I had not been in this office for forty-two years, and the sight in front of me—much like the rest of the studio that day—was both different and familiar. Where Benjamin’s office had been cheerfully untidy, papers falling off desks and scripts piled high, his grandson’s was perfectly neat. There was not a loose scrap of paper anywhere, not a thing out of place. Benjamin’s office had been a place of excitement and activity. Josh’s office lacked that comfort, that casual reality; it was as if the space existed merely for show, and no actual work was conducted there.
He waved me to one of the chairs that faced his desk, then lit a cigarette and sat down. I glanced at the pictures on the walls—there was one of him with Frank Sinatra, another with Susan Hayward, and a shot of him, leering, with Sophia Loren.
“You have worked with some true stars,” I ventured, not knowing what else to say.
“Yes, I’ve been lucky.” His voice, however, suggested nothing of the sort, and I realized that he truly believed his enviable position had come about through his own work and skill. He took a long drag on his cigarette, blew out a mouthful of smoke, and leaned forward. “Listen, Nakayama. I’m sorry about all that down there. It wasn’t fair of me to put you through that when I already knew what the result was going to be.”
I cupped my hands over my knees and looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck and continued.
“I think you know that I’ve been asking around about you. I did check out a couple of your old films, and Nick was right, you were great. But success in those old movies doesn’t mean that someone can hold their own in the movies of today, you know what I mean? So I wanted to get a better sense of who you were and what you were like to work with. And I ended up uncovering a lot of other stuff too.”
My heart began to race, but I didn’t speak. Dreyfus took another drag of his cigarette.
“When Nick reminded me of the Tyler murder, I realized I had heard your name before—my grandfather mentioned it when I was a kid, and I knew there was some connection. But I didn’t know that you’d actually worked with Tyler or that you knew the actresses involved with the murder case. When I found that out, I figured it might be worth my while to look into things a little more deeply.” He tapped his ashes into an ashtray on his desk. “Then I started hearing all these theories about the murder— Elizabeth Banks’ drug dealer, Nora Niles’ mother, maybe even Nora herself. I asked the archive guys to dig up everything they could on the case, and they came back with a lot, mostly from my granddad’s old papers.” He took another drag and blew out a mouthful of smoke. “Apparently, Elizabeth Banks was on the outs when Tyler was killed, and Nora Niles wasn’t the surefire box office draw that everyone had expected, not to mention that her mother was a pain in the ass—so no one was going to stand and catch them when they started to fall. But there’s much more to the story than that.”
“Mr. Dreyfus,” I said, “I really don’t—”
“Let me finish.” He sounded more eager now, and I was growing uncomfortable. “Nora Niles’ mother wrote a letter to Leonard Stillman about two months after the murder. Without saying anything too overt, she practically admitted that she killed Tyler. Did you know that?”
I cleared my throat. “About Mrs. Cole? No. Well, I rather suspected.”
Dreyfus seemed to find this amusing; he smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the other part. Because the other thing she said was that she’d been furious with Tyler because she thought he’d gotten Nora pregnant. Did you know that?”
I shook my head no.
“Well. Nora was pregnant, and her mother thought that Tyler was the father, and it was only after he was already dead that she discovered it wasn’t him.” He paused, eyes bright with excitement. “She said it was you, Nakayama. She said that you got Nora pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I still can’t quite believe it.”
I looked away, trying to formulate some kind of explanation. But Dreyfus kept on talking.
“I might have just dismissed it as the rant of some crazy woman out to ruin your career, which I guess she did—she threatened to go public with the whole thing if Perennial hired you again. Then the archive boys dug up Gerard Normandy’s journal, and it turns out he knew that Nora was pregnant, because Tyler, or whatever the bastard’s name really was, told him before he was killed. He also told Normandy who the father was.” He stopped here, whistled, and crushed out his cigarette. “Boy, was Normandy hot at you! You’re the one who couldn’t keep your pants on, and it’s Tyler who got killed, and Tyler wouldn’t have touched Nora anyway cause he was a flaming queer.” He shook his head in wonder. “You almost brought the house down, Jun—the director, two actresses, not to mention yourself—and the whole town had to deal with the aftermath.”
I looked down; I didn’t bother to deny it. For while the truth sounded more lurid coming out of Dreyfus’ mouth, it was still, undeniably, the truth. All of my efforts to keep it at bay had come, in the end, to nothing. It was there, it had always been there, and now it had finally come to light. I had not been able to keep the errors of my past concealed, as I had hoped. I had not been able to keep them from myself.
“You were at the heart of a murder mystery,” Dreyfus said, not noticing my discomfort. “You had a
