All That Glitters (16 page)

“Please sit down,” said Pepe, entering behind me with brisk steps. He waited until I sat, then disappeared through the archway, and I heard voices in muffled conference. I got up again and went to one of the windows to tip a bit more light in through the blinds. I sat again. Waited. All was quiet, except for the Strip traffic far below and the ticking of a mantel clock. I looked around. There was no dust on anything; the pillows were plumped; there were current magazines carefully aligned on the mirrored coffee table; the gold-veined mirrored walls had been cleaned up to a certain height (but no higher: a man’s reach; beyond that the cleaner could or would not go, and the surface was smoky). I noticed a cobweb in a corner. I had never seen a deader room; it reminded me of one of those anterooms in a mortuary where you go to view the remains of the dear departed. I also noted the indentations in the carpeting, carpeting that had somehow stood the wear and tear of time, and now had the heavy imprint of somebody’s sturdy ground-gripper shoes. Their corrugations seemed to go in all directions. Footprints in the rugs of time.

I turned as Pepe reentered. He motioned me to a small sofa in a curved window niche looking out onto the terrace, where I could see a profusion of plants and flowers. There was a hose, a watering can, some gloves on a table, and I wondered who did the gardening. I sat where he wanted me to and he took a place beside me.

“I really should apologize,” he began. “I can understand how mystifying this probably is to you.”

I replied that yes, it did seem strange; I was trying to get my bearings with him; he, too, seemed odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something different in his attitude.

He flashed his white teeth under his Pancho Villa mustache. “I’m not surprised. But I’m sure you’ll understand when I tell you that these have been our instructions. It’s not that we’re trying to be dramatic or anything or withhold information, it’s just that—it’s how she wants it.”

“Miss A, you mean?”

“Yes, Miss A. You’ve been asked here in order that she may speak with you about a matter of considerable importance.”

Fine with me. “What matter? And what importance?”

“I’m afraid that’s part of what I’m not allowed to tell you. She wishes to do it herself.”

“All right, I have no objection. When may I see her?”

“I’m sure it won’t be very long now. Outside of yourself in Chicago, she hasn’t had any visitors ‘at home,’ so to speak, in a long time. She’s very nervous over seeing you again. There are some—some things she wishes to tell you. She’s felt the need for some time, but it’s only lately that she’s found the courage to do so. She’s been waiting for your return.”

I glimpsed the burly figure of Sluggo lurking in the background, as though looking for something to happen.

“Am I to gather from all this that she’s ill?” I asked.

“Well… some problems. One or two, but things are relatively under control. And thanks for coming so quickly. I hope you’ll be easy on her.”

Now, what the hell did that mean? The whole scene struck me as hoaxy, silly as a frat-house initiation. Was this Babe’s passion for elaborate staging? Maybe the reason for all the delay was that she was inside trying to paste herself together so she’d look her usual glamorous self—the long lashes, the red fingernails, the works. Well, I thought, she put me up in the blizzard, I owe her this.

As I went on waiting, I was reminded of that other afternoon, more than twenty years ago, when I’d sweltered waiting for this very same individual but under far different circumstances. Promptness might be the politeness of kings, but it was not of movie queens, current or ex. I could hear a faint tinkling sound, chimelike and slightly Oriental, as if at any moment Gale Sondergaard might step through a beaded curtain and stick a dangerous letter in my hand. Pepe was making small talk, the worst kind: had I seen the latest movie, what did I think of the lovely weather, wasn’t there a lot more traffic on the Strip, how long would I be staying in town, had I spoken with Angie Brown? I mean
bor-
ing.

Then apparently it was time. He got up and asked me to come with him. “It’s all right,” he whispered as we got to the end of the hall, where there was a closed door, “you may go in. And please, I beg you—be kind to her.”

Thank you, Deborah Kerr. Babe undoing the buttons on her blouse. I’ll be kind. Yes, sure, although I wasn’t sure just how kind I was prepared to be. My motor was running fast as I opened the door and walked in. I shut the door behind me and paused to take in the scene—Babe’s scene. More Babe-stuff: crystal chandelier with a velvet sleeve over the chain, Austrian shades ruched all to hell and gone, satin-tufted chaise stuffed with pillows, soft piled rug, lots of satin, lots of swags, windows with the lambrequin treatment, the bed raised on a dais, hung with gauzy panels that fell from the high ceiling to the floor, and there in the bed a figure, our Babe, well bolstered against pillows, staring straight at me.

“Oh you son-of-a-bitch,” I swore softly.

“Hello, luv,” said Dore Screwball.

I mean it.

Him.

There.

In the bed.

Her
bed. The bed of Babe Austrian, the dead Babe Austrian.

What the hell!

My first reaction was, what’s that fool doing in her bed? He doesn’t belong there. Then in another moment I realized that, whatever else he was, this was no fool, that he was not in
her
bed but in
his,
and that he did, indeed, belong there. The balding head, fringed by sparse, short white hair. The features naked, without their makeup, no face paint anywhere in evidence. Just as I’d seen him at the chicken ranch. Wearing a bathrobe of maroon flannel, a perfectly ordinary-looking, by no means new, a many-wearings, comfortable garment, the hands with noticeably short fingernails, no polish, those tired blue eyes looking up at me, doubtful, rueful, entreating understanding, yet somehow filled with the old Dorewickedness. I was torn between anger and the desire to laugh, so I laughed. Nothing else seemed right. I laughed.

“Hello, Dore, what’s new?”

“Same old shit, ducks. What’s new with you?”

It was surreal. Weird, man, weird. “Good to see you, Dore. Tell me, how long has this been going on?”

“Years, luv.”

“Yuma? Torreon? Snake Bend?”

“That was in-between. Babe was ‘on vacation.’ Come sit. Take a load off.”

Though he spoke in Dore’s voice, it was still her line; it rang falsely—for the first time. I took the chair and sat by the corner of the bed. How ridiculous. How grotesque. How inconceivable. Was this Grand Guignol or Keystone Kops?

I damned my stupidity, telling myself I ought to have realized it sooner, should have known how I and the rest of the world were being duped. And for just how long? A magnificent job it was, this masquerade, this beauty of a hoax that had been pulled on me, on us all. But how?
How
?

We stared hard at each other, back and forth, he and I, wondering what to say. He reclined there in that ridiculous bed, against the piled pillows, like something out of a movie. Something quaint, bizarre, totally unlikely—and yet he lay back with such an indolent air of—of “Doreness.” The master of every situation, particularly one so
outré
and thoroughly outrageous as this one. Gloria Swanson wasn’t even close.

“I must say, you don’t seem terribly surprised,” he said, looking miffed. “I thought I’d nail you in your tracks when you walked in.”

“Damned clever, these Chinese.”

He grinned that lopsided, jack-o’-lantern grin of his. “I suppose you must be wondering why I’ve asked you here tonight.” He delivered the line and laughed.

I had to admit, it was funny. I’m not sure if I mean funny ha-ha or funny finger-down-the-throat, but it
was
funny. Maybe you had to be there.
I
was there, trying to take it all in my stride.

“Well. Is this a bitch or isn’t it?” Dore asked, a bit sheepishly, I thought.

I agreed that yes, it
was
a bitch. I’d been set up, and what a set-up. I seemed to regard him as though through the long end of the telescope, a far distance down a long tunnel of years—nearly a quarter of a century of offbeat, crazy recollections. I knew I’d been had at Torreon, and God knew elsewhere, him and his Aunt Bob)—I knew Aunt Bob had to be in on this—him with his fried catfish and his cowboy horsebacking. My mind seethed with questions, the most burning of which was When. When had it begun? For how long was Dore Skirball Babe Austrian, or, more to the point, how long was Babe Austrian Dore Skirball? What was behind it all? The questions were endless; I wanted the answers, but somehow this didn’t seem just the right moment.

One look had told me he was sick, sicker than he wanted me to know, or perhaps knew himself. If he wasn’t precisely at death’s door he was certainly in the neighborhood.

“How are you, really?” I asked.

“Not top of the heap, as any fool can plainly see. I’ve got the heartbreak of psoriasis, ducks, I think I’m going to pop off.” He saw my look. “No, not today, Chazz. I’m likely to be around a bit longer. But I had something on my mind, something I wanted to consult with you about. Anyway, I thought it was time to straighten out one or two small details before I do pop.”

There was a sudden wriggling under the covers, and a small head appeared: Tiny, the Chihuahua of recent fame; then she sprang altogether into sight, flew across the bed, tail wagging, and plopped in my lap, where she began jumping up, trying to lick my face, as though to thank me for reviving her in the Chicago fire.

Dore patted his thigh. “Tiny, do stop.” The sound of his own, real voice recalled many scenes from earlier times, and I was happy to be hearing it. But I wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily.

“I know one thing,” I said. “I know how Miss Italy’s going to die.”

“Angie? How, love?”

“By my hand. I’m going to murder her for this.”

Dore wagged his head. “I really don’t think so, ducks,” he said.

“Are you going to tell me she isn’t in on this whole thing?”

“No, I’m not, but it’s not her doing really. She’s only involved because someone had to be, after Frankie went. I couldn’t do it all alone, you know.”

I was at my most sarcastic. “I suppose not. After Frankie got shot. And while we’re on the subject, just what
does
Frank Adonis have to do with this?”

“As it happens, it was all his idea.”

“Come on, Eve, this is Addison, remember?” No one was going to convince me of that. A hoax on this grand a scale? It wasn’t Frank’s style.

Dore was bristling. “If you don’t want to believe me, okay, you can get the whole story from Madame La Zonga.” He shouted through cupped hands. “Miss Italy, get your ass in here.”

I was totally confused as the door opened and Angie Brown appeared on the threshold.

“What the hell’s going on around here?” I demanded. “You were supposed to be playing tennis in the desert.”

I heard that delicious laugh as she hurried to kiss me. “You darling,” she said, her arms still around me in a bear hug. “Fancy seeing you like this.”

I held her away from me and looked at her. “What’s going on here anyway?”

She played the innocent. “I don’t know what you mean, Chazz. Nothing’s going on, that I know of. Oh—you must mean our little masquerade; is
that
what he means, Dore dear?”

“You’d better tell him. About Frank. He doesn’t believe me.

“I don’t know
what
to believe. I wish somebody would explain.”

I sat down and Angie perched on the other corner of the bed. “Dore wasn’t kidding, Chazz; it
was
Frank’s idea. His and no one else’s. He had to do it; otherwise he would have ended up with his head in a bucket of cement.”

“But why?”

“Because of Babe. The
real
Babe.”

“And the
real
Babe? Suppose we agree on where she’s at these days.”

“Dead,” they said in unison.

I could see how eager he was to tell me the whole story, but I could also see that he was exhausted and that my being there was a strain on him. I decided to let explanations wait and get to the reason for my being summoned in the first place. Suddenly he seemed to shrink in the bed, and I could see he was deeply distressed by something, something more than the state of his health.

“What is it? Something to do with Babe?” I asked.

He nodded, but warily. “Maybe—maybe we better save it for later. Better yet, let Angie tell you.”

I could see he was tired, so I sat back and listened to Angie explaining how the back tenant at North Cadman Terrace had turned himself into one of the greatest female performers of all time.

She really
had
died in Mexico, Babe: at Rosarita Beach, aboard the
Black Star.
There’d been a drunken argument between Ears Satriano and Al “Vegas” da Prima. Trying to intervene, Babe had got herself caught by a bullet. “They dumped the body overboard and lit out for calmer waters. Frank flew down to identify the corpse. The minute he saw that it was Babe, he knew he was in hot water. The idea came to him all at once. Luckily there was Patsy. Patsy Doyle was the answer, and he saw how to pull the whole thing off.”

“But why did he identify her as Patsy?”

“Because,” Angie replied, “if he’d said it really
was
Babe, he was in trouble with some very nasty characters. Between them they’d put over a million bucks into a movie,
Camellia.
If Babe didn’t do the picture, Frank was a dead duck. It was up to him to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. So he did.”

“Good old Frank. But who’s ‘they’?”

“The boys, darling. The Vegas gang, friends of Bugsy’s. They’d rubbed him out, they could do the same with Frank.
Dore
was the way out. So Frank got Patsy to lie low, then he dug up Patsy’s husband—Snake-Hips—paid him to say the body was Patsy’s and do a big number about avenging her death.”

“Yeah, but what about Patsy? What became of her?”

“She took the money and ran. Quite a chunk, as a matter of fact; she and Snake really put the screws to Frankie. He was in hock to the banks for that one. But he made it up on Dore. Anyway, Snake got a job at a dog track in Miami, Patsy bought herself a beauty parlor, and they settled down.”