Kathryn was thankful Bette Davis had told her to not put herself out. “I’m eight and a half months pregnant,” she drawled over the telephone. “I can’t stomach anything more exotic than saltine crackers with peanut butter, and a pineapple Jell-O chaser.”
She switched on the radio; an old Harry James tune—“I’ve Heard That Song Before”—started to fill her living room when the doorbell rang. An alarmingly pregnant movie star huffed to catch her breath.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she said, taking Bette by the hand and guiding her to the sofa, taking as much of the weight as she could while Bette lowered herself.
Bette expelled a harsh breath as she arranged the cushions to support her back. “Cover model for Maternal Monthly Magazine, I am not.”
“Are you drinking?” Kathryn asked.
Bette barked out a laugh. “I shouldn’t.”
“Which means—?”
“We should probably stick to milk and pray it might induce Barbara to pop out early.”
“So you’re having a girl?”
“Barbara Davis Sherry,” Bette replied. “BD for short.” She rubbed her stomach like a farmer might pat a cow. “And don’t you dare print that until I pass this watermelon.”
Kathryn crossed into the kitchen. “I hope you were serious about the saltines and peanut butter.”
Bette’s eyes lit up when Kathryn returned with two glasses of milk in one hand and a platter in the other. “Perfection! Now, sit yourself down and tell me what’s on your mind.”
Kathryn should have known Bette was far too canny to not see through her breezy invitation. The night at Bertie’s ice cream parlor had unnerved her. She was worried that every last crumb of willpower would rot away before she knew Nelson meant what he said.
But it was Gwendolyn’s question that kept haunting her: Have you thought about how Marcus will feel when he learns of this?
Until that moment, Kathryn had assumed that Marcus would support anything she did. She’d never given him any grief over his romance with Oliver. But didn’t the Breen Office obstruct Hollywood’s freedom of speech as much as the FBI? Surely they were in the same boat. How could Marcus see it any other way?
But Nelson was with the FBI, and the FBI was in league with the HUAC, which was out to bring Hollywood to its knees over something that scarcely even existed. Nobody doubted there were Communists in Hollywood, but the idea that they were sneaking Commie dogma into every movie was laughable.
The questions swirled around Kathryn’s head like dishwater circling the drain until she didn’t know which way was up. She couldn’t talk to Gwendolyn about it—she was too close. So she’d decided she needed someone to put her straight—someone who wasn’t afraid to tell her that she was a mercenary she-devil.
Bette sat before her, wide-eyed with expectation. “Is it man trouble?” she prompted.
That was all the prodding Kathryn needed.
To her credit, Bette tsked and smiled in all the right places, and never interrupted the flood of words that came pouring out.
“Well!” she exclaimed once Kathryn reached the end of her story. “That’s one mighty sharp pickle you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Kathryn bit into another saltine. “Maybe Gwendolyn’s right—it’s just the fleeting temptation of forbidden fruit.”
Bette laughed. “I’m the world’s greatest expect on the subject of forbidden fruit.”
“Did you ever wish you hadn’t given in?” Kathryn asked.
“Every single time.” She caressed her belly. “Including the one responsible for this, sad to say. Let me take a wild stab in the dark here. You rarely find yourself on the receiving end of romantic attention from men, so when it actually comes along, you don’t know who—or what—to trust.” She held out her glass for a refill and stared at Kathryn, daring her to deny her hypothesis.
That’s it exactly, Kathryn thought. Ask me to interview a star who doesn’t want to share anything, and I know exactly what to do. Give me a moral dilemma about censorship, or tell me the boss blew the payroll at Santa Anita, and I’ll swing into action. But when a nice guy with a soft pair of lips smooches me in the moonlight, I’m senseless as a bobby soxer.
“That’s the trouble with women like us,” Bette said. “We’re not the white-picket-fence type, nor do we want to be. We’re intelligent, capable go-getters who want more out of life than knitting circles and meatloaf recipes.”
“Says the woman who’s minutes away from motherhood.”
Bette ran her hands over her stomach. “I’m thankful for the chance to experience motherhood and I fully intend to embrace it, but it’s not the be-all end-all. I don’t want a husband to take care of me; I want a partner, an equal who will take care of and look out for me as I will for him. However, we live in a world where men like that are a rare sighting. And when one comes along, it’s like catching the abominable snowman.”
“So what do we do?”
“We make a decision, then deal with the consequences. What else can we do? But if he is a good guy, you be sure to grab him with both hands.”
“I’m starting to think he might be,” Kathryn confessed.
Bette rested her chin on a palm. “If you’ve learned to tell the difference, I’d love to hear how.”
Kathryn confided what Nelson had discovered about the post office box used for the dress that turned up in the Warner Bros. costume department, and how wonderful it would be if they could track down the dress itself.
“What would you do with it?”
“Persuade Hoover to let Nelson leave the FBI. I even tracked down his favorite tailor in LA and double-checked: Hoover wears a 38 suit jacket, so it all fits.”
Bette started to laugh. “I always knew that little shit had a dark secret, but I never suspected that!”
Her laugh was infectious and soon Kathryn was giggling, too. “Can you imagine? Hoover? In a dress?”
“That’s not why I’m laughing.” Bette flung her arms out. “You’ve got it!”
“Got what?”
“I’m wearing it!”
Kathryn took in Bette’s maternity dress. It was dark green, shiny, and too tight across the chest. “This is the one that arrived in the office when you were visiting Orry-Kelly?”
“I got Jack to insert some side panels for extra room, but Gwendolyn could take them out easily enough.” Bette extended her right wrist and reversed the cuff to reveal the tiny embroidered G on the inside. “You can have it back if you get Gwendolyn to make me something new to wear once I’ve expelled BD from my loins.”
Kathryn’s head spun as she gave Bette a roomy old robe and hung the Hoover dress in her closet, and over pineapple Jell-O, they moved on to how MGM’s rivals were starting to out-gross them, and if now was not the best time for Bette to be leaving Warners. Bette told her not to worry. “There’s more than one game in town. Scrappy old battle-axes like me and Miss Crawford will always find work.”
* * *
After Bette departed, Kathryn decided Hoover’s dress would be safer in the closet. But as she lifted it off the top of her bedroom door and turned toward her room, the dress caught the edge of a statue she’d set on a small credenza against the wall. The sculpture wobbled for a moment, then crashed to the floor. She was picking up the pieces when she noticed a black wire coming from the statue’s foot.
Kathryn yanked the wire free and found something at the other end: a heavy device about the size of six quarters stacked together, black with red stripes and had two wires sticking out. It was warm in the palm of her hand.
She took two steps at a time down to Marcus’ villa, and banged on his door. When he opened it, she thrust the device and the statue into his face. “Is this what I think it is?”
Marcus looked from the broken statue of Mercury, Roman god of communication and luck, to the device, then back again. His eyes hardened. “Remember Bogie? And now they’re doing the same to you?”
She snatched it out of his hand and started to march away.
He followed her. “I’m coming with you.”
A near-full moon peeked through the branches of the eucalyptus tree that shaded both their places. It was light enough for Kathryn to see how fearful Marcus was for her.
“I’ll be fine,” she told him.
“Alone? I’m sure the Black Dahlia thought that too.”
She thought about all those tawdry Black Dahlia headlines.
GIRL TORTURED AND SLAIN
SEX FIEND VICTIM IDENTIFIED BY FINGERPRINT RECORDS
DAHLIA KILLER TAUNTS POLICE
“I don’t know that you coming along is such a good idea. I can take a cab.”
“And what if the Black Dahlia killer is a cab driver?”
* * *
Nelson’s apartment at 5905 Fountain Avenue was one of a mini-court of four whitewashed bungalows a few blocks north of the cemetery next to Paramount. She wasn’t surprised to see that he had his own back door allowing him to slip in and out, unobserved from the street.
She tapped on his back door, then knocked louder until he opened it.
He smiled when he saw Kathryn, but his lips thinned when he spotted Marcus behind her. She held the bug in her palm and raised it to his face. He looked at it, then said, “You better come inside.”
Nelson’s living room was warm and light, with dark orange drapes against apricot walls. Two sofas faced each other across a walnut coffee table. Over the fireplace hung an old California booster poster produced to convince people to move to the West Coast back in the days before the movie industry took over that role.
Kathryn gestured to Marcus. “I’m sure you know who this is,” she said.
Nelson nodded. “Yes, Mr. Adler, it’s—uh . . .”
“Good to meet me?” Marcus asked, thick with sarcasm.
“Please, take a seat.”
“I don’t want a seat,” Kathryn said. “I want the truth.”
“And I want to know how you found out where I live. I’m not in the book.”
“Maybe you’re not quite as mysterious as you think you are.” Kathryn had spotted Nelson’s address on a telephone bill on the counter of his father’s store the day she bought Gwendolyn’s lamp. Accustomed to reading upside-down papers scattered on the desks of movie moguls, she only needed a glance to memorize it. “And maybe your father should be more careful what he leaves laying around on his desk.” She lifted the bug up to face level again. “Can we stick to the subject, please?”
“Where did you find it?”
“Exactly where you put it!” Marcus jeered.
I knew it was a bad idea, Kathryn thought. If this is where I find out he’s been stringing me along, I’d rather not have an audience. Not even Marcus.
“I knocked over a sculpture,” she said, “and found it attached to the base.”
“I can assure you, that thing did not come from us.”
“The FBI bugged Bogie’s villa and you claimed to know nothing about it,” Marcus said. “Your assurances don’t mean diddly.”
Kathryn placed a gentle hand on Marcus’ pounding chest. “Let’s hear him out.”
“We haven’t used those since before the war,” Nelson said. “The newer ones are smaller and much harder to find.”
Kathryn felt a ripple of tension leave her shoulders. She looked at Marcus. That does make a certain amount of sense.
“I don’t buy it.” Marcus muttered
Nelson turned toward the desk in the corner. “Let me show you what we use nowadays. You’ll see they’re nothing like that old dinosaur you’ve got there.”
“So you admit that you do use bugs?”
“You know we do,” he said quietly.
“So who’s to say that you didn’t just decide to use some old bug you had lying around from the old days?” she asked. “Nobody at the Bureau would miss it. You could listen away to your heart’s content.”
“Because I’m saying it, Kathryn. I give you my word.”
“Your word!” Marcus scoffed, but Nelson ignored him.
“Tell me, Kathryn why would I go to the trouble of bugging your apartment and risk getting caught out by the one person whose trust I’m trying to win?”
“What do you know about trust?” Marcus demanded. “What do you care about what happens to people? Just as long as the FBI gets what they want.”
“I cared enough the night of that raid,” Nelson shot back.
Marcus turned to Kathryn. “What’s he talking about?”
“You never told him?” Nelson asked.
“Told me what?”
“That raid up in Mandeville Canyon,” Kathryn said.
“What of it?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why you guys were released?”
Kathryn threw Hoyt a Shut the hell up! look, then turned back to Marcus.
“He was on the phone with the desk sergeant when you were hauled in. He convinced the guy to release the three of you.”
Marcus twisted his neck just far enough to bring Hoyt into his peripheral vision. “Why would you do that?”
“I figured it’d encourage her to trust me.”
“To get her to do what you wanted.”
Nelson had been soft-peddling his voice, keeping it aw-shucks friendly. But now it turned harsh. “If I’d known you’d take this attitude, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. Did you read what happened to everybody else?”
The raid had made front-page news for days afterwards. Every man arrested that night was listed along with his home address and current employer.
Nelson stepped up and poked Marcus in the chest. “Within a week, all those homos were out of a job, and most of them evicted from their homes.”
Kathryn threw her hands up. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Oh, come on! Let’s lay all our cards on the table. That was a homo bar. You married a homo. Knowingly, I assume. You had your reasons. But what I did that night saved your friend from public humiliation that would have cost him his career. And what do I get for it? A thank you? No. I get accused of manipulating you to get what I want.”
“And how is that any different from what you’ve been doing since the day you walked into my dressing room at NBC?” she challenged.
“It’s different now because I want out. And I want you.”
Nelson had done a damned decent thing getting Marcus and the others off the hook, and he deserved to be thanked for it better than he was. Kathryn wanted to be nobody’s fool, but was Marcus right? Had he done it just to curry favor with her?
Hoyt broke the silence.
“And as long as we’re laying our cards on the line, you want to know the truth? Okay then, here’s the truth: That time during the war when we bugged Bogie’s place? We were supposed to be bugging yours.”
Kathryn reared back. “What?”
“You told her you didn’t know about that,” Marcus said.
“I didn’t. Not at the time. I didn’t learn till much that later those agents who broke in, they got the wrong place. Nobody knew until we started listening and discovered it was Bogie’s. You should’ve heard Hoover when I told him. He sounded like he was literally dancing a merry jig. Bogie was his ultimate target, but he wasn’t convinced the bugs we used back then could do the job, and didn’t want to take the chance with such a high-profile subject.”
Something inside Kathryn gave way. It was almost like she could feel the muscle and sinews in her chest pulling apart.
“My life was fine till you came skulking in!” she yelled. “And it’s been a bottomless rabbit hole ever since.” She pitched the bug at him. It slugged him squarely on his forehead.
She stomped past him, brushing away his attempt to grab her arm, and headed for his door. She clutched the tarnished brass knob to steady herself, and threw over her shoulder, “My mom’s tax bill is paid, and you’ve got your information about the O’Roarkes’ real estate dodge.” She jerked the door open. “I’m out, and if Hoover’s got a problem with that, he knows where I work. Don’t contact me again—ever.”
She hurried down the gravel path that led to the side street where they parked the DeSoto. The night air chilled the damp sheen of sweat coating her face. As she hit the sidewalk, she kept expecting Nelson to open the door again, but it stayed shut and the path remained dark. Part of her was glad he hadn’t followed them; another part couldn’t help but be disappointed.
They said nothing as Marcus opened the passenger door for her. She nodded her thanks as she slid onto the front seat. By the time they pulled away from the curb, she could barely see it through the tears pooling in her eyes. Marcus headed north toward the Hollywood Hills, away from Nelson’s bungalow, away from Paramount, away from the cemetery. She didn’t open her eyes again until she saw the lights along Sunset.