Scandal in Babylon

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘You were lucky.’

  There was a note in his voice that made her glance quickly sidelong at him, but his gaze was on the road ahead. In time she went on, ‘Working with Father – studying classics and Latin and Greek, and getting ready to go on a dig with him – it was odd for most girls, I suppose. But among the dons and scholars at Oxford it felt … well, very usual. Expected, in a way. On a dig, one would take camp-baths and clean linen and one’s cook and a change of clothes to dress properly for dinner. Some people took their valets. With Jim, I felt like gates were opening up before me, into a new land, a new life, something I’d never done before. Never dreamt, never even thought about.’

  With someone I loved …

  Even now her hands ached for the light strength of his grip.

  ‘And now you have run away with the gypsies,’ said Zal, his voice gentle. ‘You think you’ll be able to live with Aunt Estelle?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She’s Mother’s older sister, and I always found her a little prudish and stuffy. But like Mother, she’s a great believer in letting people live their own lives. And her husband is a dear. To look at him, you’d think he’d been mummified in pipe tobacco for a hundred years, but he’s kind, and always trying to be helpful. He’s deeply involved in the Church – I think he’s an advertisement for all that’s best about Christianity. And he collects all sorts of things from India, picture-scrolls and ceremonial dishes and musical instruments. And I’m … I’m tired,’ she confessed. ‘When I thought of New York, I thought of being there with Jim. With someone to share things with, someone I could go to, if there was a problem. I never thought I’d be trying to make my own living in a foreign country, on my own.’

  ‘Are you happy here?’

  Am I happy here?

  The moon on the sea, where it frothed silver on the rocks, forty feet below the road. The stillness of the dry hills they’d come through. An alien planet, an alien land. The strength of his arms the night he’d asked, Do you want me to stay?

  Had the nymph Calypso asked Odysseus, Are you happy? finding him alone on the cliffs of her island, looking towards Ithaca?

  She opened her lips to say, Sometimes … or maybe to say, Yes … but suddenly there was a dark rushing shape and a roar of tires and Zal yelled, ‘Shit!’ and swung the wheel as a lightless car, bigger than the Ford and faster, whooshed up beside them and cut hard into their side.

  Zal hit the brake in the instant that the other car swerved toward them, so that the impact was barely a clip on the left side of the hood. Then he whipped the wheel around again, trying to swing past on the left. Their attacker gunned his engine, the bellow of far more power than the Ford could boast, and slammed them toward the cliff that rose on the land side of the highway. Emma grabbed the hand-strap beside the door, heart pounding as Zal braked again, shoved the car into reverse to pull clear, though she guessed there was no way they’d be able to escape the bigger vehicle. The Model-T lurched in a way that told her, tire puncture, tipped over into the ditch that separated highway from landward cliff and the next instant bashed diagonally into the cliff itself. The other car stopped and she saw the bulky shape of a man framed beside its driver-side door.

  Saw the glint of steel in his hand.

  Saw the glint of steel because headlights were roaring towards them from the south, at what Themistocles of Athens would have termed ramming speed. The man in the attacking car fired at the Model-T, and the glass of the window behind Emma’s head exploded in a torrent of shards. The oncoming headlights swelled and the attacker ducked down and into his own vehicle. It pulled back and roared away north only feet in front of Kitty’s yellow Packard, whose headlight-glare showed that it lacked a rear license-plate, and that its curved rump was dark-green with the black shape of a tire on it, and a boxy cabin beyond.

  The Packard screeched to a stop and Kitty sprang out, stumbling in her diamanté heels as she ran towards them (ONLY Kitty would wear shoes like that on an expedition to meet someone in a ruined roadhouse up a canyon …).

  ‘Darling!’ she gasped. ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  Zal had already cut the engine. He scrambled out and was coming around to help Emma, should she need it, when she pulled herself out by the sides of the door. Her legs shook so badly she nearly fell. ‘I’m all right,’ she managed to say, as Zal caught her elbow. ‘I’m not hurt …’

  A few bits of glass clinked from the sleeve of her jumper. She felt something warm on her face near her ear and wiped at it, wincing as her fingers caught another splinter of glass. It was big, she pulled it free …

  He shot at us. He was trying to kill us …

  ‘Darling, what happened? Who was that?’

  ‘Tell me and we’ll both know,’ said Zal grimly. His hand on Emma’s arm was perfectly steady, but the next second he pulled her to him, clutched her hard against his body for an instant. His grip was like a gasped cry: You’re alive. You’re alive …

  ‘I realized I could just as easily get back to Hollywood through Venice as I could over the Pass,’ Kitty gabbled. ‘I was going to let you catch up and ask Emma, did she want to leave you at your house and come back home with me. Then I saw this car try to hit you—’

  ‘I thought somebody might have been following us.’ Zal kept his steadying hold on Emma’s arm as he led her back towards Kitty’s car. ‘But pretty much nobody ever drives out that way, not on a Saturday night. And who the hell would be following Kitty? Other than us.’

  ‘This isn’t just jealousy.’ Emma sank into the velvety squabs of the Packard’s upholstery, trembling now as if the mild spring night had turned arctic. Kitty produced a silver flask from her glovebox and Zal opened it, and passed it to Emma. It was very high-quality gin.

  Courtesy of Mr Cornero, I suppose …

  ‘And it isn’t a publicity play …’

  ‘He’s insane,’ said Kitty unsteadily. ‘Frank. Oh, God …’

  ‘If it is Frank.’ Emma thought of his eyes, of the cold fury as he’d pulled out into traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Of Darlene’s attempts to stir up just that emotion in him …

  ‘Rex got that way, sometimes.’ Kitty shivered. ‘Really, literally crazy with jealousy. But he’d be cold in everything else, like Frank. He’d lie, and get very, very clever about his lies. You can’t reason with them when they’re like that, or expect them to be thinking reasonably.’

  ‘You get a look at the car at all?’ Zal handed the flask back to Kitty after taking another swig himself.

  Kitty shook her head. ‘I think it was a coupe …’

  ‘Chrysler coupe,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t see the plates.’

  ‘There weren’t any,’ said Emma. ‘At least not on the back. But the car was dark green. And I’m pretty sure the driver was alone.’

  ‘Why pretty sure?’ Zal slid into the back seat; Kitty polished off the gin in the flask, lit a cigarette, and pressed the self-starter. The big engine rumbled into life like a dragon purring.

  ‘It was the driver who shot at us. If there’d been anyone else in the car, I should imagine the driver would have stayed at the wheel, ready to escape. Thank you.’ She turned her head, to Kitty’s profile outlined against the reflection of the headlamp glow. ‘You saved our lives.’

  That’s twice, she thought, Kitty has saved my life. Once from violent death, once from a slow one …

  ‘I’m just sorry this bus isn’t equipped with a Maxim gun.’ Kitty’s voice was suddenly hard as flint. ‘And if that was Frank …’

  ‘We have no idea who it was,’ said Emma firmly. ‘But I think it might be a good idea to speak to Mr Cornero again, and see what advice he has to give on the subject of murder.’

  And then, between exhaustion and shock and not enough sleep the night before, she burst into tears.

  FOURTEEN

  The Bel Giardino Club stood a few blocks from Chaplin Studios, a two-and-a-half story building of brick with a stucco arcade nearly hidden behind a blazing wall of pink-and-turquoise neon
. Helped from the back seat of Ambrose Crain’s Hispano-Suiza, Emma had an impression of shop-windows behind the arcade on the ground floor. Dark now – it was nearly ten o’clock Sunday night – they seemed darker still against the vivid hell-mouth glow of the club’s open doorway.

  Emma wondered if bootleggers – even good Italian Catholic ones – respected the Fourth Commandment. Film producers, at least, did not, particularly film producers whose pictures were half a week behind schedule and required rental elephants. She hoped that Kitty – who had been at the studio since seven that morning – and Zal, who had been there since five – wouldn’t have too grueling a night when rioting mobs stormed Nero’s palace.

  A doorman who resembled a tractor in a bellboy’s uniform bowed as Mr Crain entered, with Emma on his arm. The wide hall just within was carpeted in crimson and ablaze with light-bulbs, and a doll-faced young woman behind a counter, wearing far too much eye-paint and far too little clothing, took the sable stole that Kitty had lent Emma for the occasion (‘Darling, you CAN’T go to a nightclub wearing that tweed thing of yours!’). Mr Crain surrendered his very handsome vicuña topcoat and silk hat at the same time, and inclined his head approvingly at the sight of Emma’s dress. (‘I had Mary Pickford pick it out for you, dearest,’ Kitty had explained, when the box was delivered to her dressing room that afternoon. ‘She has the best taste of anyone I know!’) The midnight blue silk, stitched with black and silver beading, had taken Emma’s breath away.

  It was the first evening dress she’d had in ten years. The first new garment she’d had in seven. ‘Kitty—!’ she had protested, and her sister-in-law – refreshing the pallid yellow camera make-up and resplendent in yet another ensemble of the exiguous gauze that seemed to be standard daywear for ladies in Babylon – had waved her words aside.

  ‘If Ambrose is taking you hunting bootleggers all around the nightclubs tonight you can’t go dressed like somebody’s maiden aunt.’

  ‘Before I met Kitty,’ confided Ambrose Crain, when arrangements had been confirmed over the telephone, ‘it had been quite twenty years since I’d gone to nightclubs. I shall feel quite the dog, turning up at one with another woman!’

  Will I turn up in Photo Play now as well? she had wondered.

  Now, surveying her dress in the garish lobby, he murmured, ‘Exquisite, Mrs Blackstone,’ and once again offered her his arm. ‘A privilege as well as a joy to be seen with you.’ He led her up the stairs to the nightclub above.

  In a well-fitting but elderly tuxedo, the old millionaire looked almost dapper himself. With a tingling delight which almost distracted her from her apprehension, Emma looked around her. When she’d told Zal – over a hasty commissary lunch – of the evening’s plans, she’d answered his query, ‘At heart, I know nobody’s going to try to murder me in a nightclub. Not when I’m with someone like Mr Crain. And if Tony Cornero wanted to murder me he’d have done so the other night, wouldn’t he? I’ll be quite all right.’

  She almost believed this.

  During that conversation, Madge had already been bellowing for Kitty and the cameras, so Zal could only take Emma’s hands and kiss her quickly on the lips. ‘Wish I was there tonight instead of at Caesar’s joint,’ he’d said. Emma had gone to help Kitty out of her kimono and to make notes of the changes Madge had made in the preceding scene, which would involve an alteration of tomorrow’s dialog (altered twice already to account for the disappearance of the Soothsayer).

  She’d taken the dogs home by cab, fed them, bathed and made herself up simply, and inserted half a paragraph and three title-cards which explained the sudden reappearance of the commander of Nero’s bodyguard as well (last seen falling into the lions’ den in scene twenty-one). As she dressed, she felt obliquely glad to know that old Mr Shang and his wife were down in the cottage behind the house, even though that antediluvian couple would have been of no assistance whatsoever had the owner of the dark-green Chrysler turned up on the doorstep with a gun. Her heart beating swiftly, she’d had a few minutes to wait before the headlights of Mr Crain’s Hispano-Suiza had zig-zagged down the drive, to reflect that this was the first time in six years that she’d ‘put on the dog’, as Jim had termed it. That she’d dressed up to go dancing.

  The last time had been the sixth of May, 1918. Almost exactly, she thought, six years. It had been Jim’s last night in London, before returning to the Front. The last time they’d danced together, joked together. The last time she’d gone to sleep with the soft smoothness of his skin beneath her cheek. The following morning, May seventh, just before dawn, had been the last time they’d made love.

  Four weeks later, he was dead.

  As she’d heard the car stop at the bottom of the drive, heard the chauffeur’s door open and then the door of the back seat, she’d whispered, ‘Oh, Jim. I’m sorry.’

  But the echo of his voice that she’d heard in her heart had been light: For God’s sake, Em, don’t be sorry! He had had, in his way, a spirit as eager for enjoyment as his sister’s. Have some champagne for me!

  He knew, she thought, that she’d still be with him if she could.

  So when the maitre d’ took them to a table that bordered the dancefloor and Mr Crain asked, ‘Would you like something to drink, Mrs Blackstone? I understand the drinks here are first-class,’ she had said, ‘Champagne, please.’

  ‘Your best,’ instructed the old millionaire quietly, and Emma smiled.

  Jim had loved good champagne.

  To the maitre d’, she’d murmured, ‘Is Mr Cornero here this evening? My name is Mrs Blackstone; he said that I might be able to find him here.’

  ‘Mrs Blackstone.’ The man bowed, small and sleek in a Latin-lover way but exquisitely polite. He’d clearly heard her name before. ‘Mr Cornero should be here at about eleven, m’am. Would you care to wait? Drinks are on the house.’

  She glanced across at Mr Crain, who nodded. ‘I’ve been drinking bootleg cocktails for a year in Kitty’s company,’ he whispered, as the maitre d’ retreated in the direction of the bar. ‘But this is the first time I shall make the acquaintance of a gangster. I must say, I’m quite tickled – though of course,’ he added more seriously, ‘I am shocked, and concerned, at the circumstances. I’ve asked Mr Hwang’ – that was his chauffeur – ‘to remain in the building after he’s parked the car. He’ll be downstairs in the hall, in case of – well – need.’

  And Emma smiled again, and told him what she’d said to Zal that afternoon. ‘I truly don’t think what happened last night has anything to do with Mr Cornero. If he’d wanted to harm any of us, he had plenty of opportunity to do it Thursday night. But somebody means us harm – Mr Rokatansky and myself. And I can only assume it’s because of whatever it is that’s going on with Kitty. Whatever it is.’ She spread her hands. ‘You wouldn’t have any idea – any thought of any possibility …?’

  ‘I have cudgeled my brains, Mrs Blackstone,’ said the old man, with a helpless gesture. ‘And Kitty – well, she doesn’t often talk about herself, does she? It’s as if she lets go of her past, in her eagerness to run on ahead and see what the future holds.’

  ‘That’s as good a description of her as I’ve ever heard, sir.’

  His answering smile, and the movement of his fingers, brushed the compliment aside. ‘It’s a quality I wish I shared,’ he said. ‘Are you familiar with Cafavy’s poem “Ithaca”? I forget how it goes, exactly: That Ithaca will not make you rich; it’s the road that makes you rich.’ His breath escaped him in a little sigh. ‘I think that’s how Kitty sees life.

  ‘I wish I could. Even now I find myself entangled in the past, like my poor son, who hasn’t ventured off Long Island in fifteen years. He’ll go into New York, but I doubt he’s even been as far afield as Connecticut. He has our money – my money, actually – and he’s going to stay home and cultivate what’s there like a potato-patch. My wife – my ex-wife,’ he corrected, a trifle stiffly, ‘does not travel, and doesn’t want him to. Sometimes I think they both think i
t’s still 1910. And I find myself preoccupied by things I did wrong, or should have done differently. Wanting to go back and make things be the way I think they should have been.’

  His smile was rueful and a little sad. ‘Do you do that, Mrs Blackstone? Want to go back as Kitty does on the filmset, and do a second “take” because she tripped or turned the wrong way, or because someone had left a coffee cup on the arm of the throne?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Emma softly. ‘Do you think one can do it, sir? Go back and do another take?’

  The kindly gray eyes rested on her for a moment, as if trying to see what lay behind the words. ‘I should like to think one could,’ he replied slowly, then nodded friendly thanks to the waitress who set two glasses on the table, a single-malt scotch, and her champagne, and slipped a dollar bill onto the woman’s tray. ‘But it’s never exactly the same situation, is it? Faced with the identical situation, and given the same information with which to meet it as we had before, would we not make the same decision?’

  For a moment she was back in that lingerie shop in Regent’s Arcade, where a tall young man in an American uniform was looking around him in bemused bafflement. The street outside had been full of young men in American uniforms, tall and robust, healthy as the English, after a year and more of food shortages, had ceased to be. When his eyes had met hers, she’d smiled. It was her smile, she thought, as well as her VAD uniform, that had given him permission to come over to her, to ask, Excuse me, miss, but could you help me pick something out for my sister …?