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  Blank Slate Press | Saint Louis, MO 63116

  Copyright © 2019 Jon James Miller

  All rights reserved.

  For information, contact:

  Blank Slate Press

  An imprint of Amphorae Publishing Group a woman- and veteran-owned business

  4168 Hartford Street, Saint Louis, MO 63116

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Any real people or places are used in a purely fictional manner.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Set in Breamcater and Adobe Caslon Pro

  Interior designed by Kristina Blank Makansi

  Cover designed by Kristina Blank Makansi

  Jacket Images: MS Kungsholm, Ingen Uppgift [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

  Greta Garbo: Popperfoto Collection/Getty Images

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933801

  ISBN: 9781943075553

  For my mother Jean Dempsey, and the love that has lasted a lifetime.

  “Beauty will save the world.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  LOOKING FOR GARBO

  THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE NOVEL

  At a dinner party in the 1960’s, reclusive movie star Greta Garbo dropped a bombshell on her friend Sam Green. “Mr. Hitler was big on me,” she told him. “He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn’t started when it did, I would have gone, and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I’m the only person who would not have been searched.’

  Stunned, Green later said, “That’s a direct quote. She said it to me over dinner, and it was so out of character. It wasn’t her habit to make up such a story to stop a dinner party.”

  Garbo was not only serious, but actually volunteered to spy for the Allies and personally saved Jews in Denmark. Hitler, who owned his own copy of Camille, wrote her fan letters and considered her his ideal Aryan Goddess. But Hitler wasn’t the only one obsessed with Garbo. Her every movement was recorded daily in the tabloids, and her refusal to give interviews in the 1930s only fueled the public’s interest and efforts to catch her in candid moments. That’s where Seth Moseley came in.

  Author Jon James Miller met Seth while working in Los Angeles as a researcher on a documentary about famous kidnappings. Seth was the young, ambitious Associated Press reporter who got the scoop of the century when he interviewed Charles Lindbergh shortly after his baby had been abducted. But one of Seth’s fondest memories was when he found Greta Garbo hiding in the men’s room aboard the MS Kungsholm, a Swedish ocean liner, at the Port of New York in 1938.

  Seth had boarded the ship with the Press Corps, all of whom received the tip that Garbo was secretly aboard. In exchange for not ratting her out, Garbo gave Seth an exclusive. And after his interview with Seth, Miller knew he had his protagonist for a novel.

  Greta Garbo passed away in 1990, and Seth died in 2000. Their time together on the Kungsholm, back when Garbo was the most famous face of all and Seth Moseley was the beat reporter pursuing her is now the stuff of legend. But the fact that they became friends and respected each other was almost as unlikely as Garbo following through on her plot to kill Hitler and stop the war before it even had a chance to start.

  —Jon James Miller

  SETH

  I could have done nothing. I could have remained on the darkening Promenade Deck of the S.S. Athenia and sipped sidecars, played whist or shuffleboard with the swells until the end came. But as doomed as the situation was, I had to see her one more time. A washed-up, lovesick, twenty-nine-year-old hack reporter with the story of a lifetime and very little lifetime left, I had to get back to Garbo.

  I had joined the ship on a fishing expedition. The kind meant to hook the biggest catch ever for a newshound like me—a candid photograph of a movie star. And in 1939, the biggest star in the world was none other than Greta Garbo. I was lucky enough to catch up with her in the middle of the Atlantic, and no one or nothing was going to let her get away. Not even a second world war.

  So, I took a chance and headed down the hollow-sounding ship corridors to Suite 313B. I put an ear to Garbo’s locked door and listened. The room inside was silent. I knocked. Nothing. Was I too late? Had she been discovered? An electric shock ran through me. I backed across the empty hallway, then made a run for her door. I was going in no matter what.

  The hinges gave way, and I burst into the darkened stateroom as a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed past my ear. THWAK! The molding of the doorframe exploded, wood fragments stabbing the side of my face and neck. I was sure whoever was on the other end of that loaded gun was readjusting his aim. It was over. I was a goner.

  “Don’t. Move,” the low-contralto voice of a feminine silhouette commanded.

  A shadow rose from the bed and moved toward me. An open-toed shoe dipped into the pool of light that spilled in from the doorway. Then came shapely, sun-kissed legs and swaying hips encased in a white pencil skirt below small, rounded breasts peeking out from the deep neckline of a tight, blue silk blouse. Then, finally, The Face was illuminated.

  “I nearly killed you.”

  No two-dimensional black and white actress now, movie goddess Greta Garbo stood in vivid color glory before me, a .9mm semi-automatic pointed at my heart.

  “I know,” I managed to croak. The left side of my face throbbed and a trickle of warmth ran down my neck. I reached toward her. She lowered her gun and closed the space between us.

  “Nazis,” I whispered. I touched my bloody cheek, then my vision swam, my knees buckled, and I fell forward. She dropped the gun and caught me in her arms.

  LOOKING FOR GARBO

  LA-based prod co. seeks true life stories about movie star Greta Garbo TV-interview/comp.rates Exclusives need only apply Cont: James/818-509-3883

  1. APPLEKNOCKERS

  SETH

  February 14, 2000—2:10 EST Seth Moseley Interview—Norfolk, Connecticut Greta Garbo Special (Adversary Productions, Inc.)

  I’ll start from the beginning. The year was 1939. The morning of September 1st, I was bellied up to the bar at Henson’s, a rundown “black-and-tan” in the Bronx. That’s what they called joints that served both blacks and whites. All of us were getting tight in the gray early half-light that seeped in through whitewashed windows turned amber by nicotine and dust.

  The phone rang behind the bar. The barkeep, a former pugilist with the mangled face and outsized frame to prove it, answered the call. The bruiser listened with his cauliflower ear, then motioned me over. He handed me the phone.

  “Seth Moseley,” I said, putting on my best happy voice.

  “You pathetic piece of shit,” the voice on the other end growled. It was the editor-in-chief from The Journal.

  “Boss,” I said, “how’d you find me?”

  “Who cares how I found you. You need to hustle your ass down to Jackson Heights.”

  “Jackson Heights? Why?”

  “There’s a ship coming up the Narrows. The Athenia.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Who’s on it?”

  “Garbo,” he shouted. “Get me a candid, or don’t bother coming back.”

  Then the line went dead. Message received.

  Garbo was the hottest star on the silver screen in 1939. She had ruled Hollywood for an entire decade, adored and lusted after by more people the world over than anyone of her era. At $250,000 a year, she was also the highest paid and most influential actress on the planet. She was tops.

  I’d met the actress for one fleeting moment in the early ’30s when I was a copywriter at MGM Studios in Los Angeles, churning out fictitious stories for movie trade magazines. I’d heard Garbo was on the lot and wanted to see if she was as gorgeous in the flesh as she was
on film. The first actress to French-kiss on silver nitrate in 1927’s Flesh and the Devil.

  Garbo was coming out of Louis B. Mayer’s office when I saw her. Swathed in a fur coat, the young star looked sullen and kept her eyes to the ground. But then she looked up and caught my stare from across the corridor. Her blue eyes penetrated so deep, I remember taking a step back. She had a presence I hadn’t felt before or since.

  Garbo, the exotic creature from Sweden came to Hollywood to be the next vamp. Nobody knew then that she was more than the next “it” girl. She wouldn’t merely play the role of a sex goddess on screen in pre-code melodramas. Garbo was destined to become Queen of Golden Age Hollywood, but she would become so much more. Just nobody could see it yet, including me.

  I left Los Angeles not long after and came to New York. And after a string of high-profile pieces for legit papers, I fell face down on my luck. At twenty-nine, a run of bad bets at the track made me persona non grata in polite company and real newsrooms. On the lam from my bookie, I mostly hung out in derelict bars and took the occasional scandal sheet assignment for drinking money.

  I stumbled out of Henson’s that morning, my trusty Bell & Howell camera in hand, to see a streetcar hauling a hot load of sweaty, smelly assholes uptown. They were the working class. The chattel that made the city run. I was the hot, smelly asshole on the sidewalk, lollygagging my way down to the Narrows. It didn’t help my attitude that it was the silly season. That’s what we newshounds called late summer when editors resorted to—for lack of hard news—gimcrackery. Like the movements of movie stars and local color to sell papers. In short, I moseyed.

  I was about to turn into the corner deli for a fried egg and bologna sandwich when two guys with tree trunks for arms shanghaied me from behind. I felt a hard, blunt hit to the noggin and crumbled to the sidewalk like a sack of shit. My audience on the streetcar rolled by, indifferent to my plight. I’d been jacked-up good.

  “Moseley,” one of the goons said. I flipped over like a fish and wall-eyed my assailants while sucking wind. “We been looking all over the city for ya.”

  It was Toes. A particularly gruesome-looking goon in the employ of Johnnie Roses, my bookie. Toes had a sidekick, Bernie, built like a brick shithouse. Bernie was a fairly amiable guy that Toes kept around to do the cleanup after he was done messing up Joes who owed Johnnie. Toes was a tough act to follow. He tended to make a big mess.

  “Hi, Toes,” I uttered out my bleeding fish mouth. “How’s it goin’?”

  “Good,” Toes said. “Bernie, get Moseley up off the street. We need some privacy.”

  Bernie lifted me like a straw man. He carried me toward a nearby alley. Toes carried the blackjack he’d used to clock me, a piece of rebar attached to a coiled spring and wrapped in leather. He knew better than anyone how to employ six ounces of metal slug to turn a willful asshole into a fearful supplicant. He took pride in his work, scouring the city for delinquent marks like me. I was in for a very painful treat.

  “Johnnie says you’re three weeks behind,” Toes said as Bernie propped me up against the brick wall of the alley. “You like getting shit on by Lady Luck?”

  “You know women,” I said without irony. “Can’t live with them, can’t live—”

  “You may not live at all after this one,” Toes said, gangster-movie dialogue his specialty. “I don’t gotta spell it out for ya, do I?”

  “It means you’re gonna hurt me,”

  This made Toes smile. Smiling was good. I could work with smiling. This could still have a happy ending.

  “Anything you’d care to say while you still have teeth?”

  “Teeth,” Bernie echoed, missing a few himself.

  “Shut up, Bernie,” Toes said. Bernie did as he was told and hunched back away from me.

  “I got a lead on a big story,” I said. “Gonna pay off big time, too. More than what I owe Johnnie and then some. Just need the morning to get it.”

  Toes stopped smiling. This was a bad development. I had it on good authority that once Toes stopped smiling, beating soon ensued. I had interviewed enough snitches and lowlifes in my time who’d run afoul of him to convince me of this fact.

  “You think Bernie and I are a pair of appleknockers, Moseley?”

  Appleknockers were synonymous with Upstaters. Upstaters were synonymous with know-nothing bumblefucks. The sort whose eyes any wiseguy worth his salt could pull the wool over. It was an insult that required an immediate retaliatory response. It was also an invitation to have the snot beaten out of me. I was determined for my snot to stay where it was.

  “No way, Toes. No appleknockers here.”

  Toes was a sadist, given to theatrics. His influence was felt throughout the borough. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor. If you owed a debt, Toes came to collect. How he did it was left up to his own improvisation. I’d heard once a businessman had eaten dog dirt off the sidewalk because Toes had told him to. Another loser Toes depantsed and snipped his left nut off. How Toes chose which nut to cut was still open for debate among all the cub reporters covering the crime beat. Suffice it to say we newshounds stood united in our devotion to the family jewels. The thought of losing either one gave us a collective shudder, and I was no exception.

  “Bernie, get his shoe off,” Toes instructed.

  Toes replaced the blackjack in his hand with a short blade from his double-breasted jacket pocket. I didn’t struggle while Bernie took my left shoe and sock off. All struggling got you was another blow to the head. I wanted to keep those to a minimum so I could think.

  Toes approached my naked foot. He held the pen knife with exceptional skill. I was about to experience the signature move for which he had earned his nom de plume. I secretly said goodbye to each and every one of them, not sure whose number was going to come up first. They were my digits not my nuts, thank Jesus. All the same, I hadn’t truly appreciated the ten up until that moment. Where was a flat-foot when you needed one?

  “Garbo,” I suddenly screamed. “Garbo’s in town.”

  “I love Garbo,” Bernie intoned.

  Toes hesitated. I’d gone off script, and he wasn’t sure of his next line. So I filled in.

  “My editor will pay top drawer if I can get a snap of her,” I followed quickly. “I’ll pay Johnnie back with interest.”

  Toes looked down at me. My toes and I looked up at him. Bernie, God love him, couldn’t stand the dramatic tension. He looked at Toes, frozen over me about to strike, and decided to get in on the action of our little penny-dreadful in progress with an ad lib of his own.

  “Maybe we should let him go,” he said. “Just this once. Okay?”

  The newfound love I felt for Bernie swelled my chest, but I dared not breathe a sigh of relief. I had to see where this was going first. It was never a good idea to raise expectations prematurely.

  “You better not be trying to make a fool out of me, Moseley,” Toes warned. “It could be bad for your health. And I ain’t just talking about your toes.”

  “I promise,” I said. “I won’t disappoint.”

  “Could you get me Garbo’s autograph?” Bernie said, still holding my shoe.

  “Sure, Bernie.” I held out my hand for sock and shoe. I would have promised delivering her up in the palm of my hand to get my scuffed, leather Florsheim back on.

  In order to make sure I kept my word, Toes and Bernie escorted me down to the docks to meet the Athenia. The scene at Pier 80 was a bevy of activity. Droves of reporters from all the tabs were there, crawling all over the pier. Half the town had gotten the same tip. The dock was so thick with newsies not one of us stood a chance of an exclusive. My piggies cringed inside my shoes.

  The sun was still rising when I first caught sight of the Athenia coming up the Narrows into port. In front of her a seaplane coasted on her pontoons, bringing mail from another ocean liner still days out at sea. Another fixed-wing seaplane hung from a crane above our heads. Loaded with fresh outgoing mail, no doubt, she waited to be hoisted o
nto the Athenia. The same ship I needed to be on.

  I tried to explain to Toes that if I’d have any chance of getting to Garbo before the other shutterbugs, I’d have to proceed alone. Hitch a ride on the pilot boat about to head out to the British merchant vessel. But Toes wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I let you go,” he said, “it makes me look like an appleknocker.”

  “I have to get aboard that pilot boat to even have a chance of getting to the ship before these other mugs.”

  “Fine,” he said, “we’ll go with you.”

  “But,” I protested, “I only have one press pass.”

  Toes took in the scene and stalled to figure the angles. He knew I knew he was taking a risk that I would run. Meanwhile, the Athenia came up the straits, getting bigger every minute. The fourteen-thousand-gross-ton ocean liner was cruising under auxiliary power, and the pilot boat was about to launch and rendezvous with her. Toes would have to make a decision soon.

  “You swim?” he said.

  “What?” Both Bernie and I turned to him.

  “Did I stutter?” he snapped. “Can you swim?”

  “No.” I was surprised by the question. “Not a lick.”

  “Don’t even try and run out on me, Moseley.” he said and stared out at the ocean liner. “Any tomfoolery, I’ll make it my mission in life to end yours. Got me?”

  I was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, but I wasn’t going to take any risks by not answering.

  “Yeah,” I said and nodded violently.

  I ran for the pilot boat. Ran like my life depended on it, my toes’ lives, at least. No sooner had I flashed my press pass and jumped from pier to ship deck than the pilot boat was underway. For the hell of it, I turned and waved back at Toes and Bernie. Bernie waved back. Toes just glared at me. He knew I was a bad bet.

  Fifteen minutes later, me and a couple dozen other hacks transferred from the pilot boat to the Athenia. We all spilled onto her Promenade Deck like so much fish guts. A contingent of British first officers in crisp whites were on hand to make sure we didn’t run off anywhere aboard ship. It obviously wasn’t the captain of the Athenia’s first merry-go-round with the American press.