Chapter 5 - Where the Truth Lies

THE RECEPTIONIST WAS on the phone with a new boyfriend and smoking a new brand of cigarettes being test-marketed on the West Coast. Tramps, they were called, an attractive tan-colored cigarette bearing the licensed image of Charlie Chaplin on every pack. “Buy ’em or bum ’em” was their slogan, cute cigarettes marketed to give cute cancer to women. Weisner, Hillman and Dumont occupied an entire floor of 7760 Sunset, the last outpost of business real estate before Sunset Strip segued into Sunset Boulevard and directly across from the nicest of the Hamburger Hamlets (the one with the open Danish modern fireplace in the middle of the room, where your waiter would roast you marshmallows for dessert if you asked nicely).

The reception area could not have been more respectable if there’d been a baptismal font and a brace of acolytes. Pecan paneling outlined cream-and-gray-striped walls, upon which hung framed lithographs of sailing ships. There was no way one would have suspected that this firm was in any way connected to show business.

I got the receptionist to put her boyfriend on hold for a moment and explained that I was there to see Mr. Lanny Morris. “Not here,” she said tartly and, while apologizing profusely to her boyfriend, waved me toward the seat she’d allow me to take.

Hillman’s secretary came out to greet me. She was a pert British blonde named Gillian (standard issue for that rank of attorney), who was smoking a St. Moritz, an expensive menthol cigarette that came with a glossy gold band wrapped around its filter. “So you’re here, t’riffic!” she gushed. She turned to the receptionist. “Leslie, could you tend to the Mr. Coffee machine, it’s getting a bit like paint in there, I’m afraid. If you’ll come this way, Ms. O’Connor.”

She led me down several hallways filled with desks upon which Selectric typewriters were manned by middle-aged secretaries who did most of the firm’s real work. Gillian was pretty giggly about things. “So you know that we have a lady who’s here to frisk you, I’m afraid. Sor-ry! Are you all right about that then? T’riffic! We did warn you about that in the letter, didn’t we? Although I can’t think where you might hide anything in that outfit,” she confided.

I’d purposely worn something clingy and see-through, a knit macramé over a body stocking, purportedly to show that I had nothing to hide but also, I suspected, to make a strong first impression on Lanny Morris. Who was not on the premises.

Gillian showed me into a small windowless law library. Before leaving, she introduced me to Naomi, a big woman who amply filled her navy-blue outfit, which vaguely resembled a policewoman’s uniform without actually being such.

Naomi ambled over to me and recited, “Please raise your hands above your head and move your legs as far apart as possible.” In the dress I was wearing, the latter wasn’t very far. Naomi then felt me up. Every part of me. I don’t care what anyone else would have called it, Naomi felt me up.

The door opened. A tall, too thin fellow entered, wearing his age (mid-sixties) on his Harris tweed sleeve. His suit was crowned with what was, for the time, a defiantly conservative maroon bow tie.

“Miss O’Connor! John Hillman, very glad to have you here. I’m terribly sorry about the, uhm, you know”—he nodded toward Naomi—“but such is the situation. Now I’ll need you to sign these releases where you see the X…”

I signed wherever he said. “I thought I was going to meet with Lanny Morris.”

He nodded. “Well, in a sense you’ll be doing just that.” He placed a black ring binder on the library table. “This is a selection from my client’s writings. He wanted you to have the opportunity to read it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“My understanding is that he believed it might assist you in some way.” He looked inquisitively at my gal-pal Naomi. “Miss…?”

“Schall,” Naomi elucidated. She was thumbing through a copy of Seventeen with fervid interest.

“Miss Schall will remain here to make sure you don’t memorialize or take away anything you read. This material is offered as what I believe is called ‘deep background.’ Meaning you may not quote from or paraphrase any of it. You understand?”

Hillman left the room and there was this silly Citizen Kane moment, me seated at the room’s sole mahogany library table, about to read the late Great Man’s private memoirs… only the Great Man was very much alive and kicking. I remembered that when I’d asked Vince a few days earlier why he and Lanny had not spoken since their breakup, he’d confided, “Because Lanny can be a bit of a monster.”

Okay. I have all the pluck of every heroine who ever idiotically blundered her way down the stone stairs of Dracula’s castle to investigate a strange noise in the crypt. Besides, I had Naomi here at my side to protect me.

I touched the cover of the ring binder. “You King Kong,” I thought. “Me Fay Wray. Let’s meet the monster.”