Silent Murders (22 page)

“I’m not a prude! When I was sixteen I posed almost nude for the statue that’s in front of Venice High School. That was art. This was different somehow. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t want a reputation for being difficult, like Lottie Pickford.”

I cringed. “Myrna, that’s not what I meant by being difficult.”

“So what happened with your magician’s act?”

“I tried it for a week and decided I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel like art; I felt cheap. So I quit. Found another job. Look, I’m not ashamed of myself, and I’m not saying it’s bad to take your clothes off in a picture. I’m saying, don’t let anyone push you into doing something you don’t feel good about.”

“Johnnie had to leave midday. He wasn’t pushing me. He said give the part a try and he’d talk to me when he got back at five. But he didn’t get back. He never showed up. We finished shooting at six, so I left.”

“You’ll see him tomorrow morning. If you don’t want to continue, tell him so. He’ll understand.”

28

Before I had reached Pickford-Fairbanks the next morning, I’d passed two paperless paperboys.

“All sold out, miss. We’ll be gettin’ more in about nine,” the olive-skinned lad told me. “I’ll save you one!”

My day started at Makeup, reviewing the first shoot with Mildred Young to make sure we maintained visual continuity. She found herself low on a particular Max Factor undertone that she’d used the day before, and I offered to run over to the
Little Annie Rooney
set to borrow some from their kit.

Making my way through the rabbit warren of tiny workrooms, offices, and storage rooms behind the back lot, I found the makeup artist and coaxed a jar of undertone away from him by promising my firstborn child if I hadn’t replaced it by early next week. Heading back to our own set, I caught a glimpse of David Carr making his way with jaunty steps across the lot. My heart skipped a beat, but I played coy and pretended not to notice him.

He saw me. “Hey, kid,” he called. “You’re just the one I wanted to see. Come here. I’ve got a present for you.”

I looked pointedly at his empty hands. “Oh?”

“In here.” He tapped his head. “You’re gonna love it.”

“I can’t stop.”

“I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee.”

“No time.” I held up the jar of makeup. “Gotta run this back to
Zorro.
”

“Sure. Fine and dandy. Just look me up when you’re ready to learn the name of your droopy-mouthed gangster.”

“What!”

He preened and sauntered closer. “Yep. How ’bout that coffee now?”

“I … I don’t believe you. Yes I do. Who is it?”

“Commissary’s thataway.”

I know when I’m licked. Three minutes later we were sitting down at a Formica table with two cups of steaming java between us.

“All right, tell.”

“Name’s Sal Panetta.”

“How on earth did you find that out?”

“You aren’t the only one with friends in Chicago. I telephoned an old pal and asked if he knew of a torpedo with a droopy mouth, and he didn’t hesitate a second before saying, ‘Sure, that’d be Sal Panetta. One of Johnny Torrio’s Outfit, only Torrio got gunned down a couple weeks ago and the Outfit got taken over by his second, a fella named Capone.”

“Sal Panetta,” I repeated. “Geez, who’d’ve thought I’d ever know his name?”

“No one. And now you can forget it, because that’s the sort of information that comes back to bite you. Telling the cops won’t do you a damned bit of good. Torrio used to boast that he owned the Chicago police, and this new boss holds the same hand.”

“I understand. But why hire someone all the way from Chicago to kill a man in California?”

David shrugged. “Maybe somebody owed someone a favor. Maybe the local boys were too well-known to risk it. Who knows? I have the sense that it had something to do with the change in command in Chicago. Maybe somebody’s proving what long arms he has.”

“So I was right? It was dope and not revenge or jealousy that got Bruno Heilmann killed.”

“You are one smart cookie.” I was elated at my success—and David’s praise. “Heilmann was importing the goods from Mexico, competing with the hometown boys. He was a fool. No one’s gonna sit back and let some walk-on take money out of their pockets.”

“You’re telling me Hollywood has its own gangsters smuggling dope?”

“Not just Hollywood, all of Los Angeles. It’s a vicious business down here, with competing gangs fighting for territory. A pity, really. There’s plenty for everyone, if they could just organize and get along.”

Was that how he ran Portland? By organizing and getting along? Or by eliminating his competition? I was reminded how little I knew about this man. I needed reminding.

“Well, thanks … I guess.”

“You’re welcome. Now I want you to forget about this. You were right. You solved Heilmann’s murder. And the waitress’s. But it’s over.
Finito
.”

Once at a state fair, I saw one of those big silk balloons with a noisy flame that filled the balloon with hot air until it rose into the sky. When it had returned to earth and the passengers had climbed out of the basket, the carny man turned off the flame, and just like that, the enormous bubble silently crumpled into a heap of silk that would fit in a suitcase. Right there, sitting in the studio commissary, I thought of that balloon. I should have felt triumphant—after all, I had figured out who murdered Bruno Heilmann and Esther Frankel. I had figured out why he had done it and how he had done it and when he had done it, but knowing was no good. Nothing was going to come of it. I couldn’t tell the police without risking my own life. Even if I could, there was no chance of bringing the killer to justice. No one was going to charge a gangster who lived two thousand miles away and had alibis enough to stuff a Christmas turkey. I had wanted to avenge Esther’s death, for her own sake and for my mother’s, and I had failed. Her killer—and the local gangsters who hired him—were going to get off scot-free. It wasn’t fair.

Life isn’t fair, Baby,
my mother used to say. Didn’t everyone’s mother used to say that?

“There’s still Lorna McCall’s death—”

“That was probably an accident,” he said.

“And Paul Corrigan’s and Faye Gordon’s poisoning. Were they accidents, too?”

At that moment, David reached across the table and took both my hands in his.
Whoa!
I hadn’t been expecting contact and my defenses were caught napping. My pulse pounded in my throat and my cheeks flushed hot.

“Jessie,” he said in a deep, grave voice. “Look at me.”

This was harder than I thought.

“Remember that time on the Portland train when we dished lies to each other for a couple hours?”

Indignant, I pulled my hands back. “I wasn’t lying! I was acting. I was playing a part.”

“My mistake. I, however, was lying through my teeth. But that’s beside the point, which is: we know very little about each other. And what we
think
we know comes mostly from others. I want to know the real Jessie, the by-God honest truth about your life, straight from you, and I think you want to know about me. It’s only fair that we take another train ride, one with no lies. And no acting. Don’t you?”

I sidestepped. “A train ride?”

David shook his head and gave me that aw-shucks grin guaranteed to melt a girl’s resolve. “Not a real train ride. I think we can do better than that. I propose a corner table at the fanciest restaurant in Hollywood, where you and I can spend a quiet evening together talking straight. No strings attached, just dinner. I thought tomorrow night after you got off work would be good. What do you say?”

David has dangerous eyes. Somehow, he locks those baby blues on you and pulls you inside and you don’t even realize you’ve erased your own ideas and replaced them with his until long after it has happened. Not for the first time, I thought he’d have made a good vaudeville hypnotist. Or maybe he already was. I opened my mouth to say no.

“I—I guess there’s no harm in that.”

He took my arm as we left the commissary, his mile-wide smile beaming brighter than southern California’s sun. “I’ll come by your house at eight tomorrow night. Now scoot, before you’re late with that makeup.”

I passed the front gate just as the Fairbanks Rolls-Royce eased through with Douglas and Mary in the backseat. It must be nine o’clock already, I thought to myself with surprise. You could set your watch by Douglas’s schedule: nine to four every day. No one considered these hours light duty—we all knew he exercised before and after work, running, lifting weights, fencing, swimming, playing tennis, riding, and practicing with his whip. Maintaining his superb physique was essential to his success. And ours.

The Silver Ghost slowed, and a rear window rolled down. Douglas leaned over and called, “Good morning, Jessie. My office in five minutes, please.”

When I arrived, his secretary motioned me to a leather chair. “Mr. Fairbanks and Miss Pickford are in with an unexpected visitor. They’ll be with you in a moment.”

I made myself comfortable and glanced over the newspaper collection on the coffee table. Alongside today’s
Times
was the
San Francisco Examiner,
various trade weeklies, and dailies from the smaller cities of San Diego, Sacramento, and Bakersfield. Every front page blared Hollywood death and debauchery.

Today the
Examiner
went a step further, claiming that Bruno Heilmann had been homosexual. The accusation made my eyes pop. According to the reporter, Heilmann had been murdered and “disfigured” by his homosexual valet, who promptly skipped town. But it was not the ridiculousness of the story that shocked me; it was the bold use of the most terrifying word in the motion picture industry: “homosexual.” The word simply did not exist in the Hollywood lexicon; one could be pardoned for thinking it had been deleted from every dictionary in town. The faintest whiff of sodomy would have turned actor into leper and driven legions of American families out of motion picture palaces forever. No, in Hollywood, every actor was manly and had chaste relationships with scores of lovely maidens.

I tossed the paper aside in disgust and picked up the
Times
where I learned the latest suspect was Mary and Lottie Pickford’s mother, Charlotte.
Charlotte,
for crying out loud, was supposed to have been avenging her youngest daughter’s honor. Seems someone saw Charlotte lurking about the Heilmann house that night. Another piece fingered the butler who had found the body—he had purportedly shot Heilmann and stolen a large amount of cash from a safe, then returned the next day to pretend to discover the body. I hoped no one would pay too much attention to this theory, as it came uncomfortably close to something I could be accused of at Esther Frankel’s. I sighed. Sooner or later, everyone in Hollywood was going to be dragged into the mire of these murders.

I nearly missed the article at the bottom of the front page.
TWO DETECTIVES SHOT IN THE LINE OF DUTY
, it read. Idly, I looked at the first paragraph, then gasped aloud.

“What is it?” The secretary looked up from her typewriter.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just shocked at this article.”

Assuming I meant the one about Charlotte Pickford, she nodded. “Aren’t we all, dearie? I ask you, what’s the world coming to when innocent old ladies are accused just for meanness’ sake?”

Quickly I scanned the piece about the shootings, then went back and read it again, slowly this time, trying to see through every word to the truth behind it. Details were few. Two detectives investigating a dope-smuggling ring had been ambushed Thursday afternoon—yesterday—in some remote desert gully northwest of Hollywood. The smugglers were bringing heroin into the country from Mexico, and the detectives received a tip that led them to the rendezvous point. A fierce gun battle had left the two detectives and three smugglers dead. An unknown number had escaped with the bulk of the dope.

The names of the martyred heroes were Tuttle and Rios.

29

“Sit down, Jessie,” began Douglas Fairbanks. “I wanted you to see these newspapers that just came in from New York.” On the desk were several back issues of Pulitzer’s
World
. I said good morning to Mary Pickford, then breezed through the headlines. If anything, the East Coast stories were more scurrilous than the West.

“These are absurd,” I said, glancing up from an article that screamed about a pink silk nightie found at Heilmann’s home, tracing it to a young actress who hadn’t even attended his party, and another that implicated the homosexual valet. “And I saw the
Times
story claiming your mother killed him,” I said to Miss Pickford.

“Hearst would say his own mother shot Heilmann if it would sell papers,” growled Douglas. “Publicity agents are working round the clock, trying to protect their clients. Still, New York is panicking.” Most of the financial and business people involved in the motion picture industry worked out of New York, a five-day train ride from California. By and large, Hollywood liked the arrangement—it kept the big bosses at a safe distance where they couldn’t meddle in day-to-day affairs. But today, New York seemed like the moon.

Miss Pickford spoke for the first time. “Most film company stocks have lost half their value.”

“Has yours?” I asked, my concern showing plainly in my voice.

She gave a wan smile. “United Artists is owned by the three of us: Douglas and Charlie Chaplin, and me, with help from a few others like Buster Keaton and Joe Schenck. Our company isn’t public so we don’t sell stock on Wall Street. Nonetheless, this isn’t good news for anyone in Hollywood.” I’d heard it said that Mary Pickford had a head for business and now I believed it. My only brush with the stock market came from vaudeville joke books.

“Are the police making any headway?”

“They still have their sights trained on Lottie,” said Douglas.

“Lottie didn’t do it. I know who did now. At least, I know who murdered Bruno Heilmann and Esther Frankel. A hired killer from Chicago.”

Douglas and Mary exchanged startled looks. “Go on,” Douglas said.