Murder on High (25 page)

Charlotte took a sip of her drink, and felt a blessed peace settle over her. Ron’s presence had always had this effect on her. He was an unwavering ally—sometimes a ruthless ally, as well—in a town where unwavering allies were often hard to come by.

To her astonishment, she felt the sting of hot tears welling up in her eyes, and she wiped them away. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s being here, I guess. I haven’t been here in years. It’s a relic of the old days in the midst of a city that I hardly recognize any more. I won’t say
good
old days.”

“Some of them were good, Charlotte,” he protested. “A damned sight more than just some, for that matter.”

“That’s true,” she said, but she didn’t want to think about the good ones, for fear that she would start bawling. She had never been one to dwell in the past, and now she blinked away her tears.

“You’re looking very well, Charlotte,” he said.

“Thank you.” She wanted to be polite and return his compliment, but there was no point in lying to someone who knew her well enough to see right through her, acting abilities or no.

For a few seconds there was an awkward silence. Then Ron waved his drink in a gesture of understanding. “I’ve lost a hundred and six pounds since last fall. Probably more by now. I’ve stopped getting on the scales.” He nodded at the fire. “I get cold easily. I hope you’re not too warm.”

The room was stifling, but she shook her head. “What’s wrong?”

“Prostate cancer. They say I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance. But I’m pretty sure I’m on my way out.” He smiled ruefully. “Another old dinosaur about to turn up its heels.” He paused to light a cigarette, which he held in an ivory cigarette holder.

“Oh, Ron,” she said. “I’m sorry.” But she could see that it was true. His leathery skin, cadaverous-looking even in health, had gone black under the eyes. “If there’s anything I can do …”

“No,” he said. “I’m pretending that it’s not happening. As you can see,” he added, waving at the array of papers on the coffee table, the gold cuff links in his French cuffs flashing. It was typical of Ron that even while relaxing, he was a model of sartorial elegance.

“Speaking of business …” Charlotte began.

Ron lifted a manicured finger. Then he went over to the phone, and dialed his office. Charlotte heard him ask his secretary to have a courier bring the Iris O’Connor file over to the bungalow immediately.

She raised an inquiring eyebrow as he hung up the phone.

“I have something you might be interested in seeing. The courier will be here in twenty minutes. Why don’t you take a walk around the grounds? I have to take a little nap. I’m not very strong these days.”

He went over to a rattan chaise in the corner, and lay down on his back, his big hands folded over his chest. Within minutes, his now-gaunt features had gone slack in sleep.

While he slept, Charlotte finished her drink, and then quietly slipped out, closing the door behind her.

Not willing to even venture a guess at what kind of a rabbit Ron was going to pull out of his hat, Charlotte spent the time wandering around the grounds, reliving her memories: ordering up from Greenblatt’s during her first weeks in Hollywood (the suites were all equipped with kitchens, but she couldn’t cook any more then than she could now); visiting here from the East when she was married to her second husband; honeymooning here after her marriage to her third husband; and then, only six months later, staying at the bungalow after the announcement that she was seeking a divorce. And later, the secret trysts with Linc, in the romance that had captivated a nation. Nobody recognized her now. Nor did she recognize anyone else, though she knew some of them must be famous: men in ponytails and jeans and young women dressed as if they were soliciting on Eleventh Avenue. The hotel may have been back in, but it was on cruder, harsher terms than in the glamorous, leisured days of the past. Even the light in the lobby seemed more glaring, and modern. The golden, dusty ambience of old Hollywood was still to be found, but it wasn’t in the computerized records at the front desk or the hip soiree on the lawn, but in the hush of the thick-walled halls, the feather-duster palm trees swaying languidly in the breeze, and the homey comfort of the bungalows.

As she came around the side of Ron’s bungalow a few minutes later, she saw a young man coming up the walk with a file folder in hand, and she hastened her step. She got to the door just as he was leaving.

“Perfect timing,” Ron said, closing the door behind the courier.

“Did you get your catnap?” asked Charlotte.

“Mmmm.” He nodded. “Feel as good as new,” he said cheerfully, adding, “For about forty-five minutes, that is.”

She looked at him with sympathy, then nodded at the folder. “So what have we got?”

“Iris may have forsaken her old life, but she wasn’t incognizant of her place in history,” he said. “Ever since she left Hollywood, she’s had me keep a clipping file. I hired a clipping service for her.”

“Did she ever come out to look at it?”

“Once a year. She’d stay here, and we’d go over her affairs. She usually came out in February or March so we could take care of tax business at the same time.” He went over to the chair, and took a seat. Then he placed the file on the coffee table and opened it up.

Charlotte stepped over a pile of papers on the floor, sat down in the other chair, and put on her reading glasses, half glasses with tortoise-shell frames that gave her a professorial air.

“These are the clippings.” He started leafing through the, articles. “As you can see, it’s just the usual stuff. Until about two years ago, when we started getting these.” He lifted an article out of the file. “This one’s from
Variety
.” But there were dozens of them.

It was a classified advertisement, with the bold-face heading
CASH REWARD
. The rest of the ad read “Information wanted on the whereabouts of Iris O’Connor, Hollywood screenwriter from 1939 to 1952.” This was followed by a phone number with a Hollywood exchange.

“This was the first. As you can see, it’s dated February, 1988. They ran in the entertainment press for about four months, and then stopped.”

“Did you ever call the number?” she asked.

“Yes. The party wouldn’t give me his name. The reward was substantial: five thousand dollars.”

“Someone wanted to find her badly.”

He nodded. “I offered to hire a private detective to track down the person who had placed the ads, but Iris would have nothing to do with it. I think she knew, or suspected, who was trying to find her.”

“Do
you
know who it was?” she asked, knowing that even if he did, he wouldn’t have told her.

He shook his head. “But I know who might know.”

“Who?” asked Charlotte.

“Charlie Perkins,” he replied.

“Charlie Perkins!” she exclaimed, repeating the name out of the past. At one time, it had been one of the most hated—and feared—names in Hollywood. A former FBI agent, Perkins had been HUAC’s chief investigator in Hollywood; some would have said its chief inquisitor.

He nodded.

Why would Charlie Perkins know who was after Iris? she asked herself. She stared at Ron’s long, bassett hound face, and he stared back as if to say, “Figure it out for yourself.”

“Iris testified in executive session,” she said.

Ron nodded. “Didn’t it ever occur to you to wonder why she and the others with whom she testified were permitted to testify in closed session while everybody else had to go to Washington and take the witness stand?”

“As I recall, there was some explanation; that it was a rehearsal for a public session, or something. But what you seem to be suggesting is that she made a deal: closed session in exchange for naming names.”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” he said.

Iris had left Hollywood shortly after testifying, and it was widely assumed that she had been blacklisted, but if what Ron was hinting at was true, maybe she had left because she couldn’t live with herself anymore.

“Are you telling me that Iris was a friendly witness?” Charlotte asked, talking as much to herself as to him. “You are! And you’re also telling me that someone had been trying to find her. Probably someone whose life was ruined as a result of her HUAC testimony.”

Ron sat quietly smoking his cigarette.

God knows, enough lives were ruined, Charlotte thought. She also thought of what Tracey had said about Pamola being a ghost out of Iris’ past who had come back to haunt her. Maybe his comment had been more prescient than either of them had realized at the time.

“You’re getting warm,” said Ron as he took a handful of peanuts. “You haven’t come by your reputation as a detective undeservedly.”

“Some detective. The thought never even occurred to me that Iris might have left town for another reason. But how do you know that the person who’s looking for her is looking for her because of her HUAC testimony? Why not a long lost cousin or someone she owes money to? And why all these years later?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m just guessing. The first ad appeared in February of 1988, just after an article appeared in the L.A.
Times
containing previously unreleased testimony from the executive session in which Iris testified. The reporter had gotten the transcripts through the Freedom of Information Act.”

“In other words, the person who placed the ads might have just found out that Iris was a stoolie.”

He nodded. “A lot of people were out turning over rocks after that article appeared: scholars, victims, relatives of victims. Iris wasn’t the only one who was exposed as a friendly witness.”

“You’re the one who should be the detective, not me,” she said. “I didn’t know about any of this. I must have been in New York when the article was published. Did you represent her at the executive session?”

Ron nodded.

“Then you know who this person might be.”

He nodded again. “But you’re not going to get any more out of me. I’ll get you Perkins’ address,” he said.

“I’m surprised he’s still alive,” Charlotte said. Somehow she always expected villains like Perkins to have succumbed to their own venom.

“Alive and well, like a lot of other scoundrels,” said Ron.

Going over to his desk, he placed a call to his secretary, and returned a moment later with a slip of paper bearing an Orange County address. “Let me know how it goes,” he said.

Charlotte rose to leave. “Ron, about the cancer …” she said. “I hope …”

He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just as well. I don’t have any fight left in me anymore.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I don’t care,” he explained. “Like this case I’m working on now. A rock musician who smeared shit all over the walls of a hotel room. In the old days, when people got into trouble, they at least did it with style.”

“Polito in a pinch,” she said, repeating a slogan from the old days. Then she reached out—it wasn’t up anymore, she noted sadly—to give him a hug.

“Don’t ever say Ron Polito never did anything for you,” he said as he held out her jacket for her.

“You know I would never say that.”

As he closed the door behind her, she thought of how many secrets he would be taking to the grave with him.

13

After leaving Ron’s office, Charlotte bought a map and located the street where Perkins lived. She felt like a Nazi-hunter who’s finally discovered that the villain he’s been searching for is living in a suburb of Buenos Aires. She drove out there after getting a bite to eat at the hotel. Perkins lived with his wife in a tract house in a development; like a thousand others in his town, like a million others in California. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a small backyard with a high fence. Talk about the banality of evil, she thought as she rang the doorbell. She hadn’t called in advance for fear that he wouldn’t want to see her, but she needn’t have worried. He welcomed her as warmly as he might have an old high-school acquaintance. As far as he was concerned, they were both products of the same era; the fact that they had played on rival teams didn’t seem to matter. After proudly introducing her to his wife, he ushered her into a wood-paneled family room, where the television was tuned to a popular quiz show, and asked his wife to bring them some cake and coffee.

Though she had seen Perkins’ photograph in the newspapers many times during the blacklist era, Charlotte had never actually met him before. He still looked much the same as he had then, with the addition of a couple of extra chins. He belonged to the type that could be labeled genial all-American: tall, beefy, and blond (now gray). He looked like everybody’s favorite high-school football coach.

Actually, there were many people, even those who had played on the opposing team, who had not disliked Perkins, recognizing that although he had chosen a contemptible career, he had carried out his job with competence, and, to the degree that it was possible, fairness.

“I’ve come about Iris O’Connor,” she said, once she was settled in on the couch with her cup of coffee.

“What about her?” he asked.

“I want to know how she testified. Everyone in Hollywood thought she left town because she was an unfriendly witness, but I have recently learned that she was in fact a friendly witness.” She didn’t let on that her reason was Ron Polito.

Perkins gave her an appraising stare from the depths of his plastic-covered recliner. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference if I tell you,” he said finally. “The records are all open to the public now anyway, if you wanted to take the time to seek them out.”

“I’m in a hurry,” she snapped.

Perkins leaned his head back against the recliner, and stared out at the spinning wheel on the game show. “As I recall, she testified in Los Angeles in the winter of 1952, in executive session.”

Charlotte nodded.

“I actually remember it very clearly,” he said. He looked over at Charlotte and smiled. “She testified third; she was wearing a green suit.”

He was playing this for all he could, Charlotte thought.

“She named all the usual names—no surprises there.”

Those who were subpoenaed had often tried to get off the hook by naming self-confessed Communists who had already been disgraced in the eyes of the Red-hating public, and had nothing more to lose.