The Bette Davis Club (27 page)

“Why? Margo, people dig
Spy Team
. It has a huge cult following. I get requests from all over the world for photos, memorabilia, recordings. A year ago, one of Ariana’s jumpsuits—Ariana, the female lead on the show—her jumpsuit sold at Sotheby’s for over eighty thousand dollars. My customers are lining up to preorder the collector’s edition.”

“My father created that series,” I say. “He hated it. It’s garbage.”

“Sister, you’re off the beam,” Veronica says. “
Spy Team
is popular culture. It’s what the entertainment industry is built on. Nobody ever went broke peddling it.”

For an instant, I flash on Malcolm Belvedere and something he said to me that day on the lawn at the Malibu house. “And in all those years of making movies in America,” Malcolm had said, “I have never ceased to profit from this country’s endless appetite for amusement, coupled with its astonishing weakness of intellect.”

“Tell me about
this
script,” Veronica says. “Did your pop write it?”

“I think so,” I say. “It has his name on it.”

“Since you’re not a fan of the series,” she says, “you might not be wise to the fact that during the three years
Spy Team
was broadcast, four different writers worked on it. They were all top-notch scribblers, but the episodes penned by Arthur Just are considered the best of the bunch. Is the script you have from the first, second, or third season?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think it’s some sort of final episode. I’m not even sure it was ever filmed.”

It’s like the room has a mute button, and I accidentally hit it. Veronica gapes at me as though I’ve announced I not only possess a script by Arthur Just, I have the man himself sitting out in the MG. When at last she speaks, her voice is deeper, huskier than usual.

“Margo,” Veronica says, enunciating her words slowly, carefully, “are you saying you have the teleplay for the series finale of
Spy Team
?”

“I suppose that’s what it is.”

She takes a deep breath. “And where is that teleplay?”

“Here,” I say.

“Where?”

“Here.”

“There and everywhere,” Tully says.

Dottie sits up. “Are we playing a word game?”

“It’s in this room?” Veronica says. “With us?”

“Yes. I have it in my bag.” I indicate my leather tote, sitting on the floor beside me.

Veronica sighs. “Good,” she says. “Swell. Terrific. You know, for years there’s been a rumor that Arthur Just wrote a two-part finale to wrap up the
Spy Team
series. I never believed that—figured it was an urban myth, like alligators in the sewers or balancing the federal budget. But gosh, Margo, if the story’s true, if you have that script, do you have any idea of its value?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I say, “it’s worthless.”

Veronica’s speech returns to its normal, high-pitched level. “Jeepers,” she says, “you couldn’t be more off base. It’s aces. It’s a lollapalooza. It’s priceless!”

“How in the world,” I say, “how could it possibly—”

“Two reasons. First, the right collector would pay fifty grand or more to own it. Second, and this is way more important, there’d be terrific interest on the open market.”

“But how—”

“As a screenplay,” Veronica says. “Studios would go wacky bidding for this.”

“How wacky?” Tully says.

“The most insane kind of madness there is,” Veronica says.

“You mean—” I say.

Veronica squeals. “Hollywood, California, USA crazy!” she says.

Veronica’s off and running. “Let me lay out the racket for you,” she says. “You know about branding, right?”

I picture cowboys and livestock, but I know she means quite another matter. “It’s something to do with sales,” I say.

“And how. In Hollywood, the marketing execs build customer loyalty to a series of films and film-related merchandise. Haven’t you ever wondered why studios make so many sequels?”

I never thought about it before. But it does seem odd how often there’s a second, then a third, of even the most mediocre film.

“It’s like the sequels become a brand,” Veronica says. “A franchise. The characters and situations are already known to the public, and it’s that brand recognition that sells movie tickets. Which is the same reason Hollywood has been systematically filming every TV series you ever heard of. It started years ago, and it’s still going on.

“Look, Margo, I know for a fact there’s been talk of turning
Spy Team
into a feature film, but the project was jinxed, nobody could put together a decent script. Now you show up with an original two-part teleplay by Arthur Just, which is what—about ninety minutes of screen time? Well, a little tweaking, a little updating, and your old man’s pages become the hottest screenplay in Tinseltown. Literally worth a million dollars, maybe two. Maybe more. Not only that, a
Spy Team
pic would be a shoo-in for franchising. It would spawn sequels, promotional tie-ins, merchandising, video games, DVD sales, the works!”

“I don’t,” I say, “I can’t . . .”

“Take it all in?” Veronica says. “Understandable. There’s always a gap between the way the world operates and the way we wish it would operate. That, cousin, is why everybody goes to the movies.”

“Hold it,” Tully says. “What good does this do Margo?”

“Here, here,” Dottie says.

“So the script’s worth a million or two,” Tully says. “So some studio turns it into a big-budget film. So what?” He looks at me. “It’s not like Margo wrote it. She might not even have a claim to it. When her dad died, his widow kept Margo from any real inheritance. Why would she get anything now?”

“Geez Louise,” Veronica says. “You still don’t get how it works, do you?”

“I don’t think any of us do, Ronnie,” Dottie says. “We haven’t your expertise. Could you, would you, explain things to us?
S’il te plait
?”

“Okay, babes in the woods,” Veronica says. “Square one.” She points at me. “The first thing you do is get yourself an entertainment lawyer. I know a heavy hitter in Los Angeles. Longtime friend and customer of mine, drops in whenever he’s in town. Also, you’ll need an agent, accountant, possibly a publicist. Then you start negotiations.”

“For what?” I say.

“
Spy Team
, kitten! You’re going to peddle that property for more dead presidents—”

“Dead presidents?” Dottie says.

“Currency, folding green, moola. More dead presidents than poor old Orson Welles ever got for
Citizen Kane
.”

“But I don’t own
Spy Team
,” I say.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” Veronica says. “You’re in America. When has ownership ever stopped anybody? It’s in your possession. It was written by your father. Look, I get that you had a tough childhood. But as my legal friend will explain to you, you’re no longer some little half-pint who can be chiseled out of her rightful inheritance to her pop’s intellectual property. So okay, maybe your half sister and her daughter come in for a percentage. But Josh will handle things so you get the biggest piece of the pie.”

She opens a drawer and pulls out a business card, then leans across the counter and passes it to me. It reads “Joshua Epstein, Entertainment Law.”

“You can trust Josh,” Veronica declares. “Like I always say, a girl’s best friend is her attorney.”

“I don’t know . . .” I say.

“What’s not to know? You walked in here hoping
An Innocent Lamb
was a pot of gold, right? So there’s been a slight switcheroo. The smart money’s on
Spy Team
.”

I stare at the business card in my hand, feeling like I want to cry. But if I did cry, they would not be tears of happiness.

“You don’t understand,” I say. “It wasn’t just about the money. Or Orson Welles. It was about my dad. After all these years, I felt like I had connected with him. You can talk all you want about popular culture, but
Spy Team
is rubbish.
An Innocent Lamb
made me proud of my father, proud that he collaborated with America’s greatest filmmaker.”

“You didn’t even read it,” Veronica says calmly.

“I was . . . busy,” I say. “And anyway, that’s beside the point. I felt like something good had come out of my father’s life, something of value. Together, my dad and Orson Welles might have produced another
Citizen Kane
. They were creating a work of art!”

Veronica rests her elbows on the counter and crosses her arms. “
Spy Team
is art,” she says.

I stuff Joshua Epstein’s business card roughly in my bag. “It was a paycheck,” I say.

“Well, pardon me,” Veronica says. “But did no one ever explain to you that in Hollywood there are two kinds of art? There’s the art of filmmaking, and there’s the art of the deal. They’re like a spider and its web. You can’t separate them.”

I shake my head.

“Honey,” Veronica says, “you own Boardwalk and Park Place. Now what? You don’t want to build hotels?” She throws up her hands. “Dottie, talk to her.”

“
Moi
?”
Dottie says. “I’ve known Margo for thirty-odd years, some of them very odd indeed. She will do what she wants when she wants, no matter what I or anyone else says or thinks.”

“If this
Spy Team
script is so valuable,” Tully says, “how come nobody ever went looking for it before?”

“The network probably didn’t know about it,” Veronica says. “In those days, there was no serial television—not in prime time. Margo’s pop would have had to hard sell just the concept of a two-parter series finale. I figure he writes the thing on spec, on his own time. But before he can pitch it, he dies.
Spy Team
was going off the air anyway. As far as the network was concerned, end of story. Years later, the series comes out on VHS, DVD—all that rekindles interest in the show. But Arthur Just’s widow didn’t mess with his stuff, remember? Wouldn’t get rid of it, wouldn’t let other people go through it. So the script just sat there, aging and forgotten, up in that sanctum . . . that santa . . .” She flutters her hands. “You know, that secret office.”

“Until Georgia found it,” I say.

“Right,” Veronica says. She fixes a cool eye on Tully. “And the
dish
ran away with the spoon.”

Tully clears his throat. “Speaking of spoons,” he says, “Margo and I never had dinner.”

“Yes, yes,” Dottie says. “You two should eat.” She finishes the last of her drink. “Merci, Ronnie. We’ve learned so much tonight. I do hope we remember it all in the morning.”

“You don’t have to,” Veronica says. “Excepting Margo needs to remember to call Josh.”

I retrieve my bag from the floor and stand up. Tully and Dottie also rise.

“You know,” Veronica says to me, “I get that you’re disappointed in the lack of a market for the Welles script. To tell you the truth, I kinda feel the same way. But most mugs go to the movies to turn
off
their brains. And when you look at the world, its disappointments, is that so hard to understand?” She bites her lower lip and studies me. “Aw, never mind,” she says. “That’s what you call a rhetorical question.”

It’s dark outside. Dottie, Tully, and I step out onto the pavement. I glance back at the window of I’m No Angel. Veronica is inside, tidying up. Her satiny figure is silhouetted against the light of the store, her platinum hair catches the glow of a neon sign that says “Cinema.”

For a moment, we could be watching a Manhattan shopkeeper closing up on a night in the 1930s or ’40s. Then Veronica switches off the “Cinema” sign, pulls down the window shade, and vanishes.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MANHATTAN ARCHITECTURAL SALVAGE

M
argo, I’m worried,” Dottie says. The three of us—Dottie, Tully, and I—stand on the darkened sidewalk in front of I’m No Angel.

“I’m quitting again soon,” I say, waving away the smoke from my cigarette.

“I don’t mean cancer,” Dottie says. “I mean, Ronnie knows her stuff. If she says the
Spy Team
script is worth a million or two, it is. No wonder that Boone person and his girlfriend were chasing you. They’re after that script. You need to go somewhere safe. I think you should come and stay with Gerard and me.”

“Thanks, but I want to go home.”

“You lost your apartment,” Dottie says.

“You know what I mean.”

“The rag and bone shop of the heart?” Dottie says. “Yes, all right. But be careful.” She raises her hand to flag down a taxi.

“Aren’t you coming to eat?” I say.

“No, I’ve had my dinner. Plus, I promised Gerard I’d return to the marital love nest at a decent hour. We’ll talk tomorrow. If you need me any sooner, call me on that cell phone you’ve acquired.”

A cab pulls up and Tully holds the passenger door for Dottie. She gets in and lowers the car window. “Look after her,” Dottie says through the open window to Tully. “And yourself.”

As the cab pulls away, Dottie spots the driver’s hack license. “Jean-Pierre Alphonse Dubois?” I hear her say. “I bet you speak French!”

After we eat, Tully and I drive through the cobblestone streets of old New York, to an address near the river. We pull up in front of a run-down, deserted-looking warehouse. There’s not a soul around.

“This is it,” I say. “Manhattan Architectural Salvage.”

“Where’s the sign?” Tully says.

“It’s not open to the public. To the trade only. And we’re choosy even about that.”

We get out of the car, and Tully gazes up at the darkened building. “It’s like something out of Edgar Allan Poe,” he says. “This must be the only place for blocks around that hasn’t been gentrified.”

“Wait till you see the inside,” I say.

I unlock the front door. The warehouse is dark, but when I flick on the lights, I catch the amazement in Tully’s eyes. The moment someone glimpses the interior of Manhattan Architectural Salvage always makes me think of when archaeologist Howard Carter first peered into King Tut’s tomb. Carter was asked if he could see anything. “Yes,” he said, “wonderful things.”

Well, all right. Manhattan Architectural Salvage isn’t exactly the glories of ancient Egypt. But it is impressive. The loot of lost New York is here. Layers—decades—of architectural treasures rescued from the demolition of notable buildings: bronze statuary, alabaster lamps, fin-de-siècle chandeliers, banisters and balustrades, pedestal sinks and white ceramic tile.

Some of the plunder came from private homes, some from hotels, churches, and public structures, some from places like the old Ziegfeld Theatre and the Roxy movie palace. The worn wood floor holds row upon row of marble and mahogany, of terra-cotta and cast iron. There’s a smell of dust and age and the past. A past that, for once, you can reach out and touch.

“Jesus,” Tully says. “It’s like a museum.”

He runs his hand over a marble mantelpiece. “All this time you’ve been telling me you’re broke. But you could sell this stuff.”

“Yes, well, I’ll probably have to,” I say. “The way things are going, before long there’ll be a court-ordered auction.” But I won’t think about that now, won’t think about how I have failed in so many ways. “Tonight, though, it’s good to be home.”

Tully turns from the mantelpiece. “That was a heckuva road trip we took.”

“From Malibu to Manhattan,” I say.

“I’ll never forget,” Tully says, “how when Boone was trying to kill me, you distracted him. Then that fat guy came up and hit Boone over the head, and you saw your chance. When you started up the car, you were seriously wild. Your hair was messed up; you were shifting gears like crazy. You were yelling at me to get in.”

I laugh.

“I could have kissed you,” he says.

I study the wood floor.

“Oh, well,” I say at last. “Next time we’ll take public transport.”

Tully fixes his gaze on me, and I feel my heart beating. He moves toward me, then hesitates, seeming to change his mind. “I’m stuck,” he says.

So am I! Stuck in the past, stuck emotionally, stuck—

“I’m caught,” Tully says.

Oh. I glance down. The back of Tully’s jacket is hung up on a large slab of carved walnut.

“What is this?” he says, inspecting the wood.

“Edwardian-era matrimonial headboard,” I say.

We both tinker with the jacket till it’s free, but by then the mood has changed, the moment is gone.

“It’s late,” Tully says. He looks tired. “I better catch a cab to my place.”

“You don’t have to go to Brooklyn,” I say. “I mean, you can sleep here, if you want.” I look around. “Although I’m not sure—”

“This’ll work,” Tully says. He points to an oversize porcelain bathtub that long ago came out of one of the Vanderbilt mansions.

Tully and I go back out to the car a couple of times, retrieving everything from our suitcases to the big white box containing Georgia’s wedding dress.

Next we fix up the Vanderbilt bathtub with bedding and blankets. I also show Tully the open loft-style kitchen situated a little forward and to the left of the front door, the bathroom, and the rest of the premises. There’s a mezzanine—Finn’s old office—where I sleep. I leave my leather tote sitting in a corner of the kitchen, but I carry the rest of my luggage and the wedding dress upstairs to the mezzanine.

Tully parks the MG in a garage a few blocks away. When he comes back to the shop, he brings one last item with him from the car. It’s a Museum of Science and Industry shopping bag. It holds the books and mementos he purchased when we visited Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, in Chicago. Tully sets the bag on the floor.

I’m moving things around, tidying up. I hoist the museum shopping bag and place it on the long trestle table in the kitchen area. But when I do, the bag’s contents shift and it splits open. Everything spills out across the table: souvenir T-shirt, books and pamphlets, Fairy Castle keychain.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tully says. We both start picking things up.

I reach for a Fairy Castle book and notice that there’s another volume exactly like it. “Did you make a mistake?” I say. “You bought two copies of this.”

“Meant to,” Tully says.

“For research?”

“No, I only need one for that. The other one’s for my daughter.”

Daughter?

“Her name’s Emma. She’s too young for a lot of the text, but she’ll like the pictures.”

Daughter
?
Tully Benedict, aging bachelor, has a child? A child capable of holding a book and enjoying pictures?

“She lives in Pennsylvania with her mother and new stepdad,” Tully says. “But she visits me. I see her. She’s the reason I bought all these souvenirs.” He rests against the edge of the table.

“How old is Em—your little girl?”

“Seven.”

You could, to coin a phrase, knock me over with a Fairy Castle keychain.

“You never mentioned a daughter,” I say. “Not in all this time we’ve spent together.”

“I don’t talk about her with everyone,” Tully says. His eyes are gentle. “I have to trust somebody before I bring her into the conversation.”

“Does Georgia know you have a child?” I say.

“Yeah. But it’s also one of our issues. She didn’t want Emma at the wedding. Just as well, considering there was no marriage.”

It’s been a long day. A day in which nothing has turned out to be quite what I imagined. Not
An Innocent Lamb
nor
Spy Team
nor even Tully Benedict.

I cross over and open a cabinet above the kitchen sink. The bottle is where I left it when I went to California. “Fancy a nightcap?” I say. I reach inside the cabinet, my back to Tully. “For once in your life?”

He doesn’t answer. I go ahead and retrieve the bottle and pour gin into two glasses. In the same way that Tully once offered me an ice-cream cone in the California desert, I take a glass in each hand and turn and hold one out to him.

“No, thanks,” he says.

He looks so uncomfortable, I laugh. “You, Mr. Benedict, are no fun.”

Tully doesn’t respond. He stares at the floor, as though thinking something over. Then he looks up, and his eyes meet mine. “Margo,” he says, “I’m an alcoholic.”

I stand there, holding two large shots of gin.

“That’s why I don’t drink,” he says. “I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

Part of me is ready to laugh again, because of course this is a joke . . . isn’t it?

“I was sober for seven years,” Tully says. “Since Emma was born. But a couple months back, I slipped.”

I’m gripping both glasses so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t break. “Why?” I say. “Why did you slip?”

“I’m human,” Tully says. “Recovery is not a perfect science.”

Not a perfect science. No.

“I was stressed,” he says. “My ex-wife had just remarried—and it wasn’t that I wanted to get back together with her, because I don’t—but it meant that part of my life was really over. My birthday was coming up, and I wasn’t happy about getting older. I’m forty-two, by the way. I was having trouble getting started on my next project. I had an overdue library book.” He pauses. “That last one was a joke.”

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

He looks at the two glasses in my hands. “I fell off the wagon because I was feeling sorry for myself. I don’t know if you’re hip to this, but aside from genetics, the number one requirement for being a drunk is self-pity.”

Actually, I was aware of that.

“So, okay, seven years of sobriety down the tubes. In the middle of that, I go out to Los Angeles on business, meet Georgia at a party. The two of us—”

“Hit it off?”

“Went on a bender. After a week of shared substance abuse, she proposed.”

“Georgia asked you to marry her?”

“Yeah. But then I sobered up. That’s one reason she’s pissed at me. Right before the wedding, I told her I was stopping the booze, the drugs. We had a huge fight about that.”

Not to mention she ran off with her own stepfather. A fact I still haven’t shared with Tully.

“On the day we left Malibu, you seemed so broken up,” I say.

“I was down about a lot of things,” Tully says. “Getting jilted didn’t help.”

“But you told me you loved Georgia.”

“I did. I do . . . I mean, I . . . Look, you commit to someone, even if it’s the worst match in the world, you tell yourself it’ll work out. That first day, when you and I got in the MG, I was determined to pull my life together. I didn’t want to have messed up again. I was desperate to find Georgia, talk things over. But all this time on the road, I’ve been talking to Georgia. In my head, I mean. You know what? Georgia’s not listening. She doesn’t give a damn. She has my number, she never called. She sold her wedding dress, probably her engagement ring. She sent Boone after us—”

“You don’t know that,” I say.

“I know she’s not the person I thought she was. Georgia made me feel young again, made me feel it was okay not to take responsibility for my life. But it’s not okay. I know that falling for Georgia was falling for a dream.”