As the girl stood laughing with the bootlegger, the others at the pool saw with varying reactions that she wore only a small pair of briefs and her shapely breasts were completely naked. She and Tommy both jumped into the pool and swam together.
Phillip, in bathing trunks, a towel in his hand, stood by Nita at the end of the pool and said, “What sort of a party is this turning out to be?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Jack will take charge and see it doesn’t go too far.”
“It’s gone too far for decency now,” Phillip said.
She gave him a glance. “For someone who’s been married to Sally Stark you’re easily shocked.”
She’d barely said this when Tommy’s hand pawed at her ankle from the pool. His wet hair was plastered down on his forehead he grinned boyishly up at her and said, “Come on in! Let’s be buddies!”
Nita drew back. “In a minute,” she said.
Tommy guffawed and swam back to join the topless bathing beauty, and groped at her making her scream, gasp and submerge. He submerged along with her.
Phillip’s face was dark with outrage. “Are you enjoying this?”
“Not much,” Nita admitted. “And especially not with you complaining every minute!”
“Do you expect me to stand by and watch Jack Steel let his pet bootlegger maul the women guests?”
“It’s hardly come to that!”
“Look!” he declared. And he pointed to the far end of the pool where the screaming starlet had retreated with Tommy still fondling her breasts.
Nita glanced around desperately to find their host and hostess. Joyce had vanished with William Desmond Taylor. Jack and Mabel Normand were stretched out beside the pool together in their wet bathing suits, and it appeared Jack was showing her how to kiss properly for close-ups.
“We can go inside,” she suggested.
Phillip looked grim. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going upstairs and dress. I’ll be ready to leave in ten minutes and if you’re not ready to join me I’m leaving alone.”
“Phil!” she pleaded.
“I mean it,” he said, striding off into the house.
Nita watched after him worriedly, torn between wanting to leave with him and feeling she should remain at the party. If she left with him there might be gossip which would reach Eric and would be unpleasant. If she remained she was sure the party would soon calm down a good deal … At least, she hoped so.
The thing which weighed most in her decision to remain was that she didn’t want to create a bad situation between herself and her co-star and his wife. The previous times they had entertained her had been wild and drunken but never as abandoned as this! Nita believed and hoped that the wild Irishman would calm down and the rest of the party follow suit.
She stood back from the pool for a few minutes thinking that Phillip might come to her before he left and she might talk him out of going. But as she waited the likelihood of this seemed to vanish.
When Joyce returned to the poolside with William Desmond Taylor on her arm, she announced, “We’ve been wading in the ocean. We loved it!”
Taylor looked amused. “We saw your doctor friend driving away, looking very angry. Did you two quarrel?”
“No,” she said. “He had leave. A call from a patient. He was sorry to leave.”
“Too bad!” Joyce said. “But at least you’ll be able to stay.”
“Perhaps I should go as well,” she said. “I’m rather tired.”
Joyce saw Tommy Gallegher and the half-nude girl climbing out of the pool and go away hand in hand together. The hostess shrugged. “I’d be more upset if I didn’t know she’s been sleeping with him for months.”
“She isn’t very discreet,” Nita said.
“Nor is the charming Mabel, stretched out there with your husband,” Taylor said to Joyce. “I’ll just go and break up that little love match before it goes further.” He went on to join the two.
Joyce turned to Nita. “I’m sorry. I guess things are a little out of hand. We offended the doctor.”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Not now,” she said.
Joyce turned her attention to Mabel Normand and her husband who were now sitting up and talking to Taylor. She said, “Mabel is out to take Jack from me. She’s not satisfied with having Taylor and a lot of other men.”
“Is she that wild?”
“She has been since she began using cocaine,” Joyce said significantly. “She’s not the same girl at all. They say Taylor started her on drugs.”
This confirmed what Phillip Watters had earlier told Nita. She was stunned to discover that his suspicions were true. She said, “How do they get these drugs?”
“It’s easy if you have the money,” Joyce Steel assured her. “I have to keep a close eye on Jack. Luckily his weakness seems only to be women. It could be worse!”
They went inside and dressed. Nita felt troubled and lost without her escort. Taylor sat at the piano and he proved to be a clever musician and singer. He seemed to excel at all things.
More drinks were served and everyone gathered around the piano as Taylor sang witty and dirty parodies on a number of popular songs. Mabel Normand sat on the piano bench beside him and howled with laughter whenever he came up with an especially suggestive line.
Jack Steel came to hwere Nita was seated on a large pillow a little distance away from the piano. He sat down on the carpet beside her, his drink in his hand and said, “You don’t look as if you’re having a good time.”
She managed a smile. “I’m doing well enough.”
“I think not,” Jack said contritely. “Joyce told me about the doctor leaving.”
“We’ll just forget about it,” she suggested.
“I invited the wrong people,” he apologized. “I wanted Tommy to be at ease. The only one he insisted I have was you. I ought not to have had Taylor, Mabel and the others. They’re a different lot of people.”
“So it seems,” she said.
“Tommy wants to take us out on his boat,” Jack said as he got up to cross the room and refill his glass.
Then Tommy returned to the living room in slacks and a colorful open-necked shirt. The starlet was with him, smirking a little, and wearing a clinging dress with an unusually short skirt. The bootlegger took the girl over to the bar and poured drinks for her and for himself. Then he left her flirting with Jack Steel as he came back to Nita.
He sat down on the carpet beside her as Jack had, smiled at her over his drink and said, “Hello, dream girl!”
She gave him a cool look. “I saw you cavorting with your dream girl in the pool.”
Tommy’s craggy face showed annoyance. “Trouble with you is, you have too many fairies around you!”
Her eyebrows raised. “What?”
“Come on, now!” the big Irishman said. “People know about you. That you’ve been sleeping around with that pansy, Eric Gray, and you’ve taken on his boyfriend, Richard Wright, as your manager. You can’t be too fussy!”
Nita at once jumped up and ignoring the singing of Taylor told Tommy in a low, angry voice, “I will not take that from you or anyone!”
She at once dashed out of the room and ran through the doorway in the adjoining room which led to the swimming pool. She dropped into a canvas chair and began to weep.
“I’m sorry.” It was Tommy Gallegher, who had followed her out and was standing by her chair.
“Go away!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“You said far too much,” she told him.
“How did I know what kind of girl you were?” he asked. “Most of the broads here only want a good time and a good lay. I thought I’d be a nice change for you from those fairies. We’d have a fun weekend and get to know each other.”
She stared up at him and saw the puzzled look on his face and heard the desolate note in his voice, and it suddenly occurred to her that he was talking like this because
he thought it was the norm. That he actually didn’t know any better.
She stood up and faced him. “I was brought up with ignorant Irish. I happen to be one myself. But I never expected to meet the likes of you.”
He stared at her. Then he said again, “I’m sorry.”
“You think that makes everything right?” she asked incredulously.
“I mean it,” he said. “I see I was wrong. You’re not an easy lay. So I’ll have to wait a little to sleep with you.”
“A longer time than you’d ever guess,” she said, her voice hard.
“Okay! So I blew it!” the big man with the broken nose said contritely. “I didn’t act right.”
“Act right!” she echoed in disgusted disbelief.
“So I’m a big ape,” Tommy Gallegher went on. “It takes a decent Irish girl to spot it.”
She said, “At least you now know what I am.”
“So I’ll treat you like my sister, Mamie, back in Illinois. Don’t you think that even an ape like me has a family, a sister and a mother?”
“I don’t dare think of how you must treat them!”
“They manage all right,” he said grimly. “And so will you if you forget what happened and let me start over again.”
“I’ll be satisfied if you just leave me alone for the rest of the weekend,” she shot back.
“All right,” the big man said. “I’ll leave you alone.” And he went back inside.
Nita remained by the floodlit swimming pool. After a little William Desmond Taylor came out. He said, “I couldn’t have entertained you very well. You walked out in the middle of my act.”
Nita turned to him. “I had my reasons.”
“Tommy?”
“Yes.”
The director asked, “What did you say to him?”
“I’m not sure that I remember,” Nita replied. “At any rate, he left me.”
“Must have been something drastic,” Taylor said. “He came back to the living room and spoke to no one. He took a whiskey bottle into a corner with him and he’s sitting alone there getting drunk.”
Nita said, “It can’t be that I hurt his feelings. He has a hide like an elephant.”
“I think he’s also sensitive in a strange way,” Taylor told her. “I take it you rejected him. That hasn’t happened in a long while. He’s absolute ruler here! He names his price for his booze and gets it! He takes his risks and laughs at them! If he has rivals he has them killed, or does it himself. And women are a sort of commodity which he expects to buy and discard as it pleases him.”
“He explained that and I told him my opinion of it,” she said. “And of him!”
Taylor smiled at her knowingly. “You’re quite a girl, Nita,” he said. “I’d have liked to have had you come my way.”
She gave him a cool look. “From all I hear you do very well!”
“You have rather special tastes in men, I’m told,” he went on easily. “I have some experience in that direction. Perhaps we can still get together.”
“Don’t count on it,” she snapped.
Nita had had enough. In a dark mood she left him and went up to her own room, locking the door. The weekend had turned out to be sheer disaster. It would have been bad enough with only Tommy Gallegher and the girl he’d dragged along, but William Desmond Taylor and his harem completed the chaos. She did not blame Phillip for leaving and she decided that in the morning she would call a taxi and leave on her own.
Eric had promised to call her from New York or Philadelphia. He hadn’t been sure where he’d be for the weekend. He had been moving back and forth between the big Eastern cities promoting “Enslaved.” Nita had given him the Steels’ beach house number but so far there had been no word from him. This also was worrying her. She would be glad when the tour was over and he’d be back in Hollywood.
Richard Wright was supportive, but aside from being astute in business, he gave much of his energy to his life in the underground homosexual world of Hollywood. He was still a mystery to her and not much comfort. It was for this reason she’d invited Phillip with her on the weekend.
She went to bed in a very upset state. Listening to the wash of the waves on the nearby beach, she tried to think things through. It was hard to say which troubled her most — Phillip’s leaving in anger, or not hearing from Eric. She realized how much both men meant to her.
It was Eric who needed her most and whom she had come to care for deeply. He had won her heart. There had been a time when she might have married Phillip, but he had chosen to marry Sally Stark, and now that the marriage was breaking up, Nita was no longer interested. She still valued him as a close friend and did not want to lose him.
She went to sleep eventually as she dwelt on the devious ways of the Hollywood film colony, and awakened to the morning sunshine pouring in her windows. When she went down for breakfast only Jack Steel, looking pale and wan, was there.
With a sheepish smile he seated her at the dining room table and said, “I guess everybody knocked themselves out last night.”
“So it seems,” she agreed, taking her napkin.
“You feeling better?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she told him. “We have a busy shooting schedule tomorrow and the rest of the week. I should have conserved my strength by remaining home. I’ll pack after breakfast.”
“You should stay,” he urged her. “Tommy wants to take us all out in his new yacht. They say it’s armed like a light cruiser.”
She smiled bleakly. “I don’t think he’ll miss me.”
“He drank himself into a stupor last night,” Jack said. “It was a job getting him upstairs. It’s not often he drinks his own bootleg booze.”
“He’s badly short on manners,” she said.
“I know,” Jack agreed as the maid came to serve them. “He was just a kind of gangster before Prohibition elevated him to his present power.”
“His new prominence hasn’t worked any wonders in him. He’s a very rough diamond,” was Nita’s opinion.
She and Jack continued to talk over the breakfast table and afterwards she went to stand in the sunshine by the pool. He continued to try to persuade her to remain but she was anxious to leave.
“I’m worried about Eric,” she said. “He was to call me and he never breaks his promises. Perhaps there is a message waiting for me at home.”
She was about to go inside and upstairs to pack when an unexpected visitor came out through the French doors leading to the poolside. The moment Nita saw his grave face she knew he was bringing her bad news.
Richard was wearing a white summer suit and carrying a Panama hat in his hand as he came slowly towards her.
She took a faltering step towards him. “What is wrong?” she asked softly.
Richard stood before her a moment. Then in a taut voice he said, “I don’t know how to begin.”
“What has happened?” Her voice was raised in fear.
“It’s Eric,” he said.
“Go on!”
“He was returning from Philadelphia in a private plane and it crashed.”
Nita stood there stunned, not wanting to understand his words. She said dazedly, “Crashed! Was he hurt badly?”
There was great pain in Richard’s eyes. “He’s dead,” he said in a choked voice. “Eric is dead! It’s already in the headlines of the Eastern papers. Lew Meyers located me and broke the news.”
Nita made no reply because she had fainted as soon as Richard’s words registered in her brain. She felt something cold and wet touching her lips and opened her eyes to see that Jack Steel was offering her a drink.
“This will help,” he said tensely.
She obeyed him and as the burning liquid trickled down her throat and awareness returned, she realized that she was lying on one of the poolside couches. With awareness came a crushing sense of sorrow and loss.
Looking up at Richard who wa
s standing beside her, she whispered, “There’s no doubt at all? It’s not just some dreadful mistake?”
“I’m afraid not,” Richard said sadly. “I’m sorry I had to break the news, Nita.”
“What about Barbara?” she asked.
“Lew Meyers told her. She’d been expecting an announcement of his divorcing her and Lew claims she was almost pleased to hear that Eric was killed before he could return to you. Lew thinks it best that nothing be released about his intentions now,” Richard went on, “So Barbara can play the role of grieving widow to the hilt.”
“It will be as honest as anything else she has done,” was Nita’s bitter comment.
“Poor Eric!” Jack Steel said. And he asked her, “Do you want another drink?”
“Not yet,” she said.
Richard sat by her on an adjoining couch and said, “Lew is going to have production on your new film delayed for a week to give you time to recover.”
Jack nodded. “That was wise, I didn’t think Meyers had that much heart.”
“It’s partly heart and partly cunning,” Richard said. “He’s afraid that Nita might collapse on the set and the news hens would sniff out the story of her romance with Eric all over again. He wants the scandal kept to a minimum and he wants Nita hidden away somewhere until after the funeral.”
Nita stared unseeing at the sunlight sparkling on the blue ripples of the pool. “Eric and I had so many plans.”
Jack Steel said, “There’s no question he was in love with you.”
Richard Wright’s fine-featured face showed chagrin. He said, “The question is, where to take Nita to keep her away from the press?”
“Why not let her remain here?” Jack wanted to know.
“No good!” Richard said. “As soon as they hear that production is halted they’ll be out here looking for you.”
Jack knelt by her and said urgently, “I think I have the solution, if you’ll listen.”
Lost in her dismal thoughts, Nita asked bleakly without paying much attention, “What do you have to suggest?”
“The yacht,” he said. “Gallegher’s yacht! He wants to take us all out for a cruise. I call it an ideal place for you to rest in privacy.”
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