Today was their first read-through of the latest script. This week found the intrepid duo wading through the opium dens of Chinatown in search of a missing heiress. Vivian’s character, Lorna, had more dialogue than ever, and she carried much of the story, having been kidnapped by white slavers and forced to try to talk her way out of the sticky situation. It ended well, of course. Harvey Diamond always saved the day, but this was an edgy episode, much more daring than anything else they’d tried to date. Vivian could see the shift in direction the station had taken since Mr. Hart’s departure. Mr. Langley had more modern ideas about what constituted entertainment, and he was willing to take chances.
However, it looked like the sponsor might be getting a little nervous about all the chances being taken with their expensive baby. An unfamiliar man stood in the control room next to Mr. Langley. He was in his midforties and attractive, with dark wavy hair. He was dressed to the nines in a perfectly tailored pin-striped suit. He surveyed the room through narrowed eyes and puffed away at a Sultan’s Gold cigarette, tapping the ashes into a glass tray perched on a tiny pedestal at his right elbow. He had ad man written all over him. His look was carefully crafted to impress, and Vivian didn’t know anyone who smoked Sultan’s Gold cigarettes if they weren’t under contractual obligation to do so.
As Vivian watched, the man looked at her and then leaned in to say something to Mr. Langley. They both smiled at her, and Vivian felt her insides unclench. She returned the smile and watched the Sultan’s Gold man’s smile soften from one of calculation to one of flirtation. Whatever this official-looking man was here for, it clearly wasn’t about her. She followed their eyes to Graham on the opposite end of the room. He too was puffing away. A hazy cloud of cigarette smoke hung about his head.
Vivian hoped he’d at least had the presence of mind to smoke an actual Sultan’s Gold under the watchful gaze of the sponsor’s representative. Graham tended to sneak his own preferred brand of cigarettes into the studio. She spotted the telltale gold stripe around the cigarette between Graham’s lips and sighed with the relief.
“Afternoon, everybody.” The director, Joe McGreevey, shouted to be heard over the raucous din of the rehearsal space.
All heads in the studio snapped to the control booth.
“You may have noticed a new face in the booth today. This is the Sultan’s Gold radio account representative, Stuart Marshfield.”
Vivian shifted her attention to Mr. Marshfield and offered him a brilliant smile. He exhaled a cloud of smoke as he regarded the group and gave them a nod.
“Okay,” Joe continued after a beat. “Let’s take it from the top, everybody!”
The room hushed. Bill Purdy, the show’s announcer, stepped forward, one hand cupping his right ear, the other hand clutching this week’s script. The microphone wasn’t live, but Bill played his part as though it were.
“And now it’s time for another edition of that tantalizing tale of detective muscle, The Darkness Knows,” he said. “Sponsored by Sultan’s Gold, the cigarette that’s truly mellow. Today, we open on Harvey Diamond’s downtown office. Diamond is at his desk when a well-dressed man of middle age bursts in, followed by Diamond’s right-hand gal, Lorna Lafferty.” Bill shot a nervous glance into the control room, but the ad man’s gaze was focused on Graham.
Dave Chapman, utility actor on the show, stepped forward. He specialized in playing the heavy, the goon, any number of assorted bad guys, as well as any other minor male character that popped up in the script and needed a voice. Though in this episode, he was playing the wronged instead of the accused.
“Diamond, you’ve got to help me,” Dave said, a pleading look on his face.
“I tried to stop him, Harvey,” Vivian said. “He doesn’t have an appointment.”
Graham stubbed out his cigarette and stepped toward the dead mic.
“That’s okay, doll,” he said. “Help you with what…uh, Mr.…?”
“Gold.”
“Mr. Gold. Have a seat and fill me in.”
“It’s my daughter, Diamond. She’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? Oh, Harvey!” Vivian rolled her eyes and shot a look at Merle Glassman, this episode’s writer, who hovered behind Graham, eyes riveted to the script before him, pencil poised to make notes. Lorna Lafferty said “Oh, Harvey” at least five times an episode. Harvey Diamond wasn’t the only character remaining one-dimensional. Vivian flipped through the script searching for the signature Lorna Lafferty scream. There it was, on the top of page 3 when Lorna was grabbed by the kidnappers. Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Vivian thought.
“Did you get a ransom note?” Graham asked, looking at Dave.
“No, but I got this letter in today’s mail,” Dave said.
“May I see it?” Graham furrowed his brow in concentration as he feigned reading the note. “‘They’re holding me against my will. Please, help me. I’m at the Golden Lion. Myra.’”
“The Golden Lion? That’s in Chinatown,” Vivian announced.
“Pause for organ tease and then sponsor jingle,” Joe said. During the real show, there would be an organist and a trio of women singers who belted out the tune that began, “Sultan’s Gold. You’ll be sold on the cigarette that’s truly mellow.” But today was only a read-through. The actors were there to iron out the script, to catch any holes in the plot or inconsistencies that dedicated listeners would surely notice. “Announcer…” Joe beckoned to Bill, and he stepped up to the microphone again, one hand to his ear.
“And now back to our story. A mysterious Mr. Gold has asked for Detective Diamond’s help in locating his missing daughter.”
“Chinatown, you say?” Graham asked.
“Yes, I went there last week,” Vivian said. “Donald Fryman took me out for some chop suey, and I noticed the sign for the Golden Lion down the street. You can’t miss it.”
“Donald Fryman?”
Vivian and Graham raised their eyebrows at each other. Then they both looked toward Merle Glassman, the writer. Was he adding a love interest for Vivian into the mix? Perhaps things would get interesting for Vivian at least. Perhaps her character would be allowed to grow into something beyond second banana. Or maybe they were thinking of adding this allusive suitor for Lorna in order to make Harvey jealous and act on his true feelings for his girl Friday. There were so many ways this story line could play out, and Vivian was pleasantly surprised at the turn of events.
“Yes,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Donald Fryman. You know him—the big, beefy-looking fellow who hauls the mail sacks off the truck.”
“I know him all right,” Graham answered gruffly.
“Hold it,” Joe announced. They all turned to him and waited while he held a brief hushed conversation with the sponsor’s representative. He turned to Merle, still hovering behind the actors with his pad of paper and pencil at the ready. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t like the direction this is going.”
“Don’t like the direction?” Vivian asked.
“I don’t like the jealous angle for Harvey,” he replied, looking off into space as he considered it. He shook his head. “No, I don’t like it.”
Vivian’s stomach sank, and she caught Graham’s eye. He shrugged, as if it was exactly what he’d expected to happen.
“Harvey is a tough guy,” Joe explained. “He shouldn’t be jealous of anyone.”
“But I think it’s a subtle way to show that Harvey’s human,” Graham interjected. “I like that we get to see some movement on the attraction between the two of them. It’s been simmering under the surface for months.” He looked at Vivian, and she glanced quickly away.
Joe nodded and placed one stubby finger to his chin, pointing to Merle as he said, “Cut it. It slows down the story.”
Merle nodded and wiped out the extra lines of dialogue with a few strikes of his pencil.
“Good job, everyone,” Joe said. “But I’d like to move on to the section about the business partner. That dialogue seems a little choppy to me. Bottom of page 14.”
Vivian flipped back through her script. She wasn’t in this scene between Harvey and Mr. Gold, where they realize that Mr. Gold’s business partner knows more about the daughter’s kidnapping than he’s been letting on and that he’s involved in the whole nefarious scheme.
The business partner mentioned in the script made Vivian’s mind wander to her father’s business partner, Uncle Freddy, as she watched the rehearsal proceed. Of course, she’d agreed to drop the issue of her father’s mysterious drawer. She’d promised Charlie as much, but there was still something fluttering at the back of her mind, and she couldn’t let it go without talking to Freddy. He had to know something about that money in her father’s desk, and if he didn’t, well, there was no harm in asking. But if he did know, he might be able to settle this niggling ache in her stomach and put the whole matter to rest. She’d go see him as soon as rehearsal ended.
Vivian glanced at Mr. Marshfield in the control room. She watched him watch Graham and wondered what all of this could be about.
When she walked over to Graham, he was lost in his own world, staring down at a script—not for The Darkness Knows, but for The Scarlet Pimpernel. She watched his lips move, working through a bit of dialogue. She touched his arm, and he glanced up.
“Oh, hi there, Viv,” he said. He raked a hand through his thick black hair and sighed.
She sidled up to him so that both of their backs were turned to the control room.
“What’s with the ad man?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.
Graham glanced over at the man talking with Mr. Langley and smiled. “Oh yeah, I was going to tell you about that. Mr. Marshfield wants me to pose for some magazine advertisements for Sultan’s Gold.”
“Magazine advertisements? That’s fantastic!”
Graham nodded, eyes narrowed, and took another drag on his cigarette. He turned his back to the control room and made a face at the taste of the Sultan’s Gold, then exhaled. “It’s a big step,” he said.
She could picture the ad already: Graham’s face in three-quarter profile, a self-assured half smile on his lips, his dark-brown eyes trained on the reader, a Sultan’s Gold cigarette balanced in fingers held below his chin. The text appearing in a balloon above him would read:
Graham Yarborough, radio’s Harvey Diamond, says, “I smoke nothing but Sultan’s Gold. The mellow taste and smooth flavor of Sultan’s Gold cigarettes calm my throat and assure me of a confident vocal delivery every time.”
“Just you?”
“For now, but I’m working on getting Lorna into the picture. That Sultan’s Gold man was watching you awfully closely during rehearsal. I don’t think it’ll take much convincing.”
Vivian’s heart thumped in her chest. “A magazine advertisement… Wouldn’t that be something?”
He nodded. “Ratings are through the roof, and I think they have big things in store for us, Viv. I’ve heard whispers of moving the show to Hollywood.”
Hollywood? That was the big time. All the most popular radio shows had moved to Hollywood: Amos ’n’ Andy, Fibber McGee and Molly, even The Carlton Coffee Hour from their own station. She had so many questions, but Graham had already turned his attention back to The Pimpernel script in his hands. She took in his uncharacteristically disheveled appearance. There was a day’s growth of stubble on his cheeks and dark smudges under both eyes.
“How are things going?” she asked.
“I’m beat,” he said. “And it’s only Monday. The Pimpernel’s wearing me out. I was up almost all night working on it.”
“Poor boy,” she said. “Can I do something to help?” He was taking this side project much more seriously than Vivian had ever imagined he would.
Graham smiled down at her and then glanced off toward the other side of the room. He shook his head at someone over her shoulder and brushed her hand from his arm. “I’m afraid not,” he said, his eyes still trained on the far side of the room. “I’m the captain of this ship, and I’ll go down with it.”
“Well, isn’t that dramatic?” she said with a laugh.
Graham opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by his writing partner, Paul, who’d charged up to them, wedging his thin frame in front of Vivian. “Say, Graham, let’s get some lunch, huh? We need to work on this dialogue.”
Vivian stepped away, rubbing her arm where Paul had brushed up against her. She didn’t know Paul well enough to dislike him. It was his general presence that she objected to. He seemed to always be around these days. He’d been nothing more than a peripheral character at the station, a writer who worked on the comedy shows, until Graham had taken him on as his partner in this Pimpernel gambit. Now the man was always hovering, buzzing like a mosquito.
“Hello, Paul,” Vivian said.
A perfunctory smile flashed across his narrow face. “Oh, hello, Viv,” he said. His attention returned to Graham, his finger tapping a staccato rhythm on the papers he held.
“Yes, let’s do that. I think the end of act 1 could use some going over,” Graham said finally.
“Right.”
“Sorry, Viv, I’ve got to run.” Graham glanced back at the control room before leaning down to give her a peck on the cheek.
Vivian watched the men leave, and then her eyes strayed to the control room again. Langley was gone, but Mr. Marshfield was still standing there in a haze of blue-gray smoke. He’d seen everything between Vivian and Graham just now. Hopefully, he hadn’t heard everything as well. And hopefully, he’d found their chemistry undeniable enough to include her in the ad and several more to come. She smiled at him and resolved to start smoking Sultan’s Golds if that’s what it took to merit Mr. Marshfield’s regard. As she watched, he stubbed out his cigarette with a flick of his wrist. His eyes caught hers through the cloud of smoke, and he winked.
Chapter Seven
Vivian approached Freddy’s office slowly, as if sneaking up on it would somehow make the past less vivid. The Rookery was down the street from WCHI, but she generally avoided it, averting her gaze when she had to pass the revered piece of Chicago architectural history. She could never see or think of that building without encountering memories of her father.
Sometimes, she’d accompany her father on Saturday trips downtown to his office. She’d usually sit in the corner and read until he was finished with his business. Then they’d go out to lunch and take in a movie. She remembered one particular Saturday when she was about twelve and he’d taken her against her mother’s admonitions to Valentino’s last film, The Son of the Sheik, at the old Castle Theater on State and Madison. It had been released a few weeks after Valentino died so tragically of appendicitis.
Oh, how she’d swooned in that movie theater over his smoldering, soulful expressions and his utter devotion to the heroine, Yasmin. She’d imagined herself as Yasmin for months afterward, starring in lavish daydreams during tedious mathematics classes. Her father took her to that film, as well as the rereleased original, The Sheik, several more times without her mother’s knowledge that September.
Vivian tried to keep her swirling emotions at bay, but as she entered the vestibule of the venerated Rookery building, her stomach knotted of its own accord. She hurried past the bank of elevators into the miraculous airy light court in the center of the building. It had always taken her breath away to enter that space, all blinding white marble and gold Moroccan trim. She stood in the middle of the floor, eyes raised to the wonderful, vaulted greenhouse-style ceiling, so unexpected in the middle of an office building, and stood with the weak winter light falling onto her upturned face. After a moment, she hopped up the marble main staircase, fingertips trailing along the brass railing, to take the spiral stairs to the third floor.
Vivian pressed the
door buzzer to suite 310 and sucked in her breath, smoothing the fur lapels on her coat and straightening her hat. The door opened and Della, Freddy’s secretary, stood regarding her. The wide smile on her face faltered, and confusion flashed across her pretty features for the briefest of instances before her smile brightened again.
“Vivian!” she said. “What a surprise. How long has it been?”
Vivian smiled at Della. She looked just as Vivian had last seen her—pretty and efficiently put together. Della had joined the firm a few months before Arthur Witchell’s death, and Vivian hadn’t seen much of the woman since. Back then, she’d been fresh out of secretarial school and eager to please. Now, she was dressed quite well in a long-sleeved gray wool frock, with a mauve enamel flower brooch pinned over her heart, her hair pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. She looked like a woman in charge.
“Della,” Vivian said. “It’s been too long. You look wonderful.”
Della blushed and raised one alabaster hand to her hair. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re here to see Mr. Endicott, I presume?”
“I am. Is he in?”
Della nodded. “Come right in. He’ll be pleased as Punch to see you.” She motioned into the interior of the office.
The reception area hadn’t changed one bit since Vivian last walked through the door seven years ago. The dark wooden paneling glowed in the dim light from the large window facing Quincy Street, the wide sill crowded with a veritable jungle of plants somehow managing to thrive in the gray winter light. A piece of stationery curled from the top of the typewriter on Della’s desk. The one thing that had changed, that Vivian could see with any certainty, was that the gold plate on her father’s office door had been removed, leaving a dark rectangle of wood. Vivian felt her heart thump once and wondered why the absence of something so innocuous could make her feel her grief so keenly.
Homicide for the Holidays Page 8