Mayer and Mannix looked at the two lawyers, who nodded.
“There’s something we need you to do,” Mannix said.
This doesn’t sound good.
“We want to secure the rights to Reds in the Beds.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Marcus thundered. “It’s bad enough the book’s done so well to convince half of America that there’s a Pinko in every bed in Hollywood. Film it and that message will find its way to every corner of the country.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mayer snapped. “Nobody said anything about making a movie out of that donkey shit.”
“You want to make sure nobody makes a movie out of it.”
“And you need to get it for us.”
Evidently, nobody in the room had heard about the brawl down in Long Beach. Marcus chose his words carefully. “I’m not the best guy for that job.” Because Clifford Wardell hates my guts with a rage that Hitler would envy.
“I put a call through to that bastard’s publisher,” Mannix said, “and they told me Wardell’s contract gives him the power to conduct all screen right negotiations.”
“I assure you,” Marcus insisted, “our best chance at scoring those rights will be if someone else does the negotiating.”
Mannix crossed his arms. “Adler,” he said, his voice low and growly, “did I give you the impression you had a choice in this matter?”
Marcus had played office politics long enough to know when to beat a hasty retreat. “I’ll do my very best.”
“You’ll do whatever it takes.”
Marcus nodded and headed for the walnut doors. He kept his eyes glued to the floor until he was in the elevator, facing a recent portrait of Mayer looking smug and detached. Marcus tapped the glass.
“If you were doing your job properly, you’d have jumped on this eight months ago when the book came out. Our chances here are somewhere between zilch and zero.”
CHAPTER 16
Gwendolyn’s sewing machine was so old that Prohibition was still the law of the land when she bought it. It was a basic model, black with the Singer logo in gold. She’d used it to stitch together hundreds of outfits over the years, and it had never once failed her. There were newer models capable of executing much fancier work, but until this one fell apart in her hands, she was happy to rely on the Singing Beast to get her work done.
And what work there was to be done! She walked out of the Midnight Frolics with fifteen orders. After Mr. Dewberry warned the men they’d better be prepared to cough up good dough if they wanted something classy, Gwendolyn quoted as high as she dared, and nobody fainted from shock. Several of them demurred, saying it was beyond their present budget, but most offered to pay the whole amount up front. Gwendolyn told them she’d be perfectly happy to accept half as a deposit, and then take the balance when they came for a fitting. The words “for a fitting” sent most of them twitching in anticipation.
Bent over the Singing Beast, she could feel the heat radiating from the motor and knew it was time to give it a rest. She looked up to see her new volunteer assistant, Arlene, standing in front of her portrait.
“You done with that hem?” Gwendolyn asked.
Arlene nodded. “Those ruffles weren’t too bad, once I got the hang of it.”
A moon-faced accountant type with pudgy fingers and a double chin had requested a Carmen Miranda outfit. Gwendolyn was daunted at first, but when he sent her a photo from That Night in Rio clipped out of Modern Screen showing Miranda in a pale yellow dress with large panels of crimson zigzags, she was relieved. The trickiest part was the puffy sleeves, and they could tackle that after lunch.
When Marcus first told Gwendolyn about his strawberry blonde hooker from Leilah’s brothel, she pictured a hard-bitten Warner Bros. gun moll with a bad henna rinse and a shoddy manicure. She was taken aback when Arlene moved into one of the inexpensive rooms in the main house and shyly joined the cocktail party Bertie threw to celebrate the navy’s first successful atomic blast in the Pacific.
Gwendolyn doubted Bertie could even find this Bikini Atoll on a map, but she knew she’d been looking for an excuse to throw a party. Bertie invented a new drink and called it a Gilda after the nickname the military gave the bomb.
Gwendolyn couldn’t have been more surprised when Arlene asked Kathryn who the Deanna Durbin in the cashmere sweater and ballet slippers was. By the time the party was over and everybody was smashed on Gildas, Gwendolyn had recruited Arlene to help. Gwendolyn had rashly promised to finish two dresses a week and was already starting to panic that she would fail her first-ever paying customers.
Thankfully, Arlene turned out to be as skilled with a needle as she promised. But as much as Gwendolyn needed the help, she didn’t want to continue under false pretenses. It took a special sort of person to be okay with making dresses for men, and Arlene deserved to know what she was doing.
Gwendolyn headed for the kitchen past Arlene, who was still looking at Gwennie O’Hara. “What do you think?”
“You should rig up a spotlight on it,” Arlene said.
“To be honest, I find it narcissistic to have one’s portrait hanging in the living room. Are ham and cheese sandwiches okay? I might have some chutney.”
Arlene trailed after her. “If you think this is narcissistic, you should see what I’ve just escaped from. Oh, brother.”
Gwendolyn pulled bread, cheese, and ham from her little Frigidaire and spread them along the counter. “It must have been dreadful.”
“Could’ve been worse. I figured out ways to avoid the actual work as often as I could.”
Gwendolyn flipped on the radio. After the warm-up static abated, the smooth strains of Perry Como’s “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” filled the kitchen.
“You mean like doing Leilah’s paperwork?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Yes, that, and fixing buttons and zippers and hems for all the girls. They were pretty as all get-out, but Lordy, what a bunch of dummies. They couldn’t do a thing for themselves—not sew, not cook, and forget about balancing a checkbook. Honestly, I’m surprised they figured out which hole to use.”
Gwendolyn looked up from her sandwiches.
The girl rolled her eyes. “After working in a brothel, nothing shocks me anymore.”
Gwendolyn eyed the half-finished Carmen Miranda on the dining table.
“Pretty much the only thing those dumb gals knew how to do was keep the weight off. Mrs. O’Roarke insisted everyone stay movie-star thin, so black coffee and Benzedrine is all I saw any of them have. I guess I’d gotten used to it because when I saw the measurements of this outfit we’re making, my first thought was, Sheesh, how big is this woman? Then I realized, Maybe she ain’t fat, she’s just normal.”
Gwendolyn sliced their sandwiches into triangles and slid them onto plates. “There’s something about my clientele I haven’t shared with you.”
Arlene wiped up an errant spatter of chutney with a finger. “Oh yes?”
Gwendolyn was still deliberating where to start when four loud beeps sounded from the radio.
“We interrupt this broadcast for a news flash. Aviator and movie producer Howard Hughes was testing his new XF-11 photo-reconnaissance plane this afternoon when he experienced propeller trouble over Beverly Hills. Eyewitnesses report he tried to reach the Los Angeles Country Club. However, he lost altitude short of the golf course and made a crash landing on Linden Drive at the western edge of Beverly Hills.”
“Oh my!” Arlene exclaimed. “Do you think he’s dead?”
They moved closer to the radio.
“The giant aircraft tore the roof off 803 North Linden Drive then sliced through the upstairs bedroom of the home next door. Mr. Hughes was pulled from the wreckage alive; however, initial reports state that he hovers near death, with a punctured lung and multiple broken ribs. We shall bring you updates when they come to light.”
As Perry Como filled the kitchen once more, the two women bit into their sandwiches.
“Do yo
u know who lives on Linden?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Who?”
“Leilah O’Roarke.”
“No!”
There was a knock at the door.
Gwendolyn pulled it open to find Marcus and Oliver; Marcus had a large book and Oliver held a letter. She ushered them inside. “You’ve heard the news, then? Can you imagine?”
The guys frowned at her.
“We’ve come with news,” Oliver said, “but something tells me it’s not the same news.” He held up a letter. “My friend was on a mission down in Colombia.”
Linc’s postcard had been stuck to the refrigerator so long, Gwendolyn barely even saw it anymore.
Marcus held up the book in his hands. A Detailed Atlas of the Americas. He laid it on the counter and cracked it open to a map of the west coast of Mexico.
Oliver pointed to a spot about halfway down. “Mazatlán. My pal recognized it straightaway. ‘El faro’ means ‘the lighthouse,’ and apparently the Mazatlán lighthouse is pretty famous, at least in Mexico.”
Marcus flipped over a few pages until he came to a more detailed map of the town. On the opposite page was an alphabetical list of streets. He ran his finger down the first column; Gwendolyn read the name where his finger stopped.
Marcus took Gwendolyn’s left hand. “It’s quite possible that you’ll find Linc living on a street called Emilio Barragán down south of the border.”
Between the Hughes bulletin and this Mazatlán place, Gwendolyn’s mind had gone to mush. She didn’t know what to think, or how to feel, or what her next move should be, or if she even had a next move.
She studied the atlas again. “Looks kinda remote.”
“We made some enquiries and it seems you have three options. Take a series of buses—”
“How many is a series?” Arlene cut in.
“Five. And it takes three weeks.”
“What’s option number two?”
“Fishing boats. They start out at San Diego and go all the way down to a place called Acapulco, stopping at every port along the way. They don’t often take paying passengers, but apparently you can talk your way on board if you show them mucho dinero.”
Gwendolyn jacked her fists on her hips. “So your plan is for me to spend weeks at sea on a boat full of lonely sailors with nothing to do but—” She waved away the rest of her sentence. “Option number three?”
“Hire a pilot with an aircraft and fly down there.”
Gwendolyn looked past the boys to the half-finished Carmen Miranda dress on her dining table. She had no idea how much it cost to hire a pilot and get him to fly down to Mexico, but she was pretty sure it was at least a month’s work. Maybe more. Probably more. Probably a lot more.
Maybe you’ve moved on.
The thought took her breath away.
Even if I did find a way to get down there, what if Linc no longer lives on that street? And even if he’s still there, what’re the chances he’s still got your dough? I’ve now got a list of clients almost begging me to charge as much as I want for a gown. Even so, fifteen clients won’t generate what you need to open a store, but they’re still paying you to do what you love.
“Guys,” she said, “Arlene and I are fighting an uphill battle, so you’ll need to excuse us. We must finish this dress by tonight so we can start the next one tomorrow. Thank you for your help, but—”
“We know none of these options are practical.” She could see the disappointment in Marcus’ face.
“I want you to know that I love you for trying.” She nudged them toward her front door. “You’ve certainly given me food for thought, but meanwhile, you got to scoot. Carmen Miranda is calling.”
She closed the door behind the guys and rested her head against the cool wood. But what if he is there?
She heard Arlene pointedly clear her throat. “Do you need to be alone?”
“No,” Gwendolyn insisted, crossing back the Singing Beast. “Tomorrow we have a much more complicated ball gown. I hope you’re fast with sequins, because there’s going to be lots of them.”
At least you’ll know why Linc did what he did.
Arlene sat down at the dining table and picked up another panel of zigzag. “We were talking about your clientele. Is there something I should know?”
Gwendolyn lifted the dress off the table. “Let me describe the person who will be wearing this little number.”
CHAPTER 17
Kathryn lingered in the corridor outside her boss’ office, nervous as a turkey in November. She fanned herself with two versions of her next column. She had already put off this confrontation for three days and was all out of procrastination.
She strode toward his secretary, faking nonchalance. “Is he free?”
Vera didn’t look up from her typewriter. “Yep.”
“Today’s mood?”
Vera tugged out the letter and screwed it up into a ball. “On a scale from white to black, I’d say battleship gray.”
Kathryn found Billy Wilkerson standing at a teak credenza against the large windows that looked north across Sunset Boulevard toward the Hollywood Hills. He was using a blue checked handkerchief to wipe down a plaster statue painted a striking shade of pink.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Wilkerson stepped aside to give her a full view of a two-foot-tall flamingo with a downward curving beak tipped in black, long spindly legs, and tiny eyes of yellow glass. “Inspiration.” He returned to his desk.
Kathryn took a seat. “How goes it in the casino-building department these days?”
Kathryn and her boss had never actually agreed out loud that the subject of his desert folly was off limits. She’d already made it sufficiently clear that she thought the whole project was a reckless waste of time and money, and he’d made it clear he didn’t care about her opinion one way or the other. It made for an easier working relationship if they simply didn’t talk about it.
Wilkerson sat down to the mess of papers littering his desk. “You need me for something?”
She held up both sheets of paper. “I’m doing a piece on the Busby Berkeley situation.”
The director and choreographer had been suffering through a tough time lately. His mother, with whom he’d been particularly close, had died, and he was floundering in a sinkhole of debt. Still, everyone was shocked when the LA Times reported that he had attempted suicide.
“Got some news to add?” Wilkerson asked without looking up.
“LA General is releasing him to a sanitarium.”
“Probably the best place for him. So what do you need me for?”
I need you to wise up and get out of business with the mob.
“It’s a delicate situation, and I don’t know whether to go with just the hard facts, or softball it into a puff piece.”
She knew how to read his scowl: You’ve never needed my opinion before.
“Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve must be a humdinger,” he growled, “if you think you need to come up with a ploy as feeble as that.”
She lowered the papers. “I know about the million bucks.”
His face froze over. “I didn’t know your sources were that good.”
She looked at the tacky plaster flamingo while she steeled herself. “This time my source was the top of the food chain.”
On the credenza behind him, a barrel-shaped mahogany humidor sat on a shelf out of the sunlight. Wilkerson reached back, flipped open the lid, and pulled out a Montecristo. He closed it, but made no attempt to light the cigar. Instead, he ran the length of it under his nose. “Which food chain might that be?”
Kathryn felt a line of sweat pool along the underwire of her brassiere. “The FBI.”
Wilkerson remained as still as the garish statue behind him. Eventually, he said, “You want to explain that?”
I don’t want to, but I’m going to have to.
“About a year before the end of the war, an FBI agent approached me about becoming an informer for them. I told
them no, but they can be persuasive.”
“So they had something on you?”
“No, but they could see I was hostile to the idea, so they said, ‘We only want you for the duration.’ Then they changed their story. ‘We really just need you for one thing.’ They were trying to build a case against Humphrey Bogart. They had some crazy idea he’s a Commie, so they wanted me to befriend him because he lived at the Garden before he married Betty Bacall.”
“And did you?”
Kathryn rubbed her forehead. “It got complicated. The long and short of it is that I’m still on their radar. He’s the one who told me that their main area of interest is a particular Nevada casino.”
“And who is this ‘he’? Your super-secret spy FBI agent G-Man?”
“It’s not like that.” Kathryn thought about their convoluted method of contacting each other through classified ads. Okay, so maybe it is.
“And what have you been able to tell him?”
“I thought I’d given him a solid line on where Ben Siegel got the extra money to fund the rest of the project.”
A cheerless smile curled his lips. “I had no idea Mata Hari was on my payroll.”
“Apparently, I’m not a very good Mata Hari—my lead on Siegel’s dough went nowhere.”
“Why is this the first I’ve heard of it?” The dour smile had already disappeared.
“I figured the best policy was a ‘need to know’ basis.”
“Are we having this conversation because I now need to know?”
Kathryn couldn’t get a grip on whether or not he approved.
“You need to know that the FBI recently started to wiretap all of Siegel’s domiciles and offices.”
Wilkerson’s poker face dropped away. His hand trembled as he lit his Montecristo. “You think they’re wiretapping me?”
“He said they’re not.”
“Do you believe him?”
She pictured Hoyt greeting his father inside the lamp store. “I’d like to, but he only knows what Hoover chooses to tell him. Either way, I felt you should know.”
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