Chapter Thirty-Eight

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The Goddess of Warsaw

Lisa Barr

THREE WEEKS LATER, the Goddess cast and crew are back in Los Angeles for a five-day Thanksgiving break, and then back on location. I hear Connie at my front door, letting herself into my home to discuss next week’s schedule and packing options. She heads straight to the kitchen, brews us tea, and enters the library with blueberry muffins and the newspaper.

“Morning, Con,” I say, smiling, betraying nothing. She is being groomed, and I am going to allow it to happen and play along. For now.

“Hi, Lena. I take it you’ve been up for a while.” She sets down the tea, muffins, and paper on the coffee table in front of me.

“Yes. Couldn’t sleep.” I gesture her over. “Join me for tea.”

“Okay,” she says uneasily. “Just wanted to get all the details settled. I wasn’t planning on staying long.”

“Of course not,” I say, pouring her a cup of tea. “Tell me, what’s your plan for the holiday?”

“Plan? What plan do you mean?” She stiffens, and her eyes bulge, reminding me of Bambi’s mother just before she gets shot.

“Oh, you know, are you seeing family? Or doing what I’m doing—taking time at home to decompress before we go back on location.”

“Home. Nothing... special.” Connie is jumpy, guilty. I make her nervous. Good.

“Why don’t you take a few days off from coming here as well. A real break to catch up on your own life. I can manage my affairs. Come back on Sunday. We can prep and pack together late morning.” And until then, I will be following your every move.

“Thank you. That works.” She appears visibly relieved. Her eyes shift with calculated excitement. I know what she’s thinking: Paul, Müller’s leading man. A young Nazi American portraying his hero, Jürgen Stroop.

“It’s none of my business,” I begin slowly, “but is there someone new in your life these days?” Connie had a long-term boyfriend the first year she worked for me, but they broke up six months later. And since then, a few random dates, but no one special.

“No,” she says too quickly. Good thing you’re not an actress, I think. You mean yes. Paul, who has been flirting shamelessly with you, using you. I have been watching closely on set every day since that bathroom encounter. I see the way you smile, flip your hair at him whenever you walk past him. I also see that your hair is now a few shades blonder than usual. And I can’t help but notice that you’ve been wearing short skirts these past few days like Mika, and brighter lipstick. Probably L’Oréal.

But I say nothing. Instead, I faux-smile at Connie, thinking those master manipulators know exactly what they are doing. They picked the right girl to brainwash. It took them less than a few weeks to turn her. Throw a handsome, doting man at a lonely woman, and she will believe what she so badly wants to believe: that a man like him could desire a girl like her. And then, they will use her to betray a girl like me.

Connie is smitten and malleable. It works for them. And for now, it works for me too.

THE NEXT MORNING, I rent a black Chevrolet, wear a disguise, and stake out Connie’s apartment. I follow her blue-and-white Buick around town all day as she does random, monotonous errands: supermarket, gas, library. In the evening, she heads downtown to a biergarten called the Brown House, named for the Nazi headquarters in Munich. I spend three hours sitting in the parking lot directly across the street with binoculars monitoring the comings and goings, the who’s who of Hollywood’s Nazis, several of whom I recognize from the Goddess cast and crew. When Connie finally emerges from the Brown House around 10:00 p.m. with her arm looped through Paul’s, she appears, admittedly, happier than I have ever seen her look. A different Connie. A Connie with a skip to her step. I snap pictures for later referencing, so I can study them up close at home.

This meet-up happens again for the next two nights, from 7:00 to 10:00. Connie is clearly in the thick of it, emerging from the biergarten both nights with Paul. On Thanksgiving Day, Paul picks her up at her apartment. I tail them straight to the biergarten and wait. At 10:40 p.m., the duo emerges from the premises. Connie is no longer glowing from the Paul Effect, she’s neon. I follow them to an apartment complex in West Hollywood—must be where Paul lives. I wait a few hours outside the complex, when I realize that Connie is spending the night. So I leave.

On Friday, I track her again. This time a foursome appears at the biergarten’s entrance, and I know my luck is about to change. I sit bolt upright in my car as Connie and Paul, Müller and Mika leave the premises together, laughing and visibly tipsy as they squeeze into Müller’s two-seater Thunderbird. I glance at the glove compartment, grateful that my gun is there, if needed. I wait two minutes and then follow Müller.

From the biergarten, he drives to Sunset Boulevard and then west to Pacific Palisades. He turns right on Monaco Drive, takes the roundabout to Capri Drive, another right on Casale Road, and then, when I see him slowing down and there are no other cars in the vicinity except for mine, I pull over, park, and wait. Using my binoculars, I see the glimmer of the Thunderbird’s taillights. I tail them once again but very slowly, with my headlights turned off, following their path on Sullivan Fire Road along the eastern edge of Topanga State Park. I kill the engine, because there are no other vehicles on the road, and I wait.

Up ahead, Müller stops his car in front of a tall wrought-iron fence surrounded by fifteen-foot-high hedges and with four armed guards at the entrance. He leans out the car window at the base of a long driveway leading up to a sprawling estate and speaks to one of the guards. A minute later, the gate parts like the Red Sea and the Thunderbird disappears inside. My breath speeds up, my chest constricts. I know exactly where I am: Das Haus.

I wait another hour, maybe more, contemplating my very limited options. It’s a private road. I take my chance and drive past slowly and see lights and shadows merging in the lit upper windows of the estate’s second and third floors. There is no way I can get inside. But at least now I have an address for the base of their operations and an understanding of how it works. The kids all meet up at the biergarten for drinks and networking, but the adult table is right here inside this Bavarian über-schloss transplant. Once again, bad actors plotting against the innocent. Once again, these villains have invaded my ghetto.

This time, I think as I drive away, they are not going to get away with it.

WHEN CONNIE RETURNS to my house on Sunday morning to help me pack, I immediately notice the change. She is polite but nothing extra. She doesn’t ask about my holiday, inquire about my health, or partake in any of our usual banter. She takes notes and does her office tasks perfunctorily, continually checking her watch as if she has somewhere else to be. I see her expression grow bitter when we go upstairs into my bedroom to pack. When she thinks I’m not looking, I observe her in my vanity mirror, eyeing me in the same way they do—with hate-fueled filmy eyes, projecting one lone spiteful word in my direction: Jew.

My anger rises. I can feel it mask my face. Don’t fuck with me, Connie.

“I’m famished,” I lie, having eaten just before she arrived. “How about you make us one of your fabulous omelets—the kind with fresh garlic, yellow peppers, and Gruyère cheese. Sally is off today. So it will be just you in the kitchen. I can finish the packing from here and we can have a bite together before you go. Sound good?”

Her mouth tightens with resentment as I quickly lead her out of the bedroom, after spotting her purse leaning up against my chaise. The omelet prep buys me snooping time.

Once I hear her downstairs banging around, I lock my bedroom door and lunge for the purse. There’s nothing much inside of it except for a wallet with forty dollars, a comb, some hard candy mints at the bottom, a lipstick—surprisingly, Elizabeth Arden. I laugh to myself. Clearly, Connie didn’t get the memo that cosmetics mogul Elizabeth Arden, like Max Factor, is also a Jew. I pull out some crumpled receipts and an extensive grocery list. I let out a whiff of disappointment. Nothing important or telling. And then I realize something. I reexamine the grocery list closely and catch my shocked expression in the vanity mirror. It contains a wide array of German delicacies, enough to feed an army. Certainly not a list for a single working woman.

Brot Br?tchen

K?sesp?tzle

Leberkl?sse

Schnitzel

Currywurst

Kartoffelpuffer

Rouladen

Sauerbraten

Riesling

Schnapps

J?germeister

Pralines, Eclairs, Strudel