wanted to.
The studio occupied a country block surrounded by a high white concrete wall on the far side of San Fernando. Twistyface parked the Lincoln in the semicircular drive. The white-columned colonial façade of the administration building grinned emptily into the sun. Marfeld got out and put my gun in his coat pocket and pointed the pocket at me.
“March.”
I marched. Inside in the vestibule a blue-uniformed guard sat in a glass cage. A second uniformed guard came out of the white oak woodwork. He led us up a curved ramp, along a windowless corridor with a cork floor and a glass roof, past rows of bigger-than-life-size photographs: the heads that Graff and, before him, Heliopoulos had blown up huge on the movie screens of the world.
The guard unlocked a door with a polished brass sign: SECURITY . The room beyond was large and barely furnished with filing cabinets and typewriter desks, one of which wasoccupied by a man in earphones typing away like mad. We passed into an anteroom, with a single desk, unoccupied, and Marfeld disappeared through a further door which had Leroy Frost’s name on it.
The guard stayed with me, his right hand near the gun on his hip. His face was heavy and blank and content to be heavy and blank. Its lower half stuck out like the butt end of a ham, in which his mouth was a small, meaningless slit. He stood with his chest pushed out and his stomach held in, wearing his unofficial uniform as though it was very important to him.
I sat on a straight chair against the wall and didn’t try to make conversation. The dingy little room had the atmosphere of an unsuccessful dentist’s waiting-room. Marfeld came out of Frost’s office looking as if the dentist had told him he’d have to have all his teeth pulled. The uniform that walked like a man waved me in.
I’d never seen Leroy Frost’s office. It was impressively large, at least the size of a non-producing director’s on long-term contract. The furniture was heavy but heterogeneous, probably inherited from various other rooms at various times: leather chairs and a camel-backed English settee and a bulging rosewood Empire desk which was big enough for table tennis.
Frost sat behind the desk, holding a telephone receiver to his head. “Right now,” he said into it. “I want you to contact her right now.”
He laid the receiver in its cradle and looked up, but not at me. I had to be made to realize how unimportant I was. He leaned back in his swivel chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat, buttoned it up again. It had mother-of-pearl buttons. There were crossed cavalry sabers on the wall behind him, and the signed photographs of several politicians.
In spite of all this backing, and the word on the outer door, Frost looked insecure. The authority that thick browneyebrows lent his face was false. Under them, his eyes were glum and yellowish. He had lost weight, and the skin below his eyes and jaw was loose and quilted like a half-sloughed snakeskin. His youthful crewcut only emphasized the fact that he was sick and prematurely aging.
“All right, Lashman,” he said to the guard. “You can wait outside. Lew Archer and me, we’re buddy-buddy from way back.”
His tone was ironic, but he also meant that I had eaten lunch at Musso’s with him once and made the mistake of letting him pick up the tab because he had been on an expense account and I hadn’t. He didn’t invite me to sit down. I sat down anyway, on the arm of one of the leather chairs.
“I don’t like this, Frost.”
“You
don’t like it. How do you think I feel? Here I thought we were buddy-buddy like I said, I thought there was a basis of mutual live-and-let-live there. My God, Lew, people got to be able to have faith and confidence in each other, or the whole fabric comes to pieces.”
“You mean the dirty linen you’re washing in public?”
“Now what kind of talk is that? I want you to take me seriously, Lew, it offends my sense of fitness when you don’t.
The studio occupied a country block surrounded by a high white concrete wall on the far side of San Fernando. Twistyface parked the Lincoln in the semicircular drive. The white-columned colonial façade of the administration building grinned emptily into the sun. Marfeld got out and put my gun in his coat pocket and pointed the pocket at me.
“March.”
I marched. Inside in the vestibule a blue-uniformed guard sat in a glass cage. A second uniformed guard came out of the white oak woodwork. He led us up a curved ramp, along a windowless corridor with a cork floor and a glass roof, past rows of bigger-than-life-size photographs: the heads that Graff and, before him, Heliopoulos had blown up huge on the movie screens of the world.
The guard unlocked a door with a polished brass sign: SECURITY . The room beyond was large and barely furnished with filing cabinets and typewriter desks, one of which wasoccupied by a man in earphones typing away like mad. We passed into an anteroom, with a single desk, unoccupied, and Marfeld disappeared through a further door which had Leroy Frost’s name on it.
The guard stayed with me, his right hand near the gun on his hip. His face was heavy and blank and content to be heavy and blank. Its lower half stuck out like the butt end of a ham, in which his mouth was a small, meaningless slit. He stood with his chest pushed out and his stomach held in, wearing his unofficial uniform as though it was very important to him.
I sat on a straight chair against the wall and didn’t try to make conversation. The dingy little room had the atmosphere of an unsuccessful dentist’s waiting-room. Marfeld came out of Frost’s office looking as if the dentist had told him he’d have to have all his teeth pulled. The uniform that walked like a man waved me in.
I’d never seen Leroy Frost’s office. It was impressively large, at least the size of a non-producing director’s on long-term contract. The furniture was heavy but heterogeneous, probably inherited from various other rooms at various times: leather chairs and a camel-backed English settee and a bulging rosewood Empire desk which was big enough for table tennis.
Frost sat behind the desk, holding a telephone receiver to his head. “Right now,” he said into it. “I want you to contact her right now.”
He laid the receiver in its cradle and looked up, but not at me. I had to be made to realize how unimportant I was. He leaned back in his swivel chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat, buttoned it up again. It had mother-of-pearl buttons. There were crossed cavalry sabers on the wall behind him, and the signed photographs of several politicians.
In spite of all this backing, and the word on the outer door, Frost looked insecure. The authority that thick browneyebrows lent his face was false. Under them, his eyes were glum and yellowish. He had lost weight, and the skin below his eyes and jaw was loose and quilted like a half-sloughed snakeskin. His youthful crewcut only emphasized the fact that he was sick and prematurely aging.
“All right, Lashman,” he said to the guard. “You can wait outside. Lew Archer and me, we’re buddy-buddy from way back.”
His tone was ironic, but he also meant that I had eaten lunch at Musso’s with him once and made the mistake of letting him pick up the tab because he had been on an expense account and I hadn’t. He didn’t invite me to sit down. I sat down anyway, on the arm of one of the leather chairs.
“I don’t like this, Frost.”
“You
don’t like it. How do you think I feel? Here I thought we were buddy-buddy like I said, I thought there was a basis of mutual live-and-let-live there. My God, Lew, people got to be able to have faith and confidence in each other, or the whole fabric comes to pieces.”
“You mean the dirty linen you’re washing in public?”
“Now what kind of talk is that? I want you to take me seriously, Lew, it offends my sense of fitness when you don’t.
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