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  The rabbi looked helpless—like everyone else. “We’ll need to go soon. You don’t have to give a speech. No one expects you or your mother to talk at a time like this.”

  “I know. I want to.”

  “I’ll call on you at the beginning, it will be easier.”

  “Last—I’ll go last.”

  Maggie flushed the bottle of Miltown down the toilet in the ladies’ room. Better to burst out crying than be lobotomized like last night. Christ, she’d barely recognized her son after the doctor tranquilized her with a hypodermic that could have numbed a horse. Despite the drugs, the truth was clear. She was a middle-aged widow; she had a son on the threshold of adolescence; and she had no career. The combination made her persona non grata in Hollywood.

  And what was she supposed to do about the new electrician who claimed that the guy who’d wired their house was an imbecile? Or the gardener who warned that the oak tree in the front yard was ready to snap and crush the guest bedroom? She had to cancel their reservations at Lake Louise but didn’t know where they were booked. She and Harry had worked out such a perfect division of labor that her husband’s sudden absence made her useless.

  Bless Harry! And damn him! He was beyond irreplaceable—he was inconceivable. Her husband had lacked an instinct for survival—he’d been too decent for an indecent business. That was why she’d tried so hard to toughen him up. But her efforts had been for naught. Was she being too kind to herself? Had her badgering contributed to his death? That had been her first thought upon gazing into his lifeless eyes. But people didn’t die of broken hearts; they keeled over from blocked arteries.

  She had to believe that. She had to move on. Maggie had too many responsibilities to allow herself the luxury of grief.

  His father’s funeral was AJ’s first. People were sad but also . . . scared. The mood made him feel like the last, lonely victim in a horror movie. The courage he’d summoned vanished, and he waved to the rabbi that he had changed his mind. But it was too late—the prayers began. As the congregation rose, AJ rose with it. He sat when they sat. After a few moments he heard Frank Freeman speaking about Dad.

  “Almost a year ago Barney Balaban and I decided to do a movie on Mahatma Gandhi’s life. We gave Harry the unenviable job of optioning his rights. There was endless correspondence through go-betweens. Just before the negotiations concluded, the phone rang in Harry’s office and an operator said a party was calling from Delhi. Anita buzzed Harry, who was in the middle of a fight with Charlie Feldman. For you civilians, Charlie’s the toughest agent in this town. Harry couldn’t get rid of Charlie, who was screaming bloody murder on behalf of Marlene Dietrich, but he had Mahatma Gandhi holding on line two. Finally, Harry hung up and without missing a beat said smoothly, ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Gandhi.’ The two of them talked for half an hour. The highlight of my life was my friend explaining profit participation to the holiest man in the world.”

  The mourners released their tension in gales of laughter.

  Somehow, Dad was back. AJ turned to his mom, relieved to see that even she grinned.

  “They were just about to hang up,” Freeman continued. “Then Gandhi said, ‘I do not know you, Harry Jastrow, but all my life I have relied upon my ability to judge men from the smallest of details. Your voice is a good voice. Your words are true.’ He was correct. You could always trust Harry.”

  Rabbi Ginsberg called on Adolph Zukor to give Harry’s eulogy. Harry’s death, the chairman noted, was a terrible blow to Paramount, which needed men of vision in these blind times. AJ glanced at the studio contingent. Next to Mr. Balaban and Mr. Freeman sat a stocky man whose face AJ recognized as the man in the pictures he’d sneaked a look at. The guy seemed impatient, as if this was the last place on earth he wanted to be. AJ decided to take care of that.

  Paul Herzog’s body rose like a marionette. He levitated above the congregation. “Go ahead—scream, you sleazy bastard. No one can hear you,” AJ shouted, his cheeks flushed. He whipped Herzog from the chapel and deposited him in the basement where they stored the empty coffins. “Would you like the solid mahogany or maybe the teak? I know the prices because I selected one.” Herzog pleaded for mercy but AJ nailed the coffin shut, the blows of the hammer synchronizing with the beats of his heart. “So you don’t like tight places? Neither did my dad.” Utilizing X-ray vision he watched Herzog suffocate. “Here comes my favorite part.” As AJ thrilled to the feasting worms . . . Ginsberg summoned him to the altar. He wiped the sick grin from his face before the mourners could see.

  Dad, please be with me.

  “My father was great. In fact, he was so great at everything I worried I would never match up. That’s why my favorite time was when we played golf. You see, he was . . . kind of bad.” AJ waited for the nervous laughs to subside. “I don’t mean to brag, but I’m sort of good, so it gave me hope. The big thing for Dad on the course was honesty and acceptance. ‘Play it as it lies,’ he used to say. That means that even if your ball winds up in some impossible place, you have to play it exactly how you find it. You’re not allowed to move it or improve it or hit a mulligan—even if it got where it got through some really lousy break. I feel my family got the worst break ever. Although I still don’t like that rule, I’m going to live by it.”

  His mouth dry, he walked the twenty-six steps back to his seat.

  After the gravediggers laid Harry’s coffin in the ground and family, friends, and associates returned to their limousines, Maggie and AJ remained at the grave site. Just to the left was a small marble tombstone with a Star of David. It bore the inscription “Emily June Jastrow, July 1, 1940–July 3, 1940.” Maggie visited Emily every month, to keep her company. Now she would have her father by her side. “I wish you could have met your sister, AJ. She was sick from the minute she was born, but still, she was so, so beautiful.”

  “Dad explained.”

  How had he explained a baby choking on her umbilical cord? Or a life of forty-eight hours spent all in a coma? There was no explaining that or the misery when the doctors said Maggie could never have another child. She wanted a little girl more than anything in the world. Let her husband and son cavort together on the golf course. With a daughter she would share those secret parts of her life that men could never understand. But that dream was not to be.

  “Can we go back to the car?”

  She gripped his hand firmly. “It’s just you and me, kid.” But that would be more than enough.

  On June 1, AJ accompanied his mother to Paramount to clear out his father’s office. Miss Benitez had laid everything out, from diplomas to a photograph of Dad dressed as an Indian. Pulling AJ aside, she handed him a sealed manila envelope. “I typed this for your father, and I know he would have wanted you to have it.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “Not now.” She glanced warily at his mother, who was busy selecting keepsakes.

  “Thank you.” AJ joined her. In a broken picture frame he saw a picture of Stretch, the marlin from Mexico. He remembered his father talking about “cross seas” and the movie business. Did that idea apply to his life as well?

  Construction workers entered the office to make measurements in order to expand the office for its next occupant. When his mom asked who that would be, Miss Benitez changed the subject but finally admitted it was Paul Herzog. He and Frank Freeman were the new executive vice presidents, with long-term contracts for lots of money.

  “I hope Paramount goes bankrupt,” Mom declared.

  That night AJ rested on top of the covers, agonizing over what he had heard in the office. Paul Herzog’s triumph was like the Nazis occupying Europe or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. AJ might be powerless to strike back now, but it wouldn’t always be that way. He opened the envelope from the office. Inside were eighty pages of an unfinished screenplay. It was almost four A.M. when AJ reached the last scene. The hero crouched behind sandbags, waiting for an artillery barrage to subside before leading his squad on a mission behind enemy l
ines. The script was the best thing AJ had ever read. He picked up an imaginary M-1 and launched blistering gunfire at the unseen enemy.

  Maggie sat in the passenger cabin of a DC-6 revving at the end of a runway. For Christ’s sake, take off already. She had to get out of Los Angeles before the town crushed her—and, more important, her son. For weeks he had been morose and uncommunicative, unable to climb out of the tragedy of his father’s death. He needed a new start.

  Harry had left fifty thousand dollars in savings and a hundred thousand dollars of life insurance. Ironically, Balaban had offered to pay the remaining year on his contract. She’d wanted to tell him to stuff it up his ass, but it might come in handy for AJ’s college. After selling the house, Maggie calculated they had enough money to live comfortably, but it would be easier in the conservative Midwest, so she chose Chicago, where she’d grown up. Her son greeted the news without argument.

  Finally, the wheels rolled.

  Once airborne, the plane flew west over the Pacific, as if the pilot had lost his sense of direction, before banking right. AJ opened The House on the Cliff, one of those Hardy Boys mysteries he devoured, never bothering to look out the window. As the desert came into view, Maggie sat back, relieved that their life in California was over forever.

  1957–1958

  A SCRATCH

  ON THE

  NEGATIVE

  CHAPTER 10

  Dawn was still a promise as AJ approached the eighteenth tee at Pebble Beach, visualizing the shot he intended to hit hours later. To his left, surf pounded the saw-toothed coastline like shelling from a Navy destroyer, the foamy explosions pockmarking his rain gear. “It all comes down to this final hole.” His hushed voice mocked the melodrama of a TV announcer. “With a one-stroke lead Jastrow has to make sure that if he errs, he does so toward the rough on the right.” AJ swung his imaginary driver. “But that ball has split the center!” He tipped his cap to a gallery of barking sea lions.

  Striding down the fairway, AJ sensed something apocalyptic, as if the Pacific had gouged the edge out of America in this very spot. Pebble had seemed safer on his first visit, in 1947, when he’d caddied for his father in Bing Crosby’s Clambake—a golf tournament over the legendary courses on the Monterey peninsula in which the best pros in the world were paired with Bing’s golf-addicted buddies from Hollywood. AJ had hit a few shots, which had caused Crosby to joke that he’d be a better partner than his dad. After leading Northwestern to the NCAA finals last spring, AJ had received a congratulatory telegram from Bing, along with an invitation to play in the 1957 event. He had dreamed about his return to the West Coast ever since.

  Golf was less a game for AJ than a test, requiring a premium on his preparation and practice. Despite thousands of past successes, he always worried about the next shot. Even a two-foot putt held the specter of disaster. But he fed on the stress, and this morning his appetite was voracious. Standing on the final green, AJ rolled balls from every angle toward a maintenance worker, who stuck the flag in a newly cut hole. Satisfied he had a feel for the break and speed, he headed to breakfast in the clubhouse.

  “You don’t swing like a dentist,” AJ said admiringly as he shook hands on the first tee with his professional partner, Dr. Cary Middlecoff. The tall Tennessean had won the U.S. Open after abandoning his dental career.

  “That’s fortunate, ‘cause I wasn’t too handy with a drill. You know Ken Venturi?”

  AJ greeted a man his age. “You were amazing at last year’s Masters.”

  “Until Sunday.” Venturi’s collapse in the final round had kept him from becoming the youngest player to win the famed tournament by a single stroke. “Have any of you seen Todd?” The absentee in their group was Ken’s celebrity partner, Mike Todd, whose production of Around the World in 80 Days had opened to rave reviews in New York and was favored to win Best Picture at this spring’s Academy Awards.

  Middlecoff spit. “He’s probably back at the lodge banging his fiancée.”

  “I’d take a hole in one with Liz Taylor before eighteen with us,” Venturi replied.

  They stared when AJ didn’t laugh with them. “Not my type,” he alibied.

  Seconds later a golf cart bore down, bucking to a stop by smashing into a black tee marker. Mike Todd popped out like an uncapped fire hydrant.

  “Which of you guys is Venturi?” Ken raised his hand. “I hope you’re a winner, because I’m not here for my health.” Todd handed out cigars, as an afterthought tossing one to AJ.

  “What’s your handicap, kid?”

  “Scratch, sir.”

  “Impressive.” He turned to the pros. “My father gave me a kick in the ass, not golf lessons.”

  What’s this guy’s problem? AJ wondered. He returned the cigar. “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”

  “Good for you.” Todd genially lit up. “It’s a filthy habit. Let’s make this interesting. How about a side bet, say a fifty-dollar Nassau between the teams?”

  Middlecoff and Venturi agreed.

  “And what say we amateurs play a fifty-dollar Nassau with automatic presses against each other? I’m a duffer, so you need to give me a stroke a hole.”

  The plane ticket to California had used up most of AJ’s savings. A bad round could bankrupt him. “I’m in,” he squeaked.

  Todd took the honors. “I’ll use my chipper.” The club, a cross between a one-iron and a putter, was so short he had to bend directly over the ball. AJ smirked—the poor guy looked like a hunchbacked gnome—but he gulped when Mike smashed his drive two hundred yards down the center. It wasn’t the shot of a high handicapper. “The motherfucker sandbagged us,” Middlecoff whispered.

  AJ launched his drive into a copse of cypress trees. That could happen to anyone, he reassured himself. His attempt at a heroic recovery pinballed off trunks and branches, remaining stymied.

  Now Todd wore the twisted grin. “I’m in for par. How about you, AJ?” he asked.

  “Seven.”

  “Listen, I know you’re shitting your pants, but it’s only money. I made two fortunes by the time I was your age—and lost them both. You know what it taught me? Absolutely nothing!” Mike found his own joke fabulously amusing.

  After three holes AJ felt like the victim in a train wreck. Middlecoff took pity. “Shorten your backswing. And show the bastard you still got some fight left.”

  AJ finally put a drive in play on the fourth and caught up with Todd. “Is it true what Dr. Middlecoff said—you’re a film producer?”

  Todd seemed incredulous at AJ’s ignorance. “Producers are a dime a dozen. I’m a showman.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “A producer makes movies he likes. A showman makes movies the public likes.”

  “What’s it take, sir, to be a showman?”

  “Flair and balls. It’s all about flair and balls.”

  AJ nodded as if absorbing the wisdom of the ages.

  As the foursome arrived at their second shots on the sixth hole, a gale built off the Pacific. AJ deftly combated it with a low knockdown practiced on the windswept plains of the Midwest, but Todd’s chipper failed him. After he sliced two shots in the direction of Japan, Mike rummaged through his golf bag.

  “No balls,” AJ observed.

  Todd glared. “Did you say ‘no balls’?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re saying I don’t have balls?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Todd, you misunderstood. You’re a showman, so of course you’ve got those kind of balls.” AJ glanced at his crotch. “I was wondering if you had this kind.” He held up his Titleist. “Because I’ve got extras.”

  Todd never made another smooth swing. On the sixteenth green he faced a sloping five-foot putt to keep the match alive. If he missed, AJ won four hundred dollars. Todd spit out his cigar. But just as he took the putter back, a gust blew the half-chewed Havana directly in front of the cup. The ball hit it squarely, knocking the cigar into the hole; the ball remained on the lip.

  “F
uck me and my molars,” Middlecoff exhaled.

  Mike removed a fat money clip to pay off both his and Venturi’s losses. “Kid, that was a hell of a performance,” he said admiringly, counting out AJ’s share.

  “Thanks. I’m lucky the course fits my game.”

  “It wasn’t your swing that beat me. It was your cabeza. Not many people can figure out how to mind-fuck Mike Todd. I was pissed that Crosby stuck me in a foursome with a nobody just because he was jealous my first movie did more business than any of his. Now I’m glad.”

  When they reached the par-three seventeenth, Mickey Rooney was preparing to drive to the hourglass green jutting into Carmel Bay. The other celebrity in his group, Johnny Weissmuller, of Tarzan fame, and both pro partners had already hit. Rooney’s three-wood started straight, but the wind jacked the shot wildly left. “Goddamnit!” He smashed the turf. “I deserved a better fate.”

  “A thousand dollars says you can’t hit the green with four more,” Todd challenged.

  Mick motioned for his caddie to hand him another ball. His next three drives landed in tall grass. His ruddy complexion darkened to purple when he dribbled his last chance off the tee. “You miserable cocksucker!” He hurled his club thirty yards, where it broke in two against a lone pine. “You suckered me, Todd. Only a pro hits that green in these conditions.”

  “Another five hundred says I can.” The voice belonged to AJ, but he had no idea how it had escaped his lips.

  Mike’s eyes sparkled. “That’s flair and balls, baby.”

  But was he showman or show-off?

  “Who the Christ are you?” Rooney demanded.

  “AJ Jastrow,” Todd interjected. “He’s an amateur, but another five hundred says he stiffs it inside thirty feet of the pin in one shot.”

  Rain slashed them at a sixty-degree angle, while the wind wailed like a Scottish bagpiper gone berserk. Mick motioned to AJ. “Go ahead, sucker.”

  “It’ll be like landing a plane on a carrier in the middle of a typhoon,” Venturi observed to the guy standing next to him.