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story was.
    Chuckie saw the duct-tape caper as a high-angle crane shot, with a slow pan down, then a 120-frame hold on the mummified victim before the cut.
    When Jacob King was killed, his left eye was blown out of itssocket and landed on the unfinished portrait he was having painted of himself. Like a piece of snot, Chuckie said about the eyeball. Jacob was wearing jodhpurs in the portrait and laced boots and a beige silk shirt and a polka-dot ascot. Yet another indication of the mileage from Red Hook he had put on his psychic pedometer.
    Or perhaps he was only traveling in place. On a treadmill with a fancier wardrobe.
    It was said that Blue bought the portrait after Jacob King was killed. In any event, it disappeared.
    Chuckie said that Jacob always carried a silver Tiffany locket in which he kept two of Blue’s pubic hairs. Why just two? I said. Why not one? Or one short-and-curly for every time he fucked her? They couldn’t have taken up all that much room. It wasn’t like it was a load of hay.
    These were the sorts of questions I always asked. Chuckie would never answer, but would just go off on another tangent about someone else. About Blue’s lawyer, Lilo Kusack, and Lilo’s girlfriend, Rita Lewis. About J. F. French. The Mogul. Founder of Cosmopolitan Pictures. J. F. French claimed to have personally discovered Blue Tyler when she was only four years old. Arthur French figured in Chuckie’s reminiscences, too. Arthur was J.F.’s son and Blue’s designated fiancé when she was under contract to Cosmopolitan. Chuckie saw the whole story as a movie, when his mind stopped wandering. It will be my comeback picture, he said. And then he would say, Doesn’t it bother you the way these vile children directors say
film
? We made
pictures
. Adding after a moment, “I sound like some faggot female impersonator doing Norma Desmond.”
    I was surprised at how many people turned out for Chuckie’s funeral. All the oldtimers who were still around, and for whom a funeral was an outing, many of them with canes and walkers and private nurses. In the end he was one of them, whatever his transgressions; membership in the closed society of the motion picture industry is almost never revoked for moral failings.
    Of course Chuckie had scripted the service, down to the musiccues. He wanted a bugler to blow the Marine Corps hymn at his graveside, slow tempo, “From the halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli,” and then a segue into taps. Even from beyond the grave the
fageleh
son of a bitch was manipulating me, and I cried, as I knew I was meant to. And through the tears I remembered the day the story began.
    The day Lizzie died.

J ACK

WALTER SCOTT’S
PERSONALITY PARADE
    Want the facts? Opinion? Truth? Write Walter Scott, Box 9277, Beverly Hills, California, or phone (213) 555-2121. Full name will be used unless otherwise requested. Volume of mail makes personal replies impossible.
    Q .
I’m interested in former child star Baby Blue Tyler, who I think I went to grade school with in Fontana, California, way back when. I heard she has fallen on bad times. Is it true that she is a homeless bag lady in the Midwest with a criminal record?—Altula Bell, Shoshone, California
.
    A . Blue Tyler, born Myrna Marie Toolate (pronounced Too-lah-tee) in San Bernardino, California, April 28, 1928, was Hollywood’s top child star and number-one box office draw from 1936 to 1938, and thereafter was in the top ten until she left Hollywood in 1951 after being identified as a Communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Her many hits included
Little Sister Susan, Carioca Carnival
, and
Lily of the Valley
. While in her teens, Tyler had a relationship with famous hoodlum Jacob King (born Jacob Kinovsky), who in 1948 was rubbed out at his palatial Las Vegas hotel, King’s Playland, reputedly by Mob cohorts angered by the mobster’sflamboyant style. After Hollywood, Tyler made movies in Italy, then was briefly a nightclub