For once, Marcus was glad for the sixty-foot walk to the walnut wood doors leading out to reception. He needed that time to catch his breath.
Taggert waited until they were alone in the elevator. “This Trenton guy,” he said, keeping his eyes on the sliding doors. “You sleeping with him?”
“Yep,” Marcus replied.
“Casual, or something more than that?”
“A whole lot more than casual.”
Jim let out a world-weary grunt. “As your friend, I couldn’t be happier for you. As your boss, I’d say you’re screwed.”
CHAPTER 34
Bette Davis strode into Kathryn’s NBC dressing room. “Tell me I wasn’t atrocious!” she commanded, and helped herself to one of Kathryn’s cigarettes.
As she lit it, Bette took in her surroundings and frowned when she spotted Gwendolyn on Kathryn’s loveseat. “I know you,” she said. “From the Canteen, right?” She offered her hand. “And who’s this fine specimen?” When Kathryn introduced Linc, Bette’s face lit up. “As in ‘Tuxedos’?”
Linc nodded. Over the months Gwendolyn and Linc had been dating, Kathryn had noticed how awkward he became when his family entered the conversation. He had this way of ducking his head, as though the Tattler name was a Molotov cocktail.
Bette sat on the chair next to Kathryn’s vanity table and propped her feet up on the wooden coffee table. “Oh, but that song!” she yelped. “How the hell I let Jack Warner talk me into singing it, I’ll never know. I’m a lot of things, but singer is not one of them.”
Earlier in the year, some bright spark at Warners got the idea of turning the Hollywood Canteen into a movie, and Bette shot it over the summer. It was now time to promote it, so Warners had sent her onto Kraft Music Hall, where she was forced to sing a ditty called “They’re Either Too Young Or Too Old” that she sang in a movie the previous year.
“What makes you think you were atrocious?” Kathryn asked.
Bette ignored her. “What’s with all these flowers?”
Bunches of bright yellow tulips and daffodils and vases of red and pink roses had been arriving all evening. Kathryn’s mother sent an aquamarine dahlia with bright orange tips.
“Tonight was Kathryn’s first anniversary on the show,” Gwendolyn explained.
Bette smelled the roses from Wilkerson. “I’d have brought champagne if I’d known.”
The studio page, Sonny, appeared in the doorway and held up a business card. “A guy from The New York Times is requesting an interview.”
Kathryn took the card from Sonny. “Have you ever met—” She silently read the name and smothered her reaction, then fixed her eyes on Gwendolyn. “Nelson Hoyt.”
The night Kathryn walked all the way home from Cole Porter’s birthday party, she found Gwendolyn still awake, and relayed her conversation with Louella and Hedda. They spent the rest of the summer and the entire fall paranoid that the guy would come knocking on their door, but the passing months brought no such appearance—until now. “Tell him I’ve already left.”
“WHAT?” Bette jumped to her feet. “A girl knows she’s really getting places when she comes to the attention of the Times. Of course you’re going to see him. We should all clear out and give you some room—”
“The thing is,” Sonny broke in, “he’s not the only one asking to see you. Humphrey Bogart’s in the building. Although he’s not so much asking; more like demanding.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s kinda plastered.”
“Oh, boy,” Linc said.
A woman’s scream shot down the corridor, followed by a crash of falling cymbals. Sonny peeked out into the hallway. “Speak of the devil.”
Kathryn turned to Gwendolyn. “We need to get him out of here. We can’t let the New York Times see him like this.” She still hadn’t figured out why Louella and Hedda were so interested in Bogie’s connection with a Hollywood bookstore, but her journalist’s nose could smell trouble from a thousand paces.
Bogie swung into the room and waved a flask-sized bottle of Heaven Hill black bourbon in Kathryn’s direction. “You miserable bitch.”
Kathryn could feel a furious blush take over her face. She eyed Bogie’s juddering bottle.
Bette Davis stubbed out her cigarette. “Steady on there, bucko.”
If Bogie heard Bette, he gave no sign. “Mayo and me, we’re announcing our separation at the end of the week. It was going to be all very civil and adult. Then Hedda Hopper jumps on us at Chasen’s and starts jabbering on about my ‘captivating new costar.’”
Bette stood up. “For chrissakes, Humphrey, everybody knows about you and Betty Bacall. You can’t blame Kathryn if Hollywood’s worst-kept secret reached Hedda.”
“I didn’t tell her about the Sluggy!” Bogie yelled. He swilled a mouthful of bourbon and took a step closer to Kathryn. She could now smell it on him. “I only told you about taking Betty down to my boat.”
“I swear I never breathed a word to anyone,” Kathryn said.
“Not even to me!” Gwendolyn put in. “And I’m her best friend!”
It took Bogie a moment to tunnel through his alcoholic fog. His bleary eyes widened when he recognized Gwendolyn’s face. He went to say something, but it evaporated on his lips. Linc seized the moment, crossing Kathryn’s dressing room in two strides.
“Okay, Mr. Bogart,” he said gently. He towered over Bogie by at least a foot. “We’re going to take a walk now. The fresh air is going to do us all a world of good.” He nodded to Sonny. “Perhaps you could clear us a path to the nearest exit that doesn’t involve the main foyer?”
Gwendolyn kissed Kathryn on the cheek and told her she’d see her at home, then disappeared up the corridor behind the guys. Bette shook her head. “Hitching himself to Mayo was the worst thing he could have done, but teaming up with a rookie half his age? Sounds like frying pan and fire stuff, if you ask me.” She hugged Kathryn. “I’m going to leave you to prepare for your New York Times caller.”
Kathryn realized Sonny had never made it back to the reception desk to tell Nelson Hoyt to get lost. She was still scanning the corridor for an usher to deliver her message when she heard a voice behind her.
“Miss Massey, I presume?”
The voice was rich and cultured, ripe with the charm of a Southern gentleman out of Gone With The Wind, just like Hedda said. When she turned around, the first thing she saw was that deep, deep cleft in his chin.
“Mr. Hoyt, I’m sorry, but you’ve not caught me at a good time.”
He walked into her dressing room and parked himself on the loveseat, placing his dark beige homburg next to him. “This won’t take long.”
Kathryn closed the door behind her. “You’re not with any newspaper, are you?”
“I assume Miss Parsons or Miss Hopper forewarned you about me. That is unfortunate, but to be expected from a couple of old gossips.”
She sat at her vanity and started freshening her mascara. Diffused as they were by the light bulbs around her mirror, his eyes were an indeterminate color, but intelligent in a knowing sort of way. He had Clark Gable’s impressive jawline, too. His cheeks lacked Gable’s dimples, but that cleft in his chin was arresting.
“I really am pressed for time, Mr. Hoyt, so let’s skip the niceties. Exactly what do you want?”
“I’m here on behalf of the US government to request that you serve your country.”
“When you say ‘US government,’ can I assume you mean ‘FBI’?”
Hoyt sat up more formally. “Miss Massey, you have access to all levels of persons engaged in the entertainment industry. All we ask is that you keep your eyes and ears open as you move about in the course of your work.”
Kathryn tossed her mascara wand onto the vanity and turned around. “Keeping my eyes and ears open is my job.”
“Exactly.” Hoyt went through the motions of displaying a smile, but it had all the sincerity of a dime-store mannequin. “We just ask that you do your job and share wi
th us anything you feel might possibly compromise the security of the country.”
If Kathryn still had the brush in her hand, she would have thrown it at this implacable phony. “What you want is for me to become a squealer, but I value my friendships and relationships far too much to rat them out. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve my country, Mr. Hoyt, but I must decline.”
He maintained the smile. “Miss Parsons and Miss Hopper—”
“You’ve already recruited Louella and Hedda. I’m sure those two are supplying you with all the sharing you need.”
“I was going to say that Miss Parsons and Miss Hopper are more than eager to work with us, but they both lack your powers of discernment.”
“You have a talent for gift-wrapping.”
A smile stole out from between his lips with a trace of candid honesty, but only for a moment. “You remember the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, don’t you?”
Kathryn stared at the man’s cleft chin while her mind spun through the possible reasons he’d bring up an organization that hadn’t existed for five years. By the mid thirties, Hitler’s Nazi party was no longer bothering to hide its long-term plans, and Hollywoodites responded by forming the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Dorothy Parker helped put the League together, so it was a hot issue around the Garden; her husband, Alan Campbell, was secretary, and their neighbor Donnie Stewart became chairman. Kathryn hadn’t put much stock in the whole endeavor. What would Adolf Hitler care what a bunch of self-absorbed movie people ten thousand miles away thought about him? It wasn’t like he’d get a letter of protest from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and think, In that case, I won’t invade Poland after all. But the League petered out well before Pearl Harbor, leaving Kathryn to wonder why Hoyt was bringing it up now.
“Of course I remember it,” she said. And you know it.
“Were you aware it was a Communist front?”
She regarded him coolly. “I don’t keep current with that sort of thing.”
He responded with a bland nod, difficult to interpret. “Do you know what Robert Benchley, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Ginger Rogers, and Donald Ogden Stewart all have in common?”
All five people he mentioned had lived at the Garden of Allah, and Kathryn counted them as friends. She said nothing.
Hoyt continued. “As well as Joan Crawford, George Cukor, and Bette Davis.”
Those three never lived at the Garden, but she knew them all. Then it hit her. “They were all members of the Anti-Nazi League, weren’t they?” Hoyt nodded. “Which you think was a Communist Party front.”
Hoyt nodded again, this time not so mildly, and crossed his legs. “Therefore we have a file on each of them.”
Kathryn stiffened and looked away. Back in the maid’s room at Cole Porter’s house, this seemed silly and unlikely, but now she felt a noose tightening around her with agonizing determination. She forced herself to look at him. “Are you trying to scare me, Mr. Hoyt?”
“What I’m trying to do, Miss Massey, is paint you a picture of the real world, in contrast to—” he waved a hand around her dressing room, “—worlds of make-believe.”
Kathryn Massey had long considered herself one of the most pragmatic people she knew. If this FBI guy was so smart, she decided, he ought to know that his approach was entirely the wrong way to go about recruiting her.
She got to her feet. “My answer is no, Mr. Hoyt.” When she pulled open the door, the theme song of The March Of Time program filled the room.
Nelson Hoyt grabbed his hat and took his time joining her in the doorway. He put his face so close to hers she could smell his shaving cream. “Do you know who I report to?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“J. Edgar Hoover.”
For the first time that night, Kathryn’s nerve failed her. It’s one thing to say no when the FBI wants you to become some lousy snitching stool pigeon fink, she thought, but saying no to the director is a whole different rat’s nest.
He took her silence as vacillation, and pressed his argument. “Mr. Hoover takes particular interest in Hollywood, so he set up a special task force to observe what goes on here. I head up that task force.”
Kathryn thought about Bette Davis, or more specifically the sort of women she portrayed on the screen. What would Julie in Jezebel do? She’d play it smart and call his bluff. “Your mother must be very proud.”
As he dropped his hat on his head and retreated down the hallway, she expected a departing stink eye, but he disappeared through the swinging door that led into the foyer without looking back. She counted to ten before lurching back into her dressing room. It was then that she discovered she still had his business card in hand, crushed and folded, and dank with sweat.
CHAPTER 35
When Marcus pushed open the door to the Sahara Room, a racket engulfed him. In Hollywood, there was never any shortage of places to usher in a new year, but Garden of Allah residents always knew the best party in town was in their backyard. Or more specifically, in the main bar next to their backyard.
It was just past nine o’clock and already the room was half full with neighbors and their spouses, boyfriends, and girlfriends, drinking buddies, poker buddies, and a sprinkling of last night’s leftovers. Marcus saw that Kathryn and Gwendolyn hadn’t arrived yet, nor had Linc. He suggested to Oliver they get a drink while the getting was good.
These days, whenever Marcus approached the Sahara Room’s bar, his eyes shot automatically to the Glenfiddich bottles on Seamus’ shelf. For the longest time, three of them stood there, but now only one remained. “Jesus, Seamus,” Marcus said. “I hadn’t heard.”
Seamus looked paler than Marcus had ever seen him. “We lost one in the Leyte Gulf under MacArthur, and the other in the Battle of the Bulge.” His smile trembled at the edges. “Glenfiddich is a comforting drop, I can promise you that.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “If we can break the bulge and get those Huns on the run, this’ll be the last holiday season of the war, and that’s worth celebrating. What’ll it be?”
Double whiskeys in hand, Marcus and Oliver spotted Alla with Glesca. By the time they pushed and squeezed their way over, Kathryn had joined them.
“Where’s Gwennie?” Marcus asked.
Kathryn shot him an apprehensive look. “She and Linc are taking their time. Something’s going on with those two.”
“What kind of something?” Alla asked.
“I get the feeling there’s an elephant in the room. Damned if I can see it, though.”
There seems to be a plague of elephants, Marcus moped. He hadn’t noticed any chords of discontent between Gwendolyn and her handsome boyfriend; he was too preoccupied with the elephant crowding him and Oliver.
He longed to feel Oliver’s hand slide up his back. He’d always do it so casually, so discreetly, never failing to make Marcus feel wanted and needed. But it had been weeks since he sensed the warmth from Oliver’s hand drifting up his spine, weeks since Oliver used their secret three code. In the year and a half they’d been dating, Marcus had come to realize that he liked who he was around Oliver. He brooded and drank less heavily, and laughed and forgave more easily. He felt more confident in his abilities and slept more deeply than ever.
But these past couple of months, Oliver had begun to pull away. Even when he was around, he seemed preoccupied. It hadn’t escaped Marcus’ notice that Oliver’s withdrawal started around the time Marcus left the scripts for The Thin Man Goes Home and Meet Me In St. Louis lying around his villa.
He spent the week following his meeting with Mayer and Mannix stewing over how to bring up the subject in conversation, but failed to come up with any sort of likely scenario that Oliver wouldn’t see through.
In the end, Marcus left the scripts out for Oliver to stumble across, which he did, and then improvised an exasperated—and, Marcus feared, overly melodramatic—speech embellishing the points Mayer made. Oliver agreed to take a look, and by week’s end both movies we
re passed by the Breen Office. Meet Me In St. Louis opened a month ago to unanimous acclaim and enormous box office, and management had every expectation that The Thin Man Goes Home would repeat the success of its predecessors. Meanwhile, Mayer put Free Leningrad! into priority preproduction, and Marcus was suddenly the golden boy again.
But Oliver was no dummy, and Marcus was sure he’d seen through his B-movie performance. Marcus kept expecting to be confronted, and it was slowly tearing him to shreds.
Alla said, “Gwendolyn and her Mr. Tux make a fine couple. I’m sure they will resolve whatever’s going on between them. Ah!” She lifted her champagne flute. “Here they are now.”
Glesca gave an approving sigh. “How does she do it? These days, I can’t seem to find enough decent material to stitch together a hausfrau bathrobe, and she comes up with this!” Gwendolyn’s dress was the exact same shade as her honey-blonde hair, with a subtle pattern of tulips silhouetted in gold. “I guess it doesn’t hurt when your boyfriend’s in the rag trade. But still.”
“Hey, everyone!” Gwendolyn called out. “Look who I found wandering around in search of company.”
Humphrey Bogart appeared in the doorway, hatless and tieless and sucking the last half inch out of his cigarette. He was also conspicuously wifeless, which was surprising. Three days ago, Hedda Hopper reported in the LA Times that the “Battling Bogarts have signed a truce.”
“So much for the ceasefire,” Kathryn murmured before she crossed the room and prodded Bogie toward the bar.
“Talk about tense relationships,” Oliver said. “Why doesn’t he just get it over and done with?”
Oliver had barely looked at Marcus all day, and the thought struck him that Oliver may not have been talking about Bogart and his drunkard wife. If you’re going to pull the pin on us, he thought, I’d prefer you did it now so I can be plastered by the time we all launch into “Auld Lang Syne.”
“It’s getting mighty crowded in here,” Marcus announced. In the last few minutes, fifteen to twenty more people had shown up. The pandemonium of increasingly plastered cocktail chatter had jumped up a notch, and a thunderhead of cigarette smoke already filled the top half of the room. “Let’s go find some corner where we can hear each other.”
Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Page 25
