Inside his room, Marcus tore open the envelope. The one-page letter was from MGM Italia’s attorney informing him that his Metropolitana check was ready.
The banks closed at four, so he had an hour to deposit it in his Italian account. Marcus made it to the lawyer’s office by three thirty. The razor-sharp corners of the expensive parchment envelope pressed against his chest from his inside breast pocket as he hurried along the street.
The American Express office stood on a corner overlooking the triangular piazza spread out at the base of the Spanish Steps. A display in the window caught his eye, drawing him like a kid to a candy store.
A row of ten-inch gold palm trees stretched across the front. Behind them towered a backdrop, fifteen inches tall and painted in vivid mistletoe green. Near the top of the Hollywood hills, white letters the size of Marcus’s thumb spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND, ignoring how the “LAND” part of the sign had been pulled down years ago.
A reasonably accurate facsimile of a movie palace marquee hung suspended above:
Los Angeles – la città dei miti
Los Angeles – the city of myths
The sight of this romanticized version of LA pricked Marcus’s heart with tiny shards. Individually, they weren’t barbed enough to draw blood, but collectively they held the power to thrust him through the doors and book the first Pan Am flight heading west.
He peered through the window. A line of desks ran along the right-hand side, each with a different sign:
Mail Collection
American Express Travelers Cheques
International Travel Arrangements – Air, Sea
European Travel Arrangements – Train, Bus, Ferry
His eyes flew back to American Express Travelers Cheques.
Italian banknotes were enormous, so smuggling ten thousand dollars’ worth would be difficult. But what about travelers cheques?
He drummed his fingernails against the glass. If the highest denomination is a hundred bucks, surely a stack of a hundred cheques couldn’t be thicker than a comic book? Would it raise eyebrows if I went in and ordered ten grand worth? What if I came in twice a week? And what if I rotated between the three American Express offices?
“I hate the sight of you!”
Marcus squared back his shoulders, then pivoted on his heel.
Emilio Conti was dressed in the same yellow suit he’d worn the day he accosted Gina Lollobrigida in front of Ristocaffé Colosseo. But today, it hung off him like a potato sack. One of the lapels was bent back at an awkward angle, a button hung by a limp thread, and either he’d forgotten to put on his cufflinks or they had fallen off.
The guy bunched his fingers into a fist tight enough to blanch the knuckles. “Why do you make my life a misery? Why don’t you go back where you came from, Signore Scattino Americano?”
“I’m not responsible for that Epoca article,” Marcus said.
“You loved it.” Emilio treaded a semicircle around Marcus as he lifted his arms like a Pentecostal preacher. “Let us praise Lo Scattino Americano!” His voice bounced off the stone walls. “The most skilled in all Rome!”
“Emilio, don’t do this. I’m only here because I’m stuck in Rome for the time being.”
“You are an American. You can walk in there—” he pointed toward the American Express office “—and make a ticket on the Cristoforo Colombo or the Pan Am. Hello America! I have returned!”
“That was the view of one guy—”
“The top journalist for the top magazine in all of Italy.”
“Trust me, Emilio, as soon as I can, I will walk into that office behind me and I will book a one-way ticket.”
“Oh, yes! It is okay for you! You can leave. You can be whoever you want. Whatever you want. And you leave people like me stuck here.” He waved his hands around wildly, nearly hitting a young woman pushing a stroller. “With these dusty ruins. All this history. All these families and their expectations.”
So he resents how I can leave any time I want.
“Emilio,” Marcus said, keeping his voice low and even, “if you want to go to America, just pack your bags and leave.”
The guy’s face curdled into a snarl. “It is not easy.”
“Sure it is. There are so many Italians in America that you’ll feel right at home.”
Marcus attempted a friendly poke to Emilio’s shoulder but he shoved Marcus’s hand away. “I am not free. I can never be free!”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“YOU KNOW NOTHING!”
The guy began swinging wildly, struggling to land blows wherever he could. Marcus fended them off until he saw that Emilio was determined to cold-cock him. Marcus had to put a stop to this—the bank closed in less than fifteen minutes.
Marcus deposited his camera on the ground, then socked Emilio with a right hook that sent him staggering against the American Express window. It was the first time Marcus had ever slugged someone like that. The movies didn’t show how punching someone hurt like holy hell.
* * *
If he hadn’t run the last two blocks, he might not have made it to the bank in time.
For someone who had never even cheated on his income tax, the prospect of smuggling a large amount of money out of a foreign country made Marcus feel like he was in a Humphrey Bogart movie. He wished Kathryn or Gwendolyn were with him to play his femme fatale.
Was his American Express Travelers Cheques idea inspired? Or crazy? Was there a limit to how many they would sell him? Was anybody keeping track?
He turned the corner into the Piazza di Spagna to peek through the American Express window again but caught sight of a yellow smudge sprawled at the base of the Spanish Steps. Emilio Conti sat with his face planted in the palms of his hands. For a moment, Marcus wondered if he was crying.
Marcus crossed the piazza and sank to his haunches. “Let me buy you a drink. Maybe we can—”
Emilio let out a raw moan as he pushed Marcus onto the cobblestones and lurched to his feet. He pulled something from his jacket pocket but it escaped his grasp and crashed onto the ground, splintering into a thousand fragments. The smell of Scotch whiskey filled Marcus’s nose as Emilio staggered past shocked onlookers. Marcus now felt like he really was in a Bogart picture, so he surrendered to an urge and followed this miserable little jerk.
Emilio reached the expansive Piazza del Popolo, skirted around the northern border of the gardens of the Villa Borghese, and lumbered deeper into the northern part of the city where Marcus had never ventured.
The main thoroughfares led to local streets, which gave way to a lattice of back alleys where cobblestones deteriorated into sparse gravel and the looks from passers-by grew wary.
Emilio abruptly stopped to brush the dirt from his suit and smooth down his hair. He reached for the brass handle attached to a door painted asphalt black. It squeaked in protest as it swung open; the shadows swallowed him whole.
Marcus wondered if he should get while the getting was good. He wasn’t sure he could escape this maze of backstreets.
Bogie would keep going.
On the other side of the door lay a short corridor, its walls covered in peeling flocked velvet of dark pomegranate. The corridor opened into a large, semicircular room. The bar stood on the left, fanning out with stools crowding its lip. Waist-high cocktail tables lined the outer wall, each of them standing in a narrow pool of light cast by dim shaded lights dangling from a ceiling Marcus couldn’t make out. Only a fraction of the tables were occupied; all the other patrons sat at the bar.
Emilio took a seat next to a man with bright red curly hair and motioned the bartender for another round of whatever-he’s-having. The redhead asked Emilio a question and received a curt headshake in response. After a pause, Emilio let his shoulders sag and then gave them a well-maybe shrug, which made the redhead smile. He reached up and ran his fingers through Emilio’s disheveled hair.
It was the sort of thing Domenico liked to do after they made love and fell
back into each other’s arms, panting and sweaty.
Marcus took in the rest of the bar more closely now that his eyes had started to adjust. In the city of the Vatican, where two thousand years of Catholic dogma condemned everything that certain types of men liked to do in the privacy of their pensiones, Marcus found himself standing in a queer bar.
Emilio closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the soothing sensation of his boyfriend’s fingernails dragging across his scalp. A wistful smile emerged on what had been an angry, resentful face.
Marcus turned to leave, but Melody’s warning came back to him. Never trust a Conti.
He removed his camera lens cover. The light in this joint was murky but Emilio’s face was bathed in the light from the lamp directly above him.
Very, very slowly, Marcus pressed the shutter release button.
CHAPTER 19
Kathryn stepped off the stairs leading down to the Beverly Hills Hotel pool and peered over the top of her sunglasses. Over the telephone yesterday, the guy had sounded like the smooth-talking European playboy Marcus had described, so she didn’t think she’d have to look too hard. How many barrel-chested Italian hunks could possibly be lying around in the sun?
It was only late April but the hint of early summer already heated the air. Kathryn fanned her face with her straw pocketbook as she dodged around lollygaggers with nothing better to do on a Wednesday afternoon than sit around a hotel pool hoping to see Burt Lancaster.
She rounded the first corner and looked down the row of cabanas lined up along the ten-foot hedge. A man stepped out from between the white-and-gold-striped canvas flaps of the last one wearing only a bathing suit and a brilliant white smile.
If anyone deserved to be described as a “barrel-chested Italian hunk,” it was Rossano Brazzi. He held out his hand. “Miss Massey, thank you so much for meeting me.”
His grip was confident, manly. “Marcus has mentioned you in his letters.”
Brazzi’s cabana contained a glass-topped coffee table and two rattan chairs. A bottle of something bubbly rested in a pewter ice bucket emblazoned with the hotel’s BHH logo.
Brazzi gestured toward the chairs. “I took a liberty to ordering refreshment.”
Kathryn read the label. “What is prosecco?”
“Our version of champagne. I could have ordered Moët et Chandon, but I’m Italiano!”
It was only through Marcus that Kathryn even knew about the stateside publicity cavalcade Fox was planning for Brazzi ahead of the Three Coins in the Fountain launch the following month. Now that she could see him for herself, she was grateful for this private meeting. Once Fox unveiled their “Europe’s New Screen Romeo,” he might not be so accessible.
He bent behind his chair and brought up a brown cardboard box tied with string. “From Signore Marcus. It is one jar of pesto sauce and one jar of pomodoro sauce made by his landlady.”
Kathryn ran her finger along the edge of the box. She missed Marcus’s laugh, his martinis, and his reassuring presence, but most of all, she missed his ability to listen. It wasn’t until he had gone to Italy for Quo Vadis that Kathryn realized how rare a commodity good listeners were in a town filled with people hell-bent on pulling focus.
And boy, did she ever need Marcus’s ears lately.
Her father’s future, reputation, and freedom were at stake. Had she made a terrible blunder by convincing Winchell to approach the FBI on her behalf? Leo remained curiously noncommittal on the subject, and Gwendolyn had said it was a risk worth taking but acknowledged that it wasn’t her taking the risk. Kathryn longed to hear Marcus’s view, but a trans-Atlantic call would be exorbitant and letters weren’t secure.
Kathryn took her first sip of prosecco. It was more bubbly than champagne, and drier, but refreshing in a cabana with no cross breeze. “Thank you for lugging this package all the way to Los Angeles.”
“It was no trouble, and I must confess: I wanted a reason to see you.”
“With this build-up Zanuck’s giving you, I’m sure our paths would have crossed.”
Brazzi knitted his fingers together. “There is somebody I want to meet.”
Kathryn didn’t need to hear any more. She already knew what was coming. The request grew more and more frequent as Marilyn Monroe’s fame reached new heights. “I’ll help if I can.”
“I would like to meet Arthur Laurents.”
Kathryn rolled the name around in her mind. “The playwright?”
“Si. United Artists will start shooting his play, The Time of the Cuckoo in Venice in July.”
Europe’s new screen Romeo had done his homework. “And you want to talk to him—why?”
“They have not cast the role of the antique storeowner, Renato de Rossi. I know they are considering Vittorio De Sica and Enzio Pinza, but I want to appeal to Signore Laurents himself. Marcus told me that you know everyone in Hollywood.”
“Did you tell him what you wanted?” Brazzi shook his head. He’d done his homework, but not enough of it. “First of all, Arthur Laurents is a New Yorker, but that doesn’t matter because his screenplay was rejected. The director is now writing it.”
“You can connect me with him?”
“David Lean lives in London.”
Brazzi’s chin dropped onto his hands. “I am not in the correct continent.”
“However . . .” She lifted his chin with a finger. “Katharine Hepburn is in Los Angeles. She hasn’t made a movie since George Cukor directed her in Pat and Mike, and that was four years ago. This movie is sort of a mini-comeback, and my guess is that she’ll have a big say in casting. It’s Hepburn you have to impress.”
“Can you introduce me to her?”
“George has been a bit of a recluse recovering from shooting A Star is Born for four months.” She was trying not to get suckered in by his pleading hangdog expression, but the guy was just so gosh-darned handsome. “I can’t promise anything.”
* * *
Perino’s on Wilshire Boulevard was the epitome of elegant European dining, as far as Angelenos were concerned. With its alabaster walls, bone ceiling, cream tablecloths, and eggshell carpet, it was saved from being bland as a vanilla milkshake by salmon upholstery and vases of roses, bright as Mercurochrome.
To Kathryn’s surprise, Cukor readily agreed to set up a lunch the following Sunday with Hepburn and suggested she invite Gwendolyn and Leo as camouflage.
Kathryn had insisted that they all arrive at a quarter of one to ensure that Brazzi, Cukor, or Hepburn weren’t kept waiting at an empty table. And thank goodness she had, because Hepburn arrived seven minutes early, leaving poor George to scurry along in her wake as she issued orders for iced water but no ice, and garlic in her mashed potatoes, even though she knew that Alexander Perino hated the stuff.
By one o’clock, they were seated at a central table, drinks ordered, and menus in hand.
“I must say, Mr. Brazzi,” Hepburn said, “your English is excellent. Do all of your countrymen possess an equally fine command of our language? I ask because I’ll be heading over there this summer. Shooting a movie, you know. My first in a while and I don’t mind telling you that I’m looking forward to it. Working is vital; otherwise, everything atrophies.”
Brazzi looked at Kathryn bleakly.
“She means ‘weakens’ or ‘wastes away.’”
“That’s right!” Hepburn thumped the table. “The gray matter, the reflexes. Good golly, it all goes if you don’t use it. So, do they?”
Brazzi beseeched Kathryn again. Do they what?
“Your fellow Italians.” Kathryn prompted. “Do they speak English as fluently as you?”
“I’m afraid they do not, Signorina Hepburn. When I was filming The Barefoot Contessa, Mister Zanuck employed someone with whom I could practice my English. Ah, but you must know him. He worked at MGM for many years.”
“Oh yes?” Hepburn mused.
Gwendolyn brought her hand to her mouth and whispered “San Simeon!” under the light minuet waltz
ing through the loudspeakers.
A number of years before, Marcus had scored an invitation to Hearst’s castle retreat up the Californian coast. Unfortunately, he had gotten horribly drunk and embarrassed himself in front of Hollywood’s elite, including Katharine Hepburn.
“I can recommend the Oysters Rockefeller and the Breast of Capon,” Kathryn exclaimed. “And I like the Antipasto Italiene, but perhaps Mr. Brazzi might be a better judge.”
The tactic worked, and the conversation veered away from the poor impression Marcus had made that weekend.
When Kathryn had called Brazzi to tell him the luncheon was on, she’d instructed, “Feel free to ooze the European charm, but don’t drown her in it. She’s sharp as a carving knife, but she’s still a woman. And ask her about her experiences. Actors love to talk about themselves.”
“Please tell me about filming The African Queen,” Brazzi said. “Was it very difficult?”
Hepburn’s experiences in the Belgian Congo and Uganda led to a free-ranging discussion about the rewards and potholes of international travel, unfamiliar food, foreign customs, and the uselessness of guidebooks that are more than a year old.
By the time the appetizers arrived, Brazzi had managed to bring the conversation around to Venice. He had Hepburn in the palm of his well-manicured hand as he spoke rapturously of his favorite restaurant.
“Cantina Do Spade has been open since 1448,” he enthused. “Casanova himself entertained his potential conquests there. More than five hundred years of Venetian history pours from every brick.”
“You sound like you know Venice very well.” Hepburn couldn’t pull her eyes off Brazzi long enough to look at her Consommé Bellevue.
“I visited it many times when I attended university in Florence. I am very at peace there and think of it as my second home.”
“Tell me, Mr. Brazzi—”
“Please call me Rossano.”
“If you call me Katharine.”
“I would be delighted.”
“So, Rossano, what did you study at the university of Florence?”
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