The Walking Wounded Read online

  Persons who want to stay Missing, do we?

  I stopped reading. It was too much to take on so short notice. On no notice at all.

  Lightning and thunder were striking all over the apartment. The drums of the past, the

  rhythms and beats of what had made me what I laughingly was today, filled all the

  hollows and recesses of the universe. Ghosts walked.

  Jo Malmedy, playwright, had somehow opened a can of worms. A large can of

  very wriggly, creepy-crawly worms.

  And I didn't know how he had found the combination key.

  Or what he even meant by it all.

  What he was trying to prove.

  But irresistibly, magically, my eyes were pulled back to the typed pages again.

  Radar pure and simple. Mindless, unable to fight back, incapable of shutting the

  nightmare out.

  The pages of Yesterday flipped over. With dry, ironic ease.

  I took the trip. The mind-bending, frightening journey.

  There was no place else to go but back.

  Back to before, what-once-was. What-had-been.

  I went protesting, fighting, unwillingly, all the way.

  There was a mystery all right. A very great one.

  No one could know what had happened when I first met Dolores Ainsley Brand.

  No one on this earth. I had never told that chapter of my life to anyone. Least of all, Jo

  Malmedy, who must have been a Hoboken kid of about three at the time, still a thousand

  light years away from being the Boy Wonder of Broadway and Show Business. And

  Oscars and Tonys and Emmys.

  Dolores couldn't have told him, either.

  Dolores was dead. Same year, same accident.

  Killed by me.

  Her enormous ghost parades all around the apartment as I went on reading the

  crisp, neatly-typed pages of Jo Malmedy's play. She might have been laughing, in that

  old vulgar, men's room sound of her, as we both read together. The walls echoed.

  The memorable, heart-breaking past is always like that, too.

  You can never run away from it.

  All the legs in the world are useless. "It'd be fine if he'd learn to write---but

  he needs that knowledge precisely as much

  as Elvis needs vocal lessons."

  Anthony Boucher, New York Times Sunday Book Review

  THE MAD MARCEL

  Marcel Alevoinne was waiting for me that night in Downey's. In the booth

  closest to the telephones by the front door. I knew he would be prompt so I was on time,

  too. There was a lot to know, much more to learn, and Marcel Alevoinne was the man

  to ask. The Irish bar on Eighth Avenue, just a spit and a cough from the heart of the

  Broadway theatre district, was the favored watering hole of every successful and

  unsuccessful thespian still roaming free and wild in Big Town. I had bent my own elbow

  a thousand times in Downey's. They knew me and I knew them. We had grown up

  together. From the frantic Fifties to the Screaming Seventies. It was the place to go for

  all performers, great and small. Way up or far down. For a private detective, with a

  stake in Show Business, it is the Promised Land, too. Gas for the motor.

  A Grapevine with liquored wheels. Gossip Gulch.

  I needed Marcel Alevoinne that night.

  Everybody on Broadway did, sooner or later. He wasn't really a Frenchman. He didn't even like France. His real name was

  Clarence Oldenfield Wilson and he had left Hartford, Connecticut in '51 with so many

  academic credits and awards that the Manhattan literary societies embraced him as if

  Thomas Wolfe had come back to life. Fourteen best-selling novels later he was still the

  corniest, homeliest, Pulitzer Prize winning man of American letters in the entire

  universe. But more than that, he had survived and thrived in a society that ate talent

  alive and drove all old-fashioned men to cover. They called him Mad Marcel because

  anger, honest anger against frauds, liars and bureaucratic systems which strangled

  creativity, filled all his work the way Pearl Buck's locusts descended on the Good Earth

  farmers. He had emerged from Hartford with the outlandish name of Marcel Alevoinne

  because he had known how to beat the book crowd at their own game and thoroughly

  resented the fact that his unthinking parents had graced him with a monogram which

  came out COW no matter how you sliced it. But Chuck O. Wilson was a bull, from the

  nostrils down. And up. "And expert is a man who comes from forty miles away, Noon,"

  he had once told me. "and all I had to do to fox those Publisher's Row hyenas was give

  myself a fancy French name, deny my upper class New England background and drop

  the hint that I was one of seventeen starving gamins in a New Orleans back alley flat-

  before I went to college, of course---and voila, the artist is born. It's a bullshit world,

  son, and the higher the bullshit, the harder it is to see the truth."

  Of course, the real story came out years later but everybody was pretty satisfied

  with the glory of Marcel Alevoinne. He was a great read, and stayed that way through

  two decades of changing literary fads, and became one of the most successful novelists

  who ever twirled a platen roller. So Charles Oldenfield Wilson passed into musty myth. Things came to such a pass that nearly everybody forgot that Marcel Alevoinne was a

  gag name. A hoax alias. Hardly anybody remembered that dodge from way back in '51.

  I did because Marcel and I were old acquaintances. The best kind there is. Brother

  Mads. Fellow Fireaters.

  I liked him mad. Because he had a lot to be mad about.

  He was six feet five, gangling like Jimmy Stewart, with straw-colored hair

  flapping down the sides of a lantern-jawed face. Freckles dotted his country kisser like a

  bad case of the measles. His hands could have accommodated baseballs rather than

  typewriter keys. He was about forty-five and his immense height as well as his story

  telling skill, homely narrative novels and over-use of adjectives and adverbs in his prose,

  made the Thomas Wolfe comparison inevitable. Like Wolfe, Marcel Alevoinne bled for

  Mankind. Biafra bothered him as much as Watergate ever could. He bled for himself, in

  almost equal parts. Unlike Tall Tom, the modern day duplicate was a genuinely

  humorous man. In the flesh as well as print. When he talked, people usually listened.

  But his greatest and most notable feature was his feelings about the Critic.

  Critics. The whole business of men being paid good money to render an opinion on

  another man's work, to lead the audience toward enlightenment of some Godawful kind,

  outraged Marcel Alevoinne. Criticism is so much easier that craftsmanship.

  He hated critics. Why should it be important what they say?

  Hated them with a ferocity that had quit the limits of common sense years ago.

  What do they know about creating things?

  The whole world knew how Marcel Alevoinne felt about critics. It was an Open

  War, carried on with nearly religious fervor, despite all the awards, prizes and acclaim for his own life's work. Like Saroyan and George C. Scott and now Brando, he had

  refused his own Pulitzers. And all the other blue ribbon triumphs and successes of the

  academic field.

  He had only taken the money for his work. The money it had rightfully earned.

  Everything else to him was bullshit, Noon. Critics---goddammit---legless men teaching

  the art of running!

  Thus, Marcel Alevoinne nee
Charles Oldenfield Wilson.

  The man I had made an appointment with in Downey's that night. The literary

  giant I had come to ask about Jo Malmedy.

  He was a martini ahead of me when I dropped into the booth across from the

  polished brown table between us. He waved one of his monster hands and his eyes

  showed their pleasure. We hadn't seen each other in months but it was always Only

  Yesterday with him. If he liked you, Time had no importance whatever.

  "Enter the Private Eye. Tall, wearing his cool. And looking extremely fit. You

  on a diet?"

  "Not lately. Where's my drink?"

  "Order your own. I'm too busy thinking. That takes all the strength I have left.

  Man's going to be an author, he's got to think. Occupational hazard. Sorry."

  "No sweat. I'm working anyway."

  "Oh?" He cocked a large blue eye at me and his voice, which should have been a

  Stewart drawl considering his appearance, but was pure Mitchum chestiness, made him

  sound more the hard character than I. "You look somehow slimmer. Legwork, Noon?" "Working up to it." I signaled a nearby waiter. "Depends on you, Last Angry

  Man. And what pearls of wisdom you have to impart. Then maybe there will be mucho

  legwork. Too early to tell yet."

  I ordered a Scotch and another martini for him and we both did a brief toasting

  with the eyes as we sipped. He was measuring me again across the rim of his glass and I

  didn't lose a centimeter since last time. Marcel Alevoinne chuckled. Mitchum, again.

  "Funny?" I dug out my Camels and he waved me off, indicating the unlit

  cigarillo buried between his forefinger and second finger. Suddenly I remembered how

  he always did the little cigars bit, not lighting them but using them as pointers in a

  discussion while he was hammering home an argument. "How funny?"

  "Funny considering what I was thinking about before you popped up. You want

  to hear that first before you tell me your story?"

  "There's only one Mad Marcel," I said, tipping the glass to him.

  "Honored, sir." He acknowledged the tribute with a cheery grin. "All right, man

  on the move. Here it is. I was thinking that I was sick of a lot of things. Things like

  books, movies, plays, our so-called Entertainment Media, and mainly I was thinking

  about how sick I was of the way all of it is handled. You couldn't know what it is to be

  sick of your own business like that, could you? After tall, Noon has been a detective for

  like twenty years and here he is---you marched in just as I was on Norman Mailer. In my

  mind, of course, and the parallel struck me as very amusing."

  "Mailer," I said, tentatively. Music filtered from the bar radio.

  "Mailer," he agreed. "Norman M. There isn't a drop of love anywhere in any of

  his writing. And now, this fine novelist, of another time, like centuries ago, is being honored for all the wrong reasons. He can't write novels so he does a reporter's job. The

  critics love him, if of the same political persuasion, of course, but what's that got to do

  with the Truth? You obviously love what you're doing, Noon, or you still wouldn't be

  doing it. He's an oddball, besides. You're not."

  I shrugged. "It's a free country." Downey's was deserted, almost.

  "It is? Look again. What about Roth and his Private Vision, One-Joke books?

  Masturbation or Mammaries. Right? Right! And the way his books are treated by

  Private Vision critics! The Gospel According to St. Philip. My ass. Maybe you don't

  know about the Academy, Noon, and the Machinery. I'll instruct you. Way back in '33

  or thereabouts, to represent the very best in American Letters, it says here, the

  Literartists-translation: critics, college professors, the New York Times and vested

  interests, picked William Faulkner as The Man. Thereby relegating Hemingway and

  Fitzgerald to second and third place. Can't you see the laugh in that? Faulkner is fine in

  many a book but completely unreadable in many another. A break they never gave Ernie

  and F. Scott who never have been or never will be unreadable--but there you are, Noon.

  The Machinery---colleges, universities, the Times again---they put their money on Will

  Bill Faulkner and he was IT from that moment on. Which brings me along to that second

  thing that kills me…"

  "You're playing Number Six again," I reminded him, not minding at all. Fewer

  men have ever put their hang-ups in words so well.

  The little brown cigarillo jabbed one of my blue smoke rings.

  "Pay attention," he snapped. "This is important for your comprehension of the

  Brainwashing cyclamates stuck in your daily newspaper and in your book and up on your silver screen. Take Private Vision Vincent Canby of the Big Brother Times again. Ever

  follow the foreign film reviews? Canby alone, and maybe three other guys in all this

  world knows exactly what a Chabrol, Goddard, Bergman and Warhol mean with those

  reels of films they pass off as movies. Andy Warhol---my God---isn't it enough to make

  you throw up that those flicks of his wouldn't pass a Freshman's Course in Film Making

  but still get so much attention and space in America's most prestigious newspaper? No

  surprise really. That's merely the Homosexual Society getting in their equal licks in the

  Arts. Art? Movies? Give me Capra, Zinneman, Stevens, Ford, Cukor, Hathaway,

  Fleming and pictures for Everybody. I don't dig Nichols, Altman, Last Tangos, porno

  or M.A.S.H. kind of films which entertains and helps nobody at all. And I've read more

  garbage about Brando's acting ability than they found rocks on the moon! What

  happened to March, Tracy, Robinson, Cagney, Muni, while all this great critiquing

  was going on? I'm not laughing, Noon. I'm crying."

  "I don't like it either," I admitted, "but you have to understand that---"

  "I don't have to understand anything." He had set his glass down, dwarfing it

  with his big hands and glaring at me in a very unfriendly way as if I was one of Them. A

  Critic. "Take Jane Fonda and Joan Baez. Admirable people in one way but in another,

  deadlier than nitro as influences on young minds. Why? Because they both speak and

  act as if the history of the world began on the date of their births. And how do you like

  the system of Homelies--Make-Out that makes stars out of the like of Dustin Hoffman

  and Elliot Gould? And a laugh riot out of a Woody Allen whose material is so derivative

  and negative as to be pure heisting. Groucho and Henry Morgan and a half dozen other

  guys ought to sue the desk out from under him. And then there's Dick Cavett---" "What about Dick Cavett?" I asked, unable to check the flood tide of his anger

  washing across the table of the booth.

  Marcel Alevoinne fixed me with two deadly, sad blue eyes.

  "When a man like a Clifford Irving, deadbeat and cheat, par Extraordinaire,

  gets ninety minutes of prime Time on TV with a fine person like Dick Cavett, and he is

  fine, Noon, and makes the cover of Time magazine, then is it any wonder that the

  Young of this old Country of ours, feel as they do and cheer the miserable personal

  performance of a Bobby Fisher? With mostly everyone being pragmatic now…the End

  justifies the Means…everybody thinks that way, now. And I hate it. And I hate critics

  who contribute to that climate by some boldly vague expertise that supposedly allow

  them to make judgments and set down the rules."

  "You know where I sta
nd," I sighed. "Bring back Gary Cooper. Up with Heroes.

  Down with Anti-Heroes. But nobody cares much about that any more. You know that

  too. So who's arguing?"

  "Ian Fleming," Marcel Alevoinne declared proudly, "once said in a Bond

  thriller--Life reads better than it lives---and he was so right. That is how it should be,

  really. Art is supposed to transform ugliness into beauty. Lies into Truth. But in our

  books, our films, our plays, and too much in the main, God help us, the Life doesn't

  read good at all." He slapped the top of the table with rapid-fire emphasis, fixing me

  with a glare. "How do you feel about Pauline Kael and Mordecai Richter?"

  "How am I supposed to feel?"

  "Mad as a bastard, Ace. They both seem to have built entire careers writing

  about things about which they have the most incredible opinions. Richter said Citizen Kane is 'without one quotable line'---I could quote at least a hundred worth remembering

  for him. La Kael got this beauty off--'it isn't a work of special depth'---Well, after those

  splendid gaffs, why go on? But oh how I'd like to tell them both that Kane, since

  'forty-one, has stayed in the heart, soul and mind for millions of people just because of

  the greatest possible depth in all the creative world. I mean---folks still want to know if

  Mr. Bernstein really loved Kane and why did Leland act the way he did and what if Kane

  had been poor---oh, good Christ, to dismiss 'rosebud' as a 'gimmick'---that was Kael's

  verdict, and call the film 'the most complete work of art ever to emerge out of

  Hollywood'---Mr. Richter, if you please---are the sort of lunatic, end-all statements that

  make the whole business of calling the shots for everybody else, dopey and idiotic.

  Where does such statements leave films like The Grapes of Wrath, Rebecca, The

  Informer, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington---name your own poison. But, oh hell, what

  should I expect from Kael? She's the lady who insisted that Japan's Magnificent Seven

  was the greatest battle epic since Birth Of A Nation and where does that leave---shall we

  say-All Quiet On The Western Front? And why does Orson Welles need any defense at

  all for Citizen Kane? Without him, no matter what Kael has dredged up in her book, the

  making of Kane would be like shooting Patton without the tanks." Sneering, he banged