Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“I just want to know.”

Stein waited until the waitress had poured their cups.

“The god’s truth? No. Not that I ever heard of. Or saw. Not one meeting. I’d swear to it. At least him I won’t have to. He’s dead. It’s the others they’ll want to get. Fuck ’em. It’s a funny thing about age-the memory goes. Not a goddam thing you can do about it.”

“Even under oath?”

“What, with Tenney? Up in Sacramento? What’s he going to do, put me away? I’ve been there, I’m not afraid of it.”

“You were in prison?”

“You didn’t know? I’m a tough guy. Fucking George Raft.” He stirred some sugar in his coffee. “Aggravated assault. That was hitting back when they broke up a picket line. Teach me a lesson. Which it did, but not the one they thought.” He looked up. “No, he wasn’t. Like I said, he was a friend to the union, that’s all. And then not even that. Five years ago, there were lots of shades of red here. Like a fucking lipstick counter. Now, there’s one. And it’s too bright for most people.”

“Then why would she say he was-the woman who knew him.”

“Make trouble, maybe. This is someone in the Hollywood group?”

“No, from before. In Germany.”

“Germany? That’s years ago. He was a member or just-?”

“He was a courier for them. Would they have trusted an outsider? Then?”

Stein thought for a minute. “All right. But that’s still years ago.”

“It doesn’t expire, does it? It’s not like a library card.”

“Maybe he quit.”

“I thought you couldn’t.”

“No, that’s what they think. The Tenneys, the Minots. You’re never clean. Unless you confess. Help them throw a few other people on the fire. You can quit. I did.”

“Why did you?” Ben asked, suddenly curious. He sipped his coffee.

“No one thing. Maybe I got tired of taking orders. Party discipline. All the goddam meetings. It wears you out. And this place. You got a bunch of people sitting around, beating themselves up, part of the dialectic, and they’re bringing home five hundred a week, more. I didn’t sign on for that. And you know what? I got more done outside than in. My little time away kept me out of the service so I went to work for the union, the last thing they expected when they put on the cuffs.”

“When was this?”

Stein glanced up. “Late, if that’s what you mean. It’s a funny thing. After the Hitler pact, ’thirty-nine, everyone here’s bailing, and I stick. Maybe stubborn. But I figure maybe there’s something I don’t know. Then it all turns around and I see there wasn’t. Just what’s good for Russia. It takes a while, you know, to see where it’s going. Then we get in the war, and now everybody’s friends again-some people here came back in, you believe it? — but it has the opposite effect on me. I don’t care anymore. The Party line, keep the movement alive. Help Russia. What about this country? What are we doing for us?” He shrugged. “Maybe it was all the patriotic movies, what the hell. Me, waving flags. I know what it’s like here.” He touched the top of his head. “I got the bruises. But I figure if we can get rid of the fucking golfers we still have a shot at something here.”

Ben smiled. “But the golfers have the money.”

“Yeah, they do,” Stein said, smiling a little. “Right on top, where they like to be. Now, anyway. You ever go across the street, see the Pits? It’s interesting. You see these bones, the dinosaurs, and you think, there they were, walking around, fucking owned the place, top of the world. And then the next thing-they’re gone. Just bones in a pit. It’s something to think about. You drive out to the Valley, past Warners, you see those big sound stages, sitting there like the whole thing’s theirs, and for all they know a tar pit’s going to open up on them.”

“Then your pickets go, too.”

Stein grinned. “Jack would like that. He’d throw them in first-buy a little time.” He looked down. “You want pie or something with that?” he said, a signal to wrap things up.

Ben shook his head.

“This is so important to you? Whether he was a Red?”

“Did he ever talk about my father?”

“Some big-time director over there, right? The Nazis killed him. He didn’t get out in time or something.”

“Or something.”

Stein waited.

“That’s who Danny was working for.”

“He used his own kid?”

“What does that tell you?”

“That’s a trick question?” he said, flustered. “Listen, I knew your brother. The family, that’s something else. He didn’t talk about that- just your father once in a while. Not the mother. He never mentioned you, for instance.”

“No,” Ben said, feeling it anyway, a sharp point going in.

“So I don’t know. What does it tell me? He must have thought it was important. To do that.”

“It was. To them. They helped smuggle people out. Then, after they got my father, Danny kept doing it. Getting people out of France. Probably using the same network, wouldn’t you say? It’s not the kind of thing you can do freelance. You need some-comrades in place. So he still must have been a Red. And then he gets on a boat to come home and throws his card over the side. Does that seem like Danny to you?”

“Not on a boat,” Stein said quietly.

“What?”

“He came on the Clipper. The boats weren’t running then.”

Something else he didn’t know. A meaningless detail with the same sharp end.

“So does it?” Ben said.

Stein thought for a minute, playing with his spoon.

“You ask his wife?”

“She says no. He didn’t tell her, either,” Ben said, including Stein.

“But you believe the other woman. The one who said he was.”

“She survived the camps. People like that don’t have to make anything up.”

“They could make a mistake.”

Ben shook his head. “Not her. It cost her to tell me.”

Stein looked at him, uncomfortable, then went back to his spoon. “Sometimes it’s better, keeping things quiet. Let’s say he gets here, first thing he sees is you don’t want to advertise. Lie low. We were never popular here, you know, even before this craziness began. So he goes unofficial.”

“Unofficial.”

“Part of a closed chapter.”

“You mean secret?”

“Don’t get excited. Not like that. Just off the books. To protect their jobs. Some places, this can get you fired. Flash a card at Hearst, see how long you last. You go unofficial to protect yourself.”

“There’s a chapter like that here?”

Stein shrugged. “You’re in pictures, you can’t afford to offend the public. My group, it was mostly writers-they don’t have to care.”

“But they must answer to somebody in the Party. They wouldn’t just be left on their own, would they?”

“No.”

“So who would it be here?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Ben looked at him. “Even if you did.”

“I left the Party. Not everybody did. And I don’t know you from Adam.” He paused. “Look, I liked your brother, so I’m telling you. Maybe he was unofficial. But I never heard that. And it doesn’t matter a damn now anyway. Leave it. You don’t want to get somebody else in trouble. They put me under oath? There are no unofficials. Never heard of them. The rest of us, the dues payers? — it’s open season on us. But we don’t have to give them anyone else. All right?”

“Take a look at this,” Hal said, head leaning over the Moviola viewer. His jaw, even in the morning, had traces of beard. “Birkenau-we haven’t seen this before.”

Ben looked with him. Silent film, with card titles in Cyrillic. Stacks of corpses. He felt his stomach slide, the way it always did. Open oven doors with mounds of ashes.