“Darling, I’m not laughing at you,” Gwendolyn said. “That’s a heck of a tough break. I was laughing at myself. Really I was.”
“What about?”
“Nothing much. Just something silly. So, how long can you last on your savings?”
Bertie let out a honking laugh. “What savings?”
“You’ve been blowing through a grand a month?” Kathryn asked.
Their order arrived. Bertie started slathering her toast with butter. “There was always going to be another check next month, so what did I care? Now I care plenty. God, what a dunderhead I am!”
“So you’ll do what we all do: get a job.”
“I’m thirty-two and never had to work in my life. I don’t suppose there’s much call for an ex-heiress whose sole skill is picking up the tab?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve read through the want ads,” Gwendolyn said, “but I can’t imagine there’s much call for that sort of thing. Maybe I could put in a good word for you at Bullocks.”
“Would you? That’d be terrific.”
Gwendolyn nodded, but knew it wouldn’t do much good. High-toned stores like Bullock’s required all their flawlessly groomed sales girls hold themselves with a degree of poise that a free spirit like Bertie could only dream of.
A solemn silence fell over the table until Bertie said, “So all those things that have been going missing around the Garden, I guess they’re all still where I buried them?”
“They were,” Kathryn said. “After you ran back into your room, we dug it all up.”
“So you found everything?”
Gwendolyn looked at Bertie’s face mottled with red blotches, her eyes bleary and her Wild Man of Borneo in its usual state of mutinous chaos.
“Yes,” she sighed, “it was all there.”
CHAPTER 31
Kathryn stared at the empty bottle and crushed cigarette packet on her dining table with the same question running through her mind as she’d had when she started: Was I in the right place at the right time, or entirely the wrong place at the worst possible time?
Earlier that afternoon, she’d been in the stacks room where the Hollywood Reporter archived old issues to track down their review of Valentino’s The Sheik. That gargantuan party at Paramount had made anything connected to the remake hot news.
She’d just found the review when she heard Wilkerson’s heavy footfall. She listened to him take a seat at the front desk on the other side of a wall of filing cabinets, then pick up the telephone and tell someone to “put it through.”
Wilkerson’s terse side of the conversation was enough to scare the bejesus out of her. Amid the gruff “yeps” and “nopes,” she caught enough to know it was Bugsy Siegel on the other end of the line. Wilkerson’s voice coarsened. “Ambassador. Six o’clock. Yes, I will be there.”
Kathryn jumped when he slammed down the phone and thundered from the room, then waited a full minute to ensure there was no danger she’d encounter him again. She stopped by her desk long enough to reschedule an interview with Betty Grable before heading straight home. She didn’t want to leave the house until she’d decided what to do. Fortunately, Schwab’s delivered anything at any time—even to girls damp with sweat, numb with worry, and on the verge of losing their minds.
When there was a knock on the door, Kathryn grabbed her purse.
“Are you there? They said at your office you went home early.”
What is Nelson Hoyt doing here?
She laid a hand on her doorknob and took a deep breath before opening it. “Whatever today’s threat to the nation is, can it wait?”
He pierced her with his blue-gray eyes and walked inside. “I know what’s going on.”
She could feel the walls of her defenses start to crack, but she pulled herself together and kicked the door closed behind him.
“We know about Siegel’s phone call to Wilkerson,” he said. “Siegel thinks your boss has been sabotaging the Flamingo, and he’s ready to take it over completely.”
“I want to go down to the Ambassador and stop him. He might never—” She stumbled over the words walk out alive.
“My car’s out front. If we catch a good run along Wilshire, we’ll be there before six.”
* * *
The lobby of the Ambassador Hotel was preposterously huge, like the living room of a rich maiden aunt who expects regular visits. Well-padded loveseats upholstered in fraying velvet and damask were spaced around wood-paneled columns and potted ferns.
Kathryn looked wildly around.
“You’d never make a good agent,” Nelson said.
“What have I been trying to tell you all this time?”
He led her behind a square column that was close enough to the reception desk to see who approached, but far enough to avoid detection. A string quartet filled the air with a light waltz while guests milled around waiting for taxis, checking for messages.
“What if we miss him?” she whispered.
“He’s probably taken a suite. The elevators are over there.” Hoyt pointed to the right. “Wilkerson has to pass this way.”
“What if he doesn’t show?”
“Hoover met with him last week and warned him about Siegel. Wilkerson got all hotheaded and refused to believe Hoover, calling him an alarmist old biddy—there he is.”
Wilkerson’s dark brown suit made him look like a funeral director. With the homburg she bought him for Christmas last year dangling from his hand, he walked through the lobby, and stepped inside the first elevator that opened.
“It’d help if we knew which room he was heading to,” Hoyt said.
A squeal of relief almost flew from Kathryn’s mouth. “You’re not the only one with contacts.”
She dashed toward the ornate doors of the Cocoanut Grove, assuming he was following her.
She hadn’t been to the nightclub in a while, and never as early as six o’clock. It was jarring to see the cavernous place so deserted; the papier mâché palm trees looked desolate and forgotten. She was relieved to see a familiar face behind the bar.
Back when Gwendolyn was the Grove’s cigarette girl, she was pals with the head bartender, who’d always looked out for her in a big-brother sort of way. Chuck Bellamy had the blond charm of a matinee idol, but had witnessed the shortcomings of fame firsthand too often to ever be tempted onto the screen.
Kathryn explained what she needed, knowing Chuck was too jaded to ask questions. He made a phone call to his pal in housekeeping: Siegel was in Room 505. Room 503 was taken, but 507 was available. He slipped a passkey into her hand, made her promise not to tell a soul where she got it, and pointed her toward the service elevator. Minutes later, they had their ears pressed to Siegel’s wall.
She could distinguish between her boss and Siegel, and a third voice she suspected was Mickey Cohen, but she couldn’t catch everything they were saying.
“ . . . damned lie . . . million bucks’ worth of incompetency . . . construction costs . . . FBI . . . coulda done a better job . . .”
Then, suddenly, Wilkerson yelled, “PUT THAT FUCKING THING AWAY!”
Kathryn clenched her fist and pressed it against the wall, missing what Siegel’s, or maybe Cohen’s, response was.
Then Wilkerson yelled, “Fine! Wave it around like a flag on the fourth of July if you want. It’s not going to intimidate me. I have every right to decide what happens to the Flamingo. It was my goddamned idea in the first place!”
“You weren’t dreaming big enough!” Siegel yelled back.
“I didn’t get where I am today by dreaming small.”
“You canned my crew and replaced them with a bunch of knuckleheads who wouldn’t know a plank from their peckers. That place is a shambles and you know it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my casino that can’t be fixed.”
“This is our project and—”
An agonizing silence followed before Wilkerson let fly with a piercing yelp. “Go ahead, Cohen, stick your pea-shooter wherever you thi
nk it’ll do the most good, but I’ve worked too long and too hard to sign this piece of shit.”
Something heavy fell to the floor, followed by a rasping grunt, and then another. A vase—or maybe a bottle—smashed against the wall Kathryn and Nelson were listening against. Wilkerson was in his mid fifties, no match for the much-younger Mickey Cohen, who was probably pummeling—or worse, pistol-whipping—Wilkerson right now. Kathryn closed her eyes.
The fight didn’t last long. The next voice they heard was Siegel’s—hard-edged and remote, as though he was on the far side of the room.
“I don’t need you to sign it right now, but you will sign it. Or I’ll kill you myself and sign it for you.”
Kathryn heard only silence until the hotel room door slammed. Hoyt ran to the door, listened for a moment, then cracked it open. “They’ve gone.”
She followed him into the hallway and into Room 505.
Wilkerson sat on the floor with his back against the foot of a double bed, holding a hand to his nose. The floral bedspread was half-dragged off and all of the pillows scattered. Blood had oozed onto his sleeve and spattered the cuff of his silk shirt. His eyes were unfocused and registered little surprise to see Kathryn there.
In the bathroom, she doused a face towel in cold water, then kneeled beside her boss.
“What are you doing here?” Wilkerson’s face was parchment gray.
“You need to get out.” Kathryn squeezed the compress to his nose. “And I mean out of town.”
He steeled himself against the pain. “There’s this lodging house in Connecticut. It’s so out of the way I’m surprised they do any business at all.”
“It’s not far enough,” Hoyt said.
Wilkerson registered mild surprise. “And who might you be?”
Hoyt consulted his watch. “The Super Chief leaves Union Station in an hour and a half. You’ll make it if you jump into a taxi and go straight there. You’ll arrive in Chicago in time to catch the Twentieth Century. That’ll put you into New York with three and a half hours to spare.”
“Spare for what?” Kathryn asked.
“The Ile de France.”
“You think he should go to Paris?”
Hoyt helped Wilkerson to his feet. “Siegel’s network extends to every corner of the country.”
“Now just hang on a minute.” Wilkerson had had time to collect himself. “Who’s Mr. Charlie-in-Charge here?”
“This is John Mandeville,” Kathryn replied, saying the first name that came to her. “He’s the Hollywood correspondent for the New York Times.”
“What happened to the old one?”
Hoyt had Wilkerson’s jacket in hand, and helped him into it. “Take him downstairs and ask the bellhop to hail a cab. I’ll get the concierge to book the connection to New York and the passage to France.”
Kathryn grabbed her boss by the arm. “Come on, we need to step on it.”
By the time the elevator doors pinged open, Wilkerson’s color had started to return, along with the astute look in his eye. Luckily, the elevator was empty. He waited for the doors to close before he said,
“I met with Hoover on the weekend.” He paused for her reaction, but she refused to budge a muscle. “He warned me about Siegel, but I paid no attention, and look at me now, on the lam like I’m goddamned Dillinger. Anyway, your mother’s tax bill came up.”
A part of her wasn’t surprised. There didn’t seem to be any secrets left in Hollywood. Maybe that was good. Everything out in the open, flapping in the Santa Monica breezes on laundry day.
The elevator pinged again and the doors opened onto the busy hotel lobby. They stepped out and Wilkerson led her into a quiet alcove.
“I was hoping that tax thing was just a ploy,” Kathryn told him, “but it turns out my mother is a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool tax dodger. There are no good options.”
“What if I paid the ten grand?”
Kathryn flung her arms around Wilkerson’s waist and hugged him tighter than she’d ever hugged anyone in her life, and squeezed her eyes shut to stop from gushing like a sob sister. There would be time enough for that later. “You don’t have ten grand, do you?” she said into his chest.
“I barely have two dimes to my name,” he chuckled, “but there are ways around that. Of course, arranging it all the way from Paris might present problems.”
“Thank you,” she said, “but I need to solve this mess soon. I appreciate the offer, though.” She unhooked herself from his embrace. Deep red welts were starting to appear across the side of his face. “Let’s find you a taxi.” She went to pull him toward the Ambassador’s front entrance, but he resisted.
“I need a favor,” he said darkly.
“Sure. Anything.”
“When the Flamingo opens next month, I want you to be there.”
“You want me to walk into that lion’s den?”
“After everything I’ve been through, it kills me that I can’t be there for the opening. I’d feel better if someone I trusted was there to see it all and report back to me.”
The thought was almost enough to give her the dry heaves. Anything but that.
Blood began to drip from his nose again. He dabbed at it gingerly. “At least think about it?”
“Look, there he is.” She pointed to Hoyt. “And yes, I’ll think about it.”
As they walked outside into the early evening, Hoyt handed him a sheet of the hotel’s stationery. “Stateroom numbers, confirmation numbers, it’s all there. I took the liberty of booking you a room at the George V Hotel in Paris.”
Kathryn decided it was a fortunate coincidence that Hoyt chose Wilkerson’s favorite watering hole. Before she knew it, she was watching his cab pause at the end of the Ambassador’s driveway and wondering when they’d see each other next.
“He wants me to go to the Flamingo opening,” she told Hoyt.
“Will you?”
“Fat chance.”
She headed back into the hotel in search of a martini at the Cocoanut Grove. Chuck knew exactly how she liked them, but Hoyt stopped her. “I have something to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“But not here.”
He led her through a maze of passageways and corners until they stepped outside where a long, covered walkway stretched before them. There was nobody about.
She watched the rapid rise and fall of his chest and realized she’d never seen Hoyt nervous before.
He ran his finger down a concrete column. “I’m thinking of leaving the Bureau.”
“That’s an awful big step.”
“I believe in the ideals that make this country great. I wanted to protect and preserve them.”
“And what do you want now?”
He rocked onto his toes, then back onto his heels. “I want to get away from the diseased carcass that’s eating away at every principle I value. All I ever do is eavesdrop and maneuver. Those who I can’t maneuver, I manipulate; those I can’t manipulate, I bribe; and the ones I can’t bribe, I threaten.” He kept his eyes on the traffic along Wilshire.
“Not exactly what you signed up for, I imagine,” she said.
“Did you hear about that series in the Chicago Tribune?” Following the midterm elections, the paper ran a rabble-rousing series of articles alleging a Communist takeover of Hollywood, with FDR as the instigator. “I want out before Hoover burns everything to the ground.”
“From what I’ve heard, he’s real big on loyalty, and makes it hard for anyone to leave.”
“If I was no longer with the FBI, wouldn’t that remove your objection?”
“My objection to what?”
She knew what was coming, but felt powerless to stop it. She knew she didn’t want to. Even more deeply, she knew she couldn’t ignore the thrill welling up inside her. As she felt Hoyt’s warm breath on her face, she closed her eyes. This time, he didn’t hide his ardor by brushing her lips with tentative kisses. Instead, he pulled her to him, and pressed his mouth to hers until she succ
umbed.
CHAPTER 32
The Florentine Gardens nightclub was like that girl who thinks just a touch more lipstick and a brush more rouge will fool everybody into thinking she’s more attractive than she actually is.
Gwendolyn doubted that the real villas on Capri had painted papier mâché grapes pretending to climb up balsa wood columns sprayed to resemble Carrera marble. She also doubted they had dusty burgundy velvet drapes, clouds painted on their ceilings, or balsa wood busts of Roman generals. Like the girl with too much makeup, it worked as long as nobody inspected the details.
And on the day after Christmas, 1946, nobody was intent on inspecting the details of the Florentine Gardens—they were too thankful to have dodged a bullet.
The Flamingo Hotel’s opening day had been hanging over Los Angeles like a zeppelin in a lightning storm. Bugsy Siegel had chartered an all-Pullman train from Union-Pacific and invited every celebrity between the Hollywood Hills and the Mexican border, but his luck had finally run out. That morning, a squall swept across Los Angeles, grounding all transportation. Hollywood breathed a sigh of relief and cancelled.
Subsequently, everybody found themselves with nowhere to go. Kathryn told Gwendolyn that she’d heard Lana Turner called Peter Lawford and suggested they go out. So he called Judy Garland, who proposed the Florentine Gardens and hooked Joan Crawford into coming along. Crawford called Gable, who was about to start a movie about New York advertising men with Ava Gardner, and invited her. Ava talked Cesar Romero into joining them, and he in turn roped in Veronica Lake. By the time Gwendolyn walked in with Kathryn, it felt as though half the town was there.
“If everybody’s here,” Gwendolyn asked Kathryn, “who’s in Las Vegas?”
Kathryn shrugged. “Hopefully no one, and maybe Siegel will close the place down and let the Mojave Desert reclaim the whole rotten thing.”
Since its halcyon days during the war, the Florentine Gardens’ reputation had frayed. The comics were getting coarser, the girlie shows scantier, and the drinks weaker. The furs and twinkling jewels peppering the place that night lent a diverting pearls-before-swine air, but it wasn’t enough to pull Gwendolyn out of the blues she’d had since the night they discovered Bertie’s stash.
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