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

by Martin Turnbull

  Roy had done the right thing by running after her, all apologetic, but the damage was done. They were still standing there in the dark hissing at each other when Siegel’s Duesenberg roared past them. Mortified at having abandoned their post, Kathryn and Roy jumped in the car and sped off after them, but almost immediately they lost track of Gwendolyn in the folds of the canyons. Kathryn blamed Roy entirely, and things hadn’t been the same between them since.

  But Kathryn planned to fix everything. She booked a room at the Biltmore and filled it with the sorts of things Roy liked—his favorite kind of cheese crackers, his favorite radio station, his favorite brand of her perfume. But at the last minute she realized she’d left behind her clincher: Roy’s Scottish single malt whiskey. It was next to impossible to get in the states, but Robert Benchley had helped her track down a bottle. Unfortunately, she’d been in such a rush, she’d left it sitting on the counter at home. She called Marcus to let himself into her villa, get the whiskey, and grab the first cab he came across.

  She checked her watch again: five thirty-one. “Come on, come—oh, thank God!”

  She hurried over to Marcus, who was still dressed in his usual sit-around-doing-nothing Saturday afternoon getup of baggy trousers and faded green sweater. He lifted the bottle for her to see. “The cab got caught in traffic.” He reached into his pocket and turned it inside out to show her he didn’t have a dime left.

  “Let me give you cab fare home.” She grabbed his hand and led him to the elevator. “I want you to see the room. Give me a man’s perspective.”

  The elevator pinged quietly and they stepped in. Kathryn pushed the button for the third floor.

  “I don’t need cab fare,” he told her.

  “Door!”

  The voice came from just outside the elevator, so Marcus held his hand against the sliding door. “Really, just give me a quarter for the streetcar back.”

  A tall businessman wearing a hazelnut-brown homburg and matching overcoat hurried into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

  “Streetcar, nothing!” Kathryn insisted. “Treating you to a cab ride home is the least I can do. I can claim it on my expenses. Let the Hollywood Reporter pay, for a change.”

  Their fellow passenger shot them a quick glance, then turned back to the panel of brass floor buttons. Marcus’ eyes widened and, without moving his head, he slid them over to Kathryn, then back toward their neighbor.

  As discreetly as she could manage, Kathryn curved her head around until she could see enough of the man’s face to understand why Marcus looked like he was about to give birth to a porcupine. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, she thought in a blast of panic. I’m in an elevator with the man who hates Orson Welles more than anyone else in Hollywood.

  William Randolph Hearst kept his steely gaze on the row of buttons. When the elevator doors didn’t close, he sighed and pressed his floor’s button again.

  Kathryn looked at Marcus and pointed at the open doors. Should we get out? Marcus nodded but before either of them could move, the doors slid together.

  As they closed, Hearst kept pushing the button like his finger had an uncontrollable nervous twitch. They couldn’t have gone more than a floor when the elevator car started to wobble, as though the pulley wheels had rolled over something. Then the whole box shuddered strongly enough to make Kathryn reach out for the wall. She wasn’t worried until the overhead lights began to flicker and then switch off for a second, then on again, glowing at an eerie half-strength, bathing the three of them in a dim sort of twilight. The elevator slammed to a stop.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Hearst muttered. He punctuated his frustration with a rapid succession of tsks.

  Five years ago, Marcus met Hearst at his palatial coastal ranch north of Los Angeles. Having written Marion Davies’ first major hit, he’d been invited to San Simeon to spend the weekend in such rarified company as Winston Churchill, Katharine Hepburn, Harpo Marx, and Myrna Loy. To put it mildly, the weekend at Hearst’s castle hadn’t gone well for Marcus, and he’d departed knowing he’d left an irretrievably negative impression on his host. However, back at the Garden of Allah, he had them all in stitches when he mimicked Hearst’s incongruously high-pitched voice.

  Hearst pounded the elevator doors. “HELLO? HELL-OO-OO???” he yelled. Marcus was right: Hearst sounded like a sixty-year-old choir boy whose voice still hadn’t broken. “CAN YOU HEAR ME? ANYONE? I AM STUUUCK! I NEEED HEEELP!” He stretched out each syllable with increasing desperation and fear.

  Kathryn’s mind zipped back to the hotel rendezvous she’d planned with Roy and started to worry. Roy would be arriving in twenty minutes. She hadn’t told him why she’d asked him there, and if she wasn’t around, he might just leave before she ever saw him.

  Hearst started to mutter something about not having all this time to waste, when a loud wrenching sound like heavy metal gears scraping against each other filled the elevator. It wobbled again, and then an almighty jolt dropped the carriage several feet. It halted so violently that it almost knocked Kathryn off her feet. She caught herself in time to see her crocodile-skin pocketbook hit the floor.

  Kathryn slipped to her knees to collect her scattered belongings, but froze mid-reach when she saw her press pass at Hearst’s feet. He grabbed it up and examined it for a few seconds before slowly raising his eyes to meet hers.

  “You’re that loud-mouthed girl from the Hollywood Reporter,” he growled.

  It wasn’t a question or a statement; it came out more like he’d just taken a bite of something distasteful, and he wasn’t sure whether to chew it into a thousand pieces or just spit it out.

  She thought about all the pro-Orson items she’d included in her column, about how she’d defended his right to free speech and his mastery of the cinematic arts.

  “Mr. Hearst,” she said, “I’m thirty-three years old, which hardly qualifies me as a ‘girl’—I’m not playing any juvenile lead here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Hearst responded, his mouth curled into a condescending sneer, his stare unblinking. “Some of your stuff reads pretty juvenile to me.”

  “I assume we’re talking about my items on Citizen Kane?” She said the name of Orson’s movie succinctly just to infuriate him.

  “That pestilential mound of dog turds?” Even in the dim light of the elevator, Kathryn could see the tycoon’s mottled skin start to redden. “You never struck me as being the idiotic type, easily taken in with that poseur’s shallow talents and his supposed manly charms. But I can see now that for all your high-falutin’ Free Speech posturing, you’re just a girl in love with a movie star. And as for his movie. HA! It’s such a monumental waste of time, money, and resources, I wouldn’t use it to wipe my ass!” He yelled those last three words so loudly they echoed off the mirrored panels.

  “I thought you hadn’t seen Orson’s movie,” Kathryn protested coolly.

  Hearst screwed up his face in disgust. “I don’t need to see trash to know what’s stinking up the sewers.”

  Once Louella had reported back on what Citizen Kane was about, screening the movie would’ve been the first thing he did. “So in other words,” she said, “you’ve made up your mind about something you haven’t even seen?”

  He let loose a loud “Pffft!”

  Skating on ever-thinning ice, she figured as long as they were all stuck here, she was going to say something that had occurred to her when she took Gwendolyn and Marcus back to the El Capitan to see Kane again.

  The elevator seemed smaller than before. She crossed her arms. “If you had seen it, you might have noticed something which I doubt anybody’s pointed out to you.”

  Hearst leaned up against the wall of the elevator and took out a cigarette. “What are you talking about?” His gold lighter flared, showing up every line and wrinkle in the old man’s face.

  “The picture Orson paints of you through Kane, he’s also painting of himself. Both of you are masters of your mediums, with you it’s newspapers
, and with him it’s radio. You’ve both pole-vaulted your way to the top of your fields because you’re both gifted. However, you’re also both extraordinarily impressed with yourselves. Oh, come now, Mr. Hearst, you know that’s true,” she snapped. “You are both men who make wild grabs for power and tolerate no one who gets in your way. I’ve seen Citizen Kane several times now and it seems to me that William Randolph Hearst and Charles Foster Kane and George Orson Welles are really one and the same person. Whatever criticisms he’s making of you, he’s aiming just as squarely at himself.”

  By the time Kathryn finished her speech, Hearst was almost done with his cigarette. He said nothing as he sucked in one last lungful, held the smoke in as long as he could, and let it out slowly. All the while, he kept her fixed in his sights like a vulture. She uncrossed her arms and wrapped her hands around her purse, hoping it would camouflage her trembling.

  Finally, Hearst said, “It appears I may have underestimated you, Miss Massey. It’s an astute theory, which, if anybody around me had intuited, they probably wouldn’t have the nerve to share with me. Not that it changes anything. I still plan to run that peacock six feet into the ground.”

  “For what it’s worth, Mr. Hearst,” Kathryn ventured, “pretty much everybody agrees Welles went way too far with the Susan Alexander character. It was unkind and unnecessary, as anybody who’s met Marion knows.” As much as Benchley’s theory about Ganna Walska made sense, everybody agreed it was Marion Davies that Orson was lampooning.

  “Why do you think I’m doing all this?” The pitch of his voice raised higher with every word. “You think I give two goddamned hoots what a punk like Welles thinks of me? After all the character assassinations I’ve aimed at people? If this picture succeeds, that is how people are going to remember her. She’s been too good to me for too long to let that happen.”

  “We know, Mr. Hearst,” Marcus said. “Miss Davies is a lovely woman.”

  Hearst turned on Marcus. “YOU THINK I DON’T REMEMBER YOU?” He spat out each syllable. “Poor Marion had never been so mortified!” Faster than Kathryn would have given the old codger credit for, Hearst lunged at Marcus. He wrapped his hands around Marcus’ throat, pushing him to his knees. “Rosebud!” he hissed. “How could you say such a thing? Out loud, right in front of everybody! In front of Marion!”

  Marcus’ eyes were on Kathryn, his face bright red and his hands pulling uselessly at Hearst’s. Kathryn leapt over to the tycoon’s side and started yanking at his arm. “Mr. Hearst!” she shouted. “Stop this! He’s not the one who put it in the movie!”

  Hearst broke his grip and staggered backwards until he hit the elevator wall. “What did you say?” he gasped.

  “You know, the business about the snow sled.”

  The space inside the elevator went so quiet that Kathryn could hear workmen shouting at each other at the top of the elevator shaft.

  “What snow sled?” Hearst asked. His eyebrows were crushed in confusion.

  Kathryn felt herself go pale. “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Hearst,” she backtracked. “It’s a minor part of the movie. Not even worth—”

  Hearst pivoted toward Marcus. “You!” he said. “You little shithead. Tell me what she’s talking about.” Marcus gawked at Hearst, unable to squeeze out a word. “And don’t think just because you don’t work for me that you’re outside of my reach. I’ve been keeping tabs on you, you little faggot. Why do you think you got the ax when Mayer had to cut his workforce?” His words had lost their fury. A cool, calculating ruthlessness took its place. He let out a rasping, dry laugh. “You think you can mortify me in front of Winston Churchill and nothing would happen? Didn’t you ever wonder why you were the only A-list screenwriter Mayer let go? I hear you managed to worm your way back in writing B pictures. Trust me, I can fix that, too. One quick phone call is all it’ll take.”

  To punctuate his threat, Hearst pounded the paneling over Marcus’ head, causing the elevator cage to rock and shudder. “Stop it!” Kathryn yelled. She could feel the floor start to tilt away from her. “You’ll get us killed.”

  Hearst went to pound the wall again, but Marcus pushed against the old man’s chest. Hearst staggered backwards but regained his balance and took a swing at Marcus’ stomach. Hearst’s fist missed its mark, but Marcus hadn’t considered the angle of the elevator when he lurched to one side. The tycoon’s punch caught Marcus on the upswing, right in the side of his throat, and his knees gave out from under him.

  “You cranky old bastard,” Marcus croaked. He pushed away Kathryn’s attempt to help him and staggered to his feet. “Welles is right. You’re a tyrant, and a dictator, and a schoolyard bully. You’ve done nothing with all the advantages you’ve had handed to you in life. You deserve every frame of Citizen Kane.”

  There weren’t many people Kathryn knew who would talk to Hearst like that—off the top of her head she couldn’t think of any—and she wanted to hug Marcus for not even blinking while he delivered his invective. She stood next to him and faced the tycoon. “You want to know about the snow sled?” she asked him. “For all his wealth and power, the only thing Kane truly values is his boyhood snow sled. The last thing we see in the movie is the name painted on his sled as someone tosses it into a bonfire. And that name is Rosebud.”

  Kathryn felt a warm draft blow against her neck. The elevator doors had opened and a knot of speechless hotel guests were now gaping at her.

  Hearst pushed past her and elbowed his way through the onlookers. Kathryn followed him out of the elevator and watched the hunched figure recede down the corridor. She raised her hands and cupped them around her mouth.

  “Rosebud! Rosebud! ROSEBUD!”

  CHAPTER 39

  When the telephone rang, it interrupted Gwendolyn’s daydream of the cream pies she’d planned to make out of Hawaiian coconuts. Surely, she figured, a place called Pearl Harbor was positively thick with coconut palms.

  The voice on the other end belonged to a young man in his early twenties. “I’m calling for Gwendolyn Brick.”

  “Speaking.”

  “My name is Stanley Salomons, calling from Warner Brothers.”

  Gwendolyn’s head shot up as though it were spring-loaded. “Oh?”

  “I’m calling to see if you’re available to take a small part in a movie.”

  “Small part? Movie?” Gwendolyn blinked away dreamy images of palm trees and pearls.

  “This is Gwendolyn Brick, right? Face of the Forties winner?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We want to know if you can report to the Warner lot.”

  “I sure can,” Gwendolyn said. “When?”

  “Um . . . now?”

  What? Gwendolyn thought. The studio expected me to drop everything for that Gone with the Wind screen test, and now they’re at it again? “When you say ‘now,’ you mean—?”

  “I’m sorry this is last minute,” Salomons said. “The scene was scheduled for shooting this morning, but the gal we’d cast dropped out last minute. So we’re juggling a few things around here. I need an immediate answer so I can send a car to come get you.”

  “Yes!” Gwendolyn blurted out. “I can be ready in thirty minutes.”

  “You’ve got fifteen.”

  * * *

  The hair and makeup girl introduced herself as Marcia. She wore her jet-black hair all poufy and slathered her lips with shiny red lipstick.

  As Gwendolyn sat in the chair getting worked on, a blonde woman already made up strode in. Hovering around the age of forty, she wasn’t what Gwendolyn would call beautiful but she had a sharp, scrappy-dame quality about her. “I’m Lee Patrick,” she said. “You’re going to play my sister, huh? You a contract player?”

  “No,” Gwendolyn replied. “I think this is just a one-off for me.”

  “This here’s the Face of the Forties gal,” Marcia said.

  “Oh, so—!” Lee bit down on her lower lip.

  Marcia snapped her gum with a loud pop. “Watch your lipstick, Lee,
honey. We just got it right.”

  “Welcome aboard,” Lee said. “I’ll see you on the set. Good thing we’re both sitting down for this first scene. Humphrey ain’t too tall.”

  Gwendolyn blinked at Lee. “Humphrey? Bogart? He’s in this?”

  “Sure is.”

  Gwendolyn gripped the arm of the makeup chair. “They haven’t told me the name of this picture. What is it?”

  “Oh you know, the one they’ve made a couple of times before. The one about the falcon.”

  “The Maltese Falcon?”

  “See? You already know more than I do! See you in there!”

  “Close your eyes, honey,” Marcia said. “I need to go at you with the hairspray.”

  When Gwendolyn shut her eyes, she heard the same ugly sound she always seemed to hear now when she closed her eyes: the sound of a limb snapping.

  When she and Alice landed on the hard-baked dirt at the foot of the Hollywoodland sign, her first thought was that it was her own leg. But then Alice started shrieking and Gwendolyn realized whose leg had taken the hit. Siegel decided it wasn’t worth waiting for an ambulance, so they carried Alice to Bugsy’s car. Gwendolyn told them not to worry about her, she’d find her own way home. She was relieved to watch them shoot down the hill.

  Marcia swiveled Gwendolyn around in her seat so that she now faced away from the mirror. “Your hair,” she muttered. “It’s just not—mmm.” She started to fuss with Gwendolyn’s bangs so Gwendolyn closed her eyes again.

  Well, if that don’t beat all, she thought. I’ve put so much time and effort into getting a part in a movie, and now I’m not so sure I can be bothered.

  Recently the papers had been full of Benjamin Siegel’s reindictment for murder, after some foolhardy witness testified he’d brought the murder gun into LA by plane and handed it to Siegel shortly before the Greenberg killing. But Siegel finagled his way out of jail once more and had been set free, causing Gwendolyn to worry all over again if her luck would hold out. She just wanted to pack her bags and take the first taxi she could find down to where the Pacific steamers pulled out of port.