Citizen Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 3)

by Martin Turnbull

  Ramon tilted his head. “He is here?”

  “I asked him about what you said. About how you thought he and I are a couple. He said he didn’t know how you got the idea—”

  “Marcus,” Ramon broke in, his smile tentative. “I did not return from Italy alone.” He paused to let his words sink in. “I left America under the impression that you were spoken for.”

  “But I—”

  “I met Alessandro in Florence. He conducted the orchestra—”

  “I don’t need the details.” A jumble of anger, frustration and disappointment percolated through Marcus’ chest. The last thing I want to hear about is the romantic story of how you met a cultured Florentine conductor and talked him into coming back to America with you. “I hope you’re happy with—” but the remainder of the sentence evaporated in his mouth. He headed up the stairs and ended up on the sidewalk, gulping in the cool night air and trying to patch over the gaping hole in his chest that was being ripped apart by a dagger named Alessandro.

  By the time he reentered the building, Rebecca had won Best Picture and everyone, now liberally doused and soused on banquet liquor, began to table hop. People sprinkled the foyer outside the Biltmore Bowl. Marcus found Taggert leaning against a wall, taking long drags from his Lucky Strike.

  “I was hoping I’d see you,” Marcus told him.

  Taggert stubbed out his cigarette. “About?”

  “Did you know Hoppy’s here?” A light of hope flickered in Taggert’s eyes. “He’s at one of the Columbia tables. Up in the far corner.”

  Taggert gave a curt nod. “How’s he look?”

  “Lonely.”

  The light of hope flared into a beacon.

  Marcus was about to speak when a young woman walked past him. She was in her early twenties, slim, and had a nest of curly brown hair cut flatteringly short that bounced softly as she moved. He only saw her briefly, and only in profile, but it was enough to recognize her.

  He held up a finger to Taggert. “There’s something I want to ask you, but I need a minute. Please, please don’t go anywhere.” He waited for Taggert’s nod before he dashed after the girl.

  He called out but she didn’t respond. He closed the gap between them and grabbed her by the arm. “DORIS!” His heart pounded at the base of his throat. He spun her around. “It’s me, Marc—”

  Now that he was able to see her face square on, he realized it wasn’t Doris. Her eyes were the wrong color, her nose was too wide, and there were no freckles splattered across it. The disappointment wrenched his heart down into his stomach. “I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I thought you were—someone else.” He repeated his apology and turned away from the startled girl.

  “Who was that?” Taggert asked.

  Marcus struggled for a smile. “Nobody.”

  “So?” Taggert asked. “You want something?”

  Marcus shooed away the face of the girl. “I want to lay my cards on the table. What does a guy have to do to get into the big house?”

  CHAPTER 29

  The day that changed everything started with a phone call from Earl Hubbings, Kathryn’s editor at Life magazine. They’d parted on friendly terms but hadn’t spoken in over a year when he called her to ask if he was going to see her that night.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “The rough-cut preview of Citizen Kane over at RKO.”

  “How did you hear about it?” And more importantly, Kathryn thought, how come I didn’t?

  Earl fired one of his condescending chuckles down the line. “Seeing as how I saw the notice in yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter, I assumed it wasn’t a state secret.”

  She reached back to the credenza behind her desk and lifted yesterday’s issue. The tiny announcement was at the bottom of page twelve. The seven o’clock screening was for national magazine reviewers with early deadlines. Technically, Kathryn didn’t qualify, which may have explained the absence of an invitation, but still.

  Why didn’t Orson call me, or send a telegram? She tried hard to push back against the wall of resentment she felt, but it didn’t work.

  * * *

  A guy in a dark-blue uniform with the RKO logo stitched to his left arm handed Kathryn’s press ID back to her. “No can do, lady. Hollywood Reporter isn’t on this here list of approved publications.” Like all studio front gate guards, he could play poker with the best of them.

  “Perhaps not, but if you could tell Mr. Welles—”

  “He ain’t here tonight, and I’m under strict instructions. Only let in the people from the magazines on the list. No exceptions. So play nice and move along, please.”

  Kathryn retreated from the gate and started to walk back up Gower Street until she reached the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, which backed up to the RKO and Paramount lots. She headed inside; nobody was about.

  She followed a path alongside a nine-foot wooden fence that ran the length of the RKO lot. Scaling it unassisted wasn’t even a remote possibility. It was getting dark now and a January breeze blew down from the Hollywood Hills.

  Eventually she came to an oak tree, tall with branches reaching upward and outward to the other side of the fence. She hadn’t climbed a tree since she was a kid but she figured she could still do it. She took off her shoes and dug them into the pockets of her woolen coat, but soon saw the branches overhanging the fence weren’t going to support her weight.

  “Need some help?”

  A black man in a camel twill uniform stood twenty feet away. He held a flashlight in his right hand and shined it into her eyes.

  “I—er—”

  “When pretty girls like you are trying to sneak into the studio, it’s not usually this time of night,” the caretaker said.

  “I can’t imagine it is.”

  “Everyone in casting would have gone home about an hour ago.”

  “No, no. I’m trying to—”

  “I can get you on the other side of this here wall.” He held out his hand. “For five.”

  Kathryn wasn’t even sure she had five dollars on her. She slipped her shoes on as ladylike as she could manage, and rummaged through her purse: three one-dollar bills, five quarters and a dime. She held it out to him. “It’s all I’ve got and it doesn’t even leave me with anything for the streetcar home.”

  He scraped the money off her palm and told her to follow him. About twenty yards from the end, he bent down and inserted his fingers in a couple of knot holes. When he gave it a solid tug, the plank came away easily. He pulled at its neighbor and swung it up to the left. He held them apart and motioned for her to squeeze through.

  “Make a nice little living on the side out of this, do you?” she asked.

  “Would you believe me if I told you that I send it all to my sweet little aged mother back in Ohio?”

  “Nope.”

  “And neither should you,” he replied genially. “Good luck, ma’am.”

  Kathryn slipped through the gap and found herself surrounded on three sides by soundstages whose beige paint jobs gleamed dark silver in the moonlight. She headed west toward the RKO section of the lot and stopped a guy hauling a flatbed cart loaded with film canisters. When she asked him where the RKO screening room was, he pointed out a building two blocks down. She found a plaque marked “Screening Room B” and tried to pull open the door, but it didn’t budge.

  “Locked?”

  It was the first time Kathryn had ever seen Hedda Hopper without a hat. She looked like a peacock without its plumage.

  “Not on the list, either?” Hedda asked dryly.

  “I’m not a national monthly,” Kathryn replied. “But then neither are you.”

  “And yet here we both are. How much did he charge?”

  “The guy with the gap in the fence? He asked for five.”

  “Bastard! He charged me ten.” Hedda scrutinized the lock. “Step aside. This shouldn’t be too difficult.” She reached up to pull a hairpin from her coiffure and inserted it into the keyhole. After jiggling
it around for what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, she let out a satisfied “Hm!” and straightened up to reinsert the pin into her hair. The door swung open without a squeak. “After you.”

  They made their way down a bright corridor lined with large photographs of RKO stars—Ginger Rogers, Victor Mature, Ray Milland, Billie Burke—and slipped into the theater behind a dozen or so people. It was a typical studio screening room, with four or five rows of ten plush, roomy black velvet seats, and Kathryn looked around for Earl as she and Hedda found seats near the rear. Almost immediately the lights went down, and Kathryn prayed to the gods of Hollywood that nothing about this picture would warrant the clamminess of her hands.

  * * *

  Two hours later the lights came back up.

  As the audience started exiting the theater, Hedda and Kathryn stared at the black velvet curtains as they drew closed. Neither of them said a word.

  Kathryn’s mind was reeling from the cinematic marvel she’d just witnessed. Camera angles she’d never seen before, lighting so carefully constructed it looked like it was etched on glass, and mood so thick she felt she could wipe it off the screen with her finger.

  But oh, sweet Jesus! Every fear Kathryn had about this motion picture was there: the monstrous tycoon, the controlled performer mistress, the vast wealth, the tabloid newspapers, the greed, the accumulation, the castle. Oh, Lord! Kathryn rubbed her temples. The castle! Orson had dubbed it Xanadu, but why did he bother? Why didn’t he just call it San Simeon and be done with it?

  Of course Orson had every right to make a picture criticizing the most powerful man in America and the richest man in the world, but how the heck, she fretted, could he possibly think he could get away with it? In the short time Orson Welles had been in the public eye, he’d achieved greatness with everything he took on. Kathryn expected something special from his first motion picture, and this movie was an undoubted masterpiece, but was it great enough to out-Hearst Hearst? Orson Welles, she decided, was either insane or more insanely egotistical than she gave him credit for. How could I have underestimated him so badly?

  Then she thought of Hearst’s Hollywood handmaiden, Louella Parsons. “Louella is going to choke when she hears about this,” she told Hedda once the theater had emptied. “Are you going to tell her?”

  Hedda’s eyes were still trained on the curtains. “Tell Louella? No thank you. I was just wondering what it would be like to tell Hearst himself.”

  “Aren’t you afraid he’ll shoot the messenger?” Kathryn asked.

  Hedda laughed. “I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do it in person. But it’d make for one hell of a phone call.”

  “Louella’s going to look unbelievably incompetent.” Kathryn couldn’t help the knowing smile sliding across her face. “He’ll want to know why she didn’t know about this first.” Kathryn was looking at Hedda now and saw the gears churning in her own mind reflected back to her in Hedda’s eyes. Suddenly, the woman’s eyes flashed.

  “Poor Marion!” Hedda exclaimed. “The sled!”

  For all his wealth, the only thing Charles Foster Kane really prized was his childhood snow sled with the name “ROSEBUD” stenciled at the top. It was a clever idea and made its point clearly, but the word always made Kathryn think of the weekend Marcus spent up at the Hearst ranch five years ago that ended disastrously when he said the word “rosebud”—forgetting it was Hearst’s pet name for Marion’s privates.

  Kathryn sighed. “I’ve always been rather fond of Marion. Orson went way too far. She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “When Hearst sees what Orson’s done to Marion, his head will explode.”

  Kathryn nodded. “Oh, boy, this is going to get ugly.”

  “I’m not afraid of ugly,” Hedda said evenly.

  “Me either.”

  Hedda popped open her purse and took out a quarter. “I’ll flip for it.” She tossed it in the air, caught it, and palmed it on the back of her left hand. “Heads, you get to tell Hearst; tails, I do.”

  “Tails.”

  They looked at the coin together.

  * * *

  Kathryn returned to the office with cab fare Hedda loaned her in the hope that Wilkerson was still there. She was relieved to see his light shining at the end of the corridor and rushed in to tell him what she’d seen.

  “Good,” was his annoyingly smug response. “Very good.”

  “Good for whom?” Kathryn started pacing the floor. “The way I see it, Hearst has two choices: either ignore the whole thing and hope it fades away, or declare all-out war. Welles and Hearst are as bad as each other, so we know which way Hearst is going to go. So when war is declared, Orson will take him on. Louella’s going to have a pink fit and Hedda will be in there jabbing everyone she can see with any pointed object she can lay her hand on.”

  “Exactly.”

  Wilkerson was too calm for Kathryn’s liking. The two people he hated most were Hearst and Welles, but surely he wasn’t going to come out in favor of muckraking Hearst over Orson’s argument for free speech? Besides which, despite his motives, Orson had made a dazzling movie that elevated the art of the motion picture beyond anything previously brought to the screen.

  “So where is the Hollywood Reporter going to stand in all this?” Kathryn demanded. “We need to decide, because Hedda’s telephoning Hearst right now.”

  “Switzerland,” Wilkerson said.

  Kathryn stared at her boss. “What in tarnation is that supposed to mean?”

  Wilkerson pulled long on his Cuban. “Louella is pro-Hearst. Hedda is anti-Parsons, so therefore pro-Welles. RKO will be on Welles’ side, but the other studios don’t like being told what to do by anyone—especially Hearst—and the studios are an important source of advertising income for Hearst. But his papers aren’t doing well and his fortune is showing signs of crumbling, so can he afford to be anti-studios? Everybody’s going to have a dog in this fight.”

  Kathryn leaned a hip against her boss’ desk and looked at him sideways. “I know you’re no fan of Mr. Welles. Even though I don’t agree with you, I do understand your resistance to his arrogance. But you haven’t seen this movie. Trust me, it’s remarkable. We’re going to have to come out on Welles’ side. The side of the First Amendment and free speech. They have free speech in Switzerland, don’t they?”

  Wilkerson neither nodded nor shook his head. “What they have in Switzerland is neutrality. Massey, we’re going to remain neutral on this issue. The shit will be hitting fans all over town and in the middle of this free-for-all will stand the Hollywood Reporter, which everyone can turn to for unbiased, agenda-free, impartial reportage.”

  “No taking of sides?”

  “None.”

  “Neutral?”

  “Completely.”

  “Including me?”

  “Especially you.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The din of Hollywood Boulevard traffic subsided when Gwendolyn walked through the glass doors of the Warner Pacific Theater. She was there to see Santa Fe Trail, the new Errol Flynn picture, but hadn’t expected to see Ritchie. He was standing beside a life-size cardboard cutout of Errol and had four or five spent cigarette butts scattered at his feet. Gwendolyn groaned inwardly.

  Wherever Ritchie was these days, Bugsy Siegel was, too. Gwendolyn took a couple of steps back, but neither Kathryn nor Roy seemed to notice, and Kathryn waved to get his attention.

  “This is a happy coincidence,” Kathryn told him, then thought the better of it. “Or is it?”

  “Mr. Siegel can’t be too careful,” Ritchie replied.

  “He’s here?” Kathryn asked.

  “I’m leaving,” Gwendolyn said. It was four months since Siegel told casting at Warner Bros. to give her a role and nothing had come of it, which smelled suspiciously of Alice.

  “Don’t go,” Kathryn said. “Errol made you promise you’d come see his movie and give him your opinion.”

  “I know, but I don’t get why he cares so much.”
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  “Oh, sweetie.” Kathryn swatted Gwendolyn’s arm. “We both know Errol Flynn doesn’t think with his brain. Let’s just go in now.”

  “The boss prefers to sit close to the front,” Ritchie said, “so if you stick to the back, you’ll be safe.”

  “Is that George Raft?” Kathryn asked.

  “Yes, which means you-know-who isn’t too far behind,” Ritchie said.

  Gwendolyn could feel panic closing in. She wondered if there was a fire exit inside the auditorium.

  “GWENDOLYN! HONEY! GWENDOLYN! OVER HERE!”

  Alice Moore was all trounced up in a tasteless concoction of yellow and black ruffles.

  “Oh, lordy,” Gwendolyn muttered under her breath. “You guys go in and find us seats. I’ll meet you in there.”

  Alice bounded up to Gwendolyn. “Fancy seeing you here!”

  “Errol got us some tickets to—”

  “Did you know I’m in this movie?” Alice cut in. “Nobody could understand a word the director said. He’s got this abominable Hungarian accent. Once, he told an assistant he wanted a poodle for a scene, so the poor guy ran out to the dog pound and got a poodle. When he got back, Curtiz just about screamed the soundstage down around our ears. Turns out he didn’t want a poodle—he was asking for a puddle!” Alice let out a thin laugh. “And it was like that all the time. It was nutty!”

  When Gwendolyn spotted George Raft coming out of the men’s room adjusting his tie, she tried to avoid eye contact, but of course he saw her and headed in her direction. Then it hit her maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Gwendolyn leaned into Alice. “Want to meet a movie star?”

  Alice’s eyes widened in anticipation.

  Raft looked different in the late-afternoon light. His skin looked paler, his eyes a touch beadier, and his teeth nicotine yellow, but he still radiated a movie-star glow. “Hello, George,” she said as though she’d had him over for dinner a hundred times.

  His eyes scanned Alice’s impressive cleavage. Gwendolyn’s was just as generous, but Alice always displayed hers more prominently, and even more so lately—a sure sign that it was sagging.