Flat on my back in the hollow between the two sets of drawers, I scrutinized the inside boards for the sign of a sliding panel. Nothing. I went lower, twisting so that I was virtually imprisoned in the well of the desk. I tapped, clawed, and tugged, when, with jewel box precision, a section of the base came loose, revealing a small knob. I pulled at it and a shallow drawer—just big enough for, say, a manila folder—came out in my hand. Inside was a plain white envelope and inside the envelope a pink memorandum bearing the letterhead of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I slipped the envelope into my inside jacket pocket, wrenched myself from beneath the desk, and went to the door.
I leaned my damp and glistening skull into the night air. The street was as dead as a landlord’s heart. I went outside, shutting the door behind me, and walked back toward the saloon. As I reached the far side of the street, the drone of an approaching car became audible. And more audible. The glare of headlights swept across the ghostly storefronts as a dark sedan turned the corner and came down the street.
Standing just inside the saloon, I watched as the car, a Plymouth, braked sharply across the way. Two men in raincoats, their fedoras brim-down, jumped out of the car and ran inside the jailhouse. I stared intently at the two figures but for all I could see in the darkness, they could have been Amos ’n Andy.
Since the two beagles would go straight for the desk, whereupon they would be disappointed, confused, and perhaps suspicious, I decided to get off the Warners lot as quickly as possible. I could read the memo somewhere else. So I left as I came, slipping out the back of the saloon, past those cheerful houses of American innocence, and into the camouflaged Chrysler, which I gunned. A sense of urgency and fear possessed me as I streaked off the lot at sixty miles per hour.
Call it instinct.
13
I read the pink FBI memorandum while getting a fill-up at a Texaco station on Barham. I’m not exactly sure how I finished it.
TO: P. J. DAVIS
FROM: CLARENCE WHITE
RE: ROLE OF HELEN ADRIAN AND JACK LEVINE IN COMMUNIST ACTION PLAN
It can now be reported that the Communist plan for avoiding prosecution in the murders of Walter Adrian and Dale Carpenter is at hand. Once again the insidious cunning of the Soviets is obvious; the entire matter has been brilliantly conceived and executed.
Be assured that the undercover unit is well aware of the dimensions and strategy of the case and is on top of all aspects. THE LOS ANGELES POLICE ARE TO DO NOTHING! THEIR INTERFERENCE AT THIS CRITICAL POINT WOULD BE FATAL!
The facts of the matter are as follows:
1. Walter Adrian and Dale Carpenter were killed by none other than “Helen Adrian,” in reality a Soviet national named VERA DROSHDE KOVYA, whose marriage to screenwriter Adrian was planned by the NKVD (Soviet secret police) as a way of gaining a pipeline to the movie colony.
For two years, all went smoothly. “Helen Adrian” filed regular reports on the growth of the Party in Hollywood—while cleverly “refusing” to join herself. She handpicked candidates for espionage.
But when Walter Adrian unknowingly “confided” to his wife, early this year, that he planned to leave the Party and tell the House Committee on Un-American Activities what he knew about Red activities in Hollywood, she reported this knowledge to Moscow and was informed that her husband must be liquidated. A fake “suicide” was planned.
2. To assist her in this plot, New York Party functionary JACOB LEVINE, a “private detective” operating under the name of “Jack LeVine” was summoned West to help “investigate” the death of Adrian. In reality, it was LeVine’s job to protect Miss Droshdekovya and create distractions. It is obvious that he has succeeded. It also appears that LeVine and Droshdekovya have become lovers.
3. Dale Carpenter was murdered when he learned that his friend Walter Adrian had not died by his own hand, but had in fact been murdered, and by “Mrs. Adrian.” (We have not determined how Carpenter obtained this knowledge.) Not knowing who to turn to, Carpenter went to the home of Johnny Parker, a friend of the House Committee. He was followed there by LeVine, who informed “Mrs. Adrian” of the development. She went to the movie star’s house that evening and, with the deadly accuracy that is the hallmark of Soviet agents, shot him through the heart.
PLAN OF ACTION
Vera Droshdekovya plans to leave Hollywood and return to Moscow, abetted by LeVine. WE ARE TO LET HER LEAVE AND ANNOUNCE THE CARPENTER MATTER UNSOLVED. She will be followed, of course, but not detained. Her activities are of great interest to us. Her imprisonment would cause a sensation, BUT WOULD SEND THE SOVIET ESPIONAGE UNDERGROUND FURTHER UNDERGROUND. They are currently visible and under surveillance.
IN SHORT, MISS DROSHDEKOVYA MUST BE ALLOWED TO “DISAPPEAR.”
REPEAT: MISS DROSHDEKOVYA MUST BE ALLOWED TO DISAPPEAR.
I was numb when I finished the document. White had found an out and it was both ingenious and fiendish in conception. He would murder Helen and be covered by this memo; in turn, he had incriminated me as a Soviet agent. By the time things got sorted out, if ever, White would be long gone.
“That’ll be three dollars,” said the grease monkey, tapping me on the shoulder. “Check the oil?”
I threw him three bills and left the station as if a checkered flag had flashed before the windshield, pulling out onto Barham without even checking for traffic. A car screeched to a halt behind me; cursing and honking filled the air. I moved into the left lane, impervious to everything but the fact that I had to get to Helen before Clarence White did.
The Chrysler was a hell of a car and it responded splendidly to ray cowboy recklessness behind the wheel, but it still took forty-five agonizing minutes to get to Bel Air. Five or ten of those minutes were spent squinting at street signs as I cruised through Bel Air trying to find 384 St. Cloud amidst the curving roadways and fortress-high shrubbery of this poshest of neighborhoods.
But you’d drive past the Chicago fire before you’d miss the home of Zack Gross. It was what we call a mansion: three stories, pillared, and snow white. Thirty-five rooms, minimum. I expected to see Rhett and Scarlett come dancing out the front door, such was the heady, lanterned aura of the house, cushioned as it was by wide and scented lawns, bordered by exquisite shrubbery that strained against high, spiked fences. The fences looked freshly painted and freshly sharpened.
All three floors of the Gross mansion were lighted and alive; through the windows I observed what had to be a few hundred people standing about and chatting. And among them would be a man known as Henry Perillo, drink in hand, addressing his remarks to the problems of the body politic and the decaying structure of capitalism, remaining genial and modest in manner, keeping his eyes fixed above the shoulders of his immediate social circle, scanning the room for the widow of Walter Adrian. And when he spotted her, he would politely excuse himself from the group, greet Helen effusively, and steer her to a corner, then summon her outside for a serious talk. In that crush of people, who would notice the absence of two people?
I whipped around the long circular driveway and was stopped in front of the house by a gray-haired Negro standing in the road and holding up his hand. He walked over to the car and handed me a numbered ticket.
“Valet parking, sir.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No choice, no charge,” he said with a hoarse laugh. “Big party tonight. I got to park ’em or nobody’ll get out afterwards.”
I stepped from the car and the Negro slid into the driver’s seat.
“Go in and enjoy yourself.” he said cheerfully. “Don’t worry about no Chrysler. I got Rolls cars back to back and no scratches.”
“You park a blue Nash recently?”
He regarded me with untroubled brown eyes.
“Blue Nash?” he repeated innocently. “Not sure. Lot of cars tonight, mister. Lot of cars.”
I slipped a buck into his hand.
“Yeah,” he told me. “Blue Nash. Twenty minutes ago.”
“I
t still here?”
“Far as I know, but I’ve been back and forth. Nash had an end spot. Man could slip out, if that’s what you want to know.”
It was and wasn’t. I bolted up the front stairs and rang the bell.
A butler opened up, in full soup and fish, poised in front of a curving stairway, his brilhantined hair bright beneath a chandelier.
“No coat,” I told him. “Where’s the party?”
He asked my name, then turned on his heel and goose-stepped away. Maybe I was supposed to wait but I didn’t have the time, so I walked directly behind him and entered a reception room as large and noisy as St. Nick’s Arena. Perhaps a hundred people were standing about the room, in full conversational roar, propelled by urgency and drink to discuss the fevered events of the past week. As I pushed my way through the crowd in search of Helen, curious heads turned; fragments of sentences indicated, amazingly enough, that I was recognized.
“Hired by Adrian,” I heard. “New York, I don’t know if he suspects,… school friend….” Other bits of conversation drifted past: “I heard Warner is scared shitless,… goddamn Menjou can’t wait,… it starting in April?… Dalton didn’t say but I think so,… oil money behind Nixon.”
The din was awful, but what a crowd. I was too anxious to do much gawking, but in my progress across the room I managed to step on Spencer Tracy’s toe, jostle Paulette Goddard’s drink, arid rub against Myrna Loy’s ass. Katharine Hepburn was with Tracy, her exquisite, sculpted face looking tired and drained; she was letting Tracy do all the talking. Cornel Wilde was having an animated conversation with Paul Henreid; Conrad Veidt, looking nothing like a Nazi officer, had his hand on Henreid’s shoulder and was telling Dorothy McGuire a joke. “Oh, Connie,” she laughed.
In a corner was my own favorite, John Garfield. Trim and dark, he was nibbling on a sandwich and bending his ear toward a couple of talkative dolls in very low-cut dresses. Their combined four tits, at close range, were Himalayan in snowy grandeur and Garfield couldn’t keep his eyes off them.
It was all pretty fascinating for a Sunnyside schnook like me, but I would have swapped the lot of them for a glimpse of Helen or Clarence White.
I wandered through an archway into a smaller area, a dining room, I think. Two dozen people were milling about and the decibel level was a good deal lower. Eddie Cantor was there and he appeared to be boring Ava Gardner, who, in a blue silk dress slit up to her thigh, was an incitement to riot. Gloriously alluring, but as soft as a steel boot. She wandered away from Cantor in mid-sentence to greet Gregory Peck. Very tall man. I recognized no one else; a small woman, fifty or so, was drunk and appeared to be weeping. Her tears aroused my professional curiosity, but there wasn’t any time. No time at all.
Lost, wide-eyed, and increasingly agitated, I went from room to room, scanning faces, checking off backs of heads. I picked a glass of champagne off a passing silver tray and downed it in rapid gulps, then headed for the stairs, knocking over Danny Kaye and failing to apologize.
I ran up the stairs. In a small den on the second floor were Milton and Rachel Wohl. They were having an argument with a loud man whom they introduced to me as Jerry Wald.
“Where’s Helen?” I asked, without even acknowledging Wald.
The Wohls looked at each other, as if trying to agree on an answer.
“C’mon!” I roared. “Did she come with you? Is she here? Did she leave?”
Rachel Wohl became alarmed and stood up. “Is something the matter?”
“Not yet,” I told her. “Where is she?”
“She was sitting with us until about ten minutes ago,” said Milton Wohl, puzzled at my outburst. “Then Henry came up and said he wanted to talk …”
I turned and ran out of the room.
Henry Fonda was coming up the stairs; I went flying past him.
“Hey, Mister,” he said amiably. “Where’s the fire?”
The extraordinary brunette on his arm merely giggled. I took the last three steps at a jump, dashed past the butler and out the front door. The door closed behind me and the evening’s cool silence made the party seem even more unreal than it was. It roared on dully behind me.
I ran around to the back of the house, where guest cars were being parked on a huge lawn bordering a pair of tennis courts. The Negro was getting out of a Packard and saw me racing toward him.
“Leaving already?” he said with a broad smile. “That Chrysler of yours is kind of wedged in; take me a few minutes to get it out.”
Jesus Holy Christ.
“Listen,” I asked, knowing the answer, “the Nash still here?”
The Negro put his finger to his nose and rubbed.
“Nope,” he finally said. “Left five minutes ago. Maybe ten.”
“Man and a woman, a redhead?”
“Yessir.”
“In a hurry?”
“Nope. Redhead was drunk, I think.”
Drugged.
“Get me my car. Pronto.”
“It’ll take a while, Mister. Like I said, she’s wedged in.”
A sense of futility and anguish possessed me like sick fever. There I stood, my car fenced in by the Rolls-Royces and Bentleys of Hollywood royalty, while a woman I had grown to love was being driven away, to her death, by a lunatic FBI man.
I didn’t have any choice! I had to steal a car.
“Forget it,” I told the Negro, stuffing a sawbuck into his shirt pocket. “Just stay here for a few minutes. Grab a smoke.”
I sprinted away.
“If you’re going to put the arm on one,” he called out, “bring it back before midnight.”
As I turned the corner and ran toward the front of the house, a blue Cadillac was coming up the driveway.
Panting, I reached the car and leaned in through the front window. The driver, who had dipped his head to light a cigarette, turned to face me.
“What do you want?” asked Humphrey Bogart.
“Your car.” It wasn’t what I had planned to say, not at all, but confronted with Bogart, the truth rushed to my head like a snort of cocaine.
“What?” He was friendly, calm, a bit loaded.
“Why do you want the car?” asked his companion. She was thin and tawny, with sleek brown hair, large intelligent eyes, and a mouth you could have used for collateral. She was, I realized, Lauren Bacall.
“To prevent a murder,” I said.
Bogart’s mouth tightened. “You serious?” he asked.
“Very serious. Walter Adrian’s widow is in terrible danger.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Bogart. He turned to Bacall. “Go inside, Betty, tell them I’ll be late.”
“I can’t come?” she asked.
“No, no,” Bogart grumbled. “C’mon, let this guy in the car. Helen Adrian. Christ alrnighty.”
Bacall got out and I got in, thanking her profusely. She put her hands on the window, her eyes worried.
“Bogey, don’t be a hero. Take care,” she told him.
Bogart said not to worry, but we had to go; then he floored the gas pedal and sent us smoking out the driveway. He executed an impossible U-turn and went roaring up St. Cloud, which ran into Bel Air Road, and down a series of hair-raising curves to Sunset Boulevard. Bogart stopped at Sunset and turned to me.
“Which way and what’s your name?”
I said I was Jack LeVine, a real-life detective hired by Adrian, then thought over where to go. It was some sweet decision to make because if I was wrong, I had let Helen slip out of my hands and out of this world.
“Santa Monica,” I finally said. “Pacific Way.”
“Pacific Way,” the actor repeated. “That’s a little north of Santa Monica.” He bit lightly on his lip. “Okay, Chief, hang on.”
He was a skinny man, actually, almost frail-looking, with thinning hair and deep hollows in his face. But for all that surprising physical delicacy, he was commanding, impressive, and a regular egg.
And he drove like a holy madman. Cigarette dangling from hi
s lip, watching traffic with liquid brown eyes, occasionally taking a drink out of a flask of martinis, Bogart roared down Sunset Boulevard at an even seventy-five, running numerous lights in the name of chivalry.
“I heard about you,” he said. “A New York detective, old school friend of Walter’s; Larry Goldmark told me.”
“We went to City College together.”
Bogart chuckled deeply, the chuckle turning over into a cough.
“City College and you became a dick.”
“Life has its little jokes.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the actor said. “I was supposed to be a doctor.” His mouth tightened as he swerved to avoid a Buick that had just hit its brakes. “Who wants to kill Helen?”
“A guy.”
Bogart groaned. “C’mon, Jack. I’m risking my neck driving like a drunk to get you there, you can at least tell me what’s going on.”
“I won’t talk till it’s over. You can understand that.” I stuck a Lucky into the corner of my mouth.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ve played shamuses. They blab like old women.”
“That’s in the movies.”
He grinned.
“Everything’s in the movies. That’s all there is, movies. Doesn’t America realize that yet?”
An ambulance cut us off as we headed down Burlingame to San Vincente Boulevard. It missed us by inches but Bogart didn’t rattle. He was well-oiled but in full control, like any man comfortable with liquor. Booze was no opiate; it was fuel.
He lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of the old one, which snapped out his open window.
Hollywood and Levine Page 18
