“It helps me clear my head. Look, Harry, I’m sure you didn’t call to discuss my swimming habits. What have I done now?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing new anyway. But you and I both know you’re not exactly a Boy Scout.”
“Would never pretend to be. What’s your point?”
Harry sighed heavily on the other end of the line, and Flynn could tell he was not going to like the answer. “Well, Flynn, we have a problem. The Legion of Decency and the Hays Code office are breathing down my neck.”
Flynn chuckled. “Those old ninnies. They’ve got their legs crossed so tight that not even sunlight can get through. Tell them you’ll say a couple Hail Marys and be done with them.”
Harry barked out a hoarse laugh and cleared his throat. “Old ninnies they may be, but our pictures live and die by their seal of approval. And it seems they’ve got a laundry list of your exploits that they object to.”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them all written in one place before. Could you send me a copy?” Hugh came back out from the house with a cup of steaming hot coffee and Flynn’s black book and that morning’s papers tucked under his arm. Flynn nodded at the table, gesturing for Hugh to set them all down. He sipped at his coffee and let the caffeinated elixir warm him from the inside. He started to leaf through the pages of his book, only half listening to Harry.
“It seems,” Harry continued, ignoring Flynn’s interjection, “that they’ve decided you are not a good role model for impressionable Americans.”
“Who ever said there was any fun in being a role model?”
“Would you let me finish?” Harry spluttered. “I’m not enjoying this any more than you are.”
“On the contrary, I’m enjoying it immensely.” Flynn looked through the double-paned glass window shaped like an arch and saw Hugh standing in the kitchen. He was holding up eggs, as if to ask how many Flynn wanted. “Two,” Flynn shouted out.
“Two what?” Harry growled.
“Not you, I’m talking to Hugh.”
“I know life is a grand joke to you, but I assure you this is no laughing matter.” There was a gravity in Harry’s voice, a sternness that Flynn had never heard before. Not even when he had received his worst tongue-lashing, for scuttling an old-fashioned pirate ship they’d filmed on when he’d decided to take it out for a drunken evening sail. Harry’s tone made him sit up straighter in his chair, the suffusion of comfort and warmth the coffee had supplied gone in an instant.
“Harry, you’re acting like someone’s died,” he said.
“Your career will be in significant rigor mortis by next week if you don’t listen to me and do exactly as I say.”
“Okay, fine, fine, what do they want?”
“As I was saying, the Legion of Decency and, by extension, the Production Code Administration are concerned about your effect on the youth of this country. The PCA office has informed me that they will refuse to give a seal of approval to any of your films unless you prove you’ve turned over a new leaf.”
“Ah, come off it, Harry. Don’t let them threaten you. Joan confessed to a room full of people and to anyone listening on the radio that she’d made a stag film. I don’t see you calling her up to read her the riot act for violating the Hays Code.”
“Joan has also not made a picture since that night,” Harry replied coldly. “We mutually agreed it was best that she take a year or two off and give people time to forget. She’s enjoying her new life as a married woman. I have no doubt that when we do find her next project, it’ll take a lot of favors with Will Hays and his cronies to get them to even review it before condemning it outright.”
Flynn swallowed. Harry was right. He knew Joan hadn’t been working. But the truth was she hadn’t seemed to mind. She’d made a choice and she stood by it. Meanwhile, Flynn was being forced into whatever this was against his will. “I haven’t had my name in the police blotter or the front of the gossip pages for at least a month. Isn’t that a sign that I’ve sprouted some fresh greenery?”
“I take it you haven’t seen the morning papers.”
“No, I haven’t.” Flynn didn’t make a habit of reading the papers. They usually only contained bad news. But he did subscribe to them, and Hugh had laid theExamineron the table next to Flynn’s coffee. The headline on the front page was about the election of a new mayor. “I hardly see what that has to do—”
“Does the name Rhonda Powers mean anything to you?”
Flynn’s heart sank. What had the dizzy dame done? Flynn slept around. That was no secret. But he’d never gone to bed witha girl who hadn’t made it quite explicit that she wanted him. And he always took safety precautions—getting a girl pregnant would not exactly do wonders for his reputation.
“I take it your silence means her name is familiar to you.”
“Sure. I know the girl. I met her once.I kissed her in the garden at one of Joan and Dash’s house parties. I know plenty of dames a lot better than her, if you take my meaning.” Flynn thought he could hear Harry roll his eyes through the phone.
“That may be, but she’s claiming otherwise. Quite loudly, in fact.” Flynn pulled the copy of the paper toward him and unfolded it, catching a small bold-font headline above his picture, just below the centerfold.Flynn Banks Jilts Aspiring Starlet, it read. The story detailed Rhonda’s account of her and Flynn’s fly-by-night romance—a tale of love at first sight at a Hollywood party, their rushed secret engagement, and him jilting her at the altar.
Flynn snorted. “Harry, this is poppycock. Leda Price is losing her edge.”
“You know very well that no one in Hollywood has seen hide nor hair of Leda Price since the night Joan and Dash won their Oscars. I told Harold at theExaminerif I ever so much as caught a glimpse of one of her feathered hats sniffing around the studio again, I would buy the paper with the express intention of sending it into bankruptcy. He apparently values his job, because she’s been ‘on leave’ ever since. And since Joan and Dash robbed her of blackmail fodder, she has no leverage to crawl out of some other hole.”
