The Resurrection of Frank Borchard

1

On Friday at eleven a.m., forty-one hours before Frank Lyman Borchard died, he sat in his leather chair in his big air-conditioned office on the studio lot and suddenly realized that he had been found out.

It had been a strange morning for a Friday, unusually quiet with few telephone calls important enough for Phyllis to put through to him, though the line buttons had been flashing busily. He’d even had time to read two new first-draft scripts without interruption, and that was setting a record. But the burst of insight came abruptly when he found himself complacently thinking that, after five years as executive producer, things were smoothing out, the series was finally running like the well-oiled machine he’d tried to make it.

He wanted to think he was the linchpin that kept the wheel rolling, being a combination King Solomon, circus ringmaster, chain gang boss and father confessor to the submarginal types that populated the small world that the series was. But experience, reason and intuition told him no series suddenly and miraculously takes to running itself. What had really happened was that the studio had discovered his plans to abandon it to make his own feature, and all personnel had been told to ignore him, which was why he was feeling like a machine that somebody had forgot to plug in.

Sic semper tyrannis. Yes, he’d been a tyrant, he wouldn’t deny that, but by God, he got things done! Let old M. J. be glad to be rid of him; it would be his—the studio’s—loss. If he’d found out, that is. All those line flashes were probably calls to Phyllis giving her instructions for his successor. Or was he imagining it? Would he come back Monday to find his name no longer in the studio directory, the FRANK LYMAN BORCHARD erased from the door and someone else’s name above EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, and a stranger sitting in his chair? He’d seen it happen to others.

He got up, uncomfortably aware of sudden sweat, a pounding heart and cold, clammy hands. God damn it, he had a contract, the bastards wouldn’t get by with it without a fight! He felt bile in his stomach as he mentally girded himself for the battle that looked imminent, a knock-down, drag-out face-to-face with Merrill J. Herman. He’d tell the son of a bitch off once and for all. Whose show was it, for God’s sake? And look at the Nielsens!

As he paced his office with its deep-pile burgundy rug in gathering anger and breathing hard, he had to confess that, in the final analysis, his was a lost cause. A contract didn’t mean a goddamn thing. He should know. He’d broken enough of them for the studio and old M. J. Herman. All they had to do was send him home to collect his salary and he’d have no say about anything and he’d be through in the industry.

Damn, damn, damn...

Frank Lyman Borchard’s secretary, Phyllis Lassitor, was not the most beautiful girl in the world, which she was sure was one of the reasons Mr. Borchard had hired her some eight years ago, but she was loyal, she was efficient, and she exhibited such rare virtues as knowing when to keep a secret, when to open her mouth, and what to say when she did.

She thought of herself as a buffer between them out there and Mr. Borchard in here, a viable instrument that had become sensitive to needs, stable in crises and alert to the difference between what was being said and what was meant by what was being said.

Nearly everyone said that Phyllis Lassitor was a good secretary, and that the reason for this was that she was motivated. What Phyllis decided they meant was her two teenagers out of a marriage that had ended ten years before, which was certainly motivation enough to be conscientious and do everything right. But the truth was she liked Mr. Borchard, as difficult a man as he was to work for, and she liked the business—and she was afraid of failure. One failure in her life, her marriage, was enough.

That is why, at eleven-fifteen a.m., when Mr. Borchard came storming out of his office and into hers, she nearly had heart failure, for she had a secret she dared not share with him, and the secret concerned him. She had not reckoned with the web that one weaves and gets tangled in when one practices to deceive. She had never kept things from Mr. Borchard before and she wasn’t at all sure she could do it now.

He stood there scowling down at her (Oh, God! He knew already!) and all she could do was return the look and hope for the best.

Phyllis, he said.

Yes, Mr. Borchard? Her voice was shrill.

Doesn’t this morning seem unusually peaceful to you?

Peaceful, Mr. Borchard? It had been anything but peaceful. All those calls...

Yes, peaceful, God damn it! There hasn’t been a single hysterical interruption from the set. And that’s damned unusual.

I hadn’t thought about it, she lied. She put her shaking hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see them.

What were all those calls?

Calls? He was severe, red-faced and demanding. What should she say? She cleared her throat. Just minor things I didn’t want to bother you with.

Such as?

She swallowed. Oh, Mimeo checking on a couple changes they could have figured out themselves, Clark Bethel firming Bert Crowell’s contract for the Pinkney episode—

I thought he did that yesterday.

That’s what I told him.

I see. He blinked, then turned, saying over his shoulder as he went out, I’ll be on the set.

When he was gone she dialed Stage Two and told them he was on his way.

Only then did she lean back to breathe a sigh of relief.

As Frank walked down the hot, sunny studio street he tried to figure out how the studio had found out what he planned to do. If they, in fact, had done that. He must not jump to conclusions. It could be a case of his being simply let out as an economy move. But if it was not, then who told that he was planning to leave to make his own movie? Who, besides Alex Mangrum and Frank’s wife, Peg, and daughter, Terri, knew? None of them would tell. Could it be one of the men Alex said he was bringing to his house Saturday night to cinch the deal?

The red light was whirling before the entrance to Stage Two but he didn’t care. He went through the two thick padded doors and walked softly to where they were shooting in the brilliantly floodlighted living room of the standing Crapsey house set. As he rounded and went through an unused archway, he stopped to survey them: Robert Shelan and Cecile Irby, the stars of the show, in a bit of action on camera; Squib Weige, the episode director, absorbed; soundmen; mixers; script girl; production assistants, all doing their jobs. And Jim Enninger, the producer, waving a greeting at him from across the set.

Ordinarily Jim was full of complaints about schedules, temperament and efficiency, at the same time worrying about coming in over budget, but here he was smiling. That was ominous indeed.

The scene ended, Shelan and Irby disappeared, people started milling about, and Jim came to meet him across the cable-strewn floor.

Hi, Frank, he said cheerfully. What’s up?

Haven’t heard from you all morning, that’s what’s up.

So?

So what’s wrong?

Wrong? The smile disappeared, to be replaced by worry lines. Nothing’s wrong that I know of, Frank. Why?

It’s Friday, you know.

Sure.

And you know how Fridays are.

Well, this one’s different, Frank. For one thing, you’re here, and that’s different, wouldn’t you say? The smile was back. Listen, don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Just fine. The smile became a grin.

Incredible.

He stayed to watch another scene being shot, mostly to keep an eye on things, but it was business as usual as far as he could see. Everyone who had to pass him was cordial. Maybe too cordial. Or am I sensing things that aren’t there? he wondered.

No. Now that he thought of it, there’d been only one call all morning from Al Mapes, the story editor, and that hadn’t been about story lines at all but a check on a story approval. It was not conceivable that Mapes had nothing to pitch him from his great gaggle of writers.

And what about Ernie Culver, the associate producer? My God, Ernie was usually in and out of his office half a dozen times most mornings, especially Fridays, and he hadn’t bothered to come in at all today. Well, at least that was an improvement. It was about time young Culver learned to wipe his own ass.

Thinking about it, he realized that the weakest link in the chain would be Ernie. He’d take him to lunch and see what he could get out of him. He’d get down to the nitty-gritty with Ernie, by God, or know the reason why.

Frank blew his stack in Ernie’s outer office when Ernie tried to beg off. Frank said, What’s so goddamned important you can’t break bread with your boss? He was really boiling with the frustrations he’d collected.

Ernie fidgeted, stood on one foot, then the other, cast a helpless look at his secretary, Lillian Amboy. She was every bit as pale and at least as nervous as Ernie, which only helped convince Frank there were certainly maneuverings out of sight.

Well, nothing, really, Ernie said lamely at long last. He picked his jacket off its hanger on the clothes tree. I’ll go to lunch with you if it’s that important.

Is it important?

Important? Ernie stared, halfway into his jacket. What’s important?

That’s what I’m asking you. He looked from one to the other. You both look like chicken thieves caught in the act.

Well, Ernie said miserably, actually, I was going to take Lillian to lunch. I’ve been promising to do that for a long time and today was supposed to be the day.

Well, today isn’t the day, Frank said to her as he pushed Ernie out the door.

Lillian looked quite shaken. He wondered why.

In the studio commissary Frank waited until they had ordered and people stopped coming up to the table to greet him, being polite in the extreme, it seemed—even old Merrill J. Herman, who insisted on shaking his hand, which he seldom did. Frank guessed they were all holding back and M. J.’s handshake must be the rankest, the most outrageous camouflage ever. But he’d be damned if he’d give M. J. or anybody else the satisfaction of a direct question.

But that did not deter him from zeroing in on Ernie Culver, for Ernie, he felt, was constructed of fragile, corruptible material. So he said grimly, All right, Ernie, let’s have it. All of it. What’s going on?

Ernie’s hand with the fork and part of the chef’s salad on it froze in mid-air while he stared bug-eyed at Frank. Going on? His voice was a squeak and his face began to flush again.

The fork completed its journey to the mouth, but Ernie did not seem to have enough saliva to properly masticate. He just continued to stare as he chewed.

Oh, come on, Ernie, for Christ’s sake. What’s it all about?

Ernie was beginning to perspire profusely. He swallowed. It’s just Lillian, that’s all, Mr. Borchard. She’s been working hard, extra hours, doing things she doesn’t have to, quite a load, more than she should, an admirable girl, really, and so I—

"That’s not what I mean and you know it. Now let’s have it, God damn it. I mean right now!"

Ernie, for some surprising reason, stiffened inside. He blinked, lenses in his eyes shifting craftily. I can tell you a truth, Mr. Borchard, and that is that I don’t know what you want from me. It’s mostly because I don’t have what it is, I guess. His strength was multiplying by the moment and it puzzled Frank, for Ernie was obviously made of sterner stuff than he realized. Is there anything wrong with that? He swallowed. I mean, should I have it?

All right, forget it. Either Ernie was more resourceful than he thought, a more facile liar, or it was the truth, whatever the hell he was babbling about.

No, Mr. Borchard, I want to know if there’s anything wrong with that.

The accused remonstrates and wants approval so his own obvious guilt can be assuaged, whatever he’s concealing. This analysis comes to you through the courtesy of Dr. Alex Mangrum, former psychiatrist in residence at the studio.

Frank said angrily, harshly, Forget it, I said. Don’t push your luck, chump.

Ernie had sense enough to forget it and finish his lunch without another word.

For the rest of the afternoon Frank sat in his office watching the blinking lights on his telephone and wondering if he had made a fool of himself. When the calls were for him he took them calmly, found them to be mostly routine, nothing unusual, but he could not get rid of the gut feeling that had guided him in the business this far. And the feeling told him something was wrong still.

He decided it didn’t matter. If everything went right Saturday night, he’d have his own feature, and then old M. J. could take the series and shove it and life for Frank Lyman Borchard would be different, not this mind-numbing rat race he’d lived through for the past eight years. He’d have a position of artistic responsibility, his own creation, Flesh of My Flesh, to be produced at his own pace, in his own way, without risk to his own capital, such as it was.

It all hinged on Alex Mangrum, who said he had located two backers which, with Alex himself, made three.

Talk to them, Alex.

Dr. Alex Mangrum had once told Frank he was one of those people who lived each day as if it were a rehearsal for the main event which would be held tomorrow or next year or some indeterminate time in the future, for that is when the good things, the really wonderful things, were going to happen. Not that Frank didn’t make a big thing out of the rehearsals and everything else. It was just that he considered them so transient.

Frank supposed he was right, for Alex usually was. And the philosophy was certainly useful, if not essential, to being a good executive producer of a successful television series, for such a man keeps looking for that one good script, knowing at the same time it will not be found this week but maybe next week but not believing that either.

He had been quoted in the trades as saying, Everybody talks about good scripts but nobody ever does anything about them, to paraphrase Twain, but the truth was that Frank never had any misgivings about going with the script at hand, because it had been planned by all, everyone had left his mark on it, and it had been bought and paid for in keeping with the Minimum Basic Agreement of the Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. Not that the studio was ever lucky enough to pay only the minimum to its coterie of regulars who were more exclusive than the Masons and more closely knit than the Mafia.

Most of the writers Frank had hired at the beginning of the series were glib young men with a talent for selling blue sky, which is what Frank did when he started, and it was all right. It was the ideas that counted. Whether they had any talent for writing, well, that could be learned, or Frank or Ernie or Jim could get it all together somehow because it was, after all, an empirical process, a committee function, even though the segment might end up with only a single writing credit. Not that everybody didn’t try to get into the act; after all, a credit was money in the bank on residuals. But it went a long way to explain why television shows resembled works of jumbled mosaic rather than works of dramatic art.

During hard times, Guild strikes and economy moves, M. J. would ask Frank to hire a few college kids. The reasoning was simple: UCLA and other schools’ fine arts graduate students always needed money, would work for peanuts, and probably would commit mayhem, too, if asked, according to Frank. A first script could always be written without Guild membership or any attention to the MBA. That was why there were so many unfamiliar writing credits on screen.

It was all right with Frank. He didn’t like unions and often said so. He often described them as a virulent fungus or the lowest order of life in the industry. When he’d had a few drinks he’d lugubriously declare that the unions were crippling what had once been a beautiful, free, open and creative process, though Frank Lyman Borchard had not yet arrived on the scene when it was. He simply and conveniently forgot that during his newspapering days it had been the union or the threat of unionization that had kept his salary as high as it was.

Phyllis Lassitor looked at the little clock on her desk, saw that it was a little after five, and thought: In one hour it will all be over. She would, she decided, make a lousy spy.

She had been approached on Wednesday by Jim Enninger to help whip up a surprise birthday party for Mr. Borchard for six p.m. Friday. Phyllis thought it was a wonderful idea, but she had not reckoned with what it would do to her nerves and her digestive tract.

Mr. Enninger said he would take care of clearing the set, inviting the extras, the wardrobe people, technicians, cameramen, gaffers, grips, soundmen, supervisors, assistants and studio and network executives. All she had to do was invite those other people she knew Mr. Borchard would want at his party.

She thought she knew what Mr. Enninger meant—Jeanine Wray and Sally Panquin—but she elected to take on a broader task with her usual efficiency, going through Mr. Borchard’s list of names, those people he’d called or written to in the past six months, both professionally and personally. She wrote down all those names she felt were important and then weighed them, deciding which ones Mr. Borchard would want to see.

There were agents, actors and actresses who’d been in segments of the show, friends and writers. She arbitrarily listed only those writers who had done three or more segments in the five years the show had been on the air and then chose only those she knew Mr. Borchard liked.

But Jeanine Wray and Sally Panquin were a problem. Which of the two should she invite? When he was feeling exceptionally good and wanted to celebrate, Mr. Borchard would have Phyllis call Jeanine for the evening. When things weren’t going well and he needed cheering up, he’d tell her to call Sally. Which often made Phyllis wonder where Mrs. Borchard fitted into his life. But good secretary that she was, she never asked.

Phyllis solved the problem by inviting both Jeanine and Sally. She thought her decision rather devilish, but what else could she do? Let the chips fall where they may. If the party turned out not to be a surprise, at least it would interesting.

The plan was to get Mr. Borchard on the set at six o’clock, but Friday morning Mr. Enninger decided to switch the whole thing to the suite of offices, beginning in Mr. Borchard’s, because, as Mr. Enninger put it, Frank will know something’s up if we call him over to the set at six.

Phyllis didn’t think so and wondered what Mr. Enninger was up to. But she didn’t ask. Ours is but to do and die.

Frank looked at his watch, saw it was nearly six. The day was shot and so was he. If he had known it was going to be this kind of day, a day so full of vacant time and oddness, he’d have filled it with conferences he’d been putting off, particularly the one with Hampton Partlow on the spin-off he’d promised the network. Even if the financing for his picture came through Saturday night he’d still give them the spin-off. If he weren’t persona non grata by that time, that is. He was committed, wouldn’t renege, but he’d sure as hell be in a better bargaining position. And if they didn’t buy what he was selling, why, he’d just walk away from it without ever looking back.

He turned in his chair, looked out the windows that fronted on the studio street and wondered if he should go home. As he sat there he saw people going by that he knew, yet they kept their eyes averted. What was this, for God’s sake? He always kept the Venetian blinds open so he could see out and they could see in, democracy in action, and there was always an exchange of sorts, a nod, a smile, a wave. But now the sons of bitches had decided to make him the invisible man.

The intercom tweeted and Frank jumped because it was so unexpected. He depressed the lever. Yes?

Miss Tang is here, Mr. Borchard.

Miss Tang? What kind of nonsense was this? The only Tang he knew was what went with the astronauts to the moon. Who?

Miss Tang. Phyllis sounded a little affronted.

Oh. Well, it could be, but barely. The Cavanaugh people usually handled casting. Maybe it was a writer. But Mapes would have checked with him first, and Phyllis sounded as if he ought to know. Send her in, he said recklessly, wondering where and how this miserable day had gone so wrong.

He was totally unprepared for the girl who came through the door which was quickly closed behind her: a tawny, curvy, well-proportioned young woman with dark brown eyes, white-as-tile teeth, and black hair that fell down to the small of her back.

She was naked.

She charged the room with electricity, and the voltage increased with every step she took toward him. She walked in a professionally undulating way, sexy eyes flashing mischievously, her smile wide and welcoming.

Frank sat stunned, open-mouthed, unable to move even after she sat down in his chair on him, kissing him suddenly, fully on the lips.

Now listen, he mumbled, pulling away, taking a breath, blood rushing everywhere.

Call me Poon, she said in a sultry voice, taking his face in her hands and fervently kissing him again. It was so arousing he squirmed.

Suddenly there were flashes as pictures were taken, Frank wrenched angrily to his feet, and Miss Tang jumped nimbly to hers. He saw the faces now crowding his office and more pouring in, heard the ragged shouts of Surprise! and Happy birthday! and the laughter at the predicament he’d been put in.

His own face was burning, not with lust or embarrassment, but with anger. He was not amused. All of the strangeness of the day flashed clear to him: so-called friends having fun with him. He forced himself to smile at them as they milled around in front of his desk, even more spilling in through the door.

He thought, Damn you all!

He did not like surprises.

2

A portable bar was rolled in, a white-clad bartender who had been waiting in the corridor with the others began dispensing drinks, and quickly there were more people around the bar than had ever been in Frank’s office at any one time. He saw there was no escape.

Phyllis put a large cake on his desk and Jim Enninger started lighting the candles. Everybody was talking at once and it was becoming deafening.

There was no sign of Miss Tang. She had done her thing and vanished. He remembered now that she was one of the performers at Luwack’s Wild and Woolly on the Strip. He’d seen her name on the marquee often enough as he’d driven by. She had quite a body. Yes, indeed. Someday...

Come on, Frank, blow!

Jim and Phyllis were gesturing to the cake. Frank did not feel like blowing, but there seemed no decent way out, so blow he did.

Little Patti Pooele, Al Mapes’s secretary, jumped up and down, clapped her hands and said, That’s just beautiful, Mr. Borchard! You got more than half!

I suppose that’s not bad, he said wryly, considering how many candles there are.

Oh, come on, Frank, Jim said, coming around the desk and taking his arm, you’re not as old as all that. Jim steered him toward the bar, saying, Hey, hey, make way, make way, the guest of honor needs a drink!

Well, Jim was right about that. God, yes! And after he’d had several, things began to look different, he