Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  Leo pressed his hands onto her shoulders. “This is not a negotiation.”

  “Pulling rank?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  She brushed his hands away. “Fine. But I need to prepare, so let’s get this over with.”

  Leo went to kiss her on the lips, but she didn’t want to muss her lipstick, so she pointed to her forehead. He kissed it and said he’d be right back.

  The twelve-piece NBC orchestra struck up a somber refrain that Kathryn didn’t recognize. It was probably intended to introduce a level of solemnity, but it sounded like a funeral dirge.

  Marcus burst in. “Have you heard about the link?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Both radio and television, they’re kaput.”

  Why is he smiling? “But they’re going to fix it, right?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you don’t want them to.”

  Marcus had barely started relaying his conversation with Mayer when Kathryn had an overpowering urge to smoke. Normally, she abstained before a broadcast, but tonight she wasn’t sure she could resist.

  “So the worst-case scenario is they cut to Toast of the Town and America is spared his tirade,” she said. “Have they alerted Ed Sullivan?”

  “We bumped into your producer out there.”

  “We?”

  “Your mom insisted we come backstage to tell you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Talking to him. I think she wants to see her brother up close. Our seats are halfway to Fresno. Let me go fetch her—”

  “I want you here with me,” she choked out. “Voss wants a face-to-face. I’ve never met a blood relative before.”

  Marcus offered her the gentlest smile she’d ever seen on him. “I’ll be right here.” He hooked her by the chin. “If the going gets tough, remember: You enjoy a battle.”

  She might have punched him, but Leo pulled back the flap with the flourish of a ringmaster. “Kathryn Massey,” he announced, “meet Sheldon Voss!”

  Kathryn’s uncle was a slight man with a slender body, sloping shoulders, and soft, almost girlish hands. He moved with the grace of a ballroom dancer but exuded none of the charisma she’d expected from the Examiner’s staged photos.

  THIS is who has been setting the country on fire? This dainty little pixie?

  She hunted for signs of herself reflected back at her. His face was rounder, more like Marcus’, and his eyes were green, like Gwennie’s. His hair may have been her shade of brown, but sun-bleached streaks ran through it, making him look younger than sixty-seven.

  “Miss Massey!” He grabbed her hand and shook it fervently. “Thank you so very much for your support throughout my march. It’s all been so gratifying.”

  Kathryn slipped her hand from Voss’ grip.

  Talk about snake charm. You’ve even got a glisten in your eyes, as though you’re moved to tears.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve got as much to prepare for as I do.”

  “I’ve been preparing all summer,” Voss replied. “You could say I’ve been preparing my whole life.”

  “I’m sure.” She lifted her hand toward the exit.

  “Hasn’t it been inspiring to see America respond to our message of traditional values?” Voss asked.

  OUR message? Don’t you lump me in with your bunch of backward-looking—

  Kathryn realized that to him, she was no different from all those Mixmaster-blending, Betty Crocker-baking housewives whose apron strings he’d ridden across the country. She went to point out that it was close to air time when she heard Marcus whisper,

  “Incoming at three o’clock.”

  “I was told Kathryn Massey was—”

  Francine halted just inside the flap, her face frozen.

  Voss was the first to speak. “Mary? Is that you?” He rushed toward Francine, who stepped backwards. “Is it really you? I don’t believe my eyes! Sweet Jesus in heaven has brought my long-lost sister to me!”

  “Knock it off, Camden, it’s just us.”

  “Oh, how I’ve beseeched the good Lord that we might be reunited again. And here we are! On this night of all nights. Don’t you see, Mary? He—”

  She strode past him toward Kathryn. “My name is Francine. Francine Massey. This is my daughter—” She’d learned a thing or two about showmanship and paused for a moment. “—Kathryn Massey.”

  Kathryn watched the comprehension filter through his eyes. “That’s right,” she said, “I’m your niece.”

  “I’m your uncle!” He reached out for her, but she recoiled.

  “No, my uncle is Camden Caldecott, who’s got a warrant out in seven states.” “Passing bum checks in Providence; swindling a rich widow in Hartford; impersonating a member of the clergy in Poughkeepsie; embezzlement at the Vulcan Iron Works foundry in Wilkes-Barre.” She leaned her head toward Marcus. “Aren’t I forgetting one?”

  “Toms River, New Jersey,” Marcus said.

  “Is that where you took money from the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and the Catholics for two hundred gold-embossed Bibles and then skipped town?”

  “I haven’t hidden the mistakes of my past.” Voss ditched his oily tone. “On the contrary, I’ve made it a central tenet of my teachings. It’s the whole reason for my redemption boards. Up there for all the world to see.”

  Kathryn felt Marcus’ hot breath in her ear. He whispered, “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” and dashed from the tent.

  What happened to “I’ll be right here”?

  “The widow from Hartford isn’t on your redemption boards, nor are the foundry workers from Wilkes-Barre. So not ALL your sins are there for all the world to see, are they?”

  “I take it, then, that you haven’t seen the boards here tonight?”

  Oh, damnit.

  “I have since repaid the Hartford widow, and the foundry workers. And as for the Toms River situation, two hundred and fourteen Bibles have now been gifted to the city.”

  Pilgrimages of forgiveness were the sorts of stories that the press leaped gleefully on like jackals, but there’d been no mention of the Toms River Bibles.

  “But even if those warrants were still valid,” Voss pressed, “and I was found guilty, my followers wouldn’t desert me. My message is salvation through confession.”

  “Your message is a load of bunk!” Francine spat out. It was a rare tonic for Kathryn to see her mother so passionate.

  Voss stiffened. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Mary—”

  “I haven’t been Mary since I left Boston. I always thought my pregnancy caused something to tear inside you, and through that hole climbed a conniving little swindler. But I’ve been wrong all these years. It was more like pulling back a curtain. If the law landed your behind in jail, your followers would forget all about you soon enough.”

  Voss pointed at the wavering sheet of canvas that separated him from his devotees. “They’d stick with me, come what may.”

  * * *

  Marcus navigated the obstacle course of cables, lighting rigs, and sound equipment and burst through the employee egress, almost colliding with a quartet of nuns decked out in white cornettes so stiffly starched they could take an eye out.

  Skirting the Sisters of Charity, he ducked and darted across the rows of cars at the west end of MacArthur Park until he reached his own. He threw open the door and grabbed his briefcase. It was only there by chance. Ordinarily he wouldn’t bring it to something like this, but he’d come straight from his favorite photography store on Fairfax. There wasn’t time to sort through all the photographs, so he kicked the door shut and headed back to the tent.

  As he neared the flap marked NBC EMPLOYEES, he saw Mike Connolly approaching from another direction. “Connolly!” he called. “Wait up!”

  Connolly nodded mechanically, then recognized Marcus. “You’re that friend of Kathryn’s, aren’t you?”

  Marcus didn’t appreciate the malicious tone, but there wasn’t time to quibble. “There’s something
you ought to know.” He held open the flap for Connolly, who passed through without acknowledgment.

  “And what might that be?”

  “Voss plans on starting up his anti-homo rant again tonight.”

  “Nonsense. He hasn’t breathed a word about that whole lavender thing in weeks. And besides, he wouldn’t try that on this crowd.”

  “He doesn’t care about this crowd; he’s going for the radio audience. He’s got plans far beyond this march and we’re not going to come out of it very well.”

  Connolly stared at Marcus, the color slowly draining from his face. “But I’m the one who convinced him to stop. After Oklahoma City, I called him. I made it very clear that nothing good would come of it, that Hollywood’s too powerful and they’d beat him down, so he had to stop. He mentioned it in Denver, but it was more of a postscript. And after that, nothing.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s changed his mind.”

  “But he promised me. Gave me his word.”

  Marcus eyed the flap into Kathryn’s dressing room. He had to get in there now. “I have it on good authority that the guy’s a low-down lying jackass.”

  Connolly wiped his brow. “What are we going to do? Can we stop him?”

  “Do you know anything about broadcast cables?”

  “Why?”

  “The link is kaput. Both TV and radio. The NBC guys are trying to fix them. It will be helpful if we can prevent them from doing that.”

  “But how?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest.” They were outside Kathryn’s dressing room now. Marcus pushed it open. “Just give it your best shot.”

  * * *

  Kathryn was relieved to see Marcus. Voss was still explaining why his followers would stick with him when she felt Marcus slip something between her fingers. They were the photos he took at the Town House and downtown.

  She held aloft a close-up of one of the Town House quarter cans.

  “Do your followers know about these?”

  “They’re as famous as my redemption boards.”

  She held up two more photographs showing the bottoms of two cans. “Do they know they’re marked X and Y? And that the Xs go to the bank on Wilshire and the Ys go to the FBI downtown?” Voss’ trembling chin told Kathryn all she needed to know. “Or is it the other way around?”

  “You people!” he shouted. “You’ve been reading so much Raymond Chandler that you think everything’s a byzantine plot.”

  As though on cue, the orchestra launched into the John Philip Sousa march, “The Crusader,” that played every time Voss took the stage.

  Tonight, the Window on Hollywood theme song would open the show, so NBC was playing “The Crusader” to signal everyone to take their places.

  “Remember, uncle dear, I’m on first.” Kathryn marched toward the flap. Francine and Leo stepped aside to allow her to sweep from the room.

  Twice the number of people were now scrambling around equipment, checking lists on clipboards, staring into lighted consoles. She spotted NBC’s head sound technician holding the thick black cord that usually connected to her microphone. Mike Connolly was peppering him with questions. It looked to Kathryn like he was making a nuisance of himself but was too stupid to realize it.

  As she maneuvered around the equipment and over the snaking cables, she spotted the pasty-faced sneer of someone she hated as much as Uncle Holier-Than-Thou. Standing in the wings, he was accosting a middle-aged couple with a narcissistic monologue.

  Kathryn zeroed in on him like a kamikaze. “YOU!”

  Robert Harrison drew back, startled.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” she spat at him.

  “Miss Massey.” Confidential’s publisher possessed a well-honed poker face. “At last we meet.”

  “I’ve half a mind to punch you in the face.” The woman beside him inhaled sharply. “You and your Rainbow of Colors Dancing in the Garden of Eden. So smart. So smug. Did you come up with that one yourself, you slimy little bastard?”

  “I wrote both the headline and the article.”

  “The woman who owns that boutique on the Strip is a friend of mine. After your article came out, someone painted a big ‘N’ on her window. Then someone else lobbed a brick through it, and now she has to close her store. She’s lost everything.”

  His casual shrug infuriated her more than his poker face. “The press cannot be held responsible for the consequences of the news.”

  “You’re not the press!” she hissed. “A real journalist conveys actual news with objectivity, not manipulate the truth with whatever scandal he can scrounge up. Or worse, invent outrageous distortions and pass them off as fact. That’s all you do, you bottom-feeder. I know you’re aware of the damage your disgusting rag does, but your real crime is that you don’t give a rat’s ass. Chez Gwendolyn has to close down and I hold you entirely responsible, you disgusting sack of horse shit!”

  Harrison waited to ensure Kathryn’s harangue was over before formally turning to the couple beside him. “Kathryn Massey, may I present the head of NBC television, Patrick Crawley and his lovely wife, Irene.”

  Kathryn felt the heat of battle fade and her mind go blank.

  “Chez Gwendolyn,” Mrs. Crawley said. “I was planning on visiting there before we returned to New York. Walter Winchell talked it up like it was the best new show on Broadway.”

  The cymbal crashes of the Sousa climax trembled the air around them. Kathryn threw up her hands and headed for her producer, who was waiting in the wings with Roz Russell. They were deep in conversation and missed Kathryn’s rant. She was halfway there when she heard Voss demand,

  “Just you hold on a minute!”

  Kathryn was tempted to keep walking, but it was better to have it out with him now before they faced forty million people.

  He stuck a warning finger in her face. “You might go on first, but then it’s my turn.”

  She shoved his finger aside. “Here’s what is not going to happen. You’re not going to mention anything about unwed mothers, the sin of miscegenation, all this so-called loose living in Hollywood, and you’re especially going to lay off any denunciation of homosexuals.”

  “Fat chance. It’s the centerpiece of my speech.”

  “Your speech? Or Joe McCarthy’s? You couldn’t be more wrong if you think those people out there are the same ones you’ve been duping all summer.”

  “Homosexuals in government are a grave risk to the security of this country, just as they are a risk to its moral fiber. They’re out to insert the homosexual agenda into the movies. You should know! You married one. If anyone should be angry at the queers, it should be someone who was hoodwinked into living a lie.”

  Over Voss’ shoulder, Wallace Reed waved his clipboard to attract Kathryn’s attention. He pointed to his watch and held up six fingers. She ought to be standing with him and Roz and Loretta.

  Behind him, Connolly was still arguing with the sound guy. Connolly was holding up a cable and the other guy was shaking his head. Then Marcus joined them.

  Is he holding a hammer?

  * * *

  It was Regina Horne who provided Marcus with a mallet.

  She barreled up to him as he was watching Kathryn give Robert Harrison hell. “Marcus! You do pop up in the most extraordinary places.”

  “I could say the same about you.” He took in her simple black ensemble. “What are you doing backstage?”

  “I’m a member of the Los Angeles Choral Society. Voss hired us to sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ as his exit music. I almost didn’t come because I think he’s full of crap, but then I figured, hey, it’ll make for a good dinner story at Canter’s. Did you hear that NBC is panicking like hell? Their equipment’s out!”

  Marcus saw the hammer in her hand. “Is that your plan to fix it?”

  Regina hefted it up. “I just saw this on the grass and thought I ought to give it to them before someone trips over it.”

  Marcus told her he knew the
head sound guy and took the hammer from her, wishing her luck with the performance.

  As he approached the two men, he eyed the cable in Connolly’s hand. Two thick prongs protruded from one end of it. He didn’t know much, but it looked important. He mouthed the words “distract him” at Connolly.

  Immediately, Connolly started lecturing the guy about electrical networks. It diverted the tech long enough for Marcus to grab the cable out of Connolly’s hand and lay it against the trestle table. He raised Regina’s hammer as high as he dared and slammed it down on the prongs.

  * * *

  Kathryn turned back to Voss. “We were in a tough situation.”

  “Marriage is a sacred institution, not a solution.”

  “I wouldn’t mind so much if you truly believed what you’re saying, but you’re a fraud—and a thief. Half for your cause, and half for your pockets, right?”

  Every seat in the audience was filled, along with hundreds of more congregants content to stand along the periphery. They all started to clap in a slow, rhythmic tempo.

  Voss glared at her with cobra eyes. “If you keep mum about the quarter cans, I’ll fix everything. Winchell and I, we’re real good pals. I know he wants a chance at television, but I can talk him out of it. He’ll listen to me. And I’m in tight with Hoover, too. I’ll make sure he never learns about the cans.”

  Kathryn drew back from her weasely little uncle when she realized that Hoover didn’t know anything about Voss’ quarter cans. Trying to put one over on J. Edgar Hoover took balls, but he’d never get away with it. Hoover was too well-connected.

  “You can shove your deal up your ass.”

  Voss grabbed Kathryn by the shoulders and dug his fingers in deep. “If you do anything to blacken my name, fair warning: I have the patience of Job.” He pulled his lips back into a wild grin. “I waited years to exact my revenge on your father.”

  Kathryn ignored Wallace’s frantic waves. “You had him framed? Is that what all this is about? Because he got Francine pregnant with me?”

  “Thou shalt not covet! Thou shalt not bear false witness! Premarital fornication is a mortal sin! Your father’s wanton desires—”

  Kathryn leaned back and clocked him in the side of the head. He dropped to the ground like a bag of rocks.