Hollywood (2 page)

“Who do you think wrote this, if not Zimmermann?”

Hearst looked grim. “Thomas W. Gregory, the attorney general. That’s what I hear. He’s pushing Wilson harder and harder to go to war now. Luckily, the rest of the Cabinet want Wilson to hold out because,” Hearst squinted at the telegram, “this part here is what this war is all about. I mean, Zimmermann or Gregory or the English or whoever wrote it suggests that the president of Mexico approach the Japanese and get them into the war against us. Well, that’s the big danger!”

Blaise moved off his desk and into his chair. Back of him hung a life-size painting of himself, his half-sister and co-publisher Caroline, and their editor, Trimble. Blaise knew, everyone knew, that whenever Hearst was in need of a scare story for his newspapers, he would invoke the Yellow Peril. Although Blaise was neutral on the subject of Japanese expansion in China, others were
not. On February 1 when Germany had delivered its ultimatum to the United States that all shipping from American ports to those of the Allied Powers would be fair game for German submarines, or U-boats as they were popularly known, the Cabinet had met, and though Gregory among others was eager for a declaration of war, the President, remembering that he had just been re-elected as “the man who kept us out of war,” wanted only to sever relations between the two countries. He had been unexpectedly supported by his secretaries of war and Navy; each had made the case that the United States should allow Germany its head in Europe and then, at a future date, the entire white race would unite as one against the yellow hordes, led by Japan. Hearst had played this diversion for all that it was worth. Blaise had not.

Trimble entered the room, without knocking. He was an aging Southerner whose once red hair was now a disagreeable pink. “Mr. Hearst.” Trimble bowed. Hearst inclined his head. Trimble said, “We’ve just got a report on what the President is going to say to Congress …”

“War?” Hearst sat up straight.

“No, sir. But he is going to ask for armed neutrality …”

“Preparedness.…” Hearst sighed. “Peace without victory. A world league of nations with Mr. Wilson in the chair. Self-determination for all.”

“Well,” said Trimble, “he doesn’t say all that in this speech.” Then Trimble withdrew.

Blaise repeated the week’s Washington joke. “The President wants to declare war in confidence, so the Bryanites—the pacifists—in his party won’t turn on him.”

“Not to mention me. I’m still in politics, you know.” Blaise knew; everyone knew. Hearst was preparing to run yet again for governor of New York or mayor of New York City or president in 1920. He still had a huge following, particularly among the so-called hyphenates, the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans, all enemies of England and her allies. “Did you see
The Perils of Pauline?
”

Blaise adjusted easily to the sudden shift of subject. The Chief’s mind was a wondrous kaleidoscope, unshielded by any sort of consciousness. Like a child, whatever suddenly bubbled up in his brain, he said. There was no screening process except when he chose, as he often did, to be enigmatically silent. “Yes, I saw several of them. She’s very handsome, Miss Pearl White, and always on the move.”

“That’s why we call them
moving
pictures.” Hearst was tutorial. “She has to keep running away from danger or the audience will start to run out of
the theater. You know, on this war thing, I’m for staying out just as you are for getting us in. But I’ll say this—if the people really want a war, then I’ll go along. After all, they’re the ones who’re going to have to fight it, not me. I’m going to ask for a national referendum, get a vote from everybody, you know? Do you want to fight for England and France against your own people, the Germans and the Irish?”

Blaise laughed. “I don’t think they’ll let you put the question like that.”

Hearst grunted. “Well, you know what I mean. There’s no real support out there. I know. I got eight newspapers from California to New York. But of course it’s too late. This thing’s gone too far. We’ll get a war all right. Then England will cave in. Then the Germans will come over here, or try to. Have you thought about flags?”

“Flags?” This time the Chief’s unconscious mind was ahead of Blaise.

Hearst pulled a copy of the New York
American
from his huge side pocket. On the front page there were red-white-and-blue flags as well as several stanzas from “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “Looks nice, don’t it?”

“Very patriotic.”

“That’s the idea. I’m getting tired of being called pro-German. Anyway I’m about to start a photo-play company, and I’d like you to come in with me.”

Blaise adjusted to this new shift with, he thought, admirable coolness. “But I don’t know anything about the movies.”

“Nobody does. That’s what’s so wonderful. You know, while we’re sitting here, all over the world illiterate Chinese and Hindus and … and Patagonians are watching my Pauline. You see, to watch a movie you don’t need to know another language the way you have to when you read a paper because it’s all there—up there, moving around. It’s the only international thing there is. Anyway the point is that Mother, who’s the rich one, won’t lend me the money and I don’t want to go to the banks.”

At last Hearst had startled Blaise. It was true that Phoebe Apperson Hearst controlled the vast mining wealth of Hearst’s late father, but Hearst’s personal empire was more than enough to finance a photo-play company. Of course, Hearst lived more grandly than anyone in the United States on, it was said, five million dollars a year, much of which went for the acquisition of every spurious art-work for sale anywhere. “Well, let me think about it.” Blaise was cautious.

“What about that sister of yours, Caroline?”

“Ask her.”

“You don’t want to sell me the
Tribune
, do you?”

“No.”

Hearst rose. “That’s what you always say. I’ve got my eye on the
Times
here. It’s a lousy paper, but then so was this till Caroline bought it and fixed it up.”

Blaise’s sudden pang of envy was, he hoped, not visible to the other. Caroline had indeed bought and revived the moribund
Tribune;
then, and only then, had she allowed her half-brother to buy in. Now, jointly, amiably, they co-published.

Hearst stared down at Fourteenth Street. “Four,” he said, “no, five movie theaters just on this one street. I’ve got my eye on a place up in Harlem, an old casino, where I can set up a studio.” Idly, he kicked at the remains of the Biedermeier chair. “I have to stay in New York. Because of 1920. War or not, that’s going to be the big political year. Whoever gets to be president then can …” Hearst tapped the Zimmermann telegram which lay on Blaise’s desk. “I think it’s a fake.”

Blaise nodded. “So do I. It’s too convenient.…”

Hearst shook Blaise’s hand. “I’m heading back to Palm Beach now. We’ll get this war anyway, like it or not. Remember my proposal. I’m only starting up in Harlem because New York is my base. But the place to be from now on is Hollywood. You got that?”

“No,” said Blaise. Like a circus trainer, he led the great bear to the door. “But I’m sure
you’ve
 … got it.”

The Duchess was late. As Jesse Smith waited for her in Madame Marcia’s parlor, he studied or pretended to study Dr. Janes’s
Vermifuge Almanac
, a thick volume filled with lurid charts of the heavens and strange drawings of even stranger creatures of which one, a monstrous crab, gave Jesse or Jess—“No final ‘e,’ please, boys, that’s only for the ladies of the emporium”—heartache as well as heartburn, for in his recurrent nightmares there often figured a giant devouring crab of utter malignity; and Jess would wake up with a sob, according to Roxy, on the few times during their short marriage that they had spent an entire night together.

Quickly, Jess turned over several pages until he arrived at a neutral pair of scales, more soothing than the lobster with the sting in its tail or the menacing lion. It was not that he feared being eaten by crab, lobster, lion. Suffocation was the night terror, as heavy lion’s paw covered nose and mouth.

Jess took a deep shaky breath. Madame Marcia’s apartment smelled of boiled chicken and stale incense from a brass Benares dish filled with what looked like the burnt contents of a pipe but was actually the latest Indian Hindu sandalwood incense, to which Roxy had also been partial.

Madame Marcia’s parlor was separated from the inner sanctum by a curtain made of strings of different-colored beads to give an
Arabian Nights
effect; but the beads were so dull that the effect was more like threaded penny candies. Nevertheless, half the great men and women of Washington, D.C., were said to have come here in order to glimpse the Future and so circumvent—or hasten—inexorable fate. A functioning sorceress, Madame comfortably advertised herself as “A president-maker and a president-ruler.” Behind the cascade of beads, Jess could hear Madame humming to herself in a toneless voice that suggested the higher realms of spirit until one caught from time to time, the lyrics of a brand-new song made popular by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916, and heard, for almost a year now, on every Victrola in the land. Jess gazed without much interest at a gaudy diploma on the wall that admonished one and all that, by these presents, one Marcia Champrey was a minister in good standing of the Spiritualist Church.

Madame Marcia had been Daugherty’s inspiration. “I’ve never been to her. But they say she’s just what the doctor ordered, and the Duchess needs a lot of doctoring.” Like all politicians, Daugherty spoke code; and Jess, who had grown up in the actual shadow of his Ohio hometown Washington Court House’s actual colonnaded courthouse, understood the code. Also there was nothing that he would not do for Harry M. Daugherty, who had befriended him when he was first starting out; done his legal work for nothing; introduced him to those Ohio politicians who always came to Daugherty for aid at election time—
their
elections, of course. Although Daugherty had been chairman of the State Republican Committee and was now forever a part of history because he had nominated William McKinley for governor in 1893, thus launching the sun, as it were, into the republic’s sky, Daugherty himself had no political luck; had failed by seventy-seven votes to be nominated for governor; had now settled for being the hidden power behind whatever throne he could set up. Of course the highest throne of all was currently empty or, to be precise, occupied by one Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, an unnatural state of affairs which would be corrected in 1920 by the election of a Republican president. But that was three years away, and there were certain arrangements that must first be made. Madame Marcia was one.

“Is she always so late?” Madame Marcia glided into the room, at an odd angle to the floor. She had once been a dancer, as she had told Jess on his
previous visit, with the Frank Deshon Opera Company. “At sixteen,” she would add, in case someone were to count the years that had passed since her name had appeared in very small letters on a very large poster whose date marked her as an artiste from the long-ago age of McKinley. Now the dancer was a spiritualist minister and a guide to the stars in the dark days of Woodrow Wilson when every day, for Republicans, was like today, February, with wet snow falling and a cold north wind.

“No. The Duchess is the soul of punctuality.” Jess rose, as he always did, when a lady, any lady, entered a room, any room. “The weather …”

“The weather, oh, yes.” Over the years, one by one, Madame Marcia’s Brooklyn vowels had gradually closed until she sounded refined and deeply spiritual. She wore priestess black, and a string of pearls. Only the thick scarlet hair struck a discordant Frank Deshon dancer note. Jess had first met her with Daugherty, who swore by her, whatever that meant. Although Jess believed fervently in every sort of ghost and ghoul, he had no particular interest in any spirit world other than the one in his hall closet where, back of an old winter coat and a stack of galoshes, horror reigned. Only his driver George dared enter that closet; and return unscathed and sane.

“Mr. Micajah is keeping well?” Madame Marcia sat in a straight chair, and smiled, revealing pearl-like teeth rather more authentic in quality than the pearls she wore. Micajah was Daugherty’s middle name. Real names were discouraged by the lady. “Otherwise I might be influenced when I consult the stars.” Daugherty maintained that she had no idea, ever, whose horoscope she was casting: hence her high price. She was a legend in the capital and much consulted by some of the highest in the land, usually through intermediaries, as the faces of the highest would have been recognizable to Madame Marcia, thanks to photography and the newsreels.

“Yes. He’s gone back to …” Jess stopped himself from saying Ohio. “Home. But his—uh, friend is here. The Duchess’s husband.”

“An interesting—even
significant
—horoscope.” Madame Marcia had been given nothing more than the date and hour of birth of the Duchess’s husband. Of course she had a Congressional Directory in her inner sanctum and she could, if she were so minded, check the various birthdates with the one in hand, assuming that its owner was in the Congress. But, as Daugherty said, even if she knew
whose
horoscope it was, how could she predict his future without some help from the stars or whatever? The whole town knew that she had predicted the elevation to the vice presidency of the current incumbent, Thomas R. Marshall. Without supernatural aid, this was an impossibly long shot.

“I’ve never seen such a cold winter. Worse than New York ever was.…”

“Why did you come to Washington?”

“Fate,” said Madame Marcia, as though speaking of an old and trusted friend. “I was associated with Gipsy Oliver at Coney Island. Mostly for amusement’s sake. But”—Madame’s voice became low and thrilling—“she had gifts as well as—worldliness. Dark gifts. Amongst them, that of prophecy. I was, I thought, happily married. With two beautiful children. My husband, Dr. Champrey, had an excellent practice, specializing in the lower lumbar region and, of course, the entire renal system. But the spirits spoke to Gipsy Oliver.
She
spoke to me. Beware of the turkey, she said one day. I thought she was joking. I laughed—more fool I!
What
turkey? I asked. I know turkeys, and don’t much care to eat them—so dry, always, unless you have the knack of basting, which fate has denied me. Well, lo! and behold the next month, November it was, I was preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for my loved ones, when Dr. Champrey said, ‘I’ll go buy us a turkey.’ I remember now a shiver come over me. A chill, like a ghost’s hand upon me.”