Girl About Town

by Adam Shankman

  “See,” said Freddie, catching the scene from the corner of his eye. “Even a tiny pinhole can prove innocence or guilt. There has to be something out there that will show you didn’t put those bullets in the gun. We just have to find them.”

  “But how can I, when all of Hollywood is out for my blood?” Lulu asked. “If anyone spots me, I’ll be arrested right away.”

  “Then you just lie low. Go to a hotel, check in under another name, and I’ll do all your digging for you.”

  The feature faded out, with Emil’s grandmother slyly pronouncing the moral of the story—never send cash. A newsreel began, and while the announcer talked about the situation in Europe, Lulu and Freddie made their plans. He would check out Roger’s bullet and try to get alone with Ruby to ferret the truth out of her. He would talk to the chief of police again.

  And if worst came to worst, he would arrange passage on a westbound ship.

  “I’m so tired, Freddie. So very, very tired. Maybe we could just stay in here for the rest of our lives,” Lulu daydreamed as she leaned against his shoulder. “Once you pay your quarter, you never really have to leave. We can live on popcorn and chocolate nonpareils.”

  “I like your way of thinking, sweetheart,” he said. “At least, we can stay here for a few hours, until the furor dies down a bit.”

  Suddenly the newsreel changed to affairs closer to home. Freddie gasped softly as his own face came up on the screen, larger than life, then mercifully faded as the film cut to an earnest-looking man interviewing Jacob van der Waals. Freddie glanced down at Lulu. She was nestled against him, eyes closed. “The saga of the missing millionaire continues,” the announcer said, favoring alliteration over accuracy. And then Freddie’s father began to speak.

  “There is no grief greater than that of a father who has lost his son. I know my boy is alive, somewhere out there. Please, son, come home.”

  Freddie felt a pang of grief for the man he once thought his father was. Not for his old life, but for the old comfort of a life unquestioned.

  “We have to go,” he said at once, interrupting Lulu’s drowsy question about whether there were milk shakes in Hong Kong.

  “Whatever for? I thought we were staying here for a while.”

  “I just saw someone I know. Knew.” He all but dragged her out of the theater before she could notice what was happening on the screen.

  They weren’t more than a block from the movie theater when Lulu heard the wail of sirens from very nearby. “Someone must have spotted me,” she cried. “Hurry!”

  Together they dashed down one street, then the next. She couldn’t see any squad cars, but the sirens grew closer, seeming to surround them. The sound became overpowering, and she pressed her hands to her ears as she ran.

  Then a black car blocked their path. Lulu wheeled around, Freddie right alongside her, and doubled back. Another car skidded to a stop at the next cross street. They were trapped. She clung to Freddie, certain it would be the last time she would see him. They would drag her away to jail.

  From the east, where the rising sun hung glaring and blinding, came three figures from one of the cars. She squinted in their direction, trembling.

  “Good-bye, darling,” she whispered to Freddie. “You’ve made me so . . . so . . .” Then the men were on them. She tensed, waiting for their hands. But not one of them touched her.

  Two seized Freddie by the arms, jerking him away from her. He struggled, and they threw him to the ground. Within an instant they had him wrapped up in a white coat, his arms strapped across his chest, the sleeves securely buckled behind him.

  The third stood serenely with his hands loosely clasped. He had gold cuff links with little winking diamonds peeking from the sleeves of his gray morning coat and a heavy gold watch chain across his waistcoat.

  He ignored Lulu completely. She might have been a puddle in the gutter.

  “Isn’t it about time you quit this silly charade, Frederick?” Without another word, the man walked calmly back to the car. The other two hauled Freddie to his feet and followed.

  “Lulu!” Freddie shouted, struggling desperately. “I’ll come back for you. I swear! I’ll never let you down!”

  Then one of the men upended a small bottle into a cloth, clamped it over Freddie’s face, and he became limp and yielding, his eyes closed.

  It all happened so fast she scarcely had time to react. “Freddie!” she cried, and tried to run after him. But another man appeared behind her, from the other car, and caught hold of her, gently but firmly.

  She whirled and began pounding on his chest. “Let me go! Let me go!” She might as well have pummeled a brick wall.

  “Easy there, Miss Kelly,” he said, his voice soothing.

  “How can I be easy?” Lulu wailed. “What’s happening? Why are they taking Freddie away? It wasn’t him! I’ll confess, if that’s what it takes. Let me go to him!”

  “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” the man said.

  “But I have to do something. Won’t you tell me what’s happening?” She turned her red, bewildered eyes up to him.

  “I said there’s nothing you can do now.” He patted her head, which had an oddly calming effect, though if anyone had asked her before, she would have been sure there was nothing more condescending. “But there is something we can do soon.” He held out his hand. “I’m Murphy B. Murgatroyd, but most people call me Mugsy.”

  She recoiled, then looked at him with a combination of amazement and delight. “You mean Freddie’s nursemaid? The philosopher who taught him to box?” She wrapped her slim arms around him in a crushing hug. She had no idea exactly who or what Mugsy was, but she knew unequivocally that he was on Freddie’s side.

  “It wasn’t him who put the bullets in the gun, you know. It wasn’t me, either. I know Freddie’s only a poor boy, but they can’t railroad him like that. I’ll sell everything I have to get him a lawyer. Just because he’s poor doesn’t mean he shouldn’t get a fair shot.”

  Mugsy looked her sympathetically. “Kiddo, I think maybe there’s a couple things Freddie neglected to mention to you.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Freddie awoke to whiteness. White walls, white ceiling, and a glare so bright it pierced him even when he squeezed his eyes shut again. An antiseptic tang tickled his nose. He forced his eyes open a sliver and saw menacing shapes lurching through the brightness. A wave of panic flooded him, and he tried to marshal his thoughts, but he felt groggy and stupid. He tried to shake his head, but it didn’t seem to move properly.

  “Ah, good,” said a pleasant voice that grated on his ears. It was far too measured to be trustworthy. “Our patient is awake.”

  Freddie felt cold fingers on his wrist, his own pulse throbbing against them. He convinced his uncooperative eyes to loll to one side, but he still couldn’t see clearly. There was a bitter taste in his dry mouth. What had happened to him? Everything was fuzzy, indistinct, within his head and without.

  When he tried to speak, his tongue felt thick, and only a moan emerged. One of the shapes came closer, and he felt a jab in his arm. All at once he felt a surge of adrenaline as his awareness sharpened and his memory returned. He was strapped to a bed, with cloth-lined leather restraints holding down his wrists and legs and thicker leather belts strapped around his waist and chest. He struggled against them, but they only cut into his flesh.

  There were four other people in the room: a doctor, two burly orderlies . . . and his father.

  “Settle down, young man,” the doctor said in a voice that sounded almost drugged, so calm and even. “This will be much more pleasant for you if you don’t fight it. Then afterward you will be right as rain again.”

  Freddie’s father stepped forward. “I thought we agreed that this should not be a pleasant experience for him,” he said sharply.

  The doctor shrugged. “Pleasant is all relative. The unsound mind is not capable of properly evaluating pain and pleasure, and in any event, when the process is over, he wi
ll likely be unable to remember any of it.”

  “How unfortunate,” his father said, looking at his son with a peculiar smile.

  The doctor began to fix a horseshoe-shaped object onto Freddie’s forehead. It pinched against his temples. He tried to shake it off, but his head was strapped down, too, and he could only twitch.

  “Father, what’s happening here? What are you doing to me? Tell me what’s happening, damn it!”

  His father ignored him, as did the doctor.

  “As I explained in my office,” the doctor said to Freddie’s father, “the preferred method is to administer electroconvulsive therapy only to a patient who has been sedated and given a muscle relaxant. But some of my fellow psychiatrists are of the opinion that the . . . shall we call it the discomfort factor? . . . is a deterrent to relapses in those whose psychoses may be self-induced or even artificial. However, the medical complications associated with unsedated electroconvulsive therapy are such that—”

  “Extreme pain?” Jacob van der Waals said. “Possible broken bones, chipped teeth. Yes, you told me all of that. The risks are perfectly acceptable. Doctor, before you begin, I want a moment alone with my son.”

  “Of course,” the doctor said, and backed out of the hospital room with a little bow, as if Jacob van der Waals were royalty.

  “Father, don’t do this,” Freddie pleaded as soon as the door eased shut.

  “Some people, when they find they have made a substantial investment in a company that fails, cut their losses and sell out. You know that has never been my philosophy, Frederick. When something disappoints me, I squeeze it.” He held up his hand and made a tight fist in front of Freddie’s immobilized face. “I do whatever is necessary to make it pay. It takes a lot to make me give up on a foundering company. Do you think I would do any less for my son?”

  He flexed his fingers.

  “You are my heir, Frederick, my scion and my legacy. I don’t love you because you are my son. I love you because you are me. You’ve read your English history, haven’t you? Those dukes never have names of their own. They’re the Seventh Duke of Somewhere. They might as well be the same person through the centuries. We’re American nobility, my boy. You must follow me, and your sons after you, and so on, building our empire for time immemorial.”

  He leaned close to Freddie’s face. Up until then, his voice had been pedantic, a stern, quiet lecture. Now he roared, spittle hitting Freddie’s cheeks.

  “But you can’t follow in my footsteps if you’ve lost your mind!” His eyes were bloodshot and bulging. “You have willfully blemished the family name. You’ve broken Violet’s heart and spat in the face of everything I raised you to stand for. You’re a disgrace!”

  He took a deliberate deep breath. “But all will be forgiven. Eventually.”

  “I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done!” Freddie growled.

  “Me?” his father asked in all apparent innocence. “You mean you won’t forgive me for giving you every privilege a young man could ask for, the best education, a happy home, a mansion, a car, more money than you could spend in three lifetimes?”

  “You killed Duncan’s father!”

  “Is that what you think, you poor deluded child?”

  “Don’t bother lying to me. I was there! I saw it all!”

  For a moment Jacob van der Waals looked taken aback. Then he collected himself. “As the police clearly found, Mr. Shaw was shot by his son. If you were there, you no doubt saw Mr. Shaw threaten me with a gun. Duncan killed his own father to stop him from committing a horrible crime.”

  “You didn’t pull the trigger, but you killed him all the same. How many men have shot themselves or jumped off of skyscrapers after you ruined them, Father? How many old women starved because of you? How many widows sold themselves on the streets to feed their children because you beggared them to get a few more dollars for yourself?”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Frederick. I’m just a businessman. Don’t fault me for being a good one. Communists and radicals have gotten ahold of you and filled your head with rubbish. But don’t worry. A few sessions with the doctor and your head will be sorted out.”

  He patted Freddie on his strapped-down arm.

  “I’m not insane, Father,” Freddie insisted. “I left because I saw everything clearly for the first time in my life. I want nothing to do with you or your dirty money.”

  Mr. van der Waals leaned closer to Freddie. “Just between you and me, I know you’re not really insane,” he whispered with a little smile. “But we have to give the papers something. Imagine the scandal if they knew the truth. A little insanity runs through the best families, though, so no one will mind that. You had a nervous breakdown. A few electric shocks, and you’ll be good as new.”

  He smiled, and Freddie thought he’d never seen anything so corrupt and vile.

  “And if it doesn’t work, we can always go ahead with a lobotomy. Then you’ll be nice and amenable. Marry Violet—she won’t mind if your bulb is a bit dim. Leaves her more time to shop. Then I can try again with the next generation. You can make more little van der Waals and spend your days weaving baskets with a nurse.” He stood up. “Just remember what will happen if you ever disappoint me again.” He opened the door and motioned for the doctor to come back in. “Enjoy your therapy. I’ll be watching.”

  He sat in a chair in the corner while the doctor put a rubber bar, like a horse’s bit, into Freddie’s mouth. “Bite down on this,” he said. “And don’t worry. It will only last six seconds or so.”

  From the corner he heard his father’s voice. “Make it seven.”

  It was the longest seven seconds of Freddie’s life.

  Despite what the doctor had promised, he remembered it all. The doctor’s placid face looming over him. The hellish agony as every muscle in his body seized, the way mind seemed to explode as if every nerve was flying off into space, the terror, the leaden lungs, the absolute belief that this suffering would last forever.

  His father’s silent presence in the corner.

  Then he was breathing again, deep ragged breaths, and tears were streaming down his face.

  He was seventeen, a minor. His father could buy anyone’s cooperation. Freddie had thought he’d escaped, but he was trapped.

  “Another session tonight, I think,” the doctor said. “I’ll send in a nurse to clean up all that drool.”

  Freddie lay in bed scheming. But no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t see any way out. He was underage; the law was against him. He was his father’s property until he was twenty-one. He could be held for involuntary psychiatric treatment or virtually jailed in his own home or in a private institution. His father was serious about the extreme measures he would take to keep his son in check. Freddie thought it was the embarrassment of having a defiant son that bothered his father the most, as if he couldn’t keep his investments in line.

  All I can do is endure, he thought, sinking into depression like quicksand. Submit to the shock therapy, act like an obedient son . . . and then when I’m twenty-one, I can leave forever.

  It was such a long time, though, and he had no stomach for lies and hypocrisy. He didn’t think he could do it.

  And then there was Lulu.

  He couldn’t give her up. Not for a single day. Maybe if he played along, his father would . . . No. That was impossible. For one thing, he wouldn’t rejoin his father’s world even to have Lulu. For another, his father would never allow it. He might like to hobnob with movie stars, but he was as class-conscious as a Brahman, and Lulu, for all her rising fame and sparkle, was by her origin an untouchable.

  Freddie closed his eyes and tried to think. But all he could manage was to picture Lulu’s face floating over him, her lips curled in a delightful smile, torturing him with her absence, her impossibility.

  The door creaked. He opened his eyes, and there she was, in the flesh.

  He closed them again and turned away. The shock must be playing tricks with his mind
. The nurse faintly resembled Lulu, but she had caramel-brown hair peeking out from under her nurse’s cap in tight curls. Her cheeks were plumper, her nose more narrow, and there were dark circles under her black-lashed eyes. She walked differently too, shuffling wearily, a little hunched as she pushed a wheeled chair across the room. No, he might never see Lulu again. She was lost to him.

  “Ready for your sponge bath, Mr. van der Waals?” the nurse asked.

  Freddie’s eyes sprang open. She had disguised everything else perfectly, but her voice betrayed her. “Lulu!”

  “Hush,” she whispered, and was at his side, tenderly touching his face, his chest, his hands, as she unbuckled his restraints.

  “But how . . . ?”

  “Later,” she said, and helped him sit up.

  “There’s a guard outside, one of my father’s men.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, and helped him into the chair. “Now, just let me sedate you.”

  She kissed him, and after that it was easy for him to act as if he were in a contented drugged delirium.

  “He’s not supposed to be unsecured,” the guard said when Lulu rolled Freddie into the hallway.

  “I gave him enough to knock out an elephant,” Lulu-as-nurse said. “He’ll be loopy for hours.”

  “Why can’t you give him his bath in there?” The guard jerked his chin toward the room.

  Nurse Lulu shook her head in a schoolmarmish way. “Don’t you know that electricity and water don’t mix? Mr. van der Waals wants his son cured, not killed.” She winked at the guard flirtatiously.

  Freddie, gazing blankly into the middle distance with an idiotic grin on his bobbing face, wasn’t entirely certain about that.

  “Okay, Nurse, but I’ll be right at the door.”

  “Outside, if you please,” she said primly. “We value our patients’ privacy.”