Reds in the Beds

by Martin Turnbull

  “That went awfully well, I must say.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it across his forehead.

  “You sound surprised,” Kathryn said.

  He gave a dismissive shrug. “Let’s face it, I’m no Bing Crosby.”

  When Kathryn got the call that Crosby had decided to exit Kraft Music Hall, she’d expected the show to fold. She wasn’t prepared to hear that Kraft and NBC’s market research revealed that after Crosby, Kathryn was the second most popular reason the audience tuned in each week—and that they wanted her to co-host.

  At first, Kathryn wondered if Eddie was such a great choice as a replacement for the universally loved Crosby. Their first meeting was pleasant enough. He was polite and deferential, but palpably nervous. But when he and Kathryn stepped in front of a studio audience, their chemistry began to fizz like a Bromo-Seltzer and they were soon bubbling with adlibs.

  Kathryn nodded toward the bustling audience. “Sounds like they didn’t care you’re not Bing.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Thank you for making it so easy to slip right in. But I must say, I never knew we in California say ‘See you at the beach.’ Mind you, with my Scottish heritage, going to the beach is not advisable.”

  Kathryn steered them along the backstage corridor to their dressing rooms. “I was trying out a new signoff. I figured it’s time to freshen things up a bit.”

  “See you at the beach,” Eddie said, nodding. “Very Californian. Let’s keep it and see if we can’t score a catchphrase.”

  Kathryn kissed her co-host goodbye and closed her dressing room door with a nudge to the hip. She stood in front of her mirror. “Oh, the lies you tell,” she sighed.

  See you at the beach was code to tell Nelson Hoyt where to meet her that night.

  When Marcus’ hooker friend sent him the paper she found in the alley out back of Leilah’s brothel, Kathryn placed a classified ad in the Hollywood Citizen-News saying what day and time she wanted to meet him. Fearful that someone may have figured out who they were, Kathryn refused to nominate the place, so they came up with a code she could use in her next radio broadcast. “See you at the beach” meant “See you at Don the Beachcomber.”

  It was just past seven, which gave her an hour to walk up to the nightclub. She could easily have asked reception to call her a cab, but the apprehension that Arlene’s back-alley discovery might be her ticket out of the FBI was starting to hit home. She needed the walk to calm her nerves.

  * * *

  Don the Beachcomber was one of the first bars in Hollywood to ride the Polynesia wave. From its South Seas shanty décor of bamboo shutters, wicker furniture, and glass buoys strung up with fishing nets, to the Hawaiian ukulele playing over the loudspeakers, a thirsty patron could walk into the place and almost believe he’d been cast away onto a Pacific island with nothing but bracing rum concoctions like Missionary’s Downfall and Vicious Virgin to keep him going.

  The back bar was called the Cannibal Room; its low lighting made it a popular place for clandestine meetings between people who perhaps ought not be clandesting.

  Hoyt was in the most distant booth when Kathryn arrived. He’d taken the liberty of ordering drinks in matching twelve-inch bamboo trunks.

  She sat down and pulled off her gloves. “I hope those aren’t Zombies.” The first time she tried the bar’s signature drink, she lost about six hours.

  Hoyt slid one toward her. “It’s a Cobra’s Fang.”

  He flashed one of those smiles she was sure was intended to disarm her. On someone else it may have worked, but not from the guy she wanted most to evict from her life. She pretended to take a sip, and pulled a piece of paper from her purse.

  “I have something for you.” She laid it out in front of her, covering it with splayed hands. “I’m not going to tell you how I got this, but it is on the level.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you heard of something called the Nevada Project Corporation of California?” Despite the Cannibal Room’s low lighting—mostly from sconces that flickered like flaming torches—Kathryn could see the name meant something to him. “Did you know the principal stockholder is Benjamin Siegel?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Do you know what the corporation is for?”

  When his eyes blinked several times, she knew she’d scored a direct hit. For an FBI agent, you’re really not that great a poker player. She could see the cogs rotate behind his eyes until three Kings lined up in a row. Bingo!

  “Are we talking about the Flamingo Club?” he asked.

  Kathryn nodded and took another pretend sip.

  “I thought your boss was building that.”

  She thumped her bamboo cup onto the table. “My boss is so determined to build a casino that he accepted a million-dollar loan from the mob.” She pressed a fingertip to the center of the paper in front of her. “And this shows where he got it.”

  “Get a load of you, Nancy Drew.”

  “My money is on Siegel aiming to take over the whole kit and caboodle.”

  Hoyt’s eyes were now on the paper. “But where would that leave Wilkerson?”

  “Hopefully out in the cold.”

  A pause, then, “I have something to tell you. I probably shouldn’t, but I’ll take a chance that you’ll keep it to yourself.” He made a deliberately casual sweep of the Cannibal Room. “For a while now, Hoover has wanted to wiretap all of Siegel’s telephone lines.”

  “He hasn’t already?” Kathryn was being flippant, but made sure her question was hard-edged enough to remind Hoyt of the time during the war when the FBI wiretapped Bogie’s villa at the Garden. She wanted to believe that Hoyt hadn’t known about it at the time, but she never knew for sure.

  “In his own strange way, Hoover has a moral code. He’ll only wiretap somebody when he feels justified.”

  Kathryn went to push the paper toward Hoyt, but stopped. “Are you planning on wiretapping Wilkerson too?”

  His gray-blue eyes were back on hers now. “It’s Siegel and the mob we want, not Wilkerson.”

  Suddenly, Kathryn wanted to down her whole Cobra’s Fang. She took a deep swig. “I’m not cut out for all this lying and sneaking around.” He said nothing but she could see the acknowledgment in his eyes. “I know you can’t let me off the hook for no reason, so I want to earn my freedom by giving you something so good that you, or Hoover, or whoever makes these decisions thinks, ‘Well now, this is great stuff. That gal has done her duty to this nation’s security, so let’s thank her and send her on her way.’” She hoped for a response, but got nothing. “Does it even work that way?” she prodded.

  “Depending on how I sell it.” He jutted his chin toward Arlene’s paper. “And depending on what that says.”

  Kathryn extended both index fingers and used them to push the paper across the table. He kept his eyes on her until he picked it up. As he read it, she scanned the room. It was now getting close to eight o’clock and parched customers were starting to file in.

  “This isn’t the O’Roarke who heads up security at Warners, is it?”

  “It’s his wife.”

  Hoyt tapped the paper. “So this Linden Holdings Company—that’s hers?”

  “They live on Linden Drive in Beverly Hills.”

  “That’s where Siegel’s girlfriend lives.”

  “Virtually across the street. Convenient, huh?” Kathryn reached into her purse for cigarettes. She needed something to camouflage the kick she was getting at beating Mr. FBI at his own game. “I strongly suspect that if you dig into Linden Holdings, you’ll find it’s being used to launder money from brothel gravy.” Kathryn knew the address, but she wasn’t going to give it to him until she knew that Arlene was out and safe from arrest. “You’ll also find it connected to a company called Primm Valley Realty, which has been buying up all the land around a little Nevada desert town called—”

  “Las Vegas.”

  “See how it all fits?”

  He pointed to the
handwritten number at the bottom of the sheet. “This figure here.”

  “Four hundred and seventy-five thousand, six hundred and ninety-one dollars?” When she saw the way his eyes lit up, she was pleased she’d taken the time to memorize it. “It’s a very specific number. Easier to identify than, say, a round five hundred grand.”

  She took a long drag and listened to the plinkety-plink ukulele version of the “Hawaiian Wedding Song” wafting over them.

  Eventually he said, “This is very good work, Miss Massey.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “But is it good enough?”

  * * *

  Their standard procedure was to leave separately, usually with Kathryn going first. But this time she told him, “Maybe we should switch for once.”

  She counted for sixty seconds, and then slipped outside. In front of Don the Beachcomber was a patch of yard crammed with ferns and banana palms. She gently pulled one back to see Hoyt round the corner on foot, then head west along Hollywood Boulevard.

  She wondered if shadowing an FBI agent was such a good idea. But as a gossip columnist who’d spent years developing a sixth sense for secrets, she’d learned when to play a hunch. And this, she told herself, was one of those times.

  She watched him cross Hollywood and head south past the Max Factor building. It was coming up to nine o’clock, and the warmth of the summer day had all but dissipated, leaving her chilled and wishing she’d had her hunch earlier in the day when she could have planned for it better. Hoyt ambled along Highland Avenue so slowly it was almost annoying. Don’t you have some place to go? When he lit a second cigarette from the butt of his first, she grasped that she’d given him a lot to think about.

  He turned left at Sunset and headed east.

  She hurried down the street, then peeked around the corner. He stopped outside a store and looked in the window. Above his head, an orange neon sign flashed on and off. He waved to someone inside, then disappeared through the front entrance.

  Kathryn peered into the brightly lit store window. Tiffany lamps, desk lamps, bedside reading lamps, wall sconces, and chandeliers filled the display. An older gentleman behind the counter beamed when he saw Hoyt. They approached each other and met in the middle, embracing with a heartfelt hug.

  Kathryn pulled back. He’s like Marcus! My FBI agent is queer! She tipped back against the glass of the neighboring florist and breathed in the sweet scent of roses lingering in the air. Passersby crossing in front of her blurred into nebulous blobs as her mind whirred with ways she could exploit this information.

  Then something popped into her mind. But what about that flirting? Those knowing smiles. The way he touches me, real casual like. That can’t be in the FBI Agent Rule Book.

  She stole another look inside the store. The two men stood side by side, discussing a floor lamp with a long brass stem and a black fabric shade. Both men now stood in profile, and she caught something else: they shared the same high forehead, the same sharp nose, and the same cleft chin. In fact, they had the same hair—the only difference was the amount of gray flecked through it.

  That’s not Hoyt’s lover—it’s his father.

  The realization that Nelson Hoyt had a family struck Kathryn like a mallet to the chest. It had never occurred to her that a guy like that had actual parents. And if he had parents, did he have a regular childhood? With a pet dog and a little red wagon and Boy Scout meetings and summer camp?

  He’s a regular person!

  Suddenly, she wasn’t so afraid of him anymore, not so daunted by the power he held over her.

  The blinking orange neon sign above the window caught her eye as it flickered on and off. Sunset Lamps and Lighting.

  There’s irony for you, she thought. Here I was assuming this Nelson Hoyt guy had a shadowy past I had no hope of discovering. Turns out, all I had to do was follow the light.

  CHAPTER 15

  A meteor struck Hollywood on the Friday before the July fourth weekend, when Walter Winchell unveiled that the author of the best-selling roman à clef, Reds in the Beds, was Clifford Wardell, head of Paramount Pictures’ writing department. The news sent scandalized Angelenos into bars and nightclubs to cluster for endless rounds of “Have you met him? Would you ever have guessed? What will happen now?”

  Marcus was relieved that the truth was out. “Now that the mystery’s been solved,” he said to Kathryn over the scotch and soda somebody conjured that weekend by the pool, “maybe we can all get back to whatever passes for normal.”

  But they both knew the ripples in that particular pond had swelled too far for that. Hollywood knew that the Divine Oasis was supposed to be the Garden of Allah, that NJN was really MGM, and that their head of the writing department, a senior member of the Communist Party called Eugene Markham, was a thinly veiled Marcus Adler. “Quite honestly,” Kathryn said the night after the Winchell show, “I’m surprised Mayer and Mannix haven’t hauled you across the coals already.”

  The call from Mayer’s secretary, Ida Koverman, came before Marcus had finished his first cup of coffee the morning after the long weekend. “Your presence is expected at ten. Do not be late.”

  With one minute to spare, Marcus let himself into the executive reception area. Ida pressed a button on her desk and the walnut door swung open.

  Long before the name Benito Mussolini took on pejorative implications, Louis B. Mayer had decorated his office all in white to replicate the dictator’s. The fact that Mayer had chosen not to renovate mystified Marcus. He braced himself as he approached Mayer and his right-hand man, Eddie Mannix. Seated with them at the round conference table were two men Marcus had never seen before.

  Skipping any perfunctory shaking of hands, Mayer asked him to be seated. He waved a hand. “This is Tanner and Ritchey from Legal.” He didn’t bother to distinguish one from the other; not that it mattered. To Marcus they both looked like they’d spent too much time preparing legal briefs in the office and not enough honing their tennis volleys.

  Marcus took a seat as Mayer gripped a copy of Reds in the Beds. “You read this?” he asked.

  Marcus nodded.

  “I was told it was trash and to not waste my time,” Mayer said. “But of course, after Winchell . . .” He flicked the pages with his pudgy fingers. “It’s trash, all right, but it’s dangerous trash.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Mannix added, “because it’s believable.”

  “Only to those who want to believe it,” Marcus said.

  “Are you a Commie, Adler?”

  Mannix had seven inches and fifty pounds on Mayer, but they had the same beady eyes, which looked at Marcus with accusatory distrust. Meanwhile, Tanner and Ritchey maintained their professionally trained neutral lawyer faces.

  Marcus took his time studying each of them before he picked up the book. “Would you be asking me if it wasn’t for this three-hundred-page pile of horseshit?”

  “Of course not,” Mannix said, “but since Winchell’s show on Friday, it’s become an issue we can’t just hope will go away.”

  One of the lawyers cleared his throat. “Mr. Adler, we need you to answer the question.”

  “Jesus Christ! This isn’t NJN and I’m not Eugene Markham.”

  “Mr. Adler—”

  “NO!” Marcus didn’t mean to shout, but it got his point across. “I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party. Is that legalistically succinct enough for you?”

  He wished he hadn’t been quite so terse. He needed to curry favor with these lawyers when he put a good word in for Arlene. She’d really come up with the goods for Kathryn and it was time to return the favor. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said placatingly, “but that blasted book has made my life thorny since the day it came out.”

  “How so?” Mannix asked.

  “I live at the Garden of Allah.”

  Four pairs of eyes stared at him, then almost as though they’d rehearsed it, they blinked together in comprehension.

  “The Divine Oasis,” Ma
yer said, almost to himself. “I didn’t make the connection.”

  “I wouldn’t say this book has pitched neighbor against neighbor, but it’s made life there less than congenial.” Marcus placed his hands on the table in preparation to stand. “But I’m sure it’ll pass. So if that’s all you require of me, I have a story conference. The Holiday in Mexico script isn’t coming together as well as it ought, so—”

  “No, Adler, that isn’t all,” Mayer said. “Since Winchell’s announcement, the shit’s been hitting the fan over at Paramount. Do you know Quentin Luckett?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Did you know he’s been promoted to head up their writing department?”

  “I did not.” Marcus was so pleased for his friend that it was hard not to smile. Quentin and I are now both heads of writing. And THAT calls for a long boozy celebration. Maybe the Sahara Room would be safe. Since the night of the Hermit’s Hideaway raid, Marcus, Oliver, Quentin, and Trevor had been warily avoiding each other’s company in public. “But what about Clifford Wardell?”

  “Banished from the lot. For life.”

  Maybe there is some justice in the world.

  “We hear you know each other.” That mix of suspicion and accusation had crept back into Mannix’s voice.

  “Me and Wardell?” Marcus pedaled softly. “It would be an overstatement to say ‘know each other.’”

  “What would a more accurate statement be?” Tanner asked—or was it Ritchey?

  Marcus took a moment to consider his response. The only sound he could hear was Ida Koverman’s typewriter clacking away in the next office. “We both attended the same cocktail party recently.”

  “Thrown by—” the lawyer paused to consult his notes— “Konstantin Simonov. Who’s he?”

  “The Russian consul. Also a playwright. He said he invited me because he admired my work on Free Leningrad! but Wardell and I were there so he could pitch an idea.”

  Mannix snorted. “Everybody’s got an idea for a movie.”

  Marcus and Simonov had corresponded a couple of times after the Russian sent him the Pavlova outline. It was a thoroughly professional piece of work, and Marcus was still waiting for a response to his offer.