The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  His was the only car in the turnaround, and he wondered if he had come in the wrong entrance or, worse still, was the only guest. He didn’t really know Pearl, and wanted to keep it that way. They’d spent twenty minutes together when Nessheim had first arrived; it had been an amiable conversation in which Pearl himself had been the chief topic of conversation. ‘Doing a Goldwyn,’ Teitz had described it, after that mogul’s habit of conducting a non-stop monologue about himself, pausing only to take breath and say, Enough of me about me. What do you think about me?

  Nessheim had turned down the offer of an office near Pearl’s in the executive quarters, preferring to keep his distance among the studio’s proletariat of writers. Since then Nessheim’s relations with the studio owner had been confined to the occasional phone call. He thought of them as the Happy calls. ‘Is Mr Hoover happy?’ Pearl would ask, and Nessheim would say, ‘The Director is happy.’ And that was it. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done to merit this invitation, especially if it meant lunchtime alone with Pearl.

  Now a teenager in white trousers and a white polo shirt came around the corner of the house and waved to him. The kid ran up to the car and Nessheim said, ‘No rush.’

  The kid caught his breath. ‘Mr Pearl doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I figure his guests might feel the same way.’

  Nessheim let the kid drive off with the Dodge, then walked up to the front door, which was half-open. He knocked once and walked into an empty entrance hall dominated by a majestic staircase, which rose in a vertiginous sweep of white struts topped by a black banister. It looked like a grand piano had been tipped over on its side.

  A young Hispanic maid appeared and asked for his coat; she smiled when he pointed out he wasn’t wearing one and he noticed how pretty she was. A door to one side opened and Mrs Pearl came out. It had to be, Nessheim figured, since Hollywood Wife was written all over her: she was tall and tanned, with shoulder-length, wavy blonde hair that looked fresh from the beauty parlour. She wore a silk dress, patterned with blue-and-red peacocks and a string of impressive pearls. Two rings, one a big diamond, sat like capital investments on her wedding finger.

  ‘I’m Faye Pearl,’ she said in a voice that was all cigar-ettes and smoke. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Nessheim. I’m with the FBI.’

  She looked momentarily startled, then gave a hostess smile. ‘Of course. Buddy mentioned you’d be here. Do come in: it’s a buffet, nothing formal – just a lot of friends of ours. Which means movie people, since Buddy doesn’t have any other kind of friends any more.’ She turned to the maid who was now standing by the door. ‘Anita, don’t just stand there. Comprende? Work – go to work.’

  He followed Mrs Pearl through into a vast living room, which had large windows that looked out over a square of formal lawn, framed, in Italian style, by tall cypresses. There were perhaps thirty people in the room, almost all standing up, though there were several clusters of chairs and sofas, covered in fruit-coloured fabric – orange and lemon and plum. At the far end an oil portrait hung above the fireplace of a woman who looked familiar, and Nessheim realised it was a younger Faye Pearl.

  The guests were mainly men, dressed in smart weekend suits, holding drinks and talking in small groups. At the near end of the room French doors opened on to a long sun porch with a glass roof. There silver chafing dishes lined the serving tables, which were covered with starched linen tablecloths.

  Faye crooked a finger and a black waiter came up. ‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked Nessheim.

  ‘A beer, please,’ he said and the waiter went over to a bar in the corner.

  Faye said, ‘I don’t know how many people you’ll know here, Mr Nessheim.’ He looked around, but didn’t see a single familiar face except for Buddy Pearl. Nessheim noticed Faye catch her husband’s eye. As the waiter came with his glass of beer, Buddy gestured at Nessheim to join his group, so he excused himself to Mrs Pearl and made his way over.

  ‘Ah, Agent Nessheim,’ said Pearl expansively. He wore a blue blazer with shiny brass buttons, his white shirt open at the neck. ‘Come meet some people.’

  There were half a dozen men standing in a semicircle and Nessheim tried to take in their names as he shook hands with each in turn. One little guy was named Mayer, another Loew, another Warner. Suddenly it clicked: these were Pearl’s fellow moguls. He wondered again what he was doing there.

  One whose name he didn’t catch asked him, ‘How is Edgar these days?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for over a year,’ said Nessheim, which was technically the truth since he hadn’t ever seen Hoover.

  ‘Is he coming out to the Coast any time soon?’ the man named Warner asked. He was dressed sharply in a grey suit with small black checks.

  ‘I haven’t heard,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘I have,’ said Pearl. ‘I had a call from him about two weeks back. He was checking on the progress of our latest Bureau picture. It’s looking good, isn’t it Agent Nessheim?’

  Nessheim nodded. ‘They’ll be wrapping up tomorrow or Tuesday.’

  Pearl said, ‘Mr Hoover told me he’s thinking of coming out later this Fall.’

  ‘Before the Santa Anita season ends,’ Warner said. He added with a smirk, ‘His friend Clyde likes a flutter.’ Someone gave a knowing smile.

  A much younger man came across the room. He was a little short of six feet but square-jawed and muscular. Pearl beamed at him. ‘TD, you made it.’

  ‘Have you got the keys to the pool house? I left some stuff out there.’

  ‘Sure thing. Say hi to these gentlemen. This is my boy,’ he said proudly.

  TD nodded curtly at the group and made no attempt to shake hands. Pearl said, ‘TD’s got one more year at USC. Then I’m hoping he’ll join me at the studio.’ When TD frowned, Pearl protested, ‘Well you can’t play pro football. That’s a mug’s game.’ He looked around for support and his eyes fastened on Nessheim. ‘You played some ball, didn’t you, Nessheim?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘In high school?’ asked TD, sounding unimpressed. He didn’t seem to recognise Nessheim from their encounter at the studio gates.

  ‘Yeah, and college too.’

  ‘Really?’ TD seemed surprised. ‘All four years?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Nessheim, who didn’t want to play it up. If Pearl thought the sun shone out of his kid’s backside, Nessheim wasn’t going to put a cloud in the way.

  Pearl said, ‘TD here was varsity all three years. They’d have made the Rose Bowl if they’d started you,’ he said to his son.

  TD nodded. There was no aw shucks modesty about Pearl’s kid, thought Nessheim. One of the moguls asked TD, ‘What position do you play?’

  ‘Quarterback,’ he said. He was looking hard at Nessheim. Maybe he did recognise him after all.

  The mogul turned to Nessheim and politely asked, ‘What about you?’

  ‘I went both ways. Safety and end.’

  He sensed the moguls were getting bored of the football talk. Pearl took a bunch of keys out of his pocket and handed them to his son. As TD walked off, Warner announced, ‘On the way here, the radio said Kiev’s fallen.’

  A man with receding hair laughed. ‘Kiev? I left there when I was five years old after they murdered my uncle in a pogrom. My mother carried me, and my father carried a sack of gewgaws to get us started in the New World. So I’m not shedding any tears for Kiev.’

  A quiet-spoken man said, ‘If Kiev’s fallen, the Nazis will be heading for Moscow next.’

  ‘Good for them.’ This was Mayer and everybody looked a little surprised. ‘Listen, I’d rather do business with Hitler than the Commies any day. That’s what I want Joe to understand. He’s got to realise we’re Americans first and Jews second.’

  The receding-hair fellow said knowingly, ‘The Russians will fight like rats. If Moscow goes they’ve had it. That’s why I can’t see it falling myself.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said the quiet-spoken man, ‘but they better watch the
ir backside. They’ve got divisions on the Manchurian border. If they pull them back to fight the Germans, the Japs will be in like a shot.’

  Warner piped up, ‘Not if the Japs invade us first. Then the Reds won’t have to worry about their eastern flank.’

  ‘Let the Japs try,’ said Mayer. He looked at his watch. ‘Is the Ambassador due any time soon?’ There was a slight impatience to his voice.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be here,’ Pearl said. ‘You know Joe – if he can keep Gloria Swanson waiting, why worry about a bunch of haimishe Hebes.’ He laughed but seemed a little antsy. He glanced at Nessheim, ‘You should get some lunch, Agent Nessheim. You must be starving.’

  Nessheim knew when he was being dismissed. He nodded at the semicircle of potentates and made his way to the sun porch. Two black men in white shirts served him from the hot dishes. It was nothing fancy, but still quite a spread – creamed beef, hot tongue, barbecued drumsticks, breast meat served cold in slices, potato salad, coleslaw with carrot bits, beets in vinegar, tomato vinaigrette and lettuce mixed with avocado. There were three kinds of rolls.

  He took his plate and looked around; people were eating in little groups he didn’t feel comfortable joining. Spying some empty wicker chairs by one of the windows, he went and sat down. It had started to rain and the windows were streaked with long runs of water. He was gnawing on a drumstick when a man joined him, stylishly dressed, in a double-breasted suit with a white dress shirt and a rich blue tie with a Windsor knot.

  ‘Mo Dubin,’ the man said, leaning over to shake, with a soft enormous hand that felt boneless. He was rumple-nosed, with a face that looked older than the rest of him.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mo, leaning forward close enough that Nessheim smelt the earthy stink of Pall Malls, ‘have you ever seen a bigger bunch of jerks?’

  Nessheim sat back and tried not to laugh. ‘You tell me.’

  He said, ‘You work for Buddy?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Say your name again, pal.’

  Nessheim told him and Mo looked at him carefully. ‘A landsmann?’ When Nessheim looked baffled Mo laughed. ‘I didn’t think so. Though all those guys are Hebes like me. Yet they’re standing there like the six apostles, waiting for the Ambassador.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Joe Kennedy. Having been bounced out of his post in England, he had the nerve to tell them they should hold back on criticising Hitler or it could go badly for the Jews over here. I used to know Joe – what a schmuck.’

  ‘So why’s he coming here?’

  ‘It’s more why are they here waiting for him?’ Mo gestured disdainfully to the group around Pearl. ‘It’s because they’re scared. Not Buddy – he’s known Joe even longer than I have. But the others –’ he shook his head in disgust. ‘They’d cut a deal with Hitler himself if they had to. They’re having some hearings in Washington – the isolationists and anti-Semites are having a field day. Hollywood’s run by the Jews, they say; Communism is being insinuated into the nation’s motion pictures. Honest to Christ, three minutes with Louis over there and you’d know he’s terrified of Commies.’

  ‘It’s true that Mr Mayer didn’t seem very hot on war with Germany.’

  ‘Who is? But sometimes you do what you gotta do.’ Nessheim nodded and Dubin went on, ‘Mayer’s a buffoon. Oh, I know he makes a great picture, but what’s that got to do with anything?’

  Nessheim didn’t have an answer; it summed up his own view of Hollywood. ‘Are you from LA?’

  ‘Is anybody? I’m just visiting for a while. Though not many of these schmoes seem to have been out here much longer.’ He gestured with a bent thumb towards the living room. ‘Listening to them, you’d think they all lived in New York. You hear more talk about Second Avenue than about Hollywood Boulevard.’

  ‘Are you from New York?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Mo. ‘I’m just a rube from Shaker Heights.’

  A connection clicked for Nessheim, but only vaguely. ‘What brought you out here?’

  ‘The weather,’ he said cheerfully, pointing outside, where the rain was now steady. ‘And I do some jobs for Buddy. We used to be partners.’

  ‘In the movies?’ Nessheim asked.

  Mo gave a curt laugh. ‘Would you see a movie made in Cleveland?’ He added casually, ‘It was the liquor business.’

  ‘How long were you in that for?’

  ‘Long enough,’ said Mo and he and Nessheim looked at each other. Prohibition had been over for eight years, but it was clear that Mo’s and Pearl’s venture had pre-dated its expiration.

  Mo said, ‘So if you don’t work for Buddy, which studio are you with?’

  ‘I’m at AMP all right. I advise on the crime pictures. I’m with the FBI.’

  Mo made a great show of patting his jacket pockets, then guffawed. ‘Nothing to declare,’ he said.

  Nessheim shrugged amiably. He’d had worse reactions to working for the Bureau. ‘I’d cuff you if there were.’

  ‘I bet you would,’ Mo said jovially, but he looked less comfortable now. He took his empty plate and put it on the side table next to him, ruffling its fabric cover. ‘Excuse me a minute; I got to make a call. Nice speaking to you.’

  Nessheim nodded. ‘See you later.’ He sensed Mo was unlikely to return.

  Dessert was being served at the buffet tables by two Hispanic women, though not the pretty one who’d greeted him at the door. He saw Louis Mayer with a plate of strawberry shortcake, edging his spoon into his plate while a fat man in an off-white suit whispered in his ear.

  He got up, suddenly desperate for air. It was now raining hard outside, but he didn’t want to move back to the living room and the moguls. There was a glass door to the garden at his end of the sun porch and he went towards it. No one paid any attention as he quietly slid open the door and stepped out onto the veranda.

  It was paved with small ceramic tiles that were slick from the rain. Nessheim moved gingerly along them until he came to steps leading down to a small section of mown lawn, which was bounded by a high evergreen hedge. He descended and crossed the lawn, then went through a low archway cut into the hedge and looked down at a big rectangular swimming pool, long enough for laps, wide enough for water polo. Behind it sat a long low cabana of pale pine. As he came down to the level of the pool, the rain was starting to soak into his suit’s shoulders. On the surface of the pool the rain dropped plink plink plink, and steam rose as it hit the heated water.

  He decided to take shelter under the timbered portico of the pool house and wait until the rain tapered off. There were two doors in the cabana and he hoped one would lead to a bathroom. Then he heard a noise that sounded like moaning. The wind?

  He picked the second door and pushed it open slowly. Inch by inch the changing room came into view. The room was unlit and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. But gradually he could make out the wooden floor, the benches that ran against two walls, their green cushions … and then in the far corner a pair of legs. Brown legs, their knees bent, with another pair of legs wrapped around them.

  It was two people, one lying on top of the other. He saw uppermost the muscled figure of a naked young man – tanned except for his ass, which stood out in the dark room like a pale moon. A woman was underneath him, making the moaning noises Nessheim had heard outside – it was hard to tell whether from pleasure or pain. Her skirt was hitched up high, almost to the waist. It was a white cotton skirt, though darkened in places by water stains – she must have been caught by the rain.

  The woman turned her head and suddenly a pair of dark eyes was staring straight at him. It was the maid he had met in the entrance hall. The man, he realised, was TD. The look on her face was not embarrassed or surprised, but simply resigned, as if his presence was just one more humiliation.

  He turned and moved back through the open door, closing it quietly behind him. He took a deep breath. What a risk the pair were taking – but then, who would be stupid enough to come out in this rain? Bring y
our trunks, Pearl’s secretary Rose had said, but there would be no swimming party today. Not that it seemed TD would care what anybody thought.

  Nessheim walked past the pool as the rain belted down. When he came to the opening in the hedge, he hesitated – he didn’t want to face Mo Dubin again or answer the inevitable question about why he had got so wet. He went left instead, walking on a neat gravel path that went around the house, functioning as a walkway and a French drain to keep water away from the house’s foundations. Even in this torrent the gravel was absorbent and dry, crunching with every step he took.

  He had turned the corner when he realised he was about to pass a large window. He moved out into the garden instead, sheltering briefly under a jacaranda tree, orange and green-leaved at this time of year. He peered at a ground-floor room of the house and realised he was looking into a study. A man sat behind a desk. Expecting it to be Buddy Pearl, he was surprised to see Mo Dubin sitting there instead. Someone else was in the room, standing in front of the desk. Nessheim took a small step forwards to get a better view.

  Any thoughts of returning to the party vanished. It didn’t matter to Nessheim what they were talking about; it was enough that the other man was there. Time to go. He retreated further into the garden, moving behind clumps of white oleander. He’d fetch his car himself and make his excuses. Right now it was crucial that he wasn’t seen. Not by Mo Dubin while he was talking to the other man, and especially not by the other guy – Ike, the manager from Ferraro’s.

  It took him several minutes to find his car, but at last he located it behind the stables. Its keys were in the starter. He was drenched by now and drove out quickly, waving with phoney cheer to the parking kid as he went through the turnaround in front. Back on Bentley Avenue he headed towards Santa Monica Boulevard. A hundred yards down he saw a woman walking along the winding road. It was the maid again.

  She was walking quickly through the downpour on short powerful legs, her calves packed with a walker’s muscle. She was carrying an umbrella, but the wind had picked up and she had to stop every few steps to keep its spokes from bending inside out. Nessheim drew alongside her and stopped; reaching over, he pushed down the window and said, ‘You want a lift?’