Make Believe

by Ed Ifkovic

  “I’m aware of the meaning of all of them, sir.”

  “Put them together and they spell trouble.”

  “For whom?”

  “Look around you, Miss Ferber. For Metro. Even after Max…died, Hedda Hopper persists in referring to you and Show Boat in her columns. Her last comments were beyond the pale.”

  “I agree with you. Max was already removed from Metro some time ago. By you, I believe. And most unfairly, to be sure. He was uncredited for his work on Show Boat. None of that was acceptable to me…so why now…”

  “You don’t seem to grasp the situation, Miss Ferber. Millions of dollars are at stake here. Reputations. Show Boat is to be premiered in two days. Today’s Examiner published another photo of you and Max and Ava Gardner from that infamous lunch you all had. This time with Ava sticking out her tongue. And then Louella Parsons’ blow-by-blow account of the melee at Don the Beachcomber. My God, Miss Ferber. Max did himself in.”

  “And?”

  “And you’re not listening to the message.”

  Desmond Peake folded and unfolded the napkin in his lap. He was so tall and lanky, with such a long graceless neck on a head that seemed to bob as he spoke, that even sitting opposite me, five-foot little me, he loomed over me. Disconcerting, that image, for I had to look up at him though we were both seated.

  “I’m going back to New York,” I announced. “I came here for Max and someone killed him.”

  He placed his napkin on the table. “I’m happy you’ll be returning to New York. I know you were invited to the premiere at the Egyptian Theatre but…”

  “I’ve already refused.”

  The air went out of him. “I know. Wisely.”

  “But I could change my mind.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “But you won’t, will you? That’s why I invited you here today…to talk. You’re a sensible woman. I sense that about you. Hasn’t your name been in the scandal sheets too often lately? With Max, with Ava, even a casual mention of you with Alice Jeffries at the Paradise Bar the night Max died—and none of it favorable. You’re so…visible in Hollywood these days while publicly shunning our premiere based on your novel. People wonder why you’re still here. It’s only natural. So people expect you to be there. Show Boat doesn’t need that. Dore Schary is nervous.” He grunted. “The only one not nervous is Ava Gardner.”

  “She loved Max, you know.”

  “Max Jeffries is dead. So will be her career if she isn’t careful.” The napkin slipped off the table onto the floor. He glanced at it but didn’t retrieve it. I assumed it was too far to travel.

  “Aren’t you concerned that Max was murdered?”

  He didn’t answer, but shuffled to his feet. “I’m glad you’re leaving L.A., Miss Ferber. And I’m glad you’ll be absent from the premiere.” An anemic smile, forced. “It makes my job a lot easier. I’m glad we have this…understanding.”

  Outside, standing with him as we waited for the car he summoned, I heard my name called. Ava Gardner rushed up, swaddled in a terry cloth robe, a scarf around her head, cold cream slathered on her cheeks. “My spies reported in,” she whispered. “I had to escape from makeup. No one told me you were here.”

  Desmond bristled but stepped into the street, frantically waving to an approaching town car, probably hoping it would bump me onto an unused soundstage.

  Ava whispered again, “I’ll call you later. We need to talk. Me and Francis and you. I’ll call. Don’t make plans. Please. I’ll reserve a private room at the Brown Derby.”

  As Desmond Peake rushed back, out of breath, grasping my elbows, she winked at him and disappeared through a doorway.

  He spoke through clenched teeth. “If she won’t listen to me, perhaps you will.”

  I sank into the back seat. “This has been delightful, Mr. Peake. As always, you show a girl a good time.”

  ***

  Back at my hotel, lying on my bed with my eyes shut, the telephone jarred me. As I lifted the receiver to my ear, Ava was already in mid-sentence, a rush of words that ran together. “That ass, Desmond. When will men learn that there are certain women you do not warn? Edna, I couldn’t talk to you at Metro. Desmond chased me around until I slammed a door in his face. He’s so afraid the premiere will be one publicity nightmare.” She waited a second. “Edna, we’ll pick you up at eight tonight, if you’re free. Please be! We need to talk. Just the three of us.” I could hear her deep intake of a cigarette, a slight raspy cough. “That is, if you want to. I’m being pushy here, Edna.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Francis.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “This morning a New York columnist named Lee Mortimer from the Mirror, some cheap tabloid, actually accused Francis of murder. In black and white. It’s causing a fire storm.”

  “It’s just a rumor, Ava. We’ve already discussed it…”

  Her voice rose. “The wire services have picked it up. Soon it’ll be…true.”

  A heartbeat. “Could he be the killer, Ava?”

  For a moment I thought she was laughing, but it was a jagged cigarette cough. “I wouldn’t put it past him, but…no.”

  “I wondered.”

  “Tonight, Edna. Please. You can ask him yourself.”

  “Ava, I’m not his favorite person. Would I risk an ashtray hurled at my ancient head?”

  “I’ll make him behave.”

  “You haven’t in the past.”

  “Please, Edna.”

  “All right, but he must be kept on a leash. There are times I think I might like him, but I wouldn’t put my hand into his cage.”

  “Edna, really. Sometimes you talk like a gossip columnist.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “Well,” I talked out loud to myself, “there was no need to insult me.”

  ***

  Ava told me we’d be entering the Brown Derby through a side door, slipping in unseen. I’d been to the famed eatery before and never liked the unhealthy mix of noisy tourists, second-rate film stars, and obsequious waiters. As Frank, Ava, and I approached the landmark I mocked its garish exterior: that Stan Laurel derby perched atop a building already fashioned after a derby. I was sitting in the rear seat of Frank’s Cadillac convertible and had insisted he put the top up. I was in no mood for a breezy joyride.

  Frank turned back to me and laughed. “Edna, people travel across America to eat this expensive food.”

  To which I replied, “Must we be part of that mindless herd?”

  Inside the eatery, snuggled into a small room where we could still hear the hum of diners nearby, I noticed the décor was merely a hiccough of the larger room: the worn red banquettes, the glittery crystal chandeliers, walls covered with caricatures of the famous and not-so-famous-anymore celebrities.

  When we were alone, Ava reached over and grasped my hand. “I can’t believe you’re leaving so soon, Edna. I’ve come to rely on you.”

  “You’ll have to visit me in New York, Ava.”

  She nodded. “Of course. You know, I’m still afraid to stop in to see Alice. Whenever I turn around, there’s a photographer lurking nearby.”

  Frank sat with his hands resting on the table, his eyes focused on Ava. He spoke quietly. “I’ve told her not to go.”

  Ava narrowed her eyes. “I’ll do what I want, Francis.” But she pulled back. “I don’t want cameras flashing around Alice. She has enough to deal with.” She shuddered and said, strangely, “Max is not supposed to be dead.”

  We stopped talking as a waiter knocked, entered, bowed deeply to us as he was walking in. I thought of movie scenes in which the royal factotum salaamed his way before the king, then backed out, apologizing, groveling. No eye contact. Well, this bronzed young man didn’t approach that caricature but he did warrant an Oscar nomination for servile flattery. Each menu was dispensed quickly but with a flourish. “Miss Gardner.” A Prussian bow. “Mr. Sinatra.” A similar bow. Then a short, barely perceptible pause. “Madam…” A pause
, then, “Ah, Miss…Ferber.” Well trained and briefed. I like that in a man.

  But the only one he looked at was Ava Gardner.

  And I didn’t blame him. Tonight she was dressed in a strapless ivory and gold silk cocktail dress, with a cut-jade silver necklace. Quite striking, indeed. My simple black dress with the three strands of pearls and the modest onyx brooch made no statement at all that registered on Hollywood’s glitter meter.

  Ava was in a mood to reminisce about Max, and she shared some stories I’d not heard before: how he appeared as an extra in the background in Jungle Book in 1942, dragged in for a crowd scene at the last moment by director Zoltan Korda, a reluctant Max who looked very unhappy holding a basket cradled against his chest. He’d worked on the soundtrack for the Kipling adaptation. She recalled being with Max in a Montgomery Ward in Fresno where the saleslady kept saying, “You don’t look like Ava Gardner.” Late one night Max appeared at her Nichols Canyon home because he dreamed she was in trouble and she wasn’t answering her phone.

  Another time he showed up at Ava and her sister Bappie’s apartment, surprising Ava on her Christmas Eve birthday with an autographed photograph of Clark Gable, Ava’s long-time hero. This was long before she was famous, of course—when she was a fifty-dollar-a-week starlet living in a cheap hotel, the Hollywood Wilcox. Max had personally knocked on Gable’s dressing room door. The joke, realized later, was that Gable, in a hurry, had signed the photo “To Eva,” which Max didn’t realize until back in his office. Ava, of course, cherished the error.

  “Bappie and I grilled hamburgers, played rummy, and listened to the radio. I was in bed by nine because I had to catch three buses out to Culver City.” Her eyes got moist. “Max warned me about Hollywood, especially the old lechers like Mayer who groped the girls, even little girls like Judy Garland. He told me—just slap them. They only understand violence.”

  Frank said nothing the entire time Ava rambled on, a monologue punctuated now and then by my occasional interjection. Obviously she needed to do this…this beautiful ramble, heartfelt, and finally, her eyes closed, she stopped, slumped in her seat.

  Frank poured from the bottle of champagne the waiter delivered and seemed to be waiting for something to happen. At last, Ava smiled thinly at me, a wistful smile, and sipped her drink. We ordered Cobb salads because that’s what you ordered there, in the eatery where it was first created.

  As we ate, I noticed Ava got more and more agitated, picking up her fork, putting it down, leaning forward toward me, drawing back, jittery. “What, Ava?”

  She shook her head and her eyes got dreamy.

  “Something is going on,” I insisted.

  When I looked at Frank, he was sitting back in his seat, arms wrapped around his chest, rocking his body. He didn’t take his eyes off her. What he doubtless saw was what I was seeing now: that beautiful face trembling.

  Finally Frank looked at me. “Ava is going nuts over Lee Mortimer’s column in the Mirror. The tide seems to be turning against me.”

  “But there’s no proof,” I protested.

  She shook her head vigorously. “Does it matter out here?” She swung around and looked into his emotionless face. “Francis did not kill Max.” A deep intake of breath. “He didn’t murder my friend.” She reached for a cigarette and lit it with a shaking hand. I wondered why Frank didn’t light it for her, the gentlemanly gesture. But he seemed frozen in that chair, save for the maddening tapping of an index finger against his chest.

  “They’re rumors, Ava.”

  “This afternoon at Metro, in my dressing room after I saw you, I was leafing through a pile of clippings Publicity sent over, like ads for Lustre Creme Shampoo.” A fuzzy grin. “‘Ava Gardner of Show Boat uses Lux soap.’ Really insipid stuff. It piles up. Fan magazine hype—‘Trying to De-Glamorize Ava Gardner, Hollywood’s Toughest Job.’ Nonsense like that. They send it over, and I file it all away. But under that pile someone had maliciously slipped Mortimer’s vicious column.” She shook her head back and forth. “And someone scribbled on it: ‘Frankie Boy is a killer, you witch.’”

  Frank said nothing, just picked at his salad.

  “Lord,” I said. “Such mean-spirited folks.”

  “I don’t like where this is heading. I always felt safe in my dressing room.”

  “Ignore it, Ava.”

  Frantic, “I can’t.”

  “You can’t stop people from being vile or sneaky.”

  Her eyes got wide, saucer-like, moons in that stunning face. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” She paused. “But what if the rumors don’t stop…poor Francis.”

  Frank made a grunting sound, unpleasant.

  Ava touched his sleeve but he didn’t move. It was as if he wanted to be invisible, away from there, perhaps out in the night desert, driving, driving.

  It now struck me that Frank had said little during Ava’s lament for a lost Max, as well as her frenzied recounting of the circulating rumors. Just that one sentence. He sat there, leaning forward to sip his champagne, and watched, quietly, sullenly. A curious passivity, as though this had nothing to do with him.

  I looked at Frank. “Well, you did threaten to kill him.”

  Casually, “I threaten to kill a lot of people. Mostly photographers. And I did knock Lee Mortimer around at Ciro’s one night. Since then, he’s always had it in for me.”

  “Perhaps you should stop, Frank.”

  “People bring out the worst in me. They make me mean.” He chuckled and reached for his drink.

  Ava hurriedly said, “Francis, be serious. This is serious.”

  “I didn’t kill him. I had nothing against Max. End of story.”

  “But the world”—she actually pointed at the closed door, beyond which we could hear the murmur of voices—“thinks differently, Francis.” Now she turned to me. “Mortimer talked about underworld gangland shootings. Lenny Pannis and his goons.”

  “My brother.”

  “A thug.”

  Frank bristled. “Hey, you’re talking about me as though I’m not here. I happen to like them. They’re brothers.”

  “Thugs,” she thundered.

  Frank sat up, his face red, his voice booming. “Screw you, darling.”

  It was, frankly, a horrendous moment, the pathetic curse flying across the room like a sudden slap, so abrupt that I jumped and toppled over an empty champagne glass. It crashed to the floor and shattered.

  Ava searched my face. “Francis won’t do anything.”

  “Can it, Ava. Christ Almighty. I thought we’d agreed to shut up about it.”

  “All I’m saying is…”

  He yelled, “I know what you’re saying.” His foot pounded the floor.

  “I told you I talked to Dore Schary. Metro wants a meeting with you. Maybe they’ll take you back.”

  Frank looked at me, disgusted. “I wanna get out of here.”

  Ava pleaded. “Edna, I love a man who wants to see his whole life fall apart.”

  Frank fumed. He tried to light a cigarette but his hand shook. The match and cigarette dropped to the table.

  “Perhaps now is not the place to…” I began.

  “Help us, Edna.”

  Frank stood up abruptly. “I don’t need help. Ava. Old maids need boy scouts to help them across the wide boulevards of L.A. I’m not a boy scout.”

  Ava stammered, “Francis, how dare you!”

  Frank avoided looking at me.

  “Ava,” I said brightly, “why are you so sure Frank did not kill Max?”

  “Tell her, Francis.” Ava looked up at Frank who was shuffling from one foot to the other.

  Frank moved toward the closed door. “I wonder why I let you talk me into these evenings, Ava.”

  Ava stood, grabbed at the sleeve of his sports jacket. He twisted out of her grip, and sputtered, “Christ, Ava. Leave me some dignity.”

  “You didn’t do it, did you, Francis? I called you that night, but you weren’t home. You told me you’d be back in P
alm Springs.”

  “I told you already, Ava. I’ve told everybody. I went for a ride out into the desert. By myself. I do that a lot. With broads like you, a guy has to get away sometimes.”

  The look on Ava’s face startled me. Perhaps I expected a belligerent yet hopeful trust in what he was saying to her—a trust that a man who lied to her so many times would not, this time around, lie again. She wanted some black-and-white resolution to this dilemma…to convince herself that her instincts were on target.

  But what I saw in that beautiful face now was confusion, doubt, and with it an abundance of pain. Conflicted, torn, she glanced back at me, as though I held an answer for her. Though I immediately regretted it, I closed up my face and stared, steely-eyed, at a helpless Ava.

  Now Ava whispered at Frank, who had his back to her. I could see his neck muscles tighten, swell. “Your bodyguard said you left in a fit. You were angry.”

  He swung back to face her. A vein on his left temple throbbed, his eyes so dark now they could be black instead of that deep-sea blue. “You interrogated Angie? You questioned him?”

  Ava slumped back in the chair. “We were talking.”

  “Christ.”

  Frank opened the door and kicked it back against the wall. From where I sat I could see the upturned heads of a few diners, suddenly startled by the movement. “Another pleasant evening, Ava,” he sneered. “Miss Ferber, a real delight.” He sailed through and slammed the door behind him.

  I tried to smile at her. “That went well.”

  Ava stared at the slammed door. When she reached for a cigarette, her hand shook so much she had to give up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ava’s words. You know the answer, Edna. Ava’s panicked response to the accusations against Frank. Ava’s declaration that…that night held the answers we all sought. That night, and the assembled cast of this sad drama. I couldn’t escape thinking about her words. In the middle of the night, suddenly awake and sitting up in bed, I played with her words. The night of the murder. Put the pieces together, Edna. Block out the scene. Stage the performance. Place the characters. Lift the curtain. Roll the cameras. Lights, camera…inaction.