Marcus turned to his mother. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, pale as the moon, her eyes darting between her son, her husband, and her daughter. “I love you, Mom.” He fought the tears burning his eyes. “But I have a life in California that I must go back to.”
He kissed her on the cheek, then pulled Doris into a hug. “Take care of yourself, sis,” he whispered into her ear. He heard her sob, but couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Instead, he walked out the front door and down the concrete steps.
When he heard the door slam behind him, he knew it was Doris without looking over his shoulder.
“There’s a train leaving for Chicago in fifty minutes,” she told him breathlessly.
“Will I make it?”
“The station’s not far from here, but we have to stop by my place.”
“What for?”
“I need ten minutes to pack.” Doris looked like she was about to explode. “Iwanttocomewithyou!”
“Don’t you need to clear that with your boss first?”
“I don’t mean for a vacation. I want to move there.” She opened the car door. “But I never had the courage. To up and leave like that, I mean. But you did it, and look at the life you made!”
Six months ago, Marcus would have cheered Doris’ bold move, but now he was going back to a life that was probably in tatters. “Maybe you need to think this through.”
A slightly hysterical laugh burst out of her. “Since the day I got back from my trip during the war, it’s all I’ve thought about.”
“But Mom—”
Doris jacked a thumb toward the house. “You should hear the way she laid into Dad just now. She’s going to be just fine. It’s time I lived the life I want.”
“In LA?”
“The Garden of Allah, if there’s room.”
A firecracker of excitement shot through Marcus. “If there’s not, we’ll make room.”
“So I can come?”
“Lord help the man who tries to stop you.”
CHAPTER 46
When the limo Howard Hughes had provided turned into the Cabrillo Beach parking lot, Gwendolyn pinned her straw sun hat into place. “I don’t know if we’ll even get the chance to talk to him,” she told Kathryn, “but if we do, remember—it’s called the Hercules. For the sake of everything holy, don’t call it the Spruce Goose. Cary Grant told me he hates that nickname. So remember, ixnay on the oosegay.”
“It is made of spruce, isn’t it?” Kathryn countered.
“That’s not the point.”
Hughes’ chauffeur opened Gwendolyn’s door. “Are you sure about that dress?” she asked Kathryn. “This is one man you don’t want to be trifling with.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
It was windier down in Long Beach than Gwendolyn expected, so she was glad she’d grabbed her tangerine silk scarf at the last minute. It didn’t quite match her olive-green outfit, but the breeze had a kick to it. A quick glance told Gwendolyn that this was the Hollywood-heavy crowd she’d been expecting.
As Kathryn beelined for Walter Pidgeon and Randolph Scott, Gwendolyn meandered through the sprinkling of famous faces until she spotted Edith Head enmeshed in conversation with Hedda Hopper. When Edith spotted Gwendolyn, she raised an arm to cut short Hedda’s monologue. “Come, join us. You’ve met Hedda, haven’t you?” In fact, Gwendolyn had never met the woman, but they nodded in that vague I’m-sure-we-have-at-some-point way that Hollywoodites always did because it was often true.
“Good grief!” Edith tried to hold her jet-black hair in place against the sea breezes, but it was a losing battle. “I should have brought a scarf. I have an appointment later with Joan Fontaine. She’s starting The Emperor’s Waltz with Bing next month, and I hate looking like I just crawled out of a wind tunnel.”
Gwendolyn pulled the scarf from around her neck. “You’re welcome to borrow mine.” Edith took it gratefully and tied it over her hair. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen the man of the hour,” Gwendolyn said, looking around the growing mass of viewers. “I have something for him.”
“It’s an hour before takeoff,” Hedda said. “He’s probably in the cockpit. You see that humorless gaggle of suits?” She pointed out a dozen men in gunmetal-gray Brooks Brothers. “They’re observers from the Senate committee that’s been drilling him all month about financial irregularities. If this baby doesn’t fly, poor Howard’s Spruce Goose is cooked!”
* * *
It didn’t take Kathryn long to spot Hoover. Clad in a white linen suit and a panama hat, he was standing next to his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, who was dressed identically but for a lighter pocket square and a thinner hat band. The two were grown-up versions of the Bobbsey Twins, planted in a thicket of dark-suited gents with indistinguishable faces.
In the end, it had been a bootblack who brought everything to a head for Kathryn.
Jefferson Jones was one of her tipsters—her loose collection of hotel doormen, waiters, and cigarette girls who passed on useful snippets of information for a buck apiece.
When Marcus returned to the Garden from his eventful journey back East, he and Kathryn drowned each other in tears, apologies, and regrets. To celebrate, Kathryn treated him and his adorable sister to a night at the Cocoanut Grove, where she bumped into Jones, who worked the shoeshine stand opposite the Ambassador Hotel check-in desk.
He told her about a conversation he’d heard while shining the shoes of a pair of swaggering smart alecks who talked as though he had no ears or brains. They jawed about how someone called “The Hoov” was coming to Los Angeles to watch the Hercules test flight. And while he was out here, The Hoov intended to look into a missing dress that he was all upset over.
Kathryn pulled two one-dollar bills from her wallet and handed them to him. He tried to give one of them back, but she insisted that he’d been more help than he could possibly know.
She called out, “YOO-HOO! HEY FELLAS!” She marched past the G-Men and approached Walter Pidgeon and Randolph Scott, who had their heads together comparing wristwatches.
“Fine day for a test flight!” she proclaimed. “What’s with the watches?”
As Randolph explained that they’d both just bought the same timepiece at Desmond’s, Kathryn snuck a quick glance at Hoover. Her subterfuge worked: he was staring at her, or more specifically at her outfit.
Gwennie had been understandably horrified when Kathryn asked her to duplicate the Hoover dress, but she needed a lure. Although Kathryn didn’t care much for the rainbow overlay, the dark green foundation was very becoming, especially once Gwennie adjusted it to fit her measurements.
Hoover broke away from his hangers-on and strolled toward the end of the grass. The breeze picked up as he reached the sand, and he pushed his panama down more firmly on his squarish head.
Asking Walter and Randolph to excuse her, Kathryn joined Hoover at the periphery of the observation lawn, where he was surveying Hughes’ silver aircraft out on the water. “I know he’s Howard Hughes and all,” Kathryn said, “but surely something that enormous can’t fly.”
Hoover kept his eyes on the aircraft. “Some people think they can do anything.”
“Your suit is very spiffy, I must say. I do admire the pocket square. The whole black-and-white look is very Great Gatsby.”
Hoover angled his head to take in her dress. “Did your roommate make that?”
“She hasn’t been my roommate for a while now.” Kathryn grabbed a fistful of material and let the skirt flutter in the breeze. “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got bigger balls than I imagined.”
The surprisingly humorous lilt to the man’s declaration boosted Kathryn’s courage. “You know I’m making a point, don’t you?”
“I’m no fool.”
“I had Bette Davis over for dinner before she gave birth and I commented on her dress. She told me that she was visiting with Orry-Kelly at Warners when a mysterious package arrived. It contained a dress that nobody k
new anything about, so she had him turn it into a maternity smock. That’s when she found the telltale “G” stitched into the cuff. When I asked Gwendolyn about it, she told me about the anonymous request. As far as she’s concerned, I simply liked it and asked her to make one for me, too.”
Hoover pulled a Montecristo from his inside breast pocket and slipped off the foil ring.
“You’re going to have a terrible time trying to light that thing in this wind.” She pulled her cigarette lighter out of her handbag. “Here, let me help you with that.”
He jammed the fat cigar in his mouth and cupped his hands around the other end while she lit it. “What do you want?” he asked.
“I want you to bring Nelson Hoyt back from the dead.”
* * *
Gwendolyn was relieved when Hedda took off to dig for gossip, leaving her and Edith to talk freely. Edith was hoping to finally get an Oscar nomination for her work on the Joan Fontaine picture—“The Academy just loves those frilly fancies from yesteryear”—but RKO was doing Joan of Arc, so she sensed she had some competition. They were still talking about it when three long blasts of a bullhorn indicated that Hughes was ready to attempt a flight.
The crowd gathered at the edge of the grass where massive boulders formed a breakwater; a flotilla of small pleasure crafts dotted the beach in front of them. Far off to the left, the hulking aircraft shone in the November sun like a bloated suit of armor. Eight propellers, four on each wing, whirred to life, and the Hercules began to move.
Its progress was slow at first, but it gathered momentum, leaving thick sprays in its wake as it skimmed across the surface. For the longest while, it looked like a meager handspan was about all the height it could manage. Gwendolyn heard someone mutter, “Don’t tell me after all this, he can’t even get it up.”
The throng held its breath as the plane passed in front of them. The drone of the propellers vibrated the air as the behemoth bounced and strained to hurl itself into the air.
“Come on,” Gwendolyn murmured. “Up you go, up you go!”
The churning white water dissipated. Someone from the senatorial committee yelled, “It’s cleared!” and the crowd broke into applause.
Five feet. Twelve feet. Suddenly it was climbing twenty, thirty, sixty. The crowd cheered and waved and whistled. A mile later, it skidded along the water again and drew to a slow stop.
“Well, that’s that,” Edith said. “I must go.” She headed toward her car.
The crowd broke up into knots of twos and threes. As Gwendolyn looked around for Kathryn, she spotted a disconcerting sight—the black-and-white diamond dress she glimpsed at the Florentine Gardens. Leilah had waylaid her that night before she could investigate, but now Gwendolyn was free to lurk and observe.
Her quarry was well into her forties and, judging from the ostentatious diamond bracelet and triple strand of pearls, comfortably well off. Curiously, the dress seemed to fit the woman fairly well. Gwendolyn hazarded a few steps nearer.
The woman pressed a pair of opera glasses to her eyes, studying the Spruce Goose. Without warning, she yanked them away. “What are you gawking at?”
Gwendolyn blushed. “Nothing. I—”
“Is it my bracelet?”
The assumption made Gwendolyn laugh. “No. The dress.”
An odd smile came over the woman’s face as she ran a fingernail along the décolletage. Gwendolyn and her client had fought over that neckline. He wanted a deeper cut until she pointed out how hairy his chest was.
“I know I’m overdressed,” the woman admitted, “but I’m going straight to the opera afterwards.”
“You should know something,” Gwendolyn said, if only to wipe that superior smile off your face. “I made that dress.”
The smug attitude dropped from the woman’s face. Gwendolyn expected fright, horror, and embarrassment, but found instead wide-eyed excitement.
“Are you ‘G’?” She turned the cuff of her right sleeve inside out. Gwendolyn nodded. The woman clapped her hands together. “This dress! I love it!”
Gwendolyn pictured her client—one of those anxious, sweaty types, who lived on nervous energy and probably drank cheap whiskey on the sly. “I’m happy to hear that.”
“It’s a funny story, actually!” the wife declared. “I found it hanging at the back of the closet. Naturally I assumed it was for me—our tenth anniversary was coming up. I had just put it on when he walked in. He nearly passed out right then and there! So I sat him down and we had a frank discussion about what he likes.”
“How very open-minded of you,” Gwendolyn murmured.
“Could be worse,” the woman said with surprising pragmatism. “He might be a dope fiend or a gambler, or any number of things. But he likes to play dress-up, so who am I to judge?” She pulled Gwendolyn closer into her orbit so nobody would overhear. “The way I figure it, we have virtually the same measurements, so I get to expand my wardrobe. In fact, perhaps we can talk about getting you to sew some outfits for me. Or I suppose I should say for ‘us.’ Marriage is all about share and share alike, isn’t it?”
The whole time she’d been working with her Licketysplitters, it’d never occurred to Gwendolyn they might come with wives.
“You know what?” the woman continued, “I’m a member of the Native Daughters of the Golden West. A whole brigade of us is going to the opera tonight. I know they’re going to ask me where I got this dress. Do you have a card?”
* * *
When Kathryn told Hoover that she wanted him to bring Nelson back, he contemplated her with those callous eyes of his, then walked away. She thought she’d blown it, and kicked herself for overplaying her hand.
Back on shore, Hughes led the crowd to a huge white marquee where he’d arranged a celebratory spread for the press, investors, and senatorial committee.
Over glasses of champagne and handfuls of canapés, Kathryn watched Hoover and his phalanx of yes-men hover by the dessert table, but the FBI chief gave no indication he saw her there. She turned her back to them as Gwendolyn approached.
“I take it you didn’t get the answer you wanted?”
Kathryn bit into a chicken liver on rye. “I thought I was playing my ace, but it was just the joker.”
“What’s the name of Hoover’s assistant?”
“Clyde Tolson.”
“Yeah, well, he’s coming this way.”
Gwendolyn’s warning gave Kathryn just enough time to stuff the rest of the canapé into her mouth before Tolson appeared by her side. “The chief wants a word with you.” He kept his voice to an even-keeled whisper. “Please follow me.”
Kathryn shadowed Tolson to the parking lot where a black Cadillac sedan sat a little apart from the other cars. She could make out a silhouette in the back seat. Tolson opened the passenger door and motioned for her to join his boss inside.
“Are we going for a ride?” Kathryn asked lightly.
“I do not enjoy being taken for a ride, Miss Massey.” He threw her a skeptical eye. “Nelson Hoyt. State your case.”
“You must know I was not willingly recruited to be an informer.” She waited for him to nod, but he didn’t. “However, I did what I could.” Which was as little as possible to still make it seem like I was cooperating. “But I think I came through for you in the end, with that information concerning the O’Roarkes and the money they laundered in order to finance Bugsy Siegel’s casino.” Even though what I did was more motivated by my boss’ welfare than anything else. “You got your money’s worth, Mr. Hoover, and considering what you did to my ex-husband, I think it’s high time we all parted company. Nelson doesn’t deserve—”
“What, exactly, did I do to your ex-so-called-husband?” Hoover sucked a shred of celery from between his teeth.
It was time to play a hunch she’d been harboring since Marcus returned from Washington. What’s the worst that could happen? He laughs at me? I’ve been laughed at before. “You dug into his family background and shared it with the HUAC.”
Hoover’s silence was an admission of guilt.
“I assume you did it to teach me a lesson,” she said. “As it happens, you did him a favor. So I guess I ought to thank you.”
Sitting with Hoover in that hotel suite in Reno, Kathryn had sensed the power radiating from this bullfrog. She was impressed by it, but not awed. However, in the back seat of a motorcar with barely a foot of space between them, she could feel the weight of his authority.
“You’re making a point with this outfit you’re wearing,” he stated.
Kathryn’s dress felt suddenly sticky, like sitting on someone else’s gum.
“Your secret’s safe with me, Mr. Hoover.”
“What makes you think I have a secret to keep safe?”
A sudden gust of wind blew along the shoreline, shaking the white marquee. The men held onto the tent poles and the ladies restrained their hats.
“Because the green in this dress brings out the brown in your eyes.”
He smiled. It wasn’t twisted with greed or rage, but instead held all the warmth of a fireside chat. “I admire you, Miss Massey.”
Kathryn waited for the catch, but none came. “I find it hard to believe I’m anywhere near the list of people you admire.”
“Oh, but you are.”
He said it so simply, absent of all guile and duplicity, that all she could muster was a raise of the eyebrows.
“I consider loyalty to be one of the most important virtues.” He ran a finger around his pinkie ring. “I have no time for mealy-mouthed jellyfish too afraid to say what they think. During that whole Citizen Kane ruckus, you stood up to Hearst. That takes guts, and I admire guts. The way you’ve faced off against your boss over this Communist issue takes a set of metal-plated cojones. I respect that.”
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