The Chameleon (53 page)

“You're looking well, Claire. I'm glad you agreed to see me.”

“I'm just glad you're feeling better. I was worried.” She was trying to remember what part she was playing: jilted fiancée, notorious murderess, or happily married Hollywood wife. She knew she was sitting a breath away from the only man she had ever loved, but she didn't have one clue how to behave. She needed direction. When the waiter came, she studied the oversized menu as if it might hold her next line.

“Smoked salmon, please, and the cold artichoke.”

“You won't mind if I have something heartier?” He smiled that sideways smile of his and suddenly she remembered her role. She watched him, mesmerized as he methodically sliced his tomatoes and precisely peppered his lettuce leaves, patting his napkin to the side of his chin. She couldn't detect any sign of a stroke. He appeared as in control as ever.

“Are you just passing through?” She was willing herself not to care.

“I've taken the chairmanship of the World Bank and am leaving in two days for Hong Kong and New Delhi. I shall be traveling about a month. We're putting together a new industrial program for emerging nations.”

Claire's eyes lit up. Of course he knew this would interest her.

“How exciting, Harrison. Building self-help infrastructure.”

“Exactly. Foreign aid by itself isn't enough. We only create enemies by giving starving people bottled water. We need to have them build their own wells. And then create jobs. Self-reliance is where I plan to take this project.”

“I couldn't agree more. How brilliant of you.” Claire was right at home. She didn't even need a cue card. She was already seduced by his humanitarian endeavors.

“You know, we have a representative from Eleanor House along on the trip. You've done a fine job there, Claire.” He reached across the table to pat her hand and then let his fingers tighten their grip. “Darling.”

Darling. She knew she should have winced at the word, but coming from Harrison's soft lips it sounded natural to her ears. But so did “Toots” now.

“Why don't you come along and supervise the children's part? You could, you know, as founder of Eleanor House.” The invitation hung in the air.

Claire was amazed. Here in Hollywood she had won a hard-eamed respect. To the rest of the world, however, she was still a fortune-hunting murderess. Had he conveniently forgotten, or was he just being polite?

“I've only just been put back on the letterhead.”

“Yes, I saw. It was noble of you to resign when things weren't going well.”

When things weren't going well.
The euphemism for what had happened unsettled her. An artichoke leaf dropped from her fingertips onto the tablecloth.

“But I knew it was you who gave them the endowment that allowed them to continue. I matched it, you know. In Six's name.” His skin went sallow.

Claire couldn't help it. She wasn't a good enough actress. The tears welled up in her eyes. Hurt and anger exploded inside of her. “Where were you? I needed you.” Her shoulders started to shake. “He killed Six.” It was the first time she had uttered the truth. But she wanted him to know. “And you sent me there.” A year in Hollywood had taught her to reach down into the quick of her pain as if she were a method actress drawing on her own, very real, emotions. Except that she wasn't acting. “Everything in my life was in shambles and you never came.” She didn't care that her tears were falling like hailstones into her artichoke heart. The waiter headed in their direction did a quick military maneuver to skirt around their table. Whether it was a rich woman sobbing to her investment banker or an actress auditioning for a part, he decided to give table twenty-seven a wide berth.

Claire's eyes were livid with anger. “How could you just casually invite me for April in India or Pakistan after you left me penniless in an Italian jail cell? I wasn't even allowed to see my son buried.”

“Our son.” His skin was the color of ash. “It was out of my control.”

Claire bristled. Those were the exact words Tom had used when he'd ordered her to catch the next plane out of Rome, leaving everything, everyone, behind.

“But I can make it up to you now. Truly, Claire. I've got my health back. It was hearing about Six that caused my stroke.” He looked ashamed, as if by falling sick he had broken his code of honor along with her heart “Allow me to take care of both of us now.”

“It's just too late.”

“I'm free now. It's inevitable you'll hear about it, but I've tried to handle it as discreetly as possible. I've divorced Ophelia. I'm yours if you'll have me.”

She was frozen. Harrison was free. But what was she supposed to do? Drop Lefty? Fly away with a song in her heart? The man she had loved since she was eighteen, the minute she had laid eyes on him—no, before, that, the man who had materialized out of her Field's catalog dream book—was back again, pleading for her hand. And she had just given it to another.

“I understand if you need some time, darling. If you won't come now, we can be together in two months when I return.”

The waiter thought the Seberg look-alike must have got the part from the way she turned off the tears and determinedly attacked her peach melba.

“No, Harrison. It's too late for us. If only you could have come sooner.” She wouldn't leave Lefty. He might not be the one she loved, but he had been the one who was there when her life died. And sometimes being there was more important than love.

Lana Turner was coming to dinner. A very excited Lefty was trying to behave as if the star of
The Bad and the Beautiful
wasn't currently testifying in the L.A. courthouse in defense of her daughter, who was on trial for fatally stabbing hoodlum Johnny Stompanato. And Claire was trying to pretend that the man she loved hadn't just asked her to run away with him two days ago. And that her brain didn't have to shut off her heart to prevent her from following after him.

Baskets of fruit and flowers had been arriving at three-minute intervals from hopeful attendees. But Claire insisted that Lana be protected, so only the film star's most loyal friends and the cream of Hollywood society were invited. All day long the phones had been ringing off the hook. Everyone wanted to come to the Lefkowitzes’ dinner. The murder of Stompanato, Lana's lover, was making headlines all over the country, and this was Lana's first outing.

Lana was a client, and the film studio had insisted on this little dinner to show she wasn't being shunned by her peers, a real career-killer. So Lefty had arranged for supper under the flattering light of the Chinese lanterns around the kidney-shaped pool. Claire understood only too well the importance of making sure the lady felt welcome at the best table in town. She also felt the need to protect her guest of honor from the sharp pen of the press and any party crashers—and she felt the need to try to quell her own resurfacing emotions. The buzz in town was that Lana had stabbed her jealous lover in a knock-down-drag-out fight and that her fifteen-year-old daughter had taken the blame when the police stormed in, a loyal gesture to save her mother. Claire shivered in the warm air and wondered if Lana Turner's daughter had taken the blame to protect her. Dear God, she whispered, don't let someone else live the same nightmare I have.

The whole movie colony was desperate to witness this meeting. Would Claire and Lana embrace as sisters in violence? Would they tell one another the truth? The hand-picked guests included only one columnist—a friendly one—from the
Hollywood Reporter
who always spun out his column as Lefty dictated. So the little group was suddenly thrown off balance when Mrs. Cecile Juarez, descendant of one of the first families of Los Angeles and widowed owner of the
LA. Mirror,
showed up with Fenwick Grant instead of her nephew as her escort.

Grant saw Claire before she spotted him. He stood off to one side in the shadow of the pool house, studying his hostess, the woman who had sent the circulation of his papers soaring, the one whom his attack-dog columnist Anita Lace had ruined. But somehow she had risen, Phoenix-like, out of her own ashes. She was moving gracefully among her guests, whispering a word here, lightly touching another on his arm, finishing one sentence as she moved on to the next person. Like a butterfly, he thought, only more interesting. She made all the other women look overdressed. She wore a slim black sheath that covered her obviously ample cleavage all the way to the collarbone but must have been designed by a superior architect, as it had no back at all. He had little time to wonder at anything else before Lefty tapped him on his elbow, Fenwick Grant's six-three shoulder being out of Lefty's reach.

“Hit the road, bub. You got a big set of balls showing up here.”

Grant, who combined a Harvard education with street smarts, wasn't easily intimidated. “I'm here with Cecile Juarez.”

“You're outta here. Listen, Grant, maybe someday I'll forgive you for what you did to my wife, but tonight isn't it.” Lefty practiced his own smooth brand of diplomacy. He was anxious to usher Grant out before Claire could be upset by his intrusion.

Grant turned to comply a moment too late. Claire saw him and walked straight over to one of the two people she despised most on the face of the earth. Somebody had to be blamed for all her tragedy, and tonight the fellow who broadcast the news, milking the story and getting rich off her troubles, was it. By now she knew enough about the newspaper business to know that Anita Lace had been working under his skillful direction.

In her high heels Claire was more of a vertical match for him than Lefty. Her haughty aquiline nose was just inches from his face.

“I assume you've blundered in by mistake and you're not a trespasser.”

Lefty brought his hands to his ulcer, hoping she wouldn't finish her thought.

“In case you don't bother to read your own newspapers, trespassers can be shot in this neighborhood. Happens all the time. When I moved to Bel Air, I think it was your Anita Lace who dubbed this street Murderer's Row. Are you leaving now, or would you like one last drink? How do you take your poison?”

If Fenwick Grant hadn't been so bedazzled by her, so mesmerized by the sound of her elegantly impassioned voice as she squelched him, light-years away from the cool, bored hostess he'd met at Duccio's table, he might have actually been frightened by this soft-spoken, tough-talking woman. If he wasn't mistaken there was real passion beneath the surface. But had he known about the scene that was about to take place, the newspaperman would have risked his life and stayed.

“My apologies.” He was cavalier about the effect his chiseled features and charms had on all the others; he gave the impression that if his good looks evaporated in the morning, he wouldn't give a damn. The Hollywood men who made their livings with their faces were glad to see him go, though the ladies felt the sexual energy of the cocktail hour drop when he raised his hand in surrender to Claire and left.

Lana Turner swept in late, a vision of angelic innocence mixed with devilish sensuality in a short white cocktail dress that exposed three-fourths of her bosom. Her high heels, reinforced with gold taps, clicked like a sound track on the flagstone patio. Claire and Lana maneuvered their way through the cocktail crowd, ignoring everyone else until they came face-to-face. Silently, they reached out and hugged each other tightly.

The guests stilled the ice in their drinks and stopped speaking in order to hear every word. They stared at the two women. Both were pale, one with an inch of William Tuttle on her face, the other with a soft dusting of powder; one with platinum hair poured out of a bottle, the other with sleek brown mane lightly sunstreaked; one encased, sausagelike, in a white vavoom number, a transparent chiffon scarf blowing around her neck; the other sleekly aristocratic in backless basic black. The guests were breathless waiting for the two beautiful women to speak.

But the odd couple decided to offer the curious gapers nothing more than a silent movie tonight. Claire ushered Lana into the glass pool house, closing the sliding door behind her. For the next two hours the guests sipped their cocktails and nibbled their shrimp, all the while feverishly trying to read the ladies’ lips as they played the best scene of the year on their brightly lit stage.

Esther Hoffman, married to the head of MGM, couldn't take it any longer. “Look, they're hugging! What do you think they're hugging about?”

Manny Moses put on his glasses. “I think that's a tear rolling out of Lana's eye. I didn't know she could do tears without glycerin drops.”

“Can't we get any sound?” The studio czar was beside himself. “I didn't come here to play charades!”

Cecile Juarez lifted her lorgnette from her evening bag. She could regale her bridge club with this scene for months. “They both look innocent to me. Mothers protecting children. There ought to be a law against police harassing women.”

“Or mobsters beating up movie stars.”

“Mildred Pierce!”
Esther Hoffman shouted, recalling the Joan Crawford classic that had been big box office. “Just imagine Lana in a remake where the mother sacrifices everything for her daughter. It'll be a smash! I'll have the studio get right on it.”

“Oh my God.” Cecil Mulholland was beside himself. “I think she's confessing.”

“Which one? I can't see from here.”

“Sit down! I used to read lips. I think they're
both
confessing.”

“Confessing?”

“Confessing to covering up. You know, the noble gesture.”

“I'm going to weep. Look at them. Holding hands. I'd kill to have women like that kill for me.”

“If
I
were on the jury”—the actor moonlighting as a waiter and serving the beef tenderloin couldn't restrain himself—“I'd find them both innocent. They're
gor
-jus.”

“Well, for my money, but don't let it leave this table”—Esther Hoffman pointed her finger like she was betting on black at the roulette table—“Turner's guilty and Lefkowitz is innocent.”

“I'd bet on it.”

They watched as attentively as if they were in a darkened movie house until Lefty broke up the silent movie.