Hollywood and Levine by Andrew Bergman

sure we’re talking about the same thing.”
    â€œMrs. Adrian, I am aware of the fact that Walter was a Communist, and that the people who gathered here last night are also. Am I correct?”
    â€œYes, you are.”
    â€œWhat about you?”
    She cocked her head, as if thinking about the question and then as if thinking about something else, pre-Walter, pre-Hollywood. Helen Adrian floated from the room at that moment, sailing out of 1947 and into an earlier, easier time and place. She was so beautiful then, so serene, that it almost scared me. Me, a tough guy.
    Helen Adrian finally said that no, she had never joined up. “I was sympathetic, but I’m no joiner.”
    â€œDid you feel pressure to join?”
    â€œA little.”
    â€œFrom Walter?”
    â€œNo, Walter never pressured me to join, never. In fact, I think he was actually getting tired of the Party, not the politics, I think, so much as the meetings and the backbiting and suspicions, particularly recently.”
    â€œWho did pressure you?”
    She sifted through the blue haze that screened her face, as if trying to spell out an answer in smoke.
    â€œI didn’t mean pressure like anyone giving me ultimatums, Jack. It was more in the nature of suggestion.”
    â€œBy whom?”
    She smiled.
    â€œYou’re a persistent s.o.b.”
    â€œI’m not doing it for abstract reasons, Mrs. Adrian, believe me.”
    â€œCall me Helen, please.”
    â€œFine, Helen. I’m asking about these people because I’m undertaking the investigation of a first-degree murder that everyone thinks was a suicide and I’m undertaking it almost completely without information or leads, three thousand miles from my home base. That is to say, three thousand miles from any cops or reporters that I know, or any hatcheck girl or hotel dick or barber who I can depend on to tell me things on the level and on time. Out here, I can only trust you and the palm trees. So I’ve got to press you, Helen. Even if my questions seem pointless, give me an answer if you’ve got one or part of one.”
    Mrs. Adrian sat up in her chair and stared down at the tablecloth, pushing some crumbs around.
    â€œYou’re a hundred percent right, Jack. Forgive the coy remarks. Pressure.” She thought it over and furrowed her brow into soft wrinkles. “The Wohls, Milton and Rachel. Henry, Henry Perillo. He’s the most organization-minded of the group, the most disciplined. He felt it compromised a member’s effectiveness not to have his spouse in with him. We had arguments about it, friendly ones. He’s not a bad egg.”
    â€œDid Walter talk openly about his tiring of the Party?”
    â€œNo, at least not to me. But I could see it in his face, in his expression after a meeting, in little remarks he made.”
    â€œDid he ever talk to the others about leaving?”
    â€œIn the group? I’d be surprised if he had. It would have been out of character for him to be that open about it. Besides which, Party discipline really discourages that kind of faltering and egoism.” Her smile was that of the disinterested observer. “They’re all in such a bind. They sit in their offices writing bilge for the big screen, bilge indistinguishable from that written by the right-wingers across the hall, except that once in a while they work into the speech of some minor character a pitch for democracy or brotherhood or working-class rights—and then they think they’ve really advanced the cause. And they’re making these incredible amounts of money, but when they meet as progressives, they see themselves merely as ants in the anthill of Party unity, workers just like the men who bring their lunch pails to the factory everyday and make eighty cents an hour. Kind of contemptible, when you think about it. I tried not to. None of them saw the irony.”
    â€œDid Walter?”
    â€œNo. He sometimes