King Kong Read online

  Manny swallowed visibly. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Ever since you were small, people been letting you down. Some folks have it easy, but it’s never been that way for you.”

  Ann glanced away, knowing it was the truth but unable to say it.

  “It never stopped you, either,” Manny said. “You should do it, Annie.”

  “Do what?”

  “Try out for that part.”

  She shook her head. “Me? No…”

  “Why not? It’s what you’ve always wanted. You must have read that play a hundred times. Get yourself an audition.”

  Ann took a long breath. It wasn’t that easy and Manny knew this. She looked at him warily.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Whenever you reach for something you care about, fate comes along and snatches it away,” Manny said. He grabbed her hand. “But not this time, Annie. That’s what you’ve got to tell yourself. Not this time.”

  She let the words swim around in her head a bit. Nearby, the loud rumble of an El train was thunderous. Manny’s hand was like leather to the touch. Ann squeezed it tightly, thinking.

  Thinking maybe. After all, she had nowhere else to go.

  Ann had done it. She’d contacted the office of the producer, Mr. Weston, and sent him her résumé, hoping for an audition. Days had passed—days in which she had chosen to use what little money she had left to buy food instad of paying her landlord—but she had not given up. Something good was bound to come her way, she told herself. It had to. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate. She passed the starving vagrants on the street and could not imagine becoming one of them, could not imagine it even as she ate the last of her food, hiding in her meager quarters at the rooming house, not answering the door when the landlord came to demand the rent.

  Then, today—her stomach tight with hunger and afraid that any day, she would return to find herself evicted—something had been delivered for her, an envelope from Mr. Weston.

  He had returned her résumé unopened.

  What was she to do now? There was no work for anyone these days, least of all a vaudeville girl. Without this, she was lost. And the man had not even had the decency to open her letter.

  Once upon a time she might have just gone away, given up on her ambition. But she had no choice. Without the theater, she was cast adrift. She had no family, no money, and today she’d had nothing to eat but some small bits of bread and cheese gone almost stale. Soon enough, she’d have nowhere to live. Not if things kept on like this.

  And yet, in spite of her predicament, Ann’s determination didn’t come from having nothing to lose. It was more than that. She had simply grown tired of people disappointing her. If she was going to lose, it wasn’t going to be without a fight.

  Just after noon, she made her way to Weston’s office, her stomach tight with hunger and her body taut with determination. She arrived just in time to see him exiting the building, a copy of Variety tucked under one arm. He was dapperly dressed in a charcoal pinstripe suit and a greatcoat and hat that looked brand new. It seemed the Great Deprssion had not touched him at all.

  “Mr. Weston?”

  The man glanced around, but the moment he saw her, he turned quickly away, set his shoulders, and started to move off. She heard him muttering something under his breath. Ann hurried and quickly fell into step beside him, the two of them angling through the people on the busy sidewalk.

  “Look, miss, I told you already,” Weston curtly began. “Call my office. Leave your résumé with my secretary.”

  He tried to behave as though that had finished the conversation but she kept pace with him. “Why would I want to do that when we can talk about it in person?”

  Weston tugged the brim of his hat down a bit as though the sun was in his eyes. “Because that’s what a smart girl would do.”

  “Come on,” Ann said. “I sent you my résumé, and you returned it unopened.”

  Weston almost collided with an older woman of considerable girth, who shot him a withering glance as he brushed past her. Ann easily danced through the bustle of people.

  “What can I say?” Weston replied. “Jack Driscoll’s very particular about who he works with.”

  “An audition,” Ann persisted. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  The man grunted in annoyance. “Jesus, you don’t give up, do you?”

  “I know this role backwards, Mr. Weston. I can recite it in my sleep.”

  At last he looked at her, eyes narrowed with cynicism. “Well, that’s too bad, because we just gave it to someone else. Sorry, kid, the play’s cast.”

  He stopped outside the door of an Italian restaurant and Ann realized it was his destination—the only reason he even bothered with her now was that he wanted to be rid of her so he could go to lunch. Her stomach growled; she wondered if he could hear it.

  Weston waved to someone inside the restaurant and then started to enter, leaving a crestfallen Ann just standing there. This was how it was going to be? Just go without another word? Then Weston looked back and there must have been some piece of him that was not pure cynicism, because whatever he saw on her face made him pause.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “It’s not like you ever had a shot at it.”

  A couple slid past them and entered the restaurant. As the door opened, Ann caught a glimpse of plates of sumptuous food and glasses of wine, the aromas drifting from the restaurant nothing short of torment. She glanced away.

  “I know times are tough,” Weston went on. “You want my advice, use what you’ve got. You’re not bad looking. A girl like you doesn’t have to starve.”

  Ann felt a flicker of hope as Weston fished in his pocket and drew out a pen and a business card. On the back, he scribbled an address. But as he handed it to her, he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “It’s a new place. Just opened.” Weston straightened his jacket and then regarded her coolly. “Listen, princess, this gig ain’t the Palace, understand? Ask for Kenny K. Tell him I sent you.”

  Ann looked at the address, not recognizing it. And she thought she knew the city pretty well. She shot him a questioning glance.

  Weston grimly nodded. “Play the date, take the money, and forget you were ever there.”

  2

  THE SCREENING ROOM WAS utterly silent save for the occasional cough from the film’s investors and the whir of the projector coming from the booth at the back of the room. On the screen, black and white images flickered soundlessly past. Tigers roared. Handsome, square-jawed matinee hero Bruce Baxter stalked through the undergrowth in a pith helmet. A determined cast to his features, the actor on the screen raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. Breaking character, Bruce turned to the camera, lips moving.

  The angle shifted to take in a sleepy-looking lion. A piece of meat was being lowered into the frame and for just a moment, Carl Denham, the filmmaker himself, was visible on screen, attempting to use the lure of the meat to stir the yawning animal to life. The camera tilted back a moment to reveal the bars of the lion’s cage. Then the film cut to the face of Denham’s assistant, Preston, holding a clapper board. The number five was scrawled on the board, and Preston called it out, lips moving with no sound, and then clapped the board to mark the beginning of the take.

  In the audience, Carl Denham paid little attention to the images on the screen. His attention was on the individuals sitting in the rows in front of him, the money men, who had financed the whole thing as an investment. Through the smoke that furled up from their cigars and cigarettes, he was trying to read the room, to get a feeling of how they were responding to the raw footage he had cut together on this picture. So far, he had no idea how they were taking it.

  Denham wanted to shout at them for their inexpressiveness. At the same time, he was anxious about their reaction. He was an expeditionary filmmaker, used to scouring the world for sights and experiences unlike anything the American audience had ever se
en. Now he was making a safari picture on a studio back lot, and there wasn’t anything particularly special about it. Carl Denham was used to the extraordinary. Back lot filming was beneath him, but he couldn’t very well tell them that. Not the gents who were footing the bill.

  Mr. Zelman, head of the investment group, spoke to the screen, not bothering to turn around and address Denham directly. “How much more is there?” he asked, cigarette dangling from his fingers, bald spot pale in the flickering light from the projector.

  Denham started to answer, but Zelman’s assistant interrupted him from the back of the room.

  “Another five reels,” the kid said.

  Zelman sighed. “Lights up.”

  The room was flooded with light that washed out the image on the screen a moment before the projectionist shut it down and the film went away entirely. Poehler, a slick, cynical SOB in his own right, woke up with a start and a snort, glancing around mystified.

  Zelman clearly had something to say, but Tom Farragher beat him to it. Farragher was a thug, plain and simple, and he made Denham nervous.

  “This is it?” Farragher demanded. “This is what we get for our forty grand, Denham? Another one of your safari pictures?”

  The filmmaker winced. He had made several of these films, but the majority of the footage had been taken on actual safaris, not on back lots. The fact that this genius couldn’t tell the difference angered Denham. He was supposed to be a trailblazing filmmaker, not some errand boy. But he had to behave in this meeting.

  He’d figured a way to give these men something more than the garbage they wanted from him—Carl Denham wasn’t content to be relegated to the back lot.

  It was time to change his circumstances. But to do that, he needed to keep their cooperation.

  “You promised us romantic scenes with Bruce Baxter and Maureen McKenzie,” Poehler piped up, his mouth a sneer.

  “Come on, fellas,” Denham replied. “You know the deal. We agreed to push Maureen’s start date so she could get her teeth fixed.”

  Farragher clutched his cigarette between two fingers and gestured with it, the burning tip punctuating his words.

  “It’s not the principle of the thing. It’s the money.”

  Zelman was all business, watching Denham carefully. “Carl, you’ve been in production for over two months.”

  “Trust me, Bruce and Maureen are gonna steam up the screen, once we get them on the ship.”

  Zelman furrowed his brow. “What ship?”

  “The one we’ve hired to get to the location,” Denham said.

  The investors all exchanged wary looks.

  “What location?” Zelman asked. “Carl, you’re supposed to be shooting on the back lot.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Denham replied coolly. “But we’re not making that film anymore.” He rose from his seat and moved toward the front of the room, taking his place as the center of attention, making the investors his audience. The room was warm, so he had taken his jacket off and loosened his tie, but Denham figured that in just his vest and shirtsleeves, he looked more earnest, a hardworking man just trying to do his job.

  “The story has changed, gentlemen. We are now on a different path. The script has been rewritten.”

  With a flourish he produced a tattered, folded map from his pocket. It was all the showman in him could do not to say Voilà!

  “Life intervened,” he went on. “I have come into possession of a map. The legacy of a dead man. A castaway, lost at sea.”

  “Whoa, Carl!” Zelman said, holding up both hands. “Slow down.”

  “I’m talking about an uncharted island,” Denham pushed on. “A place that was thought to exist only in myth…until now!”

  Poehler looked confused in the way only truly dim people ever did. “Is he askin’ for more money?”

  The thuggish Farragher just glared. “He’s asking us to fund a wild goose chase.”

  “A primitive world, never before seen by man!” Denham said, wondering what it would take to get through to them. “The ruins of an entire civilization! The most spectacular thing you’ve ever seen!”

  He indulged himself with a dramatic pause and then shook the map in his hand. “That’s where I’m gonna shoot my picture.”

  Poehler’s eyes lit up and Denham could practically hear the gears turning in the sleazy investor’s head.

  “Will there be boobies?” Poehler asked.

  Denham gaped at him. “Excuse me? Boobies?”

  “Jigglies, jablongers, bazoomers!” Poehler rattled impatiently. “In my experience people only go to these films to observe the…undraped state of the native girls.”

  “What are you, an idiot?” Denham snapped. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? You think they asked de Mille to waste his time on nudie shots? No, they respected the filmmaker, they showed some class! Not that you’d know what that means, you cheap lowlife!”

  Denham was fuming, but he felt all the air go out of the room like a balloon deflating. The place fell silent.

  After a moment, Zelman spoke, resignation in his voice. “Would you step out for a moment, Carl?”

  The other investors avoided making eye contact with him. Denham thought about continuing, but knew when it was time to let the chips fall. With a shake of his head he left the room.

  Out in the hallway, his assistant, Preston, stood to greet him, a glass of water in his hand. The fellow was of average height and build, but with a face that looked even younger than his years. He was a go-getter, loyal as could be, and Denham liked that. People who couldn’t share his vision ought to just get out of his way. And it was time to find out who was with him, and who was against him.

  “Gimme that, quick!” he snapped, reaching for the glass.

  Preston handed it to him.

  “You won’t like it,” Preston said dryly. “It’s nonalcoholic.”

  Denham upended the glass, dumping the water into a potted plant in the waiting area. “Preston, you have a lot to learn about the motion picture business.”

  As quietly as he was able, he set the glass against the screening room door and pressed his ear against it, straining to hear the voices on the other side. Zelman was talking, just as he’d expected. He was the one they all looked to, and Denham figured Zelman would be his ace in the hole.

  “Don’t write him off, fellas. He’s hot-headed, sure, but Carl Denham’s made some interesting pictures,” Zelman was saying. Denham smiled. That boded well. “He’s had a lot of…near successes.”

  Denham’s smile evaporated. Maybe not so well after all.

  “He’s a preening self-promoter,” another voice growled. That would be the thug, Farragher. “An ambitious no-talent! The guy has loser written all over him. It’s pathetic when they can’t see it themselves.”

  Denham froze, anger rising in him, but even more powerfully, a kind of panic. This was his career that the idiot was talking about. His true calling.

  “Okay,” Zelman said on the other side of the door. “So maybe he wasn’t our strongest choice.”

  “Denham talks big,” Farragher declared, “but he don’t deliver.”

  Poehler chimed in. “He can’t direct. He doesn’t have the smarts.”

  What?! Outside in the hall, Denham flinched even as he restrained himself from bursting into the screening room with murderous intent. He adjusted his ear against the glass, not wanting to miss a word.

  “I understand your disappointment. I’m feeling very let down myself,” Zelman told them. “I thought he had something.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Farragher boomed. “He’s washed up. It’s all over town!”

  Denham pulled away from the door, forcing himself to breath slowly and evenly. So this was how it was going to be?

  Zelman’s assistant, Sid Nathanson, was a twenty-one-year-old kid from the Bronx. More often than not, Mr. Zelman called him “Stanley,” but Sid never corrected him. Working in motion pictures was his dream, and if the boss couldn’t
remember his name from time to time, he wasn’t going to get heated up over it.

  It was a tough business. Sid had known that going in, but he’d never really understood how tough until he had started attending meetings with Mr. Zelman. This one, though…it was brutal. Denham was intense and passionate, maybe a little crazy around the eyes, but obviously he knew what he wanted from a picture. Somehow, even though the man had been in the business for a number of years, he hadn’t figured out that it wasn’t about passion. It was about money.

  Even as the thought crossed Sid’s mind, Mr. Poehler spoke up.

  “A man who doesn’t recognize the value of boobies is a liability in this industry,” the man said, lighting a cigarette.

  Sid kept his face carefully neutral on the off chance that one of the investors would look at him. To do that, of course, they’d have to notice him, so it wasn’t likely. Still, practiced neutrality was a valuable skill. That much he’d already learned.

  “So,” Poehler went on, “we scrap the picture? Cut our losses?”

  Farragher reddened. “And flush forty grand down the toilet? This jumped-up little turd’s gonna bankrupt us!”

  “The animal footage has value,” Zelman noted. He was the brains, obviously, and he was trying to figure out how to salvage whatever he could from this catastrophe. Sid had learned a lot from the man.

  Poehler nodded. “Sure, Universal are desperate for stock footage.”

  “Then sell it!” Farragher said. “We’ve gotta retrieve something from this debacle.”

  Zelman nodded and gestured to Sid. “Get him back in.”

  Sid jumped up and hurried to the door. He wondered how bad the fireworks were going to get when they told Denham the news. But when he opened the door and stepped into the waiting room, it was empty.

  Denham was gone.

  Preston felt himself carried along in the wake of Denham’s fury and determination. The moment when Carl had decided they were going to bolt had been abrupt, and before Preston could even think, the two of them were hurrying out of the building struggling under the weight of eight film cans, all the reels Denham had shot so far. Now they were rushing along the sidewalk laden with that burden, Preston trying to keep from spilling the cans into the street and Denham glancing nervously back over his shoulder.