“Oh, we’re off the record, Congressman,” said Goode, dropping her cigarette to the pavement and crushing the butt. “But given that your ride just left without you, why don’t I run you both back to your hotel? I’ll give you a little tour of the Hollywood you don’t hear much about.”

“‘They don’t worship money here, they worship death,’” Goode said. “That’s Faulkner, the patron saint of writers who come here to have our hearts broken.” She lit a cigarette with one hand and used the other to steer her beat-up blue Chevy Bel Air. Margaret had unsuccessfully tried to brush aside the fast-food wrappers that littered the front seat before giving up to focus on gripping the interior door handle. Charlotte took an abrupt and unsignaled turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard, prompting a cacophony of horns.

Margaret glanced over her shoulder to see Charlie grimacing, both hands braced against the back of her seat. She offered him a small smile of encouragement.

“So where are we headed?” Margaret asked.

“The site of a whacking,” Goode said with a grin, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as she took a wide left.

“Whose?” asked Charlie.

“Bugsy Siegel,” she said. “Syndicate sent him here in the 1930s. He took over the rackets, got dope coming in from Mexico, and muscled in on the Screen Extras Guild. Big power there.”

“In the Screen Extras Guild? How does that work?” asked Charlie.

“Say you want a crowded street in ancient Athens for your movie,” Goode said, “or a packed coliseum. How much money do you lose if all the extras call in sick one day?”

“I remember seeing photos of Siegel popping up with Gable and Grant and the like,” Margaret recalled.

“Oh, sure, he was legit pals with a bunch of these folks—Jean Harlow was godmother to his daughter!” Goode said. “Then the studios started blocking those photos and censoring news of those friendships.”

“How did they block it?” Charlie asked.

“Traded it for dishier scoops,” she said. “Someone else gets human-sacrificed into my lava, but the news gods are appeased. Win-win.”

“Not for whoever ends up on the cover,” Charlie observed.

“Yes, not for them,” Goode agreed. “But so shall ye reap.”

She applied the brakes with more enthusiasm than Charlie would have recommended, and he lurched forward in his seat. Goode put the car in park and gestured with her cigarette across Margaret’s lap toward a white Spanish Colonial mansion, the mud-colored tiles on the roof barely visible behind a forest of palm trees. “This is Virginia Hill’s house, where Bugsy was killed in ’47.”

She put her car back in drive and negotiated a rapid U-turn. Charlie was flung across the back seat and swallowed down a wave of nausea.