I said goodbye to Kathleen, then took the box, the scripts, the tissue paper into my office and started to read. I could hear Nelson’s voice on every page, could all but hear his hands fluttering over the keys of the upright piano. I knew the very sort of music he would have played. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was an especially moving story, a drama that might suit Maurice Allen’s talents. That is, if he chose to do it.

I walked to the window and opened the curtains to the spring twilight. If I could go back to my child-self, how could I possibly tell that little girl, One day these men who seem to you like big friendly giants, who seem so brilliant, who create so many stories from their own great imaginations, one day they will need you, Roxanne. One day there will be no one to protect them, to advocate for them, except you. How could I possibly have foreseen that those men who basked in the protection of the great studios—studios that had laid garlands at their feet, given them grand homes and gleaming swimming pools, glamorous cars, powerful friends—that all that would have dissolved? How could they—how could I—ever have guessed that their gifts would be devalued and their names tarnished, that of those glory days and gala nights, nothing would remain? HUAC had swooped down on Hollywood like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Those like Vic Hale who atoned by abasing themselves went on working and became virulent in their own defense. Those who didn’t suffered, sinking into obscurity or fleeing like refugees. Whatever choices they’d made, they were all diminished now, and they would never be golden again.

•   •   •

When I was looking for a lawyer for the Granville Agency, I wanted someone independent, someone to read contracts and keep secrets. Not someone old like Melvin Grant who had ushered his clients into Congressional hearings and on to disaster. Not someone too cozy with the studios. Not someone whose standing in a big corporate firm might be instantly improved if he were to let some bit of information drop to another colleague. I knew that Julia had trusted Mr. Wilkie, but my needs were not her needs. Jonathan recommended his attorney, Adam Ornstein. Adam had the gravity of a rabbi. He had two doors to his office, like a psychoanalyst: one you went in, and one you went out. This was a man who understood secrets.

I spent the morning going over several of my writers’ contracts with Adam, then returned to Clara Bow Drive in time for my one o’clock appointment. Thelma and I made sure that no one else but she and I would be in the office. Maurice Allen was early, and the ashtray in front of him was full of butts when I walked in.