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  “A night landing at that,” replied Charlie Feldman, casting his eyes to the dark, violent sky. AJ remembered his dad saying Feldman had once taken Darryl Zanuck for fifty thousand dollars in an evening of poker. So he wasn’t surprised when Charlie, smelling a sure thing, kicked off a speculative wave of side betting by offering even bigger odds.

  When AJ swung, he was sure that he had aimed too far right. He bent to retrieve his tee, not bothering to follow the flight. Then he heard the most unmistakable—and incongruous—yell in the world. “Ay-Jaaaaaaay!” “Tarzan” Weissmuller beat on his chest as the ball hit the green and slid to a stop ten feet from the hole. Todd lifted AJ into the air and crushed him with a bear hug. “That’s my boy! That’s my fucking boy!”

  “Where are we headed, Bing?”

  “Gibson’s Gulch,” Crosby replied as he navigated Monterey peninsula’s Seventeen Mile Drive from the middle of the road. He puffed contentedly on his meerschaum, filling the Eldorado convertible with smoke that smelled like tangy barbecue sauce. “Actually, Lawson Little’s house. The pros nicknamed it because Lawson mixes the best Gibsons west of St. Louis.”

  Phil Harris, the bandleader-reborn-as-comedian, rode shotgun. He looked to AJ, luxuriating in the backseat. “For three weeks before the tournament he fills his basement with gallon jugs, then goes down once a day to give a half turn so the vodka won’t settle.”

  Little’s house boasted glass windows overlooking the Pacific and more sofas than a furniture store. Perched on their arms like provocative mannequins were dozens of ravishingly beautiful women. AJ looked over his shoulder as a sultry blonde with a wealth of cleavage and skimpy Capri pants beckoned him over.

  “The girls think you’re the best-looking guy here.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “The word is you’re one of those professional golfers,” she flirted. “But I’m sure I saw you at a casting session. Weren’t you in East of Eden?”

  “Actually, I’m a first-year law student at the University of Chicago.” The blonde screwed up her scooped-out nose. “Wrong answer, huh?”

  She smiled thinly. “Probably works better at homecoming. We’re after big game.”

  But the stars and golf pros couldn’t have been friendlier. At dinner AJ swallowed inside stories about Hollywood and the PGA tour as greedily as the steamed clams, spicy chili, and garlic bread. The highlight of the evening occurred when Crosby and Hope performed a customized version of their song-and-dance routines. They roasted everyone in attendance. When it was AJ’s turn, they mocked his “Joe College” crew cut and the fact that he had picked the pockets of the two shortest guys in the tournament—Todd and Rooney. AJ beamed as if he had just tapped into their exclusive gentlemen’s club.

  His stomach cramped up around midnight, so he hitched a ride with Gordon MacRae, who’d recently starred as Curly in Oklahoma! Shit-faced, they belted out Rodgers and Hammerstein songs all the way back to the Del Monte Lodge. AJ sprinted to his room. He didn’t even bother to switch on the overhead light because he was too busy tugging down his trousers on the way to the john. But when he was seconds from salvation the bathroom door opened from inside, illuminating a stark-naked girl who appeared unfazed by his presence.

  “Hi, I’m Janey. I’m a present from Mr. Todd.” AJ uncramped. She pursed her lips, noting his state of undress. “Jeez, I thought I was supposed to be a surprise, but I guess there was a change in plans. No problem.” With that she pushed him backward till he flopped on the double bed.

  AJ was in the worst of binds. All his life he’d needed privacy when he went to the bathroom, virtually never using public toilets. On top of that, he was sexually inexperienced, having slept with only three women. Fearful that a hooker would report his lack of expertise to Todd, he vowed to meet the challenge. Unfortunately, midway through AJ’s inaugural blow job, his stomach spasms returned with a vengeance. His body trembled, which the intrepid Janey interpreted as positive feedback. But when she stroked his balls—something no girl had ever done—he lost control and let loose with a thunderous chili-infused fart.

  She staggered on her haunches. “You . . . you . . . you nauseating pig! He told me you were a sweet college kid. If that’s what they’re teaching, I’m glad I didn’t take the SATs.” She retreated to the bathroom, slamming the door.

  “Janey, I’m sorry. Please come out.”

  “So you can shit on my head?” The young woman emerged fully dressed and bolted for the hall. “Movie people are all the same.”

  AJ started to chase her but decided to seek relief in the bathroom instead. Sitting blessedly on the commode, he reveled in his trifecta—doubling his net worth, golfing into Clambake history, and grossing out the sexiest woman he’d ever met.

  The next morning AJ was suffering a hangover so heinous he could barely tolerate the sound of his club whacking the ball. Back at the clubhouse, he encountered his benefactor. AJ ordered a Coke and cautiously thanked Mike for his surprise.

  “You deserved her. Janey’s great, isn’t she?”

  “The best I’ve had,” AJ replied truthfully.

  “She played an Indian princess in Around the World. I’m giving her a bigger role in my next one.”

  “She’s not . . . she’s not a prostitute?”

  “Hell, no. She’s actually the granddaughter of a friend of mine.”

  “Did she . . . did she—”

  “Say you were great? No.” AJ feared the worst. “She said you had a huge cock and were a bit of a freak. In Hollywood, that’s the best reputation you can have.” Mike winked. “Talk about reputations, I understand your dad was quite a guy.”

  “You knew my father?”

  “No, but Crosby said he was the best executive around and that if God hadn’t taken the day off, Harry Jastrow, not Barney Balaban, would be running Paramount today.”

  “You bet he would.”

  “What are you doing with your life?”

  “I’m in my first year of law school. This summer I’ve got an internship at Skadden Arps in Washington.”

  “That sounds . . . secure. We all need lawyers—because everyone else has one. What kind of law?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve only taken contracts, civil procedure, and real estate, which were kind of dry.”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

  AJ laughed. “Okay . . . parched. I’m hoping criminal law is more fun.”

  “Good luck. No interest in the business?” To movie people, there was only one.

  “I dreamed about it as a kid, but I’ve decided I should do something more serious. My mother’s got me running for Senator Dirksen’s seat when he retires.”

  “But you still go to the movies?”

  “Since they built the Old Orchard, it’s my second home.”

  “What’s the best thing you’ve seen recently?”

  “I loved The Bad Seed. Patty McCormack was fantastically evil. And The Seven Samurai . . . whoa!”

  “I’m meeting Kurosawa next month to see if he’ll do an American movie.”

  “That would be fantastic. He’s got an eye like John Ford. And when that actor . . . something Mifune . . . gave his speech about how the samurai had robbed and pillaged for too long, I was on my feet shouting, ‘Yeah!’ ”

  Todd rested his fist on his chin. “Have you ever heard of Don Quixote?”

  “Cervantes! I read Quixote for my Spanish lit class.”

  “It’s my next film. How would you like to work on it?”

  “Huh?” From enemy to employer in twenty-four hours? “That’s awfully nice of you, but as I said—”

  “You said, ‘I should do something more serious.’ ‘Should’ is somebody else talking. I heard the pizzazz in your voice talking about movies. And there’s nothing more important you can do with your life than entertain people.”

  “My mother visited Hollywood last year and said times are bad.”

  “Not ‘bad.’ Terrible! That’s the opportunity. The
studios are a joke. They make and sell movies the way they did thirty years ago. They’ll go belly-up one of these days, but the big bosses—the Warners and Cohns and Zanucks—won’t care. They’re old men who created a one-generation business. They lived selfishly and they’ll die selfishly. Forget the studios. The future of the movie industry lies with independent producers like Stan Kramer, Sam Spiegel, and me. We finance our own projects and make them the way we want. It’s a brand-new ball game. And I can tell—you have to be a part of it.”

  AJ walked back to the lodge with his head far above the next gale brewing to the west. A job offer in Hollywood was the last prize he’d imagined collecting at the tournament.

  May 2, 1957, was Maggie’s forty-fourth birthday. To celebrate, her son invited her to the Palmer House, the most expensive restaurant in Chicago. After spending hours at Marshall Field’s, she selected a Norman Norell silk taffeta dress with a wide black belt. They had to add another notch because her waist was so tiny. Friends wondered why so stunning a woman had never remarried. After Harry’s death she’d dated the available men—mostly older widowers—but found the prospect of them touching her repellent. Only in the last few years did she touch herself. Maggie loved sex, but couldn’t recapture her appetite. She joked that by the time she saw her husband in heaven, she would need to get laid really badly. Until then, her best man was her date for the evening.

  As she applied makeup, Maggie listened to the closing stock market report from Wall Street. Her investments, especially in technology companies like IBM and Haloid, had performed spectacularly in the bull market, and she considered taking some profits and buying AJ a new Thunderbird. Not the red one he coveted, because red was his only bad color, but the white, which was classier and would stand out against his olive skin. He was a terrific kid—and on his way to becoming a famous adult. The move to Chicago had been a brilliant stroke. She’d raised him away from the corrupt values of Hollywood and oriented his future to the power centers of the East. People could cluck about her grandiosity, but in her heart, she was the mother of the first Jewish president of the United States.

  Go ahead, tell her. She’ll understand. Even if she doesn’t, AJ braced himself, she’s your mother—what’s the worst she can do? “How’s your duck, Mom?”

  “Fantastic. You haven’t touched your lamb. If it’s too rare, I’ll call the waiter—”

  “The lamb’s fine.”

  “You’re nervous about D.C., aren’t you?”

  “That’s what I want to talk about. You see, I’m—”

  “They’re going to love you. That reminds me, I’ll call Triple-A tomorrow and get a route map.”

  “Ask for one going west.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not going to Washington.” He caught her attention with that punch. Now he had to finish the combination. “Mike Todd offered me a job in Los Angeles. He’s going to pay me a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking—no, I’m not talking. I’m actually doing it—dropping out of law school. I’m going to make movies . . . well, someday. Hooking up with a real showman is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  “AJ, this is insane.”

  “No, insane is staying in a place that makes my skin crawl. After I returned from Pebble Beach I realized I didn’t belong in law school. The casework bores me. The students are like pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I hate how the professors pit us against one another. Every day I get sicker at the prospect of spending my professional life talking out of both sides of my mouth. When Mike visited Chicago last week for the local premiere of Around the World, he said he was serious about his job offer.”

  “And you’re prepared to give up a future you’ve dreamed about for years?”

  “You did the dreaming, Mom.”

  He’d struck a low blow, but it was too late. “Are you accusing me of pushing you to become a lawyer?”

  “I didn’t say ‘push.’ But a lot of decisions I’ve made in the past . . . well, they haven’t always been what I wanted. Like attending Northwestern. If it had been up to me, I’d have gone to Stanford. Or staying in Chicago for law school rather than going to Harvard.”

  “Living home saved us money. Was that such a terrible sacrifice?”

  “No. And I never complained. But for my future I need to follow my dream.”

  “And your dream is to go into a business that’s dying, if it isn’t already dead.”

  “People like Mike are turning Hollywood around.”

  “My girlfriend dated Todd when he produced on Broadway. He was a two-bit hustler then, and dollars to doughnuts, he still is!”

  “He’s flamboyant. If you knew him like I do, you’d feel differently.”

  “Now he’s your close friend?” She took a gulp of wine. “You’ll wind up with nothing when this ridiculous adventure fails.”

  “It’s not going to fail!”

  “I could kill Bing Crosby for twisting your head. I’m calling him right now.”

  AJ pinned her wrist to the table. He could never cross the California line if she called anyone. “I’m sorry this is such a surprise. It was to me too. But think about it—the signs have always been there. English was my favorite subject. I’ve been writing short stories for years. And God knows I love movies. It’s in my blood. You remember how Dad and I planned to build a studio together. I think he’d tell me to follow my instincts.”

  “Into a business filled with the scum of the earth? Into the business that killed him?” She shook her head. “I don’t intend to buy another black dress.”

  “Mom, you’re being melodramatic.”

  “You’re too young to recognize your mistake. Call Mike Todd tomorrow and tell him no.”

  “I called him today and told him yes.”

  Maggie collected her purse. “The discussion is over. If you go to Hollywood, you go it alone—without any help from me. And by the way, you’re a coward for telling me this in a public place rather than at home.”

  Now he knew how his father had felt. Be thankful for small favors: at least she’d skipped the “fucking moron.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Pink’s recipe was classic—plump, chewy, hickory-smoked hot dogs served on soft, buttery buns and topped with condiments that cleared your sinuses. AJ had remembered them fondly while exiled in Chicago and had made the take-out shack on La Brea his first stop upon returning to Los Angeles. He had introduced Mike Todd, who’d become addicted and assigned him to buy the franks for the staff luncheons. It wasn’t glamorous, but any paying job in Hollywood these days put you ahead of the game.

  The year he’d left town there were five billion movie admissions. Last year the number was two and a half billion. In less than a decade profits had fallen by 60 percent. To generate extra cash, a few desperate studios drilled wells to pump oil that lay thousands of feet below their soundstages. No other American industry had ever suffered such a devastating decline so precipitously. It was perversely pleasing to AJ that his father had been prescient in forecasting the turbulence in Hollywood. Television had stolen a huge chunk of the movie audience, while the studios stood idly by and watched agents, advertisers, and independents control the new medium. Ironically, even the exhibitors who’d won in the Supreme Court had lost in the end. Their downtown movie palaces died because the middle classes deserted the cities, but the exhibitors lacked the cash and credit to build theaters in the suburbs.

  AJ glanced at his note: eight dogs with mustard and relish, three with ketchup, two with sauerkraut, and one plain for Liz. Shit! As he tried to figure the missing order—he knew he needed fifteen—AJ hooked a left into the parking lot. He zipped up his Cubs jacket and got out of his secondhand Chevy. The June gloom had descended with its annual vengeance. Like a three-martini lunch, the thick low clouds hung around until late afternoon, flattening the landscape and souring the populace.

  The guy in line ahead of
him was a perfect example. “I don’t belong here,” he groused to a woman whose head was buried in her purse. “I’ll go nuts if I don’t get back to the city.”

  “So order a ‘New York dog’ and make believe you’re at Nathan’s.” The girl’s search hypnotized AJ. Not the search itself, but the way she arched her back and shook her long auburn hair out of the way and balanced on a foot so delicate it seemed unlikely to support her. He strained to see her face, but it remained hidden. As she bent over, her cuffed, faded Levi’s rode up her athletic calves and tightened around her slim bottom. “I think you’re lonely for Neile. Why don’t you go to Vegas? You’ll be there in three hours, the way you ride.”

  The guy glanced at a pristine Harley in the space next to AJ’s Chevy. “And fuck up my carburetor with sand? If I’m bored here, imagine me on the Strip. Steph, what the hell are you looking for?”

  She removed a pack of Clorets and popped a couple in her mouth. “I’m having the spicy dog with extra onions, so I thought I’d get a head start. Want some?”

  Her friend looked dubious.

  “I’ll take one, if you have extra,” AJ blurted out. The couple looked as if he’d materialized from outer space. “Your idea makes a lot of sense—I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  She studied him for a seeming eternity before shaking two into his palm. “A man who recognizes genius. . . . I’m Stephanie Salinger.”

  “AJ Jastrow.”

  Stephanie shook his hand with a firm grip. “And the guy staring through you like a fluoroscope is my friend Steve McQueen, the biggest undiscovered star in Hollywood.”

  “I’ll tell my boss.”

  The actor evinced his first sign of interest. “You’re a casting agent?”

  “No, but he told me I should always check out new talent.”

  “Who’s ‘he’?”

  “Mike Todd.” Among the town’s upwardly mobile, a boss at Todd’s level raised AJ’s status, even if his function was retrieving hot dogs. Predictably, the girl’s eyes widened. They were one shade lighter than blueberries. In the time it took to reach the counter, Stephanie invited him to a party Saturday night. In return, AJ offered two tickets for Around the World in 80 Days.