Kathryn surveyed the dining room of the Reno hotel she’d been living in for the past two weeks. The proprietors had tried to gussy up the place with orange and yellow wallpaper, pink curtains, and fresh-cut daisies and tulips, but there was nothing as dispiriting as a restaurant of tables set for one. The Liberty Hotel, Kathryn decided, was the most depressing place in the world outside of a federal penitentiary.
She left a tip for the frowzy waitress and headed outside to thread her way through the usual throng of pedestrians along Liberty Street until she got to the post office.
Kathryn was astonished by how much work she could get done sitting alone in her hotel room with nothing to distract her. In three days, she’d banked a whole week’s worth of columns, a bunch of movie reviews, and two interviews. The clerk at the post office promised her the new airmail service would get her package to the Hollywood Reporter by the following afternoon.
She stepped out of the post office and into the cool October breeze coming off the Truckee River to face a day in which she had nothing else planned. Back home, her life was such a kaleidoscope of work, parties, premieres, and weekly radio appearances that time off with nothing to do sounded heavenly. But she’d been here for two weeks now, and more weeks stretched ahead of her like a prison sentence. She wondered how she was going to fill them.
Perhaps take in a movie? The Jolson Story was playing at the Majestic on First Street. Right before she left Los Angeles, she’d heard from one of her spies, a lighting guy at Columbia, that Larry Parks had put on a hell of a performance.
Kathryn loitered in front of the poster for a few minutes while she finished off a cigarette and worried about her radio job. Bing Crosby’s new show, Philco Radio Time, was going to debut the following week with Bob Hope as his first guest. It was bad timing for Kraft Music Hall—the show was on an enforced hiatus while Kathryn was in Reno. Kraft’s rating were strong, but would their audience desert them for this new show now that Bing was back on the air?
A shadow fell across the glass. “May I buy you a ticket?”
He sounded like one of those amorous ranch hands who spent his days off roaming the town in search of lonely women keen to experience matrimonial emancipation with the first decent stud to present himself. She wasn’t prepared, then, to find herself face to face with Nelson Hoyt.
That ironic, knowing smile of his—part wily shrewdness, part mocking indulgence—was nowhere to be seen. There had been times when it infuriated her, but now she missed it. In its place was a dour mask, all business.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’ve been sent to escort you to the Riverside.”
The Riverside was the grandest hotel in town, geared specifically for the high-end divorce trade. Kathryn had purposefully avoided it for fear of bumping into someone she might know.
“Why? Who’s there?”
Hoyt stepped to one side and made a gallant sweep of his arm in the direction of the Riverside.
A cold shiver goosefleshed Kathryn’s skin. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m to take you to a meeting.” Finally he looked at her, his gray-blue eyes blank. “With Hoover.”
Kathryn looked around for eavesdroppers. “Is this about my boss and his casino? Because I can tell you right now Wilkerson doesn’t talk to me about that cockamamie project.”
“He’s applying for a loan with the Valley National Bank of Phoenix for $600,000 to keep the Flamingo from going into bankruptcy. But it’s only a drop in the ocean; he’s in far deeper than that.”
“See? That just proves there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know.”
“Kathryn!” She saw the veneer of stoicism slip, but for only a moment. “Do you really want me to go back and report to J. Edgar Hoover that you refused?”
Kathryn fidgeted with her handbag while she weighed her options. It didn’t take long to see that she only had one.
* * *
The door to the penthouse at the Riverside Hotel was carved mahogany and featured a brass plaque announcing the Henry G. Blasdel Suite. The polished metal reflected back to her the deer-in-headlights fear in her eyes as she adjusted her blue velvet fastener hat.
Hoyt rapped on the door three times. “Whatever you do, keep calm. He’ll try and—”
“Enter!”
The door opened onto a spacious parlor done out in Victorian décor—brown and gold wallpaper in a horseshoe pattern, heavy drapes in dark aubergine with matching carpets, and a Tiffany lamp on every other table.
The director of the FBI had the face of a French bulldog with a graying hairline receding over a box-shaped head. Kathryn guessed him to be around fifty, but he wore the frown of a man ten years older. He was seated in an armchair, his eyes on a one-page report in his hand. He motioned for Kathryn to take a seat in the chair opposite him. Kathryn wondered what Hoyt was going to say out in the corridor. He’ll try and . . . what?
Eventually, Hoover let out a dissatisfied “hmm” and inserted the sheet into an unmarked folder on the coffee table. He offered his hand. She was surprised to find it soft and warm.
“Thank you for meeting with me.”
Like I had a choice. Kathryn could no longer see Hoyt in her peripheral vision. Has he left me alone? She laid her handbag on her lap and pressed her hands against the alligator skin to stop them from giving her away.
Hoover pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his navy blue pinstripe and bit off the end. “Hoyt tells me you’re unhappy about your association with the Bureau.”
It was one thing to bitch and moan to Marcus and Gwendolyn within the safety of the Garden, but to admit it to Hoover himself? She nodded and gripped her purse tighter.
“Do you want to sever ties with us?”
She nodded again.
He seemed in no hurry to light his cigar, but instead threaded it in and around the fingers of his left hand. “Benjamin Siegel has been a huge thorn in our side for years, and he’s only becoming thornier. We want you to bring us as much information on him as you can procure.”
“What sort of information do you think I can get?” Her voice came out a strange blend of hoarse and squeaky.
“Your boss is close to him, and you’re close to your boss. I can see the panic in your eyes, so let me put your worries to rest. We’re not concerned with Billy Wilkerson; Siegel is the big prize. If you could furnish enough rope to swing Siegel, I’d be more than happy to cut you loose.”
Kathryn felt a noose tightening around her throat. “What kind of rope?”
“Bring us anything you can find, and let us decide if it’s rope.”
Kathryn dropped her gaze onto the gold clasp of her handbag. What does he think I am? One of his super-spy double agents? It took all the courage she had to look him in the eye, but she forced herself. “Mr. Hoover, I don’t wish to be uncooperative. Truly, I don’t. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. That Linden Holdings Company bank statement I got a hold of? That was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke.”
Hoover let out another dissatisfied “hmmm” before he returned to the folder on the table and withdrew the paper he’d been reading when she walked in. “I have here a tax bill from the IRS totaling ten thousand dollars.”
Kathryn blurted out a “ha!” before she could help it. “You don’t work for Billy Wilkerson without witnessing the consequences of neglecting your taxes. I am meticulous when it comes to submitting—”
“I didn’t say it was your tax bill.”
Kathryn dropped her eyes to the paper in Hoover’s hand. Marcus and Gwendolyn both used Kathryn’s rigorously boring accountant. Hoover passed the paper to her with an achingly slow flourish. She ran her eyes down the page. The guilty party wasn’t named until the halfway mark.
Francine Massey.
“My mother is a telephone operator. There is no chance that she could owe the IRS this much.”
Hoover made a show of sucking something out from between his teeth before he said, “According to my investigation, your mother has never paid her personal income tax.”
Kathryn heard a soft gasp behind her. It was the first indication she had that Hoyt was still in the room.
“Never?” Kathryn scoffed, knowing how hollow it sounded.
He extended one of his pudgy index fingers and pushed the paper until it was back in front of Kathryn. “I have instructed the IRS to hold off bringing charges.” He jutted his double chin toward the bill, his dark eyes bowling-ball hard. “You should know that I have the power to make that disappear.”
* * *
Kathryn left Hoyt floundering in her wake until they reached the Liberty Street corner. “I want to hear the words coming out of your measly little mouth.”
“What words?” he asked
“Tell me you had no idea of the ambush you were leading me into.”
“I only half knew.”
“What a crock!”
She dashed across the intersection and went half a block before it dawned on her she was going in entirely the wrong direction, just like the last time she’d seen him in the alley behind his father’s store when he jumped her with that kiss. She’d tried not to think of it, but once in a lonely while she found herself reliving how soft his lips were, and how her whole body had reacted to its touch. But then she’d swat the memory away.
The first she knew that Hoyt had followed her across Liberty Street was when he grabbed her by the wrist from behind. “He’s desperate to collar Siegel.”
His hold was disturbingly firm.
“How did my mother even enter the picture?”
“He wanted leverage, and asked for a full report on you detailing every fact in my possession. When he read it, his first question was, ‘What about the mother?’ I told him she’s just a telephone operator so there was no leverage to be had, but he said, ‘We’ll see about that.’”
Her heart gave a yip of hope. “So that tax bill, it’s bogus?”
Hoyt shook his head soberly and let go of her wrist.
Kathryn stood on the busy sidewalk, too flummoxed to speak, while locals and divorcées dodged around them. Eventually she said, “What is Hoover even doing here? Surely he didn’t come all the way to Reno just to see me.”
Hoyt flicked the brim of his homburg toward the back of his head. “He did. Which should indicate how desperate he is to get Siegel. You need to take this seriously.”
She felt weak at the knees. A little farther down the street, she spotted a bus stop and headed for it. She sat down on the bench and closed her eyes, unsure what to say, or even how to feel.
“You ought to consider yourself lucky,” he said.
“How do you figure?”
“He talked about strong-arming you into pressing your husband into service.”
“Marcus? Squealing for the FBI?”
“He’s a man of some influence and position in the movie industry, and not without his—skeletons?”
Kathryn opened her eyes to narrow slits and looked at him askance. “Jesus, you people stop at nothing.”
“But I talked him out of it.”
“So you say.”
“Did you know he was light in the loafers when you married him?”
How come there’s never a ten-pound brick around when you need one? “Why? Did you?”
“No.” He ignored the disdain in her voice. “Not until the night of the . . . Mandeville Canyon incident.”
The way he paused for the briefest split-second before he said “Mandeville Canyon incident” made Kathryn’s antenna quiver. “What?”
“The desk sergeant at that station is a college buddy of mine. We get on the horn once in a while to shoot the breeze. We were yakking away one night when a bunch of queers got hauled in. In case there was anything I could use, I got him to read out the list of names. When he got to Marcus Adler, I asked him to do me a favor and let him go, as well as anybody with him.”
Kathryn felt a cool breeze waft off the Truckee River a few blocks north of them. It was the first hint of the winter to come and it afforded a brief, albeit fleeting, respite from the heat of the desert that lay just beyond the city limits. “Why would you do that?” she asked him quietly.
“Because I’m the bad guy, remember?”
She let his sarcasm float past her. “Whatever your motives were, thank you.”
“What do you think my motives were?”
“Quite honestly, you confound me beyond all comprehension.”
She was thankful when he said nothing further. They let the traffic jostle past them—cars, buses, bicycles, even a horse or two. Eventually, she asked, “Do you think Hoover meant it when he said that if I come up with the goods, he’ll let me go?” When Hoyt didn’t respond, she pressed him. “Well, do you?”
He scowled. “I didn’t hear him give you any choice.”
The two of them sat there, knee brushing knee, saying nothing. His scowl softened into something less officious, more contemplative. She watched the way his eyes roamed her face, as though memorizing every detail.
He’s going to kiss me again. Isn’t he? He is. No, he’s wavering. He wants to. I want him to. He knows he shouldn’t. Not with Hoover so close. Not with anyone so close. And yet. There’s something there. Let’s stop pretending there isn’t.
Abruptly, he shot to his feet. Tipping his hat to her, he pivoted on his heel and charged back the way he came. She watched him retreat down Liberty Street until he turned a corner and disappeared without once looking over his shoulder.