JO03 - Detour to Murder (18 page)

C H A P T E R 
28

When we parted ways at
Gayle’s car back at the Ships lot, I told her I’d stay in touch and let her know if I discovered anything new about her aunt’s murder. She climbed out of the Chevy and walked slowly to her car, turning once to give me a final look, a pitiful look you’d give to a condemned man.

My mind reeled with what Mrs. Hathaway had told Gayle about getting killed if I continued to snoop around. But a couple of questions suddenly occurred to me. Was the old lady’s remark just conjecture? Or did she know for certain that the bad guys were going to try to stop me dead if I got too close to the truth?

I took a deep breath and wheeled out of the parking lot, but what I saw next stole my breath away. I spotted a black Buick Century parked next to the curb down about fifty feet. The car pulled out and followed as I whipped around the corner at La Cienega, heading toward the freeway on-ramp. I stepped on it. Clipping the light at Wilshire, I barreled down the boulevard, zigzagged a few cars, and shot up the freeway on-ramp. I changed lanes and stole a glance over my shoulder. The Buick was nowhere in sight.

While driving back to Downey, keeping a rational mind, I thought about the car. There were a million black Buicks in L.A., and I wondered if the car on La Cienega was the same one that had been stalking me, the one with the two clowns in it. I imagined that I’d probably see a black Buick every time I turned a corner. The memory of my last encounter with those two bozos had been all too real.

Mabel had returned to the office by the time I got back from West Hollywood. But she didn’t look up, just handed me a pink phone message as I walked past her desk. The air held a distinct chill.

I was halfway across the room when she said, “It’s from Sol. He’s at Rocco’s. He wants you to meet him there as soon as you get in. Doesn’t he ever do business in his office? Jesus!”

So she was speaking to me after all. I turned to face her. “Any other calls?”

“No new clients called. And you’ve got Rita chasing around on that
no-fee
Roberts case. What’s the matter with you?”

“Drop it, Mabel. I’m not in the mood.”

“What do you mean,
drop it?
You’d better listen to me, young man. Things are going to hell around here. Someone better do something, and I mean fast.”

“Mabel, please. I have enough on my mind without listening to this crap.”

“Hold on, Buster, don’t get surly with me! I’m just trying to let you know the trouble we’re in. Did you know that there’s no money for payroll this week? I’ll work with you, but Christ…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She bent her head and started to shuffle papers—bills, most likely.

“Sorry, Mabel. You’re right. I’m a little tired, that’s all. Tell you what: I’ll pull Rita off the case. Tomorrow she can cruise the halls at the Criminal Courts Building, searching for people who might need our help.”

“What about you? Did you take Millie to lunch?”

Damn, I’d forgotten all about Millie. “Aw, yeah, Millie. Yeah, I called her. She couldn’t make it—”

She whirled around in her swivel chair. “Quit your goddamn lying. Millie called here looking for you. Said you stood her up again. She’s pissed, and so am I.”

“Thought you said there were no calls.”

“I said there were no
clients
who called.” She stood and marched to the door.

“Where you going?” I said to her back.

“Out to look for a job.” She slammed the door behind her.

I stood there without moving, hardly breathing, rooted in the middle of the mess I’d created. I wondered why I had to lie to people that I cared for. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I
did
care for them. Maybe I didn’t want them to worry. One person in the office scared out of his wits was enough, wasn’t it? But I knew that was a lie too. The real reason had to be… I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to admit that I had failed again, even to myself. I was already in my mid-thirties and had accomplished nothing.
Bupkis
, as Sol would say. It seemed my whole life had been one failed disaster after another: divorce, fired from the LAPD, and now I was about to lose my law practice. I was rushing headlong down a path to total ruin.

I set the telephone answering machine to pick up and left for Rocco’s.

“Hey, here’s Jimmy with the long face,” I heard Sol boom from his table in the middle of the cocktail bar at Rocco’s. I tried to put on a lighthearted air and even smiled as I worked my way through the group of regulars. I pulled out a chair and sat at Sol’s table, heaped with plates of appetizers.

“Jimmy, my boy. Here, take a bite of this.” Sol shoved some kind of canapé in my face, a round cracker with a glob of pink paste on it.

“Not hungry, Sol. Mabel said you wanted to see me.”

“Eat the goddamn thing. You’ll feel better. I’m tired of your hangdog attitude. Now cheer up.” He kept jabbing the bite-sized snack at me.

I took a nibble. A delicious sensation filled my mouth. “Hey, Sol, this stuff is great.” I ate the rest of it, reached out and grabbed another one.

“My own secret recipe,” Sol said. “André has the chef make it special for me. I had him sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

“No kidding. What is it?” I asked, taking another bite.

“I said it was a secret. I’m not gonna tell you.”

By now I was on my third one. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. “Aw, c’mon, Sol. I won’t tell anyone.”

He looked around and then leaned into me, his eyes shifting from side to side. Finally he whispered in a slow conspiratorial tone, “It’s cooked lobster,” he leaned in closer, “mixed with a can of cold Campbell’s mushroom soup and smeared on a Ritz Cracker. But here’s what makes it good: I tell them to put in exactly eight drops of Tabasco.”

“Yeah, I can taste it. Gives it a little tang.” Sol was right; the lobster thing did make me feel a bit better.

He snapped his fingers. “Hey, André! Tell the chef to whip up another batch of Sol’s Delight and bring it to Jimmy.”

We sat there for the next twenty minutes eating a couple orders of Sol’s secret concoction. He drank a half-bottle of Dom Pérignon with his. For a fleeting moment I wondered if giving up booze had been the wise thing to do. I could climb in that bottle of champagne and put the Roberts case behind me. Turn out the lights, the party’s over, Jimmy has left the building.

Finally, Sol leaned back. “A delightful repast, now it’s down to business.”

“You wanted to see me because Bugliosi called?” I asked.

“Did I beep you?”

I patted the beeper still in my pocket. “No, guess not.”

“Then it’s not about Bugliosi. Is it?”

“Aw, for chrissakes, Sol. Why’d you want to see me?”

“I have news about that Mercedes you spotted at the retirement home in Woodland Hills.”

“No kidding? What have you got?”

“First, tell me why you’ve been in a funk the last couple of days. Not like you, Jimmy.”

“I don’t want to talk about my problems.”

“You gotta talk. Get it out in the open.”

“What? Now you’re a priest, my confessor?”

“Yeah, Father Sol Silverman, the Jewish Jesuit.” Sol laughed. “Now cut the crap, Jimmy. What gives?”

“It’s this case. It’s got me all tied in knots. Mabel quit today because I’ve been acting like an asshole.”

“She quit? My God, you need her. She keeps that
fahklumpt
office of yours running straight. Give her a raise. She’ll come back.”

“Give her a raise?
I haven’t got any frigging money as it is. How am I going to give her a raise?”

“Jimmy, I could loan you a few bucks. You’ve always paid me back—”

“No way, Sol, I’ve got to do this on my own. When I ask for your professional help with my cases you always come through. But enough is enough. I can’t ask for money on top of everything else.”

“First of all, when I work on your cases, I work for your clients. And when you’re working
pro bono,
so am I. And, what the hell, we’re friends aren’t we?”

“Yeah, we’re friends, but—”

“If you can’t stick it to your friends, who can you stick it to? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Sol said and laughed.

I laughed too, a mirthless laugh. “You know better than that, Sol. But I’ve been thinking, maybe I’d better forget about the case. I’ll never be able to pull it off. Maybe Sue Harvey’s dead. I’ll never find her, and Roberts is in the wind, gone to God knows where. I told him to get on that goddamn bus—”

“Yeah, good idea. Quiet. You’ll be washed up as a lawyer, but hey, I could get you a job mopping hallways in my office building.”

“Cut it out, Sol. I didn’t mean I’d quit the law, just this case.”

“You listen to me, Mr. Down-in-the-Mouth, you’re no quitter.” Sol paused in thought. “Well, you did quit drinking, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Anyway, if you quit Roberts you may as well quit the law business altogether, because you won’t be worth a damn after that. You’ll quit again the next time the going gets tough—and they’re all tough. Now, what’s Mabel’s phone number?”

“Why?”

“What’s her goddamn phone number?” he asked while signaling the waitress to bring him a telephone.

“You not going to call her, are you?”

“This is the third time. What’s the
fucking
number?”

I rattled off Mabel’s home number and at the same time Jeanine, the waitress, plugged the phone in at our booth. Sol started to dial.

“Sol, damn it. It won’t do any good. Her mind is made—”

“Hi, Mabel, this is Sol. Listen, sweetheart, Jimmy wants you to come back to work. He misses you desperately. He’s like a lost little boy without you. Now, I’ve had a firm talk with him, and from now on he’s going to treat you with the respect you deserve. He’s even offered to give you a raise—that is, as soon the Roberts case is over. You know, Mabel, when he gets that poor
schmuck
out of the jam he’s in, Jimmy will be famous. The phone will ring off the hook—”

He listened for a moment, then said, “Hey, sweetheart, I know you guys haven’t got any money, but hang in there with the kid—”

Another pause. “Well, goddamn it, Mabel. I’m going to float him a loan.”

Pause, then, “You too, dear. Goodbye.” He hung up. A wide grin spread across his face. “She’s on her way back to the office.”

“I can’t take your money.”

“Shut up. You’ll take it and like it.” He laughed. “That’s a line from
The Maltese Falcon.”

After a few minutes, I couldn’t argue anymore. The firm desperately needed money, especially to cover the payroll coming due at the end of the week. It wouldn’t be fair to Mabel or Rita to turn down Sol’s offer. But I made a silent vow to pay him back, even if I had to dig ditches. He wrote a check and handed it to me.

I glanced at it and started to hand it back. “Sol, it’s way too much. I can’t—”

“What kind of lawyer are you, giving money back?” he interrupted. “Seriously, you need it. There are a lot of people depending on you to come through, now and in the future. You can make a difference. So take the money in good health and get back to work.”

I tucked it away, mumbling my thanks.

“Want some more Sol’s Delight?” he asked, pointing at the remaining few canapés on the plate.

“Nah, I’m full, but thanks.”

“Well then, do you want to hear the news about that sports car with the foxy driver?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, okay. Did I mention that the owner of the red Mercedes is Francis Q. Jerome?”

C H A P T E R 
29

Sol had me on the
edge of my seat. The news that he’d found a link between the Mercedes and Jerome meant that the actor was in fact connected to the mystery woman, just as I’d figured.

“You see, Jimmy, after we ran the plate number and discovered that the car is registered to Federal Carbide we did a little digging. Guess what we came up with.”

I leaned forward. “What?”

He took a cigar out of his jacket pocket and fiddled with the wrapper. “Go ahead and guess.”

“Ah… Jerome owns the company?”

“Not bad. Not bad at all, but you’re wrong. Wanna guess again?”

“Damn it, Sol, you got me crazy!”

“We did a background check on Jerome and learned that his father had founded the sandpaper business back in the late 1800s.”

“Then I was right. His father died and left him the company.”

He lit the cigar, took a puff, then examined the glowing tip. “Not quite. The corporation’s stock is held in a trust for Jerome, and the trust pays his bills. Sure, Jerome was a big-time movie star, but he squandered his money faster than he could make it—booze, a little gambling, and broads. He was a sucker for a pretty face, as you well know.”

“Yeah, he was married four or five times. Mostly to young blonde ingénues, like Sue Harvey.”

“Anyway, his father realized his life’s work would go up in smoke if he left the money to his son. So he set up a fund to administer the inheritance. Part of the deal was that all of Jerome’s wives had to sign an agreement, you know, a pre-nuptial. But here’s the kicker: if Jerome wants to make a major purchase, such as an expensive car, then the trustees must approve it in advance. And if approved, the trust retains ownership of the asset.”

“That’s why the Mercedes is registered to Federal Carbide,” I said, “but for all practical purposes, it’s Jerome’s car and he’s just letting the mystery woman use it. Christ, he’s too old to be putting the make on her. Don’t you think?”

“She could be working for him,” Sol answered. “Could be his personal assistant, eyes and ears to the outside world, something like that.”

“If the trust handles his money, how could he have been paying someone to work for him?”

“Oh, he still has other income that’s not controlled by the trust—royalties from the movies he made, that sort of thing—which would be more than ample to pay her.”

“Then if she’s working for him, that could that mean the goons in the black Buick work for him too. Could be taking their orders from the babe.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“And now he’s using the hired muscle to take care of those little odd jobs that pop up from time to time,” I said.

“Yeah, like trying to shake you off the case by beating the crap out of you.”

“They just got the jump on me, that’s all. But anyway, it didn’t work. I’m still on the case. Nothing’s going to stop me now. I don’t give a damn who or what he sends.”

“Let him send the goddamn army. You’re no quitter,” Sol said.

My mind was spinning. Jerome had the morals of a turkey buzzard and now it appeared he had leg-breakers on the payroll.

“Jerome is desperate to stop me from digging deeper into the case. But why?”

“That’s the sixty-four dollar question.”

“You know, Sol, he could’ve been the one who murdered Vera back in the forties. He was young and vigorous then. Remember, before the murder she’d made several phone calls to MGM, the studio where Jerome had worked. Might have had something on him, something documented in those papers. She might’ve threatened to ruin his career.”

“She could’ve tried to blackmail him, wanted a heap of cash to keep quiet. Which he didn’t have,” Sol said.

“Yeah, so he had no choice. He had to eliminate her. Then Mrs. H found the papers and she started in on him. But she only wanted five hundred a month, which he could handle.”

“No need to take the risk of getting caught trying to commit a second murder for a lousy five hundred,” Sol said.

“He got away with it once. Maybe it shook him up.”

“Maybe Mrs. Hathaway decided, after all this time, to raise the stakes,” Sol said. “Pressure Jerome to give her more money, maybe a lump sum, who knows. But don’t forget, the trust controls his cash. Oh, they pay him enough to live real comfortable. The five hundred per month wouldn’t be noticed, but if he needed big dough—”

I finished Sol’s sentence. “He wouldn’t have been able to get it. Then somehow he found out that she kept Vera’s papers hidden in the tool shed.”

“So maybe he had the goons go out to the motel and search for the documents. Maybe the old lady spotted them rooting around in her shed. So naturally, they had to kill her.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty, Sol, I think you solved the whole damn thing!”

Sol leaned back with his cigar and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. “Now, all we have to do is prove it. Everything we have is just conjecture. We need evidence.”

We didn’t say anything for a moment. I tried to figure out how we could come up with something concrete. I couldn’t take our theory to the cops yet, not until I had rock-solid proof. They’d laugh me out of police headquarters.

“Hey, guys. I knew I’d find you here.”

I looked up. Rita was rushing toward our booth. She had an excited look on her face. I could tell from her breath-taking smile that she had good news. Sol and I stood. She slipped into the booth, sitting between us. Jeanine followed on her heels.

“Sweetheart,” Sol said. “You look prettier every day.”

“Thank you, Sol.” Rita turned to face me. “I just got back from talking with Francis Q. Jerome.” And then back to Sol. “I want to tell you both what he said.”

“Calm down, Rita. First you have to order a drink,” Sol said. “What would you like?”

Rita glanced at her watch. “It’s after five. I’ll have a glass of Chablis. If that’s all right.” Sol nodded to Jeanine and the waitress left to get the wine.

She beamed as she started to tell us about her meeting with Jerome. “First of all, he insisted that Sue Harvey is dead. Some hotheaded actor beat her to death.”

“That would be John Barr, the cowboy star. That’s what he said before.”

“Yes, but then I asked him about the woman in the mini-skirt, Jimmy, just like you wanted me to—”

“Just a minute, dear,” Sol interrupted. “Would you care to have one of these little goodies?” He picked up one of the remaining canapés from the plate and handed it to her.

She took a nibble. “Hey, groovy,” she said. “Condensed mushroom soup and cold lobster. I make it all the time.”

So the recipe is a big secret. That’s a laugh. Sol probably got it off the soup can.

Rita took another bite. “It’s good, but maybe this has too much Tabasco.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sol said.

“Please, can we get back to business?” I said. “I’m dying to hear what Jerome had to say. Sol, we need proof. Maybe Rita found something we can use.”

Rita looked perplexed. “Proof of what?”

“We figure Jerome is the murderer. Or at least he had his henchmen do the dirty work. He probably killed Vera, too.”

“Think so, Jimmy?” Rita said.

“Yeah, it all fits. Now, what did he say?”

“How do you figure?”

“I’ll tell you later, but first I want to hear what Jerome had to say. Might help validate our theory.”

Rita’s voice trailed off when Jeanine appeared with her glass of wine. In the meantime, the cocktail lounge had filled with happy-hour patrons. The piano player, a silver-haired geezer in a threadbare tux, had started to pound out a few old favorites, and I do mean
old
, pop-chart toppers of the forties. The guy did a copacetic rendition of “The Dipsy Doodle.”

Rita took a sip of her wine and continued, “Jimmy, you wanted me to ask Jerome if he remembered receiving any calls from Vera back in 1945. I thought it would be impossible for anyone to remember something like that after all these years, but I asked him anyway.”

“Did he remember?”

“Oh, he remembered the call, all right. Said he’d never forget it. He said she had made several calls to MGM. The first time the switchboard just hung up on her when she asked to speak with him. But she’d called back, called the security department, and told them that Jerome’s life was in danger. I asked him why she’d called the security department. I thought security handled the gate guards and stuff like that.”

“No, sweetheart,” Sol said. “MGM’s security department protected the studio’s movie stars. The talent was considered property worth millions, and the studio took a dim view of anyone screwing with the reputation or safety of its most valuable assets. Eddie Mannix, head of security, and Howard Strickling, head of publicity, were known as
fixers.
Their job was to keep the actors in line. When the assets got in trouble, as they often did, the fixers kept their names out of the papers and, if needed, kept them out of jail.”

I thought back to my days on the LAPD. Over drinks at the local hangout, a cop joint on South Central, the old-timers told stories about how Mannix and Stickling were able to cover up misdemeanors and felonies committed by matinee idols of the day. And a few times they even swept blatant murders under the rug. The detectives who were called out on a case involving an MGM movie star were told not to ask questions, just accept what Mannix and Strickling had to say. If they said the death was a suicide or an accident, that’s how it went down.

At first I didn’t completely believe what they told us about the studio fixing murder cases. I figured the old dogs were jiving the young bucks, but then I read that Superman had killed himself and I began to wonder. George Reeves, the actor who played the Man of Steel in the popular 1950s TV series, had been found shot to death in his bedroom, but the gun that killed him was discovered nowhere near the body. It had been rumored that Reeves had been fooling around with Toni Mannix, Eddie’s wife.

“Back in the thirties and forties MGM owned the town. What the studio wanted they got and what they said was law,” I said.

“Yes, that’s exactly how Jerome had put it,” Rita added.

“What did he tell you about Vera’s phone call to the security department?” I asked.

“Mannix took her call and she told him that Al Roberts, a guy who’d already murdered one man, was in town gunning for Jerome. Mannix took the threat seriously, especially since Vera knew the details about Sue Harvey and Roberts and their plans to marry before she took off for Hollywood.”

“Vera had the movie magazine,” I said. “The one with the picture in it of Jerome and Sue together at a nightclub. The caption said they were engaged. And of course Roberts had let Vera know why he’d hitchhiked to Los Angeles. But he probably wasn’t even aware that Sue had hooked up with a big-time movie guy.”

“Not according to Jerome. He said Vera had told Mannix that Roberts was boiling mad about Sue being engaged to the actor and he planned to eliminate his competition.”

“My God, she said that?”

“Yes, again according to Jerome, she did. She said Roberts had a gun and was dead serious. Then she told Mannix that she could take Roberts out of the picture. Mannix pretended to go along with Vera, even encouraged her. She said she wanted five thousand dollars to get rid of him. But first she wanted to speak personally to Jerome. Mannix told her to call back in one hour. He’d have the actor there. She could speak to him then. One hour would give him time to rig up a call-trace so they could have the police pick her up.”

“Did she call back?” I asked.

“The phone records indicate that there were three calls made to the studio from the bungalow,” Sol said.

“That’s right, Sol. Three phone calls. She
did
call back, right on schedule. Mannix had summoned Jerome to the security department and he got on the line. She repeated her story how Roberts was coming after him, and how she had a plan to get rid of him permanently, provided someone paid her five thousand dollars.”

“What’d Jerome tell her?”

“On orders from Mannix, he told Vera he could get the money, then he told her that they’d have to arrange a meeting to work out the details, but she refused to divulge her location. He tried to keep her on the line so they could finish the trace, but she smelled a rat and hung up. She said she would call back the next day with instructions.”

“Phone calls had to be traced by hand through the old Crossbar switching mechanism back then. Took several minutes,” Sol said.

“Then what happened?” I asked Rita.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean
nothing?”

“She never called back. Mannix finally called the cops.”

“I wonder why she didn’t make the call,” I said, more or less to myself, but Rita answered.

“She didn’t call back because she was dead.”

“It’d be hard to make a phone call if you’re dead,” Sol said, lighting another cigar.

Rita ignored him. “Two days later the police informed Mannix that a woman had been found murdered in a motel. The cops pulled the phone records and saw the calls she’d made to the studio—they saw the same phone numbers you have, Jimmy—and figured she had to be the one who’d offered to bump off Roberts.”

“Was Jerome nervous about Roberts being in town?” I asked.

“He said he wasn’t, said they got calls like that all the time. Mannix figured it could be real, but Jerome thought the whole thing was a hoax all along.”

We didn’t speak for a moment. Sol toked on his cigar, Rita sipped her Chablis, and I sat quietly mulling over what Jerome had told Rita.

Sol rested his cigar on the rim of an ashtray and looked across at me. “Well, there goes your case, Jimmy,” he said.

“Why, Sol? Jerome still could’ve done it.”

“No, not with Mannix, Strickling, and the police involved. Besides, we know about the calls to MGM, so his story rings true. That means only one man had a strong motive to kill Vera.”

“What are you saying?”

“That Alexander Roberts killed Vera before she could kill him.”