The three of them stood in silence while “Button Up Your Overcoat” floated in from Lucius’ party.
“I have some brandy,” Doris said, “if you want to be sure they get good and toasted.”
Gwendolyn had some in her cupboard.
They moved back to the kitchen, where Gwendolyn tossed the cards, one by one, into her sink. When she got to Zap’s father, she wondered if she should hold onto it, just in case.
At the last moment, she decided, Nah, and dropped Mr. Zaparelli’s card onto the top of the pile. She unscrewed the brandy bottle; the tang of Courvoisier filled her nose. She held the bottle almost horizontally, but not quite.
“Second thoughts?” Kathryn whispered.
The bottle didn’t move. “I’ve tried not to judge,” Gwendolyn said. “Men will be men, and all that. It’s just that some of them pretend they’re such moral pillars of integrity.”
Doris grunted. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I moved here, it’s that those words are more malleable in Hollywood than they are elsewhere.”
The bottle grew heavy; Gwendolyn struggled to keep it above the cards.
Kathryn sighed. “Personally, I think if the menfolk don’t want to be caught out, then they shouldn’t frequent places like that.” She took the bottle from Gwendolyn and returned it to the counter. “But even I wouldn’t burn these things. We need to be smart.”
Relief swamped Gwendolyn as she collected up the cards and juggled them back into a neat pile. “So I’m not being a coward?”
“Having leverage is smart. What bothers me is Ruby knows who my father is, and that he’s in Sing Sing.”
“If Ruby can find out, so can Winchell.”
“Or worse—that Ruby would tell Winchell.”
“I thought you said there’s no love lost between those two,” Doris said.
“That’s the impression I got, but I wouldn’t put anything past either of them.”
Gwendolyn sorted through the cards until she came to the one she was looking for: Arturo Zaparelli.
“In this town,” she murmured, “it’s best not to put anything past anybody.”
CHAPTER 38
Marcus read the piece of paper in his hand: General Service Studios, 1040 N. Las Palmas Ave, Hollywood.
“Christ,” he muttered, “could it sound any more boring?”
He knew he should probably drive there; this was his first day on The Lone Ranger, after all. But when he looked up the address, he saw that he could walk. Now that he was no longer free to drive down to the ocean for his beach runs, it was a good way to get some exercise.
Plus, he had another reason to walk the twenty-odd blocks along Santa Monica Boulevard. En route, tucked away behind the Formosa Café, were the offices of Dudley Hartman, private investigator for hire.
Marcus had only spoken to him over the telephone, and was vaguely disappointed that he lacked the bourbon-ripened growl of Bogart’s Sam Spade. In fact, the guy sounded so cheery and chipper that he could have voiced a rascally raccoon for Disney. But he’d come recommended by his new neighbor, a film editor at Columbia whose deadbeat husband had failed to pay eighteen months’ alimony until Hartman tracked him down in freshly rechristened Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
It was only twenty past eight when Marcus arrived at the guy’s office. The front door of the converted bungalow was open and the sign in the window lit with a single bulb.
Inside, the place smelled of pine-scented Air Wick, which probably helped mask the smell of the café next door. Hartman was in his fifties, thinning on top, thickening in the middle, nattily dressed in a tie, collar, and jacket as though he’d come from a court appearance.
“I’m Marcus Adler. We spoke on the phone last week about a missing person.”
“Of course.” Hartman motioned for Marcus to take the nearest of two seats in front of his desk.
“I was literally passing by and was wondering if you had any news.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He waited until Marcus was settled in the chair. “Mister Adler, locating people is only difficult when they don’t want to be traced.” He offered up a jovial smile that wouldn’t have been out of place in Bambi. “Your Mister Trenton is not such a person.”
Marcus ran a finger along the crease in his pants. “Meaning?”
“He’s in a facility outside Santa Barbara.”
Just a couple of hours up the road? “What kind of facility?”
“If I may ask, what is your relationship with Mister Trenton?”
Marcus guessed that Hartman had pounded his portion of the seedier side of the street, but his round, pink face seemed unaffected. Still, Marcus wasn’t sure what sort of reaction he’d get if he revealed the full nature of his relationship with Oliver.
“He’s one of my best pals. Why?”
“Mister Trenton is in a sanatorium.”
Sweat collected in Marcus’ underarms. “He’s in a nuthouse?”
“It’s the sort of place where people check in to . . . ,” Hartman rotated his hands as he struggled to summon an upbeat slant to the news he had to deliver, “get back on their feet.”
“I’d prefer you just give it to me straight.”
“Your pal is a dope fiend.”
Marcus turned away. On the opposite wall was a silver pistol mounted onto a stained wooden frame. Underneath it was branded in rough letters
GENE AUTRY
“In Old Santa Fe” (1934)
“That was the first gun Gene used on-screen,” Hartman said. “He gave it to me when I did a job for him a few years back.”
“Even Gene Autry has problems.”
“We’ve all got our secrets.”
“I start a new job today. I’m going to be writing for The Lone Ranger.”
“Hi ho, Silver, huh?” Marcus heard the guy breathe out. “If you want my advice, get on with your life and forget about your friend. These dope-fiend cases, they rarely have a happy ending.”
Marcus kept his eyes on the pistol. “Surely some of them turn out all right.”
“I spoke to the head doctor there, and also the nurse in charge of his ward. He’s in a bad way. He’ll only get better if he wants to.”
If.
Marcus faced the guy again. “What’s this place called?”
“I’d strongly discourage you from going to visit him. The nurse said—”
“I’ll feel better if I knew where he was, that’s all.”
Hartman flipped open a folder. “It’s called Cloverleaf Sanatorium.”
Sounds peaceful. “Outside Santa Barbara, you said? Okay. Well. Thank you for your efforts.”
“Good luck with your new job, Mister Adler.”
Marcus stumbled out into the thin morning sunshine. It wasn’t warm yet but it would be soon. He had fifteen minutes to get to Boring Generic Studios, and was considering calling in sick. The last thing he felt like doing was sitting down to a typewriter to compose a scene where the Lone Ranger lassoes some grimacing bad guy and hauls him off to the local jailhouse.
The morning traffic whizzed by him, horns honking, paperboys calling to drivers at red lights. Somewhere off in the distance, an ambulance siren screamed.
Forget about your friend.
Marcus knew Hartman was right. Chases on horseback and scatterbrained gold miners with tattered maps were better than sitting around the Garden waiting for everybody else to get home.
He headed toward Las Palmas Avenue. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to forget about him.”
* * *
The Lone Ranger’s production offices were painted a calming light desert orange and had a linoleum floor whose shade of eucalyptus Anson joked was “horse-hockey green.” Posters featuring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels in heroic poses adorned the walls, but when Anson showed Marcus to his own office, he said Marcus was free to replace them with anything he wanted.
“I think it’s ironic that you’ve ended up here,” Anson said with a lopside
d grin.
The word I’d have used was ‘depressing.’ “How come?”
“Some people think your best movie was Free Leningrad! But for my money, it’s William Tell. What a terrific picture!”
“Why is that ironic?”
“Have you seen our show?”
“I told you: I don’t own a television set.”
“Our theme tune. It’s the William Tell Overture! It’s like you belong here, right?” Anson beamed his eager-beaver face at Marcus until he saw how little of an impact he’d made. “So this’ll be your office.”
The corner office Anson had assigned him was larger than the one Marcus had at MGM. Windows on two sides let in the early summer light, and in front of the soundstage across the way, a crew member was pushing a costume rack past a hand-lettered sign that read “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.” Marcus looked at it wistfully.
“Let’s go to our projection room,” Anson said. “I’ll set you up with a bunch of episodes so you can get the feel of it.”
Sounds tedious. “Sounds good.”
The screening room had sixteen seats in two rows of eight. It was a fraction of the size of MGM’s.
How about you stop comparing this place to your old life? You can like it or lump it or leave it, but at least give it a fair shake before you abandon ship. It’s not as though anybody is sitting at home waiting for you.
A few minutes later, Anson reappeared with paper and pens so Marcus could take notes. He’d gathered the first three episodes of season one and the six latest episodes of the current season.
As he turned to go, Marcus called him back and pointed to his new boss’s wooden leg. “You seem to be doing okay.”
Anson clenched his jaw. “It was an infection. Pretty bad. They’ve got this new class of antibiotics. The nurse called it ‘Superman in a hypodermic.’”
“Did it save the day?”
Anson see-sawed his hand. “Jury’s still out.” He left Marcus alone in the screening room.
By the end of the fourth episode, Marcus had grasped the formula. Open with the Lone Ranger and Tonto; cut to the bad guys discussing their evil plot; discover the vital clue to undo the villains; if possible throw in a damsel in distress, a horse chase, a daring stunt and/or rope trick; end with a bravery-wins-out battle. It was kiddie stuff compared to the complex movie plots he was used to at MGM.
By the fifth episode, Marcus’ mind started to wander. Did Oliver have his own room? What did he do all day? Did they make him lie on a sofa with a psychoanalyst? The word sanatorium conjured sadistic nurses in starched uniforms ignoring pleas for sympathy.
The image of Oliver tied down with straps was too much. Marcus forced himself to watch the screen, where a stagecoach was hurtling through the desert, hijacked by an outlaw called Knife Norton. All the bad guys had names like that: Blackie Kane, Butch Cavendish, and Marcus’ favorite: Baron Von Baden.
Surely I can do better than this.
A couple of hours later, Anson returned to the screening room and fell into the seat next to Marcus. “How’d you get on?”
“I’ve got an idea I think you’ll like.”
“Shoot.”
“How about we give Tonto a backstory? The two of them return to the village where Tonto nursed the Lone Ranger back to health. While they’re there, a posse attacks. It’s like history repeating itself, only this time Tonto has taught his tribesmen how to fire—”
Anson held up his hand. “Sounds great. Have it on my desk by Wednesday lunchtime.”
“It’ll only take a few hours.”
“To write a whole episode?”
“I’m talking about the movie outline,” Marcus said. “You brought me on board to write a feature.”
“Yeah, but to get the hang of things, I need you to write some episodes.”
“That’s not what you said. It’s not what I agreed to.”
Anson gestured toward the television set. “You’ve seen the show. Come on, you can write this stuff in your sleep.”
You better believe I could. Marcus jumped to his feet. “I’m here under false pretenses. And I’m this close to telling you to shove your hi-ho-silver up your ass.”
“If you sit down, I’ll come clean with you.”
Anson’s admission piqued Marcus’ curiosity. He dropped to his seat.
“Fact of the matter is, I don’t have an infection.” Anson glanced back toward the screening room door. “I’ve got me a whole pile of diabetes.”
“How bad?”
Anson sighed. “Prognosis: Screwed nine ways to November. Evidently, planning my fortieth birthday party is likely to be a waste of time.”
“That’s a tough break.”
Anson slumped in his seat and started rubbing the nub where his stump met his wooden leg. “I don’t know how much longer I can wear this thing.”
“Don’t, then. If your wooden leg aggravates it, come in on—”
“On crutches?” Anson groaned. “And have to ignore the looks of pity while they wonder if I can do the job? No thanks.”
“But what if you can’t?” It felt cruel to ask, but necessary.
Anson didn’t reply for the longest time. “That episode you mentioned, with Tonto’s backstory, if you can get it to me by lunchtime on Wednesday, I can fine-tune it before I hand it over to the production department on Thursday. That gives them three days until they start filming.”
“The show I start writing today will go into production next Monday?”
“And will air two weeks after that. Not like the good old days when we could spend months getting a script right, huh?”
The image of Oliver stretched out on a nuthouse bunk in a padded room swam through Marcus’ mind, only it wasn’t Oliver’s face he saw, but his own. I’ve been recruited to replace my own boss.
CHAPTER 39
The marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Conrad Hilton Jr. had been the topic of cocktail chatter for months. Taylor had been around since National Velvet, but she was now blossoming into a ravishing beauty. Even though studio moguls liked to keep their sex symbols unattached, it could hardly have surprised L.B. Mayer that Taylor would catch the eye of a prominent bachelor—and there was no bachelor in America more prominent than the son of its most famous hotelier.
Taylor was only eighteen and Gwendolyn couldn’t see why a rich, beautiful movie star would want to give up her independence, even to a dashing heir whose fortune dwarfed her own. But that was between Taylor and Hilton. What interested Gwendolyn most was The Dress.
Such was the focus on Taylor’s wedding dress that columnists across the nation had started to refer to it in capital letters. The facts and figures poured from MGM’s PR department:
Twenty-five yards of shell-white satin! Fifteen-yard train! Twenty-inch waist! MGM designer Helen Rose was in charge! The $1,500 price tag was Mayer’s gift! The bugle bead and seed pearl detailing took fifteen people three months to complete!
Gwendolyn found that last part hard to swallow, but it did pique her curiosity so that by the time the wedding day arrived in May, Gwendolyn decided she had to see The Dress for herself. Kathryn scored an invite, but Gwendolyn’s only opportunity was to wait outside the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills with the rest of the hoi polloi.
When Gwendolyn stepped off the bus and spotted hundreds of onlookers spilled across the steps and front lawn, she wondered if she’d even get close enough. She hung back. Eventually, some people were peeling away and heading back to their cars, while others were getting sick of being sardined into the areas cordoned off by the police and sought shade under the trees.
Gwendolyn spotted a gap near the top of the stairs that would offer her an uninterrupted view of The Dress as the couple exited. She was more than halfway there when a familiar face caught her attention. Horton Tattler was on the other side of the steps, several people in from the perimeter.
It pleased Gwendolyn enormously that the success of her Sunset Boulevard perfume had helped Hort
on back on his feet. He no longer lived in a ratty apartment, and now rented a place at the Brevoort residential hotel near Vine Street. She suspected that he rather enjoyed living in a place now slightly infamous as a former address of the Black Dahlia.
She gently elbowed her way to the edge of the crowd. As she scuttled across the steps, she waved at him until she caught his eye. His quietly mournful expression contrasted sharply with the enthusiasm permeating the lookie-loos.
She greeted him with a kiss to the cheek. “Yours is one face I wouldn’t have expected to see today.”
“There was a time when all the men in the wedding party would have asked me to fit them for tuxedos.”
Gwendolyn had forgotten the heights he’d reached long before she met his son. It was no wonder he looked like someone just ran over his dog.
“So why are you here?” she asked.
“Schadenfreude, I guess.”
The church bells pealed, and a surge of excitement rippled over the throng. The press photographers and newsreel cameramen jostled for position at the bottom of the steps as the white doors opened and the couple emerged. Hilton looked handsome in his one-button morning suit but his bride appeared slightly overwhelmed by the tumult around her.
Gwendolyn strained to see the beading. A line of creamy bugle beads contouring Taylor’s décolletage caught the sun and glittered like stars. The Dress wasn’t nearly as elaborate as she’d imagined. Its off-the-shoulder neckline tightened into a tiny waist, then flared out into a full skirt, giving the bride a darling silhouette.
The couple lingered at the top of the stairs long enough for the photographers to capture the moment, then were hustled into a waiting car. The crowd began dispersing as soon as the limo was out of sight. Gwendolyn turned to Horton. He’d thrust his hands into his pockets and quietly studied his shoes.
“Nothing good can come from pining for the past,” she told him.
“Today reminds me of Eleanor Boardman’s wedding to King Vidor. What an exciting week that was. We had so many orders for custom-made tuxedos that we had to hire three extra—”
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 26