Hollywood (67 page)

Tim joined her. “I finished up early. Westerns don’t get any easier. There’s no new way to film a horse. There never will be a new way.”

“Why don’t we try
people
in westerns? The way we will in our town.”

“The form’s too stylized. We just use characters, and they’re about all used up. I hear Taylor’s got something for you.”

“Word gets around. He’ll tell me after five. Do you think I look like—you know, Emma?”

Tim came very close to her and squinted down into her face. She was, at this moment, simply an object to be photographed and the director was studying the contours of the round stone-like head to see what needed light, what needed shadow. “Yes. You’ll give a good impression of her.”

“Only that?”

“There’s always some change. Don’t worry. You know, Taylor’s having trouble getting a picture for Minter.”

“Trouble? Here? Impossible. She’s a Paramount star.”

“They want to can her. Buy her out.”

“Why? She’s no worse than any of the others.” Caroline had always had difficulty telling one pretty golden-haired dwarf from another. They came in shoals, according to fashion; and vanished as quickly when the style changed. Only Mabel Normand was distinctive and unlike anyone else; and, of course, she was now becoming unemployable. Apparently, cocaine deranged performances. At twenty-nine Wallace Reid was at the end of his career and probably life, thanks to morphine. Thanks to the Arbuckle scandal, the press was excitedly hinting at their names; soon hints would become accusations, and careers would end. Caroline was now convinced that a czar of the movies was needed. In the past, whenever those in power decided to take over the railroads or the coal mines, the press would obediently cease its lurid fictions and false alarums. Plainly, Hollywood needed a rest; and Caroline and Tim an ally.

Meanwhile, Mary Miles Minter and her mother were more trouble than they were worth. Also, in the cold light of commerce, the idea of replacing Mary Pickford had been a bad one. There was only one Pickford and no substitute was needed. Although Minter, now nineteen or twenty, was good for another decade or two as a pubescent star, the public had lost interest in little girls with golden ringlets and fun-loving ways. “I suppose they’ll buy her out one of these days.”

“Poor William,” was all that Caroline would think to say.

“She’s told everyone she’s going to marry him.” Tim looked at Caroline to see what her reaction would be but Caroline was careful not to react. Although she no longer felt anything for Taylor, she was still his friend and wished him well.

“I don’t think he really wants a second daughter.” Caroline looked at a poster of Emma Traxler drinking a cocktail with a hectic jazzy smile. An air-brush had entirely erased all but the salient features.

“Particularly one equipped with such a mother.”

“But Mary Miles would be marrying him to get rid of her mother.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. Mrs. Shelby collects a third of everything her adorable child makes for as long as the child shall live—or at least until the ringlets fall out.”

“Poor William,” said Tim; he stood up. “I’ve got to go see Ince, about buying Santa Monica.”

“Where we shall build our permanent absolutely real imaginary town. Which story do we do first?”

Tim grinned. “What about who killed President McKinley?”

“Who did?”

“Theodore Roosevelt and Standard Oil. You see, they hired this crazed anarchist and gave him a gun, but no one knows they’ve done it except his kindly old mother, who lives in our town.”

“You will,” said Caroline, “end in jail.”

Taylor’s car and driver were parked before the main studio gate on Vine Street, where the fans kept constant vigil. The fact that they all recognized the new Emma was most heartening, and Caroline signed autographs while making her way, resolutely, to the car, Taylor beside her.

“Do you mind if I do some errands on the way?”

Caroline did not mind.

“Robinson’s Department Store, Fellows.” Taylor turned to Caroline.

“I’ve got to find a present for Mabel. She’s pretty low right now.”

“I thought she was working for Sennett.”

“That’s why she’s low. She’s in trouble.”

“Drugs.”

“She’s tried very hard. I’ve helped her as much as you can ever help anybody … help themselves.”

Caroline remained in the car while Taylor went into Robinson’s. “Could I have your autograph, Miss Traxler?” The chauffeur was young and fresh-faced. Emma’s dazzling smile no longer made Caroline uneasy. She wrote Emma’s name in a Woolworth’s note-book. There were a dozen other signatures in the book but she did not dare riffle the pages, as she returned book and pen. “It’s sure a great honor getting to drive you, and all the other big stars.”

Caroline simpered briefly. “Is there any news about Eddie … Eddie Sands?”

The boy frowned. “Well, he’s been signing Mr. Taylor’s name to checks up in Fresno and Sacramento. Then there was this pawn shop where he
hocked some things, using a name Mr. Taylor recognized. But that’s all.”

Taylor was back in the car. “Nothing I wanted. Let’s go by the bank,” he said to Fellows. “My God,” he said to Caroline, money on his mind, “this income tax business is a nuisance.”

“And expensive.”

Taylor nodded. “I wish you’d work on your friends in Washington to let up on us.” They were driving along a dusty lane lined with eucalyptus trees which would, presently, cross Sunset Boulevard. The day was bright, blue and cold. “I told you Eddie’s been forging my name to checks …”

“Another nuisance.”

Taylor laughed suddenly. “The real nuisance is that he’s such a good forger I can’t tell his writing from my own. Marjorie Berger’s coming over to the house this evening with all the receipted checks.”

“Anyway, you’re lucky he’s gone.”

Taylor gave her a quick curious look. Then he said, somewhat ambiguously, “Am I?” After the bank and a stop at Fowler’s Bookstore, they went on to Alvarado Street, where Caroline was shown into the familiar drawing room by the new Negro servant, an agreeable somewhat nervous man, plainly devoted to Taylor. “Miss Berger called to say she’ll be here at six-thirty, sir. Then another lady called, but didn’t leave her name.”

“Thank you, Henry.” Taylor went over to his desk and picked up a script. “
Monte Carlo
,” he said. “There’s a wonderful part for you. The star’s part,” he added quickly. “You’re a White Russian grand duchess, working as a maid for this rich American lady—very vulgar. You go to Monte Carlo with her, and there’s your fiancé from St. Petersburg, who’s supposed to have died in the Revolution.”

“I know the story,” said Caroline, sweetly, she hoped. “What do I wear?” He told her. She was thrilled.

“I think I can really get Valentino for this one.”

“I’ll do it.” Caroline looked about the room where she had played so many games of backgammon. Now she felt nothing, nothing at all. Taylor suggested that she take his car home while he walked to his dancing class in Orange Street. “I’m learning the tango,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

Caroline was awakened by the telephone, which had merged, most unpleasantly, with a dream involving a train’s departure without her. As she ran beside the train pulling out of the station, the conductor, Eddie Sands,
grinned at her, and rang a bell and said in what sounded to be German—Alsatian?—“All aboard.” Yet her luggage was on the train, including a Poussin painting and a childhood doll with one arm. “I must get aboard,” said Caroline, into the receiver.

“What?” It was a man’s voice, a familiar voice.

Caroline was now awake. She looked at the luminous dial on her bedside clock: nine-thirty. She had slept late. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Charlie Eyton.” The voice sounded tense, and unlike its owner’s usual soothing head-of-studio drone. “Have the police called you?”

“What about?” Caroline sat up in bed, completely alert.

“Taylor’s been murdered. I think you better get down here, to my office. They’ll want to question you. The police. The press, too. But don’t talk to them. Everybody who saw Bill yesterday’s being questioned. Luckily, I’ve got all the letters …”

“What letters?” she asked stupidly.

“Yours to him. Don’t worry. I’ve got the whole lot. I’ve already been to Alvarado Street. Anyway, we’ve got to work on a statement for you to make …”

“Why was he murdered? I mean,
how
was he murdered?” Caroline was having great trouble absorbing so grotesque a fact.

“He was shot in the back a couple of hours after you left him.”

“That would be
after
his tango class in the Orange Street dance studio.” Caroline was shrewd and precise in her shock.

“Sure. Sure.” Eyton hung up.

Caroline warned Héloise not to speak to anybody in her absence. “There’s been an accident,” she said. “Poor Mr. Taylor’s dead.”

“I knew it!” When it came to disaster, Héloise was never taken by surprise.

“Of course you did.” Caroline left the apartment and got into her car. The Japanese gardener greeted her politely. The day was cold and perfect. Sunset Boulevard was almost deserted. So many times she had driven like this through empty streets to studios near and far as well as to locations where it was often necessary to start out before the sun rose. If she ever looked back over this extraordinary period in her life, she would recall, first, the sun coming up over the studio ranch in the San Fernando Valley and then the torturing blaze of klieg lights in her eyes. “Interlock.” The rest was confusion.

Charles Eyton was at his desk, speaking on the telephone. He waved Caroline to a chair. “Yes, it was murder. At first they said natural causes but then the coroner rolled him over and saw that he’d been shot in the back.
When? Around seven, seven-thirty last night. Yes, all hell is going to break loose.” He hung up. “I’m sorry to rout you out, but we’ve got to co-ordinate our stories.”

“We?”

“Yes.
We
. The studio. The movie business. This could be worse than Fatty Arbuckle.”

“Oh,” was all that Caroline could manage. Then she thought how delighted Blaise would be that her acting career, what was left of it, would end in such a spectacular
Götterdämmerung
. Would scandal also affect what she had come to think of as the real imaginary American town?

“The colored man found him at seven-thirty this morning on the floor. In the living room. He called the police. He called me, thank God. I sent our people over to take away anything that would look bad for the studio. Bootleg whisky, love letters. Articles of feminine apparel.”

“I shouldn’t have thought that there would be many of those.”

Eyton gave her a hard look; but said nothing. “We got the bottles out. I personally got the letters. While the police were busy questioning the neighbors, I went upstairs.” He indicated three stacks on his desk. “Letters from you and Mabel Normand and Claire Windsor and Mary Miles Minter …”

“Nothing incriminating—in my letters, anyway.”

“No. But that won’t stop the press from running full-page pictures of you as a foreign temptress, capable of an act of passion.”

“No, it won’t,” said Caroline bleakly. “After all, I am the press, too.”

Eyton was suddenly all apparent candor. “You can help us. A lot. First …”

“First, what happened?”

“Who knows? Taylor came home with you. Went out again for a walk—to your tango class, I suppose. They’ll check it out. Then he came back to the house, where his accountant, Marjorie Berger, was waiting for him. That was six-fifteen. An hour later Mabel Normand arrived. Her chauffeur waited for her in Alvarado Street, in full view of everyone in the court. Then the colored man, who let her in, went home. At around seven-thirty, Taylor walked Mabel to her car. She had a paper bag of peanuts in her hand.” Eyton paused to see if Caroline grasped the significance of the peanuts, but Caroline chose to acknowledge nothing. “Then Mabel was driven away, and Taylor went inside the bungalow and a few minutes later the neighbors heard what sounded like a shot, which
was
a shot, the shot that killed him, but since it
could have been an automobile’s exhaust or a firecracker, nobody thought anything about it.”

“Do the police know about Mabel?”

Eyton nodded.

“This will not exactly help her career.”

“If we all work together, we can all stay clear of this thing. As you know, we can pretty much control the press from the studio, if we’re all agreed on just what we want to feed them.”

“Can you control the police?”

There was a pause. Then Eyton shrugged. “We always have. It’s expensive. You have to pay off everybody, which means the district attorney, too, and he comes high.”

Caroline was beginning to grasp the nature of the problem. “What is it that we must all agree to?”

“Do you have any idea who killed William?” The tone was so casual that Caroline found herself smiling politely.

“I didn’t, of course.”

“Of course.” Eyton was now smiling at Caroline, as if a preview at Bakersfield had gone unexpectedly well. Back of Eyton’s chair, a portrait of Adolph Zukor glowered at them. Above the picture, like heraldic devices, two polo mallets were crossed, a gift from Cecil B. DeMille.