Stardust by Joseph Kanon Page A

the street, they drove past a sleepy plaza of tile roofs and Mexican rug stalls, a village for tourists. Behind it, just a block away, the American city began: office buildings, coffee shops, anywhere. Harold Lloyd had dangled from a clock here and the Kops had chasedeach other through Pershing Square and dodged streetcars (red, it turned out), but all that had happened in some city of the mind. The real streets, used so often as somewhere else, looked like nowhere in particular.
    They drove out on Wilshire, the buildings getting lower, drive-ins and car lots with strings of plastic pennants.
    “The first time, you think how can it be like this,” she said, noticing his expression. “The signs . And then you get used to it. Even my father. He likes it now.”
    “Well, the climate—”
    “Not so much that. He’s hardly ever outside. For him it’s a haven,” she said, her voice so throaty that it came out “heaven.” “All those years, moving. One place. Another place. Then here, finally safe, and other Germans are here, so it’s good. The sun, I don’t think it matters for him. He lives in his study. In his books.”
    “What was Central Station ? I never—”
    “ Anhalter before. They changed it. So it wouldn’t sound German. You know it?”
    “ Anhalter Bahnhof . Of course.”
    “Tell him. He’ll be pleased.”
    She made a right on Vermont, pointing them now toward the hills.
    “Do we pass Continental on the way?” Ben said.
    “We can, if you like.”
    “But if it’s out of our way—”
    “It doesn’t matter. He’s not conscious, you know. We just sit there. Maybe it’s better for him. There’s so much damage, the brain—if he were awake, what would that be like for him? Sometimes I think it would be better if—and then I think, how can you think that?” She bit her lower lip. “But he did. I don’t know why. But that’s what he wanted. Not this.”
    He looked away, across the miles of bungalows.
    “Did he leave a note?” he said finally.
    “No.”
    The crucial prop, the writing of it sometimes a scene in itself, looking up from the paper into a mirror, eyes moist. In the movies. In real life you just did it.
    “Just his ‘effects.’ I had to sign. You know that word? I didn’t know it. Effects.” She looked at him. “They would have said. If they’d found anything.” She turned on Melrose. “That’s Paramount down there, where the water tower is.”
    After a few blocks he could see the roofs of the sound stages, humped like airplane hangars. She slowed near a gate of swirling wrought iron so that he could get a glimpse behind—a tidy factory yard with people in shirt sleeves gliding past, the tall water tower rising above everything, just like its mountaintop logo, ringed with stars. In front of the gate, a thin line of pickets walked back and forth carrying signs.
    “There’s a strike?” Ben said. A prewar image.
    “Daniel said it was jurisdictional,” she said, careful with the word. “One union against the other.” She looked away, no longer interested. “He always wanted to work here. More than any of them. Maybe if— well. That’s RKO, at the end.”
    They turned onto Gower under the model of a radio tower on a globe.
    “Continental’s up there,” she said, pointing. “Across from Columbia.”
    This gate was modern, no more than a break in the walls with streamlined trim. Beyond it, unseen, Lasner’s empire, built from nickels, a private world made invisible by sentries and passes. Outside, the street was empty—no pickets, just a small cluster of people near the gate.
    “Who’s that?” Ben said.
    “They wait here, to see who drives through.”
    “For autographs?”
    “No, just to see them. For a minute.”
    Hans Ostermann was waiting for them in Danny’s room, reading in the corner next to the window. The shades were half-drawn so that even the light seemed hushed, a hospital quiet broken only by the nurses outside and the clank of a meal cart