Stardust

by Joseph Kanon

  “You said if he came to-” Ben started, watching the doctor lower his head to Danny’s face, then take his wrist. “What’s the matter?”

  The doctor took out a stethoscope and bent lower again, a repeat check.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  Ben looked at Danny, winded, his own body suddenly cool. Could you tell just by looking? The body still, mouth slightly open, no movement at all.

  “But he can’t. He was just here,” Ben said.

  The doctor looked at him. “Maybe he was saying good-bye. A last effort. Nurse.”

  She hurried over, turning off the monitor, and drew up the sheet. The doctor glanced at his watch, already mentally filling out a certificate.

  “It may be for the best,” he said calmly, an attempt to comfort. “This kind of injury. A full recovery isn’t possible. It’s unusual, to last this long. If we do a complete examination, maybe we’ll know more next time. Mrs. Kohler, I’ll need you to sign some forms.”

  Liesl didn’t answer, staring at the bed, dazed.

  “We can wait till tomorrow, if you like.”

  “You mean an autopsy,” Ben said, imagining the knives.

  “It can wait,” the doctor said.

  Liesl turned from the bed. “No, I’ll come,” she said, her voice a monotone. “He wanted to be cremated.” Danny in a box.

  “That’s not a hospital-”

  “No, I just meant, it won’t matter, the examination.” She touched Ben’s arm. “That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t object?”

  Ben shook his head. “He knew me. He was conscious.”

  And then he wasn’t. When? What everyone always said, it happened so fast, a part of a second.

  “Mrs. Kohler,” the doctor said again and then he was leading her out, Ostermann following, everybody, even the duty nurse, until Ben was alone in the room.

  In a minute orderlies would come and wheel the bed away. Ben went over and pulled back the sheet, a last look, shaken. On the train, he’d thought of Danny as already dead, but that was an idea. This was worse, a flash of contact, then gone, actually cold now to the touch. Another body. When he was a child, death was something remote, an event for old people. Then, in the war, it happened to everybody. But you only got used to it when they were already dead. Dying itself was new each time, something you could feel. Ed bleeding away. Now Danny. Don’t leave me, he’d said. But he was the one who’d left, just the way he always did, when it suited him, leaving Ben behind.

  He was still standing by the bed when he heard the door open. He turned, expecting the orderlies, but it was Liesl. She glanced toward the white sheet, then away.

  “Do you want more time?” she said.

  “You’re finished?”

  “A few papers only.” She walked over to the bed, staring at the body for a minute, eyes soft. “So it’s over.” She looked up. “What should we do with the flowers?” she said, her voice shaky, snatching the phrase out of the air, something to say. “What happens to them?”

  “I never thought about it. Maybe they give them to other people.”

  “It’s true? He was awake?”

  Ben nodded.

  She looked down, then folded her arms across her chest, as if she had caught a chill. “We should go. All the arrangements. There’ll be so much to do. For the widow.” Another glance to the bed, her voice catching again. “So now this. I’ve never been a widow before.”

  The phone started ringing early and continued for most of the morning, through the deliveries and the extra help and Iris directing the table setups, the whole house in motion. The mechanics of mourning had taken over. No one sat and brooded, or even mentioned Danny.

  “You’re about the same size,” Liesl said, handing him some of Danny’s suits. “They should fit.”

  He smiled to himself. Still wearing his hand-me-downs.

  “You’ll need something,” she said, misinterpreting his look. “But if you feel funny-”

  He shook his head, cutting her off. “It’s fine.”

  “I thought you might like his watch.”

  Ben took it, his finger grazing the crystal. Not Danny’s, their father’s. Another piece of the Otto shrine. When did Danny get it? On one of those last trips to Germany, probably, a sentimental gift to the loyal son who stayed close.

  “Thank you,” he said, touched. “There must be something I can do. Except be in the way.”

  “No, really-” She stopped. “That place. Where he was,” she said, hesitant. “Somebody has to go there. If he left things. I don’t know, nobody said. But I could send Iris.”

  He shook his head again. “I’ll go.”

  “Take his car. You’ll need one out here anyway. Two now. And so hard to get. But now you-”

  “You have the key?”

  “The key?” she said, a new idea. “I don’t know, maybe here.” She went over to the desk and pulled out a ring with several keys. “They were in his pants. So it must be one of these. So many keys,” she said, looking at them, other parts of his life.

  He missed a turn and had to backtrack west on Hollywood Boulevard, past the Pantages, a name out of radio broadcasts, then right on Cherokee. The Cherokee Arms was a five-story pastel building with an alley along the side connected to a parking space behind, not grand, but not seedy, either. A place you used on the way up or the way down, but not at either end. Ben parked across the street and looked at it for a minute, fingering Danny’s keys. If the fall could kill him, he must have been on the top floor. He got out and walked across. An apartment building with a lawn in front, quiet in the bright light, no shadows. He passed through the alley. There were a few cars parked in back, garbage cans. He looked up to the top balcony. The railing wasn’t high, if you staggered against it. The back door was locked. But it would be, wouldn’t it? A convenience for residents on their way in from the parking lot. No need to go through the front, where the desk clerk would see you go up. If you had a key.

  The third one worked. From here you could either go directly up the back stairs or down a hall on the right that led past mailboxes and what looked like an elevator door. From this angle Ben couldn’t see the front desk switchboard where the clerk must be. He went up the stairs, walking quietly, expecting to be stopped. Instead he found the landings empty, the building still except for the sound of the elevator going down. On the top floor he went to what he assumed was Danny’s door, using a key that resembled the one that had worked downstairs.

  The room, a studio, was neat-bed made, no dishes in the sink, a hotel room just after maid service. Nothing in the bathroom; nothing in the closet, either. He started opening cupboards. Glasses and dishes that came with the place. On the counter there was an ice bucket and a bottle of brandy, opened. Nothing on the desk but a message pad and pen. No personal presence at all. Ben went over to the French windows and opened them, looking at the balcony, trying to imagine it. He stepped out, placing his leg against the railing. If he’d been wobbly- possible. But so was the other, the leap off. He went back in. What was the point? He took one last look around, then opened the door to leave.

  “Moving in?”

  The man was leaning against the opposite wall, clearly waiting for him to come out. Young, without a hat.

  “You the desk clerk?”

  The man-the kid-shook his head and flipped open a press pass.

  “I saw you go in. I was out back. So I figured maybe they’d been giving me the brush. About the room. I mean, you have a key. Mind if I look around?”

  “What for?”

  “They didn’t tell you? Scene of the crime,” he said, starting in. “Last guy had the room went out the window. Mind?” All the way in now. “What are they charging, you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not moving in.”

  “No? Where’d you get the key?” he asked, but almost off handedly, moving over to the counter, looking at everything.

  “I’m his brother-the guy before.”<
br />
  The kid stopped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean-”

  “What do you want to see? There’s nothing here.”

  “Honest maids,” the kid said, picking up the brandy bottle. “Usually the liquor’s the first to go.” He went into the bathroom, checking the medicine chest, behind the door. “You come here to pick up his stuff?” He went over to the balcony, retracing Ben’s steps, even putting his leg against the railing.

  “There’s nothing to pick up.”

  “I noticed. Funny, isn’t it? Somebody must have been here already.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think he used the room for? We said writing office, but what the hell, be nice to the wife. What would he use it for? You ever meet a woman yet who didn’t take over half the bathroom? Cream here, powder there. Douche bag on the door. And what’s here? Nothing. She must have cleaned it out. I don’t know when, though. I’ve been watching the building.”

  “What for?”

  The kid looked at him. “To see who else had a key.”

  “You think someone was with him?”

  “Not then. She’d have been spotted. Every window’s got a head sticking out. You know, taking an interest. Cops had to use a passkey to get in. There’s no one in there with him. It had to be later.”

  “Unless she’d already moved out. Maybe that’s why he-”

  “I get it. You think he jumped. The breakup, huh?”

  “You don’t?” Ben said, interested.

  “At first. We get the police call, nobody else is interested, but my position, you need the inches, even the blotter stuff. The cops are already here and the night clerk’s going ‘oh-my-god, he must have fallen’-you know, don’t make the place look bad-and the cops are going along with it but I can see they’re looking at it as a jump. You know, taking pictures and everything. And it’s Hollywood, where you get this. Not Hancock Park or someplace-people have been known to jump here. But I’m thinking, it’s a funny kind of jump.”

  “Why?”

  “You know anything about jumpers? I covered a few. They like it a little higher. To make sure. Maybe for the show of it. Why not just go to the Roosevelt and jump off the roof? Four, five stories? You can — I mean, he did, he’s dead. But you could also just wake up in a cast somewhere. That’s one thing. Then the angle of the fall. All the jumpers I’ve seen, they don’t back out. Face forward. So I figure the LAPD are looking for a little excitement, pick up a slow night. I wouldn’t let this get to you. You believe what you want, but my guess? He was plastered and tripped.” He nodded toward the brandy bottle on the counter.

  “Then why are you watching the building? If that’s all it was?”

  “Look, why have a separate place anyway? Under a different name. They got him as Collins downstairs. All right, he’s seeing somebody on the side. Not a one-night stand, a longer-term thing. Still, why not a hotel? Unless they don’t want to be seen in public, take that chance. Maybe she’d be recognized. So who is she? I’m wondering about this and then something funny happens. I know the cops wrote it up as a jump, I was here, but when I’m doing the story the next morning they got it as an accident. How come the change? That’s when I get interested, because that kind of change, the only people in this town get favors like that are the studios. So I figure there’s a story.”

  “Why would a studio do that for Danny?”

  “Him? They wouldn’t. Anyway, he was a goner. They look to the living. And now what do we find?” He looked around at the clean apartment. “Nobody was ever here. But she must have been. And she must have been more than a fuck.”

  Ben looked at him, sorting it out. “You don’t know any of this,” he said finally.

  “You’d rather have him as a jumper?”

  Ben said nothing.

  “Maybe we could help each other out.”

  “How?”

  “You’re family. Go through his stuff. If he’s seeing somebody, he has to call her. There must be a number somewhere.”

  “So you can find her and put her in the paper,” Ben said, thinking of Liesl reading it.

  “If she’s in pictures, it’s a story. Don’t you want to know?”

  “Seen enough?” Ben said, ducking it, starting to leave.

  “I’ll do the legwork. That’s what I do,” the kid said, a half grin on his face, playing reporter, the kind he’d seen in the movies. “I just need a number.” He took a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Ben. “Day or night.”

  Ben looked at it. Tim Kelly, a name you’d forget without a card.

  “What if she isn’t in pictures?” he said. “Just a secretary or something?”

  “A secretary-and he gets a place like this?” Kelly said, breezy, still in character. “Then I’d like to fuck her myself.”

  Ben stood beside Liesl and Hans Ostermann at the funeral, the immediate family. Around and behind them, all in black, the emigre community sweltered in old high collars, hats with veils, mourning clothes that belonged in the drizzle and cloudy skies of Middle Europe. Thomas Mann had come, a courtesy to Liesl’s father, and Ben recognized a few others-Lion Feuchtwanger, slicked-back hair and eager eyes behind rimless glasses; Brecht, rumpled and smelling of cheap cigars. They were standing in front of the plain marble wall where Danny’s box of ashes would be placed. The rest of the cemetery was more elaborate, carved headstones and obelisks and flamboyant tombs from the 1920s. Valentino was somewhere over to the left. Beyond the cypresses and the high wall, Ben could see the water tower of the Paramount back lot, as close as Danny would ever get now.

  There were Americans, too-people from the studio, glancing at their watches, expected back-and while they all waited, Ben wondered what made it so easy to tell them apart. Not just the clothes or the haircuts, maybe something in the way they held themselves, an attitude. Or maybe, like Tim Kelly, everyone here slipped naturally into a part, hitting marks under the giant arc lamp. Wasn’t he? The grieving brother. Liesl, the stoic widow, dry-eyed behind her dark glasses, leaning on Ostermann, all formal Weimar dignity, as publicly correct as the other Mann. Ben saw that Polly Marks had come, keeping close to a man in a double-breasted suit whom Ben assumed was Herb Yates. Who were all the others? Ben looked at the faces, bored or genuinely sad, and realized again that he knew nothing about Danny’s life.

  He was still scanning the crowd when he caught someone doing the same thing-a man in a gray suit standing near the edge, looking at faces methodically, as if he were counting. When he met Ben’s eyes he didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed, just looked, then moved on. Ben stayed on him, watching him fix on Ostermann, then on the others, each in turn. What part was he playing? Not from the studio, certainly not an emigre. Holding a hat in his hand, like a policeman.

  He heard a crunch of tires and turned to see a black Packard pulling up. The others had had to park near the gates. A driver hopped out to open the doors. First a little man Ben didn’t know, then Alma Mahler, making her entrance. She was dressed for a Viennese funeral the emperor himself might have attended, long black silk with a sizable hat, and without hesitation made her way to the front of the crowd. Ben watched her approach, fascinated. Everybody’s mistress, now broadened and grown outward, a kind of pouter pigeon effect, but still turning heads. She put her hand on Liesl’s arm as she took her place near the family, then nodded to Ben, her eyes interested, someone new.

  Her arrival seemed to give permission to start: a man went to the wall and turned to face them, opening his hands. Ben had been told there would be a rabbi, but his dark suit was like all the others and the service was so secular, no religion specified, that Ben wondered if the cemetery had rules about who could be buried there. Judenrein. He looked at the flowers, bouquets, and wreaths with long name ribbons in the German style, then at the open square where they would put the box. After which everyone could move on. He felt Liesl next to him, holding herself erect, getting through it. What would Kelly find, a tabloid love triangle, with picture
s of the Cherokee nest? Bury him. Why not a tipsy fall? What difference did it make?

  “Heinrich Kaltenbach will say a few words.”

  The little man who’d come with Alma opened a piece of paper, then closed it, visibly upset, his round face drawn.

  “Only a few, not a speech,” he said, his accent thick, uncomfortable. “I speak also for Alma and Franz, for many of us here. There is for us a great debt. We owe this man our lives. He came with us. On foot. Only a little farther, he would say. To the border. You remember, Alma?” he said, looking at her, waiting for her nod, a little drama. “And you know what she’s carrying, in the suitcase? The manuscript. Bruckner’s Fourth. So not just lives, culture, he’s saving culture. For this everybody owes him. Please, if you don’t mind,” he said, then switched into German, his speech picking up pace, fluent now.

  The Americans stood respectfully, trying not to look blank, but for the Germans it was a release, something real after the generic service, with the heft of language. Ben looked at them. Just the sound could take them back-the lucky ones, the ones who’d left. But what choice had there been? If they had stayed, they’d be dead. Like Otto. Ashes, too.

  His mind wandered, the sound of German fading into the background, overheard but not distinct, as if it were coming up the stairs from one of his father’s parties. Danny would be down in the kitchen, sneaking drinks from the indulgent staff.

  He froze. He looked at the marble wall, seeing Danny as a teenager, his head over a toilet bowl, retching, swearing he’d never touch brandy again. And never did. An almost allergic reaction, not his drink at all. But there was the bottle sitting on the counter at the Cherokee, suggestive. A prop. Which meant someone had put it there.

  Ben felt a prickling on his neck. Someone else in the room. The door had been locked-the police had needed a passkey. But there could have been another, a duplicate to lock the door behind you. Without thinking, he turned, looking back at the crowd for the man in the gray suit. Near the edge, still watching, like someone on duty. But why come to the funeral if you’d already filed it as an accident? Case closed. Unless it wasn’t. His mind darted to the stairs, the alley, trying to work out the logistics, as if somehow that would make it all plausible. But how could it be? Could someone really have killed him? Why? Why were people murdered? Jealousy. Revenge. Because they were in the way. In stories, not in real life. Then he thought of the film clips waiting to be assembled at Continental. Why. Millions and millions for no reason at all.