Ed Ifkovic - Make Believe

“Was Ava around then?”

“Yeah, Ava was in the picture then. The first time we met she was real nice, which surprised the hell out of me. When Frank made fun of me, she rubbed my shoulder, like we were old girlfriends. I mean, you’d think she’d be a bitch.” She smirked. “ I would if I was her. With that face. I used to be friends with a crew guy at Metro. He said she was common people. She’d eat lunch with the crew, not in her dressing room. So I thought, well, she’d help me. I wasn’t allowed to ask her. Ethan warned me-don’t you dare ask for a favor. Frank’ll go nuts.”

“Tell me about Frank.”

“What’s to tell?” Liz took a compact from her purse and checked her face. “Excuse me a sec, Miss Ferber.” She found a tube of lipstick and dabbed at her lower lip, then rolled her tongue over her lips. Satisfied, she sat back.

The waitress dropped dessert menus with us, and Liz deliberated with rapt concentration, her fingers pointing from one to the other, unable to decide. “The cheesecake,” she told the waitress. “You know, a big slice.” She checked her wristwatch. “I gotta watch the time, Miss Ferber.”

“Frank,” I repeated.

“A smug bastard. Treats me like I was a streetwalker. But then he treats all women that way, even his beloved Ava. He likes that about her. He’s got a voice and all, but so what?”

“I know. It’s amazing how the world makes excuses for people with talent or genius. The poor slob who plods along at his job is roundly upbraided for a minor mistake, while Einstein can routinely and carelessly spill his coffee on you and we’d find it harmless, if not an amusing lapse. A charming idiosyncrasy perhaps.”

Wide-eyed now. “What?”

“Do you think that he could kill anyone?”

The question stopped her cold. A giggle escaped her throat. She pointed a finger at me, a gun, while she mouthed the words: bang bang . “Anyone could. You could.” She gave me a creepy smile. “You probably have, Miss Ferber.”

I grinned. “I’ve been tempted.”

She laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.” She lit a cigarette as the waitress placed a slab of cheesecake before her. “One of Frank’s goons might. Have you seen them? They’re like…buildings. But I don’t know…”

“Yes, I’ve met one. He was very polite.”

She grumbled. “Under orders probably not to kill you just yet.”

I clicked my tongue. “Thank you, dear. A comforting thought.”

“Frank is real sick of Tony these days.” She dug into the cheesecake.

“I noticed that.”

“After a while a leech starts getting on your nerves. Ask me about it. Tony lives with me-not for much longer, though. Anyway, Frank’s had it up to here, and Tony knows it now. That’s why they’re yammering about moving back to old New Jersey again, life among the goombahs. It ain’t gonna happen. Ethan thinks he can make Frankie boy beg them to stay here. Lot of good it’ll do him. But Frank’s a savvy L.A. customer, no? It don’t work. But, you know, it’s not only Tony. Frank’s had it with Ethan, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ethan used to see Frank as a God. Frankie this, Frankie that. He got on my one remaining nerve, let me tell you. Again, you know, the coattails to a world of money and cars and Palm Springs homes and Malibu and la-di-dah stuff. But Frank looks at Ethan as Tony’s zookeeper, small fry Metro hack that he is. It finally dawned on Ethan. Suddenly Frank’s colors are fading away. There’s Ethan, grinning that empty smile of his-alone. He’s got a brain that scares me-like a machine chugging along. He said something smart-ass after that ride home from Ava’s. Frank dropped both of them at my apartment- dumped them at my place. Tony said Frank treated them like trash in the car. Ethan said, ‘Frankie isn’t worth my little finger.’ Wow! Then he said, ‘Someday somebody is gonna plug him. Whoever did Max in got the wrong slob!’ Wow!”

“An angry man.”

“Tell me about it. Inside my apartment Ethan started in on that ‘failure’ crap-how he despised failure. Failure is an awful word, he said. All around him is failure. My God, he’s a bore. He pointed at Tony. Then at me , would you believe? The bastard. Then, at a picture of Frank Tony pinned to the goddamn wall. The biggest failure of all, Frank is. He’s glad that Frank is slipping, out of a contract at Metro, you know. ‘I still got my job at Metro,’ he said. ‘And my real estate.’ And Tony, to the slob’s credit, yelled back at him, “Yeah, but you just got enough to pay the tax on the Paradise bar.”

“How did Ethan take that?”

“He walked out, headed downstairs to get a cab.” Liz glanced down at her watch, and jumped. “For chrissake.”

“So you decided…Max…your visit.”

“I decided, what the hell, retrace my steps.”

“Max?”

“Exactly.”

“Why didn’t you call him?” I asked. “Instead you went to see him.”

She deliberated. “When we parted company, well, I had a few harsh words to say to the man. I ain’t a woman to mince words. I told him I hated him, that we all hated him. You know, over the top dramatics.” She preened. “I am an actress. So I figured he’d hang up on me.” Her eyes suddenly got moist. “I didn’t hate him, Miss Ferber. I liked him. I thought that he would see me standing there, all pretty in my new dress and my hair done nice like it is now, platinum and shiny, and he’d give me a break.”

“And did he?”

Gingerly, she patted her hair with her fingertips. “You know, Miss Ferber, I got something nobody else has. Nobody believes that, Max didn’t. But I got something. I watch movies and I think, yeah, I could do that. I’m perfect for this part or that one. I know I’m not Ava Gardner, but who the hell is? She comes along, a nobody, some cotton-picking gal from the backwoods, but God gave her that shape, those green eyes, that dimple. Christ! I swear when she looks at you, you sort of melt. But there’s something else there in those eyes…like a speck of gold dust. If you got the eyes, you make it out here. Look at my eyes. Gray, no? Drab. But I can make them sparkle.”

“Liz, tell me about going to see Max.”

She waited a while before answering. “Are you going to the police?”

“I think you should. You didn’t kill him.”

“Oh God, no. Will they think I did it?”

“I can’t speak for the police, but probably not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure, but honesty is best, Liz. Sooner or later, they’ll know and knock on your door. They will, Liz. Rest assured. It’s better if you tell them yourself.”

She debated that, but I could see her rejecting the idea.

“I don’t know. I can never decide anything.” She waved a forkful of cheesecake at me.

“Throwing Tony out is a decisive act.”

A wide, pleasant grin, her head tossed back. “Maybe you’re right. Thank you for that.”

“What did Max say when he answered the door?”

She had a faraway look in her eyes, as though she now reconstructed the scene. “I could hear him talking on the phone to someone. He yelled, ‘Just a minute.’ When he opened the door, he smiled at me. Well, I started to cry, Miss Ferber. I guess I’d been hungry for someone to smile at me. Tony grumbles all the time. Ethan frowns. Frank snaps. Christ, what do you gotta do to get a smile out of somebody these days? Anyway, he steps back inside, motions me in, and I tell him, ‘Can we talk, Max? I made a mistake.’ Direct as I could be. I could see he didn’t know what to think of that, but that was all right.”

“You went inside?”