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  In Ricky’s twisted dreams the head that kept rolling into his hands wasn’t Deeves’s and it wasn’t rubber and plastic—it was his father’s flesh and bone. Was he responsible for what had happened? Jack Sobel had explained that Dad had suffered a stroke. If Ricky had gone to dinner with him, maybe it would have been different. He’d lied about being tired because he wanted to celebrate with Russ and Bo. They were allies, they believed in him. The girl they’d arranged for him looked younger than his sister, but she claimed to be sixteen and he was desperate to break his cherry. The orgy must have totally grossed the old man out.

  A knock on the door. “It’s me, Russ.”

  Ricky jumped to let Matovich in. “Is he dead?”

  “Just the opposite. They landed in Chiang Mai and he’s headed to the hospital. Production’s shut down for today. The studio’s sending an executive. Until then I’m in charge.”

  “We fucked up, didn’t we?” Ricky asked tentatively.

  “If that’s what you think, we need to talk.” Russ reversed the desk chair and sat facing him. “Your dad’s been weird for a while. Shit, the way he paraded around, some guys had nicknamed him Ho Chi Minh. I told them to keep their mouths shut, but the word was out. Who knows why he couldn’t cope? This is a fucked-up place. But you can be certain that it had nothing to do with you or last night.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so. But it’s my job—and your job as his son—to circle the wagons. I’m not going to tell anyone he tried to kill me with the tripod. He’d look like such a lunatic that no studio would hire him again. Hell, the Thai police might even prosecute.”

  That possibility had never occurred to Ricky. “Are they going to question us?”

  “I’m going to make sure they don’t. But you, Bo, and I have to make a pact to protect him.”

  “Okay, if you think it’s best.”

  Matovich shook his hand. “When we first met, I wasn’t sure whether you had guts. That’s why I tested you in that tunnel. You’re a pro. I don’t mean to make lemonade out of lemons, but I’m betting these events will actually help your performance.”

  After the director left Ricky listened to music, then read philosophy. “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” Maybe Nietzsche’s advice made sense—for both him and his father.

  After a night and day of travel Steph and Ray arrived at the Chiang Mai hospital, where they located AJ at the end of a long ward that housed a dozen patients with ailments from rickets to cancer. The smells of lemongrass and curry clashed with those of bedpans and antiseptics. AJ sipped water through a straw, but the liquid ran back out of his mouth. Four feet away, Steph realized, and he doesn’t know we’re here.

  “Move to his right,” Sung Si suggested gently. “He has blind spot to left.”

  Steph shifted. “Hello, AJ.” His smile was ghoulish since only half his mouth turned upward. Her tears must have freaked him out because in frustration AJ knocked the IV stand to the floor. “Isn’t there a private room available?”

  Sung Si shook her head, reinserting the needle. “This most private room in hospital.”

  “Let me handle it,” Ray whispered.

  Steph decided to relate news from the home front to calm AJ down. Joe Wizan was going to join them until he’d had a violent reaction to his typhoid injection. The Godfather, Part II grosses continued to set records. Jess’s class had elected her president, and Maggie’s show had debuted two weeks ago, which was why she hadn’t made the trip. Steph felt her act growing old. She felt herself growing old. The victim in the bed was not the man she’d known for nearly eighteen years. Thankfully, Stark returned with a troop of orderlies, and within thirty minutes the staff had cleared a room used to store extra bedding. It was cramped, but AJ was the only patient in it.

  “How did—”

  “You’re now looking at the Fran Stark wing of the Chiang Mai hospital. Come on, the chief surgeon’s ready for us.”

  Dr. Patpong explained that AJ’s stroke had damaged his middle cerebral artery. A blood vessel had burst, leaking blood into the firm tissue of the brain. Pressure from the bleeding had pinched surrounding vessels, shutting off more blood flow and producing further stroke effects. The doctor believed that the patient would die unless the bleeding in the brain slowed dramatically. The lasting damage couldn’t be assessed until the swelling subsided.

  “But he understands what’s going on?” Steph asked quietly.

  “He has understood from beginning,” Sung Si noted. “Being not able to speak make him very anxious.”

  “I bet,” Ray noted dryly. “How quickly can he begin rehabilitation?”

  “That is not a good idea,” Dr. Patpong advised. “He must not be moved until his condition has stabilized.”

  After the conference, however, Sung Si pulled them aside. “You are right to ask,” she whispered. “In my country doctors are not modern. They only wait. But journals I read from the West say it better to start soon.” Before Steph could press for a risk assessment, a nurse rushed over waving a piece of paper. In scrawled capital letters—still unmistakably AJ’s—was the single word HOME.

  When AJ’s Thai nurse asked him if he could get her tickets to Disneyland when she visited the United States next year, he assumed he was no longer on the critical list. Swallowing proved less painful, and he forced down saliva for the first time. But danger lurked. Every time someone stuck him with a needle, he worried that it hadn’t been sterilized. Were the drinking straws being reused? And the drugs—hell, they’d probably been made in Communist China by workers with filthy fingernails. Thank God for John Veitch. The Columbia executive had chartered a plane to fly him out tomorrow. In a crisis, Hollywood took care of its own.

  That was more than he could say about his mother. She could have ignored the network’s pressure to remain on the air, but apparently her audience came first. The one time she had called to wish him well had caused a stir among the hospital staff because Miss Mayhem was a big hit in Thailand.

  “Hey, man, you look like shit.”

  The voice startled AJ. He sensed a figure emerging to his left. Even though it was only a shadow, it was the first image to register in his blind eye. He banged the bed in frustration because he hadn’t been able to tell anyone he never wanted to see Russ Matovich again.

  “I’m sorry this happened.” The director was maddeningly matter-of-fact. “When the guy from Columbia arrived, I told him that you’d been under tremendous pressure. It didn’t surprise Veitch—he mentioned that you’d seemed unstable over the phone. If the local police learn about the girls, the booze, and the Thai stick, this could be a real mess for everyone. So I covered, explaining that we were blocking a scene when you dropped by. The stroke just hit . . . wham!”

  The only one Russ gave a shit about covering for was Russ. Even in Hollywood his blossoming reputation would suffer when people learned he used hard drugs and had pimped for a minor. Telling the truth and exposing the bastard’s bullshit was reason enough for AJ to get his voice back.

  Matovich read his mind. “Bo . . . and Ricky completely backed up my story.”

  A tremor sent AJ’s right arm bouncing up and down on the mattress.

  “So if you say anything different . . . well, that’s up to you.”

  His son’s lie created a new kind of paralysis. In order to make his case AJ would have to get his voice back, which was iffy at best. Assuming that he did, would anyone believe him, or would they view his explanation as a paranoid fantasy resulting from the brain injury? Finally, suppose he could convince them. People would regard him as a villain and a failed father. To punish Matovich, Columbia might shut the movie down. Scandal would ruin all of them. AJ squeezed Matovich’s hand to signify agreement.

  “The picture’s going to be great,” Russ added cheerfully. “So concentrate on getting better. I’ll look for you at the premiere.”

  CHAPTER 35

  AJ conducted a mental witch-hunt to determine why him,
why a stroke. Rule out the “Jastrow curse” or a genetic predisposition to high blood pressure, even a sin in a past life, as the monk in the Chiang Mai hospital had proposed—those explanations rendered him a comfy victim. Although he ranked a player in Hollywood, it had always been on someone else’s team. Mike Todd, Stan Kamen, and Charlie Bluhdorn had shielded him, so he’d never developed the thick skin and steel backbone to master a monster like Matovich. Paralysis was harsh, but poetically just punishment.

  As a cripple in the land of the radiant smile, hearty handshake, and vigorous gait, AJ needed a hideout to recuperate from his shame and pain. None promised more privacy than Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Its studio-studded board of directors had dedicated the secure eighth floor—more Hilton than hospital—to Hollywood’s disabled VIPs. The premium package included cutting-edge doctors, discreet nurses, edible food, and Lichtensteins and Stellas on the walls.

  Once the swelling in his brain subsided, AJ could make sense again, but his voice slurred and it took him a minute to stumble out a complete sentence. The perverse side effect of the stroke was enduring visitors who mistook his sluggish speech for mental deficiency and projected onto his prolonged silences their insecurity that a stroke could fell them. He blocked their maddening babble by imagining himself the healthy one in the room and observing their neurotic styles.

  The town’s powerful executives treated him as contagious. David Begelman broke eye contact and Bob Evans deposited his muffin basket and vanished. Most of his friends anxiously prattled about whatever interested them, whether it was Julia Phillips gossiping about her latest lover or Stan Kamen complaining about his clients. AJ’s devastation muted gentler spirits, like Stephanie, but encouraged others to revisit their tragic pasts. Leon Ginsberg recounted horrors of family members gassed by the Nazis, while Ray Stark talked openly for the first time about the suicide of his son Peter. Maggie compensated for skipping Thailand by pressuring the staff at Cedars for better care. Only Jess avoided monologues, waiting patiently for his responses and joining a conversation. His daughter soon topped his wish list of visitors.

  This afternoon’s guest intrigued AJ because he was the ultimate survivor. In 1973 Adolph Zukor had celebrated his one hundredth birthday at a televised party at Radio City Music Hall. He had the permanently stooped shoulders and bowed head of a man who’d delivered eulogies for almost everyone he knew. “I remember your bar mitzvah as if it were yesterday,” he intoned. “It was a magnificent haftorah reading. Your father was so proud, then he drops dead.”

  Did Zukor think it helpful to remind him of the second worst day of his life? Maybe Promethean insensitivity led to longevity.

  “You look like I feel—useless. Ever since that ungrateful bastard Barney Balaban replaced me, I’ve been stuck in the desert. I know what Moses went through. If you’re going to wind up a vegetable, get out of Hollywood. All they eat here is meat.”

  How could Zukor be this angry after all his good fortune? “Thhankss fff the advice.”

  AJ turned to his mail. Opening each envelope took five minutes and was hardly worth the inevitable Hallmark card with its brief “thinking of you.” Infinitely more rewarding were the occasional handwritten notes, like the one from the pro at Riviera suggesting an early date for their next round. The return address on a large manila envelope chilled him. Despite the Gunfight at the Malibu Corral, Steve’s failure to visit shocked and hurt. But AJ couldn’t accept the contents—a standard eight-by-ten publicity shot of the actor in his Towering Inferno gear with a scribbled “Best wishes for a speedy recovery.” He knew McQueen’s signature; an assistant had forged this one. Securing the picture in his teeth, AJ ripped off a strip with his right hand. He rotated it and ripped again. By dinner it was in shreds.

  But he preferred the stress of activity to the isolation after the nurses cleared away his flank steak and mashed potatoes. The January nights felt glacial in their darkness and endurance. The polar bear dream recurred with ghoulish variations. His mother wielded the knife; he was dancing with Russ; a team of huskies came to the rescue, but on closer inspection the sled dogs were William Morris agents. At first he watched television from the set mounted divinely above his bed, but the studios had recently started running commercials for their movies. Maybe it worked for marketing, but every spot stabbed him with the realization that someone else did what he might never do again. Shutting off the TV with the remote, AJ closed his eyes, but couldn’t beat the rush of fear.

  What if he didn’t get better? He’d heard the innuendo of the doctors and had evaluated the grim resolve of his nurses. Suppose the best he could manage was to talk like a dim-witted alcoholic? Suppose someone always had to escort him to the toilet? For weeks he had cooled his panic with the prospect of suicide. But tonight even that illusion evaporated—he lacked the nerve. His heart hammered and a migraine clutched his head like a vise. Certain he was suffering another stroke, AJ jammed the button on his night table. The simple act calmed him and by the time the orderly arrived, he claimed his call was a mistake. The nurse changed his pajamas and sheets, which were soaked in sweat, and gave him a pill, which he swallowed greedily. Its gift was dreamless sleep.

  “Three, two, one . . . you’re on the air.”

  Maggie ignored the self-important young man with the headset. She’d paid too damn much attention to the advice of others when her afternoon talk show had debuted four months ago. Fawn over guests and moderate her opinions—in other words, copy the competition. But the audience had rejected a defanged Miss Mayhem, and even reruns of I Love Lucy had beaten Maggie’s World in the ratings sweeps. Her producers had panicked, whispering cancellation, so she’d informed Mike Ovitz that she wanted control of the show and a new format—a no-holds-barred interview with a single guest. Mike no longer carried the clout of William Morris because he and four other agents had defected to form a new agency called Creative Artists, but he’d somehow convinced the show’s syndicators to grant both demands.

  On the downbeat of her new Helen Reddy theme song, Maggie parted the curtains to the applause of her live studio audience. “Today’s guest was supposed to be my friend Ronnie Reagan, but he called a few hours ago to say he was stuck in Sacramento and asked to come tomorrow. Even I can’t refuse a governor. That left my staff phoning everyone to find a substitute. But none interested me, so I’ll use our time to share a crisis that’s affected my family.”

  People leaned forward, anxious for her well-being and titillated by what disaster might touch the mighty.

  “My son—his name is AJ—recently suffered a terrible stroke while producing a film in Thailand. Every time I visit and see his palsied body, I feel like screaming. My guest today was an eyewitness. He’s one of the stars of the film. Please welcome my grandson, Ricky Jastrow.”

  Maggie saw how scared he was. Was her inspiration a blunder? Ricky hadn’t wanted to come, but since returning from location he’d remained withdrawn, even from her. He needed to talk. And AJ needed help. Despite their august reputations, her son’s doctors did bupkis but reduce his expectations of recovery. Publicizing his case could shake things up.

  “Tell me, what was it like to see your father in such pain?”

  She hadn’t prepped him—that rule stood for all guests. Ricky couldn’t make it through a sentence. Only after racking sobs did he describe his feelings that night. He was afraid, terribly afraid that when he touched his dad, he’d feel stone-cold death.

  Maggie knew the show was a success when a production assistant slipped her a note from the control booth during a commercial break. Phone calls from viewers around the country had overwhelmed the station with suggestions for AJ’s rehabilitation. Ricky hugged her in thanks just as the light flashed that they were back on the air.

  AJ grimaced as the venetian blinds snapped open, highlighting his pasty complexion and backlighting his tormentor. “Laterrr . . .”

  “Rise and shine, amigo!” With his bandanna, accent, and ponytail, Oscar de la Cuadre looked more li
ke Carlos Santana than a physical therapist. Not any physical therapist, but the best in the business. “You look like Casper the Ghost after a bender.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Bastard.” Cursing was an “automatic”—the only speech AJ could utter without impediment because it required no complex thought.

  “Let me hear you do ‘Peter Piper picked a pepper,’ then I’ll be impressed.”

  No one bullied Oscar. His medical career had started at the age of ten caring for peyote-addled Indians in an old-age home in Monterey. A decade ago he’d sneaked across the border, then worked double shifts as a janitor in a San Diego veterans’ hospital until a doctor had noticed his natural skill with patients. Giving paraplegic soldiers back their lives was his specialty. One of those soldiers had tracked Maggie down after watching her show to say no one could get AJ back on his feet faster than this Mexican kid. Officials at Cedars had huffed and puffed, claiming their own people were the best, but had finally agreed to bring him on board if Maggie paid his salary.

  Oscar was the only reason AJ forgave his mother for making him the poster child for stroke victims. He suspected that her pitch was a last-ditch attempt to improve ratings, which was exactly what had happened after the festival of tears. “The end justifies the means,” his mother had replied. That had always been her philosophy, in contrast to Dad’s. But Harry was long gone, while Maggie graced the cover of that drippy new magazine People.