Mr. Zaparelli had a round, genial face punctuated by bright blue button eyes and shaggy brows that appeared to move independently from each other. “I don’t like to think where I would be without Sid.”
Gwendolyn wasn’t fond of the idea of meeting her much-younger boyfriend’s parents at all, let alone at a memorial service. It took Zap two days to convince her. “Trust me, they’ll be pleased to finally meet the girl I’ve been talking about for so long.”
She kept an eye out for signs of disapproval or hesitation, but they were polite, if perhaps somewhat distant. Then again, she was hardly meeting them at their best.
“Sounds like he was a wonderful person,” Gwendolyn said.
“Sidney was a terrific guy.” Mrs. Zaparelli dabbed at her eyes.
A quartet of swarthy Italian men greeted the Zaparellis in rapid-fire Italian peppered with dramatic gestures that made Gwendolyn feel excluded. Even Zap didn’t notice her draw away.
She looked around for Kathryn, who’d said she’d try and make it, but now that Ruby Courtland was on the payroll, she had to maintain her vigilance to prevent little Miss Snake-in-the-Grass from gaining any more territory.
There were a few distinguished faces among the crowd, but the one that caught Gwendolyn’s eye belonged to Darryl Zanuck. She hovered on the periphery of his iron-jawed yes-men until Zanuck sized her up with a quizzical look.
“We’ve met, haven’t we?” he asked.
“Years ago, but I’d hardly expect you to remember.”
“Try me.”
“Poker game in back of Chasen’s. A certain someone had it in for you and—”
He slapped one palm against the other. “You saved me from getting poisoned! What a screwy night that was. How’ve you been?”
Gwendolyn told him that she had a boutique on the Sunset Strip, and how it was doing well, thanks to the sales of her own perfume.
“Sunset Boulevard? That’s you? I keep hearing about it.”
“From Yvette?”
“My secretary. She wears it—” He fixed her with an unsure eye. “Who did you say?”
“Yvette. The one from that poker game, who tried to—the one with the tippler’s bane. She called herself Mae back then.”
It took Zanuck a few moments to conjure the woman’s face in his mind. “I haven’t seen that conniver in years!”
“How long?”
“After that stunt she pulled at Chasen’s, we got ourselves into a knock-down, drag-out free-for-all like you wouldn’t believe. Jesus, did we go at it!” He winced as he lowered his voice. “I’m ashamed to admit this, but she got me so worked up that I punched her. Right in the kisser.” Gwendolyn took an involuntary step backward, raising her handbag as a barrier. “Don’t feel too badly. She knew just how to play that one: I ended up buying her a goddamned apartment.”
His eyes drifted away for a moment or two, lost in the recollection of what Gwendolyn assumed was a painful memory, but a smile dawned on his lips. Though barely five foot six, he carried himself with the assurance of John Wayne. The charisma the man exuded was almost palpable, although Gwendolyn wasn’t sure where self-confidence ended and ego picked up.
His eyes focused again. “To tell you the God’s honest truth, I kinda miss her. Mae’s a real good sport. Fun to be around. She taught me more than a trick or two in the bedroom, I don’t mind admitting. And she wasn’t into man-trapping as a sport, which is why that stunt with the poison threw me off. I said a bunch of things I probably shouldn’t have.”
“Mister Zanuck.” Gwendolyn knew she wasn’t going to like the answer she was about to hear, but she had to ask anyway. “When was the last time you saw Mae?”
“Must have been when I became a colonel and went to show her my Army Signal Corps uniform.”
“You haven’t seen her since the war?”
“Nope.”
“The two of you don’t play Scrabble together?”
“Hell, no!”
“Do you know if she still lives in that apartment you bought her?”
“With the real estate boom, that place’s gotta be worth a small fortune now. She’d be a fool to sell it, and that gal ain’t no fool.”
“I don’t suppose you recall the address?”
“Sure I do. Listen, if you go see her, will you let her know that I’d be up for a reunion?”
“Are you sure? The two of you sound pretty combustible.”
A droll look crept into his eye. “You say it like that’s a bad thing.”
* * *
The Talmadge was a ten-story brown brick building on Wilshire, just down from the Ambassador Hotel. Gwendolyn had always thought of it as a home to silent-era celebrities, the haut monde, and loaded dowagers whose husbands invested well. But as she sat in Zap’s Pontiac and took in the crumbling façade that was grubby with car exhaust, she wondered if she had the right address.
“If you’ve changed your mind,” Zap said, “we could go for prime rib at the Derby.”
“Don’t wait,” she told him. “I might be three minutes or three hours.”
He tugged his keys out of the ignition. “You’re not going up there by yourself.”
“I most certainly am.”
“This woman sounds like she’s off her rocker.”
“I’m more likely to get the truth out of her if there are no menfolk in sight.” He stared at her glumly. “Wait fifteen minutes. If she’s not home, we’ll go to the Derby.”
She kissed him on the cheek and climbed out of the car. The directory inside the dingy foyer with the desiccated maidenhair ferns listed a “Saperstein, H. (Miss)” on the fifth floor, Apartment 502.
The elevator door opened onto a threadbare carpet running down the center of an empty corridor. Number 502 was second from the end. The door had once been painted dark brown, but it had been years since it felt the stroke of a paintbrush. Gwendolyn heard the muffled sounds of Glenn Miller and heels clacking on tile. She banged as hard as she could.
“Yvette? Hilda? Mae? I know you’re all in there. It’s Gwendolyn Brick. From the store on Sunset.”
The brass handle squeaked and the door cracked open a couple of inches. A dull green eye, bleary with fatigue and caked with days-old mascara, stared at her. “What do you want?”
“I’ve just come from Sid Grauman’s memorial service.”
“What of it?”
“Zanuck was there. You came up in conversation.”
The woman had nothing to say.
“Yvette—Hilda—Mae, I don’t even know what to call you.”
Long pause. “It’s Hilda.”
“Can I come in? Please?”
Hilda let out a breathy groan and swung the door open. She was dressed in a red robe with a stork motif printed along the hem, too shiny to be real silk. At one time, it might have matched her hair, but it had been a while since she’d bothered with a henna rinse.
The living room enjoyed a view of the Bullocks Wilshire tower, whose burnished copper crown glowed in the sun. Gwendolyn doubted Hilda spent much time admiring it. The room stunk with stale air and cheap cigarettes. Newspapers and magazines were strewn about; the remains of last night’s pork chops were on the coffee table.
“Zanuck told me he hasn’t seen you since the start of the war.” Hilda pretended to stifle a yawn. “Zanuck didn’t set you up in that fake store, did he?”
“Fake store?”
“Your entire stock was from three seasons ago.” She pointed to the Bullocks Wilshire tower. “I used to work there. I want to know who put you up to it, and why did you break into my store?”
“Break into—? That’s a hell of an accusation, I must say. If that’s what you came in here to—”
“Cut the act, Hilda. You’re not fooling anyone.”
The woman wavered like a stalk of corn. She blinked slowly and tilted her head back.
Gwendolyn placed her handbag on the least-stained chair. “It was Leilah O’Roarke, wasn’t it?”
Hilda maint
ained her unruffled mien for a few seconds, but then her crinkled brows pointed into the center of her face, her eyes clamped shut, and her lips all but disappeared as she clenched them tight.
Gwendolyn said, “I think we could both do with some coffee.”
Hilda jerked her head up. “Irish?”
“I’m happy to make it if you want to put some clothes on.”
“This is about as dressed as I get these days.” Hilda made a token gesture of tightening the sash around her waist and told Gwendolyn to follow her.
The kitchen overlooked Wilshire Boulevard. Intermittent Sunday drivers in both directions sped up, then stopped for traffic lights.
Hilda heaped coffee into her percolator and stood staring at it for a while. “Yep,” she said, “that story about Zanuck was a bunch o’ bull.” She wagged her coffee scooper at Gwendolyn. “But I want you to know that I said yes to Leilah before I realized who you were. Swear to God, I nearly died when you came into my shop.”
“You hid it well.”
“The whole time we were chatting I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? Of all people, did it have to be her?’ If it wasn’t for your quick thinking that night at Chasen’s, I might be doing hard time for murder.”
Gwendolyn could feel her resistance begin to dissolve just as it had with Leo Presnell that day at the May Company store. “I don’t think you can actually kill anyone with tippler’s bane.”
“But I wanted to. I was nutty back then.”
“If it’s any consolation, not only did Zanuck have complimentary things to say, but he wants to see you.”
Hilda looked away. “That’s nice to hear, but I’m past fifty now, and he’s still in his forties.”
“You’ll never know unless you make that call.” And a trip to the beauty parlor wouldn’t be a waste of time. “Or I could make it for you.”
“You would?” Hope glimmered in Hilda’s eyes.
“But first you have to tell me about Leilah O’Roarke. The two of you go back a ways, huh?”
“All I’ve ever done is lurch from one regret to another.”
Gwendolyn could see it was going to be tough to keep this woman on track and truthful. “She was after those client cards?”
“I was hard up for cash, so I put this place on the market. Next thing I know, Leilah’s on the line telling me I wouldn’t have to sell if I could do her a favor. She said, ‘I’ve got this shady character I need to keep an eye on, and I need the right someone to do it for me.’ She dangled a whole wad of bills in my face. I only said yes ’cause I figured I could use her to get myself set up in a legit business. Who knew what it took to make a real go of a store like that? Honey, I take my hat off to you.”
The percolator reached the end of its cycle. Hilda started to pour the coffee into a couple of genteel porcelain cups, but her hand shook and she spilled some onto the counter.
“Leilah O’Roarke is one cool customer, but as time went on, she’d jump on the horn again and again, getting more and more rattled.”
She poured some cheap Irish whiskey into her cup; Gwendolyn lifted hers to her lips before Hilda had a chance to spike it.
“Is that when she told you to break into my store?”
Anger flared in Hilda’s face. “I want you to know that I told Leilah ‘Absolutely not!’ But she jumped off the deep end, so I went ahead with it. Me and a coupla schlubs she recruited.”
“The ones with the red Chevrolet?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m not blind.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, I was glad when we couldn’t find anything.”
“Did you like the perfume?” Gwendolyn asked with a smile.
“Sorry about that, but I couldn’t resist.” Hilda started looking around. “I want to pay you, though. My purse is around here someplace.”
Gwendolyn laid a hand on top of Hilda’s. It was clammy, and more than a little dirty, and she wished she hadn’t. “Think of it as a gift.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“You will if you can tell me what Leilah’s plans are. Has she shared them with you?”
“Oh, brother!” Hilda let out a nicotine-coated chuckle. “I sure dreaded having to tell her we came up empty-handed. I half-expected her to sucker-punch me right in the puss, but she took the news pretty well. Then she told me she was looking for someone to get drunk with, and hey, I’ve never said no to an open bar.”
“What did she tell you?”
Hilda looked down at her hands clenched in her lap; her chest rose and fell raggedly. Gwendolyn grabbed the whiskey bottle and added a generous splash to Hilda’s cup. “I have Zanuck’s number in my purse.”
Down on Wilshire, a pair of drivers erupted into a honking match.
“Leilah plans on using them to bargain her way out of jail.”
“That much I already figured.”
“Yeah, but she’s going to make copies first, and sell them off to the highest bidder before skipping bail and disappearing to South America.”
“She wants to have her cake and eat it, too.”
Hilda slurped her coffee. “Did you know her trial’s been set?”
“I’d started to wonder if she could keep getting one continuance after another indefinitely.”
“Trust me, that gal’s got more legal connections than the attorney general. Her trial starts June fifth.”
Three months was plenty of time to maneuver and connive.
“And if she doesn’t have her bargaining chips by then?” Gwendolyn asked.
“I guess they’ll ship her and that sleazeball husband of hers down the river.”
“Leilah O’Roarke’s too cunning for that.”
“Ah, so you do know her.”
Hilda reached for a half-empty pack of Luckies. She lit one with a smirk and offered another to Gwendolyn. The two of them stared out the kitchen window as the weekend traffic lazed its way eastward through heavy yellow smog until it disappeared in the haze.
CHAPTER 35
Marcus was still drunk when he pulled up to the security gate of Republic studios. Not slurringly, staggeringly, four a.m. drunk, but nowhere near as sober as he ought to be. He wished he’d taken a few moments to clear his head during the drive over the Hollywood Hills, but he was there now and the security guard behind the gate had seen him.
Thanks to Quentin Luckett, he was already two martinis in when the call came an hour ago. Quentin had been Trevor Bergin’s boyfriend for a number of years, but all that went the way of the dodo bird with Trevor’s Pinko branding-by-innuendo. Not long after that day at the beach, MGM kicked Trevor out on his ass. Without a word to anyone at the Garden, Trevor packed his things and disappeared into the night.
Suddenly, Quentin had decided he couldn’t bear to be alone, and invited himself over for an afternoon of wallowing in heartache. He arrived at Marcus’ door, gin in one hand, vermouth in the other, a jar of olives in his pocket and a grim look in his eye.
When the call from Republic came, Marcus’ first reaction was to laugh. What would the head of Republic Pictures want with him? But when the secretary on the other end of the line told him Mr. Yates wanted to see him at three o’clock, he stopped laughing.
“Yes, Mister Adler,” the guard said, “we’ve been expecting you.” Until that moment, Marcus had only half-believed it. “Mister Yates’ office is the first building on the right. Follow the sign, you can’t miss it.”
The corridor was lined with posters of Republic’s typical B-movie fare: Desperadoes of the West, Carson City Raiders, Ghost of Zorro. The door at the end opened into a reception area where a humorless woman pounded at a typewriter. She told him that Mr. Yates wouldn’t be a moment.
He took a seat, leafed through a copy of Life magazine and breathed in deeply.
Oxygen in . . . martini out . . . oxygen in . . . martini out . . .
The door with Yates’ name on it opened and a guy in his late sixties strode toward him. He wore an unadventurous bowtie, a
nd a friar’s ring of white-gray hair around the back of his scalp.
“Glad you could come in at such short notice.”
He headed back the way he came, leaving Marcus to follow in his wake, and indicated that Marcus should take a seat on the other side of his expansive desk. Sitting in front of Yates were some typewritten pages. Marcus squinted to read the title: Skybound.
How the hell did Amelia Earhart get HERE?
Yates pointed to the outline. “I understand you wrote this.”
“I did, although I’m not sure how you got a copy.”
“Vera Ralston. Have you heard of her?”
The name rings a bell . . . wait, isn’t that the ice skater from . . . where was it? Czechoslovakia? Yugoslavia? The one this guy brought to America to be the new Sonja Henie, only she couldn’t speak English or act worth a damn.
“Yes,” Marcus replied. “Of course.”
“I have her under contract and am looking for a project to showcase her talents. She did a movie with John Wayne last year, The Flying Kentuckian, and—” Yates tapped Marcus’ outline “—I want this to be her next project.”
So that’s it. You want to jump into her drawers, and this is your way to do it. Or maybe you already have, and this is how you stay there. Either way, it’ll be fascinating to hear how you plan to sandwich a glittery ice-skating number into a movie about an earnest aviatrix.
“I think she’s ready to take on a lead role,” Yates declared. “She’s going to be thrilled that I got this for her!”
“How exactly did you get this?” Marcus asked. “I can only assume Howard Hughes gave it to you.”
“Hughes? Never met the man. No, no, this came to me via a chap by the name of Purvis.”
Marcus pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes as his head spun from three martinis mixed with stupefaction. “Purvis?”
“He told me the two of you used to work together.”
“We did, but—”
“You did write this, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“All righty then!” He rubbed his hands together like a cartoon character. “Let’s talk turkey. How much are you asking for this?”
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 23