Silent Partner

Slimeball’s involved in the cover-up. And I’m off the case. Goddammit, Alex, it makes my adrenals hurt.”

“There are other question marks,” I said. “Your scenario’s based on some kind of hostility between Sharon and Kruse. She was having problems- she told me so at the party. But nothing indicates they were with Kruse. At the time of her death she was still registered as his assistant. She showed up at a party to honor him, Milo. I did see her arguing with that older guy I told you about. But I have no idea who he is.”

“What else?” he said.

“There’s lots of other factors to consider: Belding, Linda Lanier, the blackmailed doctor, whoever he is. And Shirlee, the missing twin- I called Olivia Brickerman, tried to get into the Medi-Cal files. The computer was down. I’m hoping for something soon.”

“Why’re you still pushing that? Even if you find her, you won’t be able to talk to her.”

“Maybe I can find someone who knows her- knew both of them. I don’t believe we’ll ever understand Sharon without knowing more about Shirlee, about the relationship between the two of them. Sharon perceived Shirlee as more than a sister- they were psychological partners, halves of a whole. Twins can develop identity problems. Sharon chose that topic- or something like it- for her doctoral dissertation. Ten to one she was writing about herself.”

That gave him pause.

“Air your dirty laundry and get a Ph.D.? That’s considered kosher?”

“Not at all. But she managed to get around lots of things.”

“Well,” he said, “you go ahead, look for your twin. Just don’t expect too much.”

“What about you?” I said.

“I’ve got another day and a half left before Trapp locks me into some new plum assignment. Seeing as we’re dealing with thirty-five-year-old stuff, there comes to mind someone who might be able to educate us. Someone who was around in those days. Problem is he’s unpredictable, and we’re not exactly good buddies.”

He got up, slapped his thigh. “What the hell, I’ll give it a try, call you tomorrow morning. Meantime, keep reading those books and magazines. Uncle Milo will be giving you a pop quiz when you least expect it.”

22

I spent the rest of the day getting a master’s degree in Leland Belding, starting where I’d left off- the demise of the Senate hearings.

Immediately following his reprimand, the billionaire threw himself into the movie business, renaming his studio Magnafilm, scripting, directing, and producing a string of combat sagas featuring rugged individualist heroes who bucked the establishment and emerged victorious. All were panned by the critics as mechanical and bland. Audiences stayed away.

In 1949 he purchased a Hollywood trade paper, fired the film critic, and installed his own yes man. Bought a string of movie houses and filled them with his product. More losses. In 1950 he went into deeper seclusion than ever and I found only one reference covering the next two years: Magna’s patent application for an aluminum-reinforced girdle that suppressed bulges but heightened jiggle. The device, developed for an actress with a tendency to corpulence, was marketed as the Magna-Corsair. American women didn’t go for it.

In late 1952 he emerged, suddenly a new man- a public Leland Belding, attending premieres and parties, squiring starlets to Ciro’s, Trocadero, the Mocambo. Producing a new string of films- vapid comedies heavy with double entendre.

He moved from his “monastic” apartment at Magna headquarters to an estate in Bel Air. Built himself the world’s most powerful private jet, upholstered in leopard skin and paneled with antique walnut stripped from a centuries-old French chateau that he reduced to rubble.

He bought Old Masters by the truckload, outbid the Vatican for religious treasures plundered from Palestine. Snapped up race horses, jockeys, trainers, an entire racecourse. A baseball team. An entire passenger train which he converted to a moving party pad. He acquired a fleet of custom-made cars: Duesies, Cords, Packards, and Rolls-Royces. The world’s three largest diamonds, auction houses full of antique furniture, more casinos in Vegas and Reno, an assortment of domiciles stretching from California to New York.

For the first time in his life he began contributing to charity- hugely, ostentatiously. Endowing hospitals and scientific research institutions, on condition that they be named after him and staffed by him. He threw lavish balls supporting the opera, the ballet, the symphony.

All the while, he was assembling a harem: actresses, heiresses, ballerinas, beauty queens. The most eligible bachelor had finally come into his own.

On the surface, a radical personality shift. But a Vogue writer, reporting on a bash Belding threw for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, described the billionaire as “standing on the sidelines, unsmiling and fidgety, observing the festivities rather than participating in them. He looked, to these admittedly cynical eyes, like a little lost boy locked in a room full of candy- so much candy that he’s lost his appetite for sweets.”

Given all the partying, I expected to find something about William Houck Vidal. But there was nothing, not even a snapshot, to suggest that the former “management consultant” had participated in the metamorphosis of his boss. The sole mention of Vidal during the early fifties was a quote in a business journal regarding early development of a new fighter bomber. A quote attributed to “W. Houck Vidal, Senior Vice-President and Head of Operations for Magna.”

One man going from businessman to playboy. The other reversing the process. It was as if Belding and Vidal were perched on a psychic teeter-totter.

Switching identities.

Then, in early ’55, all of it stopped.

Belding canceled a gala for the Cancer Society, dropped completely from sight. Then commenced what one magazine called “the greatest rummage sale in history.” The mansions, cars, jewels, and other trappings of princely consumption were sold- at great profit. Even the movie studio- nicknamed Magnaflop- earned millions in real estate appreciation.

The press wondered what Belding’s new “phase” would be. But there was none, and when it became clear that the disappearing act was permanent, coverage grew progressively sketchier until, by the mid- sixties, neither Belding nor Magna was mentioned other than in financial and technical journals.

The sixties: Oswald. Ruby. Hoffman and Rubin. Stokely and Rap. No shortage of actors willing to strip for the camera. No one cared about a rich hermit who’d once made bad movies.

In 1969, Leland Belding’s death was reported “somewhere in California, following a prolonged illness.” In accordance with the bachelor billionaire’s will, a group of former Magna executives assumed leadership of Magna, with the chairman of the board position going to William Houck Vidal.

And that was it. Until 1972, when a former reporter and hack ghostwriter named Seaman Cross produced a book claiming to be the unauthorized biography of Leland Belding. According to Cross, the billionaire had faked his death in order to achieve “true peace.” Now, having meditated in solitude for seventeen years, he’d decided he had something to say to the world and had chosen Cross as his Pepys, granting hundreds of hours of interviews for a proposed book before abruptly changing his mind and calling off the project.

Cross went ahead and completed the book anyway, titling it The Basket-Case Billionaire and obtaining a “strong six-figure advance.” During its very brief life, it had caused a furor.

Not my kind of stuff. I hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time. But I ate it up now, didn’t put it down until I finished.

Cross’s thesis was that a personal tragedy during the early fifties- a tragedy Belding refused to discuss but which Cross guessed was romantic- had plunged the young billionaire into a manic playboy phase, followed by serious mental collapse and several years of convalescence in a private mental hospital. The man who