CHAPTER 3

 

 

The alabaster tower of the Carthay Circle Theatre blazed like a Roman candle under the four searchlights trained on its whitewashed walls.

Kathryn handed her car keys to the parking valet. Roman candle, she thought. That’s not bad. She pulled out her notepad and jotted it down.

When she’d first heard that the director of Roman Holiday had cast a newcomer called Audrey Hepburn, she had made the rookie mistake of dismissing the unknown out of hand. Casting nobodies in starring roles wasn’t unprecedented, but the idea flopped more often than it flourished.

The chances of this European greenhorn making good opposite Gregory Peck, who was coming off his David and Bathsheba smash were slim at best. Kathryn had taken to calling her The Other Hepburn in her column until she’d learned that the girl had starred on Broadway in Gigi and that her mother was a Dutch baroness, so her role as a European princess wasn’t too much of a stretch.

Chastened for her curt assumption, Kathryn had paid more attention as production photos of the movie started to circulate, showing a poised Hepburn blooming under William Wyler’s astute guidance. By the time the movie was ready for its unveiling, the entire world was primed to see what this swan was all about.

Kathryn waved to the rowdy moviegoers installed on wooden bleachers. An usher in a black-and-red uniform pulled the door open and welcomed her with a program. She accepted it with a nod and stepped inside. The face of her beau, Leo Presnell, loomed above the heads of invitees assembling around the crowded foyer.

He kissed her cheek. “You’re right on time.” He seemed surprised.

“You make it sound like I’m not punctual!” She swiped him across the shoulder with her program. “I’ll have a manhattan, and make it snappy.”

Leo pointed to the bar, where a matching pair of cocktails was set up next to a bowl of peanuts.

“Does this mean you’re thoughtful or that I’m predictable?”

He pressed his hand to the small of her back and nudged her toward the bar. “It means we know each other very well.”

The manhattan wasn’t as chilled as she liked it, but the bartender had blended the bourbon and vermouth perfectly. Kathryn took a second sip and exhaled slowly with a low groan, letting the tension of the day leak out of her.

She knew she had taken a risk earlier that afternoon when she rode the elevator to the seventh floor of 510 Spring Street, where the National Council of Negro Women kept their offices.

A month ago, when Kathryn had stepped in front of a radio microphone to sabotage evangelist Sheldon Voss’s scam to bilk thousands of dollars from unsuspecting believers, the Council had been the first worthwhile cause that came to her mind. It was run by a formidable no-nonsense type named Mrs. Cornelia Wyatt, who welcomed Kathryn with a hug to her substantial bosom and insisted they share a cup of “the best damned coffee you’ll find west of Little Italy.” Alongside the coffee, Mrs. Wyatt had set down a slice of rhubarb pie big enough to choke the last four winners at Santa Anita.

“It must have taken you ladies a week to count all those quarters,” Kathryn had told her.

“The grand total came to $8,137.25—you should have seen our faces.”

“I wish I’d been here to witness it for myself.”

“Miss Massey, you can’t begin to know the good that money will do among black folk all over the state.”

As heartwarming as that was to learn, Kathryn had been there to test a theory. “You should tell Sheldon Voss.”

Mrs. Wyatt sneered. “Oh honey, the decision to donate those funds had nothing to do with that no-account hustler.”

Kathryn swallowed a chunk of melt-in-the-mouth deliciousness. “You think Sheldon Voss is a charlatan?”

“I know it, and I know you know it.” Mrs. Wyatt spooned sugar into her coffee and stirred it leisurely. “We don’t often receive manna from heaven, so when it comes our way, we’re not disposed to question the whys and wherefores. But between you, me, and my rhubarb pie, we knew that money was intended for the eighth floor.”

Kathryn knew a rat when she smelled one and she’d been smelling one since she learned where Voss’s Quarter Cans were supposed to be delivered. “The eighth floor is why I’m here. It houses the FBI, doesn’t it?”

Mrs. Wyatt closed her office door; the chatter of typewriters and telephones dropped away. “Officially, the eighth and ninth floors of our building are unoccupied, but we hear them walking around, sometimes yelling fit to wake Beelzebub himself. Those agents, they’re all cut from the same cookie mold. They think they blend in, but they don’t. When you’re riding the elevator with a Bureau boy, you know it.”

“Do you ever speak with any of them?” Kathryn asked.

“We ain’t nothing but a bunch of black women, but I’ll tell you something for nothing: word around the building is that the FBI’s LA office has gone rogue.”

Kathryn pushed away the rest of her pie; she simply couldn’t finish such a huge wedge. “You don’t say.”

“The week ahead of Voss’s broadcast, this building was swarming with Voss Vanguards mixing with them Bureau boys. They were in cahoots and ain’t nobody going to tell me any different.”

“Has Voss ever shown his face around here?”

The woman’s mouth flattened into a determined line. “I’m not about to let some two-faced hustler like that claw back one single quarter. Not that that’s likely, considering what’s happened.”

After Voss’s Sea to Shining Sea March, which had culminated in a tent revival meeting in MacArthur Park, Kathryn had expected Voss would announce a new venture. Perhaps another march from California back to Washington, DC, or a radio show, or maybe he’d build his own church. But instead, the most publicity-hungry media celebrity of 1953 had disappeared like he’d been nothing more than a mass hallucination.

Both the public and the press—Kathryn included—began to speculate whether Voss’s vanishing act was a replay of Aimee Semple McPherson’s “disappearance,” when she resurfaced a few weeks later with a patently phony kidnapping story.

But Voss was too wily, too greedy, and far too egotistical to stay out of sight for long. Kathryn hoped Cornelia might have had a Voss sighting she was keeping to herself—Kathryn was desperate to find the guy. Minutes before she’d walked on stage to announce his “donation,” Voss had admitted to Kathryn that he’d helped frame her father’s conviction for treason. As far as she was concerned, Voss was the reason why Thomas Danford was in Sing Sing and only he held the key to getting her father exonerated.

Voss going to ground was a wrinkle she hadn’t counted on. But nor was this information that the LA office was playing outside the FBI rule book. Could she use it as leverage?

“Bad day?” Leo asked, snapping Kathryn back into the present. She hadn’t shared with him what she’d learned since the night of the meeting. She felt like she was wading into a murky pit of morally questionable quicksand. The more she shielded him from it, the quicker he could claim ignorance in case the situation became dire.

“Kathryn, my darling! How are you?”

Edith Head emerged from the crowd, her arms outstretched.

“I hear your work on Roman Holiday is Oscar-worthy,” Kathryn said.

“We’ll see,” Edith responded, feigning indifference. “That girl is all bones and long limbs, so it was a challenge to camouflage her flaws.”

“If the production stills are anything to go by, I’d say you’ve pulled it off.”

“Only if it works on screen.” Edith permitted herself an inscrutable smile. “Of course, I’ve encountered no such problems with Grace on To Catch a Thief.”

The other big news over the summer of ’53 was how Alfred Hitchcock had lured Cary Grant out of self-imposed retirement. Cary had declared that the rise of Method actors like Marlon Brando meant that moviegoers were no longer interested in seeing his style of screen acting. Six months later Hitchcock cast him opposite Grace Kelly.

“As soon as Grace walked into my office,” Edith went on, “I had inspiration for half a dozen outfits. If I couldn’t use them in the movie, I knew any of them could be part of her press junket wardrobe. We’re a match made in heaven. Her words, not mine.”

The front doors of the Carthay Circle Theater swished opened and a thick knot of people marched in. At its center stood the svelte figure of Audrey Hepburn in a white strapless dress.

“She really is like a swan, isn’t she?” Kathryn commented. “That beautiful, long neck.” Now that she could see The Other Hepburn in person, Kathryn felt bad for having dismissed her so cavalierly.

“She’s a sweet little thing,” Edith said. “How she’ll survive the minefields of Hollywood is anyone’s guess.”

A semicircle of flashbulbs besieged Hepburn.

“Someone needs to hand her a cheeseburger.” Kathryn took out her notebook again and scribbled down a few observations. “Look at those collarbones.”

“She confided in me how hard it is for her to keep the weight on. Chronic starvation during the war, apparently.”

Hepburn caught sight of Edith and gave a little wave. She glided her hand down the white tulle and gave Edith the thumbs-up. She looked like she wanted to stop for a chat, but the momentum of her entourage propelled her into the auditorium.

Kathryn finished off the last of her manhattan, bid Edith farewell, and took Leo’s arm.

Paramount had allocated them seats in the eleventh row, directly behind James Mason, who was about to start work on Judy Garland’s A Star is Born remake at Warners. He was keenly aware that he’d gotten the part of Norman Maine after more than a dozen actors had knocked it back, including Bogart, Flynn, and Peck. He’d told Kathryn he was going to give the best he could to what was probably a thankless role in the shadow of a towering talent like Garland making her comeback.

They were still chatting when the house lights went down and the credits began to roll. The travelogue of images around Rome—the Colosseum, the Forum, Vatican City—reminded Kathryn how deeply she missed Marcus. To anyone who didn’t know him better, his frequent letters told of an enchanted life: three-hour lunches of mouth-watering pasta and smooth chianti, sunset walks through the gardens of the Villa Borghese, people-watching on the Piazza Navona. But she also knew of a recent trans-Atlantic phone call. Marcus’s frustration over being trapped in Rome seeped between the lines.

Around about the scene where Gregory Peck shocks Audrey Hepburn by pretending to have lost his hand in the Mouth of Truth, Kathryn’s attention began to splinter from the charming romantic comedy unspooling on the screen.

A four-word phrase repeated over and over in her head.

To Catch a Thief.

To Catch a Thief.

To Catch a Thief.

Sheldon Voss was a thief. She didn’t believe for a minute that he was gone for good. Ruthless shysters like that aren’t easily thwarted. But he had hidden himself away so well that nobody could find him. If Kathryn was going to get her father exonerated, she had to do it by either luring Voss out of hiding or sending someone on his trail. A job like that took a professional.

Her mind turned to the private eye she had employed to look into Voss’s murky past. When she’d first met Dudley Hartman, she hadn’t been immediately impressed. She’d been hoping for a bulldog, but he’d struck her as more of a basset hound. He did come up with the goods, though.

“It’s time I paid Mr. Hartman another visit,” she muttered to herself.

Leo leaned over. “What’s that, dear?”

“This movie makes me want to go to Rome for another visit.”

Maybe it doesn’t take a thief to catch a thief. Perhaps it only needs a clever trap.