When, later that afternoon, I offered Charlie the prospect of fronting for two comedies by Max Leslie, his clean-shaven jaw dropped. “I know Max Leslie’s work! I’ve always wanted to be that witty, that smart.” He jumped out of the chair and started pacing around my office. “Wow, I get to take the credit for a Max Leslie comedy?”

“There’s a lot of risk. If anyone finds out, we’d be branded as Communist sympathizers.”

“Yes, and you’d end up working at Pink’s Hot Dogs.” He grinned. “I’d move to Australia to surf.”

“Not funny.”

“Hell, Roxanne! Of course I’ll do it! I’m a true-blue American! Everyone knows that. I played football at Huntington Beach High. You can tell Mr. Leslie I’m honored. I hope one day I can meet him and shake his hand.”

“That won’t happen. He’s in Mexico.” Charlie didn’t need to know the particulars of Max and Marian’s situation, much less that they were living sixty miles from LA. “This has to stay an absolute secret, you understand. You know what’s at stake.”

“You’d have to be living in a North Dakota root cellar not to know what’s at stake.”

•   •   •

When I was in high school I was so well known at Empire Studios I could drive the family Packard around the lineup at the gates with just a wave at the guard. Now I waited in line watching the heat needle of the MG rise. The huge Babylonian gates were two pillars in the shape of elephants, connected across the top with a frieze of fanciful palms. Leon inherited the gates when he bought out Babylon Pictures back in 1918 and turned it into Empire. I finally pulled up to the booth, but neither my car, nor my name, nor, for that matter, my distinctive face, were known to the uniformed guard. Not till I said I had an appointment with Elliott Dunne did he allow me to pass.