At the police station he was directed to a basement room that resembled a post office will-call window, with rows of files behind.
“Accident report? Kohler?”
“You’re with the insurance?”
“His brother.”
“Companies usually get it direct. Not through the family.”
“But I could see it?”
“You could ask,” the clerk said, then got tired of himself and went to get the folder.
In fact, there was little Ben didn’t already know. A more precise time. No eyewitnesses to the fall itself. Neighbors alerted by the sounds of garbage cans knocked over when the body hit, an unexpected detail. No scream. At least none reported. Police response time. Alcohol in the room (dizzy spells not even necessary here-already unsteady). Taken to Hollywood Presbyterian with head injuries and multiple lacerations. Several boxes with numbers and acronyms for internal use. Everything consistent.
“I was told there were pictures.”
“Told how?”
“They took pictures.”
The clerk stared at him, annoyed, then checked the report again, glancing at one of the numbered boxes.
“Give me a minute,” he said, going back to the file room, a martyr’s walk.
He returned opening a manila envelope. “We don’t usually show these to family.”
“What do I need? A court order?”
The clerk passed them over. “Just a good stomach.”
Danny in the hospital had been hard to look at, but still a patient, sanitized, wrapped in bandages, the lacerations stitched closed. Here his face was torn open and the gashes poured blood, his head lying in a pool of it. Ben flipped through the pictures-the body from several angles, limp, legs twisted, a shot of the balcony (for a trajectory?), the alley crowded with onlookers and ambulance workers. Crime scene photographs.
“Why weren’t these in the file?”
“You’re lucky they’re here at all. Should’ve been tossed. No reason to keep them in an accident file.”
“Can I have them?”
“Police property.”
“Which you were going to toss.”
“Still police property. What do you want them for?” Genuinely puzzled, looking at Ben more carefully now. A morbid souvenir.
“How about some paper then? I need to take some notes. For the insurance.”
The clerk reached below and brought up some paper.
“Next time bring your own. That’s taxpayer money.”
“I’m a taxpayer.”
“Don’t start.” He went over to his desk and lit a cigarette.
Ben held up one photo, then jotted down a note, waiting for the clerk to get bored and turn away. The one thing you learned in the Army: The answer was always no, unless you could get away with it. All bureaucracies were alike. The clerk, still smoking, looked up at the clock. Ben drew out the rest of the photos, negatives clipped to the last. He copied another note, then began feeding paper into the envelope. When the clerk answered the phone, he slid the pictures under his newspaper, added some more paper to the envelope and closed it, pushing it back along the counter.
“Thanks for your help,” he said, turning away with the newspaper.
The cop waved back.
The day clerk at the Cherokee could have been the policeman’s cousin, the same wary indifference.
“You here with the key?”
“I thought it was paid through the month.”
“You’re going to use it?” the man said, oddly squeamish.
“I might. I mean, it’s paid for.”
The clerk gave a your-choice shrug.
“Anybody else have keys?”
“They’re not supposed to. Just the tenant. Otherwise we have to change the locks. Why?”
“Just wondering if you ever saw anybody else. Use the apartment.”
“Anybody else who?”
“A lady, maybe.”
“I’m on days. It’s quiet days.”
“You were on that night. I saw you in the police pictures.”
The clerk looked up, a new scent in the air. Just the word police.
“That’s right. I was filling in. What’s this all about?”
“I’m his brother. I just want to know what happened.”
“He fell-I guess. Whatever it was, it was a mess.”
“And you didn’t see anyone go up that night?”
“The police asked me this. I told them, I’ll tell you-no one. I didn’t even see him.”
“He used the back door.”
“I guess. All I know is, I didn’t see anybody.”
“So she could have done that, too. Without being seen.”
“If she had a key. Which she’s not supposed to have.”
“She’s not supposed to do a lot of things.”
“That I don’t know. I just run the board and collect the rent. We’ve never had any trouble here, you know. Never. I got a lot of people upset about this. Maybe moving out.”
“Many stay long?”
“More and more. Used to be, people didn’t want the extra service expense. But the war’s been great for us. Hard to find anything, and we already had the phone lines. You couldn’t get a phone during the war, so we did all right.”
“He make any calls that night?”
“I’d remember that.”
“You might.”
“No.”
“Sure?” Ben raised his eyes, the cliche promise of a tip.
The clerk frowned. “I’m not looking for anything here. I don’t remember. I don’t keep tabs. Half the people I don’t even know. I’m on days, right? The only reason I knew him is I rented him the room.”
“So you wouldn’t necessarily have recognized everybody.”
“Not unless they’re here during the day. You’re asking more questions than the police did. What’s this about?”
“I’m trying to find out who else came here. He didn’t take the room to be alone. The family need to know. There might be money in it for her.”
Bait that bobbed back, not even a nibble.
“Then I hope you find her. Now how about I get back to work? Are you going to keep the room, or what? Hey, Al.” This to the mailman coming in with his bag.
“Joel. How’s life?”
“Overrated.”
“Hah,” the mailman said, opening the front panel of the boxes with the post office key and beginning to fill them. Catalogues from Bullock’s, a girl in a sundress, ordinary life.
“Let me know if you want to extend,” Joel said. “The lease. It’s month to month. And he was leaving at the end, so I need to know.”
“You mean he gave you notice?” Ben said, surprised. Because the affair was over?
Joel nodded. “End of the month.” Involuntarily his eyes shifted toward the alley. “I guess he had other plans.”
Ben went over to the elevator, then turned. “When he came in to rent-how did he know? There was an ad?”
“No, we just use the window,” Joel said, jerking his thumb toward it. “Put out a sign. Somebody always sees it. Like I say, it’s been busy since the war. What with the phone.”
The apartment was exactly as he’d left it, tidy, with the empty stillness of unoccupied rooms. The brandy bottle was on the counter, untouched, not even moved for dusting. He opened the French window, looking down from the balcony just as he had before, but imagining it differently. You wouldn’t need a lot of leverage with the low rail-even a woman could have done it. But wouldn’t Danny have reacted, reached out, grabbed something? No marks on the rail.
He went out to the hall, looking down the back stairs, the door that led to the roof. Someone could have gone up there, waited it out, then slipped away after the excitement died down. But why would she have to? A transient building-not even the clerk knew all the tenants by sight. She’d be just another face in the crowd. Why bother with the roof? Walk down Cherokee to Hollywood Boulevard and hop a red car. Unless she’d been driving, parked around the corner. Then no one would see her at all.
Ben went back inside and sat in the quiet. The empty bathroom, the empty desk. Whatever prints there’d been would have been wiped away by the maid. The fact was there would never be any physical evidence. The how was unknowable. The only way in was the why.
Downstairs, he put the keys in his pocket, then took them out again-one for the room, one for the back. No mailbox key. But why would Danny get any mail? An apartment registered to another name. Just a place where they changed the sheets. Still, they must have given him one, if only to clean out the catalogues and restaurant flyers. He turned back to the clerk.
“I don’t have a mail key,” he said. “For 5C.”
“You’d better find it. We’ll have to charge. We can’t keep making keys.”
Ben looked at the mailman. “He get mail here? Collins? 5C?”
“Mister, you think I keep track? If it’s U.S. Mail, we deliver it.”
“But you might notice-if it piled up. Or if someone never got any.”
“Never? I’d buy him a beer.” He waved his hand toward the boxes. “Everybody gets mail.”
“Did you check his desk?” the clerk said. “Sometimes people keep it there.”
But it wasn’t in his desk or in the desk at home, at least not in any of the shallow paperclip trays in the top drawer, where it logically should be. And not in any of the boxes on top. Ben began taking papers out of the drawer, not rummaging through as he had that first day, but systematically putting them in piles-canceled checks, bill receipts. He started with the address book, as if somehow a number would leap out at him, but none did. Who would put his girlfriend in a book? An odd scrap of paper that no one would see, even a matchbook cover, but not in a book.
The checks were more interesting, like shards of pottery you piece together to reveal a whole society: tree surgeons and pool tilers, land-scapers and caterers, an account at Magnin’s, a life so far removed from Ben’s that it seemed to be otherworldly. Like the thick terry robes by the pool, the drawers of cashmere. He thought of Howard Stein, looking around. And this was only someone with a B series about detectives. Mayer was the highest paid man in America. Still, nobody had killed him because Liesl kept a running account at Magnin’s. He flipped through the stubs. No checks to the Cherokee Arms, presumably a cash expense, discreet. The appointment book was even less revealing: no coded notes, M 5:30, just straightforward studio meetings and doctors and dentists.
No wallet, either. But he must have had one. Maybe in his dresser, with the tie clips and cuff links. He crossed the hall to the dressing room and opened the door that covered the built-in shelves, the inside panel a mirror to check your tie. He reached for the top drawer then stopped, standing motionless. The mirror, some optical trick, reflected the mirror on the partly opened bathroom door. A leg, resting on the rim of the tub, just one, her hands moving up it slowly, as if she were putting on nylons, moving together toward her thigh, then out of the mirror. The hands again, the same smooth drawing up, rubbing. Not nylons, some kind of cream, maybe suntan oil. He stood there, unable to move, his eyes fixed on the mirror. A perfect leg, arched. He imagined his hands moving along it instead of hers, slick with oil, an image that came like a pulse beat, fast, involuntary. Now the leg leaned farther in, more thigh showing, the hands moving. Close the door. Instead he held his breath, mesmerized, wanting the hands to go farther. He could feel himself fill with blood. Unexpected, just like that, without thought. He wanted to see more, where the leg met the body. But it dropped and the other one came up, the same hand motion, just for him, even more exciting because she was unaware.
What could he say if she saw him? Find the wallet and get out. But he stayed, still not breathing. The other thigh now, an almost unbearable second, her sex just beyond the edge of the mirror, and then it moved forward, not hair, a wedge of bathing suit, then more, her whole body bent over, moving into the mirror, her head turning, looking toward her door. He closed the cabinet, a snap reflex, and crossed back to the office, his body flushed, slightly shaky. Had she seen him? The mirrors had to reflect each other, didn’t they? What would she have seen? Standing there, mouth half-open, looking where he shouldn’t, eyes fixed, caught in a kind of trance.
He picked up the checkbook again, pretending he could read the stub notes, listening for footsteps.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up, startled, feeling caught. She was pinning her hair, on her way to the pool.
“I was just-going through his things. I should have asked.”
Nervous, waiting for her to say something. But she seemed not to have seen him in the mirror.
“No, please. Somebody has to. I’ve been putting it off. I’ve been a coward a little bit. In case I found-you know, if it’s somebody I know,” she said, turning to go now, anxious, her movements as darting as they’d been that first day at Union Station.
A new idea. “Did he leave a will?”
“The lawyer has it. Everything comes to me, so that part’s easy. Oh,” she said, a hand-to-mouth gesture. “I never thought. Is there anything you would like? I’m sure he-”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t need anything. Anyway, you’re his wife.”
She smiled a little, trying to be light. “It’s lucky we’re living now. Not like in the old days. Bible times. You would have to take care of me. The brother’s wife. Like a sheep or a goat. I’d belong to you.”
He looked up at her, thrown off balance, then passed it off by smiling back.
“I couldn’t afford it.” He motioned to the check stubs. “Magnin’s alone.”
“You think I’m extravagant. Really, it was Daniel. He liked going out. He liked me to dress. And now how much is left? I haven’t thought.” She stopped and came over to the desk for a cigarette, her hands nervous. “I haven’t thought about anything, really. What I’m going to do. Since you won’t take me,” she said, smiling again, blowing out smoke. “I should sell the house. My father’s already asking, come live with me, but it’s enough the way it is. Milton’s daughter. An apartment somewhere, I guess. But I’d miss the pool.” All said quickly, as if she were filling time, avoiding something else.
“You don’t have to stay here.”
“I couldn’t leave my father. Anyway, I like it here. Maybe I’m lazy. Everyone complains, so ugly, so boring, but I like it.” She started to put on her bathing cap, then stopped. “I know why you’re looking,” she said suddenly, nodding to the desk. “You want to know who it was. The other one. But what does it matter now?”
He took a breath. “Because we need to know. I don’t think he killed himself. I don’t think he tripped.”
She said nothing for a minute, staring back, her body almost weaving. “You’re not serious,” she said finally, her voice faint.
“There was someone else in the room.”
“How can you know that?”
“It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“Sense,” she said, still trying to collect herself. “To think that. Things like that don’t happen, not in real life. Do you think he was a gangster?”
“That’s not the only reason-”
“Why then? She was so jealous? He was leaving her? Maybe it was the wife. Maybe you think that. Isn’t it always the wife?” she said, her voice rushed, flighty.
“Not always,” he said calmly.
She took up the cap again, fidgeting. “It’s not true. Think what it means.”
“It means he didn’t kill himself.”
Her shoulders moved, an actual shiver. “It changes everything, to think this. Why would anyone kill him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“And you think it’s her? She’s so strong? To push a man like Daniel? Ouf.” She shook her head, dismissive.
“She’s a lead. He got the apartment for her.”
She nodded at the desk. “What do you expect to find?”
“A number, maybe.”
“Clues, like his detectives,” she said. “Ben.”
“You think I’m imagining this.”
“No,” she said, her face softer. “I think you want it to be true. It’s easier for you.” She frowned. “But how could it be true?” she said, not really talking, thinking. “To make someone do that. Kill you. He wasn’t like that.” She looked back at him. “It’s so hard for you to accept this? What he did?”
“He didn’t.”
“The police think so.”
“The police made a mistake.”
“But not you. Just like him. You get some idea and then you won’t let go.”
“It’s not some idea.”
“Because it’s better this way. He didn’t do it.”
“Isn’t it?”
She said nothing, at a loss, then turned to go. “There’s more,” she said, flicking her hand toward the piles on the desk. “Boxes from his office. In the screening room. The next installment of Partners. Maybe it’ll give you an idea.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
“Not crazy. Something. I don’t know what. Like him. So sure.”
“You don’t want to believe it.”
“I want it to be over. It’s something you learn, when you leave. You can’t look back. Not if you want to keep going. He’s gone,” she said.
“And if I’m right? We just walk away?”
She held his gaze for a second, her eyes troubled, then turned again and started for the pool.
He looked at the piles on the desk. Check stubs and an address book. Receipts. The life you could trace. Not the one that rented a room. In cash. He reached for his wallet and took out Tim Kelly’s card. Someone interested in the other one.
Kelly answered on the second ring.
“Heard you had a talk with Joel. The day guy at the Arms.”
“Heard from who?”
“Himself. I told him to let me know if anyone came around wanting to have a chat. And there you were.” The same breezy tilt to his voice, like a hat pushed back on his head.
“And he did this for free,” Ben said, curious.
There was a snort on the other end.
“Since you bring it up, if we’re going to help each other out, I could use a little contribution to the tip box. I can’t put everything on the paper.”
“He didn’t know anything.”
“Joel? Not much. But you have to go through him to get to the others. The maid, say. So it’s worth something. Spread the wealth.”
“How much?”
“I’m not keeping books. Buy me a drink some night and throw a twenty on the bar and I’m a happy guy.”
“Okay,” Ben said, sitting back, interested. “So what did the maid say?”
“Her favorite tenant. Hardly ever there. She doesn’t even have to make the bed.”
“So he doesn’t sleep over. We knew that.”
“Or do much of anything else. Not exactly a hot affair. Neat, though. No stains.”
“Oh,” Ben said. A peephole world he’d never imagined, not in detail. “What about the usual night clerk? Joel said he was just filling in.”
“Check. Night guy knew him. Saw him a few times. Never saw the playmate.”
“So she used the back.”
“Or they arrived different times. Or she said she was going to some other room and didn’t. There’re all kinds of ways to do this.” None of which so far had occurred to Ben.
“But if she didn’t want to be seen-I thought that was the idea.”
“That was the hope. A face they’d know. Which is still the way it looks to me.”
“Why?”
“This careful? Their own place, back doors, nobody sees them together-you go to this kind of trouble for who? Some dentist’s wife?”
“You still have any credit left with Joel?”
“It wouldn’t take much. What?”
“Could you get a list of the tenants?”
“Why? You think she’s living there? Where’s the sense in that?”
“Nowhere. But maybe somebody she knows. Joel says he just sticks a sign in the window when a room comes up, but how many times would Danny be walking on Cherokee? So how did he know about the room?”
For a second there was silence on the other end.
“Okay. It’s an idea. Somebody she knows. A helper, like.”
“Juliet’s nurse.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s see who’s there. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t find anything here.”
“Forget there. You got better places to look. When do you start work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, while you’re wasting time making Joel nervous I spent a little time downtown. Always pays. Boys keep their ears open and like a drink after work.”
“And?”
“And it’s just like I thought,” he said, almost a grin over the wire. “He’s a jumper, then he trips. And who gets the report changed? Didn’t I say?”
“Studios. But why would Republic want to change it?”
“That’s the beauty part. They didn’t. The favor was for Continental.”
He first had to report to his commanding officer in Culver City, but that took less than an hour. His reassignment had been waiting for days, and the film he’d shipped from the Signal Corps already sent over to Continental, along with Hal Jasper to cut it. Colonel Hill, in fact, seemed eager to hurry him out, too. Now that the war was over, Fort Roach had the feel of a camp waiting for orders to pull out, an uncertain mix of khaki uniforms and open-necked Hawaiian shirts. No one bothered to salute. He was at the Continental gate before noon.
This time there were pickets, a handful with signs walking slowly back and forth, more a polite show of force than a threat. No shouting or heckling. They let him pass through without a word.
“You go to Mr. Jenkins,” the guard said, checking his clipboard. “Admin, room two hundred and one.” He pointed to an office building with Florida jalousie windows that faced Gower. “Park over there in Visitors till they get you a slot.”
As a boy he’d loved the surrealism of the Babelsberg lot, the street fronts and women in Marie Antoinette wigs, and sailing ships beached against a wall at the end of a street. Now what struck him was the blur of activity. Outside, in the dusty orange groves and parking lots, things moved at a desert pace. Here everyone seemed to be running late-grips pushing flats and carpenters and extras filing out of wardrobe, everyone hurrying while the sunny oasis over the wall stretched out for a nap.
The look was utilitarian-no country club flower beds or Moorish towers. Lasner hadn’t even bothered with the Spanish touches the other studios couldn’t resist, the arcades and fake adobe walls. Here buildings were whitewashed or painted a cheap industrial green. The only visible trees were the bottle brush palms up in the hills and a few live oaks behind one of the sound stages, probably the western set.
Inside things were sleeker-modern offices with metal trim and secretaries with bright nails and good clothes. He thought of the offices in Frankfurt, the piles of unsorted papers and drip pails and girls with hungry, pinched faces. This was the other side of the world, untouched, not even a shortage of nail polish. The war had only made it richer. Everyone in the hall smiled at him.
Room 200 was the corner, presumably Lasner’s office, and Jenkins was next door. Ben was shown in and announced without even a preliminary buzz, clearly expected. Or had the guard called up from the gate?
Jenkins was slight, with a boyish unlined face, sharp eyes, and hair so thinned that he was nearly bald. He came out from behind the desk with the easy grace of a cat, as smooth as his camel hair sport jacket.
“I’m Bunny Jenkins. Mr. L asked me to get you settled. He’s on the phone with New York,” he said, implying a daily ordeal.
Ben looked at him more closely. “Brian Jenkins?” he said.
“ Yes, that Brian Jenkins,” he said wearily. “Which dates you. The kids on the lot haven’t the faintest. Not exactly a comfort.”
“But-”
“Well, we all change,” he said, a put-on archness. “I’ll bet you used to look younger, too.”
Just the voice, still English, would have placed him. Faces wrinkle but voices never change. He was still the boy in The Orphan, then the reworking of Oliver Twist and the other fancy dress adventures that had followed. Ruffled shirts and wide liquid eyes, everybody’s waif.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“Never mind. It has been a while. They don’t know Freddie, either. Funny, isn’t it? They brought me over to keep Jackie in line and then they brought Freddie to keep me in line. I mean, really. Freddie. They could have saved a ton and just let the hair do it.” He touched his head.
“Freddie Batholomew?”
“Mm,” he said, glancing up, as if Ben hadn’t been following. “With all his wavy curls. Still, I hear. And much good it did him. They don’t know him, either,” he said, nodding toward the window and the anonymous kids on the lot. “Well, let’s get you started. I’m the tour guide. He wants me to show you Japan, which means the serious tour. I gather you’re here to give us some class.”
“He said that?”
“I’ve seen your budget. You might want to explain the project to me a little. I’ve already had Polly Marks on the horn. I said, ‘Darling, if you don’t know, how would I? He hasn’t even arrived yet.’ But she’ll be back. Walk with me. Oh, and you’re expected for dinner. Saturday. That must have been some chat the two of you had on the train. He never has line producers to the house-not this soon anyway.”
“That’s what I am, a line producer?”
“Well, you have your own budget and nobody seems to be in charge of you.”
“Not you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m a glorified assistant. Technically, vice-president, Operations, which is a nice way of saying I do whatever he needs me to do. You know, you grow up on a set, there’s not much you don’t learn. About the business, I mean.”
“In other words, you run the place.”
Bunny looked at him. “No. Mr. L runs the place. Every nook. You wouldn’t want to make a mistake about that.”
They were almost in the hall when the phone rang. Bunny stopped, glancing over at his secretary. She covered the receiver, mouthing a name at him.
“Hold on a sec. I have to take this.” He went over to the phone. “Rosemary, I thought you were being fitted.” He listened for a while, concentrating. “But, darling, she’s the best. I asked for her. Have you looked at the sketches? Forget the mirror. We never see ourselves, not properly. I tell you what, I’ll swing by in an hour, all right? But meanwhile all smiles, yes? You don’t want her to- Yes, I know. But she used to work for Travis. She sewed for him.” A pause. “Travis Banton. He dressed Marlene, Rosemary. Now go have a ciggie and calm down and I’ll be over later. All smiles.”
After another minute of reassurance he hung up, facing Ben again.
“A little crise de nerfs, ” he said lightly. “Still, that’s the business. I know, you’re going to make a documentary. Show us how ghastly it all was,” he said, affecting a shiver. “But that’s not the business. You know what it is, pictures? Attractive people. That’s all it’s ever been. So you want to look your best.” He put his hand to his head again, smiling slyly. “Keep your hair. Come on, I’ll show you Japan.”
They made it out of the building without another interruption, Bunny giving a running description as they went.
“That’s Payroll and Accounting. You’d get your check there, but I gather you don’t get a check.” A point to be cleared up.
“The Army’s still paying me.” He looked at the closed door. “They’d have a list, wouldn’t they? Every employee.”
“If we’re paying them. Why?”
“In case I was looking for someone.”
“Check the phone directory,” Bunny said simply. “There’ll be one on your desk.” He looked over at Ben, as if he were hearing the question again, then let it go. “We’ve got you in B building, next door. Mr. L wanted you in Admin, but there’s no room at the inn so you’re out in the stable. Be grateful in the end-nobody looking over your shoulder. I wish I were there sometimes. I’m afraid you’ll have to share a secretary. I wasn’t sure how much help you’d need.”
“That’s fine.”
“Bunny,” someone said, waving hello.
“How’d you get the name?” Ben said.
“You know, no one’s ever asked. All these years. Not rabbits. Pets, I mean. My mother, when I was little. Because I got my lines right away. You know, ‘quick as a.’ Anyway, it stuck. Editing rooms over there. I understand you got Hal back for us. He’s a great favorite of Mr. L’s. An A-list project,” he said, leaving it open, wanting to know how involved Lasner would be.
“How old were you when you started?”
“In the womb. I don’t know, four or five. Before I could read. She’d say the lines, and I’d have to remember them. But then you grow up. Nobody makes it past that. Look at Temple. Who wants to see her necking?”
“How did you end up here?”
“Through Fay. Mrs. L,” he explained.
“Yes, we met. At the train station.”
“Did you?” he said, another opening, then went back to the thread. “A great lady-not exactly thick on the ground out here. And smart. But she started late, so she needed somebody to help. You know, which fork where. How to do this and that. So, me. Anyway, the more I did for her, the more I got to know Mr. L, and he figured there were things I could do for him, too. So it all just happened. Here we are.”
He opened the door to a sound stage and flicked on the light. Ben had thought Japan would mean a Madame Butterfly set, tea house and garden, but this was Japan itself-a huge, three-dimensional model made of plaster, set up table height on a series of trestles that covered most of the floor.
“It’s built to scale,” Bunny said. “Every bay, river. Took months. Mr. L’s very proud of it.”
“But what-”
“You set the camera up there, on the crane, and you move it along what would be the flight plan. Pilot watches the film, he knows what he’s going to see when he gets there. The exact topography.” A craftsman’s pride.
Ben walked over. Mountains, cities, before you released the bombs. Up close, just plaster and canvas, like a train village under a Christmas tree.
“This must have cost-”
Bunny nodded. “It was the time. We had special effects do it after hours, so you run up overtime. The Army just paid for the materials.” He caught Ben’s surprise. “Our contribution to the war effort. We didn’t just hand out doughnuts at the Canteen.”
“What are you going to do with it now?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s just sitting here taking up space, but Mr. L can’t bring himself to get rid of it. The Army doesn’t want it. They can do actual aerial photography now. Funny thing is, the film quality’s not as good. They were better off with this.”
They made a circle of the back lot past the prop department, a hangar full of furniture, and the New York set. Everyone nodded or acknowledged Bunny, as if he were taking roll call. Lasner caught up with them on Sound Stage 5, in front of a plywood Hellcat fighter, sliced in half. A few grips were adjusting lights, fixed on the painted flat sky, but everyone else had gone to lunch.
“Well, at last,” Lasner said, putting his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Everything all right at home?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Hell of a thing. Anyway, you’re here. Bunny have you all set up? Anything you need, see him. It’s like talking to me.” He turned to Bunny. “What’s this about Rosemary’s dress?”
“Good news travels fast.”
“I happened to be over there.”
“What did you think?”
“What do I know? You’re the one knows this stuff.” He paused. “She never complains.”
“She’s nervous, that’s all. It’ll be fine.” He looked at Lasner. “It’s already paid for.”
“Don’t pinch. This is the picture we put her across. So what’s that worth?”
“I’ll look at the dress,” Bunny said, case closed. Ben watched the play between them, a practiced volley. It’s like talking to me.
Lasner nodded, then turned to the plane.
“Two more weeks on this. Think we can get it out before November?”
“We still have to score it.”
“The longer we wait- Who the hell’s going to want to see a war picture now? Would you?” he said to Ben. “I’m asking you. Seriously. These last two years, you show any goddam thing, you do business. Now we got all these guys coming back, kids over there seeing things, like you did. What do they want? Maybe they’re sick of this,” he said, gesturing to the plane. “War pictures.”
“Not with Dick Marshall,” Bunny said, indicating the pilot seat. “He’s had three in a row.”
“That’s no guarantee. Maybe Hayworth, that’s it. And that prick Cohn has her.” He cocked his head toward the studio across Gower, then looked at Ben. “You got the message about Saturday? Just a few people. Bring somebody. Nice.”
He left them at the door, heading back to his phones.
“It makes him crazy,” Bunny said. “Cohn having Hayworth.”
“Why?”
“They both started out down here. Same street. You don’t expect to get a star like that, not here. Well, maybe Rosemary will do it for him. She’s worked hard enough.”
“I thought it was all magic.”
“It helps if you help. Let’s get you back.”
“I met Cohn in Europe,” Ben said as they walked.
“You get around,” Bunny said, raising an eyebrow, having fun with it.
“I was an interpreter.”
“Cohn into English?”
Ben smiled. “Almost. He’s a little rough around the edges.”
“And he speaks so warmly of you.”
A policeman passed, touching his fingers to his hat. “Mr. Jenkins.”
“Bert,” Bunny said back.
“Not an actor?”
“Studio police. We have our own force.”
“Under you. Operations,” Ben said, thinking.
“It’s a small force.”
“And who deals with the outside police?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, runs interference. If somebody gets in trouble.”
“You think this is Metro? Benny Thau and his house detectives? There, no wonder. Just handling Mickey’s a full-time job. The rest of us just toddle off to bed and say our prayers like good children. Why, do you need to get a ticket fixed? Already?”
Ben shook his head. “Thank somebody.”
“For what?”
“Getting an accident report changed.”
“Changed.”
“To make it an accident. You know Danny Kohler was my brother.”
Bunny looked at him carefully. “Mr. L mentioned it.”
“Somebody at Continental got the report on him changed. Saved the family some embarrassment, so-”
“According to whom?”
“The police.” Ben shrugged. “People talk.”
“Through their hats. We don’t have that kind of influence.”
“Everybody says the studios have an in with the police.”
“Look, before you run away with yourself, let me tell you how things work. Somebody drives when he’s had a little too much to drink and naturally Publicity wants to keep that out of the papers. So we make a nice donation to the Benevolent Fund and people are nice back. When they can be. Strictly parking ticket stuff. The kind of thing you’re talking about-nobody here can do that.”
“Not even you? I thought you might-”
“Not even me. In fact, not me.”
“I just wanted to thank-”
“And I’d hear about it. I hear most things on the lot. Somebody’s telling you stories. Anyway, why would we? Your brother wasn’t at Continental.”
“Maybe he had a friend here,” Ben said, looking directly at him.
Bunny returned the look, then sighed. “Do you know what our police do? They check the padlocks, make sure the lights are turned off, equipment’s where it should be, not walking off the lot. They’re guards. They’re not on the phone with downtown fixing cases.”
“Somebody was,” Ben said.
Bunny stared at him, a standoff. “So you keep saying.”
He turned away, leading them around a corner. “Here we are, B building. I gather you asked for Frank Cabot for the narration. I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t take him off a picture if it’s shooting. I put a contract player list on your pile-in case he’s not available. When do you want to record?”
“It’s not written yet.”
“You’ll want to hop to, then. Not really something for the hols, is it? And Hal Jasper likes to take his time. It’s worth it, but you can’t hurry him. You’re just in here.”
Walking a little faster now, eager to get away, but then caught at the door.
“Bunny, Lou Katz. You remember Julie? Julie Sherman. She’s making a test.”
Julie nodded and smiled, her lips moist with gloss. She was in low-cut satin, held up by a single diagonal strap. Lou, hovering, glanced nervously at Ben, not recognizing him but not wanting to offend.
“Of course,” Bunny said. “Nice to see you. Everything okay? They take care of you in Makeup?”
“Yes, everyone’s been wonderful,” she said, meaning it. A pleasant voice, modulated, not what Ben expected.
“You’ll be, too, sweetheart,” Katz said. “Bunny, we appreciate this. You’re not going to be disappointed. They said you didn’t want the song.”
“Lou, musicals? Here?”
“I just thought, to get the full range. This is a real talent.”
Julie blinked, her only sign of protest, but otherwise kept smiling, evidently used to being discussed.
“You were on the train,” she said, acknowledging Ben. “With Mr. Lasner.”
“Yes. And you were with Paulette. Selling bonds, right?”
She smiled, pleased to be remembered. Bunny glanced at them, taking this in, his attention diverted.
“Bunny, we’ll catch up with you later,” Katz said, checking his watch. “You’re going to like this one. Maybe they can run it for you with the dailies.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said politely, their cue to leave, then turned to Ben. “Paulette? Is there anyone you haven’t met yet?”
“Whoever called the police.”
Bunny stared at him. “So you can send a thank-you note. Just to be polite. It means that much to you.” He cocked his head toward the building behind them. “Third door down on the left. Nice to have you with us. We could use something different. Mr. L’s right, you know. Nobody on God’s earth is going to want to see Dick Marshall shooting down Zeros. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
He headed to the Admin building, glancing back once over his shoulder.
The office was adequate but basic-typewriter, couch, Venetian blinds-a place for passing through, not unlike the apartment at the Cherokee. Ben sat down at the desk, annoyed with himself for pressing Bunny. The studio string-puller, now wary, protecting his flank.
Things had been stacked on his desk in neat piles: budget, a provisional time-line schedule, technician availabilities, an inventory of film already sent over from Fort Roach, the contract player list, personnel forms. The Signal Corps had had all the sloppy confusion of the Army, arrangements so haphazard they made the work itself feel improvised. This was a precision machine, waiting for him to set it in motion. To make something important. About millions. And all he could fix on was a police favor, worrying it like a sore tooth. Unable to leave it alone.
He picked up the phone and got an outside line.
“Meet any movie stars yet?” Kelly said when he heard Ben’s voice.
“Who made the call from Continental?”
“You tell me.”
“He didn’t give you a name? Whoever you talked to?”
“That would make it real. I get a tip. But that doesn’t mean it ever happened. My lucky guess. And nobody asks how I got there. Anyway, who would it be? Somebody in Publicity. Whoever. Who do you think makes these calls?”
“It wouldn’t be somebody further up the food chain?”
“Not likely. They like the cleaner air. We’re down here with the messenger service. The point is, who’d they call for. Who do they protect? They protect themselves. They protect the talent. This case, I’d go with the talent. He’s not renting an apartment for a business meeting. Just keep your ears open. Something like this happens, there’s always talk. I like the makeup girls. They always know who’s been out the night before. One look. Ask them out for a drink, you’ll hear what’s going on. Get in their pants, you’ll hear everything. You don’t even have to pay. Speaking of which, I could use a little contribution.”
“Why?”
“I got the resident list you wanted from Joel. Past year, right? He got all huffy. Why did I want it? Damned if I knew. Why do I?”
“I told you. Danny wasn’t driving around looking for FOR RENT signs. He knew the building. So, how? Maybe she used to live there.”
“Or somebody knew somebody. Or somebody heard-how far do you want to stretch it?”
“He had to know about it somehow. If we’re lucky, there’s a match.”
“Okay, I’ll swing by and leave it for you at the gate. Maybe-you got me curious-maybe I’ll run it by Polly’s files. She never throws anything out. Every rumor since Fatty’s Coke bottle.”
“She lets you go through her files?”
“Are you kidding? But it so happens it takes her hours to drink her lunch, and the secretary’s a friend of mine.”
“You have friends all over.”
“And I’m just the lowlife. Run a studio, you got the whole town in your pocket.”
Except the police, according to Bunny. He sat for a minute looking at the desk, then pulled over the contract list. Work backward. Who would they protect? A woman. Worth making a call for. He checked the credits. At Fox or Metro there would have been a slew of names, but Lasner borrowed stars so the featured players here made a much shorter list. Speaking parts, not hat-check girls or window shoppers. Recognizable. Rosemary Miller. Ruth Harris. Someone who met Danny on the side. Already married? One of these few, easy to check against the Cherokee records. Assuming she’d used her real name. Danny hadn’t. He thought of Lasner on the train: Who changes names? Actors. Or Danny, with something to hide.
He spent the rest of the day with Hal Jasper, a short, wiry man, still in uniform, with a permanent five o’clock shadow that suggested sprouting hair everywhere else. He was one of those technicians for whom film was tactile, a physical thing, not another form of theater. There was a reverence in the way he handled it, each splice a weighed decision. He’d already screened most of the footage, waiting for Ben, and now was full of ideas about it, eager to start.
“For the opening?” he said, framing his hands. “There wasn’t enough in the Dachau reel, but if you add some of the other materialBelsen, I guess, right? — you can go in just the way a GI would. The fence, the gates, everything. First time you see it. Walk in, looking around. What the hell happened here? Let it sink in. The faces. You don’t say a word. Just look. Put a big chalk mark on the floor.”
“A crime story,” Ben said.
“It’s the way in. I mean, if you see it that way.”
“A crime,” Ben said, thinking. “Why we need trials.”
“Trials. How the hell do you judge people like this, I don’t know. Unless you string them all up. Then you’re doing what they did.”
Ben looked up at the intensity in his voice. Thinking of Germans in greatcoats with attack dogs, not the kids eating out of PX garbage cans, both things true.
“Signal Corps said there’s more footage coming, but let me start with this.”
Ben nodded, feeling like an assistant, the machinery of the studio already whirring around him.
There were technician reqs to fill out and discarded film to be sorted and sent back to Fort Roach, so it was late by the time the gate called to say there was a delivery for him. Kelly, almost forgotten. It was still light, but the lot was quiet now, only a few distant carpenter hammers banging on a set somewhere. In the Admin screening rooms, they’d be setting up the rushes for Lasner and the producers, but most of Continental had gone home. The east sides of the sound stages were in shadows.
“Anything?” Ben asked, taking the manila envelope.
“Nada,” Kelly said. “Only a Red. If he is. Polly’s got them under every bed, so who knows?”
“A woman?” Ben said, interested.
“No. Guy. No connection. Probably some name she got from the Tenney Committee. They feed her stuff they can’t use-can’t prove. Then she runs it and they watch what happens. What pops out of the hole. Cozy.”
“And nothing else?”
“Not at the old Cherokee. You know what, though? She’s got Frank Cabot as a fruit. That’ll come as a surprise to his ex-wives.” He grinned. “Or maybe not.”
“Where does she get this stuff anyway?”
“Little birds. Chirp, chirp. And once in a while she gets hold of something real and makes him sing. ‘You wouldn’t want me to-’ And of course he doesn’t. Can’t. So he feeds her someone else.”
“Nice.”
Kelly shrugged. “Hooray for Hollywood. Don’t work too late,” he said, making a mock salute with one finger. “Let me know if you get a match.”
But no one on the Cherokee list appeared in the Continental directory. Ben looked at the short list of contract players he’d set apart. Not even similar name changes, like Kohler becoming Collins. Who changed names? Actors. Didn’t any live at the Cherokee, grateful for the phone lines? Somebody there had to be in pictures. He picked up the personnel form from his to-do pile and stopped. One box for Name, one for Birth Name. The office files would have everyone’s real name, maybe the one used to rent apartments. He filled out his own form, an excuse to hold in his hand, then took the lists and walked over to the Admin building.
It was dark behind the translucent glass panel, but the door, luckily, was unlocked, part of the protected village behind the studio gate. Ben turned on the light. A wall of filing cabinets. He started with the most likely featured players, working quickly. Arlene Moore used her real name, but Ruth Harris had been Herschel; Rosemary Miller, Risa Meyer. Ben smiled to himself. Hollywood’s own Aryanization program. But neither of them, nor any other birth name, was on the Cherokee list.
When he heard the voices outside in the hall he pushed the file back in the drawer, closing it gently so it wouldn’t slam. A click, inaudible to whoever was coming down the stairs. How could he have explained it? A clumsy snoop after hours. He was almost at the door when it opened.
“Oh, it’s you,” Bunny said, Lasner behind him. “I saw the light.”
“I was just dropping off my personnel form,” Ben said, indicating the sheet on the desk.
“So diligent and good.” Bunny looked quickly over the room, as if he expected to find someone else. “They should keep this locked.” He went over to the far filing case, test-pulling it open, looking relieved when it didn’t budge. “Well, the salaries are, so that’s all right. We wouldn’t want people dipping into that, would we? Makes for ill feeling up and down.” He switched off the light, following Ben out into the hall.
“You’re here late,” Lasner said, pleased. “You meet Hal?”
“We’ve already started. He’s just what I need. Thanks for-”
“What did I tell you? He’s got an instinct. His father was a cutter, you know. With Sennett. It’s in the blood. Like you. You on your way out? Come look at the rushes.”
“Sol,” Bunny said, his tone suggesting a breach of some unspoken protocol.
“If you’re going to learn the business,” Sol said.
Bunny looked at Ben, annoyed, then bowed to the inevitable.
“Mostly bridge shots tonight. Fair warning. No comments to the directors, understood? They’re touchy about tourists.”
But in fact, slumped down in their chairs, they seemed to expect a barrage of arrows, at least fired by Lasner.
“Eddie, what the hell’s the light on the left? What is that, sun on the wing? Except he doesn’t see it? Just us?”
“We can cover it, Sol,” the director said, not bothering to turn around. “It’ll be fine.”
Sol and Bunny were perched in the last row of the small screening room, everyone else scattered at random, leaving them a buffer zone of space. Lasner talked throughout, a back-and-forth flow, but Bunny sat quietly, looking over fingertips raised to his mouth in a pyramid, a line manager, carefully checking for scratch marks.
On the screen, Dick Marshall was leaning forward in his pilot seat, eyes squinting, taking sights on an unseen fighter plane. Then a closeup, his face registering the hit. A cover shot, another. There was no sound of gunfire or people yelling or the popping of AA fire outside-all the things Ben remembered-just Dick Marshall’s face, taking aim, taut with cold calculation.
After a few more cockpit shots they were in a western saloon, the camera turning away from the bar to take in the front door, the looming shadow behind it. The same shot, another angle. There seemed to be no order to the sequence, just what had come out of the lab first. Now a city street, someone getting out of a cab. The cab pulling away. A woman’s back, squaring her shoulders as she walks into an apartment building. Ben wondered how many pictures were in production, who kept track of the output, not just dialogue scenes but these, bridge shots, filler, seconds of screen time, the whole day’s work reduced to a few nuts and bolts, then welded to other pieces of film, like steel sections in the Kaiser yard, one ship a day rolling down the slipway. When the clip ended, Lasner started squirming, bored by the sudden lull.
“Where’s Rosemary?”
“She’s coming,” Bunny said, his head still resting on his fingertips. The screen crackled to life, the first clip with sound, the snap of the clapper with the take number. Rosemary was standing at a bar, smoking, her low-cut dress lined with beads, little darts of light. Dana Andrews, the star on loan, was questioning her, the kind of detective who didn’t bother to take off his hat indoors.
“We can do this hard or easy,” he said, the rich baritone turned tough.
“I don’t know where he is,” Rosemary said, disillusioned, not meeting his eye.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know.” She rubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray. “He left me.”
“Then one of you got lucky.”
A new clip, a fresh cigarette, this time facing him. “I’m telling you, I don’t know.” The ashtray. “He left me.”
“Then one of you got luck.” A second. “Lucky. One of you got fucking lucky.” Laughing now, the crew laughing behind him, somebody yelling cut.
“Wonderful,” Lasner said. “A thousand a week, he’s laughing.”
Another clip, this time without a flub, Rosemary turning away, a more sympathetic nuance, the camera close on her.
“Better,” Bunny said. “How do you like the dress?”
“Another inch and her tits are in the shot.”
“That’s her character.”
“No, what you want here is she should show them but she doesn’t want to show them.”
“Eddie?” Bunny said to the director, a few rows down.
“Keep watching,” a voice said in the dark.
And there it was, in the next clip, Andrews looking down, a gesture with her arm, the camera more aware of her body than before, but her own feelings more ambivalent, just what Lasner seemed to have ordered up.
“That’s it,” he said. “Christ, Eddie, I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“You know where I got that? Andrews. He said, ‘Let’s try it. I look down her dress but don’t tell her I’m going to, see how she reacts.’ And he’s right, the arm goes up, she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. But now we know her. Nice.”
“Actors,” Lasner said.
There was more of Rosemary, reaction shots, close-ups, all gleaming, like her beads, then a kiss with Andrews, which she first resisted, then gave in to. After that, a series without Andrews, simply raising her head, her hair swept up now, the way Liesl’s had been at Union Station. Ben leaned forward. Not unlike Liesl-harder, her mouth thinner and her face lacquered tight in studio makeup, but the same kind of look, the same cheekbones. Men married the same woman, over and over. Or was that just an old wives’ tale? But she’d be someone the studio would protect, worth safety shots and endless close-ups, a simple phone call. Then she looked to the side, a different profile, not Liesl. Grasping at straws. Still.
The woman who’d got out of the taxi was back, now full-face, Ruth Harris on the building’s penthouse terrace, confronting a gangster Ben didn’t recognize. The picture was clearly a B, shot for speed, not star making. No dewy close-ups. The scene seemed barely blocked out, the man uncertain of his marks. He had grabbed Ruth by the shoulders, a prelude to roughing her up, pushing her against the balcony. She fought back, trying to scratch his face, slipping out of his grasp. When he reached for her again, she pushed him hard and then, before Ben could react, it happened. The man staggered against the rail, off balance from her push, wheeled around, his weight now plunging forward, pulling the rest of him with it, too late to reach out, a scream, falling over the side. Close on Ruth’s eyes, wide now with terror. Ben blinked. Could it have happened that way? A fight, a push, the unintended pitch over-then, appalled, running. Ben looked away from the screen. The way he wanted it, not the way it had been.
“This is a woman’s picture?” Lasner said.
“The DA falls in love with her,” Bunny said, deadpan. “Well, here’s your little friend,” he said to Ben as the next clip appeared.
Ben looked back at the screen, but the terrace scene kept playing itself in his mind. Couldn’t it be possible? Not intentional, not someone coming up from behind. A woman, a love quarrel gone wrong. Two men struggling. Over what? It might even have gone the other way, Danny left standing with the appalled face. But it hadn’t.
On the screen, Julie Sherman was getting up from a piano and walking over to an older man in what looked like some variation of Intermezzo. She had been talking earlier, but Ben hadn’t been paying attention. Now her voice caught him, the same surprising modulation he’d noticed when they said hello. Nothing remarkable happened. She kissed the man, patting his arm, then walked across the room, turned, and said good-bye.
“Satin,” Bunny said. “Lou would dress his mother like a hooker.”
“Forget the dress,” Lasner said. “Sam likes her. He thinks he can do something with her.”
“She can’t move her arms.”
“So she can practice yanking his dick.”
“Sol,” Bunny said, then picked up the phone. “Any more dailies? Okay.” He looked down toward the directors. “We’re done here. Thanks. Rosemary looked great, Eddie.” He watched them leave, then turned to Lasner. “Sol,” he said, the rest unspoken.
“Sam’s girl-she looks good,” Lasner said stubbornly.
“She’s last year, somebody you could get into the sack before you ship out.”
“You’re an expert on this.”
“And now they’re coming back. What do they want? A quickie with a waitress or somebody you can bring home?”
“They want to fuck Loretta Young?”
“Sol, I’m serious. We don’t need her.”
“Sam Pilcer’s been with me a long time,” Lasner said quietly, a little embarrassed. “He doesn’t ask much.”
“So let him slip her a fifty every time.”
“We can always use a girl.”
“Fox dropped her.”
“Zanuck doesn’t see it. It wouldn’t be the first time. Lou doesn’t see it, either-he keeps saying she can sing. We could get her for a hundred a week with steps, and he’d be grateful.”
“Not as grateful as Sam,” Bunny said.
Lasner turned to Ben. “What do you think? You’re a guy off the boat. She look good to you?”
“Everybody looks good to me.” He glanced at Bunny, an offering. “She has a nice voice.”
“You want to sign her for her voice?”
“Try a shorter option,” Ben said, the thought too sudden to be filtered. “You don’t have to pick it up.”
Bunny looked at him, surprised, then waited for Lasner’s reaction.
“It never lasts long with Sam,” Lasner said finally, staring at Ben. He turned to Bunny. “Tell Lou you like her voice,” he said, amused now.
“Start her with a voice-over,” Bunny said, thinking. “If we had any.” He looked at Ben. “You could request her. For your picture.”
Ben nodded. An easy chance to make an ally.
“That picture? What voice-over?”
“One of the victims,” Bunny said. “The voice-over tells her story.”
Lasner stared at him for a second, then snorted. “You’re going to tell Lou you want her to play a dead Jew? Let me know what he says.” He stood up, shaking his head. “That’s some pair of balls you got on you,” he said to Bunny, heading for the door.
Bunny picked up a clipboard. “Good night, Pete,” he yelled to the projectionist, then turned to Ben. “Clever you,” he said, his voice without edge, as if he were trying to decide how he felt.
“If it works.”
“With Lou? He’ll grab it. It gets his foot in the door.” He sighed. “My new best friend,” he said, then looked up. “It’s hard for Sol to say no to Sam. They go back.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to use her. If she’s not right for the picture.”
“I can find something. Maybe buy myself a favor.”
“I wonder what that could be.”
Ben looked at him. It wouldn’t be Ruth Harris, not even worth safety shots anymore. “You do any favors for Rosemary?”
“My whole life is doing favors for Rosemary,” Bunny said. “Did you have a particular one in mind?”
His tone, a pretend innocence, drew a line, his eyes daring Ben to cross it. But what would be the point? Ben answered by saying nothing, a kind of standoff.
“I hope you’re not still going on about people making calls. You don’t want to be a nuisance.” He paused. “Rosemary’s been seeing Ty Power, since he got out of the Marines. She’s been photographed seeing him. They make an attractive couple. She’s going to keep seeing him. Until her picture comes out.”
“A one-man woman.”
Bunny tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned to the door, then stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Why Rosemary?”
“She’s Danny’s type.”
“Oh,” Bunny said, his voice sliding an octave. “And here I thought you were just guessing.”
“And she’s important to the studio.”
“Everybody’s important. Until they’re not.” He turned fully, facing Ben. “Look, I don’t know where you think you’re going with this, but if I were you, I’d park it outside the gate. You don’t want to be bothering people. Mr. L likes to keep things running. Anything interferes with production- Right now he likes you. He gets these little enthusiasms. You could have a future here. But he can blow hot and cold. You should know that. It’s a studio. People come and go all the time.”
“Except you.”
Bunny nodded. “I keep things running.”
S HE WAS in the pool when he got home. He followed the faint sounds of splashes through the quiet house and out onto the terrace, stopping for a second by the lemon tree near the door. Only the pool lights were on, a grotto effect, with blue light rising up, not spilling down, and he saw that she was naked, her body gliding through the water with a mermaid’s freedom, alone in her own watery world. He knew he should make a sound but instead stood watching her, the smooth legs, the private dark patch in between when they opened out. When she became aware of him, a shadow at the end of the pool, she swam toward him without embarrassment, faintly amused at his own.
“I thought I was alone,” she said smiling, glancing toward the crumpled bathing suit on the edge of the pool.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean-” Still looking, only her head above water, but the rest of her clear in the pool lights.
“That’s all right. I was getting out anyway.” She reached for a towel, more of her out of the water now, her nipples hardening a little as the air touched them. “Quiet as a mouse.”
She looked at him, still amused, then began to climb the shallow end steps so that he finally had to turn away, a show of modesty. Behind him he could hear the towel rubbing, another rustling as she put on a robe, watching her now by sound.
“Have a drink.” She moved to the open wine bottle on the table, tying her belt. “Iris left something in the fridge, if you’re hungry. I didn’t know-”
“I should have called.”
“No, don’t feel that. Come and go as you like.” She poured out two glasses from what he saw was an almost empty bottle. “Did you have a good day?” she said, handing him one.
He laughed, a reflex.
“What?”
“That’s what people say in movies.” What wives said.
“So how do I say it then?” She sat down on a chaise and lit a cigarette, turning to sit back but keeping one leg up, poking through the folds of the robe.
He shrugged. “Same way, I guess.”
“Ha, art and life. Like my father’s lectures. So, was it? A good day?”
He leaned back on the other chaise, taking a sip of the wine. “This is nice.”
“Mm. Maybe I’ll take to drink.”
But he hadn’t meant the wine: the warm night, the liquid light of the pool catching her bare leg, Danny’s wonderful life. Is that how it had been? Comparing their days, listening to night sounds, the soft air rubbed with hints of chlorine and eucalyptus.
“Did you go to your father’s?”
“No. He says it’s too soon.” She took another drink. “How long do people sit at home anyway? Do you know?”
“A week, I think.”
“Two more days. Then what? Ciro’s. Ha. Every night. Das susse Leben.”
“How about dinner at Sol Lasner’s? Saturday.”
She turned to him, eyebrows raised.
“He said to bring someone,” Ben said. “Who else do I know?”
She sat back, smiling. “Such an invitation. But you’re in luck. I’m free. Every day, in fact. Well, not Sunday.”
“What’s Sunday?”
“My father’s birthday. Salka makes a big lunch. Dieter comes and makes a toast-he writes it out before, a real speech. My father thanks him. Then he says something. It goes on like that, every year. Then chocolate cake.”
“The one Danny liked.”
“Yes,” she said, a sudden punctuation mark. She stubbed out her cigarette, then got up and poured more wine in their glasses. “They sent the medical report you asked for. It’s on the desk.”
“What does it say?”
“He died,” she said, sitting back down.
“I’ll look at it later.”
“Why?”
He said nothing for a minute, listening to the pool water hit against the drain flaps.
“I don’t know. How he died. It’s something we should know-it’s part of it all.”
She looked over at him for a second, about to speak, then let it go.
“If you say so,” she said wearily. “So what do we wear to Lasner’s? They dress up?”
“I’ll ask Bunny.”
She turned, a question.
“His right hand, his- I don’t know what you’d call him. He used to be a child star.”
“That’s what happens to them? I never think of them grown up.”
“Neither do they. Then they are and they have to do something else. But they look the same. Just older. Remember Wolf Breslau? The little boy in the Harz Mountain films? He became a Nazi. They put him on trial. For killing Poles. In open pits. The same baby face.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Someone you saw in the Kino, ” she said to herself. “How can anybody go back?” She shook her head. “My father says Heinrich’s making plans. To go back to that.” She took a sip of wine. “And what about you? What are you going to do? Now that you’re grown up. Make pictures?”
“No.”
“No? Lasner must like you. Inviting you to dinner.”
“He likes me this week. One in the family’s enough.” Was. “My father always expected Danny to-”
“But not you. So.” Another sip, thinking. “Did you like him?”
“My father?”
“No. Daniel.”
The question, never asked, took him by surprise, something tossed in the air that hung there, incapable of being answered.
“I mean, families, people don’t always- So many years, you didn’t see each other. I just wondered.”
“That was the war.”
“Ah,” she said, the sound floating up to join the question, still suspended.
He looked out toward the city. “I wanted to be him,” he said finally.
“When you were boys.”
“Yes.” When did that stop? Does it? He smiled, moving away from it. “He was good with girls.”
“And not you?”
“I got better.”
“They say in Germany now you can get a girl for a pack of cigarettes. One pack.”
“That’s not all you’d get.”
“So it’s not for you, the easy ones. I can see that. It wouldn’t be- how do you say schicklich?”
“Proper. Seemly.”
“Seemly,” she said, trying it, then took another sip of wine. “The first time I met him-he’d undress you. Look right at you. He wanted you to know he was doing it. So people are different. You look at me from the side. You don’t want me to know you’re looking.” She waved her hand at him before he could say anything. “It’s all right. It’s nice, someone looking. Don’t be embarrassed.” She paused. “I like you looking.”
He turned to her, not sure how to respond.
“If it makes you uneasy, my being here-”
She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the way it would happen. I know you a little now. You look from the side. You’d wait. You’d wait for me to say. To start it. That’s how it would happen.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think?”
A direct look, not from the side, holding his. He felt blood rise to his skin, as if she had touched him. Danny’s wife.
“Maybe,” he said. “And maybe you’re having fun with me.”
“No.” She smiled, looking down at her glass. “Maybe the wine is.” She sat up, a drowsy stretch, gathering the robe. “Anyway, it wouldn’t be seemly, would it? Not yet.”
“No.”
“Not even cold. That’s what they’d say, yes? Well, I’m going in.” She picked up the bottle to take with her. “Have a swim if you like,” she said, moving off, then smiled at him. “I won’t look.”
He sat for a while, his mind drifting but then, like the water, lapping back. Schicklich. The inside of a marriage was unknowable, curtained off. He listened for sounds of her inside, but only the crickets broke the quiet. Maybe she was already in bed, not at all uneasy because she knew the way it would happen.
On his way in, he stopped at the screening room to pick up some of the office papers Republic had sent over. Scripts, drafts. What had been in his mind those last weeks? Not that Partners in Crime was likely to be revealing-formula stuff, two brothers having fun, as frivolous as Otto’s comedies.
He went over to an open film can. The film itself was still in the projector, not yet run through and put away, the last thing Danny had seen. Maybe a Continental picture with a young star, someone he wanted to watch over and over? Ben flicked the switch, half-expecting to see Ruth or Rosemary-any girl you’d want to spend an afternoon with at a residential hotel. Instead it was a Fox Movietone newsreel, men shaking hands right after Hiroshima. Ben rewound the film and started it again.
First, the usual opening montage with the water-skiers, then the airmen at Tinian Island, the ground crew loading the bomb, kneeling with the pilots in front of the plane, a picture everybody’d seen now, instant history according to the voice-over. But the camera had been there, too, recording it, making a movie. And in the plane, flying now through the clouds.
The flash and mushroom cloud, the whole city rolled up in smoke, the narrator excited by the scale of it, the most powerful thing the world has ever known. No voice, though, over the next segment, shot later, a silent sweeping pan of the charred, flattened city. A few figures picking their way through the landscape, otherwise no movement at all. More pan shots, the frame of a domed building by the river, the rest vaporized. Congratulations all around back home, scientists and generals shaking hands. They’d made a movie of it, sent cameras up, got flight crews to pose. But so had the Nazis, filming atrocities with smiling faces. That’s how they’d identified Wolf Breslau, caught on film on the rim of the mass grave, smiling, unable to resist one last close-up.
The newsreel went on to the surrender scene on the Missouri, but even the narrator, booming with victory, couldn’t lift the film from the streets of ashes. The voice wanted to celebrate, throw a hat in the air like the relieved sailors, but the words said one thing and the pictures showed another-this was the way it would be now, the way we would die. Kissing couples, the narrator announcing a world of hope. But it wasn’t, Ben thought. Not now. Just an endless dread.
Ben took the reel off and put it in its canister. Not frivolous. Maybe Partners wasn’t the whole of him, maybe the war had touched something deeper, just as Ben’s life had been upturned by the camps, both of them alike under the skin.
He turned off the light and went into the house. On the desk in the study, just as she’d said, he found the autopsy report. He glanced through it. Medical English, not English at all, nearly incomprehensible. He heard a sound from her room, a turning perhaps, something dropped, meaningless in itself except as a sign of life. Just behind the door. He smiled to himself. Schicklich. How do we decide what’s right? He looked down again at the sheet. Pulmonary-something to do with the lungs. But of course she was right. All it said was that Danny was dead.
• • •
“W AS THERE some problem?” Dr. Walters said, caught on the run in the hall, not sure why Ben had come.
“I don’t know the technical terms. I’m not sure what they actually mean.”
“Simple language? He stopped breathing.” He halted midstep. “I’m sorry. I know it sounds like a joke. All I mean is that there were no signs of stroke-that’s the usual cause after a head trauma, edemal bleeding flooding the brain.”
“But not in this case.”
“No. Or heart damage. There are only a few ways to die. Of course, these are all connected.” He paused, framing his hands, explaining to a classroom. “Think of the brain as a switchboard. The operator pulled a line connected to the lungs. Like being cut off on a call,” he said, looking up, waiting to see if Ben was following. “The board controls everything. The lungs don’t operate by themselves.”
“Is that common?”
“Yes. Mr. Kohler, with a head injury like this, the surprising thing is that he didn’t die instantly. I gather he was lucky in the response time- the ambulance got to him before he lost too much blood. So that bought him some time. I’m sorry.”
“But if he regained consciousness-”
“We don’t rule out miracles,” he said patiently. “But I’m a doctor, you know, not a priest. This is what we expected to happen.” He waited for Ben to reply.
“Was there anything-any sign that he may have been injured before he fell?”
“Before.”
“Knocked out, anything like that.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“By someone else. Before.”
Dr. Walters peered at him, disconcerted. “No. But I’m not a policeman, either. Is there any reason to think this happened?”
“I just wanted to look at everything. Every possibility.”
Dr. Walters nodded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kohler. These things can be hard to accept.” He looked down at the paper in Ben’s hand. “Maybe that’s why we hide behind the language.”
He had stopped by the hospital on his way to lunch and now found himself running late, caught in the traffic west to Fairfax. Kelly had suggested the Farmers Market, somewhere away from the studio, a pointless Dick Tracy feint, but not worth arguing about.
The market had started as a collection of produce stalls for Depression farmers, but now had the look of a small studio-permanent buildings for the stalls and restaurants, table seating on patios and its own logo clock tower, looking over the parking lot like the RKO globe. Everything was painted cream and light green and maroon, what Ben thought of as leftover colors, the same ones Lasner had used at Continental, maybe even from the same cheap supply. Kelly was already at a table under the trees, nursing a beer.
“So what have we got?” he said as Ben sat down, his eyes darting over Ben’s shoulder.
“Not much. No matches from the building list.” He pulled out a paper. “These are the top contract players, the ones they might want to protect, but that doesn’t mean it’s one of them. And they’re not big names. Lasner doesn’t-”
“Yeah, I know, the loan-out king. Who’s he got borrowed, by the way. He’d want to take care of them, at least until the picture’s out. Listen,” he said abruptly. “You mention me to anyone? Tell them I’m looking at this?”
“No. You said-”
“You sure?”
Ben nodded. “Why?” he said, aware now of the look in Kelly’s eyes, his quick movements.
“Maybe my imagination. Except it never is, is it? Don’t turn around-no, don’t, I mean it. People always do that. Take a look when we get up for the food. There’s a guy over by the raw bar. I notice he’s casing the place, and he looks familiar and then it comes to me-he was hanging around Republic. When I’m there checking the talent. This is before I hear about Continental. Some coincidence, if you believe in that. So maybe he’s keeping an eye, you know? The guy’s a cop- everything about him-and I’m thinking, what the hell, the cops enforce for the studios, so maybe someone-”
“I didn’t say a word,” Ben said, beginning to turn.
“No, don’t. He’ll pick up on it. Let’s eat. You like seafood? They have a great Crab Louis.”
They got up and walked across the patio to the sales counter. He spotted him immediately-the man in the gray suit reading a paper, almost hidden behind a tree but scanning the patio just as he had the crowd at the funeral, the reception afterward. Ben gave a don’t-worry shake of his head to Kelly, and ordered the crab. A huge plate, enough for two.
“I know him,” he said when they sat down again. “He works for Polly.”
“No, he doesn’t. He may feed her, but he doesn’t work for her. I know all her runners. So what’s he feed her. He’s a cop. Maybe even Bureau. He’s got that look. He could be Bureau.”
“Calm down. You’re-”
“Cop shows twice, something’s up. You learn these things. So what the fuck does he want?”
“He came with Polly. To the funeral. That’s all I can tell you. Your name never came up at the studio. You’re sure he’s a cop?”
“Some kind of cop. Has to be.”
“I’m going to the head. See if he watches.”
He walked to the men’s room past piles of oranges, but the man in the gray suit seemed not to notice, his gaze still fixed toward the other end of the dining patio, an easier sight line than the side angle to Kelly. People in shirts having lunch, big California salads. A few suits. Liesl’s father. Ben stopped. Ostermann saw him at the same time and nodded. Impossible now not to go over. Ben signaled to Kelly that he’d only be a minute, using the turn to check on the man in the gray suit, absorbed again in his paper. Meanwhile, Kaltenbach was waving him to their table.
“So, you know this place?” he said standing, playing host. “A coffee? You’ll join us?”
Ben shook his head. “I’m with somebody. Just a hello.”
“A little bit of Europe,” Ostermann said, gesturing to the patio. “Not a real Biergarten, but still, trees. You can pretend.”
Ben looked down at their plates-sausages and deli potato salad, what they might in fact have ordered at Hechinger’s.
“That’s what everyone does here,” Kaltenbach said, waving his hands to take in the city. “Pretend.” He looked over at Ben, excited. “Do you know that I am going to Berlin?”
“Berlin,” Ben said, thinking of smashed bricks, jagged walls.
“Yes, I know, it’s bad now, you hear it from everyone, but still, Berlin. Something survives. I thought I would never see it again. I thought I would die here.” He gestured to the sunny patio, the healthy salad eaters, seeing something else. “And now-”
“How did you arrange it?” Ben said. “I thought nobody could get in, except the Army. A few reporters. You need a permit.”
“Yes, yes, another exit visa. But Hans here will write a letter. Thomas Mann, too. Who would say no to them? Why would they keep me here? On relief. Eighteen dollars and fifty cents a week. A charity case. You don’t think they’ll be happy to see me go? One last visa and it’s over. If Erika were still alive, think how happy.”
“Maybe you should wait,” Ben said, “until things are better. It’s difficult now, just to live.”
“No, they’re giving me a flat.”
“Who?”
“The university. I’m invited to accept a chair at the university.”
“But it’s in the Soviet sector.”
“Yes, of course, that’s who invites me.”
Ben glanced at Ostermann, who met his eye but then looked deliberately away, toying with his fork.
“They are going to print my books again.”
“The Soviets?”
“My friend, one conqueror or another, what’s the difference? Germany lost the war. Do you think the Russians will leave now? How else can I do this? I can be a writer again. I can be in Berlin,” he said in a kind of rush, emotional now, almost touching it. “Excuse me,” he said, putting a fingertip to his eye. “So foolish. Old age. And now the bladder. I’ll be right back.”
Ben watched him head for the men’s room.
“He’s not a political man,” Ostermann said quietly.
“He will be. The minute he gets off the plane. German writer returns. To the East. Which makes them look legitimate. They don’t care about his books. They just want him for show.”
“I know. They’ve asked some of the others. Even Brecht is reluctant and he-”
“They ask you?”
“No.” He glanced up, a slightly impish smile. “Maybe they don’t like my work. Too bourgeois.”
“You can’t let him do this. Do you know what it’s like there?”
“What do I say to him? He lives in one room. On money we give him. His friends. Each handout a humiliation. His wife committed suicide. For her, it was too much. And now they come to him. A professor. With a flat. His books. What do we offer instead?”
“Not a prison. At least here-”
“Reuben,” he said, using his full name as a kind of weight, “he doesn’t even know he’s here. He’s somewhere else, waiting. So let him go.”
“This isn’t going to make him popular with the State Department. Or you. Writing letters.”
“An act of friendship, not politics. Or isn’t that possible anymore? I thought that time was over. Well, it doesn’t matter for me. I don’t want to go back. The conscience of Germany? I don’t think they want that now. And maybe I don’t want them, either.”
Ben looked toward the other end of the patio. The man in the gray suit, paper down, was now sipping coffee. Just having lunch.
“A thousand apologies,” Kaltenbach said, joining them at the table. “And after so many kindnesses. I’m not myself these days.”
“Herr Kaltenbach,” Ben said, a sudden thought, “how did the offer come, from the university. A letter? It’s official?”
“Yes, yes. Hand delivered by the Soviet consul, all the way from San Francisco. So I would know it was genuine. You know, you don’t trust the mails for such an offer.”
“Ah, the consul,” Ben said. Someone who would certainly be watched everywhere, each contact another string to follow. “Well, I hope everything works out. Berlin-”
Kaltenbach nodded. “You don’t have to say. I’ve seen the pictures. A wreck. But look at me. So maybe we’ll suit each other.”
There was another minute of bowing farewells, a European leave-taking, before Ben could go back across the patio. Kelly was waiting, smoking over the debris of his Crab Louis, but instead of turning to their table Ben kept going, an impulse, toward the gray suit.
“Excuse me. You were at my brother’s funeral, but we weren’t introduced,” he said, extending his hand. “Ben Collier.”
For a second, the man simply stared, as if the approach had violated some rule, then lifted his hand to shake Ben’s.
“I didn’t know who you were. They told me later. You had different names?” he said, keeping his eyes on Ben, reading him.
“My mother changed it. How did you know Danny?”
“We did some work together.”
“You’re in pictures?” Ben said, surprised.
“Technical advisor. To get the details right.”
“On the series? Police details? My friend over there thought you might be. Maybe FBI.” The man said nothing. “He thought you might be tailing him.”
“Yeah? What’d he do?” he said, playing with it, then looked at Ben and shook his head. “I’m retired.”
“From what?”
The man hesitated, thinking through a chess move, then nodded. “The Bureau.”
“You don’t look old enough to-”
“I took a bullet. That buys you a few years.”
“So what do you do now?”
“Have lunch,” he said, stretching his hand toward his finished plate, implying long afternoons.
“And work for Danny.”
“I gave him advice, that’s all. We helped each other out.”
Ben looked up, an off phrase, but so innocuous there was nowhere to take it.
“Well, thanks for coming to the funeral. Funny running into you again.”
“No, I’m here most days.” He got up to go, taking his hat off the table. “I’m sorry about your brother. That was a hell of a thing.”
“Whatever it was.”
The man stopped, his eyes fixed on Ben. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just a little fuzzy, wouldn’t you say? What happened? You’re the pro.”
He waited. Finally the man looked away, putting on his hat.
“I wouldn’t know. I’m retired.” He paused. “It’s tough to get over something like this. You should take it easy.”
“Everyone says. Would you? Your brother?”
“Something worrying you? You were close? Maybe he said something to you.”
Ben shook his head. “What would he say?” Now a cat and mouse game, but no longer sure who was which.
The man shrugged, then took out his wallet. “Sometimes you start something, you don’t know what you’re getting into. Here.” He took out a card and handed it to Ben. “If you need any technical advice.”
Ben looked at it. Dennis Riordan. No affiliation, just a telephone number.
“Technical advice,” Ben repeated.
“Maybe he left something. Might explain it. Maybe I could help. Figure it out.” He began to move off. “Anyway, tell your friend to keep his nose clean. Stop imagining things.”
“What about German writers?”
Riordan turned. “You’re a suspicious guy.” He looked down at the table. “It was just lunch.”
He crossed the patio to the exit near the vegetable stalls, unhurried, not even a backward glance.
“What the hell was that?” Kelly said at their table.
Ben handed him the business card. “What you thought. The Bureau. But retired.”
“They never retire. They just find another pack of hyenas to sniff around with.”
“Like Polly.”
Kelly shook his head. “But somebody. I’ll find out.”
“You know people at Republic? Find out if he ever got a consultant fee. On Danny’s pictures.”
“What if he wasn’t paid?”
“Then why do it?”
Kelly looked at the card again, memorizing the name, then handed it back.
“Christ, all I wanted was the girlfriend, an item, and now I’ve got the Bureau on my back.”
“I don’t think so. If he was tailing you, you’d never see him. Handing out cards. He wants something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But think where we’ve seen him-Republic, the funeral. You weren’t even at the funeral. He’s not tailing you. It’s like he’s tailing Danny.”
Lasner lived in a chateau near the top of Summit Drive with enough land for a full set of tennis courts and a formal garden. Danny’s house flowed easily outside and back, the pool another room, but here the effect was moated, drawn up behind the gravel drive, the high view just something framed by picture windows. Teenagers in uniforms had been hired to park the cars so that arriving felt like stepping out of a liveried carriage, something Lubitsch might have shot.
The inside rooms were Du Barry French, high and ornate and formal, with gilded side tables and silk fire screens and ormolu footed chairs. Ben wondered what Lasner made of it all, passing through each morning on his way to coffee. Or did they have breakfast in bed, a proper levee? Still, Fay clearly loved playing chatelaine, greeting people just inside the door with real warmth, so where was the harm? The money, all those nickels, would have been spent somehow. Why not on a French dream? With a hostess once pretty enough to have been a Goldwyn Girl, far more attractive than any of the originals. Even Sol, beaming by her side, was an improvement, at least a bulldog jaw, not a weak Bourbon chin.
“My god, look at the jewels,” Liesl said.
Bunny had said to dress, but Ben had expected country club cocktails in suits. Instead he felt he had walked into an A-picture party scene, everyone turned out by Makeup and Wardrobe, evening dresses and sparkling necklaces, the room like some velvet jewel case.
“Fake,” he said, smiling.
“No, they’re not.” She put her fingers to her throat. “Anyway, the pearls are nothing to be ashamed of. My mother wouldn’t sell them, not even in Paris when we-”
“Nothing to be ashamed of. The rest of you looks good, too.”
“Oh yes, in a roomful of movie stars.”
He glanced around, taking in what she’d already noticed, faces from covers, people you saw in magazine ads recommending soap. He thought of his mother’s parties before the war, gaunt women with hats and fur trim, not beautiful, using their jewels to light up the room. Here the faces themselves were luminous. Paulette Goddard had come, looking even better than she had on the train. Alexis Smith was talking to the Lasners, her chin at a patrician tilt. He recognized Ann Sheridan by the fireplace, the full mouth not drawn in a glamour shot pout, but smiling, as down to earth as the girl next door, if she’d been beautiful. They were all beautiful. It seemed a kind of joke, an ancien regime room finally filled with glorious-looking people instead of pinched-faced heirs.
“There’s Marion Wallace. I’d better say something to her. She sent a nice note.”
“Let me buy you a drink first.” He lifted two champagne flutes from a waiter’s tray. “Who else is here?” he said, clinking her glass. “Do you know anyone?”
She smiled. “A few. There’s Walter Reisch. Daniel used to play tennis with him. Paul Kohner. You know him, the agent? He handles Bruce Hudson. In the series.” She took another sip. “It’s a small town. Nobody ever believes that, but it is. They never see anyone else. If my father walked in, no one would know who he was. Alma used to complain about it. After Bernadette, when people asked Franz to parties.” She giggled. “People thought she was a character actress.”
“Ah, you’re here,” Lasner said, not really in a receiving line, but hovering near the door. “A clean shirt even. You know Fay.”
“So glad you could come,” she said. “Sol tells me everything’s great with the picture.”
“Well, the cutter is. Now all I have to do is listen to him.”
“You think you’re kidding, but I’ve seen it happen. So maybe you are as smart as he says.” She smiled, rolling her eyes toward Lasner. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand to Liesl.
“I’m sorry. Fay, Liesl Kohler.”
“Talk about smart,” Sol said quickly, missing the introduction but taking Liesl’s hand. “One week in town, already a beautiful woman.”
“Sol,” Fay said, then to Liesl, “Pay no attention, he thinks he’s a comedian.”
“No, Jack thinks he’s a comedian. He tells jokes to Jessel. The same jokes. You meet Jack?” he said to Ben. “When we were over in Europe? He was with the group.”
“Jack Warner? Just to shake hands.”
“You’re lucky. He tells one tonight, it’ll sound like the first time to you. Maybe even funny.”
“Sol,” Fay said, but with a glint, agreeing. She looked at Liesl. “Your pearls are lovely. I couldn’t help noticing.”
“My mother’s.”
“I knew it. The old ones have that rich tone. They say it comes from being worn next to the skin. All those years.”
“Do me a favor,” Lasner said to Ben. “I want to introduce you later. Fay’s cousin. We just got her out. Over there. All along, we’re thinking she must be dead and then the Red Cross calls and says she gave them our name, she’s alive, would we send for her? So, we’re crying, thinking, what are the odds? And now she’s here, she just smokes.”
“Sol, she has been through something.”
“Did I say no? It’s a miracle. She’ll be interested-your picture.”
“Sometimes, you know, it’s the last thing they want to talk about. Where was she?”
“Poland. Not at first. They shipped her around. She doesn’t say much.”
“She told you, Sol. Oranienburg, then Poland.” She turned to Ben. “She’s getting used to things, that’s all. She’s only here two days. Big shot here wants- I don’t know, what, she should be dancing.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Ben said politely.
“I figured,” Lasner said. “You’ll have something to talk about.”
Is that why he’d been invited? To entertain survivors? But she’d only just arrived. Lasner was drawing him aside, keeping his hand on his arm.
“Listen,” he said, low as a secret, “I just want you to know. I didn’t want to say at the studio, but I appreciate-you know, on the train-”
“You feeling okay?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Sol, it’s Jack and Ann,” Fay said, drawing him away.
The Warners were all smiles, Jack with a jaunty mustache and a tan so dark that it seemed to have shriveled his face, like a walnut. Ben remembered him from the Army tour, paler and in uniform, telling stories about Errol Flynn. They’d been on Hitler’s boat, a brief day’s outing on the Rhine, which reminded Warner of his own yacht, moored next to Flynn’s at the marina, so close you could hear what happened in the master bedroom. “Not just every night, two, three times a night. Maybe different ones, I don’t know. I said to him, you keep it up, it’s going to fall off.” Laughter from the others, watching the banks stream by. Now he shook Ben’s hand without any hint of recognition, just a new face at Lasner’s.
“So all I hear is Rosemary Miller,” he said to Sol. “It’s going to happen for her?”
“Your lips,” Lasner said, raising his eyes.
“Get it in the can before the goddam union closes everybody down,” Warner said, prompting a huddle, cutting Ben and Liesl loose to drift.
Waiters were still passing rich canapes-caviar and asparagus tips in puff pastry-so it would be a while before they sat down. Liesl had told him Hollywood ate early to get up early, but Saturday must be the exception. No one made any move to the several tables set up in the next room. Ben wondered how dinner would be announced. A gong? Meanwhile, more champagne was poured and the man at the grand piano in the corner, probably someone from Continental, kept playing show tunes.
All the talk, overheard in snippets as they walked around the room, was about pictures. An option picked up. Sturges’s fight with Paramount. Disappointing grosses on Wilson. De Havilland taking Jack to court over her suspension. Would there be a strike? Paramount having a record year. But so was everybody. Knock wood. There seemed to be no one from the outside at all. The aircraft factories in Northridge, the oil companies downtown, shipping offices in Long Beach-all the rest of the new, rich city was somewhere else, at gentile dinners in Pasadena, maybe, or out at the movies. Rosemary Miller had just arrived, giving Sol a showy hug, careful not to muss her lipstick, then a broad smile to the rest of the group. Because it seemed to be her time-even Jack Warner had heard-and people were coming over to her, after all those parties where nobody had even noticed her.
“I’d better say something to Marion,” Liesl said. “Who’s that looking at you?”
Ben followed her gaze. “Bunny, the one I told you about. He runs things.”
She patted his arm. “Then be nice. I won’t be long.”
She moved away before Bunny reached him.
“Who was that?” he said, his eyes following her, intrigued.
“Liesl Kohler.”
“His wife?” he said, slightly addled. “You brought her? You might have said.”
“She’s allowed to go out. Why? Is there something wrong?”
“It’s just that all the seating’s been-well, never mind,” he said, stopping. “I’ve put you next to Paulette. Since you’re such old pals.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, that’s your left. Right you’ve got a relative of Sol’s. Fay’s actually. Genia, hard g. Markowitz. Polish. But lived in Berlin. Sol asked. She doesn’t speak much English, and I gather you can speak German,” he said, his voice rising at the end, a question.
“I was brought up there. Partly, anyway.”
“That’s right, the father. Quite a life. More interesting by the day.”
“And that’s just my childhood.”
Bunny smiled, enjoying the play, a kind of volley.
“Often the most interesting part,” he said. “ Mine was.”
“God. Rex Morgan?” Ben said, distracted by a tall man near the corner. “I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. He’s not still a cowboy. He must be-”
“Real estate. Glendale. You’d be surprised how many people want to live there.”
“His pictures were Continental?” Ben said, still trying to explain his being here.
“Every one. Locations out in Simi Valley. His ranch now. He bought it eventually.”
“So he and Lasner are old friends.”
“Well, that. And he owns a piece. Of the company. He came through in ’thirty when the banks wouldn’t. Mr. L got through the crunch and Rex got eight percent,” he said simply, the details of the business like a file at his fingertips.
There was a burst of laughter near the door.
“Wonderful. Jack’s here. Telling jokes.”
“You often have the competition over?”
“He’s the reason for the party.”
“It’s not just dinner?”
“It’s never just dinner.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“The Honorable Kenneth T. Minot.” He looked at Ben. “Our congressman. He and Jack need to meet.”
“Why?”
“His district takes in Burbank. Jack’s in Burbank. They should know each other. Mr. L thinks he might be useful with the consent decree.” He caught Ben’s puzzled expression. “The Justice Department issued a consent decree, before the war, to separate the studios and the theaters. Force separate ownership. A disaster for us. Nobody wanted to do anything while the war was on-kick us while we were being so helpful- but now it’s over, they’re acting up again so we’re trying to put a stop to it. Minot’s been friendly.”
“But Continental doesn’t own theaters, does it?”
“But Jack does. And we have a distribution agreement with him. This goes through, everybody suffers.”
“Warner doesn’t know his own congressman?” Ben said. “A studio that size-”
“Wrong party. Jack’s funny that way. After Yankee Doodle, he thought Roosevelt was a personal friend. But it’s time he met more people.”
“Across the aisle.”
“We don’t care where they sit as long as they get the decree squashed.”
“And he gets?”
Bunny raised his eyebrows. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
Ben looked around the room again. All this extravagance to arrange a meeting. Rosemary was near the piano now, chatting with Alexis Smith. Ann Sheridan had gone over to greet the Warners. It occurred to Ben suddenly that the stars had been brought in to dress the room, like eye-catching centerpieces. They were all under contract to Continental or Warners-maybe Lasner and Jack had simply ordered them up. He wondered if there were a studio pecking order, Bette Davis having earned the right to pass, Cagney beyond this kind of thing. Only Paulette was with another studio, but she was a friend, happy to sparkle for old times’ sake.
“Well, he’s here,” Bunny said, looking toward the door. “The Honorable. Ken to his friends.”
Minot was sandy-haired, younger than Ben had expected, with an athlete’s build already filling in, about to turn soft. There was a pleasant-looking woman on his arm, a little dismayed at the dazzle of the party about to swallow her up.
“His first term?” Ben said.
“War hero. Took out a Jap machine gun emplacement. Then caught shrapnel in the leg, enough to get him out. Just in time to start passing out flyers in Van Nuys. Well-oh god, the wife. Marie, I think. Marie?”
“Time to go to work.”
“You think you’re kidding. Sorry about the cousin, but I did give you Paulette. I just wish you’d told me- By the way, I talked to the boys in Publicity. And Security. Nobody made any calls about your brother. Nobody knew him, in fact. So I’d check your sources. They might have got mixed up. Another studio. That happens. Sometimes on purpose. A little game they play.”
Taking the time to close the door on it. Ben started to say something, then let it go. Bunny was already moving away, on to more important things.
He made another circuit of the room, another glassful, then noticed Liesl listening to some man, her expression polite but a little pained, trapped. There had been a shift in the crowd, the people near her moving away, leaving her standing in a circle of space, like a fawn in a clearing, and he felt a sudden urge to wrap a coat around her shoulders. When he went over she smiled, a flicker of relief in her eyes. Marion had been replaced by a director who’d known Danny at Metro and was now offering his condolences. He took Ben as a convenient excuse to escape.
“Having fun?”
“I would be if I didn’t have to talk. Be like her,” she said, nodding toward a middle-aged woman staring out the picture window, smoking. “Just watch everybody.”
“She’s looking the other way.”
“They all want to know what picture I’m working on. When I’m not, they walk away.”
Ben’s eye wandered back to the woman at the window, now moving to a coffee table to put out a cigarette and light another. She looked up, taking in the room, but blankly, as if she couldn’t really see anything. A skeletal thinness, gray hair in short bangs, a velvet dress that seemed too big for her, borrowed. She turned back to the window, staring down at Los Angeles.
“I have a feeling that’s my dinner partner,” Ben said.
“No, it isn’t,” Paulette Goddard said, suddenly at his side. “I am. Hello again.”
He introduced her to Liesl.
“Bunny told me,” she said to Ben. “I don’t suppose you brought any cards.” Her smile and eyes bright, still carrying their own key light. Ben thought of her cross-legged on the Pullman bed, letting Sol win. A good sport.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“Mind? I usually get Rex. He likes me or something. I don’t know why. He starts on his horses and I just nod off. Do you ride?” she said to Liesl, drawing her in.
“No.”
“I can’t imagine. The only ranch I’ve ever been to was the divorce ranch in The Women. At Metro.” She glanced around. “Fay certainly knows how to go all out,” she said, half-laughing. “I remember when it was soup and crackers.” She reached for a canape on a tray, showing a green flash of emerald bracelet.
“You’re friends?” Liesl said, polite.
“Mm, from the good old days, and thank God they’re over. Are you in pictures or-?”
“I translate books. From German,” she said, with a sly glance to Ben, waiting for Paulette to bolt.
But Paulette was impressed. “Do you really? I wish I could. Anything like that. They say you’re not supposed to regret anything, but when you don’t have school- I started work so early, I don’t know anything. You never catch up, really.”
“Well, translation, it’s not so brainy,” Liesl said easily. “Just work. And they’re my father’s books, so I can always ask him what he meant. Then find the words.”
“Your father?”
“Hans Ostermann. He’s not so well known here-”
“ Central Station, ” Paulette said immediately. “I read it. Warners made it. God, what a mess. Mary Astor. He must have hated it. But I read it in English, so that was you? I’d love to meet him sometime. Just coffee or something, if he sees people. Oh, there’s Rosemary. Have you met? Rosemary,” she said, drawing her to them, “come meet some people. Liesl Kohler,” she said, remembering it, something they didn’t teach in school. “My old friend Ben-we were on the Chief together.”
Rosemary hesitated, staring at Liesl, that first appraisal women make at parties, seeing everything, then shook hands with them both.
“Are your ears burning?” Paulette said. “Everybody’s talking about you.”
“The picture isn’t even finished yet,” Rosemary said, glancing again at Liesl, then facing Paulette, a subtle ranking.
“That’s the best time. When everybody still thinks it’s wonderful. But I hear you are.”
“Well, you know, everybody likes dailies and then it comes out and-”
“Just hit your marks and cross your fingers-that’s all any of us can do.”
Rosemary flushed, clearly pleased to be included in “us.” In person, without the glow of backlighting, her features seemed sharper, everything less soft. She looked around, slightly nervous, perhaps still self-conscious about being the center of attention.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful house,” she said, apparently meaning it.
“Well, it’s not my taste,” Paulette said. “I can’t even pronounce it. Louis Quinze?” she said to Liesl, saying it perfectly. “Liesl’s a translator, so she can be mine tonight. Quinze,” she said again, at Liesl’s nod. “I always think about dusting it. But Fay loves it. She always had a good eye. I can’t tell one vase from another. But Bunny says the Sevres is museum quality.” Again pronouncing it correctly. “So you see, she knows.” She turned, seeing Bunny coming over to them. “Isn’t that right?”
“Darling, I have to borrow you,” Bunny said, ignoring the question. “Come meet the congressman. He loved Standing Room Only.”
“God. And he got elected?”
“Nicey, nicey. Come on. You can talk to Ben at dinner. Rosemary, you know Irving Rapper’s here. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.” A firm do-yourself-some-good nudge, Liesl and Ben just table fillers.
“Now’s your chance,” Ben said to Liesl, nodding toward the woman at the window. “To join the wallflowers.”
“Who is she? She hasn’t talked to anyone.”
“Fay’s cousin. Has to be. I don’t think she has any English.”
“Then go rescue her. I’m going to the ladies’, find out what people are really saying.”
Fay’s cousin didn’t turn when he came up, her gaze still fixed out the window.
“Entschuldigung. Pani Markowitz?”
“Pani? So you speak Polish?” she said in German, finally turning. Ben smiled. “No. A courtesy only. I was told you were Polish. I’m Ben Collier.”
“I was born there, yes,” she said, her voice flat.
It was then that he took in her eyes, the same faraway emptiness he’d seen in some of the others’, a blind person’s eyes, no longer needed, nothing more to see. Her collarbones stuck out, barely covered by the thin layer of skin.
“I thought I would die there, too, but no.” She half turned to the window. “And now look. So many lights.”
“You lived in Berlin?” Ben said, to say something. “I was there as a boy. A few years.”
“Yes, Berlin.”
“And you’re Fay’s cousin.”
“Her father and my mother-but he came here. A long time ago, before the first war.”
“Your mother stayed.”
“My father-he did very well. There was no reason for us to leave. It was a different time then. My mother always said Max left for the adventure. They thought he was a no-good. To leave your family, your country. So who was right?” She turned fully to the room, the rich end of Max’s gamble. “A daughter living like this. To think all this still exists.”
“You were in a camp.”
She raised her eyes, still not really looking. “We all were. My husband, my sister. Everyone.”
“Are they-?”
She shook her head. “Now only me.”
“I’m sorry.”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if the words were not just inadequate but puzzling, irrelevant.
“I don’t know why. I was not so strong. Leon was stronger, for the work. But they took him. To the gas. I don’t know why. No reason. You survive, no reason. Or you don’t.”
“I knew you’d find each other,” Lasner said in English, genial, putting his hand on Ben’s shoulder.
“You speak English?” Ben asked her.
“A few words only.”
“But now that you’re here, you have to try. I tell her, if she gets every other word, she’s at least halfway there, right? You tell her about the picture?”
“Not yet.” Ben switched to German. “We’re making a documentary for the Army, about the camps.”
“You want to put this in a film?”
“So people will know. A record. Eisenhower ordered them to film it when we got there. He said no one would believe it otherwise. A kind of proof.”
“A proof.”
“That it happened.” He looked at her. “We don’t have to talk about this, if you’d rather not.”
“Put her in the picture. You can tell your story,” Lasner said.
“What would I say? I don’t know the reason for any of it.” She reached down to the coffee table for another cigarette.
“You ought to go easy on those things.”
“I’m sorry. For me it’s a luxury. A whole cigarette.”
“I didn’t mean- I just meant for your health. Your life is a gift now.”
She stared at him, saying nothing until, slightly flustered, he changed the subject.
“You know who this is?” He nodded at Ben. “Otto Kohler’s kid.”
Now her eyes did move, suddenly alert, as if she’d heard another voice.
“Otto’s? But-”
“You knew my father?”
“Otto,” she said, the flat tone now a little agitated. “There was a boy, yes. But I don’t understand. You’re not-”
“My brother. I was in England.”
“Your brother. Taller,” she said, measuring. “What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.”
She drew on the cigarette and looked down. “Yes. Of course he would be dead.” Her voice flat again. When she looked back up at him her eyes had retreated behind their blank wall. “So now this,” she said aloud, but to herself. “Otto’s son.”
“I knew you two would have lots to talk about,” Lasner said in English.
She turned to him, hesitating, translating in her head, then looked back at Ben, an almost wry expression on her lips.
“Yes, much to talk about,” she said and then, suddenly skittish, “Excuse me.”
She left before either of them could say anything. Lasner raised his eyebrows.
“So I was wrong?”
“She’s grateful to you, you know,” Ben said, an instinctive peacemaker. “It’s just maybe too much for her.” He opened his hand to the party. “So soon.”
“You know what I think? Honest to God? I think Hitler won that one. I don’t think she’s here anymore.”
“How did she know my father?”
“She was in pictures over there. They all knew each other. By that time, there’s only one studio.” He paused, taking a puff on his cigar. “She was a looker when she was young. What the hell, Fay’s cousin.” He looked down at the cigar. “Not now. To do that to someone-” He broke off, looking up at Ben. “Well, see if you can get her to talk a little. So she doesn’t just sit there at dinner. Picking. Ask her about Otto.”
“You think they were-”
“Christ, I don’t know. I never thought. Otto? I wouldn’t be surprised. You think that’s what spooked her with you? Like seeing the kid walk in on you when you’re- Oh, there goes Jack. Watch, he’s going to take on Congress.”
Ben followed him, intending to split off and not intrude, but the loose group around Minot seemed open to anyone passing by. Both Minot and Warner were used to audiences-even talking to each other, they were playing to the cluster around them, a public conversation. Ben noticed that they were already “Ken” and “Jack.”
“I’ll tell you what I see,” Jack said. “I see the goddam unions at my throat and now this thing hanging over my head. Ready to chop. Consent decree. Whatever the hell that actually means. Except trouble. I look around, I see trouble. Here we are, knocking our brains out trying to make pictures and everybody wants a piece.”
“Jack,” Minot said smiling, “you’re on top of the world. Top of the world.” A soap box voice, resonant, his chest swelling. “The industry and this city grew up together.” He gestured toward the lights outside the picture window. “Thirty years ago, that was bean fields. Now look at it. With lots more to come. This year the industry’s revenues are going to hit one billion dollars. One billion.”
“Revenues, not profits.”
“Profits, estimate sixty-three million.” He nodded again to the window. “It’s not lima beans anymore.”
“You just happen to have those numbers in your pocket.”
“You like to come prepared,” Minot said, almost winking. “Industry estimates, Jack, not some office in Washington doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Industry estimates. You’re on top of the world.”
“With a sword over my head.”
“Jack’s a worrier,” Lasner said.
“Of course I can’t predict what the Justice Department is going to do,” Minot said. “With them you need a crystal ball. But I can tell you there’re a lot of people in Washington grateful for all the fine work this industry did during the war.”
“While they were earning those profits,” someone said, a left jab.
“I don’t begrudge profits. I’m not a socialist.” He laughed, a stage chuckle. “Not even close. People buy your product, you ought to make a profit. And keep it. Not have the government reaching into your pocket every five minutes. But I’m not here to talk politics. All I’m saying,” he said, looking directly at Jack, “is you treat your friends right and they’ll treat you right. That’s the way it works in Washington.”
“That’s the way it works here, too. Trick is knowing who your friends are.”
“My job is to protect your interests. You do well, the district does well.” Minot smiled. “And you know what I think? I think you’re just getting started. The industry. Look what’s ahead. No more war restrictions. No more price controls. Everybody wants what you make. You’re just going to grow and grow. With this district, with California. You know why? Because it’s our time. Right now. America’s time. All through the war I kept thinking, win this thing and there’s no stopping us. And we did win it. It’s our time.”
Lifted directly from a campaign speech, Ben thought, the rhetoric building, even Jack Warner listening now with full attention.
“Of course you’ve got somebody over there doesn’t like that at all, and we all know who that is. No profits there,” he said, nodding to Warner. “No God, either. A country with no God. I think that says it all. You think the other guys were bad, the Japs, the Nazis, wait’ll you see this one. But at least this time we’re ready. The Commies want to fight, let them come. And all their helpers over here. Trying to bring this great country down. They don’t like to fight in the open. Like to hide. But we’ll find them, too. You know what a great job Jack Tenney’s been doing up in Sacramento.”
“I knew him when he wrote Mexicali Rose.”
“Well, he’s doing something a lot more important now. That state committee-they could use it as a model when they go national with this. And they will. A house has termites, you’ve got to get rid of them before the rot sets in. That’s just common sense. Unless you want to see it fall down. Jack’s been working this for years now. You know what he told me? How many files he’s got? Reds and their pals and people too dumb to know any better? Over fourteen thousand. Just waiting for when we need them.”
“Fourteen thousand subversives or fourteen thousand people he doesn’t like?” The same man who’d made the crack about profits.
“Well, let’s just say people he’s not sure of,” Minot said, deflecting this easily. “You’d want to be sure, something like this. When you’re under attack. Not with guns-not yet anyway. But ideas, too, the wrong ideas. Slip them in every chance you get until people are confused. That’s where you come in.” He nodded to Warner. “Make sure it doesn’t happen in pictures. There’s nothing more powerful if you want to reach people. Not even radio. Hitler understood that. The power of film. These people, too.”
“That’s why we have the Breen Office,” Jack said. “Try getting an idea past them.” He laughed, a signal to the others, who joined in. After a second of hesitation, Minot did, too, playing a man who appreciates a good wisecrack.
“Now, Jack, I said wrong ideas,” he said, still laughing.
“Congressman, you don’t have to worry about that,” Jack said seriously. “I’ve been in this business all my life and I don’t think you could find a more patriotic group of people. We love this country.”
“It gave us everything,” Lasner said.
Jack waited, a twinkle in his eye. “And we’re going to love it even more if you get this decree taken care of.” More smiles all around.
“Jack, they told me you were a kidder,” Minot said pleasantly. “They didn’t tell me you were a politician. Next thing you know, you’ll be running for my seat.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m already running everything I want in Burbank. Sol, you going to give us something to eat tonight?” Cutting the scene before it ran too long, his point now made.
Minot’s instincts weren’t as sure-he missed Warner’s cue and kept talking about the future, now of the Valley, but since none of his listeners actually lived there they became less attentive, darting glances around the room. He was saved by a waiter at his elbow quietly announcing dinner. Not a gong after all, servants discreetly guiding people into the dining room, a piece of social choreography.
Some attempt had been made to place the few German speakers at Genia’s table, but, as her dinner partner, most of the caretaking still fell to Ben. Paul Henreid, no doubt another Warners draftee, was on her right but after a few pleasantries turned his attention, in English, to Rosemary. Liesl, an unexpected German speaker, was across the round table from them, too far for conversation. Paulette’s other partner was Mike Curtiz, who might have helped but, head close, monopolized Paulette instead with studio gossip. Genia didn’t seem to mind. She sat quietly, her own island, while the table talked around her. Since no one on either side was listening, when Ben spoke German to her it became oddly private, as if they were in another room, in no danger of being overheard. As Lasner predicted, she scarcely touched her food, moving pieces of the tournedos with her fork but not eating them.
“I can’t, you know,” she said, noticing his glance to her plate. “It’s too rich for me.”
Ben remembered the rescued inmates vomiting their first meal, their bodies no longer used to digesting anything but watery soup. He looked down at the deep burgundy glaze with its sliver of truffle.
“Such vegetables. This time of year.”
“California,” Ben said. “They grow all year round. Have you been able to get out? See anything?”
“The ocean. Fay took me for a drive. The rest, it’s all houses, no- buildings. Not like Berlin.”
“Liesl’s father says it’s still the first layer here. Before the Schinkels.”
He smiled but she seemed not to understand this, at a loss. She looked over at Liesl.
“She’s your wife?”
“No,” he said, looking across with her, so that Liesl smiled back.
“Maybe one day. See how she looks at you.”
“No,” Ben said, flustered. “She’s my brother’s wife. Was.”
“I don’t understand. The same brother? He wasn’t killed? Years ago.”
“No, just this month. Why did you think-”
“Why? It was so dangerous. Back and forth. The courier. I never thought it was right-for your father to use a boy like that. Well, not a boy. Still, young. To risk his life. When you said he was dead, I thought, yes, it must be. Of course they killed him.”
“Who?” Ben said, suddenly feeling light-headed.
“The Nazis,” she said simply. “It was always a risk.”
“For an American?”
“A Communist,” she said, her voice steady, matter-of-fact.
“What?”
“You didn’t know this?”
Involuntarily, Ben glanced toward Minot’s table, apprehensive, the word itself now like a pointing finger. But no one in the room was paying attention, hearing anything more than a murmuring of German. Only Ben felt the words shouting in his ears. He shook his head slowly, barely moving.
“And he never told you? Well, that’s right. We had to be secret to survive. The first enemy. Even before they started killing Jews. No one was safe from them. I said to Otto, how can you use your own? But of course it was important to him. And he was like you-an American passport would protect him, they wouldn’t suspect. His mother’s in England. Of course he travels. So, a courier.”
“For the Communists,” Ben said numbly, as if repeating the words would give a sense to them, steady the room.
“Yes, for your father. Anything for your father. For him it was like a religion, so maybe for the boy, too. I don’t know.”
“Like a religion,” Ben said, still catching echoes.
“Yes. And he died for it.”
“For being a Communist? That’s why he stayed in Germany?” Not another woman, a career he couldn’t leave behind, a misguided sense of safety.
“They didn’t suspect him. He could do things the others couldn’t. Goebbels liked him. All of them-they liked to watch those comedies. They thought he was like that. So he was useful to the Party. So close and they didn’t suspect.”
“They didn’t protect him, either. He was still a Jew.”
“That’s what you think? All these years. That he was foolish? That he trusted them?” She shook her head. “They didn’t kill him as a Jew. They killed him as a Communist.” She paused. “He was betrayed,” she said, her voice suddenly low, looking away, across the table.
Ben said nothing. He heard forks, people laughing, sound track noises from another movie. In this one, everything was still. He looked at Genia’s hands, the bony fingers resting now on the table, pale, webbed with veins, the hands of an old woman.
“How do you know that?” he said finally.
For a minute she kept looking across the table, then turned to him. “Because it was me. I betrayed him,” she said, her voice still detached, a confession without emotion or self-pity, something willed. He felt it like a hand on his arm, a restraint, making him look directly at her. “Why? Why else? To save myself.” Staring back, the rest unsaid. Then she looked away, breaking the connection. “But I didn’t. Not in the end.” She picked up the small bag at her side. “Excuse me. I must have a cigarette. Apologies.”
She stood up, catching Liesl’s attention, who looked at Ben, first with casual curiosity, then, taking him in, with real alarm. Paulette was already putting her hand on his.
“I’m not ignoring you, really. Mike was just telling me about Selz-nick. You know, he’s still in therapy. He believes in it. Since Spellbound. I said he could save a bundle and just give up the pills — Are you all right? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
He tried to smile, shaking this off.
“Seriously. You’re all white.”
Finally the smile. “Just old war stories. I’m fine.”
From the corner of his eye he could see the emerald bracelet covering his hand. At the next table Fay and Ann Sheridan were charming Minot, who wanted to get rid of termites. Bunny, apparently still worried about the seating, kept looking over at Liesl, watching her. Jack Warner was telling jokes. The waiters had begun to clear the tournedos, replacing it with floating island, puffy clouds of meringue. And Otto had risked Danny’s life. The one Ben knew nothing about.
“I’d better check on her, make sure she’s okay,” he said to Paulette, getting up.
Liesl, still concerned, shot him a what? look, but he made a nothing movement with his head. As he crossed the room, still half in a daze, he noticed Bunny chatting with Marie Minot, keeping things going.
She was sitting behind the coffee table, tapping her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray.
“I thought I would never say that,” she said, not even looking up, as if she’d expected him. “Not to anybody. And now his son. For years I thought, what if someone finds out? What if someone knows? And it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”
“Everything matters.”
She looked at him, then made a half smile. “To the living.” She drew on the cigarette. “So, what do you want me to say to you? An apology? It’s late for that.”
“Tell me about Danny. What did he actually do? My father made him carry things?”
“In his mind only,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “Messages he had to remember. No papers. If they had found papers, they would have arrested him. Killed him. So it was safer up here. Of course, if they tortured him, he would have told them-everybody did-but without papers there was no reason to suspect him. And an American passport. They couldn’t arrest Americans so easily. So he was perfect for us.”
“My father’s idea?”
She nodded. “There was a problem. Before, we had a network with merchant seamen, for outside communications. You couldn’t use the radio. By hand. By mouth. And then there was a roundup-one of the cells in Hamburg-and we knew they had been given away. An informer. We traced it to one of the sailors, so we couldn’t use the network anymore. That’s when your father had the idea. The one person he could really trust.” She stopped. “Except me, he said. But he couldn’t send me. So he was wrong about that, too.”
“But what did he actually carry? What kind of messages.”
She shrugged. “To help get people out. At that point, all we were trying to do was survive. Save ourselves. There weren’t so many left. He would travel through Paris. There were people there who could make arrangements, to get people across. This was before the war. If we could get people to France-”
And later to Spain, Ben thought, helped across by someone with experience. By then you didn’t have to be a Communist to be in danger.
“So we used him for that. Not a spy, not like in the films. Just messages, to help get people out.”
“But he would have been hung just the same. If they’d caught him.”
“Yes, naturally. That’s why I thought it was too dangerous. But he wanted to do it. You know, at that age-no fear. It’s exciting to them, everything a secret. They don’t know yet what it’s like to live that way, to live in secret.” She rubbed out the cigarette. “But he survived, you said, so I’m glad for that. They never got him. Well, he stopped when Otto- He did it for Otto. He never came back to Germany after that. So maybe that saved him.”
“Tell me what happened. With my father.”
“It’s not so much to know,” she said, shrugging. “A familiar story. They caught me. My fault-I was careless. So, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. We used to talk about it, if the Gestapo- I knew what it would mean. Not just for me. My family. They didn’t have to torture me. I already knew what they wanted, the names. Who was head of the cell? Well, Otto, Goebbels’s friend.” She looked up. “So I gave them your father.”
“And they let you go? I thought-”
“Yes, usually they killed you, too. After you told them. We all knew that. They had no more use for you.”
He looked at her, waiting.
“I agreed to give them names I didn’t know yet. To be an informer. They thought I would do it-so weak, they hadn’t even had to beat me. A coward. With blood on her hands. What they wanted.”
“And did you?”
“Only to get out. To have a chance to escape. I knew they would watch. But we did it, my family. We went into hiding. The Party helped us, the ones who were left. They thought whoever had betrayed Otto had betrayed me, too, so they helped us. Safe houses. We lived like that, place to place. No one ever knew I’d given them Otto. Of course by that time it didn’t matter if you were a Communist-it was enough to be a Jew. So we hid. Do you want to hear the rest?”
“How he died.”
“I don’t know that. Shot, I suppose. I hope it was that. No, what happened after. Not everything, don’t worry, not all the horrors. Just enough to know why it’s like this now. Why isn’t she weeping? On her knees begging forgiveness-”
“You don’t owe me any-”
“Doesn’t she feel anything, facing me, Otto’s son? What kind of person is this? That it doesn’t matter to her. Can’t even say she’s sorry.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” he said gently.
She shook her head. “It’s too late for that. So, one story only. Something you can’t put in a film. Never mind the hiding, the rest of it. How you feel in the line, select one here for work, select him for the gas. Impossible to understand that, even when it’s happening to you. So impossible for you.” She took a breath. “We were back in Berlin then- the first big roundup. 1942, February. Cold. All of us in a basement, like rats, but still. Leon, my sister, her husband, all down there, but safe. Then not safe.” She looked up. “We were betrayed. Maybe a justice. Anyway, Jews in the cellar, so they came for us. You don’t fight, but they pull you out anyway. Poke the guns in your stomach. Yelling. I can hear them now, it never goes away, the yelling. And it frightens Rosa, my sister’s baby. An infant. ‘Shut it up,’ he screams at her. The soldier. As if she could do something-all that noise, so terrifying. Terrifying to us. And she tries to quiet it, against her shoulder, you know, rocking, while they’re pushing us out and it’s not enough for him. ‘Shut up!’ he yells and then he grabs it, right out of her arms. A second, my heart stops. Now, too, I can see it. He takes Rosa by the feet and before my sister can move he smacks her against the wall, swinging her like a doll, once, that’s all, because then it’s quiet. He drops her like a rag, a piece of- I don’t know. A thump, and then blood on the wall, a blotch, little streaks. There’s nothing in his face. It doesn’t matter to him. This takes-how long? How long can the heart stop? A second, less. And it’s my whole life in that time. Then I hear my sister scream and I’m somewhere else, another life.”
She stopped, almost out of breath, shutting her eyes, then reached for another cigarette, something tangible, right now, and lit it.
“She brought it with us. She picked it up and brought it. They didn’t care. On the train. Until Leon managed to get it away from her, get rid of it. By that time she didn’t know. She was-not herself. So of course they selected her right away for the gas, a madwoman. Right on the platform.” She looked up at him. “Tell me anything matters. Otto’s son.” She reached out and grazed his hand with her fingertips. “If it did matter, I would be sorry. Do you know that?”
She turned her head, distracted by the sound of doors opening.
“Here they come. They’re going to watch a film.” She stood, drawing him up with her. “Make some excuse for me, yes? Headache, whatever you like, it doesn’t matter.” She smiled to herself, a weak grimace. “That, either.”
She slipped out behind the stream of people heading for the bathrooms before the movie started. It seemed a disorganized moment, an aimless milling, like the scattering pieces in his head.
“What’s wrong? What was all that?” Liesl said.
He stared for a second, adjusting to the switch back to English, his mind elsewhere.
“Nothing. She’s- I’ll tell you later,” he said, looking at her closely now. Had she known? How could she not? Unless Danny had kept this secret, too. “Can we cut out before the movie? What’s the form?”
“We can’t. It would be considered an insult,” she said. “Listen, I have to talk to you. I think I know-”
“Later,” he said, touching her arm. “Here’s Bunny.”
“Everything fine?” Bunny said, looking at Liesl. “Did you enjoy Dick?”
Her dinner partner had been Dick Marshall, out of his pilot uniform, a smile replacing the oxygen mask. More window dressing for the party.
“Yes, he was very funny.”
“I’ll bet,” Bunny said, but relieved, as if he’d expected a different report. He turned to Ben. “And you. I thought it’d be pulling teeth, but there you were, nattering away.”
Ben felt fuzzy, a diver decompressing too fast. Why were they talking about any of this? Floating on froth, like the meringues.
“Mr. L can’t get two words out of her. Well, we’d better start the picture before the natives get restless. Glad you enjoyed yourself,” he said to Liesl. “You’ve got a treat in store-Jack sent over something special.”
“Ben,” she said, when Bunny left, “at dinner-”
“She knew Otto,” he said. “She knew Danny.”
“Daniel?”
“In Berlin. When he was with my father. She thought the Nazis had killed him. He was getting people out. The way he helped you, later. It started then. Why didn’t you tell me he was a Communist?”
“What are you talking about?” she said, nervous, unprepared for this.
“She told me. She was there. You must have known.”
“Known what,” she said, a quick dismissal. She looked toward the room, measuring their distance from the others, then back at him. “He never said. Everyone was a bit then. They were against the Nazis. Organized. There wouldn’t have been a resistance if they hadn’t-”
“You never asked?”
“I didn’t care about that. Politics. When someone throws you a lifesaver, you take it.”
“And marry him.”
Her eyes flashed. “It wasn’t important.” She looked down, biting her lip. “I thought he was-sympathetic, that’s all. So maybe he worked with them, everyone did. It was never official-you know, a Party member. Meetings. I would have known about that. It was a way of looking at things then, because of the Nazis. Years ago. Anyway, that was there. It was different after we came here.”
“It’s not something you stop, just like that.”
“Things change. People change.”
“Do they?”
“You think that? That’s what you’re looking for in his desk? A card? A letter from Stalin? I would have known.” She looked away, hearing herself, yesterday’s certainty. “He made movies here, that’s all. Silly movies.”
“So did my father. And he ran a cell. According to her.”
“If you want to know, ask them. The Party.”
“I don’t think they’re handing out membership lists these days.”
“Ask Howard Stein. It’s always in the papers about him. That he must be one. Polly says he is. Ask him. Why is it so important anyway?”
“Because we have to know everything about him. What he was doing. Why anyone would-”
“No. You have to know. I don’t know why. Look, they’re going in. No more about this. The way people talk. Who knows what’s true. My father’s applying for citizenship. How would it look? A Communist son.”
“A dead one.”
“Well, my father’s alive. Talk like this-”
“We have to know. It might be important.” He took her elbow. “Don’t run away from this. Help me. We owe it to him.”
“Owe it to him.” She smiled to herself, then looked up. “I was trying to help. Before you started with all this. Politics. They don’t kill you for that yet. Maybe not love, either. You want to know the girlfriend? Rosemary.” She nodded. “Maybe not the only one, I don’t know. So does that help? Does she look like-”
“How do you know?”
“I know. I knew at the table. The way she was with me. She wouldn’t look at me. Not once. I could see her do it, not looking. And then she heard who you were and she was upset. She wasn’t ready for that. The wife, that’s one thing. But you-”
“That’s it, the proof?”
“You can prove it any way you like. I already know. It’s her,” she said, turning away so that before he could say anything else she had already joined the people moving toward the screening room.
He followed, his mind darting again, his feet moving on their own, in another place. Around him people were talking about the movie, overheard but echoing, like voices in a train station.
Warner’s treat turned out to be Saratoga Trunk, a Bergman not yet released.
“I’ve been sitting on this since over a year,” Jack said.
“You’re worried?” Sol said.
“Not worried. Sam Wood, you’re always going to get an A product. Getting the time right. They put her in dark hair, in period, and I’m thinking, they want Casablanca again, not this. A totally different type. So I wait, we hold the picture. Then what? The Bells of St. Mary’s for Christmas. Talk about timing. I figure after that they’ll like her in anything. Put it out right after, you can’t miss. Same season. You can’t get into the Crosby, see the other.”
“Well, the Crosby,” Sol said. “They’re already counting the money.”
“Hundred bucks it grosses more than anything this year. The Catholics alone. You know how they come out for nuns.”
“Jack.”
“A hundred bucks.”
There were no assigned seats in the theater, so Ben and Liesl sat together toward the back. Minot and his wife, still being charmed, were in the front row with the Lasners and the Warners. Bunny walked up the aisle like someone counting the house, making sure everything was in place. The lights dimmed, followed by a blast of music. When the Warner logo came on, people applauded, a jokey tribute to Jack.
Within minutes Ben saw why Warner had waited. Ingrid Bergman was in a bustle, pretending to be Creole. There was a dwarf and Flora Robeson in blackface as a maid who knew voodoo. Gary Cooper was Gary Cooper, a Texan. His name seemed to be Clint Maroon. None of it made sense, and Ben drifted, not really paying attention. Somewhere upstairs Fay’s cousin was lying on a bed smoking, seeing a splotch of blood on a wall. He thought of her bony hand on his. How can you use your own? But Otto had. Like a religion to him. Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac-by whose orders? The priests of the International? Wherever orders came from. Your own son. Who wanted to do it. Fearless. He went through the dinner again, trying to piece the parts of Danny’s life together, looking for some clear thread that ran from Berlin to the Cherokee. But what? It seemed as patchy and unlikely as the movie, even without the dwarf.
Liesl wasn’t watching, either. He could feel her beside him, restless in her seat, maybe looking for Rosemary. Knowing it was her, a feeling. The girl most likely. Someone Bunny would make a call for. Dating Ty Power while they built her up, not a B director on a B lot. But when Liesl leaned toward him to whisper, her mind was somewhere else.
“Why would he keep it secret? From me? Why that? I wouldn’t have cared about that.”
He felt her breath against him before he heard her, warm, reaching into him. When he turned her face was even closer, her eyes shiny, anxious. He sorted out the words. Not about Rosemary. But then he saw in her eyes that it was really the same question, another betrayal.
“I don’t know,” he said, less than a whisper, but feeling her breath again, the warmth coming off her skin with the last of the perfume, and suddenly, a trace memory, he was a teenager with a girl in a dark theater, so close, trying not to be overwhelmed by it. Wanting to lean forward, afraid to. In a second she would move back, the contact broken. But she didn’t. The whispers became tactile, like a hand against the side of his face.
“Do you believe her, the cousin?”
“Yes.”
“But why would he?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
“Everything secret.”
Now she did look away, dismayed, reminded of other secrets. She sat back, pretending to watch the movie, seemingly unaware that he didn’t move, his head turned, as if her face were still next to his. Then someone coughed and he went back to the screen, wondering whether anyone had noticed, whether it showed on your face, the way he used to think it did when the lights came up, kids necking in the balcony.
Think about something else. Why had Danny kept it secret? Even from his wife. Politics were public, argued about. Unless there’d been a turning away, a new life that made the past embarrassing, something to put behind you. Howard Stein had said he’d even faded away from the union, no longer interested. You get to want other things. Which still didn’t explain how he’d ended up in the alley at the Cherokee.
Saratoga Trunk was a hit with the party, ending to applause and pats on the back. Then everyone began to leave at once, pouring out of Lasner’s chateau as if it were a downtown theater, without red trolley cars and taxis, just harried teenage parkers. The Warners and the Minots were the first to go, Bunny hovering nearby, followed by a halting line of impatient guests.
“Did you meet the Honorable Ken?” Bunny said, waiting with them.
“I heard him. That was good enough. Who voted for him anyway?”
“The same people who go to the movies.” He looked up. “We don’t make the world. Right now, he’s what they like.”
“Jack liked him anyway. That was the point, wasn’t it?”
“Jack likes Jack. But it’s a start. Glad you enjoyed the evening,” he said to Liesl, another question mark, still working.
When she thanked him, a bland response, Ben noticed the quick flicker of relief in his eyes. Relieved about what? That she’d got on with Dick Marshall? Or that nothing more awkward had happened, placed at Rosemary’s table? Something Bunny hadn’t expected.
Another car left, the line moving forward. Bunny was looking at her again.
“Do you mind my asking? Are you a dancer?”
“A dancer?” Liesl said. “No. Why?”
“You move very well,” he said, still looking at her.
“Oh,” she said, not sure how to respond. A professional appraisal, not a pass.
“Maybe it’s the theater,” Ben said. “Same training.”
“You’re an actress?” Bunny said.
“Before, in Vienna. Not here.”
Bunny tilted his head, taking her in at a slightly different angle. “But not in pictures. Would you make a test?”
“A test?”
“To see how you look,” Bunny said simply. “People are different on film.”
“Oh, and with my voice.”
“Never mind about that. It’s just-it gave me an idea, the way you moved. If you’re interested.”
Liesl nodded, still too surprised to answer.
“I’ll send you some pages, then. Here we are,” he said, opening the door as the car pulled up.
Liesl stood there for a second, hesitant, then got in, taking direction. Bunny bent forward, eye level with the window.
“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Let’s just see. We’ll call you.”
In the car she was quiet, looking out the open window at the dark hedges and driveways, Beverly Hills asleep.
“This place,” she said, partly to herself. “Years. And then one night you walk into a party. So I should thank you for that.”
“He’s not doing it for me. You really interested?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything. They test everybody. Favors.”
“Not Bunny.”
“Ha. Place your bets. So maybe it comes up.” She looked out again. “And maybe it doesn’t. So let’s see, what else am I going to do now?”
She pushed in the dashboard lighter, then rummaged in her purse for a cigarette.
“Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Who?”
“Who,” she said, waiting.
“I think she looks like you.”
She stopped the lighter in midair, then put the red coiled tip to the cigarette.
“You do?”
“Maybe they were all you.”
She went quiet again, smoking. “That’s nice,” she said softly. “To say that.” She turned from the window. “Then why have them.”
“I don’t know,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Did you?”
“What, have others?” She turned up her lips slightly. “You mean since he did?” She shook her head. “Only before. You want to know how many?”
“I didn’t mean-”
“I don’t even remember. That life, it made you that way. You never knew when you’d have to leave. Go somewhere else. So you took what you could. I was no different. But not after.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t brought up that way. When you’re married- You know I can cook? Sew. All those things. A good wife, for somebody. But not him.”
They entered the house through the garage, turning off the driveway lights behind them.
“Do you want a swim?” she said, unclasping her pearls as they walked. “It’s good after a party-for hangovers.”
“You go ahead.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t watch.”
“Well, then good night. Thank you for the party. My evening with the stars.”
She reached up and kissed his cheek, then stopped, her face as close as it had been in the theater, but this time looking at him, her eyes moving, as if she were reading him, deciphering. He stood still, feeling her breath again, then the graze of her hand behind his neck drawing him closer to kiss him on the mouth. He opened his, almost dizzy with surprise and the taste of her. They broke, a gasp for air, then kissed again, her mouth open to his, both of them eager.
“What are you doing?” he said, moving down to her neck, smelling perfume and warm skin.
She pulled back. “I wanted to know what it would be like.”
He looked at her, their faces still close. “I’m not him.”
She smiled, moving her hand to his forehead, gently brushing the hair away.
“No. Someone else.”
He felt her hand, fingertips barely touching his skin but drawing him back, a kind of permission, then lowered his head to hers again, no longer thinking, all instinct. Her mouth was moist, all of her warm, rubbing against him so that his blood rushed, excited. She started unbuttoning his shirt, her mouth still on his, then pulled away, both of them panting, holding each other. Are we going to do this, a look, not words, and she answered by taking his hand, leading him into the bedroom, the furniture just shadows outlined by the pool lights outside. She turned her back to him so he could undo her zipper, move the dress off her shoulders, letting it slide down, then hold her there, kissing the back of her neck, no longer groping, smooth, wanting to kiss every part of her, this shoulder, that one.
She arched her back, an involuntary intake of breath, then a small sound, dropping her head so that he could kiss more of her neck, giving it to him. When he reached around to her breasts, holding them underneath, moving his thumbs against her nipples, her body came up again, pushing back against him, and he felt her bare behind, the soft round cheeks, press against the erection in his pants. They stood that way for a minute, her nipples growing hard, his groin tight against her, until he thought he would burst from it and he turned her around, kissing her mouth, then her breasts, faster, tearing off his clothes, then laying her on the bed and falling over her, his mouth covering hers, his hand moving down between her legs, feeling her wet, beginning to move against his hand.
There was no waiting, no drawn-out stroking, everything that might come later. Only an urgency, mindless. She pulled him into her, one thrust, a second to feel her wrapped around him, the wonderful fullness, and then they were moving again, not a steady rhythm, but a heedless plunging, impossible to wait, both of them grunting. He saw her in the pool, opening her legs to the patch of hair, where he was now, then he didn’t see anything, could only hear her, next to his ear, breathing, then noises, little cries, as exciting as the slick feel of her pushing against him. When she came, a louder cry, broken, like a shuddering, he could feel her grip him inside and he wanted to shout, let something out before he exploded, and then the come shot out of him and he stopped, feeling the last jerks, his whole body emptying, then flooded with relief, inexplicable pleasure. He moved his elbow, falling on her, and it was only then that he felt the sweat, both of them shiny with it.
When he rolled away, she turned with him and they lay on their sides, heads touching, not saying anything, drained, then her body began to shake, not crying, a trembling.
“What?” he said quietly, touching her.
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just-to feel something again.” She put her hand on him.
He took her shoulder, drawing her closer and kissing her. “I’m sorry it was so fast.”
“No, don’t be sorry.”
“Next time we won’t have to hurry.”
She propped herself up, looking down at him.
“Already a next time. You’re so sure,” she said lazily.
“Now I know you.”
“You think that’s true? You sleep with someone and you know her? All those girls before-you knew them? Every one?”
“I didn’t want to know them.”
“Just go to bed. Very nice. And now that you’ve seduced me-”
“Me?”
She smiled, moving her hand down his chest. “You’re sweaty.”
He moved his hand up to her breast, running the back along it.
“Come on,” she said, getting off the bed.
“How can you move? Where?”
“Just come.”
She pulled his hand and he followed, his eyes trailing her white skin, feeling illicit walking naked through the dark house. He put his hand on the smooth flesh of her behind, cupping it, and she laughed, then sprang away, opening the patio door and running across the tiles to the pool, looking over her shoulder once at him before she plunged in. He ran after her, the front of him flapping in the warm night air, then jumped in, too, and swam after her underwater, his testicles floating beneath him, everything free. When he caught up to her, they both rose to the surface.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said, shaking her hair. “I never want to wear clothes again.”
“All right,” he said, kissing her.
She laughed. “And you’d like that?”
She swam a little toward the shallow end so they could hold each other without having to keep afloat in deep water.
“You know, my father says you can only seduce someone who wants to be seduced. Otherwise it can’t work.”
“When did he say that?” Ben said, kissing her again.
“In a story. Die Verfuhrung.”
“ The Seduction. He wrote a love story?”
She giggled. “Well, it was about Germany. How the country wanted to be seduced by Hitler. But I think it’s the same with people. Like you,” she said, touching his face.
“What about you?”
He drew her against him as they kissed, not playing anymore, aroused again, drawing one leg up around her.
“Everyone thinks it should be easy in the water,” she said, “but it’s hard. Maybe Esther Williams can.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know her? Bathing Beauty? With Cugat? Daniel did some Second Unit work on it.” She stopped, looking away.
“We didn’t get everything overseas,” he said, trying to glide over it.
“Maybe it was like this for him,” she said, distracted. “With the others. All like me. So now I’m one of them.”
He let his leg drop, freeing her below, then turned her head with his fingers. “I’m not him.”
She glanced up and moved her shoulder. “And you don’t love me, either. So that’s the same anyway. But I know it. So nobody gets hurt.”
“Nobody gets hurt.” Not wanting to go further, coaxing her back.
“Someone you meet at a party. Why not her?”
“Is that what it feels like to you?”
She looked at him for a second, her eyes opening wider, then pulled him closer, leaning her head into his.
“Make love to me,” she said, her voice quick and raspy.
He glanced over the side of the pool. “The chaise,” he said, kissing her.
“Yes, on the chaise,” she said, amused. “Like an odalisque.” She took his hand, urgent again, leading him up the shallow steps, shivering a little as the breeze touched them.
He held her to him, his body a blanket, then lay down next to her.
“Now you seduce me,” she said.
“You have to want me to,” he said, stroking her. “That’s how it works.”
She pulled herself up, her wet hair falling on him, then took his penis into her, straddling him. She closed her eyes, just feeling him there for a second, then slowly sat up, moving just a little, looking down on him. “This time we don’t have to hurry.”
This time it was slow enough to feel everything, every part, until they came again, gasping, and then fell back together, not talking, just breathing. Ben could see the city lights in the distance, hear the palm fronds overhead clicking in the soft air, the sound of paradise.
After a while it turned cooler, and he went over to the changing cabana and brought back two robes. She wrapped herself in one and reached for a cigarette pack on the table, then crunched it up.
“There are more in the house,” she said. “Can I get you anything? A drink?”
He shook his head, then raised the back of the chaise to sit upright. He watched her go in, a blur of white through half-closed eyes, and leaned back, smelling the night flowers. A light went on in the house. In a minute, he knew, his body would start to go limp and he’d drift, the animal languor that came after sex. Everything else could wait until tomorrow-what had happened, what it would mean. Now there was just this.
“Ben.” She was back at the door, her body tense, voice nervous. She waved him toward her, as if she were afraid of being overheard.
He crossed the patio, tilting his head in a question.
“Somebody’s been in the house,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“What?”
“In the office. Things were different. Moved. I could tell.” She put her hand on his arm. “Maybe they’re still here.” Her eyes darting, upset.
“You’re sure? You didn’t lock the doors?”
“Of course I locked the doors. This one, too,” she said, nodding to the patio door. “Sometimes Iris forgets.”
He looked down at the door handle. No scratches or chipped paint, but an easy lock, he guessed, for someone who knew how.
“What if they’re still here, ” she said, gripping his arm tighter.
“Calm down. There’s no one here.” He thought of them on the bed, grunting, someone watching-but they would have felt that, sensed anyone’s presence, wouldn’t they? “I’ll walk through.” He flicked on a light. “Is anything missing?”
“I don’t know. I just went to the study, for cigarettes.”
“What was moved?”
“Little things. On the desk.”
“Maybe Iris-”
“No. It didn’t seem right. I could feel it.”
“Another feeling?”
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, almost snapping. “Someone was here. In the house.” She clutched the top of her robe tighter, her voice rising a pitch.
“All right, I’ll look. Where do you keep your valuables?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Jewels,” he said. “Cash.”
“Jewels? Just the pearls-in the bedroom.”
But the bedroom was untouched, except for the bed, the spread twisted and still damp from sex. Nobody had taken anything from the bureau drawer, the velvet box with earrings and a clip. There was still money under the handkerchiefs.
He went through the rest of the house, turning on lights, Liesl close to him, still anxious, fear bobbing just beneath the surface. Not just an intruder, a more general violation.
“Ever have any trouble before?” Ben said.
“No, it was safe. I was safe here.”
“You’re still safe,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “Stop.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, not really hearing him. “Every knock. Always looking back. I thought it was different here.”
“Liesl, nothing’s missing. So, just in here?” he said, turning in to the study.
She nodded. “The desk. Somebody went through the desk.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s different. Look at the blotter-see the one end out? To look under. See for yourself. You know his drawers.”
She picked up the cigarettes, lighting one now, her hand shaking, then stood watching him go through the drawer. Everything seemed the same. Until the second drawer, the folders of personal papers. The police accident report, jammed at the end, not where he’d put it.
“What?” she said, seeing him hesitate.
“Something’s out of place.”
He went through the envelope, flipping through the photos.
“Everything’s here. Probably where I put it, just looked different.”
“No, you noticed.”
“Liesl, why would someone break into the house and not take money-anything-just go through a desk?”
“His desk.”
“All right, his desk.”
She inhaled smoke, then folded her arms across her chest, holding herself in. “It’s what you said. I didn’t believe you. Why would anybody do that? I thought it was just your way of-” She broke off, hearing herself, racing. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Maybe I always knew it. That he wouldn’t. I didn’t want to be afraid. And now they’re in my house. Somebody killed him and they’re still not finished. What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” he said, coming over to her.
“Maybe they think I have it-whatever they want.”
“They didn’t go through your things. Just his.”
“I can’t stay here. Listening. Any noise. I’ll go to my father’s.”
He took her by the shoulders, as if he were holding her down before she could fly away.
“I’m here. You’re just nervous, that’s all. I’ll be right next to you. All night.”
“Oh, next to me, and what will Iris think?” An automatic response.
He smiled at her. “The worst, probably.”
“How can you joke?”
“I’ll check the doors. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise.” He kissed her forehead. “If you’re worried about the house, I’ll talk to somebody. Make it safe.”
“Who?”
“Guy I met. He’d know.”
She dropped her head to his chest. “When is it going to be over? The phone rings-your husband’s in-when was that? And it’s still not over. What did he do? Go with Rosemary? And he’s dead for that? It’s crazy. And now you. What am I doing? His brother.” She raised her head. “Maybe that’s crazy, too. My lover.”
“Say that again,” he said, brushing her hair.
She looked away. “Oh, that doesn’t make it any better.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense. It happens. We wanted it to.” He paused. “We seduced each other.”
“So nothing makes sense.”
“What happened to him. We have to make sense of that.” He touched her hair again. “Just that.”
Liesl’s father’s birthday went exactly as predicted. Dieter read a long prepared toast, then Ostermann stood up for his own prepared thank-you. The others were more spontaneous, but none of them brief. “The Conscience of Germany,” a glib phrase from Time, had now become a kind of honorary title, his own von. The toasts ran to form: the books, the humanitarian concerns, the early courage in speaking out, all noted before and repeated now, familiar as myth.
The dinner itself followed a prescribed pattern. It had been called for late afternoon, a throwback to the curfew days when aliens had to be home by eight, and the food, according to Liesl, was unvarying- steaming bowls of chicken soup with liver dumplings, boiled beef with horseradish, potatoes, and red cabbage, followed finally by Salka’s chocolate cake, a menu that seemed designed to weigh people down in their chairs for the toasts. Later, after the brandies, there would be coffee and mohn cookies, more winter food as the California sun poured through the window.
Salka’s house, on a steep wooded road dropping down into Santa Monica Canyon, was modest, a doll’s house compared to Lasner’s. The guests were many of the same people who’d come to Danny’s funeral, and they greeted Ben like an old friend with the fast hospitality of exiles. Brecht was there again and spent most of the time arguing with someone in a corner. Lion Feuchtwanger, interrupting, playing peacemaker; Fritz Lang, with a monocle. Thomas Mann had not come this time, a social deference, not wanting to eclipse the birthday honoree. Kaltenbach wore a suit that needed cleaning.
Ben noticed scarcely any of it, preoccupied, the German toasts droning in the background, Liesl down the table, her face half-hidden by one of Salka’s flower arrangements. Did she look different? Did he? Could anyone tell? If he looked down at the lace tablecloth, blotting out the rest, he could see her last night, riding him, her breasts bobbing, and he smiled to himself because no one else knew, their secret. Maybe this was the excitement spies felt, sitting down with the enemy, knowing something, holding it to themselves, while no one else had the faintest idea. What was more secretive than sex? Kaltenbach stood up to make his toast. Ben glanced down again at Liesl, this time meeting her eyes, amused, talking to him in code, just the two of them.
When he went out to the kitchen to open more wine she followed, standing behind as he pulled the corkscrew, putting her hand on his waist. He turned, their faces close.
“Somebody’ll see,” he said quietly, glancing toward the dining room, the angle of the table.
She pulled at his shirt, moving them away from the sink, the open door.
“No, they won’t,” she said, urgent, her eyes darting with excitement. “Not here.” Kissing him then, her lips warm, unexpected, alive with risk. From the dining room there was the tinkle of glass, and they kissed harder, racing ahead of it.
He pulled away, breathless. “They’ll see,” he said, already hard, his face red with it, unmistakable.
“I don’t care,” she said, eyes shiny, still moving, then leaned forward again. “I don’t care.”
Not really meaning it, playing, but the words flooding into him like sex itself, rushing, wonderful. Then there was the scrape of a chair and he turned back to the counter, grasping the wine bottle, and she slipped over to the refrigerator, opening it with a faint suppressed giggle, kids stealing cookies, waiting to be found out. He took a breath to calm himself and started in with the wine. But when he saw that the chair belonged to Ostermann, standing to respond to a toast, he glanced back at Liesl, a complicit smile, something they’d got away with after all.
After dinner Salka led the party down Mabery Road to the beach to watch the sunset. Ben had volunteered to drive Feuchtwanger home, a cliffside house on a twisting Palisades road that would be treacherous in the dark, so he was late joining the others on the broad beach. People who’d come earlier for the day were still in bathing suits or sweatshirts and stared openly at Salka’s group in suits and ties. Liesl took her shoes off, but the men didn’t bother, formal even in the sand. The light on the water had already begun to turn the deep gold just before orange.
“You know I was twelve before I saw the ocean?” Ostermann said to Ben. They were walking with Dieter, the others straggling behind. “Fifty years ago. More now. The Nordsee. Absolutely gray. Freezing. Rocks for beaches. But my father had paid for the week, so we had to stay.” He made a mock shudder at the memory.
“So, something else good here,” Dieter said, indicating the white sand.
“Yes, but shallow. You have to walk far before you can swim. That’s why they build the piers.” He nodded to the amusement pier farther down the beach. “Me, I prefer lakes. Of course, it’s what I knew. The Wannsee. Anyway, Liesl’s the swimmer, not me. From a child, always in the water.”
“Yes. She loves the pool,” Ben said, seeing her gliding underwater, parting her legs. Everyone thinks it would be easy in the water, but it’s not. Preferring a chaise.
He looked over at Ostermann, suddenly embarrassed. Change the subject.
“She told me about Die Verfuhrung, ” he said. “I’ve never read it. Is it in a collection?”
“No, alone. Quieros did it in Holland. A small edition. It was not so popular, you know. Not even the emigres liked it. Anti-German. Me, anti-German.”
“It’s a German failing,” Dieter said. “Thin skin.”
Kanon, Joseph
Stardust
“And thick boots,” Ostermann said. “A wonderful combination. Anyway, no one read it. I thought they might buy it for the title,” he said, teasing. “They would think it’s something else. But no one did.”
“You always write about Germany,” Dieter said. “Everybody knows that. And this time-be fair-a fatal flaw in the blood, an insult.”
“No, not in the blood. That’s what the Nazis believed, things in the blood. Destiny. It wasn’t like that. A whole country seduced. Led into a dream. You have to make that happen.” He raised his finger, a classroom gesture. “But they have to want the dream. The master race. Imagine-to believe that. If it’s German, it’s better. Well, the French, too. Maybe everyone. Look at them here. ‘The Greatest Country in the World.’ What does that mean? Great how? But they believe it.”
“It’s not the same,” Dieter said. “What happened there was unique.”
“You think so? Well, let’s hope. It’s not so hard, you know. Give them something to be afraid of. Someone else. The process is the same.”
“Did Danny ever talk to you about this?” Ben said. “Liesl said he liked to talk to you.”
“About this?” Ostermann said, confused. “The story? He said it was different here.” He nodded to Dieter, a point. “He said they were already seduced. By the movies.”
“Ha,” Dieter said. “He was serious?”
Ostermann shrugged. “Well, an idea. To make talk. That was his world, not politics.”
“He never talked to you about politics?” Ben said.
“Maybe I talked enough for both of us,” Ostermann said wryly. “Of course you know he worked against the Nazis. To get people out of France. But I think that was for the adventure. He had that spirit. But here-”
“But someone told me last night he was a Communist. You’d think-”
“People are always saying such things now,” Dieter said. “Every day in the papers. How many could there be? Just for signing a petition.” A glance to Ostermann.
“No, the woman knew him. In Berlin. She said he worked for them.”
“In Berlin?” Ostermann said. “But he must have been a boy.”
“Old enough. He helped my father.”
“What woman?”
“Fay Lasner’s cousin. Genia. She was in the camps.”
“To survive that,” Dieter said, impressed. “Genia. A Polish name?”
“Originally. But she knew him in Berlin.”
“But saying such things at dinner. To accuse-”
“She wasn’t accusing him of anything. She was one, too.”
“And he never said anything to you?” Dieter said. “His brother? It’s her imagination, I think.”
“What did you think when you were eighteen?” Ostermann said gently, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Do you remember? I was for the Kaiser. A young man’s ideas. Things change. Maybe he changed, too. A flirtation and then you want to put it behind you.”
“Especially now,” Dieter said. “The way things are. Even at the school. Checking on everybody. So strict. What do they think we write on the blackboards?” He nodded toward Ostermann. “Maybe you can help me persuade The Conscience of Germany to keep his conscience to himself a little. It’s not a good time to show these opinions.”
“When was the good time, ’thirty-three?”
Dieter gave Ben a see-what-I-mean? look, then turned to the water. “Look, it’s setting. At the end, so fast.”
“Do you know why?” Liesl said, coming up to them, slipping her arm through Dieter’s.
“Of course,” he said, affectionate. “When the horizon line-”
She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m teasing. Of course you know everything. When are you going to show us the stars? I thought you were going to take us up the mountain.”
“You’re serious, you’re interested to go?” he said, including Ben. “Whenever you like. You have to stay overnight, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, turning to Ben, her eyes meeting his in code again. “I’ll pack something warm.” Smiling now, handing him a room key. He smiled back, then toward the sunset before anyone could notice, feeling the color in his face.
“You know, I don’t think it can be true,” Ostermann said quietly to Ben, reassuring again. “The ones I knew-they talked about it. They liked to tell you. For them it was-the truth. It explained everything. Children. Daniel wasn’t like that. More-elastic. Anyway, does it matter so much now, what he thought?”
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve. How would I know?”
Howard Stein pushed back from his desk, as if he’d been touched by a cattle prod.
“I thought you were in the Party. That’s what I heard.”
“What are you, working for that fuck Tenney? Or did the studio send you? Lasner doesn’t like the pickets? He wants to nail us this way?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Get a subpoena, you might get an answer. That’s how it works now.” He looked across the desk. “You have any idea what you’re getting into with this?”
“I just want to know about Danny. Somebody told me he was. So, was he? It’s not a crime, last time I heard.”
“Yeah, and it’s a free country.”
“He was a friend of yours.”
“That doesn’t make him anything.” He looked up. “It doesn’t make me anything, either.” He kept looking at Ben, hesitating, then stood up, taking his hat off the stand, his manner deliberately lighter. “But I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, you want some stories for your scrapbook.” He jerked his head toward the door, more than a suggestion. “He could be a funny guy.”
Before Ben could say anything more, they were heading down the stairs and into the glare of the street. Stein’s office was over a car showroom on Wilshire, not far from the Tar Pits, and the closest diner was empty at this hour, still waiting for school groups.
“You think I’m crazy, maybe you’re right, but I think they got the office wired. You talk about stuff like this, the board starts lighting up. Don’t bother,” he said, catching Ben’s look. “I know. Paranoid. I even know how to spell it. But I’m still walking around. It never hurt anybody, be a little careful. You, either.” He nodded to the waitress to bring the coffee pot. “First of all, I’m not in the Party. I left the Party. That’s for you, all right? Not the water cooler. Just something you heard around.”
“So was he?”
“You want him to be? Everybody else is running away from this and you want to hand him a card?”
“I just want to know.”
Stein waited until the waitress had poured their cups.
“The god’s truth? No. Not that I ever heard of. Or saw. Not one meeting. I’d swear to it. At least him I won’t have to. He’s dead. It’s the others they’ll want to get. Fuck ’em. It’s a funny thing about age-the memory goes. Not a goddam thing you can do about it.”
“Even under oath?”
“What, with Tenney? Up in Sacramento? What’s he going to do, put me away? I’ve been there, I’m not afraid of it.”
“You were in prison?”
“You didn’t know? I’m a tough guy. Fucking George Raft.” He stirred some sugar in his coffee. “Aggravated assault. That was hitting back when they broke up a picket line. Teach me a lesson. Which it did, but not the one they thought.” He looked up. “No, he wasn’t. Like I said, he was a friend to the union, that’s all. And then not even that. Five years ago, there were lots of shades of red here. Like a fucking lipstick counter. Now, there’s one. And it’s too bright for most people.”
“Then why would she say he was-the woman who knew him.”
“Make trouble, maybe. This is someone in the Hollywood group?”
“No, from before. In Germany.”
“Germany? That’s years ago. He was a member or just-?”
“He was a courier for them. Would they have trusted an outsider? Then?”
Stein thought for a minute. “All right. But that’s still years ago.”
“It doesn’t expire, does it? It’s not like a library card.”
“Maybe he quit.”
“I thought you couldn’t.”
“No, that’s what they think. The Tenneys, the Minots. You’re never clean. Unless you confess. Help them throw a few other people on the fire. You can quit. I did.”
“Why did you?” Ben asked, suddenly curious. He sipped his coffee.
“No one thing. Maybe I got tired of taking orders. Party discipline. All the goddam meetings. It wears you out. And this place. You got a bunch of people sitting around, beating themselves up, part of the dialectic, and they’re bringing home five hundred a week, more. I didn’t sign on for that. And you know what? I got more done outside than in. My little time away kept me out of the service so I went to work for the union, the last thing they expected when they put on the cuffs.”
“When was this?”
Stein glanced up. “Late, if that’s what you mean. It’s a funny thing. After the Hitler pact, ’thirty-nine, everyone here’s bailing, and I stick. Maybe stubborn. But I figure maybe there’s something I don’t know. Then it all turns around and I see there wasn’t. Just what’s good for Russia. It takes a while, you know, to see where it’s going. Then we get in the war, and now everybody’s friends again-some people here came back in, you believe it? — but it has the opposite effect on me. I don’t care anymore. The Party line, keep the movement alive. Help Russia. What about this country? What are we doing for us?” He shrugged. “Maybe it was all the patriotic movies, what the hell. Me, waving flags. I know what it’s like here.” He touched the top of his head. “I got the bruises. But I figure if we can get rid of the fucking golfers we still have a shot at something here.”
Ben smiled. “But the golfers have the money.”
“Yeah, they do,” Stein said, smiling a little. “Right on top, where they like to be. Now, anyway. You ever go across the street, see the Pits? It’s interesting. You see these bones, the dinosaurs, and you think, there they were, walking around, fucking owned the place, top of the world. And then the next thing-they’re gone. Just bones in a pit. It’s something to think about. You drive out to the Valley, past Warners, you see those big sound stages, sitting there like the whole thing’s theirs, and for all they know a tar pit’s going to open up on them.”
“Then your pickets go, too.”
Stein grinned. “Jack would like that. He’d throw them in first-buy a little time.” He looked down. “You want pie or something with that?” he said, a signal to wrap things up.
Ben shook his head.
“This is so important to you? Whether he was a Red?”
“Did he ever talk about my father?”
“Some big-time director over there, right? The Nazis killed him. He didn’t get out in time or something.”
“Or something.”
Stein waited.
“That’s who Danny was working for.”
“He used his own kid?”
“What does that tell you?”
“That’s a trick question?” he said, flustered. “Listen, I knew your brother. The family, that’s something else. He didn’t talk about that- just your father once in a while. Not the mother. He never mentioned you, for instance.”
“No,” Ben said, feeling it anyway, a sharp point going in.
“So I don’t know. What does it tell me? He must have thought it was important. To do that.”
“It was. To them. They helped smuggle people out. Then, after they got my father, Danny kept doing it. Getting people out of France. Probably using the same network, wouldn’t you say? It’s not the kind of thing you can do freelance. You need some-comrades in place. So he still must have been a Red. And then he gets on a boat to come home and throws his card over the side. Does that seem like Danny to you?”
“Not on a boat,” Stein said quietly.
“What?”
“He came on the Clipper. The boats weren’t running then.”
Something else he didn’t know. A meaningless detail with the same sharp end.
“So does it?” Ben said.
Stein thought for a minute, playing with his spoon.
“You ask his wife?”
“She says no. He didn’t tell her, either,” Ben said, including Stein.
“But you believe the other woman. The one who said he was.”
“She survived the camps. People like that don’t have to make anything up.”
“They could make a mistake.”
Ben shook his head. “Not her. It cost her to tell me.”
Stein looked at him, uncomfortable, then went back to his spoon. “Sometimes it’s better, keeping things quiet. Let’s say he gets here, first thing he sees is you don’t want to advertise. Lie low. We were never popular here, you know, even before this craziness began. So he goes unofficial.”
“Unofficial.”
“Part of a closed chapter.”
“You mean secret?”
“Don’t get excited. Not like that. Just off the books. To protect their jobs. Some places, this can get you fired. Flash a card at Hearst, see how long you last. You go unofficial to protect yourself.”
“There’s a chapter like that here?”
Stein shrugged. “You’re in pictures, you can’t afford to offend the public. My group, it was mostly writers-they don’t have to care.”
“But they must answer to somebody in the Party. They wouldn’t just be left on their own, would they?”
“No.”
“So who would it be here?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Ben looked at him. “Even if you did.”
“I left the Party. Not everybody did. And I don’t know you from Adam.” He paused. “Look, I liked your brother, so I’m telling you. Maybe he was unofficial. But I never heard that. And it doesn’t matter a damn now anyway. Leave it. You don’t want to get somebody else in trouble. They put me under oath? There are no unofficials. Never heard of them. The rest of us, the dues payers? — it’s open season on us. But we don’t have to give them anyone else. All right?”
“Take a look at this,” Hal said, head leaning over the Moviola viewer. His jaw, even in the morning, had traces of beard. “Birkenau-we haven’t seen this before.”
Ben looked with him. Silent film, with card titles in Cyrillic. Stacks of corpses. He felt his stomach slide, the way it always did. Open oven doors with mounds of ashes.
“Lasner won’t like using Russian footage.”
“Cut away from the soldiers. It doesn’t matter who’s holding the camera. We just want to see the place. Look, the guards are still there. This must be just after they went in.”
On the small screen, men in uniforms were being led away, hands up, their collars open, disheveled.
“What do they look like to you?” Ben said, watching them.
“Anybody.”
Ben nodded. “Anybody. You wonder what went through their heads. The ovens going night and day. The smell.”
There were people in bunks, too weak to move, hollow-eyed, and Ben realized, going down the line with the film, that he was looking for Genia. An outside shot now, prisoners standing around, disoriented, waiting for another roll call. The wire fence, the ovens again, bodies everywhere. What she must have seen every day, unable to turn away like the guards. He thought of her in the big Louis XV room, her dead eyes still seeing what was in the film. After a while, it would be the only thing you knew. And then you were here, in the sunshine with people drinking milkshakes, and you saw that it must have been going on at the same time, while the doctors made selections on the platform, and there was no reason at all why you were in one place or the other, reality itself become something random, inexplicable.
“This is pretty rough,” Hal was saying. “Worse than the other stuff. We’re going to have to be careful. You don’t want to chase the audience away.”
“We want them to see it. That’s the point.”
“Look at the Russians.” Soldiers carrying inmates to carts. “They’ve all got their heads turned. You don’t want the audience doing that.” He glanced up at Ben. “Let me work on it. You want anything back, we’ll put it back.”
“But keep the guards. The way they look.”
They watched the rest of the film, then another, absorbed, not even making notes, letting it run. A pan shot across bodies, the genitals just smudges, as if they had retreated inside, the women oddly neutered, without sex. Open mouths.
“Bastards,” Hal said, almost a whisper, and then neither of them said anything.
When it was over, they went outside for a cigarette, wanting distance, even a few feet. Hal leaned back against the wall, looking toward the Admin building on Gower.
“How’d you get him to do it?” he said. “Lasner.”
“He saw it-one of the camps. I didn’t have to do anything.”
“Well, whatever you did. I never thought I’d get to do something like this. At Continental. Piece of history. Fort Roach. Enemies to Friends. How to bow to a Jap. What not to say to the women. Put in your time, go home at night. That’s all I’ve done. Nothing like this.” He cocked his head, taking in Ben from a new angle. “What are you going to do after?”
“What, the Army?” Ben shrugged. “Maybe go back overseas. There’s a newsreel job if I want it.”
“Most people, they get on the lot, they never want to leave.”
“I just want to get this one done.”
“You saw it for real. That’s why?”
Ben dropped his cigarette and rubbed it out with his foot.
“I’m still trying to figure it out. The guards. How do you get to that point? When you can do that. What makes it all right? Do you know? I don’t.”
“You’re never going to know that. A wife shoots her husband, that you can know. This-”
“There has to be something. What makes them think it’s the right thing to do? There’s no money in it, nothing-personal. Like the wife. Some other reason.”
For ending up in a mound of ashes. Or in an alley with your blood running out. At least he could know the reason for that. As blameless as the ash heaps? The question that was always there. What had he done?
Riordan’s telephone voice was all business, as if he were sitting behind a desk.
“What kind of technical advice? For a picture?”
“No. Someone broke into the house last night.”
“So call the cops.”
“Nothing’s missing. I can’t prove anyone was there.”
“Then why do you think-”
“Some things were rearranged.”
“Rearranged.”
“Look, the point is it made Liesl nervous. I don’t want it to happen again. I figured you’d have some ideas. The Bureau must-”
“What? Train us in breaking and entering? I’ll tell you this much, somebody wants to get in, he’ll get in. Get better locks. Alarms will run you money, and anybody who knows what he’s doing can get in anyway. Get dead bolts. That’s for free.”
“I was thinking about surveillance.”
There was a pause as Riordan took this in.
“You’re asking me to babysit?”
“I figured you’d know somebody.”
“What makes you think they’re coming back.”
“They didn’t take anything. Even stuff just lying around. So they must have been after something in particular. If they didn’t find it, maybe they’ll try again. Look, I’m just asking you to recommend somebody.”
Another pause. “All right, I’ll have a look around. Anybody home today?”
“Iris, the housekeeper. Liesl probably. Tell whoever’s there I sent you, to check the locks. Got a pencil?”
“I know where it is.”
“That’s right. The funeral.”
“What was rearranged? So you knew somebody had been there.”
“A file. In the desk.”
“That was careless. What’s in the desk?”
“Nothing. Papers. Desk stuff.”
“No idea what they were looking for?”
“That’s why I called the Bureau.”
“Yeah. All right. I’ll take care of it. Where are you, the studio? That’s Gower. You know Lucey’s on Melrose? By Paramount. Six? But I’m telling you now, it’s locks.”
The red light was on so Ben waited, leaning against the sound stage wall, his head still full of the Artkino footage. In the street, two Japanese pilots were sharing a smoke, probably on their way to dive-bomb Dick Marshall. The casually surreal world Hal thought everyone wanted. “What, have you got a girl back over there or something?” he’d said, not able to let it go. No, here. Ben smiled to himself. A mermaid. Waiting at home. Danny’s home.
The red light flicked off and he heard the buzzer inside, unlocking the doors. What would Rosemary say? Why would she say anything? A girl on her way up, dancing with Ty Power at the Mocambo. She’d want to shed Danny, any B-list affair, like molted skin.
Ben stepped in, facing the backs of some painted flats, then walked around to the interior of the set, still drenched in hot light. A nightclub with an orchestra stage and a bar at the side, now being set up for a tracking shot. Gaffers were making adjustments in the overheads, angling away from the mirror behind the bar. The extras, in suits and evening dresses, were still sitting at the club tables, waiting to be told to start talking again. Rosemary, in a tight dress, was leaning back against a slant board to keep the skirt from creasing, while a makeup girl ran a comb over her hair, patting it gently into place. Rosemary didn’t move. When the girl stepped aside, leaving her alone against the board, she seemed for a minute like an oil painting propped on an easel.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, coming up to her. “We didn’t get a chance to talk at dinner.”
“No,” she said, wary, but not surprised to see him.
“Ready in two, darling,” the assistant director said, passing them.
“We’re in the middle of a scene,” she said to Ben.
“You all right with the gun?” the AD said.
She nodded, glancing at the gun on the table beside her. Make a leap, before she can react.
“Danny told me a lot about you.”
Eyes cornered now, but meeting his, not backing away.
“Yes?” Noncommittal, waiting.
“We were close. He could tell me things,” he said, wondering if a lie showed in your face.
She looked at him, still waiting.
“Just me,” he said, a reassurance.
She stared for another second, then raised her eyebrow. “Well, that puts you one up. He never told me anything. It turns out,” she said, her voice sarcastic but warm, as if bad behavior were a bond between them, something they should have expected.
“How do you mean?”
“I always believe it. I always think, okay, this time I’m not going to listen, and then I do. I guess you like to think-you’re the only one. So that’s what you hear.”
“He never told me about anyone else,” Ben said, trying it, another fly cast.
“Just me, huh? Well, so there’s that. Look, I don’t know what to say to you. Is there a script for this? I mean-his brother. It’s a relief in a way, I guess. That somebody knows. One day you think you’re-” She stopped, looking down. “And the next day you’re not supposed to exist. You can’t go to the funeral. Upset anyone. So what do I say? I’m sorry for your loss? Well, I’m sorry for mine, too, but nobody’s going to say it to me.”
“I’ll say it to you.”
“Thanks,” she said, stopped by this. “Well. So now what?”
“I want to talk to you about him.”
“Why? Warn me off? Before it gets out of hand? Before the wife finds out? A little late now. Anyway, she knows. I could tell. Was that you?”
He shook his head. “Not Danny, either. A hunch, I guess. Maybe you told her, the way you acted with her.”
“Yeah, and maybe it was that big A on my back.” She looked up at him, amused. “Your face. I played the part in stock. You’re right, though. I never read the book. So what do you want to talk about?”
“Were you there the night he fell?”
“What?” she said, a place holder, caught off guard.
“With him.”
“With him? You think he’d do that with me there? It’s the kind of thing you do alone.”
“Somebody was there. Or expected. Maybe you were on your way?”
She looked at him carefully. “What’s this all about?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to find out how it happened.”
“Who to blame, you mean. You think I wanted this?” She shook her head. “Why would I? I thought we were- I was silly about him. Huh. That’s the first time I’ve said that. Even to myself.” She looked away. “Whatever it means. He said it, and it turns out it didn’t mean much. No, I wasn’t there. Must have been somebody else on the call sheet.” She turned back to him. “You think it was because of me? Is that what you want to know? Maybe I should be flattered. But I wasn’t anything special to him. I know that now. What did he tell you, when you were so buddy-buddy? What did he say about me? Besides being an easy lay.”
“Places!” the AD yelled.
“He said you were nice.”
“Oh,” she said softly, surprised, her eyes suddenly moist. “If you ruin this scene for me, I’ll kill you.” She got off the slant board, checking her dress, and picked up the gun, then turned to him. “Nice? That’s not a word he’d use.”
“Maybe I said it.” He nodded to the gun. “Who are you going to shoot?”
The makeup girl came back for a last brush of powder.
“My lover. I’m jealous.” She met his eyes.
“People! Are we going to wrap today or not? Places. Monica, stick that puff somewhere. All right, here we go.”
The buzzer sounded. The director, looking through the viewfinder on the tracking camera, signaled for the clapper. Rosemary’s lover, an actor Ben didn’t know, turned from his drink and started walking down the length of the bar into the moving camera.
“You think you can, but you can’t,” he said, looking from her to the gun.
Rosemary’s hand shook, her eyes beginning to tear up.
“You love me,” the actor said with a sneer.
“I hate you,” Rosemary said, the words pulled out of her.
“Then shoot,” he said easily, still coming toward her.
He froze as the shot exploded, then grabbed his stomach in astonishment and dropped to the floor. Rosemary kept holding the gun out, then lowered her arm, her shoulders shaking.
“Cut,” the director said. “Nice. Let’s get one for safety.”
They did it twice more, then broke to change the set-ups for Rosemary’s reaction shots.
“We’re almost there,” the director said to Rosemary. “The payoff shot. Remember, you still love him.”
“Even while I’m plugging him,” she said wryly.
“And I want to see it right here,” he said, pointing to her eyes. “Watch the dress.”
She stepped back against the slant board.
“That was good,” Ben said.
“It’s always good until you see it.”
“We can talk later if you-”
“They’ll be ten minutes,” she said. “You want to know why he did it? So do I. Don’t you think I’ve asked myself a million times? I never thought there was anything wrong. Maybe one of his other friends didn’t show and he got all upset. I don’t know. Me? All he’d have had to do was pick up the phone.”
“He was seeing someone else?”
“He must have been. Why else would he have the place? We never went there. Well, once-I had somebody staying with me. We used mine. Sometimes little trips. Santa Barbara, the Biltmore. He was romantic like that.” Her voice thickened. “La Valencia, down in La Jolla. Places.”
“But not the Cherokee.”
“Just the once. He said it was a friend’s place. He borrowed it because we couldn’t use any of the hotels-the columns watch. And then I read in the paper that it was his. So there must have been somebody else, without a place. Maybe more than one, who knows? That hurt a little. You like to think- But why should I be surprised? What did I think I was? Someone he saw like that. On the side. Call it romanticoh, La Valencia. But you know what it is. It didn’t seem that way, though, at the time. It was-nice.”
“How long were you-?”
“A few months. Last spring. V-E Day. I was on loan-out at Republic and they stopped work. All-day party. So I guess I could blame the booze. But it wasn’t.”
“And he wasn’t breaking it off?”
“Not that he told me,” she said, a little sharp. “Maybe he told you.” Ben shook his head. “Then why do you ask?”
“Because he gave notice at the Cherokee. End of the month. I just assumed-he didn’t need it anymore.”
She took this in. “You think someone gave him the brush?”
“I don’t know. Any idea who it might have been?”
“I never even suspected. Why would I? We were good together. You look at it now, and I guess I was a fool, but I never thought- When I first heard, I thought maybe he’d been sick. Some condition. He had a lot of doctor appointments. Then I read the place was his and I thought, oh, that’s where the doctor was. Those kind of appointments.”
“How did you hear?”
“In the papers. I was on the set, and it’s in the papers and I had to pretend it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t say how bad he was. Not that I could go to the hospital anyway.”
“You had no idea he was in a coma?”
“You call and they say ‘stable.’“
“They didn’t know who you were, when you called?”
“What do you think? I’m not supposed to exist, remember?”
“And you weren’t at the Cherokee that night.”
“I told you. Why do you keep asking that?”
“Because if you weren’t-if there was nothing to connect you to him-why would Bunny get the police to file it as an accident?”
She started, then pushed herself away from the slant board, no longer caring about the dress.
“What are you talking about? You think Bunny would fix something for me? I’m not important enough.”
“Did he know about you and Danny?”
“I don’t know. He knows everything. He’s like that. But what if he did? You think the studio’s going to fall apart because somebody sees us necking in La Jolla?”
“With Danny. Not Ty Power. He wouldn’t like that.”
“Then he’d tell me about it. Not go flying around town playing Mr. Fixit. You think he’d do that for me? You don’t know what it’s like here. He can trade me in for a new model any time he likes.”
“Not if you’re a star.”
“That’s something to look forward to then, isn’t it? Bunny cleaning up after you. But he’s not doing it now. I’m just a big ‘maybe’ to him. You know how many chances you get in this town?”
“One?”
“Not even. Half, maybe. And nobody gives it to you. You just keep working and one day you get lucky.” She opened her hand to the set. “This is mine. If the picture works, maybe I get the other half, a real chance. That’s after ten years. A Greyhound from Newark. Nobody fixes anything for me. Anyway, fix what?”
“You close a file, nobody asks any questions. Nobody’s embarrassed. That’s all.”
“And I’m the embarrassment.”
“Maybe Danny was. A married man. They have plans for you.”
The buzzer sounded.
“Ro?”
“One sec.” She turned to Ben. “Look, what happened-this business about giving somebody the brush. He wasn’t planning to do that, was he? I mean to me. He didn’t tell you that.”
“No.”
She nodded, holding on to it. “Thanks. This is a funny kind of conversation to be having. I never thought of him as dead. I knew it wouldn’t last-but not like this.”
“Why wouldn’t it last?”
“Well, they don’t, do they? These things.” She shrugged. “They’re all still in love with their wives, I think.” She brushed the front of her skirt, smoothing it for the shot. “Anyway, they don’t leave them.”
He had lunch with Hal, taking in the pecking order of the commissary. Lasner had nodded to them when they came in, a sign of favor from the head table, but nobody got up to ask them to join the group, sober gray and pinstripe suits except for Bunny in his camel hair jacket. The writers were more casual, hound’s tooth checks and plaids, noisy with laughter, as if they’d just moved the table over from the Derby on Vine. The actors stayed with their production units, eating salads in period dress and seating themselves by salary levels. Otherwise, technicians talked shop with each other. The room itself seemed the one place on the lot where Lasner, or Bunny, had been willing to spend money-chair backs of curved chromium tubes, lacquered tables and sleek sconces, a Cedric Gibbons set.
“Who’s that with Sam Pilcer?” Hal said, nodding to a table near the window where Julie Sherman was huddled with a short man in a double-breasted suit.
“That was fast. The ink can’t even be dry on the contract yet. You want me to introduce you?”
“Later. Not in front of Sam.”
Ben smiled but looked over again uneasily. Julie was leaning forward, her full attention on Pilcer. Is this how Danny had done it? A drink and a promise? Then a quick trip to the Cherokee-except they’d never gone there, only the once. A place paid for by the month.
“They’re wrapping today,” Hal was saying. “Maybe I’ll run into her at the party. Without Sam.”
“Rosemary’s picture? What about her?”
“What about?”
“Chances with her.”
Hal shook his head, protective. “She’s not- She’s got talent.”
Ben looked at him, surprised he’d made the distinction. “Talent.”
“Watch her on the set. A pro. On time, knows her lines. No high-hatting, ever. Knows your name. She does the job.” He looked at Ben. “Then she goes home.”
But not always. Sometimes she went to La Jolla.
“The papers have her out with Ty Power.”
“Yeah, well,” Hal said. “You know these pictures they put her in, she’s got the figure for it, but she’s not like that.” He looked again toward Julie’s table. “You want to get something going, ask her if she has a friend. What?”
“Just thinking,” Ben said, then gathered up his tray. “I have to make a call.”
On his way out he couldn’t resist another sidelong glance-Pilcer even closer now, smiling, telling her all the things he could do for her. What men must have said to Rosemary, too, while she waited for half a chance. But she’d believed Danny.
Kelly was in a rush, claiming to be on deadline.
“Quick question,” Ben said. “One sec.”
“Long time no hear.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“Yeah, I know. This one’s heading for the fridge. So what do you want to know?”
“When did Danny take up the lease at the Cherokee? Did anybody ever say? Last spring?”
“No, first of the year. They didn’t say, I asked. I’m a reporter.” A cheeky Dick Powell. “Why do you want to know?”
Why would he?
“I’m checking the loan-outs. Helps to have a time, when she might have been here.”
“First of the year. You’re still on this, huh?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’ll tell you something. The way it works? At a certain point you think, I’m just spinning wheels. It’s getting late. I can feel the chill on this one already. How many weeks now? And all I got is one girlfriend who wasn’t there.”
“What? Who?”
“The Miller kid. On your contract list,” he said, a tiny delay, making a point.
“How do you figure that?”
“I showed glossies to the night clerk, the real one, not Joel. He ID’d her. But not Joel. Never saw her. So I checked her out. And he’s right, she wasn’t there that night. So, nothing.”
“You never told me.”
“Keep your pants on. Tell what? We don’t have anything if she wasn’t there, a hit and run. If I ran an item on everyone who got laid, there wouldn’t be enough paper. So they screwed around and he’s dead, but where’s the connection? No story.”
“But you ran it down anyway.”
“It’s always nice to know. Something to put on the layaway plan. Might come in handy, you never know.”
“If she makes it,” Ben said. “Then you can give it to Polly.”
“Tch, tch, is that nice? Anyway, what’s in it for Polly? He’s dead. Sorry, I didn’t mean-but he is. And not a star. So the only way it plays now is if she is and he was the secret love of her life. Which doesn’t sound like it was. The clerk saw her once. You can’t do much with a one-nighter, not even Polly.”
Ben said nothing. One night. La Jolla, the Biltmore, all the others still hers, not tucked away in anyone’s file.
“Hey, speaking of which, you know the Fed at the Market you asked me to check out?”
“Riordan.”
“Yeah, the Technical Consultant. Turns out he was. Republic paid him. Worked for your brother on the series, just like he said. So.”
“Why speaking of which,” Ben said, trying to follow.
“Oh, Polly’s secretary. You said he came to the funeral with Polly, so I figured she’d know him.”
“And?”
“Well, I told you, they never retire, they just find other garbage to go through. He’s been freelancing for Tenney-you know the one with the committee. A bunch of old hands from the Bureau dig around for him. He sends stuff over to Polly, and sometimes Riordan takes it. That’s how Polly knows him. Tenney stays clear, so nobody figures where the stuff is coming from.”
“So he’s a messenger?”
“More like a supplier. Anyway, he’s who he says he is. And a little more. Christ, there’s the ME, I have to go.”
“Wait, one more thing. The clerk who ID’d Rosemary? He saw her? They didn’t go through the back?”
“No, he saw her. They must have come in the front. I gotta run. You want, I’ll keep poking around, but this is already going away. What I can’t figure is the studio. But maybe they got trigger happy-grabbed the phone before there was anything to cover up. It happens, you get nervous about people. Maybe they don’t like Rosemary screwing around. But that doesn’t get us anywhere. We need someone there that night. Or every night-the romance that broke his heart. But all we’ve got is a jump. Yesterday.”
Check the loan-outs. Danny had rented the Cherokee months before Rosemary. Maybe for someone he didn’t bring through the front door. He started out for Personnel to get the monthly lists, but got sidetracked by Hal instead, excited about something.
“I was thinking about the guards,” he said, leading Ben to the cutting room. “You know the faces are hard to see. Medium pan shots, nothing closer.”
“It’s newsreel film. Army. They don’t do close-ups.” Heads tilted up to the light, long lashes making shadows.
“Right. But take a look at this.” At the Moviola, a frozen frame of the guards being led away. “Just for the idea. It’s a work print. But they should have the camera originals in Culver City. Now look.”
He took a lens and held it over a section of the viewer so that a single face leapt out of the frame.
“Blow up the negative here. Show his face.”
Ben looked at the spot enlargement, the guard’s eyes caught forever on a piece of film. In the full running shot he’d be turning away from the camera, a close-up of shame itself.
“It’ll cost, though, the lab work. You’re not just splicing.”
“What if the quality’s not good enough? The stock’s grainy.”
“Wet-gate print it.”
“What?”
“Before you transfer. It takes out the scratches. We always do it with a sixteen-millimeter transfer. Come back here, I’ll show you.”
Ben followed him, not really wanting to take the time but feeling obligated. He had felt in Hal’s eyes the line worker’s mild contempt for the foreman still learning the fundamentals. The whole technical side of film-making-the developing tanks, the chemical emulsions, the synchronized sprockets-were things handled by someone else. They went through heavy double doors to a big factory space of drying rooms and machines that made the transfer from light to image, Merlin’s workshop.
“See, the transfer’s clear,” Hal said, leading him to a machine. “But you couldn’t close in on this. Depends on the exposure, what light was retained.” He pointed to the sample, an indoor shot of people lying in bunks. “You blow up these faces, you don’t have enough resolution. Like a night shot. See what I mean?”
Ben looked at the faces, visible now as individuals, but slightly blurred, not good enough for full-scale projection.
“I tried printing with more light, but you can’t get the background up. Too dark in the first place.”
He reversed the process, the faces slipping back into a formless crowd.
“But the other stock we can work with.”
Shadowy faces in a crowd. Ben stood still, eyes fixed on the enlarging mechanism.
“Hal,” he said, not looking at him, thinking. “You can do this with any picture, right? Bring up the background.”
“Depends how it was printed. If you can work from the negative, you can pretty much get whatever’s there.”
“The negative,” Ben said, elsewhere.
“That’s right. Then you control the printing, kind of coax it out.”
Ben looked at his wristwatch. “How long would it take? Blow up some negatives? Stills?”
“No time. What stills?”
Ben touched his upper arm. “I’ll be back. Keep the machine free, okay?”
“What stills?”
In the car he tried to remember the lighting in the pictures, windows shining down on the Cherokee alley, the glare of a police flashbulb, a few people standing near the body, the rest outside the circle of light, like dots in an afterimage. He tried to remember the women-a distraught neighbor, anyone from the studio, maybe even Rosemary herself, who hadn’t been there-but all he’d really looked at before was the body.
Iris’s car was in the driveway so he parked on the street and walked around to the back of the house, the French doors wide open, another invitation to rifle through Danny’s desk. Liesl was in the kitchen grating potatoes, her face pink from the work, wisps of hair spilling down out of the pile on top.
“Oh! What are you doing here?”
“Just picking something up.” Wanting to go over to her, touch her arm, but aware of Iris at her ironing board. “I thought you were going to keep the doors locked.”
“Well, at night. Oh, now you won’t be surprised.” She waved the knife. “I wanted to surprise you. My roast chicken.”
He nodded to the mixing bowl. “What’s that?”
“Kartoffelpuffer.” A hesitant smile. “I told you I could cook.”
“What did Riordan say? About the locks.”
“Who?”
“The man I sent over to check the house.”
“No one’s been here.”
Ben looked at his watch. Cutting it close or not coming. Or maybe he’d been there without announcing himself, playing burglar.
“That’s a lot of food. Are people coming?”
“No, just us,” she said, looking at him, her eyes soft. “It’s going to rain, I think. So it’s cozy, eating in.”
He held her stare for a second, trying not to smile in front of Iris, then headed to the study.
The photographs were just as he’d remembered, Danny lying with a dark smear around his head, people huddled at the edge of the flash. Two angles with two backgrounds, one of the parking area, the other leading to the street. He looked carefully at the faces in front but still didn’t recognize anybody. They’d be neighbors, rushing out at the sudden sound, then the police lights, something more exciting than the radio. But who were the people right behind them? He slipped out the written reports, leaving the prints and negatives in the envelope.
“When will you be home?” Liesl said, then flushed, the simplest domestic question now somehow suggestive. “I only ask because of the chicken.”
“I’m supposed to see Riordan after work. If he shows. Eight, eight-thirty?”
“Yes, all right. But you’ll call if you’ll be late? So I know.”
This time he did smile, not caring whether Iris saw. Something any couple might say.
Hal looked at the pictures, waiting for Ben to explain.
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“People you can’t see clearly in the prints.”
“They’re dark.” He held up one of the negatives to the light, then turned it on its side, looking at the numbers in the margin. “These are police? Where’d you-?” He stopped, still waiting. “Who’s the victim?”
“My brother.”
“I thought-”
Ben nodded. “I want to see who was there. Somebody from the building, maybe. Anybody I could talk to.”
Hal looked at him, skeptical, then took up the negatives. “Okay, let’s go to work.”
Ben watched, fascinated, as Hal manipulated the negatives, enlarging, then disappearing into the darkroom with its trays of solutions. But even the studio couldn’t produce a miracle. In the shot looking toward the parking lot, faces were barely visible, even blown up. The alley angle was better, street lamps at the end providing a kind of backlight. They looked at the enlargements together, Ben hoping that Hal, familiar with everyone on the lot, might suddenly recognize somebody. But they were all anonymous, caught unexpectedly in suspenders and house dresses, one woman in curlers, hand over her mouth.
“You can tell the cops by the hats,” Hal said, examining a new print. “Everyone else just rushed out, I guess. Look, back there in the alley. You can always tell, can’t you?”
“So why is he in the alley, not with the others? He’s just someone off the street. Who’s the woman next to him? Can we get in closer on her?”
“Closer? Not much. A few more degrees, you’ll get a blotch. But let’s try one.”
When the print was done, it was just clear enough. Ben looked, then went rigid, stunned.
“She looked better in the dark,” Hal said. “But the hat-pure cop. You still think he’s in off the street?”
“No, he’s a cop,” Ben said slowly. “Ex-FBI.”
His parking space was behind Admin B, but when he got there he put the keys back in his pocket. He could use the walk to clear his head. He passed the choked line of cars at the gate, all heading home at once, then the small knot of picketers, and turned down Gower. Where they used to shoot Westerns, under roofs of cheesecloth. Today they wouldn’t need to filter the light-the day, cloudy before, was overcast and thick, already growing faint. How long had Riordan been in the alley? In the picture, he’d been craning his neck to see, just another curious bystander. But how could he have been? Someone Danny knew. Who had never made himself known, not on any of the reports, a hat in the crowd. Wanting to see, maybe wanting to make sure.
Lucey’s was more than a few blocks, a longer walk than he expected, so he was late when he pushed open the door and took a second to adjust to the dim light inside. The after-work drinkers had already piled in from Paramount, but Riordan had managed to get a table and he signaled Ben through the crowd with a two-finger wave.
“I went ahead and ordered,” he said, pointing to two glasses. “Try getting a waitress in this. Beer okay?”
Ben sat down, putting the envelope next to Riordan’s hat. “So,” he said, letting Riordan take the lead.
“So you need to do something about the pool doors.”
“Oh,” Ben said, looking over at him, the same military short hair, steady eyes, but everything different now, someone who’d been in the alley. “Is that how you got in?”
“They’d be easy to jimmy,” he said, not picking up on this. “I noticed at the funeral.”
“And that’s why you didn’t bother going over today.”
Riordan said nothing.
“Or because you already knew how he got in Saturday. Did you do it yourself, or did you send someone else? In case.”
Riordan picked up his glass, staring at Ben over the rim as he drank, buying a minute.
“If I’d done it, you wouldn’t have known anybody was there,” he said finally.
“So someone else. But you’d tell him what to look for. Now you want to tell me?”
“You think I knocked over your place? What for?”
“For something you didn’t get. Maybe I can help.”
“You’re going in circles.”
“And I keep coming back here. You were tailing him. You’re still tailing him. A dead man. What do you want? Didn’t you have enough on him already? A nice big file down in Tenney’s office.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you work for Tenney. Take love notes to Polly. God knows what else. Keep tabs on Liesl’s father, dangerous characters like him. So we can sleep safe at night. While you’re breaking into the house.”
“I don’t work for Tenney.”
“Were you getting stuff on Danny while he was paying you? Maybe little notes on his love life. Tenney likes that, I hear.”
“Where is this coming from?” Riordan said evenly. “Your information’s old. I don’t work for Tenney. I did. A while ago. But that’s a while ago. And by the way, I’m not tailing Ostermann.”
“You just like having lunch at the Farmers Market.”
Riordan sat back, his eyes steady on Ben.
“You going to tell me what this is all about?”
Ben slid the envelope to Riordan. “Have a look.”
Ben watched him open the envelope and take out the picture, his face registering no emotion at all, a practiced blank. But when he did raise his eyes, they had a new directness.
“Where did you get this?”
“The police had it. They just didn’t know what they had.”
“What did they have?”
“Someone he knew, right at the scene, who didn’t identify himself. Just stood there watching him bleed out. They might be interested in that. I was.”
“And?”
“And they might want to know more. Show your picture around- do those things the police do. To see what connection there might be.”
“They have any reason to do that?”
Ben shrugged. “A courtesy to the family. After they start making noise. Plus interfering with police procedures. Getting a report changed. They really don’t like that. Unless they’re the ones doing it, but that can’t be all of them, can it?”
“And I’m supposed to be the one asking.”
“Continental asked. But the studio had to get a call from somebody who was there. Otherwise it’s too late, the time doesn’t fit. I’ve been looking for the girlfriend, whoever he must have been meeting. But the girlfriend wasn’t there. You were. The meeting was with you?”
Riordan said nothing.
“So we’re back in the circle again-what were you doing there?”
“Maybe I happened to be passing by.”
“Passing by.”
“Who can say different?”
“Well, there’s the call. Why call Bunny if you’re just passing by.”
“He told you this?”
“Not a word. Loose lips sink ships. Your secret’s safe with him. I just figured. But put him under oath and he’s not going to keep ducking and weaving-he’ll have other things to think about. So will you. The police might want to change the accident report again. Make it a criminal case this time.”
“What are you saying? You think I killed him?”
“Somebody did.”
Riordan looked at him sharply. “Nobody else thinks so.”
“Just the two of us, huh?”
Riordan paused for a minute, staring at him, then nodded. “But I don’t know it. Neither do you.”
“Then you won’t mind if the police give us a hand. So we’ll all know.” Ben slid the picture back. “I can get more made, if you’d like one.”
Riordan sat forward, his shoulders hunched. “We need to talk.”
“Start.”
“You think you know something, but you have things a little confused. So let’s put them straight. First, I didn’t kill your brother. And you don’t think so either or you wouldn’t be sitting here. Kind of a dangerous thing to say to somebody if it were true.”
“Why? Because you’d plug me here in Lucey’s?”
“You won’t always be in Lucey’s,” Riordan said calmly. “And you can save the tough guy talk. I know people who really are tough.”
“What are they like? You?”
“They don’t talk much at all. Second, you’re not going to the cops. You don’t have anything to give them except a picture that doesn’t mean much. And you start anything, they’ll mess it up. You don’t want any mess with this. They closed it out as an accident, keep it that way.”
“Thanks to you.”
Riordan opened his hand, conceding the point.
“You don’t want anybody nosing around. Trust me on that.”
“I know what Danny was. You must, too, or you wouldn’t have been hounding him. More Red meat. Is that why you didn’t want it as a suicide? They’d blame you for hounding him?”
“I wasn’t hounding him.”
“Then what were you doing at the Cherokee? We’re back there again,” he said, tapping his finger on the photo.
“I was keeping an eye.”
“Jesus,” Ben said, turning his head in disgust. “And what did you think when you saw him there? What was in your head? One less Red? Keeping an eye.”
“You want to listen to this or just get up on a soapbox? I was keeping an eye because something was wrong. I knew your brother. We did business together. And then all of a sudden he was acting funny. Upset. And I thought, which? Is he upsetting himself or is somebody upsetting him? So I started keeping an eye, friendly, to see what was going on. That night I’m sitting in the car on Cherokee. No idea what he was doing there. A woman? Maybe. I see him go in, but I don’t see anyone else. So somebody who lives there. Then the crash. People come running out. I go take a look. And there he is.” He pointed to the picture. “The police come right away. Everybody’s talking in the alley, he’s a jumper. That fairy night clerk, carrying on. And I get that he rents there, it’s his place. And I think, this is going to be a mess.”
“So you decide to be the janitor.”
“You know what happens? A suicide, anything suspicious? They’re going to seal the place. Make an investigation. That’s not going to do anybody good.”
“Not you anyway. How does it look? You go after somebody and he finally runs so hard he jumps. That’s not the kind of press Tenney needs. What his files are really doing to people.”
Riordan sat back. “Whoa,” he said, putting up his hand in a stop gesture. “Look, you’re not playing with a full deck here. That’s not how it was.”
“No?”
“Nobody was chasing him. He was working with me. He was a source.”
For a second, even the sounds of Lucey’s seemed to fall away, his head stopped up with a cotton numbness.
“What kind of source,” he said quietly.
“A source. He gave me names. Things to follow up. You’ve got this backwards. He helped make the files.”
“I don’t believe that,” Ben said, suddenly chilled, his blood stopped for a minute.
Riordan shrugged. “That doesn’t change anything.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“I can show you reports. In the files.”
Ben said nothing, still digesting this. Then he looked down to the photo.
“You bastard,” he said. “That’s why you thought he jumped. That he couldn’t live with himself anymore.”
Riordan looked away, embarrassed. “People are unpredictable.”
“Especially informers. They turn on everybody. Then themselves. Is that it?”
“What are you talking about? Informer. He was a patriot.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ. A patriot. What did you do to make him do it? What club did you use.”
“You’ve got this wrong. Nobody made him do anything. We were all on the same side in this.”
“He was a Communist.”
“In Germany. Was. He saw what it meant. Right here.” He held his hand close to his face. “You see it that clear, you want to do something.”
“Like shop people to you.”
Riordan took a breath. “Sometimes, you stop believing in something, you go the other way. You hate it.”
“And hate yourself.”
“No, not like that.”
“Then why did you think he’d jumped?”
Riordan looked away again. “People get ideas. You never know how they’re going to-” He stopped, leaning forward. “But that’s why. It didn’t make sense to me, the way I knew him. So I thought, what if it wasn’t? Just the way you did. I thought, what if he had help? Someone who knew. Wanted him stopped.”
“Communists, you mean. At it again. Is that the way you think Party discipline works? Throw people out of windows. You should go to work for Minot.”
Riordan looked at him. “I do.”
“You work for Minot?”
“It’s not a secret.”
Ben studied him again, as if he were moving pieces of his face, seeing him new, rearranged. “And that’s why Bunny made the call,” he said, half to himself. “Not for you.”
“Ken doesn’t forget a favor.”
“And nobody would know Danny was feeding you. Minot’s own Bureau.”
“Just one of the field agents,” Riordan said smoothly. “Tenney recommended me.”
“After all your good work there.”
“You want to be a wiseass, go ahead. I don’t care. Your brother knew what was what. Maybe you will, too, someday. Everybody will. Minot’s going to take this national.”
“Take what national?”
“The threat in the industry.” He held out his hand, stopping a passing waitress. “You want another?”
Ben looked at his beer, scarcely touched, then sat back, staring at the picture. Riordan waited, letting him catch his breath.
“You’re surprised.”
“Why would he do it?”
“Why wouldn’t he? It’s the right thing to do.”
Ben looked up at him. “To fight the threat. Which one? Betty Grable taking over the government?”
“You think it’s a joke. It’s not. This is a war of ideas.”
“What’s the last idea you saw in the movies?”
Riordan said nothing, not wanting to quarrel.
“How long was all this?” Ben said. “How long did you know him?”
“Couple of years. Since the Bureau. He was a friend to the Bureau.”
“What kind of friend?”
“We asked for some help, he gave it.”
“You asked for help? What, go through Herb Yates’s mail?”
“We don’t need people for that. We know what people say, what they write to each other. What we need to know is what they think. Your brother had special access.”
“To whom?” Ben said, chilled again, apprehensive.
“He did us a service. But I think he did them a service, too. Wartime, the Bureau has to keep an eye on enemy aliens. It’s our job. But you don’t want to make people uncomfortable. Not if they’re what they say they are.”
“He spied on his friends?” Ben said, suddenly seeing the exile faces at the funeral, Heinrich and Alma and Feuchtwanger. Hans and Liesl. Family.
“I wouldn’t use that term. He reassured us, that’s closer. That they were all right. Well, Brecht I still wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw. But we got nothing yet, so we can’t touch him. Eisler we already knew. And the Mann kid’s a fruit, that’s always a risk. The others, harmless, more or less. But we had to know that. So like I say, he did everybody a service.”
“The Bureau spied on them? These people risked their lives. Fighting Nazis.”
“So they say. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good for America. They have a different idea of politics over there. You ask me to tell you the difference between a Nazi and a Communist and what would I say? This much?” He held up two fingers, a tiny space apart. “At the Bureau we call them Communazis-they’re both on the same side, so why not put them together? We needed to keep tabs. Your brother saw it. How the Reds tried to use them-small stuff, innocent, put your name on a letter, then maybe not so innocent. He was worried about them being used. We knew how he felt.”
“How? You tap his phone?”
Riordan ignored this. “So we asked him to help. You know, the Bureau, it’s hard to say no. Wartime, it’s a patriotic duty.”
“And then you kept asking.”
“He saw how it was going in the industry. So he gave me a hand.”
“Real pals.” Ben looked again at the alley picture. “But you couldn’t even go over to the body, see if you could help. Just stood there thinking how to cover your ass.”
“He was dead. I thought he was dead.”
“How’s that feel? Having someone’s blood on your hands?”
Riordan glanced up at the returning waitress, but she seemed not to have overheard, smiling as she put down his glass and moved on. He took a sip of his beer.
“How do you figure that?”
“First you think he jumped because he got disgusted with himself. For what? The work he was doing for you. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?”
Riordan said nothing.
“But what if somebody killed him. Who would that be? Who’d hate him that much? How about somebody he sold out to you?” He picked up the photo, both of them glancing at it again, back in the alley, then slid it into the envelope. “Either way it comes back to you,” he said, his voice lower, drained.
Behind him he heard the tinkle of glasses, then a roll of thunder. He turned to the window, even darker now, and suddenly thought of the window on the Chief, looking out at the endless bright fields, everything getting bigger and more open, golden, the way he imagined Danny’s life had become, not shadowy and squalid.
“I don’t see it that way,” Riordan said. “He did what he thought was right. I didn’t kill him. But somebody did. You’re his brother. If you’d stop spitting at me for two minutes, maybe we could help each other out.”
Ben stared for a second, hearing the voice, steady and reasonable, then separating it from the words. What he might have said to Danny, help each other out, while he wrapped the coil around him. Ben stood up.
“It’s still on them,” he said, nodding to Riordan’s hands. He reached into his pocket to pull out some money, then stopped. “I’ll let you get this one.”
He didn’t turn until he was at the door, seeing Riordan drop some change on the table.
Outside it had finally begun to rain, heavy sheets of it, so that he was trapped under the small awning. The Mediterranean hills had disappeared, even the Paramount water tower, leaving a few flat streets with running gutters and a tangle of overhead wires.
“Christ,” Riordan said, coming out. “Where’s your car?”
“I walked.”
Riordan looked at him, puzzled, a joke he didn’t quite get. “I’m there,” he said, pointing to a car. “Come on, I’ll drop you.”
“I’ll wait it out.”
Riordan gave him a suit-yourself shrug, then turned up the back of his collar, ready to dart to the car. “By the way,” he said. “You’re going in circles again. You think it’s somebody he gave me. If he’d already done that, it’d be too late, wouldn’t it? No point then. Right?”
He dashed out into the rain, fumbling with his keys, and got into his car. The rain was blowing in under the awning. In a real city there’d be taxis or a bus rumbling along. Ben watched Riordan’s car move into the street. Circles. No point then. Right?
Riordan pulled up in front and rolled down his window. “Don’t be a jerk. Get in.”
Ben looked at the rain again, feeling the bottom of his pants already wet, and sprinted to the passenger door.
“You’ve got a short fuse,” Riordan said, pulling out into traffic.
Ben brushed the front of his jacket, damp in patches.
“I liked him, you know. Whatever you think.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. He took out a cigarette and lit it. They were passing RKO. Only a few blocks, the windshield wipers keeping rhythm. “Everybody did.”
Even as a kid, friends clung to him, following him home. Jokes about the teachers, plans for later. But what had he felt about them? Nothing can lie like a smile. Kaltenbach spoke of him as a hero. But Danny must have filed reports on him, too. Long talks with Liesl’s father-taken down later? Bedtime reading for Riordan. Who must have supplied the lever. Maybe not blackmail, a plot out of Partners, just a soft pressure point, and then he was in it. But at least part of him must have wanted to be. Sometimes you stop believing, you go the other way. But when had it happened? Had he enjoyed it? Even justified it to himself-keeping the wolf away from innocent people? But not from everybody. How did it feel, giving Riordan a name?
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Riordan was saying. “It’s a funny thing to say, but I’m glad it’s this way. That he didn’t do it to himself. I’d hate to think that.”
“Just as long as everybody else does.”
Riordan was quiet for a minute. “You’ve got some mouth on you. That’s not even fair. I got it changed.”
Ben rolled down the window and tossed the cigarette. The quick storm had slowed to a light drizzle. “Just up here,” he said.
At the Continental gate they idled behind a white convertible with a canvas top, its tail lights bathing the trunk in neon red. Even the cars were different here, bright pieces of color, not gray jeeps and flatbed convoys. Like waking up in Oz. Maybe it had been that simple, not some blinding light on the road to Damascus. Maybe Danny had just seen a red convertible, an aqua swimming pool, and decided to leave the old world behind.
“Why Bunny?” Ben said suddenly. “Why ask Bunny? Doesn’t Minot know anybody downtown?”
“Picture people. Call comes from the studio, they figure the usual, a dame, maybe high on weed. Something. A congressman calls, they wonder. People talk. And word gets out.” He looked at Ben. “How’d you hear, by the way?”
Ben said nothing, turning back to the gate.
“Right,” Riordan said slowly, doing a sum in his head. “Your pal at the Market. Little Jimmy Olsen.”
“Did Bunny know why?”
Riordan shook his head. “Just a favor.”
“So Danny’s a drunk. Another studio mess. But not a snitch.”
“Snitch. He was your brother. What do you want to beat him up like that for?”
“I beat him up?” Ben said, looking over at Riordan.
“You’re doing it now. What he did-”
“You’re right,” Ben said, tired of it. “Maybe you didn’t, either. Maybe he beat himself up.”
“He didn’t do anything to himself. That’s the point. Somebody else did. So who?”
“Check your files.”
“You didn’t listen before. If I know, it’s too late. Somebody wanted to stop him. It’s somebody he hadn’t told me about yet.”
Ben watched the tail lights pass through.
“We could help each other out,” Riordan said.
Ben turned to him, meeting his eyes.
“That’s what you were looking for in his desk,” he said finally. “Another name.”
“It’s the same one you want, isn’t it?”
He walked through the gate and heard music, people singing around a piano. The door of Sound Stage 4 was open, light pouring out onto the wet pavement. To one side, holding an umbrella, Bunny stood watching, his figure oddly poignant, like one of the waifs he used to play, nose pressed against the glass.
He was in a belted raincoat, dressed to go-where? Ben had never imagined him off the lot. But he must have a life somewhere, maybe a house on the beach, a bungalow in one of the canyons. Where he took phone calls at night, doing favors. Something he must have done a dozen times, just putting things right. A call the police understood, coming from him-studio business, another embarrassment to keep out of the papers. Not asking Riordan why, just holding the favor in his hand like an IOU. Not talking about it, either, certainly not to the unexpected brother, who kept poking at it.
Ben stopped. According to Riordan. It was still a call to the police, not something Bunny would do without knowing why. What had Riordan said to him? Or didn’t he have to say anything?
“It’s stopped raining,” Ben said, coming up to him.
He looked at Ben, distracted, then up at the dark sky and closed the umbrella. “So it has.”
“You’re not going in?”
On the nightclub set everything was still in place, but the gowns had been traded in for ordinary skirts, the men back in casual trousers and V-neck sweaters, even the cocktail glasses replaced by bottles of beer. Platters of food had been set up along the bar.
“No, you don’t want to barge in on a wrap party. Breaks the mood.”
The piano player shifted to a new song, the small knot of singers laughing as they picked it up.
“No fun with the boss around?”
Bunny shook his head. “Ever work on a picture?” he said, smiling a little, his voice distant. “For six weeks, eight weeks, whatever the shoot is-the minute this door closes everything else goes away. Everything. There’s just the crew, what you’re doing that day, getting the take right. That’s all. Like family. Closer. Then it’s over.” He nodded to the set where Rosemary was being lifted onto the bar next to the piano. “And you pretend you’re relieved, but-now what? You don’t want outsiders, not at the end. Well,” he said, catching himself, “listen to me.”
“You must miss it.”
“Well, of course you miss it. It’s the whole point. All the rest of it-” He waved his hand. “Remember Castaway? My first picture. A hundred years ago. We opened at the Pantages. My first time. I’d never seen anything like it before-the flashbulbs, people yelling your name. I was on the radio. And I thought, well, this is all right, this is it. But it wasn’t. This was it,” he said, looking at the set. “You can get things right. Perfect, sometimes. A perfect take. You can never get things right out here.” He looked down at his watch. “Still, here we are. And I’m late, I’m late,” he said, doing the White Rabbit.
“No rushes tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he said, closing down, moving back into the life Ben knew nothing about, as secret as Danny’s. Ben looked over at him. The one Riordan had called.
“You’re all wet, by the way,” Bunny said, starting to move. “Better get dried off.”
“I got caught. I was having a drink at Lucey’s with a friend of yours.”
Bunny stopped.
“Dennis Riordan.”
Bunny turned, trying to read his face.
“What a busy little bee it is. Buzz, buzz,” he said slowly. “And what did he have to say?”
“Not much. He knew my brother.”
“Oh yes? His nickel or yours?”
“His. A condolence call.”
Bunny took a second, fiddling with the umbrella. “You want to have a care there. You know who he is?”
Ben nodded. “One of Minot’s field hands. Don’t worry, I told him you said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.”
“That’s not funny. What did he ask you?”
“About you? You didn’t come up.”
“Then why did you say he was a friend of mine?”
Ben shrugged. “I figured you’d know everybody on Minot’s staff.”
“Not everybody.”
“We just talked about Danny.”
“Was this after your chat with Rosemary?” Not making a point, just letting him know. “Quite a day for old times.”
Ben hesitated. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why the big mystery? You knew what I was looking for-”
“Tell you what?” Bunny said, then looked away, switching gears. “It wasn’t mine to tell. Yours, either.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“I said I’d never met him. I knew who he was. Hard not to, considering.”
“So it must have been a relief.”
Bunny peered at him. “Are you trying to get me to say something unpleasant? Why? I’m sorry for your loss, all right? Let’s leave it at that.”
“All I wanted was to talk to her. I knew there’d been someone.”
“And do you feel better now? Any more skeletons in the closet or are we ready to move on?”
“I don’t know, are there?”
But Bunny didn’t rise to this. “Usually. People are disappointing once you get to know them. I find. You’d do better remembering the good times. I assume there were?”
“A few.”
“Well, hold on to those,” he said archly, patting Ben’s upper arm. He glanced through the door. “Now let’s let her have her party in peace. Anyway, I’m late.” He began to move away again.
“Why’d you make the call?”
Bunny was quiet for a second. “ Les freres Kohler, ” he said finally, rhyming. “One was trouble. Now two.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“All right. What call?”
“The one you made to the police.”
“Again? You’re like a record with a skip. Back and back.”
“The one Riordan asked you to make. Why you?”
“Did he? Tell you what, now that you’re chums, why don’t you ask him?” he said, an end move. He let out a breath with an audible weariness. “Look, we’re stuck with each other for a while. Mr. L insists. Let’s make the best of it.” He nodded toward the sound stage. “For a start, we’ll keep Rosemary to ourselves, shall we? What’s done is done. No need to upset anyone. There’s the grieving widow to consider.”
“Is that why the screen test? Something for the wronged party?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bunny said, genuinely put out. “Screen tests aren’t favors. Not mine. You think we’re all Sam Pilcer?” He looked up, feeling the drizzle begin again, cooling his mood. “I think she has something.”
“Besides an accent.”
“So did Bergman, when she started. You can work with an accent, if there’s something there.” He looked again at the sound stage. “Whatever it is. Some quality.”
“And you think she has that?”
“Haven’t the faintest. She moves well, that’s what I noticed. But you can’t know anything until you see film. It’s not what you see, it’s what the camera sees. What quality it brings out. You have to have that.”
“What was yours?” Ben said.
Bunny looked at him, then smiled, amused. “Innocence, I think.”
After Bunny left, Ben stood for a while watching the party, invisible in the dark outside. There was a cake, somebody’s birthday, with candles to blow, then whoops and applause. He wondered if Bunny had had a cake on his set, eleven candles, surrounded by beaming grips and the family closer than family. Years like that, closing the world out with a door, until he was outside, too.
He darted back to Admin B, then sat at his desk looking at the photos in the manila envelope. Riordan peering over someone’s shoulder, maybe already planning how to clean up. Not a stranger to it. You’d see things at the Bureau, maybe another informer, tired of it. Except Danny had stayed with Riordan, not yet tired, wanting to-what? Protect the country? From whom? What names had he actually given? It was possible, wasn’t it, that he’d just told them things they already knew, some nimble card shuffle to protect his own flanks and bank a favor or two. But there he was, lying facedown in the alley, evidently not harmless. The same boy who’d been in the bed across the room, talking late into the night. Ben looked at the pictures again, feeling a heaviness in his chest. An informer.
And what about the boy in the other bed? No longer all ears, the eager audience. Now he’d seen things himself, stacks of bodies, a shocked face watching blood gush out. Not a boy anymore, either. Someone who knew the camp guards might be anybody, might be us- and where did we go from there? Now that we were capable of anything? They’d both done things they’d never imagined they’d do. Who was he to blame Danny, making love now to his wife? Maybe he would have helped Riordan, too, done the same thing under the circumstances-which were what exactly?
He shoved the pictures back in the envelope and put them in the drawer. Who knows what Danny’s reasons had been, some twisted apostasy. The point was he’d ended up in the alley. Nothing he could have told Riordan deserved that. A career jeopardized, a reputation? Not a real war, with real casualties. You didn’t kill people yet for name-calling.
Hal had asked him to stop by the cutting room on his way out, a quick check-in, he assumed, but some of the enlarged clips had come back from the lab, so a few minutes became an hour, then two. By the time he headed out to his car, he was already late for the roast chicken, the sort of absentmindedness they wrote into the Blondie series, cut to a scolding or an exasperated sigh at the door. He opened the car door. What were they doing? It’s too soon, she’d said, but done it anyway, gasping. If he thought about it, things flooded in, all the awkward questions. But if you didn’t think about it, it was simple again-the feel of skin. He wanted her because he wanted her. And she clutched him when she came, him, not someone else. No need to go deeper than skin. You could feel alive in it.
“Thank god.” An out-of-breath Lasner, upset, his eyes slightly frantic. “Where the hell’s Bunny?”
“He went off the lot.”
“Where? There’s nobody home. I tried. What, does he have a date for chrissake? Henry took Fay to her cards. So now what? Call a cab?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your car?” Lasner said, eyeing it. “You mind? I appreciate it.”
“You need a lift?”
“Hurry,” Lasner said, opening the passenger door. “Come to think of it, you can talk to her. If she can talk. They didn’t say.”
“Who?” Ben said, getting in.
“The cops called. There’s a crash. The Buick. Lorna said Genia took it out. I didn’t even know she could drive.”
Ben started the car and backed it out. “Where?”
“Go out Sunset. The Palisades. So who does she know out there? She doesn’t know anybody. What’s she doing there?”
At the gate, Lasner leaned over Ben to talk to the guard.
“Carl? Henry comes, tell him I got a lift home, will you?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Lasner,” he said, saluting, a Dick Marshall-army gesture.
“He takes Fay to the cards,” Lasner said to Ben, “and then she likes him to stay. I’m here late anyway, so what the hell. Then something like this happens.”
They went up Gower and made a left on Sunset.
“They got the name off the registration. Lucky Fay’s not home- you imagine, she gets the call? So Lorna says call here. Now the car’s a wreck, I guess. Not that you mind the car. I mean, family. I don’t know, you try to do something nice for somebody and she just sits there. Then it rains, she takes the car out. A night like this.”
“Maybe she was going to see somebody.”
“Who does she know?”
They had passed through Hollywood, then the long featureless stretch before Fairfax, slowing now as they came to the heavier traffic on the Strip, bright from the neon signs over the clubs.
“Who knew she could drive? Who has cars over there? Look at this,” he said, indicating the slick street. “She goes tonight, roads like this.”
“What about the other car?”
“They didn’t say. Maybe she went into a tree, I don’t know. Just come. It’s serious.”
Lasner was quiet for a minute.
“It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? You get through all that business, survive Hitler, and then you come here and-bam.”
“They didn’t say she was dead, did they?”
“No. Just there was an accident. But they don’t on the phone, do they? Christ, imagine how Fay’s going to feel-”
“Let’s wait till we get there.”
Lasner fidgeted as they snaked around miles of houses. When they climbed into the Palisades, he pulled a note out of his pocket.
“Paseo Miramar. On the north side, they said. After Palisades Drive, into Topanga.”
“I know it.”
“What do you mean, you know it? You just got here.”
“Feuchtwanger lives there. A friend of Liesl’s father. I had to drop him off there.”
A Mediterranean villa spilling three stories down the cliff.
“And that’s where she goes for a drive? Christ, look at it.” They had started up the narrow, twisting road, slowing on the sharp curves. “And they put houses here.”
“For the views. That’s the ocean.” He nodded to the string of highway lights in the distance, the dark sea beyond.
They passed Feuchtwanger’s house, dark except for a single light in the study, not expecting visitors. But why even suppose they knew each other? A convenient turnoff up into the hills, maybe even picked at random. He imagined her at the wheel, deliberate, her eyes still blank, the light left somewhere in Poland.
“She comes up here? You know what I’m thinking?” Lasner said, a kind of echo. “It’s a hell of a thing. To do that.” He looked over at Ben, suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I don’t have to tell you.”
“No.”
At the top there was another turn, then a swarm of lights at the end of a stretch, just before the road looped back. Ben saw an ambulance and a cluster of police cars, lights trained on a splintered section of a wooden barrier fence at the edge of the cliff. One of the policemen was holding back a group of curious neighbors, the same extras, Ben thought, who’d appeared in the Cherokee alley. A flashbulb went off- maybe even the same police photographer. Now a few more shots, catching the group of ambulance workers carrying a litter up the side of the hill and onto the road.
“I made the call,” the policeman in charge said. “Sorry to bring you out, but we need an ID on her. It’s your car.”
Another cop drew back the sheet. Lasner looked down at the body, his face growing slack, then turned away, squeamish.
“A friend?”
“Cousin,” Lasner said, almost inaudible.
“You’re next of kin?”
“My wife.”
“Close enough. You’ll need to see the ME over there, make the ID. I’m sorry, but we need to do it.”
“What happened?” Ben said, staring at her face, torn by shards of glass where she must have hit the windshield, her hair matted with blood. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was open, as if it were still saying “oh.”
“She went through there,” the cop said, pointing to the broken fence. “Into the canyon. The car didn’t catch fire, so that’s one thing, but a drop like that, be a miracle you survive it. You just get knocked to hell.” He looked up at Lasner. “Sorry.”
Ben looked at the length of road, almost straight after the hairpins coming up.
“What do you think?” he said. “She swerved to avoid another car?”
The cop shook his head. “No sign of that. No skid marks either side. Course the rain didn’t help there. But you get a slippery patch here, you take it a little fast-” He raised his hand, letting them fill in the rest. “We had a hell of a time getting her out. The door stuck.”
But the curve wasn’t sharp, a gradual arc that anyone should have handled easily-unless you hadn’t driven a car in years, or never intended to turn. He looked down at the body again, trying to imagine the last minute, through the fence and then suspended in nothing, waiting for it to be over. Something no one else ever knows, the desperation for release. But what prompts it? Ben wondered, an awkward second, whether he had been part of it, the unexpected reminder, ghosts coming back.
“Reuben, it’s you?”
He turned to find Feuchtwanger, a raincoat over his jacket and tie, the slicked-back hair and wireless glasses formally in place.
“Herr Feuchtwanger.”
“Such a commotion. We saw the lights.” He looked over at Genia’s body, clearly not recognizing her. “Poor woman. Oh, these roads. Marta says it’s no worse than the corniche but me, I think a death trap.” He paused. “But what are you doing here?”
“She’s a cousin,” Ben said, indicating Lasner, huddled now with the ME.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you like to come back to the house? Some coffee?” A ritual courtesy.
“No, no, thank you. We have to-” He spread his hand to the accident scene, policemen still moving idly around. “Stay with the body. Sign things.” He looked down at her. “She survived the camps,” he said, perhaps a memory trigger.
But Feuchtwanger still didn’t know her. The sorrow on his face was impersonal, another victim.
“The camps, but not this road,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, what am I doing here? They say in English a rubberneck-it’s amusing, a rubberneck. So.” He looked toward the group of neighbors, still gawking. “Marta wanted to know-all the lights. If you need to telephone, please come to the house.”
Ben nodded a thank-you.
“And coffee one day. Tell Liesl to bring you, we’ll talk. She looked well. So strong. I thought it would kill her, too-the way she felt about him. But no, strong. The father’s daughter.” He looked down at the stretcher. “But so much death.”
Ben stood in the road, watching him walk away. The way she felt about him. But Lion was a romantic, his books filled with duchesses and men in wigs and undying love. He didn’t know she could lean her head into your shoulder, soft, not strong at all. Everybody saw what he wanted to see.
Lasner was almost finished with the police. Once the ID had been made there was little either of them could do except arrange for the car to be towed. He looked again at the road. No skid marks, the policeman had said, but you didn’t need to slam on the brakes to have an accident here. Another car, with its lights in your eyes. The inky darkness of the canyon beyond, making the guard rail hard to see. The slide effect of wet pavement. There were lots of ways it could have happened, all of them easy to believe, unless you had sat with her at dinner and seen her eyes.
Still, why this road? The next turnoff would have taken her up over the coast highway itself, a more dramatic plunge off the cliff into the traffic, a spectacular end. But the etiquette of suicide could be peculiar, oddly discreet. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to make a point, just go quietly, no trouble to anyone.
“Who found her?” Ben said suddenly to the cop. They had pulled the sheet back over her face. “I mean, anybody see it happen? Stop?”
“No. Some kids. See the shoulder over there? It’s a view point, daytime anyway. Sometimes they park there-it’s away from the houses. Nights you don’t get many cars, so it’s-anyway, they’re there, going at it, and when they leave they spot the fence. They take a look and there’s the car, her in it. So they call it in.”
“This was when?”
“Hour ago, maybe. Couldn’t have been too long after she went over. No rigor. Tire marks still fresh. Must have been a quickie.” He caught Ben’s look. “The kids, I mean.”
“Nobody heard the crash?”
“Nobody said. Pretty quiet up here. She’d have the place to herself. Till morning anyway. Then you get the dog walkers.” Hours later, not an instant attraction on the highway. “It’s just lucky it didn’t burn. A few weeks ago, all you’d need is one spark and- woof. ”
But she would burn now, finally the ashes the Germans had wanted. Unless Sol decided to have her buried. He looked over to where Lasner was standing, a little lost. He was avoiding the stretcher, still shaken. But Sol had scarcely known her. It occurred to Ben that their talk at dinner may have been the only real connection she’d made in California, that he had known her better than anyone. Not buried. She’d want to go up in smoke, erasing herself.
Another car had pulled up, with a noisy greeting to the police photographer. Kelly. Ben, not yet seen, went quickly over to Lasner.
“Get in the car,” he said.
“What?”
“Now. Don’t let him see you, the guy over there-he’s press. If he thinks there’s a studio connection, he’ll do a story. You don’t need that.”
“You’re looking after me now?” he said.
“I know him, I’ll take care of it. Just don’t let him see you. He’ll recognize you. Not her.”
“Another Bunny,” Lasner said, but moved to the car, his face turned away.
Kelly was already at the stretcher with the cop.
“Hey, Kelly,” Ben said. “Chasing ambulances?”
“Hey,” Kelly said, surprised to see him. “It’s a living.” He nodded to the stretcher. “More trouble in the family?”
“Just visiting down the street. We heard the sirens.”
“Visiting,” Kelly said, taking in the neighborhood, an open question.
“If you need to call you could use their phone.”
Kelly turned back to the cop. “Who is it? Anybody?”
The cop passed over a clipboard. “Here,” he said, “I can’t even pronounce it. Copy it if you want. Polish or something. Slid in the rain and went through the fence.”
Ben looked nervously at the form on the clipboard. They’d have the Summit Drive address, a Crestview phone exchange, easy for Kelly to spot. But Kelly didn’t bother to look.
“Polish,” he said, a code for no story. “Anybody else hurt?”
“If so, they took off. Just her.” He lifted the sheet off her face.
“Christ, she did a job on herself, didn’t she? What’s with the head, in the back? You get banged up there, you’re the driver?”
The cop nodded to the cars. “Take one and find out. I’ll give you a push.”
“I’m just saying. A wound like that, it’s consistent with a crash?”
“Kelly, for chrissake, anything’s consistent with a crash. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s always got to be something,” he said, taking the clipboard away. “It’s not enough she’s dead. She’s got to be somebody dead.” Ben waited for him to mention Lasner, but evidently the name hadn’t meant anything to him. “If it was Lana Turner, I’d be on the phone to you.”
“If it was Lana, you’d be fucking the corpse. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Nice. And all those years in school. You going to write this up or what?”
“A Polack goes in the ditch? My Pulitzer.” He turned back to Ben. “Funny seeing you here.”
“Friend lives down there,” Ben said, cocking his head toward the houses. “Another refugee.”
“Some refugee. You know what these go for?”
“I guess he got his money out.” Ben moved slightly to the left, blocking Kelly’s view of his car.
“I was going to call you.”
“Yes?” Ben said, alarmed. Now what? A new scent? Maybe not just some gossip this time. Now there were worse secrets, the kind that could spread like a stain, touching other people. Things he wouldn’t want Kelly to overhear at Lucey’s.
“Get anywhere with the loan-outs?”
Ben shook his head. “I thought you were giving up on it.”
“Yeah,” said Kelly. “Too bad, though. You hate to leave it, there’s a studio angle. Sometimes it’s like this with a story. It goes and then it comes back. Never close a door.” He held up a finger and smiled. “You know where I got that? Partners in Crime. Remember how Frank always said that?”
Otto’s pet phrase. After he started working for Goebbels.
“Which one were you?” Kelly said. “The younger one?”
“Neither. It’s a movie.”
Kelly nodded, unconvinced. “Well, you hear anything, you know where to reach me.”
“You’re the first call.”
He put the car in a U-turn away from the accident and started back down the hill.
“What was that all about? He’s going to write this up?” Lasner said.
“The only story was, she was related to you, so there’s no story.”
“You forgot to mention it, huh?”
“Mrs. Lasner doesn’t need to see this in the papers. I know what it’s like.”
Lasner looked over at him. “You’re a piece of work. You’re here, what, five minutes? And already you know guys on the paper. Not to mention the goddam Palisades.” They were passing Feuchtwanger’s house, dark now. “Thanks for this,” Lasner said, serious. He was quiet for a minute as they turned onto Sunset, heading back. “It’s a hell of a life, when you think about it. Hiding like an animal. The camp. Now this. To do something like this.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Ben said quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“What she went through, it breaks something. You can’t fix it. Not just like that.”
“What did she say to you? At dinner. She talk about it?”
“No,” Ben said, avoiding it. “She was sad, Sol. Nothing was going to change that.”
“You give her all this,” Lasner said, glancing out the window, brooding. “You know the best thing that ever happened to me? Getting the hell out. Everybody should have got out. Even now, you want to kiss the ground here. What kind of life could you have there? This country-”
He broke off, as if the thought had overwhelmed him. Ben followed his gaze out the side window, trying to see what he was seeing, the big, sleepy houses and palms and hedges of paradise.
“She asks, tell Fay it was an accident.”
But he didn’t have to say anything. When they pulled into the driveway Fay came running out of the house, and Ben could tell from her face that calls had been made and nothing needed to be explained. Behind her, like a shadow, Bunny stood in the doorway, evidently summoned to wait with her. She hugged Lasner, then put her hands on his chest, smoothing his jacket, a hovering gesture.
“Are you all right?” she said. “Did you eat anything?” she said, her hands still on his jacket. “Come on, I’ll get you something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“And then you’re weak. It puts a strain.” She patted his chest. “Come on. It was bad?”
Lasner said nothing, moving one of his shoulders.
“Her face, too?”
“No.”
She shook her head a little, relieved. “You know she was beautiful. Before everything started. You can’t see it now, but she was.” She took his arm to lead him into the house. Bunny stepped aside.
“And where the hell were you?” Lasner said, not really angry.
“Out.”
“Out.”
“Even the maid gets a night off. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow. Fay said cremation?”
Lasner nodded.
“What shape’s the car in?”
“Scrap, probably.” He pulled a receipt out of his pocket. “Here’s where they tow it.”
“Anybody there from the papers? You want me to-?”
“Ben took care of it,” Lasner said, giving him a thank-you wave.
Bunny hesitated for a moment. “Ah. See you tomorrow then. You want an obit?”
“Who would read it? Who did she know?”
“It’s a question of respect,” Fay said, then to Bunny, “I’ll get you the dates. She was in a few pictures over there. You think they’d be interested in those?”
“They always cut something,” Bunny said, evasive. “But we’ll see.”
He watched them go in, then came over to Ben.
“German silents. From the ’twenties. Just what the papers want.” He looked at Ben. “Who’d you talk to?”
“Kelly from the Examiner. Don’t worry, they already had this one as an accident. You don’t have to make any calls.”
Bunny held his stare, not answering, then said, “How’s Mr. L doing?”
“He’s all right. It’s more the idea of it. He scarcely knew her.”
“Neither of them. I don’t think she said ten words. Except to you.”
Ben glanced up at the big picture window where she’d looked out over what had been bean fields. “She knew my father. It took her back.”
He drove to the Hollywood Hills, his head filled with the grainy clips in Hal’s cutting room. Why did some survive and some break? But maybe it was only a matter of degree. Nobody was the same after. Only the mindless, or the callous, could pretend nothing had happened. The others would feel the weight of it, pressing on them, until they accepted it, part of the air, or it got worse and they drove away from it. Still, why the car? Maybe because it was the one way it wouldn’t have happened there-not gas or starvation, what they used, your own choice.
Liesl was on the couch, smoking, her legs drawn up under her, a script in her lap. When he walked in, she drew on the cigarette, deliberately not saying anything.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t call.”
“I play a daughter,” she said, picking up the script. “So it’s good for me. Something I know.” Not asking where he’d been.
He went over to the tray on the side table and poured a drink.
“She takes care of him, but now she has to go away. So I can just think of my father. What that would be like.”
“You didn’t wait, I hope.”
“No. Daniel would do it sometimes-not come. So I know, don’t wait.” She put out the cigarette. “Of course I thought he was working. That’s all I thought then.”
“There was an accident. I had to take Lasner. Remember the cousin at dinner?”
“What happened?”
“Car crash. Near Lion’s, in fact. I saw him. When they pulled her out.”
“You mean she’s dead?”
Ben nodded. “She went into the canyon. Probably killed when she hit, that kind of drop.”
“Oh,” she said, a sound standing in for everything else.
“They’re listing it as an accident.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“No other car. She drove herself off.”
“Oh,” she said again, taking this in. “She did that?”
“It happens, with the survivors. It’s hard to come back.”
“And here I am, thinking about- You’re not surprised at this.”
“No. Neither was Lasner.”
“It’s terrible for them. To be the ones left. It doesn’t end-” she said, her voice private, interior.
He looked over at her. “He didn’t do that to you. That’s not what happened.”
“It feels the same. You can’t put it away somewhere. It’s in your head. Tonight I sat here, I thought, it’s just like before. So foolish-a roast chicken, something as foolish as that. Waiting, just like before. And I thought, it’s happening again. I’m waiting again.”
He went over to the couch, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrank from it, moving away.
“No. Don’t.”
She stood up and moved toward the French windows, clutching the sides of her arms, guarded.
“We can’t do this. What happened-all right, it happened. But to keep-” She turned. “You know what I was thinking about tonight? Maybe I’m still angry, that’s why. Like a child, hitting back. You can, I can, too, something like that, I don’t know.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Not for you. I don’t know what it is for you. Maybe something of his. Something crazy like that.”
“Why does it have to be anything?”
“Because he’s still in my head. How can you want me like that?”
“I don’t care.”
“Oh. And that makes it all right.” She shook her head, then moved toward the kitchen, a distraction. “Are you hungry?”
“No. I want to talk.”
“About this? There’s nothing to say. We have to stop. Before something happens.”
“Like what?”
“We went to bed. I don’t know why, maybe just to do it.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“Yes, all right. Do you want to hear that? I enjoyed it. But now it’s not so easy.”
Ben was quiet for a second, taking another sip of his drink, waiting for her, a look to get them over it.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“Leave. Where would you go?”
“The Cherokee. I still have the key.”
“Ha. To take women there. Then you can really be him. It’s what you wanted.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, why not?”
“He’s not who I thought he was.”
She looked at him, disconcerted, then turned back to the window, not wanting to pursue it.
“You can’t go to that place. It’s-what’s schaurig?”
“Ghoulish. Creepy.”
“Ghoulish.” She fingered the handle on the window, testing it. “Anyway, I’m afraid here now. The man never came. About the locks.”
“I know. You don’t have to worry. Turns out it was him. Or someone he sent.”
“What?”
“He wanted to look through Danny’s desk.”
“Like a thief? Why?”
“They used to work together. He wanted some information Danny didn’t get to pass on,” he said, his voice taut.
“I don’t understand. Worked how?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Know what?”
“You can stop waiting for him,” he said, cocking his head toward the couch. “He wasn’t who you thought he was, either.”
“What’s wrong?” she said, her hands fluttery, nervous. “What’s happened?”
“I had a drink. A real eye-opener. With Dennis Riordan. Mean anything to you?”
She shook her head.
“Ex-FBI. They worked together. Danny was keeping an eye on all of you for the Bureau.” He gulped down the rest of the drink, angry at the sound of his own voice.
“All of who?”
“The Germans. All of you. Your father, I suppose. I don’t have the exact list. I’d like to get it, see how far he went. What do you think he told them about Alma? Talk about suspicious characters.” He looked up at her. “You really had no idea?”
“What, that people watched us? Of course, all during the war. My father always said. We had to be careful on the phone. They listened. You had to expect that.”
“But not from your husband. But who better? He was practically a refugee himself. He’d know everyone in the German community-he married into it. Be the most natural thing in the world for him to know what everyone was up to. Just not so natural telling the FBI about it.”
“I don’t believe you. It’s a lie.”
“Riordan told me himself. Why would he lie? What for? Why would I?”
“A man who breaks into the house-you believe him?”
“They got together again later. After the Bureau. Riordan catches Reds for Minot and Danny helped him with that, too. A name here and there-I don’t know how many. But enough to keep Riordan interested. Partners in crime.”
“It’s not true.”
“But he thinks there must be one more name. Somebody Danny didn’t get to tell him about. Whoever killed him. So he had the desk searched. A little clumsy, but he wanted to know. He sends apologies if it frightened you.”
“No, you,” she said, suddenly white, her face drained. “You frighten me.”
“Me?”
“You’ll say anything now, to make me hate him. Any lie. Daniel wouldn’t do that.”
“Yes, he would. He just wouldn’t tell you about it. Like a lot of things.”
She glared at him. “That makes it easier for you? If he was like that. Then it doesn’t matter what we do?” She went over to him, putting her fists on his chest. “Stop it.”
“You think I’d make all this up to go to bed with you? I didn’t have to, remember? I didn’t have to force you, either.”
He took her hands, holding them, close enough to feel her breathing, until she pulled them away. She looked at him, then slumped onto the couch, half-sitting on the back.
“No, you didn’t,” she said quietly. “So it’s another thing I’ve done in my life.”
He touched the side of her face, tentative, waiting for her to turn away, but she leaned into it, letting him work down to her neck.
“I’ll never force you to do anything,” he said.
“No?” she said, staring at the carpet.
“No.”
“No,” she said wearily. “That wouldn’t be-seemly.” She looked up at him. “The good brother. But not always.”
He took his hand away.
She said nothing, then got up and went over to the window again, pacing.
“And the bad one, who was supposed to do all these things-who was that? I didn’t know anybody like that.”
“Riordan saw the reports.”
“Your friend.”
“For the moment. He wants to know who killed Danny, too. His own reasons, but so what? He can help. He’s-”
“Expedient,” she said, a test answer.
“A chance. A lead.”
“It was better when it was Rosemary,” she said, picking nervously now at her fingers. “One push. You could believe it.” She paused. “What did he say about my father?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Yet?”
“I don’t know what he said about anybody. But we need to, now,” he said, including her, still together. “We need to know what he gave them. See who might have been next.”
“Oh, and they’ll tell you. How are you going to do that?”
“I thought, the way he did.”
She looked over at him.
“Work with them. Be like Danny. The one we didn’t know.”