Cheat and Charmer (10 page)

“And she claims that you and your sister were very close, that you knew all about your sister’s membership in the Party, and that you frequently consorted with known Communists and were fully aware of who was a member of the Party and who wasn’t.”

“Mr. Marlow, I don’t see why you need me to answer questions about myself, since Mrs. Schlossberg seems to have given you all the answers you want.”

“Mrs. Lasker!” Kingman barks again. “Unless you are willing to be specific, we will have to conclude that you are unwilling to cooperate with us.”

She looks at him in silence.

“Unless concerned people like yourself help us root out this terrible conspiracy of Communism,” Marlow adds, his tone reasonable, “our lives and the lives of our children won’t be worth living.”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “You don’t expect people to t-t-t-take that seriously, do you? Frankly, gentlemen, I don’t happen to think there
is
or ever
was
a Communist conspiracy in this country. You guys are just wasting everyone’s time and taxes with all this hys-s-s-steria. And you’re r-r-r-ruining people’s lives. Now, you and I know that I’m not here because I want to be. I was subpoenaed, and I came. I should be picking up my kids at school, gentlemen.” She reaches for her purse, pushes her chair away from the table, and begins to stand up. “Anyway, I’ve told you all I know, and there just isn’t any more.”

Jake’s career and her children’s future—her reasons for agreeing to testify—dissolve in the stark wrongness of the occasion—the relentlessness of her interrogators, the poisonous absurdity of their words, the stale air in this suffocating room.

“
Sit down!
Mrs. Lasker!” Kingman booms. “You have not been excused. Moreover, you will be cited immediately for contempt of Congress unless you answer one question—namely, whether your sister was or was not a member of the Communist Party. Now, I’m puzzled and I think Mr. Marlow here is puzzled, too. Why would you tell the Committee that you’re willing to cooperate with us and then come down here and just lead us down the garden path? I can’t understand why you would waste your time and ours, unless this is some kind of Communist trick you have up your
sleeve. I can tell you one thing with great certainty: my colleagues in the House of Representatives will not look kindly on a person whom they believe to be toying with and mocking the good faith of the American people and this duly constituted congressional committee. Finally, I think you’d agree that it would be an even greater pity if your husband, Jake Lasker, who isn’t now and never has been a member of the Communist Party, were to find himself deprived of professional opportunities and professional standing because of his contaminating association with an uncooperative witness and known subversive, who may for all we know still be an active member of the Communist Party.”

Dinah can only stare at him.

“Now, Mrs. Lasker,” Kingman rasps, “was your sister, known at that time as Genevieve Milligan Ventura, a member of the Communist Party?”

Her eyes brightening with hate, Dinah takes out a cigarette and lights it, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, as her father, or a truck driver, would, with the ash end pointing backward, and she leans forward and, under the table, defiantly spreads her knees. Half-moons of clammy sweat soak through her dress, and underneath her nylon slip her girdle binds and pinches her flesh. “Mr. Kingman, I want to make sure I understand you. You are saying that if I don’t give you my sister’s name you will bl-bl-blacklist my husband?”

“As a loyal American citizen, I remind you that
there is no blacklist
,” declares Kingman.

“Then what the hell do you call the threat you just made? What you just said is that unless I give you my sister’s name, my husband will never work in Hollywood again.”

“I did not say that.”

“You certainly implied it. You made a threat.”

“Put it on the record that the witness refuses to cooperate with this committee,” Kingman shouts over her to the stenographer, and bangs his fist on the table. “And note that I hereby cite Mrs. Lasker for contempt of Congress.”

“Mr. Kingman, are we on the record?”

“Yes, Mrs. Lasker,” he shouts.

“Good. Because I want to make sure that the stenographer is recording that you are trying to hound and int-t-t-imidate me.”

“Miss Mulrooney is taking down every word we say, Mrs. Lasker,” Kingman says, white spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth. “And I wish
to add that you are refusing to cooperate with this committee and that I shall momentarily issue the citation for contempt.”

“Miss Mulr-r-r-ooney,” Dinah calls out, although the woman remains motionless at the sound of her name, “just make sure you get this: that this committee has threatened my husband with blacklisting if I don’t name my sister.”

“Mrs. Lasker,” Marlow coolly resumes, as though he hasn’t heard a word of this last exchange. “I have a copy here of a list of those who paid membership dues to the Communist Party on September 4, 1938. Your name is on the list, and so is the name of Genevieve Ventura. Can you remember now whether or not your sister was a member of the Communist Party?” he asks.

The noose tightens. The trapdoor breaks beneath her. “At that t-t-t-time,” Dinah answers, “she was.”

“Do you know when she joined the Communist Party?”

“Truthfully, I do not know for sure.”

“And were the late Mr. Ventura and Mrs. Albrecht members as well?”

“Are their names on your list?”

“Not on this list, Mrs. Lasker. But”—he coughs—“their names are on another list I happen to have right here, from March 1937, of contributors to a fund for an ambulance corps in Spain. The money was collected after a speech given by a Frenchman who came to California, a well-known Communist agitator and author André Malrowks.”

“Malraux,” she corrects him.

“Thank you. Mr. Malraux spoke at a party meeting at your sister’s home in the Malibu Colony. Mr. and Mrs. Ventura and Mrs. Albrecht each wrote a check for one hundred and fifty dollars. Do you know whether or not Mr. Ventura and Mrs. Albrecht were members of the Communist Party?”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, sir. I wasn’t there that day, and I can’t tell you about things I didn’t see.”

“I doubt that, Mrs. Lasker,” says Kingman.

“This may surprise you, sir, but I don’t care what you think.”

“Did Mr. Ventura have friends in Mexico City?” asks Marlow.

“Yes.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“He and my sister eloped to Mexico City, and it was there that they were married. They stayed with friends.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“I don’t remember their names.” She hesitates. “You know, Mr. Marlow, there was a lot going on at the time that I didn’t understand.”

“Can you explain please?”

“Don’t you listen, Mr. Marlow? I just said there were things I didn’t understand about those days. How can I elaborate when I don’t know, didn’t know, hadn’t figured it out, and still haven’t?”

That’s it, she tells herself. Not another word.

He looks at her as if deciding whether to pursue this line of questioning. She can hear Kingman’s raspy breathing. Marlow takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. She sees the red mark they have left before he puts them back on. Both men stare at her, as if they have forgotten what they wanted to ask her.

Finally, Marlow resumes his questions. “Did you ever meet an Andor Somogyi?”

“Somogyi? It rings a bell, but I can’t quite place it.”

“Mrs. Lasker, who arranged for Mr. Ventura and your sister to return to France?”

“Actually, come to think of it, it may have been that guy you just mentioned—Andor Somogyi. He was a big man, if I remember, with a very thick accent and a big jaw. He came up once, I think, from Mexico City for a few days.”

“Was he a member of the Communist Party?”

“I don’t know. I saw him once, gave him a cup of coffee, and never saw him again.”

“He was a Stalinist agent, Mrs. Lasker, and he arranged for your sister and her husband to go to France, where they were well looked after by other loyal Stalinists,” Marlow says dispassionately, “until one of them betrayed Stefan Ventura and sold him out to the Nazis.”

How have they gotten hold of this information? she wonders. Who told them?

“Tell us, Mrs. Lasker,” Marlow continues. “What makes you think it was Andor Somogyi who arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Ventura to go to Europe?”

“Because when I told them I thought it was crazy to go, my sister said, ‘Don’t worry, Somogyi’s taking care of everything. Someone’s going to meet us in Marseilles.’ Why she thought that would have k-k-k-kept me from worrying, I haven’t the faintest idea,” she adds. “I was worried sick about her from the day they left until the war was over.”

“Were you and your husband members of the Committee for the First Amendment?” Marlow asks.

This non sequitur startles her. “Why, yes.”

“In other words, you and your husband flew to Washington with other prominent members of the motion picture industry to express opposition to these congressional hearings?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Lasker?” Marlow says gently. “When did you leave the Communist Party?”

“I stopped going to meetings just before I married Jake Lasker. He insisted that I stop, and, frankly, I had come to dislike the way they were run.”

“Please elaborate for us, Mrs. Lasker. I know you’re tired.” How considerate he’s become now that I’ve ratted on Veevi and Dorshka and Stefan, she thinks.

“I disc-c-c-covered that there always seemed to be a small group of people who would decide beforehand what the larger group was supposed to do or vote on.”

“Who were these people?”

“Well, M-M-M-Metzger and K-K-K-Klein, for sure. And Guy Bergman. Those men were always telling us what the line was to be at any particular moment, no matter how illogical. One day we’re isolationists and pacifists and war is an imperialist plot; the next we’re in it with Uncle Joe, all-for-one and one-for-all. Once there was a new stand about something, you couldn’t qu-qu-qu-question or oppose it. People who did were accused of disloyalty, reaction, counter-this and counter-that. I found the rigidity of thinking intolerable,” she says simply, delivering lines that were, for her, true enough but which her lawyer has coached her to say. “About the Soviet Union, for instance. I was much more concerned about what was wrong with America than with what was right about Russia,” she says pointedly. “I mean, tell me, gentlemen, what’s the difference between you g-g-g-guys and Stalin, if I may ask?”

Marlow smiles, a frozen, mirthless smile. She looks over at Kingman. He is wiping his nose with a clotted white handkerchief, and for a moment she fights the urge to gag.

“When did you completely sever your relationship to or your membership in the Communist Party?” he asks her, putting the foul handkerchief in his pocket.

“In January, right after I was married. I was actually packing up my apartment when some fellow stopped by and asked me if I had stopped coming. I told him I had decided to quit and he agreed it was my right to do so. That was it. I wasn’t important enough for them to make a fuss over.”

“Did he threaten you with reprisals of any kind?” Kingman says.

“No. You’re up to your ears in clichés, you know,” she says. “Nobody recr-cr-cr-cruited me, and nobody ever threatened me about anything—ever. Unlike you.”

Marlow thumbs through some papers; he scans a document and glances up at her. “Did you make contributions to the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Fund?”

“Yes, I did. I have the checks here if you want to see them. Mr. Unwin suggested I bring them.”

“That won’t be necessary. Thank you very much, Mrs. Lasker,” Marlow says. “You are free to go.”

She stares at them. Is that it?

“Mrs. Lasker,” Marlow says politely when she doesn’t move. “I do apologize, but we have another witness waiting outside.”

“Yes,” she says, “I heard you the first time.”

Out in the hallway, her knees wobble. She feels rubbery and light-headed, as if she has forgotten how to walk. Her heart races, and she leans against the wall, and then something catches her attention. Up ahead, near the tall cigarette receptacles next to the elevator, she sees two men in dark suits. One of them is going bald and carries a briefcase. She figures him for a lawyer. She recognizes the other just as he recognizes her. Oh shit, she swears to herself. Art Squires, formerly Aaron Skebelsky, who had come out to Hollywood from the Group Theatre and Broadway and never looked back, not after all those Warner Brothers pictures in which he played gangsters and boxers and sexy doomed tough guys from the streets. He is pale and looks nervous, smoking a cigarette with the same hard, fast drags he’d used for the death row scenes in
Fat Chance
, which had won him an Academy Award for best actor the year before. He’s giving her a certain look, though, as if seeing her means he can turn back into somebody he would much rather be than the poor scared son of a bitch she knows he knows she’s seeing. “Dinah honey,” he murmurs. “Of all people …”

She feels a sudden sexual heat—she can’t help it. Years ago, during one of those awful periods before they were married, when Jake, after telling her he loved her, would consequently stop calling, she had gone to a Party meeting and Art Squires was there. And after Guy Bergman got up and explained that the night’s discussion topic would be “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Squires had quipped, “I don’t know if it’s a good way to run a country, but it sure sounds like a great idea for an orgy.” She had laughed out loud when nobody else had. Afterward he had taken her to a club, and while they were dancing he’d said, “I bet you’d be an animal in bed.” She went home with him that night. And now, from time to time, standing at a stoplight or tying the kids’ shoelaces, she’d remember that night—which had been, indeed, memorable.