The Man Who Died Laughing Read Free Page B

distinguished.”
    “Like I said, what made you think of me?”
    “Stop it, Hoagy. Want to meet him?”
    “I don’t think so. I’m no ghostwriter.”
    “I know. But this might be just the thing to get you started really writing again. It’ll get you out of the house, give you some focus. And it won’t be hard work. All you have to do is sit by his pool for a couple of months with a tape recorder. You can even leave your name off. What do you think?”
    I wavered. Sonny Day wanted America’s sympathy and understanding. Sonny Day wanted to be loved again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to help him. He was pretty much my idea of a pig. I also wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a ghost. Ignore the blurbs on the book jackets—there’s no such thing as an honest memoir. There’s only the celebrity subject’s own memory, and while memory doesn’t exactly lie, it does preserve, protect, and defend against all painful truths. The ghost is brought in to make the celebrity’s writing style, anecdotes, and various uplifting personal revelations seem candid and authentic, even if they aren’t. The ghost also has to make the celebrity feel good about the book so that he or she or it will go on tour to promote it and the publisher will have some hope of breaking even on its seven-figure investment. I’d always equated ghosting with prostate trouble—I never thought it would happen to me. I wasn’t even sure I could pull it off. I’m not very good with people. I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to be around them. I’m also not very good at telling my ego to go on vacation. Actually, I tell it just fine, but it refuses to listen to me.
    But it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I was on a first-name basis with the Ty-D-Bol man. I was desperate. So I told my agent it was okay to send Sonny a copy of Our Family Enterprise. She said she’d messenger it right over to the Essex House. Sonny was in town to roast Mickey Rooney.
    “What could it hurt?” she said.
    “What could it hurt?” I agreed.

CHAPTER TWO
    L ULU AND I FLEW OUT to L.A. three days later. We rode first class. No matter what Sonny’s financial situation was like, he always went first class. Lulu even got her own seat next to me, though she had to stay in her carrier. It wasn’t much of a flight. The food was gluey, the stewardess ornery. Clouds covered the entire Midwest. Flying just doesn’t seem as exciting as it used to be. But then nothing in the world does, except maybe baseball.
    I spent most of the flight reading You Are the One, a gossipy, unauthorized biography of “those fun-loving, swinging partners who kept the fifties laughing.” It had been written in the late sixties and was filled with the ego clashes, feuds, and jealousy that went on between Gabe and Sonny. There were lots of stories about money and how they blew it. Like how they went out and bought matching red Cadillac convertibles with their first big money—and paid for them with ten-dollar bills. Like how Sonny owned as many as five hundred pairs of shoes at a time and gave them away as soon as he’d worn each pair once. Mostly, I was interested in the reason the writer gave for The Fight. His theory was that Sonny, who was a compulsive gambler, owed somebody a lot of money and used the team as a kind of promissory note—forcing Gabe to work with him at a mob-owned Las Vegas casino for no money or be blackballed.
    That didn’t sound right to me. Maybe something like that had happened, but I didn’t think it was why they fought. For one thing, that sort of dealing goes on all the time in entertainment business. Merilee told me stories about Broadway you wouldn’t believe. Partners wouldn’t roll around on the rug at Chasen’s over something like that.
    The other reason I didn’t think it was true was that Sonny wouldn’t be coming forward now with what actually was true.
    I had a job ahead of me. It wasn’t a particularly dignified one, but if I didn’t do it well, I’d