9:42 a.m.

Brenda supplied the address, but stopped short of an introduction. It would have been embarrassing. The husband ordered boys from a “Tomcat” service run by one of Brenda’s friends. It was L.A. Everyone knew someone big—and primarily within illicit context. I had one name to drop. She’d take the bait or she wouldn’t. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

The approaching footsteps were Her. Stacked heels on hardwood. What is this unsolicited interruption?

Bette Davis opened the door. She wore a plaid shirt over dungarees and riding boots. Her look was unkind. No amenity would work here. I said, “Dudley Smith.”

It brought her up short. Her look went from unkind to Oh shit. She said, “Who are you, and what do you hope to gain by mentioning that name to me?”

I said, “My name is Kay Lake, and I’m not looking to gain anything. I’m hoping that we both might benefit, or at least achieve a measure of relief, from a discussion.”

She held the door open. She said, “I can give you a few minutes,” and stood aside to let me in. She pointed to two thronelike chairs. It was Sit, you.

I followed her lead and obeyed. There, now. She walked off toward the back of the house.

Which was unwelcoming and overly conceived. Large beams and too-large furniture. Too much dark wood. The home of a British baroness—and an unruly Airedale bounding my way.

I embraced him and held him off; he ignored my entreaties to sit. He wanted all my attention and seemed to know how beguiling he was. I gave in and gushed over him.

Miss Davis returned and resumed her performance. She was brusque—but now amenable. She balanced a pewter tray like a drive-in carhop and swooped over to me. She placed the tray on a table by our thrones. The baroness, her petitioner. The pewter pitcher and mugs. The props covered her skittishness. She was dying to hear what I had to say.

She filled the mugs with rum punch. She opened a pewter box and pointed to a pewter lighter. I lit a cigarette and reclined in my throne; Miss Davis did the same. The Airedale hopped on an ottoman and went to sleep.

“Dudley was besotted by the dog. There’s a way that certain men behave with animals. They regress in a certain way. Dudley kissed the dog, which I found discomfiting.”

I sipped grog. “I live in a policeman’s world. In a sense, I’ve been seduced by it. It’s my résumé for any discussion of Dudley Smith.”

Miss Davis tucked her legs up on the throne. She placed a pewter ashtray on the ledge between us.

“I know from seduction, as you might have guessed. I thought I recognized him, and then convinced myself that I knew him and could restrict him within the boundaries that I impose upon my men. I erred there, and I will never see him again. Which does not mean that he will fail to haunt me.”

I said, “You haven’t asked me to explain my résumé, or asked me if there’s a specific purpose for my visit.”

“Why should I? You’re an artful inconvenience, and I’m momentarily taken with your approach. It’s a cool Saturday morning, and we’re having a chat. We’re going to get shit-faced and become over-familiar, because the war has sanctioned such indecorous behavior. Your introduction was entirely sufficient.”

I sipped punch. Dark rum, Pernod, fruit juice. Pinch me—am I really here?

“Tell me about you and Dudley Smith, please.”

Miss Davis said, “He fell ill here Wednesday afternoon. He became delirious and muttered things in his sleep.”

10:26 a.m.

There was no quick revelation. I knew why, instantly. Miss Davis was at loose ends. She was lonely and needed an audience; she knew that she could hold me enthralled, in my front-row seat. She would bid me to speak, in time. She would ignore telephone calls and intrusions, such as her husband and any lovers she might have on a string. I expected autobiography, and got it.

Miss Davis, Broadway ingénue. She runs afoul of her family and makes her way to the Big Town. The ’20s. Prohibition. Jewish intellectuals, eager to fuck her. George Gershwin succeeds. Poor George. He may or may not have been queer. She’s there for the Carnegie Hall debut of Concerto in F. She smokes hashish with Scott Fitzgerald and finds herself weeping at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. She witnesses a May Day parade that leaves three dead. She’s outside the prison when Sacco and Vanzetti fry. I sat silent and steady-eyed. I made no attempt to intrude on the woman’s one great theme of Herself.

The stories went on. The day passed in one long monologue. We moved room to room. Miss Davis tossed flapjacks and deep-fried them into egg-stuffed enchiladas. Every movement was graceful and calculated to appear nonchalant. She was teaching me how to act in the world. The baroness and her protégée. She knew that I was studying her and believed that I would mimic her for the rest of my life. Miss Davis failed at insight and excelled at technique. This put her at odds with Claire De Haven. Claire embraced drama and employed it as but one approach to her fierce assignment of task.

We sipped grog, smoked cigarettes and stayed short of pie-eyed. Miss Davis had her one story. This shortcoming outlived its novelty and taxed me over time. I resisted her story, in all its accomplished seduction. I saw how deeply she fell prey to Glamour and how willfully she reconstructed it as Life’s Big Romance. Her Forced March to Hollywood. Her Conquests of Famous Men, all weaker than she. Her Tiffs with Studio Chieftains and Directors.

It went on through the night and two bottles of red wine with coq au vin. The Airedale reappeared at fetching intervals. He brought the baroness a fresh-killed squirrel at one point. I dutifully cleaned up the mess as Dudley Smith loomed in ellipsis. The dog reminded her of him. Miss Davis was all artifice, save for her fear and rage. It was fear of nothingness and rage at the prospect fulfilled. It was her appetite for men at war with her need to orchestrate her every life’s moment. Dudley Smith terrified her. He was the brutal blank page of her unconscious and had hurled her beyond her ken. They had breached each other’s façades.

Miss Davis goes to Hollywood. Miss Lake goes to Hollywood. The film star, the round-heeled carhop. She was there at the premiere of Gone with the Wind—and was almost cast and should have been cast as Scarlett O’Hara. I attended the first public showing and still kept the ticket stub in my purse.

My visit ran through the wee small hours and up through dawn. I realized that she’d done this many times. She got lonely and became bored with all the people in her life. She needed a new audience. Someone might offer her a perfect new reflection. It would cut her loose to be someone less furious and less arch.

She gave me my opening. It was her critique of Victor McLaglen in The Informer. I told her that Dudley Smith brought to mind McLaglen, writ suave.

So she told me. She phrased it as a Bette Davis Story. Miss Davis and her Demon Lover. His infected hand, his delirium, the studio abortionist she brought in. She invited him here to screw him one last time and then banish him. She changed her mind at the door. He collapsed and said things in his sleep.

What things, Miss Davis? Please tell me. I can tell that they disturbed you.

She said she heard Dudley confess. He blathered in Catholic Latin and English. His utterings shocked her.

Extortion and robbery. Murder. The killing that took her past Her Ken—Because She Caused It.

“There was a party for Ben Siegel, a little over two weeks ago. It was at the Trocadero. I keep a room there, over the club.”

Yes, Miss Davis. And then?

“I spent the night there with Dudley, and I made a harmless wisecrack as I fell asleep. I said, ‘Kill a Jap for me.’ I read the newspaper the next day, and there was a horrible account of that Japanese man shot in the phone booth. Dudley confessed to the murder in his sleep.”

Miss Davis wept then. It was the crescendo of her performance. She wanted to be held, so I held her. I thought of my Kabuki mask and heard Japanese music. I held Bette Davis and let her sob into me.