The Garden on Sunset

by Martin Turnbull

  THE GARDEN ON SUNSET

  A novel by

  Martin Turnbull

  Book One in the Garden of Allah novels

  Smashwords edition – Copyright 2011 Martin Turnbull

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER:

  This novel is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events and locales that figure into the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to

  BOB MOLINARI

  with whom everything is possible,

  without whom nothing is worthwhile.

  CHAPTER 1

  When the Hollywood Red Car lurched to a stop, Marcus Adler pulled open his eyes to find a wheezing old conductor staring right at him.

  Marcus looked around. He was the only passenger left. “Where are we?”

  The conductor jerked his head toward the door. “End of the line.”

  “Don’t suppose you know where 8152 Sunset Boulevard is?”

  “What do I look like? A street map?”

  Marcus took that for a no, picked up his cardboard suitcase, and climbed down to the street. A line of rickety stores huddled on the south side of Sunset Boulevard up to where the asphalt ended; a sign near the curb read LOS ANGELES CITY LIMIT. Past the sign, west of Crescent Heights Boulevard, Sunset disintegrated into a wandering dirt road. A knot of horses stood in the shade of a tree with thin, dusty leaves Marcus had never seen back in Pennsylvania. One of the horses raised its head to study him for a moment, then returned to grazing.

  “Hey!” The conductor hung from the streetcar’s doorway. “8152 Sunset? Try thataway.” He pointed toward the horses.

  Eighty-one fifty-two Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California. It was an address Marcus had repeated over and over to himself since that time when he was eleven years old, swollen grotesquely with diphtheria in the hospital. His parents had written Madame Alla Nazimova a letter at his request, never thinking that a motion picture star so unspeakably exotic, so stupefyingly glamorous would respond. But she did. And she came to call on him, a diaphanous vision in lavender tulle. How kind she was, and so humble. Surely she would remember him. How many bedside visits had she made to children inflated with diphtheria in the middle of Pennsylvania? How many did she look in the eye and say, “If you ever come to Hollywood, I want you to come visit me. My house is very large, and I have plenty of room for you. I live at 8152 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California.”

  And now he was almost there.

  Marcus crossed the deserted intersection and headed toward a nest of two-story bungalows that loomed behind a tall white wall. They were freshly painted; the sheen caught the light of the setting sun as it descended into the dirt track.

  As he made his way along the wall, an unbroken trumpet note sliced the still air. What will Nazimova say when she answers the door? he wondered.

  The trumpet player ran out of steam and a thunderclap of applause erupted. Maybe this wasn’t a good time. He peeked around the corner and looked up at a twelve-foot-high sign.

  GARDEN OF ALLAH HOTEL

  8152 Sunset Boulevard

  Marcus set his suitcase down in the dust and stared at the gold letters of Allah. He didn’t expect Sunset Boulevard to be a dirt track and he certainly didn’t expect to find a hotel sign out front of Alla Nazimova’s movie star mansion.

  He peered at the hotel past the sign. It was painted the same cream as the garden wall, with tall, arched windows and dark brown shutters. It looked like the California missions he’d studied in high school.

  He pulled out a handkerchief and swiped his broad forehead, round cheeks and the back of his neck. It was hard to believe this was January. Back home, they’d be shoveling the driveway, but here there wasn’t even a cool breeze. He picked up his suitcase and made his way past a long bed of pale roses and into the white hotel.

  The murky foyer had paneled walls and octagonal avocado-green tiles the size of dinner plates. The reception desk would have been hard to spot without the lamp casting a pool of amber light on it. Its stained-glass shade was a kitschy pyramid with a sphinx and a clump of palm trees. There was no one in sight.

  Marcus rang the bell. Laughter and clinking glasses wafted through the double doors that opened onto a wide brick path to a swimming pool curved like a grand piano at the far end. A crowd too large to count was scattered around it in knots of fours and fives; a hundred, two hundred people maybe. Shiny tuxedos, sparkling diamonds, ropes of pearls, patent leather shoes.

  Marcus gaped at a clutch of women dancing the Black Bottom. Their short hair, high hemlines and cigarettes were a far cry from the Pennsylvania Dutch girls he’d grown up with. A girl Marcus had known in McKeesport had turned up at a St. Stephen’s tea dance social with her hair bobbed like Louise Brooks and her stockings rolled down below her knees; she hadn’t lasted ten minutes, and Marcus had never seen her again. Maybe she’d been run out of town too.

  Six days, three trains, a bus and two streetcars later, the sting of his father’s last words still jabbed at Marcus’ heart. “You get out of my town and get as far as you can go, and don’t come back.” On the night train to Chicago, he’d stared into the darkness and wondered where to go. Eighty-one fifty-two Sunset Boulevard was the only address outside of McKeesport he knew, so when his train pulled into Chicago, he took the next one heading west.

  There wasn’t a Pickford curl in sight at this party. It was all crisp bangs, bright rouge and red lipstick, ivory cigarette holders and cream bowties on outrageous three-inch heels. Oriental butlers circulated with silver cocktail trays and virtually every girl had a martini in her hand. So much for seven years of Prohibition. There was a lively, frantic quality to this crowd Marcus had never witnessed before. Everyone seemed to be having such a riot that he had to wonder: What was so bad about booze if this was the result?

  A troupe of musicians decked out like Spanish matadors made their way to the pool and lined up at the far end. They brought their Continental spin on “Ain’t She Sweet” to a close and started counting backwards from ten. When they shouted, “ONE!” the trumpeter blew a long note and paper lanterns in orange, blue, green and red strung throughout the maple trees lit up, transforming the garden into a fairytale wonderland with their gentle glow. The crowd sighed and clapped. It looks like the set of Camille, thought Marcus, where Nazimova wore that shimmering cloak with the white camellias. How luminous she’d been, falling in love with Valentino.

  The matadors merged into the crowd playing “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue” and the chatter swelled again.

  “You look a little lost.”

  The voice belonged to a tall man with a long, narrow face. It took Marcus a moment to realize he was staring into the eyes of Francis X. Bushman. Marcus had seen Ben-Hur twelve times when it came to McKeesport; he’d thought Bushman was stupendously hateful as Massala, the villain. Tonight he wore a tuxedo that looked twice as expensive as Marcus’ entire wardrobe. His first movie star!

  “I . . . ah . . .” The words dried up on Marcus’ tongue like August dirt.
>
  Bushman peered down at Marcus’ cardboard suitcase and his eyes lit up. “Good gravy! You’re here to check in!” Bushman lifted his hand to his mouth. “Hey! Brophy!” The actor’s voice carried easily over the commotion.

  A wide-faced man with a Cheshire cat smile turned around and raised his eyebrows. Bushman grabbed Marcus’ suitcase out of his hand and lifted it high. “You have a guest!”

  Brophy cut through the crowd with the eagerness of a groundhog in February. “Is that right, son? You want to check in? To the hotel?”

  Marcus scanned the crowd. He couldn’t see Alla Nazimova anywhere. “This is 8152 Sunset Boulevard, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.”

  Marcus felt stupid asking if Madame Nazimova still lived there. This is a hotel, you big nincompoop, he told himself. Clearly she isn’t here any more. “I guess I do need a room,” he conceded.

  Brophy stepped up onto the diving board and let out a whistle that slashed through the crowd and stopped the band.

  “Everybody!” Brophy announced. “I have an exciting announcement to make. I would like to introduce you all to a most important person.” He pulled Marcus up alongside him on the diving board and out of the side of his mouth murmured, “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Marcus Adler.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present the Garden of Allah Hotel’s very first guest, Mister Marcus Adler, Esquire!” The crowd, easy to impress on bathtub gin, let out a collective “Oooohh!” and burst into a thunderclap of applause. “Mister Adler hails from the great city of . . .” He nudged Marcus.

  “McKeesport, Pennsylvania.”

  “ . . . Of McKeesport, Pennsylvania!” Brophy spun around in surprise. “McKeesport? Ain’t that where the first nickelodeon opened up?”

  Marcus nodded. It was McKeesport’s sole claim to fame. Thin, to be sure, but eagerly brought up in conversation with every visiting relative and Fuller Brush man passing through town.

  “Seems to me,” Brophy beamed, “that our Mr. Adler here is bringing the coals back to Newcastle, which I think qualifies him to an extra-special rate. What do you say, friends?”

  A loud cheer erupted. It dropped off quickly, though; the crowd was keen to get back to its gin. Brophy swept Marcus off the diving board, grabbed up his suitcase and led him back into the gloomy foyer. He opened the first page of the hotel register, swung it around toward Marcus and handed him a fountain pen.

  “You on the level about being from McKeesport?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all. You planning on staying long with us, Mr. Adler?”

  Marcus looked up from the blank page and summoned up a fistful of courage. “Does Alla Nazimova still live here?”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Garden of Allah Hotel’s opening night party was only just starting to wind down when Marcus peered out of his tiny room late the next morning. All he could see was a couple of pretty girls in ginger-brown muslin, their velvet headbands slipped down around their necks. The shorter one had lost something and they were searching in the bushes of one of the villas.

  Marcus saw the silhouette of a woman pull back the villa’s heavy lace curtain to watch the girls fumble around in the flower beds. The figure remained disturbingly still until the girl with a long, bedraggled mess of peroxided hair held up the missing shoe and departed with her pal. The curtain fell, then was suddenly pulled back again. Had she seen him looking at her?

  Marcus stepped away from his window and sat on the bed. “Okay,” he said out loud. “So now what?”

  Not once in the six days it had taken to get to Hollywood had it occurred to him that Alla Nazimova might no longer live in her Sunset Boulevard mansion. He’d expected that she might not recall her visit to his sick bed, but what sort of dunderhead crosses the entire country without an alternate plan?

  He looked around his room. It wasn’t very expensive, nor was it very big. There was barely enough room for a bedside table, and it was dark even during the day. Why was he sitting inside this cramped and dim hotel room instead of reveling in the boundless California sunshine? Surely the Pacific Ocean was easy enough to find.

  Marcus had taken a wrong turn inside the hotel and ended up on the far side of the pool, where a handful of people in chaises lounged, none of them too chatty or sociable. The grounds looked a lot bigger today without a couple of hundred smartly dressed partygoers in varying stages of sobriety and subsequent disarray. The garden was thick with broad-leaved ferns, pink rhododendrons, yellow lantana and profusions of purple bougainvillea; villas spread to the east and west sides of the property. Marcus kept his eye on the one he could see from his room, but the curtain was drawn.

  The California sun, which Marcus had traveled like a pack mule to feel on his face, had burned away the last of the morning haze. He tilted his face toward it and soaked up the warmth. He couldn’t help but smile; the poor folks back home wouldn’t get to feel this for another four months.

  When he opened his eyes, a slim woman with bony shoulders had stretched out on a chaise lounge on the other side of the pool. He gasped and looked away — she looked like Greta Garbo. She also looked nude. He snuck another peek and took in the fawnish brown bathing suit that hugged her lean body and matched her legs. He had to know if it was her.

  He wandered closer to the pool’s edge and dropped to one knee to retie his shoelace. He snuck a sideways glance, squinting to see more clearly; it sure looked like Garbo. While he was messing around with the double knot, somebody’s knee smacked him right in the forehead and sent him tumbling ass over chin into the pool. His hand hit the water with a thwack and the cold sucked the air out of his lungs. He groped at the water like a terrified octopus until his hand connected with something soft and fleshy. It moved like it was trying to shrug him free.

  He broke through the surface and gulped air, shaking the water from his face. When he opened his eyes, a girl with startling white skin and hazel eyes was frowning at him, her forehead pinched. Dark brown hair draped across her narrow face like seaweed.

  “Are you trying to drown me?” she demanded. “Can’t you swim?”

  “Pennsylvania state champion,” Marcus snapped back. It wasn’t entirely accurate, but this girl wouldn’t know that. She made for the nearest edge, doing a one-armed side stroke, and Marcus followed her.

  “I’m so sorry,” the girl whispered. “I didn’t see you. I got distracted by . . .” She glanced at the woman in the fawn bathing suit. They were a mere seven feet from her now.

  “Is that who I think it is?” he murmured.

  The girl smiled but didn’t take her eyes off the woman. “I think so.”

  Marcus had seen Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil just a few months ago. It was the last movie he and Dwight Brewster had seen together. Marcus wondered for a moment how Dwight was. And then he wondered where Dwight was. Did he get run out of town too? Would he ever see Dwight again?

  “Are you two drowned?” The voice was deep and possibly foreign but, Marcus asked himself, who knew how Greta Garbo sounded when she spoke?

  “We’re fine,” the girl replied.

  “Do you need a towel?”

  “No, no,” the girl called out, “we’re okay. But thank you.” She pushed off for the far side of the pool and motioned for Marcus to follow her.

  They hoisted themselves out of the water and sat with their feet paddling the water. “I’m really sorry about all that,” she said, and offered her hand. “My name is Kathryn,” she said. “Kathryn Massey.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Kathryn Massey smoothed her cotton sundress across the palm of her left hand. “See?” she said to the guy she’d knocked into the hotel pool right in front of someone who may or may not have been Greta Garbo. “This is almost dry already.” She nodded toward their shoes. “They won’t take too long.”

  “I hope not,” he replied seriously. “They’re the only ones I’ve got.”

  Kathryn studied the g
uy a little more closely. With his round, corn-fed face, apple cheeks and sandy blonde hair, he didn’t seem the down-and-out type. “You’ve only got one pair of shoes?”

  “I sort of left home in a hurry,” Marcus said. His face shaded with something Kathryn couldn’t quite identify. “You just check in?” he asked. She nodded. “Rooms are kind of small, huh?”

  “There’s barely room to swing a dead duck in mine.” She shrugged. “Still, they’re cheap, so what can you expect?” She stared at the villas. “I wonder how much they cost.”

  “Do you see the woman in the window?” he asked.

  Kathryn followed Marcus’ gaze to villa twenty-four. There was definitely someone standing there, holding the curtain back, unnervingly still.

  “I noticed her from my window this morning,” Marcus said. “I was thinking maybe it was Alla Nazimova.”

  “The movie star?”

  “This used to be her home. I asked the manager if she still lives here, but he said he’d heard she had a place in New York.”

  “Would you stick around if someone got the bright idea to turn your home into a hotel?”

  Marcus smiled a quiet sort of smile, more to himself than anything else. His teeth were big and white, and a couple were slightly snaggletoothed, which gave him a quiet sort of charm. Thank God you don’t have one of those thousand watt smiles, Kathryn thought. I’m so tired of the ones designed to mesmerize casting agents and costars.

  “You a big fan?” she asked.

  Marcus hesitated, weighing something in his mind, and then nodded. “I’ve got this uncle and aunt in Pittsburgh. They took me to see her in A Doll’s House when I was ten. I was completely captivated. Then I came down with diphtheria and my folks asked her to come see me. Nobody could believe it when she turned up. Before she left, she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘If you ever come to Hollywood, I want you to visit me.’ So last week when —”