Ed Ifkovic - Make Believe

“Ask Harry.”

“I don’t have to ask Harry anything. I talked to Sophie Barnes today. She recalled Tony slouching in the booth, crumpled in a corner, snoring. And you’d disappeared. She considered you’d gone into the kitchen or backroom, which you probably did. But she recalled that she glanced back as she stormed out-some fifteen or so minutes after she’d first looked-and only Tony was still in the booth.”

“You’re right. I run a bar. I was in back.”

“At one point Liz Grable came looking for Tony, walking in and spotting him drunk and passed out. She backed out, headed home. She’d had it with both of you. She told me this afternoon that Tony was by himself.”

“I told you…”

“But I pushed her and she remembered that your car wasn’t in the parking lot in its usual spot. She knew it because Tony doesn’t drive and relies on you-you always brought him home. On the nights when she met Tony there your car was in its usual spot, right of the back door. Well, that night it was gone. But she paid it no mind. After all, you weren’t inside with Tony. She wasn’t surprised to see Tony by himself. Disgusted with him, she went home.”

“I was…” He clammed up.

“Something else. When Larry Calhoun was handing you the papers for the sale at the Ambassador, he sniped that he’d chosen not to hand them over at the Paradise to a drunk. I wondered, by chance, if he’d stopped in that night and you weren’t there. Desmond Peake is putting in a call to him and…”

He held up a hand. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. “You got it all figured out, right?”

“Yes, I do. You slipped out and murdered Max. You could accomplish the deed in less than a half hour. Considerably less, in fact. It was a question of timing, Ethan. You’re right on the money. Timing in Hollywood is everything.”

Ethan was biting his lip like a frenzied chipmunk. He reached for the empty coffee cup and rattled it.

“Ava told me to look at the players and where they were situated. And that led me to you, Ethan.”

Ethan shot a fierce look at Frank. “Is that why you’re here, Frankie boy? To take me in? To play the tough guy one more time? To catch a murderer and hand him over? The boy from New Jersey who made it big slapping handcuffs on the boy who never got a chance? Is that it? High muck-a-muck Frank Sinatra. Boozy kingpin. Shoot-‘em-up crooner.” He raised his voice, shrill, metallic. “I didn’t come out here to pick up crumbs off your table. Lenny told me…it…it was all ours for the picking. I hoped they’d arrest you , Frank. Haul your ass off to prison. You, who threatened to kill him. Maybe Alice, but I thought…you. You or Alice-I didn’t care. Big shot. You and Ava, two drunks. Alice killed Lenny and what did you do? Nothing. She murdered him. You let it go because Ava told you to. Alice got away with murder. Murder! At that moment I knew what I had to do.”

“All right, stop,” Frank said slowly.

“I hated Max. He is everything Hollywood did to me that is rotten. He dashed my dreams-made light of my script. My blood was in there.”

“Oddly, Ethan, in this dreamland out here, where everyone makes up stories, you still couldn’t make anyone believe in you.”

He smiled. “And there was that Commie sipping cocktails with Frank and Ava. Like he was one of them. It was all perfect, really, so logical. The pieces of a puzzle coming together, piece by piece. Exquisite, mostly. The stars in alignment. For once…with me .”

Suddenly Ethan swung into me, a jack knife move, but Frank stood, moved behind me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. I could feel his touch, his fingers pushing into my flesh. A comforting move, and welcome. He simply stood there, not saying a word, as Ethan glared.

“Sure thing, Frankie boy. You know how you call everybody a bum? Well, you’re a bum.”

Frank measured his words. “I may be a bum, Ethan, done my share of rotten things, but I also know that Max didn’t deserve to die.” He lifted one of his hands while the other still rested on my shoulder. “Sometimes you gotta do the right thing. Right, Edna?”

“Yes.”

Frank pointed at Ethan, a bony finger aimed at his chest. Ethan stiffened and wrapped his arms around his chest. “Edna’s a smart cookie, wouldn’t you say?”

Ethan spat out his words. “I would have gotten away with it if she’d stayed in New York where she belongs.”

Frank’s hand grazed my cheek affectionately. “Hey, welcome to Hollywood.”

Ava and Frank smiled into the camera at the premiere of Show Boat . I folded my copy of yesterday’s Los Angeles Times so that I could stare at the two lovers at the gala event at the splashy Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Two days ago, July 17. The day before that event I’d sat with Frank in the commissary at Metro. Three days ago. Two days ago. Both lifetimes in the past. Worlds far from me as I sat in the first-class compartment of the American Airlines plane, headed back to New York.

Tonight Show Boat would premiere in Manhattan, though I’d not be there. I’d be in my bed with a tray of food, catching up on mail and friends.

Hollywood was history. The past is over.

Frank Sinatra told me that one night, but it turned out he didn’t really believe it either.

Three days ago, the beginning of that long afternoon as Frank signaled to security to step in, then two police officers appearing, though Ethan, sitting there with his lips drawn into a straight line, his eyes filled with hatred, refused to move. Spine rigid, hands gripping the edge of the table, he demanded to be left alone, ordering the cops around in a fierce and chilling voice. He had to be lifted from the table bodily, his fingers pried off the edge; and even then, held in the air like an errant, spoiled child, his knees still bent and his fingertips curled, he set his face into a stony mask. He said nothing as the cops hauled him away, his body catatonic. He didn’t look back when Tony plaintively called out his name.

Tony, that blubbering mass of grief. I’d not wanted him there, of course, because I did not want the sad man to witness what would happen. Poor Tony, twisted by his brother into a lost soul who railed at a world he could never understand. A victim, shattered. Even before the cops arrived, while security stood over his brother, Tony dissolved into a weeping fit, rocking back and forth in the seat, head rolling as though unhinged, sloppy wet tears gushing down those fat cheeks. “No, no, no.” The rumble of his voice filled the large room where other diners, luckily not so many late in the afternoon, watched in horror, some backing away or standing by the entrance.

I sat there quietly. It was Frank who tapped Tony on the shoulder and nudged him to get up. And it was Frank, whispering in a small, demanding voice, who directed Tony away from the table. As I sat there, unmoving, staring away from Ethan, Frank began walking Tony around the room, maneuvering him around the tables, his right arm draped over Tony’s broad shoulders, his head dipped into Tony’s neck, whispering, whispering, a drone I couldn’t hear except to know that it was someone soothing a lost and miserable child.

Frank walked Tony out, found a phone, and called Liz Grable. He later told me that Liz had told him to bring Tony to her at the beauty salon, which he did shortly; and that Liz, leaving work and embracing the trembling Tony, had taken him back to her home, from which he’d just been exiled.

“She’ll watch over him.” Frank told Ava and me later. “He’s hurting. And maybe she’s the one thing he needs now.”

He also told us that Tony had babbled in the car that he’d suspected Ethan of the murder, though it seemed impossible, of course. He could never ask him…or even consider it, but he’d roused himself twice that night when he’d passed out in the Paradise. Both times Ethan wasn’t there. Later, asking him, Ethan said he’d never left Tony’s side. One night last spring, rifling through Ethan’s bureau at his apartment, searching for singles and change, he’d spotted the.32 under some papers. Days after Max was dead, he’d checked again: the gun was gone. Still he fought the idea that Ethan could do such a thing.