The Last Embrace Read online

  Lily bounded up the stairs, grabbed the ape, and ran back down brandishing it.

  Squeals came from the girls.

  “How perfectly hideous!”

  “Max must have given it to her.”

  “No wonder she threw it in the back of her closet.”

  “Poor fellow, he’s got no idea of the way to a gal’s heart.”

  “What is this creature?” Lily asked. “And who’s Max?”

  “Max Vranizan is a special effects guy for the studios,” Red said when they finally stopped tittering. “And that”—she pointed—“is Mighty Joe Young.”

  “Mighty Joe Young?”

  “Didn’t they have picture palaces where you were stationed?” Red asked with exasperation.

  “Of course they did. Maybe it wasn’t out in Europe yet.”

  “It’s been out here since July. It’s about a pet gorilla named Joe that’s brought from Africa to Hollywood and exploited by a shady promoter.” Red fitted a cigarette into a holder and lit it. “I know it’s hard to believe.” She blew out smoke. “A shady Hollywood promoter.”

  “Why did Max give her the gorilla from his picture?” Lily asked.

  “Because he’s sweet on her.”

  This was the first useful thing Lily had heard. “Was he Kitty’s boyfriend?”

  “Not hardly,” Red said.

  “He’s not a nice guy?”

  “Oh, he’s as sweet as a puppy dog,” Beverly said. “And just as slobbery.”

  “I think those special effects guys are weird,” Jinx said. “They’re like mad scientists, locked up in their workshops, slaving over their dinosaurs and apes and monsters.”

  “Could he have gotten angry that she spurned his advances?”

  “We’ve wondered about that. She went to premieres with him, but they’re just friends. You see him, you’ll understand.”

  “He’s no Cary Grant?”

  “Not even William Demarest.”

  “What studio does he work at?”

  “Those guys move around. Sometimes the producers put him on a small retainer while they go hunt down the money. He’s at RKO now, getting ready for a werewolf picture.”

  Lily wanted to talk to Max. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was too late to reach him at RKO. Which reminded her…she still hadn’t called Kitty’s mother.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any news yet,” she said several minutes later when Mrs. Croggan’s eager voice came on the line. Then she recapped her day and explained that she’d moved into Kitty’s room.

  Hanging up, she noticed an evening paper in the hallway nook and was surprised to see a photo in the Society pages of Gene Tierney disembarking at Union Station.

  Lily pulled it closer. Off to the side stood a smart-looking girl, simply dressed but elegant. With shock Lily recognized herself. She frowned. After so long in the covert life, it made her uneasy. She didn’t want her return broadcast in the evening news for estranged relatives and long-abandoned friends to see. Let the past stay buried.

  When the phone rang a moment later, Lily jumped, then told herself to calm down. No one except Mrs. Croggan knew where she was staying.

  Red answered, then squealed with excitement.

  “I’ve got some swelligant news,” she said, hanging up. “Frank’s rehearsing tonight.”

  The girls burst into excited chatter, prompting Lily to ask who Frank was.

  Red said, “You’re kidding, right? Frank is only the dreamiest singer and lover boy in the whole universe. Frank Si-na-tra. Ever heard of him, Europe?”

  Since when had Angelenos been on a first-name basis with stars they’d never even met?

  “Do you want to come with us?” Red asked.

  “They’re going to let us in?” Lily asked dubiously.

  “Of course. That was my friend Lynette. She’s the receptionist.”

  The offer was tantalizing. Lily had danced to “The Voice” in canteens throughout Europe. But what if they got caught? she asked.

  “Don’t be silly. We’re invited. Frank likes an audience.” Red pirouetted. “How’s that for your first night in Hollywood?”

  CHAPTER 4

  At eleven-thirty p.m., Lily joined Red, Jinx, and Beverly as they trooped down to Sunset Boulevard. The cobalt sky draped impossibly huge over the desert air. Clouds moved overhead like some great oceanic migration, but the night was mild, gusts of warm wind plucking at their waved hair.

  “Ooh, I hate these Santa Anas,” Beverly said as they passed an empty lot, the wind sending a beer bottle clanging over gravel. “They make my skin itch and my blood boil.”

  The hair along Lily’s nape stood up and static crackled her dress. She thought the winds made the nightscape dramatic, as if anything might happen. She’d come to L.A. to find Kitty, not to have fun. But as she’d changed into her cornflower-blue dress and her sable-trimmed wool coat, she realized she’d learn more going out with the girls tonight than sitting alone in her room.

  When they arrived, Red checked with her friend. Sinatra was running late, so they waited in a huddle on the gusty boulevard, smoking cigarettes and telling jokes, shivering like excited puppies, the winds whipping up dried leaves and the odd, stray cigarette pack. Waiting for Frank.

  At one in the morning a black Cadillac pulled up and there he was, hat pulled low over those brilliant blue eyes, emerging from the backseat, surrounded by unsmiling men in dark suits. Red and Beverly called, “Yoo-hoo, we love you, Frank!” and he looked up and his face creased into that million-watt smile and he waved back.

  “C’mon in, girls,” he said. “I hope you like ice cream.”

  They shrieked and Lily found herself shrieking too, some indescribable primal release that left her throat and spiraled up to the constellations.

  A small, slick-looking man with reddish-brown hair appeared behind Sinatra’s entourage. Lily saw him scanning her roommates with feral intensity.

  “Where’s Kitty tonight?” he asked at last.

  Jinx snapped her gum. “We thought you might know.”

  The little man looked like he wanted to deck her. He would have needed to climb a ladder.

  Jinx’s bravado crumpled. “She hasn’t been home in four days. You think she went back to the desert?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “She should stay away from there.”

  “Why?” Lily said, stepping up.

  The man regarded her like a wolf sizing up a rabbit.

  “Who’s the looker?” he asked.

  “Li—” Beverly began.

  “Linda,” Lily interjected, not wanting the predatory little man to know her real name. “Linda Desmond. Pleased to meet you. And you are?”

  From inside came the excited squeal of female voices, then the tootle of a horn warming up. “Showtime,” the man said, hurrying inside.

  Lily tried to follow, but two girls in tight sweaters rushed past, blocking her path. Lily turned back to Kitty’s roommates. “Who was that creepy man?”

  “I don’t know his name,” Jinx said. “He was here the last time Frank played, flirting madly with Kitty.” She lowered her voice. “I think he may be a gangster.”

  “Did she go out with him?”

  Red clucked her tongue. “She could have. Kitty didn’t tell us everything.”

  “If she thought we wouldn’t approve,” added Jinx.

  “Now, now, ladies,” said peacemaker Beverly, holding the door. “Let’s go inside before we miss the show.”

  They trooped in. The musicians were yawning and drinking coffee and smoking Chesterfields as they warmed up. They all had day jobs and were beat, but no one turned down an opportunity to work with Sinatra.

  Jinx waved at a guitarist she knew named Al Viola, natty in a white suit and mustache. Two college boys uncorked a bottle of champagne they’d smuggled in, sending it fizzing to the floor. The smell reminded Lily of Wiesbaden, Germany, where she’d helped set up files for an OSS office in a champagne factory. The year was 1945, and there were
n’t many buildings left standing, so they’d made the best of it, working amid pungent winey fumes that left everyone light-headed.

  Lily scanned the studio for the unpleasant man and found him on the sidelines, deep in conversation with a larger man who kept mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. Then Sinatra got up and everything went quiet. With his sheet music on the stand, he began to sing, the orchestra backing him all the way.

  Lily gave a languid sigh and tried to surrender to the music, vowing to find the little man at the break. It was a waking dream to be here, something she’d tell her grandchildren one day. So what if he’d lost the bobbysoxer crowd and the papers said he was washed up. He’d always have her heart. She swayed with pleasure, losing herself in the melody, mesmerized by the slim, handsome man crooning at the mike, the swoop and dip of his voice, that unique phrasing that made her go all funny inside. Between songs, he joked with them and others who slipped in as the night wore on, solemn as churchgoers, heads bowed before a deity. Lily felt how their presence energized Sinatra, the exhilaration flowing back and forth across the stage. He fed off their adoration, needed it as much as they needed him. He was singing to them, and, if she wanted to fantasize, directly to her, Lily Kessler from the farmlands of Mar Vista.

  Lily imagined Kitty coming to Hollywood and getting a taste of this life, the hunger it would awaken in a naïve midwestern girl. Had Joseph’s sister met a gangster on a night like tonight and started seeing him? Had something happened? But just as Lily got hold of a theory, it escaped down the maze of her mind, twisting out of reach as Sinatra hit a particularly sweet note.

  Finally the spell broke and Sinatra called a break. Lily saw the little man making his way through the crowd. With a murmur about needing the powder room, she slipped after him. She was about to hail him when he turned into a hallway, following the larger fellow, who gripped a third, frightened-looking man by the arm. The big guy stopped, opened a door into what looked like the back alley, and jerked his captive so violently that his hat fell off. With a sharp intake of breath, Lily drew back into the shadows. The little man gave a low chuckle, stooped to pick up the hat, then followed the pair outside. The pneumatic door sighed shut.

  Behind her, two men came up, jostling her elbow. Lily jumped, then saw with relief that they were musicians. “Whoa, there, little lady, you all right?” one of them asked, seeing her frozen face.

  “Fine,” Lily said, nodding. “It’s just that…” She searched for words.

  “Frank has that effect on the ladies,” one said, misconstruing her speechlessness. He clapped his pal on the back. Laughing uproariously, they moved down the hall.

  Lily got hold of herself. What would you have done in your old life? She looked around. Beyond the bathroom was a sign that said STAIRS. Lily ran over, threw open the door, and tiptoed up, making sure her heels didn’t clang on the metal steps. On the third landing, she opened the door and stepped into an office, deserted and eerie in the reflected neon light of Sunset Boulevard. She found the emergency exit, opened it soundlessly, and climbed onto the fire escape above the alley. She was three floors up, but sound carried. Crouching, she looked down. The little man was punching the man who’d been dragged outside while the big thug held his arms pinioned back. The little man grunted softly as he landed blows, but the victim made no sound at all, which seemed deeply sinister to Lily. Why didn’t he call for help?

  Then it was over. The little man took out a handkerchief and wiped his hand clean of blood and mucus.

  “When you gonna have it, Jimmy?” the little man said. “The boss is tired of your worthless promises.”

  Jimmy sagged against the big thug, then fell to the ground and crouched on all fours like an animal.

  “I swear, you’ll get it next week,” he wheezed.

  “By next week you’ll owe double.”

  “No.” The man on the asphalt writhed. “I can’t…It’s too…Don’t,” he pleaded, as the big thug aimed a kick at his kidneys. “I’ll tell ya…I saw…something you might…About that star…”

  “I’ll make you see stars,” the big man vowed.

  The little thug tugged on his partner’s shoulder. “Ease up, will ya, Monty? Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  The beaten man scrambled to his feet. “It’s about that missing actress you been asking about.”

  “Fer chrissakes, keep it down,” the little man said, glancing about the alley in alarm. Lily shrank back into the building’s shadows, but the thugs, intent on their business, never looked up.

  There followed a whispered conversation that Lily, despite ears sharpened by years of surveillance, could not quite overhear.

  Letting the door snick quietly shut behind her, she ran down the stairs and made her way past the audience. She slipped through the lobby, hurrying down the street and around to the alley, where she flattened herself against the brick wall and peered around. Except for two drunks approaching from a block away, singing at the top of their lungs, the alley was empty. They must have scared off her quarry. Lily swore, then walked back inside, scanning the crowd, who were drifting back to their seats. But Jimmy, Monty, and the little thug had disappeared.

  “There you are,” said Beverly, her big eyes tight with concern. “We thought you’d gone AWOL.”

  She clasped Lily’s arm in a friendly manner and the other girls crowded around, giddy and giggly from flirting with the musicians and eating ice cream. Jinx still clutched a silver dish of orange sherbet. Lily blinked, transported from the brutal world of the alley to one of sugared breath and sweet perfume. Part of her wanted to blurt out what she’d seen. Then her training took over. She needed to learn what the girls knew about Kitty’s romantic entanglements.

  “I took a walk to clear my head,” she said.

  Just then Frank strolled back up to the mike and a collective intake of breath rippled through the audience. Uneasy, Lily gave up and surrendered to Sinatra’s magic. Wherever Joseph’s sister was, there was nothing more she could do tonight.

  They tore themselves reluctantly away at dawn, yawning and stretching, humming snatches of song, their bellies full of vanilla-chocolate-strawberry-pistachio ice cream and sloshing with hot coffee, the bushy fronds of the palm trees along Sunset Boulevard sweeping the ashy night from the sky.

  Lily wondered if she’d hallucinated the scene in the alley. In the gray light of dawn, as birds trilled and the first rays of sun rose to illuminate the Hollywood sign, it seemed like a nightmare born of sleep deprivation. Yet the fear that still pulsed in her nerve endings seemed very real.

  The buses were filled with commuters, and Lily rejoiced privately that she didn’t have a job to go to. All day Red and Beverly and Jinx would slump sleepily at work, trying to catch an hour on their lunch breaks, but they swore that no matter what, it was worth it, because Frank was a dreamboat and he’d joked with them and sung just to them, that’s the kind of town it was. Lily wanted to grab a bite of breakfast before the evening’s high wore off, then tumble into Kitty’s bed and sleep for several hours. She’d start her search right after that.

  CHAPTER 5

  October 12, 1949

  Hot enough for ya, Mildred?” Harry Jack asked his favorite waitress, settling into a seat at the drugstore counter.

  “These Santa Anas get any hotter and the eggs out back are going to hatch into chicks,” Mildred said. She sauntered over with her pot, slapped down a doily and a cup, and poured coffee.

  Harry was a news photographer. He’d honed his skills during the war, pointing and shooting a camera while others aimed more lethal weapons. Four years after the Allied victory, the world was headed for another showdown, but Harry tried not to think about atomic annihilation; his biggest concern was landing a staff job at one of the big city dailies. For now he was freelance, selling snaps one at a time, which meant cruising the streets with his radio tuned to the KMA367 police frequency, looking for action.

  It was only a matter of time, with the turf wars heating up b
etween Mickey Cohen and Jack Dragna as they fought for the spoils left open by Bugsy Siegel’s murder two years back. Rumor had it there was a contract out on the dapper Jewish gangster and now even the cops were following Mickey around to protect him. Harry knew one of Cohen’s henchmen from Boyle Heights, where they’d grown up together. Maybe he should track him down. If a gang battle erupted and he got it on film, he’d be a cinch for a staff job.

  Harry spread out his paper but found his gaze drifting to a pretty gal in a cornflower-blue dress who was eating breakfast and reading her own paper, though she slumped over it like a wilted flower. She had big brown eyes, an upturned nose, a sprinkling of freckles, trim hips, and a nice swell in the bosom department. A gal like that could go far in this town. He pictured her in a grassy backyard, laughing and pushing a toddler on a swing as he came home from work. She’d have lamb chops and mashed potatoes on the table, and later after they put the kid to bed…

  “You can pop your eyes back in now,” Mildred said, putting down his breakfast special.

  “I can look, can’t I?” Harry examined his over-easy eggs. “Glad you found a couple that haven’t pecked their way out yet. Leastwise I don’t see any beaks.”

  “Get away with you,” she said with a laugh.

  Harry ate, sopping up the last of his yolk with a crust of bread. Leaving Mildred her tip, he sauntered over to the cornflower girl.

  “Hello, miss,” he said. “Didn’t I meet you last February at Sammy’s wedding?”

  The girl tensed. Her eyes danced nervously.

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken.” She played with her napkin. “I just got into Los Angeles yesterday.”

  “Newcomer, eh?” Harry smiled and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Maybe you’d like someone to show you around. I’m a news photographer. I know all the hot spots.”

  The girl examined him like he was a stud racehorse she might consider plunking down good money for.

  “Do you know any gangster hangouts?” she asked.

  “Sure I do. It’s part of my job. But why would a nice…You think they’re glamorous? Is that it?” Harry hoped it wasn’t a new trend. How could a regular guy compete? “You’re one of them gals that likes a little danger, a little roughing up?”