by Donis Casey
The mention of motion picture producer Carl Laemmle gave Oliver confidence in Mr. Ruhl’s bona fides. “I’ve done some investigative work for Mr. Laemmle on previous occasions,” he said. He explained his terms and conditions to Ruhl, and when he padded his usual fee plus per diem by twenty percent, Ruhl didn’t blink, which told Oliver something about his prospective client.
Often very rich people would try to bargain him down or ask for a discount, which is why they were rich, Oliver figured. But Mr. Ruhl didn’t argue, so he was both rich and extremely motivated. He said to Oliver, “A couple of lovers walking on the beach found a skeleton this morning, buried under rocks below the cliffs of Palisades Park.”
Oliver had heard worse. “You want me to find out who it is?”
“I know who it is. I want you to try to find something that he stole from me.”
Oliver considered this for a moment. “You said they found this guy’s skeleton. And you know who he was?”
“Yes. They found his wallet on him. I know who it is.”
Oliver noted that the man’s aggressive attitude was covering a bad case of nerves. “And he stole something from you. How long ago did this happen? Long enough for him to thin out, apparently.”
Mr. Ruhl did not appreciate Oliver’s humor. “You don’t need to look so skeptical, young man. His name was Graham Peyton. He used to work for my company. He disappeared five years ago, along with a great deal of money and a book that belonged to me. The money is of little interest, but I would like to retrieve the book.”
“A book.”
“You’re very talented at repeating everything I say, if at nothing else. Yes, a book. A ledger, actually.”
“How much money did he get away with?”
“I told you, I don’t care about the money.”
“Peyton may have cared, and a lot of other people too.”
“All right. About fifty thousand.”
Oliver gave low whistle. “Somebody may have taken a notion to conk your boy over the noggin and buy himself a ticket to Santiago. Or for fifty big ones, Peyton could have decided to hand his wallet to some schmuck, push him over the cliff, and take a steamer to South America himself. Besides, if this ledger has been missing for five years, you have obviously been able to get along all right without it. Why is it so important to get it back after all this time?”
“The ledger contains some very valuable information. When Peyton disappeared, it was generally supposed that he skipped and took the book with him, perhaps with blackmail on his mind. After a few months with no contact, I began to suspect that Mr. Peyton had come to a bad end. He did not keep the best company. Still, I’ve had people looking for him all this time. When I learned this morning what had become of him, I wasn’t surprised. Peyton was a shady character.”
“Mr. Ruhl, if Peyton took the ledger from you five years ago, he probably sold it to someone or someone found it and kept it after he disappeared. The likelihood that it can be found is slim at best.”
“Mr. Oliver, if he sold it or the wrong person found it after he died, I’d know.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I’d be dead.”
“Well, now you’ve got my attention, Mister. What is in this book that is important enough to kill for?” The moment he asked the question, he knew the answer. He took a breath. “Mr. Ruhl, you say that the police discovered the remains at the foot of the palisades this morning, yet you already know who it is. Could it be that you know how he got there because you put him there?”
Ruhl looked shocked. “Certainly not. I have friends in the Santa Monica Police Department who were kind enough to inform me of the deceased’s identity. It is generally known among my circles that I have been looking for him for a long time.”
“Before I take on the job, I’m going to need a little more information, then.”
Ruhl sat back and perched his forearms on the arms of the chair. “I was given to understand that you are…let us say, nonjudgmental about a person’s line of work. If that is not so, tell me now.”
“Mr. Ruhl, if it weren’t for people’s vices, I wouldn’t be in business for long. As long as it doesn’t involve killing people, I’m not interested in how a man makes his living.”
His answer seemed to satisfy Ruhl. “You have not been in the Los Angeles area for long. Have you ever heard of K.D. Dix?”
Oliver got a sour feeling in his stomach. Perhaps he wasn’t as blasé about a person’s profession as he had thought. “K.D. Dix runs whores, mostly for studio bigwigs and money men, and has a profitable side business turning dirty money into clean money for rich people who got rich the wrong way. I’ve never had the pleasure, if you can call it that, and as far as I know, neither has anyone else. Of course I’ve heard of him. Big operation, but no one seems to know Dix himself. What does he have to do with this?”
“K.D. is my employer, and your client, if you decide to take the job.”
“The ledger belongs to Dix?”
“It does. It contains potentially damaging information about some very powerful men.”
“If we are going to work together then let us not get off on the wrong foot by not being perfectly honest. If you are K.D. Dix, then say so.”
“That is an amusing notion, Mr. Oliver. No, I am not K.D. Dix. I have been with K.D. for many years, however, and am in my employer’s complete confidence.”
“Why didn’t your boss come himself?”
“My employer prefers to shun the limelight. I handle most of K.D.’s business, public and private. I have men at my disposal who can take care of some of my less savory chores, but I want an outsider for this particular task. I also wanted to meet you in person, and judge for myself if you are up to the job. I want to find out what happened to that ledger, if it still exists, who has it, and if it can be got back. I’m willing to pay well to find out. K.D. particularly wants to find out if Peyton’s death was an accident or if someone killed him. And if so, who. If he was murdered and you can find out who did it, that greatly increases the chances of finding the book.”
“Mr. Ruhl, don’t you think that if someone was going to use the information in that ledger, they’d have done it by now?”
“Maybe. Maybe they don’t know what they have. Maybe it’s hidden somewhere, a safe deposit box, under a bed.”
Oliver sat back in his chair. Knowing the type of clientele who utilized K.D. Dix’s services, Peyton had most likely collected plenty of incriminating information over the years. Yet why wasn’t a ledger full of five-year-old dirt too old to be useful? It must hold proof of something shockingly illegal or shockingly filthy against someone shockingly rich or famous or powerful. If it came to light that a man frequented brothels, his reputation would suffer. But tax evasion and money laundering, now that was a thing that could ruin a man’s life, whether he was a mobster, movie mogul, businessman, or President of the United States. K.D. wanted that power back.
“What more can you tell me about the last days of Peyton’s life? When was the last time you saw him? Do you remember?”
“I don’t remember the exact day, but it was sometime in the last week of September 1921. I had given him the cash and an assignment to travel to Chicago to pick up a shipment of merchandise…”
Oliver interrupted. “What kind of merchandise? Hooch?”
Ruhl’s put-out expression scared Oliver a bit. “Does it matter?” Ruhl said.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I have to have all the pieces before I can put together a puzzle. You wanted someone discreet and I can guarantee you that I am.”
Ruhl still didn’t look happy, but he said, “Not liquor. We have a Canadian connection for that. Cocaine and heroin, mostly. The government controls on dope were getting stricter by the minute, so in ’21 we decided to open up our own supply lines. Just in the nick of time, too. By the next year it was
almost impossible to get the stuff legally, so our market exploded. Anyway, Peyton took the dough and was supposed to catch the train to Chicago the next morning, but our contact telephoned a couple of days later and said he never arrived. He didn’t catch the train. He never made it to the station, as far as we were able to tell. He was gone and so was the money.”
“And the ledger?”
“I know he had it in his house the day before. I saw it myself. I searched his house as soon as we knew he had disappeared, maybe a week later. But there was no trace of the ledger then. We removed everything from his duplex that could lead back to Dix. K.D. thought from the beginning that Peyton was dead. My boss had a soft spot for the guy and never did believe that he took the money and scarpered.”
“But you believe it.”
Ruhl didn’t opt for subtlety. “Peyton was an idiot. It’s a wonder somebody didn’t knock him off years earlier. He liked to seduce young girls with stories of love or fame or riches and then sell them to pleasure establishments. If some outraged father was after him with a shotgun I have no doubt he’d have purloined that money and sailed for Hawaii on the next steamer out of Long Beach. That’s why we’ve had our agents hunting for him overseas. Until now. Maybe the outraged father got him after all.”
“Did Peyton gamble?”
“Was he in hock to the Chicago outfit? Dix says no. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“So…he died before he got on the train to Chicago, and the ledger disappeared, sometime during the last week of September in 1921. I assume that once you knew Peyton was missing, you talked to all his known associates in the L.A. area.”
“Of course. No one knew anything.”
“Someone could have been lying.”
“No one would be stupid enough to lie to K.D. Dix.”
If Oliver agreed to take the job, he’d have to be careful. If Peyton had been murdered for the ledger, the killer would go to bloody lengths to keep hold of it. His hesitance must have shown on his face, because before he could refuse, Mr. Ruhl said, “I’ll give you five thousand to get started, on top of your usual fee. If you get the book back for me, I’ll give you a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus. More if you can find out what happened to Peyton.”
Oliver uncapped his pen. “Tell me everything you know about Graham Peyton.”
Boynton, Oklahoma, 1920
It Had All Started Five Years Earlier, in the Fall, when a Starstruck Girl Went to the Movies.
Blanche Tucker and her sister Alice Kelley had gone to the flickers at the O&B Theater in Boynton, Oklahoma, to see Stella Maris, with Mary Pickford and the ever-so-dreamy Conrad Terle. Their parents didn’t approve of their offspring going to the movies. Who knew what sort of unsavory ideas impressionable young people might pick up? But Blanche was staying at Alice’s house for a few days to help her with her three-year-old daughter, Linda. Alice was expecting again and hadn’t been feeling well. Blanche saw in the Boynton Index that the Mary Pickford flick had arrived in town at last. Boynton, Oklahoma, was the back-est of the back of beyond, and it took forEVER for anything cultural to finally show at the O&B. Blanche concocted an elaborate plan to sneak out of Alice’s house and see that motion picture come hell or high water before she had to go back out to the farm. She would not miss her one and only chance to see her very favorite actress in action.
But she never had to execute her plan. After three days of lying around, Alice was bored to tears and she made the suggestion that they go to the pictures herself. If there was one thing about Alice that Blanche had always admired, it was that Alice usually did whatever she felt like doing and managed to not just get away with it, but charm her way out of trouble, to boot. So Alice and Blanche made a pact one warm, hazy September afternoon. Blanche would not tell Alice’s husband or the doctor that Alice had been out of bed, and Alice would not tell their parents that she had corrupted her little sister by taking her to the purveyor of shocking ideas that was the O&B Theater. Blanche worried that Linda, little magpie that she was, would spill the beans. But Alice knew her baby well. A cautionary word and a box of Good & Plenty was enough to seal her lips. Linda was used to keeping her mother’s secrets, anyway. She had learned early that her collusion would always be rewarded.
After the picture ended, when the lights came up in the theater, Blanche was sure that her life had been changed forever. The divine Mary Pickford had played two entirely different characters—the sheltered, crippled Stella Maris, and Unity, the poor servant girl. Unity had fallen for her benefactor, the kindly, married John Risca, but John only had eyes for Stella. In the end, the selfless Unity shot John’s evil wife and then killed herself so that John would be free to marry his one true love, Stella Maris.
What a story. What sacrifice. What unbridled, unselfish love. What a gift Mary Pickford had, to be able to move and inspire one the way she had inspired Blanche. Blanche would do anything…
~Anything, Blanche?~
“Yes, anything at all.”
…to be able to evoke such emotion.
“Let’s get some ice cream before we have to go back to prison,” Alice said, jolting Blanche out of her dream.
Alice took Blanche and Linda to the soda fountain at the Owl Drug Store. They didn’t stop at Williams Drug Store across the street from the theater, where the entire Tucker clan usually shopped, lest they be recognized, in which case word of their outing would certainly get around. Not that Alice or her husband, Walter, would care, but it was just too much trouble to put up with the family’s disapproval. When the ice cream was finished, Alice took a tired Linda home, but she didn’t bat an eye when Blanche asked to stay behind for a while and peruse the magazines in the long rack by the front window. Owl Drug Store was smaller than Williams’, with a small soda fountain and two little round tables at the front. All around the back and side walls of the store, a U-shaped counter displayed an assortment of patent medicines and a few sundries.
Mr. Williams never seemed to mind when Blanche thumbed through the magazines, but five minutes after Alice left, the sour-faced woman who was working the register at the Owl Drug informed Blanche in no uncertain terms that if she was going to read all of the motion picture periodicals from front to back and get her finger marks all over then, she at least had to buy one.
Blanche felt her cheeks flush, but before she could respond, a voice behind her said, “I would be most pleased to buy any magazine the lady wants.” Blanche turned to find herself facing the handsomest, most sophisticated man that she had ever seen. His gaze lowered to her face and he tipped his white boater. Unimaginably dapper, dressed in his black suit and bow tie, he spoke with an exotic clipped accent. His blue eyes shone with good humor. “Kindly allow me to be of assistance, Mademoiselle.”
She had been told that she shouldn’t accept gifts from a stranger. She had been told a lot of things. But her parents were desperately old-fashioned, and Blanche could tell at a glance that this stranger was a gentleman. The only reason he could possibly have for offering to buy a magazine for her was his own natural gallantry.
After allowing him to spend a quarter on the October 1920 issue of Photoplay with the picture of Mary Pickford right on the cover, Blanche and the gallant gentleman sat down at the corner table and talked for half an hour, until Blanche feared that Alice would come looking for her. Graham Peyton was his name. He had seen her at the movie house, sitting two rows ahead of him with Alice and the little girl. He had noticed the tears in her eyes when her little party left the theater. It was a happy coincidence that he had run into her here at the drug store.
Graham was only passing through on his way to Los Angeles from New York City. He was a Broadway impresario, he told her, as well as a Hollywood motion picture producer. She didn’t know what an impresario was, but when he explained it to her, she was impressed. His latest Broadway revue had recently closed after a two-year run, and he was returning to Cal
ifornia to take up the reins of his motion picture production company. He had tired of New York and wanted to spend more time concentrating on the movie industry. Besides, his mother lived in Los Angeles and she wasn’t getting any younger.
It occurred to Blanche that Boynton, Oklahoma, was not exactly situated on the direct route from New York to Los Angeles, but when Peyton told her that he had decided to take his time getting out to the West Coast and see a bit of the country, she didn’t wonder about it again. Especially once he told her that he intended to hang around Boynton for a few days because he particularly liked the scenery. Since the scenery around Boynton consisted of fields, a bunch of cows, trees, and endless barbed-wire fences, Blanche got his drift immediately.
Though Alice was feeling better by the end of the week, their mother let Blanche stay on a few more days. As long as she had returned in time to fix supper, Alice and Walter didn’t seem to mind that Blanche was a little late coming back to their house after school. Blanche didn’t feel guilty about meeting Peyton on the sly to talk about Hollywood. After all, he was only going to be in town for a couple more days.
But then he told her that he thought he would spend some extra time in Boynton before he made his way out west. He looked deep into her eyes and said he had found a compelling reason to delay. He had the most poetic way of putting things.
“Your eyes are emerald pools. Your hair is living waves of sable.”
The first time she and Peyton had met at the Owl Drug, he spun tales of all the Broadway stars he had worked with. The second time, he had told her how many of those stage actresses were now Hollywood stars, acting in motion pictures that he had produced. The third time, Peyton told Blanche that she was too beautiful to bury herself in Boynton, Oklahoma, only to find herself hitched someday to a hayseed husband and raising a bunch of snot-nosed kids. The very next day he brought her flowers. By the end of the week, he told her he loved her.
After that, Blanche contrived ways to meet Peyton in whatever out-of-the-way place she could, as often as she could manage. Alice would have been happy to have Blanche take up residence at her house and become a permanent cook and nanny, but their mother knew both her daughters’ scheming ways too well. Finally, she insisted that Blanche vacate Alice’s neat little house in town and come home. To the farm. Located two endless miles outside of town. Far from the Owl Drug Store and the fascinating Graham Peyton.