The Wrong Girl

by Donis Casey

  Mrs. Gilbert considered the straightforward approach of asking Blanche what the hell she thought she was doing, but finally decided to follow Blanche on one of her secret excursions. She’d rather know where Blanche was going and what she was up to before confronting her. After all, Blanche was not her daughter. As long as it didn’t concern Alma’s household, it was Blanche’s problem if she was stupid enough to get herself into something unsavory. Wasn’t it?

  ~Blanche had forgotten that

  luck never holds.~

  Alma and Mrs. Gilbert left for the studio on their own the next morning, leaving Blanche at home with only Jack Dempsey for company. Blanche was supposed to study lines for an audition that Alma had set up for her the following week. And she really intended to do just that, at least until Alma’s Cadillac limousine disappeared down the hill with Fee at the wheel.

  She knew her lines pretty well. Graham Peyton had recently returned from a trip and had been at home the last couple of times she paid him a surreptitious nighttime visit. It was a beautiful, soft California fall day, and no one was there to tell her no.

  An hour later, Blanche was wandering through Graham Peyton’s bungalow. Everything looked different in the daytime. Shabbier, somehow, or maybe just ordinary. She was riffling through kitchen drawers that she had riffled through many times before when she came upon a meat cleaver. She held it up to the light and examined it carefully. Sharp. For several minutes she fantasized about sneaking up behind Graham and burying the cleaver in his back. Or maybe the back of his head. No, his back was better. He’d suffer more.

  She went into the living room and made a gin rickey for herself. She was sitting on Graham’s sofa with one arm slung along the back, sipping her drink, when she heard someone coming up the wooden steps to the front door. She flew off the couch, glass in hand, and squeezed herself down between the sofa and the back wall just as a key turned in the lock and the door opened.

  Graham wasn’t alone, but this time his companion was a man rather than an aspiring actress. Blanche’s heart was pounding so heard she feared they would hear. Someone sat down on the sofa.

  “Can I fix you a drink?” Blanche recognized Graham’s voice.

  “I’m not staying,” the other man said. “This is not a social call, Graham. Do you have the goods?”

  Blanche couldn’t see them, but she could tell by his tone and the way that Graham deferred to him that the stranger was older. Graham’s voice took on a conciliatory tone. Oily, even, Blanche noted. “Now, Ruhl, have I ever let the boss down? Of course I do.”

  What was this? Blanche forgot her fear, even forgot her hatred, as curiosity overtook her. She oozed forward enough to be able to peep around the side of the sofa, the gin glass still clutched in her hand.

  Graham was retrieving a large leather bag from his front closet. He turned toward the sofa and Blanche jerked her head back like a frightened turtle. He must have handed the bag to the man on the sofa, for she heard it snap open.

  “It’s all there,” Graham said.

  The man must have been satisfied. “Here’s the money for the next shipment. And here’s your cut. K.D. has made arrangements for you to meet O’Halloran at the usual place in Chicago on the fifth. Telephone him at this number when you get into town.”

  Blanche could tell that Graham was standing in front of the man on the sofa. “The fifth? That’s pretty quick. I don’t know if I can get to Chicago by the fifth.”

  “Yes, well, K.D. suggests that you go by train this time.” Ruhl’s comment was tinged with sarcasm. “Your automobile trips take too long and draw too much attention. You’re going to pick up the wrong girl one of these days and get yourself shot. Which wouldn’t bother me, but K.D. would be unhappy and we don’t want that.”

  “K.D. worries too much. But far be it from me to raise a ruckus. I have a meeting with the Count over at the Sennet studio in a couple hours, but I’ll put the dough in the bank and buy a train ticket as soon as I finish with him this afternoon.”

  “Do it now, Graham. I don’t want you to leave fifty thousand dollars lying around your house while you go off to get high.”

  “Damn it, Ruhl, I’m not going to get high. I’m going to offer him this dope for a better price than K.D. is offering him now.”

  “We’ve only ever run that scam in Arizona, Graham. It’s too dangerous to try it in K.D.’s own backyard.”

  “It was the Count’s own idea. He’s not going to spill the beans to anyone.”

  Ruhl thought about this. “That could be a very profitable line to pursue. What time are you meeting him?”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “You don’t have much time if you’re going to get the money deposited and get over to Sennet by three.”

  “All right. For cryin’ out loud! Tell K.D. I’ll take care of it. Now get out, Ruhl, and let me go to the can and change my threads so I can hit the road.”

  Ruhl cautioned Graham to be careful, and Blanche heard the front door open and close. Ruhl had left, but Graham was pacing around the living room, muttering to himself. He called Ruhl a couple of imaginative names before pouring a drink for himself at the cart. Blanche chanced a glance. Graham was still standing at the drinks cart with his back to the sofa. He slugged his drink, picked up what looked like a small suitcase from the side table and put it on the top shelf of the coat closet before he stalked upstairs. Blanche didn’t move until she was sure she could hear his footsteps overhead, then she crept out from behind the furniture and placed her empty glass on the cart next to his. (Let him wonder about that!) She fully intended to skitter out through the kitchen window until she heard water running in the bathtub upstairs.

  She walked nonchalantly to the coat closet and took the suitcase down from the shelf, sat down in an armchair with it in her lap, and opened it. She had never seen so much money in one place in all her life. She lifted her head and listened to Graham splashing around in the tub. What would happen if she stole the suitcase?

  Graham would be in loads of trouble if all the money disappeared. Would his associates kill him? Probably. She didn’t know much about the crime world, but she knew that drug dealers and bootleggers were brutal and unforgiving.

  No, tempting as it was, it was too much. Still, he owed her. She pulled out a small bundle of fifties and stuffed it down her blouse before replacing the bag and slipping out the window.

  She could feel the money next to her skin all throughout the trolley rides back to Hollywood. Passengers would smile at her as they got on and off. I probably look like the cat who ate the canary, she thought. It was nice to be smiled at, to be noticed, though, so all the way home she cultivated an enigmatic little smile.

  Winter 1926, Hollywood, California

  Oliver had not expected to learn anything when he paid the ravenous Miranda $100 for information. But learn something, he did.

  And after that luncheon, it had taken some pull from some powerful people for Oliver to gain permission to meet with Bianca LaBelle at her fabulous Beverly Hills estate. Even though he figured it would lead to nothing, Oliver had been happy enough to spend a few unproductive minutes in the company of a glamorous movie star. But Bianca had turned out to be nothing like Oliver expected. No brainless Hollywood ingenue, she. No, there was something about this woman that scared him, and scared him good. He had thought that he was going to ask her a few questions and get on with his life, but she had turned the tables on him, and against his better judgment—almost against his will—he had agreed to keep her informed on the progress of his investigation. Why had he done that? Bianca LaBelle was Dangereuse indeed.

  After he answered Bianca’s summons and let her wrap him around her little finger, Oliver spent the next few days completing his shoe-leather investigation. The building in which Peyton’s office was once located had been sold, and the office space had a new tenant who had never heard of Graham Peyton
. Half of the businesses on this particular mile-long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard had changed hands in the years since Peyton disappeared, and half of the remainder had different staff. A few people were still there who recognized Peyton’s snapshot and remembered waiting on him for one thing or another, but aside from the headwaiter at Philippe, Oliver didn’t find anyone who remembered his name or had any idea what had happened to him, or admitted to it.

  Oliver revisited the bungalow court on Alameda several times, coming back again and again to knock on doors until someone answered who would talk to him. Only a few of the tenants had lived in the complex long enough to have known who Peyton was, and no one admitted to being well acquainted with him or even to wondering what had become of him. Oliver had just knocked on one particular front door for the fourth time in a week and was about to give it up as a lost cause. He was hoping that he wouldn’t have to pump the landlady for the names of the people who had lived here while Peyton was alive, but that was his next move. He was wondering how much the information would cost him when a breathless woman flung open the door, causing him to start.

  “Oh, sorry,” she panted. “I was upstairs when you knocked. What can I do for you?”

  She was just past the first bloom of youth, rosy-cheeked, with a sleek cap of light brown hair. Oliver immediately pegged her as an actress or would-be actress.

  He introduced himself and gave her the same spiel about the skeleton and tracing Peyton’s last movements that he had been rattling off to all and sundry. He was surprised when she said, “Yeah, I remember Graham. He’s dead? Sorry to hear that. I just figured he moved out. We were friendly enough, but didn’t really socialize. I had a bunch of leftover roast once and took it to him. He thanked me and was very polite. I liked him, but I could tell that he was a scallywag. Girls over all the time. But then most of the people who live in this complex are scallywags. Mostly motion picture people, you know. Some famous people have lived around here, and I’ve seen famous people coming to visit their friends. I don’t know if Mr. Peyton worked in the business. He never said. I thought he must be a traveling salesman. He was gone a lot, often for long periods of time. ”

  “Did you recognize any of his visitors?”

  “Nobody famous. Not that I noticed. Oh, except once. Right before he left on one of his trips, Alma Bolding herself asked me which bungalow was his! I nearly fainted.”

  The hair rose up on the back of Oliver’s neck. “Alma Bolding. Are you sure?”

  The young woman seemed insulted that he’d ask. “Well, of course. I’d hardly mistake some regular person for Alma Bolding.”

  “Did she go into his place?”

  “She did. She didn’t even knock, just walked right in.”

  ~A little time out for

  Zanzibar Gold~

  The afternoon was well along by the time Oliver got back to Santa Monica. He was driving up Third Street toward his apartment when he noticed that the Criterion Theater was showing a Bianca Dangereuse adventure called Zanzibar Gold. He braked so quickly that he nearly bumped his head on the steering wheel. He pulled over to the curb and parked amid a chorus of horns from cars that had been behind him when he stopped in the middle of the street.

  He paid his twenty cents for a ticket and settled himself into a seat in the middle of the darkened theatre. It was a weeknight, so the crowd was sparse. He had arrived in time for the opening credits. The story had something to do with Bianca foiling a plot by renegade slave traders to rob a train carrying British gold so they could…do something about buying ivory or slaves or wives. Oliver wasn’t quite clear on that point. However, it was exciting.

  Oliver’s favorite part was after the renegades had hijacked a train full of schoolgirls, when Bianca leaped off a roof and onto the top of one of the cars as the train sped past. She crouched down on the shingles atop the depot until the train was whizzing by under her, then stood up and took a flying leap, hit the top of the caboose behind the cupola, rolled to the end, and caught herself before she was flung off onto the tracks. For a moment she flapped along behind the caboose like a human flag, then pulled herself up and dropped onto the platform at the back, where a British soldier opened the door and she disappeared inside. It was all rather silly, but Oliver had to admit that if Bianca LaBelle really did do her own stunts, she was amazingly athletic. Like all Bianca Dangereuse pictures, she saved the day with a little help from her sidekick Butch Revelle, and the last shot of the movie was a close-up of Bianca’s face and her famous quirky, knowing, little smile.

  After Zanzibar Gold ended and the shorts were showing before the next feature, Oliver sat in the dark and tried to think of what connections there could be between Bianca LaBelle and the grisly fate of Graham Peyton. Even if Peyton had taken advantage of LaBelle when she was a girl, that didn’t mean she had anything to do with his death. He took advantage of a lot of girls. Oliver would have simply chalked it up to the fact that Bianca was one of many Peyton-hating women that he would eventually uncover. But what about the Alma Bolding connection? What did she have to do with all of this? The first time he saw Alma, she had implied that she knew Peyton. How? Peyton was a boy when Alma first became famous, so she was probably not one of his seducees. What was she doing at Peyton’s bungalow shortly before he disappeared?

  Ruhl had told him that the missing ledger contained incriminating information about important people. Could Alma Bolding be one of them? Surely Bianca herself was not one of the names in Ruhl’s book. When Peyton disappeared in 1921, Bianca was a nameless teenager and not yet a movie star worth blackmailing. Old enough to be judged for her morals, but he couldn’t imagine her as a teenaged money-launderer or politician-briber. Oliver gave an unconscious shrug in the dark. Maybe she was a girl mobster and he was just naive.

  When Oliver finally got home, he telephoned the number that Bianca had given him and was surprised that the woman who answered the telephone put him right through. He asked Bianca if he could make another appointment to see her. After all, she had asked him to keep her apprised of his progress, and by the way, he’d like to ask her a few more questions. “I could come by tonight,” he offered.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver, but tonight I’m throwing a little shindig. We just finished a picture and I’m having a wrap party for the cast and crew and a few close friends.”

  Oliver had drawn a breath to ask when would be convenient for her when she said, “You’re welcome to come, if you wish. Come around nine. I’ll leave your name with the gatekeeper.”

  He removed the earpiece from his ear and gave it a dubious once-over. Was he really being invited to a Hollywood party? He regained himself quickly. “Will Miss Bolding be there?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “Would you object to my talking with your guests? Would that be too intrusive? I promise I won’t connect your name in any way to the person I’m investigating.”

  She answered with a throaty laugh. “I trust you know what you’re doing. Intrude away, Mr. Oliver. Intrude away.”

  After Bianca rang off, Oliver sat back in his chair with the receiver still in his hand and pondered his next move.

  ~Oliver climbs back up the mountain,

  takes a terrifying fall.~

  Oliver waited until midnight to head back up the canyon to Bianca’s estate. He knew how Hollywood parties went, and wanted to be sure all the guests arrived before he did. He drove to the gate, where a uniformed guard with a clipboard came out of his little booth and gave the battered Ford a skeptical once-over.

  Oliver spoke before the guard had a chance to shoo him away. “I’m Ted Oliver. Miss LaBelle invited me.”

  The guard’s skepticism deepened, but he checked the guest list, found Oliver’s name, didn’t believe his eyes and looked again. “All right,” he said with reluctance. “Park that jalopy over to the side.”

  “Thanks, pal.” Oliver strove not to sound put ou
t. Sometimes the schlubs who worked for the high and mighty were snobbier than the high and mighty themselves. He wound around the long drive and parked behind the Cadillacs, Hispano-Suizas, and Rolls-Royces. Two or three liveried chauffeurs were bunched together around a silver limo, smoking. They gave him a collective stink-eye as he walked up to the front door.

  Fee, the same unusual creature whom he had met the first time he was here, was stationed at the door with a list of her own. Oliver categorized the person as a “she” this evening, since she was wearing a perky blond wig and a backless gold-sequined evening gown that was split up one side. Fee’s muscular bare shoulders and one bare thigh were smooth and hairless, though they did look more suited to bench-pressing than tangoing. Still…“Nice dress,” Oliver said, as he handed her his hat.

  “Thanks. Go on in, Mr. Oliver. Just follow the noise.”

  That wasn’t hard to do. Most of the action was centered in the white-carpeted living room, which judging by the state of most of the guests who were tromping in and out of the house from the pool area with glasses of wine in their hands, would not be so white tomorrow.

  Oliver hesitated when he saw that it was a costume party. Bianca hadn’t mentioned that. Most of the partygoers were masked, but Oliver recognized several of the more famous guests. There was Daniel May, who played Bianca Dangereuse’s partner in crime, Butch Revelle. In the corner, where the eight-piece jazz band was making the joint jump, Dorothy Dwan, dressed as a pussycat, was cutting a rug. And over there, in full cowboy regalia, Tom Mix and Will Rogers were seated on the long couch with their heads together, engaged in a raucous conversation. Oliver didn’t recognize the rest. Either their disguises were too effective or they were behind-the-scenes types like directors and scriptwriters. He wandered through the crowd, hoping the guests took his shabby suit for a Little Tramp outfit. Nobody paid him the slightest mind. A handsome devil in tails was noodling on a grand piano, though the noisy jazz band rendered the effort futile. Even so, a slender young thing dressed as Cleopatra was hanging all over him.