Stardust (27 page)

“After all your good work there.”

“You want to be a wiseass, go ahead. I don’t care. Your brother knew what was what. Maybe you will, too, someday. Everybody will. Minot’s going to take this national.”

“Take what national?”

“The threat in the industry.” He held out his hand, stopping a passing waitress. “You want another?”

Ben looked at his beer, scarcely touched, then sat back, staring at the picture. Riordan waited, letting him catch his breath.

“You’re surprised.”

“Why would he do it?”

“Why wouldn’t he? It’s the right thing to do.”

Ben looked up at him. “To fight the threat. Which one? Betty Grable taking over the government?”

“You think it’s a joke. It’s not. This is a war of ideas.”

“What’s the last idea you saw in the movies?”

Riordan said nothing, not wanting to quarrel.

“How long was all this?” Ben said. “How long did you know him?”

“Couple of years. Since the Bureau. He was a friend to the Bureau.”

“What kind of friend?”

“We asked for some help, he gave it.”

“You asked for help? What, go through Herb Yates’s mail?”

“We don’t need people for that. We know what people say, what they write to each other. What we need to know is what they think. Your brother had special access.”

“To whom?” Ben said, chilled again, apprehensive.

“He did us a service. But I think he did them a service, too. Wartime, the Bureau has to keep an eye on enemy aliens. It’s our job. But you don’t want to make people uncomfortable. Not if they’re what they say they are.”

“He spied on his friends?” Ben said, suddenly seeing the exile faces at the funeral, Heinrich and Alma and Feuchtwanger. Hans and Liesl. Family.

“I wouldn’t use that term. He reassured us, that’s closer. That they were all right. Well, Brecht I still wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw. But we got nothing yet, so we can’t touch him. Eisler we already knew. And the Mann kid’s a fruit, that’s always a risk. The others, harmless, more or less. But we had to know that. So like I say, he did everybody a service.”

“The Bureau spied on them? These people risked their lives. Fighting Nazis.”

“So they say. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good for America. They have a different idea of politics over there. You ask me to tell you the difference between a Nazi and a Communist and what would I say? This much?” He held up two fingers, a tiny space apart. “At the Bureau we call them Communazis—they’re both on the same side, so why not put them together? We needed to keep tabs. Your brother saw it. How the Reds tried to use them—small stuff, innocent, put your name
on a letter, then maybe not so innocent. He was worried about them being used. We knew how he felt.”

“How? You tap his phone?”

Riordan ignored this. “So we asked him to help. You know, the Bureau, it’s hard to say no. Wartime, it’s a patriotic duty.”

“And then you kept asking.”

“He saw how it was going in the industry. So he gave me a hand.”

“Real pals.” Ben looked again at the alley picture. “But you couldn’t even go over to the body, see if you could help. Just stood there thinking how to cover your ass.”

“He was dead. I thought he was dead.”

“How’s that feel? Having someone’s blood on your hands?”

Riordan glanced up at the returning waitress, but she seemed not to have overheard, smiling as she put down his glass and moved on. He took a sip of his beer.

“How do you figure that?”

“First you think he jumped because he got disgusted with himself. For what? The work he was doing for you. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?”

Riordan said nothing.

“But what if somebody killed him. Who would that be? Who’d hate him that much? How about somebody he sold out to you?” He picked up the photo, both of them glancing at it again, back in the alley, then slid it into the envelope. “Either way it comes back to you,” he said, his voice lower, drained.

Behind him he heard the tinkle of glasses, then a roll of thunder. He turned to the window, even darker now, and suddenly thought of the window on the Chief, looking out at the endless bright fields, everything getting bigger and more open, golden, the way he imagined Danny’s life had become, not shadowy and squalid.

“I don’t see it that way,” Riordan said. “He did what he thought was right. I didn’t kill him. But somebody did. You’re his brother. If you’d stop spitting at me for two minutes, maybe we could help each other out.”

Ben stared for a second, hearing the voice, steady and reasonable, then separating it from the words. What he might have said to Danny, help each other out, while he wrapped the coil around him. Ben stood up.

“It’s still on them,” he said, nodding to Riordan’s hands. He reached into his pocket to pull out some money, then stopped. “I’ll let you get this one.”

He didn’t turn until he was at the door, seeing Riordan drop some change on the table.

Outside it had finally begun to rain, heavy sheets of it, so that he was trapped under the small awning. The Mediterranean hills had disappeared, even the Paramount water tower, leaving a few flat streets with running gutters and a tangle of overhead wires.

“Christ,” Riordan said, coming out. “Where’s your car?”

“I walked.”

Riordan looked at him, puzzled, a joke he didn’t quite get. “I’m there,” he said, pointing to a car. “Come on, I’ll drop you.”

“I’ll wait it out.”

Riordan gave him a suit-yourself shrug, then turned up the back of his collar, ready to dart to the car. “By the way,” he said. “You’re going in circles again. You think it’s somebody he gave me. If he’d already done that, it’d be too late, wouldn’t it? No point then. Right?”

He dashed out into the rain, fumbling with his keys, and got into his car. The rain was blowing in under the awning. In a real city there’d be taxis or a bus rumbling along. Ben watched Riordan’s car move into the street. Circles. No point then. Right?

Riordan pulled up in front and rolled down his window. “Don’t be a jerk. Get in.”

Ben looked at the rain again, feeling the bottom of his pants already wet, and sprinted to the passenger door.

“You’ve got a short fuse,” Riordan said, pulling out into traffic.

Ben brushed the front of his jacket, damp in patches.

“I liked him, you know. Whatever you think.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. He took out a cigarette and lit it. They were passing
RKO. Only a few blocks, the windshield wipers keeping rhythm. “Everybody did.”

Even as a kid, friends clung to him, following him home. Jokes about the teachers, plans for later. But what had he felt about them? Nothing can lie like a smile. Kaltenbach spoke of him as a hero. But Danny must have filed reports on him, too. Long talks with Liesl’s father—taken down later? Bedtime reading for Riordan. Who must have supplied the lever. Maybe not blackmail, a plot out of
Partners,
just a soft pressure point, and then he was in it. But at least part of him must have wanted to be. Sometimes you stop believing, you go the other way. But when had it happened? Had he enjoyed it? Even justified it to himself—keeping the wolf away from innocent people? But not from everybody. How did it feel, giving Riordan a name?

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Riordan was saying. “It’s a funny thing to say, but I’m glad it’s this way. That he didn’t do it to himself. I’d hate to think that.”

“Just as long as everybody else does.”

Riordan was quiet for a minute. “You’ve got some mouth on you. That’s not even fair. I got it changed.”

Ben rolled down the window and tossed the cigarette. The quick storm had slowed to a light drizzle. “Just up here,” he said.

At the Continental gate they idled behind a white convertible with a canvas top, its tail lights bathing the trunk in neon red. Even the cars were different here, bright pieces of color, not gray jeeps and flatbed convoys. Like waking up in Oz. Maybe it had been that simple, not some blinding light on the road to Damascus. Maybe Danny had just seen a red convertible, an aqua swimming pool, and decided to leave the old world behind.

“Why Bunny?” Ben said suddenly. “Why ask Bunny? Doesn’t Minot know anybody downtown?”

“Picture people. Call comes from the studio, they figure the usual, a dame, maybe high on weed. Something. A congressman calls, they wonder. People talk. And word gets out.” He looked at Ben. “How’d you hear, by the way?”

Ben said nothing, turning back to the gate.

“Right,” Riordan said slowly, doing a sum in his head. “Your pal at the Market. Little Jimmy Olsen.”

“Did Bunny know why?”

Riordan shook his head. “Just a favor.”

“So Danny’s a drunk. Another studio mess. But not a snitch.”

“Snitch. He was your brother. What do you want to beat him up like that for?”

“I beat him up?” Ben said, looking over at Riordan.

“You’re doing it now. What he did—”

“You’re right,” Ben said, tired of it. “Maybe you didn’t, either. Maybe he beat himself up.”

“He didn’t do anything to himself. That’s the point. Somebody else did. So who?”

“Check your files.”

“You didn’t listen before. If I know, it’s too late. Somebody wanted to stop him. It’s somebody he hadn’t told me about yet.”

Ben watched the tail lights pass through.

“We could help each other out,” Riordan said.

Ben turned to him, meeting his eyes.

“That’s what you were looking for in his desk,” he said finally. “Another name.”

“It’s the same one you want, isn’t it?”

H
E WALKED
through the gate and heard music, people singing around a piano. The door of Sound Stage 4 was open, light pouring out onto the wet pavement. To one side, holding an umbrella, Bunny stood watching, his figure oddly poignant, like one of the waifs he used to play, nose pressed against the glass.

He was in a belted raincoat, dressed to go—where? Ben had never imagined him off the lot. But he must have a life somewhere, maybe a house on the beach, a bungalow in one of the canyons. Where he took phone calls at night, doing favors. Something he must have done a
dozen times, just putting things right. A call the police understood, coming from him—studio business, another embarrassment to keep out of the papers. Not asking Riordan why, just holding the favor in his hand like an IOU. Not talking about it, either, certainly not to the unexpected brother, who kept poking at it.

Ben stopped. According to Riordan. It was still a call to the police, not something Bunny would do without knowing why. What had Riordan said to him? Or didn’t he have to say anything?

“It’s stopped raining,” Ben said, coming up to him.

He looked at Ben, distracted, then up at the dark sky and closed the umbrella. “So it has.”

“You’re not going in?”

On the nightclub set everything was still in place, but the gowns had been traded in for ordinary skirts, the men back in casual trousers and V-neck sweaters, even the cocktail glasses replaced by bottles of beer. Platters of food had been set up along the bar.

“No, you don’t want to barge in on a wrap party. Breaks the mood.”

The piano player shifted to a new song, the small knot of singers laughing as they picked it up.

“No fun with the boss around?”

Bunny shook his head. “Ever work on a picture?” he said, smiling a little, his voice distant. “For six weeks, eight weeks, whatever the shoot is—the minute this door closes everything else goes away. Everything. There’s just the crew, what you’re doing that day, getting the take right. That’s all. Like family. Closer. Then it’s over.” He nodded to the set where Rosemary was being lifted onto the bar next to the piano. “And you pretend you’re relieved, but—now what? You don’t want outsiders, not at the end. Well,” he said, catching himself, “listen to me.”

“You must miss it.”

“Well, of course you
miss
it. It’s the whole point. All the rest of it—” He waved his hand. “Remember
Castaway
? My first picture. A hundred years ago. We opened at the Pantages. My first time. I’d never seen anything like it before—the flashbulbs, people yelling your name. I was on the
radio
. And I thought, well, this is all right, this is it. But it
wasn’t. This was it,” he said, looking at the set. “You can get things right. Perfect, sometimes. A perfect take. You can never get things right out here.” He looked down at his watch. “Still, here we are. And I’m late, I’m late,” he said, doing the White Rabbit.

“No rushes tonight?”

“Not tonight,” he said, closing down, moving back into the life Ben knew nothing about, as secret as Danny’s. Ben looked over at him. The one Riordan had called.

“You’re all wet, by the way,” Bunny said, starting to move. “Better get dried off.”

“I got caught. I was having a drink at Lucey’s with a friend of yours.”

Bunny stopped.

“Dennis Riordan.”

Bunny turned, trying to read his face.

“What a busy little bee it is. Buzz, buzz,” he said slowly. “And what did he have to say?”

“Not much. He knew my brother.”

“Oh yes? His nickel or yours?”

“His. A condolence call.”

Bunny took a second, fiddling with the umbrella. “You want to have a care there. You know who he is?”

Ben nodded. “One of Minot’s field hands. Don’t worry, I told him you said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.”

“That’s not funny. What did he ask you?”

“About you? You didn’t come up.”

“Then why did you say he was a friend of mine?”

Ben shrugged. “I figured you’d know everybody on Minot’s staff.”

“Not everybody.”

“We just talked about Danny.”

“Was this after your chat with Rosemary?” Not making a point, just letting him know. “Quite a day for old times.”

Ben hesitated. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why the big mystery? You knew what I was looking for—”

“Tell you what?” Bunny said, then looked away, switching gears. “It wasn’t mine to tell. Yours, either.”

“You said you didn’t know him.”

“I said I’d never met him. I knew who he was. Hard not to, considering.”

“So it must have been a relief.”