“Everyone says. Would you? Your brother?”
“Something worrying you? You were close? Maybe he said something to you.”
Ben shook his head. “What would he say?” Now a cat and mouse game, but no longer sure who was which.
The man shrugged, then took out his wallet. “Sometimes you start something, you don’t know what you’re getting into. Here.” He took out a card and handed it to Ben. “If you need any technical advice.”
Ben looked at it. Dennis Riordan. No affiliation, just a telephone number.
“Technical advice,” Ben repeated.
“Maybe he left something. Might explain it. Maybe I could help. Figure it out.” He began to move off. “Anyway, tell your friend to keep his nose clean. Stop imagining things.”
“What about German writers?”
Riordan turned. “You’re a suspicious guy.” He looked down at the table. “It was just lunch.”
He crossed the patio to the exit near the vegetable stalls, unhurried, not even a backward glance.
“What the hell was that?” Kelly said at their table.
Ben handed him the business card. “What you thought. The Bureau. But retired.”
“They never retire. They just find another pack of hyenas to sniff around with.”
“Like Polly.”
Kelly shook his head. “But somebody. I’ll find out.”
“You know people at Republic? Find out if he ever got a consultant fee. On Danny’s pictures.”
“What if he wasn’t paid?”
“Then why do it?”
Kelly looked at the card again, memorizing the name, then handed it back.
“Christ, all I wanted was the girlfriend, an item, and now I’ve got the Bureau on my back.”
“I don’t think so. If he was tailing you, you’d never see him. Handing out cards. He wants something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But think where we’ve seen him—Republic, the funeral. You weren’t even at the funeral. He’s not tailing you. It’s like he’s tailing Danny.”
LASNER LIVED in a chateau near the top of Summit Drive with enough land for a full set of tennis courts and a formal garden. Danny’s house flowed easily outside and back, the pool another room, but here the effect was moated, drawn up behind the gravel drive, the high view just something framed by picture windows. Teenagers in uniforms had been hired to park the cars so that arriving felt like stepping out of a liveried carriage, something Lubitsch might have shot.
The inside rooms were Du Barry French, high and ornate and formal, with gilded side tables and silk fire screens and ormolu footed chairs. Ben wondered what Lasner made of it all, passing through each morning on his way to coffee. Or did they have breakfast in bed, a proper levée? Still, Fay clearly loved playing chatelaine, greeting people just inside the door with real warmth, so where was the harm? The money, all those nickels, would have been spent somehow. Why not on a French dream? With a hostess once pretty enough to have been a Goldwyn Girl, far more attractive than any of the originals. Even Sol, beaming by her side, was an improvement, at least a bulldog jaw, not a weak Bourbon chin.
“My god, look at the jewels,” Liesl said.
Bunny had said to dress, but Ben had expected country club cocktails in suits. Instead he felt he had walked into an A-picture party scene, everyone turned out by Makeup and Wardrobe, evening dresses and sparkling necklaces, the room like some velvet jewel case.
“Fake,” he said, smiling.
“No, they’re not.” She put her fingers to her throat. “Anyway, the pearls are nothing to be ashamed of. My mother wouldn’t sell them, not even in Paris when we—”
“Nothing to be ashamed of. The rest of you looks good, too.”
“Oh yes, in a roomful of movie stars.”
He glanced around, taking in what she’d already noticed, faces from covers, people you saw in magazine ads recommending soap. He thought of his mother’s parties before the war, gaunt women with hats and fur trim, not beautiful, using their jewels to light up the room. Here the faces themselves were luminous. Paulette Goddard had come, looking even better than she had on the train. Alexis Smith was talking to the Lasners, her chin at a patrician tilt. He recognized Ann Sheridan by the fireplace, the full mouth not drawn in a glamour shot pout, but smiling, as down to earth as the girl next door, if she’d been beautiful. They were all beautiful. It seemed a kind of joke, an ancien régime room finally filled with glorious-looking people instead of pinched-faced heirs.
“There’s Marion Wallace. I’d better say something to her. She sent a nice note.”