Stardust(18)

“Well, the climate—”

“Not so much that. He’s hardly ever outside. For him it’s a haven,” she said, her voice so throaty that it came out “heaven.” “All those years, moving. One place. Another place. Then here, finally safe, and other Germans are here, so it’s good. The sun, I don’t think it matters for him. He lives in his study. In his books.”

“What was Central Station? I never—”

“Anhalter before. They changed it. So it wouldn’t sound German. You know it?”

“Anhalter Bahnhof. Of course.”

“Tell him. He’ll be pleased.”

She made a right on Vermont, pointing them now toward the hills.

“Do we pass Continental on the way?” Ben said.

“We can, if you like.”

“But if it’s out of our way—”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not conscious, you know. We just sit there. Maybe it’s better for him. There’s so much damage, the brain—if he were awake, what would that be like for him? Sometimes I think it would be better if—and then I think, how can you think that?” She bit her lower lip. “But he did. I don’t know why. But that’s what he wanted. Not this.”

He looked away, across the miles of bungalows.

“Did he leave a note?” he said finally.

“No.”

The crucial prop, the writing of it sometimes a scene in itself, looking up from the paper into a mirror, eyes moist. In the movies. In real life you just did it.

“Just his ‘effects.’ I had to sign. You know that word? I didn’t know it. Effects.” She looked at him. “They would have said. If they’d found anything.” She turned on Melrose. “That’s Paramount down there, where the water tower is.”

After a few blocks he could see the roofs of the sound stages, humped like airplane hangars. She slowed near a gate of swirling wrought iron so that he could get a glimpse behind—a tidy factory yard with people in shirt sleeves gliding past, the tall water tower rising above everything, just like its mountaintop logo, ringed with stars. In front of the gate, a thin line of pickets walked back and forth carrying signs.

“There’s a strike?” Ben said. A prewar image.

“Daniel said it was jurisdictional,” she said, careful with the word. “One union   against the other.” She looked away, no longer interested. “He always wanted to work here. More than any of them. Maybe if— well. That’s RKO, at the end.”

They turned onto Gower under the model of a radio tower on a globe.

“Continental’s up there,” she said, pointing. “Across from Columbia.”

This gate was modern, no more than a break in the walls with streamlined trim. Beyond it, unseen, Lasner’s empire, built from nickels, a private world made invisible by sentries and passes. Outside, the street was empty—no pickets, just a small cluster of people near the gate.

“Who’s that?” Ben said.

“They wait here, to see who drives through.”

“For autographs?”

“No, just to see them. For a minute.”

Hans Ostermann was waiting for them in Danny’s room, reading in the corner next to the window. The shades were half-drawn so that even the light seemed hushed, a hospital quiet broken only by the nurses outside and the clank of a meal cart being wheeled down the hall. Ostermann stood when they came in, taking Ben’s hand. He was wearing a suit and tie, as natural to him as his perfect posture and formal nod. Ben wondered, a darting moment, if he wrote dressed this way, erect at his desk in a white collar, keeping German alive.

Ben approached the bed, his stomach tightening with shock. Not just sick. Danny’s face was beaten in, bruised, one eye swollen shut, jagged laceration marks crossing the rest. What happens when you hit. Ben stared at him for a minute, trying to see something familiar, but all he could see was the fall itself, the smash at the end. Why this way? Danny primping at the mirror for a date, deliberately doing this to himself. Why not sleeping pills, an easier Hollywood exit? Why would he want to look this way?

Ben stepped closer, taking in the IV drip, the monitor, all the hospital tools to keep him alive, bring him back. But you only had to look at the broken face to see the truth. The teases, the grins, were gone. They were just waiting for the rest of him to go. Ben took his hand, half expecting some response, but nothing moved.

“Danny,” he said, keeping his voice low, waking someone who’s just dozed off. He turned to the others. “Can he hear anything?”

“No,” Liesl said.

“We don’t know that,” Ostermann said. “There’s no way of knowing. Talk if you like.”