Page 58 of His Girl Hollywood
“You promise not to misbehave?” Frankie sneered and the man holding Don chuckled, his laugh like the growl of a boat’s engine.
Don swallowed his fear and rolled his eyes. “I’m not a child.”
“Funny.” Frankie laughed. “Because I hear you’ve been acting like one. An ungrateful one.” Frankie waved his hand and the goon dropped his arms. Don rolled back his shoulders, making sure everything still worked right. His neck was sore from the way the man had wrenched his arms back, but it wasn’t anything permanently damaging.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Don had been caught red-handed, but Frankie was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He preferred brawn to brains as a persuasive technique. If he kept playing dumb, maybe he could convince Frankie that Eleanor had been hysterical and Robert had it all wrong.
“You don’t? Let me jog your memory. Boys.”
One of the goons grabbed Don’s arms again, and the other one punched him square in the gut, making him double over. “That ring any bells?”
Don shook his head.
“Well, maybe a black eye might help.”
The goon slugged Don again, this time in the face. He’d closed his eyes in time with Frankie’s warning, but the blow still smarted. Don knew his eye would be swollen in the morning. If not also bright purple. Still, he said nothing. If he admitted wrongdoing now, he was a goner.
Frankie grabbed his chin and lifted his head, leering at him. “Still no idea why I might be here? Why I might’ve needed to make an emergency trip to Hollywood?”
“Something happen with one of your racehorses?”
Frankie didn’t appreciate his goods talking back to him. He gripped Don’s jaw even harder, twisting Don’s face to let the streetlight in the alley illuminate first his nose and then his mouth. “What do you think, boys? Will Hollywood still want their new golden boy with a broken nose and some missing teeth?” The goons chuckled ominously. “If that doesn’t help him remember, there’s always his legs.”
Don groaned. His legs. His feet. They were all he had. If he couldn’t dance, he was nothing. “All right, all right, I know why you’re here.”
“Because you were two-timing me,” Frankie spat out. “Imagine how I felt when I heard that my little Donnie, who was nothing until I found him hoofing in a downtown dive, was planning to run out on me when he was about to make good.”
“I wasn’t—”
Frankie backhanded him, the oversized diamond in his ring scraping at Don’s cheek as it made contact with his face. “Don’t lie to me.”
“You were still gonna get your money.” Don struggled to get the words out, the throb behind his eye and the sting in his cheek a distraction. “I wasn’t gonna welch on our deal. I would’ve bought you out.”
“Why would I want the pittance of what’s left on our contract when I could have so much more?”
Don didn’t answer.
“You’re about to be the biggest star in Hollywood, and it’s because of me.”
“It’s not.” Frankie slapped him again. This time on the other cheek, sending Don’s head winging in the opposite direction. But Don couldn’t help himself. “You want to take credit for discovering me? Opening some doors? Fine. But you haven’t earned anything through an honest day’s work in your life. You used me. And Eleanor. It was our talent, our dancing that got you money and power. We’re the biggest gravy train you’ve ever managed to catch a ride on. Now that we’ve wised up enough to want out, you don’t like the idea of watching us walk off into the sunset, leaving you in the dust.”
Frankie came so close to Don’s face that their noses were almost touching. “You’d be nothing without me,” he sneered. “Just a putz who stank like the fishing boat you crawled off of. No matter how many society dames you slept with, no amount of perfume would’ve covered your stench the day I found you. Your daddy hated you, was ashamed of you. And he should’ve been. Little twinkle toes. Too bad he didn’t figure out he could make some dough off of those pretty little feet. He might’ve loved you then.”
Don spat at Frankie’s feet, a trickle of blood coming from his mouth. The last blow had sliced the inside of his cheek against his molars. But it was the mention of his father’s disdain for him that hurt. “It’s you who’d be nothing without me. That’s why you’re here. Because you know it’s true. You know that if I go, you’ll lose everything.”
Frankie poked his finger into Don’s chest. “Wrong! I’m here toget what I’m owed. And that’s sixty percent of whatever contract this Evets character signs you to. In perpetuity.”
“I owe you nothing. I’ve paid my dues twelve times over.”
Frankie’s eyes gleamed with a gleeful malice. “Besides, I’ve been thinking I could use a little sunshine. I hear there’s money to be made here.”
Don laughed. “Los Angeles is Jack Dragna’s territory. You think he’s gonna let you move in on it? You’ll be at the bottom of Santa Monica Bay before you can blink twice.”
“Dragna owes my boss a little favor,” Frankie said as he smiled, and it was a more horrifying sight than any of his sneers or pugilistic grandstanding.
“Good. Stay in Los Angeles for all I care. But I’m done. I’ll finish out my contract, pay you what I owe you, and we’re through.”
“I thought you might say that.” A car drove down the alley and the lights that hit the wall cast an eerie shadow over Frankie’s face, making it look like a skull. Don suppressed a shiver.