, is proof there's deviation around."

"From what, Major? There's several kinds."

"Do I have to give you a blueprint? You know the kind I mean."

"I know now; not that it's any of our business."

"That's for me to decide. The girls will be out of there at five-forty-five, so I want you on the job no later than six."

"Hold on a minute, Major ----"

Cecile had to close the key at that point, and now, Pollock told her, "It's a job I wouldn't put a reformed p.i. on."

"So -- ?"

"So, in five minutes I'm leaving the lot. From here straight to the Finnish baths on Santa Monica; then to have my dinner in that Czech restaurant on Sunset; and from there, home. And tell the major I took great pains to inform you."

"Mind if I just say you left?"

Three hours later Pollock was at home, and well into a Kingsley Amis novel. The building was called the Argyle Mansionette Apts.; and the same coy, Frenchy diminutive was applied to everything. Foyerette, dinette, refrigerette. He was in the kitchenette, pouring himself a glass of iced coffee when the telephone rang.

It was Erickson, brisk and crackling with cheap-jack arrogance. "Pollock, you seem to have ignored the orders I gave you for tonight. Any reason why they weren't carried out?"

"Yes. I think you understood me when I told you it was nothing you'd want to move on if you put it in writing. A draft of it at least, for the Legal Department to reword so that it wouldn't sound completely like invasion of privacy. Then, if you signed it as a responsible executive of the studio ----"

Erickson abandoned his austerity to babble, "I had enough from you, Pollock... . I didn't hire you to come out here ----"

"You didn't hire me at all, Erickson."

"And maybe I can't fire you either, is that what you're thinking? But I promise you I'm going to work on it." His voice rasped with anger. "You weren't brought out here to deliver New York Police Academy lectures at a salary four times what you got as a cop."

"Detective, First Grade. And I took a leave of absence; I wasn't busted down to the subway toilet detail."

Pollock recovered his glass and stepped out on the terracette, a tiny, railed embrasure overlooking the electronic frenzy of Vine Street. Glass serpents, lions, rabbits, lizards frisking among neon flora of every shape and color except those which exist on earth. Every six seconds a fire-tailed rocket burst into smithereens, advertising a barroom. The Cyclotron. Try Our Isotope Stinger with Gamma Rays -- Only Two per Person.

There was no sky; only the dull reflection, as in a muddied pond, of the street below. And there were no people abroad in all the shimmering light. The city was infested, engulfed by endless ranks of luminous scarabs. They moved, they halted, moved again, and finally dropped from sight into the crevasse of distance.

The wind, freshening, wove through the television aerials with a long, spiraling sigh over Pollock's head. At his elbow, and from the floor below, a voice throbbed with binaural clarity. "So get a jar today. And remember -- ask for it by name. The Cream of Sheba, for ugly blackheads and blemishes."

A whisp of dew flicked at his eyelids. And the breeze that carried it sucked more sounds from the open windows... . "Why schlep from store to store when there's a one-stop Fetch-a-Tessen as near as your phone." ... "Not one, but a combination of medically tested ingredients." ... "We can't go on this way -- hiding -- hiding. Oh, Travis, how can you pretend that Gwen isn't silently mocking us with our secret?" "Stop it, Mercedes! Stop raising the ghost -- the living ghost of that brooding figure confined to her wheelchair by mononucleosis." "Hold me, then. Take me. Love me ..." ... "It comes to you in a plain wrapper. The address again is Iron John, Box 2218... ."

From the tatters of sound above, below and around him, Pollock tried to distinguish human speech from that which leaked past loudspeaker grids. No dice. The meanings overlapped and fused; all smoky, and with the wanton balance of an asylum finger-painting.

• • •

A smeary rain fell Sunday until late in the afternoon. Then, for an hour or two the sun levered up the lid of smog, and Hollywood was bright again. Pollock bought a newspaper, too unwieldy to read at the counter in Musso-Frank's. He finished his steak and left the restaurant.

It was the hour of Hollywood's sabbath promenade. Unharnessed from their automobiles, the people walked in the thinning afterglow. From Cherokee, east on Hollywood Boulevard, Pollock found his own pace to be faster than the ambling shuffle of a community that is rarely on its feet. The stores were closed, so they had nothing to stare at but themselves mirrored in each other.

They were in front of him and behind him. They pressed against his side; their clothes touched his. Yet, he could get no warmth from them; nor, conversely, the dry chill of exclusion. They were a horde whose habits, he felt, could not be described; only interpreted, as with a nagging dream.

That night he wrote a letter about it to his wife. "You remember once asking me what spooked meant, the way it's used nowadays? Well, I can't tell you exactly yet, but it's beginning to form. Whether it's me apart, or everybody else in this town but me, I haven't quite figured out. But, one of these days I'll know."

There was a calmer-than-usual atmosphere about the studio when Pollock arrived for work and his certain encounter with Erickson.

"The major's been in and gone," Cecile explained. "Funeral. Manny Cleveland, General Fairchild's brother-in-law. They all went, the executives that is, to show respect."

Then, at three o'clock, a courier brought him a "Personal -- Receipt Requested" letter. The gummed flap was still moist when he opened the envelope, and the meat of it was in the second of three short paragraphs: In accordance with Art. 9 of the said Contract, due notice is hereby given that the Studio does not elect to exercise its option on your services beyond the termination of the initial period of employment hereunder.

He calmly pocketed the letter. Glancing out, he saw that a relief-girl was at Miss Toussaint's desk. She moved obligingly aside as he took the key of the personnel file cabinet from a tray in the center drawer.

When he returned a few minutes later, carrying his own folder, the girl pointed to a visitor. "This gentleman wants to talk to somebody here, and I told him the major might not be in till much later."

A short man, in faded drill almost invisible against the blond furniture of the reception room, stood up.

"I'm from over on Stage 9," he said. "Over where they're shooting this Hindu picture. My name is Klemm. Petey, they know me as. If you don't mind, it's something I wouldn't want to mention in front of this young lady."

In Pollock's room the man waited until the door was shut, fiddling with his hat -- a sun-helmet made of varnished cardboard -- and licking his lips. He had the mouth of a hard drinker, flaccid, and the edges rimmed with brown scale. "It's about the tigers," he said. "I want (continued on page 108)Taste of Fear(continued from page 42) this feller to let up on me, or there might be trouble. That's the reason I'm putting it up to you Security people."

"Start back a little," Pollock suggested.

"All right. It goes back to him slipping me a bottle of Double Eagle rye. Then he wanted me to take ten dollars. Then twenty. No! And now he's offering me fifty bucks."

"Sounds like he might be getting near your price. For what?"

"It ain't a bit funny -- not to me."

"I'm sorry... . These tigers you mentioned."

"There's Akbar," Klemm said, and wincing, repeated, "Oh, that Akbar! And Mogul, not so powerful maybe, but meaner. But just to show you how strong this Akbar is, there's a tree made outen cement for them to scratch on. Thirty inches around the trunk, and branches a foot thick. Well, sir, Akbar takes one swipe at a pea-hen roosting, and knocks that branch clean off. I take care of their feeding; regular rations of this fresh horsemeat. Failing that, them tigers'd as soon eat me, or you, mister, and lick their whiskers after."

"Now, just what's your complaint?" Pollock wanted to get at his folder.

"Just this ----" Klemm was not elusive; he was simply unaccustomed to framing petitions. "Me, personally, I'm kind of used now to knocking them wild horses down with a sixteen-pound sledge; slaughtering them like they say, and quartering up the carcasses." His voice became strident. "But I'll be goddam if for twenty bucks -- or even fifty bucks and any number of bottles of whiskey -- I'll go and turn a live horse in the stockade with them two cats! No sir! That would make me just as bad as him... . Let me tell you something, mister ----" He glanced backward at the door and spoke lower, "You know, there's certain people get their kicks that way."

"That's their problem, Mr. Klemm."

"Women, too -- if you want to believe that!" Klemm whispered moistly. "You know where our place is -- over on the other side of Thousand Oaks? Well, it must have been a couple-three weeks ago, one of them tall types -- about forty, I'd say; swell-dressed like them extras they use in ballroom pictures. She comes up to Brownie Snyder, that's the owner, with a proposition. She'll pay for a live goat, or a pig, whatever it cost; for us to chuck it in the cage with Freckles -- that's the leopard you see in all them King Solomon pictures. Well, you know what Brownie told her she can go and do."

"I can guess."

"Now comes the topper." Klemm took another cautious glance at the door. "You know Brownie keeps the place open Sundays for the public -- kids and all -- a quarter admission. I put on a little show with the cats and a lecture like, when all of a sudden I'm looking up, and there she is again -- the same dame. Now, dogs ain't allowed on the premises on account it nerves up the animals. But she must have had this one hid under her coat -- one of them skinny wire-haired terriers. Before you know it, it's inside the cage and Freckles hooks one paw. I don't have to tell you the rest. But you can imagine that with two tigers and a horse! I ask you!"

"What did you -- Brownie -- do about this woman?"

"Oh, she was cute! To cover up she yelled and made out her poor little doggie jumped in there on his own. Nobody's fault, she claimed, and started picking up her lipstick and stuff where the pup must have kicked her purse open, and everything spilled out. Part of it was inside Freckles' cage. Compact and a couple of cards stuck together with a piece of tishy-paper in between. Printed up with the name of a lawyer. Marshall it was -- Alex something Marshall -- on South Olive Street. I figure a dame like that must keep him busy."

"We veered off, Mr. Klemm," Pollock said. "Your complaint had to do with some tigers the studio is renting. What's the arrangement?"

Klemm explained. Brownie's deal was for $250 a day, including Klemm's services as handler. The script called for one tiger. Akbar was more photogenic, but Mogul was on hand, too, as a spare. The wild horses on which they were fed? They came by truck trailer, shipped by an outfit in Wyoming which had a license to round them up; otherwise they would be shot by government rangers.

"From what you tell me, Mr. Klemm, I don't see how the studio is involved. You're being propositioned to put on this -- this show -- at your own place, not here on the lot. And, besides, you don't want any part of it."

"Right so far. But I tell you this guy keeps pestering me," Klemm wailed. "He's got me so I don't know how I'm going to be able to handle Akbar. It's not the animals -- it's me that's getting spooked. And it's catching, like fever. And if the cats get it from me, there won't be any working with them. Scenes won't come off right, and it'll cost the studio a day, maybe two days retakes."

"What I'd do, Mr. Klemm, is take this up with the Humane Society."

"Aah, they don't bother with people. Only animals," Klemm scoffed. "They had their agent here this morning, looking to see if I was using a gooser... . You know -- some trainers slide a pole with a hundred and ten volts in the tip up against the animal and give him a touch with it to start him. But what I'm doing gets around that. I got a long strip of chicken wire laid along the track Akbar's supposed to move on. Onto that I hook up a series of dry cell batteries with an induction coil; and if that cat gets stubborn I hit the switch. And, brother, you begin to see action." He illustrated by leaping out of his chair. "When you come over I'll show you how it's rigged. It's a night scene, see? The girl with the red dot on her forehead is all alone in the silk tent. And twenty feet away is Akbar, crouched down ----"

As soon as Klemm left, Pollock began working on the papers in his folder with a razor blade. It took him less than 15 minutes to finish and replace the file. The shreds of paper he had cut out were still in his pocket, 20 minutes later, when Major Erickson sent for him.

He saw his open folder on Erickson's desk when he entered, and Erickson tapping it rhythmically with his pencil. "What this amounts to, Pollock, is stealing confidential data belonging to the corporation."

"I left all I thought the corporation has a right to know about an ex-employee, Major."

"You're getting kind of lippy now that the creases are out of your belly, aren't you?"

"And I'm not putting them back by bending over to kiss ----"

"That's all. Oh, and I gave orders to have your car searched nights when you leave the lot. With people on notice ----"

"I don't have a car," Pollock said, "and whatever I carry out of here is in my pocket. Now, give some orders about that... . I usually leave by the front gate."

"Good. You can leave right now, and you don't have to bother coming back. I'd just as soon not see you around any more."

"It's mutual. But I'm not willing to pay six hundred dollars for the privilege."

Erickson slapped his desk. "Well, goddamit, I am! I'll put an order through tonight -- right now. You don't have to come any further in than the cashier's window in the morning. They'll hand you out an envelope... . Come in here, Cecile, and bring your book."

She bustled at her desk until Pollock came out. "Anything in your desk, John? He'll go through it," she whispered rapidly.

"Corporation's desk, isn't it?"

"What are you going to do now?"

"Get a cup of coffee."

• • •

Tigers were nowhere on his mind, and he had come abreast of Stage 9 when Klemm caught his arm. "He's inside now. Lemme give you his name -- Forbes -- the writer on the picture. He's sitting in there with the director."

Klemm drew him into the vast interior of the sound stage, guiding him over a tangle of cables to a village in Hyderabad where two men sat in canvas chairs.

Pollock studied the puffy face contorted over a script; the lips pouting like a burst rose; the rumpled hair; the flabbiness and pallor of the cheeks. Here, by Lombroso's standards, Pollock thought, was the face of a criminal voluptuary. Most likely a talented fellow, highly paid, and harassed; as now, called down to repair a weak scene, or revise unutterable dialog. The tense kind, who needed -- if one wanted to be charitable -- the sort of recreation he asked Klemm to procure. The other man was totally and wholesomely different; younger, relaxed and leaning back with easy grace. He turned his head, saw Pollock, and smiling in tentative recognition, stood up and came toward him.

"You better talk to him," Klemm muttered and slid out of sight in the weighted gloom beyond.

"Hello. I'm Scotty Forbes. Did you want to see me?"

For a second or two, in a protean struggle with his mistake, Pollock was unable to say anything. Then: "There's been a beef with the Security office."

"So Tiger Boy's smoked up?" Forbes' voice was flat, with something of a drawl, but pleasant. He smiled openly. "Well, it looks as if that gag bombed... . What was the story he told you?"

"A long, dirty one," Pollock answered.

"Here -- let's find a place to sit down... . I don't know your name."

"Pollock. But don't bother. I didn't intend to stay."

"Just leaving, myself. I'll walk out with you."

They left the sound stage together, Forbes choosing the diagonal street leading to the main gate. "I thought you might want to ask me a lot of questions, Mr. Pollock."

"Not a one."

"I'm disappointed -- but only because the rib rolled over and died. Anyway, you must have taken that little wino's story seriously enough to come down and study me from the shadows in three-quarter profile."

Pollock was able to smile. "To tell the truth, I was studying your friend, the director."

"This I've got to tell him! Chuck Corbett, the repopulator of Bel Air -- the begetter of eight kids! A papal knight on top of that. Taken for a dee-gen-erate -- by an expert!

"You have to be an expert to be that far off base."

Forbes pointed to a handsome redwood bungalow behind some fine shrubs. "There's my office. Come in for a minute."

Pollock glanced at his watch. "I've just got time to make the five-twenty bus to Highland and Yucca."

"Just till I shave, and then I'll run you down," Forbes urged, and steered him over the flagstone to a side door and into the largest room of the house, furnished as a library.

Looking around from a green leather armchair at the profusion of Brueghel prints on the paneled walls, Pollock said, "I thought you writers hung out in the Writers' Building near the other gate."

"Not me. I wouldn't walk into that iron lung even to use the cigarette machine. It's in my contract. Privacy -- enough room to swing an idea." Forbes paused to plug in an electric razor. "This heap of slats was put up for Katya Szabo, remember, when she came over here to make eight pictures for Manny Cleveland."

"The late Manny Cleveland."

"I stand corrected -- poor bastard. A mattress death, I hear. And I always thought he'd go out howling, the other way. Almost did, at that, one time when Katya cut loose at him with a pistola grande. Would have got him, too, if she'd had a better target than his so-called parts. Later on, his wife -- Sidney Fairchild's sister -- and two female wrestlers swooped down on her while she was giving Manny a flourish, and really fixed her goulash." Swathes of tough, black whisker disappeared as he spoke against the razor's hum. "And don't think Manny hadn't made work for that good squad since. If ever there was a crow-pecked lout -- which reminds me ----"

Forbes pressed the buzzer and his secretary came in. "Helen," he said to her, "I love you like rubies. A little favor. Send a telegram to General Fairchild, care the studio. Condolences -- that sort of jazz. Say I was indisposed -- sorry about his loss. Make that 'overcome.'" He turned to Pollock. "I must be on Sidney's louse-list for not showing up at the burning ghat this morning." He shuddered. "Moping along behind a corpse -- having to shake hands with the widow -- almost the same as touching one. Did you go?" Pollock shook his head. "I thought you might, seeing as you belong to the Fairchild household troops... . That's all, Helen, for now."

"I've got a reminder here," the girl said, "about your dental appointment at six o'clock."

The hand holding the electric shaver went clay-white. "I can't tonight. Make it next week sometime."

"But Scotty, Dr. Arnold told me be sure to tell you ----"

Trembling, Forbes all but shrieked, "I don't want to know what he told you!" He glared at the girl, the wings of his nose flaring out. "If I do, I'll ask you." She left abruptly, her face red with shame and rage.

Then, as if this passage had never taken place, the writer looked amusedly at Pollock. "So, you say the poor man's Frank Buck went to Erickson -- another creep -- with his yarn about the tigers."

"No. He came direct to me."

"Scout's oath, Pollock -- did you believe him?"

"It doesn't matter to me."

"Just the same, I owe you an explanation of the whole thing."

"Not officially. I don't work here any more."

Forbes unplugged the razor. "So you turned in your trench coat." He wound the cord around the instrument and held it out to Pollock. "Want one of these? Take it. I've got about thirty of them, all makes and models. Buy them as fast as they come out."

"No, thanks. I use blades."

The film writer bit sharply at his upper lip. "I couldn't -- I mean even handle a blade. Just taking it out of the wrapper gives me a -- I just stand there and see that thin, shiny edge so close to those two veins that cross on my wrist -- and I get sick."

• • •

In the parking lot across the street from the studio, Pollock guessed wrong about the make of Forbes' car. It was not the Thunderbird, but the blue Dodge in the adjoining slot.

It had been drizzling, and the tires hummed over the slick on Ventura Boulevard. There was an hour of daylight unspent, and a streak of red from a vanishing rainbow still glowed above Laurel Canyon. When Pollock remarked simply that it was a nice time of day, Forbes said, "I say it's the cool of the evening when the drinking begins. How about a stimulant?"

Why not? It was better than a drink alone with flat soda out of the refrigerette.

They sat in the Plandome Grill on the Sunset Strip, in the umber-lighted, baronial Men's Lounge. Forbes' kind of place; it "went with" him. And with everything about him -- his tactile narcissism in the feel of his own face. His naked cowardice at the reminder of an appointment with the dentist. His approach to the rim of shrieking panic at a dribble of blood -- his own only. As for that of horses ----

"Knock this one back, John... . Waiter, some more of the devil's lubricant here... . Only seven weeks, so you haven't begun to understand the way industry-people huff and puff thinking up ribs on each other. Friend or foe, all alike. You'll have them played on you, and in time you'll be planning them. Better ones, I hope, than my dud with that rum-pot and his scabby tigers." He turned to the waiter. "Gus, stand by to repel boarders. Another Scotch old fashioned and a pale gibson."

Forbes' explanation sounded reasonable -- a quality which distinguishes the most poisonous lies. And this is one of them, Pollock decided. The Scotty Forbeses indeed play their costly hoaxes: but on their own kind. Not on the Petey Klemms of Desiluland.

"Sure Desiluland -- or hadn't you noticed? More than half the studio facilities, Fairchild included, are leased out. DeMille has been called by the Great Producer, and the rest are headed for the bottom of that 21-inch electric bottle. But, in between 'Is-your-stomach-burning-up?' and 'Your-golden-liver-bile' they still need me to give the mummers some lines to gum; and you, Johnny, to keep them from getting into each other's scanties on the studio's time."

Nibbling a spear of pineapple, Pollock wished for a sandwich -- a slab of cake -- anything absorbent. But the waiter brought two fresh drinks, and plugged a telephone into a jack beside Forbes. "Call for you."

"You beat me to the ameche by seconds," Forbes drawled into the phone. "... No, with a friend of mine from the studio." Then Forbes listened intently for a moment, and resumed talking. "No, Al, just the other way around. Listen -- set up the projector. I'm bringing along some footage that'll make up for everything... . After dinner. Start scraping the mould off three of your best porterhouses." He merely glanced at Pollock, as if for quick compliance, but ignored the dubious headshake, and concluded: "Along about half-past seven. Bye, now."

"That was a quick shuffle," Pollock said. "Still, I can't claim to have another engagement. Could we pick up some claret to go with that steak?"

"It's all there, John; that is, if you're satisfied with the best. It won't be Château Manischewitz."

Forbes took the car over Coldwater Canyon. "Let's double back over the Freeway to Flintridge," he said. "Give us time to talk... . Now, this job you kissed off?"

"I was canned. Erickson had a longer arm than I suspected."

"That snot-ape! Nipped you off like a ripe mango, huh? What were you getting -- five hundred?"

"Three."

"Peanuts."

"Not where I come from."

"Got anything lined up?"

"I'm going to give San Francisco a whirl. Maybe I don't belong here in the first place."

"Cut! Johnny, that's a word-for-word playback of my tape nine years ago, when I changed my flag from Chicago and came out here in the first covered Buick. Nothing belongs here -- in the first place! Nothing's indigenous to this chip off the Kalahari Desert except horned toads and cactus. We're all transplanted, like the eucalyptus tree. But once you take hold, all those gags about Hollywood -- about how it's like lying in a swimming pool of warm farina -- well, they sound a lot funnier right here, at the place of origin, than while mushing through that fudge-sundae snow around Radio City."

The car breasted Mulholland Drive and wove downward to San Fernando Valley, Forbes silent in the dense oily wake of a truck loaded with oranges. But, Pollock wanted to hear him talk some more; on the subject of Hollywood -- on anything. From the first he had appreciated Scotty's crackling remarks, brief or extended. His locutions were not the hipster's obscure turn of phrase. They had, instead, a graphic clarity that illuminated both the subject and Scotty's mind with sudden streaks. That, Pollock realized, was why he had remained in this man's company. He was uncommonly stimulating -- even for Hollywood.

"If I decided to stay," Pollock remarked, "I'd have to get on with some aircraft or industrial security department, or pick up an assignment with a private agency."

"How're you fixed for cocoanuts? Got enough copra for the traders, meanwhile?"

"Money? I can get by nicely, thanks."

"I wasn't offering any. I've got an iron rule against lending it. The last one who asked got a swift kick in the groin for his trouble. My own brother. If it's a real hardship case, up to five dollars, I furnish the address of the nearest blood bank."

As the car swung into the Cahuenga lane from the Pass it caused a heavy object to slide and thump on the flat ledge behind the seats. "Mind holding that in your lap the rest of the way, Johnny? It might open and brim out like spun gold, because that's what that can of film is. A thousand feet of it that I have to have back in the morning."

"Back to the studio?" Pollock offered. "I'll be glad to take it. I'm calling for my closing check."

"No. A private source I rent these from. Comes to an arm and a leg, but worth it. Wait'll you see."

"Oh, one of those 'sporting' reels ----"

Suddenly, and for once without theatricality, Forbes scowled in patent disgust at the term Pollock used. But he recovered just as quickly, and with a forgiving grin. "No -- I can't bolt that swill. That's for the Velvet Paw trade, frat houses and beer busts in legion cellars."

"Well, don't be sorry," Pollock said. "It's not my speed either. ... My error, Scotty."

"Forget it, lad." Forbes slapped the film tin; continued patting it as he spoke, and smoothing its glossy top. "There's a thousand feet of UFA film in this packet. Sixteen frames to the foot, and every one as great in its own medium as a Dürer engraving. From the standpoint of plastic design, composition and content."

His eyes flicked often from the road, and to the tin of celluloid, as if to make sure it was still there, under his palm. "After thirty years it's still as clear as optical glass. You'll see. The only thing that dates it is the printed subtitles -- in German. But they're not really essential. For instance, there's a medium-close shot of an officer explaining something about keeping their heads down and not struggling. But his gestures tell it pretty well."

"I might be able to translate," Pollock said. "I did thirty months' occupation duty there after Remagen."

"Great! That'll give it another dimension. Maybe tip us to a nuance I didn't catch when I ran it through a Movieola this morning... . Brilliant! In the great manner of Pabst and Murnau. Compared to the way we handled the camera for the Streicher and Ribbentrop hangings -- and the way UFA did their subjects, the difference is like between Mickey Spillane and Hammett's Continental Op. With those UFA boys you see it first, and the lens just confirms what you're looking at."

An enthusiastic eagerness that communicated itself even to the gas pedal came into his voice. "Take the fade-in right after the main and credit titles. Exterior -- medium-long shot of a dirt road somewhere in China -- Kiangsi Province, I think it said. Two trucks coming up in background and -- cut! After this establishing shot, the rest of it is all in camera-dimensions from close-up to medium-full, and such angles as Gadge Kazan never dreamed of."

"Sorry, Scotty," Pollock said lightly, "you're leaving me in a fog on that first dirt road."

"You'll get it. The competence will come through as you watch." He resumed with more controlled eagerness. "The trucks stop near a big ditch, and you can count them -- Commies, or whatever they are -- being helped off the trucks in a medium-full so that you can count them. Twenty-eight, all with their hands tied behind them. All looking pretty tacky; expressions the same, registering nothing -- a rimless zero. Camera pans with them as they're marched off by the soldiers; four guarding each line. Now -- reverse angle! The cab of the leading truck opens and out steps another Chinese -- no uniform. He lifts out two swords, Japanese-type -- this long, but heavier; and, as we move in to close shot, he unwraps an oily cloth from the swords, glances over toward where the prisoners are already kneeling in b.g., one line behind the other, and starts rolling up his sleeves... . How's that for making each frame count?"

He did not pause long enough for an answer; nor would Pollock have been able to give him one. He tried, however: "The object, I imagine, is suspense ----"

"Good try, lad. But suspense is the wrong word. You see, there's no waiting for Chapayev and the Seventh Red Cavalry. What's happening can't unhappen. So the footage builds! We go to a medium-full shot: another Chinese with a basket under his arm. He stops behind each prisoner and smears something from the basket into his ears... . What? ... Extreme-close shot: contents of basket. Mud! Just plain old mud, to plug up the prisoners' ears. There's a title inserted there to explain why this is done. You'll be able to tell us, John."

"I suppose to keep him from hearing the approach of the ----"

"The executioner! And is he qualified for his work! Deadpan all the way through! Low-angle high-hat shot first on Number One kneeling there, mouth drooling open. Swordsman's feet, in slippers, tipped in frame to show his stance... . He's working the back row first, naturally... . Camera pans up in the same arc as the sword coming down, and freezes as it connects. Silent, mind you, but I swear you'll be able to hear the thunk! ... And so on.

The car swung east on Franklin in the direction of the Los Feliz Hills. His mouth dry, Pollock repeated, "And so on. All twenty-four?"

"Of course not. Eight, and then a dissolve -- lap-dissolve, rather -- as he comes forward to the truck to swap swords and does five more in the front row. Fadeout... . I left out the intercuts ----"

"Just as well," Pollock said, and felt suddenly, desperately thirsty. "How much farther do we have to go?"

"To Vermont and then left... . Now, about you, John? That job? Would you go back to it under conditions where you wouldn't have to tangle sterns with Erickson? I can go right to Sid Fair-child and put it in mesh, and that'd be only part-payment on a couple of big favors he owes me."

"I don't know."

"Give yourself a couple of days to defrost. Meanwhile, I'll start cutting the buttons off that schtunk-major of yours."

"About tonight, Scotty ----" Pollock began.

"Yeah, tonight. About Al -- no cracks about what's in this reel -- not before dinner, or she'll want to slap it right into the projector."

"She?" Pollock asked in casual astonishment. "I had no idea at all that -- is it Alice?"

"No, Alix, A-l-i-x, for 'X-marks-the-spot' Marshall. She's my lawyer."

"Office downtown? South Olive Street?"

"That's right... . Then you know her?"

"Just the name," said Pollock. "It came up in some connection."

His lips dried in the searing rush of blood to his face, and the cigarette in his mouth clung as if cemented there. He drew it savagely away and saw it muddied with stringy spittle. He swallowed hard to engorge the taste of fear; and it rolled back -- a lump of dry-ice, expanding in frigid steam, upward through his trunk, to his wrists and to the frontal lobes of his brain.

"I've got to get out," he said. "Pull up at that Shell station ahead."

Forbes slowed automatically, but the car rolled on in the same lane, without warping toward the yellow sign two blocks distant. "We'll be at Al's in four minutes, and you can have first crack at the sandbox."

"Right now!"

"Sure, if it's that urgent." Scotty pulled in beside a gas pump. "I'll get some fuel meanwhile... . Man about a dog situation?"

Pollock said, "Yes -- that's it," dropped the can of film on the seat and got out of the car. He passed behind a wood lattice screen to the rest rooms, and peered out.

Scotty was still in the car, fumbling with the keys to find the one for the gas tank filler spout.

There was a weed-choked alley between the Shell station and the next building, a florist's shop. The weedy path ran around that structure as well, and it brought Pollock across an abandoned miniature golf course to the adjoining street.

Three minutes later he was at Vermont Avenue, where he waited in the doorway of a dry cleaner's until he saw the dome light of a vacant taxicab.

When he reached the Argyle Mansionette lobby, the manager waved to him with a message slip from the switchboard. "You're just a teeny minute too late, Mr. Pollock," she announced. "A gentleman for you just hung up -- for the second time."

"He'll call again."

"That's what I told him to do, Mr. Pollock."

"I won't be in. What I mean, Mrs. Senft, is that I don't want to speak to him. Tell him I called from outside and left a message for him. Will you do that little favor for me? ... Here -- I'll write it down."

The woman read from the slip:

"'The man said the dog was one of those skinny wire-haired terriers.'"

"That's fine... . Now, Mrs. Senft, I'm going to do something for you."

"But you don't have to, Mr. Pollock."

"It'll be a pleasure... . Beginning tomorrow, anybody comes looking for an apartment, you can show them mine."

"But your month isn't up till ----"

"Thanks very much, Mrs. Senft. I've enjoyed staying here."

Upstairs, Pollock heated a family-size can of chili con carne, and ate it ravenously with a box of crackers.

After carefully washing the single dish and spoon he used, he stepped out on the terracette. The night was clear, and he could see far, but the view no longer interested him.

Crossing to the door, he bolted it with the chain -- something he had never done before.