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  For Eric Bercovici and his family

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Book One: October 1959: Homecoming

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Book Two: The Hunt for the Blacklist Killer

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Addendum

  By Jerry Ludwig

  About the Author

  Copyright

  The Hollywood blacklist was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment because of their political beliefs or associations, real or suspected. Artists were barred from work on the basis of their alleged membership or sympathy toward the American Communist Party, based on participation in liberal or humanitarian political causes that enforcers of the blacklist deemed disloyal. Refusal to assist investigations into Communist Party activities, principally by refusing to give the names of others they knew to be similarly involved, was deemed proof of disloyalty. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, the late 1940s through the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit and verifiable, but it caused direct damage to the careers of scores of American artists, often made betrayal of friendship (not to mention principle) the price for a livelihood, and promoted ideological censorship across the entire industry.

  —WIKIPEDIA NOTATION

  I did what I did because it was the more tolerable of two alternatives that were, either way, painful, even disastrous, and either way wrong for me. That’s what a difficult decision means: either way you go, you lose.

  —ELIA KAZAN

  BOOK ONE

  OCTOBER 1959:

  HOMECOMING

  CHAPTER

  1

  DAVID WEAVER

  So I’m sprawled in a lounge chair next to the swimming pool at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood wondering where Teddy is. Theodore Weaver, my father, best friend, and mentor. A brilliant, witty, extraordinary screenwriter. He died in my arms in Rome four nights ago after he finished editing the movie he’d directed that was to be his comeback achievement. Heart attack at the brutally young age of forty-eight.

  Despite the aching loss that permeated me and the feeling of being totally alone in a world where no one gives a damn about me, I somehow made the necessary arrangements to bring him back here for burial. Ending his political exile. But like a lost suitcase, the airlines have misplaced the casket. It went astray when we changed planes in New York. I came on to L.A. and they still don’t know where the hell Teddy went. That was three days ago. I feel like strangling someone.

  Instead I lean back in the lounge chair and stare at my surroundings. It’s late afternoon in October 1959. The pool area is deserted. The sky is smoggy yellow-gray. The Chateau, as everyone calls this place, still looks the same as when I first saw it as a child. A multi-turreted, Mediterranean-style hotel with a carefully cultivated aura of shabby chic. The lobby features overstuffed sofas and languidly turning ceiling fans. It’s an oasis of what passes for civility in Hollywood, nestled a couple of hundred yards above the touristy Sunset Strip.

  Panorama Studio put us up here for the first couple of weeks when they brought our two families—the Weavers and the Vardians—out from New York in 1937. It’s where the studios book the special VIPs until they get acclimated.

  Teddy and Leo Vardian were already a red-hot radio writing team—Weaver & Vardian—spoken like a run-on word, two halves that made a dazzling whole. Physically they were a Mutt and Jeff team, bearlike Teddy and foxy little Leo. Two buddies from Brooklyn who had conquered the Big Apple and now were poised for success in Hollywood. All blue skies then.

  I get out of the lounge chair and restlessly stroll around the pool, pausing at the deep end to gaze down at my reflection. First time I did this, it was chubby little three-year-old Davey Weaver looking back up at me, innocent happy guy. Now I’m twenty-four, six-two and lean as a long-distance runner, strong as the U.S. Army Ranger I used to be, and if it weren’t for my sunglasses I’d be seeing the angriest eyes in the Greater L.A. area. But the shimmering waters of the Chateau pool look the same.

  Nothing’s changed. Everything’s changed. Question is: can things ever change back?

  * * *

  My heels make a hollow clicking sound as I walk across the tiled lobby of the Chateau. Before I reach the desk, the starchy, officious desk clerk I’ve been pestering shakes his head. No message from the airline.

  So I’m still stuck in this surreal limbo. But I realize that much of my anxiety is at being back in the town that I grew up in. Weird, isn’t it? So many people dream of coming to Hollywood and I feel like a soldier home from the wars, wary as hell of the reception I’ll get.

  I start for my room and a guy sitting alone behind a potted plant folds his newspaper and gets up. Tall, tan, lanky, late forties, dressed in a black sharkskin suit without a wrinkle in it. Carrying a gray snap-brim fedora, he’s looking more weathered than the last time I saw him. I go down the corridor; so does he. I force myself to stroll, but I’m tensed up by the sight of an old enemy.

  I unlock my door and behind me he says:

  “Mr. Weaver, my name is McKenna.” He flips open a small leather case, shows me a gold badge and an FBI identification card. As if I didn’t remember him. The number one figure on my Hollywood Hate Parade. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Sure. Speak.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  “Oh, c’mon, kid. Don’t be like that.”

  “I’m not a kid. That was last time.”

  “Quite a few years. Surprised you remember.”

  “Some things you never forget.”

  The last time McKenna appeared on my
doorstep was almost a decade ago, in 1951, at our house in upscale Brentwood near the top of Tigertail Road. Mom and Dad had ordered me to never open the door unless I knew who was knocking, but this one time I’d been playing with the dog and the bell rang and I forgot and I swung the door wide and there were two Slim Jims. McKenna did the talking.

  “Your father home?”

  “N-no,” I stammered. “Nobody’s home.” But they could hear the typing upstairs. They pushed past me and started for the staircase. Later on they signed a sworn affidavit that I invited them in.

  “Teddyyyyyyyyyy!” I yelled. It was the first time I’d used his first name. The typing stopped. The two FBI men raced up the stairs. When they reached the second floor and disappeared down the hallway, I saw my father drop off the thick maple tree branch outside the window of his study down onto the lawn. He crouched, like a hunted beast, and looked over at me through the open front door.

  I’ve never forgotten that look.

  Then he ran off and they didn’t get him that day to serve the pink subpoena for the House Un-American Activities Committee.

  The shame that coursed through me that day still remains. It is a frozen instant no son should ever have to experience—the sight of my father stripped of dignity and rendered powerless and all because of my careless blunder. Teddy never blamed me for opening that door, but I never stopped blaming myself.

  * * *

  And now here’s McKenna at the Chateau. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Gone from Hollywood nearly ten years. Senator Joe McCarthy, who cowed even President Eisenhower, has died in disgrace. But the Cold War that McCarthy exploited still lives on. Apparently so does the Blacklist.

  “What do you say, Mr. Weaver?” McKenna asks. “Can I come in?” So polite, this time. But why the hell should I let him? Then he adds, “I’ve got some news you’ll be interested in. About your father.”

  “Tell me out here, Slim Jim. I don’t want to have to fumigate my room after you’re gone.”

  “My name’s not Jim, it’s—”

  “Brian. Brian McKenna. Says so on your ID, but to us you were all Slim Jim. Dark suits, dark glasses, snap-brim hats, skinny as bird dogs, good manners, bad news.”

  I lean against the mustard-colored wall outside my closed door. Fold my arms, making myself elaborately comfortable. Bet I could take this asshole out now if I had to. McKenna pretends he’s not annoyed.

  “Okay, we can do it out here.” Takes practice to make agreeing sound so threatening.

  “Guess I should be flattered by your visit,” I gibe. “After all those years of being on my father’s case, now you’re keeping tabs on me.”

  He probably knows about the screaming match verging on a fistfight that I got into at LAX when the airline people told me they’d lost Teddy.

  “You’re not a subject of interest to us, Mr. Weaver.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “First of all, I wanted to give you an update. Your dad’s casket arrived. You can notify your mortuary to pick it up at the Air America cargo terminal.”

  “You bastard!” My rage index skyrocketing. “You’re still haunting Teddy even after he’s dead. Fuckin’ body snatchers. Shanghaied his casket, moving him from city to city while you go through his pockets and the lining of his coffin, looking for what? An atom bomb? Haven’t you turds got any sense of decency?”

  Someone clears his throat. “Everything all right, Mr. Weaver?” It’s the fussy desk clerk from the lobby. Standing at the end of the hallway.

  “Everything’s fine,” McKenna says, without taking his eyes off me.

  “Mr. Weaver?” the clerk repeats.

  “Fine,” I mutter as I keep the staring contest going with McKenna.

  “Just call if you need anything.” With a frown, he disappears. McKenna waits until he’s gone, then says in that infuriatingly unruffled voice they use, “The airline lost the casket, we helped find it. As a courtesy.”

  “Yeah, you betcha.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry for your loss. I understand he was a very nice man.”

  “You mean, for a diabolical Commie menace to the republic, plotting to overthrow the government by force.”

  “Look, Mr. Weaver—I just gather information. Follow orders. Other people decide how it fits together.”

  “That’s what the war criminals said at Nuremberg.”

  He ignores that. Just rolls on. “But after all the years of reviewing your father’s file, seems to me all he was guilty of was signing some checks and petitions for the wrong causes.”

  “Are you saying that in an official capacity, Agent McKenna?”

  “I’m not here in an official capacity.”

  “So I asked you before—why are you here?”

  “To deliver this.”

  McKenna hands me a dark blue booklet. There’s one like it in my pocket. Been there since the bad times began; Teddy taught me that. Always have it with you so if you have to you can go straight to the airport.

  It’s a U.S. passport.

  I flip it open. Brand new. A photo of Teddy on the first page, taken years ago. Valid from 1959 through 1965.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  “Your dad applied to the embassy in Paris for a renewal.”

  “Seven years ago. When they confiscated his old passport.”

  “Well, it cleared a couple weeks ago,” McKenna says.

  “Better late than never.” He ignores that one, too. So I step up the sarcasm. “Here I thought I was sneaking him in under the radar. But turns out it’s all legit. He’s got a passport. He’s officially welcome again in his own country. With the FBI’s thoughtful assistance.”

  “You’ve got a bad attitude, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Gee, I wonder why.”

  “Probably a problem with authority figures.”

  “That’s what they told me in the Army.”

  “I was thinking more recently—about your hassle at the L.A. airport.”

  “No hassle. Only an energetic conversation with some incompetent idiots. Nobody got hurt.”

  “But your temper scared a few people.”

  “It’s a scary world, haven’t you noticed?”

  He raises an eyebrow, maybe he’s wondering if he can still take me out. Then he gives a small fuck-you shrug and leaves. I enter my room to check for wounds: not only am I okay, I feel exhilarated. Got a little of our own back that time, Teddy. Then I begin to consider why McKenna came. He could have left a phone message about the casket and dropped the passport in the mail. Or even thrown it away. Despite his professed lack of interest in me, Slim Jim is still watching.

  CHAPTER

  2

  DAVID

  After McKenna leaves, I phone the mortuary and give them instructions. Then I sit alone in my room, the smallest and cheapest one in the hotel, until it’s almost dark. I pull the rented Chevy out of the hotel garage and drive west on the Sunset Strip. Still a brassy collage of tackiness and glitz. When our family used to drive along here, my mom would roll down the car window, take a deep breath, and joke: “M-m-m, know what that smell is? Naked ambition.” Dad would always laugh. Most of the dinner clubs my parents used to go to with their friends remain. Here and there a new music record shop has replaced an old bookstore, and Dean Martin’s neon caricature flashes over a nightclub with a waiting line out front. Since I left, there’s been a hot war in Korea to augment the cold one with the Russians, but no sign of any of that here.

  I continue on Sunset into Beverly Hills, past the ten-foot hedges protecting the millionaire mansions. Then through elegant Holmby Hills into Westwood just north of UCLA. I’m driving on automatic pilot, as if I’m going home. Guess in a way I am.

  When I reach Stone Canyon Road, I turn right and cruise past the classy, secluded Hotel Bel-Air. Deep in the canyon I park in the darkness on the side of the road with a view of the Vardian house. No lights on yet, so I’ve arrived in time.

  The ranch house, designed by trendy local architect
Cliff May, still has a friendly look. Simple, deceptively casual lines, soft colors, a place that blends comfortably into the wooded canyon around it. As a child there were two places I thought of as home. “Jana’s house” and “Davey’s house.” We spent so much of our time at one or the other. Wonder if that marvelous tree house out back where we used to play is still there?

  Jana and me. Me and Jana. We grew up together. No, that doesn’t begin to describe it. Because of the closeness of our families we were inextricably joined. Born only two weeks apart, we learned to walk and talk together. I’m told that, like twins, we had our own private language when we were infants. Our fathers had a pal who was a metal sculptor, and they got him to construct a special double stroller so they could wheel us around Greenwich Village while they worked out story ideas. As kids we played with each other’s toys, shared most meals and games, picked each other up when we fell down, laughed and cried together. All to our parents’ delight.

  Leo Vardian and my dad both came from a Brooklyn neighborhood called East New York-Brownsville, where the New Lots IRT subway line ended. It was an area of cheap duplexes, mom-and-pop stores, still some half-paved streets, a scattering of weed-choked empty lots, and old Dutch cemeteries. Peopled by families of first- and second-generation Jews and Italians.

  Teddy’s father was Russian and he came to New York as a fifteen-year-old along with his older sister. They both found work in the sweatshops of the garment industry; he eventually became a union organizer. Teddy’s mother worked as a custom seamstress. They never made much money, but they were devoted to each other. Rest in peace.

  Leo’s dad was from Poland and became a plumber; Leo’s mom was the Flatbush High night-school instructor who taught his dad English. Teddy and Leo grew up only a few blocks apart and they were best friends.

  I never knew Leo’s first wife, Shirley; she died giving birth to Jana. She and Ellie Birnbaum, my pretty mom, also were best friends. The four of them met in Junior High School 149. The two couples were married together in a double wedding and lived across the street from each other in the bohemian, politically progressive Village, while the guys were struggling to establish themselves as writers. They still hadn’t made it when Shirley passed away.