Script for Scandal

by Renee Patrick

  The spell cast by any bookstore soon fell over me. I’d surface every few minutes to scan the room for Dolan, then dive back under seeking treasure. I was trying to make head or tail out of a book on Kandinsky when the man stationed at the cash register beckoned to me. He had a spare frame that seemed more the result of disposition than diet, and the faint agitation of one striving not to appear agitated.

  ‘Pardon me, miss,’ he said with a Texas drawl. ‘You look trustworthy. Might I ask you to watch the till a moment? I’ll be right back.’ He then started for the rear of the store without awaiting my reply.

  ‘What?’ I hollered after him. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

  The man spun back to me. ‘Nominally? Me. Stanley Rose, at your service.’ He bounced his fingertips off his prominent forehead and continued on his way.

  I glowered at the now-abandoned cash register. Tending to it was in no way my responsibility. Had the proprietor left the drawer open, exposed bills wagging like tongues, I’d be under no obligation to close it. Let the learned clientele rob the place blind. It’d serve Rose right for running a business this way.

  But I found I couldn’t vacate the front of the store, either. My finely honed Catholic guilt kept me in the vicinity, just in case. As my uncle Danny said, life tests us constantly, and you don’t learn your grade until after you graduate.

  A man in a sweater vest and red bowtie sauntered past the register with several volumes under his arm. He didn’t speak to me so much as the spirit of the store. ‘Tell Stanley to put these on account.’

  I waited for someone to speak up. No one did. ‘Hold on!’ I yelled at his receding back. ‘What’s your name? What account?’

  ‘Any of the brothers Warner.’ He vanished out the door.

  I stomped over to the register to scribble a description of the man for Rose’s presumably non-existent records. Sweater vest. Smug. One of many.

  Stepping behind the register proved my undoing. A queue instantly formed, and instincts forged during my Tremayne’s Department Store stint took over. I wrapped a book for one customer, and told another when I didn’t have change to break his hundred-dollar bill that he’d have to come back and no, he couldn’t have the book in the meantime. A man standing off to the side said ‘Excuse me, miss’ during this discourse and I took great pleasure at snapping ‘In a minute’ at him. Only when he left in frustration did I identify him as Edward G. Robinson.

  Still reeling from telling Little Caesar to blow, I said, ‘Next!’

  George Dolan stepped up, squinting at me through his glasses. ‘What are you doing?’

  I flapped my arms. ‘Working the register!’

  Understanding and a grin broke simultaneously across his face. ‘Oh, I get it. You must have come in the front door.’

  ‘How should I have come in?’

  He hooked his thumb. ‘Through the back. It’s where the parking is. I’ve been waiting for you. Let’s go.’

  ‘But who’s going to watch the till?’

  Dolan grabbed a walrus-faced man eating an apple over a copy of Great Expectations. ‘Hey, Milt, hold the fort, would you?’ Milt grunted and carried both dinner and diversion behind the register.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to help me,’ I said.

  ‘Anything to irritate Clyde.’ Dolan chuckled. ‘Plus I recognized that crazed look in your eyes. Used to get it myself when I couldn’t let a story go. Like a dog with a bone.’

  We reached the stairs to the mezzanine. I started up, but Dolan delicately took my elbow. ‘Stanley keeps his special collection upstairs. Material’s a little more … artistic.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, chasing it with a worldlier, ‘Ah.’ Dolan gestured toward the store’s back room.

  It was another largely masculine environment, more pipes and eyeglasses. The men scattered around laughed raucously, their camaraderie buttressed by whatever liquid was in the pitcher on a side table. Dolan offered me a glass but I demurred, drawn instead to the lithographs on the walls. The artwork was interesting, audacious, probably scandalous. I didn’t know enough to be sure.

  Talk flew around the room at a furious clip. One man spoke of the Nationalists’ victorious march into Madrid (‘Spain’s just the coming attraction, the feature hasn’t started yet’). Two more concentrated on matters closer to home. ‘Mark my words, the extras will make a go of it on their own. Break away from the Screen Actors Guild.’

  His conversation partner refilled his glass. ‘Better run over to the Writers Guild and tell ’em to man the barricades.’

  ‘How are we gonna man barricades without extras?’

  A man slouched against the wall, unlit cigarette bobbing in time to his words beneath an unkempt mustache. ‘Give me the bank robber over the banker. At least we know what the bank robber’s doing and why.’ The words ‘bank robber’ seized my attention, but before I could horn in Dolan spoke.

  ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He snatched a file off the side table before it was appropriated as a coaster. ‘Found those script pages Sylvia wrote.’

  One of the men made a scoffing sound. ‘You mean Brother Fentress’s “discovery”? He doesn’t actually make her type, does he?’

  ‘These pages are better than anything you’ve produced since you tumbled off that train, Lou.’ Dolan handed me the file. ‘Honestly, they’re good. For a historical. Always skip that kind of pageant myself, but I liked this enough to offer to show it to DeMille’s people. Sylvia wants to finish it first. She’s savvy, all right. Clyde and I bounced the wife’s dialogue in Streetlight Story off her, and she convinced me to keep that business with the thief’s kid from Clyde’s story in the script. I pegged it as maudlin, but she swears women will go for it.’

  ‘Those pages better be good,’ Lou said drunkenly. ‘Otherwise, Comrade Josie will haul Clyde up before the People’s Court for a People’s Divorce.’ He fished a flyer out of the wastebasket and gave it to me to pass along to Dolan. The paper reeked of oranges. ‘You see she’s doing another of her pass-the-fur-hat dinners?’

  ‘Christ, again?’ Dolan skimmed the broadsheet. ‘Most of what Josie knows about politics she learned from books bought in this store. Got half her art here, too.’

  ‘The next thing getting hung in that house is Clyde if he keeps fooling around with that girl,’ Lou opined, nodding at his glass in confirmation.

  A woman entered through the shop’s rear door, like everyone in the know apparently did. She was approaching the half-century mark in age but her hair retained its reddish tinge, albeit with some chemical assistance. She possessed sharp features, particularly her eyes, which took in the back-room scene with glee. ‘The standard troop of miscreants at assembly,’ she said in an unplaceable accent, vaguely western but broad enough to scoop up traces of every place she had ever lived. ‘Who’s this innocent you lot are attempting to corrupt?’

  Dolan greeted her warmly. ‘Lillian Frost, may I present Florabel Muir.’

  Had I been drinking whatever liquid the pitcher contained, I would have spit it out. Florabel Muir’s byline had appeared on many of the most sensational Daily News stories of my youth. My blood still curdled at the memory of my uncle Danny reading aloud her account of the murder of gangster ‘Legs’ Diamond. Now she covered the Los Angeles beat for the same New York newspaper.

  ‘You’re the one whose curiosity I’ve come to sate,’ she said.

  ‘And I’m the one taking my leave.’ Dolan donned his hat. ‘I beat a hasty retreat homeward so I don’t upset the little woman.’

  ‘Are you married to Josie Fentress, too?’ Florabel surveyed the room again as Dolan exited. ‘As usual, nothing but orange wine. Shall we adjourn next door for some real refreshment?’

  Florabel and I took a shortcut through the parking lot and entered another back room, this one in the adjacent restaurant, Musso & Frank Grill. More intellectual imbibers had gathered here. Among them stood Stanley Rose, swirling an empty cocktail glass. He nodded genially at me. ‘How’s it going over
there?’

  After a dumbstruck moment, I said, ‘Milt’s covering for me.’

  ‘Good. Milt’s a square fella.’

  Florabel bantered with assorted well-wishers but never stopped leading the way into Musso’s long, narrow front room. She ignored the dark wooden booths in favor of the bar, a massive structure that looked hewn from a Spanish galleon that had run aground in Santa Monica. Diamond patterns adorned each of its panels. We settled ourselves and ordered martinis. I took advantage of the moment to get a better look at my companion. Florabel had a pioneer woman’s sturdy face; I could readily picture her raising livestock and a dozen overall-clad young’uns somewhere in Wyoming. Instead she’d become a chronicler of the city, dressed in a functional navy suit that had clearly served her well on many a lengthy night with the boys awaiting a verdict in the courthouse. A brooch on the lapel provided her sole nod to frivolity, a bunch of red enamel cherries dangling from a stem with bronze leaves. ‘What do you do at Paramount, exactly, and why do you care about this years-old bank robbery?’ she asked.

  I heard presses rolling when she spoke. No way would I attempt to hoodwink this woman. I told her the truth – I didn’t work for Paramount, I was involved with Gene, and I had to know how Clyde Fentress had come by the version of events he’d shilled to the studio.

  Florabel took pity on me, patting my hand. ‘This new investigation by the DA is a tough break for your friend.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard about it?’

  ‘That’s my job. Word is, Detective Morrow is the target, but I have no idea why – or what prompted DA Fitts to reopen the case. They’re being awfully tight-lipped over there, especially for them, so they must have something. Detective Morrow doesn’t know what it is?’

  ‘He has no idea. This is so absurd. Gene never planned any bank robbery. He couldn’t have. You know that, don’t you? Mr Dolan said you had all the ins and outs of this story.’

  ‘George is the press agent I never needed.’ She sipped daintily at her drink. ‘I didn’t cover the story, you understand. I’d only been out here a few months. I’d actually quit the newspaper game. Was trying to make a go of it in pictures, like friend Dolan, over at Fox. It didn’t take. Mary Astor’s scandalous little love diary came out that summer and I was the only one who knew how to play the story. Don’t know why I ever tried to leave the business. No sense fighting your nature. I should have known when I started following the California Republic caper instead of churning out script pages.’ Another, longer sip, to prepare herself. ‘You know who’s responsible for the robbery, yes?’

  ‘Bianchi, Hoyer, and Yates.’

  ‘Good girl. But there was always talk, even back in ’36, of a fourth man. A Svengali, pulling the strings. He chose the bank, chose Bianchi, Hoyer, and Yates. I was never completely sold on the idea. I think it came about to explain where the twenty thousand dollars disappeared to. Somebody must have it. Over the years that notion became sort of accepted wisdom. There was a fourth man, the brains of the operation, who ended up with the money and is biding his time.’ She reached for her glass but didn’t pick it up, turning it on the surface of the bar instead. ‘One of the names bandied about was Detective Morrow’s.’

  ‘It’s not him.’ My vehemence startled even me. I wondered who this resolute girl was, and why she didn’t come around more often. ‘If there is a fourth man, which nobody seems to know for sure, it isn’t Gene.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I agree. But he makes a convenient subject for speculation.’ She ticked off the reasons on her fingers, one of them literally ink-stained. ‘He’s alive, he knew the principals, and he was and remains close to his partner’s widow.’

  That relationship with Abigail, forever threatening to drag Gene down. An image of her formed in my mind and I realized, to my dismay, I’d pictured Brenda Baines.

  ‘Again, I don’t cotton to the notion myself,’ Florabel continued. ‘But Fitts is operating under the idea Morrow’s the fourth man. I’d like to know why that is.’

  You and me both, I thought.

  ‘Maybe there is something to this fourth man angle,’ she said. ‘It makes a kind of sense.’

  ‘Then it has to be someone else.’ I sampled my martini, and like that half of it was gone. ‘What about Fentress? He seems to know an awful lot about what happened.’

  ‘That he does. So why write a script confessing to everything once you’ve gotten away with it? Although …’ She trailed off, as if lost in the rhomboid patterns behind the bar.

  ‘Although what?’

  ‘I’m thinking about Clyde. We’ve rubbed elbows a few times. Always check for my wristwatch after. I’m all for a man turning over a new leaf, but he’s not going to do it at my expense. Anyway, back in 1936 Clyde was on the ropes. He hadn’t boarded Josie’s gravy train yet, and his career in pictures had hit the skids. He didn’t turn it around until Paramount paired him with George.’

  ‘So he might have returned to his old trade. Kind of like you did,’ I added without thinking.

  ‘Don’t lump me in with Clyde.’ Florabel smiled. ‘But I can see it. As for why he’d put pen to paper on the subject now, well, I heard the boys in the back room next door cracking wise on how the Fentress union has hit rocky shoals. If Clyde’s looking to go his separate way …’ She shrugged, mulling the possibilities.

  ‘Can I ask about another name? Aloysius Conlin.’

  ‘The late Nap. Now taking the big sleep. Damn, that reminds me, I meant to pick up a copy of that book next door. I’m familiar with Nap’s work.’

  ‘And Nap was familiar with Fentress. Any chance Nap could have been the fourth man?’ And, as such, not at all keen on Clyde’s script reviving interest in the case? I thought.

  ‘I haven’t heard that before, but I reckon it’s possible. Then anything is possible out here under the golden sun.’ She sat back to reconsider me. ‘I may have to do some digging now. Either find the missing money or figure out what bee got into the district attorney’s bonnet that made him delve into this business again.’

  ‘Use your feminine wiles,’ I said.

  ‘Those withered some time ago, alas. All I have left are tenacity and skill. Though in my day …’ Her chuckle blossomed into a guffaw. ‘There are things in this business only a woman can get away with.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘This goes back to one of my first jobs, in Salt Lake City. We were covering a murder trial and the July Fourth weekend was coming up. Beastly hot. I had an invitation to go to the mountains, but I couldn’t leave during deliberations. The jury was deadlocked.’ She glanced at me. ‘Six good men and true. All of them married.’

  I nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Somehow I found my way into the jury room during lunch. Brought an entire bottle of perfume my beau had given me for my birthday. Narcisse Noir.’ The name conjured a pleasant memory for her, and she smiled. ‘I chose to sacrifice it. Spilled the whole thing under the table. Said it was an accident, of course. Those half-dozen men came back from lunch, caught a whiff of what they’d been missing, and acquitted the man in under an hour. Never underestimate the power of a fine perfume.’

  ‘Was the man guilty?’

  ‘No idea. But six of his peers said he wasn’t, and I got to cool off in the mountains.’

  She laughed again, and I couldn’t help joining in. ‘I met Virginia Hill the other day, the heiress? She strikes me as someone who’d try a gambit like that.’

  ‘You don’t say. Is she somehow wrapped up in this California Republic business? You didn’t fall for that heiress bunk, did you?’

  ‘It’s not true?’

  ‘Not in the least. She’s what they call a courier. Runs money for gangsters out of Chicago. It was common knowledge when she lived in New York, which is partly why the boys sent her out here. She has to explain how she came by all that cash somehow, so she cooked up this Alabama heiress line.’ Florabel leaned in, confidence-close. ‘Here’s a little story. I was at Westmore’s Salon o
f Beauty getting my hair done – this color doesn’t linger on its own – when a package comes in for Miss Virginia Hill. She’s due in that afternoon, fresh from Mexico City. The package is thin. I get a gander at the sender’s name and recognize it from Chicago circles.’ Her eyebrows shot up suggestively toward that crown of preserved red. ‘So I dilly-dally until Miss Virginia arrives. She opens the bundle. What’s inside?’

  I couldn’t make myself answer.

  ‘Ten one-thousand-dollar bills. I know this, because she asks Perc Westmore to break one for her. He does, and she tips everybody in the place fifty dollars. Even the gals who aren’t doing her nails. What does this tell me? For one thing, I’m in the wrong racket if Perc Westmore has a thousand in change in the till. It also tells me that while Virginia Hill may be a fellow redhead, she’s a dangerous woman, and one best avoided.’

  I was still marveling at the story when I noticed Florabel had at some point surreptitiously taken out a small notebook. I could make out some of what she’d scribbled—

  Morrow CalRep Va Hill???

  She had told me plenty. But I’d revealed more, to an inveterate newshound who already sensed a scoop.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for your time,’ I said, dropping a few bills onto the bar. ‘But I should go. Work tomorrow.’

  ‘Pity you don’t work at Paramount. I was going to ask about rumbles I’ve heard. Studio big shots footing the bill for an operation spying on the German-American Bund.’

  I grabbed my purse. ‘Sounds far-fetched to me.’

  FOURTEEN