Another volley of laughter.
“When two people marry,” Blair yelled, aiming the cigar right at me, “you’re supposed to become one!”
Through the laughter the reporters were shouting out questions. “Then you do intend to marry Belinda?”
“Is Bonnie on drugs!” Cynthia asked.
“We don’t know that!” G.G. said impatiently. I could see he was finding this as unpleasant as I found it. In fact, he looked almost angry.
“The hell we don’t!” Blair said, climbing to his feet and pulling the raincoat around him. He tapped his ashes onto the rug. “Just go down there, have a drink in the Polo Lounge, and listen to the gossip. She’s so out of it she couldn’t talk and chew a stick a gum at the same time, she’d strangle.”
“Will you marry Belinda!”
“But it’s just gossip!” G.G. said.
“Yes, I want to marry Belinda,” I answered. “I should have asked her before.”
I still couldn’t see straight from the flash. More questions. I couldn’t follow.
“Let’s get out of here,” G.G. whispered in my ear. “Belinda wouldn’t want all this to happen. Blair’s out of his mind.”
“Jeremy, are you happy with the response to the paintings?”
“Jeremy, were you at the preview?”
Blair seized me by the arm. Amazingly strong little man.
“Was it a long affair between Marty and Belinda?”
“They were like glue in Hollywood,” Blair said. “I told you. Ask Marty about that.”
“G.G., was it Bonnie and Marty that ruined your business?”
“Nobody ruined my business, I told you. I decided to leave New York.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” Blair said. “They spread their rumors all over town.”
“G.G., will you sue?”
“I don’t sue people. Blair please—”
“Tell them what happened, damn it!” Blair roared. He had G.G. on one side and me on the other and he was shoving us across the lobby. I almost laughed it was so ridiculous. The reporters were following like bugs around a porch bulb.
“The rumors about the salon started when they came looking for her,” G.G. explained with obvious difficulty. “But by the time I sold the business we had things well in hand. I did get quite a price for the business, you know—”
“They ran you out of New York!” Blair said.
“And what were the rumors?”
“Did you know she was living with Jeremy Walker?”
“I knew they were friends and he was good to her and he was painting her pictures. Yes, I knew.”
“Jeremy,” Cynthia almost tripped me. “Did Belinda ever tell you Marty had been carrying on with her?”
“Look,” I said, “the important thing is the exhibit opens tomorrow. That is exactly what Belinda and I both want, and I hope, wherever she is, she will hear about it. Her movie Final Score was stopped, but no one will stop me from showing the paintings I did of her.”
We had reached the elevators. G.G. pushed me inside after Blair. Then G.G. blocked the reporters as the doors closed.
“Ah ha!” Blair roared. He stuck the cigar between his teeth and rubbed his hands together.
“You’re saying too much!” G.G. said. “You’re going overboard. You really are.” Even as upset as he was, he kept his soft tone, and his face showed worry as much as anger.
“Yeah, that’s what my aunt Margaret told me when I bought out her little œor com? n? snd rsn my ,qrsr sd w~?h Bor~n~k r/grit smack lh the middle of Vogue. Don’t look pale, Walker. I’m going to crucify that Hollywood wop, that Gruesome Statistic, that Awful Fact.” Reporters were waiting when the doors opened.
“You guys get out of here,” Blair said, leading us past them, “or I call the front desk.” He was puffing cigar smoke ahead of us like a little locomotive.
“Jeremy, is it true the family knew she was with you? That Bonnie came here herself?.”
What? Had I heard that right? I turned, tried to focus on the reporter. That part of the story I’d told to no one, no one—except those closest to us, G.G. and Alex and Susan. But they would never have told.
The reporter was a young man in a windbreaker and jeans, nondescript, steno pad, ballpoint, portable tape recorder clipped to his belt. He was scrutinizing me, must have seen the blood rushing to my face.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that you met with Bonnie at the Hyatt Regency right here in San Francisco?”
“Look, leave us alone, please,” G.G. said politely. Blair was watching me intently.
“That true?” Blair asked.
“Listen to this!” the reporter said, as he stood between me and the door to the room. He was flipping through the steno pad. I noticed the little tape recorder was running. The red light was on.
We were ringed in by inquisitive faces, but I couldn’t see them. Nothing registered.
“I have a statement right here from a limousine driver who says he drove Bonnie and Belinda to the vicinity of your house on September 10, that, after Belinda got out of the car, Bonnie waited three hours in front of your Seventeenth Street house before you came out, and then he picked you up at—”
“No comment!” I said. “Blair, have you got the key to this damned door?”
“Then she knew you were living with Belinda!”
“Bonnie knew where Belinda was!”
“Why the hell no comment!” Blair shouted. “Answer his questions, tell him. Did Bonnie know the whole time?”
“Did Bonnie know about the paintings?”
“Open the door, Blair,” G.G. said. He grabbed the key out of Blair’s hand and unlocked the door.
I went inside behind Blair. G.G. shut the door. He looked as exhausted as I felt. But Blair sprang into life immediately.
He tossed off the mink-lined raincoat, stomped his foot, and rubbed his hands together again, the cigar between his teeth.
“Ah ha, perfect! And you didn’t tell me she came here. Who’s side are you on, Rembrandt?”
“You keep this up, Blair,” G.G. said, “and they’ll sue you. They’ll ruin you, the way you keep telling people that they ruined me!”
“They did ruin you, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“No, they didn’t!” G.G. was clearly exasperated. The blood was dancing in his cheeks. But still he wouldn’t raise his voice. “I’m here because I want to be. New York was over for me, Blair, I left because it was over. The worse part is, Belinda doesn’t know that. She may think it’s all her fault. But they’ll go after you with their big guns if you don’t stop.”
“So let them try. My money’s in Swiss francs. They’ll never get a cent of it. I can sell furs from Luxembourg just as easy as from the Big Apple. I’m seventy-two. I got cancer. I’m a widower. What can they do to me?”
“You know you can’t live anywhere but New York,” G.G. said patiently, “and the cancer’s been in remission for ten years. Slow down, Blair, for God’s sakes.”
“Look, G.G., the thing’s out of control,” I said. “If they nailed down that limousine driver—”
“You said it,” Blair said at once. He picked up the phone, punched in a single digit, and demanded in a loud voice that the hall outside his room be cleared immediately.
Then he shot past me into the bathroom, looked in the shower, came back out. “Look under the bed, you strapping nitwit?’ he said to G.G.
“There is no one under the bed,” G.G. said. “You’re dramatizing everything as usual.”
“Am I?” Blair went down on all fours and lifted the spread. “OK, nobody!” he said. He stood up. “Now you tell me about this meeting with Bonnie. What did she know?”
“Blair, I don’t want to fight their dirt with more dirt,” I said. “I have said everything that needs to be said.”
“What a character! Didn’t anybody ever tell you all great painters are pricks? Look at Caravaggio, a real bastard! And what about Gauguin, a prick, I tell you, a first-cl
ass prick.”
“Blair, you’re talking so loud, they’ll hear you in the hallway,” G.G. said.
“I hope so!” he screamed at the door. “OK. Forget about Bonnie for the moment. What did you do with the letter Belinda wrote you, the whole story?” Blair demanded.
“It’s in a bank vault in New Orleans. The key is in another vault.”
“And the photographs you took?” Blair asked.
“Burned all of them. My lawyer kind of insisted on that.” Excruciating, burning all those prints. And yet I had known all along the moment would come. If the police got the photographs, the press would get them, and everything would change with the photographs. The paintings were something else.
Blair considered. “You’re sure you vaporized every one of them.”
“Yes, what didn’t burn went down the garbage disposer. Not even the FBI could get their hands on that.”
G.G. gave a sad little laugh and shook his head. He’d helped me with the burning and grinding, and he’d hated it, too.
“Oh, don’t be too cocky, sonny boy!” Blair shouted at him. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you transporting a minor over the state lines for illegal purposes is a federal crime?”
“You are a madman, Blair,” G.G. said calmly.
“No, I’m not. Listen, Rembrandt, I’m on your side. But you were wise to torch that stuff. Ever hear of Bonnie’s brother, Daryl? He’ll be on your tail in no time. And United Theatricals is already getting calls from the Moral Majority—”
“You know that for sure?” I asked.
“Marty himself told me!” he answered. “In between gypsy curses and gangster threats. All through the Bible Belt they’re calling the affiliate stations. What’s this bullshit, they’re asking, about Bonnie letting her daughter run away from home? You go home and make sure there’s nothing to connect you with her but art and that romantic slop you wrote in the exhibit catalog.”
“I’ve already done all that. But I think G.G. is right. You’re not being very personally careful.”
“Oh, you’re a sweetheart, you really are.” He started pacing, hands in his pockets, the cigar between his teeth again. Then he whipped it out of his mouth. “But let me tell you something, I love that little girl. No, don’t look at me like that, and don’t say what’s on the tip of your tongue. You think I hate Bonnie ‘cause she snubbed me. You damned right, but hating her is like hating bad weather. I love that little girl. I watched her grow up. I held her when she was a baby. She’s sweet and kind like her daddy, and she always was. None of that other bullshit ever touched her. And I’ll tell you something else. There were times in my life when every single connection I had was bullshit, crap I’m talking, business, lies, major filth! And you know what I’d do? I’d get on the phone and call her. Yeah, Belinda. She was just a kid, but she was a person, a real person. At parties on Saint Esprit we would go off together, her and me, we’d ride her goddamn motorcycle. And we’d just talk to each other, her and me. She got screwed by those bums. And it was damned near inevitable. Somebody should have looked out for her!”
Blair took a long drag off his cigar, spewing all the smoke into the room, and then he sank down into a little chair by the window and put the heel of his silver tennis shoe up on the velvet seat in front of him. He was lost in his thoughts for a second.
I didn’t say anything. The sadness came over me again, the sadness I’d felt so strongly back in the kitchen at the house and in the little cottage in Carmel. I missed her so much. I was so afraid for her. The exhibit was a triumph, that was the word the most cautious of men had used, a triumph, and where was she to share it with me? What the hell did all of this mean till she came home?
Blair was watching me through the cloud of smoke from his cigar.
“Now you gonna tell me what happened when Bonnie came up here?” he demanded. “You gonna give me all the dirt or not?”
There was a loud knock on the door suddenly. Then another knock and another, as if more than one person was out there.
“No, Jeremy,” G.G. said, looking straight at me, “don’t do it.”
I looked into his eyes and I saw Belinda again. And I saw this overgrown sweet kid who meant just what he said.
The knocking got louder. Blair ignored it. He continued to stare at me.
“Blair, don’t you see?” I asked. “We’re past all that. I don’t have to tell anybody anything else. And neither do you.”
“G.G., open that fucking door, damn it!” Blair said.
The reporters, crowded into the corridor, were holding up the morning papers. They had the new editions of The World This Week in their hands, the early morning Los Angeles Times, and the New York tabloid News Bulletin.
“Have you see these stories?” Do you have any comment?”
NURSE TELLS ALL.
BONNIE, DAUGHTER, AND HUSBAND IN LOVE TRIANGLE.
KIDDIE PORN PAINTINGS OF BONNIE’S DAUGHTER.
BONNIE’S DAUGHTER RUNS FROM STEPFATHER TO TRYST WITH SAN FRANCISCO PAINTER.
BONNIE, STAR OF “CHAMPAGNE FLIGHT,” ABANDONS TEENAGE DAUGHTER FOR PRODUCER HUSBAND.
BELINDA STILL ON THE RUN.
“Well, Rembrandt,” Blair said over the noise. “I think you gotta point.”
ALL morning long as people lined up for two blocks before the Folsom Street gallery, the news came in, through television, radio, telegrams at the front door, and calls from George and Alex on a private line that had just been installed.
Three more lines had been added to my regular number also, but, now that the tabloids had the story, the situation was worse than ever with the hate calls coming in from as far away as Nova Scotia. Dan’s secretary, Barbara, was at the house now full-time, answering as fast as the machine.
It was all coming out. Nurses, paramedics, a chauffeur who had been fired by Marty, two of my neighbors who had seen Belinda with me—those and others had apparently peddled their stories. Film critics dragged out their old notes on the Cannes showing of Final Score. The TV and radio people were too cautious to use the tabloid accounts verbatim, but one medium fed upon another with ever-increasing confidence. News of fire, flood, political events—all this continued as before—but we were the scandal of the moment.
The morning network news showed live coverage in LA of United Theatricals executives disclaiming all knowledge of the alleged disappearance of Bonnie’s daughter, Belinda, insisting that they knew nothing about the distribution of Final Score.
“Champagne Flight” would air this week as scheduled, said network spokesmen. They had no comment on reports that affiliates all through the South were dropping the program.
Again and again “modest” portions of the paintings were flashed across the screen: Belinda’s head in the Communion veil, Belinda in punk makeup on the carousel horse. Belinda in braids dancing.
Televison cameras stopped Uncle Daryl’s car as he tried to leave the Beverly Hills Hotel. Through the open window he said: “I can tell you right now, as God is my witness, my sister, Bonnie, knew nothing about her daughter living with this man in San Francisco. I don’t know why the exhibit has not been closed down.”
The late edition of the morning Chronicle ran a picture of G.G. and me and Blair taken in the lobby of the Stanford Court. DID BONNIE KNOW OF WALKER’S PAINTINGS. Two kids in the Haight claimed to have known Belinda, they called her “wild, crazy, lots of fun, just a really beautiful spirit” and said she’d disappeared off the street in June.
When the noon news came on Channel 5, I saw my own house live on the screen, got up and went to the front windows and looked out at the video cameras. When I went back to the kitchen, they had switched locations to the Clift downtown and the reporter on the scene was talking about the closing of G.G. ‘s salon.
I flicked the channel. Live from LA the unmistakable face and voice of Marty Moreschi again. He was squinting in the southern California sun as he addressed reporters in what appeared to be a public parking lot. I turned up the volume because
the doorbell was ringing.
“Look, you want my comment!” he said in the equally unmistakable New York street voice, “I wanna know where she is, that’s what I wanna know. We’ve got eighteen pictures of her naked up there, selling at half a million a pop, but where is Belinda? No, you don’t tell me—I tell you!” The loaded .38-caliber finger again aimed at the reporter. “We’ve had detectives scouring this country for her. We’ve been worried sick about her. Bonnie had no idea where she was. And now this clown in San Francisco says she was living with him. And she consented to these pictures. Like hell!”
“I knew he’d take this tack,” Dan said. He had just come into the kitchen. He was unshaven and his shirt was a mess. Both of us had slept in our clothes listening to the answering machine and the radio. But he wasn’t angry anymore. He was concentrating on strategy instead.
“—come right out and say she was missing?” Marty yelled. “And have some guy kidnap her? And now we find out this world-famous children’s artist was busy painting every detail of her anatomy? You think he didn’t know who she was?”
“He is slick, he is real slick,” Dan said.
“It’s a dare,” I said. “It’s been a series of dares from the beginning.”
Marty was getting in the car, the window was going up. The limousine was pushing through the flash of silver microphones and bowed heads.
I hit the remote control again; the anchor woman on Channel 4: “—of the LAPD confirms that no missing persons report was ever filed on fifteen-year-old Belinda Blanchard. Belinda is seventeen now, by the way, and her whereabouts are still completely unknown. Her father, internationally known hairstylist George Gallagher, confirmed this morning that he does not know where she is and is eager to find her.”
The door bell was now ringing incessantly. There was a knocking. “How about not answering it?” Dan said. “And suppose she’s out there?” I asked. I went to the lace curtains. Reporters on the steps, the video cameraman right behind them.
I opened the door. Cynthia Lawrence was holding an open copy of Time, which had hit the stands less than an hour ago. Had I seen the article?
I took it from her. Impossible to read it now. The questions were coming not only from her but from the others farther down on the steps and on the sidewalk. I scanned the scene, the crowd across the street, the teenagers on the corner, people on the balconies of the apartment house. There were a couple of men in suits next to the phone booth by the grocery store. Cops? Could be.