Vintage Love (286 page)

Then Tommy returned to the living room in slacks and a colorful open-necked shirt. The starlet was with him, smirking a little, and wearing a clinging dress with an unusually short skirt. The bootlegger took the girl over to the bar and poured drinks for her and for himself. Then he left her flirting with Jack Steel as he came back to Nita.

He sat down on the carpet beside her as Jack had, smiled at her over his drink and said, “Hello, dream girl!”

She gave him a cool look. “I saw you cavorting with your dream girl in the pool.”

Tommy’s craggy face showed annoyance. “Trouble with you is, you have too many fairies around you!”

Her eyebrows raised. “What?”

“Come on, now!” the big Irishman said. “People know about you. That you’ve been sleeping around with that pansy, Eric Gray, and you’ve taken on his boyfriend, Richard Wright, as your manager. You can’t be too fussy!”

Nita at once jumped up and ignoring the singing of Taylor told Tommy in a low, angry voice, “I will not take that from you or anyone!”

She at once dashed out of the room and ran through the doorway in the adjoining room which led to the swimming pool. She dropped into a canvas chair and began to weep.

“I’m sorry.” It was Tommy Gallegher, who had followed her out and was standing by her chair.

“Go away!”

“I said I was sorry!”

“You said far too much,” she told him.

“How did I know what kind of girl you were?” he asked. “Most of the broads here only want a good time and a good lay. I thought I’d be a nice change for you from those fairies. We’d have a fun weekend and get to know each other.”

She stared up at him and saw the puzzled look on his face and heard the desolate note in his voice, and it suddenly occurred to her that he was talking like this because he thought it was the norm. That he actually didn’t know any better.

She stood up and faced him. “I was brought up with ignorant Irish. I happen to be one myself. But I never expected to meet the likes of you.”

He stared at her. Then he said again, “I’m sorry.”

“You think that makes everything right?” she asked incredulously.

“I mean it,” he said. “I see I was wrong. You’re not an easy lay. So I’ll have to wait a little to sleep with you.”

“A longer time than you’d ever guess,” she said, her voice hard.

“Okay! So I blew it!” the big man with the broken nose said contritely. “I didn’t act right.”

“Act right!” she echoed in disgusted disbelief.

“So I’m a big ape,” Tommy Gallegher went on. “It takes a decent Irish girl to spot it.”

She said, “At least you now know what I am.”

“So I’ll treat you like my sister, Mamie, back in Illinois. Don’t you think that even an ape like me has a family, a sister and a mother?”

“I don’t dare think of how you must treat them!”

“They manage all right,” he said grimly. “And so will you if you forget what happened and let me start over again.”

“I’ll be satisfied if you just leave me alone for the rest of the weekend,” she shot back.

“All right,” the big man said. “I’ll leave you alone.” And he went back inside.

Nita remained by the floodlit swimming pool. After a little William Desmond Taylor came out. He said, “I couldn’t have entertained you very well. You walked out in the middle of my act.”

Nita turned to him. “I had my reasons.”

“Tommy?”

“Yes.”

The director asked, “What did you say to him?”

“I’m not sure that I remember,” Nita replied. “At any rate, he left me.”

“Must have been something drastic,” Taylor said. “He came back to the living room and spoke to no one. He took a whiskey bottle into a corner with him and he’s sitting alone there getting drunk.”

Nita said, “It can’t be that I hurt his feelings. He has a hide like an elephant.”

“I think he’s also sensitive in a strange way,” Taylor told her. “I take it you rejected him. That hasn’t happened in a long while. He’s absolute ruler here! He names his price for his booze and gets it! He takes his risks and laughs at them! If he has rivals he has them killed, or does it himself. And women are a sort of commodity which he expects to buy and discard as it pleases him.”

“He explained that and I told him my opinion of it,” she said. “And of him!”

Taylor smiled at her knowingly. “You’re quite a girl, Nita,” he said. “I’d have liked to have had you come my way.”

She gave him a cool look. “From all I hear you do very well!”

“You have rather special tastes in men, I’m told,” he went on easily. “I have some experience in that direction. Perhaps we can still get together.”

“Don’t count on it,” she snapped.

Nita had had enough. In a dark mood she left him and went up to her own room, locking the door. The weekend had turned out to be sheer disaster. It would have been bad enough with only Tommy Gallegher and the girl he’d dragged along, but William Desmond Taylor and his harem completed the chaos. She did not blame Phillip for leaving and she decided that in the morning she would call a taxi and leave on her own.

Eric had promised to call her from New York or Philadelphia. He hadn’t been sure where he’d be for the weekend. He had been moving back and forth between the big Eastern cities promoting “Enslaved.” Nita had given him the Steels’ beach house number but so far there had been no word from him. This also was worrying her. She would be glad when the tour was over and he’d be back in Hollywood.

Richard Wright was supportive, but aside from being astute in business, he gave much of his energy to his life in the underground homosexual world of Hollywood. He was still a mystery to her and not much comfort. It was for this reason she’d invited Phillip with her on the weekend.

She went to bed in a very upset state. Listening to the wash of the waves on the nearby beach, she tried to think things through. It was hard to say which troubled her most — Phillip’s leaving in anger, or not hearing from Eric. She realized how much both men meant to her.

It was Eric who needed her most and whom she had come to care for deeply. He had won her heart. There had been a time when she might have married Phillip, but he had chosen to marry Sally Stark, and now that the marriage was breaking up, Nita was no longer interested. She still valued him as a close friend and did not want to lose him.

She went to sleep eventually as she dwelt on the devious ways of the Hollywood film colony, and awakened to the morning sunshine pouring in her windows. When she went down for breakfast only Jack Steel, looking pale and wan, was there.

With a sheepish smile he seated her at the dining room table and said, “I guess everybody knocked themselves out last night.”

“So it seems,” she agreed, taking her napkin.

“You feeling better?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she told him. “We have a busy shooting schedule tomorrow and the rest of the week. I should have conserved my strength by remaining home. I’ll pack after breakfast.”

“You should stay,” he urged her. “Tommy wants to take us all out in his new yacht. They say it’s armed like a light cruiser.”

She smiled bleakly. “I don’t think he’ll miss me.”

“He drank himself into a stupor last night,” Jack said. “It was a job getting him upstairs. It’s not often he drinks his own bootleg booze.”

“He’s badly short on manners,” she said.

“I know,” Jack agreed as the maid came to serve them. “He was just a kind of gangster before Prohibition elevated him to his present power.”

“His new prominence hasn’t worked any wonders in him. He’s a very rough diamond,” was Nita’s opinion.

She and Jack continued to talk over the breakfast table and afterwards she went to stand in the sunshine by the pool. He continued to try to persuade her to remain but she was anxious to leave.

“I’m worried about Eric,” she said. “He was to call me and he never breaks his promises. Perhaps there is a message waiting for me at home.”

She was about to go inside and upstairs to pack when an unexpected visitor came out through the French doors leading to the poolside. The moment Nita saw his grave face she knew he was bringing her bad news.

Richard was wearing a white summer suit and carrying a Panama hat in his hand as he came slowly towards her.

She took a faltering step towards him. “What is wrong?” she asked softly.

Richard stood before her a moment. Then in a taut voice he said, “I don’t know how to begin.”

“What has happened?” Her voice was raised in fear.

“It’s Eric,” he said.

“Go on!”

“He was returning from Philadelphia in a private plane and it crashed.”

Nita stood there stunned, not wanting to understand his words. She said dazedly, “Crashed! Was he hurt badly?”

There was great pain in Richard’s eyes. “He’s dead,” he said in a choked voice. “Eric is dead! It’s already in the headlines of the Eastern papers. Lew Meyers located me and broke the news.”

Nita made no reply because she had fainted as soon as Richard’s words registered in her brain. She felt something cold and wet touching her lips and opened her eyes to see that Jack Steel was offering her a drink.

“This will help,” he said tensely.

She obeyed him and as the burning liquid trickled down her throat and awareness returned, she realized that she was lying on one of the poolside couches. With awareness came a crushing sense of sorrow and loss.

Looking up at Richard who was standing beside her, she whispered, “There’s no doubt at all? It’s not just some dreadful mistake?”

“I’m afraid not,” Richard said sadly. “I’m sorry I had to break the news, Nita.”

“What about Barbara?” she asked.

“Lew Meyers told her. She’d been expecting an announcement of his divorcing her and Lew claims she was almost pleased to hear that Eric was killed before he could return to you. Lew thinks it best that nothing be released about his intentions now,” Richard went on, “So Barbara can play the role of grieving widow to the hilt.”

“It will be as honest as anything else she has done,” was Nita’s bitter comment.

“Poor Eric!” Jack Steel said. And he asked her, “Do you want another drink?”

“Not yet,” she said.

Richard sat by her on an adjoining couch and said, “Lew is going to have production on your new film delayed for a week to give you time to recover.”

Jack nodded. “That was wise, I didn’t think Meyers had that much heart.”

“It’s partly heart and partly cunning,” Richard said. “He’s afraid that Nita might collapse on the set and the news hens would sniff out the story of her romance with Eric all over again. He wants the scandal kept to a minimum and he wants Nita hidden away somewhere until after the funeral.”

Nita stared unseeing at the sunlight sparkling on the blue ripples of the pool. “Eric and I had so many plans.”

Jack Steel said, “There’s no question he was in love with you.”

Richard Wright’s fine-featured face showed chagrin. He said, “The question is, where to take Nita to keep her away from the press?”

“Why not let her remain here?” Jack wanted to know.

“No good!” Richard said. “As soon as they hear that production is halted they’ll be out here looking for you.”

Jack knelt by her and said urgently, “I think I have the solution, if you’ll listen.”

Lost in her dismal thoughts, Nita asked bleakly without paying much attention, “What do you have to suggest?”

“The yacht,” he said. “Gallegher’s yacht! He wants to take us all out for a cruise. I call it an ideal place for you to rest in privacy.”

She said wearily, “You know how I feel about Gallegher.”

“He’ll behave, I give you my word,” Jack said. “He’ll be as shocked as the rest of us to hear what happened to Eric.”

“He’ll probably say it’s just one less fairy left in the world!” was her caustic reply.

Richard spoke up impatiently, “You don’t have to like him! Jack’s offering you a chance to recuperate and get away from Hollywood.”

She glanced at the young man and said, “I’ll go if you’ll come along.”

“Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be back, ready to leave,” Richard promised. “I’ll have to let Lew know where you’re going to be.”

She said, “See that flowers are sent …”

“I’ll look after everything before I leave,” the young man promised.

Nita went up to her room and lay on the bed and sobbed for hours. She couldn’t collect her thoughts or make any plans. She knew that for the moment she would have to simply drift along and let others do her thinking for her.

Joyce Steel came up and offered her sympathy as well as the concern of William Desmond Taylor and his women friends. From what Nita gathered they would all be going on the cruise. She wondered if she could stand their company in the close quarters of Gallegher’s yacht.

She was dozing fitfully when she heard a knock at her door. When she opened it she saw the big man with the broken nose standing there. His battered Irish face showed a good deal of compassion.

“I’m sorry,” he managed awkwardly.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I hear you’re coming on the boat.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be safe on board,” he promised.

“It’s kind of you,” she said listlessly, turning her back to him and staring out the window at the beach.

“I owe Lew Meyers a favor,” he said, and vanished down the hall.

Richard Wright returned and drove her to the dock in his long, cream convertible. He said little to her on the drive. She could see that he as well was badly shaken by Eric’s death.

The yacht was waiting for them. It was larger than Nita had expected, gleaming white, with shining brass and graceful lines. A curt man in a white uniform welcomed them aboard and introduced himself as Captain Navarro. They explained that the others were on their way.

“Let me show you to your cabin, Miss Nolan,” the Captain requested. Followed by a sailor who carried her bags, he led her below and down a long corridor which was extremely narrow to a small but elegant cabin with a porthole looking out on the ocean.

“I’ll be most comfortable here,” she said as the sailor put her bags down.

“We’ll talk later,” Richard Wright said. He left with the Captain and the steward to be shown to his own quarters.