Girl About Town

by Adam Shankman

  Duke Ellington and his band played as two Ziegfeld girls gyrated gently on their podium clad in what appeared to be nothing more than hundreds of ropes of pearls, but everyone else fell silent when Frederick entered the room. For a breath they all looked in sheer awe at that handsome young man, fortune’s favorite, heir to the world. Then they erupted in spontaneous applause. Waves of people moved in to congratulate him on the rare accomplishment of having survived seventeen years.

  They parted when Jacob van der Waals walked slowly toward his son, arms wide. “Come here, my boy!” he boomed, and took Frederick in a solid embrace, pounding him on the back. Then he held him at arm’s length. “Look at you. Your mother would be so proud. Congratulations and many happy returns!” He grabbed a flute of champagne from the nearest waiter and turned to the crowd, raising his glass high.

  “A toast!” he cried. “To my son and heir, Frederick. May all the happiness of the world be laid in your lap.”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  “Chin-chin!”

  There was a clink of glass, tipsy sloshing, and more applause.

  And Frederick thought, If happiness is just laid in my lap, is it as good as happiness I’ve worked for?

  Then he was swept away in the party, and all his questions dissolved in the sheer joy of being alive, and loved, and rich.

  Eventually, inevitably, Mugsy found him.

  The heavyset man with the squashed nose and cauliflower ears nevertheless had a look of keen intelligence in his small dark eyes. They were filled with disapproval as they looked Frederick up and down.

  “Morning dress,” Mugsy said with a sigh.

  “This from a man who used to spend his days in a loincloth,” said Frederick. The cut had no sting. Mugsy wasn’t ashamed of his past as a professional boxer.

  “Attire should be appropriate to the setting,” Mugsy countered in his thick Brooklyn accent. “If you was in the boxing ring, you’d be overdressed. Here, you’re underdressed. And I wore boxing shorts, not a loincloth.”

  Mugsy himself was in impeccable white tie, its contours expertly tailored to fit his pianolike proportions while leaving room for the gun he carried cross-draw under his left arm.

  “Go change,” he ordered.

  “But . . .”

  “Go!”

  And Frederick went, Mugsy following.

  As he impassively assisted his master (or charge, or friend, or surrogate son) to change into the requisite top hat, white tie, and tails, he commented, “Miss Ambrose is looking like a real gem today.” His face was inscrutable as he helped Frederick slip on his dress coat. “And speaking of, it seems to me she’s sporting a new piece of jewelry.”

  Frederick grinned. “Maybe I know something about it. Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

  “No.”

  Frederick’s mouth gaped.

  “Oh, all right already. May you and your Jane have years of wedded bliss and a big brood of little hoodlums, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “You don’t approve, old man?”

  Mugsy frowned. “Don’t you think you ought to look around a little? It’s a big greenhouse out there, with plenty of tomatoes for the pickin’.”

  “Oh, it will be years before we actually tie the knot.”

  “That’s what you say now. Then before you know it, there’s a spring wedding with her dress a little tight, and seven months later a big bouncing baby you try to convince everyone is premature.” Frederick blushed at Mugsy’s earthy analysis. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s perfectly natural for a young fella to want to rut it up a little. But why tie yourself down to the doll you happen to get a kick out of at seventeen? Go out. Sow some oats.” His sweet, ugly face looked more humorless than usual. “I got a bad feeling about this. Put Violet off, why don’t you? Wait till you’re sure.”

  “Why, Mugsy, I never thought I’d see the day! You, telling me to go out and . . . have fun.”

  “Have too much fun. Live a little. If you still love her in a few years, you’ll have my blessing. But marry her now and I see nothing but trouble. Marry in haste, repent in leisure, they always say.”

  “Who exactly is they?” Frederick asked.

  “Oh, just they. And they is always right. Always.”

  Frederick shrugged and adjusted his bow tie. “We’ll see,” he said.

  Mugsy’s lips twitched, and he tugged the tie back the way it was. “We will, ya sap. And when you need me, I’ll come running. I always have. I always will.”

  Back in the thick of the party, Frederick easily found Violet at the center of a cloud of silk and tulle, her bejeweled hand extended for the admiration of her friends. Duncan, though, was nowhere to be seen. Frederick had hoped to have his best friend and his best girl with him when he shared the news of his engagement with his father. Oh well. Duncan was probably living it up somewhere, canoodling with a girl, shooting dice with the waiters.

  “Our engagement is the worst-kept secret of the century,” Violet said as they received another congratulation. “That’s what you get for buying me a diamond so big I can hardly raise my hand.” All the same, she looked entirely pleased and managed to heft her encumbered hand for at least a dozen more admirers before they heard from one of the discreetly lurking maids that Jacob van der Waals had gone upstairs to his full-floor office.

  “That’s strange,” Frederick mused. “What kind of business would he have today?”

  “How would I know?” Violet shrugged her slim, lovely shoulders indifferently. “Probably the market just opened in Hong Kong. Oh, Frederick, I’m so glad you’ll never have to bother with anything as bourgeois as making money. Frederick . . . Frederick . . .” She bit her lip, mulling something over. “Do you know, I’ve never liked the name Frederick. It’s not your fault of course, darling. But it smacks of comic operetta, doesn’t it? And the nicknames are just as bad. Fred,” she intoned heavily. “Rhymes with dead. And Freddie’s even worse, like a little boy in a sailor suit.”

  “I’ve always rather liked Freddie. . . .”

  “Darling, wouldn’t you consider going by Aloysius? It is ever so much more sophisticated, isn’t it? Just picture us, Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius van der Waals, dancing in our private ballroom in One Beekman Place. Won’t it be just too, too divvy for words?”

  Words certainly failed Frederick at the moment. He had a sudden urge to call for Mugsy. Mugsy would fix everything. But that would mean confessing to his bodyguard that he—and apparently the mysterious they—were right.

  Resolutely, he offered his arm to Violet and they went up the private stairway to his father’s office. Frederick expected to find him alone, most likely on the phone, or perhaps reviewing profit and loss statements (always with a great deal of profit and very little loss). But as they climbed the stairs, each silent, lost in thoughts of the future, they heard raised voices.

  “You knew! You knew all along, you dirty bastard.”

  Frederick froze, pulling Violet closer to his side. The voice was unmistakably Duncan’s.

  “Darling,” Violet said, “I’m going to dash back downstairs and see how my parents are doing. It sounds like man talk up there, and you know how I feel about coarse language!” And with that, she quickly turned and floated back down to the party, swallowed up by the escalating gaiety.

  “Let’s be reasonable, now,” Frederick heard his father say. He inched forward to hear better.

  “How could you, Jacob?” came an anguished voice he recognized as Duncan’s father’s.

  Jacob van der Waals liked to work in a vast, open space. Why, exactly, Frederick wasn’t sure, but he’d heard someone say that he liked an open view in case of predators, or spies. Still, the office had been a proper apartment once, and no one could see him in the shadow of the stairwell. He edged closer to what was intensifying into a heated conflict.

  Duncan’s voice, always ready for a joke or a song, sounded twisted, wrong, as he attacked Jacob van der Waals. “It’s all too obvious,” Duncan hissed. “You jus
t needed more investors in the beginning or you would have lost what you had in there. But as soon as my dad and a few other trusting rubes made it look like the sure thing you promised them it was, you jumped ship with your money. You knew the company was going under.”

  “This is the nature of investment,” Mr. van der Waals said, unabashed. “The market moves, and . . .”

  “And where did my money move to?” Mr. Shaw asked quietly. “Into your pockets, Jacob?” Mr. Shaw sounded much calmer than his son. “I trusted you. I trusted the entire future of my family to you. Or did you plan from the beginning to ruin us? I’m aware you never could stand the idea of Frederick being close with us.”

  Mr. Shaw stepped forward, a new agitation creeping into his tone. “How many lives have you destroyed to accumulate your fortune? How many widows have you defrauded? Cheated out of their entire life’s savings? Funny thing about having so very much money to protect you—you never have to pay for anything, do you? Well, my friend, now it is time for you to pay.”

  Then it was chaos.

  “Are you insane?” Mr. van der Waals gasped.

  “Dad, no!” Duncan shouted. “Don’t!”

  What happened next took less than three seconds but changed Frederick’s world forever.

  Downstairs the band kicked into a rousing version of Irving Berlin’s hit tune “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” sending the partygoers into ecstatic shouts and yips, champagne corks popping like a firing squad. Around the corner Frederick heard the sound of scuffling and then another pop, almost the sound of champagne uncorking but much more terrifying.

  Frederick, still hidden, moved forward enough to look into the mirrored wall that reflected the office and went pale. Both Duncan and Mr. Shaw had their hands on a small silver revolver. Mr. van der Waals stood removed and cold, his back to Frederick, focused on the sight of Mr. Shaw slumping to the ground. The gun fell with a clatter between them.

  “No!” Duncan kicked the gun across the room. It spun near where Frederick stood, frozen and concealed. Duncan dropped to his knees and held his father in his arms. The sound of his sobs was drowned out by the joyous clamor of the party below.

  Duncan looked up at Mr. van der Waals. “Your whole family is rotten to the core,” he choked out. “You’re going to pay for this. Everyone is going to know how corrupt you are. You’ll rot in prison!”

  Frederick felt his stomach knot, his lungs spasm so that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Downstairs, the band played on, but Frederick could hear nothing except the rush of blood in his own ears.

  “This was an unfortunate accident,” Mr. van der Waals said calmly. “Your father was mistaken and committed a rash criminal act. I’m very sorry that your family lost all their money.” He didn’t seem to be affected by the dead man in his office or the red-faced and sobbing young man threatening him.

  “I am more than happy to provide any compensation necessary that may in some way mitigate this unfortunate turn of events.” Mr. van der Waals retreated behind his desk. He pulled open a drawer and took out his checkbook.

  For a moment Duncan was speechless. “You’re trying to buy me?” he gasped at last. “My father is dead because of your greed, and you offer me money?” He took a menacing step toward Mr. van der Waals.

  “I don’t think you understand the precarious nature of your position, Duncan. You just shot your own father before a witness.” Mr. van der Waals picked up the phone. “I can make one of two calls now. Either I call the police and tell them you just murdered your father in a fit of rage when you discovered he lost the family fortune. Or I call my lawyer, who arranges for your mother to be well provided for after your father’s unfortunate accident. Which is it to be? Your mother will need you in this difficult time. You’ll be no good to her in jail.”

  Duncan trembled with rage. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother! I’m calling the police myself and telling them the truth.” He moved to the phone, which Mr. van der Waals still held in his hand.

  “Who do you think they’ll believe—a rash young nobody or the richest man in America? You murdered your father, Duncan. That’s what the world will see. I’m not interested in bad publicity. The police will not be coming. We have other ways of cleaning up messes here.”

  Duncan gazed at his father’s lifeless body and then back to Mr. van der Waals. Then in a choked whisper he said, “You’re a monster, and I will not rest until I see you and your cursed family rotting behind bars.”

  He turned and walked from the room, brushing past Frederick in the stairway shadows. Duncan didn’t seem to see him at first. Then he whirled and took Frederick by the lapels, shoving him against the wall.

  “Now I have to tell my mother that her husband is dead, that he left us penniless, all because he trusted and loved you,” he growled low into Frederick’s ear. “But someday I’m going to destroy your father. And then I’ll be coming for you. He’s an evil man, but you’re no better. You live on the blood of your father’s victims.” He let Frederick go and spat at his feet. Then he staggered down the stairs, his sobbing drowned out by the din of the wild party.

  Frederick, gasping, turned slowly toward his father. Mr. van der Waals hadn’t seen him in the shadows near the stairs. He looked astonished to find himself still alive. For a moment he gazed blankly at the phone receiver he still held in his hand. Then he began to dial. He didn’t call for a doctor or an ambulance. He called his lawyer.

  With his back to the carnage, he said, “I need you to fix something for me.”

  Frederick stumbled backward down the stairs, then turned on his heel and began to run blindly. He saw figures and shapes and knew there was noise, but it was all strange and muted and terribly, terribly wrong. As he brushed past Violet, she called out, “Aloysius . . . Frederick . . . what happened?”

  But he kept running. He didn’t know who either of those people was anymore.

  PART TWO

  HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA

  1931

  FIVE

  Several months after that fateful evening that changed her life, Lucille lay in a huge bed in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. There she huddled, feeling very small and alone as the gay sounds from the Cocoanut Grove nightclub floated up to her bed. The music made her think of dancing with her mother. Would she ever do that again?

  She’d never been away from her family overnight before—the train ride didn’t really count, because she’d hardly slept at all during the three-day journey. She thought it would be impossible to sleep without one little sister’s elbow in her ribs, another little sister’s knee in her back.

  Lucille had been deposited at the hotel almost without a word, not knowing if someone would be coming for her in an hour or a day or a week. The first night she just cried into her pillow, but even the quality of her tears was mixed up and uncertain. Sometimes she wept tears of joy for having come so unbelievably far, within the reach of money and security and, maybe, greatness. Other times the tears fell out of fear for the future, that everything might slip from her grasp before she could even touch it, and she’d have to crawl home to poverty and leave her family without hope.

  But mostly her tears were for the past, for the shameful thing she had done. If anyone knew . . .

  They won’t know, she swore to herself as she tossed in that oversized, too comfortable bed. They can’t know.

  On the first morning, she’d tentatively gone downstairs, thinking she could take a little walk or have breakfast somewhere quiet. But as soon as she stepped into the lobby she saw how far removed she was from all of these people, in her shabby cotton dress without the slightest trace of chic. Maybe everyone looked up only out of curiosity, but she was sure they glared with hostile rejection. She crept back to her room.

  That evening there was a knock on her door, and she jumped up eagerly, but then hesitated, biting her lip, before finally opening it. It was only a member of the hotel staff.

  “Will you be dining out tonight, miss, or s
hall I have something sent to your room?”

  Lucille beamed at him with relief. She hadn’t eaten since dinner on the train the night before, and she was famished, but still too afraid to go out on her own. “Yes, please,” she said. Then, “Only, I’m not sure if I have enough money.”

  “Arrangements have already been made for your bill, miss. The specialty tonight is boneless squab with wild rice à la Roosevelt, and may I recommend the avocado supreme to start?”

  “You may,” she said breathlessly. Sal had done this? She’d hoped for little more than a train ticket and an introduction. Why was he putting her up in the fanciest hotel, giving her the best food money could buy?

  After that, though she still didn’t leave her hotel room, at least she didn’t starve. Danish and rich coffee for breakfast; shrimp in aspic for lunch; more coffee; tiny, tender, pink lamb chops . . . She ate like a queen but still felt like a prisoner. When was someone going to come for her? The hotel staff would realize that she was just a kid from the street and kick her out. She couldn’t really be rewarded, after what she’d done?

  Sal’s men had asked her what she wanted—cash, a car, jewels, furs, a flash apartment.

  Instinctively, Lucille knew that she should do anything to avoid being beholden to Sal and his terrible henchmen. Her payment would be a start in a better life—far, far away from Sal. Just a boost, that’s all she needed. Then she and the mobsters would be square.

  “I want it all,” she’d told them. “But I want to earn it for myself.”

  “What job, then?” they’d asked. There were only two ways for a girl to earn a lot of money for herself: marriage . . . or the other thing.

  But she wanted neither of those.

  When they’d asked, she had conjured up that night. Mrs. Fahntille’s blue-veined body . . . Peter Lorre’s eyes . . . the spill of Hollywood magazines to the blood-soaked pavement . . . A kindly officer had wiped away the gory splashes and handed the magazines back to her when they’d finished their questioning. Later, after telling her mother where she’d been (with very scant detail), she had climbed out onto the fire escape and read page after page by moonlight, her face an inch from the glamorous spreads. . . .