Marcus watched her disappear behind a swinging door and realized he’d much rather be with Oliver and Kathryn, Gwendolyn and Alla at a moment like this. But they were scattered all over the city and wouldn’t be home for hours. He smiled at the thought of the humdinger of a celebration at the Garden tonight.
“Marcus, my boy!”
Those three words were all Marcus needed to recognize the voice of George Cukor. The two men embraced.
“It’s a great day!” George declared. He watched the woman set six bottles of Pabst and two of whiskey on the chrome counter, then shifted his gaze to Marcus. “I hope that’s for later.”
“About ten minutes later, I’d say.” Marcus went to pick up the bottles until he felt the weight of George’s hand on his arm. “Something wrong?”
“I had a meeting this morning,” George said, speaking more carefully than usual. “With L.B. and Mannix. It was about Free Leningrad!”
“Oh?”
“Clarence Brown is already knee-deep in The Yearling and I’m between projects, so they want me to direct the new sequences. The deal was no screen credit, but double pay. Plus, it’s your picture, so I wanted to help out.”
With his revised script and George at the helm, Marcus was sure Free Leningrad! could be saved. “That’s great!” he exclaimed, but George didn’t seem thrilled. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, but haven’t you got a deadline? Mayer and Mannix stressed that never has an MGM project had less time to waste. They promised me they’d deliver the script in forty-eight hours.” He cast around the tumultuous commissary. “Marcus, I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but do you really have the time to sit around drinking?”
Slack-jawed, Marcus gaped at his friend. “Hitler is DEAD. I think that deserves some celebration.”
“And I think you need to look further than the next two days. We have a lot to reshoot for a picture whose release date cannot be moved. A lot hinges on this movie, and your new version needs to be done. By Friday. This whole project—to say nothing of the future of your career—hinges on this deadline. Hitler will still be dead on Saturday; go celebrate then. But meanwhile, you’ve got a Russian city to liberate.”
* * *
Living at the Garden of Allah for eighteen years should have taught Marcus that the biggest Ding Dong Hitler Is Dead party in town would be around the swimming pool forty feet from his place. But his head was too filled with Lieutenant Charlie Walters and Leningrad to think about that on the streetcar ride home. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the Garden’s main building and onto the path to the pool that he realized he should have gone someplace else.
The huge gathering around the pool was already three drinks ahead of him. Kay Thompson’s husband, Bill, was playing bartender at a patio table littered with a haphazard collection of booze—though he seemed as half-smashed as everyone else.
Alla’s face lit up. “There you are, my darling!” It was encouraging to see her smile. She’d done three movies in the previous year and was excited that her acting career was back on the upswing. But no more offers materialized, and her soulful face seemed more lined, weighed down by the advances of age. “This glorious day has arrived!” She hooked her arm through his. “A drink to celebrate, yes?”
“Later.” He patted her arm. It felt thin and fragile through her cotton blouse. Hitler will still be dead on Saturday. “I’m battling an impossible deadline. Free Leningrad! is—”
“Bill!” Alla called. “Some punch for my boy!”
Marcus accepted the cup she thrust into his hand. She clinked her glass against his and winked one of her violet eyes. “Here’s to happy days!”
“MADAME!” Kay Thompson’s strident voice shot through the crowd. “That’s a marvelous suggestion!” She elbowed her way to the side of the pool. As she clambered onto the diving board, the sun slipped out from behind a cloud like a spotlight and picked up the gold thread in her shot-silk pantsuit. She held up her arms. “Two, three, four, and . . . Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again . . . ”
Sober or drunk, Gardenites were really just a bunch of hams at heart, and never needed much prompting. By the end of the second line, every last one of them had joined in.
Marcus offered Alla a vague I’ll-be-back gesture. Halfway to his villa, he was captured by Dorothy Gish happily sandwiched between Artie Shaw and her current live-in lover, Louis Calhern. Marcus never understood how Louis could be so happy with Gish when his ex-wife, Natalie Schafer, lived right next door. But that was the Garden of Allah—no rules, no expectations, no problems. Marcus lingered for a verse, then broke away. He made it through his front door without being ambushed a third time.
He figured if he could bang away until the halfway point where Veronika reveals to Charlie the hoard of Nazi grenades hidden beneath her father’s bakery, then maybe he could finish for the day and rejoin the celebrations. Once they were over, he could Benzedrine his way through the rest of the night.
It didn’t take him long, though, to realize that his plan to hide away and concentrate on the Siege of Leningrad was delusional. The singing and laughter, plus the chatter and shrieks of new arrivals, bled through the walls, windows, and doors.
He thought about Bertie’s room in the main house, where the walls were thick enough to buffer the loudest noise. Bertie was probably several drinks in by now and unlikely to need her room for the next few hours, but getting access meant going back out there, typewriter in hand, and risking recapture.
A squeaking floorboard drew his attention.
“Sweetheart!” Marcus stepped forward to embrace his lover. “Your office as nutso as mine? Everybody’s crazy drunk and singing and carrying on—just like here. Hard to believe, huh? We can’t be more than a couple of days away from the end of the war!”
But Oliver didn’t return Marcus’ embrace. He stood rigid as a toy soldier, his arms by his sides.
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked.
“I’m here to pick up my things.” Oliver’s voice was low and restrained.
Marcus went to grab his hand, but Oliver pulled it away. “What’s going on?”
Oliver headed for the closet. He yanked the door open, but stopped. When he turned around, his eyes were filled with hostility. “The Thin Man Goes Home, and Meet Me In St. Louis.”
Oh, crap. Oh, no. Oh, jeez. Marcus feigned a blank look.
“Don’t even bother.” Oliver yanked a fistful of shirts off the rack and threw them onto the bed. “On second thought,” he spun back, “I want to hear you deny that you developed our relationship so you had an insider at the Breen Office.”
Outside, Bertie’s hoarse laugh burst through the window, chased by a shockingly loud champagne-bottle pop. The distraction gave Marcus a moment to sort through his options. Do I finagle my way out of this, or just come clean and hope to hell he understands?
“You’re the one who suggested we talk over drinks,” he said.
“Stop skirting the issue!”
“What is the issue?”
Oliver stepped forward, and poked a finger into the air over Marcus’ chest. “I got hauled over the coals by the entire executive committee this morning. They had the scripts for The Thin Man Goes Home, and Meet Me In St. Louis, and they demanded to know why I approved them.”
“Why did you?”
“I DID IT FOR YOU!” he exploded. “I figured if I rushed them through, you’d score big points with the boss. Once scripts are approved, nobody goes back and takes a second look. There are too many coming down the pipeline. I figured I’d just push ’em through and that’d be that.”
Marcus sat on the bed and looked up at Oliver. “But somebody did go back?”
“I kept hoping it was a coincidence, but then Breen made me swear—on a Bible, no less—that I wasn’t doing someone at MGM a favor. It was the way they said it. Someone. A favor.”
Marcus gripped the chenille bedspread. The soft material folded between his fingers. “Mayer and Mannix dragged me i
nto a meeting and asked if I had deliberately cultivated the friendship of someone inside the Breen Office.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think exactly what you’re now thinking. They’d just handed me Free Leningrad! then made me feel like I owed them. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you just leave the two scripts sitting around and figure if I pick them up myself . . . ” Oliver let the rest of the sentence mingle with the voices outside singing “We’ll Meet Again.”
“Something like that,” Marcus admitted. “I am so, so sorry. I was stuck; I didn’t know what to do. I know I handled it badly—”
“Badly? Marcus, you handled it atrociously.”
Oliver turned back to the open closet and pulled out more clothes. Marcus got to his feet and clutched at Oliver’s arm, but Oliver pulled away; the heat behind all that hazel-flecked green was gone.
“I feel like everything’s in limbo,” he said. “Hitler’s dead. Berlin’s surrounded. Maybe the Krauts’ll hold off the Ruskies, maybe Goering will take Hitler’s place. Whatever happens, there’s still Japan. It’s like the whole world is holding its breath.”
“The whole world is holding its breath.”
“It’s how I feel about you and me. If you’d come to me that day and told me what you were faced with, I wouldn’t have been happy, but at least I’d have known what was going on.”
Shame burned Marcus’ chest. “But I didn’t do that.”
“No, Marcus, you didn’t. And now I don’t know how I feel.” Oliver reached under the bed and pulled out his suitcase. “Until I do, I need to get away.”
It felt like only last week that he’d arrived with his luggage in hand and they’d laughed while they made room for him. Marcus withdrew to the living room. He stared at the typewriter on his dining table and realized that getting any more work done today was beyond even the help of Benzedrine. He became so mired in his thoughts that Oliver had to clear his throat before Marcus noticed him standing at the front door, case in hand.
“Will you call me?” Marcus asked.
Oliver didn’t nod, nor did he shake his head. He simply lowered his eyes and disappeared through the door.
Marcus crossed over to the kitchen window to watch Oliver skirt around the pool as discreetly as he could and hurry up the path. As he rounded an azalea bush, the radio started playing the Duke Ellington tune, “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me.”
Marcus wrapped his fingers around the window latch. “Screw you!” he told Ellington, and slammed the window shut.
CHAPTER 40
Sitting alone at the center table of La Rue on the Sunset Strip, Kathryn picked up the red and gray Hollywood Canteen matchbook and started tapping it against the black lacquered tabletop, trying to ignore her nerves. This isn’t my pitch. I’m not here to impress Howard Hughes. That’s all up to Wilkerson. I’m just here to be a cheerleader. Billy! Billy! Rah, rah, rah!
Both Wilkerson and Hughes were late, so she looked around the restaurant in case a story appeared. She spotted Ida Lupino with her husband, Louis Hayward. How interesting! I thought they were on the verge of announcing their divorce. Randolph Scott and Cary Grant were lunching with their wives, Patricia Stillman and Barbara Hutton. Kathryn made some notes on the back of next month’s Canteen volunteer schedule.
When Ciro’s burned down, Kathryn assumed it portended the last of Wilkerson’s foray into upscale dining. He’d opened the Trocadero, Vendome Café, and Ciro’s, and they’d all done very well until he lost interest and moved on to something new. But Kathryn had underestimated her boss. His latest “something new” was a classy lunch spot he’d called La Rue, and in typical Wilkersonian style, he’d gone all out.
La Rue sported gold leather booths and two enormous crystal chandeliers so elaborate that Wilkerson claimed he’d hired specialists to come down from San Francisco to keep them clean. Kathryn had never seen these cleaners, so she wasn’t convinced they actually existed, but it made for great copy. And it seemed to do the trick—the Master of Hype’s latest eatery had become popular with celebrities by the end of the month.
Hughes came dashing into the restaurant like he was three hours late. He slid into Kathryn’s booth and ordered a large tomato juice, room temperature, no ice.
The man was still gangly thin, but his face had filled out since the USO tour.
“Nice to see you again.” He scanned the room, for kewpie cuties, Kathryn guessed, and then settled in to focus on her. He smiled when he noticed the bracelet on her wrist.
She’d managed to talk Melody Hope into being realistic about the Hughes situation by admitting that she’d had an abortion herself. It took Kathryn several days to track down Dr. Harrison, the doctor she’d seen, but by the end of the week everything had been taken care of. The MGM brass never found out, and everybody accepted Kathryn’s tonsillectomy story at face value. Several weeks later, a spectacular bouquet of yellow Oriental lilies arrived at the Garden of Allah with a silver charm bracelet whose nine tiny letter-shaped charms spelled out “HOLLYWOOD.” Attached to the bracelet was a note: To Kathryn, a friend indeed, H.H.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “Choosing jewelry for women is a tricky business.”
Kathryn lifted her wrist and jiggled it so the silver letters caught the chandelier light. “I get compliments whenever I wear it.”
“It barely begins to express how grateful I am, especially seeing as how I got nowhere with Gwendolyn’s brother. I tried all my contacts in the armed services, but they stonewalled me. The guy must be in the thick of things; I’ve never seen the brass so button-lipped.”
“Thanks for trying, anyway.”
A wave of anticipation rolled through the crowd, and all eyes darted to the front door where Bogie and Bacall were strolling in with a humility bordering on shyness. Kathryn was glad to see them dispense with the over-wide smiles, the showy waves, and the too-loud laughter.
A couple of months ago, Bogie’s wife announced that their marriage was over, but everybody at the Garden already knew; Bogie had moved into villa number eight. He had confessed to Kathryn the date of his impending marriage to Betty Bacall, and told her that if she kept it to herself, she could have the exclusive. It was a big scoop that garnered a lot of attention, but it also meant that Bogie trusted her again, which struck Kathryn as sadly ironic, considering what the FBI was asking of her. She wondered if it was too late to weasel out of her agreement.
Kathryn hoped for a moment with Bogie, but he was intent on avoiding all eye contact, so she gave up and turned back to Hughes. He wore a bemused smile in his dark eyes.
“What?” she asked him.
“I assume this is some sort of pitch meeting.” He took Kathryn’s silence as a yes. “Now that this place is up and running, your boss has something new in mind?”
It was time to go for broke. “He’s got this screwy idea that he wants to build a casino.”
“That’s not so screwy.” Hughes motioned to a waiter for a refill. “If you run them right and keep out of the clutches of the mob, they can be a bonanza.”
“That must be why he’s been talking about the desert.”
“Which desert?”
“Out past the Mojave, into Nevada. But you’ve seen the way he plays poker. Putting a guy like Billy Wilkerson in charge of a casino is like making W.C. Fields foreman of the Johnnie Walker factory.”
“So you want me to knock him back?”
Kathryn leaned forward. “You’re here because he’s four hundred grand short on capital. Last week he went down to Agua Caliente to win it—and ended up losing two hundred grand.” For years now, Kathryn had kept the betting cage supervisor of the Agua Caliente racing track on retainer. He cost her a pricey $50 per month and had provided her with all sorts of tips, but never had he come in as handy as he had last week. “I’m just saying that if you’re going to put money into this absurd venture of his, do it with your eyes open.”
/> Wilkerson chose that moment to make his entrance, all smiles and nods. He stopped by several tables—Bogie and Bacall’s included—before approaching the booth with his hands outstretched, ready to “greet and grip,” to use his own words.
When Hughes ordered butterflied steak and green beet salad, Wilkerson unhesitatingly followed suit, so Kathryn told the waiter to make it three. Wilkerson didn’t even bother with niceties, and jumped into his spiel. That morning, Wilkerson had coached her on her role for tonight. Lots of smiling, lots of “Oh my goodness, yes!” and precious little else.
Wilkerson made no secret of what he wanted: $600,000 to meet his budget in return for a substantial stake in his Flamingo Club. As Wilkerson laid out his plan, Hughes posed no questions and made no interruptions. The steaks arrived just as Wilkerson was winding up.
“That’s the deal, plain and simple,” Wilkerson concluded. “Now let’s enjoy these steaks and talk of better things, like the end of the war. They’ve gotta capture Goering soon. The Huns can’t hold out much longer, don’t you think? Then this whole blasted mess will be over and we can all get back to business as usual.”
Another wave of excitement swept through the crowd as Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli walked in. The couple had just announced their plans to marry. The talented star falling in love with the sensitive director was a classic Hollywood fairytale, and the press had run with it from coast to coast.
“Excuse me,” Wilkerson said, getting to his feet, “but I have some glad-handing to do.”
As soon as he was out of earshot, Kathryn asked Hughes, “What do you think?”
“Gambling’s legal in Nevada,” Hughes said. “It’s got that going for it.”
Kathryn thought about Gwendolyn’s dilemma with Linc and his suspicions about his father cooking the books and transferring money to and from Clem O’Roarke. On a whim, she asked, “Ever heard of an outfit called Primm Valley Realty?”
Kathryn loved it when she surprised big-time businessmen. “As a matter of fact, I have.”
Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Page 29
