From there on, Arthur’s memoir read like a movie with Hollywood’s greats in supporting roles and a bit player holding the camera. In one scene Spyros Skouras, the head of Fox, rose from his breakfast in a rage, jowls quivering, spewing incomprehensible English and crumbs of half-chewed toast at Arthur. A few chapters later, Arthur was in the dressing room with a half-dressed Marilyn Monroe, resisting her advances while coaxing her into costume and out onto the soundstage to deliver a knockout performance of “Heatwave.” He claimed to have held Marilyn’s hand and offered this advice:
Keep trying. Hold on, baby. And always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don’t, who will? Head up, chin high. Most of all keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.
Could that have been Arthur? Sensitive, supportive? It sounded more like lines he’d written. Or was Deirdre’s view of her father tainted, warped by the angry adolescent girl she still had snarking away inside her?
As she read on, what came across was how much her father adored everything about the movie business. And despite the prism through which Arthur saw the past—selective memory colored by an oversized ego—it was clear that he and Gloria were much in demand in those heady early years when they churned out hit after hit.
Every so often, Arthur would mention Deirdre or Henry, and when he did it was with blind affection and pure delight. In the bitterness that had built up over the last twenty-plus years, Deirdre had forgotten how unabashedly gaga he’d been about his kids. Forgotten the many times he’d taken her to the studio to show her around but also to show her off. First they’d have lunch, sitting at a corner table in the cavernous studio commissary, surrounded by actors and actresses in full makeup and extraordinary getups. Then they’d walk over to one of the vast soundstages where invariably a movie was being shot. Deirdre had to be careful not to trip on the cables that crisscrossed the floor, and she got goose bumps remembering how absolutely still and silent she had to be the moment a voice boomed, “Quiet on set!” The painted backdrops that looked so phony in person were somehow rendered utterly believable through the magic of filming.
She was near the end of the manuscript, tired and ready to turn out the light when she read these words: There are parties and there are parties, but the shindigs at Elenor Nichol’s house were legendary. Why did it have to be that night of all nights that our attorney finagled an invite there for us to mingle with the crème de la crème of Hollywood’s most glamorous?
A chill passed through Deirdre as she read on.
The setting was out of a movie script. Liveried attendants valet-parked the Jaguars and Mercedes that pulled up at the end of the driveway. Gloria and I got out of my six-year-old Austin-Healey feeling like pikers. We waited for a golf cart to ferry us up to the house.
Tuxedoed waiters, most of them out-of-work actors, glided about with silver trays bearing champagne flutes of Dom Pérignon and shots of Chivas and Glenlivet. The crowd included stars and studio executives, a heady mix of staggering beauty—men and women both—and arrogant power. The men swaggered about, bravado masquerading as brains. Oscar Levant seemed permanently ensconced at the piano, completely brilliant and completely soused, per usual. Needless to say, writers like Gloria and me, a dime a dozen in Hollywood, were in short supply. Most of the folks there were under the illusion that actors and directors made up lines as they went along, so who needed writers, anyway?
Bunny, as Elenor Nichol was known, though there was nothing remotely soft or cuddly about her, reigned over all. Queen of wanton amorous fire, that night she wore a crimson dress with a plunging neckline and ropes of pearls that couldn’t hold a candle to the luminescence of her skin. With her swelling bosom and round bottom, her sultry voice somewhere between a purr and a snarl, she had every man in that house salivating, including yours truly. But no one dared to make a pass at her—not with Tito Acevedo watching her every move like a dyspeptic guard dog.
Thug. Bully. Gigolo. Goon. Those were just a few of the labels hung on Tito—never to his face, of course. Supposedly he used to be errand boy for Mafia boss “Sam the Cigar” Giancana in Vegas before shifting his base of operations to Hollywood. Here, rumor had it, he threatened to castrate the director of Bunny’s last film when he got what Tito deemed a bit too chummy. On top of that, he fancied himself a player and took meetings, reading scripts and throwing around wads of cash. A crass charmer, he’d have made a great character in a B-movie. In real life, he was a black hole of pure nastiness. Everyone gave him a wide berth.
That night, Tito glowered silently from the shadows beside a massive potted palm in the corner of Bunny’s palatial living room. He was doing a second-rate Humphrey Bogart imitation, his eyes half-closed, pinching the end of his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger behind a cupped hand.
Like the cigarette he was smoking, it turned out Tito Acevedo was on a slow burn.
Deirdre paged ahead, looking for but failing to find any mention of her or Joelen at the party. Like Oscar Levant, Arthur would have been plenty “soused” himself with all that high-class booze floating around, more than a few rungs up from his usual Dewar’s. Finally she found her own name.
Gloria and I had long ago bailed and were home sleeping it off when the phone rang. I was thinking, Christ almighty, who calls at two in the morning? I almost didn’t pick up. But then I did.
“Arthur? It’s Bunny.” Her voice didn’t sound soft or sultry—more midway between outraged and petrified. “Get Deirdre.”
Get Deirdre? For a crazy moment I was thinking: great title. Then I realized my daughter was sleeping over at Bunny’s house. I’d seen her at the party, she and Bunny’s daughter all dressed up and parading around like grown-ups.
I sat bolt upright, wide awake. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s happened,” she said.
“To Deirdre? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. But you’ve got to get her away from here before they come.” Before I could ask who “they” were, she hung up. Talk about your cliffhanger ending.
I slapped some water on my face, threw on some clothes, and drove over there as fast as I could. Up Bunny’s long driveway to the big white house that had been lit up like a stage set hours earlier but now had just a single light on in an upstairs window.
Before I could knock, Bunny pulled open the front door. It was dark, but I could see she looked pale, her face puffy and teary-eyed. She had a nasty bruise under one eye and her lip was split. She wore a flowing peignoir that, it only occurred to me later, looked like a leftover costume from her movie Black Lace.
I followed her up the stairs into what I realized right away was her daughter’s bedroom. Pink walls. Twin beds. One of the beds was empty. Lying facedown on the other was Tito Acevedo.
I could smell the blood that had soaked into the quilt under Tito. The soundtrack, high-pitched squeals, turned out to be a pair of thoroughly spooked guinea pigs. Bunny’s daughter, Joelen, was huddled in a corner by their cage. She was hugging a pillow and leaning against the wall. Her eyes were shut tight. At first I thought she was asleep.
I looked around for Deirdre. Thank God she wasn’t there.
When I reached for Tito’s wrist to feel for a pulse, Bunny stopped me. “He’s dead, for Chrissake. Can’t you see that? Help me move him.” Imperious as ever.