Still, it was a superb display designed to dominate countless inches of newspaper columns over the coming days. They were generous with the wine, too, so by three o’clock, Stage Fifteen was abuzz with tanked-up guests. The London correspondent and the theater tycoon from Fargo stumbled away in the direction of the movie-star tables, which suited Kathryn fine. She wanted to sneak a closer peek at this new version of Ruby. The dolled-up femme fatale with the misguided chignon at Hughes’ press conference was bad enough, but what was Ruby shooting for with this pink-and-black concoction?
The bold pink of her dress should have made it easy to track her, but Kathryn’s prey proved elusive. She zigzagged around the boisterous crowd until a thicket parted to reveal Errol and Ruby leaning against Esther Williams’ paddle steamer—which exactly matched the pink in Ruby’s dress. Surely that’s a coincidence.
Kathryn had been Errol’s neighbor and drinking partner long enough to know every maneuver in his playbook, and he was executing one now. Ruby stood with her back to the set as Errol towered over her, his left arm leaning against one of the pink spokes.
Kathryn skirted around the perimeter of the banquet space and snuck behind the set until she found a quiet nook within earshot.
“Oh, come on, Mister Flynn,” Ruby admonished.
“Please, call me Errol.”
Ruby let out an artificial giggle. “You and I both know that Mayer’s speech was baloney. Tastes have changed, and MGM’s been left in the dust. They’ve had their time. So has Mayer, and so have Louella and Hedda.”
“Strong opinions from such a young girl.”
Get your mind out of your pants, Errol. She’s talking about you, too.
“Louella and Hedda are in their sixties,” Ruby pressed on. “They should think about retiring. Meanwhile, I’m only twenty-two, which makes me nearly forty years younger than them.”
“I like a girl with ambition.”
You like a girl who’s barely old enough to vote.
“Even Kathryn Massey,” Ruby went on.
“What about her?”
“When she was my age, all she did was answer mail for Tallulah Bankhead, but I’m already being invited to a big wingding like this.”
Someone’s been doing their homework.
“You make it sound like Kathryn should be put out to pasture.”
Ruby let out another giggle, as hollow as the last one. “I’m just saying that the world is bending toward people with youth on their side. Louella, Hedda, Kathryn, Sheilah, they’re all a bit past it. The future belongs to people like me.”
“How do you figure that?” Errol’s voice had sobered up.
“Over the next few years, the movies are going to see a new surge of customers.”
“Who?”
“Teenagers.”
“Kids? You’re off your rocker.”
“If you’d been paying attention, you’d know there’s been a huge spike in births since the end of the war. Those babies will grow up in the boom times that follow every major conflict. Look what happened after the Great War. Just you watch: the 1950s will be the Roaring Twenties all over again. And when that happens, who’s going to want to listen to a bunch of old bags?”
CHAPTER 17
Gwendolyn figured at least a dozen years had passed since she’d stepped inside the Hollywood Hotel.
In its 1920s heyday, it had been the epicenter of Hollywood’s social life. Expectant faces glowing with stardust stayed there when they arrived from the boonies of Montana and Kentucky hoping for a better life than the hardscrabble subsistence they’d fled. Budding moguls inventing the studio system as they went along struck deals on its spacious veranda. All the best clubs and charity events held their galas at the Hollywood Hotel. Rudolph Valentino even spent his honeymoon there.
Gwendolyn looked around the deserted foyer and realized its halcyon days were a speck in the rearview mirror. The splashes of gold and blue in the carpet’s leafy design had faded in the sunlight. The sofas and easy chairs arranged along the length of the building sagged from decades of use and gave off the musty smell of undisturbed dust. The yellowing paint on the columns had started to peel away in flakes the size of her thumbnail. Spider webs were left unmolested.
Nobody appeared when she arrived at reception. A young chap in a deep red bellboy jacket with gold stripes down the arms stood behind a tour desk that advertised bus trips to San Francisco and train tickets to “all points east.” As Gwendolyn approached, she could see how frayed the jacket was.
He apologized that there was nobody to greet her, and said he’d see if he could rustle someone up. When Gwendolyn told him she wasn’t there to check in, the resigned look in the kid’s eyes said, Hardly anybody does, lady.
“I’m looking for an employee. His name is Horton.”
In desperation, Gwendolyn had gone through the LA City Directory and systematically telephoned each hotel to ask if Horton Tattler worked there. She got nowhere until she hit “H” and was told Horton was employed there, but they couldn’t be sure which shift he worked and to try her luck next time she passed by.
The bellhop’s face brightened. “Sure, he’s here.”
“Where might I find him?” she asked.
“Dining room, but it ain’t open till eleven.”
It was twenty to eleven now. “I want to catch him before the lunch trade starts.”
He threw her a jaundiced eye—What lunch trade?—and pointed to the doorway on his right.
The dining room was as run-down as the foyer. Threadbare rugs beneath wooden tables pockmarked with neglect, grimy potted plants suspended from a shabby ceiling dulled by decades of tobacco smoke, opaque windows in need of elbow grease.
“Hello?” Gwendolyn called out. “Anybody?”
After a moment or two, a scowl peeked out from behind a swinging door.
“Horton!” She rushed toward him. His craggy face was blank with surprise. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” He pulled at the ragged hem of his ill-fitting white jacket. “I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”
They sat down at the nearest table and she ran him through the story of her broken perfume bottles. When she was done, he asked, “Is that what you’re wearing right now?” She nodded; he beamed. “You’ve got yourself a winner.”
Leilah had seen to it that her business was doing so poorly that if she failed to turn it around soon, Chez Gwendolyn was a dead duck. She grabbed him by the forearm. “You think so? You really do?”
“And I wish you the very best of luck,” he told her. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some prep work to do.” He went to rise to his feet, but she pulled him down.
“I was hoping we could do this together.”
She watched the impact of her words hit his face. “We?”
“Didn’t Tattler’s Tuxedos have its own product? A cologne, maybe?”
“We had an aftershave balm and eau de cologne set. It was quite the brisk seller.”
“Did you develop it yourself?”
“With the help of a professional perfumer, yes, but—”
“I can’t do this on my own! I need you, Horton. So here’s what I’m thinking: what if you had a stake in this venture?”
His face deflated. “Oh, Gwendolyn, look at me. Look at this scruffy old dining room I’m working in. I have no money to contribute.”
“The money, I’ve got,” she told him. “You have the expertise. What if I stake the dough up front, and you take a cut of the profits?” His eyes flashed ever so slightly. “How much do we need to get this off the ground?”
“Getting the formula exactly right takes a professional, and they’re expensive. You have to package it right, so figure in the bottle design and box, plus manufacturing costs. Then there’s advertising—”
“Roughly.”
She watched figures roll through his eyes. “Eighteen hundred, maybe. Do you have that?”
I have precisely one thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-seven dollar
s in my bank account. It was the last of her Alistair Dunne money. She knew it made poor business sense to pin her entire future on this one idea, but she clung to it like it was the last life vest aboard the Titanic.
“Barely,” she squeaked. Horton stared at her while she screwed up her courage. “Let’s do it.”
His eyes misted over. “Are you sure?”
“No!”
“Gwendolyn, my dear, you need to be—”
“I must do something!” Her voice echoed around the dismal restaurant.
He took her hands between his. “In that case, I know the right person.”
* * *
Exactly a week later, Gwendolyn stood at her counter, tapping the glass top in apprehension. “How did you find this guy?”
“His father was a master glass blower in Venice who specialized in delicate bottles. When Zap came along, he showed an aptitude for it, so Papa Zaparelli brought him in. By that stage, he was doing very well for himself and was a regular at my store. But Zap got more interested in what went inside Papa’s bottles, so he became a perfumer with a knack for packaging.”
“He sounds perfect.”
“We’ll have to play it by ear,” Horton cautioned. “The last time I saw him, he’d just started shaving.”
Gwendolyn had been picturing a well-turned-out businessman in his mid forties with a self-assured command of the perfume business. “How old is he now?”
“Twenty-five or thereabouts. That men’s set he did for us was his very first project.”
Gwendolyn felt her optimism trickle out of her. I’m going to hand over the last of my savings to someone who doesn’t even remember The Jazz Singer?
The silver bell above the door rang, and a tall man with ink-black hair strode in exuding the confidence of a Rockefeller. “Horton, you old son of a gun!” He held his hand out. “What a pleasure to see you again. And how well you look!”
Horton must have spent his last few bucks having his suit pressed and his shoes polished.
The men shook hands and turned to Gwendolyn. “I’d like to introduce Gwendolyn Brick. Gwendolyn, this is Ignacio Zaparelli.”
“Call me Zap.”
His hands were large and strong, with fingers at least as long as his palms were broad, and reminded Gwendolyn of Alistair.
She took in his three-piece suit. The color alternated between royal blue and deep purple, depending on how the sunlight hit it. In a predictable world of charcoal grays and navy blues, it was a refreshing sight.
“Your suit,” she said, “it’s so unusual.” No wonder he chose this color—it matches his eyes.
“I have a cousin, he’s a tailor in Rome. I was there at Christmas. You should see that city now. It’s coming back to life. Give it five years, and everybody will want to go there.” He lifted his arm so Gwendolyn could inspect the fabric. “When he showed me this material, well, how could I say no?”
He swung around to face the store. “What a charming place you have. The colors, the light.” He lifted an eyebrow. “So this fragrance, are you wearing it now?”
Gwendolyn nodded, and picked up a cheap little bottle she bought at Newberry’s. She popped open the cork stopper and floated it under his nose.
He closed his eyes as he took in a deep breath, then held it until he had to breathe again.
“You’ve really got something there. But of course how it smells in the bottle is only useful for the sales pitch. What really counts is how it performs on a woman. A real woman.”
The way he hovered over the word “real” made Gwendolyn blush. Although he had Tyrone Power’s dark looks, he wasn’t nearly as handsome, but he had a magnetic quality that made the hairs on her arms stand up.
He leaned in, running his eyes along the line of her neck. “May I?”
Gwendolyn nodded, and angled her head to one side. She felt Zap’s warm breath on her skin.
Goodness gracious!
He drew in another breath.
He’s at least ten years younger than you.
“Mmmm.”
So why are you reacting like a silly little Girl Scout?
He stepped back again, his deep blue eyes gleaming with—Gwendolyn wasn’t sure how to read it. Admiration? Excitement? Eagerness? Or was it just good old-fashioned lust?
“You came up with this formula yourself?” he asked.
Gwendolyn explained that it was part Chanel No. 5, part Miss Dior, with notes of orange, vanilla, and cinnamon oil.
“Will that be a problem?” Horton asked. “Seeing as how it’s mostly made up of perfumes from other couturiers.”
Gwendolyn was glad to see Zap shake his head.
“Not once I’m done.” He turned to her. “Do you have a name for it?”
“Earthquake—it’ll send you staggering!”
“Do you really want to be associated with a natural disaster?”
Gwendolyn began to see how ill-equipped she was for this enterprise.
“Do you have any ideas?” Horton asked.
He took Gwendolyn’s pencil and paper and started sketching a bottle shaped like an “S” topped with a palm tree.
“I suggest ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ It conjures Los Angeles, movie stars, and nightclubs on the Strip. Sunset twists and turns as it heads west toward the ocean, so you’re never sure what you might encounter around the next bend. Mysterious. Surprising. Just like the woman who wears it.”
A jolt buzzed up Gwendolyn’s spine. “That’s perfect! How soon can we start?”
He picked up the Newberry’s bottle. “If I can take this with me, I’ll get on it right away.”
She pushed it into his hands. “I don’t have much time to lose.” Or money.
“I’ll send a contract by messenger in the morning,” Zap said. Horton and Gwendolyn saw Zap to the door. As they watched him climb into a pre-war Pontiac, she hooked her arm through Horton’s. “This just might work!”
“For both our sakes, it’d better. But with Zap on board, I have a good feeling about this.”
CHAPTER 18
Oliver’s Dr. Kramer wasn’t listed in the city directory, nor in any of the old ones at the Beverly Hills library. Many of his past and present neighbors at the Garden of Allah were veteran pill-poppers, so he put out feelers, but got nowhere.
Perhaps Kramer wasn’t his real name? Or maybe he was a doctor of philosophy pretending to be a doctor of medicine because it was good for business?
Meanwhile, Marcus would visit Oliver from time to time, but not as often as he wanted to. It had taken them weeks to get past the ugliness of that awful night in January.
As January of 1949 became February, and then March, Marcus tried to bring up the subject of Kramer and his shifty pills, but Oliver deflected every time. His skin grew more and more sallow, his fine, brown hair wilted like straw, and his eyes lost their optimistic shine. Somehow he found the strength to return to work, though Marcus didn’t know how. Invariably, Oliver would already be in bed when Marcus came around in the evening, exhausted by the day’s work defending the Hays Code and barely able to summon the strength to eat.
In the end, it was Charles Laughton who supplied Kramer’s address.
Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester had been occasional guests at Garden of Allah parties ever since the unusually hot summer of ’39 when Charles was filming The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He would dash from RKO to the Garden during his lunch break in full makeup and keep sane in the swimming pool.
Laughton was off to Europe where he’d been offered the lead in The Man on the Eiffel Tower. Elsa invited Marcus to a farewell party in the private room of the Vine Street Brown Derby. Laughton was propped up at the bar knocking back his umpteenth bourbon when Marcus overheard Elsa remind her husband that he ought to see Kramer before they leave for France.
Marcus spun around. “Doctor Kramer?”
“You know him?”
“I’ve been trying to track him down.” Suspicion sent Elsa’s eyebrows northward. “He’s moved offices
since the last time I saw him.”
Charles gave a throaty harrumph. “It’d take an army of Pinkertons to locate the good doctor Kramer should he fail to apprise you of his latest whereabouts.”
Marcus took a chance. “I’ve never known anybody to move so damn often!”
“I don’t have his current address on me,” Elsa said. “I’ll cable you when we get home.”
* * *
Carroll Avenue was lined with gothic Victorian mansions built in the 1880s when Los Angeles was starting to outgrow its boundaries. Back then, a prosperous middle class that could afford maids and chauffeurs and governesses populated Angelino Heights, but LA’s postwar push toward the Pacific and into the San Fernando Valley had left the neighborhood in its wake.
Number 1346 was a two-story house that featured a narrow wraparound porch topped with the sort of witch’s hat turret nobody built anymore. If the owner had bothered to keep up the maintenance, it would have looked quite darling, but now its delicate spindle work hung in rotting scraps and the paint on its myriad teardrop shingles had long since weathered away.
The guy who answered the door wore a respectable blue serge suit that was a far cry from the disheveled picture of back-alley shiftiness Marcus anticipated.
“Doctor Kramer?”
The man nodded. He had the full face of someone who enjoyed his pancakes a little too much; an extravagant moustache bisected it from ear to ear.
“Mister Bryant, I presume?” He opened the door wider and directed Marcus into a spacious office that had been a living room at some time. An empty fireplace next to the doctor’s desk was bordered by a sheet of pressed metal painted white. A damp chill pervaded the room.
Kramer pointed to a chair and took his seat behind the desk. “How may I help you?”
Marcus pulled Oliver’s bottle from his pocket and slammed it on the desk. Startled, the man pitched back. Marcus twisted off the top, shook a couple of pills into his palm, and threw them at Kramer. One of them missed him completely, but the other bounced off a doughy cheek and onto the rug.
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 11