Reds in the Beds Read online

  “Sure,” Dierdre replied. “By the way, a package just arrived by special messenger.”

  Marcus was out of his office before Dierdre even hung up.

  Last Friday night, Marcus had found a diamond-shaped gold tiepin at his favorite department store, Desmond’s on Wilshire. It was half an inch across and unadorned, and he’d asked the store’s jeweler to set three rubies into the front and etch an inscription into the back. It was supposed to take a week, but here it was, only four days later.

  Marcus picked up the Desmond’s package and returned to his office, slipping the contents out of its signature wrapping before he reached his seat.

  The three rubies sparkled in the light of the desk lamp. The jeweler had set them in a perfect equilateral triangle, just as instructed. Marcus turned it over and read the inscription—“Happy birthday, Oliver, one two three.”

  He put the tiepin back into the maroon velvet box and tapped it three times on his desk: their secret code. Three little taps, or three soft knocks, or three quiet finger snaps equaled three little words.

  Yip Wainwright steamed into Marcus’ office without knocking. Like so many greenhorns his age, Wainwright carried around the insufferable assumption of entitlement. They get hired by the best studio in Hollywood and immediately start wondering why they’re not getting two grand a week.

  In his years at MGM, Marcus had seen it all, but now he had to deal with it head on. He slipped the velvet box into his drawer.

  Wainwright spotted his script. “You’ve read it?” He sat down, uninvited, on one of Marcus’ two visitor chairs and slung a leg over its arm.

  Marcus pointed to the guy’s foot. “How about you sit in a chair like a professional? This is MGM, not the YMCA.”

  Dressing down employees had come easily to his predecessor, Jim Taggert. Marcus hoped it’d eventually be the same for him, but meanwhile, he’d have to fake it. He was relieved to see Wainwright put his foot on the floor.

  “My mistake,” Wainwright said, with just enough insouciance to get his point across.

  Marcus adopted one of Taggert’s trademark postures—leaning forward, shoulders hunched, red editing pencil in hand. “Your script is a mess.”

  “What?!”

  “I know a slapdash effort when I see one.”

  “Slapd—?”

  “You made Hannah’s love interest so damn cocky that the audience is going to start booing him halfway through the picture. Not to mention your jokes—I can see them coming a mile away.” Whatever Wainwright was about to say, Marcus cut him off by swiping his red pencil through the air.

  “You were hired by this studio because we thought you were capable of a screenplay far better than this.” He jabbed at the script. “If you want to get away with putting as little effort into your work as possible, I suggest you try Republic or Monogram.” He used the pencil to push the script toward Wainwright, as though it stank like last week’s garbage. “You’ll find notes on nearly every page. Go back to your office and show me our faith in your abilities wasn’t misplaced.”

  Marcus didn’t let out his breath until Wainwright closed the door behind him, and then he slumped into his chair, telling himself that wasn’t half as grueling as he’d imagined, and that he might not have to fake this tough-ass attitude for too long. There was a knock on the door. Thinking it was Wainwright back for a rebuttal, he shouted, “WHAT?”

  Dierdre cracked open the door holding a brown paper package in her right hand. “This came for you in the mail. It’s marked ‘Personal’ so I didn’t open it.” She placed it on his desk and retreated, leaving Marcus to ponder whether his scolding had carried through the office walls.

  The sharp corners of the package were already poking through the wrapping. Marcus tore away the paper. It was a hardback novel, and fresh off the press, by the look of its pristine cover.

  Reds in the Beds by Julian Caesar.

  Clearly a pseudonym, and an artless one at that.

  The dust jacket featured a double bed, the sort of thing usually found in a cheap motel, draped with a crumpled red chenille bedspread. An anonymous hand, scratched and bloody, was lifting a corner of the bedspread off the floor to reveal a face silhouetted in shadow. Behind the bed, a window framed by raggedy pink lace curtains looked onto the deteriorating Hollywoodland sign in the distance.

  Publishing houses often sent Marcus books they hoped to sell as movies. Generally, he handed them to staff members who would summarize them if they had potential. But there was something about the title—Reds in the Beds—and the striking cover that made him open the novel and read the first line.

  Hollywood was the sort of place where deadbeats become kings, kings become paupers, paupers become whores, and whores become stars who marry deadbeats.

  It was catchy, memorable, provocative.

  The clatter of the office typewriters receded as he read the second line, and then the third. By the time he reached the end of the page, he couldn’t stop. By the end of the chapter, he found himself short of breath and wished he’d never started.

  CHAPTER 3

  Gwendolyn Brick had never lived by herself. Eighteen years ago, she went straight from her mother’s funeral to the bus that took her to the train that brought her to Hollywood, where she shared a villa at the Garden of Allah with Kathryn Massey. But after Kathryn and Marcus got married, it didn’t seem right for the women to keep living together—not even at the Garden of Allah Hotel, where nothing ever seemed inappropriate.

  But the wartime housing crunch didn’t evaporate when the war ended; the Garden was still operating at full capacity for months after Japan surrendered. Gwendolyn couldn’t conceive of living anywhere else, and Kathryn was in no hurry to push her out the door. But finally, in late November, a villa opened up, and at the age of thirty-five, Gwendolyn finally had a place she could call her own.

  It sat at the far end of the Garden, which meant it was quiet, but dark, too. The only significant window was in the kitchen, and it faced the high fence along Havenhurst Drive, which blocked out most of the sunlight. But it had a five-sided nook that squeezed out of the living room like an extra limb, and that’s where she set up her sewing machine and mannequin. She was standing in her sewing nook admiring how much space she had when she heard a knock at the door. Her first visitors!

  “We come bearing gifts!” Marcus presented her with an enormous bouquet of baby-pink azaleas. He held up his left hand. “Champagne!”

  “And paint!” Oliver added, lifting a can. “They call this shade Pale Butterscotch.” He cast his gaze around Gwendolyn’s new home and grimaced. “You weren’t kidding. It is a little on the murky side. I can see why you requested a jollier color.”

  “Light or dark, it’s all mine and I love it.” She ran her finger over the three rubies on Oliver’s tiepin. “This is lovely. You have a thing for the number three.”

  “I do?” Oliver asked.

  “You’ve got a pair of cufflinks with three little emeralds, too.”

  “Those are mine.” Marcus wore a grin Gwendolyn couldn’t quite interpret. He deposited the flowers and champagne on Gwendolyn’s drain board. “We shouldn’t let this champagne get any warmer.”

  “I don’t suppose you bought glasses?”

  Marcus laughed. “Was everything Kathryn’s?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He shot Gwendolyn a sympathetic look. He was one of the few people who knew she’d spent the whole war socking away nearly three grand by selling nylon stockings on the black market, only to have her boyfriend disappear with every last dime. That money was supposed to bankroll her store—Chez Gwendolyn—but Linc Tattler’s disappearance put the kibosh on that.

  “Not to worry,” Marcus said. “We’ll just pop the bottle and take turns.”

  They were four or five swigs down when Oliver pointed to the empty wall. Six feet across and eight feet high, it was the largest wall in the place, and bare as a newborn. “What do you plan on hanging there?”

&n
bsp; Gwendolyn shrugged. She’d never had a wall of her own to fill, and wasn’t even sure what her taste in art was.

  They gazed at the blank space for a few moments before Marcus ventured, “What about your portrait? It’d fit, wouldn’t it?”

  Gwendolyn lit a cigarette and tried to picture her portrait hanging on the wall. It’d been so long, she wasn’t even sure she remembered it accurately.

  “Someone painted your picture?” Oliver’s words came out a touch slurred. It was one of the things she liked about Marcus’ boyfriend: booze affected him about as fast as it affected her.

  Marcus nudged Oliver. “Remember back in the thirties how we were all obsessed with the casting of Scarlett O’Hara? Well, our enterprising young Gwendolyn here concocted this plan to get her portrait painted as Scarlett and have it hung in Selznick’s living room.”

  “How did that work out?” Oliver asked.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I didn’t play Scarlett O’Hara.” Gwendolyn pursed her lips. “You don’t think it’s too overpowering for my little abode?”

  “Au contraire,” Marcus said, “I think it’d give the room a focal point. Where is it?”

  “I can only assume it’s where I left it in the basement of the main house.”

  Oliver took another swig of champagne. “Whatarewewaitingfor?”

  * * *

  The painting was bigger than Gwendolyn remembered, and heavier than the boys bargained for. They had to rest a couple of times en route, as well as negotiate the stairs from the basement. Inside Gwendolyn’s place, they propped it against the bare wall and stood back.

  “I can’t believe you hid something so gorgeous in a basement,” Oliver panted.

  Gwendolyn was surprised at how much she liked it. It’s like bumping into a younger version of yourself.

  David Selznick’s wife, Irene, was the one who originally put Gwendolyn in the room with Alistair Dunne, who was supposed to paint her portrait for the Archibald Prize. Gwendolyn thought the plan to catch Selznick’s attention with it was farfetched, but she was desperate to screen-test for Scarlett. What Gwendolyn hadn’t counted on was someone who threw such gusto into everything he did, from painting her portrait to making sweaty, animalistic love to her. Their affair burned out in a smoldering heap, but not before he painted this goodbye gift.

  He’d arranged her on a faded brown velvet chaise lounge in a huge dress with gold, crimson, and peacock blue brocade, resting on one elbow with her mouth slightly open, as though half shocked and half thrilled.

  Marcus nodded approvingly. “In Kathryn’s villa there’d have been too much distraction, but this wall gives it the right amount of space, without getting lost in the corner.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “It’s almost like the you in this painting has been quietly waiting for just the right spot. Welcome home, Gwennie O’Hara.”

  * * *

  The boys left once the champagne was gone. Now that Marcus was respectably married to Kathryn, their mutual social life had opened up, filling their evenings with dinner parties and bridge games at all the right homes around Hollywood. Gwendolyn wondered how Oliver felt, but if there was any resentment, it didn’t show. “I get a lot more reading done,” he told her once without rancor.

  She was still standing in front of Gwennie O’Hara’s portrait, marveling at how agreeably it fitted, when someone knocked on her door again. She opened it to find Horton Tattler on her landing.

  Horton was the father of her wartime boyfriend who dashed off with all her savings. It was hard enough to tell him his son was a thief, but then she’d had to suggest he look into his own finances, as it seemed his most trusted friend had been laundering money through Horton’s company. Gwendolyn had been relieved to put all that sordid business behind her, even though it meant kissing three thousand smackers goodbye.

  The last few months had aged the man considerably. His Victorian handlebar moustache that had bristled with pride and confidence now drooped with neglect, and the gray in his sideburns now spread across the top of his head.

  He smiled weakly. “May I?”

  Gwendolyn widened the door. “I’ve only just moved in, so I’m still in disarray.”

  Tattler stopped in front of the portrait and muttered, “Magnificent!” before settling onto Gwendolyn’s sofa.

  She sat down beside him. “How have you been?” she asked mildly, and received a pinched smile in return.

  “My wife left me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Gwendolyn said, but she was far from surprised. Most of Mr. Horton’s purchases at her perfume and lingerie counter at Bullocks Wilshire were for his mistress.

  “She went back to Atlanta. I’ve sold both homes and all the household effects.” He cast his eyes around the dim room. “If I’d known, I’d have saved you one of my lamps.” He tried for a warmer smile, but fell short of the mark. “I’m living at the Hershey Arms now.”

  “It’s only temporary, I’m sure,” Gwendolyn said. The Hershey Arms was prosperous in its day, but that day was a long time ago, and both of them knew it.

  Tattler’s Tuxedos had been one of LA’s classiest menswear stores, but the government had appropriated Mr. Tattler’s factories, obliging him to make uniforms at cost for the war effort. He could have survived, but his closest friend, Clem O’Roarke, had been using Tattler’s Tuxedos’ bank account to launder his wife’s brothel money. Gwendolyn was pondering whether Horton’s sudden appearance had something to do with Nelson Hoyt bringing up Leilah O’Roarke to Kathryn at the Hollywood Canteen when Horton pulled a postcard from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. It was a black and white photograph of a lighthouse on a tiny smudge of an island.

  “What’s this?”

  “I thought you might know.”

  Gwendolyn shook her head. “Where did you find it?”

  “I was packing up Linc’s house. That’s his handwriting on the back.”

  Gwendolyn flipped the card over. “El Faro. That’s Spanish, isn’t it?” Horton shrugged. She read out loud the two other words written there. “Emilio Barragán. Do you know who that is?”

  “No idea,” Horton responded. “But I figured it might point to his whereabouts.”

  Gwendolyn could feel her hopes rising. Perhaps her three grand wasn’t quite as lost as she’d thought. She studied the picture again. “Maybe this lighthouse is somewhere in Mexico?”

  “Or Guatemala. Or Argentina. Or Chile. Or Spain.”

  “It’s the only clue you have to track down your son.” And my money.

  “No,” Horton said firmly. “It’s the only clue you have. I’m not looking for him.” He grew instantly red in the face. “My son sold illegal goods on the black market while the rest of the world was fighting for freedom. And then he disappeared without a word after stealing a considerable amount of money from a decent, lovely lass who deserved no such treatment from anyone, least of all my own blood.”

  Gwendolyn decided against making the point that the money Linc took from her was earned from the black market too. “Mr. Tattler,” she said, “Linc isn’t a criminal.”

  “He stole your money!”

  “I want to think it was for a very good reason, and we won’t know that until we track him down.”

  Horton Tattler brushed invisible lint from his shabby tweed jacket. “I’ve washed my hands of him.”

  “Then why did you bring me this postcard?”

  “In some small way, I feel responsible for my son’s actions, and while I can’t repay the money he took from you, the least I could do was bring you this clue.” He glanced down at the picture postcard in Gwendolyn’s hand. “That lighthouse could be anywhere, but that name—Emilio Barragán—perhaps could get you somewhere.”

  He went to stand, but Gwendolyn caught him by the elbow. The tweed felt cheap and scratchy—a sad step down for one of the best haberdashers in California.

  “What if I do? What should I say to him?”

  “If I were you, Miss Bri
ck, I’d say, ‘I want my money back.’”

  “I meant what should I say about you?”

  He thought for a moment, disappointment seeping from his eyes. “In that unlikely event, I’m sure you’ll find something kind to say.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Kathryn set a plate of fileted salmon on rainbow rye next to Bertie Kreuger’s mock pâté de foie gras. Even though everybody had agreed to make something from scratch for Robert Benchley’s wake, Kathryn suspected Bertie’s contribution came from Schwab’s, and she’d just mushed it up to make it look homemade. Bertie lived in Alla Nazimova’s old bedroom suite up in the main building. Unlike the villas, it lacked a kitchen, which was fine because Bertie had never cooked a thing in her life.

  Dorothy Parker appeared at Kathryn’s side holding a platter of celery sticks stuffed with crabmeat. Her drawn face looked as though all the life had been sucked out of it. Dottie wasn’t the hugging type, so Kathryn just kissed her lightly on the temple. Her hair smelled of cigarette ash and dog food. “How you doing?”

  Dottie’s eyes were rimmed in red. “I’m annoyed because he got there before I did.”

  It was one of her typical barbed lines, snapped off with practiced indifference, but Kathryn saw through it. Her closest friend in the world had died, and there was no replacing him. Kathryn imagined losing Marcus and she knew how Dorothy felt.

  Dottie grunted. “I hope every last pigeon on Nantucket is shitting all over his family plot.” Benchley was famous for his hatred of pigeons. “Oh well,” she said bitterly. “You know what rhymes with Nantucket.” She slid her platter next to Bertie’s pâté. “Have you seen Lillian? She said she was bringing Edna.”

  “Ferber?” Kathryn asked. “She’s in town?”

  “For the premiere of Saratoga Trunk. I haven’t seen her since Medusa was in pigtails. She’ll be a sight for these bleary old eyes. Point those harpies in my direction when you see them.” She headed for the booze table Kay Thompson and her husband had set up. “Martini!” she barked at Bill. “Double! Three olives!”