The Last Embrace (15 page)

Lily picked her way back to the Special Effects hangar. Just outside Max’s office, she heard a man say, “Show some imagination, for god’s sake.”

“It’s because of my imagination that I can’t do it, Mr. Sullivan.”

Walking in, Lily saw Max and another man examining a terrarium. Amid the rocks and dirt were two lizards, the kind that sun themselves on every L.A. hillside. Someone had painted blue and red stripes down one lizard and green and purple spots on the other. Lizard One also had an Elizabethan collar around his neck and a spiky club at the end of his tail. Lizard Two sported metallic spikes down his back and horns. Lily could see the white dots of dried Elmer’s glue where the reptiles had been modified.

The man in the suit turned to Lily.

“Don’t you think they look like dinosaurs? All he has to do is rile them up a little so they’ll fight. Shave eighty thousand dollars off production costs, just like that.”

Red blotches were visible on Max’s high, pale forehead. He compressed his lips. “I can’t do it, Mr. Sullivan.”

“Why not?” The man was apoplectic. “I’ve done all the prep work already, you lazy sonovabitch.”

A vein began to throb at Max’s temple. Lily remembered him explaining the weeks of painstaking sketches, the building of the armature, the search for the perfect fur or skin, the obsessive detail and love lavished on his creatures. She wondered how much of Max’s soul got whittled away with each of these battles, how long before hunger won out over creative pride. Or did these high-strung artists just crack?

“Because they’re
lizards,
” Max said.

The man couldn’t believe his ears. “Of course they’re lizards. Dinosaurs were lizards too.”

Max gazed at the terrarium. One hand went out. Lily saw his long delicate fingers twitch. He had the hands of an artist. She imagined those hands holding a length of fine wire, stretching it taut. The deft way he’d wrap each end around those ink-stained fingers, the look of intense concentration on his face, much like the one he wore now.

“But lizards can’t move the way I want them to,” Max said, his voice low. “They can’t show anger, fear, hunger, greed, malice. They’ve got no personality.”

“Personality?” screamed the producer. “We’re talking about a fucking dinosaur movie.”

Max didn’t say anything. He heaved up the terrarium and brought it down on the producer’s head.

Dirt, rocks, reptiles, and shattered glass rained down. The producer let out a cry—half gasp, half scream—as blood flowed from his forehead. He backed away slowly, raw fear in his eyes.

“You belong in a cage, you know that, buddy?” He spit out bits of glass. “They told me you were temperamental, but you’re off-your-rocker dangerous.”

Max dusted his hands, squatted, and picked up a shard of the terrarium glass. It glinted in the light. He straightened, pointed it at the producer, and said, “Get out of my office, you fat prick.”

“Jesus Christ,” the producer yelped, running away.

The door slammed. Lily heard a clink as the shard of glass hit the floor. The animator sagged into a chair. He gave a low moan and passed one hand across his forehead as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

“You could have killed him,” Lily said, recalling the red haze in Max’s eyes right before he exploded. Now she saw only a spent, bewildered man. It was like he was two different people.

“They’ll fire you,” she said.

He laughed, a queer light suffusing his face. “They can’t afford to.”

“Why not?”

The animator pushed himself out of the chair and walked over to the closet, where he got out a broom and dustpan and began sweeping up the mess.

“Because I make them a lot of money,” Max said, his voice a curious mix of boasting and loathing. “Haven’t you heard? After Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen, I’m the best trick man in the business.”

Lily wondered if Max had killed Kitty and the studio had covered it up. The phone rang, startling them both.

“This is Doris. Mr. Rhodes would like to see you in his office right away,” a female voice announced.

Max turned, making it difficult for Lily to hear the rest of their conversation.

“Who was that?” Lily asked when he hung up.

“She works for the director of Studio Security.”

Lily wondered why Max didn’t look worried. “I
told
you. That producer ran right over there and complained.”

Max waved away her protests with a languid hand. “It’s only a few scrapes. Let him take his piece-of-shit idea to one of the B outfits, I don’t need him. Besides”—Max examined Lily—“that’s not why they called. Doris said I’m supposed to bring the girl who’s been roaming around asking questions.”

Lily’s stomach plummeted. They must have spies on the lot. Or had Myra reported her?

“The studios are paranoid,” Max explained as they walked over. “Anytime anyone gets killed, it’s bad publicity. The almighty Hays Code.”

“Wasn’t he some congressman?”

“Will Hays founded the Production Code, which lays out what can be shown on screen.” He ticked it off. “No immorality, adultery, homosexuality, drug use. The villain must pay. Good must triumph.”

“What does that have to do with a murdered starlet?”

“The ‘morals’ clause. Actors sign contracts promising not to do anything immoral.”

“How ridiculous. Hollywood is rife with sex, drugs, and excess.”

“It’s hypocritical, I know. But the studios are terrified the government will step in and say,
okay, you obviously can’t police yourselves, so we’re going to decide what movies you can make.
”

“So the studio would go to great lengths to cover up a scandal?”

“Absolutely. I’ve heard that the dossiers Rhodes keeps on people would put Stalin’s secret police to shame.”

“What does he use them for?”

Max gave a sick grin. “He doesn’t. They’re his insurance that the stars behave.”

The security chief was behind closed doors on a telephone conference when they arrived. Twenty minutes passed. The secretary apologized for the delay. After a half hour, Max grew annoyed. “I’ve got a picture coming out in January,” he fumed, “and I can’t waste time like this.”

When the door finally opened, Lily was surprised to see the man who had sidled around the desk in David O. Selznick’s office asking questions. She could tell he recognized her too. Lily recalled an old OSS saying: if caught, stick as close to the truth as possible.

“Haven’t I seen you before, Miss…?”

“Kessler,” Lily said.

“That’s right.” Frank Rhodes smiled. “In David’s office. And now you’ve popped up again like a bad penny. Why are you nosing around asking questions and churning the gossip mill?”

“I’m a friend of Kitty’s family in Illinois,” Lily said. “We’re just trying to get some basic information…”

“Max, how did this woman get on the lot?”

“She’s visiting me.”

“I wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”

“I won’t have you dragging this dead actress through the mud. We at RKO stand for decency and good clean entertainment. The last thing we need is a scandal.”

“Has there been any suggestion of a scandal?” Lily asked.

“Of course not. But you can’t just come here and harangue people. You’re not with the police. You’re not a family member. You’re nothing but a troublemaker. Max, I’m banning her from the lot.”

“I’m sorry for the disturbance,” Lily said, “but perhaps you could tell me what your security man found when he searched Kitty’s room.”

Rhodes’s eyes were flat and distant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“His name was Clarence Fletcher. He showed the landlady an RKO card.”

“The police already asked me about that. We don’t have anyone here by that name.”

“So someone impersonated an RKO employee to gain access to Kitty’s room?”

Rhodes checked his watch. He looked impatient to have them gone. “I don’t know.”

The secretary popped her head in. “Mr. Rhodes, your stepson called to cancel lunch.”

A look of aggravation crossed the security chief’s face. Lily imagined an insouciant young man with a peeling nose and white flannel pants, holding a tennis racket. Hollywood’s Golden Youth.

“Call him back and tell him he’s got twenty minutes to get here or he won’t see his allowance this month.”

The secretary withdrew.

“What if this fake RKO fellow was the murderer?” Lily continued stubbornly.

“Then the police will catch him and the landlady will identify him,” Rhodes said. “One hates to speak ill of the dead, but Miss Hayden wasn’t too choosy about the company she kept.”

So much for not dragging his actress through the mud.

“What do you mean?” Lily feigned innocence.

“She consorted with gangsters, Miss Kessler. And there’s a gang war under way in this town right now. Max, tell her what I’m talking about, will ya?”

He pressed a button and the secretary appeared to herd them out. As the door closed behind them, they heard Rhodes get on the phone, but his voice was too muffled to make out.

They picked their way through a group of vestal virgins marching toward a Roman temple. At the studio gates, Max waved to the guard.

“How’s it going, Charlie?”

“That’s a hell of a ‘special effect’ you got there, Max. Good day, miss.” The guard doffed his hat. “Say, my son’s a nut for those movies of yours. Spends all his spare time sketching dinosaurs and giant apes. Any chance I could bring him around one afternoon?”

“Sure thing, Charlie. Be delighted.”

Max turned to Lily. “Where are you going now?”

“An errand,” she said, thinking of the address the makeup girl had given her.

T
his is the street,” Gadge said as they turned onto Morton Street. “I’m sure.”

Harry’s voice rose in exasperation. “You were sure last time too. And the time before that.”

“I remember that dry cleaner’s. There was a cat in the window.”

Shaking his head and muttering about snipe hunts, Harry parked and they set off along the sycamore-lined street.

He’d spent most of the previous day chasing photos for the Florence Kwitney murder investigation and they’d run out of light before Gadge could show him where he’d found the shoe. Today he swore not to rest until he had some answers.

They’d started at home this morning, trying to pin down exactly which day Gadge had made his discovery. The kid didn’t know, but he produced a copy of
Treasure Island
that he’d checked out of the library the same day.

“Jesus Christ, kid.” Harry chuckled. “You don’t have a roof over your head, but you’ve got a library card. If that don’t beat all. How long they let you take books out for these days?”

“Two weeks.”

“God bless Andrew Carnegie and his libraries. So we count back from the due date.”

The card was stamped
OCT. 22,
so they subtracted fourteen days, which meant Gadge had found the shoe early on the morning of October 8. The papers said no one had seen Kitty Hayden since the evening of October 7. Harry had a hunch she’d been abducted and killed that night. Possibly from this very street.

Now they scanned the sidewalks, gutters, and vacant lots for any evidence to support their theory. The Santa Anas had shaken loose the season’s first leaves, making a brown carpet that crunched underfoot. How the heck were you supposed to find anything under all that? Harry thought, kicking the leaves and feeling melancholy at this annual reminder that all things die.

A hundred yards below Hollywood Boulevard, they came to a row of tidy shops.

“Here,” Gadge said, stopping. Harry examined the sidewalk but saw nothing—no thread, hair, dried blood, earrings, scraps of cloth. It was a long block. He imagined Kitty hurrying home late at night. Then a sudden assault, in a lonely place with shuttered shops and no witnesses.

Harry questioned each shopkeeper, but as he expected, they all closed by ten p.m. and didn’t recall anything unusual that evening. Walking back to the sidewalk, he hiked up his pants and got on his hands and knees for a beetle’s-eye view.

“You sure the shoe was here?” he asked finally.

“Yup, and it wasn’t there at eleven the night before.”

“How’re you so sure?”

“The owner of that deli”—Gadge pointed to a store that Harry had just canvassed—“sometimes throws away perfectly good sandwiches. I waited until he went home at eleven to go through the trash.”

Harry pushed himself off his knees and dusted off leaf crumbs. He’d narrowed it to a seven-hour window—Kitty Hayden had run into trouble between eleven p.m. and six a.m. the next morning when Gadge found her shoe. Something bad had happened here, he could almost feel it.

He decided to give it one more try. Head bent, eyes scanning, hands clasped behind his back, he walked slowly to Hollywood Boulevard, then crossed the street and came down the other side. This time, he spied something wedged into a crack where the sidewalk had buckled from the tree roots. It looked like a big dirty pebble. He picked it up, saw that it was a button. Stylish. Carved of bone. A woman’s button. With a bit of dirt-encrusted red thread still in the hole. To match the red suit? Kitty Hayden’s body had been found a mile away. But the shoe suggested she’d tussled with her attacker right here. And now a button. Was it even hers? Harry scraped off grime with his fingernail. He needed to look at photos of the suit again. But first…

Harry slipped the button into his pocket and called Gadge. They hiked back up to Hollywood Boulevard and Harry studied the businesses on either side of the intersection. A greengrocer, a leather shop, a florist. Lots of offices. They all would have been closed by eleven p.m. Half a block down, Harry saw a nightclub called the Crow’s Nest. Bars stayed open late. Maybe a patron had heard something.

The sign on the nightclub door said
CLOSED,
but the front door was unlocked. They walked in.

The place smelled of last night’s sweat, spilled alcohol, and a miasma of stale perfume and smoke. In the dirty aquarium light, couples danced. A man sat at an upright piano, picking out tunes with one hand while holding a drink. Seeing Harry, he put down his drink and launched into “God Save the Queen.” He played atrociously and Harry thought he might be drunk.

There was a sudden shuffling on the floor. A wary watchfulness descended. The bartender, a handsome guy with a ruffled white shirt, plunged glasses into hot sudsy water. Harry made his way to the bar.

“I’d like to ask your customers something. It’s about a woman who’s mur…disappeared. I wanted to know if anyone heard anything unusual the night of October seventh out on the street. Like screaming or the sounds of a fight.”

“You a copper?”

“No. Just a…friend of hers.”

“And I’m Joan Crawford,” the bartender said. “Sorry, bud. I don’t know anything about your lady friend. And we’re closed.”

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s a private party. Didn’t you see the
CLOSED
sign out front? I suggest you leave.”

“Now, wait a—”

The bartender put down the glass he was washing and began walking around the bar. He was bigger and burlier than he had looked from behind the counter.

Harry said thank you, grabbed Gadge by the collar, and left.

Back at the car, he found his newspaper photos of the dead girl. Most of the buttons on the girl’s jacket had popped, revealing the blouse beneath. But one was intact. Harry held his button next to the glossy black-and-white image, feeling a strange tingling at the base of his neck. It matched.

The sign on the stucco building said
DOCTOR S. R. LAFFERTY & ASSOCIATES, DERMATOLOGY,
but the door was locked. Maybe Dr. S. R. Lafferty no longer helped girls in trouble. Lily was about to leave when the venetian blinds in the window parted and a pale doughy face looked out. Then the door opened.

“Yes?” said a man who wore stained hospital scrubs.

“A friend of mine sent me…I’m looking for Dr. Lafferty…”

Lily wasn’t sure how to go on.

“We’re closed for lunch,” the man said, staring at her lower belly as if she’d drawn a crimson bull’s-eye in lipstick.

“I can come back.”

“If you’re here for a skin care consultation, please call us for an appointment.”

“That’s not what—” Lily began.

The man craned his neck around her to see if she was alone.

“What do you want?” he asked, his words fast and insinuating.

The man leaned over and coughed so violently that his body convulsed. Pulling a wadded handkerchief out of his pocket, he hacked and hacked. There was dirt under his fingernails. She prayed this wasn’t Dr. Lafferty. Lily wanted to flee, but she pushed on.

“I was hoping to talk to the doctor about some trouble I’ve been having.”

He licked his lips. “How long has this been bothering you?”

“Nine weeks,” she said, feeling that they were talking in code.

A flicker passed over his eyes.

“The doctor can help you, miss. Come back after two.”

Lily was back at two-fifteen after eating an egg salad sandwich and drinking a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. This time there was nothing sinister—she walked into a clean and pleasant reception area appointed with magazines and ashtrays. Nurses in crisp white uniforms called patients. One woman had a pimply teenage girl with her. Several older women with bejeweled, liver-spotted hands hid their faces behind hats and oversized dark glasses. The man with the begrimed fingernails was nowhere in sight.

Lily signed the patient roster and waited for her name to be called. After an hour, she checked with the receptionist and was told the doctor would see her last because she didn’t have an appointment.

Finally, the nurse led her into an examination room filled with glass cabinets and advertisements for face-care products. Twenty minutes later the doctor came in.

He was in his sixties, but his hair and eyebrows were dyed the color of shoe-black. His cheeks were ruddy, the skin clean-shaven, and he smelled faintly of antiseptic. The skin around his eyes was stretched taut, giving him the look of an aged doll. When he picked up a clipboard, Lily noticed a tremor in his hand.

“Welcome. I’m Dr. Lafferty. What can I do for you, Miss…Corcoran?” he said, using the name she’d given.

Lafferty peered at Lily’s skin. “Your complexion looks fine to me. Bit pale, maybe.”

“A friend told me about you,” Lily said. “I have a problem.”

He looked up. “Ah, yes. I believe my associate mentioned a girl. Lie down on that table and let’s have a look at you.”

Lily froze. “But—”

“Do you want to take care of this or don’t you?” he said sternly. “It’s all the same to me.”

Lily felt trapped. She didn’t like being alone in an examination room with this strange doctor, couldn’t bear the thought of him touching her.

“This isn’t a pelvic exam, Miss Corcoran. No need to take your clothes off. I’m just going to palpate your belly, see how far along you are.”

Reluctantly, Lily lay down on the stainless steel table, holding her legs tightly together and smoothing her skirt down as far as it would go. She tried not to shudder as she felt his hand slide under her girdle, her fist cocked for the moment when his hand would stray lower and she’d punch him in the mouth.

He probed the contours of her stomach, face furrowed in thought. The hand withdrew.

“All right, you can sit up now.”

Lily feared Dr. Lafferty had caught her out, and started preparing a lie in her head.

“You’re ten weeks pregnant,” the doctor announced with authority.

Lily couldn’t believe that he’d take her money and scrape up her insides when she wasn’t even pregnant.

“We can help you,” he continued. “It’ll be a hundred fifty dollars. Cash. What do you say?”

Lily was so stunned she couldn’t say anything.

“Don’t look shocked. You girls think it’s fun and games. Now you’ve got to pay the piper.”

Lily wanted to slap his face. Instead, she smiled.

“Do you see a lot of girls like me?”

He gave a sandpaper laugh. “More and more.” He shook his head. “I reckon it’s the war that did it. All you gals getting jobs and running around on your own.”

Seeing something in her face, he added, “Mind you, I’ll do anything I can to help a girl in trouble. And it’s not for the money, because there isn’t any. Not after the precautions I take.”

“I bet the studios send you business.” Lily inclined her head west and smiled enigmatically, letting him decide whether she meant facials, nose jobs, or abortions.

“They’ve got accounts here,” he said, adding with sudden suspicion, “Who’d you say sent you?”

“A friend from Hollywood.” Lily felt her way through the conversation. “She might have gone by the name of Doreen.”

A strange light flashed, then banked, behind his eyes.

“Don’t recall anyone by that name.”

“Kitty, then,” said Lily, watching him.

“Nope,” he said.

Dr. Lafferty pressed an intercom and said, “Reginald, Room Three, please.”

Again, she noticed the tremor in his hand, shuddering to think of him performing surgery.

Lily had sensed the air in the room shift as soon as she mentioned the name Doreen. She felt pretty sure that Kitty had been here, using her real name.

“Miss Corcoran, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t think I’ll be able to help you after all. And I’m a very busy man. Good day to you. My associate will see you out.”

He left and Lily, her heart galloping in her chest, made to follow him. She took a step and ran smack into the man in the orderly’s outfit. A hand with dirty fingernails gripped her wrist, tightening until her flesh burned.

The walls echoed with silence. It was late afternoon, no one left in the building. Reginald hauled her to a back door and shoved her out. She stumbled and fell to her knees, found herself in an alley. The man stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

“You don’t want to get on the doctor’s bad side,” Reginald said. “He’s got friends who could make life difficult for you. Now get lost and don’t come back.”

Lily retreated to a safe distance. She’d blown her cover by uttering Doreen’s name. This was her last chance to goad Reginald into revealing anything useful. In daytime, here in suburban Culver City, Lily felt perfectly safe.

“Or what?” she taunted. “You think you can take care of me the way you did Kitty Hayden? Did she die on Dr. Lafferty’s operating table? You don’t care about the girls you butcher, do you? So long as you get paid.”

“Miss, are you okay?” came a quavering voice from across the alley. An elderly woman in a flowery print dress stood on her porch.