Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  During this whole exchange, Winchell’s gaze hadn’t left Gwendolyn’s face. He had parked his smile in neutral, but she could feel the heat of his scrutiny.

  “Let’s be honest,” she said. “You’re not exactly known for your philanthropy, so what’s the catch?”

  He snorted a quick laugh. “True enough.”

  “What do you want from me, Mr. Winchell?”

  “When Irene comes in here, bring up Kathryn Massey’s proposed television show. Tell her that despite what she may have seen on Golden Aerial Day, Kathryn Massey is quite unsuited for the role of weekly host and would be a national embarrassment to NBC if it goes ahead.”

  If that dustpan had still been in Gwendolyn’s hand, she probably would have thrown its jagged contents at him. She got to her feet. “Kathryn is my best friend and you know it. Did you seriously think I’d say yes?”

  He made no move to get up. “Mark my words, Miss Brick, Letter to Loretta will put Young back on the map. You’ll be mentioned—glowingly—in my column. Fifty million people in over two thousand newspapers read me, and you’ll have so much business that you won’t know what to do.” He rose from his chair. “You’ve seen what one article in Confidential can do. One mention in my column can undo all that. Now picture your life after a dozen flattering mentions.”

  His shoes crunched glass as he headed for the door. He paused to take in the metal plates, then told her he was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

  Gwendolyn counted to ten, then dialed Kathryn at her office.

  “You’ll die when you hear who just paid me a visit.”

  “I was on my way out the door.” Kathryn sounded distracted. “Marcus is with me, we’re going to the Town House.”

  “Can I meet you there?”

  “In the middle of the day?”

  “I can be there in half an hour.”

  * * *

  The Zebra Room featured furniture upholstered in black and white stripes. On the walls hung murals of zebra wandering across a vista that struck Gwendolyn as more like Wyoming than Africa. She found Marcus and Kathryn in a corner booth.

  “Somebody hurled a brick through my window,” she blurted out. “Left a hole the size of a Mixmaster and broken glass all over the place.”

  “Were you looted?” Kathryn asked.

  “No, just shaken.”

  “Have you seen Hedda’s column?”

  “Guess what was wrapped around the brick.”

  Gwendolyn recounted her morning and her conversation with Winchell, expecting Kathryn to explode, but Kathryn was unruffled.

  “It’s an incredible opportunity,” Kathryn said. “You must take him up on it.”

  Gwendolyn blinked at her, wondering if Kathryn understood. “But what about you?”

  Kathryn beckoned the waitress. They ordered club sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea. Kathryn lit a cigarette and continued to shake her match long after it had gone out. She dropped it in the zebra-shaped ashtray.

  “I can fight my own battles.” She thrummed the pads of her fingertips against the table for a worryingly long time. “You know what I’ve come to realize about myself?” Her eyes took on a new sparkle. “Fact is, I rather enjoy a battle!”

  The table fell silent as Gwendolyn and Marcus absorbed this startling admission.

  “Think about it. I’m always in the trenches fighting someone about something. Whether it’s Wilkerson over the blacklist or Hearst over Citizen Kane, not to mention my clashes with Louella and Hedda. And now my darling uncle comes along, trying to drag us back into the dark ages where women never leave the kitchen, men make all the decisions, and there’s a moratorium on forward-thinking. I cannot sit by and let that happen. I love jumping in the ring and putting up my dukes. Maybe I’ll win, or maybe I’ll go down for the count. In a funny sort of way, I don’t really care.”

  “You can’t really believe that,” Marcus said quietly.

  Kathryn stubbed her cigarette out on the zebra’s face. “Don’t get me wrong. I prefer to win, but it’s the fight that I enjoy. Does that make me crazy?”

  Gwendolyn started giggling. “In a good way, perhaps.”

  “At any rate, the point is, take Winchell up on his offer. This Loretta Young job could really open doors.”

  “But he’s sure to know Gwendolyn’s not going to betray you,” Marcus said.

  “All the more to bamboozle him. Do it, Gwennie. You’ll regret it if you don’t. And so will I.”

  “If you say so.” Gwendolyn still wasn’t sure. She needed to think it through. “Can I ask why we’re at the Zebra Room, of all places?”

  “Ah-ha!” Kathryn’s eyes bulged. “Remember that bootblack at the Biltmore? Turns out his brother is also a bootblack, here at the Town House. Delmar called me this morning to tell me that his brother told him that a couple of nights ago all sorts of strange stuff was going on here.”

  “What kind of strange stuff?”

  “Voss and his inner sanctum are staying at the Biltmore, but his herd is here. With MacArthur Park just a block or two away, it’s easier for them to prepare. Delmar’s brother, Fayard, goes on duty at one.”

  “So you’re here to—?”

  “Snoop around. See what we can see.”

  Lunch arrived and the conversation shifted to how Marilyn had hurt herself during a take on the Canadian set of River of No Return. Suddenly, it was one o’clock. Kathryn flagged down the waitress with a five-dollar bill and hustled them out to the foyer.

  The Town House’s shoeshine stand was tucked into a nook along a corridor between the reception desk and the parking lot out back. Fayard was a round-faced man with a shaved head and a full smile that belonged on a toothpaste tube.

  “I can’t just stand around chatting.” He gestured to Marcus’ shoes. They didn’t need a shine but he hopped up onto the seat and rested his right foot against the angled platform.

  “Delmar told me you think some strange things are going on around here.”

  “Those Voss people have been trooping in and out like they was planning D-Day all over again. I don’t recognize half the stuff they’ve been carrying through here, ’cept of course those quarter cans.”

  “But aren’t they at the Biltmore?” Kathryn asked. “Delmar showed them to me.”

  “Them’s just the overflow. The real ones are out back.” Fayard shook his head. “Too many to count. Sky high, they’re stacked.”

  “Where are they?” Kathryn pressed.

  “There’s a little yard next to the parking lot beside the service lane.”

  “Can we see them?”

  “They’ve got security out there, but he’s a buddy of mine. Nate. Just tell him Fancy told you it was okay.”

  At the rear of the hotel, the parking lot lay to the right, a large loading zone to the left. Between them, a guy in a blue-and-gray security uniform stood around, his hands buried in his pockets.

  It wasn’t until they drew closer that Gwendolyn realized he was whistling a hymn she hadn’t heard in over thirty years.

  Back when she was a pigtailed kid, her mama would send her down to the liquor store on Sunday mornings to replace the gin she’d swigged the previous night. The quickest route to Polk Street Liquor was past the Baptist Church, which sang “Come Down, Angels” every other week during the years Gwendolyn’s mama was sprawled on the sofa whining about her disappointments.

  “You’re Nate, aren’t you?” Kathryn asked.

  He eyed them up and down. “Nope. Nate called in sick today. Unless you’re with the Voss party, I’m going to have to ask you to move along.”

  “We are with the Voss group,” Kathryn said.

  “Can I see your passes?”

  “We just started,” Marcus jumped in. “They said we’d get our passes by the time we were finished for the day.”

  “I’m sorry, but I got my orders.”

  In front of the brick fence behind him, three dark blue tarpaulins were draped over something huge. If these were the quarter
cans, Gwendolyn figured there must be dozens and dozens of them.

  “Tell me,” she said sweetly, “but you weren’t whistling ‘Come Down, Angels’ just now, were you?”

  He pulled his head back as he took in the sight of a white girl quoting a Negro spiritual.

  She started singing, “I love to shout, I love to sing, Let God’s saints come in.”

  He joined her at the third line. “I love to pray my heav’nly King, Let God’s saints come in.” He uncrossed his arms. “How the heck does a girl like you know a song like that?”

  She raised her hands heavenward like she’d seen the Baptists do, and with far more reverence than she felt right now. “Your God, my God, their God, our God,” she said. “It’s all the same God, isn’t it?” She pointed to the tarpaulins. “They asked us to double-check all that stuff’s in place. Won’t take us too long.”

  The guy stepped aside and let them pass.

  Marcus pulled away a tarpaulin corner and revealed stacks of old paint cans.

  “There must be two hundred here,” Kathryn said.

  Marcus grabbed a couple of cans. “Get a load of this.’”

  Someone had painted the bottom of each can with a small red ‘X’ or a small red ‘Y.’

  “Turn around and walk away,” Marcus whispered.

  “What?”

  “Go into the corner and pretend to chat, but do it now. Now!”

  They scuttled over to the far end of the pile, lifted up a corner of the tarpaulin and pretended to inspect the battered cans underneath.

  “Can you see what he’s doing?”

  Gwendolyn snuck a glimpse past Kathryn’s shoulder. “A couple of real volunteers have arrived with more cans.”

  They were a twin set of young girls, no more than eighteen years old, glowing with Salvation-Army purity.

  “Marcus is showing them his camera.”

  “I asked him to bring it along. Is he photographing the cans?”

  “He’s getting them to pose in front of the cans and he’s taking their photo. They’re giggling. Now he’s shaking their hands.”

  Marcus waved the volunteers goodbye and hurried over to Gwendolyn and Kathryn. “I think our guard is onto us. Come on.” He nudged them toward the service lane.

  As they hurtled west along Wilshire in Kathryn’s car, he explained how he told the teenage vanguards that he was a photographer with the Examiner working on a story about preparations for the march into LA. All it took was a promise that their picture would be in the paper for Marcus to worm out of them the difference between the X cans and the Y cans.

  “Their bank has told them that it’ll be too much for one branch to handle. The cans marked X will go to a Bank of America at Wilshire and Normandie, and the Y’s will go to 510 Spring Street in downtown.”

  The first bank branch, opposite the Ambassador Hotel, was the one Gwendolyn had used when she worked at the Cocoanut Grove. It was a tiny branch, and she wasn’t surprised they didn’t want the responsibility of counting up all those quarters.

  When Kathryn pulled her Oldsmobile to the curb at the corner of Wilshire and Normandie, Gwendolyn asked Marcus what he was looking for. He scanned the Bank of America branch and confessed that he didn’t know. “This whole X and Y business sounds shifty. I thought it was worth checking out, but there’s nothing to see here.”

  By the time they reached downtown, the afternoon rush hour was thickening. They found a parking space on the 600 block of Spring Street and walked back.

  Five hundred and ten Spring was nine stories of cream brick: pleasant enough to look at, but the least remarkable building on a block of richly ornamented banks and stockbroking houses built in the 1920s.

  Standing out front, Kathryn said, “I’ve been here before.”

  They walked into the foyer and studied the list of tenants: the usual roll call of insurance offices, importers, and obscure organizations.

  Gwendolyn pointed to the head of the list. “Nobody’s registered for the eighth or ninth floors.”

  The guy at the reception desk shifted uneasily in his seat when Kathryn asked him who occupied the top two floors. He told them they were empty.

  Out on the sidewalk, Kathryn said, “Two whole floors? Empty? I don’t buy that for a minute.”

  The service lane behind the building was called Harlem Place. As they approached, the rear door swung open and a pair of colored women stepped onto the grimy cobblestones. They wore light worsted wool suits that were clean, pressed, and fitted them well. Gwendolyn guessed they were secretaries or supervisors of the typing pool.

  “Excuse me,” Kathryn said, “but I was wondering if you work in there.”

  “At 510?” the plumper of the two asked, her face filled with suspicion. Her raised her handbag to her chest, preparing to brush past them, when her friend said, “Say, aren’t you that white lady who makes dresses for Ella and Lena?”

  Gwendolyn smiled tightly. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “From that Confidential article, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, brother! Ella and Lena, they’ve been running to your defense every chance they got. I saw Miss Ella play the Dunbar some time back. Did you make that dress? The one-shoulder number in dusty pink?” When Gwendolyn nodded, she whistled. “Miss Ella never looked better.”

  Gwendolyn felt Kathryn nudge her in the back. “So, you ladies work in this building?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re with the National Council of Negro Women.”

  “We were in the foyer just now and saw there was no listing for the top two floors. I don’t suppose you know who occupies them?”

  “We’re not sure who’s there.” The other one chose her words more carefully than her friend. “We’ve just heard, you know, rumors.”

  A puff of rotting garbage and exhaust smoke wafted past. “It’ll go no further than this stinky back alley,” Gwendolyn prodded.

  The plump woman lowered her eyes as she leaned in ever-so-slightly. “We hear that those are the LA offices of the FBI.”

  Kathryn slapped an unprepared Marcus across his shoulder. “I knew I’d been here!” She turned back to the women. “Thank you, ladies. We appreciate your candor.”

  The women nodded unsmilingly and hurried away.

  “Half of Uncle Sheldon’s quarter cans aren’t even going to a bank?” Marcus said. “There’s a plot twist worthy of Hitchcock himself.”

  Kathryn started tapping her chin. “Wilkerson’s been very put out that Hoover hasn’t been returning his calls.”

  Gwendolyn angled her face upward until she could see the top floor. “Funny place for a laundry, huh?”

  CHAPTER 38

  Marcus zoomed in tight on the face of Clifton Webb.

  “Why can’t women play the game properly?” Webb declared. Marcus snapped off three frames. “Everyone knows only men can lie—look, I’m sorry, Jean.” He looked up from his script. “But this photographer chap, is he necessary?”

  Marcus lowered his camera.

  “What’s the problem?” Negulesco asked Webb.

  “We’re feeling our way through our first table read, and it doesn’t help when you have Mister Shutterbug here distracting us.”

  “You didn’t mind when we were shooting Titanic,” Jean pointed out. “It’s the same guy.”

  “That was different.” Webb started fondling his silk cravat. “We already knew our characters, and that huge set camouflaged him. But here it’s just the twelve of us sitting around a table.”

  Marcus had tried to be unobtrusive, letting his zoom lens do most of the work. They’d been reading lines for the best part of an hour without any sign that he was ticking off Webb.

  “Clifton,” Negulesco said, “I’m sure a performer of your stature, not to mention professionalism, is able to block out any distractions.”

  Webb cracked a sliver of a smile. “Flatterer.”

  “Jesus, Webby,” Dorothy Maguire declared, “you survived the sinking of the Titanic; sur
ely you can ignore one little photographer.”

  “I survived the filming of the sinking,” Webb corrected her, “which was almost as uncomfortable.”

  Negulesco waved at Marcus to step back.

  Marcus was keenly aware what promises meant in Hollywood—even earnest ones. Deals fell apart at the last minute; stars got better offers; screen rights were rescinded; scripts failed to come together. For four months, he’d waited for Negulesco to contact him about Three Coins in the Fountain.

  As the sharp air of spring yielded to the balmy breezes of summer, Marcus became more and more antsy. Joining Three Coins in Europe was his best hope of getting off the graylist, but that was his priority, not theirs. When the final days of July approached and still nothing, Marcus decided it was time to give things a nudge.

  But how?

  The answer arrived the day he stood with Kathryn and Gwendolyn in that downtown back alley.

  Marcus wasn’t sure why he was so shocked to learn that the FBI had a hand in laundering Sheldon Voss’ quarter cans. He was all too aware of how the Bureau dug its spindly fingers into every pie it deemed necessary, but this revelation rattled him to his core.

  He suddenly needed some alone time to clear his head, so he escorted the girls to Kathryn’s car, waved goodbye, then wandered down Spring Street. A block and a half later, he passed an art gallery with an oil painting in the window that glued him to the sidewalk.

  It depicted a solitary figure in browns and reds with splatters of gold. It was a monk, or a priest, perhaps? Or maybe a friar? The man was on his knees with his face tilted toward a beam of light coming through a hole in the roof above his head. The stooped figure looked exactly like Oliver. The shape of his nose, the smudge of a dimple in his chin, the way his lower lip dropped when he was taken by surprise.

  Marcus pressed his face against the glass and realized the eyes weren’t the same. Oliver’s were hazel flecked with green, but this disciple with the beatific smile had eyes so brown they were almost black. And his brows ran together in an unbroken line. But they were only superficial discrepancies—it was the expression that captured Marcus. It was just like Oliver’s the day Marcus drove to Cloverleaf Sanatorium and asked him to come to Rome.