Keeper of the Flame Read online

  “Of course.”

  “Where the guy sticks his dipstick in the girl’s mouth?”

  “Dipstick?”

  “It’s just another word for penis.”

  “I know,” I said. “Dipstick just slipped my mind when I was making a list recently. But never mind that. So you say you’ll do porn as long as blow jobs aren’t included?”

  “They make me gag.”

  “But don’t the porn producers object? I sort of imagined blow jobs are a big attraction.”

  Sal shrugged. “I got a lot of other attractions to offer.”

  “Right,” I said. “Suppose you just tell me more about you and Franny and the porn business.”

  “Franny said these movies were different from 99 percent of porn films. Not sleazy or cheap. These had money put in them. Three cameras, professional cameramen, a director, a lighting guy, a girl who does the art direction and designs the set and chooses the actors’ clothes. Everything like a real movie with a budget.”

  Sal gave me a big smile. I tried to smile back. But Sal could read the skepticism in my face.

  “Let me show you what I’m talking about and you’ll be convinced,” Sal said. She reached for my MacBook, turned it around to face her and began tapping into some Google pages. “The things Franny told me were no lie. You’ll see.”

  Sal tapped some more, then turned the computer toward me so I could follow what the movie she’d brought up was all about. On screen, a very pretty blonde girl ambled into the frame from off stage. The scene was brightly lit, had pricey looking furniture, everything in good taste. The girl had on a white dress and sat down on a sofa. The sofa was white too. So were the walls and the thick carpeting and most of the décor I could see.

  “White is the visual theme of all the films these people make,” Sal said.

  The girl sat on the sofa and soon removed her clothes including her underwear. It was white. She began to masturbate. She was vigorous about it. Another girl entered the room. She was dark and voluptuous. Seeing the first girl in action, the second girl took off her white clothes, displaying her spectacular breasts, and joined in the masturbation. Also vigorous. Soon the two girls were helping one another in mutual pleasuring. Both girls had had Brazilians recently.

  “You get the idea about the production values?” Sal said.

  I coughed and said, “Yes.” My voice seemed unusually high-pitched.

  “In this movie we’re looking at here, a guy comes in before too long, gets into it with the two girls, and la-di-da-di-da,” Sal said. “But let me show you one thing more.”

  She began to fast forward through the rest of the film.

  “The brunette girl in the movie?” Sal said as she ran the fast-forward. “That was Franny.”

  “Your Franny?” I said. “Great heavens!”

  I thought of telling Sal that I was a lawyer gathering facts for a file, and I needed her to go back for a lengthier examination of Franny’s person. But I resisted. Instead I asked a question.

  “What type of guy do these films cast in the male roles?”

  “The type who looks at a naked girl and gets a stiffie in about five seconds.”

  “Stiffie?” I said.

  “It means an erect penis.”

  “Another one that slipped my mind recently.”

  Sal looked at me for a moment, shrugged and moved on.

  “The point with the male actors,” she said, “is the director doesn’t want to wait around with everybody else while the guy takes forever to get it up.”

  “It would be an unfortunate expenditure of resources.”

  Sal had fast-forwarded the film all the way to the end of the credits.

  “Look at the very last name,” she said.

  I looked. The last credit read, “‘Producer: Freddie the Champ.’”

  “That’s our guy from Heaven’s Philosophers?” I said.

  “Not only that,” Sal said. “What you’d also be interested to hear is that he was the guy, when I agreed to get involved. He drove Franny and me to the studio. And it, the studio where the movies are shot — get this — it’s in his house, which is a mansion practically.”

  “What’s this guy look like, Freddie the Champ?” I said.

  “He’s not heavy, but he’s got a body like he lifts weights, and he’s scary in a smooth way,” Sal said. “His hands, when Franny introduced me to him and we shook, were like a couple of power tools. My impression, he could have crushed me if he wanted to. He could crush Mike Tyson.”

  I thought about the guy in the first photograph I took at Heaven’s Philosophers, the one where I got Squeaky Fallis, but the sleeve of my jacket covered up one of the other guys in Squeaky’s group. That guy had a jutting chin.

  “Anything distinguishing about Freddie’s face that you noticed?” I said to Sal.

  “Just that it was sort of lean like all the rest of his body. The guy comes on like a regular joker, but he’s actually very forceful. Totally a threatening guy.”

  I decided to forget Freddie’s description for the time being, and move on with Sal’s story.

  “Freddie drove you and Franny to the mansion where the filming was going to take place,” I said. “Where was the mansion?”

  “Out in the east end, in the Beach, but a part of the Beach I’d never been in before. It’s a very hilly neighbourhood, lot of trees and very big houses. None was quite as big as Freddie’s place. It’s huge, and he’s got the living room made over into a movie set where the porn films are shot.”

  “And he’s the homeowner, you know that for sure?”

  “He acted like he owned it, and nobody that I saw called him on it. The only people in the place that day were connected to the movie, and they seemed to think Freddie was the homeowner. One other guy, not with the movie crew, he came into the room a couple of times, but he seemed more like a servant type of person.”

  “What was it about him that persuaded you he was of the below-stairs class?”

  “The guy was deferential,” Sal said. “I didn’t pay much attention to him. My impression was of a very tall, not bad looking guy, well-dressed, quiet and polite. That was all.”

  “Okay, you’re in the house to shoot a film. Then what happened?”

  “The first day is always a sort of audition day for everybody: the actors, the cameramen, the director. It seems to be the custom, audition happens on a Sunday, then a day off on the Monday, and everybody gets down to shooting the whole movie on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Audition day, it’s when we get a script, which mostly just says what sex acts happen in what order.

  “So on this day I’m telling you about, when Franny and I were there, we took off our clothes and moved around, did poses whatever way the director told us. The cameramen shot our bodies from different angles, tits, ass, pussy, whatever, while we just more or less ran through the whole storyline without actually doing any of the sex acts.”

  “What about the guy in the male role?”

  “That guy was perfect,” Sal said. “Franny and I gave him a flash of our legs wide open and it was an instant hard-on for the guy.”

  “But something must have gone wrong,” I said. “You dropped out of the movie, right? Was it sudden second thoughts or what?”

  “A mix of reasons. I didn’t go for the type of guy I’d have to screw in the movie. This particular guy had these godawful tattoos. The atmosphere didn’t feel right. Maybe I just got plain chicken about the whole idea of the porn thing. Anyway, I turned down the job even though they were begging me.”

  “A sound decision,” I said. I gave Sal’s hand a squeeze of a reassuring nature.

  “Except,” Sal said, her voice bright, “I’m ready to do an audition with Franny one more time.”

  “Really?” I said. “Why so?”

  “It’s a plan to help y
ou.”

  “Moi?”

  “You want to know more about Freddie the Champ and Squeaky what’s his name, and all those other guys out at Heaven’s Philosophers, am I right?”

  “Given recent events, the need for information might have lost some urgency,” I said. “But, yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting a better handle on the crowd from the church.”

  “That’s where I come into the picture,” Sal said. “The point is I’ve got an open invitation to do a film whenever I feel ready. The director and the cameramen, these guys told Franny they had a high appreciation of my body. They keep mentioning this to Franny. So, really, all I need to do is go along with her on an audition day, and you come with me.”

  “I’m not a five-second man,” I said. “That might restrict my value to the film. Why else would I be there?”

  “As my lawyer is why you’re there,” Sal said. “I’ve got it all figured. When they hand out the contracts to everybody at this audition, I tell them I’ve brought my lawyer to read mine. They already know I’m not a dummy, so arriving with a lawyer won’t surprise anyone.”

  “That puts me on site for a legitimate reason,” I said. “But what do you imagine in your plan I would do with my time in the house?”

  Sal shrugged. “It gives you pretty much free rein on your own in the mansion.”

  “That might work,” I said. “I could poke around for whatever information about Freddie the Champ and his associates that’s on offer. Kind of vague, but what the heck.”

  “It’s pretty clever, don’t you think?” Sal looked pleased with herself.

  “And I’m grateful to you for the thoughtfulness,” I said. “I should tell you, if things break the way they’re supposed to, I may be free of Heaven’s Philosophers and related parties by Wednesday afternoon. But it’s best to prepare for all eventualities, and if Squeaky and Freddie the Champ continue to be bothersome, I’ll call on you.”

  It seemed a long shot that I’d need to perform a sneak job in the mansion where porn movies were filmed. But Sal was so earnest that I didn’t want to disappoint her completely. Besides, the conversation with her had chased away the small case of the blues I’d developed over the episode of the smashed coffeemaker. I owed her something for that.

  “Done,” Sal said.

  She kissed me on both cheeks by way of goodbye, and went out the door.

  I needed another ten minutes to clean the debris off the floor. Then I left for home. Annie and I had a plane to catch.

  Chapter Nineteen

  At four o’clock next day, on the Tuesday afternoon of Annie’s book launch at Columbia University, the two of us were standing on the west side of Fort Washington Avenue on a corner way up at 190, just south of the Cloisters. We were waiting for Manhattan’s M4 bus. During Annie’s six or seven days in New York, and my day and a half, we were borrowing a co-op apartment owned by a friend of Annie’s who worked for the UN. The friend was currently doing good works in Darfur, and we had the run of the place. The address placed the co-op in Hudson Heights at the very top of Manhattan. Go any further north and you’d soon be off the island and into plain old New York State. The good news was that from our remote location, it was a straight run on the M4 to Columbia University.

  “We could take a cab,” I said.

  “No cab,” Annie said. “I don’t want to rush things.”

  “You’ve seemed remarkably calm the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Even serene?” Annie asked. “Would you say I’ve been serene?”

  I nodded. “Serene is le mot juste.”

  “I think it’s the preparation I’ve done. Memorizing my speech. Going over it dozens of times. I’ve got what I’m going to say to the audience under control.”

  “The heebie-jeebies have vanished?”

  “Let’s say they’re in abeyance.”

  The M4 bus came, and we got on it.

  “Jerome wants to take us to dinner afterwards,” I said to Annie. Not many people were riding the bus at that hour, and we had good seats. “That okay by you?”

  “Flame’s coming too?”

  “He’ll join us later,” I said, “when he’s done for the night in the recording studio.”

  “Hanging with those guys seems like a nice way to come down after the speech.”

  “You know what I was thinking?”

  “That I could talk to Flame about himself and his movie, and bank the material for an article I’d write when the movie actually gets made.”

  I smiled at Annie. “No moss grows under this girl’s feet.”

  Annie’s elbow jabbed me in the ribs.

  We got off the bus at 116th Street and stepped into the middle of the great university. Architecturally speaking, Columbia’s buildings made a hodgepodge. Most were done in high Gothic. One was state-of-the-art modern. The latter turned out to be the law school. There were marble statues scattered among the buildings and many sculpted archways. Most buildings were worn by age but still regal, even in some cases authentically majestic.

  The address for the Miller Theater placed it on Broadway. The theatre was three storeys high, built of dark cement blocks, and squeezed on either side by nondescript apartment houses. The Miller wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but when Annie and I stepped inside, we arrived in a small gem of a space. The orchestra level seated about five hundred people, and a steep balcony took in another couple of hundred. The theatre’s feel was elegant and intimate.

  A small crowd of editors, publishers, and sales people from Columbia’s book department surrounded Annie the minute we came through the Miller’s front door. I slipped past the throng, and pushed open a door to the auditorium. Jerome was already there, a large presence in the front row.

  “Very classy, this is, man,” he said to me. “In the record business, we launch a new disc, it’s usually in a smelly nightclub. We serve a lotta drinks, and people sneak some weed in the alley out back.”

  “In here today,” I said, “Annie’s speech rates top consideration.”

  “Sorta the same as at record launches, except with them, all the speakers are drunk or stoned. They talk too damn long.”

  “Annie’s sober,” I said, “and she’s timed the speech for twelve minutes.”

  “They gonna sell books today, man?” Jerome asked. “That the etiquette? Or they give them away, one to a customer? Something like that?”

  “Strictly for sale, Jerome. Book launches are where a lot of authors move more books than at any other time. Annie’ll throw in an autograph for free.”

  “I’m getting four books, man, and I need them all signed.”

  By five o’clock, there were about three hundred people in the seats. Annie arrived on stage with a young man and a middle-aged woman. The woman was her Columbia editor. The guy stepped to the microphone with a big grin on his face. He said he was the president of Columbia’s book division. The young president told the audience Annie was a Toronto movie critic, and she’d written his favourite book of the season. That drew a big round of applause.

  Annie took her place at the mic. She had on one of the outfits she bought for the book tour — a black suit, a beautifully tailored jacket and skirt. The jacket was cut low in the bodice, and the skirt fell to just above the knee. The combination did the job of looking simultaneously chaste and sexy as hell. Annie gave the crowd her million watt smile, and began the speech.

  “Courage is not a quality that comes first to mind in describing an actor famous for his double takes,” Annie said, “but Edward Everett Horton was a courageous man.”

  Where the courage came in, Annie said, was him being gay but sticking it out through a long career, all the while knowing somebody might out him and blackball him from the business. Horton was hardly alone as a gay guy in film, of course. Annie described the lives of gay actors like Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, and Clif
ton Webb and gay directors like George Cukor and Edmund Goulding. There were gays in the makeup departments and in set design and costumes, too. All of these people looked out for one another in Hollywood. But of the gay actors, of all the gays in front of the camera, no one flourished as grandly as Edward Everett. He wasn’t just a supporting actor; in most of the movies through his prime decades, he played the sidekick to the lead, giving him plenty of space to strut his stuff. He held his own with everybody, often as second banana to the incomparable Fred Astaire.

  Annie broke down Edward Everett’s talent, and spent the last minutes of her speech analyzing his finesse with double takes, which frequently morphed into triple takes and even quadruples. By way of illustration, she referred to a scene from a 1937 Astaire–Ginger Rogers movie called Shall We Dance. In the particular scene, Horton arrives at a New York hotel where he’s met by the establishment’s manager, played by Eric Blore. The two characters introduce themselves to one another, becoming instantly embroiled in a case of misidentification. Horton is the one who does most of the misidentifying, and as the truth of his errors is exposed to him, though he is never going to admit to so much as a tiny faux pas, his face registers dawning realization in a double take, followed by a hint of a triple take and finally a climaxing quadruple take. It was all accomplished in a matter of a few brilliant seconds, and as Annie B. Cooke on the stage of the Miller Theater did her impersonation of Edward Everett in the scene, her beautiful face going all rubbery in the Horton manner, her reworking of the comic actor’s catalogue of embellished takes brought the house down. Nobody had seen loveliness and comedy in such a winning combination for such a long time. The audience went bananas.

  I might have been one of the first people in the theatre up and cheering.

  “Brava!” I yelled.

  Since I was in the front row, I couldn’t see what the rest of the audience was up to, but I felt excitement behind and around me. Jerome pounded me on the back.

  “Your girl got the knack!” he shouted.

  The cheers kept on coming.