Jane said, “I’ll call my dad and tell him I’ll be home late.”
Sol said, “_Border Patrol!_. . . . Riiiiiiight. . . .”
* * *
I zoomed by Googie’s and copped some bennies off Gene the Queen, this transvestite that deals shit from the men’s room. Va va voom!–I chased a handful with coffee and hit Sol’s warehouse hummingbird buzzed.
Sol and Jane filled their fuel tanks: Maxwell House, double x Benzedrine. Pencils, notebooks, the _Wetback!_ script to work from, go–
We changed heroic fruit picker Pedro to Big Pete–a Border Patrolman/accordionist hot to foil a Communist band exporting wetbacks to a secret slave labor camp in the Hollywood Hills. Big Pete is in love with torch singer Maggie Martell, formerly leftist earth mother Maria Martinez. Maggie is being pursued by evil scientist Dr. Bob Kruschev, who’s brainwashing the wetbacks and implanting slogan devices inside their heads. Big Pete/Maggie/Kruschev– a hot love triangle!!! Big Pete serenades illegals from the back of a truck; his accordion lures them into surrender and deportation! Kruschev sends his sloganeering robots into the bracero community, where they spout Commie rebop and corrupt a youth group that Big Pete has been indoctrinating into Americanism. The robots and corrupted youths advance on a Border Patrol station; Big Pete makes an impassioned anti-Red speech that instantly un-corrupts the young pachucos and inspires them to attack their corruptors. The robots are demolished; Dr. Bob Kruschev makes a last-ditch effort to corrupt Maggie with a pinko love potion that makes all Commies and fellow travelers irresistible! Maggie unknowingly drinks the evil brew and puts the make on a roomful of visiting Soviet spies! Big Pete arrives on the scene, lures the spies outside with accordion music and guns them down! The movie ends with a citizenship swear-in: all the wetbacks that fought the Reds are issued green cards!
We finished the script at 6:00 A.M.–Benzedrine blasted, exultant. Jane called her dad to say she was a movie star–Sol just offered her five hundred scoots to play Maggie Martell.
I wondered how “Dad” would react.
Jane cupped a whisper. “Dick, Dad wants to talk to you.”
I grabbed an extension; Jane hung up. DePugh came on the line. “I approve, Contino. But I want this Slotnick clown to up the payoff to _six_ hundred. Plus: no gratuitous cleavage during her nightclub scenes. Plus: no heavy make-out scenes with you. Plus: I say we tie the kidnapping in to the movie. I say we do it just as the movie starts shooting. I’ve got some Teamster guys to play the kidnappers, and I think you should audition them. Dick, this caper is tied to Janie’s career now, so I want to do this right. We want a realistic abduction backed by eyewitness testimony. We want–”
Rabid dog stage-daddy–whoa!
“We want–”
I said, “Dave, I’ll call you,” and hung up. Sol was taking his bennie-jacked pulse–at 209 when I walked over.
“Can you stand some more excitement?”
“Just barely. The way Jane re-wrote that love scene is gonna get us Auschwitz’d by the Legion of Decency.”
I whispered. “I’m getting kidnapped right before we start shooting. It’s a put-up job with some pro muscle working back-up.”
Sol whispered. “I like it, and you can count on me to keep mum. What about Jane as your co-victim? Add cheesecake to beefcake for a _real_ publicity platter.”
“That spot’s already filled.”
“Shit. Why are we whispering?”
“Because amphetamines induce paranoia.”
The warehouse door slid open; two pachucos struck lounging poses. Slit-bottom khakis, Sir Guy shirts–bantamweight punks on the stroll.
“Hey, Mr. Sol. You got trabajo?”
“When we get our movie work? Hey, Mr. Sol, what you got for us?”
Sol flipped. “I’m doing a new picture! No trabajo! No work! Get your green cards and you can play robots in _Border Patrol!_ Amscray! Get out of here, I’m having a heart attack!”
The punks split with middle finger farewells; Sol broke out the saltines, took his pulse and noshed simultaneously. My fair co-star: dozing in a Border Patrol car.
I walked outside for some air. _Heralds_ in a curbside newsrack– “New Whipcord Slayings!” on page one. Photos of the dead couple–the woman looked oddly like Chris Staples.