Dangerous to Know Page 28

  I hated invoking Addison’s name. I hated keeping him in the dark about Donald even more. But I needed confirmation before impugning his longtime counselor.

  Dealing with Charlotte was another matter. In the midst of my machinations she telephoned, the sound of her voice startling me. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Wishing your husband was only cheating on you.

  I stuck to neutral answers and didn’t rise to any of her gossipy conversational bait, willing the call to be over. At last, she got to the point. “Addison will spare you to help plan our Christmas bash! Isn’t that fabulous? Still interested?”

  “Let’s see what the next few days bring,” I said.

  * * *

  THE LAUNCH WAS but a distant speck on the pitch-black sea, slowly growing larger. I had time to stretch my legs.

  Simon fed change into a slot machine, pulling the handle as if testing his reflexes. He subtly indicated the adjacent one-armed bandit. I took a seat and rooted in my purse for coins. We’d argued about the wisdom of his being on the Lumen; I was concerned his presence could scupper his cover story at the Bund. Simon had again gazed at me levelly, paying me the compliment of his full attention. “You need someone on that boat whose sole concern is protecting you. That someone will be me.”

  Now he murmured at the tumbling wheels of the slot machine, which made him seem like an authentically degenerate gambler. “How much longer do we wait?”

  “We may have waited too long already. Drewe’s starting to doubt me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Actually, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I have no change.”

  After surveying the room in the slot machine’s polished exterior, Simon surreptitiously palmed me a nickel. Into the slot machine it went.

  Three cherries. Naturally. I fed a nickel from my winnings in and kept playing.

  “If we decide to bail on this barge,” Simon muttered, “any thoughts on how we do it?”

  “The FBI should leave me alone. The trouble is recovering my suitcase from Drewe. He might kick.”

  “I’ll deal with him if necessary. I’ll row you back to shore myself if it comes to that.”

  I couldn’t help turning toward him, ready to offer my deepest gratitude. One of the FBI agents furtively spun away to assess a sheet of horseracing odds. We were being watched.

  Wordlessly I shoveled nickels into my purse and walked off, careful to leave a coin behind. I always paid my debts.

  * * *

  THE FEWEST PEOPLE yet tumbled out of the water taxi, having commenced their imbibing on terra firma. None of them was Donald Hume. It was more than two hours past our meeting time. I had to face facts. He wasn’t coming.

  I stood outside, freezing, watching the launch’s skeletal crew ready the boat for the return voyage. The plan had made sense—to Edith, to Simon, to Barney Groff, to me. Yet nothing had come to pass, aside from J. Edgar Hoover’s choirboys eyeing me anew.

  Where was Donald? I shivered in my too-thin coat as the rain fell harder, pocking the surface of the bay below, and reviewed every step in our scheme. How could it have failed? Could Marjorie have mangled Rory’s message to Donald?

  My next thought chilled me more than the night air. What if Donald had never received it?

  Gene. I had to talk to Gene. I needed a telephone, desperately. There were none on the Lumen I could access. I couldn’t ask to use the ship’s radio, not with Drewe already harboring suspicions about me.

  A blast of the water taxi’s horn made up mind. I drew my coat around me and raced toward the landing stage before the launch—the Caroline—pushed off. I couldn’t signal Simon, not without siccing the FBI on him. And I couldn’t risk Drewe knowing I’d slipped ashore. I’d hightail it to Santa Monica, telephone Gene with my latest fear, and be back aboard the Lumen in two shakes. No one would even notice I had left.

  Or so I told myself.

  40

  THERE WEREN’T MANY passengers on the Caroline, most people possessing the sense to ride out the rough weather on the larger vessel. Plus the Lumenarias went on again at ten. A half-dozen swells braved the swells in the launch’s bow, protected from the elements. A baby-faced sailor in a peacoat and watch cap sprawled in his seat in despair, mourning the loss of his pay. A white-haired drunk, stuffed with free turkey, dozed off with his face aimed at the heavens. I feared he’d drown sitting up.

  The Caroline charged toward shore, the lights of Santa Monica a promise destined to be broken. I steadied myself against the railing, realized with regret I’d have to make two more such crossings this evening, and started for shelter.

  The sailor’s legs blocked my path. I could have tried slipping past, but the deck was slick with rain. And I frankly wasn’t in the mood. “Excuse me,” I said over the wind.

  “I don’t believe I will,” the sailor replied, and I no longer had to call Gene and warn him about Charlotte Hume because Charlotte was right in front of me, brandishing a pistol that perfectly complemented her peacoat. Then again, black went with everything.

  Props and costumes, Edith had said, lend shape and definition to a performance.

  She’d tucked her hair under the watch cap, the coat concealing her curves. With her hands in her pockets and her head angled down in the classic pose of a sailor fleeced at the start of shore leave, no one would give her a second glance. I was certain I hadn’t: I had the sinking feeling I’d passed Charlotte on the Lumen repeatedly.

  “Donald won’t be joining us. Donald doesn’t even know about this. Men can only get into trouble, not out of it.” She sat in masculine fashion, legs splayed, shoulders hunched. The gun leveled at my stomach was invisible to those at the front of the Caroline. “Were you behind this all along?”

  I didn’t see the point in feigning confusion or surprise. Not with my friend. “No,” I said.

  “Then it was Jens. So I can end this once and for all.” Her eyes ticked past me to the dark waters of the bay, dappled with rain now falling with some force. They then shifted to the drunk, still out like a light. “Almost at the busiest part of the channel.”

  “People know I’m here.”

  “Dozens of them, from what I saw on that boat. But nobody knows I’m here.”

  “How long have you known you were married to a Nazi?”

  “I didn’t have a clue until the first time that slick mick ambushed me and I mentioned what he said to Donald. Donald cracked immediately. Told me every detail of his silly intrigues. The Germans sure can pick ’em. Donald’s terrified of them. So I stroked his forehead, told him it was nothing. Then set out to make it nothing.”

  A wave struck the launch. I stumbled against the railing. Charlotte shifted as if she’d sensed the swell coming, the gun still aimed at me. She moved like an old salt, completely at home in that peacoat. The power of wardrobe could not be denied. I’d have to tell Edith, if I lived through the night.

  “Donald couldn’t think, so I thought for him,” Charlotte said. “The only threat facing him was Jens. Without him, no one could prove anything about Donald. It didn’t take long to realize Jens was also the blackmailer—and sleeping with his music teacher’s wife.”

  “You tracked him to the Auerbach cabin.”

  “I’d been looking for a challenging ride for my horse.” Charlotte smiled at the memory. For an instant I could glimpse the woman I knew—and I was petrified. “A lovely canter through the hills and back. Never saw a soul. Donald has no idea what I did. All he knows is no one followed up with any demands, so he believes his worries are behind him. So did I, until the Irishman came back.”

  “You didn’t pass along his second message,” I said. “You called the Irishman pretending to be Donald’s secretary.”

  “I assumed he was a go-between, but it couldn’t hurt to put a little fear into him. I got to the Lumen hours ago. I saw you arrive, and all those men watching you. I decided to wait you out. If you left on your own, I’d follow you. Arrange an acci
dent at sea.”

  “Why? Why are you protecting Donald? Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I’m going to work with Capra!” She bellowed the name into the wind, invoking the director like some ancient god who would smite her enemies. “After years of struggle, of rejection, I’m finally being seen. Not by casting directors or sleazy agents, but the names on the screen. Other actors. Directors who matter. They are seeing me. Do you understand what it means when those people see you, acknowledge you exist? They are making me real. If Donald is exposed as a Nazi agent, that goes away. They’ll stop seeing me. I won’t be real.” She stared through me to the water, the storm raging in her head far more tumultuous than the one behind me. “I won’t be my own person. I’ll be the floozy married to Hitler’s stooge. I won’t be me. I won’t be able to share my gift. I won’t permit that to happen.”

  Her recitation took on a religious fervor, the won’ts becoming her cant. I knew she had every intention of pulling the trigger. Yet I had to ask the one question that had formed solidly in my mind.

  “That job you offered me. It wasn’t real, was it?”

  The words needed a moment to penetrate her haze. “No.”

  She glanced at the shoreline, then the channel marker, and flicked the gun at me. The time had come.

  “Put the weapon down, Mrs. Hume.”

  The Caroline’s skipper approached us, billed cap pulled low over his eyes. He had a gun of his own in his hand.

  And, incredibly, Gene’s voice.

  Charlotte vaulted toward me. At that moment the drunk from the rear of the launch pounced, moving with the reflexes of a much younger man. He seized Charlotte’s arm, her gun clattering to the rain-slick deck. Charlotte writhed in his grasp and unleashed a fierce animal wail. Already she could tell the right people had stopped seeing her. She could feel herself disappearing, each missing molecule causing untold pain.

  I blinked through the rain at Gene. His eyes practically shined with calm. “LAPD officers have been on these launches all night. I ever tell you I hate the water?”

  Questions elbowed each other aside in my brain, desperate to be asked. Instead I collapsed against Gene, burying my face in his borrowed coat that smelled of fresh rain and another man’s cigarettes. And I sobbed.

  * * *

  THE ANSWER TO my most pressing query came when I spotted the figure standing beneath a streetlamp at the water taxi landing. Her stylish tartan umbrella would have given her away even if her petite frame hadn’t.

  Gene had to help me off the boat, my legs suddenly petulant about obeying orders. He and the erstwhile drunk then led Charlotte toward a waiting police car. She drifted between them in shock; one tap of a finger on her shoulder and she’d change direction.

  Slowly I walked over to Edith. She extended her umbrella but I remained beyond its reach, feeling unworthy.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. But I know actresses. I saw it as a possibility.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You and Charlotte were friends. I didn’t want to plant a seed of doubt until I was sure. So I told Detective Morrow.”

  I’d applied the same logic in keeping mum about Donald to Addison. It only seemed fair Edith use it on me.

  “You’re soaked. Come in out of the rain,” Edith said.

  “In a minute. You should go to Marie’s Pantry. I recommend the strawberry shortcake.”

  Edith nodded and walked away. I watched Gene guide Charlotte into the police car with an almost respectful gentleness. A little more than three miles away, the Lumen bobbed aimlessly. That’s where Simon was, out at sea, where he couldn’t help. While I was on largely dry land with Gene. There was no doubt in my mind Edith had planned that, too.

  San Bernardino Lamplighter

  December 19, 1938

  KATHERINE DAMBACH’S

  SLIVERS OF THE SILVER SCREEN

  ***EXCLUSIVE***

  Happy Hollywood marriages are as rare as hen’s teeth, but those who know Donald and Charlotte Hume called them the exception that proved the rule. The bond between the powerful lawyer and the up-and-coming cinematic star was a true love match.

  Did I say “was”? Apparently it still is, for although Charlotte is cooling her high heels in the Lincoln Heights Jail, accused of murdering Austrian songsmith Jens Lohse, husband, Donald, is standing by her side.

  The police allege Charlotte and Jens were lovers and she took his life in a jealous rage. Despite that, the influential attorney will drop all current clients and devote himself to defending his wife on the capital charge.

  So what if debonair Donald hasn’t tried a case since he was a wet-behind-the-ears pup right out of USC Law? Connubial commitment trumps legal experience. Or does it? Only time, and a jury of Charlotte’s peers, will tell.

  41

  “SOMEONE DONNED THEIR gay apparel,” I told Edith as I entered her office. She’d foregone her muted tones in favor of a bright red shirtwaist with a white placket and matching pockets. “I should dip you in hot chocolate like a candy cane.”

  “Perhaps later. I thought I’d dress for the occasion. I’m throwing a holiday party for the girls in Wardrobe.”

  “That’s a swell idea. Will you be playing Santa?”

  “At my height? I’ll forever be typecast as an elf.”

  “That seems appropriate. Elves do the hard work, while Saint Nick hogs all the press.”

  Edith concealed a smile. “Quite right. This afternoon I’m only making the punch.”

  “You’re not putting Fernet in it?”

  “No. It’s not really for mass consumption, is it? What have you been up to?”

  “Mainly helping Addison find a new lawyer. Although I did see Artists and Models Abroad. Extremely silly and just what the doctor ordered. I’m going again for the assembly line of beauty alone. To think I ran around the Lumen with those gowns in my suitcase. That scene with Cynthia—Jack Benny and Joan Bennett ran the same dodge I did!”

  “Of course. Nothing’s original in Hollywood.”

  Edith’s secretary leaned into the office in a dither. “Miss Head, I— Um, Dorothy Lamour is here.”

  The actress breezed in, gorgeous in a green dress with a red tropical print that acknowledged both the season and her famous jungle girl roles. Still, her appearance hardly warranted the secretary’s pixilated reaction. After effusive hellos, Dorothy said, “I’m showing a friend from back east around and he asked to meet you, Edie.” She went to the doorway. “Jack?”

  The man stepped into Edith’s office as if afraid he’d misheard the summons. He was shorter than me, the grimace on his face indicating he’d logged that fact. His massive head and blocky frame seemed to have been carved out of a single slab of stone. The dark circles under his eyes clashed with the surprisingly flashy blue-and-gold tie around his throat.

  Speaking of throats, mine closed up. I recognized the man.

  “J. Edgar Hoover, Miss Head. May I say I’m a great fan of your work.” His cadence was clipped, patrician. He turned to me. “Miss Frost.”

  How I mustered a nod, I would never know.

  Edith recovered her bearings at once. “You and Dorothy are friends?”

  “We’ve known each other for years,” Dorothy said. “When I sang at the Stork Club, Rudy Vallee introduced me to the regulars like Walter Winchell. But Jack was the one I really wanted to meet. Can he tell a story!”

  Hoover flashed a perfunctory smile. “Dorothy, might I have a moment with Miss Head and Miss Frost before we continue the tour?”

  Dorothy happily blew air kisses all around. Apparently, knowing Hoover meant regularly being dispatched in that fashion.

  He waited until the door closed behind her. “I wanted to meet you both after hearing about your efforts. Your tenacity is to be commended. We’ll need more of it in the days to come. I’d like to reassure you that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is acutely aware of all German attempts to gain undue influence
within our borders and would have acted at the appropriate time.”

  Sure you would have, I scoffed. Hoover’s head snapped toward mine, and I was certain he could read my thoughts.

  “You were wasting your time suspecting Errol Flynn, Miss Frost,” he said. “We’re familiar with his political convictions, such as they are. The man is a danger only to himself.”

  Some automatic reflex deep in my brain again managed to move my head up and down in response.

  “I also wanted to allay any concerns on your part, Miss Head, about how the Bureau kept apprised of your involvement in the matter of Albert Chaperau.”

  “I believe I know,” Edith said. “Dorothy?”

  Another blink-and-you-missed-it smile from Hoover. “Old friends often discuss their respective workplaces. Dorothy passed along studio gossip about your meeting with Mr. Benny and Mr. Burns. And gossip, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a valuable form of intelligence.”

  “I’m not about to put an end to gossip.”

  “I daresay I couldn’t do that, either.” The expression on Hoover’s face hinted he’d like to try.

  “Sir?” I sounded faint, and couldn’t tell if my voice or my ears were failing me. “If I could ask, what happens to Mr. Chaperau and the others now?”

  “The matter is resolved,” Hoover declared. “Mr. Burns sensibly decided to plead guilty. At present Mr. Benny insists on maintaining his innocence, but he will assuredly be convinced to do otherwise and initiate the process of putting his mistake behind him. The American people are a forgiving people.”

  I fought the urge to hunt for the radio microphone into which Hoover seemed to be issuing his official remarks.

  “As for Mr. Chaperau,” he continued, “he will hold his tongue and serve his time. Time that may not be as long as he thinks.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Edith said.