Silence at the table. No one looked at me.
“Of course, we’re sorry,” Ethan said finally, matter-of-factly. “We’re not barbarians.”
“Really, Miss Ferber,” Tony said. His bloodshot eyes clouded over. “That’s all we’ve been talking about.” But then he bristled. “You’re a little unfair.”
“Really?”
Liz crossed her arms and muttered under her breath. She’d dabbed some whitish powder on her face, covered it with rose-tinted blush, and in the dim light, she looked garish, a platinum-blonde geisha girl gone to seed. A smear of red lipstick blotted a front tooth, giving her a jack-o’-lantern look. “Max ruined all of our careers,” she said.
“Come on, Liz,” Ethan pleaded.
She pouted. “It’s true, Ethan. Dammit. You know it. Me and Tony. Tony was a bright, clever comic.
Variety
mentioned him once. Max booked him into fleabag venues.”
Ethan held up his hand and said to me, “Tony forgot to show up for work.” Then to Liz, “You know that. The drinking. He took Lenny’s death…it got to him. And let me remind you that Tony was the one who fired Max.”
“There was a reason,” Tony blustered. “When Alice married Max…”
Liz barreled on. “What about me? I quit but he’d already really
dropped
me, you know. I could have had bigger parts, but he kept saying this was wrong, that was wrong. He said he took me on as a favor to you two. Baloney!”
Ethan was shaking his head back and forth. “Now’s not the time.”
“And you too, Ethan. You wanted to be famous. He wouldn’t circulate your script. He said it was lame. Remember.”
Ethan glanced at me and his eyes twinkled. “‘Lame’ is a gentle word for my script, Miss Ferber. Like every other person in this town, I came to Hollywood to make my fortune. A passing dream. But it won’t be from scenarios, I’m afraid.” He smiled. “Real estate, though not this lovely bar.” He waved his hand across the dim room. “Numbers for me—not words. And he was right about you, Liz.” He drew his lips into a cruel, razor-sharp line. “You have no talent.”
She screamed. “How dare you! You…use…Tony. You made him believe all kinds of nonsense. You made him—angry all the time. You, dammit.” She stifled a sob.
Tony patted her wrist. “Oh, Christ! Leave her alone, Ethan. Ruin one life at a time, okay? You want to hear my theory about Max, Miss Ferber? I’ll tell you. It’s something Liz and I talked about earlier. Alice killed him. Just like she killed our brother. She’s not that cheerful lady I seen you with here last night. Little miss housewife out with the girls. Lenny was going to divorce her, so she pushed him over a railing. And Max knew it. She shot
him
before she got here.
Planned
it all.”
“Ridiculous,” I thundered. “For what reason?”
Tony’s voice had a metallic tone now, cold and sharp. “Maybe killing husbands has become a habit for her. It gets into the bloodstream, you know. Maybe he got on her nerves. The pinko stuff. She married a Communist. Maybe she didn’t like being pointed out as the wife of a card-carrying Moscow boy.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Ethan said.
“No, I won’t.”
Liz was talking to the back wall. “Max ruined us all.”
“Shut up, Liz,” Ethan said.
I stood, tired of the bickering and noise. Enough. “Good night. You’ve all been delightfully charming.”
Ethan scoffed, stood, and touched my elbow. “We all know who killed Max, Miss Ferber.”
That surprised me. “Frankly, I don’t.”
“It wasn’t Alice, despite what Tony says. He can’t get past Alice who’s his bogeyman for all his horrors. Alice is not going to risk murder
twice
in this town. Max was treading dangerous territory these days. That letter he wrote infuriated people. The timing was perfect for throwing gasoline on an existing fire. Timing is everything, Miss Ferber. An actor knows timing. Hollywood is built on timing. Here Max is in the land of
timing
, and he misreads the signals. His timing was off. The America First crowd. The HUAC. The D.A.R. The American Legion. He got hate mail. Death threats. Max was a filthy Communist. You know who killed him? A patriot, Miss Ferber. Yeah, a misguided, crazy person. But a patriot nevertheless. In some stupid way some lunatic thought he was saving America from Max. Max asked for it.”
“Ava,” I began, and started to cry.
The two of us hung on the line, neither speaking, our mutual grief filling in the spaces.
“I’m a prisoner here,” she said, finally. “In my own home. There are photographers camped out in the bushes. The phone keeps ringing. Reporters. Me and Max. Over and over. Reenie hangs up on them.”
I could hear someone talking in the background. Reenie, perhaps, a soft, soothing murmur. The sound of her yipping dog Rags.
“I have to be at the studio later today.” Ava sounded as if she were talking to herself. “But all I think about is…Max.”
“Is Frank there?”
A long pause. “He’s been avoiding me. We fought over that scene at the Beachcomber.”
“Tony Pannis told me people are suspecting him.”
Again, the long silence. “I know, I know. I heard it on the radio. Francis won’t talk about it. So all I do is sit here and sob. Poor Max. So…horrid.”
“Well, it is,” I agreed. “But whoever did this must be caught.”
“
Who
would…”
“That remains to be seen, Ava.”
“You don’t think it was Francis, do you, Edna?”
“You tell
me
, Ava.” My voice even, crisp.
“Of course not. I mean …”A deep intake of breath. I could hear her striking a match. “Edna, I need to see you. To see…or to…talk to someone.”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a little coffee shop up the block from you. On Wilshire. The Coffee Pot.”
“I’ve gone by it.” I gazed out the window. “Okay, we’ll meet there.”
“Could I ask Sol to join us? He’s called here a number of times. The man is a wreck, Edna. You can feel his pain through the phone line.”
“Of course. I’d like to see him.”
“He’s so…helpless.”
***
I sat waiting in a booth, expecting her to be late. Lateness was a cardinal sin in my book, certainly; but I supposed I could excuse someone who confessed to being an insomniac, who only dozed off at early morning light. And now, especially, having to slip out to avoid the pesky reporters.
A woman entered The Coffee Pot, the country-store bell clanging noisily, and slipped into the booth opposite me. What in the world?
“Edna.”
My eyes got wide. The unglamorous Ava Gardner was smiling back at me. “Ava?”
But, of course, it was. Not a trace of makeup on her, not a hint of blush or lipstick or rouge, and yet, unmistakable, that face compelled, drew you in. But I hadn’t looked into that face. She was wearing a baggy lime peasant blouse, loose over calf-length pedal pushers, with a pale-green organdy kerchief covering her head, tied under her chin. She wore the most outrageous pair of tortoise-shelled eyeglasses, so matronly I expected her to deal a hand of canasta and kvetch about the agony of her sciatica.
“I’m near-sighted,” she told me.
“So this is what you really look like?”
Again, the small laugh. Yet there was no disguising that whiskey voice, so low and rumbling I kept thinking she had a cold. At first she whispered, but then, checking out the empty eatery, began to speak naturally. She debated between pecan waffles or
pain perdu
—“Edna, it’s nothing more than French toast with an attitude”—before choosing the waffles. The bored waitress, pencil buried in her messy hairdo and an order pad tucked into a stained apron, paid her no mind. I loved it. A practical woman, I ordered tuna on wheat toast. Coffee with whipped cream.
Ava reached across the table and grasped my hand. For a moment we sat there, silent, though we stared into each other’s faces, and she sobbed a little girl’s cry: short, raspy breaths, swallowed. Finally she sat back, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “I still don’t know what to think, Edna.”
“None of us do, Ava.”
I glanced around the empty eatery at the tacky tablecloths, a blackboard listing specials, a dropped napkin under a nearby table, the waitress chewing gum as she leafed through the newspaper.
We spoke in fits and starts, random chatter about Alice, about Max, about the…horror of it all. “What do you know?” she kept asking, but I knew nothing. She leaned in. “Francis has taken a vow of silence. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Well, does he have anything to hide?”
That shocked her. “Oh no, Edna. It’s just that he keeps stuff inside.” A sliver of a smile. “I’m the opposite—I yell and fret and let everyone know my insanity. He’s…he broods inside, cool, stewing…it’s deadly.” A pause. “I don’t mean…deadly.” She stopped. “I’m not making much sense, am I?”
“Very little, Ava.”
She laughed. “You don’t let people get away with much, do you?”
“No reason to.”
“You haven’t seen the best of me, you know. The fights, the bickering…” She slipped her hand across the table and touched mine. “I’m so sorry, Edna. I want you to
like
me.”
“Ava, I do like you.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Max adored you. That tells me something.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
The curious insecurity bothered me…I didn’t expect it from a movie star. The love goddess of
A Touch of Venus
. The girl in the bathing suit on the cover of
Photoplay
. Max once told me she’d been on over three hundred fan magazine covers, an ocean of lipstick and eye shadow and sun-tanning lotion. Mechanics in innumerable garages across America checked off the months on calendars that showed her come-hither smile.
What I liked about her was hard to define. For one thing, she was a strong woman who was hell-bent on defining her own life, regardless of public censure. She set the terms. This woman could be hungry for caviar at Romanoff’s, yet publicly insist on sticking up for a battered friend. Max. Dear Max. Here was a woman who drank and cursed and slapped lovers, but she refused to be cowed by random and thoughtless authority.
Yes, admittedly not
my
life, my prim and spinsterish life, purposely chosen. Being a spinster, I famously told everyone, was like drowning, a delightful sensation once you ceased to struggle.
Ava’s terms were otherwise: men, sex, more men—even scrawny crooners with circus bowties—dancing at the Trocadero, nightlife, cigarettes, coffee, and plenty of booze. Spiked ten-inch heels on the dance floor. Life on
her
terms. Perhaps it was the fist raised against the hypocritical constraints of Metro and Hollywood and Hedda Hopper, the phony and disingenuous morals clause that no authoritarian mogul himself felt compelled to follow, given the stories of sexual peccadillo on the casting couch. A man’s world, scripted narrowly for women.
Ava said no! In thunder!
You had to admire that in a fleshpot.
“I’m so sorry for everything.”
“Stop saying that, Ava.” I made the sign of the cross, or at least I think it was, never having executed the benedictory papal gesture before. “I absolve you of all sin.”
“If only it was that easy.” She laughed so loudly the waitress glanced over.
“Where’s Sol?” I wondered out loud.
She looked toward the front door. “Funny. He’s always early. But he seemed so…so broken on the phone. Those sobs that erupt from inside him. Everyone’s shattered, Edna. I understand Lorena is distraught, too.”
“So the Pannis brothers told me.”
“Those foolish guys.”
“I made the mistake of stopping at the Paradise for a glass of wine. You know, Ava, they seem more interested in Tony’s job loss than grieving for Max.”
She tapped her finger on the table. “It’s because of Alice. They didn’t care one way or the other about Max—it was a business arrangement, rarely social—but when Alice married Max…”
“Tell me about the Pannis brothers.”
“I don’t care for them.”
“I know that. Your likes and dislikes are apparent.”
“My mama once told me I was not born to lie.”
I arched my eyebrows. “Oddly, my mother told me it was one of the things that I was especially good at—and would make me rich and famous.”
“And so it did.”
“Yes, indeed.”
She sighed. “Actually I used to like Tony—before he became Tiny, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Tony was the…softer of the two. A deliberate buffoon, capable of making us all laugh. City-slicker boyish humor. But after Lenny died and Ethan went to the police and called it murder, Tony…shifted. He got sullen, angry, started those sad drinking binges. He never was like that before. I
liked
him. Now he gets on my nerves.”
“So sad,” I commented. “So Lenny…”
“Lenny is the only important Pannis brother. The dead one. Lenny. There’s a photo that Francis keeps in his Palm Springs home of him and Lenny and Lucky Luciano dining together in Havana. The exiled Mafia don. The three men in flowered shirts smoking Cuban cigars.”
“So the rumors are true—he was a gangster?”
“Francis has a liking for thugs.” The waitress placed the food on the table. Ava sipped her coffee but grimaced. “Dreadful stuff, really.” She pushed the coffee cup away. “When the Estes Kefauver committee in Washington started investigating organized crime, Lenny Pannis got…squirrelly, abusive. The FBI was moving in. He began to
hit
Alice. Edna, I’m good friends with Alice. I like her. She’s a sweet girl.”
“I like her, too. A lot.”
“And she was the best girl for Max. She married Lenny back in New Jersey, right out of high school, a simple girl. Lenny was the dashing, flashy boy who wooed the quiet, bookish girl. Then they came here, Lenny spreading his poison, getting into deals with seedy characters. Alice finally wised up. The fights. The beatings. Alice always had bruises on her arms and neck. Francis closed his eyes to it all because he’s a skinny little boy who likes to play with the big shots. He likes guns, he likes to hear stories of people getting beat up. He likes playing the tough guy. That’s my Francis. Thugs…but from a distance.”
“Lenny still has a lot of power over Frank, it seems.”
“That’s true. Unfortunately.” Her eyes got wide, a glint of fear in them. “Francis wants to be in a James Cagney shoot-‘em-up crime movie. He loves that scene in
White Heat
, Cagney on top of the oil tanks, yelling, ‘Made it, Ma. Top of the world.’ The hoodlum and his mommy.”
“Everyone out here sees the world through a movie lens.”
She shook her head. “I’m drifting. That last night Alice and Lenny had fought. He was drunk. He went to hit her. She ran off the balcony into their house. He stumbled, toppled over the railing. Dead on the pavement. Alice, the widow. Ethan cried murder. He hounded the police. He got Tony all crazy.”
“And somehow Max got in the middle of this.”
“Well, Max was Tony’s agent—back when Tony actually could do a funny stand-up show. So Alice knew…liked Max. Edna, they were meant for each other. Max had been slowing down these last few years, settling, and he needed a decent companion, someone to go to the movies with, someone to make grilled cheese sandwiches with. And Alice, fresh from bruised arms and legs, from shouting matches, from a loveless marriage, needed someone like Max Jeffries. Kind and decent and funny…and, well, by her side.” She closed her eyes for a second. “My favorite Gershwin tune, Edna, is ‘Someone to Watch Over Me.’” Her eyes got moist.
“And Alice got all the money.”
“That’s the funny thing. Ethan and Tony, latecomers out here, believed Lenny’s stories of colossal wealth. Well, yeah, he flashed a bunch of cash, had that big house in Beverly Hills. A kidney-shaped pool and spiral staircases. He used to point out the spiral staircase like it was the golden path to Mafia heaven. But after the dust settled and debts were paid, and the IRS stepped in with a wink from the FBI, it was not the fortune—the pot at the end of the rainbow—that the brothers believed in.”
“They don’t accept that fact, do they?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Edna. Ethan
knew
there was no money. He’s a moneyman. Lord, he
handled
lots of Lenny’s money—so Francis told me. But I don’t think he told Tony that. Let the simple brother think he’s poor because of Alice. Ethan knows better.”
“Ava, I don’t understand Frank’s friendship with Ethan and Tony. They’re hangers-on.”
“True, and Francis knows it. He
insists
I like them. He’s always dragging them to my house. Yet he gets annoyed with them. It’s dumb loyalty to the dead, revered gangster brother.”
“It has to be more than that. Why?”
“Lenny.”
“Everyone tells me that. It makes no sense.”
She leaned in. “Another secret, Edna. Francis will
kill
me if he knows I told you. But back East, Francis was trying to elbow his way into some deal, so he got involved with some local hoods. Money borrowed, fights, even threats against his life. He promised things he shouldn’t have—whatever that means. Well, Francis suddenly renewed his old-buddy friendship with Lenny, and Lenny, a real power thug, called off the low-level creeps, paid off Francis’ debts, and the two became joined at the blood-brother hip, so to speak.”
“So what? Years later…”
“Well, suddenly everyone is out here in happy land, and Francis loses his audience, his record contract. Friends disappear out here faster than loose change in a hole in your pants pocket. Look at poor Max. Loyalty is not a virtue out here. Who stuck with Francis? Lenny way back when—and the brothers. Lenny’s long gone and Francis has lonely evenings with me—or, when it’s time for fun and games, the boys.”
“But it must wear on Frank.”
She nodded. “I got to hear all about it. He
liked
them—still does, I suppose. But Tony is on the path to drunkenness.”
“And Ethan?”
“He’s still waiting for some of the gold dust of Hollywood to land on his shoulders.”
I finished my sandwich and tapped my cup. The waitress walked over with a coffee pot. “Ethan struck me as intelligent.”
“He is, and sometimes real funny. We find it amazing that he still is on speaking terms with his ex-wife.” She arched her back. “Not very Hollywood, that attitude. Lorena’s a funny lady, bright. She divorced Ethan but
likes
him. It’s like she’s afraid to let go of something
important
. I don’t get it, but who am I to talk? We end up with men we never plan to, right, Edna? I first thought Francis was arrogant and ego-mad, but one night in Palm Springs the bells and whistles went off in my head. In my case, all it took was a heady dose of his charisma and flattery. I mean, Ethan’s too rigid, intolerant of any weakness. All the pencils sharpened, all the sentries lined up.” She laughed. “Lorena told me he demanded his socks be ironed.”