Gilletto. A wonderful man. Sang while he painted. Drove us all crazy. Naturally, he wanted to paint me—as a stand-in for Olivad who was busy fucking up the Nazis while his contractor built Natalia a fancy house in Bel Air. A five bedroom Spanish with terra cotta tiled roof and three bathrooms she hated. Spent most of her time with Eduardo. We really should go.”
“Please, just one more thing. This Eduardo . . .”
“Natalia’s live-in lover. Oh, didn’t I tell you? Olivad rescued him too.”
“Olivad didn’t mind Eduardo living with the woman he loved?”
“Even if he did, what could he do about it when he was in Europe?”
“He went back?”
Nicholas sighed. “Like I said, I wasn’t damaged by war. But Olivad? Caught the terrible disease of patriotism. He reconnected with Leni Riefenstahl in Warsaw. He’d met her while she was in America promoting her film Olympia, and he was working on Fantasia. Walt introduced her to the men working on the sound production. I don’t know how close they became, but she gave him a job. He probably would have testified she didn’t know the gypsies forced to work as extras on Tiefland were exterminated. Poor bastards. But he was afraid for Natalia and her Nazi baby.”
***
John Stafford pulled the plug on his project after the Excelsior interview. His investigation had yielded information, but little insight into Olivad Borghese. All he had was speculation and the ruminations of a narcissistic old man. His dream of creating a Cold War “cause” couldn’t compete with the reality of the Hanoi airlift.
Olivad would be seventy-five if he was alive. “He isn’t,” Nicholas had insisted. He wouldn’t have abandoned Natalia or his gay brother who’d been crippled by a fall from a polo pony in 1950. Yes, the bills were paid. Natalia’s kids went to private schools. Nicholas and Enrique bought their bungalow in Florida in 1960. Enrique was stabbed to death by a disturbed young man in ’62. Natalia died of breast cancer in ’69. Compton died of a heart attack in ’73. Nicholas was the only one left that could have known or cared about the fate of the entertainer. If he wasn’t excited about a media piece on his brother, the public wouldn’t be interested either.
“Pack up,” John told Mrs. Stafford. Like it or not, he’d agreed to accompany his wife to Africa for a Serengeti shoot if there was no story. He didn’t even have a picture of his subject after 1938: Gilletto’s portrait was a copy of the younger copy of the man himself.
***