“Stop it there, Jerry. Thanks.” His eyes were still on the screen as the lights came up. “One week at the Paramount and it’s gone. But it was perfect. That look, like a grace note. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here, putting in grace notes. Making things better.”
“What’s the picture?”
“Midnight. Before the war.” He got up. “There’s a sequence I wanted to see, a bit with taxis. But I don’t think we can use it.” He turned to Ben. “What were you doing there?”
“If you don’t know, you’ll never have to answer that,” Ben said, feeling the weight in his pocket.
Bunny looked at him, then moved away, running his hand over the back of his seat. “I suppose you heard everything, behind your little arras.”
“Faint mumblings.”
“I should have had a sword. Run you through. But I find I never do have one, when I need it.” He stopped. “Don’t interfere in this.”
Ben nodded, noncommittal.
“I mean it. Just put it out of your mind. We’ll both do that. What were you doing, though?”
“Catching up on my filing. They make interesting reading.”
“Not anymore. Stay out of it.”
“Don’t give him anybody.”
“You think I’m enjoying this?” He walked down the aisle, away from Ben. “It’s business, that’s all.”
“No. It’s going to get worse.”
“Not for us,” Bunny said quickly. “Look, I’m walking a tightrope here.” He lifted his arms from his sides a little, a balancing mime. “Don’t shake it. Don’t huff. Don’t puff.” He looked at Ben. “Don’t anything. Or you’re off the lot. Mr. L or no.”
The back door to the Cherokee was kept locked now, so he went through the front, past the new night clerk, attentive, maybe a Bureau man, planted too late. Upstairs he flicked on the light before going in and flung the door open, in case another Ray was waiting. He opened the French windows to let in some air, then went back to the door and wedged a desk chair under the knob. Would he really try here again? Dropping somehow onto the balcony?
Ben sat on the bed and pulled out the sheet of names. Wallace. Gilbert. No more recognizable than before. Not here, not in San Francisco. Friedman. He stopped. A name he had heard. Literally heard. A voice saying it. But whose? He tried putting it in people’s mouths to see how it would sound—Liesl, Bunny, anyone he knew, but nothing came. Still, he’d heard it somewhere. On the lot? Lasner’s party? Let it go. If you tried to force it, nothing came. You had to let it pop into your head.
He looked at the door again, barricaded, what his life was going to be like now. What if he never came? But he’d want the list. Unless he’d decided to write it off as a bad risk, move on. Still, he’d tried once, a man dead. A day, two. Or he’d have to use more bait.
MINOT PRESENTED the hearings as a preliminary fact-finding inquiry, something local, but he was staging them like a full Washington investigation. The press had its own section in the hearing room, behind the newsreel cameras, but half were still outside covering the witnesses arriving, a premiere without the broad smiles. The public seats filled almost immediately, with a few front rows reserved for the witnesses, studio VIPs, and anyone with a friend on Minot’s staff. Ostermann, surprisingly, was in the press section, near Polly, who kept leaping up and down to talk to people, then scribble notes, a blur of eager restlessness. The committee sat at a long table, not a raised judge’s bench, but the arrangement, looking across at the witnesses and their lawyers, still had a courtroom effect.
What Ben noticed most was the noise. The galleries buzzed with talk. In the side rooms, telephones rang almost constantly and aides ran back and forth with messages. When Minot came out to take his place at the table the hum rose even higher, the room busy, anticipating. Ben thought of a Coliseum scene in the old silents, everyone in jerky motion, waiting for the lions.
The first bang of the gavel was startling, followed by a murmur, a second bang, quiet. Minot, his face flushed with confidence, gave the opening speech—a great industry undermined from within, the values and moral fabric of the culture itself at risk, the unwitting comfort extended to traitors in our midst—and then, just a few seconds before the audience could get restive, called Dick Marshall.
“I thought he was going to start with Stein,” Bunny whispered, half to himself.
A logical choice, the strike still daily news, and Stein’s sympathies so well known he would have been an easy first shot, but for once Bunny’s instincts were off, not the point Minot wanted to score. As Marshall approached the table, there was an audible rustling of interest. A movie star, someone, Ben suddenly remembered, who’d once actually played a gladiator.