Script for Scandal

by Renee Patrick

‘Let’s you and I change that right now, Bugsy.’

  The gym emptied so fast you’d think a fire alarm had been pulled. Albert stood stock-still. Maybe he’d read in the gangster guidebook that playing dead might save him. Siegel straightened up. Somehow, he looked more menacing out of his fighter’s stance. ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘You heard me right. Otherwise you wouldn’t be asking me to repeat myself.’ With a smile, Gene held his detective’s shield aloft. ‘You see this?’

  ‘Yeah? So you’re a cop.’

  His badge still in the air, Gene knocked on the gym door. A fearful attendant opened it. Gene tossed the badge to him, then turned back to Siegel. ‘Now you see I don’t have it. Because I’m not talking to you as a cop.’

  ‘It don’t wash off that easy, you know.’ Siegel smirked.

  ‘It’ll have to do. I don’t have a badge. And neither one of us has a gun.’

  ‘Maybe my friend Albert here’s packing heat.’ Siegel pointed at Albert, who at that moment longed to vanish from the face of the earth. ‘Christ, Albert, relax. You better sweat that much when we play handball. Fear not, copper. Albert’s a nancy-boy studio man. Lodestar Pictures’ finest.’

  Gene walked slowly toward Siegel. When he stood paces away, he started talking – and Siegel immediately spoke over him. ‘Are you a member of the club? Because if you’re not here in an official capacity—’

  ‘It won’t take long to say my piece.’ There was a faint tremor deep beneath the solid ground of Gene’s voice; Siegel’s gambit had thrown him.

  ‘Then say it.’

  ‘You accosted someone recently.’

  ‘Who in particular?’

  ‘Call this a blanket statement that applies to all of them.’ Gene grinned, regaining some of his swagger. ‘Keep to yourself. Don’t pester those people again. Or you and I, Bugsy, will have business that can’t be settled on a handball court.’

  ‘Where, then? Boxing ring? Target range? Pistols at dawn, like in the pictures?’ Siegel bent to retrieve one of the medicine balls, hefted it. ‘I leave people alone when they leave me alone, Detective Morrow.’

  As he pronounced Gene’s name, he shoved the medicine ball with a swift flick of his hands. Gene, anticipating the move, dropped his own hands and caught it. I couldn’t be certain from my position, but I thought he winced as he did it. Gene dropped the ball to the floor, where it landed with a meaty thud that echoed around the room.

  ‘You’re talking about the Frost woman,’ Siegel said.

  ‘You’re the one who bothered her,’ Gene replied.

  ‘I asked her a question. It was not answered to my satisfaction. If I choose to ask her another one—’

  ‘It goes through me. Consider me her representative.’

  ‘You dance as well as her?’

  ‘Try me, Bugsy. I’ll lead. Until then, stay away from her.’ He closed the distance between them and stared directly into Siegel’s blue eyes.

  Siegel stared right back. ‘I feel threatened. I thought this city had reformed, turned over a new leaf. You seeing this, Albert?’

  Albert, dismayed he hadn’t been forgotten, cleared his throat. ‘Now fellas, there’s a bar upstairs—’

  ‘I told you, I don’t drink.’ From Siegel’s businesslike tone, you’d never guess he and Gene stood nose to nose. ‘I don’t appreciate being harassed in the middle of my exercises by a peace officer who’s not a club member. Here I am trying to preserve my health and discuss business with a friend—’

  ‘You mean pictures? I keep hearing you want to get into those.’ Gene also maintained an even keel as he spoke. ‘Yeah, I could see you playing a punk who dies one reel in.’

  Siegel bristled, the comment irking him more than the use of his nickname. ‘Not me. I stay alive right up to the weak ending Joe Breen makes ’em slap on the picture. No, my friend Albert Ryan here – you buy that Ryan nonsense? I mean, look at the schnozzola on that kid! – runs a profitable enterprise at Lodestar. I offer counsel to help keep it profitable. The landscape out there, it’s tough to read, labor-wise. Unions all agitating for a piece, now you got the threat of a new one just for extras.’

  Atmosphere players, I silently corrected from the heavens.

  ‘Can’t make a movie with a cast of thousands without those thousands,’ Siegel continued amiably. ‘I keep my ear to the ground, talk to both sides. At times of great unrest, people need friends. You and I, though, we’re not gonna be friends.’

  ‘No, we’re not. Stay away from Lillian Frost, Bugsy. Anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible.’

  ‘What I hear, you’re in no position to make threats. I get the sense the skids are under you and you just need a push.’

  ‘Funny, I hear the same thing. Lucky I don’t need a badge or any back-up to handle you. My best to your wife.’ Gene turned on his heel and walked out. The door slammed behind him so loudly I feared the building would come crashing down around us.

  A long, pregnant moment of silence, then Albert said with a strained laugh: ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Goddamned bum,’ Siegel spat. ‘Guy’s as bent as they come. Money squirrelled away from years ago. He better not have thrown me off my form. I came here to tan your hide today.’

  ‘You’ll still thrash me, Ben, and no mistake.’ Albert chuckled to chivvy the conversation in a different direction. ‘Let me say, we all appreciate you using your influence behind the scenes.’

  ‘The extras don’t want their own union. They may not have lines to read, but they’ve still gotta eat. They’ll listen to reason.’ Siegel continued staring at the door, in case Gene made a surprise return. ‘And I know you need the help. It’s not just your Bible picture. You’re working on the one about Andrew Jackson, right?’

  ‘Just got a great script on it.’ Albert preened a little. ‘Ben Hecht knocked it out of the park.’

  ‘Yeah, Hecht’s good. And that horse-racing picture, too. Needed a good hundred extras on it last week, I hear.’

  Albert frowned. ‘It couldn’t have been that many.’

  ‘Yeah, it was. Check your records. Ninety-two atmosphere players, twenty in fancy dress. Hell of a thing if they didn’t show up. I wanted to ask you, Al. Things are tight.’

  ‘You didn’t actually ask me anything there, Ben.’ A pause, then another of Albert’s stilted laughs, then an even longer pause. ‘What – what are you asking?’

  ‘For a loan.’

  ‘A loan. So you’ll pay it back?’

  Siegel finally turned toward him. ‘You think I’m unfamiliar with what a loan is? I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of finance.’

  ‘Sure you do, sure you – I just – how much did you want?’

  ‘Five thousand oughta cover it. Rates here at the club have been going up.’

  Albert’s laugh was low on vinegar now, coming purely out of reflex. ‘Have they? I haven’t been keeping track.’

  From the stairwell behind me came the soft tread of footfalls. When the attendant who had caught Gene’s badge spotted me, his eyes popped out of his head. ‘Miss? What are you doing here?’

  Albert craned his neck to peer up at me. I scampered into the stairwell before Siegel could do likewise. ‘I got turned around,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Trying to find the ladies’ locker room.’

  ‘Downstairs on your left. Are you a member of the club, miss?’

  ‘Yes. I forgot my card. Let me go to my car.’

  Ninety-two atmosphere players, twenty in fancy dress. There it was.

  I ran through the lobby without looking back to see if Siegel had emerged from the gymnasium. I didn’t stop running until I’d gotten into the Lincoln and barked at Rogers to drive. I didn’t want him to stop, not even for a red light, until I had safely reached Mrs Quigley’s, and had Edith on the phone, and could tell her I had not only solved the mystery of the California Republic bank robbery, but I also knew why District Attorney Fitts had reopened the investigation in the first place.

&
nbsp; Not bad for a Sunday, and a Palm Sunday at that.

  THIRTY

  Florabel Muir couldn’t join us until Monday afternoon, but when she did, she instantly transformed Edith’s office into an extension of a newsroom. To complete the illusion we only needed a few copy boys, the thrum of the presses, and a fugitive murderer concealed in a rolltop desk.

  The veteran reporter was on the telephone, her eyes fixed on the pearl stud earring she’d removed and placed in the center of Edith’s desk. ‘How are you, Mike?’ she said down the wire. ‘Now don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to need to talk to the big fellow himself, or someone closer to Buron than you are. Nothing personal, you understand … Well, aren’t you a charmer? I’m happy to tell you why. I’m about to solve two of the District Attorney’s headaches at once and I want to make sure he knows where to address the great big favor he’s going to owe me.’

  I refilled Florabel’s teacup as she continued haggling. The lateness of our appointment had allowed me to spend the morning putting the finishing touches on Addison’s annual charity Easter egg hunt, which included tracking down the largest available huevos in Southern California so every child could easily find one. Sample hen fruit were being trucked in from Pacoima at that very moment. I also helped him unlearn all he’d been taught by Joan Crawford and Bette Davis during their acting lessons, replacing it with the only counsel I could think of: ‘Don’t look at the camera. Let the camera look at you.’

  ‘The best advice you could have given him,’ Edith reassured me, patting my hand. ‘The nightclub scene will be shot on Wednesday morning. Will Mr Rice be ready?’

  ‘No, but he’ll be there. How was the rest of your weekend?’

  ‘Not as busy as yours. I was here, finalizing Paulette Goddard’s wardrobe for The Cat and the Canary. As if anyone will notice her clothes with Bob Hope’s antics.’

  Florabel, meanwhile, was growing steadily angrier. I could tell from the fact she took off her other earring, pinning the receiver against her shoulder as she did so. Clearly she wanted a sense of balance as she vented her spleen. ‘Put him on, Mike. This is bigger than you, trust me … OK, fine. Got a pen and paper handy? Because you’ll want to have these particulars down when you convey the news up the ladder.’

  She winked at Edith and me, adjusted the pearl studs on the desktop, and let fly. ‘I will be reporting that a young woman named Sylvia Ward – you’ve read about her, she was recently murdered – presented herself to the District Attorney and pressured him to reopen the 1936 California Republic bank robbery case with an eye toward investigating Los Angeles police detective Gene Morrow. Our good DA Mr Fitts is not in the habit of letting anyone who wanders in off the street dictate his office’s operation, but the Ward woman offered him a deal too good to resist. “Investigate Morrow’s role in the robbery and I’ll deliver Benny Siegel on a silver platter with an apple in his mouth.”’ She paused while poor Mike asked a flurry of questions. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? I can tell by the panic in your voice. Care for additional salient details? Ambitious Benny is strong-arming the studios by claiming to have pull in the upcoming Screen Actors Guild’s vote for a separate extras’ union. The Ward woman knew about it because she was feeding him the inside dope he needed straight from Central Casting … Sure, I’ll hold, Mike. You talk to whoever needs talking to. We don’t need to start the presses rolling yet.’

  She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It was easy enough to confirm Sylvia’s role with my lower-level contacts in the DA’s office, not that I’m about to tell Mike here that.’

  ‘It was clever of you, piecing it all together,’ Edith said to me.

  ‘When I heard Siegel’s encyclopedic knowledge of what pictures were in the works, especially which ones would require extras’ – to hell with calling them atmosphere players; extras was shorter – ‘I realized all that information went from the studios to Central Casting. Where Sylvia could pass it along to him.’

  ‘That also explains Mr Fentress being taken aback by news of Miss Ward’s relationship with Mr Siegel,’ Edith said. ‘She kept her plans completely separate. She wanted the movie to damn Detective Morrow’s reputation, but once she got involved with Mr Siegel she understood she was in possession of information she could barter with the district attorney’s office.’

  ‘The pieces were all there,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know how they were connected.’

  ‘It’s like Mr Ramsey said the other day in the screening room. Sometimes you have to look at the story from a new angle. I have to confess I’m still doing that.’

  I didn’t have time to ask Edith to expand on what she meant, or to dwell on the significance of Max Ramsey now being referred to in more formal terms. Florabel was rapping on Edith’s desk, commanding our attention.

  ‘Thank you, Mike. I applaud your sound judgment. Go ahead and put me through … And a good afternoon to you, Linus. I suppose Buron himself is indisposed? … You’ll always suffice, Linus, and I assume as you’re on the horn it means I’m on the money about this Sylvia Ward business. Considering how sadly she ended up, I’m also assuming your efforts to snare Benny Siegel have gone into a ditch … No, I can’t help you land him, but I’ll tell you what I can do. I will not only not write a story about how you botched this Siegel affair – he’s shaking studio executives by their ankles personally, by the way, and keeping whatever change falls out of their pockets – I will wrap up the California Republic bank job for you once and for all. One beaming bundle, that’s right.’ She paused, a cobra’s smile on her lips. ‘I will return every last cent of the haul and exonerate an innocent LAPD officer, Detective Gene Morrow, in the process. It’s a heartwarming tale if it’s played right, and seeing as I’m writing it, it will be. Of course, another officer will have to take the fall in Morrow’s place. But don’t worry, this one’s actually guilty. And even better, he’s already dead, so he won’t kick when you condemn him. The truth without fear of reprisal, which is the best truth there is … Oh, you bet I’ll hold, Linus. I’ve nowhere else to be.’

  This part of the arrangement set my guilt, custom-made for my every need by the Catholic Church, jangling. It required fudging the timeline of the money’s discovery, a falsehood Florabel was unknowingly perpetuating. And it meant deceiving Gene about my role in his redemption. I had asked him if he and Abigail would be willing to surrender the cash if Florabel could clear his name and end the DA’s investigation. I never let on I’d followed him to the Hollywood Athletic Club and eavesdropped on his chivalrous confrontation with Siegel, thus tumbling to Siegel’s racket. Gene’s initial response to my pitch had been mixed, but an adamant Abigail insisted they go along with it. I didn’t mind if Florabel got the credit, as long as she sold the package to the DA.

  She was doing so with tremendous persuasion. ‘Take this deal, Linus,’ she urged into the phone. ‘Buron knows something is better than nothing. A photo of the recovered cash will look terrific in everyone’s scrapbooks. You know where to reach me.’

  She hung up the receiver looking like a lioness that had feasted on a herd of hapless gazelles. ‘He’ll play ball. Fitts is a fool, but he’s no idiot.’

  ‘There’s still one issue,’ Edith said slowly. ‘We know what happened in 1936, but not in the past two weeks. Whoever killed Mr Conlin and Miss Ward did so for reasons that are, at best, peripheral to the bank robbery.’

  ‘Were they murdered because of the movie?’ I asked. ‘That sounds crazy.’

  ‘We have to at least consider the possibility.’

  ‘You can. I’m not.’ Florabel replaced her earrings. ‘I don’t know about pictures, but in real life, when there’s a killer in your cast of characters, odds are he’s the one who did it. Don’t let the slick suits and fancy colognes fool you. Benny Siegel is a killer.’

  Her certainty came close to clinching it for me. ‘Why would he do it?’

  ‘He found out Sylvia was talking to the DA.’

  ‘And Mr Conlin?’ Edith asked.<
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  ‘If I had to guess, I’d say Nap’s the one who told Benny what she was up to. Selling information was Nap’s stock-in-trade. He went to Benny with what he thought was a hot item and got killed for it.’

  It made sense to me. Edith, though, still seemed to be mulling it over, finding a fresh angle for the story. ‘I can’t believe all this mayhem is swirling around a Paramount picture. I’m indebted to you, Miss Muir, for clearing it up.’

  ‘And I have to thank you ladies. Putting the California Republic caper to bed is a juicy story all on its own. I’ll tell you, Edith, I could have used your expertise back in my early days. I was covering a murder in Salt Lake City, one involving the paper. A hefty fellow in the circulation department had married out of his league. His wife was some looker. He’d been driven so mad with jealousy he finally up and shot her. He’s immediately stricken with remorse and uses the last bullet in his gun to join her in the Great Beyond. Only he louses up the job. Circulation department was a mess, too, now that I think about it. All he can find to finish himself off is a safety razor, but as I said he was a bit porcine in nature. He’s got to hack at his wrists to get any traction.’

  ‘My word,’ Edith said, looking as green as I felt.

  ‘The editor orders me to grab photos of the wife, so he can splash them all over the front page. Nothing sells papers like a beautiful dead woman. Only there’s a cop outside the house. I slip around back, spy an open window, and swipe every picture of the missus I can find. Back out the window I go. I’m on the streetcar before I realize it.’

  ‘Realize what?’ I asked.

  ‘The circulation man had good circulation in one respect. He’d staggered all over the house leaking blood trying to kill himself. Great pools of it everywhere.’

  ‘And you’d walked through them,’ Edith said. ‘Leaving a trail of blood to the streetcar.’

  ‘Forget the trail of blood. I was wearing my favorite shoes. Beautiful champagne kid slippers. Never wore anything so comfortable. Like walking in your bare feet. And I’d ruined them, thanks to this fat man’s blood. I still think about those shoes. That’s where your expertise comes in, Edith. For future reference, is there any way to get bloodstains out of kidskin?’