by Troy Soos
“So she doesn’t expect to act anymore.”
“No, no one will risk giving her a role. I am afraid the poor lady shall never again trod the boards.”
It would be a lot easier to talk with Carlyle if he spoke English. I tried on the plaid suit. Again a perfect fit. Carlyle frowned. “The problem is that you’re rather on the small side yourself. I don’t know if we have anything that’s going to be too small for you. Try the other one again.”
Back to the green and tan, but I was sure it hadn’t shrunk in the last five minutes. “Why won’t people give her any parts?”
He pinned up the sleeves and trouser cuffs four inches above my wrists and ankles. “Well, what I hear at the Lambs Club is that she drinks a bit excessively. Between us gentlemen, I don’t blame her. Tom Kelly is not a very good husband. She made him. Without her, he would have no career. And he repays her sacrifice by philandering.” Carlyle added an oversized polka dot bow tie to my neck. “So she has taken to the bottle. Poor girl can’t remember lines anymore. No one is going to hire an actress who blanks out on stage. Hmm. . . . That doesn’t quite do it. You need something else.”
He opened a drawer of his makeup kit, pulled out a red walrus mustache, and dabbed some glue on it. “Here we go,” he said as he attached it to my upper lip. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t like it, but at least I was disguised enough that John McGraw would never recognize me.
“Just a touch more,” Carlyle said.
What more could he do to me? How much sillier could I look?
From another drawer he pulled out a set of spectacles. Oh, no. I don’t want to look like Karl Landfors. They were huge goggles with thick lenses. In the mirror I couldn’t tell what I looked like.
Then he topped my head with a porkpie hat. “Perfect,” he said. “Now go on out and I’ll get into costume.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I added to myself, “I think.”
“My pleasure. Always glad to help an aspiring member of the craft.”
I went back out to the main floor of the studio and walked up to Margie. When she realized it was me, she burst into laughter. “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed.
“I feel silly,” I grumbled, as I repositioned the spectacles up on my forehead so that I could see.
“That’s what acting is all about. You can act however you want to—silly or evil or coy. And it’s just acting. It’s like being a child playing make believe. Enjoy it!”
“I’ll try ...” It would have been easier if I didn’t look so ridiculous. Although if Margie liked the way I was made up, it couldn’t be too awful.
When Arthur Carlyle came out of the dressing room, in a waiter costume with a handlebar mustache and a towel draped over his forearm, I waved to him and mouthed, “Thank you.” He acknowledged it with a nod.
Garvin then bellowed into his megaphone, ordering changes to the sets. People scurried about in response to his commands, moving chairs and tables “a little more this way” and “a little more that way.”
After everything was moved, and then moved again back to its original position, Garvin stopped yelling and began pacing. His head was down, his lips were moving, and coins jingled in his pockets.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” Margie whispered.
“Okay, we’ll start with the bar,” Garvin finally announced, as he strode to the barroom set. “Mr. Kelly, take your place please. Mr. Rawlings, over here.”
Tom Kelly moved behind the counter as a bartender. I went to the front of the bar, where Garvin put me on a stool. Then he called another actor—Mr. Carver, he called him—and put him two stools away. Carver was dressed as a dandy, an unconvincing one, like Sloppy Sutherland on a bad day.
Garvin said, “Okay. You two are going to argue.” He turned to me. “Just like you did with Casey Stengel. You did that good.”
“Are we fighting over a girl?”
“Argue about whatever you want.” He seated himself behind the camera.
I felt stiff and self-conscious. Let yourself go, I told myself. Pretend to be the character you’re dressed as, and have fun with it. It’s just make believe.
Something nagged at me, though, and my inhibitions remained. I scanned the crew behind the camera, and then the actors costumed as waiters, waitresses, diners, cooks, and busboys. All of them in the business of make believe. If they could do it, I should be able to.
I didn’t even have to worry about John McGraw. He would never recognize me in this costume. But still I couldn’t relax and enjoy my role.
Make believe . . .
I slowly realized it was Florence Hampton who kept me from abandoning myself to acting. I could feel her presence in the studio. Her death was full of make believe: false names, nonaffairs, people being other than where they claimed . . . and there was nothing fun about it.
I looked around the room again.
And I suddenly knew who killed Florence Hampton.
My mind raced as I tried to think what to do about it. Stay calm, I told myself. Don’t let on.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Garvin called. “Just do as I tell you. Uh, Mr. Rawlings, lower the glasses please.” Mechanically, I pulled them so that they were seated on the bridge of my nose. “Start camera!” I heard the gears of the camera turn. “Mr. Kelly, start some business—polish the bar, pour a couple of drinks.” Kelly poured two drinks and slid them before each of us. “Now start talking.” Carver and I started talking—he about stamp collecting and I about baseball—while Kelly polished the countertop with a bar rag. “Start arguing!” Our words grew heated, incoherent but heated. “Now go for each other. Fight!” We hopped off the stools and started grappling. “Mr. Kelly, let him have it!”
Have what?
Then my head exploded.
When my eyes opened again, I was in the dressing room, laid out on a pile of musty overcoats. Elmer Garvin and Tom Kelly were staring down at me.
Tom Kelly was the first to speak. “I’m sorry, kid. The bottles must have got mixed up.”
“Should have been a sugar bottle,” Garvin said. “It was supposed to crumble when it hit you, not bust your head open.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but my head felt exactly as Garvin described it, like I was missing the top of my skull.
“How does it feel?” Margie’s voice asked from behind me. I raised my eyes; she was kneeling behind me, a bloody cloth clutched in her hand.
“Like I’ve been scalped.”
Margie dabbed carefully at the back of my head with the rag. “It’s still bleeding some,” she said.
“We sent for the studio doctor,” said Garvin. “Your lousy luck sure seems to be holding.” He didn’t sound particularly bothered by it.
I lifted my right hand and reached back to touch the wound.
Margie caught my wrist and put my arm back down. “Don’t touch it,” she said. “Wait for the doctor.”
It was only a few more minutes until the doctor arrived. He looked like he’d been dressed for the role by Arthur Carlyle: white hair with matching beard, small gold spectacles, immaculate frock coat, and black leather bag. I hoped he really was a doctor and didn’t just play one in the movies.
“Well, what have we here?” he asked in a soft soothing voice. It sounded like there was nothing he hadn’t seen before.
“Small accident,” Garvin said. “Mr. Kelly hit him with a real bottle instead of a sugar bottle.”
“You should be more careful with your props.” The doctor placed his bag on the dressing table. “You can all leave now.”
Garvin and Kelly exited the room without hesitation.
“May I stay?” Margie asked.
“Of course, Miss Turner. You can assist me. I’ve patched you up often enough that you should know how it’s done.”
Margie gently ran the fingertips of one hand along the back of my neck. “Dr. Campbell’s a good doctor,” she said.
He asked me, “Can you sit up?”
I raised myself on
my elbows. “Yes.”
“Let’s see how bad it is,” Dr. Campbell said. He pulled off his spectacles and leaned over me, peering at my head. “My, that’s an ugly one.” His finger started to probe my scalp, and I was barely able to suppress a scream at the pressure. “You’ll need a few stitches.”
The doctor next crouched down in front of me and stared into my eyes. “Pupils look okay.” He pulled a fountain pen out of his pocket and held it in front of my nose. “Keep your eye on the pen.” He moved the pen back and forth and I followed it with my eyes. “I think you’ll be fine,” he decided. “We’ll just have to sew up that cut.”
The doctor opened his black bag. “First let me give you something to kill the pain.” Reaching into the bag, he withdrew a syringe.
“No,” I said. “No needles. You can sew me up, but no needles.”
“It’s going to be painful,” he warned.
“No needles,” I insisted. I didn’t want anybody putting anything into me. I had some thinking to do. Stitches were okay—my head had a hole in it, so it made sense to close the hole—but I wasn’t going to let anybody do anything to me that could affect my thinking. The bottle busting over my head had interrupted it, but I was going to try to get back on track.
“Very well,” he conceded. Then he took a razor from his bag. “I’ll have to shave around the cut.” He moved behind me and started scraping with the blade. After shaving a patch of hair, he cleaned the wound with a liquid that stung worse than a fastball on the hands.
Dr. Campbell next pulled a needle and some coarse black thread from the bag. I was tempted to ask if he had another color, one that would better match my hair. “Ready?” he asked.
I tried to nod, but it hurt, so I said, “Yes.”
“Hold him still, Miss Turner.”
She gripped me tightly just behind my ears. I felt the needle go in. I didn’t think my head could feel any worse but this was a sharp pain. I clenched my teeth so hard and quickly that I bit into my inner lip.
While Dr. Campbell continued weaving, I focused my thoughts elsewhere. On Florence Hampton’s killer. As I thought about questions like how and why, the stitching became no more than a tugging sensation.
When the doctor finished, he said, “That should do it. Now if you feel dizzy or have trouble with your eyes, let me know.” After packing his bag, he left the room muttering about Elmer Garvin providing him with too many patients.
Margie squeezed my hand.
“How bad does it look?” I asked.
“It’s not bad,” she said, trying too hard to sound convincing. “Like a little bald spot is all. With one, two . . . nine stitches in it. Uh ... you might want to wear a hat.”
I chuckled at the number of stitches—nine, a good number for a baseball player. It felt good to laugh at something, but it brought a worried look to Margie’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going crazy.”
No, I wasn’t going crazy. In fact, my brain was working surprisingly well. It had just generated one of the most promising ideas I’d had lately. “Could you leave me alone for a minute?” I asked her. “I want to get up and walk around a bit.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be right out. I need to get out of these clothes.”
She left the room, and I had a minute to collect my thoughts. I stood up and shuffled to the mirror. I couldn’t see what the back of my head looked like, but after tearing the false mustache from my lip I was reassured to see that I looked as handsome as ever from the front.
I then peeled out of my hick outfit, much of which was now soaked with blood.
Fifteen minutes later, I stepped back into the studio, dressed in my street clothes, my boater set lightly on my head, and generally feeling pretty pleased with myself.
The studio had gone back into production with pies flying everywhere. Margie was the only one waiting for me outside the door.
I pulled her back in the dressing room for a long kiss and a longer hug, then took leave to go to the game.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wednesday evening was our next chance to have dinner together, and Margie and I were finally able to take advantage of it. There were no candles or tablecloths though. Since we were both tired from work, we didn’t bother to look for elegance. Instead we settled for a quick supper at a Bond Street luncheonette near Loeser’s department store in downtown Brooklyn.
One advantage of the informal setting was that I could leave my hat on to cover up the shaved patch on my scalp. The pain was gone by now, but the skin itched like crazy.
I’d played in yesterday’s and today’s games, with no ill effects from the blow to my head. In fact, it might have helped—I went five for eight with a triple as we split the last two contests of the series to leave us one game behind the Braves. Although even if I’d gone eight for eight, I had no intention of getting my head broken again.
I’d also had forty-eight hours to try to figure out what to do about Florence Hampton’s killer. My first impulse was to announce it to the world and let justice take its course. Then as I thought about it, I realized I didn’t really know all that much and could prove even less. A premature accusation would only serve to forewarn the murderer.
After a little more thought, I decided I shouldn’t tell Karl Landfors, either. How would he react if I told him the identity of his sister’s murderer and said there was no proof? It wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to even the score on his own and get himself jailed or killed as a result.
The same with Margie. Her tie to Florence Hampton wasn’t as strong as Karl’s, but she was even less likely than him to let her friend’s death go unavenged.
So I decided to say nothing for now and vowed that I would get enough evidence to bring to the police. Once they took over, Karl and Margie would be safe.
Over ginger ale and liverwurst sandwiches, Margie finally told me where she’d been on Sunday. “I talked with Esther Kelly again,” she said.
“By yourself?” That didn’t sound like “together.” But considering what I was keeping from her, who was I to complain?
Margie nodded. “I asked her where she really went after the party at the Sea Dip Hotel. I told her that I knew she didn’t go home until late that night—”
“But I promised her maid not to say anything. I don’t want to cause trouble between them.”
“Don’t worry.” Margie patted my arm. “I didn’t tell her that we learned anything from Bridget, ”she said with a smile. “I said that somebody from Vitagraph saw her out with a man who wasn’t her husband, and I wanted to hear from Esther what it was about so I could try to stop any rumors.”
“Oh.” Not a bad story, I thought. “So what did she say?”
“She broke down. She felt guilty.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She didn’t know. She said she couldn’t remember. I’ve heard people say that Esther drinks and that’s what cost her her career. She told me she tries not to drink at all now, but since she couldn’t remember what happened that night, she assumed she must have been drunk. That’s what she felt guilty about. But she was sure she hadn’t been drinking. Esther seemed torn up with herself.” Margie added, “I don’t think she’d do anything to hurt anyone. That’s what my gut says.”
“Sometimes that’s the most reliable guide.” I thought for a bit. “Who do you think took Esther Kelly home that night?”
“I really wish I knew,” Margie said. “I’m sure it was innocent, but I still want to find out . . . more than ever now.”
“Why’s that?”
“Esther kept asking me where she was seen. She really wanted to know.” Margie shook her head. “And I couldn’t tell her. I wish I hadn’t lied to her like that.”
“She remembered things from a long time ago,” I said. “My aunt was like that, could remember things in detail from years ago but could hardly remember what happened the day before. People used to kid her about it. Sometimes my a
unt would show up unannounced at the house where she grew up, as if she still lived there. The people who owned it eventually got used to it, and they’d call my uncle to come and get her. Then it got worse, and nobody kidded her anymore. We just knew she was sick somehow. She died when I was fourteen.”
I pulled out my watch and flipped open the back cover to reveal a picture of two people. “This is her,” I said. “And my uncle. They raised me.”
“They look like nice people,” Margie said.
“They were.”
We sat for a few moments in silence. This investigation didn’t seem to be doing anyone any good, nice or not. Margie and I had almost been killed, Florence Hampton—Karl Landfors’s sister—had been murdered, as had an innocent twelve year old boy. And we were telling lies to people, causing them grief, to get them to talk.
But as cruel as it might seem sometimes, we couldn’t stop now. There was still a killer to be caught.
“It’ll be all right,” I finally said and picked up the check.
“Would you like to come over . . . for coffee, or something?” Margie asked in a tight voice.
“Yes.”
We decided to walk and were strolling hand in hand on Pacific Street toward Third Avenue, when Margie pulled up short at a second-hand bookstore. “Could we stop a minute?” she asked.
I agreed and we went over to the bins of used books and old papers stacked outside the store. One bin was crammed with old photographs. Margie started rifling through the photos while I scanned a rack of magazines not looking for anything in particular.
Margie pulled out one of the pictures. “Ooh! This is a good one,” she said.
I walked over to see the creased photo of a lean bucktoothed young lady. “Who is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But she has a good face, an honest face. I like her! She’ll look good on my wall, I think.”
“With your relatives?”
“Oh, those aren’t relatives. Not that I know of anyway. The only relative I have is my brother.”
“Then who are they?”
“People like her,” she said. “My brother and I were adopted as babies. We never knew our parents and don’t know of any relatives. So I collect people who look interesting, people I might like to have as family.” With that explanation, she paid two cents for the picture.