The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  The houseboy, René, let me in. One of the maids led me into the long living room. There were five guests—four men and a young woman—and from their rosy expressions and easy laughter, it looked as if they all had been drinking freely since they arrived. Everyone was dressed nicely—the writer in a wrinkled suit with a clumsily knotted tie, but looking clean and alert with his hair slicked back and his cheeks freshly shaven, the other four men also in suits, Gellhorn and the young woman in black dresses. Hemingway introduced me.

  “I want you all to meet Mr. Joseph Lucas, on loan to us from the American embassy to help me with some oceanographic studies I’ll be doing in the coming months. Joseph, this is Dr. José Luis Herrera Sotolongo, my personal physician and fine friend since our days together in the Spanish Civil War.”

  “Dr. Herrera Sotolongo,” I said, bowing slightly before shaking his hand. The doctor was dressed formally in a style from twenty years past. He wore pince-nez glasses. The only sign that he had been drinking was a rosy flush along the line of his high collar.

  “Señor Lucas,” said the doctor, returning my bow.

  “This short, disgustingly handsome gentleman is Señor Francisco Ibarlucia,” said Hemingway. “Everyone calls him Patchi. Patchi, say hello to Joe Lucas. It looks like we’ll be spending time on the Pilar together.”

  “Señor Lucas,” said Ibarlucia, springing forward to shake my hand. “Encantado. It is my pleasure to meet a scientist of the ocean.” Patchi Ibarlucia was not a big man, but he was physically magnificent. Besides the perfect tan, the oiled black hair, and the pearly teeth, he had the coiled steel body of a consummate athlete.

  “Patchi and his brother are the best jai alai players in the world,” said Hemingway. “And Patchi is my favorite tennis partner.”

  Ibarlucia’s huge grin grew even larger. “I am the best jai alai player in the world, Ernestino. I allow my brother to play with me. Even as I sometimes allow you to beat me in tennis.”

  “Lucas,” said Hemingway, “I’d like you to meet my friend and favorite executive officer on the Pilar, Mr. Winston Guest. We all call him Wolfie or Wolfer. He’s one of the best yachtsmen, tennis players, skiers and all-around athletes you’ll ever meet.”

  Guest lumbered to his feet and came forward to grip my hand in a friendly vise. He was a big man and he gave the impression of being even larger than he was. He reminded me a bit of Ian Fleming, and his face was full, ruddy, eager, open, and almost rubbery with drink. His jacket, tie, slacks, and shirt were beautifully tailored, or exquisite material, and worn with that elegant sloppiness which only the very rich can carry off. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Guest,” I said. “Why do they call you Wolfie?”

  Guest grinned. “Ernest started it. Ever since Gigi said that I looked like that guy in the wolfman movies. You know… whatshisname.” I had taken him for an American, but he had a slight English accent.

  “Lon Chaney, Jr.,” said the attractive young woman. She had a strangely familiar voice and a Swedish accent. Everyone was standing now, ready to move into the dining room.

  “Yeah,” said Guest. “The Wolfman.” He grinned again.

  He did look like that man from the movie.

  “Gigi is Ernest’s youngest son,” said Martha Gellhorn. “Gregory. He’s ten. He and Patrick come down every summer.”

  Hemingway touched the young woman’s arm. “Daughter,” he said, “I apologize for abandoning protocol in these introductions, but I am saving the best for last. The jewel in the crown, as it were.”

  “I guess that means I go next, Mr. Lucas,” said the last male guest. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “Gary Cooper.”

  For a minute it did not register. I said earlier that I have always had a photographic memory, but recognizing the photograph in my mind does not always mean recognizing the proper name. For a moment everything seemed wrong—the tall, handsome man, the Swedish woman—as if they were suspects I had run across in an O/C file and I knew that it was wrong for them to be here, in this house. I just could not place them.

  Cooper and I exchanged handshakes and pleasantries. He was a tall thin man, mostly muscle over bone, and looked to be in his early forties—about Hemingway’s age—but he seemed more mature in some quiet way. Cooper’s eyes were very light, he had the deep tan of a full-time athlete or someone who worked outside, and his voice was soft, almost deferential.

  Before I could connect the memory of having seen him somewhere to the proper context, Hemingway was pulling me toward the young woman.

  “And the jewel in our crown tonight, Lucas. Ingrid, I would like you to meet Joseph Lucas. Joe, Mrs. Petter Lindstrom.”

  “Mrs. Lindstrom,” I said, shaking her large but delicate hand, “it is a pleasure.”

  “And a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Lucas,” she said.

  She was lovely, with the solid bone structure and clear complexion so common to Scandinavian women. But her hair was a dark brown, her eyebrows were thick, and from the full lips to the straightforward gaze she exuded more warm sensuality than most Swedish women I had met.

  Martha Gellhorn said, “You might already know her as Ingrid Bergman, Mr. Lucas. Rage in Heaven? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Soon to be in… what was the name of the one you’ve just signed for, Ingrid? Tangiers?”

  “Casablanca,” said Mrs. Lindstrom with a musical laugh.

  It took me a second or two to realize that these were the names of movies—none of which I had seen—and then I placed their faces with their contexts. I rarely paid much attention to movies, often using them to help me forget whatever I was obsessed with at the time and then forgetting the film as soon as I left the theater. But I had enjoyed Sergeant York. I had never seen the woman in a movie, but I had caught glimpses of her photographs on magazine covers.

  “Well, now we all know each other,” Hemingway said, holding out his arm and bowing like a maître d’. “Shall we absent ourselves from felicity for a while and go to dinner before Ramón comes after us with his Cuban longknife?”

  We filed into the dining room.

  “Absent ourselves from felicity,” hissed Gellhorn at Hemingway as she took Dr. Herrera Sotolongo’s arm and followed Cooper and Bergman into the long room. Hemingway shrugged at me, offered his arm to Ibarlucia, took a punch in the shoulder, and bowed Winston Guest and me in ahead of him.

  IT WAS THE MAIN COURSE NOW, roast beef in a decent sauce with fresh vegetables, and we were waiting for Hemingway to return with his book, when Bergman said to me across the table, “Have you read his new book, Mr. Lucas?”

  “No,” I said. “Which book is that?”

  “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” said Gellhorn. She had been a gracious hostess throughout the meal—a surprisingly formal meal with servants in white gloves standing near the wall—but she could not conceal the impatience in her voice when she spoke to me. Obviously, everyone there was supposed to be intimate with all of the host’s works and deeds. “It was the best-seller in 1940 and last year and would have won the Pulitzer Prize if that old bastard, pardon my French, Nicholas Murray Butler, hadn’t vetoed the board’s unanimous recommendation. They printed more than two hundred thousand copies as a Book of the Month Club Selection and Scribners has printed more than twice that.”

  “Is that a lot?” I said.

  As if to head off Martha Gellhorn’s acerbic response, Bergman said, “Oh, it is a wonderful book, Mr. Lucas. I have read it many times. I am in love with the character of Maria in it—so innocent yet so determined. And so madly in love. My dear friend David Selznick thought that I would be perfect for the part—David’s brother Myron is Papa’s film agent, you know….”

  “He sold it to Paramount for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Cooper, his fork raised halfway with a modest portion of roast beef on it. He ate European style, fork inverted. “Incredible. I’m sorry, Ingrid. Go ahead with what you were saying.”

  She touched the other actor’s arm again. “That is correct. It was amazing. But i
t is an amazing book.”

  “You are then to be this Maria?” asked Dr. Herrera Sotolongo in his soft voice.

  Bergman lowered her gaze. “Alas, it is not to be, Doctor,” she said. “I tested for the part, but Sam Wood—the director who took over from Mr. DeMille—thought that I was too tall, too old, and had too large a behind to be running around in trousers for the whole film.”

  “Nonsense, Señora Bergman,” said Patchi Ibarlucia, his wineglass raised as if in toast, “your behind is a work of art… a gift of God to the world’s worshippers of all beautiful things.”

  “Gracias, Señor Ibarlucia,” said Bergman with a smile, “but my husband agrees with Sam Wood. At any rate, I did not get the part. They gave it to the Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina.”

  “Over my protests,” said Hemingway, who had returned to the table with his book and was scowling down at them all. “We’re not finished with this yet. I’m not finished with Paramount. Daughter, you will be Maria.” Hemingway looked at the jai alai player, the doctor, and me. “That’s why Coop and Ingrid came down here for this quick visit. All in secret. If they’re confronted with it, they’ll deny it. We’re conspiring in secret to cast the right people for this damned movie. Coop is right… I knew from the beginning that he had to be Robert Jordan. Now Daughter has to be Maria.”

  “But they have already begun shooting, Papa,” said the actress. “Last April. Up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.”

  Cooper raised one long finger as if he were asking to be recognized before speaking. “Only the preliminary shots and battle scenes.” The actor chuckled. “I heard that Wood and his people were up there working overtime in the deep snows in December, trying to get the scene in where the planes come to blow up El Sordo—Sam had gotten a loan of some fighter-bombers from the army air force just for that scene—and they were sitting up there all day on a Sunday freezing their keisters off, wondering what had happened to their planes, when word came that there weren’t going to be any planes… if they saw any, report them and hide. It was December 7.”

  “Pearl Harbor,” Gellhorn said to me, Winston Guest, and the doctor, as if we were retarded. She smiled at the actress. “Actually, Ingrid, you might remember from our conversation in San Francisco two years ago that it was I who first recommended you for the part of Maria. Long before Ernest mentioned it to Life. Before we were married, actually.” She looked at her husband. “Do you remember, dear? I was sailing on the Rex from Italy and had been reading the book and I saw Ingrid there—you had your baby on your back in a little carrier, Ingrid, like some beautiful peasant woman fleeing the Nazis, and then I saw you in that movie with Leslie Howard…”

  “Intermezzo,” said Bergman.

  “Yes, and I told Ernest… that has to be your Maria. This girl is Maria.”

  Hemingway sat down. “Does anyone want to hear the goddamned description?” he said.

  The table hushed. “Please,” said Bergman, setting down her wineglass.

  Hemingway rubbed his chin, opened the book, and read in a rather toneless tenor: “Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and eyes were the same golden tawny brown…. Her hair was the golden brown of a grain field that has been burned dark in the sun but it was cut short all over her head so that it was but little longer than the fur on a beaver pelt.” He stopped and looked at Bergman. “Short, Daughter. To show your ears.”

  Bergman smiled and ran her fingers through her thick hair. “I would cut it short, but I would get the best hairdresser for short hair in Hollywood. And then I would tell everyone that I cut it myself… with a kitchen scissors.”

  Everyone laughed politely.

  Ingrid Bergman dipped her head again in a shy, almost self-effacing gesture that seemed both studied and innocent. “But Vera Zorina has it and I wish her luck. And you, of course, Mr. Cooper,” she said, touching the tall man’s arm again. She brightened. “But I was chosen for another part just a few days ago, and now I am on my way to shoot Casablanca.”

  “Won’t that be dangerous?” I said. “With the Germans in control of that entire region, I mean.”

  Everyone laughed heartily. I waited for the gaiety to die down.

  Bergman reached across the table and touched my hand. “The movie will be shot in Hollywood, Mr. Lucas,” she said, smiling toward me rather than at my ignorance. “No one has seen the script yet, but the word is that the farthest we will go is to the Burbank airport.”

  “Who is your leading man, Miss Bergman?” said Winston Guest.

  “It was supposed to be Ronald Reagan, but now it is Humphrey Bogart,” said the actress.

  “Are you looking forward to working with him?” said Gellhorn.

  Bergman dropped her eyes again. “In truth, I am terrified. He is said to be very private, very demanding of his co-stars, and very intellectual.” She smiled at Cooper. “I had so looked forward to kissing you in front of the cameras.”

  Cooper smiled back at her.

  “You’re Maria, Daughter,” growled Hemingway, as if jealous of the growing intimacy between the two actors. “Here,” he said, and he scrawled something in the book he held. He handed it across to her.

  She read the inscription and smiled brilliantly at him. Her eyes were moist. “May I read it to the others, Papa?”

  “Sure.” Hemingway’s voice was gruff.

  “It says—‘To Ingrid Bergman, who is the Maria of the book.’ Thank you. Thank you. I will treasure this more than I would have treasured the role itself.”

  “You’ll get the part, Daughter,” said Hemingway. “Ramón!” he thundered toward the kitchen. “Where the hell is dessert?”

  OVER COFFEE AND BRANDY, talk turned to the war and its leaders. Gellhorn, at her end of the table, beyond Patchi Ibarlucia, to my left, was saying that she had spent quite a bit of time in Germany in the mid and late ’30s and that she had never seen anything as loathsome as the Nazi thugs—both in the streets and in government. Patchi Ibarlucia waved his brandy snifter and declared that Hitler was a puta and a maricón and a coward and that the war would be over before Christmas. Dr. Herrera Sotolongo, on my right, suggested softly that many Christmasses might pass before the fighting would be over. Winston Guest took a second helping of Key Lime pie and listened.

  Gary Cooper said little, but offered the quiet opinion that the Japanese were the true enemy—it was the Japs, after all, who had bombed Pearl Harbor, not the Germans.

  Hemingway literally growled. Turning to Bergman, he said, “You see why Coop and I can’t talk politics, Daughter? He’s to the right of Attila the Hun. Damned strange choice to play my Robert Jordan—a man who gives up everything to join the Lincoln Brigade to fight the Fascists….” As if to take the sting out of the words, Hemingway grinned at Cooper. “But I love him and wrote the goddamned character with him in mind, so I guess he’ll just have to play Jordan and we’ll just have to avoid talking politics.”

  Cooper nodded and raised his coffee cup in salute. To Gellhorn, the actor said, “You’re good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, aren’t you, Marty?”

  Gellhorn shrugged, but nodded.

  “Have you and Ernest been to the White House since the war started?” said Cooper. “How are the Roosevelts holding up under all this?”

  It was Hemingway who answered, laughing harshly. “Marty bumps into Eleanor all the time, but the last time we had dinner with His Presidentialness in the Casa Blanca was in the summer of ’thirty-seven when we showed everyone there The Spanish Earth.”

  Everyone waited politely. I could see Ingrid Bergman’s eyes gleaming as she leaned forward to set her chin on the back of her interlaced fingers.

  “The food at the White House is terrible.” Hemingway laughed. “Goddamned inedible. Marty warned us… she was eating sandwiches at the Newark airport snack bar. It was July and the White House was a steam bath. Everyone at the table was sweating like a pig. And the place looked like a ratty old hotel—worn carpets, sprung cushions, dusty drapes. Am I exaggerating,
Martha?”

  “No,” said Gellhorn. “Eleanor doesn’t care about her surroundings, and the president never seems to notice them. And their chef should be shot.”

  “What were your impressions of the evening?” asked Bergman, enunciating each syllable with care. Along with her sweet accent, some effects of the alcohol had begun to creep in.

  Hemingway laughed again. “I liked Eleanor and Harry Hopkins,” he said. “If Hopkins was the president and Eleanor the secretary of war, we might get this war over with by Christmas.”

  “And the president?” queried Cooper. For such a tall and imposing man, his voice was almost diffident.

  Hemingway shrugged. “You’ve been around him, Coop. He’s sort of sexless, isn’t he? Rather like an old woman… an old society dame, what with that stuffy Harvard accent.” Hemingway pronounced it “Hah-vahd.”

  “And all that work to get him into and out of that goddamned wheelchair,” continued the writer, frowning now into his brandy glass. “It must take up half the day just to wheel him around.”

  I admit that I blinked at this. Everyone knew in the backs of their minds that the president was crippled, but no one mentioned it and his wheelchair and braces were never shown in newsreels. Most of us in the country had forgotten about his condition. It seemed a rough thing for Hemingway to say.

  The writer looked up at the sudden silence. “But… hell…” he said. “He’s our war leader, like it or not, and we back him against that moral cripple, Hitler, right?”

  There was a chorus of assent, and Hemingway refilled our brandy glasses whether we wanted more or not. We were not quite finished with politics. Dr. Herrera Sotolongo wondered what Adolf Hitler was really like.