Dangerous to Know
Page 29
“Mr. Chaperau understood the risk he posed and acted to minimize it. He will be rewarded for that discretion. Now more than ever, we must protect the rule of law. That begins with protecting our duly elected leaders.”
He paused as if waiting for the echoes of his oratory to fade then rubbed his hands together, a friendly gesture he’d no doubt poached from an underling. “Now. Dorothy said we might peek into your salon, where you do the fittings.”
“By all means. It’s right next door.”
“Excellent. I hope you won’t mind if I call on you both again should my business take me to this fair city?”
Edith nodded. I followed her lead.
“I wish you ladies happy holidays. 1939 should be a splendid year for the picture business.”
“We have Persons in Hiding from your book to look forward to,” Edith said.
“And Gone with the Wind might even come out,” I added.
“Yes.” Hoover hesitated. “Vivien Leigh will play Scarlett O’Hara.”
“What?” I yelped. “But she’s English!”
“Mr. Selznick’s made his decision. I think it’s an inspired choice. Good day to you both.” With an oddly formal bow, he left to find Dorothy Lamour.
Edith and I stared at each other. “I don’t suppose he planted some kind of listening device in here,” she said softly.
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“And he’s in the salon now. That’s where the secrets really come out. I should have Mr. Groff inspect both rooms once Mr. Hoover departs.” She chuckled. “Shall we have lunch?”
Halfway to the door she returned to her desk to jot down a note. Barney Groff would be receiving a call.
* * *
THE PATH TO the commissary was festooned with wreaths and decorations. Only the mild weather prevented it from being a winter wonderland. “What are your holiday plans?” Edith asked.
“Up in the air at the moment. Addison’s wife, Maude, is back from her trip. She had a difficult crossing, and the mood in Europe left her feeling tense. Plus the unpleasantness with Donald has been weighing on Addison. So they’ll spend Christmas in seclusion, at their place in Arizona.”
“Desert Christmases can be lovely. You won’t be joining them?”
“They have staff there. Besides, I have to get to work on Addison’s January social calendar. He’s decreed 1939 will be a year of bashes and ballyhoo, starting with a New Year’s Day brunch. The studio will be closed, so your attendance is expected.”
“I do have to eat. You’ll be at liberty on the twenty-fifth, then. What will you do with yourself?”
“Gene’s arranged a dinner.”
“Just the two of you?”
“No. Abigail will be there.” I paused. “But Gene invited another detective to keep her company. Nice fellow, he says.”
“That should be grand.”
I certainly hoped it would be. I had similar expectations for my dinner with Simon the following evening. He’d been disappointed at being left on the Lumen during my showdown with Charlotte. “Now that this is over, we should spend some time together,” he’d said. “You know who I am. I’d like to get to know who you are. It would have to be away from those fancy Hollywood places, though. No big names, no bright lights. That doesn’t work for me. We’d have to go someplace off the beaten path. A little dark and disreputable.”
If that’s what it takes, I’d told him.
Edith wouldn’t be pleased with my decision. But then Edith didn’t need know to everything about me. Although when she fired a sudden suspicious glance my way as we reached the commissary doors, I realized she came as close as anyone ever would.
* * *
INSIDE THE USUAL ritual played out. Edith greeted everyone she passed by name, occasionally pausing for a few words. I affected a look of worldly patience. Let the assembled bigwigs wonder who the woman in Miss Head’s company was. A well-regarded Park Avenue couturier, perhaps, trying California on for size. Or possibly the enigmatic star of a new film that was all the rage in Paris. Certainly not a too-tall girl from Flushing who’d lucked into the world she’d always dreamed about.
A roar erupted from the writers’ table. Edith led the way to the ruckus. Billy Wilder jabbed at the piece of paper in another man’s hand.
“These are the words you come up with? Does the studio know they’re paying you as a writer? There’s no wit to them, no élan, two words which, incidentally, I had in this round.” He took note of Edith’s approach. “Our esteemed Head of costume! Tell me, when will the commissary feature something inedible named in your honor? That’s when you’ll know your position is secure. It’s cheaper to keep people on salary than reprint the menus.”
“Say,” another wag called out, “what’s this I hear about J. Edgar himself being in your office?”
Wilder shushed his confederates. “Can we please discuss more significant matters? Your friend Preston Sturges is threatening to direct again. You know everything. What’s he saying?”
“One thing I don’t know,” Edith said, “is why this word game you play fascinates you so.”
“It’s a keen test of intellect. We go around the table calling out letters until we reach twenty-five. You write them in a grid and make words of three, four, five letters. Whoever has the most wins.”
Wilt, I spotted on Wilder’s card. Tilt. Spun.
“That doesn’t sound too difficult,” Edith said.
Ovoid. Slid.
Following a long, awkward pause, all eyes at the table shifted to Wilder. Who shrugged.
“Anyone with a brain can play.”
Spavin. No, that was six letters. I wondered if it counted.
“I’ve got a brain,” Edith said.
Wilder pushed out a tortured sigh of impressive duration. “Miss Head has a brain, she says. Very well. Prove it.” He gestured at the writers closest to him. “Shove over, boys. New shooter.”
Vapid. That would work.
Edith sat demurely.
“I’ve got a brain, too,” I said.
“What is this world coming to?” Wilder rubbed his face. “All right, gentlemen, make room. Time to see what the ladies are made of.”
Author’s Note
We wove a lot of fact into our fiction in this book, although on occasion liberties were taken. Herewith, a few words about sources and what’s true. Any errors are our own.
A happenstance discovery of a news item regarding the Albert Chaperau affair inspired Dangerous to Know. It amazed us we’d never before heard about an international scandal involving two of the biggest stars of the era. Our description of the dinner party at the Lauer residence on October 21, 1938, is drawn from period accounts. Elma Lauer pled guilty to smuggling charges and served three months in prison, while Justice Edgar Lauer resigned from the bench and public life. In exchange for his guilty plea, George Burns received a suspended sentence and paid a substantial fine. Jack Benny initially protested his innocence in court, but was ultimately persuaded to take the same course of action as his longtime friend. He would pay more in legal fees than he would in penalties, an outcome that would flummox the skinflint character he famously portrayed. While our story depicts him at a personal and professional low point, our research confirmed that Jack Benny was unquestionably one of the funniest individuals of the twentieth century, his work on radio, television, and film deserving of new audiences.
What of the man behind the scandal? Once convicted for his role in the Lauer case, Albert Chaperau cooperated with the government in their efforts against Benny and Burns. His sentence of five years was “reluctantly reduced” to two by the presiding judge in recognition of this assistance. On April 12, 1940, Chaperau was personally pardoned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The cited reason was his help in obtaining guilty pleas in the smuggling cases as well as his corroborative testimony in an unrelated judicial corruption trial. And we’re certain that’s all it was, not the names of the dozen or so businessmen and “soci
ally prominent” people found in Chaperau’s papers upon his arrest and never publicly revealed.
As for the peripheral players in the scandal, Rosa Weber, the maid who informed on the Lauers, was paid a reward of $6,714, or twenty-five percent of the total fines and penalties collected as a result of her information, and was never heard from again. The attorney who represented Jack Benny and George Burns, William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan—wonderful fellow, used to be in the Coolidge administration—was chosen by President Roosevelt to head the O.S.S., the World War II intelligence organization that served as a forerunner to the C.I.A. Lillian’s boorish tablemate at the Lauers’ dinner, the mysterious international financier Serge Rubinstein, was murdered in his Manhattan townhouse in 1955. The case remains unsolved. Lillian’s whereabouts at the time have not been accounted for.
The saga of the spy ring founded by attorney Leon Lewis and initially funded by studio moguls to combat the Nazi influence in Southern California is a fascinating true story, its details only now beginning to emerge. We are indebted to Laura Rosenzweig, Ph.D., who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject based in part on Lewis’s personal papers, for answering our questions. Her forthcoming book Hollywood’s Spies: Jewish Surveillance and Resistance of Nazi Groups, 1934-1941 (New York University Press) will shed some light on this too-long-overlooked aspect of Los Angeles history.
Many books have been written about the exodus of artists from Europe to California in the years before World War II, often spotlighting Salka Viertel’s role as the doyenne of this exile community. The most illuminating of these is Salka’s own memoir, the sadly out-of-print The Kindness of Strangers (1969).
For a matchless look behind the scenes at Paramount Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, read 2015’s It’s the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age. Anthony Slide deftly edits Brackett’s diaries to provide a glimpse at one of the most successful, if contentious, partnerships in movie history. Ernest Marquez’s Noir Afloat (2011) is the definitive work about Southern California’s gambling ships. Future generations may well know Hedy Lamarr more as an inventor than an actress; the patented frequency hopping technology she developed with composer George Antheil (who scored several Paramount films in the 1930s) for use with Allied torpedoes prefigured many contemporary communication networks like GPS and Wi-Fi. In Hedy’s Folly (2011), Richard Rhodes pays tribute to Lamarr as an intellectual adventurer.
Other truthful tidbits: Every actor dubbed “Box Office Poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners in May 1938 bounced back nicely, thank you. Marlene Dietrich would have one of her greatest triumphs the following year in Destry Rides Again, featuring songs written expressly for her by Friedrich Hollaender. Dietrich’s plan to deal with Adolf Hitler? One of her own devising. There really was a Cynthia, an eerily lifelike mannequin who became the 1930s equivalent of a Kardashian sister. Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia did screen for a select audience at the California Club on December 14, 1938, as part of Riefenstahl’s trip to the United States. The Chopin script that Frank Capra longed to make was finally filmed in 1945 as A Song to Remember. Charles Vidor directed Cornel Wilde as the composer, with Wilde netting an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Merle Oberon played George Sand. Travis Banton designed her costumes. The movie’s not very good, but the wardrobe is to die for. And yes, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Paramount actress Dorothy Lamour were indeed friends. All of which demonstrates that it truly is a small world, and Hollywood perhaps the strangest place in it.
FORGE BOOKS BY RENEE PATRICK
Design for Dying
Dangerous to Know
About the Author
RENEE PATRICK is the pseudonym of married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Rosemarie is a research administrator and a poet. Vince is a screenwriter and a journalist. Both native New Yorkers, they currently live in Seattle, Washington. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Author’s Note
Forge Books by Renee Patrick
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DANGEROUS TO KNOW
Copyright © 2017 by Renee Patrick
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Gerad Taylor
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in–Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8186-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8459-5 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466884595
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First Edition: April 2017