Stardust (56 page)

“It was a fund-raiser. And a party.”

“I see.” Minot picked up a magazine. “Are you aware that
Red Channels
lists the Relief Fund as one of their suspected Communist front organizations?”

“No.”

Ben saw Lasner take out a pad and begin to write, a memo he must have forgotten, trapped at the hearing.

“And how had you come to be invited to this party?”

“I was a contributor.”

“So you gave some money to this organization, and Mr. Schaeffer invited you to his home. This was in the nature of a thank-you?”

“Partly, I guess.”

“And the other part was to raise more money? Did they actually collect cash?”

Hal looked at him steadily. “Checks, mostly.”

“Not just spare change, then. Who else was at Mr. Schaeffer’s party?”

Hal glanced quickly at the lawyers, some code they’d been waiting for. “I don’t remember. Other people from the Relief Fund, I guess. The ones in the letter you have.”

“But you don’t remember which ones precisely?” Minot said, biting the last word. “Was your wife there?”

“Yes.”

“Your sister?”

“No. It was an industry event. People in pictures.”

“So you remember their occupations, but not who they were.” Lasner squirmed in his seat, jotting something down again, his breathing audibly impatient.

Minot pulled out a copy of the letter. “Let’s see. Mr. Schaeffer, of course. How about Howard Stein? Was he there?”

Another quick look to the lawyers. “I don’t remember.”

“Gus Pollock?”

“I think so, I’m not sure.”

“Not sure. Ben Friedman. Was he there writing checks?”

Friedman. Ben’s mind went to Danny’s list. Friedman. But not Ben, he’d remember his own name. Another Friedman. A voice saying it. He looked away from the table, trying to remember, hearing it instead. One of the newsreel cameramen was changing film, the other camera still whirring.

“Ben Friedman?” Minot said again.

No, Alfred. Alfred Friedman. He jerked his head toward the cameras, hearing the name, then stared, not moving, afraid even a blink would make it go away. Newsreel, a voice in a newsreel. Alfred Friedman. The camera panning across a group of men. Suits and uniforms.

Minot was talking again but his voice had become a background sound, like noises in the woods, Ben’s mind racing. What did it mean? A man in the group. Follow the logic. His thoughts ran everywhere at once, water rushing downward, separating, branching off until it was
stopped, blocked, then backing onto itself. If he knew Friedman, he knew the others, who they must be. Follow the logic, like gravity, one step flowing down to another. Then a split, a whole branch that led nowhere, stopped at Paseo Miramar. Unless Genia had been an accident after all, something that didn’t need to fit. The cameras kept whirring but his mind was moving even faster, in a panic now, because while things snapped into place a dread was spreading through him, where all the logic led, Danny doing something that could not be forgiven. He felt himself growing warmer, as if the body could literally burn with shame. His brother. Someone Ben hadn’t really known at all.

“What?” one of Bunny’s assistants whispered, but Ben shook his head “nothing” and faced forward again. He tried to listen to Minot, something again about Schaeffer’s party, but kept hearing Friedman’s name in the newsreel.

Assuming it was the same Friedman. He needed to be sure, something more than instinct. One foot, then the other. But he kept moving in leaps. If he was right, then the list wouldn’t be enough bait. They’d run to ground, not take any risks now. He’d need to offer something more, a direct threat, exposure. He glanced toward the press section, Polly’s hand moving on a pad as she watched Hal testify. Ostermann looked up, his features suddenly Liesl’s, the fine stretch to the chin, and Ben met his eyes for a second, then quickly went back to Polly. Did he owe Danny anything now? Was there ever a good reason for betrayal? Anyway, how could you betray the dead? This one would be for the still-living.

Assuming it was the same Friedman. He got up, crouching, the way people left the theater halfway through. “Phone,” he said to the assistant, the all-purpose excuse, this time true. In the hall, he felt his pockets for change, heading for the phone booths.

“Long distance,” he said, getting the coins ready.

The call took a while to put through but only a few minutes once the connection was made. Afterward he sat in the booth, his hand still on the receiver. The first piece, but not everything, the water still running in too many directions. Even now, when he thought he knew what
Danny had done, his mind kept drifting back to the Cherokee, to police details, instead of what he really wanted to know, why.

He looked up. Across the hall, Bunny was standing in the witness room, no longer on the phone, not doing anything, in fact, just leaning against the wall and staring. His chest moved in small heaves. Ben got up and went over, directly in his sight line, but Bunny seemed unable to see anything until Ben was in front of him. Then a quick blink, startled, his throat moving in spasms, as if someone were choking him, cutting off his air. He swallowed, constricted.

“You all right?”

He didn’t answer, just swallowed again, his eyes talking now, screaming somewhere, mute.

“What’s wrong?”

Bunny looked down at the phone, then back at Ben. “He’s gone,” he said, a whisper, all the sound he could manage. “Jack’s gone.” Then nothing, another swallow, trying to breathe, now that it was said.

“When?” Something to fill space.

“Last night. This morning,” Bunny said, vague, but less ragged.

Ben looked at him, not sure whether to touch his arm, a gesture that might seem too intimate. Instead he nodded. “Go. They don’t need you in there.”

But Bunny still didn’t move, mesmerized by his own news, all the echoes of it.

“They just called?” Ben said, trying to keep his attention.

“They had to wait,” Bunny said, mostly to himself, his eyes getting moist for the first time. “Until they got the next of kin. They have to do that, tell them first. They didn’t want to wake her.”

“Who?”

“His mother. In Oregon. They had to tell her first. He’s been there all morning.”

“Go,” Ben said again. “Really. There’s nothing you can do here anyway.”

“She wants the body shipped back. She can do that. Ship it up
there. He hated it up there.” He looked at Ben, catching himself. “I have to see him. Before they do that.”

Ben nodded. “Go.”

“I can’t,” Bunny said, looking down at his hands, an invalid displaying his paralysis. “I don’t think I can drive.”

Ben looked toward the hearing room, then gripped Bunny’s elbow. “Come on.”

In the car, Bunny said nothing, staring blankly at the half-visible streets, as if the rain were in his head, not something outside the window. Ben had to hunch over the wheel, peering out, watching for lights and corners.

“Is there anyone else? Besides the mother?” he said, trying to draw him out, but Bunny didn’t even turn his head.

“Me,” he said. “They’re going to ship him up there.”

After that, Ben let him drift, his eyes fixed out the side window. They took Washington all the way out, through Culver City, past the white colonnades of MGM, maybe next on Minot’s list. More stars than there are in heaven. The rain stopped in Venice, leaving just patches of fog on the coast highway. At the Sunset turnoff Ben thought of Paseo Miramar, the sharp curves as slippery now as they had been when Genia had driven up. Why? An invitation to Feuchtwanger’s? But he didn’t know her. A convenient excuse for the other car, though, if anyone noticed. But no one had.

As they got nearer the hospital road he could feel Bunny stirring beside him, sitting up straighter, gathering himself. He even glanced into the side rearview mirror, a last-minute dressing-room gesture. Closer than blood. How close was blood anyway? More than obligation, scraps of shared memories? Were he and Danny even the same blood type? O-negative, the universal donor. Another thing he hadn’t known, that didn’t matter. But Otto’s blood had, binding Danny in a kind of loyalty oath, while Ben had been somewhere else. Or was that just another excuse, another out for Danny? What possible out could there be, to have done what he did?

“At least it wasn’t in action,” Bunny said suddenly. “They just send you the dog tags. At least he’s here.”

They went straight to MacDonald’s room, not bothering with the front desk, but it had been emptied out, the stripped bed not yet remade, the personal things in the bedside cabinet already taken away. Ben thought of his mother’s hospital room, another body whisked away before anybody could say good-bye, the white loneliness of it. Danny wouldn’t know until a cable reached him, an ocean away, and by that time Ben had arranged the burial, all the family gone now except for the thin stream of flimsy V-mail sheets, the last blood tie. But how close was blood?

“Where is he?” Bunny said to the nurse who’d hurried after them.

“He’s—downstairs. They’re preparing the body. He’s going to be—”

“I know. I want to see him.”

“We’re not supposed to—”

“I want to see him,” Bunny said, not any louder, but in control. Ben remembered that first day at Continental, people making way as Bunny walked by.

He waited in the room, smoking on Jack’s balcony while Bunny went downstairs. No mention of how it had happened. But people never liked to talk about that. How easy it had been to make Danny an accident, convenient for everybody. He touched the rail, thinking of the Cherokee. Why kill him if he were passing on the list? Unless he wasn’t, another Danny fast one, but not fast enough. Or unless they were just covering traces, wiping every pawn off the board, Danny not important enough to be worth the risk of what he knew. Better if it died with him, everyone safe.

He turned, hearing Bunny come back. “You okay?”

“Yes, fine,” Bunny said, his own voice again, embarrassed to be asked. “Thank you for coming.” A polite, receiving-line phrase, as if the panic choking and the drive out had never happened.

“It’s not easy. I’ve done it.”

“What?”

“Been with somebody. After.”

Bunny walked closer to the bed. “I had a scene once. In a picture. My grandfather, I think. Everybody upset, in floods. But it’s not like that, is it? They’re not really there. Just a body.”

“I’m sorry, Bunny.”

Bunny glanced up at this, then let it in, nodding. He touched the bed frame. “There wasn’t anybody here. When it happened. He was alone.” He stared at the bed for another minute. “Did I tell you? His playing—he had the lightest touch.”

“Mr. Jenkins? Sorry to intrude.” A woman in a suit, not a nurse. “Some papers to sign.”

She looked over at Ben, hesitant, someone she hadn’t expected, not next of kin, either, and for a second, less than a blink, Ben felt what it must be like to be Bunny, every quick disapproving eye movement, trying to explain him.

“Papers,” Bunny said.

“Yes, for the shipment. The additional charge. The expense isn’t covered in the monthly rate.”

“I pay to ship him?”

“I’m sorry. I understood you were the responsible party. My records say all expenses.”

Bunny looked at her, a final twist in. “Yes, that’s right. All expenses. Yes.”

He looked down at the bed again. For a minute everyone just stood there, not moving, and yet it seemed to Ben that he and the woman were disappearing, wisps of fog, the room itself receding, so that Bunny was completely alone.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bunny finally said, an executive dismissal, then turned to Ben. “You’d better get back. Mr. L will want watching.”

“I can wait.”

“No, we have some things to do here,” he said. “Did his mother give any instructions?”

“She said, whatever you decide.”

“Did she. The navy blue, then, I think. The worsted.
Not
the uniform.
Where did you put his ties?” He turned to Ben. “We’ll be a while.”

“But how will you get back?”

“I’ll have the studio send a car,” he said, in charge again. “It doesn’t really matter now. If anyone knows.” He stopped, glancing at Ben. “Still. It’s nobody’s business.”

Ben met his eyes. “Nobody’s,” he said.

He started back down to the coast highway but had to pull over at the second curve, unable to see through a new bank of thick fog. He felt back in the hospital room, everything white, gauze and empty sheets, Bunny standing in a void. But this white was moist air, beginning to drift, the other had been still, an absence. The dead are gone. And yet we hold on—a loyalty, a debt, to make up for something. Didn’t he owe Danny that much, to let it die with him, a crime that could only bring shame now. Paid for. But who had decided that? What do we owe the dead? Dress the body, the blue worsted, keep the memory intact. What did he owe Henderson, willing to use him as bait? There were all kinds of debts, even, finally, one to yourself. Do the expedient thing. Or the crime would go on, maybe taking him with it. Danny’s name was a price, but the dead never blamed you.

He sat for a few more minutes, trying to think. The list wasn’t supposed to stop at Danny’s mailbox. But nobody had moved yet, playing safe. He had to make them come for it. Something public, a spotlight they’d have to put out. Another car was coming up the hill, grinding slowly around the curves, the sound muffled, a little like the newsreel cameras. For a second he was back in the hearing room and then he was looking across to the press section, Ostermann watching quietly and Polly scribbling beside him.

He found Lasner with the lawyers finishing lunch at Ristorante Rex, the kind of place where they usually brought clients to celebrate deals, all black enamel and art deco ocean-liner trim. Today the mood was anxious, Lasner fidgeting, impatient.

“Where’s Bunny?” he said when Ben took a seat.

“Something came up.”

“Serious?”

Ben shook his head, knowing Lasner meant a studio problem. “He’ll be here later,” he said vaguely.

“So will we, by the looks of it,” Lasner said, glancing at his watch. “The goyim like a long lunch.”