Gods and Pawns (32 page)

The suspense kept building, too, because the road wound like five miles of corkscrew, climbing all that time, and there were frequent stops at barred gates as we ascended into different species habitats. Lewis had to get out and open them, nimbly stepping around buffalo pies and other things that didn’t reward close examination, and avoiding the hostile attentions of an ostrich at about the third gate up. Eventually we turned up an avenue of orange trees and flowering oleander.

“Oh, this is very like the south of France,” said Lewis. “Don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” I muttered. A pair of high wrought-iron gates loomed in front of us, opening unobtrusively as we rattled through, and we pulled up to the Grand Staircase.

We were met by a posse of ordinary-looking guys in chinos and jackets, who collected our suitcases and made off with them before we’d even gotten out of the car. I managed to avoid yelling anything like “Hey! Come back here with those!” and of course Lewis was already greeting a dignified-looking lady who had materialized from behind a statue. A houseboy took charge of the Model A and drove it off.

“…Mr. Hearst’s housekeeper,” the lady was saying. “He’s asked me to show you to your rooms. If you’ll follow me—? You’re in the Casa del Sol.”

“Charming,” Lewis replied, and I let him take the lead, chatting and being personable with the lady as I followed them up a long sweeping staircase and across a terrace. We paused at the top, and there opening out on my left was the biggest damn Roman swimming pool I’ve ever seen, and I worked in Rome for a couple of centuries. The statues of nymphs, sea gods, et cetera, were mostly modern or museum copies. Hearst had not yet imported what was left of an honest-to-gods temple and set it up as a backdrop for poolside fun. He would, though.

Looming above us was the first of the “little guest bungalows.” We craned back our heads to look up. It would have made a pretty imposing mansion for anybody else.

“Delightful,” Lewis said. “Mediterranean Revival, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” the housekeeper replied, leading us up more stairs. “I believe this is your first visit here, Mr. Kensington? And Mr. Denham?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Mr. Hearst would like you to enjoy your stay, and has asked that I provide you with all information necessary to make that possible,” the housekeeper recited carefully, leading us around the corner of the house to its courtyard. The door at last! And waiting beside it was a Filipino guy in a suit, who bowed slightly at the waist when he saw us.

“This is Jerome,” the housekeeper informed us. “He’s been assigned to your rooms. If you require anything, you can pick up the service telephone and he’ll respond immediately.” She unlocked the door and stepped aside to usher us in. Jerome followed silently and vanished through a side door.

As we stood staring at all the antiques and Lewis made admiring noises, the housekeeper continued: “You’ll notice Mr. Hearst has furnished much of this suite with his private art collection, but he’d like you to know that the bathroom—just through there, gentlemen—is perfectly up-to-date and modern, with all the latest conveniences, including shower baths.”

“How thoughtful,” Lewis answered, and transmitted to me:
Are you going to take part in this conversation at all?

“That’s really swell of Mr. Hearst,” I said.
I’m even more nervous than I was before, O.K.?

The housekeeper smiled. “Thank you. You’ll find your bags are already in your assigned bedrooms. Jerome is unpacking for you.”

Whoops. “Great,” I said. “Where’s my room? Can I see it now?”

“Certainly, Mr. Denham,” said the housekeeper, narrowing her eyes slightly. She led us through a doorway that had probably belonged to some sixteenth-century Spanish bishop, and there was Jerome, laying out the contents of my cheap brown suitcase. My black suitcase sat beside it, untouched.

“If you’ll unlock this one, sir, I’ll unpack it too,” Jerome told me.

“That’s O.K.,” I replied, taking the black suitcase and pushing it under the bed. “I’ll get that one myself, later.”

In the very brief pause that followed, Jerome and the housekeeper exchanged glances, Lewis sighed, and I felt a real need for another Lifesaver. The housekeeper cleared her throat and said, “I hope this room is satisfactory, Mr. Denham?”

“Oh! Just peachy, thanks,” I said.

“I’m sure mine is just as nice,” Lewis offered. Jerome exited to unpack for him.

“Very good.” The housekeeper cleared her throat again. “Now, Mr. Hearst wished you to know that cocktails will be served at Seven this evening in the assembly hall, which is in the big house just across the courtyard. He expects to join his guests at Eight; dinner will be served at Nine. After dinner Mr. Hearst will retire with his guests to the theater, where a motion picture will be shown. Following the picture, Mr. Hearst generally withdraws to his study, but his guests are invited to return to their rooms or explore the library.” She fixed me with a steely eye. “Alcohol will be served only in the main house, although sandwiches or other light meals can be requested by telephone from the kitchen staff at any hour.”

She thinks you’ve got booze in the suitcase, you know
, Lewis transmitted.

Shut up
. I squared my shoulders and tried to look open and honest. Everybody knew that there were two unbreakable rules for the guests up here: no liquor in the rooms and no sex between unmarried couples. Notice I said “for the guests.” Mr. Hearst and Marion weren’t bound by any rules except the laws of physics.

The housekeeper gave us a few more helpful tidbits like how to find the zoo, tennis court, and stables, and departed. Lewis and I slunk out into the garden, where we paced along between the statues.

“Overall, I don’t think that went very well,” Lewis observed.

“No kidding,” I said, thrusting my hands in my pockets.

“It’ll only be a temporary bad impression, you know,” Lewis told me helpfully. “As soon as you’ve made your presentation—”

“Hey! Yoo-hoo! Joe! You boys made it up here O.K.?” cried a bright voice from somewhere up in the air, and we turned for our first full-on eyeful of La Casa Grande in all its massive glory. It looked sort of like a big Spanish cathedral, but surely one for pagans, because there was Marion Davies hanging out a third-story window waving at us.

“Yes, thanks,” I called, while Lewis stared. Marion was wearing a dressing gown. She might have been wearing more, but you couldn’t tell from this distance.

“Is that your friend? He’s
cute
,” she yelled. “Looks like Freddie March!”

Lewis turned bright pink. “I’m his stunt double, actually,” he called to her, with a slightly shaky giggle.

“What?”

“I’m his stunt double.”

“Oh,” she yelled back. “O.K.! Listen, do you want some ginger ale or anything? You know there’s no”—she looked naughty and mimed drinking from a bottle—“until tonight.”

“
Yes, ginger ale would be fine
,” bawled Lewis.

“I’ll have some sent down,” Marion said, and vanished into the recesses of La Casa Grande.

We turned left at the next statue and walked up a few steps into the courtyard in front of the house. It was the size of several town squares, big enough to stage the riot scene from
Romeo and Juliet
complete with the Verona Police Department charging in on horseback. All it held at the moment, though, was another fountain and some lawn chairs. In one of them, Greta Garbo sat moodily peeling an orange.

“Hello, Greta,” I said, wondering if she’d remember me. She just gave me a look and went on peeling the orange. She remembered me, all right.

Lewis and I sat down a comfortable distance from her, and a houseboy appeared out of nowhere with two tall glasses of White Rock over ice.

“Marion Davies said I was cute,” Lewis reminded me, looking pleased. Then his eyebrows swooped together in the middle. “That’s not good, though, is it? For the mission? What if Mr. Hearst heard her? Ye gods, she was shouting it at the top of her lungs.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be any big deal,” I told him wearily, sipping my ginger ale. Marion thought a lot of people were cute, and didn’t care who heard her say so.

We sat there in the sunshine, and the ice in our drinks melted away. Garbo ate her orange. Doves crooned sleepily in the carillon towers of the house and I thought about what I was going to say to William Randolph Hearst.

Pretty soon the other guests started wandering up, and Garbo wouldn’t talk to them, either. Clark Gable sat on the edge of the fountain and got involved in a long conversation with a sandy-haired guy from Paramount about their mutual bookie. One of Hearst’s five sons arrived with his girlfriend. He tried to introduce her to Garbo, who answered in monosyllables, until at last he gave it up and they went off to swim in the Roman pool. A couple of friends of Marion’s from the days before talkies, slightly threadbare guys named Charlie and Laurence who looked as though they hadn’t worked lately, got deeply involved in a discussion of Greek mythology.

I sat there and looked up at the big house and wondered where Hearst was, and what he was doing. Closing some million-dollar media deal? Giving some senator or congressman voting instructions? Placing an order with some antiques dealer for the contents of an entire library from some medieval duke’s palace?

He did stuff like that, Mr. Hearst, which was one of the reasons the Company was interested in him.

I was distracted from my uneasy reverie when Constance Talmadge arrived, gaining on forty now but still as bright and bouncy as when she’d played the Mountain Girl in
Intolerance
, and with her Brooklyn accent just as strong. She bounced right over to Lewis, who knew her, and they had a lively chat about old times. Shortly afterward the big doors of the house opened and out came, not the procession of priests and altar boys you’d expect, but Marion in light evening dress.

“Hello, everybody,” she hollered across the fountain. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but you know how it is—Hearst come, Hearst served!”

There were nervous giggles and you almost expected to see the big house behind her wince, but she didn’t care. She came out and greeted everybody warmly—well, almost everybody; Garbo seemed to daunt even Marion—and then welcomed us in through the vast doorway, into the inner sanctum.

“Who’s a first-timer up here?” she demanded, as we crossed the threshold. “I know you are, Joe, and your friend—? Get a load of this floor.” She pointed to the mosaic tile in the vestibule. “Know where that’s from? Pompeii! Can you beat it? People actually died on this floor.”

If she was right, I had known some of them. It didn’t improve my mood.

The big room beyond was cool and dark after the brilliance of the courtyard. Almost comfortable, too: it had contemporary sofas and overstuffed chairs, little ashtrays on brass stands. If you didn’t mind the fact that it was also about a mile long and full of Renaissance masterpieces, with a fireplace big enough to roast an ox and a coffered ceiling a mile up in the air, it was sort of cozy. Here, as in all the other rooms, were paintings and statues representing the Madonna and Child. It seemed to be one of Mr. Hearst’s favorite images.

We milled around aimlessly until servants came out bearing trays of drinks, at which time the milling became purposeful as hell. We converged on those trays like piranhas. The Madonna beamed down at us all, smiling her blessing.

The atmosphere livened up a lot after that. Charlie sat down at a piano and began to play popular tunes. Gable and Laurence and the guy from Paramount found a deck of cards and started a poker game. Marion worked the rest of the crowd like the good hostess she was, making sure that everybody had a drink and nobody was bored.

The Hearst kid and his girlfriend came in with wet hair. A couple of Hearst’s executives (slimy-looking bastards) came in too, saw Garbo and hurried over to try to get her autograph. A gaunt and imposing grande dame with two shrieking little mutts made an entrance, and Marion greeted her enthusiastically; she was some kind of offbeat novelist who’d had one of her books optioned, and had come out to Hollywood to work on the screenplay.

I roamed around the edges of the vast room, scanning for the secret panel that concealed Hearst’s private elevator. Lewis was gallantly dancing the Charleston with Connie Talmadge. Marion made for them, towing the writer along.

“—And this is Dutch Talmadge, you remember her? And this is, uh, what was your name, sweetie?” Marion waved at Lewis.

“Lewis Kensington,” he said, as the music tinkled to a stop. The pianist paused to light a cigarette.

“Lewis! That’s it. And you’re even cuter up close,” said Marion, reaching out and pinching his cheek. “Isn’t he? Anyway you’re Industry too, aren’t you, Lewis?”

“Only in a minor sort of way,” Lewis demurred. “I’m a stunt man.”

“That just means you’re worth the money they pay you, honey,” Marion told him. “Unlike some of these blonde bimbos with no talent, huh?” She whooped with laughter at her own expense. “Lewis, Dutch, this is Cartimandua Bryce! You know? She writes those wonderful spooky romances.”

The imposing-looking lady stepped forward. The two chihuahuas did their best to lunge from her arms and tear out Lewis’s throat, but she kept a firm grip on them.

“A-and these are her little dogs,” added Marion unnecessarily, stepping back from the yappy armful.

“My familiars,” Cartimandua Bryce corrected her with a saturnine smile. “Actually, they are old souls who have re-entered the flesh on a temporary basis for purposes of the spiritual advancement of others.”

“Oh,” said Connie.

“O.K.,” said Marion.

“This is Conqueror Worm,” Mrs. Bryce offered the smaller of the two bug-eyed monsters, “and this is Tcho-Tcho.”

“How nice,” said Lewis gamely, and reached out in an attempt to shake Tcho-Tcho’s tiny paw. She bared her teeth at him and screamed frenziedly. Some animals can tell we’re not mortals. It can be inconvenient.

Lewis withdrew his hand in some haste. “I’m sorry. Perhaps the nice doggie’s not used to strangers?”