Kathryn planted herself at the managing editor’s desk with her next column hovering over his wooden in-tray. It was as polished a piece of work as she’d ever done, but she couldn’t let it go.
“You gonna stand there all day?”
“How much time do I have?”
He pulled his half-burned cigarillo out of his maw. “Your deadline hasn’t changed in twenty years. What makes you think today is any different?”
Kathryn consulted her watch. “In other words, fifty-five minutes.”
“Fifty-four, but who’s counting?” He returned to what would be the following day’s front-page article about how William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon ranch would soon be open to the public.
She trekked to her desk and stared at what she’d written. She’d faced dilemmas before but this one was personal.
On the first day of shooting The Beginning of the End, the Legion of Decency had given Marcus and Luckie’s movie an “A-II” rating, meaning they considered it “morally objectionable” because it depicted teenagers wanting to escape an oppressively harsh religious environment.
As the self-appointed guardians of America’s morality, the Legion regularly condemned dozens of movies; this was the first time they’d passed judgment on a picture that wasn’t even in the can yet.
“It is outrageous,” their press release bellowed, “that a production company would so blatantly thumb its nose at the blacklist. After being included in Red Channels, Melody Hope took her communistic values to Europe, where she starred in a string of licentious motion pictures set during the disgracefully profligate Roman Empire. Miss Hope’s casting in The Beginning of the End is bad news for Hollywood. But to cast her as a mother is even worse news for America’s teens, who should be protected from such reckless immorality. If films like this are to be released, we fear it shall indeed prove to be the beginning of the end.”
Kathryn had raced over to RKO. She was taken aback when Marcus and Luckie had turned to each other, their faces bright with glee. “It worked!” Marcus panted. “Could you include the story in your column?”
Her goal had been to dilute the Legion’s power by ignoring them, thereby sucking out the oxygen from the fire of their antiquated theories. And now along had come this little movie that Marcus was staking so much on—not to mention Luckie and Rex and Melody. She wanted their picture to succeed and she had considerable resources at her disposal. But the whole point of today’s article was how The Beginning of the End had got made despite the Legion’s disapproval and interference.
She was still standing at her desk, wondering if, twenty years from now, she would look back and think, “I should have chosen friendship over principle” when she felt Cassandra beside her. “There’s a guy out front with a jawline that a girl could split a nail on. He’s asking to see you, and he looks kinda perturbed.”
Nelson stood at reception, beating the toe of this right shoe against the carpeting. A conspicuous nervous twitch for such a cool customer.
“I need you to come with me,” he said flatly. “Right now.”
“A bit of notice might have been—”
“There’s someone you need to meet. I’ve got three minutes left in the parking meter. Do you really need your handbag or can we go straight downstairs?”
Nelson was a careful and methodical planner; spontaneity was not his long suit. Kathryn asked Cassandra to take the article next to her typewriter and put it into the editor’s in-tray. Two minutes later they were speeding into the Cahuenga Pass through the Hollywood Hills.
“This had better be good.”
“It’ll blow your panties off.”
“Now I am listening.”
“Do you remember someone by the name of Alice Moore?”
Kathryn pressed her hands against the dashboard as Nelson took a sharp corner. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.” Alice Moore was a ruthless chorine who’d been floating in and out of Hollywood around the time Gwendolyn had arrived in search of fame. Whenever Gwennie had tried to get ahead, Alice had sabotaged her chances at every turn. Although never proved, Kathryn had always suspected that Alice was responsible for Gwendolyn falling off that human billboard. “Why are you asking?”
“I’ve had a hunch but didn’t tell you about it because it was a crazy long shot and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“I assume you’ve kidnapped me because the long shot came in?”
He nodded. “My dad had a brother, Jerome, who was a master juggler. He went by the name of Geronimo. When he became a big deal, he took on a partner, a guy called Arthur Moore. In time, they needed a stage assistant, so they hired a pretty girl by the name of Joanna.”
“Let me guess,” Kathryn said. “The two guys fell in love with her.”
“Of course they did, and my uncle won. The whole situation left Arthur so bitter that he left vaudeville altogether. However, by then Arthur and my dad had become pretty good buddies because they were both ham radio enthusiasts, so my dad kept in contact with Arthur mainly via ham radio. Arthur was a real stand-up guy.”
Nelson exited the Hollywood Freeway. Where are we going? Warners? Universal? “What happened to him?”
“He ended up marrying a nice librarian and had a daughter, Alice, who grew up to be very pretty.”
Kathryn wouldn’t have called Alice Moore “very pretty.” On her best days, she was a low-rent version of Gwennie, but she let Nelson’s comment go unchallenged. “The last time I saw Alice was when Gwendolyn got her walk-on part in The Maltese Falcon.”
“She left the business—”
“Good riddance.”
“—and married a guy by the name of Uri Herschelman, aka The Coat Hanger King. He’s the manufacturer who won the contract to supply every Hilton hotel west of the Mississippi.”
“I’m guessing that’s enough hangers to keep Alice Moore in the lifestyle she always felt she deserved.”
“It was. But she recently hired me to tail Uri because she believed he was cheating on her with his Norwegian masseuse.”
They passed the Warner studios and headed deeper into the San Fernando Valley. She’d forgotten how warm it became during the summer and wound her window down. “This is a hell of a coincidence, I must say.”
“Not really. I’ve known Alice my whole life. She’s a headstrong girl, a bit self-absorbed—”
“To say the least.”
“Her father asked me to keep an eye on her, so I have. It wasn’t until Gwendolyn told me her Maltese Falcon experience that I started putting two and two together.”
They passed a sign for the Lockheed Air Terminal. Kathryn wished she’d taken thirty seconds to retrieve her handbag.
“When Alice came to me about trailing her husband, I had a hunch that she wasn’t telling the entire truth.”
“Let me guess: you discovered that Alice was the one having an affair.”
He barked out an unguarded laugh. Kathryn didn’t hear it very often and hearing it now warmed her heart. “I swear, Wonderly, you have instincts that would make a bloodhound jealous.”
“I’ve been around enough Alice Moores to know how they operate. Did you find out who she’s been flinging with?”
“Her twenty-seven-year-old tennis coach.”
Kathryn did some quick mental math—Alice must be in her early fifties by now. “She always was a walking cliché.”
“And now we’re at the part where you need to hang onto your panties.”
“Thank God I put some on this morning.”
“The tennis coach she’s been stepping out with? His name is Vincent Haynes Junior.”
“NO!”
“Guess who hates his father?” He turned on to the road that led into the airport parking lot and headed into the first available space they came to. “Alice and Junior are running away together. They’re flying to Wichita in about an hour.”
“Who the hell runs away to Kansas?”
“They have something to tell you, and they insist on doing it in person.”
In contrast to the bustle of Los Angeles International Airport, this terminal was refreshingly placid. Nelson hurried them along the concourse. “We’re to meet them in here.”
The Happy Hangar Café was a rather forlorn place, with walls painted sky blue and amateurish clouds hastily dabbed near the ceiling. The only waitress in sight was a humorless woman, her nondescript brown hair pulled tightly back, lending her the unforgiving air of a South American dictator’s wife. A couple sat hunched over their coffee cups at the only occupied table.
Evidently, there was money in coat hangers—Alice looked better than she had any right to do. Her face was still reasonably tight and her eyelids hadn’t started to droop. Her hair showed no signs of graying—or her beautician stocked a realistic shade of strawberry blonde.
She motioned for Kathryn and Nelson to join them. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.” She turned to the young man next to her. “VJ, darling, this is Kathryn Massey and the private eye I’ve been telling you about, Nelson Hoyt.”
Vincent Haynes Junior looked like his father—a face planed from sharp features that on Senior looked austere but on Junior appeared to be the result of a healthy, active lifestyle. Unlike the fiery, judgmental air of his father, the only thing this guy radiated was a Californian tennis tan.
“We don’t have long,” Alice said, brusque and businesslike, “so let’s get down to it. First, I have a message for Gwendolyn. Will you please tell her I’m sorry?”
Kathryn wanted to ask, For which of the nine thousand treacherous ploys you pulled? but they were short on time.
“I used to be such a terrible bitch.” Alice shook her head ruefully. “When I think about how I behaved—oh, the stunts I pulled!” She placed a hand on Junior’s arm. “You wouldn’t have liked me very much back then. Naked ambition can blind a girl.” Alice turned back to Kathryn. “Unfortunately, Gwendolyn bore the brunt of some of it.”
Some? So Gwendolyn wasn’t Alice’s only victim? The regret filling the woman’s face could have been an act, but this eleventh-hour mea culpa felt like it was on the up-and-up. “I’ll be sure to let Gwendolyn know,” Kathryn said. “And second?”
Junior glanced around the Happy Hangar. It didn’t seem necessary; nobody else was around.
Alice unslung a large tan leather tote bag from the back of her chair. She opened the zipper along the top and pulled out a sheet of paper folded in half.
“What’s that?” Kathryn asked.
“Your worst nightmare come true.”
“Listen,” Junior said. His voice was higher than Kathryn expected, but that may have been from nerves; he began drumming his fingers. “I want you to know that deep down, my father believes what he’s doing is for the greater good. That his motives are pure and just and—”
“What do you believe?” Kathryn asked.
“I think he’s completely misguided—”
“Dangerously so,” Alice cut in.
Junior pulled the paper out of Alice’s hands and gave it to Kathryn. “He needs to be stopped.”
Pretty much the only time Kathryn went to the Cocoanut Grove anymore was for Golden Globes ceremonies. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association had held their last five presentations there. Now that the awards included prizes for achievement in television, it had grown enormously.
The Grove had managed to hold onto its pre-war allure, but only just. The palm trees were beginning to wilt, and not all of the ceiling lights twinkled like stars. The tables were packed in tighter than Kathryn remembered, but that was okay. It suited her purpose.
Marcus was already seated with his date. This was Melody’s first industry event since the Legion of Decency’s attack on The Beginning of the End. Their condemnation had sparked off heated discussions over manhattans and whiskey sours in bars, homes, and studio conference rooms across town. From what she could gather, her condemnation of their reproach was viewed as a cannonball across the bow of the USS Legion of Decency, but how much support it had garnered among the wider Hollywood community was hard to determine. Tonight was her first opportunity to see the whites of people’s eyes.
She thanked the heavens that Nelson had insisted on their jaunt out to the airport. If she’d refused, Alice Moore and her inappropriate swain would have flown to Wichita and Kathryn would never have been the wiser about what was about to happen.
The sheet of paper that Junior had handed over contained two columns of typed names. On the left was the same list of women that Zanuck had shown Kathryn; the list on the right linked each pseudonym to its real-life counterpart. Each one was a public figure. In this room alone, Kathryn counted five.
Haynes Senior was too notorious to be let inside the Cocoanut Grove, but Mike Connolly wasn’t. He would be arriving with a briefcase that held two hundred copies of the list that Junior had given Kathryn, which he would distribute among the journalists in the audience tonight.
When Kathryn had asked Junior if he was sure about these plans, he’d told her that it had been his job to type out the lists himself. For pretty much his whole life, his father had treated him as free slave labor kept around to carry out whatever tasks needed doing.
On the drive home from the airport, Kathryn and Nelson had discussed the pros and cons of bringing this situation to Wilkerson. Nelson reasoned that Connolly’s actions would undermine the Reporter’s position on reining in the Production Code and the blacklist. But Kathryn feared that she’d come off like a tattletale. “I’ll take care of this myself,” she’d told Nelson. “If Mike appears with that briefcase, we’ll swing into action. And if we manage to head him off at the pass, I’ll have something to hold over him.”
Now, she pulled off her gloves and said, “You haven’t been thrown out, I see.
“Au contraire!” Melody’s eyes were wide with surprise. “So many people stopped to congratulate me on my comeback. And not just the old folks. There was this one kid, real pretty.” She turned to Marcus. “Who was the pert little blonde who’s getting a New Star of the Year award?”
“Sandra Dee.”
“She told me that she loves to watch my old movies now that they’re resurfacing on television.”
Kathryn surveyed the crowd. Famous faces dotted the landscape: Henry Fonda, who was up for 12 Angry Men; Joanne Woodward surely a shoo-in for The Three Faces of Eve; Billy Wilder; Alfred Hitchcock; and Zsa Zsa Gabor—although what she’d done to receive a Special Achievement Award tonight was beyond Kathryn’s comprehension.
But there was one face in particular that Kathryn was looking for. She found it at a table with Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor. As soon as she caught Frank Sinatra’s eye, he made his way toward her, just as Gwendolyn and Chuck arrived.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Frank exclaimed.
“Did it work?” Gwendolyn asked.
“And how!”
“What did?” Kathryn butted in.
“He’s wooing a certain someone and told me that her favorite perfume is my old Sunset Boulevard fragrance.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “She was complaining that since Chez Gwendolyn closed down and Bullock’s Wilshire stopped stocking it, she can’t find it anyplace.”
“You’re not trying to get Ava back again, are you?” Kathryn asked.
“There was a time when I still held out hope, but not anymore. A fella’s gotta move on.”
Kathryn spotted Mike Connolly arriving with a starlet who was all hair, teeth, and bust. Craning her neck to get a better view, she saw a dark brown leather briefcase hanging from his left hand. She felt like throwing a dinner plate at the treacherous son-of-a-bitch.
An announcement came over the PA that the ceremony was due to start and would everyone kindly take their seats. The house band played a jaunty tune to pep up the audience into a party mood. With television in the awards line-up, the Golden Globe ceremonies had taken on a more inclusive quality, and were therefore more relaxed. It also helped that, unlike the Oscars, the Globes were presented at a dinner where the hooch flowed freely.
“You know what I need you to do, right?” Kathryn asked Frank.
“I do, and it’s gonna be fun.” Frank grimaced. “These award shows can get so damned tedious. The Association members they get to present them, none of them have any pizzazz. They need people who can put on a show.” He pointed a thumb to his chest as though to say Like me, for instance and returned to his table, where David Niven and Gene Kelly awaited him with a double scotch.
Kathryn watched Connolly discreetly slip the briefcase under his chair. His date for the night raised her champagne flute and proposed a toast, and everyone followed suit. That’s right, Miss Booby, Kathryn thought. Get him liquored up. Vincent Haynes Junior didn’t know exactly how his father and Connolly planned to distribute their list, so the sooner Frank swung into his act, the better.
She didn’t have to sit too long on her pins-and-needles. The third category was for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. Cyd Charisse had been nominated for Silk Stockings, along with Audrey Hepburn for Love in the Afternoon and Jean Simmons for This Could Be the Night, but the winners had been a surprise tie between two of the stars of Les Girls, Taina Elg and Kay Kendall. Before either actress was even standing, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly erupted into a huge hullabaloo and raced to the stage like Keystone Kops.
“I’m sorry, ladies and laddies,” Frank trumpeted into the microphone, “but Gene and I, we gotta stop you right there because we wanna make a protest.” He pointed to Taina and Kay, who were standing apprehensively at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the stage. “Sorry,” he told them, “but Gene directed you in Les Girls, so you still gotta do what he says, and he says to just cool your heels for a moment.”
Behind him, Gene shouted out, “THAT’S RIGHT!”
Frank nodded in slow-motion agreement. “For those of you who don’t know, Gene here starred in Pal Joey on Broadway, and I played his part in the movie version.” This statement brought forth a smattering of applause. “The way we figure it, if Taina and Kay can share an award, maybe the fine folks at the HFPA might be able to do the same for us. Now listen, we don’t need an actual award to carry home. No, no, no. But we do want a presentation, and after careful analysis, we decided we’d like it to be our pal, Mike Connolly.”
Mister Francis Albert Sinatra, Kathryn thought, you are a genius!
With the addition of television cameras, the lights shining on the stage tonight were extra bright, so Mike would barely be able to see past the edge of the stage. As he dashed forward, Kathryn wound through the maze of tables and dropped into the chair he’d vacated. She turned to the girl with the shiny hair, alabaster teeth, and perky bosom, and recognized her as one of the models in Silk Stockings.
“You’re Celeste, aren’t you?” she asked.
The girl’s mouth drooped open in surprise. “Why, yes, I am.”
“I’m sorry, but your last name escapes me.”
“Davenport.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kathryn leaned forward so that their bare arms brushed. “There was a lot to like about Silk Stockings but you were the most memorable.” At least that part was true. What came next, though, was pure fabrication. “I’m about to start a new feature in my column called ‘Faces to Watch Out For’ and I’d like you to be my first face.”
The girl was strikingly beautiful and might have a career ahead of her if she possessed more than a teaspoon of gray matter to call her very own.
On stage, Gene cracked a joke about how, if he’d co-starred with Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth, his version of Pal Joey would have played longer. The crowd burst into laughter, and Celeste turned toward the stage. Kathryn bent down and grabbed up Mike’s briefcase and stood up in one smooth motion. She whispered, “I’ll be in touch” and glided away to a door hidden behind a clump of papier-mâché palm trees that Gwendolyn had pointed out.
She slipped behind them and through the swing door, where Gwendolyn was waiting for her in front of a small table under a mirror intended for last-minute makeup checks before stepping onto the stage.
Kathryn hoisted the briefcase onto the table and flipped it open. “Those miserable rats.”
Gwendolyn pulled out the topmost sheet and pointed to the name near the bottom. It belonged to a nominee seated fifty feet away.
“Where is it?” Vincent Haynes Senior was dressed in a waiter’s uniform. The red jacket was a size too small; his bony wrists stuck out like a scarecrow’s.
The briefcase still lay on the table behind Kathryn. She moved an inch to the left. “Where’s what?”
“I saw you take it from under Connolly’s seat.” He started glancing around without moving his face. “It can’t be far.”
Gwendolyn stepped in front of Kathryn, holding the list behind her back. “You’re the guy who thinks it’s acceptable to picket funerals, aren’t you?” she demanded. “I’m all for the First Amendment and free speech, but there’s a time and place to raise your voice in protest . . .”
As Gwendolyn launched into her reprimand, Kathryn plucked the paper from her and groped for the briefcase. It wasn’t too big, nor was it overly heavy. Her fingers caught the handle and wrapped themselves around it as her other hand raised the back of her dress. Taking care to move as little as possible, she shoved the case between her legs and gripped it with her knees.
Haynes thrust his face close to Kathryn’s. He smelled faintly of hospital floor disinfectant. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” she bit back. “Your conscience? There’s a dumpster out behind the kitchen. I suggest you go look for it there.”
He ducked around her, hoping to catch her in a sudden movement and winced when he couldn’t see any sign of what he was looking for.
On stage, Frank Sinatra cracked a joke about how Kay Kendall was an inch taller than he was and if she ever got cast opposite him, he’d have to borrow her high heels. The audience’s polite applause telegraphed “It’s been fun, now get off the stage; otherwise, we’ll be here all night.”
The briefcase jagged a run in Kathryn’s nylons as it slipped down her legs. “I don’t know what you thought you saw in a dark nightclub where the lights are trained on the stage, but you’re welcome to go out there and search Frank and Gene if you think that’ll do any good.”
Haynes sneered at Kathryn. “You people think you got all the answers.”
Kathryn inhaled. The case was near her ankles now. She thanked the heavens she’d chosen a floor-length gown. “Why don’t you just take your old-fashioned ideas and your outdated morality and put them where they belong? May I suggest 1895?”
Haynes’s hateful eyes bounced back and forth between Kathryn and Gwendolyn for a few moments. He wedged himself roughly between them and disappeared through the swing door just as his briefcase thudded onto the floor. Kathryn bent down and scooped it up. “You got your cigarette lighter on you?”
“It’s in my purse back at our table. I’m sure the kitchen staff can help us out, though.”
Kathryn lifted up the case. “We need to burn this pile of hate. Where are the trashcans?”
“When I used to work here, there was a line of them near the delivery bay.”
“Lead on, MacDuff,” Kathryn said. “The sooner we get rid of this, the sooner we can empty that champagne bottle back at our table.”