Monty leaned against the hood of his jeep. “This is more like it.”
Kathryn could hear the smile in his voice.
He pointed to a cluster of lighted buildings a couple of miles away. “What are they?”
“Hollywood Hotel and Grauman’s. The ice cream place we went to is next door.”
Monty gazed at the half dozen cars spaced to their right along the Mulholland Drive overlook. “Popular spot.”
“This isn’t where the natives go to neck, if that’s what you’re thinking. Pecker’s Point is the next clearing along.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“You’re my best friend’s brother,” she pointed out. “There are some things which aren’t appropriate.” Says the girl who just broke up with a married man.
It had taken some doing, but she’d tracked Roy to Washington, DC. He was on a team of army personnel helping the government plan for the country’s wartime needs. It was all very top-secret hush-hush, but she passed it along to Roy’s wife. Mrs. Quinn’s thanks had been cool, but it didn’t take a genius to read the woman’s mind: At least they haven’t sent him overseas yet.
Monty took in a lungful of eucalyptus. “This is the sort of memory I can look back on when they tell me to report for duty.”
Kathryn tightened her cashmere wrap to ward off the chill. “Did you get your orders yet?”
“Nope, not yet—hey!” He took a step toward the shoulder and stared at a shaft of light pointing into the night sky. “What’s going on there?”
“That’s one of those searchlights they use at movie premieres. I’m surprised there’s only one. They usually come in pairs, or more often four, or even six.” A second shaft appeared, followed quickly by a third, then a fourth. “See?” She looked at her watch. “Usually they switch them on before the premiere. It’s midnight now, so I guess the crowd must be getting out.”
“Look!” Monty pointed to a pair of searchlights lighting up farther west. “Another premiere?”
“No one schedules those things on the same night a rival studio holds theirs. Especially not on a Tuesday.”
As though on cue, all the search lights started aiming toward the same patch of clouded night sky. Kathryn joined Monty at the edge of the gravel overlook. “I don’t think those lights are for any premiere.” A third set, originating from the Echo Park area, joined the others. Now nine searchlights were strafing the sky. “It’s like they’re looking for something.”
With a start, Kathryn thought of the submarine off the Santa Barbara coast. With her hands pressed to her chest, she turned to Monty, but he was already racing back to the car. He switched on the radio. “This is a military frequency, so don’t tell anyone I let you listen in.”
A deep, authoritative voice burst through the crackling in the speakers.
“Dammit, Major, collect yourself. Can you see the outline of aircraft? If so, how many? Over.”
“Negative, sir. Just individual lights. I don’t know, maybe eight? Ten? The searchlights, they’re—they’re making it hard for us to—to make out anything for sure. Over.”
A volley of gunfire cracked the night air. Kathryn gasped. Another volley followed, then a third, each one louder than the last.
“MAJOR!” the commander bellowed through the radio. “Was that you? Have we started firing? Or have they started firing on us? Over!”
More shafts of light joined the others, some trained on a specific area of the sky while others wildly swung from one end to the other.
“Is it the Japs?” Kathryn asked.
She gripped the edge of her wrap with shaking hands. Gwendolyn should be home from work by now and Marcus hadn’t planned to go out. They’d both be at the Garden of Allah, but were they safe? Would the Japs bomb Hollywood to take out the best propaganda machine the US had?
“It’s hard to say.” Monty kept his eyes on the radio. “While I was still laid up, they asked me to be on the team to put together defense plans for the West Coast. Half the details are still in my head; I’m going to have to hightail it back to base.”
Kathryn’s heart started pounding like a jackhammer. “Can you drop me off back at the Garden?”
Monty clamped his hand on her arm. It gripped her tightly but she could feel it tremble. “If we’re under attack, the safest place you can be right now is up here.”
More shots punctuated the air and he revved the jeep’s engine. “Combatants are trained to aim where the lights are brightest. Up in these hills, it’s mostly dark. Until you know you’re safe, my advice is to stay put. Sorry, but I gotta go.”
Monty threw his vehicle into a tight U-turn and disappeared down Mulholland Drive in a spray of gravel. Kathryn waited until his red taillights were out of sight before she dug around in her purse for her cigarettes. She stood on the shoulder’s edge and smoked while she watched the searchlights crisscross the sky like grasping fingers. By the time she was done, the other three cars nearby had taken off as fast as Monty had. She realized she was never going to find a taxi where she was, and figured maybe she could hitch a ride with one of the couples parked down the road.
The last thing she expected to hear at Pecker’s Point was her name being called out.
“Kathryn? Is that you?”
None of the cars parked along the side of the road looked familiar, but an almost full moon slipped out from behind a bank of clouds and she saw a hand waving from a Studebaker Champion that gleamed silver in the moonlight. It was Alla Nazimova, the Garden of Allah’s original resident. She lived in a bungalow near Kathryn and Gwendolyn’s when she wasn’t touring the country in Chekhov or Ibsen. She held out her hand for Kathryn to grasp.
“Madame, this is a surprise.” Kathryn took Nazimova’s warm hand in hers.
“Pang and I often come up here. You’ve met Franklin, haven’t you?” She leaned back so Kathryn could see her escort. Franklin Pangborn was a comedic actor who’d made a career out of playing sissified butlers and fastidious hotel clerks. He and Madame had been pals for years.
“It’s probably warmer in here,” Franklin offered. “Climb in the back.”
She pulled the chrome handle and slid onto the rear seat’s soft leather upholstery.
“What on earth are you doing up here by yourself?” Alla asked.
They watched the searchlights zigzag the sky while Kathryn gave them a rundown of her evening. By the time she was done, the anti-aircraft gunfire peppering the sky had fallen silent.
“Perhaps it’s over already?” Franklin asked hopefully.
“I can’t imagine it’ll be over until they switch off those—”
In the far distance, an extended machine gun volley burst to life and the searchlights lurched across the sky. The barrage lasted a few minutes, then stopped as abruptly as it started. The poles of light staggered wildly across the sky for another few minutes, but gradually calmed down to a lazy sway.
Eventually Kathryn asked, “Do you think that’s it?”
“If it is,” Nazimova said, “I do believe it was too short to be Pearl Harbor part two.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” Franklin admitted, “for a while there, my heart was in my throat. All I could think was Hollywood is done for! Shall we return to our picnic?” He flicked on the cabin light and opened the wicker basket between him and Alla. He pulled out a handful of green gingham napkins and some sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper.
Kathryn took a bacon and mayo on rye. “And what, may I ask, are you two doing all the way up here in the middle of the night?”
“Every week, we pack a picnic and drive up here to take in the view and listen to The Pepsodent Show.”
Bob Hope’s show was one of the most popular programs on the radio. Half the country tuned in each week to hear Hope clown around with some of the top names in show business.
“He was going to have Humphrey Bogart and Frances Langford on tonight,” Franklin said. “However, NBC preempted them once this craziness broke out. But the
news department was clearly in an uproar, a lot of so-called ‘unconfirmed reports,’ which I’m convinced is code for ‘Damned if we know what’s going on.’ So we turned the radio off and watched the light show, trying not to imagine the worst.”
“Turn it back on, Frankie,” Alla commanded. “Perhaps they’re broadcasting again.”
Kathryn settled into the back seat and savored the tang of the crisp bacon in her sandwich while Francis Langford’s smooth vocals filled the automobile with “You Are My Lucky Star.”
“Do you listen to this show?” Alla asked Kathryn.
“If I’m home.”
“Did you catch it a few months ago when Hedda Hopper was on?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Franklin harrumphed. “She was awful. Every joke fell flatter than a phonograph record. Even her report was old news.”
“You know who could have done a far better job?” Nazimova fixed Kathryn with an unblinking stare. She didn’t say anything more, but as one of the silent screen’s foremost actresses, she didn’t need to.
Kathryn leaned back until her face was cloaked in shadow. Pepsodent, huh?
CHAPTER 6
The week leading up to the Academy Awards was always a nutty time around Tinseltown. Beauticians, dressmakers, dieticians, limousine drivers, jewelers—everybody ran around like the Keystone Kops.
Until now, Gwendolyn had been largely unaffected by Oscar week, but now that she was a regular working girl at one of LA’s classiest department stores, she was caught up in the commotion. Society matrons, private secretaries, pretty starlets, and established celebrities swarmed her counter for perfume, stockings, and lingerie, rarely stopping to ask the price. The men were all the same, whether they were old-money gentlemen bankers or new-money studio executives: they bought perfumes for their wives and lingerie for their mistresses.
The novelty was fun at first, but as Oscar week plodded on, Gwendolyn’s energy wore thin. The day before the ceremony, she arrived at her counter and looked at her watch. Nine hours to go. She looked up to find Mr. Dewberry gathering together the staff from other departments: jewelry, clothing, furs, and millinery. Gwendolyn joined her coworkers in the middle of the floor.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement,” Dewberry declared. “We are on track to break the sales record for any month outside of December in the entire history of our store. Firstly, thank you for all your hard work. Secondly, in an effort to set a new record, management has authorized an incentive. Each staff member who posts the highest sales figures in their department today will receive an in-store credit for twenty-five dollars.”
Gwendolyn thought of the nylon stockings filling half her counter and did a quick calculation. At seventy-five cents each, she could buy at least thirty pairs. If she made each pair last two weeks—not easy, but not impossible—she’d have stockings to last a couple of years. Surely the war would be over soon, now that the US was in the fight?
Then she thought of Delores. The statuesque redhead had been working in department stores for as long as Gwendolyn had been schlepping tobacco around the Cocoanut Grove, which meant she knew her stuff. She’d been friendly, but not entirely welcoming; professional but guarded. Gwendolyn’s years at the Cocoanut Grove had taught her how to size people up. She knew a competitive achiever when she saw one.
Gwendolyn spotted Delores on the edge of the group and could see the gears already churning in Delores’ mind, calculating how many bottles of Chanel No. 5 she was going to have to hard sell.
It wasn’t hard to see why Delores was so successful at her job. She possessed the grace of a ballerina, the polish of a duchess, and the sophistication of a finishing-school graduate, and topped it all off with a mane of shimmering cinnamon hair. However, she lacked one essential: an impressive bosom. God knows she’d tried every trick in the book—plumping, padding, lifting, squeezing—to negligible effect. Gwendolyn took solace in the fact that in the battle of the bust, she would always emerge the victor.
As it happened, today Gwendolyn was wearing one of her showier outfits, a dark pink dress with a rose petal pattern that hugged the important curves in just the right ways. If the old-money bankers and new-money yes-men outnumbered the society matrons and haut monde flirts, the new girl on the Bullocks block might well nab the prize from under the queen bee’s nose.
Ladies, start your engines.
* * *
It was almost lunchtime before Gwendolyn had a chance to check her order book. She was running up a mental tally of the morning’s efforts when Delores glided over to her.
“I’ve just sold Soir de Paris to Arthur Freed’s wife,” she declared. “I think she’s his wife. At any rate, she bought three bottles!” She checked her flawless makeup in the mirror on Gwendolyn’s counter. “Now, I ask you: who needs three bottles of the same perfume? And so expensive. How have you been doing?”
Delores’ eyes were brown, but not the warm brown of fudge, more like an unforgiving shade of petrified wood. The girl used them to intimidate; it was like she could go for hours without blinking. A sale of three bottles of Soir de Paris alone meant she was already ahead.
“I’ve been busier than a one-armed bricklayer,” Gwendolyn replied airily. It was true, but there’d been too many matrons and not enough bankers.
“It’s nearly lunchtime,” Delores said. “You want to take the early break?”
For a girl like Delores, “lunch” meant black coffee. Gwendolyn had never actually seen her coworker eat, which probably explained her nineteen-inch waist. Gwendolyn could feel the twenty-five-dollar store credit slipping from her grasp and almost volunteered to take lunch first, if only to get away from that unflinching gaze. But a split second before she opened her mouth to reply, Gwendolyn spotted a familiar silhouette wandering toward the lingerie counter on the far side of the marble hall.
“Why don’t you go?” she told Delores. “I can hold off.”
Gwendolyn hoped the clicking of her heels on the store’s marble floor didn’t give her away until she was ready to pounce. Fortunately, her quarry was preoccupied with lacy teddies until she reached him.
“Why, Mr. Flynn! How delightful to see you!”
Errol Flynn’s handsome face lit up in genuine surprise. “Well, cut off my legs and call me Shortie! Gwendolyn, my love, I didn’t know you worked here. What happened to the Cocoanut Grove?”
Gwendolyn swept a hand down the long marble hall glinting with lights that made jewels sparkle, gloves shine, and lace gleam. “Better hours.”
She took a moment to drink Errol in. The dashing bachelor had been moving in and out of the Garden of Allah for years; sometimes between marriages, sometimes because he forgot to pay the mortgage elsewhere. Over that time, Errol and Gwendolyn had toyed and teased each other with their respective charms. Back in December, the night before Pearl Harbor, they’d gone as far as smooching in the shadows, and an overdue scamper to the bedroom had seemed inevitable, but they were interrupted.
He looked professionally put together: a new gabardine pinstripe suit, a honey-colored cravat folded perfectly around his neck. She could smell the citrusy cologne used by the barbershop upstairs. His skin shone with the radiance of a steam bath.
Gwendolyn subtly pushed out her chest. “Shopping for lingerie? Someone’s a lucky girl.”
Errol glanced down at the teddies. “More like looking for ideas.”
Gwendolyn pulled out the most expensive one and laid it out on the glass counter. It was made of peach silk and matching lace, and weighed next to nothing. “A girl never feels sexier than when she’s wearing one of these beauties.”
He ran a finger along it. “I didn’t know they made them so—” He stopped at the crotch and looked up at her. “Brief.”
“Most materials are going to be in short supply, so there’ll be a lot more female flesh on display. You know, for the war effort.”
“We must all make our sacrifices.” He studied the contents of Gwendolyn’s counter.
“And what about suspender belts?”
“Would you like to see some?”
Those come-to-bed Errol Flynn eyes were back on Gwendolyn. “I’m only interested in the ones you’d wear yourself.”
“You mean if money were no object?”
“I’ve always admired the way you dress. You have a poise that can’t be taught.”
“Oh, Errol!” As a thank-you, Gwendolyn leaned over the counter to withdraw some satin garter belts, pushing her breasts together just enough to make them strain the material. She heard him groan quietly as she laid out two sets of belts—one black, the other red. “I’d be more than happy to wear either one of these.” Please pick the red one. It’s three bucks more.
“Are you wearing either of them right now?”
Gwendolyn flashed her green eyes at him, feigning shock. “That’s an awfully private thing to ask a lady.”
He traced his finger up the satin stripe and didn’t stop when he got to her hand. He trailed it along her finger, and by the time he reached her wrist, she could feel herself going all tingly.
She pressed her hips against the sliding door of the display case and tilted them back and forth. “Is there anything else you’d like to see?” She tried to keep her voice from shaking, but the throb around her own skin-toned garter belt made it difficult.
“There’s a lot more I’d like to see,” he said quietly.
The harsh ka-ching! of a cash register on the other side of the hall hacked through the light strings of a Strauss waltz playing over the store’s PA. Delores was back from lunch.
Gwendolyn looked at the merchandise arranged on the counter. If I can get him to buy all of this, and perhaps a few pairs of our best stockings . . .
But then the throb in her crotch ratcheted up a notch and she realized that what she really wanted was to put an end to a decade of flirting with one of Hollywood’s biggest hound dogs. Half the pretty girls in town had succumbed, so why not her, too?
Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Page 4
