They surveyed the scene before them. Hope continued with his jokes. The audience sat there, responding obediently. The aisles were empty. In the corners and along the back of the auditorium, seat-fillers loitered. Up front, the orchestra began their next number.
Margaret pointed out a skinny young man wearing a pink rose boutonnière. He quickly stood to make room for a man returning to his seat.
“Who is that?” Charlie asked.
“Can’t tell,” Margaret said. “Should I check?” Charlie nodded.
She edged past him and exited the auditorium.
Outside in the hall, Margaret stood nervously for a second.
It was entirely possible that their foes intended to take the file and kill her friend Sheryl Ann Gold. But despite their precautions and plans for the night, it was clear that their enemies’ response would depend on their own—and their friends’—ability to ad lib.
Margaret walked down the hall and up a few steps into a control room in the back of the theater. She opened up a heavy door to see a producer with a headset and a map looking out to the audience.
“Richard Widmark leaving his seat, copy,” he said, glancing down at the map. “Row fourteen, seat H, gamma sector. Row one-four, seat H, as in hotel.”
“Copy,” said a voice from the radio.
Margaret took a step closer to the man. “You’re sending out the seat-fillers.”
The man jumped, startled. He looked at Margaret, quickly assessed that she was a harmless rich lady, and returned his attention to the audience.
“Yes, ma’am, our scouts sit up front and watch who’s getting up, and we have four teams scattered throughout so the odds of a pan to the audience showing an empty seat are close to nil—”
He was interrupted by a call on his walkie-talkie. Margaret noted he had several devices for communication—a headset, two walkie-talkies, and probably more.
“Shirley Jones is on the move,” the voice crackled.
“Copy that,” said the man, scanning his seating chart. “That’s row twenty, two-zero, seat B, as in bravo, also gamma sector, Carlos.”
“Copy,” said Carlos.
“This is so cool!” Margaret said.
The man smiled, happy to be appreciated and gushed over.
“You’re single-handedly making sure that there aren’t any empty seats!” she said, really selling the notion that this constituted an achievement. “Are a lot of people out of their seats?”
“Nah,” he said with false modesty, motioning toward a handwritten list on a legal pad. “A couple dozen so far.”
Margaret walked over and looked down at the list. She scanned the names, then tapped the pad twice with her finger, seeing one that she recognized, one that made sense.
“First time at the Oscars?” he asked, but she was already gone, the door slowly closing behind her.
Chapter Twenty-SixSanta Monica, California
April 1962
“Let’s split up,” Margaret whispered.
She and Charlie stood in the hall out of earshot of the ushers.
“You don’t think we should wait for them to come to us,” Charlie clarified.
“We need to get the drop on them,” she said. “They have Sheryl Ann, and they think they have the file—the only advantage we have right now is the element of surprise. They think we’re meekly waiting for them.”
“We don’t know where they are,” Charlie said. “We don’t even know who is a part of this, other than your speculation based on a name you saw on the seat-filler list.”
“That’s my point,” Margaret said. “We need to figure it out. Back here in ten?”
Charlie nodded and they began walking in opposite directions.
The loudspeakers in the hall continued to broadcast the events onstage. Shelley Winters, who’d won a Best Supporting Actress award two years before for her performance in The Diary of Anne Frank, presented the award for Best Cinematography together with Vince Edwards—television’s Ben Casey. It struck Margaret as crass to have Winters—who’d donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank House—alongside some cheesy TV doctor, but then again, Hollywood was crass. Ben Casey made as much sense on that stage as Howdy Doody or Mr. Ed. These people were acting. They were paid to pretend. None of it was real.
Margaret continued down the hall.
There—in the distance, near a scrum of photographers waiting to enter the auditorium—was Manny Fontaine walking solo. She followed him back into the auditorium as the audience seemed to suddenly tense up. A young man had jumped onto the stage and grabbed the microphone, interrupting Edwards and Winters.
“I’m the world’s most famous gate-crasher,” he said, “and I just came here to present Bob Hope with his 1938 trophy.” He plunked down on the podium a miniature faux Oscar, the kind a tourist might purchase at a souvenir shop. Except for some gasps, the audience was silent.
“We’ll give it to him,” said Winters, trying to end the awkward moment, which was compounded by the gate-crasher’s unfounded confidence that anyone found this remotely amusing or charming.
Margaret hadn’t noticed much security around that night. There were a couple of boys in blue out front, and a private auditorium guard had surveyed the stars as they walked in. But now, with the gate-crasher on the stage, a dozen men—some in uniform, most not—appeared and rushed out to remove him. Margaret was pushed forward and collided with several seat-fillers and Fontaine himself. He turned to see who had rammed into him, then did a double take. To avoid being crushed as the crowd continued to bunch up at the corner of stage right, Fontaine walked up the stairs onto the stage and then behind the curtain, out of view.
“Crazy, huh?” Margaret said, right behind him.
Fontaine shot her a look. “Where’s the real file?” he asked, dropping all pretense and barely concealing his rage.
Charlie made his way to the opposite end of the hall. No sign of Fontaine or anyone who might be involved. He opened a door marked NO ENTRY, revealing an industrial stairwell with worn steel railings and a buzzing fluorescent light. He entered, and the door closed behind him, but before it could snap shut a Santa Monica Police cadet burst in. He moved his right hand to his
