Dangerous to Know Read online

  My stomach growled despite my not understanding a word after “dumplings,” showing who the true brains of the outfit was.

  “Come, we will compare notes on cooking in a more genial atmosphere.” Dietrich stood, all business, and kissed Edith. “Again, my eternal gratitude to you and Lillian. You surpassed my every expectation.” Her gloved hand touched my face, the leather cool against my skin. She leaned in to buss my cheek only to turn her head and press her lips against mine. Her eyes were open, which meant, I supposed, that mine were, too. She breezed out of the office with Gretchen on her arm, and I smelled of My Sin at last.

  While I regained my equilibrium, Edith fussed with Jens’s book. “It seems underwhelming now that you’ve recovered it. Any indication of where Mr. Lohse’s bounty of secrets is?”

  “It’s my opinion you’re looking at it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Felix said most of this material was gibberish. My theory—well, Simon and I developed it together—is that the gibberish is actually a notation system. Jens had to keep track of every scandalous tidbit he came across while working, but didn’t want anyone to know he was doing it. So he developed a code in the language he understood best.”

  “Music.”

  “Exactly. It’s an idea out of Hiram Beecher’s book How to Be at Home in the World, which Jens and I both read. ‘Only you know how the river of your memory flows,’ Hiram wrote. Jens scratches down a few notes that remind him of a name or location. Letters and numbers clarify the meaning. To anyone else, they’re a composer’s scribblings. To him, it’s a way to recall information to pass along to Kaspar Biel or use for blackmail purposes. My guess is Jens planned on transcribing it for Malcolm Drewe while hiding at the Auerbachs’ cabin, but never had the chance.” I tapped the page before Edith, containing a good two dozen unconnected measures of music. “This could be dirt so filthy it would keep Louella Parsons and Lorna Whitcomb going for years. And the only person who can read it is dead. Jens took all his secrets with him.”

  “Except the one he left for Marlene. Remarkable.” Edith closed the book, flashing a grin at the ribald drawings inside the cover. “What does Detective Morrow make of your suggestion?”

  “He deemed it interesting.”

  “Does he believe Mr. Biel is responsible for Mr. Lohse’s death?”

  “That notion he dubbed intriguing. The police still think one of the Auerbachs killed him. We only have Felix and Marthe’s word for what happened.”

  “While scant evidence implicates the Nazis.”

  “Gene contacted the consulate anyway. They stonewalled him.” I slapped the table in frustration. “But Biel did it. Simon insists Felix and Marthe are innocent. There’s no one else it could be.”

  “There is another possible culprit,” Edith said slowly. “I thought of it earlier, and Jens’s confession only fanned the flame. He stated he was collecting money to deliver his family from Austria. He did so by turning the spying he was compelled to do for the Nazis to his own ends. Blackmailing society people, extorting the studios.”

  “And selling all his information to Malcolm Drewe.”

  “For which he was willing to accept less money, in order to receive it up front. Why would he ask for such terms? Suppose Mr. Lohse needed to move his family at once, with Mr. Drewe’s immediate payment providing the last of the necessary revenue. What would he—and they—live on after that? Particularly if he planned on leaving Los Angeles for good?”

  “Rory Dillon said Jens had other irons in the fire.”

  “Simon said Mr. Lohse’s primary role as a spy was serving as go-between, ferrying information to and from higher-placed assets.”

  The hair on the nape of my neck stood at attention. “You think Jens was blackmailing other Nazi spies?”

  “Surely the names of those agents are the most valuable intelligence Mr. Lohse possessed. What better way to raise a great deal of money? He could act indirectly, again using Mr. Dillon and others. His targets would not want to admit to their Nazi handlers they had been compromised. One of those individuals could have acted on their own to kill Mr. Lohse—the only person who could conclusively identify him as a spy—without knowing it was Mr. Lohse himself blackmailing him.”

  I sat back in my chair. “So some illustrious Los Angeles resident who met Jens at a party or a club and is secretly a Nazi agent could have killed him.”

  “Conceivably. All that remains is to determine that person’s identity.”

  “Piece of gugelhupf. We don’t even need Jens’s magic book to figure it out. I’ll just invite Kaspar Biel around and ask him. He already knows where my place is.”

  “Don’t joke, Lillian, you— What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just thought of someone other than Kaspar who might know where to start.”

  * * *

  “SO WHAT YOU’RE telling me,” Malcolm Drewe said with understandable exactitude, “is I’m never going to get what I paid for.”

  I nodded from my position opposite him in a booth at Marie’s Pantry. I had arranged to meet him at the café near the Santa Monica water taxi landing. I hadn’t gone to the assignation alone, either. I’d instructed Rogers to park Addison’s car two blocks from the restaurant. When he’d done so, I dropped a dollar onto the front seat next to him.

  “Marie’s has the best peach melba in town. Have some, my treat. You don’t have to sit with me or acknowledge my existence. Just go in ahead of me and leave after I do.”

  Rogers held the bill up to the light; had it been a coin, he’d have bitten it. When I arrived at Marie’s ten minutes later, he was comfortably ensconced at the counter. He’d ordered strawberry shortcake and seemed to have gotten the better of the deal. Drewe was already waiting.

  “Jens didn’t lie,” I told him. “He had what he sold you. But it’s in a form only he could read.”

  Drewe shoveled shortcake into his mouth, the peach melba apparently wildly overrated. “You’re telling me there wasn’t one name in it you recognized?”

  “Johannes Brahms, but he hasn’t had a hit in years. Jens used a musical code to remember everything, and did so because it would only make sense to him.”

  “He said he had incriminating photographs. Where are those?”

  “Locked in a bank somewhere, or squirreled away at a friend’s place under the floorboards.”

  “All noted in his magic book using his secret code, now lost to us mortal men. So they’ll molder away and not turn a buck for anyone.” He laughed uproariously and continued attacking his shortcake, the flashes of vivid red on his teeth disquieting. “I’ll say this for you, Miss Frost, I like your nerve. Not many people would deliver this news in person.”

  Before I could explain why I’d done so, Drewe’s man Knoll slid into the booth. He cocked his ginger head toward Rogers. “That goon at the counter is with her. And the pair of them are being followed by guys look like federal agents.”

  Drewe lowered his fork and stared at me. At least he’d closed his mouth. “They probably are federal agents,” I said. “But they don’t care about you. They’re only interested in Jack Benny.”

  I sipped my disappointing coffee and waited. Drewe continued staring, so I pressed on.

  “I had a reason for bringing you this information directly. I wanted to ask a question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What do you know about Nazis in Los Angeles?”

  “Nothing. I get enough grief from local politicians. What do I care what foreigners do across the sea?”

  “We could all be concerned before long. You want your customers looking up from the roulette wheels to see U-boats out the windows?”

  “Portholes.”

  “You know everybody worth knowing. I was wondering whether you’d heard if anybody worth knowing was overly sympathetic to the Nazi cause.”

  Knoll shifted. He wanted to hear the answer, too.

  “If I tell you,” Drewe said, “you owe me.”

  I s
wallowed hard, tasting burnt java. I didn’t want to consider what owing Malcolm Drewe might entail. But I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask. “Fair enough.”

  “Plenty of people think like me, that what happens in Europe is none of our business. Lindbergh, for one. He’d know, since he was in such a damn hurry to get there. There are people who want the Nazis to come out on top. Some of them are quite well known.” Drewe grinned, his teeth now licked alarmingly clean. “One of them got famous robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Doesn’t sound like a Nazi, does he?”

  35

  IF THERE WERE ever a time I could wear slacks without fear of reproving glances, it would be a golden December morning with a nip in the air, spent at the north end of Griffith Park watching cricket. Then I pictured the veddy British expatriates clotting like cream at Addison’s parties, considered what Edith would recommend, and decided more traditional attire was the safer bet.

  The Hollywood Cricket Club had been founded in 1932 by C. Aubrey Smith. The venerable character actor’s stiff-upper-lipped visage had come to exemplify Englishness after decades of playing earls and majors in films like Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Smith had carved out a slice of his native land in the hills for the playing of his favorite sport. Any male British subject who arrived to test his fortunes in Hollywood soon received a note from Smith summoning him to the nets. I’d learned of a Wednesday morning practice staged largely to put Nigel Dansby-Hall, scribe of the Broadway smash Ten for Elevenses and newly signed to a contract at Warner Brothers, through his paces on the pitch. Rogers drove me to Griffith Park, his silence more respectful since witnessing my showdown with Malcolm Drewe. Or so I liked to think.

  I drifted through the club’s pavilion, a rustic structure with a fieldstone fireplace, a wood plank ceiling, and that essential comfort of any colonial outpost, a well-stocked bar. Outside a handful of people sat scattered on low bleachers around a field of an uncommonly rich emerald hue. Beyond lay a lushly wooded stretch of Griffith Park, oak, California sycamore, and pine all rustling in the breeze.

  C. Aubrey Smith stood by three wooden stakes driven into the ground at one end of the field, shaking his leonine head at a fair-haired man I presumed to be Dansby-Hall. A ball cowered between them. “I say,” Smith bellowed, “not to put too fine a point on it, but you are familiar with the accepted rules of the sport, what? Where the ball is to be bowled and so forth?” Dansby-Hall nodded in dignified embarrassment and cast blame down at his ill-fitting equipment, likely borrowed from a club member.

  One of whom I was there to see. I climbed the bleachers for an unobstructed view of Errol Flynn, every bit as impressive a specimen as he’d been at Club Fathom. A man whose name was on Jens Lohse’s calendar, and Malcolm Drewe’s lips.

  * * *

  “I’M NOT SAYING he’s a Nazi, you understand.” Drewe pushed the remains of his strawberry shortcake aside. “He came to mind in response to your question, that’s all.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “I can tell you three things about Mr. Flynn. I could tell you more, but I don’t want to be accused of corrupting an innocent. That’s Errol’s job.” He snorted. “One, he’s Australian—Tasmanian, you want to be precise—but thinks of himself as Irish. You Irish, Miss Frost?”

  “My people are.”

  “Then you know bog-cutters love whiskey and the church, and hate the English. The English hate the Nazis. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That’s as much thought as Errol’s given the situation. Although with the state the world’s in, I sometimes believe the people in charge think the same way. If Errol’s disposed toward the Nazis it’s because, like him, they loathe the limeys.” Drewe shrugged. “Yet he still plays cricket. Go figure.”

  * * *

  CRICKET EARNED POINTS for fashion. Many of the players at the edge of the field wore blazers boasting magenta and black stripes. Flynn had shucked his, standing among his teammates in a crisp white shirt, as much at ease in the bulky pads protecting his lower legs as his own skin.

  What purpose the pads served, I had no inkling. I knew nothing about cricket, the sports section of my brain jammed with what I’d learned from watching the Hollywood Stars with Gene—and that only because Barbara Stanwyck owned a share of the baseball team. I didn’t want to ask those around me for pointers, not because I feared they wouldn’t reply but because I sensed they yearned to; I wasn’t prepared to face normally reserved Englishmen bubbling with enthusiasm.

  “Real English grass, you know,” one of them said to a compatriot. “Smith had the seeds brought over.”

  “Surprised the water took to it,” his friend replied, and both chortled merrily.

  No, I would definitely be parsing this game on my own. As Dansby-Hall retrieved the ball and made another sortie, it occurred to me C. Aubrey Smith had created an oasis for expats much as Salka Viertel had. Two tribes of émigrés, one reveling in the opportunities afforded by the glorious sun overhead, the other peering up at the golden orb suspiciously.

  Speaking of orbs, the ball pitched by Dansby-Hall rolled to a halt three feet from Smith’s two feet. Flynn turned to his teammates and offered a critique that provoked gales of laughter. I wondered anew if I looked at a Nazi spy.

  * * *

  DREWE RAISED A second finger. “Two. Errol went to Spain earlier this year. Craved a firsthand look at the war.”

  “I remember that. He wrote about the trip for Photoplay.”

  “Then you remember he was supposedly wounded.”

  “Some of the papers reported he’d been killed.” I blinked at Drewe. “Wait. ‘Supposedly’?”

  “There are all kinds of questions about Errol’s trip. For instance, he told the Loyalists he’d raised a million dollars from his Hollywood pals and brought the money with him, earmarked for ambulances and hospitals. Repeated the story everywhere he went. Only he never raised a penny.”

  “Hold on. If he’s supposed to be a Nazi, why would he pledge aid to the Loyalists?”

  “And another thing. Errol went to Spain in the company of Hermann Erben. Austrian, some kind of doctor, by all accounts a true-blue Nazi. Stories I’ve heard say Erben used Errol to get to the front lines for some purpose of his own. Are these stories true? Beats me. But could a guy like Errol be a dupe?”

  Drewe sat back and brandished his teeth in a way that made me glad Rogers was sitting nearby.

  * * *

  EITHER AUBREY SMITH harrumphed or someone had fired up a Rolls-Royce. “You don’t have to listen to me,” he roared to the hapless writer. “I’ve only won one bloody Test cap, and that was fifty years ago. Perhaps the game has passed me by. New techniques and all that. This soft tossing of yours could be the way of the future.” Dansby-Hall kicked at the green, green grass. “We’ll try you with a bat in your hand, what? You want to grasp the narrow end.”

  Simon vaulted up the bleachers. He dropped down next to me, staring at the pitch in contempt. “I never know who to feel worse for, people playing cricket or watching it.”

  “Amen. Give me the Stars at Wrigley Field any day.”

  “Baseball’s just as boring.”

  I decided not to contest the point. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Thanks for calling me. I figured after we brought Felix to your friend, our conversations were over. I missed them.”

  And so, I had to confess, did I. Simon saw me differently than Gene did; in his eyes, I was more mature, more mysterious. A woman of hidden depths, including some I’d concealed from myself. Gene likely had a truer sense of my nature. But there was no denying I liked the person Simon thought I was—and, by extension, the person who viewed me that way. Not that I could admit that to Simon. I could hardly accept the thought in my own mind. So I stuck to the matter at hand.

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “About Flynn? Not much. He’s popular down at the Bund. Heard him referred to as ‘one of us’ a few times, but that could mean anything. All those burghers
think of themselves as lean panthers of men who are catnip to women.”

  “Do you think he could be a spy?”

  “No one would suspect him, I’ll say that. He meets a lot of people, travels extensively. His reputation as a man given to excess could work in his favor. But he’d be more valuable as a public spokesman, a friendly face saying, ‘Hey, folks, Hitler’s not all bad.’ He’s not doing that, I notice.” He squinted at the actor, still contemplating. “The Bund’s in a lather over something else today. You’ve heard about Leni Riefenstahl’s disastrous trip.”

  “Credit Dorothy Parker and the Anti-Nazi League for that. I doubt she’ll sell her documentary about the Olympics to one of the studios.”

  “They’re too terrified to look at it. Walt Disney told her he wanted to screen the film but those Reds in the projectionists’ union would blab about it.” Simon laughed. “She’s finally showing Olympia tonight.”

  “She is? Where?”

  “The California Club downtown. No advance publicity, but word’s out at the Bund. A very private screening for club members, sportswriters, athletes who are in the picture. They say Johnny Weissmuller will be in attendance. It’s supposed to be a celebration of human competition, very apolitical.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “She’s showing the apolitical version.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “What I hear, Leni has three different Olympias in her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Tonight’s doesn’t include a single shot of Hitler. Pure sport, appropriate for all audiences. Then there’s the version that premiered on der Führer’s birthday. As you might expect, he has a starring role in that one. One of the Bund bigwigs let slip Leni secretly screened that print at her bungalow. Gyssling, the consul, wanted to see it and invited some other Nazi personnel. Quite the top ticket, possibly the only time Leni’s uncut version plays in the States.”

  A crack of the bat rang out, so loud I expected to see the Hollywood Stars’ own Frenchy Uhalt trotting around the bases. Instead there was only Nigel Dansby-Hall, looking chuffed as the English say, watching the ball he’d struck bounce across the turf.