by Howard Fast
“No!” Clair exclaimed. “Don’t ever say that.”
Jean had taken over her father’s office in the Seldon Building on Montgomery Street, cleared out the dark oak pieces and the overstuffed leather chairs, and replaced them with pale birch and chintz upholstery. The gloomy Oriental rug on the floor went to an auction house and in its place Jean installed a pale blue, gold, and ivory Aubusson, with drapes to match. Clancy, who had gathered the courage to contest her decision to take over the bank in fairly strong terms, pointing out that the news of a woman bank president might well token disaster, was deeply troubled by these decorative changes, but he bore them in silence. The Chronicle, objectively expressing neither approval nor disapproval, did a feature story on the first female bank president in the United States. The bank’s business, however, did not suffer; quite to the contrary, riding on the tide of the times, it increased.
One afternoon, sitting in her office, Jean was informed by her secretary that a Mrs. Alan Brocker was outside and would like to see her.
“Did you say Mrs.?”
“Yes.”
“A woman?”
“Very much so.”
“Well–send her in,” Jean said. “By all means, send her in.”
The secretary left and then returned, opening the door for a large, handsome, dark-eyed woman who swept into the room, crying, “Darling, you have not forgotten me? It is Manya.”
Jean rose, staring at Manya Vladavich whom she had not seen in at least ten years. She came around the desk, and Manya embraced her in a cloud of silk, bosom, and perfume.
“You are more beautiful than ever,” Manya declared when Jean had untangled herself. “You are a witch. Or you have sold your soul to the devil.”
“More likely the latter. You can’t complain, Manya. You look absolutely stunning. What is this Mrs. Alan Brocker thing?”
“What you see, darling. Myself. I have married more money than is in the Bank of England. We have taken fantastic house by the bay, and tomorrow a great party–”
“Manya, stop! Are you telling me that you and Alan Brocker are married?”
“But of course.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jean said, shaking her head and smiling. “You and Brocker. How did you do it?”
“Darling, it would take days to tell you whole story. I am living in Paris where I meet him. He is very lonely, very unhappy. How old you think he is, Jean?”
“Don’t you know?”
“He tells me forty-four. He looks older.”
“He told you the truth–or close to it.”
“Darling, we are five days in Paris. He is so unhappy. I make him go with me to Vienna. You know what is psychoanalysis?”
“Sort of. Dr. Freud’s thing?”
“Exactly. We go to Dr. Freud. He is with Dr. Freud for seven weeks, every day. Every day I am like mother to him. Not exactly. After seven weeks, we go to Venice. Three weeks. Then we go to London and we are married. Then we come here. So simple.”
“I don’t believe it. What on earth did this Dr. Freud do to him?”
“Ah. We shall have to talk about that Alan’s mother, what was she like, darling?”
“A little bit of a thing, as I remember.”
“Yes? What does it matter? You are president of bank. Incredible. You are still married? Of course–to the fisherman.”
When she left, Jean sat down at her desk, closed her eyes for a few minutes, and then burst out laughing. Alan Brocker and Manya Vladavich. The world was insane, senseless. What had Shakespeare said? “A play written by a madman?” No–she couldn’t remember. She conjured up in her mind what it might be like to be married to Alan Brocker, and she wondered why the very notion horrified her so, herself married to a huge, brawling savage who had not taken her to bed in years. And now she sat here, playing this new game of being the head of the Seldon Bank.
She put her head down on her arms and wept.
*
When Martha returned to her Los Angeles apartment, in the second week of January of 1929, she called Marty Spizer. The telephone company informed her that the phone had been permanently disconnected. She was not unduly alarmed at first, concluding that Spizer had moved. Since she had not been in Hollywood, he might have tried to call her and failed to reach her, and she had not told him about Higate. He might also have tried to reach her at Sausalito and failed there as well. She was certain that he would be in touch with her, and she spent the next few days in her apartment sipping gin and soda and waiting for the telephone to ring.
Finally, she went to his apartment, a tacky, stucco two-story enclosure on La Brea. The landlady there, a stout, slatternly woman, told her in no uncertain terms that “the lousy, four-flushing sonofabitch” had skipped out on the first of the year, owing her five weeks of unpaid rent.
“No forwarding address?” Martha asked uncertainly.
“Cookie, if that little louse left me a forwarding address I’d have him in court right now. No, sweetie pie, he skipped.”
Martha was not entirely sober, not entirely certain that she understood the landlady. She managed to drive home, and by then the impact of what she had discovered reached her. Still she tried to reason her way out of it. She had known that since the school had closed, Spizer’s funds were minimal. On several occasions she had lent him money, twenty dollars once and fifty another time. The twenty thousand dollars, he had assured her, would have to go entirely toward paying the writer for the screenplay. She kept salving her misery with explanations. He would call; he would turn up; and it would be a fine thing indeed if he came armed with good news and found her drunk.
She poured every ounce of gin in the house into the toilet, and for the next two days she did not touch a drop. When she woke up the morning after getting rid of it, she discovered that she was ravenously hungry. She dressed herself carefully, put on her make-up, walked over to Hollywood Boulevard, and ate an enormous breakfast at Musso and Frank’s restaurant. Then she went back, got her car, drove downtown, and spent the rest of the day drifting around and shopping. She returned with a bag of odds and ends of clothing, two sweaters, a blouse, some kerchiefs, and some stockings–none of which she particularly needed. She spent the rest of the evening sitting quietly in her living room, listening to music on the radio. She felt strangely good, like a person in a dream, in a continuing fantasy, a person suspended in time.
The following morning, she awakened very early, strangely enough with no desire at all for liquor. Again she dressed very carefully, brewed a pot of coffee, and satisfied her hunger with that and fig newtons. Then she got into her car and drove over Laurel Canyon Pass down to Ventura Boulevard, turning east. A mile farther on, she drove into the entrance of the Great Western Film Studio. Her progress was halted in front of the swing barrier at the guardhouse, and the uniformed studio guard leaned out of his cubbyhole and asked her who she was there to see.
“Mr. Donaldson. My name is Martha Levy.”
The guard consulted his clipboard. “I don’t have your name here, miss,” he said. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No. But I must see him.”
“That may be, miss, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I suggest you call from outside and make an appointment.” Cars were lining up behind her now, and the guard raised the swing barrier and told her to drive through and turn around and come back out. Instead, Martha drove ahead about thirty feet and then pulled over to one side and parked.
“I told you to make a U-turn and come out!” the guard shouted at her.
She shook her head and sat there.
The guard in the cubbyhole shouted to another uniformed guard, who came over and spoke to him. He pointed to where Martha sat in her car. The second guard walked over to her and said, “Now why do you want to make a scene, miss? You know about studios. No one goes in without an appointment.”
“I’m going to see Mr. Donaldson,” she said stubbornly.
“Not today, lady. So come on, be a good g
irl and turn your car around and drive out.”
“No, not until I see Mr. Donaldson.”
“Lady, this is private property and you are trespassing. You want to make a pain in the ass of yourself, we’ll arrest you, and that’s going to make a lot of trouble for you. So why not do it the nice way?”
A small crowd had gathered, extras in costume, Indians, cowboys. A tall, heavyset man in a white linen suit pushed through and said to the guard, “What’s this all about, Brady?”
“We got a crasher. I’m trying to be polite.”
Martha called out to the man in white, “Mr. Donaldson, I must talk to you, please.”
He looked at her curiously. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Martha Levy. Marty Spizer introduced me to you. Please. I only want five minutes. Please.”
Donaldson stared at her. “All right, Brady. I’ll take care of it. Come along with me, Miss Levy,” he said to Martha.
She got out of the car and followed him in silence to one of the larger bungalows on the lot. He led her inside, past his secretary into his office.
“Sit down, Miss Levy,” he said to her. “You know, I could have had you thrown out. You know why I’m talking to you?”
She shook her head.
“Go on, sit down,” he said, nodding at the chair by his desk. “I remember you. I’m talking to you now because your name is Levy. You’re the first Jewish kid I’ve run into on this lot who hasn’t changed her name to Adore or Bradford or Simmons or something like that. So it gives you points. Not many, but it’s worth five minutes of my time. Now what do you want?”
“I only want to know about my picture,” she said forlornly.
“What picture?”
“The picture Marty Spizer is producing.”
“That lousy little turd? Sorry. But if Marty Spizer were a magician, I wouldn’t let him produce a rabbit out of a hat on this lot.”
“He has a deal with you–”
“No.”
Tears oozed out of her eyes, blurring her careful make-up. “But he has a deal with you,” she insisted. “He’s preparing a screenplay. He’s going to direct it.”
“Spizer?” He stared at her thoughtfully.
“I had a screen test here,” she said woefully.
“Anyone who puts down two hundred and twenty dollars can have a screen test here, Miss Levy. It’s a service. We’re a small studio. It’s just a way of augmenting our income. How much did Spizer take you for?”
She shook her head without answering.
“Where are you from, Miss Levy?”
“Sausalito,” she whispered.
“Why don’t you go back to Sausalito, Miss Levy,” he said, not unkindly. “That’s the best advice I can give you. That’s the best advice I could give a thousand kids in this town. Stay away from lice like Marty Spizer and go home.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made a scene outside. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
She walked out of Donaldson’s office across the lot to her car. Her tears had stopped, and she got into her car.
“Just make a U-turn, miss,” the guard said to her.
She drove along Ventura Boulevard and then turned left into Laurel Canyon Boulevard, climbing the hill to Mulholland Drive, a dirt road on the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. She drove westward, and then parked her car in an open spot, with the whole hazy reach of the San Fernando Valley stretching north beneath her. It was a cool, lovely morning, the valley with its great orange and avocado and lemon and lime groves lying in the early mist like some enormous garden, and eastward, the mighty spur of the San Gabriels. She sat there for perhaps a half-hour, stating at the scene and now and then probing at her own self, forming in her mind a picture of utter emptiness within her, a cloudy, floating emptiness, a feeling that she did not exist, a feeling she had had as a little girl when she would awaken at night in the darkness and be overtaken with terror at the thought that she had disappeared into the consuming dark.
She started the car and began to drive. She increased her speed. Her self had fled, and unless she overtook it, she would live out all her days as an empty shadow. She drove faster and faster, the car careening wildly on the narrow, twisting dirt road.
Polly Anderson, Mark’s secretary, came into Dan’s office without knocking or being announced, terribly upset, and said to him, “There’s a call for Mr. Levy from the Los Angeles Police, and he’s somewhere down in the store, and I think it’s something awful about Martha–”
Dan looked at her, then picked up the phone and asked for the call. Then he listened, while Polly Anderson watched him. His face turned white, his hand holding the phone trembled, and he whispered, “Oh, my God, no.” He listened again. “I’m his partner, his friend. Yes, I’ll take care of it.” He put down the phone and stared at Polly Anderson.
“Martha’s dead,” he said. “She died in a car crash.”
Polly Anderson began to blubber. Dan rose and eased her into a chair. “Just take it easy, Polly. I’ll find Mark and tell him. You just stay here until you feel better.”
He left his office and took the elevator down to the store, then walked through floor after floor looking for Mark. How do you do it? he asked himself. How do you tell your best friend that his daughter is dead? How do you tell him that all that’s left inside of him is dead and gone and finished?
He found Mark staring thoughtfully at a display of sporting equipment, and Mark said to him, “You know, Danny, I ought to have some sport in my life. Look at all this stuff. I never did any exercise in my whole damn life, and look at this potbelly I’m wearing here. I used to be skinny as a rail. I think I’m going to join one of those golf clubs and take up golf. How about it? Suppose the two of us try it?”
“Come up to my office,” Dan said gently. “I want to talk to you.”
He saw Dan’s face then. “What happened?” he demanded.
“Come up to my office.”
Polly Anderson had left and the office was empty. There was no easy way to do it. Dan told him what had happened. “The Los Angeles Police called. There was an accident.”
“Martha?”
“Yes. Martha’s dead.”
Mark stared at him. “What are you saying, Danny?”
“Martha’s dead. She died in a car crash in Los Angeles.”
“I don’t believe that. That’s crazy. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday. I spoke to her on the phone.”
Dan eased him into a chair, and now he began to cry. “Maybe it’s not Martha,” he said through his tears. “Maybe it’s someone else. Danny, what do I do? What do I do? How do I tell Sarah?”
A great belly of gray-white fog, shot through here and there with shafts of sunlight, golden, unlikely bars that gave way to thin cold rain, rolled in through the Golden Gate on the morning they buried Martha Levy. Rabbi Blum, bowed with the guilty weight of his years in an irresponsible universe that destroys youth, read the burial service over the grave, and then Sarah cast herself on the fresh soil and lay there sobbing. Dan lifted her up, surprised at how thin, how almost weightless she was in his arms. She clung to him. Mark stood and stared at the grave with unseeing eyes until Jake went over, put his arm around him, and said gently, “Come on, papa. It’s over. We’ll go home now.”
In the background, there was only the poignant sobbing of Maria Cassala and the muted agony of Clair Levy against the lonely foghorns out on the bay.
PART SIX
The Whirlwind
At seven-thirty in the morning, California time–which is ten-thirty New York time–on October 24, 1929, Dan received a long-distance call from his New York manager, Frank Anderson, who said to him, “I hate to get you out of bed, Dan, but this wouldn’t wait.”
“It’s all right. I’m up.”
“There’s something funny as hell happening with the market. Joe Feld, my broker, called me. I didn’t know whether you and Mark were going to the office today. I think you ought to have a look at
the ticker.”
“I’ll be there,” Dan said.
It was eight-thirty Pacific Time, eleven-thirty New York time, when Dan walked into his office. The offices opened at mine. He was the first one there, and as he entered his office, the phone was ringing. It was Stephan Cassala.
The first thing he said was, “Dan, have you looked at the tape?”
“I haven’t turned the damn thing on. I just stepped into my office. What the devil’s going on?”
“There’s been a big break in the New York market. The prices are plunging.”
“Well, it’s happened before.”
“Not like this. Twenty, thirty points on a stock. I’m calling because I don’t want you and Mark to panic.”
“We don’t panic,” Dan said with some irritation. “We got a few thousand shares on margin, our own money–the hell with it. What goes down comes up.”
“That’s it exactly. I talked to Crocker and Giannini. There’ll be a consortium of banks in the city in the next hour or two, and we’ll be buying heavily. The same thing’s happening in Chicago and in New York. Pop talked to Clement at the National City Bank in New York, and back there Mitchell and Wiggen and Lamont are putting together a consortium of their own. So don’t get nervous.”
Dan put down the phone and switched on the ticker tape. But he hardly had a chance to glance at it before the telephone was ringing again. It was Klemdheim, his broker: “I need twenty-one thousand five hundred from you, Dan, and eleven thousand from Mark. To cover your margins.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Do you know what’s happening on Wall Street?”
“Give us an hour.”
“No more than that. For Christ’s sake, Dan, I got thirty customers in the same fix. We’ve got to have the money.”
“Look, my office hasn’t opened. No one’s here. The moment my secretary comes in, I’ll send her over with a check.”
