Ugly Money

‘It’s OK. Better than this asshole city ever was, even in its good days.’

A local girl. Portland, Oregon. She could hardly believe how much she’d managed to discover in so short a time. Jack Adams’ first movie had been something about a wagon, about pioneers coming to the West. An arty failure. This pathetic woman had played the daughter, and her mother, the local girl, had been given a bit part. How come? Obvious – she’d been an actress up there in Portland; sometimes she spoke about acting on the stage, but she had never done it in LA, therefore it must have been in Portland. And if the wagon movie was being made on a small budget they would have depended on local talent, would have visited the theaters to find it, had found Ruth Shallon.

And when shooting was finished she had left Oregon to come to LA – to hide her pregnancy? – just another out-of-town girl trying to make the big time; and Julie Wrenn had introduced her to the VanBuren Agency. How did things then stand between the young actress and the young director?

Sitting there in that dreadful desolate patio, Marisa realized what thin, thin ice they’d been walking on, those two loved people. As a child of Hollywood she knew very well what would have happened if the media had caught the faintest whiff of what was going on. Young actress, pregnant by another man, sets her sights on up-and-coming young director and brings it off. The fact that this not-unheard-of scenario sounded laughable when applied to Ruth and Jack made her suddenly proud of them. Perhaps, unknown to her, pride was the first step in coming to terms with the hurtful truth.

Yet even while she thought of them with pride and love, that determination still urged her on: she must talk to her true father, she must ‘feel his genes’ in her; that was her way towards the light at the end of the tunnel, the light in which she would find peace and happiness again.

But right now she knew that she had to keep Oregon in Julie Wrenn’s mind, or vodka would take over, destroying the whole chain of thought: a rusty chain, many links no doubt missing. She said, ‘Pity the movie was a bummer. But it must have been a fun location.’

The eyes which were raised to hers already had that soggy, dulled look. ‘What location? Oh … Portland.’ The regard sharpened somewhat. ‘Hooked on that, aren’t you? What are you after?’

‘I thought … thought maybe I could find a couple of Mom’s old buddies from up there. For the birthday thing.’ She could see that this detail had also been forgotten. ‘You know – like I told you …’

‘Oh sure, This is Your Life.’

‘People she hadn’t seen for years – that would really be a surprise, wouldn’t it?’

A sly glance. ‘Too much maybe.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Could dig up the wrong ones, couldn’t you? Old boyfriends. Your dad wouldn’t like that.’

Marisa’s heart lurched. Her mouth seemed to have dried up. She couldn’t find words to unearth this buried gold; managed, ‘Oh. I hadn’t … thought of that. How would I know?’

‘For a start, honey, you can avoid the name Hartman.’

‘Was that … a boyfriend?’

‘The boyfriend, I heard tell.’ She waved her glass, vodka and orange slurping. ‘Oh Christ, I’m being a bitch. Who knows, who cares? It was a thousand years ago; it’s her business, not mine, not yours.’

Marisa’s heart was thudding so hard that it seemed to be shaking her whole body. Hartman – it might be exactly her business. ‘Was he … ? I mean, was he a serious boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know. Rich as hell … Forget it.’ She reached for her jug of orange juice and managed to change the subject with an almost audible grinding of gears. ‘Matter of fact, your mom and I did another movie together. Down in New Mexico, what’s the place called, hell hole? Stranger in Town, good movie. Harold Gage directed …’ Marisa could see that the oracle had no intention of returning to Oregon. And she’d better get away before all kinds of random reminiscences began piling up like rush-hour traffic, the way they did at her parents’ dinner parties. But in fact New Mexico had been a small bonus – she’d been born in New Mexico: Santa Fe.

In reply to her polite thanks and goodbye, Julie Wrenn merely nodded, at the same time refilling her glass. Marisa went home, clutching her golden nugget: Hartman – the boyfriend. What next? A year ago she might have gone storming up to Portland right away, but at the ripe age of seventeen she took a shower, lay on her bed for a while, and came to the conclusion that some kind of confirmation was called for. Ruth had never mentioned the Oregon connection; this in itself was a negative confirmation – she’d hardly mention it if she had things to hide.

Marisa rolled off her bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and went down the hall to the small room known as Mother’s Den. Mother was out, Marisa had checked the cars. The room was cool and pleasant, facing north. A Japanese couple were teetering at the top of the steep bank which fell away from the Adams property; they were trying to get the ‘Hollywood’ sign behind their heads before their friends took the photograph. If they weren’t careful they’d go slithering down the crumbling hillside and find themselves at the mercy of spiny yucca, all kinds of cruel thorns, maybe poison oak.

In the bottom drawer of Ruth’s desk there was a pretty red and gold book which came out of hiding in November: ‘Christmas Cards’. Only three days ago Marisa would never have dreamed of poking around among her mother’s private belongings. She thumbed through the neat pages and almost immediately stumbled over Koskela, Beth, who lived in Beaverton, an extension of Portland, Oregon; and here were Greg and Kathy Nelson of Oregon City, no less; and here also was Lina Thomassen of Eugene, Oregon. (And yes, of course, here was her one-time Uncle Will: a long list of deleted addresses, a wanderer over the face of the earth: at present roosting in Astoria, Oregon – maybe he’d be getting a visitor before very long.) She found several more Oregon addresses – no other state was so well represented; the name, Hartman, was conspicuous by its absence – not a negative omission, in Marisa’s opinion, but a positive one. So Julie Wrenn’s bibulous evidence was partly confirmed, the Oregon connection certainly existed.

What next? Next she called her friend Nick Deering, and got an earful.

Her friend Nick Deering pushed his plate away – they’d both eaten two enormous helpings of pasta – and said, ‘I’ll say she got a earful, why not?’ He was a good listener, rare at any age, even more so at seventeen, and only spoke when he had something to add, as now: ‘For God’s sake. I’d called her a hundred times, I was shit scared. I mean, this was Saturday, and on Thursday night she’d been next thing to suicidal.’

‘Thursday night seemed like another world.’

‘Great. All you had to do was tell me.’

She put a hand over his. ‘I’m sorry.’ Nick looked at me. ‘Then she calls and says she has to go up to Oregon.’

‘And he shouts Oregon as if I’d said Botswana.’

‘Sure. I thought you’d gone crazy – with school starting Monday and both of us supposed to get top grades.’

I grabbed this one: ‘Yes, what about school? I’m a dad from way back, remember? It’s been worrying me.’

Marisa nodded. ‘Worries me too.’

‘Considering what your folks pay,’ said Nick, ‘it should.’ And to me, ‘I’m good old Hollywood High, pushers’ paradise.’ He looked as if he could take it. Ruth and Jack wouldn’t even consider it for their daughter; they reckoned just growing up was a big enough problem for a girl without that; and anyway they had the money for a private education. I knew it was no time to be going on about school; I said, ‘So where are we now? Day before yesterday, right?’

Nick replied, ‘Right – Saturday evening. We started north on Sunday. Had to wait until her folks were out of the way.’

‘Brunch,’ added Marisa. ‘All that poolside crap, out at Bel Air. They weren’t surprised I wouldn’t go, I never do. So we started late and had to spend Sunday night in Medford. Hit Portland around noon today.’

‘Hit being operative,’ said Nick. ‘Or did it hit us?’

Marisa had been sure that as soon as she saw the Portland phone directory she’d find her Hartman; she was wrong. Several Hartmans, yes, but their addresses didn’t add up to being ‘rich as hell’, Julie Wrenn’s words.

Nick said, ‘Figures. Rich-as-hell people have unlisted numbers.’

They had brooded over this for a while. He was all for continuing their journey to Astoria, finding not-Uncle Will and enlisting his help; she, spurred by her ‘Sherlocking’ successes in LA, felt that a little application, a little tenacity, would still lead them to a male Hartman who was not only rich but about the right age to have been her mother’s lover seventeen years before. What age? Probably older than Ruth who had been twenty-four; maybe a man of around thirty, now around forty-seven.

It was when even Marisa had all but abandoned hope – when they were driving through downtown Portland to pick up Interstate 5 – that they both saw it, at exactly the same moment: ‘Hartman’, written house-high in aggressive steel lettering against the sky: a big new building, some twenty-five floors of it, dominating its neighbors with self-assured power. The surprise made them both laugh; Marisa said, ‘There he is, that’s him!’

They parked opposite the building – no easy task: it took a half-hour and involved four circuits of the downtown area – then walked across the street to look at it. A palatial sweep of steps led up to massive steel doors, six of them, which flashed in the sun every time anyone went in or out. Beyond the doors was an enormous atrium carpeted in acres of scarlet, and on either side of them were two ever-changing display systems which informed the world that Hartman was transportation, including airlines; was oil; was hydroelectric power; was software and timber, steel and mining, hotels and real estate. While they were staring, a group of young men in suits emerged from the place laughing and joshing; some of them went across the street to Steve’s Espresso. Marisa and Nick followed. Unsurprisingly, she never has difficulty in finding young men who are happy to talk to her. One, Adrian, natty in dark gray with a subdued tie, junior exec, personified, proved to be a mine of information. Oh God, yes, Hartman was money all right; Hartman had been money around here for a hundred and fifty years. Those goodies shown on the display were only the tip of the iceberg – OK, call it the acceptable tip – you could add anything you cared to think of and you’d probably be right.

It appeared that the existing Hartman wasn’t too interested in the source of his wealth, hardly ever put in an appearance over the road. But that was what big money was for, wasn’t it? The ultimate liberating factor. Clearly young Adrian himself couldn’t wait for the seniority which would ultimately liberate him. Right now he had to go, business was business, but (a cautious glance at Nick, twice his size) if Marisa wanted to know more they could meet some evening … Marisa hugged Nick’s arm and said she was sorry, that wouldn’t be possible. The junior exec, personified withdrew.

She said, ‘I’m going in there. I’ve a hunch we’ve hit the jackpot.’

Nick was less sure. ‘What are you going to say?’

‘Final year’s project – big business, how it works. What better place to find out than Hartman Inc.?’

He said, as he’d said many times before, ‘Marisa, think first for Christ’s sake.’

‘No. Sound, camera, action!‘

‘You have to be kidding.’

‘Watch me.’

And watch he did, as she crossed the street, stood gazing at one of the displays until a gaggle of secretaries approached the doors, then joined them and disappeared from sight. Nick knew that he tended to be overly cautious by nature, but he couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

Inside the atrium, which seemed to stretch upwards to infinity, Marisa trekked across a mile of scarlet carpet until she reached the information desk. To the expertly painted lady behind it she explained this pregraduation project which was so important to her final grades: an in-depth portrait of big business doing its thing. So, nothing ventured nothing gained, she immediately thought of Hartman – why not aim for the top, right? Why not even try to get fifteen minutes with boss Hartman himself?