An Inconvenient Woman (57 page)

In a corner of the room, also disguised with dark glasses and a head scarf, was Rose Cliveden. Her hands were still bandaged from the burns she had suffered when her bed caught on fire. She had refused to go to the clinic in Palm Springs, as suggested by her friends, but, after meeting with Philip Quennell, she had agreed to go to AA meetings for two or three weeks. On this particular morning, he had promised to meet her there at the log cabin, as he guaranteed that she was unlikely to see anyone she knew, as she might at one of the more fashionable meetings in Beverly Hills, but, to her annoyance, he had not appeared. She could not relate to any of the stories told by any of the people who had shared their experiences. “I have nothing in common with any of these people,” she thought to herself, as she gathered her bag and prepared to leave.

It was then, while she was slowly walking out of the frightful little room, as she later described it, that the woman
called Fleurette began to speak. Rose was already at the door, tiptoeing out, when it suddenly dawned on her, when she heard the words
gangster
and
President of the United States
, that Fleurette, with the dark glasses and the good-looking suit, was none other than the infamous and notorious Flo March, who had brought such unhappiness to the life of Pauline Mendelson. Riveted, she stared at her.

“My God,” thought Rose. “That’s the same woman I saw outside the church talking to Jules at Hector Paradiso’s funeral last year. And the one from Jules’s funeral.” As if she were in a theater at a play, where the second act suddenly began to show more promise than the first act had, she tiptoed back to the seat that she had abandoned and sat, rapt, throughout Flo March’s sharing.

Philip Quennell, who regularly attended the early-morning meetings at the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard, arrived very late that morning. An unexpected telephone call from Lonny Edge, complaining bitterly about a description of himself that had appeared in Hortense Madden’s account in
Mulholland
of his possession of the manuscript of Basil Plant’s supposedly unfinished novel, had caused the owners of the bungalow where he lived on Cahuenga Boulevard to serve notice that he must vacate the premises by the first of the month.

“On what grounds?” Philip asked.

“They said the article insinuated that I was using my apartment for purposes of prostitution. I mean, I only turn a couple of tricks a week in my apartment. Most of my work I do elsewhere, in my clients’ homes. But I don’t exactly want to go to court over it, if you know what I mean,” said Lonny.

“Listen, Lonny. I have to be somewhere. I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back later,” said Philip.

“You giving me the runaround, Philip? You’re the one who got me into all this about that fucking manuscript that was just sitting on my table peaceably for three years, until you came along and began stirring things up.”

“No, I’m not giving you the runaround, Lonny. I just promised somebody I’d be somewhere. I’ll call you later.”

Philip arrived at the meeting as it was breaking up.

“I’m so sorry, Rose,” he said, when he saw her. Knowing how spoiled she was, he expected her either to have left or to be in a foul mood with him for suggesting that she meet him
on Robertson Boulevard at seven o’clock in the morning and then not showing up. “I had a sort of emergency telephone call that I had to attend to. How did the meeting go? At least you stayed to the end.”

“Darling, it was fascinating, absolutely fascinating!” said Rose. He had never seen her so animated, except when she was drunk. “You have no idea what you missed. You won’t
believe
who spoke.”

“Who?” asked Philip, confused by her enthusiasm.

“Flo March!” she said.

Philip, surprised, looked at her.

“She’s the one who was Jules Mendelson’s mistress,” said Rose, in explanation. “My dear, the things she said! I’m
sick
you weren’t here.”

“Rose, would you like to go out for a cup of coffee with me,” said Philip. “We have to talk.”

“Oh, no, I can’t, darling. I have things to do,” she said. “But I’ll be back tomorrow. Every morning. It’s fascinating. Better than the movies. Why didn’t you tell me it’s so fascinating?”

“Listen, Rose. You do know, don’t you, that what you hear in these rooms must never leave these rooms,” said Philip.

“What does that mean?” asked Rose.

“It means that you mustn’t discuss what you’ve heard here, or tell the names of any of the people you might have seen here. That’s why it’s called Anonymous.”

“Oh, darling, my lips are sealed,” said Rose. She could not take her eyes off Flo and squinted to better take her in. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she? You’d never know she was only a waitress, would you? See you tomorrow, darling. Love to Camilla. Big hug.” She blew Philip a kiss and ran off.

Flo was surrounded by people. Unused to such friendliness, she smiled nervously as she accepted their thanks for her sharing with them. Several people offered to give her their telephone numbers. When she looked up, she was glad to see Philip standing there.

“Oh, Philip,” she said, breaking away.

“Hello, Flo,” he said.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Of course, I’m not mad at you.”

“You were the last time I saw you. I was afraid you’d given up on me.”

“Never,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m delighted you came back.”

“I looked for you earlier, but I didn’t see you.”

“I just got here. I was very late.”

“Philip, I raised my hand,” she said, proudly. “I actually spoke up at a meeting for the first time.”

“I heard. I’m sorry I missed you. How do you feel?”

“Wonderful. Everyone was so nice.”

“What made you come back today? What made you speak up for the first time?”

“Something happened,” she said. She looked up at him. Although he could not see her eyes through her dark glasses, he felt that something was wrong.

“Would you want to go out for a cup of coffee and talk?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I’d rather you came up to my house for a cup of coffee. I want to show you something.”

Inside her house, she showed him the note, the gun, and the splintered plate glass window.

“Good God,” he said. “Did you get a look at the car?”

“I think it was a Rolls-Royce. I peeked out those curtains at it. It was eerie. Two men sat in the front seat with the motor running and the lights on and just stared at the house. I think the car was gold, or some shade of yellow,” she said.

“I’ll tell you who has a gold Rolls-Royce,” said Philip.

“Who?”

“Arnie Zwillman. I saw it one night at Casper Stieglitz’s house, when Jules and Pauline were there.”

Flo shivered. “Arnie Zwillman?”

“Do you know him?”

“He tried to get Jules to launder money,” she said. “When Jules turned him down, he called the State Department and told them something about Jules that had happened years ago in Chicago that I can’t tell you about, and the State Department told Jules, just an hour before his heart attack here, that he wasn’t going to get the job as head of the American commission to Brussels.”

“Were you planning to put all that in your book?” asked Philip.

Flo, embarrassed, nodded. “That’s the kind of stuff my collaborator is interested in.”

“You’re playing with fire, Flo. You must know that. Arnie Zwillman is not a swell guy.”

“I’m broke, Philip. I need bucks. My pool man quit. The telephone company is dunning me. That third-rate actor who owns this house wants me out. I don’t have any choice.”

“And Pauline won’t help?”

“You must be kidding.”

“Let me ask you a question, Flo. If you had the money that Jules wanted to leave you, would you still be writing this book?”

“Of course not,” said Flo.

“That’s what I wanted to hear you say,” said Philip. “You wouldn’t mind if I interfered a little bit in my own private way, would you?”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you that yet. Trust me.”

As Philip was leaving, Flo followed him to the door. “You wouldn’t want to move in here with me, would you, Philip? No strings attached. Not like it was between us at the Chateau Marmont. You in that room. Me in here.”

“Somehow I don’t think that would go over very well with Camilla,” said Philip, smiling.

Flo laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

“It’s nice to see you laugh, Flo.”

“Before I used to be afraid because there was no money anymore. Now I’m just afraid.”

At the same time that Philip was with Flo, Rose Cliveden called Pauline Mendelson, whom she hadn’t spoken to since her outburst over lunch at the Los Angeles Country Club. “My dear, I have the most riveting thing to tell you,” she said. “You won’t believe who spoke at an AA meeting this morning.”

Late that night, Flo couldn’t sleep. She got up and drove to the Hughes Market on Beverly Boulevard. As she pushed her shopping cart through the aisles, she stopped to stare at the gallon bottles of Soave wine, but she kept moving and bought twelve cans of Diet Coke instead. Ahead of her, standing at the magazine counter, was Lonny Edge. When he looked up from the magazine he was reading and saw her, he grinned his wide grin, the grin that buyers of his pornographic videos found so beguiling.

“Hi, Flo,” he said.

“Hi,” she answered.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Lonny said.

Flo smiled.

Lonny waved the magazine in her direction. “Last time I saw you here, you were on the cover of
Mulholland
, and now I’m
in
the magazine. Have you read this about me?”

“No.”

“I’ll treat you to a copy. They’re trying to kick me out of my building because of this article.”

“Really? What’s the article about?”

“This manuscript I have that turns out to be the lost manuscript of Basil Plant. That famous writer who cooled a couple of years ago?”

“I always heard you had his manuscript, way back in the Viceroy Coffee Shop days. Curly told me that. Why would they kick you out of your apartment because of that?”

“The dame who wrote it makes it sound as if I turn tricks there, and the manager of the building has been dying to get rid of me for a long time, and he’s using this magazine for an excuse. Like I’m giving his dump of a building a bad name.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Turn tricks in your apartment?”

“Hell, no, I don’t. Just a couple of my regulars. Otherwise, I go out. Anyway, I want to get out of that kind of business. I’m over thirty now. Time to get serious about my life.”

“Well, we’ve all got our problems, Lonny,” said Flo, moving her shopping cart past him.

“I don’t know where the hell I’m going to move to. I’ve lived in that bungalow ever since I came to this town.”

Flo stopped and looked back at him. An idea came into her head, which she then rejected. “Good luck in finding a place,” she said.

Flo’s Tape #24

“After Jules died, when Cyril Rathbone’s article in
Mulholland
magazine came out about me, with my picture on the cover—oh God!—Archbishop Cooning started to give these sermons every Sunday from the pulpit of Saint Vibiana’s. Oh, my, the things that he said about him! Poor Jules. He said Jules corrupted my morals. When I was a kid back in parochial school, we used to hear about Archbishop Cooning, only he was just Bishop Cooning then. He was always carrying on about virginity and stuff like that, saving yourself for marriage, ha ha ha. We were all scared of him, but the nuns thought he was great, especially Sister Andretta
.

“
Which brings me to Cyril. I always knew he was vile. Jules hated him. And Pauline did too. And yet, I put my fate in his hands. That was a mistake, one of my many mistakes. Any vestige of sympathy I might have received from Pauline over Jules’s estate, I lost when I said that Cyril Rathbone was going to write my book. I mean, just from that article he wrote about me in
Mulholland,
I should have known. When facts failed, he just embellished his accounts with whatever came into his head
.

“
I didn’t tell him everything. Some of it I held back. The part about Kippie Petworth, for instance. For about five minutes I had the upper hand in the situation, with the information about Kippie that I had learned from Lonny, that he was the one who killed Hector Paradiso. But when I met with Pauline, I saw the look of terror in her eyes when I approached the subject of Kippie. I mean, terror. And I backed down. I didn’t press my advantage. Like I felt sorry for Pauline Mendelson, this rich lady who’d had every whim of her whole life attended to
.

“
I’d like to have had that out with Jules, about Kippie. That he hid the kid out in my house, and I was there squeezing orange juice for him. I don’t think Jules should have done that to me. But people like that, Jules and Pauline and their whole crowd, they really didn’t think the rules applied to them
.”

T
he death of Jules Mendelson was a great sorrow to Dudley. He felt that never again would he be able to serve so great or so kind an employer. He had been generously provided for in Jules’s will, and had also received a handwritten letter from Jules, delivered after his death by Sims Lord, asking him to stay on with Mrs. Mendelson at Clouds, for which there would be a substantial added remuneration for each year he remained in her employ. The muffled scandal of Jules Mendelson’s love affair was a thing that Dudley chose to overlook, as if it had not happened. When pejorative remarks about the great man’s behavior came to his ears, and a great many had, he faced his informer with a look of such hauteur that it silenced further discourse on the subject and caused the informer to retreat in shame. It was, he felt, up to him to see that there was no lessening of the established standards of the house.