Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4)

by Martin Turnbull

  There was usually somebody balancing the books or juggling the next week’s roster at one of the three desks that were crammed together, but when Gwendolyn walked in, there was nobody around. She plopped down on the battered sofa and kicked off her pumps.

  “Bully!”

  Gwendolyn knew who it was before she looked up from rubbing her feet. Bertie Kreuger was one of her favorite people who’d moved into the Garden of Allah since the start of the war. In a town filled with amply blessed girls, Bertie never seemed the slightest bit put out that she’d been dealt a meager hand in the looks department: broad face, mess of corkscrew hair the color of oleomargarine, widely spaced teeth, and eyes neither blue nor green but something in between. But she possessed a heart as big as the Gulf of Mexico. She also had a knack of giving everyone she met a nickname. Gwendolyn’s was “Bully,” as in Bullocks Wilshire.

  Bertie flopped onto the sofa. “What a crazy night!”

  “We get busier and busier every week.”

  Bertie nudged her. “But not so busy that I didn’t notice you chatting with Junior.”

  Gwendolyn kneaded the ball of her left foot. “Did I tell you Monty ships out tomorrow?”

  “I was talking about Tattler Junior.”

  “You know him?”

  She juggled her head from side to side, sending her double chin to wobbling. “His dad’s the tuxedo king.”

  “You mean Tattler Tuxedos?”

  Tattler Tuxedos was the best-selling line of formalwear at Bullocks. They were beautifully hand-stitched from the finest wools and silks, and cost so much that only top stars and executives could afford them.

  “Who did you think he was?”

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “His family and mine are both Johnny-come-latelies into the Los Angeles Blue Book. We’re new money, but we’ve both got enough of it to qualify for the social register.”

  “I’m surprised you care.”

  Bertie barked out a laugh. “I don’t give a diddly-damn about that, but my parents do, so they drag me to those tedious balls at the Biltmore and the Jonathan Club. That’s where I usually see Linc.”

  Gwendolyn slipped her shoes back on. “They must sell a lot of tuxes to get into the Blue Book.”

  “Tuxes are the tip of the iceberg. They make all those fancy jackets and caps for the yachting crowd. And those whatchamacallits for polo players—jodhpurs. And morning dress suits, and chauffeur uniforms, and judges’ robes. They make a lot of things. You still figuring on opening your own dress shop?”

  “I hope so.”

  “If you’re looking for brains to pick, you could do a lot worse than Lincoln Tattler. Play your cards right, he might even bankroll you.”

  Gwendolyn’s mind started sprinting.

  Bertie heaved herself up from the sofa. “By the by, I came in here to give you a message. Our commander in chief says it’s okay if you gals cut out early.”

  Gwendolyn pulled open the door and the din of several hundred couples jitterbugging to “Minnie the Moocher” avalanched into the office. Lincoln wasn’t hard to spot—he was the tallest guy in the room, and was holding a tray piled with glassware above his head as though it were made of cotton candy. She watched him thread through the maze of tables filled with lonesome soldiers and obliging starlets.

  As he neared the kitchen, he lobbed one of his Tyrone smiles at her; more genuine than any she’d seen on the idle rich boys who shopped at Bullocks. She tapped her watch, then mouthed the words “thirty minutes.”

  He might even bankroll you.

  Gwendolyn knew better than to count on a long shot like that.

  CHAPTER 21

  Marcus sprinkled as much cinnamon as he could spare into the cake batter and stirred it while he watched Oliver pull down a volume from his bookshelf.

  “Crime and Punishment, huh? Did I ever tell you what I studied in college?”

  Marcus stopped stirring. “I don’t think so.”

  “I was a double major. English literature and Russian studies.”

  Marcus focused on his batter. “You’re the Russia expert but I’m the pinko. There’s irony for you.”

  Oliver fell silent and they listened to the cast recording of the latest Broadway hit, Oklahoma, as Celeste Holm told them how she cain’t say no. Oliver walked into the kitchen and planted an unhurried kiss on Marcus’ shoulder. “I never said you were a pinko, so if you’re spoiling for a fight—” He ran his fingers through Marcus’ unruly hair.

  “Nah,” Marcus said, “not with you, anyway.”

  “Then who?”

  Marcus stirred the batter some more. “It still bothers me that Mayer thinks I’m a pinko.”

  “Are you sure he does? From what you’ve told me about Edwin Marr—”

  “William Tell grossed more than Yankee Doodle Dandy, Road To Morocco, AND Holiday Inn. Two thirds of our guys with any know-how are in the service, which makes me one of the most experienced writers we’ve got. And yet not only has he knocked back every idea I’ve come up with since William Tell, but what have they got me working on? Maisie Goes To Reno.”

  “Hey,” Oliver protested gently, “I like those Maisie movies.”

  “Me too, but it’s no Madame Curie, is it?”

  “Keep at it. You’ll come up with something that’ll knock their socks off.”

  Oliver traced his hand from Marcus’ hair, down his neck and onto his chest. He leaned in for another one of those languid kisses he was so good at. They left Marcus with a sense of falling—but in a good way, like Alice down the rabbit hole to a queer Wonderland. He’d thought he loved Ramon, but now that he had the real thing, he could see he’d been fooling himself. For the longest time, Marcus doubted he was any good at this boyfriend business, and had almost resigned himself to a monklike life with the occasional encounter. But then Oliver came along, and his private life became such an effortless oasis of tranquility that he marveled at how he’d doubted himself.

  After a deliciously long smooch, they broke apart like two halves of an oyster shell. Oliver leaned against the counter with his back to the window. The late afternoon sun enveloped him like a veil.

  “I do like your place.”

  The gang at the Garden of Allah was as open-minded as any group of highly paid bohemians. Oliver could be an opium-smoking circus freak-show reject and nobody would bat an eyelid. It was an unspoken rule at the Garden that once you moved in, you were family. That meant you were free to be whoever you were, do whatever you wanted, sleep with whomever you pleased. No matter your vice—booze, pills, sex, racetracks—there was no judgment, no rejection. Dorothy Parker joked once they should put a plaque over the front desk: Whatever transpires inside these Garden walls remains within. On the outside, the queers played it straight, the boozers feigned sobriety, and the tramps exuded a virginal posture. But on the inside, you were who you were, and that was just fine with your neighbors.

  However, Marcus strongly suspected that even the Gardenites would draw the line at one of their own dating the Breen Office. In the us-versus-them trenches of Hollywood, a studio screenwriter and a Breen Office censor were considered mortal enemies. So every time Oliver suggested they meet at the Garden of Allah, Marcus changed the subject.

  Then Orson Welles moved in with his latest paramour, Lili St. Cyr. One weekend while working amid the tomato stalks and cabbage leaves of the victory garden, he announced that his Jane Eyre had reached the rough-cut edit stage, but he wasn’t sure the picture worked. Could he bring everyone to the studio for a screening to gauge their reaction? Orson had neither directed, written, nor produced the movie, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it wasn’t his movie to screen.

  Everybody said yes except Marcus. This was a rare chance for him to be home alone with Oliver without having to explain anything to anyone, including Kathryn and Gwendolyn—or even Alla.

  It was five thirty, so they had at least a couple more hours. After the screening, Orson was treating the group to a smorg
asbord dinner at Bit of Sweden restaurant.

  Oliver peered into the mixing bowl. “What are you making?”

  With its raisins boiled in cloves and lard, the batter looked like something Dottie Parker’s dachshunds might puke up. “It’s called war cake,” Marcus said. “There’s no butter, eggs, or milk, so I’m making no promises. But it came highly recommended.” He indicated a recent Saturday Evening Post that featured a Norman Rockwell painting of a rather muscular woman named Rosie holding a hefty rivet gun across her lap.

  Oliver dipped his finger into the batter and conceded that it tasted better than it looked. “I think your Hollywood Writers Mobilization can come up with a better name than that.”

  Marcus opened his oven door. “Why don’t we just call it what it is: a poor-excuse-for-a-dessert-that’ll-have-to-do-until-we-win-the-war-and-rationing-comes-to-an-end cake.”

  A voice from down near the pool called out, “Looks like he’s home!”

  It was Kathryn, and she wasn’t alone. The stone pathway crunched under a dozen pairs of feet.

  “MARCUS!” Orson Welles boomed through the open window. “We need every drop of Four Roses in your possession!”

  Marcus’ front door swung open and ten bodies lurched in.

  Kathryn led the pack. “You said you wouldn’t be—” She froze when she caught sight of Oliver in the corner, buttoning his shirt.

  “I thought you all were going out for dinner afterwards,” Marcus said.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Gwendolyn asked, her eyes on Oliver. “A bunch of sailors and marines are fighting with those Mexicans who wear the zoot suits.”

  “Something about the Sleepy Lagoon murder.” Kathryn started pulling off her gloves. “Apparently downtown is a mess, so we figured we’d better hightail it back here. It’s all over the radio—but I guess you were busy.”

  Oliver stuck his hand out and introduced himself.

  There were now twelve bodies crowding a living room intended to comfortably fit a half dozen. Marcus’ heart ratcheted up a notch while Kathryn shook Oliver’s hand. “You’re one of Marcus’ screenwriter buddies at MGM?”

  “Nothing as exciting as that.” Oliver turned to Orson, offering his hand. “Mr. Welles, I count myself a big fan of your Citizen Kane. It deserved better treatment than it got.”

  Orson beamed and treated Oliver to his trademark two-handed shake.

  Kathryn sidled up to Marcus. “Did we interrupt something?”

  The smell of cinnamon and boiled raisins filled the air around them. “Just baking a cake.”

  Orson declared he’d come up with a new punch recipe based on a daiquiri Hemingway had served him once, and Marcus pointed to two unopened bottles of bourbon. Before Oliver entered Marcus’ life, no bottle of Four Roses had gone unopened for long, but now one could sit there untouched for a whole week.

  Lili spoke up. “Say, Oliver. Your last name ain’t Trenton, is it?”

  Oliver’s response was slow in coming. “Uh-huh.”

  Marcus steeled himself.

  “I know that name.” Donnie Stewart was a fellow screenwriter at MGM. Marcus could see it registering in Donnie’s mind like an electric sign flickering on one light bulb at a time. “From the Breen Office?”

  “I knew it!” Lili exclaimed. “When I was dancing at the Florentine Gardens, someone pointed you out to me. Called you a snake in the grass. When I asked why, she told me where you work.” She pulled her face into a sneer. “You old maids disapprove of everything.”

  Ten pairs of eyes turned to look at Marcus, daring him to explain.

  “Actually,” Marcus began with little idea of what to say next, “it’s the damnedest thing. Oliver was the guy who evaluated my script for William Tell.”

  “You mean he was the one who put the idea into Mayer’s head that you’re a Commie?”

  The accusation came from Kay Thompson. As MGM’s choral arranger, she was responsible for most of Judy Garland’s vocals. She and her radio-producer husband, Bill, hadn’t been at the Garden very long before she’d ensconced herself at the epicenter of the hotel’s social life. Thin, blonde, and fully confident of her extraordinary abilities, Kay was one of those people who filled every room she entered. Not an easy feat to pull off in a room already crowded with the likes of Orson Welles and Lili St. Cyr.

  “No,” Marcus replied. “That was Edwin Marr. All Oliver did—”

  Oliver stepped forward. “What Marcus probably won’t tell you is that when he saw my notes on his script, he marched down to our office and confronted me.”

  “You didn’t!” Donnie’s round face was the picture of amazement suffused with admiration. He knew better than anyone else in the room the risk Marcus had taken.

  Nazimova hadn’t said anything at this point, but she took advantage of the shocked silence to speak. “Did you really do this?” Her weary eyes appraised Marcus in a way he’d never seen before.

  Oliver nodded. “Bawled me out like a son of a gun.”

  Orson leaned up against the doorway into the bedroom. The same look of reevaluation in Alla’s face filled his, too. “That takes guts.”

  “How very Fruit Fight At The OK Corral of you.” Kay Thompson threw her hands up. “Don’t get me wrong, pumpkin, but I hardly think I’m the only one here who draws the line at your doing it with someone from the Breen Office. If there’s a snitch among us, I for one want to know about it.”

  “Hold on a minute, Kay.”

  Ogden Nash stepped out from behind Lili. Marcus hadn’t seen the poet since he moved out of the Garden. Back then, Scott Fitzgerald and Marcus were writing a screenplay and Nash was working up a treatment for The Wizard Of Oz. Neither Marcus nor Nash got screen credit for their efforts and they’d clinked shots of commiserating whiskey. “I don’t know that any of us have the right to go snooping into—”

  Kay sliced a hand through the air like a horizontal guillotine. “I beg to differ, Nashie darling. One of the reasons Bill and I chose to live here was the Garden’s reputation as a haven where us creative folk are free to express ourselves.” She turned to face the antsy crowd. “Am I wrong?”

  “Not at all.” Orson had lost his look of fleeting admiration. “While some in Hollywood call the Hays Code and the Breen Office a necessary evil, I disagree. I consider myself an artist and am, quite frankly, appalled at how frequently I’m forced to defend my work against self-appointed moralistic bowdlerizers who have bestowed upon themselves the moral high ground.” He thrust a finger toward downtown LA. “As far as I’m concerned, the Breen Office is no better than those zoot-suited hooligans.”

  “And I think you’re all hypocrites,” Oliver shot back.

  The group drew in a collective gasp.

  Marcus felt his heart sink to the soles of his bare feet.

  Lili St. Cyr piped up. “Well, how do you like that? The Breen Office fairy is telling us we’re the hypocrites.”

  Under different circumstances, Marcus would have laughed at the irony of a semiliterate stripper becoming the moral voice of the Garden, but—.

  “May I speak?” Oliver asked. “Or have you already made up your minds before you hear me out?”

  Marcus braved a glance in Kathryn’s direction. It wasn’t hard to tell what she was thinking: You’ve certainly got a live wire on your hands, haven’t you?

  Alla flickered an inscrutable look at Oliver. “Go ahead, Mr. Trenton.”

  “You people give me a pain!” Oliver stated. Several mouths dropped open. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe we’re on your side?”

  Orson released a caustic laugh. “No, Mr. Trenton, it never has.”

  “I guess I ought only speak for myself,” Oliver conceded.

  “Perhaps you should,” Marcus urged quietly.

  “Both my father and grandfather were preachers. It was assumed that one of my siblings would follow in the family footsteps and lucky for me, I had an older brother to shoulder that burden. It left me free to pursue a career in the movie business,
and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. So I sent a letter to Joseph Breen and asked if there was an opening for me.”

  The tension in the room broke; several people scoffed.

  “You volunteered?” Gwendolyn asked.

  “I could see what they were trying to do, but felt they were going about it the wrong way.”

  “And what,” Orson asked, “did you think the Breen Office was trying to do?”

  Oliver clapped his hands together as though begging his audience to hear what he had to say. “The Greeks and the Romans had their gods; the Europeans, their kings and queens. Us twentieth-century Americans? We have our movie stars. It’s like what Voltaire said: ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’”

  Alla’s lover, Glesca, stepped forward. She was a forthright woman given to speaking her mind, consequences be damned. Marcus would have been crestfallen if she took a dislike to Oliver. “Mr. Trenton, I feel reasonably sure that Voltaire was not talking about movie stars.”

  “Stars serve a purpose,” Oliver rebutted. “Like gods and royalty, they fulfill a fundamental human need for heroes. What we do here in Hollywood is create role models for regular folks to emulate. They represent Americans at our finest, and inspire us to be like that, too.”

  “A very fine soliloquy,” Kay said. “However, the point is, you work for the organization that seeks to clamp down on our freedom of speech. We don’t take that light—”

  “The Breen Office exists because the Hollywood studios have been charged with creating the American dream. When left unchecked, they allowed greed and lust to overtake all other considerations. And so we got the Hays Code with all its stringent rules and regulations enforced on us. The problem is, the Hays Code hasn’t kept up with the times.” This triggered a restless ripple through the room. “I have intentionally positioned myself as the voice of moderation within the Breen Office. I make it my business to suggest other—more modern—ways to look at things, more in keeping with the way American life is lived in the present, not the past.”

  Donnie Stewart broke into a shrewd smile. “You’re telling us that you went to work at the Breen Office to change it from the inside?”