The Devil's Due (13 page)

“What? I miss my wife. She’s been gone to Florida for two weeks. Just a little leg? An ankle?”

Elizabeth liked him; she liked them both, the owl and the fox. She put one leg out and inched up the hem to show off her calf. Wolf whistles came from men who weren’t even looking. She could feel the heat of Simon’s glare from across the room.

Charlie shook his head. “Nothing like my wife’s.”

Mr. Fox lifted his pant leg to reveal a pale hairy calf.

“Now
that
looks like my wife!”

Elizabeth laughed, much to the delight of both Charlie and Mr. Fox, who held out a chair for her.

“Thank you.” As she sat down, she noticed today’s issue of
Variety
on Charlie’s desk.

“Pretty shocking about that girl, isn't it?” she said.

“Ruby?” Charlie picked up the paper and then tossed it aside. “Yeah.” There was a decided lack of surprise in his voice.

“Or not so shocking?” she asked.

“It’s a shame and all; she was pretty, even had a little talent, but there was just somethin’ about that dame.”

Mr. Fox picked up the paper. “You just don’t like Benny Roth.”

“He waters down his gin!” Charlie said indignantly and then shrugged it off. “I don’t know. One day, she’s a nobody; the next day the whole town can’t fall over themselves fast enough to give her the world on a silver platter. Heard maybe she had something going with Roth on the side.”

“Sam?” Mr. Fox said. “The only thing he likes to make love to is his money.”

Simon joined them and Elizabeth introduced him to Charlie and Mr. Fox.

“They were just telling me about Sam Roth,” Elizabeth said.

Simon sat down on the edge of the desk. “Were those actual wooly mammoth tusks in his office?”

“The real McCoy,” Charlie said. “Story is he found them himself, when he was looking for oil.”

“Oil?” Elizabeth asked.

“Studios don’t come cheap ya know,” Charlie said. “That's how Roth got his money. Another overnight sensation you might say.”

“How so?” Simon prompted.

“Story is, he came here, what 30 years ago, young kid from the East coast looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Found it at Wilshire Boulevard.”

“The La Brea Tar Pits,” Elizabeth said more to herself than the men. She'd visited them the last time she'd come to LA — huge pools of tar or asphalt bubbling up from enormous deposits of crude oil. That explained all of the oil derricks they'd seen downtown.

“Right,” Charlie said. “Supposedly, he hooked up with Thorn and they somehow managed to beat Standard Oil and the rest of them out of one of the richest oil fields in California.”

“And he found the mammoth tusks in a tar pit above the oil,” Simon reasoned. “Hence the name Mammoth Studios.”

Charlie touched his nose. “Give that man a cheroot. Thorn stayed a silent partner and Roth founded the studio. And here we are wasting his not-so-hard earned money.”

“Gets ya right here,” Mr. Fox said touching his heart. “And a little down here,” he added touching his stomach and pretending to belch.

Life didn't give out second chances very often. Jack had been lucky enough to have more than his fair share. The fact that he was alive and kicking was testament to that. It was unnerving to think of the number of times he could have and should have died. If Simon and Elizabeth hadn't literally pulled his bacon out of the fire in 1942, his story would have ended, like so many others, at the point of the German bomb. And now, life had given him yet another go. He'd be damned if he was going to let it pass him by.

Jack paid the taxi driver and walked the last block west toward the setting sun. He'd managed to convince Betty to meet him for dinner. It had taken some doing. Even this younger, hopeful version of Betty was a bit of a cynic — a funny, wonderful, heart beneath the armor of a cynic. Hollywood taught you that people who wore their hearts on their sleeves didn't survive. By the time Jack had met Betty in 1938 and fallen head over heels for her, she'd learned that the hard way. But this Betty didn't look at him and see the shadow of the man who'd hurt her. For the first time, she could look at him and just see him.

Of course, he thought, the real him was using a fake name and couldn't tell her who he really was or why he was really here. Starting off with a fistful of lies was far from ideal, but he'd learned in the spy game that circumstances were never ideal, and you did the best with what you had. He'd also learned to focus on today and not tomorrow. Tomorrow was never guaranteed. And, for Jack, today meant a second chance with the woman who stole his heart and that was all that mattered.

He saw her leaning against the fence that lined the bluffs above the Roosevelt Highway and the Pacific Ocean below. God, she was beautiful. The light from the setting sun cast a golden hue across everything it touched. It seemed to linger just a little bit longer on her, touching her hair, caressing her cheek.

She turned and gave him a small wave. His heart pounded in his chest. He felt like a teenage boy on his first date. It was horrifying. And it was wonderful.

“I hope you haven't been waiting long,” he said.

She smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said turning back to watch the sunset. “I forget how beautiful the ocean is. I'm still not used to seeing it.”

He moved next to her and leaned forward, resting his elbows on top of the fence. “Not a native then?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

She laughed. “Is anyone? Nope, I'm from Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

“You're a long way from home.”

Betty looked out at the sun dipping beneath the far horizon. “Yeah. A long way.”

Jack searched her face for a clue to the sadness he heard in her voice. “Homesick?”

She held out her hand, thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “A little.”

Jack shifted his weight onto his left elbow and turned toward her. “You know what does wonders for homesickness?”

She gave him a skeptical smile.

“Ice cream.”

She laughed, but he continued, “It's a scientific fact. There's a great place just down on the pier.”

“We haven't even had dinner yet.”

He shrugged. “After dinner then? For medicinal purposes only, of course.”

She smiled. “I am feeling pretty homesick. I might need a double.”

“That can be arranged.”

Dinner at Luigi's went past in a blur. Betty was a strange and wonderful mixture of things - smart and funny and ready to sock the world right in the kisser with one hand and pull it to her with the other. The years he'd spent dreaming about her, wondering where she was, if she was happy, if she had children now, fell back into the dark in their candle-lit corner booth. His memory had painted gauzy pictures of the past. But no memory, not even ones that had kept him going during some of the darkest nights of the war, compared to this, to being with her again. It seemed impossible, but she was even lovelier than he'd remembered.

He knew it was foolish. He knew it couldn't be. And yet, he couldn't stop himself from dreaming, from hoping against hope there was a way to stay together. If she'd even have him, he realized. He loved her, had always loved her, but to Betty he was a stranger. Maybe she'd send him away and that would be that. All he knew was, he had to find out if she could, if she would love him. And if she did, he would find a way. There was always a way.

After dinner, they walked along a busy Ocean Park enjoying the warm spring evening. Even the wind coming in off the ocean was gentle and warm. They fell in with the crowd and headed down the long sloping entrance that led to the mouth of the Santa Monica Pier. In the distance the sound of a band organ playing something vaguely circus-like came ashore with the wind.

At the base of the long ramp, a large two-story red and yellow building stood where the pier met the end of the bluff. Tall Spanish Colonial spires jutted out over arched Byzantine windows in a strange menagerie of styles. As they walked closer to the open archways that spread across the first floor, the music grew louder and was joined with bright flashes of light.

Jack nodded toward the carousel asking if she wanted to ride. She smiled and shook her head. They contented themselves with watching others climb aboard the colorful hand-carved horses. Mothers held on to their children, men held on to their dates and some held on to their lunches as the enormous carousel started up again. After a few minutes, Jack put his hand on the small of Betty's back and led her out back into the night air and further down the pier.

He maneuvered them through the crowd to a small storefront. “Your medicine,” he said, gesturing to the blackboard with today's special ice cream flavors.

They both opted for a single scoop cone of chocolate and then found an out-of-the-way bench and sat. As they worked on their cones in contented silence, they watched the crowd pass by.

“You've got a little…” Betty said pointing at Jack's face.

He wiped his chin with a paper napkin, but she shook her head. He tried again only to have her laugh and reach toward him. With the pad of her thumb, she gently rubbed a spot just under his lower lip. Her eyes focused on his mouth; her own lips slightly parted as she wiped away the errant drop of chocolate. It was completely innocent and yet it made the blood rush out of his brain. Once she'd finished, she sat back against the bench and he continued to stare at her like some escapee. He sat there slack-jawed, aching to kiss her and knowing he couldn't.

“Are you all right?” she asked, narrowing her eyes with concern.

“Dancing?” he said before his brain had started fully functioning again. “Me.”

She cocked her head to the side and then spoke to him like he was a backwards child. She pointed at the bench. “Sitting. Dancing different.”

He laughed. “Right. I mean, do you dance?” It was another cheat. He knew the answer. She loved to dance.

She hesitated.

He knew that look in her eyes; he'd seen it so many times. She was teetering on the edge of saying yes and just one more little nudge would do it. “If you're a little clumsy, that's okay. I don't mind if you step on my feet.”

“Oh, you don't mind?” There was a tinge to her voice that meant she was winding up.

“Well, you do have pretty big feet for a girl.” He pointed down at her perfectly normal feet.

“I do not!” She was about to lay into him when she realized he was joking. Her pique melted into an embarrassed smile.

He stood and held out his hand to help her up. She looked at it warily for a minute before accepting. They walked a little further down the pier to the La Monica Ballroom. It was enormous and spread out across the width of the double pier. It was another mishmash of styles that seemed to find a home in LA. The outside was Spanish-style stucco with a dozen twenty-foot minarets dotting the perimeter. Each minaret top, like something out of Ali Baba, was lit by hundreds of tiny fairy lights and made the whole building look like some insane magic palace that had floated across both oceans and time and plopped down right in the middle of the pier.

Betty, who had never been to La Monica's, stopped outside and stared at the building. “That makes no sense.”

Jack put her arm through his. “Sense is overrated.”

The interior was equally bizarre and wonderful. The cavernous 15,000 square foot ballroom had entrances from every side and was ringed by a large open promenade with a café and fountain. There was even an upper level mezzanine with plush upholstered chairs and divans.

Jack bought them both tickets, just a dime these days. Back when Jack had first come, it was a dime for each dance and men with ropes would herd off each set of dancers when the music was over to make way to for the next set of paying customers. But, the Depression didn't spare anyone and La Monica cut its rates and even started offering dance marathons as a way to make enough money to keep the doors open.

Luckily, for him, one ticket bought a whole night of dancing, and Jack led Betty out in the throng that covered the maple dance floor. For a cynic, she had an incredibly wide-eyed with wonder look about her. She gazed up at the ceiling and the three-dozen bell-shaped chandeliers that dangled over them held by gold ropes. The large paintings on the walls depicted an underwater garden and it gave the entire room a feeling of being in a bubble beneath the sea.

When he found an open spot, Jack took Betty's hand and placed it on his shoulder. He smoothly took a hold of her other hand and they effortlessly fell in with the mass of dancers. Rogers and Hart's “You Are Too Beautiful” had just started and they moved slowly in time to the melancholy song.

Jack held Betty's off-hand high and tried to keep their bodies a respectable distance apart, but it was damn hard. He kept his hand on her back light and fought the temptation to pull her to him.

She caught him staring and ducked her eyes self-consciously. “I don’t usually do this,” she said, bringing her face up toward his. He arched an eyebrow and she smiled. “Go out with men I don't know.”

“I know,” he said, hoping she could see the sincerity of his feelings for her.

She started to say something else, but frowned.

“It's like dancing,” he said. He spun them around in a graceful turn, her body moving with his as though they'd done it a thousand times. “You just have to go where the music takes you.”

She smiled, half puzzled and half in wonder. “And where's that?”

He couldn't resist then and pulled her just a little closer. He brought his off-hand toward his chest and pressed the back of her hand over his heart. “There's only one way to find out.”

Simon and Elizabeth spent the morning at the studio, ostensibly getting up to speed on Grant's picture,
Through the Dark Continent.
Simon shuddered at the memory. The script was dreadful. He'd been completely sincere and a little surprised no one had appreciated his suggestion that the original writers might perhaps benefit from remedial history and English lessons. Perhaps it had been a mercy that the film would never see the light of day. It started off well enough, he supposed. Alan played Henry Morton Stanley, explorer and journalist, on his dangerous journey through the jungles of Africa in search of the missing missionary Dr. David Livingstone. It was faithful enough to reality until the famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” whereupon everything had gone pear shaped. He blamed
King Kong
.