Kathryn knew she was taking an awful chance asking Nelson Hoyt to meet her at the Midnight Frolics.
Its patrons had made Gwendolyn their darling, and last time Kathryn was there, someone said to her, “Miss Gwendolyn makes us look as glamorous as we’ve always dreamed.” They’d be horrified to know that an FBI agent was in their midst.
And there was no way of telling how Hoyt would react when he realized he was sitting among perverts. Not that Kathryn saw the Frolics crowd as perverts, but Hoyt might. The last thing anybody wants is to be near a guy blowing a fuse when he’s within arm’s reach of a gun.
The last time Kathryn saw Hoyt was the previous December when he kissed her at the Ambassador. Afterwards, anxiety and indecision compelled her to keep him at a distance, but then a couple of things transpired that could only be dealt with face to face. “Pick somewhere out of the way,” he’d told her. “Someplace unexpected.”
She strummed her fingers on the table, chain-smoking Chesterfields while she watched Gwendolyn work the room with her boss, Mr. Dewberry. The regulars liked to call this joint The Licks and referred to themselves as Licketysplitters. As soon as she and Gwendolyn walked in, the Licketysplitters gathered around her like gazelles at a watering hole. Does this color suit my complexion? What are your thoughts on diagonal stripes? Could you make me a copy of that black-and-white number Gene Tierney wore in Leave Her to Heaven?
After Gwennie’s disappointments about Linc, her money stash, and her store, it warmed Kathryn’s heart to see she had found her niche. It wasn’t one she could tell many people about, but it paid well, and her clients adored her.
Kathryn went to light another cigarette, but realized it would be her fifth inside ten minutes, so she slid it back inside the pack. She glanced at the entrance. It wasn’t like him to be late. She pulled the cigarette out again and tapped it on the table. Were my instructions not clear enough? Did the door guy send him away? Maybe he already knows this is a cross-dresser bar.
The drumming of a microphone pounded through the loudspeakers. Onstage stood Miss Julie, the Midnight Frolics manager, a gangly Charlotte Greenwood type. “We have a hell of a treat tonight,” he announced. “Miss Vilma is back in town from his six-month stint at the Brooklyn Navy Yard”—he paused to let the Licketysplitters wolf-whistle their appreciation— “and is here to entertain us with a few songs.”
Miss Vilma made a passably attractive woman. With a sun-ripened olive complexion accentuated with dark red lipstick and a hint of eye shadow, he took the stage in a gauzy floor-length gown of apricot chiffon that Kathryn immediately recognized as a Gwendolyn original. He launched into “I Could Write a Book” with a purring, gravelly voice, and was barely sixteen bars in when Hoyt plopped himself on the chair next to her.
“Sorry I’m late, but this Black Dahlia thing has us working overtime since we ID’d the body with fingerprints.” He fished out a cigarette and asked the approaching waitress for a bourbon on the rocks, then studied him more closely as he wound his way back to the bar.
Over Hoyt’s shoulder, Miss Julie pointed to Hoyt and mouthed Is that him? Kathryn had felt it only fair to secure the manager’s okay to bring an FBI agent into the club. Understandably, Miss Julie almost imploded with horror, until Kathryn pointed out that a vice squad raid was not an altogether unlikely event for a cross-dresser bar, so if push ever came to shove, it might be handy to have an FBI agent in his corner.
Hoyt wrested his attention from Miss Vilma’s song styling. “You look pretty tonight.”
Part of her stirred. Having spent so long in the company of a head-turner like Gwendolyn, she had convinced herself that she was perfectly fine with not being the center of attention. Then this guy comes along and pitches a compliment like that in her direction, and suddenly she was a sixteen-year-old virgin.
“How’s your father?” she deflected, then wished she had stuck to a less personal topic.
He ducked his head. “Not so great, actually. He came back from the Great War with TB, which is why we moved out West. It flares up every now and then. This one is particularly bad.”
He didn’t look at her in his usual direct way, but averted his gaze to a blank spot on the wall. She could see the worry in his eyes as he shifted in his seat. “But you didn’t ask me here because of dear ol’ dad.”
Kathryn straightened her spine, all business now. “I’ve come across some information that you and your boss will find interesting.”
Kathryn related Gwendolyn’s conversation with Leilah O’Roarke at the Florentine Gardens, when Leilah admitted that she and Clem had sold blocks of land to fund Bugsy Siegel. Gwendolyn wisely cautioned Kathryn against bringing this news to Hoyt without some independent verification, so Kathryn sent her freelance snooper to Las Vegas to do some nosing around. Lenny didn’t strike gold, but he struck silver in the form of an upturn in real estate sales along the Los Angeles Highway, where the Flamingo now stood. According to his calculations, the total sales came to $989,600. When he dug for names, he was stonewalled, but Kathryn figured she had enough information to take to Hoyt, and that he’d have the resources to uncover the missing pieces.
“So what do you think?” Kathryn pressed. “Is it enough to cut me loose?”
“If all this checks out, you’ve given us more than enough to lasso Siegel and the operators of the most profitable brothels in California. They all kick back to the LAPD to allow them to stay open, but the O’Roarkes don’t.”
“How the hell do they get away with that?”
“Our theory is they’ve got bigger muscle behind them.”
“The mob?” Kathryn whispered.
Hoyt nodded. “But we’ve never had any proof of a link. Until now.”
Kathryn started to feel lightheaded. She tried to tell herself not to count her chickens, but it was hard to keep a lid on the excitement rising in her chest.
Hoyt accepted his bourbon and lit a Viceroy. “Mr. Hoover is a lot of things, some of them unsavory, but he is a man of his word. When I told him your mother’s tax bill had been paid in full, he laughed.”
“What kind of laugh?”
“The touché, well played kind.”
While Miss Vilma brought his sultry rendition of “I’ve Heard That Song Before” to a close, Nelson surveyed the crowd. “What sort of club is this? Not one of those private lodges with nutty initiation rites, is it?”
He watched some more. A group of four couples walked through the arched entryway. Half of them were dressed in tuxedoes tailored to look like something Marlene Dietrich used to shock audiences with; the other half wore identical ball gowns of silver lamé tipped with white fox fur. Hoyt scrutinized them as they waved and kissed their way through the thicket of tables until they found their seats.
When Miss Vilma made a big finish, his spotlight went out, and the Licketysplitters filled the room with the thunder of their applause. From the way Nelson chewed his lower lip, it was clear Kathryn had succeeded in throwing him. She wondered how many people had managed to pull that off.
He looked away from the Dietrich-tuxedoed quartet and flashed an impish Errol Flynn type grin. “Why do I get the feeling I’m being tested?”
Because you are. On paper, you’re quite a catch. Good-looking, dresses well, speaks nicely, treats his father with respect, has a real job, and a set of principles I can’t help but admire the more I get to know you.
“We have another item on the agenda,” Kathryn prompted. “That post office box I asked you to look into.” She watched Hoyt’s wall of G-man neutrality rise between them. “Did you get anywhere?”
One of the things this guy had going for him was his sense of humor, which he managed to maintain regardless of what was going on. She watched it drain from his face, and was shocked at how different he looked.
“I want to know why you asked me to look into it,” he said.
She shifted in her seat so their faces were closer together. Not that anybody could hear them over Miss Vilma’s “Summertime.”
“There was an impromptu gathering at the Florentine Gardens the night the Flamingo opened.”
“I knew you’d find a way to get out of that.”
“I bumped into Bette Davis, who told me about an odd garment that arrived when she was visiting Orry-Kelly at Warner Brothers. It turned out to be something Gwendolyn had made.”
“She works there now?”
“No. It was a freelance job for an anonymous customer who asked her to mail it back to the same post office box. Nothing to do with Warners, and yet that’s where it appeared. When Bette told Gwendolyn about it, I got a strong hunch. The measurements for the dress Gwendolyn made were 38–38–38. Women don’t have those sorts of measurements.”
Nelson’s eyes looped around the nightclub. “But men do.”
“That post office box was where Gwendolyn sent the dress.” The audience burst into applause. Gwendolyn glanced over to Kathryn and frowned. Kathryn made a keep away hand signal. “Did you find out who that box belongs to?”
Hoyt started to knead his forehead. “The Ding-a-ling Toy Company.”
Kathryn felt her heart drop. So much for my hunches.
“But they’ve only had it a month or so,” he continued. “Prior to that, it belonged to a Jack Humboldt.”
“That name doesn’t ring a bell.”
The Flynn grin resurfaced. “A few months back, Hoover came into town with a full agenda. All the anti-Commie stuff with the studios, the HUAC, Chaplin. When he got there, he had trouble with his briefcase. He’s got this huge thing he totes around—like the ones doctors carry on house calls. It has these two big locks that open with separate keys, but one of them jammed. He messed around with it but couldn’t get it open. His assistant, Clyde, had a go, but he couldn’t do it either. Hoover got more and more frustrated, but none of us dared volunteer until finally he said, ‘There’s got to be at least one man here who’s good at picking locks.’”
“You?”
“I’m good with mechanical stuff. The damned thing refuses to budge, so I get more physical with it. I start to break a sweat when suddenly, it bursts open—boom! Krakatoa! So naturally I get on my knees to pick it all up. You should have seen the way he threw himself on top of all these papers and folders and letters. I only managed to pick up a few things before he ordered me back to my seat, but I saw a pile of envelopes bound up in an elastic band, and the top one was addressed to . . .” He gestured toward Kathryn.
“Jack Humboldt . . . J.H. . . . John Edgar Hoover.”
“ . . . who is very friendly with Jack Warner.”
Kathryn thought about Bette’s story about the package landing in Orry-Kelly’s office marked “Jack.” She shook her head as things started to fall into place. “So the head of the FBI likes to—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish such an outrageous sentence.
“Everybody has a personal life,” Nelson said, “but not him. Leastways, none that I’ve observed. He’s the most tightly closed book I’ve ever encountered.”
They let Miss Vilma’s gravelly final note of “Summertime” waft over them.
“You said you wanted to leave the Bureau.” Kathryn fancied she could see Nelson’s eyes harden as the lights of the club dimmed. “Was that just a heat-of-the-moment declaration, or did you mean it?”
“I think maybe I’ve found my way out.”
“Blackmailing the head of the FBI?” Just the thought of it made Kathryn’s innards churn.
“I’m going to have to play it smarter than that.”
As the Licketysplitters thundered their applause, Kathryn felt Nelson’s breath fill her ear.
“This is a transvestite joint, isn’t it?”
“You said to pick somewhere unexpected. Are you mad?”
“I probably should be.” She heard him chuckle. “You really are one hell of a gal.”
A part of Kathryn melted. Nobody had ever said that to her before. It wasn’t the most flattering compliment a typical guy could pay a typical girl, but here she was sitting with an FBI agent in a cross-dresser bar talking about hoodwinking J. Edgar Hoover. Kathryn Massey had passed “typical” so far back it wasn’t even in her rearview mirror.