They transfer at Santa Monica Boulevard and ride inland, past the boxy white spire of the Mormon Temple, past the Fox Studios and the Country Club, across the Beverly Hills town line. Stanley still can’t figure how anybody can call this place a city. To him, it’s like a real city got cut to pieces and dropped from a plane: tall buildings litter the valley in no real order, and streets and shops and houses stretch between them like a fungus. Every time Stanley thinks they’re downtown, they’re not.
At Wilshire they swap seats. Claudio takes the window to watch for famous faces in passing Rolls-Royces and Corvettes; Stanley slouches and half-listens to Claudio’s commentary while he thinks about what to do next. He should be glad to have a solid lead on Welles, but this feels wrong, and he’s not sure why. It’s not that he doubts what the barber told him—the guy had no percentage in putting him off the trail—it’s just that none of it fits with the image of Welles in his head. That scares him a little. The movies, for crying out loud! Stanley feels betrayed, but can’t justify it. The idea that Welles didn’t so much misrepresent himself in his book as somehow avoid representing himself at all leaves him queasy.
After half an hour of pointless wandering, Claudio gets directions from a Mexican valet at the Sunset Tower—talking to the guy a lot longer than seems necessary—and leads Stanley to a spot where they can catch the Number 22 up Highland into the hills. They stroll the boulevard while they wait. Stanley points out details on the old theaters’ weird fa?ades: thick columns and pharaoh heads on the Egyptian, Moorish battlements on the El Capitan. Claudio listens, nods, but keeps glancing nervously at the white letters on the hillside to the north, as if he expects them to evaporate in the gathering haze.
When they reach Grauman’s Chinese, Claudio gives a start, mutters something in Spanish, and dashes into its patchwork forecourt. Stanley follows at a skeptical distance as Claudio scans the pavement in a half-stoop, like he’s looking for dropped coins. Stanley sees handprints and footprints in the cement, left when it was poured, with names and messages scrawled around them. For a moment he thinks of a sidewalk back home in City Park: G G + V C gouged into its setting surface, alongside the winged imprints of mapleseeds. Then he starts to read the writing at his feet, and he slows to a stop.
Carmen Miranda. Janet Gaynor. Eddie Cantor. Here’s looking at you, Sid. Mary Pickford. Ginger Rogers. Fred Astaire. The parallel furrows of Sonja Henie’s skates. To Sid, Tillykke, Always. Harold Lloyd’s doodled spectacles. Loretta Young. Tyrone Power. To Sid—Following in my father’s footsteps. As Stanley steps over each section of pavement, he imagines the moment it was made: moviestars laughing in a fusillade of flashbulbs, waving their dirty hands. Kids playing in the mud. So this, he thinks, is what it means to be famous.
He turns to make a snide comment, but the look on Claudio’s face brings him up short. The kid’s expression is so transparent, so supersaturated with longing and awe, that Stanley immediately cracks up laughing. He has to sit down for a minute—next to the hoofprints of Champion, Gene Autry’s trusty horse—to catch his breath.
The 22 makes a brief stop at the white shell of the Hollywood Bowl before climbing the dry hillside and dropping them near the entrance of Universal City Studios. Stanley expects a steady stream of cars from the other direction—showbiz footsoldiers knocking off work—but nothing’s coming in or out of the gates. One look at the guard’s booth convinces him that this is a waste of time, but he and Claudio stroll up anyway.
Excuse me, Stanley says. I’m here to see Adrian Welles.
The guard is a flat-nosed man with deeply lined skin. He marks his place in his Herman Wouk novel with a pencil from behind his ear and looks at Stanley and Claudio. His eyes are blue, sharp, devoid of judgment. Adrian Welles, he says.
That’s right.
I don’t think I know him, the guard says. Where does he keep his office?
He’s editing a movie here. He’s a writer. And a director.
The guard shakes his head slowly. He’s not one of ours, he says. Maybe he hired out one of the cutting rooms?
Maybe so.
Well, the guard says, if you find out what building he’s in, and then you have him phone me and put your name on the cleared list, I can let you through.
Stanley has been trying to figure out what he’ll say if the guard asks if he’s got an appointment, but now it’s clear he isn’t even going to ask that. You can always tell a man who’s been to war, Stanley’s dad used to say, although he never said exactly how to do it. Stanley’s pretty sure this guy has been to war.
I don’t want to make no hassle for nobody, Stanley says. If you just let me and my pal poke around a little, I’m sure we can hunt him down.
The guard gives him a tiny smile. Well, he says, I’m not so sure. I got better than two hundred acres of property over my shoulder. I don’t want to have to come looking for you when you get lost.