The Garden on Sunset Page 10

  Harpo broke into his cheeky grin when she approached his table, and introduced her to his brothers and their dates. Groucho was checking out her cigars when he reared back and stared just beyond her with bugged eyes.

  “I want more cigars.”

  “You’ve landed yourself a whopper,” Groucho said without moving his lips.

  Gwendolyn turned reluctantly around to find the grizzly bear behind her, motioning for her to come closer. His top half wavered as though a gale was blowing through the club. His jacket was unbuttoned and his hair was coming unstuck. There was a bleariness to his eyes that wasn’t there before and a harder edge to his smile. “Six m-more cigars.”

  “Would you like me to get this gorilla turfed out?” Harpo asked over her shoulder.

  Gwendolyn shook her head and stepped forward until she was just out of reach of his paws. “You’ve gone through those six cigars already? My, you must be a real aficionado.”

  He grunted and lunged forward.

  Oh god, Gwendolyn realized. I’m going to have to do something. She thought of Kathryn’s bravado with The Hammer’s gangster friends, raised her throbbing right foot, and landed her kick dead on.

  The guy dropped to the carpet like a sack of cannon balls, his hands clutching at his crotch. As he did, it revealed Chuck the bartender standing with his arms outstretched. “I was going to come to your rescue, but I can see you don’t need my help.”

  It was past four in the morning when Gwendolyn walked out across the parking lot toward the stand for the night bus. Her smile muscles hurt, her back hurt more, and her feet hurt the most. But it was nothing a better pair of shoes and some practice couldn’t fix. She passed a grove of palm trees–real ones that shot thirty feet unto the air–when the silhouette of a large man stepped out from the shadows. She recognized the gorilla at once and panicked. Forgetting the bone-deep ache in her feet, she broke into a run across the parking lot.

  She made it to Sixth Street behind the hotel and had started to head for Normandie Avenue–a wider street with more traffic and street lights–when she felt him gaining on her. “Will you just hold your horses a moment?” he called out. “I need to apologize to you.”

  Gwendolyn didn’t stop until she was under a street lamp. She grabbed it and leaned against it to catch her breath “Keep your distance,” she warned him.

  He took a step back to the outer edge of the street lamp’s pool of light. “I’m so sorry for my behavior,” he told her. “My mother would be ashamed of me.” A hairy-knuckled bulldozer like this wasn’t the sort that Gwendolyn would think of as having any sort of mother, let alone one whose approval he needed. “I got some real bad news this afternoon, and I did the only thing I could think of — get rotten, stinkin’ drunk. I’ve had a whole pitcher of water and three strong coffees since you kicked me in the — since you kicked me.”

  The guy didn’t seem like a grizzly bear any longer; more like a raggedy old teddy bear. “I’m sober now.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a square box covered in red velvet. “By way of apology?” He offered the box to her but when she wouldn’t take it from him, he opened it.

  Gwendolyn’s mouth dropped open. It was a diamond brooch. Before she could think twice, she took it from the velvet box and held it in her hands. The center was a diamond, about the size of a robin’s egg, and from it shot a dozen silver stems, each of them ending in a smaller, but equally perfect diamond.

  The gorilla said, “It’s from Harry Winston. They call it Egyptian Starburst. I want you to have it.”

  The words were a faceful of ice water. “Thank you, but I am unable to accept any gifts.”

  “Says who?”

  “House rules. Very strict.”

  “But you’re not in the house now. And you’re not on company time.”

  Gwendolyn looked at the diamond brooch. If it blazed this gorgeously from the light of a street lamp, what would it look like in daylight? The guy had a point, didn’t he? She was off the clock, wasn’t she? Not even on hotel property. When did an employee become a private citizen? Grainger hadn’t bothered to clarify that. “I don’t want you to get into no trouble,” the guy said, “but a simple verbal apology don’t seem no where near enough.”

  Gwendolyn looked him in the eye. “You always in the habit of carrying around absurdly breathtaking jewelry everywhere you go?”

  “This,” his eyes had settled on the brooch still in her hands, “was part of the bad news I got this afternoon. I don’t want it no more. It would give me great joy if you would accept it.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Marcus could have been anywhere when the job came in. The sender could have paid for general delivery. His boss could have given it to anyone.

  It was fate.

  Marcus pedaled up to the grand front gates of MGM and got off his bicycle. He approached the graying guard at the pedestrian entrance and held up the sealed envelope. “I’m from Western Union,” he said. “I have a hand delivery for Mr. Ramon Novarro.”

  The guard held his hand out. “You can give that to me, son. I’ll see to it that Mr. Novarro gets it.”

  Marcus pulled the envelope to his chest and pointed to the “Hand Delivery Only” stamp on the front. “The senders of this telegram paid extra to have it delivered into Mr. Novarro’s hands and nobody else’s.”

  The guard eyeballed him. “Wait right there.” He retreated into his booth and picked up the telephone. Hand deliveries to movie stars were El Dorado for Western Union boys. You got to meet a movie star, and movie stars tipped big–Wallace Beery had once tipped twenty bucks. But Marcus didn’t care about that. The thought of being close enough to touch his favorite movie idol was enough to suck the air clean out of his lungs.

  Ben-Hur only had a four-week run at the Bijou in McKeesport, but Marcus saw it twelve times. His family kidded that he wasn’t going to be happy until he was Ben-Hur. Novarro’s scowling courage, the way he’d toss his black hair, and the chariot race had hypnotized Marcus. Oh! That chariot race! Every time Francis X. Bushman pounded his razor-edged wheels against Novarro’s chariot, Marcus held his breath.

  The guard approached him again and handed Marcus a card. “See this pass? That’s the time you gotta be off the lot, or I will come find you. Trust me, son, you don’t want that. Mr. Novarro is shooting on stage fourteen.” He jabbed a finger into Marcus’ face. “If you go in while the red light above the door is flashing, you’ll spoil the take so they will shoot you on sight. And if they don’t, I will.”

  Marcus walked out onto a road flanked with warehouse-sized sound stages. A guy in fatigues led a half-dozen camels past a mob of Canadian Mounties buttoned tightly into red jackets with gold buttons. They fanned themselves with their hats while a stagehand hauled a rack of raccoon coats down the street.

  The number 14 was emblazoned in thick brown paint on the soundstage’s cream walls; the red light above its door wasn’t flashing. Marcus slipped inside and headed toward the set, a stark, stylized bar with a shiny floor and cocktail tables with white tablecloths and small black lamps. The black chairs and glasses stood out against the white wall in the background. Marcus was stunned.

  A pair of workers adjusted the furniture and glassware, moving things a fraction of an inch to the left and right. Someone on a very tall ladder was fiddling with a microphone attached to a long pole.

  When Ramon Novarro walked onto stage left pulling at his cuffs, Marcus could barely breathe. A woman with a tape measure slung around her neck followed closely behind him. “I think we’ve fixed it now,” she called out, nodding. They laughed over something about a falcon. Marcus pulled the telegram from his jacket pocket and took a couple of steps closer.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Marcus turned around to find a guy in a homemade sleeveless sweater glowering at him. “How hard can it be to find — never mind. We’ve lost enough time already this morning. Follow me.”

  Marcus followed the guy toward the set when Novarro loo
ked up and saw Marcus for the first time. Marcus was struck by his strong jaw, his lustrous hair, his expressive eyes. A blaze of lights exploded over his head, and Marcus slammed into a cocktail table.

  “Watch it,” the guy in the sweater told him, then lifted his hand to his eyes and yelled, “The kid is good to go!”

  “Let’s do a take, then.”

  The workers scurried off the set, leaving Marcus to refocus on Ramon Novarro’s deep brown unblinking eyes. Nice to meet you they seemed to say. Or was that just wishful thinking? Marcus tried to speak but the words evaporated in the heat of the spotlights.

  Someone behind Marcus said, “Mr. Novarro, we are rolling so commence when you’re ready.”

  “Who the hell is THAT?”

  Marcus looked around to find another guy in a sleeveless sweater standing next to a kid about half Marcus’ age, dressed in a uniform almost exactly the same as his own. Everyone around the periphery of the set turned to look at them.

  Novarro’s smile widened and a HA! of a laugh flew out of his mouth. “Don’t tell me you are a real Western Union messenger?” His voice filled Marcus’ ears with honey.

  Marcus nodded and held out the telegram.

  The first sleeveless sweater strode onto the set, his face redder than lava. “You idiot!” he screamed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here to deliver a goddamned telegram?”

  “Calm down,” Ramon said. “No harm is done. It is not his fault you assumed he was an actor.”

  The guy turned on Ramon. “We only had enough film left in the can for one more take. Now we have to change the can, which means exceeding our daily budget by a percentage —”

  Ramon waved away the man’s anger. “It was a simple mistake. And a funny one, you must admit.” He turned his attention to Marcus. Marcus had never seen a person with such liquid eyes. “This is for me?”

  When Marcus stepped outside again, the sunlight blinded him. He squeezed his eyes closed to let them adjust, and Ramon Novarro’s smiling face quivered into view. His eyes flew open when he felt a hand grip his upper arm.

  “What the hell did you do?” It was the guard.

  “What do you mean?” Marcus tried to pull away, but the old coot held firm.

  “You caused a ruckus. You ruined a take. What did I tell you?”

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Marcus protested.

  The guard marched Marcus toward the gate. “I don’t need no pansy assistant directors screaming at me for letting in a telegram boy who runs around impersonating bit-part actors just so he can meet pretty-boy movie stars.”

  “That’s not the way —”

  But the guard had just been bawled out by a snarky assistant director and wasn’t interested in explanations. At the gate, he grabbed Marcus by the shoulders and made a big show of jabbing at Marcus’ name plate. “Marcus Adler, huh? You are hereby banned from the MGM lot. I’m an elephant, son. Don’t even bother trying to get past me in the future. You got that, Marcus Adler from Western Union?”

  Marcus nodded and headed for the sidewalk. He didn’t care he’d been stiffed for a tip or that he’d been banned from the biggest studio in Hollywood because when Ramon Novarro signed for his telegram, their hands had touched.

  The man had the smoothest hands Marcus Adler had ever felt.

  CHAPTER 22

  Marcus leaned over and whispered into Kathryn’s ear. “Is this even legal?”

  Kathryn glanced at Hugo and his little tart of a date, then back at Marcus. “Bob Benchley tells me it’s perfectly legal,” she said, “in a loophole sort of way.”

  For a while now, Marcus and Hugo had been meeting up for weekly booster sessions at the Top Hat Café, where they spitballed story ideas over coffee and a shared slice of pineapple upside-down cake. It was Hugo who told Marcus that the fastest way to a screenwriter contract was to get a few short stories printed in magazines, preferably the classier ones like Vanity Fair, Saturday Evening Post, or The New Yorker, but anything was better than nothing. It was all too clear to everyone in Hollywood that these new-fangled talkies weren’t just the gimmicky fad that the moguls and theater owners hoped they would be. The public was clamoring for more, and all the studios were now converting to sound and, Hugo pointed out, the pair of them were in the right place in the right time to get in on the action from the start.

  Much to his own surprise, Marcus found he had a knack for coming up with story ideas. They seemed to bubble up out of him like a water fountain. However, it didn’t take him long to realize that while getting a great story idea was one thing, turning it into a great story was something else again. It was hard for him not to be envious of Hugo: he’d had two stories placed already but he encouraged Marcus to stick at it, and reminded him that the main difference between being unpublished and published was ‘not quitting.’

  Last week, when Hugo started talking about a story set on the Montfalcone, Marcus sat up straight. He’d heard Ramon Novarro mention that boat to his seamstress. Hugo’s father was chummy with the casino boss, who could get them aboard to research the story, so Hugo suggested they both bring dates and make a night of it. When Marcus asked Kathryn; her eyes lit up like jack-o-lanterns.

  As the motorboat pulled up to the Santa Monica pier to shuttle the foursome to the Montfalcone, Kathryn fingered the diamond brooch pinned to her lapel. She had protested when Gwendolyn tried to loan it to her, but Gwendolyn was firm. “Nobody will question your right to be there if you wear this.”

  Hugo’s date nearly toppled into the Pacific when her heel caught on a slice of rotten wood halfway down the gangplank. They made it the rest of the way without falling into the drink and were ushered onboard by an old sailor in a uniform that couldn’t have seen action since the Great War. The casino ran nearly the length of the ship. It was jammed with a motley collection of second hand roulette, blackjack, and poker tables crowded with people determined to lose as much money as possible in as short a time as possible.

  The guys went to rustle up some drinks, leaving Kathryn to watch Kitty chew her gum. “So Hugo tells me you work for Tallulah Bankhead.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Kathryn surveyed the room for Billy Wilkerson.

  “Is it true that she’s a lesbian?”

  Tallulah Bankhead probably slept with anyone who’d ever raised an eyebrow in her direction, but Kathryn answered, “She’s never made a pass at me.”

  “Are you a lesbian?”

  Kathryn turned to look at Kitty’s cud-chomping mouth. “No, I’m not.”

  “So, you and Marcus . . . ?”

  “We’re just real good friends.”

  Kitty winked and chomped. “Gotcha. So’s Hugo. He’s a swell writer, didya know that? He lets me read his stories before he sends ‘em out to magazines and stuff. Does Marcus do that with you?”

  “Oh sure,” she said, scanning the poker tables over Kitty’s shoulder. Marcus had only recently started showing her his stories. She wasn’t terribly impressed at first but his output had been remarkable. Lately they’d shown noticeable improvement so she was glad for him that he was persisting.

  “It’s amazing where these guys get their ideas, ain’t it? Hugo’s working on a ripper right now. It’s about this guy and this girl, see, and they wake up in bed, right? Only they don’t know who the other one is, and they don’t know how they got there. But there’s a piece of string tying their wrists together. What a setup, huh?”

  “It’s only a good setup if he can match it with a good resolution.”

  Kathryn spotted Wilkerson’s Brylcreemed profile at a table in the far corner.

  “Reso-what? Oh, you mean a boffo ending? I think it’s a knockout of an idea. Don’t you?”

  Reluctantly Kathryn pulled her eyes away from Wilkerson’s poker table. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I said, don’t you think that’s a terrific idea for a story?”

  “Oh, look,” Kathryn muttered, “the boys found us some drinks after all.”

  “How much mon
ey you got on you?” Marcus asked Kathryn.

  She gave him a look. As they left the Garden of Allah, Kathryn insisted they make a pact: Under no circumstances were they to allow each other to gamble. Both of them were barely getting by as it was.

  “I doubt I’ve got five dollars in my purse,” Kathryn replied.

  Marcus’ stomach churned. Ramon Novarro was playing blackjack at a ten dollar table, and he only had nine dollars. The look in Kathryn’s eyes said, Don’t ask, but the pythons squeezing his heart screamed louder.

  “Will you let me have it?”

  Kathryn’s eyes widened.

  “Ten bucks ain’t going to get you anywhere,” Hugo announced from behind them. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out his wallet. “Will a hundred get things rolling for you?”

  A roar surged like a geyser around Wilkerson. Kathryn arrived at his roulette table in time to see the croupier push towers of black and red chips in his direction. She leaned on the high edge around the wheel and stroked Gwendolyn’s diamond brooch. She had noticed women eyeing it. “So,” she whispered to herself, “this is how it feels to be the envy of people like you.”

  Wilkerson studied the roulette table and placed several large bets, then the croupier shot the ball into the wheel’s groove. Kathryn thought she’d approach him at the first opportunity, but when the ball landed on red five and another whoop flew out of Wilkerson’s mouth, she changed her mind. The crowd applauded as he boxed the air. She wouldn’t be the one to break his winning streak.