“What are you doing?”
“You mean since you came in me the third time eleven minutes ago?” she replied one day, exasperated. She knew he didn’t like her to be vulgar, except when they were making love, and she used it in retaliation when she felt that he was overcrowding her. Hearing his disapproving silence, she relented. “I’m lying here on my brand-new sets of Porthault sheets that you bought me in Paris, exhausted from your lovemaking, Jules, drinking a glass of wine from the Bresciani auction that you brought over to my house. That’s what I’m doing.” She didn’t tell him that she was also smoking a joint. She knew he wouldn’t have approved of that. He told her once he had no patience with people who took drugs.
In time Flo became stultified by the persistency of Jules’s demanding love in their relationship. He wanted her to be there always for him, in case he should drop in on her unexpectedly, or telephone her, which he sometimes did as often as ten times a day, or more. A busy telephone line could send him into a tantrum. He imagined that there were other men in her life, even though he knew there weren’t. She drank more wine. She smoked more marijuana. Several times she threatened to pull away from him, but such threats did not unnerve Jules. There was no doubt in his mind that he was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Flo March’s life. He knew that Flo knew that too. He understood totally the power of money. How gorgeous it was. How easy it was to get used to. How terrifying it was to imagine life without it once one had become used to it.
Except in the evenings, when he drove Pauline to parties, Jules stopped driving his blue Bentley, because he felt that someone might recognize it when he drove each afternoon to Flo’s house on Azelia Way. He leased himself an expensive but nondescript Cadillac with darkened windows that he could see out of but passers-by could not see into. One night when Pauline was in New York for a party, he drove Flo back to her old apartment in the obscure neighborhood—at least obscure to Jules Mendelson—known as the Silverlake district, where she had resided before the recent good fortune that had changed the economic circumstances of her life. She went to pick up some mail that her former landlady told her was there. When they stopped at a red light on Melrose Avenue, Flo looked out the window of Jules’s car at a bag lady on the street, making her preparations for the night. Terror seized her.
“She reminds me of my mother,” said Flo.
“Who?” asked Jules.
“Her.” Flo pointed at the bag lady. “I bet that lady was pretty at one time, like my mother was.”
Jules nodded.
“My mother died in a fire in a welfare hotel.”
“You told me that in Paris,” said Jules.
“You’re going to take care of me, aren’t you, Jules? I can’t die poor like my mother. I just can’t.”
“I am taking care of you.”
“No, I mean after.”
“After what?”
“Nothing.”
He knew what she meant, but he could not bear to think of what she meant. They drove on in silence.
Each morning without fail Philip Quennell went to the AA meeting at the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard. He sat reading the newspaper before the meeting started and rarely mixed in conversation with the other members of the fellowship.
A bright red fingernail tapped on the sports page of the Los Angeles Tribunal that he was reading one morning. “Think McEnroe will ever make a comeback?” asked Flo.
“Hi, Flo,” he said.
“Hi, Phil,” she answered. She opened her bag and took out the handkerchief he had handed to her at Hector Paradiso’s funeral. It had been laundered and ironed. “Thanks for the loan,” she said.
“That was some funeral,” he said, taking it.
“Did you see Loretta Young?” she asked. “I hope I look that good when I’m her age.”
Philip smiled.
“Who would have thought we would both be attending the same fashionable funeral so soon after meeting?” asked Flo. “I suppose you were at Rose Cliveden’s lunch party at the Los Angeles Country Club afterwards.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I read about it in Cyril Rathbone’s column in Mulholland,” said Flo. “Poor Rose.”
“Why poor Rose?”
“You didn’t hear? She fell down and broke her leg at her lunch party. She tripped over Hector’s dog, Astrid.”
“Did you read that in Cyril Rathbone’s column too?”
“That’s where I get all my information,” said Flo.
After the meeting, when they were leaving, Philip said to Flo, “What was the name of that club you mentioned to me where Hector Paradiso went on the night he committed suicide?”
“I didn’t hear you say Hector committed suicide, did I?”
“It seems to be the popular theory.”
“I’m surprised you fell for that line, a smart guy like you. Miss Garbo’s is the name of the club. Some of the guys who go there just call it Garbo’s.”
“Where is it?” asked Philip.
“On a street called Astopovo, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Somehow I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of hangout.”
“You wouldn’t want to go there with me, would you? To Miss Garbo’s? I’d like to find out who Hector left with that night.”
“I’d like to, Phil, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I told you I was spoken for.”
“Listen, I’m not coming on to you, I swear. I meant as pals only. I didn’t want to go there alone.”
“But I’ve got a jealous fella. He calls me twenty times a day to keep tabs on me.”
“A rejection, huh?”
“Sorry, Phil.”
“Actually, it’s Philip, not Phil. I really don’t like to be called Phil.”
“Oh, sorry. Philip. Sounds classier.”
“You’re sure you won’t come?”
“Pretty girls like me they definitely do not want at Miss Garbo’s after midnight. But I’ll certainly want to hear what you find out. Ask for Manning Einsdorf. He’s the one who makes the arrangements.”
“So I hear.”
“And Phil?”
Philip turned to look at her.
She snapped her fingers. “I mean Philip. A cute guy like you, you better put a padlock on your fly,” said Flo.
That day Philip Quennell placed a call to Sandy Pond, the publisher of the Los Angeles Tribunal.
“Will Mr. Pond know what this is in reference to?” asked Sandy Pond’s secretary after Philip had identified himself.
“Tell him I am the author of the book called Takeover, about Reza Bulbenkian,” replied Philip.
“Would you care to tell me what it is you’re calling Mr. Pond about?” asked the secretary.
“I wouldn’t, no,” replied Philip.
“It is customary for me to ask. Mr. Pond is extremely busy.”
“I understand.”
“Then you won’t tell me?”
“No. You have only to ask him and to identify me. Then it’s up to Mr. Pond to decide whether he will speak to me, isn’t it?”
There was an icy silence. “Just a moment,” she said.
In an instant Sandy Pond picked up the telephone. “I certainly enjoyed your book, Mr. Quennell,” he said. “Is it true that Reza Bulbenkian threatened to break your legs? That’s what we heard.”
Philip laughed. “There was something like that, yes.”
“I understand from my wife that you’re seeing our great friend Camilla Ebury,” said Sandy Pond.
“Yes.” Philip did not elaborate.
“How can I help you?” asked Sandy Pond.
“I am very curious that your paper hasn’t covered the murder of Hector Paradiso,” said Philip.
There was a pause. “Murder? What murder?” replied Sandy Pond.
“Death, then,” said Philip.
Sandy Pond did not speak.
“You did know Hector Paradiso, did you not?”
“I
did, yes. I was a pallbearer at his funeral. A charming man. A great friend of my wife’s. She always said he was the best dancer in Los Angeles. It’s all so sad, so terribly sad.”
“He was shot five times, Mr. Pond,” said Philip. “I was there at the house a few hours afterwards, with Camilla Ebury. I identified his body for the police.”
“But it was a suicide, Mr. Quennell. I have seen the autopsy report.”
“Don’t you find it odd that someone could shoot himself five times?” asked Philip.
“Apparently he was deeply depressed. The autopsy report goes on to say that he was a poor shot. I will be happy to have my secretary send a copy of it on to you,” said Sandy Pond. His tone of voice indicated that he wished to terminate the conversation.
“But don’t you think even that is a story worth covering, Mr. Pond?”
“Would you explain yourself?”
“A prominent man in the city, who moves in the highest social circles, dines and dances at the home of the Jules Mendelsons, and then commits suicide by shooting himself five times in the torso. Where I come from, that’s a story. Add to that that he was a member of a Land Grant family and has a boulevard named after him, and that’s a front-page story.”
“Is that all, Mr. Quennell?”
“I believe that, for some reason I do not understand, there is a cover-up going on, and that your newspaper is a party to that cover-up.”
“Ludicrous, and libelous,” said Sandy Pond. All trace of pleasantness had vanished from his voice.
Philip, fearing that Sandy Pond would hang up on him, began to speak very quickly. “Isn’t it a fact that Jules Mendelson went to see you on the morning that Hector Paradiso was murdered? I beg your pardon, on the morning that Hector Paradiso committed suicide.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Quennell.”
That evening at a dinner party at the home of Ralph and Madge White in Hancock Park, Sandy Pond motioned to Jules Mendelson to follow him onto the lanai after dinner, when the other guests were having coffee in the living room.
“Have you ever heard of someone called Philip Quennell?” he asked. “He wrote that book on your friend Bulbenkian.”
“Yes, I have. He’s seeing Camilla. Why?” asked Jules.
“I had a most upsetting call from him this afternoon.”
• • •
That same night, in a different part of the city, Miss Garbo’s was mobbed. Miss Garbo’s was mobbed every night. Marvene McQueen, the chanteuse, was in the middle of her set.
“You are not my first love. I’ve known other men,” she sang.
She stared straight up into the spotlight. Her lips puckered over her protruding teeth. Tears filled her eye-shadowed eyes as she moaned out her signature number. One of the shoulder straps of her black evening dress dropped down on her arm. She allowed her hair to fall over one eye, like a forties film star. It was a wasted performance. No one in the crowded bar paid the slightest bit of attention to her.
“Zane,” called out Manning Einsdorf to the bartender. Manning sat on a high stool where he could survey the entire room. “Don’t serve any more drinks to Mr. Coughlin and guest at table twenty-six. They’ve had enough. And tell the parking boy to call a cab and not let him drive home either. I’m not going to have the West Hollywood police closing down my place because of a couple of drunks.”
“Calm down, calm down, Manning,” said Zane. “It’s all taken care of.”
“Miss Einsdorf is very jumpy lately,” said Joel Zircon, who was standing at the bar listening to the exchange.
“Miss Einsdorf has been very jumpy ever since you-know-who left here with you-know-who and ended up with five bullets in him. She bites my head off ten times a night,” said Zane.
Philip Quennell walked into the club. For several minutes he was unnoticed in the packed and noisy room. Making his way through the crowd, he found himself a space at the bar by standing sideways. Joel Zircon, who had been introduced to Philip at Le Dôme by Mona Berg, looked down the bar at him in surprise and then stared at him through the blue mirrored wall behind the liquor bottles. Philip, waiting to be served, concentrated on Marvene McQueen’s set.
“You better go now, because I like you much too much, you better go now,” she sang.
“Beer?” asked Zane, when he found time to approach Philip.
“Soda water,” answered Philip.
“Lemon? Lime?” asked Zane.
“Lemon.”
Zane filled the glass from a rubber tube attached to a spigot and placed it in front of Philip.
“Who’s the singer?” asked Philip.
“Marvene McSomebody,” replied Zane.
“Drag queen?”
“No, real girl.”
“Buckteeth.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m looking for someone called Manning Einsdorf,” said Philip. He leaned forward on the bar toward Zane so that he would not have to raise his voice.
Zane looked at Philip. “He’s the fella sitting on the high stool at the end of the bar. He’s pretty busy tonight. Is he expecting you?”
“No.”
“Who shall I tell him wants to see him?”
“I’ll tell him myself,” said Philip. He pulled out from his position at the bar and walked down to where Manning Einsdorf was surveying the activity in his club.
“Zane!” hissed Joel Zircon. When Zane turned around, Joel signaled for him to come over to where he was standing at the bar. “What did that guy want?”
“Asked for Manning. Who is he? Doesn’t look like our crowd, if you know what I mean,” said Zane. “But you never know these days.”
“No, no. Definitely not our crowd. He’s writing a documentary for Casper Stieglitz so Casper won’t have to go to jail for being caught with ten pounds of cocaine,” said Joel. “Mona Berg told me all about it. What the fuck do you suppose he’s doing here?”
“Who?” asked Manning Einsdorf, leaning down from his high stool and putting his hand to his ear.
Philip repeated the name. “Lonny.”
“I never heard of such a person,” said Manning.
“Blond, handsome, apparently.”
“That could be any of a couple of hundred guys who come in here nightly.”
“The name means nothing to you?”
“That’s right.”
“I see,” said Philip. “Did you know Hector Paradiso?”
“I didn’t, no,” replied Manning Einsdorf. He turned away and called out to the bartender. “Zane, they need drinks at table twenty-two. And send Marvene a glass of champagne.
Tell her she was terrific tonight. Tell her not to forget ‘Moanin’ Low’ in the next set.”
Philip, dismissed, remained. “You say you didn’t know Hector Paradiso?” he asked.
“I already told you I didn’t.”
“But you went to his funeral.”
“Who said I went to his funeral?”
“No one said.”
“So, where did you get such an idea?”
“I sat in the row behind you. You were with Joel Zircon, the agent who works with Mona Berg, and Willard, Casper Stieglitz’s butler.”
Manning Einsdorf began to feel uncomfortable.
“Well, of course, I knew Hector slightly,” said Manning. “I mean, everyone knew Hector Paradiso, God rest his soul, but he wasn’t a close friend.”
“I understand he was here in your club on the night he was murdered.”
“He wasn’t murdered.”
“I beg your pardon. I understand he was here in your club on the night he committed suicide.”
“No. I don’t recall that he was.”
“Think.”
“Look around you. The place is packed like this every night. I can’t remember everyone who comes in here. Miss Garbo’s wasn’t Hector’s sort of place, you know. Hector was a high society sort of person.”
Philip persisted. “He came here that night in a dinner jacket straight from a party
at Pauline Mendelson’s. People tell me he even described to you what Pauline was wearing that night.”
“I don’t remember any of that,” said Manning.
“And you don’t remember his leaving with a young blond man called Lonny?”
“How many times have I got to tell you that I never heard of anyone called Lonny, and I didn’t see Hector in here that night?”
“Thanks.”
“Stick around. My new singer’s going to go on again.”
“I heard enough of your singer.”
In the parking lot, Philip Quennell handed the parking boy his ticket. “Beige Le Sabre,” he said.
A back door of the club opened. Zane stuck his head out and, seeing Philip, whistled between his fingers. When Philip turned around to respond to the whistle, Zane signaled with his head for him to come over.
“I’m on a piss break. I gotta talk quick,” he said.
“Your boss does not exactly dwell in the palace of truth,” said Philip.
“No, no. Truth was never Manning’s long suit,” replied Zane.
“What’s up?” asked Philip.
Zane looked behind him into the club before he spoke. “You’re looking for Lonny?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Lonny, and I don’t even know Lonny’s last name.”
“Edge. His name is Lonny Edge. Lives on Cahuenga Boulevard—7204¼ Cahuenga—near Ivar. I don’t know the phone number, and he’s unlisted, but he left here with Hector about two-thirty that night.”
“What’s your name?” asked Philip.
“Zane.”
“Thanks, Zane. How come you’re telling me this? Your boss could fire you.”
“Hector Paradiso was a good guy to me, and I don’t buy this suicide story. There was no way he was on his way to committing suicide the last night he was in here. No way. Someone’s covering up his murder.”
Philip nodded. “That’s exactly what’s happening. What’s this Lonny Edge like?”
An Inconvenient Woman Page 16
