Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“You don’t think so?” she said, an evasive shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe for Daniel. Maybe I wanted to see what was on his mind. You tell me things-you make me think I never knew him. So who was he?”

“Any answers?”

“No. Maybe in the one he didn’t make.” She nodded to the box Republic had sent over.

He picked a script out of the box.

“You’re late again,” she said.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said with a sly smile. “They liked the test.”

“Yes?” she said, lifting her head, alert.

“Lasner, Bunny. They liked it.”

“Tell me,” she said, excited. “What did they say?”

“Get an agent.”

“Yes? They want to make a contract? Well, Kohner, I can call him,” she said, suddenly practical. “He knows my father. They really liked it?”

“Bunny wants to give you a buildup.”

“A buildup,” she said, translating it.

“Publicity.”

“Oh, to make me a movie star,” she said, skeptical. “With my accent. Daniel said it was impossible. With my accent.”

“Times change. He sees you as a war bride. Dick Marshall’s.”

Her eyes widened. “His wife? It’s a real part?”

Ben nodded. “Also his girlfriend. Off screen. At least at Ciro’s, places they take pictures.”

“They can do that?”

“It’s a personal services contract. That’s part of the service.”

“Oh, will you be jealous?” she said, coming over to him, putting her hands on his arms.

“That depends what happens after,” he said, playing along.

“That’s not in the contract, too, is it?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said, reaching her hand up to his neck. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

She smiled, her whole body warm against him, eyes darting across his face, just the way they had when she said, “I don’t care.” And suddenly he didn’t care, either. Maybe it was always acting. He thought of the girls in Germany-there’d been no pretense there, a warm mouth for a few cigarettes. No one thought of sex in the back of a jeep as making love, just something you did while you waited to go home, to real intimacy, a cry that wasn’t fake. Her eyes moved over him now, the way they had in the test, but did that make it any less real? He was already hard, wanting to be seduced, wanting the touch that reached inside you, when the eyes were only for you, the way it was in the movies.

Liesl became Linda Eastman, suddenly swept up in a storm of wardrobe fittings and blocking rehearsals, and Ben moved out of the house. It wasn’t a question of propriety. He was family, easily explainable to the photographers, but why raise questions at all? She was supposed to be lonely, waiting for someone like Dick to come along.

He wasn’t superstitious about the Cherokee. Danny may have died there, but he had never actually stayed there, and there was still part of a month already paid for, with the next now paid in advance to Joel. It was convenient, just a few blocks’ walk to drugstore counters on Hollywood Boulevard if he didn’t want to eat in. Still, there was a haunted feeling to the place, especially at night when the thin sound of a radio playing downstairs came in through the window, like smoke. He never saw his neighbors and after a while he began to feel that no one really lived there-they were all just passing through, drinking or washing out nylons or memorizing lines, all waiting, the way they did in Hollywood, for the phone to ring.

Even with his things hung in the closet and books and papers in a small heap on the desk, the room seemed empty. He paced through it, door to kitchen counter to balcony, an animal staking out territory to make it his own. The balcony especially needed to be claimed, swept free of ghosts. He looked down, seeing the body in the photograph again, the huddled neighbors, Riordan hanging back, surprised. If he had been. If he hadn’t been upstairs, racing down with the others to gape. The photograph was real, but everything else was a story you chose to believe. You couldn’t be certain, not of anybody.

Even someone you thought you knew. He’d seen that going through Danny’s reports in Minot’s office, a paper trail of little betrayals, no one ever suspecting. Just listening and passing on, but violating, too. As Ben flipped through folder after folder, he felt he was no longer looking for leads, but for something else, a reason.

At first Riordan hadn’t wanted Ben in the files at all. “It’s not somebody we know, it’s somebody we don’t know, remember?” But Ben had insisted-it was his bargaining chip, a matter of trust-and Riordan finally agreed, but only at night, after everyone had gone. He steered Ben to files that used Danny’s reports-Ostermann, Brecht, the emigre circle. There were even notes on Werfel and Salka and Thomas Mann. Everyone. Danny appeared simply as the initial K in the margins, identifying him as a source on the memos Riordan had written up, Bureau style.

“Subject [Ostermann] requested sign position paper Latin American Committee for Free Germany sponsored by exile group, Mexico City (see Seghers, et al.).” Brecht’s sexual relations with secretary Ruth Berlau were known to wife, Helene Weigel. “Guest Viertel home Santa Monica (arranged Brecht). Numerous visits Brecht.” Kaltenbach had met with Kranzler, Aufbau. “Kranzler under Bureau surveillance after visit Eisler (known CP). Purpose: discuss English translation of subject’s works. No decision reached (K).” According to the files, Kranzler visited other German writers, then the Highland Lounge, “popular with deviants. Entertained US serviceman overnight at Roosevelt Hotel.”

There were more. Brecht’s arguments with Fritz Lang on Hangmen Also Die, Kaltenbach’s finances, Ostermann’s intention to apply for citizenship after the five-year waiting period. Could anyone have taken these seriously? Written down, recorded, sources put into code so that the files themselves became secrets about secrets. Were they all like this? Ben thought of the FBI, the GPU, any of them, with their archives and hundreds of legmen, filling folders with items no more damaging than onions in Winchell. But there were other items, too, from other sources, requests for surveillance, possible new informants, now vulnerable to approach, everyone caught in a fun house hall of mirrors. In Germany files like these had killed.

“None of these are recent,” Ben said.

“That’s what he used to give the Bureau-it’s just there as backup. You know, in case we ever need it. The congressman’s more interested in the industry.”

Riordan pulled another file.

“Subject [Schaeffer] suspected CP, Hollywood branch. K suggests verify with source G, ex-CP.”

“Who’s Schaeffer?”

“A writer. Fox. But you get one, you have a lead to someone else.”

“Did G verify?”

Riordan nodded.

“What happens to Schaeffer?”

“That depends what he says under oath, doesn’t it? When he testifies. How cooperative he is.”

“Who else?”

Riordan looked to the filing cabinets. “I told you, he’s not going to be here. Bring me a suggestion, a name in his desk. We can check that out. But here, it’s a needle in a- What’s that?”

“A guest list. People Danny knew. I thought-” He stopped. What could he tell Riordan? Another crime, with no connection except a shared past? Something Genia must have known. “Look, we’re flying blind here, I know. But I think he was going to put one of these names in here.” He pointed to the files. “Let’s see who’s already there.”

Riordan looked at him, then at his watch, then back again.

“Can I say something to you? I know this is personal with you. But make it too personal, you’re not going to get anywhere. You want to know everything he told us. What’s the point?”