The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1

by Douglas Kennedy

  I threw on some clothes, I took the elevator down to the basement. I handed the doorman ten bucks. He opened the door to the service entrance.

  “If those men come back asking either for Eric or me . . . ,” I said.

  “You’re still asleep upstairs, right?”

  The service entrance led to an alleyway on West 56th Street. I hopped a cab, and took it down to Joel Eberts’s office. Because, quite frankly, I didn’t know where else to go. As always, he was welcoming—and appalled when I told him what had happened at the passport office yesterday afternoon.

  “I tell you,” he said, “we’re turning into a police state—and all in the name of the Red Menace.”

  But he was even more alarmed by the news that Eric was last spotted sneaking out of the side entrance of the Hampshire House with a suitcase in hand.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide from these bastards. If he’s not at NBC today, HUAC will instantly subpoena him. And the Feds will dream up some crime and misdemeanor in order to issue a warrant for his arrest. He should just face the music, no matter what happens.”

  “I agree—but as I don’t know where he’s gone, I can’t give him that advice.”

  “You know, you don’t need a passport for Canada,” Eberts said.

  He made a fast call to Penn Station, asking to be put through to the reservations office. Yes, they told him, a train had left at ten that morning—but there were no passengers registered under the name of Eric Smythe. When he asked if they could check and see if he was registered on any other departing trains, they said that they didn’t have the time or manpower to search through every passenger list of every train.

  “You know what the guy in Reservations told me?” Eberts said after hanging up the phone. ‘If finding this guy is so important, call the Feds.’”

  That was the only time I’d laughed in two days.

  I suddenly had a brainstorm, and asked to use the phone. First I called the Rainbow Room and spoke to the receptionist and found out that the Rainbow Room band were staying at the Hotel Shoreham in Atlantic City. I got the number and got lucky: Ronnie—in true musician style—was still asleep at twelve thirty. But he woke up quickly after I told him about the events of the last two days.

  “You have no idea where he is?” he asked, sounding genuinely worried.

  “I was hoping that he might have come down to see you. But had he, he would have been there by now.”

  “Look, I’ll stay in the room all afternoon. If he’s not here by four, I’ll see if I can get out of tonight’s gig and come back to Manhattan. I hope to hell he hasn’t done something really stupid. I mean, if he loses his job, he loses his job. I’ll make sure he’s all right. As I know you will too.”

  “I’m sure he just panicked,” I said, trying to convince myself this was true. “I bet anything that he’ll surface in a couple of hours. Which is why I’m heading back to his apartment straight away. You can reach me there all day.”

  I was back at the Hampshire House by one. I used the service entrance, and took the elevator up to Eric’s apartment. There was no sign of his return, and the switchboard operator had logged no calls for him. I used the house phone to call Sean, the doorman.

  “Sorry, Miss Smythe. Your brother hasn’t shown his face yet—but those two guys in the car are still out front.”

  I worked the phones all afternoon, calling every possible bar, restaurant, or haunt that Eric frequented. I called the travel agent at Thomas Cook who’d booked Eric’s passage to Europe, on the long shot that he might have asked her to dispatch him somewhere within the States. I checked in every hour with Ronnie. I phoned the superintendent of my building, wondering if he’d seen my brother loitering with intent outside. I knew that all my efforts at locating him were futile ones—but I had to keep busy.

  At four, Ronnie phoned me, to say that he’d managed to find someone to cover him for tonight, and he was taking the next train back to Manhattan. He showed up at the apartment around six thirty. I was pacing the floor at that point, wondering why Agent Sweet hadn’t phoned the apartment at five to enquire about Eric’s whereabouts. After all, he was supposed to have been at NBC then. But now he was a fugitive; a man who had run away. Though I didn’t want to articulate my deepest fear to Ronnie, I couldn’t help but think: I may never see my brother again.

  At eight, we called the Carnegie Deli and had them deliver sandwiches and beer. We settled down in the living room and continued the wait. The evening went by quickly. Ronnie was a great talker—with a huge cache of stories about growing up in Puerto Rico and earning his chops as a musician. He chatted on about all-night drinking sessions with Charlie Parker, and surviving as one of Artie Shaw’s sidemen for seven months, and why Benny Goodman was the cheapest band leader in history. He kept me laughing. He helped numb the fear we were both feeling. Round about midnight, however, he started to admit his worry.

  “If your dumb, crazy brother has done anything really self-destructive, I’ll never forgive him.”

  “That’ll make two of us.”

  “If I lost him, I’d . . .”

  He shuddered a bit. I reached out and gripped his arm.

  “He’ll be back, Ronnie. I’m sure of it.”

  By two that morning, however, there was still no sign of him. So Ronnie retired to the bedroom and I returned, once again, to the sofa bed. I was so drained that I was asleep within minutes. Then I smelled smoke. My eyes jumped open. It was early morning. Thin dawn light was creeping through the blinds. Groggy, I squinted at my watch. Six nineteen. Then I heard a voice.

  “Good morning.”

  It was Eric, sitting in an armchair near the sofa, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. His suitcase was on the floor next to him.

  I leaped up from the bed. I threw my arms around him.

  “Thank God . . . ,” I said.

  Eric managed a tired smile. “He had nothing to do with it,” he said.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Here and there.”

  “You had me frantic. I’d thought you’d left town.”

  “I did. Sort of. At seven yesterday morning, I woke up and decided that the only thing I could do was get the next flight to Mexico City. Because, outside of Canada, Mexico’s the only foreign country you can enter without a passport. And, hell, I’d done time down there after Father died, so I figured it was a logical destination for me.

  “Of course, I knew the Feds would be out in front of the building, so I tipped the doorman and had him slip me out of the side entrance. I hopped a cab, and told him to take me to Idlewild. Want to know something funny? If the cabbie hadn’t taken the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, I’m sure I’d be on a flight to Mexico right now. But there we were, heading to Queens on that bridge. And I made the mistake of turning around in the backseat, and seeing that midtown skyline framed by the rear window. And before I had time to think about it, I told the cabbie, ‘Change of plan. As soon as you get off the bridge, turn around and bring me back to Manhattan.’

  “The driver didn’t like this one bit. ‘You crazy or somethin’?’ he asked me.

  “‘Yeah, I’m crazy. Crazy enough to stay here when I shouldn’t.’

  “I got him to drop me off at Grand Central Station. I checked my bag at the left luggage place there—but it was raining, so before I turned the bag over to the guy, I opened it up to get a folding umbrella I’d packed away for London. That’s when I found your gift. I tell you, I cried when I saw the inscription. Because I also knew that this was the pen I’d use to name names.”

  I swallowed hard. And said nothing.

  “That’s what I had decided, halfway across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. I was going to be a stoolie. I was going to sing like a canary. I was going to sell out several people who I hadn’t seen in years, and who were as innocent as I was. I was going to keep my job, and keep my lifestyle, and keep being able to run a tab at 21. Yeah, I’d feel bad about it . . . but dem’s de breaks, right? I mean,
if the Feds knew I’d been a member of the Party, then they also knew that the people I’d be naming had been members too. So all I’d be doing is telling them stuff they already knew.

  “Or, at least, that’s how I rationalized it to myself.

  “So I clipped the pen inside my jacket pocket, and decided that I’d celebrate my last eight hours as a man with a relatively clean conscience by doing whatever the hell I wanted to do. Especially since I had a thousand bucks in traveler’s checks in my wallet. So I treated myself to a champagne breakfast at the Waldorf. Then I wandered into Tiffany’s and dropped some serious cash on a sterling silver cigarette case for Ronnie and a little something for you.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small blue box marked Tiffany. He tossed it over to me. I stared down at it.

  “Are you crazy?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Well go on, open the damn thing.”

  I lifted off the lid, and stared down at an absurdly dazzling pair of platinum teardrop earrings, studded with small, perfect diamonds. I was speechless.

  “Does your silence indicate ambivalence?” he asked.

  “They’re beautiful. But you shouldn’t have done this.”

  “Of course I should have. Don’t you know that the great American rule of thumb is—when committing an act of moral cowardice, always soften the blow for yourself by spending a lot of money?

  “Anyway, after my little spree at Tiffany’s I walked up Fifth Avenue and spent a few leisurely hours at the Metropolitan Museum, looking at Rembrandts. They’ve got the Return of the Prodigal Son on loan from Amsterdam. Helluva picture, as Jack Warner would say. The misery of family, the need for redemption, the tug between responsibility and desire—all wrapped up in one really dark canvas. I tell you, S—the only person to use black better than Rembrandt is Coco Chanel.

  “After the Met, it was lunchtime. Off to 21. Two martinis, an entire Maine lobster, half a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé . . . and I was ready for a little more hochkultur. The New York Phil was doing a matinée at Carnegie Hall with your old favorite, Bruno Walter, on the podium. And the band were playing Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. Amazing stuff. A big cathedral of sound. A guided tour of heaven in the company of a devout believer—and a sense that there is something just a little grander and more all-encompassing than our trivial endeavors on Planet Stupid.

  “The audience went nuts when the concert ended. I too was on my feet, cheering my lungs out. Until I glanced at my watch. Four thirty. Time to stroll down to Rockefeller Center and engage in some very dirty work.

  “Agent Sweet and that shithead Ross were waiting for me on the forty-third floor. Once again, I was escorted into the conference room. Once again, Ross glowered at me.

  “‘So,’ he said, ‘you’ve decided to cooperate.’

  “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you some names.’

  “‘Agent Sweet told me about your little escapade at the passport office yesterday.’

  “‘I panicked,’ I said.

  “‘That’s one way of describing your actions.’

  “‘But if the passport had come through, you’d be out of the country by now,’ Sweet said.

  “‘And I would have rued that decision for the rest of my life,’ I said.

  “‘Liar,’ Ross said.

  “‘You mean, you’ve never heard of a Pauline conversion, Mr. Ross?’

  “‘Didn’t that happen on the road to Damascus?’ Agent Sweet asked.

  “‘Yes—and it’s about to happen here right now in Rockefeller Center,’ I said. ‘What do you want to know?’

  “Sweet sat down opposite me. He was working hard at containing his excitement, knowing full well that I was about to inform on my friends.

  “‘We’d like to know,’ he said, ‘who brought you into the Party, who ran your cell, and who were the other members of the cell.’

  “‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Would you mind if I wrote this down.’

  “Sweet handed me a yellow legal pad. I pulled out your beautiful new pen. I uncapped it. I took a deep troubled breath. And I wrote eight names. It took less than a minute—and the funny thing was, I remembered them all with ease.

  “When I was finished, I recapped the pen, put it back in my pocket, then pushed the pad forward—as if I couldn’t bear to look at it. Sweet came around and patted me on the shoulder. ‘I know this couldn’t have been easy, Mr. Smythe. But I’m glad you’ve done the proper, patriotic thing.’

  “Then he picked up the pad. He stared at it for a moment, then threw it back in front of me and said, ‘What the hell is this?’

  “‘You wanted names,’ I said. ‘I gave you names.’

  “‘Names,’ he said, snatching up the pad again. ‘This is your idea of names?’ Then he started reading them one by one.

  “‘Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, Happy, Sneezy, Doc, and . . . who the fuck is SW?’

  “‘Snow White, of course,’ I said.

  “Ross grabbed the pad from Sweet’s hand. He glanced at it, then said, ‘You have just committed professional hara-kiri.’

  “‘Didn’t know you spoke Japanese, Ross. Maybe you were one of their spies during the last war.’

  “‘Get out,’ he yelled at me. ‘You’re dead here.’

  “As I left, Sweet told me to expect a subpoena from HUAC any day. ‘See you in Washington, asshole,’ he shouted as I left.”

  I stared at Eric, wide-eyed. “You really wrote the names of the Seven Dwarfs?” I asked.

  “Well, they were the first Communists that came to mind. Because, let’s face it, they lived collectively, they shared their communal wealth, they . . .”

  His face fell. He started to shudder. I ran over and held him. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. “You did wonderfully. I’m so damn proud of . . .”

  “Proud of what? The fact that I killed my career this afternoon? The fact that I’m now unemployable? The fact that I’m about to lose everything?”

  I suddenly heard Ronnie’s voice. “You haven’t lost us,” he said.

  I looked up. Ronnie was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. Eric glanced in his direction.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked tonelessly. “You’re not due back till Monday.”

  “Sara and I were just a little worried that you might have vanished into thin air.”

  “I really think you both could spend your time worrying about more important matters.”

  “Will you listen to Mr. False Modesty,” Ronnie said. “And where the fuck have you been since naming the Seven Dwarfs?”

  “Oh, here and there. Mainly a bunch of seedy bars on Broadway, then an all-night movie theater on Forty-second Street. Saw a honey of a new Robert Mitchum thriller: His Kind of a Woman. Howard Hughes produced. Jane Russell costarred, natch. Pretty nifty script: ‘I was just taking my tie off, wondering if I should hang myself with it.’ Kind of summed up how I felt last night.”

  “Mr. Self-Pity,” Ronnie said. “Too bad you couldn’t have dropped a nickel and told us you were alive and well.”

  “Oh—but that would have been easy. And I don’t do easy.”

  I tousled his hair.

  “But you did good, Mr. Smythe,” I said. “Didn’t he, Ronnie?”

  “Yeah,” he said, coming over and taking his hand. “He did real good.”

  “This calls for a toast,” I said, picking up the phone. “Will room service deliver champagne this early?”

  “Sure,” Eric said. “And while you’re at it, tell them I want an arsenic chaser.”

  “Eric, don’t worry,” I said. “You’re going to survive this.”

  He leaned his head on Ronnie’s shoulder.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  NINETEEN

  THE STORY BROKE in the papers the next morning. Predictably, it was that great patriot, Walter Winchell, who dished the dirt. It was just a five-line item in his Daily Mirror column. But it did a lot of damage.

  He may be Marty Manning’s best
scribe . . . but he used to be a Red. And now Eric Smythe’s in nowheresville after taking the Fifth with the Feds. He may know how to crack a joke, but he doesn’t know how to sing “God Bless America.” And what about the romantic company the never-married Smythe is keeping at his swank Hampshire House pad? No wonder NBC showed him the door marked “Get Lost.”

  Winchell’s column hit the streets at noon. An hour later, Eric called me at my apartment. I was still in deep shock from reading this decimation job on my brother, but I didn’t know if he’d seen it yet. Until, of course, I heard his voice. He sounded dazed.

  “You’ve read it?” he asked.

  “Yes. I read it. And I’m sure you could sue that bastard Winchell for defamation of character.”

  “I’ve just been handed an eviction notice,” he said.

  “You what?”

  “A letter was just pushed under my front door from the management of Hampshire House, informing me that I’m to vacate my apartment in forty-eight hours.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “What do you think? Winchell’s line about the ‘romantic company’ I’m keeping at my ‘swank Hampshire House pad.’ ”

  “But surely, the management knew that Ronnie was living there with you.”

  “Sure. But the deal was, I didn’t say anything and they didn’t ask anything. But now, that shit Winchell has blown everyone’s cover—and the Hampshire House management are being forced to do something public and noticeable . . . like evicting the pervert.”

  “Don’t call yourself that.”

  “Why not? It’s how everyone’s going to see me now. After all, I’m the never-married Smythe, right? You don’t have to be Lionel Trilling to grasp the underlying meaning of that sentence.”

  “Call Joel Eberts—ask him to get an injunction blocking the eviction notice, then fight the bastards in the courts.”

  “What’s the point? They’ll win anyway, and I’ll be even deeper in debt.”

  “I’ll pay the legal bills. Anyway, Mr. Eberts isn’t that expensive . . .”

  “But we’re probably talking about a six-month battle . . . which I’ll end up losing. I’m not going to drain your bank account on my behalf. Especially as you’re going to need the money. Because, thanks to me, your position at Saturday/Sunday is probably now in jeopardy.”