Hollywood and Levine by Andrew Bergman Page B

Jack Warner, “All of us at Warner Brothers mourn the tragic passing of Walter Adrian. He was a man of great character, as well as a writer of enormous skill. Millions of Americans, who loved Three-Star Extra, Berlin Commando, Beloved Heart , and the forthcoming Easter release, Alias Pete Costa , will miss him.”
    Adrian’s long-time friend, Academy Award-winning scenarist Milton Wohl declared that “the world has lost a fighter for decency, the industry has lost a courageous and gifted voice, and I have lost a dear, dear friend.”
    Adrian is survived by his wife, Helen. Funeral services will be held Friday at Temple B’nai Sholom, in Beverly Hills. Persons are asked not to send flowers, but to forward contributions to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.
    The power of the press to play things up and play things down never ceased to amaze me. The spectacular fact that Adrian had been found dangling from a gallows on the Western Street at Warners, a fact my beloved Daily News would have spread all over the front page, with pictures (“SCRIBE’S LAST ROUNDUP”), went unmentioned. It appeared that Warners’ flaks had worked overtime, either at getting the cops to keep mum or holding their advertising power to the Times’ throat. For myself, I was grateful to have become an anonymous “friend.” The story left the unmistakable impression that all concerned were handling the matter with tongs.
    When I got back to the hotel, the desk clerk handed me a piece of. paper with a telephone message from Lieutenant Wynn. The message was that I was to go, immediately and directly, to his office. The half hour was up; blue skies or gray, I was a small-time shamus in a familiar creek sans paddle.
    Wynn didn’t really have an office; it was a cubicle set in a bullpen on the third floor of the downtown L.A. police headquarters, a building that would not have looked out of place in Long Island City’s warehouse district. The bullpen was a long green room full of cranky homicide dicks in threadbare sports jackets and the insistent din of teletype machines and ringing telephones. Wynn’s cubicle had flimsy green partition walls topped by a foot of frosted glass, but there was a good fifteen feet between the glass and the ceiling. He had a kind of privacy, but not much more than you find in the pay toilets of a metropolitan bus terminal.
    â€œLovely setup here,” I told him.
    Wynn was alone today. He chewed a pencil and surveyed me from behind a bare municipal-issue desk. “It’ll do,” he said. “As a matter of fact it doesn’t do, but it’ll have to do. So it does. Have a seat.”
    I perched myself on a municipal—issue chair a straights backed beauty with no arms and a seat treated with iron. Wynn sat swiveling back and forth in his small metal chair, never taking the pencil from his molars or his eyes away from me. It is what cops call psychology. They take courses.
    â€œWhat are you trying to do,” I finally said, “break me?”
    â€œBig mouth,” Wynn said softly. He stopped swiveling and leaned across the top of his desk. “A New York big mouth. We get lots of them out here, know-it-alls.” He smiled at me like he knew something that I didn’t. Very likely, because I didn’t know a thing.
    There was a rap at the door; Lemon and Caputo strolled in, bored to death, and sat down on opposite sides of Wynn’s desk, like bookends. Caputo handed Wynn a manila folder. The lieutenant opened it and examined the contents very critically, very police lab. Lemon and Caputo slid off the desk and left the office.
    â€œThey’re bright boys,” I said. “I could use a couple like that.”
    Wynn ignored the remark. “LeVine, we’re about to close the books on this Adrian suicide. I just want to tie it up with ribbons.” He leaned