Читать книгу Glory Boys - Harry Bingham - Страница 13

The cigar smoke hung blue-grey in the projector beam. The first reel snickered to an end and the screen filled with light. Willard jumped up to change the reel.

‘That dame,’ said Ted Powell, prodding the air with his cigar, looking every inch like the Wall Streeter that he was. ‘Is she meant to be the same as the first one?’

‘Brunhilde Schulz? O’Hara?’

‘Blondie back there. The one who just got kidnapped by the bank robbers.’

‘O’Hara quit on us. Right in the middle of filming. Breach of contract. We found a girl who looked OK from a distance, but all the close-ups are of O’Hara.’

‘Is that why the backgrounds are funny?’

‘They’re not that funny.’ Willard fiddled the second reel into place, poking the fragile celluloid through the little rollers. The lamp inside the projector was burning hot and the whole apparatus was scorching to the touch. ‘Ow! Here. You’ll like this next bit.’

The next bit was the skyscraper scene.

‘That’s me in the plane. I did this stunt myself.’

‘Funny place to park an airplane.’

Willard and the girl who really was O’Hara bounded out onto the roof. They looked dramatic – tragic – resolute. Then they bounded into the plane. The next shot had the propeller whirling and Willard clenching the muscles in his jaw.

‘Plane that starts itself,’ commented Powell. ‘Nice.’

‘She’s only a Gallaudet and she didn’t start herself. We’re doing things cheap here, Powell. Cheap as we can without … without…’

‘I was kidding, Will. And call me Ted.’

The plane rolled to the edge of the building, then plunged out of view. The next shot, taken from a neighbouring rooftop, showed the little Gallaudet dive nose-first for the ground. After falling ten or twelve storeys, the nose had come up and levelled out. There was another close-up of the hero: resolute – victorious – defiant. Then a shot of the Gallaudet flying out of sight, while a group of hoodlums poured out onto the roof and began shaking their fists at the sky.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Powell.

‘Pretty good stunt, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like you just fell clean off the edge.’

‘We did just fall.’

‘Something wrong with the airplane?’

‘No. It’s a question of air speed. You have to build speed before you can climb. And it was a dive, not a fall. Saying “fall” makes it sound bad.’

‘I saw a picture recently where they pulled a stunt like that.’

‘Breaking Free. They had it in Breaking Free.’

‘Yeah, maybe. Only there, the airplane flew, it didn’t just fall. You sure your plane was OK?’

‘They had a catapult. We thought about using a catapult, only it wouldn’t have been very realistic.’

‘Realistic…?’

The two men watched in silence to the end of the reel. They watched the girl be captured twice more by the hoodlums and be rescued back both times. The best stunt showed the girl being snatched by an airplane from a speeding car. The girl didn’t look too much like O’Hara and the pilot didn’t look too much like Willard, but it was a good stunt all the same.

The second reel snickered to its close. Willard got up again, tweaking the cuffs of his shirt from his jacket sleeve so they showed up better. He’d just spent four hundred bucks on a set of silver cuff-links and it annoyed him when they didn’t show. Powell stood up to flex his back. The cigar smoke filled the room like a migraine.

‘How’s distribution coming along? If I was going to be picky about it, I’d have to remind you that your first repayments were due last week.’

‘Distribution?’ said Willard. ‘Don’t you even want the third reel?’

‘Oh, there’s more? Sure…’

The reel ran on in ugly silence. Willard watched it with new eyes and found himself hating every frame of it. A picture of class, indeed! The picture was pitiful, truly pitiful.

He owed Ted Powell one hundred and ninety-four thousand bucks.