HE PARKED HIS FORD in a lot beside the Equitable Building at just gone three next day, June 27. Checking the polished glass of the shop windows as he walked south, he saw a lanky man with big ears and slicked back brown hair, casually well-dressed, wearing heavy brown glasses and carrying a small cardboard suitcase. These were expensive clothes—Daniel Lamotte had a sort of crumpled style—and they were a good fit. Even the shoes.
He’d arranged to meet April Lamotte opposite the Taft Building on Hollywood and Vine at half past the hour. Historically appropriate, he reckoned, seeing as that was where Howard Hughes had maintained his offices until he’d been carted off to the funny farm. The lawyer’s office was a couple of miles on along Sunset toward Downtown, but it made sense that she pick him up someplace else. He saw that he’d arrived ten minutes early when he checked Daniel Lamotte’s Longines watch.
The glasses were starting to slide with the sweat off his nose. He felt around in his pockets for a handkerchief—it was fresh, and monogrammed D L—but his fingers felt a gritty residue. Particles of sand glittered on his fingertips. He brushed them off, told himself to focus, wiped the lenses, put his glasses back on. He was an actor once again, and this was simply another role. It was just a question of imagining that the whole of Los Angeles was a giant stage. He bought coffee in a paper cup from a doughnut-shaped stand using a dollar from Daniel Lamotte’s billfold. Mussolini had just declared war on the British and the Russians had invaded some place called Latvia according to the newsstand. More interestingly, stockings made out of something called “nylon” were about to go on sale. He’d just finished the coffee when he saw the Delahaye heading east, top down. Even amid the expensive machines that teemed across this particular intersection—the Cadillacs, Buicks and Bentleys of all the feelie industry players who worked around here—it stood out.
April Lamotte pulled in at the curb and gave him a smile far warmer than anything he’d seen the day before as she leaned across the bench leather seat and gestured him in. She was wearing something burgundy with padded shoulders and big lapels and puff sleeves. The outfit was belted at the waist and fitted snug around her hips and down to her beige-stockinged thighs. She was also wearing a diamond-studded wedding ring and matching gold and emerald necklace and bracelet. Clark heard the thrum of the Delahaye’s exhaust, felt the expensive heft and swing of the door, as he sat beside her and slung the suitcase on the back seat.
“Bang on time.”
“You must have been early.” She was still smiling. Then she let go of the wheel and leaned over and slid the glasses neatly off his ears and laid them on the dash and put her arms right around him. Her lips sought his mouth with smooth ease. He felt the hard push of her tongue. She was still wearing Chanel Cuir de Russie and she was fuller-bodied than he’d thought. Her hand trailed down across the top of his thigh as she finally drew away. He saw the guys around the doughnut stand watching open-mouthed as she pulled off. If she was looking for witnesses, she’d certainly got them.
“That was some greeting.”
She laughed. “You are my husband. But don’t forget to put those glasses back on. Dan always wears them.”
He did as she said. “’Cept when you’re kissing him?”
“Yeah. Except for then.”
She drove the way Clark would have expected her to drive: well, but with a pushy unconcern for other traffic. And this car really was something else. Even with the top down, you could feel and smell the straight eight engine’s growl over the scents of leather, burr walnut, Kidderminster carpet and April Lamotte’s Chanel.
She felt in her purse for one of her cigarettes, then pressed in a button in the Delahaye’s central console which, after a few moments, popped back out again. The coil which now glowed inside enabled her to light it.
“That’s neat.”
“Is, isn’t it? I got a pack of Luckies if you want a smoke.” She gestured a green-lacquered fingernail toward the glovebox. “Forgot to tell you yesterday they’re the brand Dan prefers.”
He opened the dashboard and found the pack. He tapped one out as she swerved to accelerate past a line of trucks.
“Just press the lighter in. You should use a book of matches otherwise. Dan doesn’t like pocket lighters, says they leak too easily, although I’ve bought him a few over the years. Monogrammed All My Love and forgotten in a drawer somewhere. You’ve been married, haven’t you? You know the sort of thing.”
The sensation of smoking a real Lucky Strike was nothing like as good as the feeling he’d got as Jo-Ann Corkish lit one up yesterday in the feelies. But it wasn’t bad. “Anything else?”
“Anything what?”
“That you haven’t told me.”
“You’ve practiced the signature?”
“Uh-huh. A whole hour this morning.”
“You’ve read the script?”
“You weren’t shitting me when you said it was good. As long as you don’t expect me to say too much about it.”
“Don’t worry. The whole contract’s already fixed. All you need do is sign…” He watched her teeth go over her bottom lip. The lipstick was burgundy as well. “Then, when we’re finished I thought we could maybe go for a meal. I’ve booked a table at Chateau Bansar.”
“Thanks.” He guessed he should probably be impressed, and grateful. “And then that’s it? We’re done? No call-backs or encores?”
“Exactly. You haven’t kept anything? The clothes, the script, Dan’s signatures?”
“I’m either wearing it, or it’s in this suitcase.”
She smiled. “You know, you really do look like Dan. Driving like this, it’s weird. It feels like I’m sitting right by him.”
“How is he, anyway?”
“He’s getting better.”
“When did you last see him?“
“A couple of days back.” The Delahaye’s speed fell a few mph as her foot dropped off the gas. “Seeing as you ask.”
“Does he know anything about what’s happening today?”
“Imagine what it would do to someone in his frail state if I started trying to tell him that I’ve hired this guy to impersonate him.”
“He’ll have to know eventually.”
“I guess he will. Meantime, you’re Daniel Lamotte. Do you really think you can do it, Mr Gable?”
“Sure. But maybe we should cut the Mr Gable act. Seeing as we’ve got no chance for a dress rehearsal.”
“Yes.” She touched at her coiffure, which the wind was doing nothing to disturb. “You’re right.”
“Dan?” “Yeah. Dan.”
“And you’re just April? Not bunnikins or sweet-tits or flot-not?”
“You have an odd sense of humor, Mis…” She smiled and tossed her cigarette into the slipstream. “… Dan.”
They were slowed to a halt by a parade beside the twin radio masts of the Angelus Temple. A brass band of American Legionaries led a procession of capped and uniformed types, the largest and most prominent of whom were wearing Liberty League sashes in blue and red. All ages. All sizes. Women and men. All of them white. The cops were smiling, too, as they held everyone back. He saw that they were also wearing Liberty League badges on their lapels. A few years ago, any display of political allegiance by a city employee would have been illegal, but Herbert Kisberg’s term as governor had put paid to all that.
April Lamotte traced the leather rim of the steering wheel and glanced at her watch as the parade dragged on. Some of the other enforced spectators were getting restless, but the cops were grinning in that way which suggested that you’d better grin along. After all, this was California. You just had to smile.
Clark smiled, too, in a neutral way he’d once practiced for the role of this guy—schmuck, really—he’d played in a fleapit off Broadway, who’d thought the entire world was a swell place until some Prohibition gangsters kidnapped him. Even then, he couldn’t stop smiling, and thinking the world was essentially a kind and decent place. That was why the gangsters had finally shot him, and by the final scene you ended up feeling that it was nothing more than the stupid bastard deserved.
It was all kids now. Scout Cubs. Camp Fire Youths. Pocahontases and Hiawathas. Pioneers. Many of them were carrying banners. NEUTRAL AMERICA. NO FDR THIRD TERM. GIVE IT UP WINSTON. END THE DRAFT. SUPPORT NEW EUROPE. LIBERTY LEAGUERS AGAINST WAR.
He watched it all trail by.