Twisted Boulevard Read online

  Once he realized that, it was a grueling test of his patience to wait until Oliver was ready to see him. Now that he was, Marcus had no intention of spoiling the moment.

  “The past is the past,” he told Oliver. “Let’s concentrate on getting you well enough to break you out of here. You must be so damned sick of hospital food!”

  Oliver was still crying, but it was laughing-crying. Marcus tilted forward and kissed the tears from Oliver’s cheeks. He was about to reach up and run his fingers through Ollie’s messy bed hair when a male voice behind them said,

  “My boy, I was so happy to hear—”

  Marcus slid off the bed and took a moment to adjust his tie.

  Joseph Breen stood two paces inside the room. He was a bland-faced accountant type with a three-piece suit the color of dirt, wire-framed spectacles, and long cauliflower ears that looked better on Clark Gable. The man was uncompromisingly Roman Catholic, notoriously anti-Semitic, and most significantly, Oliver’s boss.

  He threaded the brim of a tan homburg through his fingers as he glared at Marcus. Over the public address, someone paged a doctor and nurse to Room 218. A flurry of footsteps pounded the linoleum, but inside Oliver’s room, it was like the day had arrived for hell to freeze over.

  “Hello, Mister Breen.” Marcus offered his hand. “I’m Marcus Adler.”

  “I know who you are.” Breen made no effort to shake his hand. “When Mayer cleaned house last year, I was glad to see he started with you.”

  That wasn’t even close to the way Marcus’ exit from MGM came about, but this was neither the time nor place for that argument.

  Marcus lowered his hand. “I was just on my way out.” He turned to Oliver. “Good to see you, Trenton, ol’ boy. I hope your recovery continues apace.” He went to step around Breen but was caught by the shoulder and shoved against the metal bars at the foot of Oliver’s bed.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, then glared at Oliver. “Don’t tell me you’re friends with this guy. You know what he is, don’t you?”

  Marcus and Oliver flashed panicked glances at each other. Homo or Commie?

  “I was visiting a friend,” Marcus told Breen, “and I happened to see Mister Trenton’s name posted outside. Over the years at MGM, Mister Trenton and I have had a number of negotiations. I always found him professional and fair-minded, and I liked to think the respect was mutual. So when I saw he was here, I simply came in to offer my best wishes.”

  Of course, that didn’t explain why he had been kissing away Mr. Trenton’s tears, but he hoped Breen hadn’t seen that. The indecision in the man’s eyes was about as much as Marcus could hope for. He angled his head toward Oliver without taking his eyes off Breen. “Good luck, Trenton.”

  As he left the room, a loud buzz over the PA system filled the corridor, followed by an announcement it was four o’clock and visiting hours were over.

  Marcus reached for his cigarettes and lit up as he pressed the elevator button with his hip. That was a hell of a close call. If Breen had walked in five seconds earlier? Yikes. He breathed out a long plume of Camel.

  The elevator took forever to arrive, and when it did, it was packed. But the operator, a wizened old turtle of a guy, reckoned there was space for one more and instructed the other passengers to shift around.

  A voice yelled, “Hold the car!” Marcus looked down at his shoes for a few moments, then raised them to meet Breen’s hellfire eyes just as the doors slid to a close.

  CHAPTER 13

  With its bright red walls, kelly green upholstery, and prancing Carnival-in-Rio figures along the walls, Mocambo was the perfect place to celebrate the dawning of 1949, but Gwendolyn wasn’t in the mood.

  Kathryn nudged her in the back seat of Trevor Bergin’s Studebaker while up front, Trevor and Marcus talked about the fallout over Howard Hughes cutting 1500 jobs from RKO.

  “Your face is like a mini Greek tragedy,” Kathryn said. “Is it the store?”

  “If things don’t pick up soon, I might have to shut down.”

  “Didn’t Edith send some customers your way?”

  “A few big spenders, but I haven’t seen any of them again.”

  “What about your Licketysplitters?”

  “Some Filipino woman near downtown has stolen all my business. It’s impossible to compete when she charges half my rates.”

  “I bet the quality is half, too.”

  Gwendolyn smiled. “My rent’s going up next month. This postwar boom is all very well unless you want retail space.”

  Kathryn rubbed her hand. “All you need is a celebrity to wear one of your creations to a premiere—”

  “They’ve first got to come into the store.” Gwendolyn regretted biting off the end of Kathryn’s sentence. She was only trying to be a good friend. “I still haven’t found Horton Tattler.”

  Kathryn popped open her clutch and pulled out a compact to check her makeup. “Horton isn’t the only one who can market your perfume.”

  “I know,” Gwendolyn sighed, “but it might be a way to help him out. This sort of thing is right up his alley, and he’s had such a tough time of it.”

  “That’s all very well,” Trevor butted in from the front seat, “but Chez Gwendolyn isn’t a charity. You need to make the right decisions that will shore up its survival.”

  Trevor Bergin had been one of MGM’s biggest heartthrobs throughout the 1940s. He combined the swagger of Errol Flynn with the boy-next-door charm of Jimmy Stewart; he could fill an expensive suit as well as Randolph Scott and sang better than Van Johnson. He was also queer as a three-dollar bill, and like other contract players in his situation, had allowed himself to be railroaded into an arranged marriage to his studio counterpart, Melody Hope.

  But while Trevor took to stardom like a hog to mud, Melody’s ego proved far more fragile. Her recent years had cratered into gin-soaked misery.

  “By the way,” Marcus said, “where is Melody tonight?”

  “Beats me.”

  Gwendolyn could tell from the way Kathryn leaned forward that she smelled a scoop. “So, you and Melody—?”

  “—are getting a divorce.” Trevor swung the car to the curb out front of Mocambo. “And yes, that scoop is all yours.”

  The South-American-themed nightclub was always a riot of color, from raspberry red to nightshade violet, but tonight they’d added actual rainbows—streamers hung across the ceiling from one side of the club to the other.

  Mocambo’s maître d’ was a whippet-thin gent with a Gable moustache, an implacable face, and a precise way about him broadcasting the notion that no detail had been overlooked. Gwendolyn was surprised when he consulted his silver pocket watch and asked them to wait a moment. He skirted around the dance floor to consult a rotund man dressed in white tie. Their heads were together in conference for what seemed like an eternity before he retraced his steps.

  “Mister Bergin,” he said, “it seems our reservations girl has made a most grievous error. I am mortified that we cannot offer your party a dance floor table—”

  Trevor raised his hands to stop him. “Don’t worry about it, Eduardo. As long as our cocktail waiter has a clear shot to the bar.”

  Eduardo led them to a table one ring removed from the center of the action.

  According to the tacit rules of the Hollywood food chain, the whole point of going out was to see and be seen. The bigger the star, the closer they were seated to the dance floor.

  Had Melody been with them, their demotion to second tier might have set off a Wagnerian aria of do-you-know-who-I-am culminating in a how-dare-you finale. But Trevor was offloading his overindulged wife, which was reason enough to celebrate as far as Gwendolyn was concerned. With Trevor and his divorce, Marcus and his awkward encounter with Oliver’s boss, Kathryn losing her radio show, and me slowly going broke, we could do with a decent night out.

  * * *

  They were halfway through a second round of champagne cocktails when Gwendolyn began to suspect so
mething was amiss. She shook it off at first, then noticed a couple of well-dressed wives hiding their mouths behind menus and looking in her direction.

  Nearby, she spied an eight-top; the women clustered at one end, their husbands at the other. Three of the four women and the oldest of the men were looking at her. Or at least her table.

  She motioned for the other three to lean in. “Is it just me, or are we the center of attention?”

  “Are you referring to the Junior League?” Trevor asked.

  “Or that group of eight who have nothing better to do than gawk at us?”

  Kathryn drained her cocktail. “Have none of you noticed Harry Cohn’s table? His wife nearly fell off her chair when she spotted us.”

  “Did the back of my dress drop off or something?” Gwendolyn asked.

  “I suspect it involves Trevor’s demotion to social Siberia. Sorry, old chap, but it appears to be all downhill from here.”

  “That’s nonsense!” Kathryn made a show of looking around for a waiter as she scanned the room. “The Sheik was a huge hit last summer, and this war picture you’ve just done—what’s it called?”

  “Command Decision.”

  “I was talking to Walter Pidgeon the other day. He said that even in a rough cut, the movie is a knockout.” She tapped Trevor on the wrist. “He said that Sam Wood couldn’t sing your praises high enough. I doubt our banishment has anything to do with Golden Boy here.”

  Marcus flipped a Mocambo matchbook like a coin. “Don’t look at me. I’m no longer even in the biz.”

  “It’s not me, is it?” Kathryn reared back. “What the hell have I done?”

  Marcus pretended to scratch his nose with the matchbook to cover his mouth. “How many people know you helped Bogie with that Photoplay essay?”

  “The one from last year? That article is the sole reason his career did an about-face. Key Largo pulled in three million.”

  “Speak of the devil.”

  None of this made sense to Gwendolyn. Bogie and Bacall appeared at the maître d’s podium. Bogie looked suave in his tux, but it was Bacall who netted all the attention. As they threaded their way toward their ringside table, her shimmering emerald gown caught the lights as it swirled around her legs.

  What if I offered her a free outfit? And encouraged her to wear it to someplace like this?

  When Bacall turned sideways, Gwendolyn saw that she was heavily pregnant. Aside from a prominent bosom and a little puffiness around the face, she looked every bit as radiant as she did on the screen.

  Peter Lorre and his wife, Kaaren, joined the Bogarts at their table. Within seconds, a waiter appeared with a magnum of champagne, four glasses, and a chrome ice bucket. Lorre made a toast and they clinked glasses. Bogie, however, froze when he spotted Gwendolyn through the figures circling the dance floor.

  “Is he staring at me?”

  Bacall followed her husband’s gaze and noticeably tensed.

  Trevor let out a strangled squawk. “Peter Lorre’s wife looks as though she’s bracing herself for a root canal.”

  Kathryn slapped her napkin on the table and shot to her feet. “If I’m not back in ten, call out the coast guard.”

  Half the place charted Kathryn’s progress through the maze of tables. When she approached, Humphrey and Peter made half-hearted attempts to stand, but Kathryn waved them down as she crossed to Bogie and Bacall’s corner. She was only there a couple of minutes, then headed back with Bogie in tow.

  When he arrived at the table, he tendered his right hand. “May I have this dance, Gwendolyn?”

  Bogie swung her into a clinch as the band launched into “I’d Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China.”

  Gwendolyn and Bogie had a history that stretched back to The Maltese Falcon. She’d proved to be so bad an actress that she’d thankfully ended up on the cutting room floor. Bogie had never brought it up when he and Bacall moved into the Garden of Allah before they got married.

  She asked him, “Do you have indigestion, or are you about to deliver some bad news?”

  He sneered a crooked smile. “I’m surprised I even need to tell you.”

  Sweet Jesus on the cross. She presented him with her bravest smile. “For the love of Mike, yank off the Band-Aid.”

  He pulled her in more tightly, as though to steady her for what was coming. “Your screen test for Gone with the Wind.”

  Gwendolyn groaned. Back when every actress under fifty was maneuvering for a Scarlett O’Hara screen test, Gwendolyn’s neighbor, Scott Fitzgerald, managed to score her one. It was a fiasco. Not only did her dress catch fire, but in the mad scramble to get ready, she’d neglected to put on any panties. In an absurd effort to escape the flames, Gwendolyn stumbled into the backdrop, which flipped her hoop skirt up and exposed her shame in glorious Technicolor.

  She dropped her head onto Bogie’s shoulder. “Why on earth would that film suddenly resurface—OH!” Her head shot up.

  “Did I just hear the penny drop?” She saw a depth of sympathy in Bogie’s soft brown eyes that he rarely presented to the camera.

  “It’s Leilah O’Roarke, isn’t it?”

  “That would be a safe assumption.”

  “Please tell me what you know.”

  “In the past couple of months, my wife and I have been to three parties where your screen test was shown ahead of the after-dinner movie. Inevitably, someone asks, ‘I wonder whatever happened to that poor unfortunate dish.’ And twice now, someone else has said that you’ve got a store up on the Strip and that they’d heard you financed it by forcing Leilah’s hand.”

  “How am I supposed to have pulled that off?”

  “Because you’ve got her client cards and are sucking her dry before you hand them over.”

  Gwendolyn closed her eyes and gave herself over to Bogie as he guided her around the dance floor. “These movie parties you went to, were they all Warner Brothers?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is Leilah’s husband still head of security?”

  “See why I told you it’d be a safe assumption?”

  “I almost wish I did have them, so I could hand them over and be done with it.”

  “So you don’t?”

  “No!”

  “Because if you did—”

  “Which I don’t!”

  “—my advice would be: Hang onto them in case you need them as a bargaining chip.”

  She felt him tense; the fingers of his right hand dug into her back. She looked up to see alarm plastering Bogie’s face. “If this box does exist, might you be in it?”

  A nervous smile. “I haven’t been heaven’s purest angel, but no, I’ve never set foot in Leilah’s brothels. Half the town’s running scared, and if those cards fall into the wrong hands—the FBI, the police, or—God help us—Louella or Hedda—it could be a bloodbath.”

  “Honestly, I don’t give a fig about who’s gone where, but Leilah paid me a nasty visit a while back. She’s convinced I have her rotten old cards, and threatened to ruin me if I didn’t fork them over.”

  “She’s made good on her threat.”

  “My store can only last maybe another four or five months, six at best. Leilah said she’d kill my business; I didn’t realize it’d be such a slow death.”

  “Then you need to convince her.”

  “I’m more than willing to try—”

  “Good, because she and Clem walked in about five minutes ago.”

  That explains the bear claw to my lower back. “Where are they?”

  “They’re ordering Eduardo to push their table next to ours.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Sure as hell wasn’t my wife’s. She looks like she’s about to go into labor.”

  “Maybe she is.”

  “I’d better go and run defense.”

  Gwendolyn thanked him for his honesty and returned to her table and related the gist of her dance floor tête-à-tête to the others.

  “What are you going to do?” Marcus
asked.

  “I’d fight fire with fire, if I had any to fight with.”

  “You’ve got all the firepower you need,” he said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “Look around, Gwennie. If you publicly call her on her sneaky tactics, everyone here will tell everyone they know, and they will tell everyone they know.”

  Gwendolyn cast around the room. The eyes not aimed in her direction were pointing toward the Bogart-O’Roarke table; heads were pressed together in furtive conversations behind menus. I’m really going to have to do this, aren’t I? In front of everyone.

  “It’s your best shot,” Kathryn said.

  Maybe if I pretend I’m Joan Crawford.

  Gwendolyn picked up her champagne cocktail and finished it off. She shanghaied Trevor’s and drained that, too. Then she hoisted herself to her feet, locked Leilah’s face in her sights, and planted herself in front of their table.

  “Leilah,” she hollered, “you need to stop.”

  Leilah looked up from her Lobster Cocktail Cardinal. “Stop what?”

  “This public harassment.” Gwendolyn slapped the table. “I do not have—” She realized half the people within earshot might be in Leilah’s box of cards, and suddenly she couldn’t say the words out loud. “—anything that belongs to you!”

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “You’re ruining me, Leilah! And for what? A hunch?”

  “I’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to recover my business records.” Gwendolyn leaned away from the table as Leilah got to her feet, ignoring her husband’s attempt to keep her seated. “I’ve explored every avenue available to me, and guess where every road leads?”

  “If I had them, I would give them to you.”

  “Then hand them over and be done with it.”

  “I DON’T HAVE THEM!” Gwendolyn screamed so loudly that the drummer crashed into his cymbals and the band lost its rhythm. By the time they recovered, Gwendolyn could feel every pair of eyes drilling her.

  “I DO NOT HAVE YOUR GODDAMNED CARDS. I HAVE NEVER SEEN YOUR GODDAMNED CARDS. THIS CRUEL PERSECUTION IS RUINING MY LIFE AND IT MUST STOP!”