Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

I should have walked away. But I couldn’t. No matter what Linda Gail did, I could not think of her as a villainess. I believed she was infatuated with Wiseheart and he was infatuated with her, regardless of what either of them said. In her own mind, she was guilty of no wrongdoing. The pantheon of gods and goddesses that surrounded her, here in the hotel and in the Hollywood Hills, was as real as the temples and the hanging gardens of Babylon. The deities looking down at her from their niches might have been of human creation, but to her, they obviously represented the grace and perfection that awaited those who believed and were willing to take risks.

That said, I could not forgive Linda Gail for the way she treated her husband’s affections; nor could I forgive her indifference toward the unhappiness she caused him. “Are you expecting Hershel?” I said.

“He’s out of town,” she replied. “You didn’t know that?”

“I thought he might be back today. Can Rosita and I offer you a ride home?”

“I’m with Mr. Valentine. Thank you just the same,” she said.

Valentine stood up from the table and arched back his shoulders. “I got to see a man about a dog,” he said. “How about you, fella? I want to tell you about a project I’ve got in mind.”

I had to use the restroom anyway. Maybe it was time to have a talk with the man who had started Linda Gail’s film career. We walked through the ballroom. On the bandstand, a country musician named Moon Mullican was playing a song on the piano titled “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone.”

“Let’s fill up the tank before they run out,” Valentine said, stopping at the bar. He ordered two mint juleps. His mustache was so thin, it looked like grease pencil. His tin-colored suit and open-necked white snap-button shirt hung on his body as loosely as clothes on a hanger. He kept drumming his fingers on the bar, like a man whose clock spring was wound too tight. He was looking across the room at Benjamin Siegel and Virginia Hill. “I don’t know why they let riffraff like that in here.”

“I’d lower my voice if I were you,” I said.

“He bought the house next door to Jack Warner,” he said. “I heard Warner browned his shorts.”

“What was the project you wanted to tell me about?”

“Siegel’s got the unions tied up so he can extort the studios.”

“The project?” I said, trying to get his attention back on track before we had trouble.

“I’m getting some money together in order to make a documentary about drilling in the Louisiana swamps. It’s going to show all the good that’s being done there. I’d like to get you in on it.”

I watched the bartender pour from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s into two paper cups filled with crushed ice. It seemed more than coincidence that Jack Valentine was soliciting me in the same way he had solicited Linda Gail. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Right now I need to go to the restroom.”

“Did you know Roy Wiseheart keeps a fuck pad here?”

“No, I wasn’t aware of that.”

“In one of the penthouses. He uses his wife’s money to cat around on her. I’m surprised he doesn’t charge his rubbers to her pharmaceutical account.”

I picked up my drink and walked into the restroom. Seconds later, he came in behind me. He set his drink on top of the urinal next to me and unzipped his trousers. He let out a sigh as he relieved himself. “Don’t get me wrong about Wiseheart,” he said. “Everybody’s human. Once you accept that, you make it work for you.”

“I don’t know if I follow you.”

“Look at Linda Gail. She’s standing on the front porch of a general store in a backwater shithole, with that innocent look on her face and a hush-puppy accent, and she gets hit by lightning.”

“I guess she’s a lucky girl.”

He looked sideways at me, his hand cupped on his phallus. “Luck doesn’t have anything to do with it, Holland.”

I went into a stall to get a piece of tissue and came back out. Valentine was washing his hands and examining his teeth and nostrils in the mirror.

“I’m not good at code,” I said. “What was that last remark?”

“About luck? I guess it’s a matter of definition. I was at the store. She was at the store. I clicked the camera a few times, and she was off and running.”

“It wasn’t a chance meeting?”

“You’ve heard the stories about somebody getting discovered at a soda fountain on Hollywood Boulevard?” he said. He took a long drink from his julep. “Believe me, it doesn’t happen.”

“Somebody sent you to find her?”

“What difference does it make? The girl has talent. She’s also a realist. She knows people need to make concessions. That’s what I mean when I say everybody’s human. I poled her the same day I photographed her.”