“I’ll go with you to Paris, and I’ll even take the Orient Express with you as far as Venice. That’d be a wonderful way to celebrate our anniversary. But Turkey? Russia? I’m not going any farther east than Italy. And neither are you.”
“I’m over twenty-one and free to do as I please,” Marcus threw back.
Anger flared in Oliver’s face, but subsided quickly. He laid a placating hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “Lookit, if you’re feeling a pull toward Russia—and I can see why you would—then go read all the Dostoevsky and Turgenev you can lay your hands on. But please, honey, no more talk of actually going there. It’s the most ludicrous idea I’ve ever heard—especially in this political climate. Promise me you’ll forget the whole thing.”
For the first couple of months after leaving MGM, Marcus had felt liberated from the fetters of office politics and outmoded Hays Code regulations. But as winter gave way to spring in 1948, he began to feel as though he were drifting rudderless through the balmy Angeleno days, each one indistinguishable from its predecessor.
Oliver’s advice was sound, but Marcus had already plowed through War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, and had a couple of Gorkys stashed in his nightstand. He’d started reading them to feel closer to Alla Nazimova, whom he was missing more and more without an arduous job to distract him. Steeping himself in her history alleviated his heartache but made him yearn to see the place for himself.
“It hasn’t been easy trying to figure out what I should do next,” he admitted.
“You think the answer’s in Russia?”
Marcus pushed Oliver’s condescending tone aside in the name of household peace and picked up the vodka. “This stuff is pretty smooth, huh? Another shot?”
He could feel the heat of Oliver’s stare as he refilled their glasses, but couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye. He tipped the booze down his throat and walked into the kitchen to start dinner.
CHAPTER 5
The silver lamé evening gown was a god-damned, god-awful, god-forsaken son of a bitch. Gwendolyn had never sewn with lamé before but she knew of its beast-from-hell reputation, which is why she’d charged double her usual rate. The material was hostile. It gathered where it shouldn’t have gathered, resisted where it had no business resisting, and pinched in the places Gwendolyn least expected.
She’d been working on this fiend since two o’clock, and it was now eight fifteen. Was it any wonder her fingertips ached?
She flicked on the radio and thought about her store as she spooned coffee into her percolator. In the four months Chez Gwendolyn had been open, she’d made enough money to cover expenses, with some left over for emergencies. But once the friends, neighbors, and lookie-loos had visited, traffic slowly subsided.
Had it not been for the Licketysplitters, Gwendolyn would have started to worry. Thank heavens for them and their extravagant tastes.
The night Gwendolyn discovered that her boss at Bullocks was a cross-dresser, she offered to make him an ensemble far more flattering than the one he’d cobbled together. It had been such a hit at a cross-dresser bar called the Midnight Frolics, that the regulars—who’d nicknamed the bar “The Licks” and themselves “Licketysplitters”—started lining up, money in hand, desperate for her to make their fantasy costumes. Better yet, most of them didn’t care how much they had to fork over.
Now the Licketysplitters’ commissions were keeping her afloat, and she knew this was not a sustainable situation. She was brooding over whether she’d been rash with the perfume guy when a rap sounded at the front door.
She peeked out from behind the black velvet curtain strung across the doorway into the back workroom to see a girl in a knitted navy blue top and woolen skirt standing on the sidewalk. When she glimpsed Gwendolyn’s face, she waved and knocked again, and gestured for her to come forward.
Gwendolyn wished she’d turned out the lights. She still had hours of work to do on that lamé shambles. She turned off the gas under her coffee and made her way through the store. “WE CLOSE AT SEVEN!”
The girl’s dark blonde hair came down into a widow’s peak above one of those symmetrical faces that beauticians claimed was necessary for stardom. She pressed her hands together as though in prayer. “Please!” she called through the glass. “I’ve been trying to get here for weeks. I desperately need some new clothes. Orry-Kelly recommended you.”
Orry-Kelly was a costume designer on par with Edith Head. Gwendolyn relented.
The girl stepped inside, radiating Chanel No. 5. “Thank you!”
She’s got a definite spark about her. Deep blue eyes, a wide smile, and a full bust. “You know Orry-Kelly?”
The girl scanned the store. “I was at a party with Mister Schenck and we struck up a conversation. He mentioned your store several times.”
Joseph Schenck was one of the big cheeses over at Twentieth Century-Fox. If this girl had caught—and held—the attention of one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, she was probably nobody’s fool.
“You’re under contract at Fox?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Was. But Columbia picked me up in March. I wouldn’t let myself believe that it was going to last, but I just wrapped a picture called Ladies of the Chorus. The casting feller told me what a bang-up job I did. I figure they plan on keeping me, so I can afford to splurge.”
Gwendolyn took a step back. The girl sure knew how to show off her hourglass. “35-22-35?”
The blue eyes popped open. “You’re good!”
“Those are my measurements, too.” She waved her hand across the store. “Formal? Casual? Daytime?”
“All of the above!” The blonde giggled like Shirley Temple playing a taxi dancer. She swayed her behind as she gravitated toward the cocktail dresses.
Schenck must have given this kewpie doll a wad of cash and told her to go buy herself a new wardrobe. The monster in the back would have to wait.
The first piece the girl headed to was one of Gwendolyn’s Christian Dior New Look knockoffs—a tight skirt in black heavy silk faille reaching below the knee, cinched waist, deep neckline, but with extra detailing Gwendolyn had thrown in for good measure.
“Do you have this in white?”
“No, but I could. It’d take me about a week.”
The girl ran her finger along the embroidery. “You made this?”
“I did.”
“Could you make one to match my lipstick?” She turned back toward Gwendolyn and pouted her full lips.
Gwendolyn leaned in. Your skin, it simply glows. If they can capture that on film, you could really go places. “Elizabeth Arden, right?”
“Crimson Lilac. It’s absolutely my new favorite. You can do that dress in this shade?”
“Certainly.”
“I’ll take it.”
She didn’t even ask the price. “Don’t you want to try it on first?”
“35-22-35.” She started to roam the store. “What have you got in the way of casual Palm Springs weekend—OH!” Gwendolyn had left the black velvet curtain open. The girl pointed to the mound of silver lamé. “What is that?!”
Gwendolyn didn’t know how to explain she was making a floor-length cocktail dress for a five-foot-eleven dentist from Pacoima. “An expensive experiment.”
The blonde beelined for the workbench. “I hear lamé is the devil to work with.”
Gwendolyn sighed. “It’s slippery as all get-out and tends to fray unless you baste it with these long stitches to hold the seams. And that’s just for starters.”
“Oh, but when it’s done.” She stroked the sparkling fabric. “Remember how Jean Harlow used to look in this?”
The dentist from Pacoima had said the same thing. “She’s my inspiration.”
“I adored her!” The budding bombshell with the va-va-voom curves turned all baby-doll soft. “I was only eleven when she passed away. I cried and cried.”
“I went to her funeral,” Gwendolyn said.
; “No!”
“I didn’t get inside, of course. I was just one of those people in the crowd. But I couldn’t not be there.”
The women fell silent for a moment, and the store was quiet except for the sound of the radio.
“Would you make me one of these?” the blonde asked.
“I’d need some time,” Gwendolyn replied. “And they don’t come cheap.”
“Would a hundred-dollar down payment be enough?”
That was more than the dentist was paying. “What did you have in mind?”
“Remember those dresses Jean used to wear with the scooped necklines, all loosey-goosey folds at the front? Like that.” She clapped her hands. “Now, casual weekend wear?”
Before Gwendolyn could point her customer toward the other side of the store, the silver bell above the front door tinkled and Kathryn marched in. “I can’t believe you’re still open! Isn’t Winchell about to start? And look who I found wandering the streets!” She hopped to one side to reveal Marcus’ sister.
“I was not wandering!” Doris insisted. “I was visiting Bertie at Wil Wright’s. I can’t get enough of their chocolate burnt-almond ice cr—” She spotted Gwendolyn’s customer.
The blonde stepped toward Kathryn. “Your column is the first thing I turn to every morning.”
Kathryn shot Gwendolyn a look: Who the heck?
“This lucky lady has signed with Columbia,” Gwendolyn said, “and felt it was time for a new wardrobe.”
“Speaking of Columbia,” Kathryn yanked off her gloves in a rough way that told Gwendolyn she was more than a little tanked, “I’ve just come from this big bash at Columbia Records. Not the same Columbia, I know, but anyway. They’ve come up with a new type of record. They’re calling it an LP; stands for Long Playing. Means each side can last for up to twenty minutes. Or some such. Most of us weren’t paying attention; we were busy speculating about what Howard Hughes is going to do now that he owns RKO.” She let out a long sigh and announced, “I’m desperate for coffee.”
“I was just about to make some,” Gwendolyn said. But now I’ve got a customer who’s on the verge of spending hundreds of dollars. I can’t ignore her.
“I would love some coffee,” the girl cooed. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
Gwendolyn led everyone into the back room and relit the stove. Doris pulled out a paper bag of Wil Wright macaroons and arranged them on a clean plate by the sink. She was pouring the coffee as the clock hit nine and Kathryn turned up the volume on Gwendolyn’s new Sentinel radio.
A second or two later, Walter Winchell’s staccato voice came barking through the speaker. Gwendolyn didn’t particularly enjoy his harsh faultfinding and snide blind items, but he always had his finger on the pulse of America.
“Good evening, Mister and Missus America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press. Notorious Hollywood madam Leilah O’Roarke is still languishing in jail. But in a telephone conversation I had with her only hours ago, she admitted to me that she plans on turning state’s evidence against alleged mobster Mickey Cohen.”
Kathryn sat up straight. “Holy moly!”
“When I asked Mrs. O’Roarke what sort of bargaining chip she possessed, she told me—and I hope you’re hanging onto your chapeaux, ladies and gents—of a box of filing cards on which each and every one of her clients is listed, along with all their personal preferences and particular peccadillos.”
“Leilah and her client files are the talk of the Columbia lot,” the blonde said. “Most people don’t believe it exists, but if it does, there’s probably a card on Mister Cohen.”
“But if there really is a box like that,” Kathryn said, “it probably includes most of the menfolk residing within the LA city limits.” She shot Gwendolyn a sharp look.
Not only did Leilah’s metal filing box exist, but it was missing because Gwendolyn’s ex-boyfriend, Lincoln Tattler, had stolen it from under the O’Roarkes’ noses and vamoosed south of the border. How it ended up back in Leilah’s possession was anyone’s guess.
“I know a hot potato when I see one,” Winchell continued, “so I asked her when she plans on producing this box of cards. She told me that the box is safely hidden away in a secure location, and all shall be revealed when the time is nigh. And so, America, here is my prediction: When the preferences and peccadillos of Hollywood’s gentlemen-of-means surface, there will be much scampering into the shadows. And now I turn to Belmont Park, where the horse-racing community yesterday was—”
Gwendolyn switched off the radio.
“The prosecution must be playing hardball,” Kathryn said. “It takes guts to admit she even has something like that to the most powerful journalist in the country.”
“I’m not buying it.” Doris bit into a macaroon. In the six months since she’d moved to Los Angeles from small-town Pennsylvania, her heels had gotten taller, her dresses tighter, her makeup more subtle, and her opinions stronger. “Leilah O’Roarke has been in remand since, what, February? That’s four months. I haven’t lived here too long, but even I can tell that no Beverly Hills madam will spend one single night in the slammer longer than absolutely necessary. I think she’s bluffing.”
“You don’t think she’s got this box of client cards?” the blonde asked.
“She’d have produced it first chance she got,” Doris said.
“Who do you think’s got it?” Gwendolyn asked.
Doris shrugged. “If she says she’s going to reveal it when the time is right, don’t you think it means she’s got a pretty good idea where it is, and is stalling for time until she can track it down?”
Gwendolyn could read Kathryn’s unblinking gaze like a large-print book: That box on the floor next to the buttons. The one Linc’s dad brought to you. The one Linc wanted you to have. The one you haven’t sorted through yet. What if . . .?
Gwendolyn finished her coffee and set the empty cup in the sink. “So,” she said, turning to her new gold mine, “casual Palm Springs wear.” She drew back the velvet curtain. “Shall we take a look?”
* * *
It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time the girl with the baby-doll voice and the Lili St. Cyr silhouette finished making fourteen purchases, paid with a fat roll of cash she pulled from her pocketbook, and needed help bundling everything into a cab.
Kathryn let out a long, low whistle. “Five hundred and twenty-six bucks! Is that a record?”
Gwendolyn nodded.
“Let’s hope she comes back,” Doris said. “Are you closing up now? Can we walk you home?”
“I wish!” Gwendolyn jutted her head toward the silver goliath still heaped on her workbench. “I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter.”
“Do you have enough coffee to see you through?”
Kathryn let out a strangled gurgle. “I can’t stand it a minute longer!” She dashed to the corner and picked up Horton Tattler’s box.
Gwendolyn joined her at the table and pushed aside the lamé. “You don’t actually believe it’s in there, do you?”
“What are we talking about?” Doris asked.
Gwendolyn gestured to Kathryn: Don’t let me stop you. As Kathryn told Doris how Gwennie’s ex-boyfriend had been in possession of Leilah’s client cards before he absconded to Mexico, Gwendolyn pulled each item from the box and spread them out across the workbench.
Apart from the Gwendolyn Was Here menu, there was a souvenir photograph of her and Linc at Mocambo in a silver frame, a few books, his wristwatch, a stack of their love notes bundled together with a white ribbon, and a few other odds and ends.
Leilah’s box, however, was not there.
“I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved,” Kathryn said.
“I’m relieved,” Gwendolyn announced. “Howard Hughes told me Linc went around town and told each guy that Leilah had a card on them. He told Howard that he planned on burning them when he was done.”
“Leilah certainly thinks they’re s
till here,” Kathryn said.
“She might actually have them.”
“In which case, God help us all.”
Gwendolyn eyed the lamé. “The point is, they weren’t in Linc’s box, so please excuse me, girls, but I really must attack the beast.”
Doris picked up Linc’s books: Grand Hotel; All This, and Heaven Too; Magnificent Obsession; and Anthony Adverse. “I haven’t read any of these.”
“You’re welcome to them.”
“You’re going to lock the door behind us, aren’t you?” Kathryn said sternly. “They still haven’t caught the Black Dahlia killer, so you never—”
“SCOOT!” Gwendolyn herded them out the back and locked the door behind them. She eyeballed the mound of fabric shimmering in the light. “I’m warning you,” she told it. “I have a book of matches and I’m not afraid to use it.”
CHAPTER 6
Bette Davis turned her olive green sedan onto Wilshire and headed east out of Beverly Hills. “You don’t have to get an Oldsmobile,” she told Kathryn. “We could just as easily go to DeSoto, or Packard, or Cadillac, but I’ve had this one for nearly two years and nothing ever goes wrong with it.”
“I can barely tell a lemon from a limousine.” Kathryn fidgeted with the zipper on her handbag until she chipped her nail polish. “Thanks so much for taking me out.”
Bette pulled up at San Vicente Boulevard where Beverly Hills gave way to Los Angeles. “What gets me is how you’ve reached forty and have never had a car of your own. Even Louella’s got one, and she can’t even drive!”
“Louella has a chauffeur,” Kathryn replied. “That’s hardly my style.”
“And she has a lovely niece who ferries her about on the chauffeur’s day off.”
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