City of Myths

by Martin Turnbull

  The door to Voss’s room stood slightly ajar. Its hinges squealed as Kathryn nudged it open. The faster you do this, the quicker you get out. She tiptoed in and hunted around for the FBI envelope without switching on a light, but it was like combing through a junkyard at midnight for a house key.

  It wasn’t near the bar, or on the coffee table, or any of the sofas. Nor was it on the dining table or the sideboard that stood against the wall shared with the bedroom.

  Oh God, I’m going to have to go into the Stinkhole of Calcutta.

  Even with the window open, the smell lingered like smog. She picked among the debris of soiled sheets and discarded magazines, socks that reeked of foot rot, and apple cores furry with mold.

  She found the envelope slouched against the wall opposite the open window. It was heavier than she expected. As she raced toward the exit, she passed the telephone.

  Should I call reception? And say what? Somebody fell out of a window and broke his neck but I wasn’t there and I don’t know a thing?

  Had Sheldon Voss been a decent person worthy of the adoration he’d desperately sought, she might have buzzed the concierge. But he’d been a two-faced charlatan and deserved the ignoble death he got.

  She tucked the envelope under her arm, took one final look around the mess, then charged into the corridor.

  CHAPTER 36

  Gwendolyn waited until Edward Dmytryk yelled, “CUT!” before she snipped off a loose end from the nine-foot rope of pearls she’d been threading.

  Dmytryk stood up from his director’s chair. “Break for lunch. Back at one.”

  As the crew began to disperse, he made his way to Gwendolyn. “Gable’s scene is the first one we’re tackling after lunch,” he said. “Do you know if he’s arrived yet?”

  Gwendolyn straightened out the pearls along the length of her workbench. “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  He eyed her handiwork. “What are these for?”

  “They’ll be looped across the front of a Queen Elizabeth costume that Charles LeMaire has designed for Bette Davis.”

  “Why are you doing this on my set?”

  “The Virgin Queen starts filming the week after next and those complicated costumes aren’t finished yet. I felt somewhat useless sitting around, so Charles asked Zanuck if I could assist with the costumes. He said sure, as long as I worked on the Soldier of Fortune set—”

  “I don’t care about Bette’s pearls. I need Gable in front of my camera at one o’clock. Please tell me you can make that happen.”

  Gwendolyn jumped to her feet and tried to mask the agony throbbing her abdomen. The doctor had taken out her stitches but the residual pain they left behind attacked if she moved too quickly. She unclenched her teeth. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Your best is only good enough if Gable’s here by one o’clock.”

  She had been focused on Bette’s pearls so Clark could have slipped into his dressing room. She knocked three times and called out his name, but got no response. She tried the door; it was locked.

  The last time they’d lunched together was the day she’d reported for work after the New Year. As they’d sat down to their usual Caesar salad, he had asked if she was okay after that night at Grauman’s. She told him it was an ordinary fainting spell but that Kathryn had panicked and called an ambulance. It wasn’t hard to change the subject to how he’d enjoyed sitting next to Judy Lewis.

  After that, he lunched with his visitors to the set, most often outdoorsy types from his MGM days. A couple of times she was invited to join them, but she was still very tender “down there” and wanted to discourage any advances until she was ready to take up with him again.

  He seemed to sense it too, and didn’t push to resume their liaison, but it meant she was no longer as in tune with his whereabouts as she’d used to be.

  Where would I be if I was Clark Gable? The commissary was the most likely spot she could think of. She was only a dozen steps outside the soundstage when she heard someone call her name.

  Loretta Young usually moved with the unhurried air of someone secure in the knowledge that people would always wait for her. But today she came running, her lips parted in distress. She gripped Gwendolyn by the hands and squeezed them tight. “I heard what happened!”

  Charles LeMaire’s final instructions were to be sure that his unwieldy string of pearls was finished by the end of the day. The job would take hours, so Gwendolyn hardly had the time to run around the Fox lot looking for Clark Gable. Or to be waylaid by Loretta Young.

  Did she know about Clark sitting next to Judy at the No Business premiere, and, more to the point, did she hold Gwendolyn responsible?

  “What did you hear?” Gwendolyn asked.

  Loretta pulled her behind an acorn tree outside the fire station. “About your hospital stay.”

  “Much ado about nothing,” Gwendolyn said lightly. “I fainted, is all.”

  A glaze of tears in Loretta’s eyes glistened in the cool January sunshine. “I know what really happened and I want you to know that you have my utmost sympathy. I haven’t lost a baby like that, but I—I’ve—”

  Unintentionally conceived a child with Clark Gable? “Thank you, Loretta. That means a lot.”

  Loretta’s trembling lips stretched into a smile. “Is everything okay now?”

  “Yes, thank—”

  “THERE YOU ARE!” Clark’s voice hacked into their tête-à-tête like a machete. “I hear you’re looking for me.”

  In an effort to disentangle herself from a sticky situation, Gwendolyn backed out from behind the tree and placed herself in full view.

  “I am,” she told him. “Dmytryk ordered me—”

  “Why were you hiding?”

  Loretta stepped out of the shadows. “Hello, Clark.”

  He looked at her, then back at Gwendolyn. “Am I interrupting?”

  “A shared moment of empathy and compassion.” The hostility in Loretta’s voice was hardly the tone Gwendolyn would have used to divert Clark’s curiosity.

  “I don’t know what that means,” he said, “but—”

  Loretta pushed her shoulders back. “Life just goes on and on for you, doesn’t it?”

  Clark turned to Gwendolyn. “What’s she on about?”

  “Don’t talk like I’m not here!” Loretta’s breath came in short rasps. “You’re all action and no consequences.”

  “I’m what?”

  “If you’re not going to acknowledge your responsibilities, then I can’t stand to look at you.” Loretta faced Gwendolyn. “You know where to find me if you need me.” She marched away without looking back.

  “Why do I feel like the accused?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Gwendolyn said. “You need to be in costume and made up by one p.m.” She stepped out from under the tree, but he pulled her back, obscuring them from view.

  “I’ve heard that tone of hers before.”

  Gwendolyn fumbled around for a reply, but came up blank.

  “That night of the premiere—it wasn’t a fainting spell, was it?”

  Gwendolyn swallowed hard. “What makes you think that?”

  “It was something Monty said to me a few weeks back after one of our sparring sessions.”

  It may have been the sedative, or perhaps the shock of learning what had happened that had rendered her numb, but Gwendolyn had felt okay in the hospital. The news had been hard to hear, but the doctor had delivered it with calm compassion.

  She hadn’t fallen apart until she got home.

  “It’s not like I ever wanted a child. Or even get married,” she’d blubbered onto Kathryn’s shoulder. “I look at what marriage does to half the people in this town, and I think, ‘No thanks!’”

  She had drawn her blinds and taken to her bed until she was all cried out.

  That’s when Monty started dropping by. Who knew he made such a delicious duck-and-corn soup? He claimed he’d learned the recipe in Shanghai fifteen years before and had been perfecting it
ever since. They would sit at her table and eat it, saying nothing, relaxing into the silence. When they were done, he’d clear the table, wash the dishes, kiss her on the forehead, and let himself out. He did that four or five times, and then one day he’d said, “It’s the possibilities you’re grieving for.”

  She’d asked him what he meant.

  “I’ve met enough women to know that even the career gals, somewhere in the back of their minds they’re thinking, ‘Yeah, but what if my maternal instincts are slow to boil? I’ve still got time. It’s not too late to change my mind.’ But with you, that choice was taken away. And that’s what you’re mourning, if you ask me.”

  Things started to turn around after that. Not quickly—a decent night’s sleep eluded her for weeks—but at least she was able to drag herself from her bed and report for work.

  She looked up into Clark’s glowering face, dappled by the leaves above their heads. “What did Monty say?”

  “The subject of Carole came up.” Carole Lombard often came up in his conversation. “And Monty said to me, ‘Grief don’t know no time limits. I hope Gwendolyn figures that out,’ but I didn’t think much about it at the time.”

  She wanted to take him by the hand, but somebody might see them.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  She stepped away from the tree and led him into his dressing room on the deserted Soldier of Fortune soundstage.

  “You’re scaring me,” he said.

  “Let’s sit down—”

  “If it’s sit-down news, I’ll take it standing up.”

  Gwendolyn began to feel like a gangly marionette whose arms wobbled and dithered with no comfortable place to put them. “I wasn’t going to tell you this because it’s over and done with, and I didn’t see the point.”

  “What does this have to do with Loretta?”

  “I didn’t faint for no reason at Grauman’s that night.”

  “Stop burying the lead.”

  She pushed the words out before she lost her nerve. “I had a miscarriage.”

  “You mean you were—? With my—? And you lost it?” Clark dropped onto the sofa where she joined him and took his big, meaty hand in hers.

  “It was an ectopic pregnancy,” she explained, although from the vacant expression she wasn’t sure he was listening. “That’s when the egg stakes its claim in a place it’s got no business being. It was only a matter of time. Unfortunately for me, it happened while I was standing in a crowded theater.”

  A twitch jerked at his left eye. He bit down on his lower lip as though that might still it, but the way his fingers wrapped around her hand and squeezed them told her it was a losing proposition.

  “Are you okay?” His words came out shaky.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Are you still able to have children?”

  “They had to go in and—” She let out a deep breath. “The upshot is that I won’t be able to.”

  He relinquished his grip and buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  Gwendolyn hadn’t told Clark about what had happened because she didn’t want him to look at her as a narrowly dodged bullet. But nor had she anticipated this anguish.

  “Don’t be,” she told him. “I’m nearly forty-five. Even if I wanted it, the motherhood ship has pretty much already sailed for me.”

  “Carole and I wanted kids.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “The chance to be a father—it’s a precious thing.”

  His efforts to be close to Judy now made sense. Clark was ten years older than Gwendolyn, so if the motherhood ship had sailed for her, he was probably thinking fatherhood had too. This lost baby represented his last chance at being a dad.

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” she whispered. “And besides, you and me? We’re not that sort of couple.”

  His head shot out of his hands. His eyes were bloodshot. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on,” she nudged him gently. “We weren’t destined for a justice of the peace. The pressure was off so we were free to have fun. No harm, no foul. Especially seeing as how it all started with Zanuck and his instructions to keep you happy.”

  Clark twisted his shoulders toward her. “His instructions?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Tell me what he said, exactly.” His tone had changed from shaky to rigid.

  “He said that he’d moved heaven and earth to get you here, and that it was my job to ensure you were glad you had.”

  “And that included sex?”

  “He didn’t come out and say it.”

  “But he implied it?”

  “If I recall correctly, his words were, ‘You must know what it takes to keep a man satisfied.’”

  “THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH!” He launched to his feet.

  Gwendolyn was touched that someone like Gable felt outraged at the thought that she had prostituted herself for him. However, there was a time and place for this conversation, and in his dressing room minutes prior to filming his final scenes on a crucial movie was not it.

  “Maybe we could revisit this after filming’s done—”

  “He treated you like a hooker?”

  “I saw your face when Zanuck presented me to you that first day of filming.”

  “All he told me was that he’d lined up an assistant I’d be very happy with. And when I saw it was you, I figured that he knew we were already acquainted and I’d feel more comfortable coming to a new studio.”

  “So when you invited me in here for lunch and . . . dessert?”

  “It was because I think you’re pretty damned gorgeous and hoped you might be up for a tumble or two.”

  “It wasn’t because Zanuck led you to believe I had no option?”

  Clark paced the floor as though looking for the best place to punch a hole in the wall. “I’m sorry if you ever thought that.” He stopped abruptly. “Did you?”

  Gwendolyn debated telling him that she had been threatened with losing her job, but after all, what kind of knucklehead would knock back the chance at landing Gable in the sack? “No.”

  “I’ve half a mind to march right up to that bastard and clock him right in the kisser. In fact, screw it. I’m going to—”

  He charged toward the door but she hooked him by the elbow. “No, you’re not.”

  “He can’t treat people like that!”

  “He shouldn’t, but he can,” she countered. “You are not going to punch Darryl Zanuck in the face.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Let’s be straight up about this,” she coaxed him gently. “Zanuck likes to think he’s the great and powerful puppet master, pushing and pulling us where he wants us to be, doing what he wants us to do. Okay fine, let him think that, but the joke’s on him.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Because although something unfortunate came out of what we were doing, the fact is I was having fun with you because I wanted to. Not because I felt pressured.”

  He regarded her warily. “No duress, then?”

  “None,” she reassured him. “You said ‘How about it?’ and I said ‘Sign me up.’”

  “Okay. Well. That’s different.” He snorted. “I still want to punch his teeth in, though.”

  “But you’re not going to do that because you’ve signed on to do The Tall Men, and Zanuck has the power to scuttle it as well as Soldier of Fortune if you give him reason to prove that without the MGM machinery, Clark Gable was just a product of studio hoopla. Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

  She could see she was getting through to him; the red blotches of anger were fading from his neck.

  “And don’t forget The King and Four Queens,” she continued. “Jane Russell and her husband have worked hard to put that movie together. Don’t spoil your shot at producing. Remember: that’s where the real money is.”

  It was now a quarter of one. He held up his hands in surrender. “But we can’t let the bastard get away with this.”

&
nbsp; Despite her noble speech, Gwendolyn could feel the embers of her own anger start to glow. “We won’t,” she told him. “But wouldn’t it be better if we managed to find a way that didn’t wreck our futures?”

  CHAPTER 37

  Marcus still had Gwendolyn’s latest letter gripped in his hand as he turned the corner onto his street.

  Pregnant by Gable!

  He nipped inside the tabaccheria to stock up on cigarettes. He needed to read the letter a second time before he could compose a reply.

  Miscarried! In the middle of Grauman’s!

  He added matches and a couple of ballpoint pens to his pile and handed over a fistful of lira. He had never felt so separated from Gwendolyn and Kathryn and life at the Garden of Allah.

  He turned up his lapels against the chilled wind gusting up the street as he headed toward his pensione. A snifter of brandy, some biscotti, his one thick sweater, the armchair next to the signora’s oil heater: he’d need them all to respond to a letter like that. If he’d known what was inside, he wouldn’t have taken it to the café where he always read his letters from home.

  The double doors into his pensione were pale wood, pock-marked from decades of weather and war, and tall enough to permit a horse and carriage to pass through. Marcus stepped through them and spotted a familiar figure standing next to the tiled fountain in the center of the courtyard. He ducked back into the shadows but was a half-second too late.

  “Mister Adler? Is that you?”

  He contemplated dashing out into the street and going into hiding for the rest of the day, but she would only come back again. He wiped his clammy hands down his trousers and stepped back into the alleyway.

  At forty, Ingrid Bergman still possessed the beauty that had illuminated Hollywood movie screens, but up close, Marcus could see the last five or six years had seasoned her allure with a worldliness that sat on her like a favorite hat.

  “Miss Bergman!”

  She walked toward him, her hand outstretched. “Please call me Ingrid.”

  Her skin was soft but her handshake was firm.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  She duplicated that reticent smile she’d used on Bing Crosby in The Bells of St. Mary’s. “I was hoping we might have a chat. Perhaps we could get out of this cold?”