True Confessions (17 page)

They walked back to the squad room. Masaryk was on the telephone. He cupped his hand over the receiver.

“They think her name’s Lois Fazenda,” Masaryk said.

Gloria Deane said that the apartment building where Lois Fazenda lived until three weeks before her death was on North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood. It was a nondescript two-story bungalow turned into a warren of one-room apartments with hotplate privileges. There were eight girls sleeping in four double-decker bunk beds in what used to be Lois Fazenda’s apartment. The rent for each girl was a dollar a night. Their bathroom was strung with wet lingerie and the wastepaper baskets were overflowing with balls of split hair, rouged Kleenex and brown paper bags filled with used Kotex. Besides Gloria Deane, the girl from Max Factor, there were three actresses, a model, a singer, a telephone operator and a cocktail-lounge employee living in the one room. A check of police-department records established that two of the girls had records for prostitution, one for shoplifting and a fourth for acting in a stag movie as a minor. Five of the eight had moved into the apartment since Lois Fazenda’s departure and only the girl from Max Factor, the singer and the telephone operator remembered her. All three recalled that Lois Fazenda had a rose tattooed on her lower abdomen and that although she claimed not to know a soul in Los Angeles, she had a date nearly every night. Gloria Deane remembered a “tall sinister elderly man” who drove a Packard and sometimes paid her rent. The singer recalled a radio announcer with a British accent named Maurice and the telephone operator a famous prop man at Paramount, Jim, Johnny, a man named Red, a pilot from Chicago, Jack, Lee, an outfielder from the Sacramento Solons and someone named Fred who possibly ran a model agency. The girl from Max Factor said that the telephone operator remembered all these names because she was always eavesdropping on Lois Fazenda’s telephone calls. The telephone operator said she was trained to remember names. She also said that the girl from Max Factor had been sweet on Lois Fazenda. Gloria Deane replied that the telephone operator had a nigger pimp.

The building on Cherokee was owned by one Timothy Mal-lory, who had a record making stag movies going back to 1937 and who called himself an associate producer. Framed on the wall of his apartment was a headline from the June 6, 1944, Los Angeles
Times:
BRUSH FIRE IN HILLS THREATENS HOME OF HOLLYWOOD ASSOCIATE PRODUCER.

“Same day as D-Day,” Timothy Mallory said. “No one gave a fig about my house.”

“About your alibi, homo,” Crotty said.

“It’s hard to check.”

“Why?” Tom Spellacy said.

“I’m a pimp, that’s why. It’s not exactly a nunnery I own here. Not very many people, bright eyes, are going to tell you, ‘I saw Timmy today and his new find, that twelve-year-old dinge from the Belgian Congo.’ “

“You pimp for Lois Fazenda?” Tom Spellacy said.

“Pussy pictures, that’s all I did with her,” Timothy Mallory said. He adjusted his toupee in the mirror and then pulled a nudist magazine from a drawer. Lois Fazenda was lying in a glade, the sun glinting off her hair. The thrust of her leg elongated and distorted the rose tattooed on her lower abdomen.

“A rock is a rock, a tree is a tree, shoot it in Griffith Park,” Timothy Mallory said. “It’s an old saying in the Industry. Meaning it’s where I shot the picture.” He smiled at Tom Spellacy. “I know your murderer.”

“It’d be a help if you told us.”

“J.H., Columbus, Ohio, that’s who you should look for,” Timothy Mallory said. “He wrote the magazine and said he had a thing thirteen inches long and where he would like to put it was guess where. J.H., Columbus, Ohio, was the way he signed himself.” Timothy Mallory sighed and once again straightened his toupee in the mirror. “
Ou sont les
’J.H.’
d’antan?
”

“What the fuck is he talking about?” Crotty said.

During the next forty-eight hours, the Robbery-Homicide Division established the following facts:

Timothy Mallory was clean. On the night Lois Fazenda was killed, he was directing a stag movie in a house out by the airport with the telephone operator, the model, a girl from Bakersfield, two boys, an old man and a horse. The girl from Max Factor had a severe case of menstrual cramps and never left the house on North Cherokee Avenue. The singer attended a sneak preview in Burbank of
They Wouldn’t Believe Me
with Robert Young, Jane Greer and Susan Hay ward and afterward had her nose broken in a bar on Central Avenue by a unit publicist and spent the evening in the emergency room at Central Receiving Hospital. The prop man at Paramount had an alibi, as did Jim, Johnny, the man named Red, Jack, Lee and Fred, whose model agency was actually an outlet for Timothy Mallory’s dirty photographs. The outfielder for the Sacramento Solons was playing in Seattle against the Rainiers and went oh-for-five and dropped a fly ball in the bottom of the tenth to let in the winning run. As it happened, the pilot from Chicago was in Seattle and had seen the game. The pilot said he hoped the outfielder could fuck better than he played ball and then said he was sorry about Lois Fazenda but she wasn’t all that great a piece of ass. The owner of the religious-supply store on Hollywood Boulevard was at Saint John of God’s Hospital where his wife gave birth to stillborn twins and developed a puerperal infection. Maurice, the radio announcer with the British accent, was actually a Jamaican octoroon and was now an all-night rhythm-and-blues disk jockey at a colored station in Brownsville, Texas. The tall, sinister, elderly man who drove a Packard was in fact short, thirty-seven, drove a La Salle and was Timothy Mal-lory’s trick.

These facts were learned about Lois Fazenda. She was twenty-two years old. She had come west from Medford, Massachusetts, three years before in hopes of becoming a movie star. She worked as a waitress, an usherette in a movie theater, a carhop and a checkout girl in the PX at Fort MacArthur. For two months she was a volunteer at County General Hospital, working for a Catholic charity called the Protectors of the Poor. The volunteers of the Protectors of the Poor worked the emergency rooms and orthopedic wards of County General passing out candy and cigarettes and toothpaste and razor blades and Virgin of Guadalupe medals to indigent accident victims of Mexican descent.

Lois Fazenda also did two days as an Arab extra in
Casablanca
at Warner Brothers. Her only other movie work was being eaten out in a film directed and associate-produced by Timothy Mallory. She lived in a series of boarding houses much like the one on North Cherokee. On West Adams Boulevard she thought she was pregnant. On Camino Palmero she hemorrhaged. On North Orange Drive she was tattooed. The tattoo artist was currently in the federal penitentiary on Terminal Island for violation of the Mann Act. On Linden Drive in Long Beach she left behind a poem that said, “Remember me and keep in mind/A faithful friend is hard to find/But when you are good and true/Trade not the good ones for the new.” On K Street in Lancaster there was an unmailed letter to Joe that said Doc was courting her and that unless Joe made his intentions clear, she could not vouch for what Doc would do. There was also a letter from the pilot in Chicago: “You say in your letter you want us to be good friends, but from your telegram you seem to want more than that. Are you really sure just what you want? Why not pause and consider just what your coming out here would amount to. Helen still hasn’t agreed to the divorce. I think she has private detectives following me. I care too much for you to subject you to that. Perhaps Matt is your out. In your last letter you mentioned he had sent you a ring. Diamond? Engagement? You gave no explanation. Matt sounds like a big spender and if he wants to make an honest woman out of you (that’s a J-O-K-E, ha ha), he might be better for you than me.” On Bronson Avenue, there was a newspaper clipping from the Wenatchee, Washington,
Herald:
LOCAL ACE HONORED. The story said that Captain Matthew J. Kronholm, a flight instructor at Peterson Field in Colorado, had recently been promoted to major. “Major Kronholm is the son of Mrs. Matthew J. Kronholm, Sr., and the late Mr. Kronholm, a local pharmacist. Major Kron-holm’s brother, Samuel, is an actor in Hollywood under the name of Sammy Barron. Major Kronholm is engaged.” To whom it did not say, but the word
engaged
on the clipping was circled in lipstick. On Harold Way there was a letter from Mrs. Matthew J. Kronholm, Sr.: “Matt asked me to write you because he said you were a very refined girl. He said you would ‘fit right in.’” On Sierra Vista there was a note from Sammy Barron: “The doctor’s name is Snyder and he’ll do it at his house and not at his office and bring $200.” On Formosa Avenue there was a telegram from Mrs. Matthew J. Kronholm, Sr.: “Received word from War Department Matt killed in a crash. Our deepest sympathy is with you. Pray it isn’t true.” Lois Fazenda had left Formosa Avenue without paying her rent. Nor had she paid her rent on Sierra Vista, Harold Way, Bronson Avenue, K Street in Lancaster, Linden Drive in Long Beach, on North Orange Drive, Poinsettia Avenue, Camino Palmero or West Adams Boulevard.

Lois Fazenda’s mother had died of a stroke when her daughter was sixteen. Her father, who had divorced his wife in 1931 and moved west, was a refrigerator repairman in Lompoc. He had not seen his daughter in two years. She had come to live with him in Lompoc when she was out of a job, but he had thrown her out after five weeks. Lewis Fazenda said his daughter would not keep house for him and was only interested in men. She had once wired him for two hundred dollars. He had not sent it. It was his opinion that his daughter was “no damn good.” He had a graduation picture of Lois Fazenda wearing a white cap and gown and it was published in the
Express
, the
Times
, the
Herald
, the
Daily News
, the
Examiner
and the Long Beach
Press-Telegraph
, Sammy Barron had a photograph of Lois Fazenda in the Arab costume she wore during her two days of extra work on
Casablanca
at Warner’s. It was printed in the
Express
, the
Times
, the
Herald
, the
Daily News
, the
Examiner
and the Long Beach
Press-Telegraph
.

Sammy Barron was a midget. He lived in a trailer park in Glendale.

“She nearly shit, Lois, when she saw I was a little person,” Sammy Barron said. “Matt was a tall, blond-headed kid. His prick was bigger than I am. The schlong on him. I mean, you could have put it in costume and given it a lead in
The Wizard of Oz
”

Sammy Barron puffed on a cigar. He was losing his hair and his legs barely extended to the edge of his chair. Tom Spellacy wondered if it was better to stand or to sit. He slouched down in the chair in Sammy Barron’s trailer until he was practically sitting on his shoulder blades.

“Nobody told her I was a little person,” Sammy Barron said. “Not that I don’t grant you it’s a tough subject to ease your way into.” He began to speak in a high-pitched falsetto voice. “ ‘He’s not exactly Matt’s
big
brother, Lois, he’s what you might call an
older
brother.’ “ Sammy Barron pulled on his cigar. The ash shivered. “My old man used to look at me funny and say, ‘Circus work is good, I hear. Steady. Outdoors. Like being a cowboy.’ Three foot two, eyes of blue, I was going to sit on the Lone Ranger’s lap. The tiny Tonto.” He dipped the butt end of his cigar into a beaker of brandy. “So I cut out of Wenatchee when I was twelve. With a circus.”

“You kept in touch with Matt?” Tom Spellacy said.

“He looked me up when he joined the Air Corps,” Sammy Barron said. “That was the golden age of little people in this business.
The Wizard of Oz
I did, then
Lady in the Dark
. Speaking parts. You know Ray Bolger? A good pal of mine. Jack Haley. Ginger Rogers.”

“Judy Garland?”

“A pain in the ass. And Georgie Jessel, too.” Sammy Barron sucked the brandy from the cigar end. “Anyway, Matt comes to see me on the set. I take him to lunch in the commissary and he’s looking at all the fluff and he says, ‘How long has this been going on?’ “

“Did you introduce him to Lois?”

“Quiff is one thing Matt never had any trouble finding. He latched onto her somewhere and then when he’s leaving town, he asks me to look out for her.”

“They were engaged.”

“Shit,” Sammy Barron said. “He was dipping it, is all. Knocked her up is what he did. I was doing
Casablanca
at Warner’s. No lines, but two close-ups. In that crowd scene outside of Rick’s Place where Peter Lorre gets it. I got run over, is how I got the close-ups. Anyway, I talk to this friend of mine and he talks to another guy and this guy talks to Curtiz and Curtiz thinks it’s cute, a little person with a girl friend. ‘Most guys go down on a girl,’ he says. ‘You go up.’ I give him a big wink and he gives her a job. She didn’t have any close-ups, though.”

“I got a couple of suits off that picture,” Crotty said.

Sammy Barron looked perplexed.

“From Sidney Greenstreet,” Crotty said. “You remember the white double-breasted one?”

“It had bone buttons,” Sammy Barron said.

“That’s the one,” Crotty said.

“I didn’t know you knew Sidney,” Sammy Barron said.

“I know somebody who knows him, gets me his suits,” Crotty said.

“You’re about the same size,” Sammy Barron said.

“48 regular,” Crotty said.

Tom Spellacy cleared his throat. “You arranged the abortion?”

Sammy Barron looked from one officer to the other.

“You won’t get busted,” Crotty said.

“I lent her the two hundred,” Sammy Barron said. “And gave her the name of the guy does all the major studio scrapes.” He chewed on his cigar. “That’s the last I saw of her.” He grew pensive. “She was very interested in the problems of little people.”