“You’re single-handedly making sure that there aren’t any empty seats!” she said, really selling the notion that this constituted an achievement. “Are a lot of people out of their seats?”

“Nah,” he said with false modesty, motioning toward a handwritten list on a legal pad. “A couple dozen so far.”

Margaret walked over and looked down at the list. She scanned the names, then tapped the pad twice with her finger, seeing one that she recognized, one that made sense.

“First time at the Oscars?” he asked, but she was already gone, the door slowly closing behind her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Santa Monica, California

April 1962

“Let’s split up,” Margaret whispered.

She and Charlie stood in the hall out of earshot of the ushers.

“You don’t think we should wait for them to come to us,” Charlie clarified.

“We need to get the drop on them,” she said. “They have Sheryl Ann, and they think they have the file—the only advantage we have right now is the element of surprise. They think we’re meekly waiting for them.”

“We don’t know where they are,” Charlie said. “We don’t even know who is a part of this, other than your speculation based on a name you saw on the seat-filler list.”

“That’s my point,” Margaret said. “We need to figure it out. Back here in ten?”

Charlie nodded and they began walking in opposite directions.

The loudspeakers in the hall continued to broadcast the events onstage. Shelley Winters, who’d won a Best Supporting Actress award two years before for her performance in The Diary of Anne Frank, presented the award for Best Cinematography together with Vince Edwards—television’s Ben Casey. It struck Margaret as crass to have Winters—who’d donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank House—alongside some cheesy TV doctor, but then again, Hollywood was crass. Ben Casey made as much sense on that stage as Howdy Doody or Mr. Ed. These people were acting. They were paid to pretend. None of it was real.

Margaret continued down the hall.

There—in the distance, near a scrum of photographers waiting to enter the auditorium—was Manny Fontaine walking solo. She followed him back into the auditorium as the audience seemed to suddenly tense up. A young man had jumped onto the stage and grabbed the microphone, interrupting Edwards and Winters.

“I’m the world’s most famous gate-crasher,” he said, “and I just came here to present Bob Hope with his 1938 trophy.” He plunked down on the podium a miniature faux Oscar, the kind a tourist might purchase at a souvenir shop. Except for some gasps, the audience was silent.

“We’ll give it to him,” said Winters, trying to end the awkward moment, which was compounded by the gate-crasher’s unfounded confidence that anyone found this remotely amusing or charming.