“I think an ordinary room, Chet, thank you,” Pick said.
Gayfer turned to the key rack, took one, and then handed it to him.
“The Penthouse,” he said. “Take it.” When Pick reached for his wallet, he held his hands up, fingers spread. “My pleasure. I want you to comp me at the Andrew Foster.”
What the hell. The Penthouse at least doesn’t look like a hotel room—as in taking a girl to a hotel room.
“It’s done,” Pick said. “Thank you.”
“Where’s your luggage?”
“It will be coming.”
“Have a good time, Pick,” Gayfer said with a knowing smile. But then he asked, “How’s Dick Stecker? You ever see him?”
“Yeah, he’s in Hawaii.”
“Give him my regards if you see him,” Gayfer said.
“I will,” Pick said, and walked across the lobby to the bar.
Martha was sitting at the bar. She already had a drink, as well as the fascinated attention of a number of young men in Navy and Marine uniforms who were sitting to either side of her.
He walked up to her.
“I ordered you a scotch,” she said.
The bright smiles faded from the faces of quite a few young officers.
“Did you get a room?” she asked. “Let me have the key.”
The faces now registered gross surprise.
He handed Martha the key. She looked at it.
“There’s no number on it.”
“It’s the Penthouse,” he said.
“Maybe it would be a good idea if you bring something to drink with you when you come up,” she said.
Does she not know these clowns can hear her? Or doesn’t she give a damn?
She walked out of the bar and through the door to the lobby, carrying her drink with her.
“Give me a bottle of this,” Pick said to the bartender, “and let me pay for the drinks the lady ordered.”
“I can’t do that, Sir,” the bartender said. “Sorry.”
“Call Mr. Gayfer,” Pick said. “And tell him the bottle’s going to the Penthouse.” When he saw hesitation on the bartender’s face, he said, more sharply than he intended, “Do it!”
The bartender went to the telephone and returned a moment later, his hands refusing the money Pick held out to him.
“Mr. Gayfer said he’d put it on your bill, Sir,” he said. Then he took a fresh bottle of Johnnie Walker from under the bar and handed it to Pick.
“Thank you,” Pick said, then smiled at the officers at the bar. “Good hunting, gentlemen,” he said, and walked out to the lobby.
The door to the Penthouse was open. Martha was by the windows overlooking the street, half sitting on the sill.
“I think you find my etchings interesting, as the bishop said to the nun.”
She smiled.
He glanced around the sitting room and into the kitchenette. Both bedroom doors were closed. It was a hotel suite now, nothing more. There was no hint that a pair of Marine second lieutenants had once lived here while learning to fly.
“Brings back memories?” Martha asked.
“Yeah. Some. We had a lot of fun here.”
“I was only here once. You’re talking about you and Dick?”
He nodded.
“How is he?”
He met her eyes. “He got his gear shot out; made it back to Henderson, dumped it, rolled his airplane into a ball, and is now in the Navy Hospital at Pearl, wrapped up like a mummy.”
“I’m sorry,” Martha said. “I liked Dick.”
“Everybody likes Dick.”
“You didn’t get hurt?”
He shook his head no.
“Jim told me you were a natural pilot,” she said.
Jim? Oh. Carstairs. Captain James Carstairs.
“And you’re an ace,” she went on. “I saw the way they looked at you.”
“You saw how who looked at me?” he asked. And then, before she could reply, he held up the bottle and asked, “You want some of this?”
“In a minute; I still have some,” she said, raising her glass; it was a quarter full. Then she went on: “The kids, the students at Corey Field this morning.”
He walked into the kitchenette and started making himself a drink.
“You were at the Field this morning? I didn’t see you,” he said from there.
“I didn’t want you to see me.”
“I hope you were suitably impressed.”
“I was,” Martha said. “You had those kids hanging on your every word.”
“I was talking about the flying.”
“I was talking about Lieutenant Pickering, the Marine officer. You weren’t that way when you left. You’ve changed. You reminded me of my husband today.”
“He’s dead.”
“Why did you have to say that?”
“Because sometimes I think you think he’s coming back.”
“I guess I did for a while. No more.”
He finished making his drink and went back into the sitting room. Martha hadn’t moved from the window.
“So now you get on with your life, right?” Pick asked.
“Right.”
“And does that include me?”
She turned, carefully put her glass on the windowsill, and then pushed herself erect and looked at him.
“I’m sorry I brought you here, Pick,” she said. “Sorry I put you through this.”
She touched his cheek with her hand, then stepped around him and walked across the room and out into the corridor. She stopped and turned.
“Take care of yourself,” she said, and then she was gone.
Pick exhaled audibly. Then he put his untouched drink on the windowsill beside hers, waited for the sound of the elevator to tell him that she was gone, and walked out of the apartment.
At the door he turned, went into the kitchenette and picked up the bottle of scotch, took a last look around the Penthouse, and left.
[THREE]
Belle-Vue Garden Apartments
Los Angeles, California
1325 Hours 4 November 1942
When the door buzzer sounded, Dawn Morris was at her card table, autographing a stack of eight-by-ten-inch photographs.
Actually, they weren’t real photographs, run through an enlarger; they were printed, like the cover of a magazine, but on heavy paper with white borders, so they looked like photographs. And this disappointed her just a little when she first saw them.
Dawn managed to talk herself out of that little disappointment, however, after it sank in that there were two thousand of them, and that not just any old photographer took them, but Metro-Magnum Studios’ Chief Still Photographer himself, and that Mr. Cooperman, who was Jake Dillon’s stand-in as publicity chief, told her they would order more as necessary.
They’d printed up all those photographs so she could pass them out on the war bond tour. The picture showed her in something like a military uniform, except that she wasn’t wearing a shirt under the jacket, and you could see really quite a lot of her cleavage.
Mr. Cooperman said they were going to start calling her “The GI’s Sweetheart.” And just as soon as she came off the tour, they were going to start shooting her first feature film. She would play a Red Cross girl who breaks the rules and dates a GI. She falls in love with him and gets caught, and gets in trouble. They hadn’t resolved that yet—how she was going to get out of trouble—but they would by the time she came off the war bond tour.
Anyway, she was under contract to Metro-Magnum Studios. And they were paying her five hundred dollars a week. While that certainly wasn’t nearly as much money as they were paying some star like Veronica Wood, for example, it was a lot more than she ever made in a month, much less a week.
Mr. Cooperman said they wanted to take advantage of the war bond tour publicity, so they were going to make the movie just as fast as they could. They would get it out right away, not let it gather dust in the vault. Dawn wasn’t sure how she felt abou
t that. You obviously couldn’t make a high-quality movie if you did it in a hurry. But on the other hand, it was better to be the star of a movie made in a hurry than not to be in any movie at all.
When the doorbell rang, Dawn had no idea who it could be. Somebody she didn’t want to see anyway, probably; so she didn’t answer the door at first.
Then whoever it was just sat on the damned button and banged on the door with keys or something…which was probably going to chip the paint and make the superintendent give her trouble. Not that she really had to give a shit anymore; she’d be out of this dump by the time she came off the war bond tour. Get a place maybe closer to Beverly Hills. Or maybe even she’d get lucky and find some place on the beach.
Mr. Cooperman said not to worry about gas rationing. Motion pictures had been declared a war industry, just like the airplane companies. Since she was driving to work in a war industry, she would get a “C” Ration Sticker for her car.
Dawn stood up and went to the picture window; she’d made a hole in the curtain over it that let her peek out at whoever was at her door.
At least most of the time: It was possible to stand in a place that was out of range of her peephole. And the person who was there today was doing that. But she did recognize Mr. Jake Dillon’s yellow Packard 120 convertible in the parking lot. It stood out like a rose in a garbage dump from all the junks there…including Dawn’s 1935 Chevrolet coupe.
She wondered what he wanted. But then, that wasn’t all that hard to figure out. So the question was really how to give it to him. How coy should she appear? Probably not very coy at all, she decided. They’d understood each other right from the start. She scratched his back by being nice to the kid he brought home from the war, and he scratched hers by getting her a film test. A really good film test. Which meant she owed him. And now he was coming to collect.
So what was wrong with that? She’d been around Hollywood long enough to know all about the casting couch. And having Jake Dillon as a friend certainly wouldn’t hurt her career any. And she certainly wouldn’t be the only actress who was being nice to Dillon. Veronica Wood was screwing him.
I wonder if she’d be pissed if she found out I was doing it with him, too.
She called, “Just a moment, please!” And then she went to the door and unfastened the chain and all the dead-bolt locks you needed in a dump like this to keep people from stealing you blind. As she was finishing with that, she had a final pleasant thought: Three weeks ago, I couldn’t even get in an agent’s office. And here I am about to do it with Mr. Jake Dillon and worrying if Veronica Wood will be pissed if she finds out!
“Hello, Dawn, darling,” Miss Veronica Wood greeted her. “I hope I didn’t rip you out of bed or anything?”
“Oh, no,” Dawn said. “I’m really surprised to see you here, Miss Wood.”
“I had a hell of a time finding it, I’ll tell you that,” Veronica said. “Can I come in?”
What the hell does she want?
“Oh, of course. Excuse me,” Dawn said. “Please come in. You’ll have to excuse the appearance of the place….”
“I’ve lived in worse,” Veronica said, and walked to the card table and picked up one of the photographs.
“Isn’t that Mr. Dillon’s car?”
“Yeah. They finally got it fixed,” Veronica said. Then, tossing the photograph back on the table, she said, “Not bad. Who did that, Roger Marshutz?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
“He’s a horny little bastard; keep your knees crossed when you’re around him. But he’s one hell of a photographer. He did a nice job with your boobs on this one.”
“I liked it,” Dawn said.
“You’ll pass them out on the war bond tour, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. I was over at Publicity just before I came here, and they were signing mine.”
What the hell does that mean?
“Excuse me? I don’t quite understand.”
Veronica looked at Dawn as if her suspicions that she was retarded were just confirmed.
“The girls, the girls in Publicity, were signing my handouts.”
“Oh.”
Of course, Veronica Wood is a star. Stars don’t autograph their own pictures. How the hell would the fans know if the real star had signed them or not? I am not a star—at least not yet. And that’s why I’m signing my own photographs. What the hell, I sort of like signing them. But this will be the last time. Next time the girls in Publicity can sign “Warm regards, Dawn Morris” two thousand times. They probably have nicer handwriting than I do, anyway.
“Can I offer you something to drink?”
“Have you got any scotch?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t think I do.”
“Then I’ll pass, thanks anyway.”
“I know I have gin.”
“Gin makes me horny, and then it gives me a headache,” Veronica Wood said. “I don’t like to get horny unless I can do something about it. Thanks anyway.”
“Is there something you wanted, Miss Wood?”
“No, I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d pop in and say ‘howdy,’” Veronica said, meeting her eyes. “I wanted to talk to you about Bobby.”
Bobby? Who the hell is Bobby? Oh.
“Corporal Easterbrook, you mean? What about him?”
“Actually, Lieutenant Easterbrook,” Veronica said. “They gave him a commission. You didn’t know?”
Dawn shrugged helplessly. “What about him?”
“Now you and I know why you were screwing him at Jake’s place,” Veronica said. “But I don’t think he does.”
“I don’t…” Dawn began.
“Let me put it this way, Dawn darling,” Veronica interrupted her. And then she changed the entire pitch and timbre of her voice, sounding as well bred and cultured as she did in her last film, where she played the Sarah Lawrence-educated daughter of a Detroit industrialist who fell in love with her father’s chauffeur. It earned her an Academy Award nomination. “As you take your first steps toward what we all hope will be a distinguished motion picture career, the one thing you don’t need is to have me pissed at you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I like that kid,” Veronica said, her diction and timbre returning to normal. “He’s a good kid. He’s been through stuff in the war you and I can’t even imagine, and he’s just dumb and sweet enough to think that you were screwing him because you liked him.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Dawn said.
“Yeah, you do. It’s time for Bobby to get thrown out of your bed. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. You couldn’t keep it up if you wanted to. Even in his lieutenant’s costume, he looks like a little boy. You can’t afford a reputation for robbing the cradle, either.”
“He is young, isn’t he,” Dawn said. “And he’s so sweet!”
“So,” Veronica said. “The question is how to let Bobby down gently. You want to be an actress, act. You figure out how to do it. Just keep in mind that if you don’t do a really nice job of letting him down, you will not only break his heart, but you will really piss me off. You really don’t want to do that.”
Dawn had her first rebellious thought, and it was not entirely unpleasant: Jesus, is it possible that she’s looking at me as a threat to her? Of course it’s possible. But I’m not as vulnerable as she thinks I am. The studio has plans for me—based on my screen test, and on the fact that Shirley Maxwell liked it. She may have an Academy Award nomination, and she may be screwing the ears off Jake Dillon, but she doesn’t come close to having the influence Shirley Maxwell has on her husband. And he runs the studio!
“I have no intention of hurting Bob Easterbrook, Miss Wood,” Dawn said. “I really like him. You didn’t have to come here and threaten me.”
“It wasn’t a threat, it was statement of fact.”
“Not that I think you could do a thing to harm me�
��”
“Oh! I’ll be goddamned! Darling, let me let you in on a little secret. The real power at Metro-Magnum is Shirley Maxwell. Don’t ever forget that. And just for the record, Shirley and I go way back. She was under contract, too, you know. We were in the chorus of a swimming-pool epic with Esther Williams…and we were sharing a dump like this. Anyhow, she once confided in me back then that she really loved that porcine dwarf she finally married. And I confided in her that I really loved Jake Dillon, and I was going to catch him in a weak mood and get him to marry me. The consequence of that is that Shirley knows that I’m the only female on the lot who’s not trying to get her husband’s undersized dork out of his pants and into her mouth. And Shirley likes Jake, too…and not only because of me. When I heard that Shirley said nice things to the dwarf about your test, I knew it was because of Jake. You’re not bad-looking, and you have a fine set of boobs, but so do five thousand other girls out here. How long do you think you’d last if I went to Shirley and told her to keep an eye on the dwarf, he’s got the hots for Whatsername, Dawn something, the one with the sexy voice and the big teats?”
They locked eyes for a moment.
“I think we understand each other, Miss Wood,” Dawn finally said.
“Yeah, I think maybe we do,” Veronica said, and then shifted back into the role of Pamela Hornsbury of Sarah Lawrence and Detroit. “And please call me Veronica. Now that you’re going to be part of the Metro-Magnum family, it seems only appropriate, don’t you think, darling?”
Then she smiled and walked out of Dawn’s apartment.
[FOUR]
Cottage B
The Foster Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills, California
1325 Hours 5 November 1942
“May I come in?” the general manager of the Foster Beverly Hills said, inserting his head through the open door.
First Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, waved him in, then held up his index finger, asking him to wait. Pick was sitting on a couch whose wildly floral upholstery and faux-bamboo wood manifested, he supposed, a South Pacific ambience. There was a telephone at his ear.
“I know they’re in the Federal Building,” he said to the telephone. “Or maybe it’s the Post Office Building. Would you keep trying? It’s the West Coast, or Los Angeles, or something like that, Detachment of the Public Affairs Division of the Marine Corps. Thank you.”
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