“We’ve been dying to meet you,” Tony/Tiny said.
I said nothing.
Ava made no attempt to hide her distaste. “Francis,” she began, her words low and angry, “what are they doing here?”
He didn’t look at her. “They were at my place in Palm Springs when I got back.” He smiled. ”You said it was a party. I brought a party with me.”
Ava glanced at Alice and Max, both sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. “Damn you.”
Tony seemed to be happy anywhere that would allow in a man who happened to be wearing a dynamited clown tuxedo covered with green and red and silver buckshot sequins. Tony, I guessed, now spent most of his offstage time as…Tiny. A Hippodrome elephant in a Groucho Marx fright wig.
Ethan looked as though he wanted to be home adding up a column of figures, far from the maddening brother, though, as his brother’s resident sheriff, he immediately frowned as Tony walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a martini from the pitcher resting there.
“Christ, Tony,” he muttered. He nodded at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ferber.”
He nodded at his former wife when she glanced his way, and for a moment they both smiled at each other, though Ethan’s quickly disappeared. Lorena, I noticed, seemed to be waiting for something. Ethan stepped closer, and the hard, set face relaxed, became almost boyish.
Oddly, he spoke now in a stilted Elizabethan voice, so lilting it compelled us all to pay attention. “‘How now! What do you here alone?’”
Lorena, obviously settling into an old and familiar playfulness, became a fluttering heroine, her voice equally Elizabethan. “‘Do not chide; I have a thing for you.’” She winked.
He grinned. “‘A thing for me? It is a common thing-to have a foolish wife.’”
She bowed.
For some reason Ethan addressed me, and his severity had returned-that rigid jaw, those unblinking eyes. “And Hollywood said I couldn’t write dialogue.” He glared at Max, who was ignoring him.
“Well,” I countered, “if you’re going to plagiarize, you might as well go for the best.”
He grumbled. “Shakespeare is over-rated.”
A stupid remark, best ignored. Said by the court jester who never learned to jest.
Ethan turned away, a little flustered, but what caught my eye-and sadly so-was the look in Lorena’s eyes: a lingering affection there, perhaps unwanted but unavoidable, a bond she’d refused to relinquish. It saddened me, then. I realized that Lorena, despite her feisty, tough-as-nails demeanor, that hard-bitten exterior, might be a foolish woman.
“Ethan,” she announced. “You’ve brought the circus.”
“Be nice, Lorena,” he pleaded.
“Why would I go out of character?”
He laughed, a dry, brittle laugh that seemed more sardonic than celebratory. Immediately he disappeared into a corner of the sofa, and began picking a trace of Rags’ generous dog hair off a pants leg. “In Arabian countries,” he told no one in particular, “it’s considered unclean to have dogs inside a house.”
“I’m a hard-shell Baptist,” Ava told him.
“Christ,” he mumbled.
Ava looked toward Max and Alice, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed the words: I’m sorry. Max waved back, a thin smile on his face.
Reenie circulated with more appetizers, but deliberately rolled her eyes when she approached Tony, who was mixing his drink with his index finger. For a few minutes I talked quietly with Lorena about her life in the script department of Paramount, but it was a strained conversation. Everyone seemed to be keeping a deliberate, if tense, distance from one another, the two hostile factions content to drink in corners and eye the others over the rims of their whiskey glasses. No one was happy, but maybe Tony/Tiny.
Lorena told me, “As you can tell from our opening skit, Ethan used to be a scriptwriter.”
From across the room Ethan shook his head. “For God’s sake, Lorena. Not really. One measly script doesn’t count. I’m a numbers guy.”
“You mean a racketeer,” Frank joked. He was pouring himself a drink.
“Yeah, sure thing.” Ethan didn’t look happy.
Ethan, I noted, drank spring water, refusing liquor. And he eyed Tony who got drunker and drunker, at one point spilling his drink on his sleeve. Now and then Ethan put out his hand, protectively, admonishingly, warning in his eye. When Tony turned away, Ethan slid Tony’s glass to the side, the older brother as desperate protector. He saw me looking. “I am my brother’s keeper, Miss Ferber. A lot of good it does me.”
Tony looked at his brother, squinted. “You won’t let me have fun.”
“That’s because one of us goes to work in the morning, the one who pays your bills.”
Tony narrowed his eyes, a trace of resentment there. “I make money at the club.”
“Which you toss away.”
“Now, boys,” Frank began, “remember your old mama in Hoboken.”
Ava spoke up. “Francis is loyal to old friends to the point of downright suffocation. Get him talking about playing kick ball with Lenny in the street and he’ll get weepy on you.”
Frank ignored her. He raised his glass. “To the memory of Lenny, my old boyhood friend.”
I toasted someone I didn’t know, but I noted that neither Max nor Alice raised their glasses. At the mention of her dead husband-I flashed to that clipping of Alice in a police station-Alice looked down into her lap. Lorena was shaking her head, unhappy. Ava sat with her arms folded, her lips drawn into a straight line.
Tony leaned into me. “Frank takes care of us. Got me the job in the valley. He knows people.”
Ava spoke over his words. “Max used to be Tony’s agent, but Tony deserted Max when…” She stopped, flustered.
Downing his drink and swaying back and forth, Tony bellowed, “When Alice murdered my brother.”
The words sailed across the room. Time stopped.
Lorena had been lighting a cigarette but froze, the match burning.
Looking up, Alice gasped.
“Cool it, Tony.” Frank spoke through clenched teeth.
“Don’t be an idiot, Tony.” Ava punched his sleeve. “Not here tonight.”
Ethan was frowning. “Tony, shut up.”
But Tony couldn’t be stopped. “I gotta say it again. She pushed him off that balcony. She got all the money. His money. Our money. Lenny promised us, remember? She married that…that fool Max. Him.” He pointed at the ashen man. “He was just…waiting.”
Ava spoke to me sarcastically. “The legendary Lenny Pannis had lots of money, pots of it at the end of the Hollywood rainbow, at least his brothers believe he did. He ran shadowy businesses and played with the big boys. He was a big shot in this town. Supposedly he made a fortune.”
“He did,” Tony went on, his words biting. “He did. Alice killed him. He was gonna divorce her. The money…” He glared at Alice, who was staring down into her lap again. Max was making rumbling noises, fidgeting in his seat.
I stared at them all, stupefied by this raw and public scene.
“Stop it now,” Ethan whispered.
Ava was trying to end the conversation and looked at me. Perhaps she saw disgust on my face, tempered by a little wonder. “The neighbors heard them arguing on the balcony. Lenny, agitated, toppled over. Alice was inside…”
Tony yelled, “That’s the phony story the police bought.”
Ethan stood abruptly and looked shame-faced. “We shouldn’t have come. Tony, get up.”
But there was no stopping the drunk man. “I fired Max. He was an accomplice to murder.”
Ava sneered. “And look at the jobs you’ve been getting ever since.”
“Hey, I’m doing all right.” He pointed at Max. “You ruined all our careers, Max.”
Max started to say something, but Alice put her hand on his knee. He blinked wildly at her.
“Say good night, Tony.” Ethan prodded him.