The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [172]
The only bad news in his life had been Missie’s running off and marrying the German baron. He still dreamed about her at nights—or rather days, for his whole life was reversed. He got up at six in the afternoon, showered, shaved, had his breakfast of corned beef hash and five cups of coffee in his smart penthouse suite atop the new Sherry Netherland Hotel. Then he might catch the latest Broadway show, always with some pretty girl on his arm—usually one from the upper social classes who adored his Irish blarney and his rugged redheaded good looks, as well as his newfound reputation as a “King” in bed. But none like Missie. She was a classier dame than even the richest and classiest of society women. Missie was a true lady, and he still loved her even though he damned her in his dreams.
After that it was dinner at a smart restaurant and on to the club, the place where he truly felt like a king. He enjoyed the turned heads as he entered his little kingdom, he enjoyed having celebrities vie to catch his eye, or his smile, or a word or two, and he enjoyed choosing whose table he should grace with his charm and jokes and presence each night. All in all, he was a very happy man. If it was not for Missie.
He wasn’t a man who gave much time to reading journals, and it was a few months after the event that the headline about Arnhaldt’s death caught his eye, as his cellarman unwrapped a newspaper from around the latest batch of alcohol, bought from rum runners in Bermuda.
He read and reread it, but there was only a brief mention of Arnhaldt’s marriage to the Ziegfeld beauty and the fact that his son inherited everything. And where did that leave Missie? he wondered. Alone and penniless again? Anger burned in his heart as he remembered the pain and anguish of her desertion, but he knew he would still do anything for her. He guessed he was just a sucker after all. A sucker in love.
It took a team of private detectives exactly a week to uncover the fact that the young Baroness Arnhaldt had flown the coop only months after her marriage and that no one knew where she was, especially her husband, who had spent a fortune on wild goose chases, even as far as South America, trying to track her down. And also the fact that he had been living openly with the Countess Gretel von Dussman even before Missie had left him and that Eddie Arnhaldt had not left his young wife a single pfennig.
“I don’t care what it costs,” O’Hara told the detectives, just as Eddie must have, “find her.”
“Give us a clue at least,” they begged. “I mean, if Arnhaldt with all his money couldn’t find her, how d’ya expect us to?”
“Try Ziegfeld,” he said, “try Madame Elise, try Rivington Street.” He thought for a minute and then said, “Try Rosa Perelman and Zev Abramski.”
They drew blanks with Ziegfeld and Elise but found out soon enough that both Abramski and Rosa had gone to Hollywood. And it took another month of hard work to find that no one had ever heard of a Zev Abramski in Hollywood but that Rosa Perelman was running a boardinghouse on Fountain Avenue.
O’Hara immediately put on his hat, caught the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, where he conducted a little business and signed the lease for his new club, then took a Pullman on the next afternoon’s Limited to Los Angeles.
He found his reputation had preceded him. He was welcomed personally by Mrs. Margaret Anderson, the manager of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and shown to her best pink stucco bungalow set amid lush lawns and flower beds. He showered, changed, slicked back his wet red curls, hired a chauffeured car, and set off to find Rosa.
As they drove he stared around at the roads that petered out into flat fields and citrus groves, at the palm trees and the jungly hills baking in the sunshine and the bare, glowering mountains beyond. He took in the pretty Spanish houses, the few stores, and the unfinished look of the place and knew it wasn’t for him. “B’jaysus,” he commented to the driver, “a man could go crazy here. What d’you do for amusement of an