“You think you’re clever, but you’re really just glib. Rachmaninoff and Scriabin are yesterday’s news. Comrade Shostakovich is au courant. I’m part of the collective that’s smuggling in his new symphony, in case you think I’m just a silly young girl who has no business being in Comrade Otto’s house.”
She spoke Brooklynese. She had Dudley Smith’s small brown eyes. She flexed her jaw while she spoke and glared more than looked at you. Her part in the smuggling effort surprised me. I felt confluences merge.
“It was nice of you to come up for this party, Comrade. I’m sure Comrade Otto appreciates it.”
Comrade Joan lowered her voice. She leaned against the piano and dropped into stage-whisper range.
“I’ve gone undercover down in Mexico. My fake dad’s an Army officer in Ensenada. My aunt Claire’s his lover, but I don’t think for much longer. My mock dad’s a fascist, but he’s nice to women, even though he cheats on Aunt Claire. He’s got a wife and five real daughters, and his illegitimate daughter is nice, but she’s stupid and boy crazy.”
I said, “You’re very perceptive, Comrade.”
The girl swooped over to the low-register keys. She sat down at the bench and banged the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth. She did it one time, two times, three times — each time harder and faster. I looked over my shoulder and saw Claire De Haven standing in the doorway.
We stared at each other and nodded in sync. Comrade Joan hopped off the bench and ran to her mock mom. They disappeared down the hallway.
So much for Comrade Medtner. Comrade Claire and Comrade Joan had excised him for now. I walked back to my observation perch and looked down at the party floor.
The Koenigs and Mr. Abromowitz remained bombarded and beleaguered. Partygoers continued to harangue, gesticulate, bloviate, and dubiously critique. I scanned the room for new faces and spotted Meyer Gelb.
He’d been pointed out to me at a previous party. There he was now — tall, florid, heavyset. Joan had run nationwide records checks on him. They turned up negative; he had no listed address and no driver’s license issued within the forty-eight states. He came to Otto’s parties in cabs. Joan had noted his burn-scarred hands and had surmised the source as the Griffith Park fire. Gelb was waving his hands in Magda Koenig’s face at this very moment.
I scanned the room again. Faces popped in and out of smoke clouds. I saw Ruth Szigeti necking with Butch Stanwyck’s husband, Robert Taylor. Butch herself watched and delightedly grinned. Someone called out “Jean!” A woman turned and walked toward the voice.
Jean, as in Staley. Slender, dark-haired, stylish glasses. It had to be her — she fit Joan’s precise description. She entered my line of sight from the back of the house; her hair was noticeably wet. I wondered where she had just come from.
I walked downstairs and through the big room. It was all war-talk cacophony and gesticulation. Dr. Saul held court for daughter Andrea and Miklos Koenig; I noticed Andrea notice me. She had buzz-sawed me at a Claire De Haven party in mid-December. Andrea lived to harangue, gesticulate, and dish. Party guests were her very favorite victims. She tended to find people. I walked out the terrace, to let her find me.
I sat in a deck chair and looked out at the rain. Wind buckled the awning above me. I counted days backward to the Rice-Kapek murders. January 29 to March 4. That made thirty-five.
The investigation had gone fallow since the catastrophic blackout and Joan’s suicide. Hideo split his duty time between L.A. and Baja; Dudley rarely attended briefings. The Crash Squad continued to meet and hash out go-nowhere leads. Lee reported an overarching sense of futility. His drunk act on the jazz-club strip had gleaned no leads; the Negro riot had turned jazz-club regulars that much more truculent. Thad Brown teethed on the bootjacked guns. He was planning to run an East L.A. youth sweep. Rice and Kapek had purportedly sold a good many firearms to Mexican hoodlums.
“Hello, Miss Lake. I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. I chewed your ear off at one of Claire’s dos, remember?”
I pulled a chair up beside me; Andrea slumped down and kicked off her shoes. She wore a man’s greatcoat over her party dress. The left breast pocket was pinned with Spanish Civil War medals. Meyer Gelb had worn that coat just a few minutes back.
Andrea’s hands were a mess. Her nails were chewed bloody; her fingers were nicotine-stained. I lit two cigarettes and passed her one. Let’s dish, Andrea. How about Meyer Gelb as a topic?
“I like that coat you’re wearing, Andrea. It’s not yours, is it? It’s much too big for you.”
Andrea jiggled the breast-pocket medals. She said, “To hear Meyer tell it, he killed more fascists than the Red Guard at Leningrad. I think he bought them from an old lefty down on his luck, and passed them off as his own.”
“He must have whole rooms full of that sort of junk at his house.”
“If he has a house. If he doesn’t sleep in a coffin like Dracula, and come out only at night. If he doesn’t just appear at Mr. Klemperer’s parties to grandstand and schmooze up his old comrades.”
“You’re saying that nobody knows where he lives?”
Andrea flicked her cigarette out in the rain. She’d smoked it in ten seconds flat.
“ ‘Kay Lake’s nosy. She’s a fascist chippy and keeps her ear to the ground.’ Claire De Haven told me that.”
“ ‘Andrea Lesnick loves to tattle.’ A little birdie told me that.”
Andrea giggled and made bird sounds. “ ‘Miss Lake’s a hoot.’ That’s my grand pronouncement, and I figured it out for myself.”
“Yes, and what have you figured out about Comrade Gelb?”
“What’s to figure? Meyer’s Meyer. My daddy and I were in his cell back in the early ’30s, and Meyer went off to the Spanish Civil War, and he became this big hero and got his hands burned in a pitched battle with Franco’s Falange. Or, there’s the persistent rumor that Meyer and some Jap Navy man were doing acid dips on their fingerprints way back.”
Or, he burned his hands in the Griffith Park fire.
“Was the Navy man’s name Kyoho Hanamaka?”
“I don’t know. Rumors are rumors. All I know is that it was just some loopy Jap.”
“Jean Staley was in your cell, wasn’t she? She’s here at the party now.”
Andrea snatched my cigarettes. She lit one up and dropped the pack in her purse. The awning dripped rain just a few feet away.
“Meyer’s Meyer and Jean’s Jean. Everybody made her for a snitch way back when. The CP was full of snitches then, and everybody made Jean for a secret right-winger, because she was such a conniver and a square. She’s a carhop, but she sucks up to rich people in the arts. She bunks in their guesthouses, like she’s hiding out and on the lam, even though she’s got a nice little place in Hollywood. My daddy says Jean’s a piece of work. She plans theme parties for rich people and hides out like the bogeyman’s on her case. She’s holed up in Mr. Klemperer’s guesthouse right now, and she leaves the curtains down all the time. My daddy says she’s a nympho and an exhibitionist. He said she blew Clark Gable at a party, while all the other guests watched.”
Andrea paused to catch her breath and chain cigarettes. I mulled the Jean Staley dish. Jean’s name appeared in Tommy Glennon’s address book. Kyoho Hanamaka touched the book and left a burn-scarred fingerprint. Jean Staley was on Elmer Jackson and Buzz Meeks’ interview list. Jean was bunked up across the backyard. That fact explained her wet hair.
Andrea stood up and slipped her shoes on; Meyer Gelb’s greatcoat brushed the ground. She said, “ ‘Miss Lake’s not as smart as she thinks she is.’ My daddy told me that. ‘Miss Lake’s a stooge for the L.A. cops.’ That’s another good one you can chalk up for Claire.”