up a slow night. I wouldn’t let this get to you. You believe what you want, but my guess? He was plastered and tripped.” He nodded toward the brandy bottle on the counter.
“Then why are you watching the building? If that’s all it was?”
“Look, why have a separate place anyway? Under a different name. They got him as Collins downstairs. All right, he’s seeing somebody on the side. Not a one-night stand, a longer-term thing. Still, why not a hotel? Unless they don’t want to be seen in public, take that chance. Maybe she’d be recognized. So who is she? I’m wondering about this and then something funny happens. I know the cops wrote it up as a jump, I was here, but when I’m doing the story the next morning they got it as an accident. How come the change? That’s when I get interested, because that kind of change, the only people in this town get favors like that are the studios. So I figure there’s a story.”
“Why would a studio do that for Danny?”
“Him? They wouldn’t. Anyway, he was a goner. They look to the living. And now what do we find?” He looked around at the clean apartment. “Nobody was ever here. But she must have been. And she must have been more than a fuck.”
Ben looked at him, sorting it out. “You don’t know any of this,” he said finally.
“You’d rather have him as a jumper?”
Ben said nothing.
“Maybe we could help each other out.”
“How?”
“You’re family. Go through his stuff. If he’s seeing somebody, he has to call her. There must be a number somewhere.”
“So you can find her and put her in the paper,” Ben said, thinking of Liesl reading it.
“If she’s in pictures, it’s a story. Don’t you want to know?”
“Seen enough?” Ben said, ducking it, starting to leave.
“I’ll do the legwork. That’s what I do,” the kid said, a half grin on his face, playing reporter, the kind he’d seen in the movies. “I just need a number.” He took a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Ben. “Day or night.”
Ben looked at it. Tim Kelly, a name you’d forget without a card.
“What if she isn’t in pictures?” he said. “Just a secretary or something?”
“A secretary-and he gets a place like this?” Kelly said, breezy, still in character. “Then I’d like to fuck her myself.”
Ben stood beside Liesl and Hans Ostermann at the funeral, the immediate family. Around and behind them, all in black, the emigre community sweltered in old high collars, hats with veils, mourning clothes that belonged in the drizzle and cloudy skies of Middle Europe. Thomas Mann had come, a courtesy to Liesl’s father, and Ben recognized a few others-Lion Feuchtwanger, slicked-back hair and eager eyes behind rimless glasses; Brecht, rumpled and smelling of cheap cigars. They were standing in front of the plain marble wall where Danny’s box of ashes would be placed. The rest of the cemetery was more elaborate, carved headstones and obelisks and flamboyant tombs from the 1920s. Valentino was somewhere over to the left. Beyond the cypresses and the high wall, Ben could see the water tower of the Paramount back lot, as close as Danny would ever get now.
There were Americans, too-people from the studio, glancing at their watches, expected back-and while they all waited, Ben wondered what made it so easy to tell them apart. Not just the clothes or the haircuts, maybe something in the way they held themselves, an attitude. Or maybe, like Tim Kelly, everyone here slipped naturally into a part, hitting marks under the giant arc lamp. Wasn’t he? The grieving brother. Liesl, the stoic widow, dry-eyed behind her dark glasses, leaning on Ostermann, all formal Weimar dignity, as publicly correct as the other Mann. Ben saw that Polly Marks had come, keeping close to a man in a double-breasted suit whom Ben assumed was Herb Yates. Who were all the others? Ben looked at the faces, bored or genuinely sad, and realized again that he knew nothing about Danny’s life.
He was still scanning the crowd when he caught someone doing the same thing-a man in a gray suit standing near the edge, looking at faces methodically, as if he were counting. When he met Ben’s eyes he didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed, just looked, then moved on. Ben stayed on him, watching him fix on Ostermann, then on the others, each in turn. What part was he playing? Not from the studio, certainly not an emigre. Holding a hat in his hand, like a policeman.
He heard a crunch of tires and turned to see a black Packard pulling up. The others had had to park near the gates. A driver hopped out to open the doors. First a little man Ben didn’t know, then Alma Mahler, making her entrance. She was dressed for a Viennese funeral the emperor himself might have attended, long black silk with a sizable hat, and without hesitation made her way to the front of the crowd. Ben watched her approach, fascinated. Everybody’s mistress, now broadened and grown outward, a kind of pouter pigeon effect, but still turning heads. She put her hand on Liesl’s arm as she took her place near the family, then nodded to Ben, her eyes interested, someone new.
Her arrival seemed to give permission to start: a man went to the wall and turned to face them, opening his hands. Ben had been told there would be a rabbi, but his dark suit was like all the others and the service was so secular, no religion specified, that Ben wondered if the cemetery had rules about who could be buried there. Judenrein. He looked at the flowers, bouquets, and wreaths with long name ribbons in the German style, then at the open square where they would put the box. After which everyone could move on. He felt Liesl next to him, holding herself erect, getting through it. What would Kelly find, a tabloid love triangle, with pictures of the Cherokee nest? Bury him. Why not a tipsy fall? What difference did it make?
“Heinrich Kaltenbach will say a few words.”
The little man who’d come with Alma opened a piece of paper, then closed it, visibly upset, his round face drawn.
“Only a few, not a speech,” he said, his accent thick, uncomfortable. “I speak also for Alma and Franz, for many of us here. There is for us a great debt. We owe this man our lives. He came with us. On foot. Only a little farther, he would say. To the border. You remember, Alma?” he said, looking at her, waiting for her nod, a little drama. “And you know what she’s carrying, in the suitcase? The manuscript. Bruckner’s Fourth. So not just lives, culture, he’s saving culture. For this everybody owes him. Please, if you don’t mind,” he said, then switched into German, his speech picking up pace, fluent now.
The Americans stood respectfully, trying not to look blank, but for the Germans it was a release, something real after the generic service, with the heft of language. Ben looked at them. Just the sound could take them back- the lucky ones, the ones who’d left. But what choice had there been? If they had stayed, they’d be dead. Like Otto. Ashes, too.
His mind wandered, the sound of German fading into the background, overheard but not distinct, as if it were coming up the stairs from one of his father’s parties. Danny would be down in the kitchen, sneaking drinks from the indulgent staff.
He froze. He looked at the marble wall, seeing Danny as a teenager, his head over a toilet bowl, retching, swearing he’d never touch brandy again. And never did. An almost allergic reaction, not his drink at all. But there was the bottle sitting on the counter at the Cherokee, suggestive. A prop. Which meant someone had put it there.
Ben felt a prickling on his neck. Someone else in the room. The door had been locked-the police had needed a passkey. But there could have been another, a duplicate to lock the door behind you. Without thinking, he turned, looking back at the crowd for the man in the gray suit. Near the edge, still watching, like someone on duty. But why come to the funeral if you’d already filed it as an accident? Case closed. Unless it wasn’t. His mind darted to the stairs, the alley, trying to work out the logistics, as if somehow that would make it all plausible. But how could it be? Could someone really have killed him? Why? Why were people murdered? Jealousy. Revenge. Because they were in the way. In stories, not in real life. Then he thought of the film clips waiting to be assembled at Continental. Why. Millions and millions for no reason at all.
Kaltenbach finished, the sudden quiet like a touch to Ben’s shoulder. His eyes went to the rabbi, placing the box in the square, then handing Liesl a flower to put with it. She stood still for a second, then took Ben’s hand, drawing him with her to the wall. He was given another flower and then, as if it had been rehearsed, they put them in together, one on each side of the box. When she finished she gave Ben a weak smile, her eyes confused, still not
