“For what it’s worth,” Francine said, “I’m not completely convinced he was guilty.”
Francine usually assumed the worst in any given situation, so this declaration was as shocking as Truman’s win over Dewey.
“Sounds like you followed the case pretty closely.”
The hesitation in Francine’s face was slight, but Kathryn had grown up learning to decipher every blip on her radar.
“You’ve been keeping tabs on him, haven’t you?” Silence. “All these years, you’ve been watching him.”
Francine kept her eyes trained on her glass. “You make me sound like a stalker.”
Kathryn shifted closer to her mother. “I think it’s one of the most romantic things I’ve heard outside a Barbara Stanwyck weepy.”
“That’s going a bit far.” When Francine looked up, her eyes had softened like marshmallows; her smile was tentative and girlish. “I only left Boston because I had to. Because of his family and their standing in society. I never wished him ill.”
“You knew where he was all along.”
Kathryn didn’t mean to sound vindictive, and hoped her mother understood that she was simply coming to terms with how her father had only ever been a question away. “Have you been in contact?”
“I only watched from afar by subscribing to The Boston Globe. Their society pages—” Francine hunched her shoulders. “Please tell me you’re not thinking of writing to him.”
“I’ve missed out on a lifetime of not knowing my father.”
“He was respectable once upon a time, but now he’s in prison.”
“But you think he’s not—”
“I said I doubted his guilt, but I’m far from impartial. You must think of your public position, Kathryn. The moment people find out your father is a convicted felon, for treason, no less, it would surely be the end of everything you’ve built. Imagine what Louella and Hedda could make of this.”
“It’s just that I have no sense of where I come from. No sense of family history. I feel like everything started when we moved to California.”
Kathryn suddenly understood Marcus’ plan to go to Russia, and wished like hell that she hadn’t told him how thoroughly she agreed with Oliver. But now it made all the sense in the world.
She could also see that her mother had a point. This news that her mother had been monitoring Thomas Danford like a clipping service was a lot to take on board. The sensible option was to do nothing.
“You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” Francine said. “It’s just sausages and sauerkraut, with tapioca for dessert. But it’s those pork sausages you like.”
“Will you tell me everything you know about my father?”
“If you promise me that you won’t be so reckless as to communicate with him.”
Please don’t ask me to promise that. Kathryn rose to her feet. “If you fix me another drink, I’ll cook the sausages.”
* * *
Several hours later, Kathryn walked through the front doors of the Garden of Allah, her bloodstream coursing with brandy and her head crammed with Boston society, oversized hair ribbons, and a nervous father’s laughter.
The reception desk was deserted. One of the upstairs residents was playing a Wagnerian aria on the phonograph; it wafted down the stairs and encircled Kathryn.
She glanced at her watch; it was nearly midnight and she wondered if Marcus was still up.
From the pool area, she could see the light in Marcus’ kitchen. She was halfway to his door when he came running toward her, an envelope fluttering in his hand.
“Telegram! Telegram!”
“Good news, I hope?”
“It’s not for me; I just signed for it.” He thrust it into her hand.
She stared at the Western Union logo, not sure that she could take any more news today.
If this were a movie, the telegram would be from my father. Or the chief warden at Sing Sing. Or the Massachusetts governor telling me Thomas Danford has been pardoned due to fresh evidence—
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Marcus pushed.
Or I could just open it.
She pulled the telegram out.
WE ARE LOOKING TO SPONSOR NEW PRIME TIME RADIO SHOW STOP WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HOSTING STOP CONTACT US AT FIRST OPPORTUNITY STOP BEST REGARDS MAX FACTOR STOP
CHAPTER 23
Marcus stood out front of Oliver’s apartment building, jiggling his car keys with one hand and flicking a Camel in the other. He’d promised himself that he would knock on the door when he finished the cigarette, but now that he was only a puff or two away, he told himself that he’d go in after he finished a second one.
Tossing the butt aside, he kept his eye on Oliver’s window, hoping to catch signs of life. He could see the print of Man Ray’s A Night at Saint Jean-de-Luz hanging over the mantle. Marcus didn’t care for it, but they’d been together when Oliver bought it at an art store in Pasadena during the war.
Surely sooner or later, Oliver would have to come home.
Marcus lit another cigarette.
The morning after his encounter with Breen, Marcus returned to catch Oliver before he left for the office, but nobody was home.
At first, he refused to believe Oliver was avoiding him. He told Gwennie, “Nobody does that to someone they’ve been with for six years.” But there was no call, no telegram, no note.
He ignored his instincts and started calling Oliver at work. “Mister Trenton is in a meeting. May I take a message?” None of his messages were returned, so Marcus drove over to Oliver’s apartment three or four times a week at different hours of the day and night. The lights were never on and nothing came of his knocking, so he forced himself to face the possibility that Breen had somehow gotten to Oliver first.
Hope faded as his thrice-weekly drive-by dwindled to every other week. At one point, he even called the city morgue. By June, he’d all but given up. And now he was standing out front of Oliver’s apartment block knowing he couldn’t go on much longer.
He crushed the butt of his second cigarette under his heel, then swung open the picket gate. Lily of the valley lined the gravel path to the foyer. Bunched so tightly together, the plants gave off a heady scent that reminded Marcus of the previous summer when he and Oliver spent a rare weekend entirely in bed. They only got out to fetch another bottle of champagne or pop some corn. Marcus remembered an especially satisfying postcoital cigarette he’d smoked at the window as the flowers’ perfume drifted up from below.
He arrived at Oliver’s door slightly out of breath, and gave himself a moment.
I was nuts to think I could actually go to Russia. You were completely within your rights to tell me so. I was wrong, you were right, and I want you to know it.
He knocked on the door. Three times. Loudly.
He knocked again. Nothing. Down the corridor, a woman peeked out her front door. She had the sort of face Marcus had seen a hundred times. The Betty Boop eyes had probably been her most striking feature, but she ringed them with too much mascara to distract from the crow’s feet. The flaming red hair was too bright; the taut curls too uniform to be natural. Her lipstick was supposed to match her hair, but it was several shades off, and even from this distance, it was clear she’d missed the left corner of her lips. He guessed that at her peak she’d probably scored a position in a Busby Berkeley line-up and hadn’t been seen on-screen since Gold Diggers of 1933.
“Hello, there,” she said, with all the coquettishness she could muster. “Looking for Oliver?”
“I am, yes.”
She edged outside her doorway, tightening her green kimono. “I haven’t seen him in an awful long while.”
“Me either, and I’m getting concerned. I’m Marcus.”
“Regina Horne.” She said her name with such dignity that Marcus wondered if he was supposed to recognize it. He offered her an encouraging smile. Ah, so you’re Regina Horne.
She jutted her chin toward Oliver’s apartment. “I have his k
ey,” she whispered.
“You do?”
“Round about Christmastime, I locked myself out. I wasn’t the most sober I’d ever been in my life, you understand.”
“Haven’t we all been there?”
“The building manager forbids us from calling him after ten o’clock, but lucky for me, Oliver arrived. That darling boy shimmied up my drainpipe and opened my balcony door. I should lock it, but I never do.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t.”
“So then we swapped spare keys just in case one of us got caught in a jam.”
Marcus wondered why this was the first he’d heard of this woman. “Could I possibly borrow it?”
She didn’t answer straightaway, but stepped closer as though to inspect him more thoroughly. At first, Marcus thought she was one of those people who smoked exotic, scented European cigarettes, like the ones Tallulah Bankhead lit up at every party he could remember. But the scent that lingered around this woman had a tang he’d encountered before.
Those Betty Boop eyes widened. “Oliver hasn’t been the same since his accident.”
“He got banged up something awful.”
She studied him some more, then disappeared inside her apartment. When she reappeared, she placed a key and a rolled cigarette in Marcus’ outstretched palm. “I owe him one of those.”
Marcus had smelled marijuana at the Garden a few times, but it had been a while.
“Thank you, Regina.” He held up the key and the cigarette. “For both.”
“I have some succotash on the stove I must tend to.” As she tottered back inside, she threw over her shoulder instructions to slip the key under the door when he was done.
Oliver’s living room looked like the scene of a bar brawl. For a brief, panicky moment, Marcus wondered if Oliver had been broken into—the sight of Gwendolyn’s workroom had stayed with him. But no, it was just the home of someone who couldn’t be bothered picking up after himself.
Blankets lay crumpled on the floor under empty soda pop bottles; a full ashtray and a rancid bowl of mulligatawny sat on the coffee table.
Marcus called Oliver’s name. No response. He hoisted a stack of untouched LA Times off the rug and dropped them on the only available space of the dining table. He heard a groan, a few seconds’ silence, then another.
Marcus wasn’t even sure there was anybody under the tangle of linen in Oliver’s bedroom until he saw a foot. The sole was filthy with grime and the nails needed trimming, but he’d know that foot anywhere from the dime-sized birthmark under the anklebone.
He grabbed a fistful of blanket and pulled it toward him. Oliver was face down, his head twisted to one side. He wore boxer briefs, but that was all. His body was pale as paraffin and so emaciated that each bone along his spine jutted out clear enough to count.
“Ollie? Honey? Can you hear me?”
Oliver let out a belch. He lifted his head off the pillow, but kept his eyes closed. “Regina?”
“No, it’s me.”
The muscles cramped up Oliver’s torso. “How did you get in?”
“I got a key—”
“You need to leave.”
Marcus sat on the corner of the mattress. He rested his hand on Oliver’s ankle, but pulled it away when Oliver jerked his foot. “I haven’t seen you in months.”
“I thought you’d have taken the hint by now.”
Marcus’ scalp crawled. “Why don’t you get up and I’ll fix us a sandwich. You’ll feel better with some food inside you. And we—”
Oliver sprang up like a ghost-ride spook in an amusement park. His eyes were hauntingly bloodshot and he hadn’t shaved in days. “Yeah, uh-huh,” he sneered. “Tuna salad on rye. That’s what I need. Didya bring a pickle? Because that’ll go with the tuna salad just jim-dandy.”
Marcus reached out to grab Oliver’s hand but Oliver smacked it away.
“Leave me the hell alone. Just leave me to my . . .” His limbs went rubbery and his back folded in on itself.
“Leave you to your what, Oliver?” Marcus stood up. “To your Dr. Kramer and his little pills?” Oliver’s head shot up but he had trouble focusing. “Do you know what’s in those pills of his?”
“They relieve the pain.”
“Do you know what you’re swallowing?”
A burst of anger propelled Oliver off the bed and onto his feet. “Yes, Marcus, I do. Breen had them analyzed. They’ve got laudanum and cocaine and . . . and . . . ”
“Heroin, Oliver. Heroin. That stuff is treacherous.”
Oliver pushed past him and staggered into the living room. “It wasn’t too long ago that you could get heroin over the counter.”
“They banned it for a reason.”
Oliver rummaged through the mess on his coffee table. “Kramer’s stuff kills the pain, that’s all I care about. Nothing else works. Well, besides . . .” He pushed the LA Times off the dining table.
“Looking for this?”
Oliver made a grab for Regina’s marijuana cigarette, but Marcus got to it first. Instead, he clung to the back of a chair to stop himself from stumbling over. “Give it to me.”
Marcus wanted desperately to toss the reefer out the kitchen window, but he could see the hunger in Oliver’s eyes and found he didn’t have the heart. “You heard what happened to Mitchum. He got two months in jail. How long do you think Uncle Joe will keep you on if you get arrested for marijuana possession?”
“You got to walk away from that accident just fine. Lucky you! The doctors say that my bones have all healed, but I’m in agony. Every. Waking. Moment.” The pleading in Oliver’s voice tore at Marcus. “Breen’s taken me to doctor after doctor. You know what they all say? ‘It’s in your head, Mister Trenton. Mind over matter, Mister Trenton.’ One of them told me I should grow a backbone and go cold turkey.”
“Maybe he was right.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And maybe you don’t either. Screw them, and screw you.”
Marcus gripped the back of a kitchen chair. “I don’t pretend to know what it must feel like—”
Oliver stared at the reefer. “You going to give me that, or do I have to fight you for it?”
Marcus dropped it onto the table. Oliver scooped it up and lit it with a nearby lighter, then took a deep drag. As he slowly breathed out, he dropped onto one of the dining chairs and let his head sink onto his chest.
They were on a precipice; any ill-chosen word could send them toppling over the edge. Marcus decided to let Oliver speak next, even if it meant sitting in silence for the rest of the afternoon.
On the other side of Oliver’s kitchen wall, Marcus could hear Regina Horne singing along with “That Lucky Old Sun.” She was surprisingly in tune. Maybe she got further than a walk-on in some kaleidoscopic extravaganza. Then her parakeet started squawking and Regina yelled at it to shut the hell up.
The minutes crawled by as Oliver puffed through the marijuana cigarette. He pitched the stub into one of the putrid soup bowls. “It’s time you left.”
Marcus rounded the dining table. “Okay, but let me fix you a bite to eat. You’ve gotten so thin.” He opened the refrigerator to find there was nothing inside but a lone bottle of milk—and even that was nearly empty.
“I mean go . . . and not come back.”
Marcus gripped the refrigerator door. “You’re in terrible shape and you need help.”
Oliver was on his feet now. “I’ve seen every doctor in the book.”
“Then we’ll go farther afield. Up to San Francisco if we need to.”
Oliver reached the front door and grabbed the knob. “There is no ‘we,’ Marcus. Not anymore.”
Marcus felt himself starting to go pale. “I’m not leaving.”
“I’m not giving you a choice.” A steely edge cut through Oliver’s words. “You need to get your life on track.”
“It isn’t off track.”
“You haven’t worked in a year and a half.”
�
��I haven’t wanted to.”
“It’s time you went back to work.”
“I’ll decide when it’s time.” Marcus strode toward Oliver. “You need me far more than Hollywood does. So here’s what’s going to happen: We’re going to get this place shipshape; I’m going to make some dinner; then we’re going to start listing every doctor registered in California, and we’re going to—”
“YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!” Oliver shoved Marcus away, but the attempt sent Oliver lurching against the door. “We’re at the end of the line, you and me.”
“I refuse—”
“I don’t know what my future holds, but I do know that it no longer involves you.”
Oliver’s ragged face began to warp and blur through Marcus’ tears. “You’re not alone!”
“But I want to be. And I want you to get on with your life. Without me.” Oliver threw open the door and it hit the wall with a bang. He gripped Marcus and shoved him out into the corridor.
“I’ll come back every day, and I’ll bang on your door until—”
“You’ll be wasting your time. I’m moving out.”
“Where are you going?”
“Goodbye, Marcus, and good luck.”
“I love you!”
Oliver smiled sadly, tears in his eyes. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s the problem.” He stepped back and closed the door.
CHAPTER 24
Kathryn pressed her palms to her forehead. She didn’t need to look at the clock—she’d just consulted it less than a minute ago.
“Where the hell can she be?”
“You’ve got an hour till showtime,” Marcus said. “Will this help?”
She eyed the chrome hip flask in his hand. She thought Marcus was a darling for even showing up tonight. He’d been shattered by the bombshell Oliver dropped on his head and hadn’t left his villa all week. But he knew this was a big night for her so he pulled himself together and offered, soberly if somewhat ashen, to drive her to the NBC studios.
Kathryn looked at the clock above her dressing room door. It was now twelve past seven. Forty-eight minutes to air and no special guest. She thanked him, but said she needed to keep her head clear.
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 15