SIX
The man in Edith’s office had broad, impossibly straight shoulders and a figure tapering to a point, his ankles pressed together. He looked like he’d been built to be driven into the ground – or, I thought once I heard his German accent, a vampire’s heart.
Edith, every color of springtime captured in the scarf draped over her pale gray suit, made the introductions. ‘Your timing is perfect,’ she said. ‘This is Aaron Ludwig, who will be directing Streetlight Story.’
Ludwig moved with the restrained grace of a ballet dancer. He gazed at me through disinterested blue eyes beneath a lacquered swoop of black hair. I said it was a pleasure to meet him.
‘You are a liar, Miss Frost.’
Not the reply I anticipated. The air rushed out of my lungs as if it had remembered other plans. Watching me fumble for a response, Ludwig’s expression softened marginally.
‘If it truly were a pleasure, you would recall we have already met, if briefly. At the home of Salka Viertel.’
I should have considered that possibility. Salka was nominally a screenwriter – Greta Garbo scripts a specialty – but of late she’d taken on a more important role, doyenne of the community of European emigrés fleeing fascism. Her Santa Monica home had become a gathering place, her Sunday salons a refuge where exiles could exchange news, advice, and word of job opportunities, Salka serving as an informal Works Progress Administration to help her colleagues get hired on at the studios. I still stopped by some Sunday afternoons when I craved Continental company and a slice of gugelhupf.
‘My apologies,’ I said, a faint memory stirring. ‘You were called something else.’
‘Luddy.’ He spoke the sobriquet with mild distaste. ‘My given name is Ludwig Aaronofsky. Salka advised me to Americanize it. My friends always called me Luddy, but as this is such an informal country, that courtesy is now extended to one and all.’
‘I so wanted to see your film. Salka described it to me in detail.’
He sniffed. ‘I’d ask which one, but here I am known only for Serpent in the Garden. A trifle of a love story involving mesmerism. Paramount threatens to make an American version, but with your Production Code the more … intimate scenes would be impossible to recreate, and without them the film has no point. Do not allow me to detain you ladies. I am here to reacquaint myself with Edith’s handiwork.’ Luddy – now I was calling him that, too – swept an aristocratic hand over the sketches strewn across Edith’s desk.
‘Take your time, Luddy. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.’ Edith drew me toward the window. I could see Oblath’s, where my ordeal began, across the street. ‘How was your weekend, dear? What did you think of Midnight?’
A short, dismissive sound came from Luddy’s throat. I couldn’t tell if it was directed at Edith’s sketches.
‘I haven’t seen it yet,’ I said contritely. ‘It wasn’t a very romantic weekend. We saw Sergeant Madden instead.’
Another noise emanated from Luddy, this one indicating interest. ‘If I may ask, what did you think of the film, Miss Frost?’
It wasn’t one of Paramount’s, so I felt free to give it both barrels. ‘The story was rather silly.’
‘Ah, but a film is not the story, is it? A film is the mood. The story merely the frame. Von Sternberg is without peer at creating mood, filling the screen with interest. I have seen this picture. You are correct about the story.’ He waved his manicured nails at me as if they were roses to be cast at my feet. ‘But the images! The long shadows, the agony the father feels about his son’s fate taking physical form on the screen. Most instructive.’ He held up one of Edith’s sketches – a woman rendered in bold, vivid strokes wearing a long black dress with delicate double straps crisscrossing over the open back – and raised a judgmental eyebrow. ‘For the nightclub, ja?’
‘Yes. We can, of course, make adjustments, bearing in mind our budget and time constraints—’
‘Always it is money in America, or the lack of it. Every decision made on that basis.’ He let the sketch fall to the desk and shrugged. ‘I, too, will use shadows on this next trifle. Mainly to conceal the lack of money, but also to evoke. To build the landscape of our story, such as it is. It is a dark, urban nightmare, all driven by the torment in Jim’s head.’
I started. Luddy pronounced the character’s name with a soft ‘J’ and an elongated ‘E’, making it sound like he’d said Gene. At least to my overly sensitive ears.
Luddy raised another sketch aloft. It depicted a cute house dress, pastel pink with a pattern of blue daisies. Edith held her tongue, awaiting his comments.
‘I confess this one eludes me, Edith. I suppose I pictured the woman as more of a wanton.’
‘Again, I’m happy to make alterations that suit your vision of the character. Based on my reading of the script, I saw her as a policeman’s wife. Loyal, devoted to her husband.’
‘Yes, yes, but every woman has desires. A repressed desire is still a desire. On some level we must understand this woman wishes to be ravaged by Gene.’
There was that mangling of the moniker again. I refrained from correcting his pronunciation, chewing my cheek instead.
Luddy tapped Edith’s insufficiently immoral sketch against her desk. ‘Always we must remember Gene is the infection in this picture. A sickness. He taints the virginal wife and the city itself. The city’s shadows reach out for him, to destroy him, and always he runs. The city, it distorts itself around Gene. Fighting him as a healthy body fights disease. We have shadows to save money, and to cut at him. This … Gene.’
Please stop saying that name, I thought, unable to look at Edith.
‘This is why we must have someone likable to play him,’ Luddy continued, oblivious to my distress. ‘They insist I cast a villain in the role. A “heavy”. But I ask you, what kind of devil introduces himself by slipping his hand in your pocket?’
‘Who is playing the part?’ I blurted desperately.
‘Chester Clement,’ Edith said.
I couldn’t help wincing. Chester Clement as Gene? That plodding Paramount staple who’d been menacing actors from behind plaster boulders since the 1920s? Who wound up in jail at the end of every picture? Luddy, I hated to admit, had a point.
‘Better to use the actor playing the detective, Eddie. This Robert Preston has a garrulous quality I like. Better still to cast someone else entirely.’ Luddy shook his head. ‘To my mind this Gene is a disease. Always a disease introduces itself subtly. A cough, some fatigue. You never see the disease until it has claimed you, when you slice open the body and find the tumors. Gene must be a friendly man, charismatic, handsome. We like Gene. We wish for him to succeed. But then, when the truth of his character is revealed, when we learn who Gene truly is, we are devastated.’ He picked up a discarded sketch. ‘I do not care for this nightclub gown at all.’
I spun away from the window. ‘Would you excuse me? I have to go.’
Edith took me by the elbow and spoke into my ear. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m not sure. But I should do what I came here for and talk to that bum writer. And while this is hardly the time, I also wanted to ask a favor.’
I raised the subject of Addison appearing as an extra in Streetlight Story. ‘If I know Max, he’ll get a kick out of the notion,’ Edith said airily. ‘I’ll put it to him today.’
As I took my leave, Luddy never glanced at me. Edith walked to her desk, reasserting her dominance. ‘Tell me how you see this dress,’ she said to Luddy, ‘and I will move heaven and earth to bring it to life. Within our budget, of course.’
Typewriters thundered at Clyde Fentress’s building, the Underwood army definitely on maneuvers this Monday morning. But no sound emerged from his office. The blinds were closed, too, not a promising sign. Maybe he’d holed up inside to wait out a hangover, I thought, recalling Nap Conlin’s words. I pounded on the door loud enough to wake the dead drunk.
It flew open instantly. ‘Judas Priest, sister, you knock
the door like the fuzz.’
Taken aback, I uttered the only thought in my head. ‘You’re not drinking.’
‘Not yet, anyway. Why, who you been talking to? Unless we’ve met before?’ Clyde Fentress’s voice was reedy and raw, as if he didn’t use it much. He had the close-cropped haircut familiar from countless prison pictures, scalp and temples shining aggressively under a tight bristle. I wondered if his maintaining that style meant he planned on returning to stir, or if he’d simply gotten used to it. To provide contrast, he wore an obviously silk purple necktie knotted with a four-in-hand along with a matching silk pocket square. He’d cultivated an image, I understood now, of a man from the wrong side of the tracks now riding those rails first class.
While I puzzled all this out, he appraised me with eyes the color of a file baked into a cake, eyes that made it clear nothing I might say or do would impress him. I swallowed hard.
‘We haven’t met, Mr Fentress. I’m Lillian Frost from Modern Movie.’ I blew the dust off a can’t-miss dodge I’d deployed before. The prospect of talking to a fan magazine cracked many a stony Hollywood heart. ‘I thought I’d try to catch you while I was on the lot. We wanted to feature you in a story about former convicts who have rehabilitated themselves by writing for pictures.’
Fentress grunted. ‘You talking to all the brethren? Bob Tasker and Ernie Booth, too?’
Knowing everyone appreciated a solo turn in the spotlight, I said, ‘This would mainly be about you. You’re the true success story. A happy marriage, a new picture about to start shooting.’
The second-story man turned second story man waved me into his office. ‘Come into my cell. Better appointments than the ones I’m used to.’
The room smelled fusty, and Fentress didn’t bother to open the blinds. When he shut the door the office immediately felt close, an ominous charge hanging in the air.
I needed a moment to get my bearings. ‘I read the script for Streetlight Story.’
‘Whadja think?’
Don’t give him an ounce of satisfaction. ‘Very interesting. Max Ramsey tells me it’s based on an actual bank robbery.’
‘Yep, back in ’36. Truth of the thing was hushed up. It’s being hushed up again thanks to those yard bulls at the Breen Office. Those censors live to take the teeth out of a story. Then my partner George Dolan got a hold of it, put in too many goddamn jokes. Lots of comic relief.’
‘I like comic relief,’ I said.
‘Then hell, maybe George is right. What say you leave those remarks out of your little article?’ He auditioned a smile. I envisioned it on the far side of a gun and suppressed a shiver.
‘Let’s talk about the truth of the thing, then, and get the facts on the record. How did you come by them?’
‘The brotherhood. Guys like me, living on the outside now. You can walk out of prison but you never leave that world behind. It’s a world that’s often ignored. So I file reports on it. Like George used to do when he was a reporter, only I put ’em in pictures instead of in print. More people see ’em that way.’ Another vulpine flash of teeth. ‘Everybody likes pictures.’
‘Who told you about this particular robbery? And what really happened?’
‘It’s a funny story.’ He stretched out his arms as if yawning, then abruptly seized the cord on the blinds. Sunlight flooded the room, forcing me to blink. I squinted through the dancing dust motes and realized it hadn’t been the darkness giving the room an aura of danger. That sense of menace emanated directly from Clyde Fentress, who now studied me curiously.
‘My guys tell me almost everything, y’see. Plenty of them are still working, if you understand me. And the ear I got to the ground brings me the rest. All of which means … I know who you are, Miss Frost.’
A rattle as he flicked the blinds shut again, prompting a new round of frantic blinking. He was playing me like a fiddle, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop him.
‘Not just that you pal around with that costume lady, always wears dark glasses. And not just that you had a bit of luck with some crimes came up and got a taste for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I also know you’re Detective Gene Morrow’s girl. Or at least you think you are.’ His laughter sounded like chains being dragged across a stone floor.
Every instinct told me to flee, but my legs wouldn’t follow instructions. And some dim, stubborn part of me refused to leave empty-handed. ‘You’re so smart. Much smarter than me. Why not just tell me what you know? Tell me the truth about the California Republic bank robbery of 1936.’
Fentress shook his head. ‘Sorry, sister. Wait for the picture. Go see it with Morrow. But I’m telling you right now, don’t watch the screen. Watch Morrow’s face. That’s where the story is.’ He pointed at his typewriter. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get back to work. Put some hardboiled stuff down on paper, make it so tough even George and the Breen boys can’t neuter it. You can show yourself out.’
I headed off the lot in a hurry, away from the grim specter of Clyde Fentress and his death rattle laughter. Without thinking I left through the nearby Van Ness gate. The shortest route back to where Rogers waited with Addison’s car meant passing within view of Fentress’s window. On the off-chance he was peeping through the blinds – he seemed the type – I instead took the long way around. The stroll gave me the opportunity to settle my nerves, and to purchase a newspaper for the ride back to work. I needed a distraction, and my usual one-sided conversation with Rogers wouldn’t turn the trick.
My stratagem worked for all of twenty seconds. Then I saw Nap Conlin’s eye gazing out at me from one of the inside pages. Someone had closed it for good. Saddest of all, the story never mentioned his acting career.
Los Angeles Register March 27, 1939
EX-CONVICT MURDERED
LOS ANGELES, MAR. 26 (AP) – The body of Aloysius Conlin, age 42, twice convicted of armed robbery, was discovered in the downtown Los Angeles hotel where he was living. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said Conlin’s body was found on Saturday evening in his room at the Hotel Maitland on East Fifth Street, where he was also employed as handyman and night clerk. Initial reports indicate he was beaten to death sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Police are pursuing several lines of inquiry. Conlin had served terms at San Quentin and Folsom State Prisons.
SEVEN
The hard stare I sent to my friend Violet Webb conveyed a simple message. Choose your words carefully.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘What did you think?’
Vi bought herself time by taking a long pull on her ice cream soda. Finally, she closed the Streetlight Story script and pushed it back across the drug store counter toward me.
‘Honestly? I kind of liked it.’ She slumped forward, her blonde ringlets drooping. ‘I read it awfully fast, though, with you hanging over me like a vulture the entire time.’
‘I was reading a magazine.’
‘You pretended to read a magazine. Whenever I laughed you looked to see what page I was on.’ She drew on her straw again, downing the dregs of her dessert with a thirsty slurp. ‘But don’t listen to me. I’m probably wrong.’
‘That’s what annoys me. I kind of like it, too.’ I flicked the script’s cover, now sticky with drops of Royal Crown cola. ‘You knew Eddie was still alive at the end, didn’t you? That part’s pure hokum.’
‘Sure. But grade A hokum.’ She rubbed her shoulders with excitement. ‘Couldn’t you just see the look on that big dope Jim’s face when his old pal Eddie waltzes in and arrests him when he’s trying to make time with Eddie’s wife?’
‘Yeah. That’ll be some swell moment.’
I braced myself against the countertop and considered the unthinkable: another ice cream soda in which to drown my rapidly multiplying sorrows. Vi chucked me on the arm. ‘Chin up, Lillian. Let’s talk about the picture we did see instead of the one they haven’t made yet.’
That picture had been a poultice on the wound of my afternoon. Having spo
tted the article on Nap Conlin’s murder, I’d telephoned the police from Addison’s. I was eventually routed to a bored detective named Tate, who spoke in a garbled tone that sounded like he’d bolted a glass of Bromo-Seltzer just before lifting the receiver. He was unimpressed by my tale of encountering Nap on the Paramount lot a day – if not mere hours – before his demise, looking to relay some juicy criminal tidbits to a man who could spin them into studio gold. I spelled Clyde Fentress’s name and told the detective about his criminal record. I heard no pencil scratching on Tate’s end of the line. He said in a patronizing voice he’d look into it, reassuring me Nap had likely met his end at the hands of a fellow tenant at the flophouse where he’d breathed his last. ‘It’s the kind of place where you scrape the soles of your shoes on the sidewalk when you step outside. Still, thanks for the tip.’ Tate didn’t bother to conceal his earth-rattling belch as he hung up.
Despondent at this reaction, I sought comfort where I always did, at the pictures. Another telephone call summoned Vi. The petite blonde had been one of the flock of lost sheep I’d met at Mrs Lindros’s boarding house, and we’d remained friends after I’d moved out and she’d found a modicum of success singing with a dance band. She had readily assented to a late matinee of Midnight, set amidst Paris society with repartee courtesy of Messrs Wilder and Brackett and wardrobe by Edith Head. Except in the case of Claudette Colbert, who for some reason insisted on having another designer, Irene, tailor her togs. (‘She simply hasn’t taken a shine to me,’ Edith once said with a shrug.) Vi joined me in hissing La Colbert’s every appearance, much to the consternation of those around us, although I had to admit to myself, if never to Edith, that she looked divine.
‘It was all just heaven,’ Vi said dreamily. ‘Her hotel room, her clothes—’
‘Her Don Ameche, coming to her rescue.’
‘I won’t look as good when my Don Ameche comes for me, although I’ll bet my Don comes in his own taxi, too. You’re lucky you have Gene.’
Script for Scandal Page 5