Blood and Oranges

by James O. Goldsborough

  Callender was the first to speak. “Calvin Mull,” he said, chagrin in the voice, “I understand that you would not want to shake hands with me, though in other times we were friends, just as I was a friend of your father, may his soul rest in peace. I have his chess set here with me, at Folsom, the set you gave me, the one he had from his grandpa. Willie and I still play, do you know that?” His face brightened. “Sometimes he wins.”

  Cal smiled, and Callender looked to Lizzie, who’d not spoken a word. “I am happy that you are here, young lady. I did you a terrible grievance and for that I am sorry, but it could not be otherwise. I will share your pain if you will share mine. You lost your father, and I lost my savior and mentor, the Reverend Willie Mull, the man I loved more than any other in the world, the godly man who led me back to Jesus Christ, the father of this fine young man who sits beside you. When that beautiful man was taken away, the goodness went out of me, the goodness Willie Mull had taught me to keep in my heart, the goodness that drove away the rancor that had lodged there since the day I was cheated.

  “When Willie was gone, I determined to settle the score, as I would have done sooner except for Willie, as I had always done out on the trail. Nothing could dissuade me, and I was full ready to accept the consequences. I embraced the jury’s verdict and even wished for the death penalty so I could join Willie in heaven. Do you know that when he went we were in the middle of a chess game? We always kept a game going at the temple. Cal knows that. I finished that game in my home, with Nyx, my cat, who is gone now, too. Do you know that the Reverend Willie won that game?”

  His bright eyes fixed steadily on Lizzie. Finally, he dropped them to stare at his gnarled hands. “Through me, he was making the moves from heaven.”

  No one said a word. Milstein opened his mouth to say something and quickly closed it again. Callender was not done.

  “I do not seek to atone. A man cannot atone for a mortal sin, though it be an eye for an eye. I feel no guilt, for what I did was in the situation.” He paused for some time, and still no one thought to intercede. Eventually, he raised his eyes to Lizzie again. “I do not seek to atone, but think maybe I can help you. I know what you are doing, Miss Mull. I know about the murder of Pat Murphy. Folsom has a good library and I read the Times every day. I follow the story in the front-page notebook. I believe I have learned something that can help you. I want to help you. I believe I can give you the name of the man you are looking for.”

  Lizzie went suddenly stiff. Her mouth was the only dry part of her. She’d thought this man might be crazy, but there was nothing crazy in his words or his demeanor. She believed everything he said, just as she had in the courtroom. It would all be in her book.

  Milstein laid his hand on Callender’s arm. “First there must be an understanding,” the lawyer said. “My client has a record of good behavior at Folsom. If he helps you solve the vicious murder of Pat Murphy, it must be recognized.”

  “No, no,” cried Callender, loud enough to attract attention of the guards circulating in the yard. “A thousand times, no! I seek no favor, no deal. I do what any righteous citizen would do. The Reverend Willie Mull expects no less.”

  Chapter 28

  A string quartet played Bach. A pretty cellist in white satin, golden locks cascading down over bare shoulders and soft undulating breasts, lost herself in the arco movement of the bow. She’d played wedding receptions before, though never in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, sometime home to Freddy Martin’s orchestra, which most evenings played down the hallway in the Coconut Grove. Howard Hughes had come and brought some aircraft friends and a few more from Hollywood. Since Sister Angie was officiating, Miss Adelaide Nevin had led her Sunday column with the wedding, and Angie’s presence at the reception meant that the broad lawns reaching to Wilshire Boulevard would be teeming with Soldiers for God, though only a select few had any chance of making it to the ballroom. The chapel wedding had been intimate, but 225 invitations went out for the Ambassador reception, which meant twice that many would show up. Freddy Martin didn’t do weddings anymore, but the string quartet would be replaced by Lester Lanin for dancing. Forty tables surrounded the dance floor, the main tables with name cards carefully placed by Maggie herself.

  The ceremony had been perfect, though through it all she found herself thinking of her first one. Was it Paris, or do all brides do that the second time? She thanked Cal once again for walking beside her. She seated him next to Angie at the main table. She didn’t know much about them, Cal was too much the gentleman for that, but knew there was something. She saw it in his eyes. Angie had taken his hand at the chapel and held onto it. How odd it must be, she thought, with the ghost of Willie hovering. The main table also included her and Terry, her new husband; Nelly and a samba specialist named Marco; Howard and a ravishing Latin thing named Gabriela who smelled of coconuts and wore pink plumeria in her hair. The fifth couple was Lizzie and Joe.

  Cal had been initially puzzled by Maggie’s interest in Terry Heyward, an amiable, red-haired flier in the Hughes mold who at first seemed totally outclassed by his bride. Thinking more on it, he realized that all the men in Maggie’s life, at least the ones he’d known, had been similar types: dashing, dominant, high-risk fliers. Maggie was cut from the same mold, though softened by her femininity and sad first marriage. Hughes was the most interesting of her beaux, but she’d been smart enough to end their wartime affair. Paired, type A’s reduce their chances of survival exponentially, something to do with the multiplication theorem of probability. Terry would be smart to stay out of planes with her. You could see the respect Howard had for him. Howard held all the speed records, but had never shot down a Jap Zero.

  Cal had not seen Angie for a while, had not desired to return to the temple. She was in the news more than ever, adding to her notoriety by taking the Church of the New Gospel on the road each year. She’d played the Cow Palace in San Francisco and gone into the Central Valley to preach to farm immigrants who didn’t have a radio to hear her and wouldn’t have understood if they had. She moved from place to place with truckloads of equipment, setting up her tent like a traveling circus. In Salinas the tent went up in the Spreckels’ fields, which once had been Tesoro. The New York Times put her on page one when she preached at Madison Square Garden during the war. She’d met Eleanor Roosevelt on that trip.

  Before the wedding, Angie took him on a tour of the temple, which was showing some wear since his days on the second floor. She was also showing some wear, but it only added to her allure. She could have had the facial scars removed, but preferred wearing them as her badge of honor, as a duelist wears his. She’d kept her figure, as he saw when she emerged from the vestry after changing from white robes into in a clingy black frock for the reception. He remembered their first time alone together, at the Brown Derby, when he realized there were two Angies. He wondered if there were men in her life, which would not be easy given her celebrity. She was never far from his mind, but was he ready to compete with Jesus? Or with his father? They’d chatted on the ride over. She lived in Los Feliz, in the foothills above Sunset, invited him to come over some time. He told her about visiting Folsom. Gil had come up once for parole, and she’d written to oppose it, reminding the board of his courtroom threats.

  In setting up the main table, Maggie consulted no one. Of course, she included Howard, not thinking that he and Joe Morton might already be acquainted. Hughes’s Hollywood career was long on big hits and big flops, but two constants were his insistence on total control of his movies and his rejection of anything left wing. He would not employ union workers, which was a problem because postwar Hollywood was heavily unionized. For his part, Joe had marched in a few picket lines and never crossed one. His sympathies were hard to miss in his latest film, The Brotherhood of Man, panned by critics as socialist propaganda. He’d had trouble raising money in Hollywood for his next script, a collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, but found backers in New Y
ork, where money was more familiar with Brecht and less afraid of his politics.

  Lizzie didn’t mind Joe’s politics. Her view was that writers ought to be nonconformists, and she was happy to be free of her first husband’s sniffy conventionality. Her Westwood wedding to Joe had had nothing in common with her sister’s temple event except being the second for each. Miss Adelaide didn’t mention it. Joe had worked for the Times, and Lizzie still worked there, which created a newspaper conflict. Joe was controversial in Hollywood, but had the good taste to put his politics into his writing, not his conversation.

  The reception started at five, and sharply at seven Bach gave way to Cole Porter. The genius of Lester Lanin is that his music brings onto the dance floor people who normally would never leave their seats. The Lanin two-step is a little like a march, but happier because the champagne is flowing and the men are holding onto something softer than a rifle. Part of his genius is that Lanin can put almost any music into a two-step. There is never any excuse, aside from exhaustion or too much champagne, not to be dancing.

  Morton was tickled about getting Terry Heyward as a brother-in-law. The two had nothing in common except being generally good-natured guys. They’d bonded on their first meeting, when Maggie brought Terry to dinner at Brentwood. They were smart enough to talk about things they had in common, not things they didn’t. As a dancer, Joe was more enthusiastic than talented, and as the evening wore on danced with every woman at the table but the one smelling of coconuts and wearing plumeria. He detested champagne, which he regarded as something for christening ships, but found the Ambassador’s bourbon acceptable. He’d had a few drinks, but held his liquor well, always had. He’d found over the years that liquor stimulated his creativity, as if he needed an excuse.

  When the orchestra launched into a Jerome Kern medley he found himself awkwardly alone at the table with Howard, who did not dance anymore, and Gabriela, who did. Glancing at her, he wondered what was in it for the girls—sex, publicity, a mention by Miss Adelaide, a role in his next movie? Who’d ever heard of Jane Russell before The Outlaw? He considered that he might have had Howard instead of Terry for a brother-in-law, sharing holiday turkeys with him at Nelly’s place in Bel Air. Not that Howard was unattractive, but he was not convivial, not at all like Terry. What would they talk about? Certainly not movies. Not much of a drinker, not much of a dancer, not much fun. Plus he was deaf. Did all his business on the telephone because it was the only place he could hear. One thing they had in common was draft deferments: one who couldn’t hear, one who couldn’t see. After a moment, Joe switched his musings from Howard to Gabriella and smiled across the table. She smiled back. He took a swig, rose and circled the table; it seemed the gentlemanly thing to do. Appropriately, the orchestra was playing “I Won’t Dance.”

  “Sit down, Joe,” commanded Howard as Joe inclined himself toward the lady.

  Gabriela was half out of her seat, but sat back down. Joe sat beside her. “How are you doing, Howard?”

  “I hear you’re having trouble raising money.”

  Hughes was not good at small talk. “Who isn’t?”

  “You’re a good writer, Joe, just write the wrong stuff.”

  “And what would you say is the right stuff?”

  “What’s that?”

  Joe leaned across Gabriela, which was not unpleasant, and repeated the question.

  “It’s not the moment for your peace drivel,” Howard responded. “The Bolshies are in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. Do they have to take Paris before you wake up?”

  “I am awake, Howard. I rarely sleep.”

  “I hear you’re working with Brecht, something about teaming up on an allegory.”

  “All good writing is allegorical.”

  “How’s that again?”

  A dialogue with Hughes was essentially a monologue: He heard only his own voice.

  He leaned across Gabriela again. “I said: ALL GOOD WRITING IS ALLEGORICAL.”

  Hughes retreated. “What kind of allegory?”

  “You interested in seeing the script?”

  “Brecht’s a Bolshie.”

  Morton looked up into his eyes, strangely luminescent and opaque at the same time, too many crashes, probably. He had a strange ostrich-like head, a neck too long for it. Deafness isolates people, especially those too arrogant to get a hearing aid.

  “Brecht is brilliant, Howard. It is an honor to work with him.”

  “Going to be subpoenaed just like you.”

  “I expect you to be back there, too, Howard.”

  Hughes hesitated. He was reading lips.

  “Oh, I’ll be there—but it won’t be under subpoena.”

  “Maybe we can discuss this another time.”

  The music stopped, the players went on break and the dancers returned, Maggie with Terry, Nelly with Marco, Lizzie dropped off by a Times colleague, Cal with Angie.

  “If Terry doesn’t stop stepping on my feet,” said Maggie, reaching for a shoe.

  “Light, light,” said Marco, holding Nelly’s hand and executing a mincing little pas. “As if you are floating. Maggie you must bring Terry to the studio.”

  “What are you three talking about?” said Lizzie, looking suspiciously at Howard and Joe crushing in on poor Gabriela.

  “Waiting for you to come back,” said Howard. “I’m ready for a talk.”

  Finally, it was quiet, which might have had something to do with Hughes’s previous reticence. Terry went off to the buffet to bring back plates of food. The cake had been cut long ago, and the toasts were over but no one seemed to have left the party. A waiter passed to refill flutes and spike Joe’s bourbon. Angie left to greet some Soldiers.

  “What’s on your mind, Howard?” said Maggie.

  “Those Venice oil wells.”

  “What here . . . on the dance floor . . . you want to talk business?”

  When he smiled, which wasn’t often anymore, you could see traces of the boyish charm, the impishness that once radiated. “Why not? I want to make an offer.”

  “For the Venice oil wells?” said Lizzie.

  “I remember Maggie telling me once that she hated them. Right, Mag?”

  “What are you after, Howard?” said Maggie, slipping her shoe back on, wobbling from dance and drink and sitting down beside Joe. “You’re always after something.”

  “Look, we have to leave, but I want to talk about it some time. Eddie sold me the land for the airfield. I should have bought more at the time.”

  “Since when are you in the oil business, Howard?” said Cal.

  Cal was the only member of the family that Hughes had not met before. “I have always been in the oil business, son,” he said, too abruptly. “And so was my daddy.”

  “Eddie Mull couldn’t have sold you more land,” said Cal, undeterred. “He didn’t own the land between the airfield and the oil wells. It is undeveloped county marshland.”

  “What about my stables?” muttered Maggie. “You leave my stables alone, Howard. I’m trying to get Lizzie to go back with me. She won’t go near horses anymore.”

  “Never was my thing,” said Lizzie.

  “Remember Billy?” said Maggie.

  Lizzie shot a glance at her sister, who was tighter than she thought.

  “That land’s too good for stables,” said Hughes.

  “No, it’s not,” said Cal, loud enough to be sure Howard heard him. “It’s good for horses and a hundred other species. The oil wells are an abomination. They’re coming down.”

  “So I’m right,” said Hughes, standing, “you want to sell.”

  “Don’t be too sure, Howard,” said Maggie.

  Terry returned, leading a waiter with a tray of plates.

  “We are discussing the disposition of your oil fields,” Howard said to Terry, “for I take it that they are yours, to
o, now, my friend and associate, as part of the common property.” He turned to Nelly. “Though perhaps I should be talking to this fine lady as well.”

  “It’s the girls’ business—the girls and Cal.” She smiled at Marco. “Just leave me enough for my friends.” Marco stood as the musicians returned, announcing an Irving Berlin medley.

  “Irving Berlin is my speed,” said Joe, looking at Gabriela.

  “No,” said Hughes, standing, “we are leaving.”

  Angie returned, and Hughes took her by the hand. “We didn’t have time to talk today, but I thought it was a fine wedding. My first time at the temple, Angie. I make movies, you know. Would you allow me to call you sometime?”

  “I would love to see you again, Howard,” she said.

  Annoyed, Cal watched them together, noticing the facial scars in common, which they both refused to have removed.

  “Howard, you stop doing business at my wedding,” said Maggie, standing and hugging him. Terry stood as well. “But thank you for coming.” She kissed Gabriela.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” he said, shaking Terry’s hand. “Terry is a fortunate man. Since Maggie accuses me of doing business, let me say that I am dead serious about that land. And I will give you a guarantee: sell to me and the wells come out and the stables stay. You won’t find another buyer to make that promise.”

  Chapter 29

  Chili was the name Callender heard.

  He heard it in the Folsom game room, heard it during a chess game, heard it in the same sentence that he heard the name Murphy, and that’s what struck him, that the two names were used together, Chili and Murphy, two things that didn’t go together, like frijoles and Irish stew. After he thought about it a while and thought about whom Pitts had been playing chess with, he decided he might have something. That’s when he called Sammy Milstein who called Cal Mull at Pacific Electric.