She thought of what Kathryn said when she voiced her hesitation earlier that evening. Those boys in the trenches and the submarines would be the first ones to tell you to get out and live life while we can. Isn’t it what we’re all fighting for? “Let’s stay,” Gwendolyn said. “We’re here now.”
Although she’d initially resented Mrs. O’Roarke for setting her up with a stranger and forgetting to tell her, Gwendolyn was soon glad she had. That first night, Linc took her and Kathryn to the Café Gala up on the Strip. When he dropped them home, he said nothing about contacting her again. She spent three weeks thinking about him and was delighted when he telephoned to ask her out on a date to Billy Berg’s, a jazz club on Vine Street. Linc was smooth on the dance floor, tasteful in his clothing, generous with his money, and attentive in his conversation—it was no wonder they were sleeping together by their fourth date.
The Mocambo’s maître d’ showed them to a table next to the dance floor, where they ordered drinks and settled in to watch the dancers.
Gwendolyn accepted the cigarette Linc offered and waited for him to light it. “So how’re things down at Tattler’s Tuxedos?”
“Same old, same old, you know.”
“No,” she told him, “I don’t. You so rarely talk about it.”
Bertie’s prediction had stayed with her: He might even bankroll you. She hadn’t brought up the possibility because it seemed tacky; he might get the impression that she was only sticking around for his money. But he was never going to offer if he didn’t even know her plan to open her own store. Bring it up, she told herself. Let him get used to the idea.
“There’s not much to tell,” he said. “Tuxes, cravats, jodhpurs, tie clips. Six of these yesterday, twelve of those today. It doesn’t change much. But you know all about that, I expect.” She was about to agree when he said, “By the way, what you’re wearing tonight—is it new? One of your own creations? It’s very becoming.”
Her dress had been a donation from Kay Thompson: a royal blue moiré silk ball gown with a black sash and a necklace edged with pearls. Rationing dictated shorter hems for less fabric, so Gwendolyn revamped Kay’s gown into a cocktail dress. She was satisfied with how it turned out, but what pleased her more was that she was dating a guy who would even notice.
“This one’s more of a remodel. I love that you have the sort of eye—what are you doing?”
He was patting the pockets of his tuxedo jacket. “I have something for you.” From inside his breast pocket he withdrew a slim package wrapped in cream tissue paper and tied with gold string.
“Is this some sort of anniversary?”
“No.” He leaned over and kissed her hand.
Gwendolyn unfurled the wrapping paper until three pairs of nylon stockings fell onto the table. They were from Gorgeous Gams’ ritzier line—even Lester had trouble getting his hands on these. The few times he did, Gwendolyn sold them to Mrs. O’Roarke for twice the regular price. “Where did you get these?”
“A couple of weeks ago I was helping you out of your dress when I noticed you weren’t wearing any.”
She picked up one of the stockings and held it to the light. It was so sheer she could barely see them. “Who did you have to hit over the head to get your paws on these?”
Linc’s halfhearted shrug made it clear he wasn’t about to divulge his secret.
She told him, “Come here and let me thank you properly.”
She felt Linc respond to her lingering mouth—his hand slid up her thigh and would have kept on going had the waiter not arrived with their drinks.
Now that Ciro’s was a burnt-out carcass of charcoal rafters and singed curtains, the Mocambo was the place to be. Despite the ambivalence she felt about going to the club, Gwendolyn thanked heaven for an oasis among the browns and blues of military uniforms and jeeps that seemed to pervade the city.
“Would you like to dance?” Linc asked. “I do like the way you rumba.”
He led her onto the dance floor and pulled her into his confident arms. Together they swayed to the rhythm of the tune spilling over them from the orchestra pit. She snuggled in closer, pressing her face against the folds of his dress shirt, where she could feel the rise and fall of his chest.
They hadn’t taken more than a few steps before the shattering of glass fractured the music, followed by a woman’s voice shooting across the dance floor like a poisoned dart.
“SON OF A BITCH!” Another crash of exploding glass. “LOW-DOWN, NO-ACCOUNT, GODDAMNED BASTARD!”
Several hundred heads turned in the same direction, except Gwendolyn’s. She kept hers pressed against Linc’s chest. “Let me guess—the Battling Bogarts?”
Humphrey Bogart’s distinctive voice opened fire. “SO NOW WE’RE DOING THIS IN PUBLIC? YOU DESPERATE LITTLE WASHED-UP LUSH, YOU THINK YOU CAN COWER ME BECAUSE WE’RE AT THE MOCAMBO?”
Gwendolyn jumped at the sound of heavier glass breaking against the floor. He’d upped the ante from wine glass to wine bottle. She looked up to see Bogie standing with the neck of a broken champagne bottle in hand; one of the lapels of his tux had been ripped away and now hung limply down his side. His wife, Mayo, stood several feet away in a white chiffon cocktail dress, unaware—or perhaps didn’t care—that a dark stain blotted her right hip.
“I’D JAM THIS INTO YOUR CHEST IF YOU HAD A HEART,” Bogie yelled.
Mayo went to lunge at him, but the Mocambo’s maître d’ caught her deftly by the elbow and pulled her back. He said something to them, but he was drowned out by the music restarting from the bandstand. Mayo yanked her arm free, grabbed her handbag, and started storming toward the front door like Sherman on the march. Bogie let go of the busted bottle, reached inside his torn jacket, and tossed a flutter of money onto the table. Gwendolyn watched the crowd part as he plunged across the dance floor.
Had she not been following Bogie’s progress, she might not have spotted her friend, Ritchie Pugh, sitting in a booth against the far wall. He was the fifth wheel at a table filled with three thuggish bruisers in expensive suits and a strikingly handsome blue-eyed dreamboat with a matinee-idol smile, diamond-studded pinkie finger, and a nationwide reputation as the most dangerous mobster on the West Coast: Bugsy Siegel.
Gwendolyn met Ritchie when he was a waiter at the Vine Street Brown Derby, but he’d gotten into big trouble at the Santa Anita racetrack and soon found himself working for Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen to pay off his debt. Then the FBI approached him to spy on the gangsters with the promise that they’d fund his freedom. Gwendolyn hadn’t heard from him since long before Pearl Harbor and hoped he’d escaped his predicament by getting drafted.
Linc kissed her ear. “You don’t actually know Bugsy Siegel, do you?”
Gwendolyn had had a couple of run-ins with Siegel and only just managed to extricate herself from his treacherous web, but that was the last thing she wanted Linc to know. “One of the guys at their table used to be my favorite waiter at the Derby. I’m just shocked to see him.”
“You want to go over and say hello?”
“With Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen sitting right there? No siree, Bob!”
The rumba came to an end and they returned to the table. Gwendolyn kept an eye on Ritchie. The guy had bags under his eyes, thinning hair, and hardened edges around his once-boyish face.
When he spotted her, Ritchie pulled out a notepad and wrote something on it, then folded the paper in half, then in half again, and then a third time. He said something to the guys at his table before sliding out of the booth. When he reached up to scratch his face, she saw he’d slotted the folded paper between his second and third fingers.
One of the Mocambo’s many features was a glassed-in birdcage that ran the length of an entire wall. It contained dozens of bright green parakeets, inky blue macaws, and fuchsia lovebirds. She watched him walk past it and into one of the telephone booths at its far end. He didn’t make a call, though. He stood facing the telephone for a moment or two, then exited the booth. He wa
s halfway back when he reached up to scratch his face again—the paper was no longer between his fingertips.
“If you will excuse me,” Gwendolyn said, placing her napkin on the table. “Kathryn isn’t feeling very well tonight. I promised her I’d call to see how she’s doing.”
Thankfully, Ritchie’s phone booth was vacant. His wad of paper was wedged behind the telephone.
What is it with you and shady types? You do know Lincoln Tattler is a black-market racketeer, don’t you?
Gwendolyn pressed the paper to her chest and wondered what a racketeer was. The word had been flung around during Prohibition, but what did it mean these days? Gangster? Hoodlum? Just someone who broke the law by selling on the black market? By that definition, she was a racketeer. But that hardly makes me a hoodlum.
She slipped the paper into her purse. The Tattlers are rich as blazes, she reasoned. Why would Linc need to sell on the black market?
She paused beside a six-foot-tall white painted bamboo cage. Inside was an enormous cockatoo with a magenta beak, huge blue eyes, and a crest of pink-and-red-striped feathers. Gwendolyn ducked behind it to observe Linc, who was eyeing the Siegel table with a grimness she’d never seen before. She hadn’t figured him for the jealous type.
“Sorry about that.” She dropped her purse on the table and took her seat.
Linc’s face had resumed its usual carefree expression. “She’s okay, I hope.”
“Kathryn? Yes, much better.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Thank you again for those nylons. You boys have no idea!”
Linc smiled. “I like to think I have some. While you were making your call, I got to thinking.” He leaned in. “I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”
“I’m listening.”
“Working for dear old Dad and the clothing business, it’s okay, but my heart really isn’t in it.” His face lit up. “I’ve landed on something that really gets me going: electrical appliances, radios, and phonographs and the like.”
Gwendolyn took a moment to chew over this information. “Phonographs? Like with records?”
“I love anything electrical, but radios are really my thing. I built my first ham when I was ten. In my last year of high school I built a shortwave radio and began listening to broadcasts from the BBC in London. Give me any broken electrical gadget, and I can fix it in a snap.”
Gwendolyn grabbed his hand. “Aren’t you a surprise?”
Linc nodded like a boy given his first BB gun for Christmas. “What I want to do is open a store that sells radios and gramophones to start with, but then I’ll sell televisions.”
“Televisions? What’s that?”
“It’s like radio, but with pictures. Like a small cinema that fits in the corner of your living room.”
“In the corner of—really? Is such a thing even possible?”
“Trust me.” Linc’s face took on the same gravity she’d seen from behind the gigantic cage. “It’s coming, and when it does, look out.”
Gwendolyn rested her face on the palm of her hand. “We both want to open our own stores. I didn’t know we had that in common. But what about financing all this? Do you think your father will help you out?”
“Parentasaurus Rex?” Linc scoffed. “Even if he offered—which he won’t—I wouldn’t take it. A man needs to stand on his own two feet, you know?”
Gwendolyn thought of Linc’s elegant house on San Ysidro Drive north of the Beverly Hills Hotel, his gleaming silver Packard, and the hand-stitched suits he never seemed to run out of. Not to mention the fancy dinners and classy nightclubs he took her to. That’s all very well, she thought, but if you think you can have all your nice things by selling radios, you’re in for a crash landing.
“Selling overpriced tuxes to spoiled jerks isn’t the only way I can make the money I need.” He drained his champagne in a single swallow.
Gwendolyn looked across the dance floor to Siegel’s table and saw Ritchie slumped in his seat, part of the group but not part of the conversation. Without warning, his eyes shot up to meet hers. He raised his eyebrows and, almost imperceptibly, started shaking his head.
CHAPTER 24
Kathryn slid a tray of bologna-and-cheese sandwiches onto the table and took a look around the packed barn. Marlene Dietrich and Deanna Durbin were on coffee duty and Lana Turner was tonight’s hatcheck girl. Even Rita Hayworth had shown up, which wasn’t especially unusual, but she and Orson Welles had just gotten hitched in a surprise ceremony. For Kathryn, the surprise was that Orson would get married at all. Kathryn and Orson had indulged in an affair before the war, and it didn’t take her long to figure out that he was hardly the hitching type. She wished them lots of luck. They’d need it.
The throng around the stage whistled their appreciation for Jimmy Durante’s “Inka Dinka Doo.” As always, the servicemen couldn’t get enough. Kathryn turned to her tablemate for the night. “Is it just my imagination, or is it particularly star-studded in here tonight?”
Betty Grable tucked a lock of white-blonde hair back into a light blue cap that matched her vaguely militaristic uniform, which Kathryn decided must be a studio creation. She doubted Grable had time to join the WACs or the WAVES. “We’re expecting our one millionth serviceman tonight,” Grable said. “They asked me to stick close by. When Mister Million comes through the door, I’ve been elected to bestow upon him the congratulatory kiss.” She laughed. “Everything’s a publicity opportunity, isn’t it?”
Kathryn had never met Grable before being assigned to sandwich duty with her tonight. She was the biggest female star in the world these days, but it didn’t seem to be going to her head. She seemed to know that all the attention and clamor would fade away eventually, but for now, it was on her shoulders to embody every wife, fiancé, and sweetheart each guy had left behind.
“You’re going to give some lucky GI a kiss he’ll never forget,” Kathryn told her. “Especially if he saw you in Coney Island. You looked sensational.”
Grable frowned. “Don’t remind me. I’m still fighting with Anita Wyndham over that. Wouldn’t you know it, she’s here tonight.”
Kathryn raked the crowd. “She is?”
“She gave it the big rah-rah on Kraft Music Hall—which is great, but she got everything wrong. She said I costarred with Robert Montgomery, not George Montgomery, and Eddie Cantor instead of Cesar Romero. I’m surprised she got the picture’s name right. I caught your fill-in spot that night Melody Hope was on.”
“It was all so crazy. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.”
“Oh, honey, you were terrific. They should give you that job. At least your heart would be in it. Anita’s nice enough, but she’s been doing such a slapdash job since the night of the fire.”
A hoard of eager servicemen descended on Grable. She already had a pen in hand and smiled her famous smile as she signed the autograph books and magazines thrust in her face.
Kathryn got a dance hostess to watch the sandwich table for a while and worked her way down to the coffee stand. She only knew Anita Wyndham from the photograph that accompanied her byline, but the nest of black curls piled on top of her head made her easy to identify. Kathryn hadn’t planned on saying anything, but just sniff around, but to Kathryn’s surprise, Wyndham beckoned her over.
“It’s time we met,” she said. “I’m Anita Wyndham.” She paused long enough for Kathryn to shake her hand. “I owe you a belated thank-you for saving my bacon that night.”
Kathryn pictured Bertie cornering Wyndham like a rabid hippo. “I don’t know that I saved your—”
“Oh, but you did! Even though I got to the studio in time, I was so frazzled I couldn’t have put three coherent words together. Someone from the WAC committee waylaid me, and before I knew it, I heard your voice over the loudspeakers. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was.”
“Miss Wyndham,” Kathryn began, but one of the guys from the kitchen interrupted them with a giant wicker basket filled with fre
sh donuts.
“Please, call me Anita. Can you give me a hand to stack these? They won’t last long, but we’re supposed to present them nicely.” They started piling the donuts into a pyramid.
Kathryn had listened to the Kraft Music Hall every week since that night, and Betty Grable was right—Anita had been stumbling over her words, getting her facts wrong, and missing cues. “Things going well, I hope?”
Anita pouted. “Depends what you mean by ‘well.’”
“Are they treating you okay? Are you happy there?”
“Absolutely yes to your first question. But the second?” Anita topped the stack with a final donut, and almost immediately, an undernourished Coast Guard plucked it off its perch. “I’m committed to a contract, so what does it matter?”
Kathryn’s fantasy that Wallace Reed or Bing Crosby would call her to say they’d sacked Anita and wanted her had faded by the end of the month. But now a flutter of ambition quickened Kathryn’s pulse. “I’m sure Bing, not to mention the gentlemen at Kraft, would be concerned if you’re not happy.”
Anita dusted sugar off her hands. “I suppose.”
A roar of a hundred male voices filled the place as Marlene Dietrich took the stage and launched into “Lili Marlene.” Kathryn took Anita by the arm and pulled her into a quieter corner.
“Contract or no contract, if you’re not happy, there are plenty of columnists who’d be more than willing to fill your place. I’d give anything to have that job.”
Anita shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“I would, yes.” Anita shook her head again. “Is someone putting pressure on you to—well, you know, do something?”
Anita looked genuinely horrified. “No, no, nothing like that. It’s just that when you get on the radio, you raise your public profile. A lot more people become aware of you.” Anita’s face grew hard with apprehension. “I’m surprised you haven’t found that out already.”
“Oh, but I have. You must have heard about my run-ins with Louella.”
A few years back, at the height of the industry-wide conflict over Citizen Kane, Tallulah Bankhead and Agnes Moorhead got drunk at the Garden of Allah and made an effigy of Louella Parsons, then encouraged everyone to stick it with any sharp-edged implement they could find. When the story of that night flew around Hollywood, it was dubbed Kathryn Massey’s Parson Piñata Party, and Louella hadn’t spoken to her since.
Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Page 17
