Hollywood (71 page)

But the lines were vague at best, and when it came to campaign contributions there was moral chaos. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt had gone begging to every rich magnate in the land. “We bought him,” Frick was supposed to have said later, “but he didn’t stay bought.” Actually, Roosevelt had been sufficiently honorable to give value for money paid. That was the rule of the game, and one broke it at one’s peril. Ohio politicians tended either to the small-time, like Jess Smith, helping out bootleggers, or they were, like Mark Hanna, huge national operators, selling their presidents, like oil stock. Of the lot, Harding was, perhaps, the most honest, while the much-maligned Daugherty appeared to be above temptation except when it came to raising money for Harding; then he rivalled Hanna.

“Well, we’ve still got Charlie Cramer at the bureau.” Harding stubbed out his cigar. “He’ll straighten everything out once Forbes is gone. Burden, I’d be most grateful if you said nothing about Forbes’s resigning until he actually has, in the next week or so.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” Harding smiled; a normal color had returned to his face. “They tell me I may be up against you in ’24.”

Burden laughed. “I hear that every four years but they always find someone else.”

“Personally—selfishly—I hope they do again. You’d be hard to beat.”

Burden gave the President a folder containing his reflections on the International Court; and departed.

Burden let himself in the side door of the Sanford Massachusetts Avenue house, now up for sale. Whenever Blaise or Frederika wanted to stay over in town, they would use the upper part of the house; the rest was empty, dark, cold.

Frederika wore a negligee. “Come in. Shut the door. The house is freezing.” She shivered even though her sitting room was as warm as a greenhouse with a great fire and masses of flowers everywhere. She liked it to be known that she gardened seriously. Actually, she did not know one flower from another and preferred goldenrod to chrysanthemums. The conservatories at Laurel House were well tended by professional gardeners, and Frederika never went near them.

Burden sat beside the fire while Frederika made a cocktail containing gin. Since Prohibition, each felt obliged to drink more than ever before. Luckily, neither was addicted, unlike half the Senate—and their wives. “Harding’s gone on the wagon.”

“Poor man.”

“He owes it to the Constitution …”

“His?”

“Ours. Both, I suppose.”

“Have you seen Caroline?”

Burden shook his head. New mistress quite liked old mistress, who made no fuss of any kind. Then, suddenly, on cue, the door to the sitting room was flung open and there stood Caroline herself, with Blaise behind her.

Burden’s first alarm turned, unexpectedly, to mirth. There they were, the four of them, like some intricate equation that, with time, kept bringing forth new answers or, more precisely, data, since there were no answers in life.

“You have caught us at last,” Frederika observed dispassionately. She embraced Caroline; and patted Blaise’s cheek. Burden had always assumed
that Blaise knew everything; now he wondered if, perhaps, Blaise had
not
known because—sad thought!—he did not care one way or the other.

“This is cozy,” said Blaise neutrally and sat beside the fire. “I had no idea you were giving a party,” he said to Frederika.

“I wasn’t. Until you two made it one. Burden has been telling me all about Mr. Forbes and the Veterans Bureau …”

“I am home,” said Caroline, smiling fondly at Burden. “Where I live, you would be talking about how much
Robin Hood
really grossed last week at the Capitol … the one on Broadway, not ours.”

“What,” asked Frederika, “is Douglas Fairbanks really like?”

“Very athletic.”

“I can see that on the screen. But—in person.”

“There is no person in person,” said Caroline, who looked like someone Burden had never known except on the screen. She had managed to simplify her face so that now it was nothing but a number of perfect features in strict harmony with each other. Kitty was certain that surgery had been resorted to, but Burden thought not. The camera had burned away all imperfections, and fame had done the rest.

“How long will you stay?” Burden was casual.

“As long as I have to. I must wait for the scandal to die down.”

“How I envy you!” Frederika was perfectly sincere in this. “I wish I could have my picture in the tabloids. Frederika Sanford …”

“Traxler is our movie name,” said Blaise, gazing thoughtfully at Burden, whose cheeks were suddenly warm.

“All right. Frederika Traxler,
femme fatale
, the pearl of Transylvania …”

“Alsace-Lorraine, dear.” Caroline’s smile was dazzling.

“Whatever. Were you really the last person to see that director?”

“The last but two. At least.” Caroline’s smile began to fade exactly as it did on film.

“Who killed him?” Blaise turned to Caroline.

“Eddie Sands, they say. The servant. Anyway, this is not the sort of case that anyone wants to solve. We put it all down to the Californian Curse.”

“Mary Miles Minter’s pink dressing gown in his closet!” Frederika shuddered with pleasure. “Mabel Normand in the middle of the night …”

“Shortly before eight in the evening.” Caroline was precise.

“I thought him charming, that evening at the Coconut Grove. But I had no idea he was such a … a voluptuary?”

“Was he?” asked Blaise.

“I saw no sign of it.” Caroline stopped smiling and, nonsmiling, began to resemble a younger version of her own self. “He was more … fatherly with the movie ladies. He was always the best of friends. Anyway, my new friend Will Hays is cleaning up Hollywood, and I’m helping him.”

Burden wondered how he could explain, first, his immediate departure from the Sanford family bosom and, second, his presence in Frederika’s room. “We’re having,” he began, “more scandals here than Hollywood …”

“But our cast is so unattractive.” Frederika began to recomb her hair. Caroline watched her with a professional eye. Blaise rang for Frederika’s maid, the only servant in the house.

“Mr. Harding is very handsome.” Caroline looked at herself in Frederika’s mirror and saw Burden. He raised an eyebrow—in greeting?

“I don’t think he’s involved, poor bastard.” Blaise turned to Burden. “What do you think?”

“Harding’s honest. But he’s managed to surround himself with all these poker-playing small-time chiselers. Like Charlie Forbes.” After Forbes’s encounter with the President, he had fled to Europe, from where, on February 15, he had resigned. As Burden had predicted, shortly before adjournment, the Senate ordered an investigation of the Veterans Bureau. Then Congress went home, and the Hardings and the McLeans went to Florida together.

“Forbes isn’t such a small-time chiseler. You’ve heard about Cramer, haven’t you?”

Currently, the Veterans Bureau was being administered by its general counsel, Charles F. Cramer. “Is he involved, too?” asked Burden.

Blaise nodded. “Very much so, I’d say. Or was. Last night he shot himself in the head. In Harding’s old house.”

“Cramer’s dead?” Burden was astonished. Never before in his experience had politics veered off into overt crime, covert death.

“Yes. They say he left two letters but they’ve disappeared.”

“She was charming,” said Frederika. “Mrs. Cramer. What was her name?”

No one answered. Then Burden said what each was thinking. “Cramer was supposed
not
to have been involved in Forbes’s deals.”

“He must have known,” Blaise was emphatic. “And if he knew, he should have gone public. He is—was—a lawyer, after all. Anyway, according to my reporter who was in the house, there was a clipping about the Senate investigation on his desk.”

“He would have had to testify …” Burden stopped; suddenly aware of the possibility of a scandal so vast that it could bring down the Administration.

Caroline completed his thought. “But if someone did not want him to testify, they would shoot him and make it look like a suicide.”

“Or a movie,” said Frederika. “Nonie, I think, is her name.”

“I have been living in a movie murder case.” Caroline was hard. “It is not pleasant, let me tell you.”

“Where’s Daugherty?” Burden turned to Blaise.

“Somewhere in Florida. Sick.”

The maid arrived with whisky for the master of the house. Burden used her arrival as pretext for departure; and bade his three lovers a fond farewell.

Usually May was Jess’s favorite time at Deer Creek, but nothing pleased him now because nothing that he could do would ever please Daugherty again. For the most part, the two men sat in their rocking chairs, staring straight ahead at the woods in full leaf. In silence they had eaten the hamburgers that Jess had cooked. Now Daugherty was yawning; ready for his afternoon nap. It had taken him three months to recover from the flu. After Florida, he had gone alone to North Carolina; then back to Washington Court House and the shack at Deer Creek which they had both used for years as a getaway from the world. But the world could not be got away from if you were attorney general.

“Maybe,” said Daugherty suddenly, “you should stay on here.”

“Here? In the shack?”

“No. Washington Court House. That other Washington’s nothing but trouble for you now. Me, too.” Daugherty rocked more quickly in his chair.

Jess waited to be told what kind of trouble, but Daugherty was silent. “Well, there was the Charlie Forbes and Cramer business. But that’s all over. I mean, what else is there?”

Daugherty grunted; and slowed down his rocking. “There’s Fall.”

For a year the conservationists had been attacking Fall for his indifference to nature, a likeable trait in Jess’s eyes. Then La Follette had got into the act, and asked for a Senate investigation of all the oil leases given out by the Department of the Interior. Senator Walsh of Montana was assigned the task of finding out why the Navy lands had been turned over to Interior and on what principle Fall had then leased the lands to private exploiters. Nothing of interest had come to light. The Secretary of the Navy did not want to be burdened with such vast oil reserves, pending some distant war with Japan.
The Secretary of the Interior had then asked to take them over and the President had agreed. All this was done openly. Edward Doheny had taken a lease on Naval Reserve Number One at Elk Hills, California, and Harry Sinclair had taken a lease on Naval Reserve Number Three at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. All of this was straightforward, or so it seemed. Yet the Senate investigation of Fall was due to continue when Congress convened in October, simultaneous with the investigation of the Veterans Bureau.

“What’s Fall done?”

“Who knows? It’s what Walsh thinks he’s done that matters to us.”

“Like take a … a commission from Doheny?”

“A bribe. Sure. And one from Sinclair, too. He’s travelling with Sinclair right now, the damned fool. I asked him not to, but he thinks he’s God on earth, and so he and Harry Sinclair are prospecting for oil together in Russia.”

“Partners.”

“And for just how long have you two gentlemen been partners?” Daugherty assumed a loud inquisitorial voice. “Oh, it’s going to be hell. For the President. Thank God he’s leaving town. He needs a rest. So do I.” Daugherty stood up and stretched. “I’m going to take my nap.”

“O.K., General. I’ll hold the fort.” Daugherty went inside, and Jess rocked back and forth, soothed by the motion. The truss bothered him less now that the scar was beginning to heal, but lately he had been having odd dizzy spells and moments of confusion when he was awake and terrible dreams when he was not. The doctor had unhelpfully assured him that this was perfectly normal for a diabetic, who had nothing to fear as long as he remembered to take his insulin shots.

Despite three months of convalescence, Daugherty was still not himself. He was irritable with Jess, something he had never been before. For Jess, Daugherty had always been the ideal older brother, wise and humorous and kind. In twenty years, they had never exchanged a harsh word. Jess would have committed murder for Daugherty; he would even have gone into the downstairs coat closet without a light, if Daugherty asked him to. Since the thought of that closet made his pulse race, he made himself think of something pleasant, like the trip to Alaska. Most of the Cabinet would be on the train with the President, and they would make leisurely stops across the country so that W.G. could bloviate and get his strength back, renewed by the crowds who loved him even if the Senate did not. Jess would join the President in his bridge games.

“Jess!” With a start, Jess opened his eyes. He had fallen asleep in the
rocker. Standing over him was one of the courthouse gang from Columbus. An early supporter of Harding, he only came around when he wanted something.

“Whaddaya know?” said Jess.

“I know I got to talk to the General. He’s here, isn’t he?”

Jess nodded. “But he’s taking a nap like always after lunch. Come back later.”

The man shook his head. “I can’t. I got business over to Marion. I just want a couple words with him. That’s all.”