“Catching up, I see?” Leilah entered the room, a thick envelope in her hand. She passed it to Linc on her way to a bronze liquor cart.
“Leilah, you might have told me Gwendolyn was your nylons girl.”
“How was I to know that you were acquainted?” Leilah poured out two fresh sherries.
Linc had already adopted his let’s-get-the-hell-out face. Gwendolyn was about to speak when the countess laid a hand on her arm. “It was Leilah who introduced me to you-know-who!”
The countess was loaded with charisma and money in equal measure, so the mental list of lovers Gwendolyn had to flip through was considerable.
“Remember? That day at Bullocks Wilshire?” Dorothy insisted. “At the perfume counter? You smelled Chanel No. 5 for the first time and I was telling you about my affair at your Garden of Allah.”
Gwendolyn now stood at that same perfume counter, but she had never thought about that day when Dorothy told Gwendolyn how she was indulging in a red-hot affair with an East Coast businessman. It wasn’t until much later that she pieced together the fact that Dorothy’s paramour was Bugsy Siegel. Suddenly, the boundaries of Gwendolyn’s world shrank.
Gwendolyn swirled the amber sherry around her glass. “I forgot about you and Ben Siegel. Didn’t he run speakeasies back East?”
“Half the people I know can be traced to those New York joints. Benjy was one of the main suppliers; and Dorothy was—”
“One of the main consumers!” The two women burst into high-pitched laughter. “I never told you this,” Dorothy continued, “but Benji really was the love of my life. And I like to think that I was his. At least that’s what he told me, but considering what the man does for a living, it’s hard to tell reality from hoopla, isn’t it?”
Leilah smiled wistfully at her friend. “Guess who’s rented the house three doors up from here?”
“Who?”
“Virginia Hill!”
“Isn’t that Siegel’s girlfriend?” The question came from Linc. He set his untouched sherry on a side table and then ran his finger around the brim of his hat.
Leilah pointed through the front window. “Across the street, three doors along. Ain’t it something?”
Gwendolyn deposited her sherry on Leilah’s quartz mantle. “I’m sorry, but we really do have to be going.” Her voice came out high and squeaky, but she couldn’t help it. She planted hurried kisses on the two women amid a flurry of lovely-to-see-you-agains, and scurried out of the house, saying nothing more until they were seated in the Packard.
“JESUS!” Linc hissed. “Please tell me you didn’t know about any of that.”
“All I knew was the countess and Siegel had an affair, but that was years ago. The rest of it was news to me.”
“I nearly crapped my BVDs!” He turned the ignition and the vehicle roared to life. “She said the girlfriend lives three doors up, but which direction, do you think? I don’t even want to pass it.”
“Don’t know, don’t care!” Gwendolyn pulled off her gloves and started fanning her face with them. “For the love of Mike, just start driving!”
Linc pulled away from the curb and headed north but they’d barely gone twenty yards before a guy in a double-breasted pinstripe stepped into the street. He faced them, impassive and unmoving.
Linc hit the breaks. “This isn’t good.”
From the front porch of a one-story house to their right, another dark pinstripe reached the concrete driveway, where he stood curling his finger, beckoning them inside.
“I can’t believe Leilah set us up like this!” Linc barked. “She’s like an aunt to me. Her husband and my dad, they were college roommates.”
Gwendolyn kept her eyes on the porch guy walking slowly toward them. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“Clem O’Roarke took a lot of look-the-other-way bribes during Prohibition,” Linc said. “He ended up with stacks of money he couldn’t account for with the IRS, so he gave some of it to my dad to help him get Tattler’s Tuxedos off the ground.”
“Does Ben Siegel know all of this?”
“It’s probably best to assume he does.”
Porch Guy stood at Gwendolyn’s window, making a circular motion with his hand. After she rolled down the window, he snarled, “Mr. Siegel would like a word with you.”
Link parked the car outside Virginia Hill’s house and they followed Porch Guy inside.
In contrast to Leilah’s dark, chilly house, this one was filled with warm sunlight and furniture upholstered in a bright floral that Gwendolyn would normally have taken a moment to memorize. But this wasn’t a normal moment.
Benjamin Siegel sat on the largest sofa. He wore a tweed jacket patterned in unusually large black-and-white checks, a white shirt, and a black necktie with a playing-card pattern on it. It’s a shame he chose a violent life, Gwendolyn thought. The guy’s so good-looking he could be a movie star. No wonder the countess fell for him. Seated next to him was his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, a broad-faced woman with dark shoulder-length hair who was a little on the plump side. Her carefully painted lips hinted at a sneer, giving her an air of unvarnished cheapness.
With practiced deliberation, Siegel drew a long breath from his cigar and slowly stubbed it out in the black ashtray to his left. He looked at Linc and said, “Thanks for saving me a trip across town. I didn’t want to have to do this at your fine establishment.”
“Do what?” Linc asked.
“Let you know that I’ll be supervising your activities from now on.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Siegel, but you’re too late. We just sold our last supply. We’re out of stock and out of business.”
Virginia Hill let out a scoffing sound and her crossed leg started to jiggle. Siegel laid his right hand on her knee to subdue the twitch. He made a point of inspecting his nails, which seemed unnecessary. From where Gwendolyn stood, she could see they’d been expertly manicured.
“That’s not accurate, Mr. Tattler, and we both know it.” Siegel’s voice was measured and deliberate. His eyes were a deep aquamarine, but there was nothing beautiful about them.
“Look, Mr. Siegel,” Linc said, “you obviously know what Valentina is, and where she is. We’re walking away; she’s all yours.”
Siegel gave no indication he’d heard anything Linc said. “My own supply has just about shrunk to nothing, but Valentina’s is better merchandise. The quality, I’m impressed. So from now on, you’ll do what you’ve been doing, only I’ll be supervising. For a cut.”
Virginia Hill’s leg erupted into manic jiggling again and her veiled snicker bloomed into barefaced scorn. Despite the warmth of the sun streaming into the room, Gwendolyn felt a film of clammy sweat blanket her forehead. She wanted to wipe it clean, but her arms refused to budge. The only movement in the room was Hill’s kneecap. The atmosphere bulged with tension until Siegel finally spoke.
“You can go now,” he commanded. “I’ll be in touch.”
“How will I—” Linc began, but the mobster cut him off.
“Trust me, Tattler, you’ll know.”
Linc seemed nailed to the carpet until Gwendolyn pulled at his elbow. Neither of them said a word until they were five miles down Sunset, and even then, all Gwendolyn could manage was “Holy crap.”
CHAPTER 33
Marcus couldn’t sit still any longer. He started pacing the length of Jim Taggert’s office.
“How are we supposed to work with you being all Jumping Jehoshaphat?” Taggert asked.
“How are we supposed to work at all?” Marcus shot back. “Our troops are nearly there. By this time next week, Paris will be liberated!” Down the hallway, very few typewriters were clacking away. All Marcus could hear was low-volume chatter.
“Might be liberated,” Taggert corrected him. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. But Paris or no Paris, this script needs to be finished by Friday.”
“It’s an Abbott and Costello movie. These things write themselves.”
“Ob
viously they don’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be here trying to come up with a better ending. These movies are huge moneymakers; we’re lucky to have wrestled them from Universal. I could have asked anybody to fix this turkey but I asked you.”
Taggert’s telephone rang, so Marcus kept pacing. The success of D-Day was one thing, but if the Allies can liberate Paris, surely that spells the beginning of the end?
Jim hung up and got to his feet. “We’ve got a meeting.” He reached for his jacket. “Mayer’s office. Right now.”
“We?”
Taggert stopped halfway through donning his jacket. “When was the last time you spoke to Mayer?”
“Not since the William Tell premiere.”
“We’ve been clashing a lot lately.”
“Has my name come up?”
“Not till just now.”
* * *
Mayer’s desk was built on a platform so subtle that anybody sitting across from him was unconsciously intimidated, even though he was only five foot three. Consequently, Mayer was rarely seen in meetings anywhere but behind his desk.
The fact that Marcus’ presence had been ordered was the first clue that this was no regular meeting; the second was how Mayer was leaning against the small conference table instead of sitting at his desk.
The mogul pitched himself forward, hands outstretched, smiling like a used-car salesmen. Eddie Mannix, followed suit, but pulled off the salesman routine less convincingly.
The third clue was the way both men babbled on about the hopeful situation gathering momentum outside Paris while they settled at the conference table. In Marcus’ experience, neither man was much for small talk.
Something was going on, but Marcus couldn’t make out what. Then, abruptly, it was time for business.
“Gentlemen,” Mayer began, “we are in need of a great pro-war story. We released Song Of Russia earlier this year, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo will be coming out soon, but we need something else.”
Mannix added, “Something along the lines of Since You Went Away.” He turned to Marcus. “Did you see it?”
Surprised that Mannix would be interested, Marcus nodded—Alla had a small role in the movie. He wondered if Mannix would know that, but decided his paranoia was getting the better of him.
Mannix rolled a quarter around his fingertips. “If you ask me, it was way too schmaltzy, even for a keep-the-home-fires-burning picture. But brother, did it ever mint money at the box office. That’s what we’re shooting for here, but we don’t want no copycat.”
Taggert strummed the table. “A tearjerker, but not an American family doing it tough on the home front.”
“Exactly.”
“So instead of an American family, we could have a group of American friends—”
“We need an international story.”
Mayer’s owl eyes and Mannix’s ex-bouncer glower stared expectantly at Jim, who continued to tap the table like it was going to conjure the story they needed. The silence grew more painfully awkward as each second passed.
Mayer turned to Marcus. “Feel free to jump in at any time, Adler.”
If I’m free to jump in, he wanted to ask, why have I been rotting away on fillers while my original ideas are shot down faster than kamikazes? Still, he wondered how many chances he would get to bend the ear of the big boss.
“I do have an idea,” he said.
Mayer’s mouth twitched. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s about a bunch of neighbors who live on the same street, and how they each deal with the war. I conceived it as Anytown, USA, but what if we set it in Europe? Remember that picture we were going to do with Garbo? The Girl From Leningrad.”
Jesus! What part of my ass did I pull that out of?
Mayer snapped his fingers. “Where she was going to play a Russian resistance fighter?”
Mannix planted his elbows on the table and bunched his fists together. “I like that. Song Of Russia did well for us, but I thought it was too highbrow. All that Tchaikovsky crap went on and on.”
“We could set it during the Siege of Leningrad.” Marcus could feel his mind churning with possibilities. “The picture opens just before the siege starts and climaxes at the height of the Soviet offensive, driving the Germans out. I have a whole bunch of characters—baker, doctor, mechanic, dressmaker—all I need to do is change their names and some of the dialogue.”
“You’re talking like you’ve already written it,” Mayer said.
Marcus nodded. “In my spare time. Sort of a side project. I was calling it The Street, but now I’m thinking a better title might be Free Leningrad.”
“This is a great idea,” Mannix said. “Why haven’t you pitched this?”
“I thought I was on the outs.”
Marcus doubted that Mayer’s “Oh?” was as genuine as it sounded. Unsure at how honest he ought to be, Marcus glanced at Jim. The two of them had worked together long enough to be able to read each other’s faces. Jim’s was saying, It’s your career. Fight for it.
“At the William Tell premiere, Edwin Marr called me a murderer.”
Mayer wiped his brow with a starched handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “Christ almighty, what a night that was.”
“I know that you two go back a long way,” Marcus said, “and I got the impression he’d told you something about me.” Mayer nodded, noncommittal. “My guess is that he either told you I was a murderer or a Commie.”
Mayer didn’t even blink. “Both. I know all about his son’s death, and that you were there, so I didn’t pay much attention to the murderer nonsense.”
“But the pinko issue, you’re not so sure. Especially when William Tell came back from the Breen Office. Am I right?”
Mayer nodded slowly, his beady eyes narrowing. “I’m starting to realize you’re sharper than I gave you credit for.”
Marcus could feel a layer of clamminess break out across his forehead and he wished he could borrow Mayer’s handkerchief. He said, “I’d like to state for the record that I’m no Commie. My political preferences may lean left of center, but I can assure you they don’t tilt anywhere near that far left.”
“Adler,” Mayer said, “I will admit that I allowed my opinion of you to be swayed, so I appreciate your honesty.”
Marcus offered Mayer a reverential bow and then looked at Jim. We should exit stage right.
“So,” Jim said, “Adler here has come up with the goods with this Leningrad picture. All we need is a deadline.”
“Is a week too soon?” Mannix asked.
In all the time he’d worked at the studio, Marcus had only ever heard Mannix bark out orders like a drill sergeant, and now he was asking if a deadline he was suggesting was enough time? This meeting really was one for the books. He said, “I can do it in a week.”
The four men rose to their feet, then Marcus and Jim started the long walk out of Mayer’s office. They were halfway out when Mannix’s rough New Jersey voice shot at them.
“By the way,” he said, feigning nonchalance, “I understand you’re friendly with someone inside the Breen Office.”
I knew it, Marcus thought. I’m not here for my ideas.
In a way, Marcus was almost relieved this moment had come. He’d been half expecting the Sword of Damocles to drop ever since Doris told him what happened that night at the Oscars. Marcus could see Jim slowly turn his head. He didn’t need to look at his boss to know what he was thinking: You are?
“Oliver Trenton, right?” Mannix asked.
Marcus and Taggert returned to the conference table. “Yes, that’s right,” Marcus replied.
“How did that come about?”
Marcus hesitated. Their standard story about meeting at the HWM left a sour taste now that the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals had labeled it a hornet’s nest of subversives. “At a fundraiser for the USO canteen at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I knew the girl running the kissing booth and so did he. We got to talking and struck up a
friendship.”
“You went out of your way to strike up a friendship with someone from the Breen Office?” Mayer asked. The afternoon sun shone directly through the window behind Mayer, striking Marcus directly in the eyes, blocking him from seeing Mayer’s expression.
“In a manner of speaking,” Marcus replied evenly.
“Outstanding!” Mayer took Marcus’ hand and pumped it. “Tremendous initiative!”
“Okay, Adler, this is what we need you to do.” Mannix handed Marcus two scripts: The Thin Man Goes Home and Meet Me In St. Louis. “These are two of our biggest new movies, but we’re having huge problems with the Breen Office. They’re objecting to all the booze being swilled in Thin Man.” He let out a snarl. “We keep telling them, ‘It’s a Thin Man movie, for chrissakes. Drinking is the whole goddamned point.’ But they keep jabbering on about rationing and keeping sober for the duration, so we want you to fix that.”
Fix it? Marcus thought. How am I supposed to—
“And with St. Louis, they’re all pouty because of the Halloween sequence. We plan on shooting it from low angles to give the audience Margaret O’Brien’s point of view. She’s seven, so of course she’s going to be scared. But they keep insisting that scary movies have no place during wartime. It’s our job to lift public spirits, blah, blah, blah. So we need you to see what you can do about that, too.”
Marcus looked up from the pair of scripts in his hand.
“This Trenton character, is he a drinking man?” Mayer asked.
Oliver had proven a number of times that he could out-drink anyone at the Garden, which was no mean feat. Marcus nodded.
“Terrific!” Mayer enthused. “We’re going to set you up with an expense account. Nothing huge, so don’t go hauling him off to the fancy places around town. Stick to the middle of the road. Nice enough to impress, but not enough to make him suspicious.” Mayer held up a cautioning finger. “Discretion is key. I can tell from the look on Taggert’s face that you even kept it from him. That’s good, very good. Shows me you know how to keep a secret. Tell me, who else knows about this friendship of yours?”
Marcus thought about the gang at the Garden of Allah. Pretty much everybody knew. He said, “Nobody,” and received a solid slap on the back.
Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Page 24