Baby and Joe

Shifting his gaze across to Catalina Island, Michael’s mind flickered with his father’s tales of weekends spent sailing and partying there.
His old man, making up for lost time after the war, would join a fellow writer or two and let himself go on the island. Sometimes a director would tag along or a publicist escaping fantasy land or maybe an old friend just in from New York. There’d been girls too – extras and wannabes off the MGM or Fox payroll - and plenty of wine and bourbon.
“Mister Gates?”
Michael looked round. Paul, the Stones’ Man Friday, had returned.
“Mister Stone says he’ll be right with you. Can I get you something while you wait? A drink?”
“I’m fine.”
Paul smiled and gestured at the view. “Every morning I wake up and thank God I’m living here.”
Michael nodded appreciatively. “How long have you been working for the Stones?”
“Two years this fall. I knew a friend of theirs - Jane Bryan. She was an actress from way, way back, before the talkies came in. I house sat for her when I was between acting jobs.”
Fame and fortune had not crossed Paul’s path and Michael could see why. Hollywood was full of guys as slim and as good looking, all of them coaching tennis or running valet parking, just waiting for their break. He offered him a cigarette.
“Thanks,” said Paul, stepping closer to let Michael light his cigarette.
Michael, lighting his own cigarette, returned Paul’s smile. He needed this guy to feel relaxed, to be off guard. “Do you still act?”
“I take an acting class, but you’re here to interview the Stones, you don’t want to know about me.”
“I’m curious. Besides, it’s good background for the book,” Michael lied. “I want a feel of what life with the Stones is like. You’re at the center of everything they do, you’re a player, so what’s it like living here?”
The self-satisfied smile on Paul’s face told Michael his aim had been true and that he’d hit the target.
“Well, it’s fabulous,” enthused Paul. “A dream come true.”
A small plane circled the island then buzzed its way along the peninsula.
Michael, watching the plane scoot landwards, remembered being on this terrace thirty years ago at some stupid party for orphans.
“Mister Gates?”
Michael turned as Joe Stone stepped onto the terrace.
“Mister Stone. Good of you to see me,” said Michael, shaking hands with the silver-haired comic.
“The pleasure’s mine and my name’s Joe. Have you been in town long?”
“I flew in yesterday.” A quick lie.
“From Phoenix? Last time we played there was thirty-one, thirty-two. I guess things have changed since then - most things have. Can Paul fix you a drink?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? Not even a beer?”
“Well, okay then, a beer.”
Joe turned to Paul. “A beer for Mister Gates and the usual for me.”
Paul took his cue and left.
“Y’know, we were spokesmen for Bunner’s Beer in nineteen thirty nine and they still send a case of the stuff every year,” said Joe. “Never touch it myself – gives me gas.” He looked out over the bay. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s a long way from Bellefontaine, Ohio.”
“Everywhere’s a long way from Bellefontaine, Ohio,” cracked Joe. “Bellefontaine: home of the first concrete pavement in America – and me!”
“Eighteen ninety one?”
“Correct for the pavement. And for tonight’s star prize, when was comedian Joe Stone born?”
“May first, nineteen hundred.”
Joe let out a long, low whistle. “You’ve been doing your research, kid.”
Better than you know, thought Michael, as a picture of his parents in their Buick flashed through his mind. He was in back, complaining. He hadn’t wanted to come to the party and, boy, had he let them know it. He realised now it hadn’t been a bowl of cherries for them either but they’d been expected to attend, to play their part in front of the newsreel cameras. He took a drag on his cigarette and erased the black and white images.
“Paul was telling me he worked for Jane Bryan.”
“Jane? There wasn’t anyone she didn’t know in this town,” Joe recalled. “De Mille, Mary Pickford...she was Hollywood royalty.”
The Buick cruised into Michael’s mental rear view mirror. Not the shiny new car his father brought home one day but the dented and dirty high miler he and his mother had left LA in seven years later.
“When she died, we asked Paul to come and mind house for us,” said Joe.
“He says he thanks God he lives here.”
“And me too, I hope. He’s on my payroll, not God’s.”
“Do you have other staff?”
“There’s our maid, Nancy. She’s been with us...”
Michael tuned out. He’d been watching the house so long he knew the answer. Apart from Paul and Nancy, there were two gardeners who came on Tuesdays and the pool man’s day was Wednesday. The maid’s day off was Friday. Paul’s acting class was on a Friday. Today was Friday.
“...but Paul mostly drives us in the Bentley. Y’know, when Ray Milland came on ‘Who Goes First?’ he told me to get a Bentley and I haven’t looked at another car since. Remind me again which paper you work for.”
Michael shook his head and lied. “It’s a book I’m writing - ‘From Vaudeville to Video.’.”
“Nice title. Who else are you talking to?”
“You’re the first.”
“Speak to George Burns. He’s at the club most days if he’s not making a movie some place. Can you believe he won an Oscar?” asked Joe, leading the way into the house.
“Wasn’t ‘The Sunshine Boys’ based on Smith and Dale?”
“Gallagher and Shean. The schtick in the movie is like Smith and Dale’s Doctor Kronkheit routine but the rest is pure Gallagher and Shean. They hated each other’s guts.”
By now they were in a long gallery, its walls lined with photographs of the stars of yesteryear.
“I’ve worked with them all,” said Joe, with a sweep of his arm, repeating a line he’d used a thousand times on chat shows. “From A to Z: Al Jolson to Florenz Ziegfeld!”
Some place in Michael’s head he could hear his father shouting, ‘tell them about working with Harry Laine!’, and then his mother’s voice cut in as always, calming her husband as she switched off the television. The tears came next: the sobs of regret; the anguish of failure and impotence; the clutching at each other as they slipped into another night’s drinking. He saw it now, as it was then, in brilliant Technicolor.
“C’mon,” said Joe, heading off into a lounge where their drinks were waiting for them. He picked up a photograph of himself with another man. “Look, Joe Sultzer. Y’know, Smith and Dale? Sultzer was Smith.”
“Like you became Stone.”
“Sure. Sanders and Stone sounded better than Sanderson and Steinberg. Baby’s uncle was a manager for the Keith Circuit. He dreamt up the act and gave us the name.”
“So falling in love at an audition isn’t true?”
Joe grinned. “RKO made that up when we signed with them. Baby was in a sister act that broke up when her partner ran off with a pianist from Hackensack and I’d been touring with ‘Doctor Buckle and his Dogs of Renown’. Her uncle needed an act to go in quickly at Trenton so he suggested we team up. He even gave us the tag –”
“The Harmonising Honeymooners.”
Joe missed a beat, thrown by the interruption, cleared his throat and reasserted himself. “She sang a couple of numbers, I did some patter and then we finished with a song and dance.”
“And you never looked back.”
“Are you kidding? We were terrible but without us they had an empty spot so we played the week and the next week at Baltimore and so on. We were making thirty bucks a week by the end of the first month.” Joe smiled. “C’mon, let’s go see Baby.”
They wove through the house while Joe regurgitated the tale of their careers.
“After the Palace in twenty-nine, we made our radio debut on ‘The Sunshine Serenade Special’. Our own show - ‘The Marigold Music Box with Sanders and Stone’ – began in thirty-three and stayed on air for twelve years.”
They emerged onto a west-facing terrace overlooking the ocean. Under a canopy, a table was laid for lunch.
“Ah, here she is!” Joe nipped round to take the arm of his wife as she ventured outside from a darkened lounge.
The trim and dapper Joe underscored the bloated and unkempt mess that was Baby. Her platinum blonde hair, yellowed with age, was coiffed at the front but scrunched up at the back; her lips a red oasis in the deathly white desert of her face; a floral gown covered her from head to toe.
“Baby, this is Michael Gates,” said Joe. “He’s writing a book about us. Isn’t that marvellous? Michael, this is my wife, Eleanor Stone, but I call her Baby. Hell, the whole world calls her Baby!”
Michael offered his hand. “Good to meet you, ma’am.”
“You sit here, sweetheart,” said Joe, steering her to the table. “Michael, you sit there. You can enjoy the view while we talk. Take your jacket off.”
“I’m okay,” said Michael. Removing his jacket was not an option. He glanced at Baby and recalled his mother saying that Baby only looked a star on the stage or in front of camera.
Joe settled in his chair and quickly began reminiscing about the old days, pausing once in a while to look at his wife like he’d cued her into a swell piece of business that would have the audience rolling in the aisles. But Baby just sat there.
“It was ‘Something In The Air’ that brought you out here, wasn’t it?” Michael asked.
“We’d done it on Broadway and when Paramount bought the rights there was talk they were gonna cast - ”
“Do I know you?”
The question and the querulous voice startled Michael. He turned and found Baby looking at him. “Excuse me?”
“Do I know you?” she repeated, the words a little slurred this time.
Michael met her eyes. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?” Baby kept looking at him.
“How can you know him?” asked Joe. “He just got here.”
“He looks familiar.”
“Baby, he flew in from Phoenix last night. There’s no way you know him.”
Baby fell silent and Michael turned from the truth to look at Joe. “Your first RKO picture was ‘The Kid From Broadway’?”
“Yeah. I was never that crazy about it or ‘Midnight Melody’. They were both old Astaire and Rogers scripts that’d been mothballed a thousand times before we got to do them.” Joe laughed then sighed. “The only picture I really liked was ‘The Lady From Manhattan’. That and ‘Lady, I’m Yours’.”
“It’s your eyes!”
“Baby!”
“Ma’am?” Michael cut through Joe’s exasperation.
“I’ve seen them before...some place,” she slurred.
“Well, they’ve always been in my face.”
Joe laughed. Baby didn’t.
“Your eyes are - ”
“Blue, Baby, blue. His eyes are blue just like millions of eyes. Now, can we forget this, have a nice lunch and talk about the old days?”
“They’re familiar,” Baby continued, ignoring Joe’s sigh. “It’s not just the color, it’s the way you look.”
“How did you feel about getting the Golden Globe?” Michael asked Joe, avoiding eye contact with Baby.
“Deeply honored. To be recognised for our movies and ‘Who Goes First?’ was a big thrill.” He watched Paul carry a large tray to the table. “Y’know, we were on air with the same show for twenty years.”
“Yeah, I -”
“Putting some John Doe with a guest and have them answer questions was a neat idea, and the chance to win a brand new car just made it. I mean, a brand new car in nineteen fifty-two! No wonder it was a hit.”
“I heard you were making a movie?” asked Michael, like he really cared.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, for Disney.” Joe chuckled. “Y’know, the first picture I ever saw was some dumb western where a cowboy rode through a river on his horse and came out on the other side bone dry.”
Paul served the Caesar salad, poured the wine and sat down. Baby took a gulp of wine and lunch got under way.
The last time he’d eaten, Michael realised as the waitress slid through his memory, had been two nights previously at the surf ‘n’ turf place. Someone said, ‘I missed an opportunity there’ - it wasn’t her – and he looked up from his plate. Paul was eating. It was Joe, swirling the wine in his glass.
“With the winery?” asked Paul, the perfect feed.
“But who knew? Where I came from we drank coffee with our meals.”
Michael saw the waitress look back and smile at him in the parking lot. He blinked and she exited the scene.
“Is this your first book, Mister Gates?” asked Paul.
“Yeah, and please, call me Michael.”
Paul smiled at that.
“The book’s a great idea, kid,” said Joe. “Make it good and make a million.”
“I’d like that.”
“Who doesn’t?” Joe looked at his wife. “Baby, you’re not eating.”
“Not hungry,” she replied petulantly.
“You gotta eat, Baby. Have some for me.” Baby shook her head. “Aw, please. Just a little.”
“No.”
“You see how difficult she is, Michael? Lucky for her I love her.” He blew Baby a kiss. She did not reciprocate.
The waitress was back, great ass, cute smile and all, pulling the recliner on his car seat and climbing on top of Michael. The scene paused then played from the top again and again. He flinched. She disappeared.
“Where did Baby come from? The name, I mean,” asked Michael, trying to stay focused.
Baby blinked.
Joe stepped in quickly. “The radio people said it sounded more intimate when we were at the microphone. It stuck and before long everyone was calling her Baby.”
Or Bitch, in my mother’s case, thought Michael.
“Years later, we recorded ‘The Folks Who Live On The Hill’,” said Joe. He hummed a few bars. “Peggy Lee changed the words from Darby and Joan to Baby and Joe, so someone – I forget who – someone
said - ”
“Herb Mason. It was Herb Mason.”
“Well done, Baby. Herb was our producer and - ”
“And Ralph Parnell arranged it.”
“That’s right. Herb thought it’d be neat for us to do the number, so we knocked it off in an afternoon, called the album ‘Baby and Joe’ and sold two million.”
“And it was Ralph’s orchestra too.” Baby was on a roll.
“Suddenly you’re a walking encyclopaedia,” laughed Joe.
“I remember things,” said Baby, turning to Michael. “Like your eyes. I remember your eyes.”
“Ah, no!” Joe rapped the table with a knife. “Stop it, Baby! Stop it now.”
“But I do, Joe. I’ve seen his eyes someplace else.”
“I’m sorry, Michael, my wife gets confused.”
“I do not! It’s just that you do all the damn talking all the goddamn time! Like on the ‘Tonight Show’,” said Baby, hitting her stride, breaking into lucidity, “and on ‘Merv Griffin’. You did all the gags but I never got to sing. I just sat there looking stupid.”
“Johnny said there wasn’t time for a song and you had a cold the day we were on Merv’s show, and,” said Joe, dusting down an old argument, “anyway, you did two numbers on Dick Cavett’s program.”
“Ten years ago!” Baby eyeballed Joe and slumped back in her chair.
The conversation dropped a notch or two and while it meandered through showbiz, whether Ronnie Reagan had fully recovered from being shot, and some sports, Michael tripped back to the waitress riding him, arching her back as he cupped her breasts in his hands, her nipples hardening between his fingers. He recalled too the lightning flash thought of killing her, of snuffing her out there and then.
Paul cleared the plates away.
“We have a light lunch most days,” Joe explained. “A little salad, some fruit, a glass of wine...it’s enough.”
For a last meal, thought Michael.
“So, how’s Phoenix?” Joe looked at Baby. “Michael’s from Phoenix. You remember playing there, don’t you?”
“It’s fine,” answered Michael, not waiting for the lady to stir herself. “Do you miss not being on television?”
“Not on television? I’m as busy as ever,” insisted Joe. “From the day we quit the show, I was swamped with offers.”
The network cancelled you, Michael wanted to say.
“I started acting. Me!” Joe laughed.
As the credits rolled, Michael’s thoughts wandered back to the motel room and the waitress standing in front of him, her thumbs hooked in the top of her panties.
“And then there was ‘Distant Plains’.”
Michael nodded but his mind was filled with the girl gasping as he kissed her panties and ran his tongue along the lace trim.
“I was telling Michael how busy I am, Paul.”
“Busier than ever,” agreed Paul, putting the bowl of fruit on the table before returning indoors.
“I try not to do too much for my wife’s sake.”
Baby didn’t look as though she gave a damn.
“I’ve done a couple of guest spots this year,” continued Joe, “and I’ll make the Disney picture in the fall, God willing.”
No, he isn’t, thought Michael.
Beads of sweat trickled down his back to the Saturday night special tucked in the waistband of his pants. The waitress, struggling and thrashing about on the bed, pierced his mind again. The thought, the instant knowledge of how easy it would be to kill her had not left him that night.
Baby joined the living again. “Are we having coffee?”
“Yes, Baby. Paul’s bringing it out here.”
And he did.
“Coffee?” asked Joe, picking up the pot as Paul left for his acting class.
“Thanks. Will he be gone long?” asked Michael.
“A few hours.” Joe looked at his wife. “You remember that hotel in Pittsburgh?”
“Which hotel?”
“The one we stayed in the first time we played there,” said Joe, passing Michael his coffee. “Can’t remember its name.”
“Neither can I.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I know.”
“We were on the same bill as Jack Benny - ”
“It was Al Jolson.”
“I’m telling you it was Jack Benny.”
“Jolson.”
“It was Benny!”
“Have it your way.”
Joe smiled, victory!, then set off on the tale. “There was us, Jack and a dance act called the Lemon Brothers and we were all in the same hotel.”
As a boy, Michael had often heard his parents talk about the stars they’d worked with, who was nice, who was a pain in the ass, and he’d liked it when other writers and directors dropped by to gossip over a cocktail or two.
“Jack was riding up in the elevator one day when two maids got in on the third floor.”
The visitors had stopped coming when Michael was six, their reasons for doing so only becoming clear after they’d buried his father.
Joe grinned. “And one maid said to the other, ‘I
washed it for her the day she was born and I washed it for her the day she got married but if she thinks I’m gonna wash it for her now, she’s got another thing coming’. Then the elevator doors opened and they got out before Jack could ask them what they were talking about.”
“It was Jolson.”
“It was Benny, for Pete’s sake! Drove him crazy trying to figure it out.”
“It was Jolson and it was the Plaza in New York and you,” said Baby, jabbing her finger at him, “weren’t even there!”
“Ah, forget it!”
“You heard the lousy story at the club!”
“I said forget it, didn’t I? Michael doesn’t want to hear us arguing, do you, Michael?”
But Michael hadn’t heard a thing. He’d been reckoning they’d have found the waitress by now.
Joe sat back. “So, shall we begin in Trenton?”
Michael forgot the girl – she was gone, he’d said a prayer for her – and looked at Joe. “Nineteen forty-two.”
“Nineteen forty-two? I thought we’d go from the top?”
“Let’s talk about ‘The Lady From Manhattan’.”
“‘The Lady From Manhattan’?”
“You sound like a goddamn parrot,” said Baby.
Joe resisted hitting back with some wisecrack.
“How come you got to make that movie?” This from Michael.
“We’d left RKO -”
“They didn’t pick up their option,” interjected Baby.
“They weren’t making so many musicals,” said Joe, feeling the need for clarification, “so we moved to Fox and made ‘St. Louis Girl’ and then Columbia for ‘The Lady From Manhattan’”
“They offered you the picture? The studio?”
“Well, of course they did. It was their picture.” Baby
smiled. “That’s how it was in those days.”
“The producer called up one day,” added Joe. “Said he’d got a script for us, said it was sharp and funny.”
“Didn’t they want Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers?” Michael’s question stirring things a little. “But the director insisted on you two?”
“That’s the way this business goes. The pro –”
“No,” interrupted Michael, “not the producer, the director. The director insisted on hiring you. Harry Laine. He wrote it too and he wanted you.”
“He had good taste,” laughed Joe. “Y,know, he went into the navy right after we’d made it.”
Baby shook her head. “The air force.”
“The army,” Michael said quietly, noticed only by Baby.
A breeze rippled through the canopy.
“And after the war, you worked with him again on ‘Lady, I’m Yours’ and then he got you into television.”
Joe took a moment to view the ocean, a mass of blue with white-foamed peaks, then looked at his interrogator. “What are you saying, kid?”
Michael swung onto the offensive. “He put you back on top. Without him, you’d have been washed up long before television went coast to coast. Without Harry Laine you’d have lost everything. There’d have been no mansion, no Bentley in the garage, no Golden Globes. Without Harry Laine you’d have been nothing!”
Joe stood up. “This interview’s over.”
“Sit down!”
“Nobody tells me what to do in my house!”
“I said sit down!”
“The hell I will!” Joe started across the terrace, calling out, “Paul! Paul!”
“He’s out,” said Michael, catching up and grabbing the comedian by the arm. “Acting class, remember?”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” demanded Joe as Michael manhandled him back to his seat. “Who the - ”
“You’re Michael, aren’t you?” Baby’s voice was unexpectedly calm and clear. “Michael Laine.”
“What?” Joe caught his breath.
“It’s his eyes. They’re like Betty’s,” said Baby. “I always said that, remember?”
“Harry’s kid? Little Mikey?”
Baby nodded. “I knew I recognised him.”
“So what’s with calling yourself Michael Gates?”
“Would you have seen me if I’d used my real name?” Michael looked at them. “Me? Harry and Betty Laine’s son?”
“We were sorry about your father. He didn’t deserve to ...to...” Baby faltered.
“To what?” asked Michael. “To be treated the way he was or to die the way he did?”
Joe winced.
“You destroyed him. After all he did for you, you destroyed him.”
The unanswered accusation hung in the air.
“How is Betty?” Baby was looking for better news.
“Dead.”
“Oh.”
Michael saw them exchange of glances. For a nickel he’d have pulled the gun and ended it right there. Instead gave it to them hard and fast. “She died in sixty-nine. She’d handled everything – losing their careers and the house, being investigated, their friends deserting them – but the day she found my old man hanging from a tree in the yard was the day she gave in and died. It just took a quart of bourbon a day and seven years to do it.”
“We didn’t know,” said Joe. “It must have come awful hard to you.”
“So long as she had liquor, she didn’t care about me. When the janitor called and said she’d been found dead, I was glad it was over, that she’d gone.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
Michael faced Joe. “You’re the man who swore my father was a danger to the nation. You’re the man who cheated my parents. So, yeah, I guess you’d know terrible when you hear it!”
“It wasn’t like that,” protested Joe. “The sponsors didn’t want the show associated with a Red.”
“My father was a New Dealer; my mother too. They were FDR through and through. They campaigned for Adlai Stevenson. All they wanted was a better America!”
“You know what I mean.” Joe shifted nervously in his seat.
“He wasn’t a commie.”
“So why didn’t he co-operate? Why didn’t he tell what he knew? Why didn’t he name names?”
“Because he wasn’t like you!”
“I’m an American! It was my duty to testify!”
“And lie?”
“I didn’t lie!”
“You really believe that?”
“You have no idea what it was like!” shouted Joe, his fist hitting the arm of his chair. He drew breath and summoned up the defense and self-justification of thirty years before. “The sponsors wanted to pull out. The network threatened to cancel. I told your father to go to Washington, to speak to the committee and clear things up, but he made things worse. If he’d told them what they wanted to know, the whole thing would have blown over.”
A flashbulb went off in Michael’s head. He was six and arriving at Baby and Joe’s with his parents. There was a rush of cameras and a press of newspapermen as his father doggedly refused to answer any questions.
Joe sighed. “I did what was right. I did my duty.”
“By screwing my parents?”
“We had to wind up the company, didn’t we, Baby?” Joe looked to his wife for support which came in one terse nod. “Everyone said we had to save the show. The network, the lawyers, our manager...everyone.”
“So you started a new company without the man who made you,” said Michael.
“We were stars long before Harry Laine!” Joe hit back.
“RKO had dropped you. All you had in ‘St. Louis Girl’ was a couple of scenes and a song and dance routine that didn’t make the final cut. You hadn’t worked for over a year when he offered you ‘The Lady From Manhattan’.”
“Showbusiness is like that,” insisted Joe. “One minute you can’t get arrested, the next you’re hot.”
“Hot? You weren’t even lukewarm! My father kept all his notes. Columbia thought you were box office poison but he believed in you. He persuaded them to hire you.”
“For a lousy fifty grand!” Joe snarled.
“But it worked, didn’t it? You were great -”
“Better than great - sensational!” proclaimed Joe, unable to resist the spotlight. “They all said it – Variety, the papers – they all said we were sensational.”
“But nobody offered you a deal. All you got were crappy parts in crappy movies, and then the radio show was dropped. Vaudeville was dead and your song and dance act was living proof of it.”
“That’s a cheap shot.”
“I’m full of them,” said Michael. “What did it feel like when you were playing Pensacola and your agent called to say Harry Laine had another movie for you.”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful,” gushed Baby, ignoring Joe’s reproachful look. “That first day on set was like coming home.”
“And this was forty-eight, just when things were getting tough with a lot of people asking questions like ‘are you now or have you ever been a –‘”
Joe threw his hands up. “Yeah, yeah, okay, we know, we know.” He shook his head. “We were halfway through the picture when your father was named by a witness. He denied it of course and the studio stuck by him but - ”
“But not for long. A week after the picture opened he was released from his contract.”
“It was happening all over this town.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
Joe sighed wearily. “You don’t understand what it was like.”
But Michael did. He’d grown up hearing his mother, awash with Jack Daniel’s or Jim Beam’s or whichever fine Southern gentleman was playing host to her bittersweet memories, tell of how Baby and Joe, their career in a nosedive, had hot-footed it to New York where Harry had found work in television. They’d begged him for help and he’d given it, dreaming up ‘Who Goes First?’
For two decades Baby and Joe had invited contestants to toss a coin to decide who answered a round of questions first, with the winner over six rounds partnering a star guest in a quiz for big money and, if they got lucky, a car.
“We were a hit for twenty years,” said Joe, smiling at Baby and kissing her hand.
“And when my father was called before the house committee again,” said Michael, slicing through the warm glow of nostalgia, “you dropped him.”
“He wouldn’t co-operate. He wouldn’t name names.” Joe let go of Baby’s hand, exasperated. “Jesus, I was subpoenaed to appear! Me! I’m an entertainer. What do I know about politics?”
“Enough to kiss ass.”
“It was my duty to tell them what I knew. I said your father was a good man but he knew a lot of dangerous people – radicals, liberals.” The words spewed out. “And he’d said some stupid things in his time. When we first met him in forty-two, he said he was enlisting as soon as we’d shot the picture. He said, ‘we -”
“Can’t leave all the fighting to Stalin,” intoned Michael, taking the words from Joe’s mouth. “I saw the transcripts. You told McCarthy that.”
“Stalin was a murderer and a communist!”
“And our ally when my father made that remark.”
Joe slumped back in his seat.
“So, you’re in Washington. My father’s taken the fifth and you’ve sung like a canary. When did you tell him you were ending your partnership?”
Joe sighed. “They called from the coast and said the sponsors would quit the show if Harry stayed. I told him we were finished if he didn’t to co-operate with McCarthy.”
But Harry had stuck to his principles and been blacklisted.
“There were just the three of us – your father, Baby and me. We hadn’t even begun to make a profit.”
“It was sad,” said Baby, shaking her head.
Michael bit on that. “It was the end of everything. My father. My mother. Me.”
Baby’s face finally colored as she blushed.
“They said I was unstable, said I needed help, some medication. A doctor saw me once, said he wanted to hospitalize me.” Michael saw the alarm on his hosts faces, saw Joe stiffening. “When my mother died, I - ”
Baby gripped Joe’s hand.
“Well, I went crazy. Robbed a drugstore, went to jail, got out, robbed another one and went to jail for again.” He snorted a laugh. “Must like drugstores, I guess.”
“Your parents would be sorry to hear you’ve been in jail.” Joe glanced at Baby. “Look, if this is about money, we’d be glad to give you something to start over. Our attorney could draw up a figure for you. We’d be more than generous, wouldn’t we, Baby?”
“Of course we would,” chimed Baby, her face deathly white once more.
“My father made your show a hit,” said Michael, taking a quarter from his pocket. “Under the terms of your partnership, he was due a third of the profits.”
“I’ve already explained. There weren’t any profits.”
“But the new company made money, didn’t it? And you sold that company for thirty million dollars.”
“That was years later and we made other programs too, not just ‘Who Goes First?’” Joe spluttered. “Your father had nothing to do with that.”
“I know. I saw him swinging from that tree myself so I know he wasn’t around when you hit the jackpot.”
“Two hundred thousand, so you can start over in Phoenix.”
“I’ve never been to Phoenix.”
“But you said - ”
“I was lying.”
“Oh!” said Baby, like the concept was new to her.
“Two hundred and fifty grand and we’ll forget the whole thing,” offered Joe, still trying to cut a deal.
“Two days ago.” Michael paused, contemplating what he’d done, then continued in a voice like ice. “I killed a woman. A girl of eighteen, maybe nineteen.”
“No! Stop him, Joe!” Baby wailed. “Stop him talking like this.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. He means he knocked her down in an automobile accident or something. Isn’t that right, Michael?”
“I killed her with my bare hands.”
Baby screamed.
Joe put his arm round her. “Please, Michael, don’t play games.”
“I knew if I could kill an innocent person, I could kill you two.”
Baby screamed again.
“Us?” Joe held firm. “Are you insane?”
“Toss the coin,” ordered Michael, handing the quarter to Joe.
“No.”
Michael pulled the revolver from behind and levelled it at him. Baby screamed louder. Joe tossed the coin.
“Call the toss right,” Michael said to Baby, “and you get to say who goes first.”
“To...to answer...a question?” Baby’s voice quivered with fear.
“No, to die.” Michael swung the gun at her. “Call it!”
“Heads! Heads!” she shouted and the quarter landed on the terrace, Roosevelt’s profile catching the sun.
“What?” yelled Baby. “What is it, Joe?”
“Heads,” he croaked, his face a rictus of fear and incomprehension.
“No!” Baby clutched hold of him.
“So,” asked Michael, “who goes first?”