The Notorious Pagan Jones Page 7

  Looking again at the signature on the letters to her mother, Pagan drew a blank on the name Rolf von Albrecht.

  She turned the paper over again and saw the date.

  1952…

  Something jolted from her memory. That had been the year the Renoir-giving German Doctor Someone had visited. Maybe Doctor Someone was Rolf von Albrecht.

  The tall, skinny man with the squeaky, nasal voice had stayed with them in the winter of ’52 for a couple of weeks, barely speaking to anyone except for Mama, and then mostly in Daddy’s office with the door locked. He’d departed quietly the morning after a late-night, knock-down fight between her parents, never to be seen again.

  Pagan focused on the unfamiliar language in the letter. She’d been pretty fluent in German once upon a time thanks to her early years speaking to Grandmama, but after many years away from it, the German-reading part of her brain stop-started like a rusty engine.

  Fortunately, most of it was in simple language, and the more she read, the more German came back to her.

  But the letter was weirdly benign and boring. Whole paragraphs consisted of sentences like As summer arrives, I find myself wishing it was November again.

  Pagan had been braced for evidence that her mother had somehow betrayed her father with this Rolf von Albrecht guy. Instead, it was nothing but sunny days, back pain, and roast turkey.

  All the letters were like that, stilted and dull, filled with memories of anonymous landscapes, walks in the garden, and purchasing tickets to the opera. The relentless banality was oddly chilling. No one would write letters this pointless every week for months.

  No one would have kept something so meaningless in a safe.

  Unless… The thought was ludicrous. But what if there was more going on, literally, between the lines?

  She shoved away the memory of the taste of that champagne by plunging into an attempt to find some sort of cipher in the letters. But two hours later, safely ensconced in first class on the plane to New York, she’d found no obvious code or hidden message. If there was any truth to her instinct, finding proof was going to take a lot more work, and right now her stomach hurt. So she put them and her own boring file away.

  She was doing the same with Ava’s folder when a photograph fell out of it into her lap.

  Pagan threw her gaze up toward the airplane’s ceiling, not wanting to see her younger sister’s face.

  Ava had been twelve when she died, blonder than Pagan, but people said she wasn’t as pretty because she was more serious and smiled less. The truth was that Ava had been beautiful because she didn’t smile when she didn’t feel like it. Pagan could only dream of being as confident as her little sister had been.

  Pagan swallowed hard and looked down at the photograph. It lay sideways on her lap—a shot of Ava at age three seated next to seven-year-old Pagan on the piano bench. Pagan had both arms around her sister and was grinning ear to ear as she squeezed her tight. Ava, taking the hug for granted, stared down at the piano keys, chubby fingers already reaching for a chord.

  Dang it, she was not going to cry again.

  She hastily put the photo back into its folder and continued going through the others. She’d learned how to conjure tears on cue for her movie roles, and she could damn well do it in reverse now.

  She came to the last folder, labeled Eva Murnau Jones.

  Murnau. That had been her mother’s maiden name. Eva’s mother’s name was Ursula, her father’s was Emil. That was everything Pagan knew about that side of her family.

  She opened the folder and paged past bank statements and the dull, posed pictures of Mama with her hair freshly done. Near the back of the file lay a white-bordered photo, smaller, grainier, and very different from the rest. In it a handsome blonde woman around thirty years old stood in front of a worn stone building. She was smiling, holding a swaddled baby in her arms.

  Pagan flipped the photo over. In fading script someone had written: Ursula mit Eva, 1924.

  Grandmama and Mama had moved to Los Angeles in 1925, so this must have been taken in Berlin when Mama was an infant. Pagan scanned the photo for anything that might identify where it had been taken, but there was no street sign or building number, just a glowering winged griffin carved in stone over the door.

  There couldn’t be more than one building with that design in Berlin. Funny how that’s where she was headed now.

  Maybe it was nothing. But all of a sudden, more than anything, she wanted to walk the street where her grandmother had held her infant mother, maybe even explore the building where Mama had lived. She didn’t know what going there might tell her, but any tiny glimpse she could get into her mother’s life or her mother’s mind was precious.

  All she had now of her family was the past.

  As she plunged into reading the script for Neither Here Nor There, two people across the aisle began glancing over at her furtively, whispering. She sank back against the plane’s round window and lifted the script to block her face.

  Fortunately, the script was smart and funny, mocking both capitalism and socialism at every turn. Pagan was slated to play Violet, a flirtatious teenage Southern belle who caused havoc wherever she went. She swiftly fell in love with a handsome young Communist and secretly married him, much to the horror of her family, particularly her rabidly capitalist father. Although James Brennan, former star of gangster movies and expert tap dancer, was the star, her role wasn’t far behind his in size. Jerry Allenberg had been right about one thing at least—this was a pip of a role, and she’d better not mess it up.

  She let everyone else get off first at Idlewild Airport. She stepped out the door onto the metal bridge under the vast, saucer-shaped overhang, and the warm humid air was enough to make her remove her gloves and unbutton the top of her dress. The metal rungs clattered beneath her heels as she walked toward the gleaming terminal.

  It was past eight o’clock at night, and she was hungry again. Time to catch a cab to the Waldorf and order some room service. Maybe a big juicy steak. She could get the concierge to mail the stack of magazines to Mercedes at Lighthouse, with a note to say hi. Maybe it wasn’t too late to call M. She had to tell someone about Nicky and that Donna woman.

  Thinking about Nicky being married again literally made her heart ache. As she entered the terminal, Pagan pressed one hand against the painful spot. She was too young to have a heart attack, wasn’t she?

  “Hello, Pagan.”

  She jerked her head up, hand clutching the fabric at her throat.

  A slim figure in a perfectly tailored black suit detached itself from the shadows and stepped into a pool of light.

  Devin Black was in New York, waiting for her.

  The maître d’ swept his narrowed gaze over Devin and Pagan. When he looked up, he was smiling. They had passed some unspoken test. “Welcome to the Panorama Room,” he said. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Do we need one?” Devin stepped closer and slid a folded bill into the man’s ready left hand.

  “Not at all!” The maître d’ slipped the money into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “This way, please!”

  He led them across the polka-dot carpet around the perimeter of the dimly lit circular lounge, to a table overlooking the restaurant’s sweeping view of the curving interior of the Pan Am Terminal. Taking hold of one of the transparent Lucite chairs, the maître d’ slid it back and bowed a little toward Pagan. “Mademoiselle.”

  Pagan sank down on the cushioned seat as Devin sat opposite. Below them the white expanse of the new terminal spread like some adult version of Tomorrowland. On a Tuesday night, the place was quiet, the baggage check-in empty. Ladies in Pan Am blue rested their elbows against the white seat-selection counter, talking in low voices. A few waiting passengers smoked in rows of square padded seats, feet up on coffin-shaped tables. Beyond the
outer wall, or rather, a curtain of glass, skycaps waited for arriving passengers on a wide concrete porch.

  A white-coated waiter arrived to turn their water glasses over and give them menus. Devin waved him away. “I’ll have a salad with vinaigrette and a flank steak, medium rare.”

  Pagan’s simmering frustration and anger at being tracked down nearly boiled over. That was exactly what she wanted to order. She pondered snatching a menu and making them both wait for a good long time while she pretended to decide, but she was hungry. “I’ll have the same,” she said.

  The waiter put the menus under his arm with a flourish. “And to drink?”

  She looked Devin dead in the eye. “Water.”

  Devin smiled. “As the lady said. And please let the cook know we have to catch the flight to Berlin in an hour.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll put your order at the top of the list.” The waiter gave a little bow and hustled off.

  Pagan kept staring at Devin. “I know how you did it.”

  He stared back. “And I know how you did it.”

  That almost threw her, but she plowed on. “Somehow you arranged for every seat on every direct flight to New York to be sold out, which forced me to do a stopover in Chicago. That delayed me long enough to let you get here first.”

  His blue eyes narrowed. “Your father had a bunch of cash in his safe, and you knew the combination.”

  “And you have your own boatload of cash—enough to buy up every empty seat on every plane to New York,” she said. “The benefits of working for a big movie studio.”

  “You know every creaky board in your house,” he said.

  She shrugged. “The benefits of a misspent youth.”

  He opened his hands as if releasing all control. “Perhaps all this was meant to be.”

  “Nicky used to say that all the time, about the two of us,” she said with heat. “We were ‘meant to be.’ Turns out he was full of baloney, and so are you.”

  His expression got serious. “So you heard about Nicky.”

  She shot him a poisonous look and said nothing.

  He studied her, eyebrows furrowed. “I wanted to break that to you gently.”

  She took a sip of water to calm herself. “Nicky told me he would marry me the first day we met. I told him I’d never get married, but he didn’t believe me. Nobody believes me.”

  “He’s a romantic.” Devin’s voice was dry. “Romantics believe what they’re saying when they say it. And they believe it just as much when they say the opposite a few days later.”

  “He had rheumatic fever when he was a kid, and it damaged his heart.” Pagan took another sip of water, watching Devin’s face closely. He didn’t appear surprised, even though Nicky’s condition wasn’t public knowledge. “It makes him want to live every moment to the fullest. He doesn’t pussyfoot around. He jumps right in.”

  “And you think he jumped into the first girl who looked like you and married her.” Devin considered the prospect. “Probably. He’s a fool.”

  “I was his girlfriend for nearly a year,” Pagan said, not ready to forgive Devin yet for tracking her down. “What does that make me?”

  “Young,” he replied.

  “When you are so old and wise.” She eyed him, seated so comfortably across from her in his pricey suit with the sophisticated air of a man twice his age. He was awfully cagey, Devin Black. He must have a lot to hide.

  Time to find out more about this so-called legal guardian of hers. She needed leverage if she was ever going to truly escape him. She made a wild guess, based on nothing more than instinct. “Coming from a rich family makes you pretentious, not more mature.”

  He smiled skeptically. “Whereas growing up in Hollywood makes you down-to-earth?”

  She waved aside this attempt to insult her, intent on wringing some kind of admission from him. “No studio pays press agents enough to have custom-made Savile Row suits,” she said. “Did your mother pick it out for you?”

  His smile broadened. “Mother can’t be bothered with my suits. She’s too busy ruling her little kingdom of wealthy socialites.” He shrugged the elegant shoulders of his jacket. “You’re right, of course. I had no idea you were so observant.”

  So his mother was still alive, and he referred to her as “Mother” rather than “Mom.” A distant, formal relationship then.

  The waiter was approaching with their food. She moved her water glass aside. “And your father? Does he rule that tiny kingdom by her side? Or is he like my dad was—just happy to be on the team?”

  Devin’s face went blank. The emptiness there was so profound, a chill ran down the back of her neck.

  Then the waiter was at the table, putting down plates of rosy butterflied steak filets and snowy white mashed potatoes dolloped with chunks of golden butter.

  Devin picked up his fork and knife, contemplating his food with anticipation, and the moment was gone.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” He nodded at the waiter. “Thank you.”

  He began cutting the steak, and she took up her own utensils, waiting for a response to her question. But he only made a small appreciative sound as he took a bite. “I always eat here if I’m stuck waiting for a flight,” he said. “Better than the Clipper Club.”

  The warm rich smell wafting up from her plate was making her mouth water, so she cut into her steak. But she made a mental note: Devin didn’t like discussing his father. That relationship held some kind of secret pain for him, and knowing that, she’d gained a tiny victory. He knew so much about her, it was only fair that she find out more about him, and she resolved to dig further into this whole father issue of his when she could.

  The filet melted between her teeth. She groaned involuntarily with pleasure. She hadn’t tasted anything so delicious in months.

  “See?” Devin cut himself another neat piece. “Did you want sour cream for your potatoes?”

  She had practically forgotten sour cream existed. “Oh, yes please!”

  As he signaled the waiter, she realized that for a good five minutes she hadn’t thought about Nicky Raven and his new bride. Maybe that’s just how Devin Black had wanted it.

  The Dior suit dress withstood the trip to Berlin without a wrinkle, but by the time they landed Pagan was very much looking forward to getting out of it and into a nice soft bed, faraway from everyone on earth, particularly Devin Black.

  While on the plane, and with a showy flourish to demonstrate how she was ignoring him, Pagan had plunged into an article in Time about the Cold War.

  She’d found herself caught up in the article in spite of herself. Nothing like the serious threat of nuclear war to grab your attention.

  A defeated Germany had been divided into four parts after the Second World War, each part governed by a different Allied nation—the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union. They’d similarly divided up the German capital, Berlin.

  But the alliance soured fast after Soviet leader Joseph Stalin effectively took control of all the countries east of Germany, as well as a big chunk of Germany itself, now known as East Germany.

  So the other three powers remained huddled in the three quarters of Berlin that had been given to them, surrounded on all sides by the new country of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany as Westerners liked to call it.

  The man now in charge of that country, Walter Ulbricht, had been tight with Stalin, and even more than the Soviets, maintained rigid control of every aspect of daily life—from the price of bread to what people could read and say.

  Well, that was glum, restricting, and oddly familiar. Pagan’s biggest hit, Beach Bound Beverly, would never have been made in East Germany—too frivolous. Also, the East German government spied on its citizens all the time, so even if you managed to get your hands on something “decadent” li
ke a Dior suit dress, you could never wear it out or the government would punish you.

  This Walter Ulbricht guy sounded a lot like a balding, grumpy version of Mama.

  Pagan giggled, then caught herself guiltily. Mama had been warm as well as firm, and Pagan loved her. The world had seemed to bow to Mama’s control. Pagan had been safe with her around, and Mama had taught her many useful ways in which to navigate the strange world of Hollywood. That was one of many reasons her suicide had cast Pagan so adrift.

  But Mama had been a perfectionist—overseeing Pagan’s every word and gesture, grooming her meticulously for success, managing every tiny detail of her career. Pagan had barely been allowed to breathe out of her mother’s sight. As long as Pagan was perfect, the family would get to keep their fine house in the Hollywood Hills, and Mama would be happy. One mistake could ruin them.

  All of that effort had paid off. Pagan had become a star. She hadn’t made any mistakes until Mama died. After that it had been the secret stashes of alcohol that soothed her anxieties instead of her mother’s firm hand on her shoulder.

  Maybe Ulbricht’s approach was paying off for East Germany, too. Maybe he loved his people the way Mama had loved Pagan. Pagan couldn’t be sure, but she doubted it. You couldn’t mold millions of people the way you could your own child.

  It was for the best that Mama hadn’t been in charge of an entire country. Every little girl would have been forced to walk for thirty minutes each day with a book on her head, and every husband would have been lectured regularly on how to fold the morning newspaper just so.

  Hours passed, and Devin sat next to her the whole way. He never seemed to sleep. She would nod off, then jerk up her head to find him alert and reading the latest editions of the New York and London newspapers. He was polite; he knew when to speak and when to be quiet, but he was there.

  They changed planes in Frankfurt to Air France, one of the airlines with permission to fly into Berlin’s Tegel airport. By then Pagan was so tired and grumpy, the plane could have been a flying palace and she would have found something to complain about. Devin Black just kept reading, taking one of the German language journals from the stewardess with a smile. By the time they reached Berlin, fatigue had smudged dark circles under his eyes, but he seemed alert. Pagan decided he was either a robot or one of the aliens from Invaders from Mars.