Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4)

by Martin Turnbull

  Normally, the boys weren’t shy to ask hostesses for a dance—they knew they’d never be refused. But some of them hung back, so Gwendolyn made a point of seeking out the hesitant ones. She soon spotted one. He was leaning against the far wall underneath “Cowboy Heaven”—a mural painted by volunteers from the Motion Picture Illustrators Guild to make the rural lads feel more at home. This guy had the sunburned face of someone who’s spent most of his life pushing a plow. He had a bad case of the fidgets, alternately tucking his hands in his pockets and hooking them in his underarms. His eyes started to bulge as she approached.

  “This is a heck of a good song to dance to,” she pointed out. “How’s about you and me go for a spin?”

  The Canteen Hostess Rulebook encouraged the girls to contribute to the festive atmosphere by dressing colorfully. Hostess rule #6: Feel free to wear bright colors as an antidote to the drab grays and browns of their day-to-day military life. Gwendolyn had sewn an outfit especially for her nights at the Canteen—bright yellow with a snugly sashed waist and a full skirt made for spins. As an extra bonus, the décolletage put her bust on discreet but full display.

  This kid couldn’t have been more than twenty, and was kind of cute in his olive green private uniform. The pants were a touch too short and the sleeves of his pressed shirt a little too long, but she told him it suited him well. He nodded his thanks and took her in his arms with surprising confidence and merged them into the dance floor traffic. He picked up the beat of the music quickly.

  “What’s your name, Private?”

  His smile was quietly unassuming. “Pete.”

  “You’re hot stuff when it comes to this dance floor business.”

  “I come from a real big family and there ain’t much to do at night. Mama plays the fiddle, and Uncle Jack, he’s pretty good on the banjo. The rest of us dance.”

  His eyes took on a distant look, so she let the conversation drop. She’d learned when to talk and when to just give a serviceman the pleasure of holding a woman in his arms.

  After a couple of laps around the dance floor, she felt his grip tighten. She saw a hand tap Pete on the shoulder. It was a tow-headed sailor in the same black and gold seaman’s uniform she’d seen Monty wear.

  “Sorry, sailor,” she told the guy, “there’s no cutting in unless it’s a tag dance.”

  Pete let her go. “That’s okay. It’s been a pleasure, miss.”

  Before Gwendolyn could say anything, Pete melted into the churning crowd. She turned to the sailor. When she opened her arms to allow him to scoop her up, she saw that he had no left hand.

  Hostess rule #9: Don’t talk about a guy’s injuries. Engage in conversation, but stick to cheery topics like where they’re from and what is his mother’s best dish. But this was the first time Gwendolyn had danced with an amputee, and she hated herself for staring at his arm as long as she did.

  “Battle of Midway,” he said matter-of-factly. He picked up the rhythm and propelled them on their way.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Fitzy.” She could see the spray of freckles across his face now, speckled all the way to each ear. “I’m sorry I had to barge in like that, but I got me a bus to catch. Leaves at midnight.” Gwendolyn glanced at her watch; it was ten thirty. “I got married just before I shipped out. I haven’t seen my wife in two years and she’ll be picking me up at the bus depot tomorrow morning.”

  “You must be looking forward to seeing her.”

  “Yes and no. I ain’t told her about my injury. Couldn’t work up the nerve.”

  “I see.” Hostess rule #4: Let the guy talk as much as he wants to or needs to. Your job is to listen.

  “It’s going to come as a shock to her. So I got to figuring if maybe I could bring her back something she’d appreciate, then maybe it’d soften the blow.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, Fitzy.” Hostess rule #2: Use his name as often as you can.

  “That’s when I heard about you.”

  Gwendolyn’s spine stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  Fitzy leaned in. She could smell antiseptic ointment. “You’re the nylons girl, right? The one with the black-market nylons for sale.” Gwendolyn looked across the dance floor to the snack bar where Mrs. O’Roarke was setting out a tray of coconut cake.

  “One of the orderlies at the military hospital told me about you. He said, ‘Keep an eye out for the knockout in the yellow dress.’”

  Gwendolyn did her level best to keep a low profile when selling her stockings. Always to someone she knew, always when nobody else was around, always asked her customers to keep it to themselves. Some orderly is telling sailors about me?

  “Can you help a guy out?” Fitzy pushed. “I gotta leave here in a few minutes so as I don’t miss my bus.”

  It wasn’t hard for Gwendolyn to picture the small-town sweetheart this guy left behind. She was probably a Betsy or a Wanda and right this very moment was probably pressing her favorite outfit in excited anticipation of greeting her war-hero husband at the depot. She pictured Fitzy stepping off the Greyhound bus, his face filled with the fear of what her reaction was going to be.

  “Give me five minutes,” she whispered into his ear. “Go out the front, turn right and when you get to the parking lot, turn right again. You’ll see a door marked Stage Entrance. Walk past it so you’re not in the light. This is completely against the rules, so don’t do anything to attract attention.”

  Although Hostess Rule #19 forbade fraternization with the servicemen outside the Canteen, the girls tended to look upon it more as a guideline than a rule. Wartime was different. The certainty of a future everyone had taken for granted during peacetime had given way to a feeling that nothing could be counted on anymore. Everyone had thought the Battle of Midway was as bad as things could get, but then Guadalcanal happened and they lost more than seven thousand men. People were learning that “here and now” was all anybody really had.

  A couple of people lingered in the pool of light outside the stage door. Gwendolyn could make out a few silhouettes idling in the shadows, not all of them alone.

  “Pssst! Over here!”

  Gwendolyn joined Fitzy in the darkness and opened her purse. She pulled out the three pairs she had and handed them over.

  “How much?”

  “I want you to have them, Fitzy.”

  The guy withdrew his hand. “I ain’t no charity case.”

  “I wouldn’t disrespect you like that,” she insisted. “These are a gift. From me to—what’s your wife’s name?”

  “Valerie.” Emotion choked his voice to a whisper.

  “Tell Valerie I hope she wears these the first time you take her out dancing.”

  “I don’t know that we’ll—”

  “She’ll be the envy of every girl in the place. You mark my words, Fitzy.”

  He dropped his head down onto his chest and tried to steady himself with a deep breath. Had he not done that, Gwendolyn wouldn’t have noticed Mr. Dewberry walking out of the Canteen’s back door. He’d mentioned to her once or twice about volunteering, but she wasn’t aware he’d started. He was heading right for her.

  She grabbed Fitzy by the wrist and pulled him toward her, sandwiching the stockings between them. She managed to squeeze out “Follow my lead” before pivoting him around so that he stood between her and Dewberry as he walked past. She pulled him closer and planted her lips to his. She could taste the bologna from the sandwiches Hedy Lamarr had been handing out all night.

  She listened to Dewberry’s footsteps on the gravel and heard them stop for a moment before continuing. A car door creaked open, then slammed shut. An engine purred to life, then suddenly they were drenched in the blinding glow of his headlights.

  * * *

  When Gwendolyn arrived at work the following morning, she was still cringing at how close she’d come to being caught by her boss, black-market stockings in hand and illicitly smooching a serviceman. How Dewberry had failed to see her in her
bright yellow dress was a mystery.

  St. Valentine’s Day was less than two weeks off, and the regulars were starting to gather at the lingerie counter like locusts. Sugar daddy seemed a smidgen too vulgar a term for these gents, who took great care to select precisely the right expensive gifts for their mistresses and chorine girlfriends; Gwendolyn liked to call them sweetiepies.

  She was just finishing up with one of the newest members of the sweetiepies club—this one wore an enormous handlebar moustache like a medal of honor and certainly knew his silks and satins—when Dewberry appeared. His indecipherable smile sent her into a dry-throated panic when he asked her to follow him to his office. She’d never been in his inner sanctum. The room was painted a startling shade of teal and lit by sunshine streaming through tall windows that overlooked Wilshire. By the time Gwendolyn sat down in front of Dewberry’s desk, she’d promised to give up this whole black-market thing. It wasn’t worth the strain on her nerves.

  I’m going to have to find some other way to finance my store.

  “It’s about your job,” he started. Gwendolyn clenched her hands together. “I always thought Delores was irreplaceable, but you’ve proven me wrong.” Gwendolyn loosened her fists, but just a fraction. “You’ve probably noticed that we’ve lost more staff lately. All those war factories offering wages we cannot compete with. So management has decided to change things up a little, and we’re creating supervisors for each department. It will involve more work, but in return, these supervisors will get a bigger staff discount, a say in hiring and firing, first choice of floor samples sold at a steep reduction, and free meals in the Tea Room.”

  Gwendolyn unfolded her fingers and pressed her palms into her lap.

  “Miss Brick, I’d like to offer you the position of supervisor of perfume, lingerie, gloves, and scarves.”

  “Me?” The word popped out an embarrassing squeak.

  “I saw you volunteering at the Canteen last night.”

  “You saw me there?”

  His smile was indulgent like a favorite uncle. “You’re doing your bit for the war; I was terribly impressed.”

  Gwendolyn stared at Dewberry while he stared at her. For several moments, neither one spoke a word, until Dewberry, frowning slightly, said, “Miss Gwendolyn, would you like me to fetch some water? You look like you’re about to faint.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The air in the courtroom corridor grew humid with apprehension. Kathryn started to fan herself with her notepad. “I never knew how interminable this waiting could be.”

  Gwendolyn nodded. “Imagine how Errol feels.”

  Through the whole of January 1943, Errol Flynn had been fighting for his freedom against three counts of statutory rape.

  At the trial’s outset, Kathryn wondered where her loyalties would lie. In spite of his rakish ways, she genuinely liked Errol and suspected that he—and not his pouting accusers—was the real victim in this mess. She put a lot of stock in the rumors that some of LA’s less-than-sterling politicians had trumped up this dog-and-pony show as a warning to uncooperative studio heads whose kickbacks were less than lucrative. Kathryn didn’t believe a star of Errol’s stature would actually be convicted; if he was found guilty, the axis of power would tilt away from the studios, and nobody knew what that version of Hollywood might look like.

  On the other hand, the allegations that Errol had drugged and raped these girls sounded like a harsh version of her mother’s tale. Kathryn was far from convinced that Francine had told her the whole story of her conception—Opium, indeed!—and as Errol’s trial ground on, she became less convinced that the girls’ testimony bore anymore resemblance to reality than her mother’s did.

  Kathryn and Errol had been at a working bee last spring when he announced to a round of good-natured laughter, “I like my whiskey old and my women young!” Only a wolf as charming as he could get away with that, but it wasn’t quite as droll in the harsh light of the superior court as it had sounded at a boozy party.

  Kathryn’s eyes drifted over to a banner, five feet across and three tall, with ABCDEF in big blue letters over American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn. Errol smiled every time he caught sight of it.

  “The jury foreman, Mrs. Anderson,” Gwendolyn said without preamble, “she looks a lot like my biggest customer. I keep wondering if they’re sisters or cousins.”

  Gwendolyn rarely talked about her side business. The crowd around them had spread along the length of the hallway, so Kathryn snatched the opportunity. “You’re being careful, right? No unnecessary chances? You never did figure out how that one-armed sailor found out about you.”

  Gwendolyn nodded. “You know how much I’ve got stashed away? Nearly two thousand.”

  Kathryn figured Gwendolyn had made a few hundred bucks by now, but two grand? She wasn’t sure what two thousand dollars looked like when stacked together, but she couldn’t imagine she’d miss it sitting around their villa. “Where is all this loot?”

  Gwendolyn leaned her head on Kathryn’s shoulder. “You know how Bertie’s living in Alla’s old bedroom?”

  “The room with the hidden safe?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just promise me you won’t do anything nutty—”

  “In the whole time you’ve known me, have you seen me do anything nutty?” Gwendolyn paused for a moment, then added, “With my money, I mean.”

  “No, of course not,” Kathryn conceded. “It’s just that—oh, don’t listen to me. I need to be reminded that not everybody’s like my pea-brained boss.”

  Wilkerson’s plan to finance his $50,000 pledge to the USO fundraiser was to win it back at David Selznick’s poker game the following weekend. According to Ira, he came close to pulling it off, getting as high as $43,000 before blowing it all—and then lost another $71,000 in a scramble to recoup. This morning, before she left for the courtroom, Ira pulled her into his office and told her that some recent stock-market gambles had also gone bad, and that his calculations put Wilkerson’s debt at over half a million dollars. She thought about Presnell and his hundred bucks a week and his suite at the Marmont, and wondered for the five hundredth time whether she’d made the right call. Was it too late to change her mind?

  Gwendolyn pointed to the bailiff at the door as the mob crowded back into the courtroom with sober expectation hovering like a thundercloud. Errol was already seated at the defendant’s table next to his hotshot lawyer, Jerry Giesler.

  A feverish voice several rows behind Kathryn called out, “We believe in you, Errol!” Errol turned around and forced a smile. He looked meticulously dapper in his dark blue suit, white shirt, and finely checkered tie, but his face was pale as a pallbearer’s.

  The bailiff asked everyone to rise as Judge Leslie Still—as sober and serious a judge as you’d find in any movie—entered the chamber and asked that the jury be shown in. One by one, nine women and three men filed into the room and took their seats.

  “Mrs. Anderson,” the judge said, “have you reached a verdict?”

  Ruby Anderson was a stout woman who looked like she hadn’t changed her makeup since Pola Negri was a star. “We have, Your Honor.” She handed a slip of paper to a bailiff, who passed it to the judge.

  Judge Still read the three verdicts and then handed them to the court clerk. “Read the verdicts, Mr. Averre.”

  As the clerk got to his feet, the weight of anticipation pressed the air. Kathryn focused on Errol’s back; she watched his shoulders inch up. Averre read the words on the paper in his hand. “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.”

  The bubble of tension ruptured over the audience and applause filled the room. Someone shouted, “We knew you were innocent!,” then someone else, “Justice is served!,” but Errol didn’t appear to hear them. He dashed over to Mrs. Anderson to shake her hand, then worked his way down the line of jurors.

  Kathryn waved, trying to attract Errol’s attention. Wilkerson had told her not to return to the office without “some sort of bo
ffo quote. He’s Errol Flynn—shouldn’t be too hard.” But Errol was too distracted by the racket around him. He nodded to Giesler and they plunged into the roiling sea of outstretched hands and press photographers’ flashing bulbs.

  Kathryn and Gwendolyn let themselves be swept up in the undertow that led to the sidewalk outside the courthouse, where dozens of people had gathered. A roar went up as Errol emerged into the cool February sunshine. A couple of reporters prevailed on him to say something.

  Errol pushed back his hat and flashed his million-dollar smile. “Gosh!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t become an American citizen for nothing.” Like most good actors, he knew when to pause for effect. “The fair play I have received in this trial proves the value of my American citizenship. I want to thank all of those who stood by me.”

  The ABCDEF banner shot up over the head of the mob and Errol saluted it.

  “ERROL!” Kathryn called. “OVER HERE!” She watched helplessly as Giesler hustled him into a Packard, which quickly merged into traffic on Grand Avenue.

  Kathryn jammed her hat onto her head and considered the journalistic integrity of making up a Flynnian quote.

  “Kathryn Massey?”

  One of the bailiffs, a hairy-knuckled bear of a guy, handed her a note written on the back of an envelope: I’m throwing a party to celebrate. My place—7740 Mulholland. Any time after 9 p.m.

  * * *

  Free from his rollercoaster marriage to Lili Damita, Errol had bought a parcel of land on Mulholland Drive and built a five-bedroom house he dubbed Mulholland Farm. The parties there were notorious and fueled rumors of secret passageways, spy holes, and two-way mirrors.

  Gas rationing had made finding a taxi tougher and tougher, and it was well after ten o’clock before Kathryn and Gwendolyn pressed the bell at Errol’s gate. The seven-foot iron gate slid to the left, revealing a gravel driveway that meandered to the right. They followed it up to the sprawling house’s front door. Gwendolyn pressed her ear to it.