Fentress grimaced as if the repast didn’t agree with him. Josie, it was now apparent, could say anything to him and he wouldn’t raise his voice in response.
‘Mr Fentress.’ Edith dabbed the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin. ‘What exactly was the basis for your Streetlight Story scenario?’
‘You haven’t cleared Clyde’s name yet,’ Josie said. ‘I thought those were the terms of the deal.’
He’d told Josie about our arrangement, then let her stick up for him. Fentress looked distinctly queasy as he uttered a half-hearted backing of his wife’s defense: ‘Yeah.’
‘You’re hardly in a position to be making demands, Mr Fentress,’ Edith said. ‘After all, you’ve been sharing a mistress with a notorious underworld figure.’
Fentress scoffed. ‘That’s the story you’ve got? Pass.’
‘It’s no fabrication, I’m afraid. Although the initial reference to Mr Siegel’s involvement was pure hearsay.’
A breath lodged in Fentress’s throat, his eyes briefly becoming unmoored from logical thought. Josie’s orbs, meanwhile, flashed dangerously. ‘Bugsy Siegel?’ she gasped.
‘Don’t call him that,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t care for the nickname. I had no cause to believe what I heard about him and Sylvia, until Mr Siegel contrived to meet me and demanded to know why I was interested in her.’
Fentress sat back and rubbed his face. He seemed genuinely taken aback by this revelation. Josie, too, had been temporarily struck dumb.
‘It puts you in a difficult position, being linked romantically to – what’s the term? – a gangster’s moll.’ Edith then took an elaborate pause. ‘Only you’re not, are you, Mr Fentress?’
This time I had trouble breathing. I’d had no advance notice of Edith’s line of attack; what she was saying came as news to me.
‘It’s only speculation on my part,’ she explained slowly, taking her theory for its first spin. ‘But once Lillian discovered Miss Ward was not a writer, I realized you likely expected that information to come to light. How, then, to explain your relationship with her? Suppose you told a story people would readily believe.’
‘A story people already believed,’ Josie said.
‘Precisely my point. Once Sylvia was murdered, you knew you would come under suspicion. Perhaps the wisest course of action would be to embrace the gossip commonly accepted as fact on the lot. Namely, that your putative protégée was, in truth, your mistress. A fabrication now considerably complicated by Mr Siegel being her actual paramour.’
Edith did not target her words at Fentress but at Josie. Josie, after all, wore the pants in the marriage. Clyde Fentress, looking ludicrous in his knee breeches, was ready to crawl off. The hard case, holed up in a glamour pad.
‘What, then, was the late Sylvia Ward to you?’ Edith continued. ‘She was not your student. Neither was she your lover. Yet you lied to protect her – and yourself. Who, exactly, was Sylvia Ward?’
‘Too bad you can’t ask her,’ Fentress said churlishly.
‘I don’t have to. Considering her relationship with you and the fact she was well informed about the California Republic bank robbery, I can hazard a guess. Sylvia Ward was the daughter of one of the thieves. Likely Borden Yates.’
From the look the Fentresses exchanged, I knew Edith’s guess was on the money. I somehow prevented myself from yelping ‘What?’ aloud.
‘A thief in your original story has a child, Mr Fentress,’ Edith said. ‘That detail remained in subsequent drafts of the script. Mr Dolan, in fact, said Miss Ward lobbied for its inclusion. That’s because it’s a detail drawn from life. Her life. When I learned Mr Yates fathered multiple children out of wedlock but maintained ties with those children, I drew that conclusion.’
Borden Yates, who repeatedly took advantage of young women like yourself, Miss Frost, Frady had said. And how had Florabel described him? The soft-hearted soft-touch lothario. Damn.
Fentress finally nodded. ‘I’ve known Sylvia since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. That bit in my original story where Lefty’s kid wants to play cops and robbers? Sylvia did that when she was little.’
‘Then she’s the one who told you Gene was behind the bank robbery?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Fentress hammered the syllable home. ‘I’d sold the story and was working with Dolan on the script when she came to me. She’d heard I’d written it. A mutual acquaintance I’d stupidly shot my mouth off to tipped her I’d spun the robbery that killed her old man into a picture.’
‘Nap Conlin,’ I said.
‘Another pal from the old days. Used to run with Bord Yates and me. Sylvia tried to find the poor bastard work once he’d caught on with Central Casting. I’d lost touch with her. But once Nap told her about the picture she showed up at my door, demanding to know who killed her father. She never bought the official story, always believed there was another man involved with the job.’ Fentress’s brow furrowed, the first indication of remorse I’d seen from him. ‘Sylvia gave me hell for not going to the law with what I knew and cashing in on it instead.’
‘Yes, and why didn’t you?’ The only thing more astonishing than Josie’s endless stream of jibes was her husband’s martyr-like ability to absorb them without complaint.
‘I had no choice,’ he said flatly. ‘I didn’t have any evidence. And the cops would never go after one of their own.’ Fentress looked directly at me. ‘Because Gene Morrow planned and executed that bank robbery.’
‘You’re a liar,’ I spat. ‘Who told you that?’
Fentress leaned closer to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josie’s rapt expression. Even she didn’t know this part.
‘Who told me? Sylvia’s father. Bord Yates told me. He talked to me before the job. Didn’t give up any particulars, because Bord was a good egg and a solid thief. But he let on he had something in the works, something big that would net him a decent payday. He made it plenty clear whatever this thing was, it had been planned to the last detail by someone else – and he’d be protected. Who could protect him other than a cop?’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Then he never gave you Gene’s name.’
Fentress glowered at me before resuming his story. ‘I didn’t give it much thought at the time. Then, when the whole deal went belly up and Bord died, I looked at it with fresh eyes. Picked it apart. And realized Morrow’s the only cop it could be. He got the money, offed his partner, and took up with his wife.’
‘It’s not him,’ I said.
‘Believe whatever you want. I know what I believe, what Sylvia believed, and what’s going to be in the picture.’ He shook his head, possibly in awe, possibly in fear. Maybe both. ‘That was all that mattered to Sylvia. The picture. The idea that even if Morrow wasn’t called out by name, the truth of what he did would still be up there on the screen. She wanted him to know somebody knew. She wanted the movie made even more than I did, and I wrote the goddamned thing. She told me more than once Streetlight Story would be the only justice she’d ever get. And the poor kid didn’t live to see it.’
He pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the window to brood at the ocean. Edith sat worrying her napkin, doubtless appalled at the notion of untruths going into the world under the Paramount banner, while I remained stock still and tried not to cry.
Movies are what people remember, Sylvia had said that day in the drug store. When you’re sitting in the dark, you let yourself be vulnerable. You allow things in. And those things you carry with you.
Josie clapped her hands. ‘Well! Anyone for coffee?’
TWENTY-SIX
The long drive from Malibu proceeded in stop-and-go fashion as Saturday beachgoers headed back to the city, some pulling over to buy hamburger sandwiches for children turned brown as berries by the sun. The rhythm of the ride was also thrown off by the many theories caroming around my brain. Edith and I had been largely silent on the trip out. Not so anymore.
‘We know there’s a fourth man, and Gene isn’t
him,’ I said emphatically. ‘Then who is it?’
‘I’m considering the possibilities now.’
‘Start with Clyde Fentress himself. I haven’t ruled him out.’ I realized to my chagrin I was almost yelling. ‘He knows everybody involved with the robbery. He needs a hit movie and decides to turn the rumors about Gene into a script as his own private sick joke.’
‘It’s something of a risk, but I imagine he longs to get away from his wife.’ Edith waved blithely to the caravanning family she almost sideswiped.
‘Or it could be Bugsy Siegel.’
‘Benjamin. Don’t get in the habit of using that sobriquet.’
‘He was in Los Angeles in 1936. He knew about the robbery when I mentioned it. And he could easily offload twenty grand with his gangland cronies.’
‘Don’t say “grand”, either. Theoretically, Miss Ward could have told him about the robbery. On the other hand, given Mr Siegel’s position in the criminal hierarchy, it’s credible Mr Yates would feel “protected”, as he allegedly told Mr Fentress.’
‘Everything with Clyde is “allegedly”. The only thing down on paper is his lousy script, and it’s a tissue of lies.’
Another name occurred to me, but merely considering it made my heart flutter. Trying to speak it aloud brought an acrid taste to my mouth. This suspicion I couldn’t yet share with Edith.
Suppose Fentress is correct, and the fourth man actually is with the LAPD. Only the machine in Clyde’s head pulled a punch card casting the wrong cop in the role. Could the fourth man be you, Captain Byron Frady? Would that account for your intense personal interest in the case, your dislike of Gene, your presence everywhere I turn? They say you’re corrupt. How corrupt, exactly? Enough to plan and execute a robbery, with other men doing your bidding? You knew Giuseppe Bianchi. You arrested him yourself. Could you have sent him, and Hoyer and Yates, into the California Republic Bank? And just when a path to the police chief’s office opened for you, this damned movie resurrected your crime. Now, you need to turn the script’s fiction into fact, so an innocent man can pay for your sins.
I didn’t dare give my wild surmise weight by voicing it. But I had to say something. ‘What I don’t understand is why, if Sylvia wasn’t Clyde’s mistress, she’d go to the trouble of dummying up those script pages.’
Edith leaned forward and squinted. ‘Is there any sand left on the beach, or is it all on this windscreen? Those pages were for Mr Dolan. He’s the writer Miss Ward was sleeping with. I daresay Mr Fentress didn’t even know.’
I sat back in stark raving confusion as Edith rubbed futilely at the glass.
‘Miss Ward knew the script would be extensively rewritten, and while Mr Fentress would have some say, much of that work would be done by Mr Dolan. You heard Mr Fentress. She regarded Streetlight Story as her sole chance at justice. She had to monitor the changes to the script and ensure the character based on Detective Morrow remained responsible for her father’s death and was punished.’ She glanced apologetically at me. ‘She had a connection to Mr Fentress. She needed to forge one to Mr Dolan. To work her way into his affections, she began by convincing him she truly was an aspiring writer learning her craft from Mr Fentress. Mr Dolan may have been the only person who believed that story, partly because she fabricated those pages to augment the illusion for his benefit. He acknowledged he incorporated her suggestions as the script was revised.’
‘OK,’ I said slowly. ‘But how do you get from that to Sylvia and Dolan sleeping together?’
‘Simple,’ Edith replied. ‘He kept the pages.’
Late on Saturday afternoon, the Paramount lot was like an open-air cathedral, a place of stillness and grandeur. At least I saw it that way. Edith, as usual, viewed it pragmatically. ‘Max is screening rushes from Streetlight Story. He wants to be reassured about the wardrobe and the overall look of the film. You’re welcome to watch, if you’d like.’
‘I’ll be along shortly. I’d like to make a quick stop first. At George Dolan’s office.’
I listened at the scribe’s door until I heard a sound, a faint exhalation that could have been a sigh, or a sob, or a figment of my imagination. Only one way to find out.
He wore casual trousers and a mint green golfing shirt, as if he’d been dispatched to Wardrobe with the instruction ‘Make him look like he’s enjoying himself.’ Feet propped on the windowsill, he watched the inactivity on the lot.
‘First person I’ve seen in hours, and you don’t even work here. I was hoping you were Clyde. Falling behind on this script since he up and vanished yesterday.’
‘I just saw him.’
Dolan swung his chair toward me. ‘Where is he?’
‘With Josie.’
‘I don’t envy him, then.’
I had to agree with him on that score. ‘He confirmed he wasn’t sleeping with Sylvia.’
‘Oh? Yeah, I always took that as so much chatter.’
‘But someone else was.’
‘This is what you and Clyde talked about? With Josie there?’ I let the silence expand. ‘I’ll bite. Who was it?’
Bugsy – sorry, Benjamin Siegel, I thought, but I’m not here to tell tales out of school.
‘You know who it was.’
Dolan pushed back from his typewriter. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t worry. Clyde doesn’t suspect a thing. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it. But the officers investigating Sylvia’s death need to—’
‘Ah, Jesus.’ He hammered his fist onto the desk, his gaze fixed on the wall and likely some point in the past. As he moved, I caught a trace of a vaguely familiar odor, both fussy and masculine; a mixture of lotions from some luxe barber shop. With a start, I realized where I’d encountered the near-exact combination of fragrances before: on Ben Siegel.
Was that by design, Sylvia? Did you cajole poor, pliable Dolan, the budding California dandy, into using Bugsy’s preferred products, so as not to carry the scent of one lover to the other? Oh, you clever, doomed girl.
‘How could I have been such an idiot?’ Dolan massaged his eyes. ‘Actually, I know how. Not like it’s complicated. A young girl hangs on your every word, laughs at your stories, finds excuses to be alone with you, it puts a charge in you. Even when you’re happily married and not looking to stray. Sometimes, goddammit, it’s just nice to be asked. Not that she was interested in me,’ he added with a generous serving of self-pity.
‘What was she interested in?’
‘Writing.’ Dolan pronounced his profession with contempt. ‘All she wanted to talk about was Streetlight Story. What scenes was I thinking about, how about this piece of business, what did I plan to do with this character? I figured out she had a one-track mind and broke it off with her. It didn’t change anything. She was still yammering at Clyde. He’d make script suggestions and I’d know they came from her.’
‘When did you stop seeing her?’
‘A few weeks ago. Around when Streetlight Story’s script was frozen.’
You mean around the time she didn’t need you anymore, I thought, and wondered if their parting had in fact been mutual. If they’d parted at all; I only had his word for it.
‘Anyway, it was for the best,’ Dolan went on. ‘I made a mistake. I don’t want to hurt Gloria. That’s my wife. She’s done nothing to deserve this. Lord knows Sylvia didn’t deserve what happened to her, either.’
Sylvia, who died believing the worst of Gene, and hating me for defending him. No, she didn’t deserve that at all.
Dolan laughed bitterly as he picked his eyeglasses up from the desk. ‘She was always pushing me to gussy myself up, Sylvia. New clothes, new cologne. I finally change my glasses and she’s not here to admire them. Gloria doesn’t like them.’ He slipped on handsome horn-rimmed spectacles that didn’t suit his face; point to Gloria. ‘It’s all such a waste. You read her pages. Sylvia was a good little writer. She could’ve gotten somewhere. Maybe farther than me.’
He still bought the balderdash Sylvia had handed him; she’d played him completely for a fool. Once again, I didn’t tell him the truth about Sylvia’s script pages, this time out of respect for both her memory and her achievement. Maybe Dolan was right, and she did have a skill for telling stories. The one she’d spun for him, after all, still held up.
I stopped at a pay telephone and let the police know to expect George Dolan’s call, and to get in touch with him if they didn’t receive it. I hiked across the lot in the last of the late afternoon sunshine, accompanied by lengthening shadows and the echo of my footfalls. I could have been the only person at the studio and in the city of Los Angeles. The solitude was just fine by me.
The lights in the designated screening room were down. I slipped inside and eased the door shut. Turning, I slammed my shin into the closest chair and muttered an oath. So much for a seamless entrance.
In the projector’s flickering light, I caught sight of a commotion in the front row. Max Ramsey clumsily untangled himself from Edith and vaulted two seats over, smoothing what remained of his hair. Edith fumbled with her glasses.
All the while I stood motionless. Thunderstruck. Like a child walking in on her parents putting out Santa’s Christmas presents – or perhaps engaged in a more adult activity. My face flushed hot and bright. I calculated the odds of being able to exit the room before hell broke loose.
Then Max erupted. ‘Lights!’ he bellowed into the speaker connected to the projection booth, then wheeled around to glare at me. His crooked tie waved from beneath his askew collar. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘I invited her, Max.’ Edith spoke calmly while adjusting her hairpins.
‘What on earth for? We’re working here!’
‘We can continue working.’
Max grunted. ‘Not anymore. I’m not in the mood.’ Noticing his tie and collar, he restored himself to his former dated elegance. ‘We can discuss Brenda’s wardrobe on Monday. I want to screen all the footage again. The pieces aren’t coming together properly. Luddy’s approach is too esoteric, too … European. I have to look at the story from a new angle so it makes sense. I need my writers, but Fentress has disappeared.’
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