American Blonde (36 page)

On Friday morning, I reported to hair and makeup and then to the Thalberg Building. I had a meeting with Bernie at nine o’clock. As I came off the elevator, I saw a man who looked like Zed Zabel but who couldn’t have been Zed Zabel because this man was dressed in a suit Zed couldn’t afford and walking with Howard Strickling and Eddie Mannix, the three of them looking like best friends, the conspiring kind.

In Bernie’s office, I said, “Do you want to hear something funny? I thought I saw Zed Zabel just now with Mr. Strickling and Mr. Mannix, but it couldn’t have been him because he’s banned from the studio.”

“He was banned, that’s right. Until Mr. Strickling hired him.” Bernie launched into what he knew: Howard Strickling had been the one to approach Zed, or that was the rumor anyway. Bernie had seen the result of it with his own eyes—Zed sitting with Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling in Strickling’s office, the three of them shooting the breeze like old friends. The next thing that happened was Zed on a guided tour of the office, shaking hands, chatting up the secretaries and female publicists, acting for all the world like a man who’d inherited a gold mine.

He showed up the next day wearing an expensive-looking suit and an expensive-looking haircut, his name on the door of one of the third-floor offices, where he moved in as if he’d always been there.

What was it Zed had told me?
Everyone has a price
.

While Bernie talked, my mind was spinning in all directions:
Now that I’ve lost Zed, I’ll have to find someone who can get the story out there. I can go to the
Times
or, better yet, the
Examiner
. I can go on the radio, tell my story there, once I have proof.

Sam can write something.

But I can’t go to Sam because Sam isn’t speaking to me.

Maybe Dr. Murdoch will come forward. He says he’ll come forward if he has evidence. But I don’t have any evidence to give him. Not yet.

Outside, I saw her across the street, parking her brand-new car. Babe King, dressed hat to shoes in red, sashayed toward the Thalberg Building, toward me. I could tell she hadn’t seen me yet, and I considered running, but I wanted to know: Had Yilla talked to her?

For the first time in my life, I wished for a cigarette so that I would have something to do with my hands. I opened my purse and rummaged around until I heard the tap of her heels on the steps. I looked up. Smiled. “Morning, Babe.”

She smiled in return as she paused on the same step, so that we were eye-to-eye. “Morning, Kit.” There was something in her voice that made my pulse quicken and my brain start churning in an excited, terrified way, as if it realized that finally the waiting was over.

I raised my hand to tuck the hair behind my ear, and her eyes followed it. As they settled on my ring, her expression changed. The smile disappeared. I held out my hand so she could get a better look. “Pretty, isn’t it? But then, I think you have one like it.” I smiled and glanced up at the building, where anyone might have looked out the window and seen two of Metro’s rising stars engaged in pleasant conversation.

“Nice to see you, Edna,” I said, skipping down the steps. “Have a good day.”

On Saturday night, I sat on a corner of the living room sofa, Butch in the opposite corner, Hal between us, Helen and Sherman and Flora taking up the chairs, Johnny Clay standing beside the record player. This was my fake birthday party for my fake birthday, and my present from Butch and my brother was a copy of the record we’d made.
Butch Dawkins & the Bluesmen, featuring Velva Jean Hart.

The music was good. It was so good, I wanted to take the record and break it into a million little pieces so that no one but me could ever hear it, so that I could protect it and keep it for myself. There was my voice, as I’d always thought it sounded. Not my MGM voice. Not the voice of Kit Rogers. That was Velva Jean Hart, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much, singing from deep in her soul.

I glanced past Hal at Butch. When I’d played my first record for him, years ago, up on Devil’s Courthouse, we had danced. He’d held me so close that I could feel the Indian medicine beads he wore against my own chest. It was the nearest I’d ever been to him, the only time he’d had his arms around me.

Butch looked up, catching my eye before I glanced away. Somehow he had kept my brother from hearing about Zed Zabel’s article, and I was grateful.

When the song was over, we all observed a moment of silence out of reverence for the fact that it was really, truly good in a way that you couldn’t say about many things. Then everyone started to talk at once about how much they loved it, how great it sounded, and what came next. Johnny Clay chattered on about the record they’d made yesterday, which was going to be even better than this one, and guess how many dealers had asked for copies, Velva Jean. Go on, guess. That’s right, Leroy was sold out already and having to press more.

My brother’s face was lit up, and I was happy for him because he needed to be happy, even if I was too worried and anxious and on pins and needles to do anything but watch the phone and watch my back and wait for Babe to do something.

Johnny Clay, Sherman, and Butch were the last to leave. On their way out the door, my brother was off and running toward the street, as if he couldn’t wait to get to the next place. I hadn’t told them about Babe or Yilla, not after what had happened with the police.

While Sherman and Johnny Clay climbed into the car, talking a mile a minute, Butch stopped on the step and said, “He’ll be okay. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“I’ll be okay too.”

“What are you up to, girl?”

“It’s nothing, not yet. But I’ve laid the bait.”

“We can help. You’re not in this alone.”

“I know.” But I’d involved them enough.

“For now, maybe you should go back in there and listen to what you did, in spite of what you’re going through. You need to be proud of that and know if you can do something like this now, you can do it anytime. People ask do I only write when the feeling hits, but you can’t wait for the stars to align. You got to stick with it and be prepared to align your own stars. That’s what you did here, Velva Jean. You aligned the stars even when you couldn’t see a single one for the clouds.”

After they left, and after Helen and Flora had gone to sleep, I curled up on the living room sofa with the record on my lap. It was just a thin black disc labeled “Bronze Recording Company.” To look at it, you’d think it was nothing much of anything—a plastic circle, no bigger than a pie plate.

Butch Dawkins & the Bluesmen
. I ran my finger across his name.

I flipped the record to the other side and there was his name again. There was my name too.

The part of me that was still Velva Jean Hart, a ten-year-old girl with a mama and a daddy, who dreamed of hearing her voice on the Grand Ole Opry, thought, Once everything is over, I want this.

1947

O
n Saturday, March 1, a message was waiting when I got home. In Helen’s neat and tidy handwriting it read,
Nigel Gray wants to meet Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Lot 2 castle. His secretary says NG knows about “Edna” and has something that might help.

Sunday was cool and wet, the sky gray and heavy with fog. Rain fell off and on throughout the day, but by five o’clock, the clouds were starting to clear. Helen’s parents were visiting from Connecticut, and the three of them were spending the weekend in Santa Monica. She called to give me the phone number for her hotel, to make sure I’d gotten the message about Nigel, and to tell me she’d left food in the icebox. “I knew you wouldn’t take time to cook or even eat if Flora or I didn’t see to it.”

In the refrigerator, I found cold chicken salad with celery, nuts, and berries, lemon meringue pie, and iced tea. It was a summer picnic for a winter day. I picked at the food the way I picked at all my food lately, then dropped my plate into the sink, meal half-eaten, and got dressed. Because of the weather, I pulled on a trench coat and picked up an umbrella.

At twenty past six, I drove to the studio. I checked my mirrors, but no one was behind me, as far as I could tell. I arrived at the gate at ten of seven. I sat by the curb on quiet Overland Avenue, Lot 1 on the left side of the street, Lot 2 on my right. “Keep Out,” the signs said, all along the chain-link fence. The gate was open, but I didn’t see the guard. I waited, engine idling, for him to come out of the guardhouse, where a light was burning, but when he didn’t I rolled on past, following the curve of the main road past the warehouses and boat dock, twisting through New England Street, passing the railroad tracks, the trains, and Railroad Terminal #2, and parking near the enormous and elegant Grand Central Station.

Outside the station, the gaslights gave off a hazy glow, barely burning, as if someone had turned them down but not completely. The backlot looked eerie, especially with the fog billowing in from the ocean, but I could see the moon, appearing in and out from behind the clouds. Something about it made me feel more exposed somehow, and for the first time I thought: You should have told someone where you were going, Velva Jean. Why does Nigel want to meet you here? Why not a restaurant? Why not his house or Mudge’s house?

The station and terminal were dusted with fake snow so that I found myself in a winter wonderland. The ground was covered in white, icicles hanging from the train and from the eaves of the station roof. I crossed over the open ground. I could see the turrets of Castle Finckenstein outlined against the sky. The back side was nothing but plywood beams and ladders, scaffolding and propped-up wood.

I walked through the passage between Verona Square, with its fountains and statues and arched stucco walls, and Joppa Square. It was darker here, and I made my way carefully across the courtyard, blackness and shadows all around. I could only make out the shape of the castle turrets and walls, and the stairs that led to the entrance, a flight on either side of the landing.

A figure waited at the top of the stairs, framed against the entrance. I started to call out, but didn’t because the sound of a voice cutting through all that night would have been jarring, even if it was my own.

I ran up the stairs, two at a time, my shoes tapping against the concrete, the only noise for miles. Nigel stood, hands in pockets, waiting.

“This is an interesting choice for a meeting place,” I said, trying to sound breezy.

“My thoughts precisely.” He wore a black jacket, the collar turned up.

“Before you say anything—I’m sorry I came out to your house that day.”

“Why did you come out there?” I could just make out his face.

“To get information. Maybe to get you to confess or admit that Pia did it. But I know now that you didn’t kill Barbara.”

“So now I’m innocent? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around in this country.”

“You have to admit, it looked bad. By doing everything in their power to protect you, the studio only made you seem guilty.”

“It’s been a bloody nightmare, start to finish.” He gazed out past me at nothing, then shook his head, eyes on mine again. “I don’t blame you. I guess I don’t blame anyone. I would have thought I was guilty too.”

“I’m sorry about Pia.”

“Everyone seems to assume I’m glad she’s gone, but what they don’t realize is I did care about her. I wouldn’t have married her all those years ago if I didn’t.” The moon disappeared again, and he rocked back and forth, as if he was cold. “Was that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes.”

“You could have waited till tomorrow and found me in the daytime. You didn’t have to bring me all the way out here on a Sunday night.” Even in the dark, I could see his white, white smile.

“I didn’t bring you out here.”

“I had a message that you called, asking me to meet you.”

“But you invited me.”

Our eyes locked, and I could see he was as confused as I was. I looked up suddenly, toward the turrets, toward the rooftops of Chinese Street, which grew up alongside. I took his hand and pulled him into the shadows of the great doorway, where I whispered, “I didn’t invite you here.”

I could see his eyes now, the only spot of color in the pale light. “Then who?” His voice was barely a breath.

“Barbara’s sister. The one who killed her.”

“Her sister?”

“Where’s your car?”

“The boat dock.”

“Mine’s closer.”

We crept down the stairs and stayed in the shadows of the building, hugging it as close as we could. We slipped through a castle archway to the narrow and twisting Chinese Street beyond. This was acres of palaces and pagodas, ringed by the Great Wall of China. Most of it was flooded with water for
Green Dolphin Street
, a full-sized ship docked on one side of a wooden bridge, a group of small Chinese junks on the other.

We picked our way across the bridge, over sandbags that lay strewn about. We were halfway across when a shot rang out. In the night, it was hard to tell where it came from, the sound of it echoing through the buildings. Nigel grabbed my hand again and we went bumping along, tripping over the bags of rice or sand, as heavy as bodies, then off the bridge, our feet hitting dirt as we ran through the streets. The shop window signs, all in Chinese, waved in the breeze. Narrow stairways and doorways led to nothing.

At the end of the street, I could see Grand Central Station, the gaslights glowing in the fog, and, to the left of it, my car, and another car beside it.

Suddenly, a figure blocked the path.

Nigel said, “Babe?”

We froze because she had a gun, and it was pointed at both of us. Without a word, she fired, hitting Nigel in the chest or arm, I couldn’t tell. The unexpected force of it sent him reeling backward.

She said, “Hello there, you two. Just the people I wanted to see. Thanks so much for coming. How are you feeling, Kit?”

“A little ambushed.”

She laughed. “And you, Nigel?”

“The same. Also a little bloody.”

“Just so you know, that wasn’t bad aim. If I’d wanted to hit your heart or your head, I could have. After all, I grew up in Oklahoma. I was as good as married to a farm boy who taught me how to shoot.”

Nigel gripped his arm, little beads of water forming across his face. In the glow of the gaslights, I could see the red of his blood.

Babe waved the gun. “Let me tell you how we’re going to play this scene. I shoot you once more, Nigel, before giving the gun to Kit, after the chamber’s empty, of course. Then I’m going to get in my car and drive away, and tomorrow Howard Strickling and Eddie Mannix can call in Whitey Hendry and the whole thing will just disappear. Just like Eloise. As if it never happened. As if you’d never killed each other, Kit so angry and distraught over the death of her friend, and Nigel so bent on shutting her up.”

I said, “Before you do this, tell us why.” I was stalling, but I had to think.

“Are you trying to stall for time, Kit? Okay. I’ll play, just like in the movies. Because Eloise took everything I ever wanted and then she turned her back on me. The time I needed her most, she said no. I was just a kid, but that didn’t matter.”

Nigel said, “She was sorry.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me. Not about you exactly, but I knew there was something in her past that she regretted. She said, ‘I haven’t always done the right thing. I once hurt someone very much, someone close to me, someone I should have forgiven and watched out for.’”

“Someone she should have forgiven? That sounds like Eloise.”

Please keep talking.

“It’s ironic, when you think about it, that she got the life I wanted and I got the life she wanted, or at least I had it for a while. She loved John Henry Briggs, but she couldn’t have him because he was married, and back then she didn’t go for married men.” She batted her eyes at Nigel. “That changed, of course. But I guess, in the end, neither of us got the life we dreamed of.”

It started to rain again, and that was when I remembered the umbrella, still gripped in my hand. Out of instinct, Babe tilted her head toward the sky, and I opened the umbrella like a shield and swung it in her direction.

A shot went off, and for a moment I thought I’d been hit because I felt the force of it go through me. Nigel slumped to the ground. I hesitated, but he said, “Go,” and I ran away from the light, into the dark.

My throat had gone dry. My heart was pounding. I ran through Chinese Street, back over the bridge, the rain falling harder now, the drops sounding like a chorus as they hit the water. Babe could be anywhere and everywhere.

Three shots had been fired so far. The gun looked like a.38, the same one I’d carried in the WASP. The chamber would hold six bullets, which meant three to go before she would have to reload.

I could hear her behind me, faster than expected. I was moving too slow. Go, Velva Jean, I told myself. Go, go, go.

I was on the streets of England now, the clouds rolling out toward sea. I could see the thatched, peaked roofs of the buildings and the towers of another castle, an arched door leading to another land. I raced across cobblestones, through the door, and onto another cobbled street. My shoes were making too much noise, so I ducked into one of the open buildings, pulled them off, and in bare feet went rushing out the open, empty back side. I flashed back to wartime France, where the houses and churches were beautiful and whole, until you stepped inside and realized there was no roof, no wall, the stairs leading nowhere to floors that no longer existed.

I was on the cobbled streets again, silent this time, running. And suddenly I was in Paris. The world tilted because these were streets I recognized. I knew these courtyards and sloping walkways. There was the dome of the Sacré Coeur, the shops and alleyways of Montmartre, the chimney pots and steeples, the twisting streets of the Latin Quarter. I was Clementine Roux, Germans on my heels. I slipped through the shadows thinking: They won’t take me. I will not be caught again.

The scale was wrong. The dome looked smaller the closer you got to it, when it should have looked larger. The alleyways stopped suddenly, coming up short, and the shops were empty, except for plywood and cables and dusty props. It was a world meant to be seen through the lens of the camera. Up close, in the middle of it, everything seemed upside down and backward.

I felt the sting on my shoulder before I heard the shot, and saw the blood dripping down. It might be bad, very bad, but I couldn’t stop to look. I needed to reach the entrance gate on Overland because it was the only way in or out that wasn’t blocked by a twenty-five-foot fence. There would be a telephone. I could call for help. Even in the rain, I was burning up. I threw off my coat, which was too heavy, and began to run faster.

I was in Hamlet’s Mill, or a place just like it. In a blur, I passed city hall, a barbershop, department store, market, drugstore, all lined up on either side of a charming town square of grass and trees, the American flag waving in the breeze. I passed the little theater where I’d seen my first movie, the one Mama had brought me to when I was seven and we’d walked down from Sleepy Gap, holding hands and singing the whole way. I passed the Hamlet’s Mill Hotel, but the sign said something different.

I could call Daddy Hoyt. I could call the sheriff. They would know what had happened to the hotel. The sheriff would get me home, just like he used to bring Daddy home. I would walk up the mountain and see my family, as if nothing had ever happened, as if all of it—my whole life—was just a dream, like the one Dorothy had in
The Wizard of Oz.
I would be safe and quiet and cool and still, and this pain in my shoulder would stop aching.

Babe King was on my heels, and suddenly I wasn’t home at all but on the backlot of MGM. I’d completely lost my bearings. In the distance, straight ahead, I could see the water tower, which meant Lot 1 was that way.

To get there, I would have to cross open ground. I stayed low and ran in a zigzag because something in my brain remembered this from France. I wished I still had the umbrella, but I had thrown it away when I opened it, and now I had no shoes, no coat, no weapon. Nigel might be dying or dead already, and I had left him all alone.

The rain made everything blurry, just slightly out of focus. I was out of breath, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow, my heart racing. I wanted to rest, but I had to keep going.

I reached the scene docks and heard another shot. This one brushed so close to my ear that my hair blew across my face. Without thinking, I climbed. Here were staircases that went nowhere, standing in a tangle, railings crossing railings, stairs bumping into stairs, some curved, some straight. I ran up and down, up and down, and there was Babe, two staircases over, coming up and up and across toward me. By now, we’d been trained to run up and down stairs with books on our head, not even looking where we were going, because we were MGM girls and that was what we did. She fired again, and then again. I wasn’t counting anymore, but I knew she had reloaded.