Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  There it was. Bichloride of mercury, out in the open.

  And still, in all the hoopla, not a single reporter had linked Esther’s death to the others. Or maybe they all had and just didn’t care to write about it. She wasn’t a famous director or glamorous actress, after all. She was a nobody, a former vaudeville player who served glamorous Hollywood its champagne and caviar.

  But I cared about Esther. A helluva lot more than I cared about Bruno Heilmann. He had been killed for something he did. She had been as innocent as a child. Nothing would bring her back, but I could at least identify her killer. She deserved that much.

  I was sorting photographs with Geraldine in Frank’s office when a sharp rap turned both our heads. “Come in,” she called. A sunburned errand boy with ears like pitcher handles pushed open the door. “Mr. Richardson’s not here—” Geraldine began.

  “Miss Beckett?” he addressed us both.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “There’s a policeman wants to see you. At the front gate. Shall they let him in?”

  “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

  The boy nodded and ran off.

  I found Carl Delaney inside the gatehouse chatting with the security guard. His smile faded as I came up. Not a good sign.

  “Where can we talk?” he asked with cold politeness.

  I indicated an empty bench in the shade where secretaries sometimes took their lunch, and we sat down. I clasped my hands together so as not to seem fidgety or nervous. But I was. Carl was more perceptive than most cops. Than most people, period. I wasn’t fooling Carl. Not much, anyway.

  He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “Have you seen the newspapers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know there was poison in the coffee.”

  I nodded. “I also know Lottie Pickford is your prime suspect. She didn’t do it. I’m certain of it.”

  Carl stared hard at the pavement while he listened. Finally he asked, “How about you tell me why you think so?”

  “There are lots of reasons,” I said evasively.

  “Just for the record, I don’t think she did it, either. But I’m not in charge of this investigation, and some of the boys think she looks mighty suspicious. Heilmann was breaking off their love affair, and he’d started sleeping with Lorna McCall. Lottie was jealous of her and angry with him. She was one of the last to leave the party that night, and she threatened to kill him in front of a lot of people.”

  “And I was one of those people. Look, Carl, she may well look suspicious, but it’s circumstantial. She didn’t kill Heilmann. Or Esther Frankel.”

  “Our new crime lab downtown tested the stomach contents of Mr. Corrigan and Miss Gordon. They both showed traces of bichloride of mercury. The detectives think that points to Lottie, too.”

  “Actually, it points to Jack Pickford, if it points to anyone.”

  “He’s got alibis for everything.”

  He would, I thought bitterly. “Just because her brother used the stuff years ago doesn’t mean Lottie has any.” The irony of my vigorous defense of Lottie was not lost on me. I couldn’t stand the woman and here I sat, arguing her innocence like she was my best friend in the world. “Look, Carl,” I said, exasperated. “I don’t know anything. I’m only trying to help.”

  “Help who, is what I’m wondering.”

  “My boss. He’s trying to protect his wife’s reputation and their studio. Another financial crash like the one after the Fatty Arbuckle scandal could wipe him out, not to mention ruin the whole film industry. They’re all afraid that the Catholic Church will boycott or that those do-gooder women’s groups will rise up and start calling for blood. Did you hear what the head of MGM said yesterday? ‘If this keeps up there won’t be any motion picture industry.’”

  That earned me a long look. “You seem to know a lot more than anyone else about these things,” he said in his careful way, “and I like to check in now and then to see if you’re going to tell me something I don’t already know. Besides, I was across the street at the pharmacy, looking at their poison book, so I didn’t have far to come. We’ve been visiting every pharmacy in Los Angeles to see if anyone bought mercury bichloride in the past few weeks. That’s ‘anyone,’ mind you, not just someone who looked like Lottie Pickford.”

  Everyone who has ever bought anything like rat poison at a pharmacy knows you have to sign a book saying what you purchased and when, just as a deterrent to crime. And Lottie’s face was so well-known, she couldn’t have gotten away with giving a false name. She could have worn a disguise, but I didn’t think I needed to point that out.

  “Any luck?” I asked him.

  “Not yet. So why couldn’t Lottie Pickford have done the murders?”

  Unable to sidestep the subject any longer, I took a deep breath. “One, she isn’t big enough or strong enough to have bashed in Esther. Two, she was too drunk Saturday night to stand up straight, let alone hit a man in the head from a distance with one shot. Three, she doesn’t know much about guns. Said her husband’s guns were too heavy, so she bought a tiny one for protection—a couple days after Heilmann was killed, by the way. And four, how do they think she got inside Paramount Studios without being on the gate list?”

  “Sneaked in somehow. She has no alibi for Tuesday morning.”

  “She was home in bed nursing a hangover.”

  “So she says. And no one was there to corroborate the story. Same for Sunday afternoon, when Lorna McCall was killed.”

  I sighed. Had I been a juror, none of this would have sounded very convincing. Then again, the case against Fatty Arbuckle had been far weaker and the trial had still destroyed him. In the motion picture world, the truth never mattered. Only what the public found titillating.

  27

  I was making myself a late supper when Myrna crept through the front door. “Hey,” I called, “I’m in the kitchen. How did it go?” One look at her pretty face answered my question.

  Without a word I poured some orange juice into a tall glass. “Here, sit down. I just squeezed this. I’m making my famous Egg-on-Toast for supper. Two fried eggs on a piece of toasted bread, buttered. There’s nothing better. How about I make you one, too?”

  I took her silence for a yes, and in a few moments, placed my culinary masterpiece on the table. Handing her a knife and fork, I sat down across from her. I waited until we’d both cleaned our plates before leaning back in my chair and saying, “What did they want you to do—play the part naked?”

  Her lips parted and she stared at me in frank astonishment. Finally she found her tongue. “How on earth did you know?”

  How did I know? I’d been in show business my whole life. I’d seen acts go from vaudeville to burlesque and back again. I’d crossed that street myself. Myrna was young and she was pretty. It didn’t take a crystal ball to know that men would want to work with the package unwrapped.

  “I’m psychic.”

  “Really?”

  “No, silly. What else would make you so upset?”

  “Well, you’re not quite right. They want me to wear two costumes. One’s a net and the other’s a cloud. Do you know the story of Zeus and Io?”

  I confessed I did not.

  “It’s a very, very stupid story. Zeus comes down from the sky and sees this river nymph named Io and wants to, you know, and he doesn’t want his wife Hera to find out, so he hides Io in a cloud and they, you know, and then he turns her into a white heifer to disguise her. So Hera sends a vicious fly to sting the heifer, and Io jumps into the sea to get away from the fly, and comes out human again. That’s the fishing net scene. We filmed some of that today.”

  “Wearing the net?”

  She nodded glumly. “I told Johnnie I didn’t like the costumes, and he said he understood but that I wasn’t a child anymore and it was time for me to grow into adult parts. He’s been very, very nice all along. He told me some really sweet things and said to just give it a try and then decide. All the other girls w
ere wearing nets, and they said it was artistic, that film is art just like Greek statues and Renaissance paintings so I, well…”

  “So you tried it. And how do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I knew.

  “Listen, Myrna. Once when I was seventeen, I worked in an act that crossed the street, meaning it went burlesque. I was a magician’s assistant. You probably know that magic is mostly misdirection—making people look at your right hand while your left hand is really doing the trick. Well, this magician wasn’t very good, and I was the act’s misdirection. The magician said the same things to me that Johnnie is saying to you: everyone’s doing it, the female body is art, don’t be a prude—”

  “I’m not a prude! When I was sixteen I posed almost nude for the statue that’s in front of Venice High School. That was art. This was different somehow. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t want a reputation for being difficult, like Lottie Pickford.”

  I cringed. “Myrna, that’s not what I meant by being difficult.”

  “So what happened with your magician’s act?”

  “I tried it for a week and decided I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel like art; I felt cheap. So I quit. Found another job. Look, I’m not ashamed of myself, and I’m not saying it’s bad to take your clothes off in a picture. I’m saying, don’t let anyone push you into doing something you don’t feel good about.”

  “Johnnie had to leave midday. He wasn’t pushing me. He said give the part a try and he’d talk to me when he got back at five. But he didn’t get back. He never showed up. We finished shooting at six, so I left.”

  “You’ll see him tomorrow morning. If you don’t want to continue, tell him so. He’ll understand.”

  28

  Before I had reached Pickford-Fairbanks the next morning, I’d passed two paperless paperboys.

  “All sold out, miss. We’ll be gettin’ more in about nine,” the olive-skinned lad told me. “I’ll save you one!”

  My day started at Makeup, reviewing the first shoot with Mildred Young to make sure we maintained visual continuity. She found herself low on a particular Max Factor undertone that she’d used the day before, and I offered to run over to the Little Annie Rooney set to borrow some from their kit.

  Making my way through the rabbit warren of tiny workrooms, offices, and storage rooms behind the back lot, I found the makeup artist and coaxed a jar of undertone away from him by promising my firstborn child if I hadn’t replaced it by early next week. Heading back to our own set, I caught a glimpse of David Carr making his way with jaunty steps across the lot. My heart skipped a beat, but I played coy and pretended not to notice him.

  He saw me. “Hey, kid,” he called. “You’re just the one I wanted to see. Come here. I’ve got a present for you.”

  I looked pointedly at his empty hands. “Oh?”

  “In here.” He tapped his head. “You’re gonna love it.”

  “I can’t stop.”

  “I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee.”

  “No time.” I held up the jar of makeup. “Gotta run this back to Zorro.”

  “Sure. Fine and dandy. Just look me up when you’re ready to learn the name of your droopy-mouthed gangster.”

  “What!”

  He preened and sauntered closer. “Yep. How ’bout that coffee now?”

  “I … I don’t believe you. Yes I do. Who is it?”

  “Commissary’s thataway.”

  I know when I’m licked. Three minutes later we were sitting down at a Formica table with two cups of steaming java between us.

  “All right, tell.”

  “Name’s Sal Panetta.”

  “How on earth did you find that out?”

  “You aren’t the only one with friends in Chicago. I telephoned an old pal and asked if he knew of a torpedo with a droopy mouth, and he didn’t hesitate a second before saying, ‘Sure, that’d be Sal Panetta. One of Johnny Torrio’s Outfit, only Torrio got gunned down a couple weeks ago and the Outfit got taken over by his second, a fella named Capone.”

  “Sal Panetta,” I repeated. “Geez, who’d’ve thought I’d ever know his name?”

  “No one. And now you can forget it, because that’s the sort of information that comes back to bite you. Telling the cops won’t do you a damned bit of good. Torrio used to boast that he owned the Chicago police, and this new boss holds the same hand.”

  “I understand. But why hire someone all the way from Chicago to kill a man in California?”

  David shrugged. “Maybe somebody owed someone a favor. Maybe the local boys were too well-known to risk it. Who knows? I have the sense that it had something to do with the change in command in Chicago. Maybe somebody’s proving what long arms he has.”

  “So I was right? It was dope and not revenge or jealousy that got Bruno Heilmann killed.”

  “You are one smart cookie.” I was elated at my success—and David’s praise. “Heilmann was importing the goods from Mexico, competing with the hometown boys. He was a fool. No one’s gonna sit back and let some walk-on take money out of their pockets.”

  “You’re telling me Hollywood has its own gangsters smuggling dope?”

  “Not just Hollywood, all of Los Angeles. It’s a vicious business down here, with competing gangs fighting for territory. A pity, really. There’s plenty for everyone, if they could just organize and get along.”

  Was that how he ran Portland? By organizing and getting along? Or by eliminating his competition? I was reminded how little I knew about this man. I needed reminding.

  “Well, thanks … I guess.”

  “You’re welcome. Now I want you to forget about this. You were right. You solved Heilmann’s murder. And the waitress’s. But it’s over. Finito.”

  Once at a state fair, I saw one of those big silk balloons with a noisy flame that filled the balloon with hot air until it rose into the sky. When it had returned to earth and the passengers had climbed out of the basket, the carny man turned off the flame, and just like that, the enormous bubble silently crumpled into a heap of silk that would fit in a suitcase. Right there, sitting in the studio commissary, I thought of that balloon. I should have felt triumphant—after all, I had figured out who murdered Bruno Heilmann and Esther Frankel. I had figured out why he had done it and how he had done it and when he had done it, but knowing was no good. Nothing was going to come of it. I couldn’t tell the police without risking my own life. Even if I could, there was no chance of bringing the killer to justice. No one was going to charge a gangster who lived two thousand miles away and had alibis enough to stuff a Christmas turkey. I had wanted to avenge Esther’s death, for her own sake and for my mother’s, and I had failed. Her killer—and the local gangsters who hired him—were going to get off scot-free. It wasn’t fair.

  Life isn’t fair, Baby, my mother used to say. Didn’t everyone’s mother used to say that?

  “There’s still Lorna McCall’s death—”

  “That was probably an accident,” he said.

  “And Paul Corrigan’s and Faye Gordon’s poisoning. Were they accidents, too?”

  At that moment, David reached across the table and took both my hands in his. Whoa! I hadn’t been expecting contact and my defenses were caught napping. My pulse pounded in my throat and my cheeks flushed hot.

  “Jessie,” he said in a deep, grave voice. “Look at me.”

  This was harder than I thought.

  “Remember that time on the Portland train when we dished lies to each other for a couple hours?”

  Indignant, I pulled my hands back. “I wasn’t lying! I was acting. I was playing a part.”

  “My mistake. I, however, was lying through my teeth. But that’s beside the point, which is: we know very little about each other. And what we think we know comes mostly from others. I want to know the real Jessie, the by-God honest truth about your life, straight from you, and I think you want to know about me. It’s only fair that we take another train ride, one with no lies. A
nd no acting. Don’t you?”

  I sidestepped. “A train ride?”

  David shook his head and gave me that aw-shucks grin guaranteed to melt a girl’s resolve. “Not a real train ride. I think we can do better than that. I propose a corner table at the fanciest restaurant in Hollywood, where you and I can spend a quiet evening together talking straight. No strings attached, just dinner. I thought tomorrow night after you got off work would be good. What do you say?”

  David has dangerous eyes. Somehow, he locks those baby blues on you and pulls you inside and you don’t even realize you’ve erased your own ideas and replaced them with his until long after it has happened. Not for the first time, I thought he’d have made a good vaudeville hypnotist. Or maybe he already was. I opened my mouth to say no.

  “I—I guess there’s no harm in that.”

  He took my arm as we left the commissary, his mile-wide smile beaming brighter than southern California’s sun. “I’ll come by your house at eight tomorrow night. Now scoot, before you’re late with that makeup.”

  I passed the front gate just as the Fairbanks Rolls-Royce eased through with Douglas and Mary in the backseat. It must be nine o’clock already, I thought to myself with surprise. You could set your watch by Douglas’s schedule: nine to four every day. No one considered these hours light duty—we all knew he exercised before and after work, running, lifting weights, fencing, swimming, playing tennis, riding, and practicing with his whip. Maintaining his superb physique was essential to his success. And ours.

  The Silver Ghost slowed, and a rear window rolled down. Douglas leaned over and called, “Good morning, Jessie. My office in five minutes, please.”

  When I arrived, his secretary motioned me to a leather chair. “Mr. Fairbanks and Miss Pickford are in with an unexpected visitor. They’ll be with you in a moment.”