Searchlights and Shadows (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 4) Read online

  SEARCHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS

  a novel by

  Martin Turnbull

  Book Four in the Garden of Allah novels

  Kindle edition – Copyright 2015 Martin Turnbull

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER:

  This novel is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events and locales that figure into the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to

  PAUL PATIENCE

  because old friends don’t come along every day.

  CHAPTER 1

  Gwendolyn Brick’s head throbbed like a son of a bitch, but she didn’t care. The traffic thundering along Sunset Boulevard was bordering on painfully loud and the midday sun shone so bright it hurt to open her eyes. But that didn’t bother her, either. All that mattered was her brother’s telegram. She clutched it in her hand as she waited for him on the sidewalk outside the Garden of Allah Hotel.

  “I can’t sit here anymore!” she declared, springing to her feet, but it made her head throb even harder and left her breath jagged. She sat down again.

  Kathryn Massey yawned. “Aren’t hangovers the worst?”

  Gwendolyn had never been much of a drinker—which made her a rare bird at the Garden of Allah—until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Her brother was stationed there and the navy had listed him missing in action. As the grim days that followed blurred into wretched weeks, Gwendolyn made up for lost time by downing whatever booze lay at hand. At the Garden, there was always something within reach: champagne, gin, punch, brandy, martinis, daiquiris, manhattans. She kept it up through a dismal New Year’s Eve, but Western Union brought her bender to a halt.

  AM ALIVE BANGED UP BUT RECOVERING STOP MEET YOU GARDEN OF ALLAH SUNDAY NOON STOP

  The two women sat on the low brick fence next to the red and black pansies whose smoked-honey scent Gwendolyn usually enjoyed, but today found annoying. “Maybe they hit traffic?”

  “It’s all of three minutes past twelve,” Kathryn said gently. “I’m sure he’ll be along real soon.”

  They said nothing more until a black Cadillac with shiny chrome trim slowed to a stop opposite them. In the back seat, a young bride wrapped in a veil sat next to a handsome young man who was beaming in his army uniform.

  “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of that now,” Gwendolyn commented. She watched the Cadillac head east into Hollywood. “Do you think either of us will be married before the war ends?”

  Kathryn started to say something, but cut herself off. “Is that a jeep?”

  A fatigue-green vehicle, roofless and doorless, bounced up the boulevard toward them. Two men in white sailor caps were up front, but that was all Gwendolyn could see. She clutched Kathryn’s arm and pulled her to her feet.

  It wasn’t until the jeep came to a stop that Gwendolyn could be sure it was her darling, damaged Monty. She raced to the curb, unaware that she was crying until Monty’s grinning face blurred and wobbled. “It really is you!”

  His driver, a beefy Italian, jumped out with a pair of crutches in his hand. “Don’t even think of trying to help,” he told her. “Mister Independent don’t like that.”

  It took all of Gwendolyn’s self-control to let her brother climb out of the vehicle under his own steam. He took the crutches from his buddy, hooked them under his arms, and swung himself onto the sidewalk. “See?” he declared. “Almost good as new.”

  The tendrils of Gwendolyn’s hangover unfurled. She felt lighthearted and clearheaded as she wrapped her arms around Monty, crutches and all, and let her tears soak the shoulder of his dark blue uniform. He hugged her back as best he could. “Honest, sis, it ain’t that bad. These here crutches? Just for show, mainly. More like an insurance policy.”

  She took a half step back and studied his face. A graze across his forehead was still healing, as well as some purple bruising down the left side of his neck. But most noticeable of all was a deep slash carving a line from under his right ear, across his cheek, to the middle of his chin.

  Monty looked past Gwendolyn. “Hi, there. Kathryn, isn’t it?”

  Gwendolyn broke her hold on her brother to let him shake hands with Kathryn, then noticed that his ride had driven off. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go inside and—”

  Monty pulled back. “I’ve been cooped up in that dang hospital for weeks. Can’t we go out?”

  “Got somewhere in mind?” Gwendolyn asked.

  “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “Anywhere you want—it’s your big day.”

  “Anywhere?”

  * * *

  The girls slid into a booth and watched Monty pitch himself unaided onto the seat opposite them.

  “I know we told you anywhere,” Gwendolyn said. “But—here?”

  C.C. Brown’s ice cream parlor on Hollywood Boulevard was just down from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and was famous for inventing the hot fudge sundae. Last time they were there, Monty confronted a guy who was bothering Gwendolyn. It would have been gallant had it been anybody but Bugsy Siegel. Monty neither knew nor cared who that was, but Gwendolyn and Kathryn did, and so did their friend Marcus. They’d fled out of Brown’s with their hearts in their throats and hadn’t been back since.

  “Hey!” Monty swiped a hand through the air. “That meatball left you alone, didn’t he?”

  Siegel had eventually taken the hint; not because of anything Monty did that day, but Gwendolyn let her brother think he’d come to her rescue.

  After they ordered a round of sundaes and coffees, Gwendolyn faced her brother. “Your telegram said you got banged up, so I’ve been picturing the worst. You seem to be mobile.” She flickered her eyes toward his crutches. “When you pulled up—”

  He laid a hand on top of hers. “Sis, I’m okay,” he said quietly. “I won’t lie, it was touch and go for a while. There was a serious infection and—ah, skip it. You don’t want to hear about all that.”

  “But I do,” Gwendolyn protested. “All I got was one lousy telegram. Honestly, Monty, you could have taken the time to scribble a note, just to let me know.”

  “If I’d been conscious, sure I could’ve written you. Maybe even called.”

  “Not conscious?” Kathryn butted in. “How serious was this infection?”

  “There was talk of losing a leg—”

  “MONTY!” Gwendolyn squeezed her brother’s hand.

  “—but it didn’t come to that. Once they got me stateside, the quacks down there in Long Beach tried something else. It worked and I’ll be as good as new.” He shrugged away the rest of his story.

  “I bet it was mayhem after the attack, huh?” Kathryn asked.

  He flinched. “I ain’t got the words to describe what it was like. Destruction on that kind of scale,” he shook his head slowly, “it’s like nothing you can imagine. The noise! You shoulda heard it. On second
thought, nobody should have to hear them sounds.”

  Gwendolyn leaned on her elbows. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through. I’m surprised you’ve held onto your sanity.”

  Monty started to chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He laid down his spoon and grinned at her. “I thought I was going to be able to get away with it, but I guess not.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  He took suspiciously long to reply. “I was—er, when the Japs hit, I was in the brig.”

  “In jail?”

  “I had a two-day liberty pass, so I tied one on. Got into a bar brawl with some other seadogs. I don’t recall much of anything after about twenty-two hundred hours, but someone told me the MPs arrived and I took them on, too. Landed in the brig sometime before midnight. The first thing I knew of the attack was when the brick wall of my cell started crumbling and the tin roof pinned me to the bunk.”

  The waitress arrived holding sundaes piled high with vanilla ice cream, smothered with hot fudge and crushed peanuts, and crowned with a cherry. Monty dug in, cramming as much as he could into his mouth.

  Gwendolyn shook her head. “Oh, Monty. The things I’ve been imagining.”

  He pointed his chocolatey spoon at her. “That drunken bar brawl saved my life. If I was sober and awake that morning, I’d have been supervising hull maintenance on the Arizona.”

  A thousand soldiers had lost their lives on that battleship, which now lay shattered at the bottom of the harbor.

  They ate their sundaes in silence until Monty said, “Truth is, I’m ashamed I wasn’t with my buddies. That two-day drunk may’ve saved my life, but it’s wrecked my pride.” His sky-blue eyes lost their focus for a long moment. “Can we just leave it at that?”

  “Mo-Mo, I’m so sorry—”

  “How’s about you, Googie? Did you get your job back at the Cocoanut Grove?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. I’d been slinging tobacco around that place too long. I need something new.”

  “Like what?”

  Gwendolyn watched an old guy in gray overalls paste a For Lease poster to the front window of an empty store across Hollywood Boulevard. “All I’ve done is sell cigars and cigarettes since I got to LA. I don’t know what else I’m good at.”

  Kathryn’s burst of gunfire laughter took Gwendolyn by surprise. “What else you’re good at?” she asked. “Are you kidding?”

  “What?”

  “You’re the best damn seamstress I know.” She turned to Monty. “You should see the dresses she makes for me. I get compliments everywhere I go.” She slapped Gwendolyn’s wrist. “If the studios knew what you were capable of, they would be falling all over themselves.”

  Gwendolyn resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. Between the cattle calls, her disastrous screen test for Gone With The Wind, and her two so-called big breaks in A-list movies, she hadn’t had the best luck with the studios. They were the last place she wanted to work.

  She scooped up the last of her sundae and slipped it into her mouth, savoring the warm fudge that was so thick and gooey it was almost chewable. Her eyes drifted back to the empty store across the street. The early afternoon sun was shining over the roof of C.C. Brown’s and directly onto the spacious display window. It wasn’t a large store, but it was opposite Grauman’s and three doors down from the Roosevelt Hotel, which was a great location.

  Best of all, it was available.

  CHAPTER 2

  Kathryn Massey never thought of herself as the moody type. As the Hollywood Reporter’s gossip columnist, she liked to think of herself as Gumption Girl. Hadn’t she been the first to foresee the commotion Orson Welles caused over Citizen Kane? She’d tried to warn him against wading into Hearst-infested waters, but of course he didn’t listen. He wouldn’t have been Orson Welles if he had. The point was, she was the first one to see it coming, and that never would have happened if she was some wallflower.

  Back then, when the Kane missiles were flying, she’d never have guessed her stance would lead her to the envelope in her purse. Back then she was sure of who she was and what she believed, and she wasn’t afraid to stand up in public—or in print—and say so. But now she had an envelope whose contents made her question everything. She’d felt compelled to keep it close in case she was taken with the urge to look at it again. And she was often taken with that urge.

  Kathryn’s desk sat on the periphery of a vast room that housed the battalion of journalists, editors, and photographers who toiled to produce the Hollywood Reporter. Ignoring the gibbering typewriters and clanging telephones, she reached for her purse and pulled out the contents of the envelope.

  AS REQUESTED CONFIRM BIRTH DETAILS FOR KATHRYN JANE MASSEY BORN 8.37 AM ON JANUARY 24 1908 STOP MOTHER FRANCINE MARY MAE CALDECOTT STOP FATHER NOT APPLICABLE STOP

  I don’t know why you care so much, she told herself. You’ve done perfectly fine your whole life without Father, dear Father Not Applicable. Who cares if he wasn’t married to your mother? That single, long-buried fact has no bearing on the woman you are today.

  “Father not applicable.” The words blurred as her eyes burned. If only I could believe that.

  “Ahem? I said, excuse me?”

  Kathryn smelled Chantilly perfume, the five-and-dime scent whose bargain price and woody notes appealed to spinster librarians and suburban housewives with budgets as limited as their worldviews. Like most cheap perfumes, it didn’t stick around very long, which meant someone had doused herself less than an hour ago.

  The woman standing rigidly at Kathryn’s desk was dressed in a conservative two-piece suit of dark beige tweed; a simple gold crucifix hung from her neck.

  Kathryn got to her feet. “Can I help you?”

  “You’re Miss Massey?”

  “That’s right.” Kathryn extended her hand, but the woman regarded it with disdain.

  “I am Mrs. Quinn.” She fixed Kathryn with a stony look.

  Kathryn forced herself not to blink or swallow or show any sign that she wanted to run screaming from the building. For

  ten years, she’d been having an on-again-off-again-on-again affair with a stuntman. By the time she figured out he was married, she’d fallen for him. It’s not my marriage, she’d told herself. It’s not my problem. Kathryn never asked about Roy’s wife and Roy rarely mentioned her, except to say that she was deeply Catholic, so divorce wasn’t an option.

  “I see,” Kathryn said softly. She doubted Mrs. Quinn could hear her over the cacophony of typewriters. “Would you like to take a seat?” I suppose you have every right to make a scene, but not here at my office.

  “Please understand how difficult it was for me to come to you.”

  “You’ll be more comfortable if you’re seated.”

  Mrs. Quinn lowered herself into the chair in front of Kathryn’s desk.

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “You can tell me where my husband is.” The statement came at Kathryn like a sharpened bullet.

  The intercom next to Kathryn’s telephone buzzed. It was her boss’ secretary, Vera. “Mr. Wilkerson would like to see you.” The “immediately” was assumed.

  Normally, Kathryn would be on her feet before Vera got off the line, but she stayed in her chair. Vera called her name again, but Kathryn didn’t move. When the intercom went silent, she said, “Your husband is at Fort Williams in Maine.”

  Mrs. Quinn closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with a gloved hand. “No,” she said, “he is not.”

  “Then I’m sorry, but—”

  “He hasn’t responded to any of my letters or telegrams, so I called long distance. I talked my way up to the fort commander; all he would tell me is that my husband is on special assignment.” She braced herself with a forced smile. “I figured if anyone knew where Roy was, it would be you.”

  “Mrs. Quinn,” Kathryn said, “I’ve scarcely heard from him since—”

  “Miss Massey, I am pregnant.”

  T
he din of telephones, typewriters, office chatter—even the stink of stale coffee—fell away, making Kathryn feel like she was sitting in the hushed eye of a twister. In that moment, she realized she’d been deceiving herself for ten years.

  She dropped her eyes to a copy of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner that was open to an article about plummeting real estate prices in the Pacific Palisades after Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Quinn’s news made her realize she’d been fantasizing that one day Roy’s wife would consent to a divorce, and perhaps they could afford one of those houses overlooking the ocean. Kathryn had met Roy on the day of the Long Beach earthquake, so it always felt to her that their meeting was fated. But now she knew it was a deluded fantasy. She felt like one of those girls who read romance novels, dreaming that her prince would appear amid swirling mist. “Roy is a good guy stuck in a rotten situation” had been her refrain for so long she’d come to believe it.

  Kathryn Massey, she told herself, you are one first-class dope. You have no right to feel like your boyfriend has been cheating on you. The woman in front of you is his wife; you were just the mistress.

  Kathryn laid her palms flat on her desk and looked Roy’s wife directly in the eye. She wanted to say, At least your baby isn’t illegitimate. At least it’ll know who it is and where it came from. But the buzzer cut her off.

  “Kathryn, are you there? Mr. Wilkerson would like to see you.” Mrs. Quinn raised her eyebrows; Kathryn shook her head. “Kathryn!” Vera barked. “I can hear you breathing.”

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Kathryn shot back. “Tell Mr. Wilkerson I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She waited until Vera cut the line. “Mrs. Quinn, I had to pull strings leading all the way up to Louis B. Mayer to learn where Roy was stationed. I’m willing to pull those strings again to see if I can find out where he is now. Would you like me to do that?”

  Mrs. Quinn fidgeted with the clasp on her handbag. “I didn’t know what else to do. Thank you, yes, I would be greatly indebted.”