him. “If it was Lana Turner, I’d be on the phone to you.”
“If it was Lana, you’d be fucking the corpse. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Nice. And all those years in school. You going to write this up or what?”
“A Polack goes in the ditch? My Pulitzer.” He turned back to Ben. “Funny seeing you here.”
“Friend lives down there,” Ben said, cocking his head toward the houses. “Another refugee.”
“Some refugee. You know what these go for?”
“I guess he got his money out.” Ben moved slightly to the left, blocking Kelly’s view of his car.
“I was going to call you.”
“Yes?” Ben said, alarmed. Now what? A new scent? Maybe not just some gossip this time. Now there were worse secrets, the kind that could spread like a stain, touching other people. Things he wouldn’t want Kelly to overhear at Lucey’s.
“Get anywhere with the loan-outs?”
Ben shook his head. “I thought you were giving up on it.”
“Yeah,” said Kelly. “Too bad, though. You hate to leave it, there’s a studio angle. Sometimes it’s like this with a story. It goes and then it comes back. Never close a door.” He held up a finger and smiled. “You know where I got that? Partners in Crime. Remember how Frank always said that?”
Otto’s pet phrase. After he started working for Goebbels.
“Which one were you?” Kelly said. “The younger one?”
“Neither. It’s a movie.”
Kelly nodded, unconvinced. “Well, you hear anything, you know where to reach me.”
“You’re the first call.”
He put the car in a U-turn away from the accident and started back down the hill.
“What was that all about? He’s going to write this up?” Lasner said.
“The only story was, she was related to you, so there’s no story.”
“You forgot to mention it, huh?”
“Mrs. Lasner doesn’t need to see this in the papers. I know what it’s like.”
Lasner looked over at him. “You’re a piece of work. You’re here, what, five minutes? And already you know guys on the paper. Not to mention the goddam Palisades.” They were passing Feuchtwanger’s house, dark now. “Thanks for this,” Lasner said, serious. He was quiet for a minute as they turned onto Sunset, heading back. “It’s a hell of a life, when you think about it. Hiding like an animal. The camp. Now this. To do something like this.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Ben said quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“What she went through, it breaks something. You can’t fix it. Not just like that.”
“What did she say to you? At dinner. She talk about it?”
“No,” Ben said, avoiding it. “She was sad, Sol. Nothing was going to change that.”
“You give her all this,” Lasner said, glancing out the window, brooding. “You know the best thing that ever happened to me? Getting the hell out. Everybody should have got out. Even now, you want to kiss the ground here. What kind of life could you have there? This country-”
He broke off, as if the thought had overwhelmed him. Ben followed his gaze out the side window, trying to see what he was seeing, the big, sleepy houses and palms and hedges of paradise.
“She asks, tell Fay it was an accident.”
But he didn’t have to say anything. When they pulled into the driveway Fay came running out of the house, and Ben could tell from her face that calls had been made and nothing needed to be explained. Behind her, like a shadow, Bunny stood in the doorway, evidently summoned to wait with her. She hugged Lasner, then put her hands on his chest, smoothing his jacket, a hovering gesture.
“Are you all right?” she said. “Did you eat anything?” she said, her hands still on his jacket. “Come on, I’ll get you something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“And then you’re weak. It puts a strain.” She patted his chest. “Come on. It was bad?”
Lasner said nothing, moving one of his shoulders.
“Her face, too?”
“No.”
She shook her head a little, relieved. “You know she was beautiful. Before everything started. You can’t see it now, but she was.” She took his arm to lead him into the house. Bunny stepped aside.
“And where the hell were you?” Lasner said, not really angry.
“Out.”
“Out.”
“Even the maid gets a night off. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow. Fay said cremation?”
Lasner nodded.
“What shape’s the car in?”
“Scrap, probably.” He pulled a receipt out of his pocket. “Here’s where they tow it.”
“Anybody there from the papers? You want me to-?”
“Ben took care of it,” Lasner said, giving him a thank-you wave.
Bunny hesitated for a moment. “Ah. See you tomorrow then. You want an obit?”
“Who would read it? Who did she know?”
“It’s a question of respect,” Fay said, then to Bunny, “I’ll get you the dates. She was in a few pictures over there. You think they’d be interested in those?”
“They always cut something,” Bunny said, evasive. “But we’ll see.”
He watched them go in, then came over to Ben.
“German silents. From the ’twenties. Just what the papers want.” He looked at Ben. “Who’d you talk to?”
“Kelly from the Examiner. Don’t worry, they already had this one as an accident. You don’t have to make any calls.”
Bunny held his stare, not answering, then said, “How’s Mr. L doing?”
“He’s all right. It’s more the idea of it. He scarcely knew her.”
“Neither of them. I don’t think she said ten words. Except to you.”
Ben glanced up at the big picture window where she’d looked out over what had been bean fields. “She knew my father. It took her back.”
He drove to the Hollywood Hills, his head filled with the grainy clips in Hal’s cutting room. Why did some survive and some break? But maybe it was only a matter of degree. Nobody was the same after. Only the mindless, or the callous, could pretend nothing had happened. The others would feel the weight of it, pressing on them, until they accepted it, part of the air, or it got worse and they drove away from it. Still, why the car? Maybe because it was the one way it wouldn’t have happened there-not gas or starvation, what they used, your own choice.
Liesl was on the couch, smoking, her legs drawn up under her, a script in her lap. When he walked in, she drew on the cigarette, deliberately not saying anything.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t call.”
“I play a daughter,” she said, picking up the script. “So it’s good for me. Something I know.” Not asking where he’d been.
He went over to the tray on the side table and poured a drink.
“She takes care of him, but now she has to go away. So I can just think of my father. What that would be like.”
“You didn’t wait, I hope.”
“No. Daniel would do it sometimes-not come. So I know, don’t wait.” She put out the cigarette. “Of course I thought he was working. That’s all I thought then.”
“There was an accident. I had to take Lasner. Remember the cousin at dinner?”
“What happened?”
“Car crash. Near Lion’s, in fact. I saw him. When they pulled her out.”
“You mean she’s dead?”
Ben nodded. “She went into the canyon. Probably killed when she hit, that kind of drop.”
