The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time Page 11

  With that kind of property to protect, McCormack has assumed veto-power over anyone assigned to write about it for the public prints. This is compounded in its foulness by the fact that he usually gets away with it. Just prior to my introduction he had vetoed a writer from one of the big-selling men's magazines -- who eventually wrote a very good Killy article anyway but without ever talking to the subject.

  "Naturally, you'll be discreet," he told me.

  "About what?"

  "You know what I mean." He smiled. "Jean-Claude has his private life and I'm sure you won't want to embarrass him or anyone else -- including yourself, I might add -- by violating confidence."

  "Well. . . certainly not," I replied, flashing him a fine eyebrow shrug to cover my puzzlement. He seemed pleased, and I glanced over at Killy, who was chatting amiably with DeLorean, saying, "I hope you can ski with me sometime at Val d'Isère."

  Was there something depraved in that face? Could the innocent smile mask a twisted mind? What was McCormack hinting at? Nothing in Killy's manner seemed weird or degenerate. He spoke earnestly -- not comfortable with English, but handling it well enough. If anything, he seemed overly polite, very concerned with saying the right thing, like an Ivy League business school grad doing well on his first job interview -- confident, but not quite sure. It was hard to imagine him as a sex freak, hurrying back to his hotel room and calling room service for a cattle prod and two female iguanas.

  I shrugged and mixed myself another Bloody Mary. McCormack seemed satisfied that I was giddy and malleable enough for the task at hand, so he switched his attention to a small, wavy-haired fellow named Leonard Roller, a representative of one of Chevrolet's numerous public relations firms.

  I drifted over to introduce myself. Jean-Claude laid his famous smile on me and we talked briefly about nothing at all. I took it for granted that he was tired of dealing with writers, reporters, gossip-hustlers and that ilk, so I explained that I was more interested in his new role as salesman-celebrity -- and his reactions to it -- than I was in the standard, question/answer game. He seemed to understand, smiling sympathetically at my complaints about lack of sleep and early-morning press conferences.

  Killy is smaller than he looks on television, but larger than most ski racers, who are usually short and beefy, like weight-lifting jockeys and human cannonballs. He is almost 6-feet tall and claims to weigh 175 pounds -- which is easy enough to believe when you meet him head-on, but his profile looks nearly weightless. Viewed from the side, his frame is so flat that he seems like a life-size cardboard cut-out. Then, when he turns to face you again, he looks like a scaled-down Joe Palooka, perfectly built. In swimming trunks he is almost delicate, except for his thighs -- huge chunks of muscle, the thighs of an Olympic sprinter or a pro basketball guard. . . or a man who has spent a lifetime on skis.

  Jean-Claude, like Jay Gatsby, has "one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced -- or seemed to face -- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." That description of Gatsby by Nick Carraway -- of Scott, by Fitzgerald -- might just as well be of J.-C. Killy, who also fits the rest of it: "Precisely at that point [Gatsby's smile] vanished -- and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. . ."

  The point is not to knock Killy's English, which is far better than my French, but to emphasize his careful, finely coached choice of words. "He's an amazing boy," I was told later by Len Roller. "He works at this [selling Chevrolets] just as hard as he used to work at winning races. He attacks it with the same concentration you remember from watching him ski." The assumption that I remembered Killy on skis came naturally to Roller. Jean-Claude is on TV so often, skiing at selected resorts all over the world, that it is nearly impossible to miss seeing him. This is The Exposure that makes him so valuable; every TV appearance adds dollars to his price. People recognize Killy, and they like his image -- a sexy daredevil, booming downhill toward a cushion of naked snowbunnies. This is why Chevrolet pays him a salary far larger than Nixon's to say, over and over again, "For me, zee Camaro is a fine foreign sports car. I own one, you know. I keep it in my garage at Val d'Isère" (Killy's hometown in the French Alps).

  Jean-Claude emerged from the 1968 Winter Olympics with an incredible three gold medals and then he retired, ending his "amateur" career like a human skyrocket. There was nothing left to win; after two World Cups (the equivalent of two straight Heisman Trophies in U. S. collegiate football) and an unprecedented sweep of all three Olympic skiing events (the equivalent of a sprinter winning the 100, 220, and 440), Killy's career reads as if his press agent had written the script for it -- a series of spectacular personal victories, climaxed by the first triple-crown triumph in the history of skiing while the whole world watched on TV.

  The nervous tedium of forced retirement obviously bothers Killy, but it comes as no surprise to him. He was looking over the hump even before his final triumph in the '68 Olympics. Between training sessions at Grenoble he talked like a character out of some early Hemingway sketch, shrugging blankly at the knowledge that he was coming to the end of the only thing he knew: "Soon skiing will be worn out for me," he said. "For the last 10 years I have prepared myself to become the world champion. My thoughts were only to better my control and my style in order to become the best. Then last year [1967] I became the world champion. I was given a small medal and for two days after that it was hell. I discovered that I was still eating like everybody else, sleeping like everybody else -- that I hadn't become the superman I thought my title would make me. The discovery actually destroyed me for two days. So when people speak to me about the excitement of becoming an Olympic champion this year -- should it happen -- I know it will be the same thing all over again. I know that after the races at Grenoble the best thing for me is to stop."

  For Killy, the Olympics were the end of the road. The wave of the future crashed down on him within hours after his disputed Grand Slalom victory over Karl Schranz of Austria. Suddenly they were on him -- a chattering greenback swarm of agents, money-mongers and would-be "personal reps" of every shape and description. Mark McCormack's persistence lent weight to his glittering claim that he could do for Killy what he had already done for Arnold Palmer. Jean-Claude listened, shrugged, then ducked out for a while -- to Paris, the Riviera, back home to Val d'Isère -- and finally, after weeks of half-heartedly dodging the inevitable, signed with McCormack. The only sure thing in the deal was a hell of a lot of money, both sooner and later. Beyond that, Killy had no idea what he was getting into.

  Now he was showing us how much he'd learned. The Chevvy press breakfast was breaking up and Len Roller suggested that the three of us go downstairs to the dining room. J.-C. nodded brightly and I smiled the calm smile of a man about to be rescued from a Honker's Convention. We drifted downstairs, where Roller found us a corner table in the dining room before excusing himself to make a phone call. The waitress brought menus, but Killy waved her off, saying he wanted only prune juice. I was on the verge of ordering huevos rancheros with a double side of bacon, but in deference to J.-C.'s apparent illness I settled for grapefruit and coffee.

  Killy was studying a mimeographed news release that I'd grabbed off a table at the press conference in lieu of notepaper. He nudged me and pointed at something in the lead paragraph. "Isn't this amazing?" he asked. I looked: The used side of my notepaper was headed: NEWS. . . from Chevrolet Motor Division. . . CHICAGO -- Chevrolet began its "spring selling season" as early as January first this year, John Z. DeLorean, general manager, said here today. He told newsmen attending the opening of the Chicago Auto Show that Chevrolet sales are off to the fastest start since its record year of 1965. "We sold 352
,000 cars in January and February," DeLorean said. "That's 22 per cent ahead of last year. It gave us 26.9 per cent of the industry, compared to 23 per cent a year ago. . ."

  Killy said it again: "Isn't this amazing?" I looked to see if he was smiling but his face was deadly serious and his voice was pure snake oil. I called for more coffee, nodding distractedly at Killy's awkward hustle, and cursing the greedy instinct that had brought me into this thing. . . sleepless and ill-fed, trapped in a strange food-cellar with a French auto salesman.

  But I stayed to play the game, gnawing on my grapefruit and soon following Roller out to the street, where we were scooped up by a large nondescript car that must have been a Chevrolet. I asked where we were going and somebody said, "First to the Merchandise Mart, where he'll do a tape for Kup's show, and then to the Auto Show -- at the Stockyards."

  That last note hung for a moment, not registering. . . Kup's show was bad enough. I had been on it once, and caused a nasty scene by calling Adlai Stevenson a professional liar when all the other guests were there to publicize some kind of Stevenson Memorial. Now nearly two years later, I saw no point in introducing myself. Kup was taking it easy this time, joking with athletes. Killy was overshadowed by Bart Starr, representing Lincoln-Mercury, and Fran Tarkenton, wearing a Dodge blazer. . . but with Killy in eclipse the Chevrolet team still made the nut with O. J. Simpson, modestly admitting that he probably wouldn't tear the National Football League apart in his first year as a pro. It was a dull, low-level discussion, liberally spotted with promo mentions for the Auto Show.

  Jean-Claude's only breakthrough came when Kup, cued by a story in that morning's Tribune, asked what Killy really thought about the whole question of "amateur" athletic status. "Is it safe to assume," Kup asked, "that you were paid for using certain skis in the Olympics?"

  "Safe?" Killy asked.

  Kup checked his notes for a new question and Killy looked relieved. The hypocrisy inherent in the whole concept of "amateurism" has always annoyed Killy, and now, with the immunity of graduate status, he doesn't mind admitting that he views the whole game as a fraud and a folly. During most of his career on the French ski team he was listed, for publicity reasons, as a Government-employed Customs Inspector. Nobody believed it, not even officials of the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS), the governing body for world-class amateur ski competition. The whole idea was absurd. Who, after all, could believe that the reigning world ski champion -- a hero/celebrity whose arrival in any airport from Paris to Tokyo drew crowds and TV cameras -- was actually supporting himself on a salary gleaned from his off-season efforts in some dreary customs shed at Marseilles?

  He spoke with a definite humility, as if he felt slightly embarrassed by all the advantages he'd had. Then, about two hours later when our talk had turned to contemporary things -- the high-style realities of his new jet-set life -- he suddenly blurted: "Before, I could only dream about these things. When I was young I had nothing, I was poor. . . Now I can have anything I want!"

  Jean-Claude seems to understand, without really resenting it, that he is being weaned away from the frank unvarnished style of his amateur days. One afternoon at Vail, for instance, he listened to a sportscaster telling him what a great run he'd just made, and then, fully aware that he was talking for a live broadcast, Jean-Claude laughed at the commentary and said he'd just made one of the worst runs of his life -- a complete-disaster, doing everything wrong. Now, with the help of his professional advisers, he has learned to be patient and polite -- especially in America, with the press. In France he is more secure, and far more recognizable to the people who knew him before he became a salesman. He was in Paris last spring when Avery Brundage, 82-year-old president of the International Olympic Committee, called on Jean-Claude and several other winners of gold medals at the 1968 Winter Olympics to return them. Brundage, a tunnel-visioned purist of the Old School, was shocked by disclosures that many of the winners -- including Killy -- didn't even know what the word "amateur" meant. For years, said Brundage, these faithless poseurs had been accepting money from "commercial interests" ranging from equipment manufacturers to magazine publishers.

  One of these gimmicks made headlines just prior to the start of the Games, if memory serves, and was awkwardly resolved by a quick ruling that none of the winners could either mention or display their skis (or any other equipment) during any TV interview or press exposure. Until then, it had been standard practice for the winner of any major race to make the brand-name on his skis as prominent as possible during all camera sessions. The "no-show" ruling worked a hardship on a lot of skiers at Grenoble, but it failed to satisfy Avery Brundage. His demand that the medals be returned called up memories of Jim Thorpe, who was stripped of everything he won in the 1912 Olympics because he had once been paid to play in a semi-pro baseball game. Thorpe went along with the madness, returning his medals and living the rest of his life with the taint of "disgrace" on his name. Even now, the nasty Olympics scandal is the main feature of Thorpe's biographical sketch in the new Columbia Encyclopedia.

  But when a Montreal Star reporter asked Jean-Claude how he felt about turning in his Olympic medals, he replied: "Let Brundage come over here himself and take them from me."

  It was a rare public display of "the old Jean-Claude." His American personality has been carefully manicured to avoid such outbursts. Chevrolet doesn't pay him to say what he thinks, but to sell Chevrolets -- and you don't do that by telling self-righteous old men to fuck off. You don't even admit that the French Government paid you to be a skier because things are done that way in France and most other countries, and nobody born after 1900 calls it anything but natural. . . when you sell Chevrolets in America you honor the myths and mentality of the marketplace: You smile like Horatio Alger and give all the credit to Mom and Dad, who never lost faith in you and even mortgaged their ingots when things got tough.

  Anyone watching our departure from the Kup show must have assumed that J.-C. traveled with five or six bodyguards. I'm still not sure who the others were. Len Roller was always around, and a hostile, burr-haired little bugger from whichever of Chevvy's PR agencies was running the Auto Show, who took me aside early on to warn me that Roller was "only a guest -- I'm running this show." Roller laughed at the slur, saying, "He only thinks he's running it." The others were never introduced; they did things like drive cars and open doors. They were large, unconfident men, very polite in the style of armed gas-station attendants.

  We left the Merchandise Mart and zapped off on a freeway to the Auto Show -- and suddenly it registered: The Stockyards Amphitheatre. I was banging along the freeway in that big car, listening to the others trade bull/fuck jokes, trapped in the back seat between Killy and Roller, heading for that rotten slaughterhouse where Mayor Daley had buried the Democratic party.

  I had been there before, and I remembered it well. Chicago -- this vicious, stinking zoo, this mean-grinning, Mace-smelling boneyard of a city; an elegant rockpile monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit.

  The public is out in force to view the new models. Jean-Claude makes his pitch for Chevrolet every two hours on the button: 1-3-5-7-9. The even numbered hours are reserved for O. J. Simpson.

  Barker: "Tell me, O. J., are you faster than that car over there?"

  O. J.: "You mean that groovy Chevrolet? Naw, man, that's the only thing I know that's faster than me. . . ho, ho. . ."

  Meanwhile, slumped in a folding chair near the Killy exhibit, smoking a pipe and brooding on the spooks in this place, I am suddenly confronted by three young boys wearing Bass Weejuns and Pendleton shirts, junior-high types, and one of them asks me: "Are you Jean-Claude Killy?"

  "That's right," I said.

  "What are you doing?" they asked.

  Well, you goddamn silly little waterhead, what the hell does it look like I'm doing? But I didn't say that. I gave the question some thought. "Well," I said finally, "I'm just sitting here smoking marijuana." I held up my
pipe. "This is what makes me ski so fast." Their eyes swelled up like young grapefruits. They stared at me -- waiting for a laugh, I think -- then backed away. Five minutes later I looked up and found them still watching me, huddled about 20 feet away behind the sky-blue Z-28 Chevvy on its slow-moving turntable. I waved my pipe at them and smiled like Hubert Humphrey. . . but they didn't wave back.

  Killy's Auto Show act was a combination interview/autograph thing, with the questions coming from Roller and a silver-blonde model in rubberized stretch pants. The Chevvy people had set up a plywood podium next to the Z-28 -- which they said was a new and special model, but which looked like any other Camaro with a (Head) ski rack on top.

  Not far away, on another platform, O. J. Simpson fielded questions from a ripe little black girl, also dressed in tight ski pants. The acts remained segregated except in moments of unexpected crowd pressure, when the black model would occasionally have to interview Killy. The blonde girl was never cast with O. J. -- at least not while I was there. Which hardly matters, except as casual evidence that Chevvy's image-makers still see racial separatism as good business, particularly in Chicago.

  On the way in, Roller had rehearsed Jean-Claude on the Q. and A. sequence: "Okay, then I'll say, 'I see an interesting looking car over there, Jean-Claude -- can you tell us something about it?' And then you say. . . what?"

  J.-C.: "Oh, yes, that is my car, the new Z-28. It has seat covers made of Austrian ski sweaters. And you notice my special license plate, JCK. . ."

  Roller: "That's fine. The important thing is to be spontaneous."

  J.-C. (puzzled): "Spuen-tan-EUS?"

  Roller (grinning): "Don't worry -- you'll do fine."

  And he did. Killy's public pitch is very low-key, a vivid contrast to O. J. Simpson, whose sales technique has all the subtlety of a power-slant on third and one. . . O. J. likes this scene. His booming self-confidence suggests Alfred E. Neuman in blackface or Rap Brown selling watermelons at the Mississippi State Fair. O. J.'s mind is not complicated; he has had God on his side for so long that it never occurs to him that selling Chevrolets is any less holy than making touchdowns. Like Frank Gifford, whose shoes he finally filled in the USC backfield, he understands that football is only the beginning of his TV career. O. J. is a Black Capitalist in the most basic sense of that term; his business sense is so powerful that he is able to view his blackness as a mere sales factor -- a natural intro to the Black Marketplace, where a honky showboat like Killy is doomed from the start.