Beverly Hills Dead Page 10

  “I’m listening, Hy.”

  “The investigator told me less than fifteen minutes ago that you can testify as a friendly witness in Alan’s stead, that you can make a statement for the record that you are or were a Party member, and you can state your reasons for staying in or getting out, whatever they are. Then, in the questioning that follows, you’ll name the five other people Alan was going to name. You’ll be on the stand for less than half an hour, and you’ll spout a few platitudes about what a great country this is and how you would never do anything to harm it. At the end, you’ll be dismissed with the committee’s thanks. That will be a kind of coded message to others involved in this, and you will not be blacklisted.”

  “Hy, if I do that, no one I know will ever speak to me again.”

  “Wrong. No Communist you know will ever speak to you again. How many people is that? And all of them will be disgraced; they won’t be in any position to harm you.”

  “Hy, it all boils down to this: the committee has no right to demand of an American citizen that he explain his political views; they don’t have a constitutional leg to stand on.”

  “Sid, the party has advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government. If you’re a member, then you’re tarred with that brush; that’s the leg they have to stand on.”

  “Well, I don’t advocate the violent overthrow of the government, and I’ll be glad to tell them that.”

  “If you cooperate with them they’ll believe you; if you don’t, they’ll just…”

  “Hy, I’m not going to become a friendly witness; if I did, I might have to do what Al James did.”

  “You’ll lose everything, Sid: your career, your home, your wife.”

  “My wife? Nonsense, I just talked to her.”

  “Did she offer her undying support?”

  “Not exactly. In fact, she said pretty much what you’re saying.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  “Hy, if I begin losing things, am I going to lose my agent?”

  “I hope not, Sid. You and Dalton Trumbo are the highest paid writers in Hollywood, and I want to see you both survive this. I think of you as my friend, and I’ll do everything I can to help you, regardless of what you say before the committee. Just don’t tie my hands.”

  “Thank you, Hy. I appreciate that. When I get back from Washington, let’s have lunch and talk about where to go from here, okay?”

  “Okay, Sid. I guess all I can do is wish you luck.”

  “Thanks, Hy.”

  Sid hung up and went back to his packing.

  23

  Saturday nights during the location shoot, Manny White staged a square dance for the cast and crew. He hired a western band and a caller, and everybody caught on to the moves quickly. Rick was amazed at how everybody had somehow acquired western outfits—fancy shirts, fringed skirts and cowboy boots—and he and Glenna enjoyed the dancing as much as everybody else.

  On Friday, he had sent Alice Brooks back to L.A. on the airplane with the film stock. All the participants in the hearings—friendly and unfriendly witnesses, the members of the Committee for the First Amendment, who had chartered an airplane, the lawyers and investigators—were in Washington now. Eddie Harris was there, too, on his way to New York for the studio heads’ meeting at the Waldorf. Rick hadn’t spoken to him since his first call after the phones had begun working, their only communication having been telegrams about the donation to Temple Emanuel in Alan James’s memory.

  On Sunday, their only day off, Rick and Glenna put the girls and their nurse, Rosie, in a Jeep and drove out to the riverbank with a picnic lunch. Rosie took the girls down to a sandy bank to wade, and Rick and Glenna had a moment alone.

  “Did you speak to Alice before she left?” Rick asked.

  “Yes, and she was very upset.”

  “She seemed very quiet and uncommunicative.”

  “That’s how I knew she was upset. I tried to get her to open up, but she wouldn’t. She’s very angry with Sid, I think, about his choice not to cooperate with the committee.”

  “I think that’s a mistake, too, at least as far as his career is concerned, but he feels it’s some sort of moral imperative to oppose the committee, that he’s acting to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

  “Do you think Sid is really a Communist?”

  “Glenna, I haven’t told you this—in fact, I haven’t told anybody, not even Eddie—but a few weeks ago I got an internal mail envelope at the studio that contained a photostat of Sid’s party card.”

  “Who the hell would send you that?”

  “I don’t know. Just somebody at the studio; could be anybody.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to do to Sid.”

  “Yes, it is. And I have to tell you, the next day I got another envelope that had another photostat of a party card, this one with your name on it.”

  Glenna’s mouth dropped open. “With my name on it?”

  “Louise Brecht, with a Milwaukee address.”

  “That’s impossible; I never joined the party.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Did you know any people who did?”

  “There was a little group, half a dozen people I socialized with. I don’t know if they were actual members, but they tossed around a lot of party-style rhetoric.”

  “Were you close to any of them?”

  “I went out with one of the guys for a while; I guess you could call him my boyfriend. He’s how I met the others.”

  “Did you ever go to a meeting or sign any petitions or anything?”

  “No, but I went to a couple of cocktail parties with him, and he tried to get me to go to some sort of rally once, something about supporting aid to the Soviet Union. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I didn’t know what to think; I didn’t know you when you lived in Milwaukee, and I don’t know any of your friends from that time, except Barbara Kane, your old roommate.” Barbara Kane had been Martha Werner, and she and Glenna had gone to high school together. Rick had gotten her a contract at Centurion, and she was doing well in supporting roles, mostly in comedies.

  “Martha/Barbara ran with a different, wilder kind of crowd,” Glenna said. “Lots of drinking and sex. The men she liked didn’t go to political meetings; they hung out in pool halls.”

  “Did any of the people in your group come out to L.A.?”

  “I don’t know; after I broke up with Hal—Harold Schmidt—I didn’t see any of them anymore. We had different interests. Why do you think somebody would fake a party card like that?”

  “My first thought was blackmail, but I haven’t heard anything more about it.”

  “Do you think the card with Sid’s name on it was a fake, too?”

  “I don’t doubt that Sid was or maybe still is a party member, but I have no way of knowing whether the card I was sent was real or fake.”

  “Now that I think about it, I’m glad you didn’t tell me about this before; in fact, I’m sorry you told me about it now.”

  “I think it’s better that you know. If anything else comes up about this, then you might see a connection you might not have otherwise.”

  “This is going to get ugly, isn’t it?”

  “It already has, considering what happened with Alan James. The hearings start tomorrow morning.”

  “I have this really ominous feeling,” Glenna said. “Is that why you offered me the associate producer’s job? To give me something to do If I got caught up in a political scandal?”

  “Of course not; there’s no reason to think that will happen.”

  “There’s got to be a reason for somebody sending you that card.”

  “If it comes up again, I’ll deal with it, don’t worry.”

  She put her hand on his cheek and kissed him. “I know you’ll protect me, but I’m going to worry anyway.”

  When they were back at the ranch house, Rick walked over to Leo Goldman’s trailer and found him, as usual, workin
g.

  “Hi, Rick. Come in,” Leo said.

  “You ought to take a day off now and then,” Rick said, settling into a chair.

  “I’m happier working,” Leo said. “I don’t ride horses or square dance.”

  “Well, I won’t argue with you. There’s something I want to ask you about, though.”

  “Shoot.”

  “A few weeks ago, right after I bought the Bitter Creek script, I got two pieces of internal studio mail, on successive days: each of them was an envelope containing a photostat of a Communist Party card, one in the name of someone I’ve dealt with who might very well be a party member; the other, in the name of someone I know for sure is not a member.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I’d rather not say. Since I know one of them was a fake, the other may be, too. I just wondered if you had received anything like that in the interoffice mail.”

  Leo shook his head. “No. If I had I would have come to you about it. God knows, I don’t want any Reds on the productions I work on.”

  “You’re anti-Communist, then?”

  “Damn right. Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t really care much about the politics of the people I work with, Leo; all I expect from them is talent, ability and hard work.”

  “You don’t care if they’re trying to get propaganda into our scripts?”

  “I think I’d spot it if they did, and I’d take it out.”

  “So would I. I went over the Bitter Creek script very carefully,” Leo said.

  “Did you find anything suspect?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Well, then, we know that Sid Brooks is not trying to use our productions for propaganda.”

  “I guess not. Is Sid a Communist?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never asked him, and he’s never volunteered that information. You know that he’s been subpoenaed by HUAC and that he’s testifying this week in Washington.”

  “Sure, I read the papers and the trades.”

  “Leo, when Sid gets back, are you going to have any problem working with him?”

  “I guess that depends on his testimony before the committee.”

  Rick nodded. “Thanks for being frank with me, Leo, and if you come across anything like the internal mail I received, please bring it to my attention.”

  “Sure, I will, Rick.”

  Rick walked back to the ranch house for dinner, wondering what he would do if two people who worked for him wouldn’t work with each other because of their political views.

  24

  Sid Brooks had stewed in Washington for a week. He had attended some of the committee hearings, but he had stopped going after hearing the testimony of screenwriter John Howard Lawson, who, he thought, had made such an ass of himself by upbraiding the committee that he had been an embarrassment to the cause of the others. By the time Sid was called to testify, he was convinced that, under the influence of two Party lawyers sent to advise them, the unfriendly witnesses had taken the wrong tack. Sid resolved to change that, if he could.

  Finally, he was called before the committee and was sworn. The committee’s chairman, J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, began the questioning.

  Sid stood up, humiliated, folded his written statement and stuffed it into a pocket. A uniformed man appeared at his side and showed him the door. For this, he had flown across the country and spent ten days in a hotel?

  In the hallway outside there was a barrage of questions from the gathered press. “Here’s my statement,” he yelled, shoving the typed pages into the hands of the nearest reporter. “That’s what this committee wouldn’t allow me to say.” He elbowed his way through the crowd and somehow got out of the Capitol, into a taxi and back to his hotel.

  When he walked into his room the phone was ringing, but he didn’t answer it. When it stopped, he called the operator and told her not to put any calls through. He had a bottle of Scotch in his bag, and he poured himself a stiff one. Shortly, he was asleep on his bed. He didn’t wake up until the following morning.

  He ordered breakfast and read the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which had fairly complete summaries of the hearings. He was about to start packing for his return flight when someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” he shouted.

  “Special delivery letter, Mr. Brooks,” a young voice replied.

  “Shove it under the door.” He picked up the letter and looked at the return address. It was from Higgins & Reed, a Los Angeles law firm he had never heard of. He opened it and began reading and thus learned that his wife had filed for divorce; that she had removed his belongings from their home and sent them to an empty apartment in the Santa Monica building that they owned; that a key to the apartment was enclosed; that she would decline to speak to him directly in the future and that all their communications must be conducted through their respective attorneys.

  Sid sat down on the bed, picked up the phone and placed a call to his Beverly Hills home. Five minutes later, the operator rang him back and told him that the number had been disconnected. Then he noticed a second page of the letter which said that the locks and telephone number of his home had been changed. In addition to the key to the Santa Monica apartment, a receipt from a dry cleaner’s was enclosed, listing a suit and a sport jacket.

  Sid finished packing in a daze and went downstairs, carrying his own luggage. He was waiting for a taxi when another writer who had been an unfriendly witness got out of a cab. “Sid, did you hear that after Bertolt Brecht testified, he went straight to the airport and left the country?” The playwright had been one of the unfriendly witnesses.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “They’re calling the rest of us the ‘Hollywood Ten.’”

  “Swell,” Sid said and got into the vacated cab. “National Airport,” he said.

  The airplane took off on time, and because of strong headwinds, stopped short of its normal refueling point, Witchita, and landed instead in Little Rock. He spent the night there and, at the crack of the next dawn, continued his journey west. After refueling at Albuquerque, the airplane arrived in L.A. after dark.

  At Los Angeles Airport he took a taxi to Beverly Hills and rang his doorbell. No answer. He walked around to the side of the darkened house and peered into the garage through the little window in the door. His car was not there. He got back into the taxi and gave the driver the address of the Santa Monica apartment building.

  When he arrived he saw his Buick convertible parked in the little parking lot. He let himself into the vacant apartment and found a pile of suitcases and cardboard boxes neatly stacked in the living room. There was plenty of room for the stuff, since there was no furniture in the apartment, not even a bed.

  Sid got into his car and drove to a diner, had some supper, then returned to the apartment. He slept on the floor that night, under his overcoat.

  The following morning he rose early and had breakfast at the diner. He visited a furniture store and ordered a bed and a comfortable chair, then stopped at his bank in Beverly Hills to cash a check for a hundred dollars. The woman in the teller’s cage went to a ledger and looked something up, then returned.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks, but your account balance is seventy-six dollars and twenty cents. Would you like to cash a smaller check?”

  Sid laughed. “There’s a mistake here; I have in excess of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in that account.”

  She handed him back his check. “Please go and speak with Mr. Merrill, at the first desk on the platform,” she said, pointing to a middle-aged man.

  Sid approached the man. “Mr. Merrill? I’m Sidney Brooks; we’ve met before.”

  “Of course, Mr. Brooks. Please have a seat.”

  Sid took the chair next to the desk. “I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks, and when I tried to cash a check just now, the teller told me my balance was less than a hundred dollars.”

  “Well, that’s substantially less than your usual balance, isn’t
it?”

  “It certainly is. A month or so ago, I deposited a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and there was already around ten thousand in the account.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Brooks,” the man said. “Please wait a moment while I investigate.” He got up and was buzzed through a door to the area behind the tellers’ cages. Five minutes later, he returned. “Mr. Brooks, our records show that Mrs. Brooks recently transferred a hundred and sixty thousand dollars from your joint account to an account in her name at the Bank of America. I took the liberty of checking the balance of your savings account with us, and found that she has also transferred forty thousand dollars from that account, leaving a balance of less than ten dollars. Were you not aware of that?”

  “I was not. Can you cancel the transfer?”

  “I’m afraid not. You see, you and Mrs. Brooks are joint owners of your account here; she’s not just an added signature. She was legally entitled to made that transaction.”

  “You mean she can just steal all that money from me?”

  “Legally, it’s not stealing. I’m afraid your only recourse would be a civil action to recover some portion of the funds.”

  Sid grappled with this for a moment. “Mr. Merrill, my wife has announced her intention to divorce me and has moved my things out of our house into an apartment building we both own. This…action of hers has left me without funds; may I borrow ten thousand dollars from the bank for thirty days?”

  “I can certainly take a loan application, Mr. Brooks, but it would require collateral, and approval would have to go to the loan committee, which would take a week. Do you have any stocks and bonds?”

  “I do, but those are in a joint account, too, if you see what I mean.”

  “Ah, yes. I suppose…Mr. Brooks, I can approve a loan of a thousand dollars immediately, if that will help while you are sorting out these affairs.”

  “Thank, you, Mr. Merrill, that would be very helpful.”