by Ed Ifkovic
He ran his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “I have so many.”
“Mr. Peake, may I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“Clever boy.” But I wasn’t smiling now. “Tell me, do you think Max Jeffries was murdered by some misguided patriot?”
He stammered. “What?” Then, back in full control, “Of course not.”
“You say that with such certainty.”
He took a long time to answer, as though weighing his words. “Admittedly there could be a crackpot out there, some vigilante, but I don’t think so. Wouldn’t someone like that-a victim of some delirium-target a higher profile name? Someone like…I don’t know…an actor like Larry Parks, currently in the news. Someone who’s already appeared before Congress. Max was a small-time offender, though I admit he’d been spotlighted in the press. But a hoodlum wouldn’t seek him out.”
“What about someone in your America First organization?”
He bristled. “We’re patriots, and non-violent. We’re theorists, constitutionalists, loyalists. We…”
“Don’t murder?”
A thin sliver of a smile, indulgent. “Of course not. We want names…not obituaries. We’re true Americans, Miss Ferber. We want apologies, recanting, and loyalty oaths. People do make mistakes, and we forgive them, so long as they acknowledge the error of their ways.”
I shivered at that, but went on. “So who killed Max?”
“I assumed all along it was some personal vendetta.” He stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Miss Ferber. I have appointments. I trust Ava Gardner will take care of you.”
“She already has.”
A puzzled look on his face as he backed off.
“Oh, Mr. Peake, one more question.”
He stepped closer. “What is it?”
“Larry Calhoun is a member of your organization?”
“You already know the answer to your own question.” He started to walk off.
“I have a favor, Mr. Peake.”
He turned back. “And what is it?”
“I’d like to talk to Larry. I have a question for him. Could you please ask him to call me?”
He deliberated, his brow furrowed, but then he nodded. Without another word, he disappeared into the hallway.
A few minutes later Ava stepped into the room. “I see Desmond has been here already. He sputtered at me as we crossed paths.”
“Well, he actually served a purpose today. He told me something I wanted to hear.”
Ava scoffed. “Edna, what?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. She cradled my elbow under hers, our shoulders touching. The scent of jasmine, heavy and cloying. “Let’s go back to my dressing room.”
I accompanied her down the hallway, neither one of us speaking. Smiling, she bowed me into her rooms. I expected a familiar Broadway dressing room, small and cramped, the sickening smell of old stage makeup and mouse droppings. The lingering bite of sweat and spit. Instead Ava escorted me into a spacious three-room suite, with a stocked kitchen and bathroom. I swept my hand around the room. “I guess you’re a star.”
“That could change in a heartbeat, Edna. Tomorrow I can be back in a closet with has-been darlings.” She looked worried. “Right now Francis is trying to woo himself back into the contract with Metro.”
“Will it work?”
She shrugged. “He can be charming.” She glanced toward the shut door, then up at a wall clock. “I expect him here in a bit.” She moved around the room nervously, looking into a mirror, playing with lipstick on a tabletop, reaching into her purse for a cigarette. “He can also be a bumbler.”
Determined, I reached out and held a hand against her shoulder. “Ava, stop moving.” Both of my hands held her shoulders as I looked up into her face. “Ava, I want to go back to our conversation this morning.”
She looked away for a second, her eyes lingering on the closed door. “Edna, you scared me.” Almost a whisper.
“Did I really?”
A wistful smile. “I suppose not, but I’m…scattered. It makes sense, but I don’t see how you can prove…”
I let go of her and she toppled into a chair. I sat down. “I think I can now. I need one more conversation. Well, maybe two. Maybe Larry Calhoun. But I need to talk to Ethan now. Can you reach him here?”
She picked up the phone. I listened as she chatted with someone in accounting, who at first refused to believe he was talking with Ava Gardner. Irritated, she hung up the phone. “He’s on break in the commissary, Edna. But he’s with Tony, who’s looking for a job here. Ethan is trying to get him some work. God knows what he can do!”
I frowned. “This is not good. I want to talk to Ethan alone, without Tony. This is a wrinkle I didn’t anticipate.”
“You want to wait until Tony leaves?”
I shook my head vigorously. “No. Not this time. I seem to deal with the brothers Pannis together all the time. The whole world does. This time will be no different, though unwelcome.” I stood. “Having Tony there is not good.”
“Edna, I don’t think it’s a good idea…”
I raised my voice. “I never said it was, Ava. But it’s the only thing I can do now.”
She fidgeted. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Edna!”
“No, Ava. If I’m wrong, I don’t want you there.”
“And if you’re right?”
“Then the game is over.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ava gave me directions to the commissary, one building over, and I headed there, though my steps dragged. Ethan and Tony. Tony/Tiny. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Falstaff in sequins, begging for pennies from a miserly brother. But then, I thought wryly, neither should I be strolling the hallways, the wandering novelist shuffling through Metro with an I.D. badge and a purpose.
My progress was interrupted by an aide to Dore Schary who’d heard I’d invaded the hostile territory. She waylaid me as I turned a corner, standing in my path with a clipboard and pencil, her face grim. Trying to smile but failing at the simple human act, she questioned whether my being there had to do with tomorrow’s premiere of Show Boat at the Egyptian Theatre.
“No,” I said quickly, “I’ve already been accosted by Desmond Peake.”
I tried to move around her.
“Did you see Miss Gardner? Where are you headed now?”
“To the commissary.”
Suddenly chatty and bubbly, she confided that Dore Schary was out of town-“a man who respects you”-and would be unable to see me.
“I don’t expect to see him.” I raised my voice. “I’m leaving L.A. You will not see me tomorrow.”
She looked relieved, jotted something on the clipboard-what? confirmation of my travel schedule? — and scurried off. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Peake waiting for her. My, my, such clandestine intrigue: Edna Ferber, the Show Boat herself, lumbering through the sanctified Metro hallways. Alone, adrift, and doubtless a danger in this celluloid canyon.
But I was stopped again. At the doors of the commissary, a voice shouted my name. “Edna, wait.” Frank Sinatra, his face flushed and that Adam’s apple bobbing, came hurrying up to me.
“Frank.” I was confused.
“Wait.” He stopped next to me, swung around so that his back was to the commissary door. He was out of breath, his face too close to mine. Those awful scars, those blue eyes so bright now. “Edna, Ava just told me what you said about…Max.”
Another wrinkle, this. Why would she do that? I tried to step around him. “She shouldn’t have done that. I asked her for secrecy.”
For a second he closed his eyes. “Look, I don’t want you to do this alone.”
“I do everything alone.”
“Not this.” He softened his voice. “Not this.”
“I do not need a protector, Frank.”
He stammered, “I’m not here to…to protect you, Edna.” He smiled broadly. “Hey, I’ve heard enough about
you to know you can win your own battles. But I think you need to have a friend with you.” He reflected on his words. “Yeah, a friend.”
“A friend?”
He nodded. “I can be a friend, you know. I’m not always an ass.”
Now I smiled, staring at the jumpy man, this short, scrawny scrapper with the red bow tie and the cowlick. Ludicrous, perhaps, but staring into those blue eyes I saw something I didn’t associate with him-had refused to see: real concern. And despite what he said, that look also communicated something else-fear. He looked nervous, his fingers opening and closing quickly. All right, then. My rogue companion, though uninvited. The wisecracking man with the sarcastic tongue and the flippant attitude-the brazen brawler-the nasty man-all eclipsed for the moment by a young man who wanted to come out on the side of justice. I looked at this crooner with a kind of wonder, not certain if I trusted this gangly Galahad. An intriguing soul, this Francis Albert Sinatra, Ava’s lover. A man who could surprise me. Even old ladies welcomed surprises.
Ethan and Tony looked up as Frank and I, side by side, approached the table. Tony rose, plopped back down, confused. “What the…” Frowning, Ethan kept his eyes on Frank.
“Boys.” Frank addressed them warmly. “Miss Ferber would like to visit with you.”
Ethan laughed in a high, unnatural cackle, while Tony folded his arms onto the table, hunched over, head bobbing as though he would drop his head down for a nap.
“We were just leaving,” Ethan said. “I have to get back to work. Tony filled out an application…” He stopped. “What?” The word was almost shouted out, addressed to Frank. “Frankie, I only got a minute.”
I pulled up a chair directly across from him. “Then my timing is perfect. Remember what you told me about timing, Ethan? You said everybody in Hollywood depends on timing. It’s the key to everything out here. Bam bam, hit your mark.”
A baffled look, first at Frank, then at me. “So what? You came here to remind me of things I said at a cocktail party?”
“Partly.”
Tony roused himself. “I gotta leave.”
Frank reached out and touched his sleeve. “Sit, Tony. We’re friends here. Miss Ferber has something she wants to say.” He spoke in a calm assuring voice. For a second, I thought he’d sung the words, so smooth and lilting were his syllables. The crooner, easing the way.
Tony darted a frightened glance at Ethan, who refused to look his way.
“Timing,” I repeated.
In a clipped, hard voice, with a sharp glance at Tony, Ethan demanded, “What are you trying to say, Miss Ferber?”
Tony was fidgeting, rocking back and forth, but another look from Frank quieted him. It struck me as uncharacteristic of Frank, this wistful and hypnotic smile. The seasoned keener at your funeral. Tony stopped moving and closed his eyes.
I had trouble focusing on Ethan, suddenly forgetting the questions I’d planned to put to him. Distracted by Frank’s suave maneuver with Tony, I considered how little I really knew about him, this smooth balladeer, how quick I’d been to condemn him, to draw him as a facile caricature. Yet Ava loved him, and I respected her. Indeed, so many parts of Frank failed colossally. Ethan’s word: failure. Frank nodded at me because I’d not answered Ethan, intent as I was on watching this pacific ballet with Tony.
Now, spine erect and hands gripping the edge of the table, I announced ferociously, “Ethan, you murdered Max.”
Tony squealed, flew back in his chair, nearly toppling it over, a gurgling sound escaping his lungs. Beads of sweat glistened on his face, in the creases of his neck. His eyes darted first to his brother, then to Frank, but not to me. Breathing heavily, he swayed toward Frank who put his palm on Tony’s shoulder. The effect was immediate: Tony looked at him, pleading in his eyes.
I was staring at Ethan, who watched me carefully, unblinking. I waited a long time. He sat back, his body at attention, eyes narrowed, and seemed to be sifting through his thoughts, planning his sentences…or maybe judging the value of mine. Then, finally, speaking in a low, gravelly voice from the back of his throat, he spat out, “Preposterous.”
The word hung in the air, explosive, thunderous. Suddenly he looked down at his hands, his expression troubled. I followed his eyes and saw a tremor in his right hand, a movement he tried to squelch by covering it with his left hand. He looked perplexed, as if he couldn’t believe his body operated independently of his brain.
“Preposterous!” A hiss. “I won’t sit here and take this.”
Frank glared. “Of course, you will.” The tenderness he’d showed Tony was gone now, the old spitfire back.
Ethan twisted his head slowly toward Frank, and I saw what I suspected these last few days, in bits and pieces: a fierce and massive dislike for the famous singer. I swear a sneer escaped from those tight, thin lips, and for a moment I envisioned Pete on the showboat, the vicious crew hand in love with Julie, whose love is unrequited and who turns her in to the sheriff. The dark melodramatic villain the audience rightly hissed. Ethan and Pete, two men at a moment of devastating reckoning.
Frank looked at me. “Prove it, Edna.”
Ethan, in that split second, must have believed he had an ally in his old friend, Lenny’s blood brother, because he nervously smiled at Frank. Prove it, lady.
“I shall,” I trumpeted, but paused, collecting my thoughts.
“Go ahead,” Ethan snarled.
“Timing,” I repeated. “Ava prompted me to revisit the night Max died, especially what happened at the Paradise. That got me thinking about the night before-the disastrous dinner at Don the Beachcomber, the night Frank here”-I nodded at him-“got a little drunk, resented Max’s idle flirtation with Ava, then hit him. Frank notoriously threatened to kill Max, a public declaration I gather he’s in the habit of making, unfortunately”-Frank winced-“but so be it. The following day the tabloids ran with it-Frank’s threat to commit murder. Timing. The next night Max was, indeed, murdered. The rumors grow, alarming Ava but not Frank…at first. Not until the cops took him in for questioning. It’s logical to suspect Frank, especially with his hair-trigger temper and his overweening arrogance.”
I glanced at Frank who had pulled his lips together, frowning. “Thank you, Edna.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
“Christ,” Ethan muttered, “This is…”
“Just a second,” I went on. “Someone wanting Max dead might see this as an ideal time, especially someone who’s harbored a long-standing, festering grudge that probably turned into outright hatred. Timing. It was also convenient that Max had become the poster boy for the blacklist, his name bandied about in the columns, the hate mail arriving on his doorstep. Even death threats. No one took such threats seriously, the product of loose cannons, crackpots.”
“Crackpots,” Ethan echoed me.
“But Max’s murder would not surprise some folks. Max was obsessed with the blacklist-he and Sol Remnick spent long hours talking about it. Sol made an interesting observation before he died. The so-called-patriots don’t murder; they torment, they deprive folks of income and reputation. Their cruel and unusual punishment is slow and deliberate. Desmond Peake, a leader in America First, got me to believe this, too. For all their absurdity and their misguided patriotism, his group believes in redemption, admittedly after coercion and appropriate public humiliation.”
“Max was a Commie,” Ethan seethed.
“No, he wasn’t. And you know it, Ethan. When you said that one night, it made me wonder. You pride yourself on logic, precision, all the orderly trimmings you’ve manufactured for living your own life. Everything in its place. Regimented truth. So that remark made no sense. You knew better, though you’d like others to believe Max courted his own death.”
“So how did I do it?” Cocky, he threw back his head.
“Just a minute. This is my script now, my storyboard. You’re a man who prides himself on control, but that wasn’t always the case. A drinker, a wife-beater, you reformed yourself,
true, something that must have taken inordinate discipline. Severe, authoritative-a life lived with rigidity. Why? I wondered. Why so keen a transformation? Because, I suppose, you burned with a deep-seated anger, a desire for vengeance.”
Tony made a blubbering noise, and for a second we all stared at him.
I went on. “It was clear the other night when you and Tony fell apart at Ava’s house-you resent Frank and his success. It should be your success. Tony told us your comment about Adam and Ava-how they don’t deserve what they’ve worked for. I listened to a man who is craven, bitter, seething. And thus dangerous.”
“Your scenario is missing some elements.” He gave out a false laugh. “Missing pieces.”
“Circumstantial? You bet, Ethan. So far. But you resented your own failure. That’s your word: failure. It burned you, ate you up. Ava and Frank, success, money, cynosures whose lives are documented in the magazines. Hollywood, the land of dreams and money and fame-it all eluded you. So close…but gone. Fame, power, money-they eluded you. And with Frank now disappearing from both your lives, you despaired. Hence the business of heading back to New Jersey. That’s admitting failure, no? Back to staring faces, folks who’d point and remember the boy who left to meet his dreams.”
Tony started to say something but stopped when Ethan shot him a look.
“To you, Max was the instrument of that failure. Tony’s career was over. But yours never started. That script you gave Max-the one you’ve mocked and played down and cavalierly dismissed-it was the touchstone of your failure. In Max’s journal today I found his summary of your final conversation, a description of how you fell apart, weeping, a little drunk then, when Max told you it was worthless. You blamed him, irrationally-then Hollywood, then, bizarrely, Frank. Three lines stayed with me. ‘I have to do it for Lenny. He won’t like it if I’m a failure.’ Awful words. Max told you to get out and what did you say. ‘I’ll be back, Max.’ An innocent enough threat, idle, but one you took seriously. You did go back.”
“Crazy lady.” Tony was sweating.
“You believed in the puerile script you peddled, sadly. It was your ticket to your name in lights. After Max’s rejection, you played it down-mocked it with Lorena. But inside you seethed. Max squelched your most important dream. You were left with a penny-ante job and a life on the fringe of Frank’s glory.”