“Listen, Jimmy… they pull the plug and you’re liable to lose the baby with the bathwater. I’m referring to me, baby, in case you had any doubts…”
“Take it easy. I did a docudrama about a Chicago psychiatrist for CBS last year…”
I hadn’t heard the word docudrama before. I was looking at him with confusion. He understood my problem and said, “Fictionalized documentary. Semi-real. Touches truth in at least ten places. Anyhow…”
The babble was growing louder. The old, old woman was now silent, watching and listening. The thirty-year-old guy and the fifty-year-old guy were obviously on opposite sides of the question—whatever the question was—and I could see the crowd was about evenly divided. The older guy was with Mia, whatever she was proposing, and I had the certain feeling that if the thirty-year-old guy’s point of view prevailed, that this baby might go down the drain before Jimmy Stewart made one of his rare personal appearances.
“Are you listening to me?” Kerch demanded, squeezing my arm.
“No,” I whispered, “I’m listening to them. Somehow I get the feeling what they’re saying has more to do with my living to a dignified old age.”
“Just shut up and listen, for Christ’s sake!
“Marvin Ziporyn is his name… the psychiatrist. He’s the top shrink for the state. Works with the Cook County authorities. Concert violinist, big social mover, wrote a couple of books; he’s got access to Kup and the Mayor and everybody else.”
I was staring openly now. Hell, anybody could get to the Mayor; but access to Irv Kupcinet, the columnist; well, that was the Big Time.
“So?”
“So I call Marvin, tell him what I’m into, get him to contact Kup, who’ll love it a lot. They pull in a few of the local squires and top cossacks… and Mia and the crowd remand themselves into proper custody.”
“Before Jimmy Stewart breaks in…”
“Right, right.”
“I’ll meet you at the car. Thank the old lady for the bread.” I started toward the door. The thirty-year-old guy erupted from his seat and if there was anything else in that lousy kitchen but the gigantic. 45 in his hairy paw, I didn’t see it. There is a quality about blue-steel gunmetal that gathers all light in a room; like a black diamond.
He was pointing it at me.
I grinned stupidly, placed both palms against the air and tittered like the village idiot. He seemed somewhat mollified and the barrel of the automatic lowered to the vicinity of my crotch. For a moment there it had been like staring into the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, only bigger.
“Damn it, Larry, stop acting like a schmuck. Let Mia handle it. “.
“Her name isn’t Mia.”
“Whatever her name is; let her handle it.”
So I stood there with him, leaning against the wall, for the better part of an hour while the Sanhedrin decided my fate.
Sometime during that hour I asked him, “Who’s Vic Lamont?”
He said, “Who?”
I said, “Vic Lamont.”
He said, “Never heard of him.”
I said, “Will Laurie marry him?”
He said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I said, “Will Laurie marry Vic Lamont; will Cookie go crazy; will Simon Somebody-or-other kill Orin Hillyer; will Adam Something-or-other fall in love with Nicole?”
He stared at me.
“The old lady seemed miffed I didn’t know the answers,” I whispered.
He thought about it a minute. Then he said, “The Edge of Night. It’s a soap opera.”
I said, “Why me?”
He said. “Because you’re with me, and Mia told them I’m a famous television writer, and that means you’re a famous television writer, and that means you know what happens to all those characters in the soap operas, because they’re not characters, they’re real people, and I suppose when you’re on the lam the only consistency in your life is the surrogate life of people in soap operas. What’d you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.”
He said, “How’d she take it?”
I said, “Not terrific.”
He nodded, thought about it a minute, then called Mia over. He took her aside, whispered at her for a little while, then sent her back to the table. She bent down over the old, old woman, whispered in her ear for a while longer, and when she straightened up the old, old woman was grinning wide as a death’s head. Her mouth was a classic argument for compulsory remedial orthodontia.
Whatsername sat down and smiled, waiting.
Then the old, old woman said something sharp and hard. In Hungarian. Everybody shut up and stared at her. Then she said something else, not quite as sharp and hard, and the thirty-year-old guy packing the Holland Tunnel bowed his thorny head, nodded in supplication, and murmured words of acquiescence.
The fifty-year-old spoke rapidly to the Ghost of Mia Past, every once in a while pointing at Jimmy or me, or Jimmy and me. Once, damned sure, he was making a threat; and once, damned certain, he was giving warning. She nodded, said okay okay okay every few sentences, added a thought here and there and, finally, it all seemed settled.
She got up, came over to us, and said, “All set. Do your stuff, Kerch.”
He gave her a little kiss and started toward the old black two-handed pedestal telephone on the kitchen counter. I asked the Memory of Mia, “What’s all set?”
She patted me on the cheek and answered, “They’re not going to cut you into small pieces and leave you in garbage cans all over the South Side.” Then she went away, to join my best friend, Kercher Oliver James Crowstairs, who had brought me along into the jaws of death on a “dangerous mission of research.”
It was not till a week later, after the gypsy bank robbers had given themselves up with attendant headlines and photos of Jimmy leading them out of the tenement into the waiting arms of Irv Kupcinet, the Mayor of Chicago and the bureau Chief of the Midwest Regional FBI office (not to mention several thousand cops and G-Men armed for the apocalypse), that Kerch bothered to tell me that what had saved our lives was Mia’s imparting to her dear old Granny the information that I was a close family friend of everyone on The Edge of Night and that when (or if) Granny ever got sprung from the federal slam, I would introduce her to Laurie, Vic Lamont, Simon Jessup, Orin Hillyer, Cookie, Nicole and Adam Drake, whoever the hell they were!
“My name is Kercher O. J. Crowstairs,” said the Kercher O. J. Crowstairs three times life-size on the screen before us. The camera pulled back into a medium shot and Jimmy up there whipped open the wallet lying on the desk. He pulled out a sheaf of cards and held the first one up to the camera, which obligingly zoomed in for a closeup. Jimmy’s voice, off-camera, said, “ And this is my driver’s license, issued by the state of California. You’ll notice it has a rather unflattering photograph of me right here in the lower left-hand corner, which will identify me as the one and only K. O. J. Crowstairs, your friendly neighborhood testator.”
The camera had slowly pulled back to include the attorney, Kenneth L. Gross. He was making a small moue at Jimmy’s levity. The moue became a stricture as Jimmy held up one card after another:
“And this is my BankAmericard/Visa card; and this is my Master Charge card; and this is my Diners Club card, but I don’t use it much; and this is my Carte Blanche; and this one will rent me a Hertz, and this one an Avis, and this one will get me a tacky room in any Holiday Inn across the face of the Earth; and this one is for Neiman-Marcus, and this one is for good old Bloomingdale’s, and…”
He must have caught the strangled moan from Gross, because he stopped. He dropped the rest of the thick pack of cards, and looked into the camera.
“Look: we’re doing this videotape so no one, and that means no one will be able to raise the question of my competency after I’ve croaked. By competency they mean was I of sound mind and body, and under no duress, such as being held captive by the Symbionese Liberation Army. But if I played it absolutely straight, and didn’t laugh at all this somber bullshit, then anyone who’s known me more than ten minutes would suspect I was out of my skull.