To Live and Play in L.A.

There are probably a lot of reasons to hire a publicist, but I never thought that selling a house was one of them.

I’ve been hustled by press agents promoting singers, dancers, actors, priests, hookers, writers, lawyers, burglars and ordinary people who just wanted to be better known.

But I had never been approached by a publicist for a house until I got a call from Rosalind Marmel, who opened her conversation by saying that I could be the next Geraldo Rivera.

Since that has never been a compelling ambition, I was ready to start making noise like there was static on the line and I couldn’t hear, which would force me to hang up, until she mentioned a secret room.

It seems that a stockbroker named Chris Kavanau was living in a sprawling hilltop house in Glendale once owned by the late Hubert Eaton, a research chemist who had made dying, if not fun, at least more interesting.

Eaton founded Forest Lawn Cemetery, a boundary of which is about 100 feet from the house in question. He joined his customers in eternity in 1966.

By tapping on walls, Kavanau, who has lived there only a few months, discovered what he thought was a secret room. He and Marmel speculated that since the place had been owned by a cemeterian, it could be haunted or contain bodies that had never made it to more suitable surroundings.

Kavanau was being transferred to San Diego and was trying to sell the house, which was why he’d hired Marmel. She no doubt said to him we have a secret room, Halloween is coming up, you want to sell the joint, so what we need is a little off-beat P.R. That’s when my phone rang.

*

Her reference to Geraldo Rivera alluded to the time in 1986 when he blasted open Al Capone’s vault in Chicago during a live two-hour television program, and, amid a roar of hype, found . . . nothing.

As I said, I’ve never wanted to grow up to be Geraldo, but I am a sucker for hidden rooms in homes once owned by people who were in the business of death. If it makes me famous, so much the better.

So I went out to the place and was greeted by Marmel, Kavanau and a voice teacher from Chicago named Dan Balestrero, who had just moved to L.A. and was thinking of hiring Marmel as his publicist.

Kavanau fascinated me because he is the kind of guy who can compute in his head the number of light-years from here to any moving object in space but can’t tie his own shoelaces.

A big, detached, red-faced man of 32, he doesn’t know what his IQ is, but in high school he built a computer from scratch, taught advanced calculus in the 11th grade, founded his own company in college, learned to read Japanese, dabbles in electronics and deciphers Egyptian hieroglyphics to relax.

Although he works as a stockbroker, he wants to devote his life to theoretical physics, but needs money to support himself. I can understand that. I’ve always wanted to open a little hardware store in Bellflower, but it will have to wait.

On to the secret room. We all trooped to the basement in an area opposite what had been a chauffeur’s quarters. Kavanau began tapping on the wall to the ghostly compartment.

“OK,” Marmel declared in a manner meant to convey excitement, “let’s open her up.”

*

Kavanau, who perspired and got progressively redder in the face as he worked, chipped away with a crowbar as Balestrero sang “Danny Boy” in a rich baritone and Marmel took pictures with a little red dime-store camera.

Not exactly Geraldo in prime time, but I enjoyed the music.

What had intrigued Kavanau in the first place were the remnants of a hidden door concealing the secret room. After chipping away at a corner of the door, he ripped it open and, to our utter amazement, found . . . a wall.

Still convinced there was a room back there, he brought out an electric saw to cut a hole in that wall and, as the piece fell away, we gasped to find . . . OH MY GOD! . . . another wall.

I could go on with this, but as it turned out that wall was the wall to the chauffeur’s room just on the other side, which was rented to a writer who was away at the time.

There was no secret room, only the space between two walls. Marmel, unfazed by the revelation, began talking about a secret basement, but my interest by then had dwindled to zero and I left.

I hope Kavanau sells the place and goes on to solve all the mysteries of the universe, but he’s going to have to do it without me. When I got home that night, my wife, Cinelli, asked, “What’ve you been doing all day?” I said, “Nothing,” and I meant it.

It’s all yours, Geraldo.