Chapter 17
The Derby was filled that night. At one of the booths, the young, leonine Burt Lancaster held court like a gangster king, surrounded by cronies and babes, his teeth so white they filled the air with radiance.
In another, the young genius Orson Welles sat with his beautiful wife, eating immense amounts of food, an actual second dinner, and downing three bottles of champagne. Rita Hayworth just watched him sullenly as he uttered the words that were to become his signature: 'More mashed potatoes, please.'
Mickey was there, of course, though without his wife. He was with a chorine who had even larger breasts than his wife. He was smoking Luckies and drinking White Russians and looking for producers to shmooze, because he could feel himself, in his dreams at least, slipping ever so slightly.
Bogie was there, with a little nobody named Bill something or other, a Mississippi-born screenwriter who was lost in the rewrites of Ray Chandler's The Big Sleep. Bogie called him 'Kid,' got him good and drunk, and kept trying to get him to understand that it really didn't matter if anybody figured out who did it.
And Virginia was there, with her swain Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel, and Ben's best Hollywood friend, Georgie Raft.
'Will you look at that' said Ben. 'Enrol Flynn. Man, he don't look good.'
'He's all washed up, I hear,' said Georgie, drunkenly. 'Warner's may drop him. Look at him.'
Errol Flynn was even drunker than Georgie Raft and his once beautiful face had begun to show ruination. It was a mask of beauty turning inexorably into a burlap sack hung on a fencepost.
'Yeah, well, they didn't pick your contract up either, Georgie,' said Virginia.
'I bought my way out of my contract,' said Georgie. 'I gave Jack a check for $10,000 and walked out of his office a free man.'
'I heard he would have paid you the ten long to take a hike,' said Virginia.
'Can it, Virginia,' said Ben.
Raft stared moodily into his drink. For a tough guy, he had an amazingly delicate little face, a nose as perfecdy upturned as any pixie's.
'It ain't been easy on him,' consoled his best friend from the old neighborhood, where they'd specialized in heisting apple carts.
'Why don't you beat up a casting director, Ben? That is, if you could find one you could take. Maybe you could make Georgie big again.'
'I don't know what's the matter with this bitch,' Ben explained to Georgie. 'Ever since we got back from the South, she's been acting funny toward me.'
He looked at her. But goddamn, she was still the female animal in all her surly glory, tonight with a huge wave of auburn cream for hair, meaty big-gal shoulders and breasts scrunched together to form a black slot in the ample flesh into which a man could tumble and lose his soul forever.
'Yeah,' she said, 'maybe it has something to do with all the times you fly out to the fucking desert and watch
Del Webb pour Mr. Lansky's money into a big hole in the ground.'
Another row was starting.
'Kids, kids, kids,' consoled Georgie. 'Let's enjoy ourselves. We have a great table at the Brown Derby in a room filled with movie stars. People would kill to get what we have. Let's enjoy. Gar^on, another Scotch, please.'
The three friends each retreated briefly to his or her libation, tried to settle down and collect themselves, then returned to conviviality.
'Virginia, it's a big thing I got going. You'll see. The big guys all believe in it. It'll be bigger than Hot Springs.'
'Hot Springs is supposed to be in Hot Springs, not in a desert. Owney Maddox is supposed to run Hot Springs. That's the way it's supposed to be, Ben. You ought to know that.'
Ben allowed himself a snicker.
'You think Owney's so high and mighty? You think nobody would stand against Owney? Well, let me tell you something, Owney's got some troubles you wouldn't want.'
'Owney's okay,' said Georgie. 'He knew some people and helped me get started out here.'
'Owney's finished,' said Ben. 'He just don't know it yet.'
'Owney's a creep but he can take care of himself,' Virginia argued, then took another sip of her third screwdriver. She could outdrink any man in Hollywood except for Flynn. 'He pretends to be a British snob but he's an East Side gutter rat, just like you two pretty boys.'
'Virginia, Owney's got troubles and the big guys know it. I heard about it all the way out here. He's got some crusader raiding his joints and he doesn't know how to get the guy. His grab on that town is shaky and once it slips, you just watch everybody walk away from him. It happened to him in New York, it'll happen to him in Hot Springs. He lost the Cotton Club, he'll lose the Southern. You just watch. He'll end up dead or with nothing, which is the same thing.'
'And would you be the guy to take it from him?'
'I don't want nothing in Hot Springs. But I don't want Hot Springs being Our Toztm either. We need a new town, and I mean to build one in the desert. You just watch me, goddammit.'
'Ben, the only thing you've built so far is a hole in the ground for somebody else's money.'
'Virginia, you are so rude.'
'Don't you love me for it, sugar?'
'No, I love you for them tits, that ass, and the thing you do with your mouth. You must be the only white girl in the world who does that thing.'
'You'd be surprised, honey.'
'Hello, darling. Your bosom is magnificent.'
This was from Errol Flynn, an old pal of Virginia's from some weekend or other. Flynn leaned into their booth, his famous handsome face radiating a leer so intense it could melt a vault door.
'Hit the road, you limey puke,' said Ben.
'Hi, Georgie,' said Errol, ignoring Ben. 'Tough luck about Warner's. They'll drop me next.'
'I got some deals working. I'll be okay. Errol, how're you doing?'
'Well, there's always vodka.'
'Errol,' said Virginia, 'just don't doodle any more fifteen-year-olds. Jerry Geisler might not get you out of it next time.'
'In like Flynn, old girl. Oh, Benjamin, didn't see you there, old fellow. Still looking for buried treasure? There's a very good map to it in Captain Blood.'
'You Aussie bastard.'
The reference was to one of Ben's more regrettable adventures. With a former lover who billed herself a countess by way of some forgotten marriage to an actual Italian count, he had rented a yacht and gone to an island off the coast in search of pirates' treasure. It had been quite the joke in Los Angeles in the social season of 1941.
'Don't pick on Ben,' said Virginia. 'He has big plans. He does know where the treasure is buried and it is in a desert, only it ain't on an island.'
'Virginia, you bitch.'
'Tut tut, old man,' said Errol, moving on to another table.
'You shoulda smashed him,' said Georgie. 'He can be an asshole. You understand, I can't take him on because he still has Jack Warner's ear, and he might talk against me. I might get another shot at Warner's, so I don't want to do nothing now.'
'You're dreaming,' said Virginia. 'You couldn't smack him because you're afraid of him. He's pretty tough, they say. And genius here couldn't smack him because he can't smack anybody without puking all over his clothes.'
