by Donis Casey
“Who?” Now it was Fee’s turn to stop walking as the light dawned. “You mean Ted Oliver?”
“He’s the only shamus I know.”
“What do you expect Oliver to do? Are you going to get him to go to New York with you? Last I heard, he was still working for K. D. Dix.”
Bianca resumed their forward motion. “And not happy about it.” K. D. Dix was one of the most notorious gangsters in Los Angeles. “No, I’m not asking Oliver to come to New York. Not yet. I need to get there as fast as I can, and besides, I don’t know what Rudy has in mind. He asked for me, that’s all I know. How quickly does the…”
Fee anticipated her question. “You’re leaving tonight on the California Limited to Chicago and from there the Lake Shore Limited to Grand Central. You’ll get to New York on Thursday morning.”
“What if he dies before I get there?” It was a rhetorical question, so Fee didn’t bother to answer. There wasn’t a more practical way to get from Los Angeles to New York.
By this time, they were practically running toward the parking lot, where Fee had parked Bianca’s Cadillac. “I’ve booked us private compartments on the train and a suite at the Ambassador, where Mr. Valentino has been staying. George Ullman’s wife, Beatrice, will pick us up at the terminal and take us directly to the hospital.”
“What do you mean, ‘us’?” Bianca did not miss that little detail.
“I’m coming with you. Somebody has to watch your back.”
“I can take care of myself, Fee,” Bianca protested, though she wasn’t really upset.
“I know you can, honey.” Fee opened the front passenger-side door of the car for her and she slid in. “But that doesn’t mean you have to. Norah will have our bags packed and waiting for us when we get home. We have just enough time to change and get to the station.”
“Well, if you’re coming, I want to take Jack Dempsey with me.”
Fee got behind the wheel and pressed the starter. “I figured. Norah’s packing for him as well.”
~ On and on they ride the rails, to the city that never sleeps ~
The train left Los Angeles early in the evening. Because of her celebrity, Bianca and her party (Fee and the dog) were boarded early and settled in a deluxe cabin, two sleeping compartments connected by a small sitting room. The Los Angeles to Chicago leg of the trip was by far the longer, the train making its endless way through eastern California, across the top of Arizona, to Albuquerque, Denver, Kansas City. Bianca spent the entire three-day trip in her cabin with her dog in her lap, staring out the window at the infinite vistas, the landscape slowly changing from arid desert, to pine-covered mountains, to endless plains, as the California Limited made its way across country.
Bianca had made the California–New York trip dozens of times since she had become famous, but every time she boarded the train, she couldn’t help but remember the first time she had ridden the California Limited with Alma, six years earlier. She had been fifteen years old and had never traveled in such luxury. Alma Bolding was at the pinnacle of her fame, and Bianca (or Blanche, as she was called at the time) was dazzled and amazed by the royal treatment her party received at every turn. People were falling all over themselves to please the luscious Alma. That was when Blanche Tucker decided that the movie star life was for her.
After years of fame and fortune, both the glory and the horror of it all, Bianca LaBelle had mixed feelings.
~ Bianca has a long, quiet time to ponder the past ~
James Quirk had probed Bianca and Rudy for secrets about their pasts at the end of the Photoplay interview, but neither had been inclined to enlighten him. In the end, Quirk had agreed with surprising good nature to let the line of questioning go. But Bianca had days and many miles to think about the conversation she had with Rudy later that evening, after they had left the restaurant. Things were said that seemed prophetic now, and Bianca couldn’t get it out of her mind.
It was Quirk who had brought up the topic of other lives without meaning to. “There are a lot of apocryphal stories circulating about both of you, almost like you’re creatures of myth. Rudy, I know you were a taxi dancer and tango teacher when you first came to America.”
Rudy made a face. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about the dancing. I only did that because I had to. I never enjoyed it.”
“But you’re so good at it.”
“I’m good at boxing, too, and sword-fighting.”
“How about you, Bianca? You’ve talked about your first movie with Alma Bolding and Tom Mix in Arizona, but you’ve never told any interviewer how you got to Arizona in the first place. A couple of years ago, I read the first profile of you in Movie Weekly in which Margo Miles suggested you’re a French countess who came to America to get away from an importune suitor, but I’ve never heard you talk about that. You certainly don’t sound French. So, what’s the real story?”
Bianca pushed her tiramisu around on her plate. “I’ll tell you someday, Jimmy, when you don’t have that pencil in your hand.”
“Is Bianca LaBelle your real name?”
She put her hand on his to stop him from writing. “Of course not.”
“Oh, come on, Bianca. Tell you what, I promise to keep it a secret.”
“I don’t care if you know. But I do want to protect my family’s privacy. I like you, but I don’t trust you, Jimmy.”
Quirk could tell by the set of her jaw that he was not going to get any more out of Bianca. Not today. “Okay, then. Rudy, is Rudolph Valentino your real name?”
Rudy laughed. “Sort of. I have such a long name that I shortened it. Besides, no one in America can pronounce my family name.”
“What is it?”
“Guglielmi.” He grinned. “Go ahead, Jimmy. Say that three times fast.”
Later that evening, in the back of Rudy’s limo after they had left the restaurant and James Quirk behind, out of the blue Rudy said, “LaBelle means ‘the beautiful one’.”
“I know. What does Guglielmi mean?”
Rudy made a disparaging noise. “In English it would be Williams, I think. What about Tucker?”
Bianca laughed. Rudy already knew more about her real background than almost anyone. “It means ‘one who tucks,’ I imagine.”
“I think Jimmy was getting on your nerves in the end. That is how you say it, yes?”
“Yes, and yes. You, he asks about the art of cinema. Me, he asks about makeup.”
Rudy heaved a sigh and turned to look out the window, thinking. Bianca spent those few minutes regarding his profile, thinking he really was amazingly good to look at.
She was shaken out of her reverie when he said, “Do you believe that we will live again?”
“What? Are you asking if I believe in life after death?”
He gave a particularly Italian gesture of dismissal. “Life after death, no, not as you are thinking of, heaven and hell and all that. I believe that we each live many lives. That this life is not all we have.”
“I wish that were true. I would love the opportunity to try again, to do better than I did this time. But I’ve read Madame Blavatsky’s book on Theosophy, too. I don’t believe there are a bunch of Masters running the world from Tibet, and I don’t believe the dead can talk to us by tapping on tables.”
“Oh, I think there is more to being than we know, my darling girl. I do not believe about the séance, either, but are there spirits on the other side who guide us? Perhaps those we love and have lost still help us. There is another world after death that we cannot see, and we may return to this world if we wish. I want to believe it is so.” He gave her a surprisingly shy smile. “I do believe it. I have seen evidence.”
She knew he wanted to tell her what his evidence was, but the very thought made her want to cry. She didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to believe it, too. But she couldn’t. “I don’t know, Rudy,” she said.
“I don’t know.” She leaned back into the leather seat and closed her eyes. Rudy didn’t bring it up again.
All the way between Los Angeles and New York, Bianca turned the conversation over in her mind and wished she had let him talk.
Valentino Dead! …Is a Scurrilous Rumor!
Doctors Say Rudy on the Mend!
~New York Evening Graphic~
At every stop, Fee disembarked long enough to buy a newspaper. Rudy’s illness was big news. In Albuquerque, the headline read, Rudy Brave in the Face of Death. In Denver, it was Valentino’s Condition Grave.
By Kansas City, Bianca was relieved to read, Sheik Rallies. George Ullman had conveyed some of the waiting reporters’ questions to Rudy and delivered his answers to them in writing. “I feel grateful,” Rudy told them, “so grateful to my fans, and feel my inability to repay all the kindness extended to me. They have helped me mentally to overcome my sickness.” He sounded so normal that some reporter suggested that Rudy’s illness and the daily updates on his condition were nothing more than a publicity stunt.
They had a layover in Chicago before changing trains, long enough for Bianca to place a telephone call to the hospital in New York, but the switchboard was jammed and she couldn’t get through. She called the Ambassador Hotel and got hold of Beatrice Ullman, who told her that Rudy was still in danger, but seemed to be doing better. Beatrice arranged to meet her at the terminal’s Park Avenue exit and drive her and Fee to the hotel.
They left Chicago for the overnight trip to New York, but Bianca couldn’t sleep, and neither could her stir-crazy pooch, who was careening off the walls after such a long confinement. Fee faithfully hunted for newspapers at stops throughout the night. In Cleveland the hours-old evening edition declared, Rudy Doing as Well as Can Be Expected. In Buffalo there was not a paper to be found, but a ticket agent who was listening to the radio said that at last report nothing had changed. As the sun rose over Albany, the porter brought Bianca a telegram from George Ullman, warning her that reporters were hovering around Grand Central like flies around a puddle of honey, or something smellier, waiting to pounce on any of Rudy’s friends or relatives unlucky enough to be spotted arriving in town. As they neared the city, Bianca pulled her deepest cloche hat and darkest glasses from her suitcase and prepared to make a run for it. When the train glided to a stop at the platform, Bianca stuffed a protesting Jack Dempsey into a soft travel bag and handed it to Fee. Jack Dempsey, the ugliest of celebrity dogs, was well known by the press as Bianca LaBelle’s constant companion. His presence would give her away in a second.
She stepped off the train behind Fee, and the familiar smell, sound, and feel of Grand Central Terminal smacked her in the face like an open hand.
She had grown used to the paradisiacal weather of southern California, seldom too hot or cold, just one continuous springtime punctuated by the occasional earthquake or rollicking thunderstorm rolling in off the Pacific. But New York reminded her that there are seasons. On other trips, she had stepped out onto Park Avenue or 42nd Street from this very terminal into driving rain, or needles of sleet, or piles of dirty snow in the gutters.
Today it was hot, a particular big-city kind of August heat, thick, humid, and wilting, the kind that makes the air shimmer above the baking sidewalks, compounded by the smell of diesel, iron, humanity, greasy food. She took a deep breath. She could pick out sauerkraut, meat cooking, and…was that Chinese?
“If I were home,” she said, “we’d be picking blackberries about now, all dirty and about to faint from the heat, getting our arms scratched up and dodging snakes and spiders in the bushes. Your hands turn purple and so does your face because you stuff so many hot messy berries into your mouth, and Mama yells at you to quit it, now and get to picking.”
“Sounds hideous,” Fee said.
Bianca shrugged. “I hated it, then. Now I look back upon it with misty nostalgia.”
Fee was busily supervising the unloading of their luggage while keeping an eye on the crowds surging up and down the platform. “I’d rather get my blackberries in an uptown restaurant, already folded into whipped cream.”
Bianca laughed. “So would I.”
Two porters had loaded all their bags onto a cart and started moving toward the ramps that led from the train level to the street level. “Come on,” Fee urged. “The longer we stand here, the more likely it is that somebody will recognize you. In fact, look over there. No, don’t! I think that’s the guy from New York Today. Let’s get out of here before he spots you.”
No matter how many times she came to New York, the city’s incredible energy was always a shock to Bianca, and it usually took her two or three days to acclimatize herself. She had been seventeen years old the first time Alma brought her. It had been like stepping off the train onto another planet. They had taken a taxi to the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South, and after fawning over Alma for a few minutes, the chatty driver had regaled them with tales of the other famous people he had chauffeured over the course of his career. Alma had been raised in the Bronx, so there was a long discussion about how things had changed since she lived here. Bianca had been too awed by the scenery to say much, until the driver asked her, “Where are you from, sweetheart?”
She had looked at Alma, who nodded. You may speak to this strange creature. “We came here from Los Angeles,” Bianca said.
“That’s a famous place. How many people live in Los Angeles?”
“Oh, it’s a big town,” Bianca said. “I heard that almost a half a million people live there now.”
The cabbie pointed to the MetLife Building as they sailed past it. “See that building, honey? There’re a half a million people in that building.”
Bianca’s eyes would have popped out of her head, but Alma laughed, which gave her pause. “You’re kidding me.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I don’t think you’re from Los Angeles, girlie. You sound like a sweet corn-fed baby to me. How many people live in your hometown?”
“Last I heard, there were about eighteen hundred.”
The cabbie had snorted. “See those people about to cross the street?”
The memory always made her smile. New York was fun. New York was funny. New York was electric.
Fee directed the Red Caps to haul their luggage up the ramp to the main concourse. It was only seven blocks to the Ambassador from the station, and Bianca would have preferred to walk rather than drive. Traffic in midtown was so congested that walking would have been faster, anyway, but with all their luggage, it was impractical. They were supposed to meet Beatrice Ullman at the Park Avenue entrance to the terminal, but when they reached the concourse, she wasn’t standing at the agreed-upon half-hidden spot by a column. Bianca stationed herself with the dog and the luggage pile behind a potted plant. Fee went outside to search for their missing ride and found her double-parked halfway down the block.
“How long have you had to wait?” Bianca asked as they clambered into the rented Ford.
“I’ve circled the block a few times,” Beatrice admitted. “But I finally decided to take my chances and double-park.”
“You’re lucky somebody didn’t cuss you out.”
“Oh, they did.” Mrs. Ullman was an adaptable creature and had assumed a New York attitude. She shifted into first and pulled out into traffic amidst a cacophony of horns. “Rudy is doing a little better today,” she added before they could ask. “He’s very anxious to see you, Bianca, but I thought you’d like to check in to the hotel and clean up first.”
“I’d rather go straight to the hospital. Fee, Beatrice can drop you off at the Ambassador with the luggage, and you can get us situated while I check on Rudy.”
The drive from Grand Central to the Polyclinic Hospital on West 50th was hair-raising, though Beatrice did a good job of dodging swerving cars and buses and trucks and the occasional horse, while not running over one of the innumerable pedestrians wh
o meandered across the busy streets in blissful disarray.
~ The specter of evil hovers over the scene ~
George Ullman met Bianca in the hall outside of Rudy’s room on the eighth floor of Manhattan’s Polyclinic Hospital on 50th and 8th Avenue. The manager looked hideous, rumpled, pale, and unshaven. Bianca’s heart sank. “Oh, my God.”
George hastened to reassure her. “No, no, he’s not dead. He’s not out of danger, but he’s better, actually. He slept well, and this morning he’s been fussing to go back to the Ambassador. The doctor operated on him a couple of days ago. He handled it pretty well, but the doctor told me that his condition had gotten very bad. They’re not going to even let him sit up for several days. We’ve put out the word that his doctors aren’t allowing anyone but me to see him, but it’s Rudy who asked for no other visitors. He doesn’t want anyone to see him like this. He’s desperate to talk to you, though.”
“Tell me what happened, George.”
George removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “It was so fast. We went to see Scandals at the Apollo on Saturday, then to a party at Barclay Warburton’s on Park Avenue. Maybe one, two o’clock in the morning, Rudy fell ill. Beatrice and I had already left the party. Rudy refused to go the hospital. He made them take him back to the Ambassador. His valet, Frank, wanted him to go the hospital right then and there, but you know how he is about hospitals. Frank called me late the next morning and said Rudy was doubled over in pain and spitting up blood. I called a doctor I know who came to the hotel, but nothing he did helped. Rudy kept getting worse. I called an ambulance at about four thirty in the afternoon and they rushed him here. I’ve never seen him so sick. The doc thought his appendix had burst, and they wanted to operate right away. It took forever to convince Rudy to let them do it. He was terrified of being cut. Jesus! Turns out that he had a perforated ulcer. If he had only listened to me! Now they think his insides are inflamed. Maybe an infection.”
“Oh, Lord,” Bianca said. An infection was bad news. While 1926 may have been modern times, the best medicine of the day still had no surefire way to treat an infection.
