Make Believe

by Ed Ifkovic

  Tony made a blubbering noise, and for a second we all stared at him.

  I went on. “It was clear the other night when you and Tony fell apart at Ava’s house—you resent Frank and his success. It should be your success. Tony told us your comment about Adam and Ava—how they don’t deserve what they’ve worked for. I listened to a man who is craven, bitter, seething. And thus dangerous.”

  “Your scenario is missing some elements.” He gave out a false laugh. “Missing pieces.”

  “Circumstantial? You bet, Ethan. So far. But you resented your own failure. That’s your word: failure. It burned you, ate you up. Ava and Frank, success, money, cynosures whose lives are documented in the magazines. Hollywood, the land of dreams and money and fame—it all eluded you. So close…but gone. Fame, power, money—they eluded you. And with Frank now disappearing from both your lives, you despaired. Hence the business of heading back to New Jersey. That’s admitting failure, no? Back to staring faces, folks who’d point and remember the boy who left to meet his dreams.”

  Tony started to say something but stopped when Ethan shot him a look.

  “To you, Max was the instrument of that failure. Tony’s career was over. But yours never started. That script you gave Max—the one you’ve mocked and played down and cavalierly dismissed—it was the touchstone of your failure. In Max’s journal today I found his summary of your final conversation, a description of how you fell apart, weeping, a little drunk then, when Max told you it was worthless. You blamed him, irrationally—then Hollywood, then, bizarrely, Frank. Three lines stayed with me. ‘I have to do it for Lenny. He won’t like it if I’m a failure.’ Awful words. Max told you to get out and what did you say. ‘I’ll be back, Max.’ An innocent enough threat, idle, but one you took seriously. You did go back.”

  “Crazy lady.” Tony was sweating.

  “You believed in the puerile script you peddled, sadly. It was your ticket to your name in lights. After Max’s rejection, you played it down—mocked it with Lorena. But inside you seethed. Max squelched your most important dream. You were left with a penny-ante job and a life on the fringe of Frank’s glory.”

  A whine, high and thin. “I make money in real estate…”

  “Then Lenny died, the catastrophic event in all your lives, and you accused Alice of murder. That became your mantra. Alice the black widow. You let Tony believe she’d taken all the fortune Lenny bragged about, but you, the numbers man who probably laundered cash for his brother, knew there was little left after the government stepped in. But it served your purpose to let Tony believe and whine and spout his nonsense. Because, frankly, at that moment you made a decision: you stopped drinking and like the Iago character you sometimes quote, you plotted revenge. Or maybe it solidified when Alice married Max—the ultimate indignity. Max, the man who single-handedly killed your dream of fame and fortune. It all comes together, no?”

  Ethan opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  “You also decided to make Tony your unwitting dupe. The genial comic, plodding, a little funny, the social drinker, a soft-hearted soul though not so dumb as everyone thinks he is—he became your tool. You whispered murder in his ear. Words like betrayal, dishonor, family. And Tony fell apart, losing himself, gaining weight, losing jobs, a binge drinker. I don’t think you thought he’d get so out of control, and it might have scared you—this dissolution so quickly. So you coddled him, sheltering him at the Paradise where he could get plastered and not bother a soul. Except maybe Liz, who still cared for the young man she remembered fondly.”

  Tony started to say something, but stopped.

  “You decided on revenge. Kill Max, and somehow blame Alice who got away with murder one time but perhaps not a second. Leave the pistol on the hall table so that Alice, returning, might pick it up, thinking Max had been careless with his gun. A possibility. Relying on chance. Alice feared guns, and, unfortunately for you, gingerly picked it up with index finger and thumb so that the cops immediately had doubts about her as suspect. She was still, of course, a possible killer. Chance.”

  “Alice did…” His voice trailed off.

  “No, that plan failed. Lenny is gone, the brother revered and loved. A decision by you to avenge—cool, calm, collected. A deliberate man, waiting, waiting. Timing. Always timing, you said. And that night at the Paradise the stars came together. Alice is out of the house. You watched her having a drink and leaving for the movie with Lorena and me. Max, nursing his wounded jaw, at home alone.” I looked at Frank who was entranced by my voice, barely blinking. “It was a crime of opportunity.”

  “Preposterous,” Ethan growled again.

  I shook my head. “You left the bar, headed down the street to Max’s, a short drive, rang the bell, followed him back to his workroom on some pretext, and when Max sat down, you shot him in the head.”

  Silence at the table, Tony breathing hard. Frank’s hand, I noticed, rested on Tony’s shoulder.

  Ethan’s voice was thick with venom. “Ask Tony. Ask Harry the bartender. I never left. When you all stopped back for a nightcap, I was there, watching over a drunken Tony, our usual night at Paradise.”

  “Not so,” I said, checking off one more point in my head. “One thing bothered me later that night. You spend a lot of time stopping Tony from drinking. I’d seen that before at Ava’s. Yes, that night Tony was morose, having lost his comedy spot. But you let him drink. You seemed to encourage it. All right, let Tony drown his sorrows this one night. You knew Tony would drink until he passed out, which he sometimes did, slumped there in the booth until closing when it was time to drive him back to Liz’s. That bothered me.”

  “Ask Harry.”

  “I don’t have to ask Harry anything. I talked to Sophie Barnes today. She recalled Tony slouching in the booth, crumpled in a corner, snoring. And you’d disappeared. She considered you’d gone into the kitchen or backroom, which you probably did. But she recalled that she glanced back as she stormed out—some fifteen or so minutes after she’d first looked—and only Tony was still in the booth.”

  “You’re right. I run a bar. I was in back.”

  “At one point Liz Grable came looking for Tony, walking in and spotting him drunk and passed out. She backed out, headed home. She’d had it with both of you. She told me this afternoon that Tony was by himself.”

  “I told you…”

  “But I pushed her and she remembered that your car wasn’t in the parking lot in its usual spot. She knew it because Tony doesn’t drive and relies on you—you always brought him home. On the nights when she met Tony there your car was in its usual spot, right of the back door. Well, that night it was gone. But she paid it no mind. After all, you weren’t inside with Tony. She wasn’t surprised to see Tony by himself. Disgusted with him, she went home.”

  “I was…” He clammed up.

  “Something else. When Larry Calhoun was handing you the papers for the sale at the Ambassador, he sniped that he’d chosen not to hand them over at the Paradise to a drunk. I wondered, by chance, if he’d stopped in that night and you weren’t there. Desmond Peake is putting in a call to him and…”

  He held up a hand. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. “You got it all figured out, right?”

  “Yes, I do. You slipped out and murdered Max. You could accomplish the deed in less than a half hour. Considerably less, in fact. It was a question of timing, Ethan. You’re right on the money. Timing in Hollywood is everything.”

  Ethan was biting his lip like a frenzied chipmunk. He reached for the empty coffee cup and rattled it.

  “Ava told me to look at the players and where they were situated. And that led me to you, Ethan.”

  Ethan shot a fierce look at Frank. “Is that why you’re here, Frankie boy? To take me in? To play the tough guy one more time? To catch a murderer and hand him over? The boy from New Jersey who made it big slapping handcuffs on the boy who never got a chance? Is that it? High muck-a-muck Frank Sinatra. Boozy kingpin. Shoot-‘em-up crooner.�
�� He raised his voice, shrill, metallic. “I didn’t come out here to pick up crumbs off your table. Lenny told me…it…it was all ours for the picking. I hoped they’d arrest you, Frank. Haul your ass off to prison. You, who threatened to kill him. Maybe Alice, but I thought…you. You or Alice—I didn’t care. Big shot. You and Ava, two drunks. Alice killed Lenny and what did you do? Nothing. She murdered him. You let it go because Ava told you to. Alice got away with murder. Murder! At that moment I knew what I had to do.”

  “All right, stop,” Frank said slowly.

  “I hated Max. He is everything Hollywood did to me that is rotten. He dashed my dreams—made light of my script. My blood was in there.”

  “Oddly, Ethan, in this dreamland out here, where everyone makes up stories, you still couldn’t make anyone believe in you.”

  He smiled. “And there was that Commie sipping cocktails with Frank and Ava. Like he was one of them. It was all perfect, really, so logical. The pieces of a puzzle coming together, piece by piece. Exquisite, mostly. The stars in alignment. For once…with me.”

  Suddenly Ethan swung into me, a jack knife move, but Frank stood, moved behind me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. I could feel his touch, his fingers pushing into my flesh. A comforting move, and welcome. He simply stood there, not saying a word, as Ethan glared.

  “Sure thing, Frankie boy. You know how you call everybody a bum? Well, you’re a bum.”

  Frank measured his words. “I may be a bum, Ethan, done my share of rotten things, but I also know that Max didn’t deserve to die.” He lifted one of his hands while the other still rested on my shoulder. “Sometimes you gotta do the right thing. Right, Edna?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank pointed at Ethan, a bony finger aimed at his chest. Ethan stiffened and wrapped his arms around his chest. “Edna’s a smart cookie, wouldn’t you say?”

  Ethan spat out his words. “I would have gotten away with it if she’d stayed in New York where she belongs.”

  Frank’s hand grazed my cheek affectionately. “Hey, welcome to Hollywood.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ava and Frank smiled into the camera at the premiere of Show Boat. I folded my copy of yesterday’s Los Angeles Times so that I could stare at the two lovers at the gala event at the splashy Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Two days ago, July 17. The day before that event I’d sat with Frank in the commissary at Metro. Three days ago. Two days ago. Both lifetimes in the past. Worlds far from me as I sat in the first-class compartment of the American Airlines plane, headed back to New York.

  Tonight Show Boat would premiere in Manhattan, though I’d not be there. I’d be in my bed with a tray of food, catching up on mail and friends.

  Hollywood was history. The past is over.

  Frank Sinatra told me that one night, but it turned out he didn’t really believe it either.

  Three days ago, the beginning of that long afternoon as Frank signaled to security to step in, then two police officers appearing, though Ethan, sitting there with his lips drawn into a straight line, his eyes filled with hatred, refused to move. Spine rigid, hands gripping the edge of the table, he demanded to be left alone, ordering the cops around in a fierce and chilling voice. He had to be lifted from the table bodily, his fingers pried off the edge; and even then, held in the air like an errant, spoiled child, his knees still bent and his fingertips curled, he set his face into a stony mask. He said nothing as the cops hauled him away, his body catatonic. He didn’t look back when Tony plaintively called out his name.

  Tony, that blubbering mass of grief. I’d not wanted him there, of course, because I did not want the sad man to witness what would happen. Poor Tony, twisted by his brother into a lost soul who railed at a world he could never understand. A victim, shattered. Even before the cops arrived, while security stood over his brother, Tony dissolved into a weeping fit, rocking back and forth in the seat, head rolling as though unhinged, sloppy wet tears gushing down those fat cheeks. “No, no, no.” The rumble of his voice filled the large room where other diners, luckily not so many late in the afternoon, watched in horror, some backing away or standing by the entrance.

  I sat there quietly. It was Frank who tapped Tony on the shoulder and nudged him to get up. And it was Frank, whispering in a small, demanding voice, who directed Tony away from the table. As I sat there, unmoving, staring away from Ethan, Frank began walking Tony around the room, maneuvering him around the tables, his right arm draped over Tony’s broad shoulders, his head dipped into Tony’s neck, whispering, whispering, a drone I couldn’t hear except to know that it was someone soothing a lost and miserable child.

  Frank walked Tony out, found a phone, and called Liz Grable. He later told me that Liz had told him to bring Tony to her at the beauty salon, which he did shortly; and that Liz, leaving work and embracing the trembling Tony, had taken him back to her home, from which he’d just been exiled.

  “She’ll watch over him.” Frank told Ava and me later. “He’s hurting. And maybe she’s the one thing he needs now.”

  He also told us that Tony had babbled in the car that he’d suspected Ethan of the murder, though it seemed impossible, of course. He could never ask him…or even consider it, but he’d roused himself twice that night when he’d passed out in the Paradise. Both times Ethan wasn’t there. Later, asking him, Ethan said he’d never left Tony’s side. One night last spring, rifling through Ethan’s bureau at his apartment, searching for singles and change, he’d spotted the .32 under some papers. Days after Max was dead, he’d checked again: the gun was gone. Still he fought the idea that Ethan could do such a thing.

  Cold, cold—that was how he described his brother. “I knew he was burning with something from the day Lenny was murdered.” So the gun was no surprise. “Ethan takes care of me. How could I say anything?” he asked Frank. “I thought he’d kill Alice. He hated her. Not Max.”

  The stewardess poured me more coffee as I stared at the black-and-white photo. She glanced at the newspaper in my hands. “Oh, Hollywood royalty,” she gushed. I nodded. Frank was dressed in a spiffy black tuxedo with a dark bow tie. Ava wore a strapless gown with elaborate folds and twists of fabric, bunches of ruffles across the bodice. I wondered about the colors, though I assumed the dress was a vibrant assault of greens and blues and reds. Vaguely oriental looking. With her hair pulled back to accentuate those high cheekbones, Ava appeared exotic, the wild woman. Frank held a Show Boat program in his hands, as both smiled for the camera. Behind them Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh looked the proper couple, not like the glamorous woman in front of them. I smiled at that: Ava, Ava, the woman as temptress of the night. The article mentioned the success of Show Boat and of Ava’s stellar performance. A film classic, it was called. A monumental achievement. Metro’s Technicolor extravaganza.

  I’d sat with Ava in her dressing room at Metro for hours, and she made a pot of tea for both of us, hovering, solicitous. “Thank you, Edna,” she’d whispered, but I’d simply closed my eyes. Exhausted, I needed to fly away from Metro, get back to the Ambassador, and start to pack my suitcase.

  But that night, kidnapped from my room, I sat with Ava, Frank, and Alice in Alice’s living room, and we talked and talked. Alice wept, and then Ava did, and then I did, too, the three of us chain-linked to Max. A bond, we three women, a cherished closeness. Frank, I suppose, learned not to cry when he was a blustery boy in hardscrabble Hoboken, but he had the sense to be quiet. No, that is unfair: he made his feelings known by his gestures—touching Ava’s cheek as he passed by on the way to the kitchen, squeezing Alice’s hand as she sat on the sofa—and with me…a spontaneous hug as I stood to leave, so serendipitous that Ava and Alice both smiled.

  Ava had told me he’d decided I had “class,” a favorite word. Some women had it. That’s why you loved walking into restaurants with them, their arms linked with yours.

  So Frank wasn’t always a cad and a bounder, this Francis Albert Sinatra, though I feared I might be too forgiving a
t the moment. That could change.

  When both drove me to the airport and Ava held onto me for a long time, Frank simply shook my hand. “You know, Frank,” I said, “I’m afraid I misjudged you.”

  A mischievous gleam in his eye. “No, Edna, you really didn’t.”

  Ava smiled. “Keep dreaming, Edna. Wait until the next scuffle with a photographer.”

  The night before he’d sent flowers to my hotel suite, an enormous—and vaguely funereal—spray of carnations and roses. But when I leaned in to smell their bouquet, there was none. Of course not. In L.A., where sunlight covers you like a shroud, the flowers have no scent.

  ***

  Late yesterday afternoon, returning from a walk about the Sun Club Pool, I spotted Lorena Marr waiting for me in the lobby. She watched me approach, her eyes on me the whole time. I stood in front of her, looking down, and waited. “Edna, could I talk to you?”

  “Of course, Lorena.”

  “Please sit with me.”

  I hadn’t spoken to her since Ethan’s arrest, so I began, “Lorena, I’m sorry it worked out…”

  She spoke over my words, her head going back and forth. “Stop, Edna.”

  I sat in a wing chair next to her. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not.” A feeble smile. “But it’s not your doing. I’ve been thinking about what happened…Ethan…Max…and I need to tell you something.” A rasp from deep in her throat. “Christ, Edna, I’m sorry. I let myself be blinded. That’s the word—blinded. Ethan had changed since he was my husband. He’d stopped drinking. He was always rigid and severe but he got…deadly serious. I even thought we might get back together. I liked him. I used to love him. I suppose I still do. I wanted to believe I could have something with him. Foolish, foolish. I thought our friendship was sweet and cosmopolitan and enviable, very modern Hollywood, after the messy divorce.” She fumbled in her purse for a cigarette and lit it. She slumped in her seat and closed her eyes.