Dead to Me

by Mary McCoy

  Then I took out the picture of Ruth.

  “I’ve never seen her, either,” said Milton Fleming.

  “Look behind her,” I said. “What do you see there? How do you explain that?”

  Poring over the photographs in the hospital room, I’d been focused on the girls, looking for the clues in their faces and body language. But that’s not where the clues were. The photographs were poorly lit and sloppily composed—the photographers had barely bothered to conceal where they were taken. In Ruth’s photograph, they hadn’t bothered at all. The stencil on the door was nearly washed out by the spotlight that shone up from below, bathing her face in a sickly light, but I could still make out the letters, reversed in the frosted glass:

  It took a moment for Mr. Fleming to see what I was pointing at, caught up as he was in the sight of a winking and scarcely clad Ruth. He gaped for a moment before suddenly remembering that he was a respectable citizen and family man looking at dirty pictures in the presence of a minor. The moment his eyes lit on the stenciled letters, I saw his lips begin to form a protest that died in his throat. All that came out was a long, high-pitched wheeze.

  “Girly, I don’t know anything about this.” His panicked eyes met mine and begged me to believe him. I almost did.

  He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me in close enough to whisper in my ear, “Please.”

  Please? I scowled at him.

  “Please, not in front of these people, not now,” he said. “I could lose my contract with the schools, and I swear I didn’t have anything to do with this. There’s a back door to the shop off the alley. Come back in an hour, and I promise, I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “One hour,” I whispered back. The people in the store froze in place, hanging on the sight of Mr. Fleming, muttering in my ear. He nodded, gave my shoulders a shake, and gave me a shove that looked rougher than it really was.

  “Get out of here now, girly,” he bellowed, chasing me toward the door. “Next time you play a prank like that, I call the police.”

  We put on a good show for them. At the last minute, I spun around and stuck out my tongue at him, then slammed the door hard behind me.

  Since I had an hour to kill in the neighborhood, I found a diner around the corner from Fleming’s and helped myself to the first meal I’d had since yesterday’s breakfast. I shouldn’t have bothered. My toast was cold and the coffee tasted vaguely of dish soap, which at least served to reassure me that the cup had been washed. I was still hungry when I finished, but I needed to save my last few dimes for bus fare.

  By the time I finished my meal, it had been close enough to an hour. As I walked down the alley behind Fleming’s Fine Family Photography, it occurred to me that Mr. Fleming might be planning an ambush. The alley was empty, no cars or people in sight. Just to be safe, I pressed my back flat against the wall and inched along until I was standing just outside of Fleming’s. When I peeked through the glass door, I saw Mr. Fleming sitting in a leather swivel chair, smoking, and staring daggers at a boy who sat across from him. Mr. Fleming looked too angry to speak, and the boy looked too scared. It didn’t look like an ambush in any case, so I knocked on the back door. Mr. Fleming let me in, locked the door behind us, and closed the blinds.

  “Meet my son, Alex,” he said, offering me a seat. “I believe he’s the person you want to talk to.”

  Up close, I could see that Alex wasn’t much older than me. He wore his fine blond hair like a kid’s, slicked back with too much pomade, and his stark-white eyebrows made him look perpetually surprised. He had the pale, rheumy eyes of a kitten you didn’t expect to live long—not the sort of person I imagined would do well in a criminal underworld. I took the picture of Ruth out of my bag and put it down on the table in front of him.

  “Did you take this?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “For someone named Rex?” I ventured.

  Again, he nodded. He picked it up, and I noticed that his hands shook. “I don’t take pictures for Rex anymore.”

  Mr. Fleming sighed and inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “That’s what happens, Alex. You fool with those people, and you pay the piper. You pay and you pay and you keep paying.”

  With this last sentiment, Mr. Fleming picked up his ashtray and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall near Alex’s head and shattered.

  “Idiot child,” he said more quietly, and went back to his smoking, flicking the ash into a coffee cup.

  Alex’s hands shook harder as he swallowed and gave me what I’m sure was the steeliest look he could manage at the moment. “What do you want?” he asked. “How much?”

  “How much more, you mean,” Mr. Fleming roared.

  For a moment, I was tempted to play along, to continue being whoever it was that Alex and Mr. Fleming seemed to think I was. Because it was someone who terrified them, someone to whom they would have given up anything, information or cash. Maybe they deserved it, but I didn’t think there was any joy to be had in terrorizing the school photographer and his son.

  “I’m not after your money,” I said.

  “Then who sent you?” Mr. Fleming asked.

  “Nobody sent me,” I said, taking the picture back from Alex. “But I need information. I need to know where these came from.”

  Mr. Fleming looked skeptical, but Alex swallowed and nodded.

  He explained that he’d been taking pictures of sunbathers and bodybuilders at Venice Beach for his portfolio when Rex approached him and asked if he’d like to make a little extra money. Rex asked if Alex had his own studio, and being eighteen and proud, Alex passed off his father’s business card as his own. Soon they had an arrangement, and Rex started bringing girls by after the studio had closed.

  Sometimes Rex would ask the girls if they wanted to take their clothes off, but he never made anyone do it. And even that work seemed mostly on the level, Alex said. It was artistic, tasteful even, and the girls all seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. But then, after about a year, Alex started to notice things that troubled him. Rex started to bring in different girls, and even Alex knew that these girls would never get a screen test. Emaciated girls with dark circles under their eyes and bad wigs and too much makeup. Girls who posed wearing elbow-length gloves to hide the track marks on their arms. Girls who left their children sleeping in the backseat of Rex’s car while Alex took their pictures.

  “Was it just you, Rex, and the girls?”

  “Most of the time. That lady came a few times,” Alex said, pointing at Ruth’s picture. “She helped out with the makeup and wardrobe. And he had a partner who used to come in the beginning, but by the end, he wasn’t coming around anymore. Older guy with a mustache, wore nice suits. He said he was with one of the studios, and chatted up the girls. They all liked him a lot.”

  Women did like my father a lot. At parties, my mother’s friends always swarmed him. He was charming, never said a word about himself, and made them feel like the most beautiful, interesting people in the room. Not that I was certain Alex was talking about my father, but the odds seemed decent.

  “Was there ever a girl named Annie here?” I didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “It doesn’t sound familiar, but most of them didn’t use their real names.”

  “When did you stop taking pictures for Rex?” I asked.

  “About a month ago.”

  “And he just let you walk away?”

  Mr. Fleming snorted. “Not by a long shot. We pay that piece of garbage twenty dollars a week now. We do that, he stays away, doesn’t ruin us.”

  “So when I showed up in your showroom with those pictures…”

  “All Rex’s messengers are girls,” Alex said. “At first. Then he sends the guys who put cigars out on your arm.”

  “Was that why you stopped taking the pictures?” I asked. “Because you were scared?”

  “No, it wasn’t that.” Alex’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Like I said, som
e of the girls that Rex started to bring in were in real bad shape. And at first, I figure it’s none of my business. I mean, they’re all adults and can do what they like, right?”

  “But then something happened,” I said, trying to help him along with this story he clearly didn’t relish telling.

  He nodded, his face suddenly stricken. “It was when they brought in that young girl.”

  I took out the picture of the underage Jean Harlow look-alike and put it down in front of Alex. “You mean her?”

  He reached out and took me by the wrist. “I didn’t take that one—you have to believe me.”

  I recoiled from his touch. “If you didn’t, who did?”

  “Rex shows up with the girl, and she’s out of it, like she was drunk or drugged or something. And Rex is barking orders at her, telling her to do what he says or else. I tell Rex I’m calling the police. He says, I do that, and he’ll make sure me and my dad take the fall for it. Says he knows the right cops and nothing will ever stick to him.”

  Alex’s face turned red and blotchy as he fought to keep from sobbing.

  “I should have called them anyway. I should have at least taken that girl away from them and gotten her to a hospital or something. But I was scared. In the end, I told Rex I wouldn’t do it, that we were done, for him to get out.”

  “So that’s how it ended?” I asked, knowing full well it wasn’t. Rex didn’t seem like a man accustomed to being told no. “He just took the girl and left?”

  “No,” said Alex. “I didn’t throw them out. I tried, but Rex let me have it pretty good. While I was down, he dragged me into the showroom and locked me there. He took the pictures himself, and then he left. Took my camera with him, too.”

  “Too bad,” I said, not very convincingly.

  “Lay off,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you any of this. And I wouldn’t, except that little girl is on my conscience.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “Like I said, nobody around here uses real names anyway.”

  Alex kept talking, making excuses for the role he’d played, trying to confess this girl off his conscience. Some parts I believed, others I didn’t. The longer he went on, the more it became the version of the story that Alex had decided was the truth, just to keep from hating himself.

  By that point, I wasn’t listening anymore. I was thinking about the girl in the picture. I wished I could find her and take her someplace safe, someplace where none of them could hurt her anymore.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, cutting Alex off midsentence. I stood up and put the pictures back in my purse.

  Mr. Fleming walked me to the back door. Holding it open for me, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I’m sorry I raised a son who would do such a thing. I’m sorry you had to come here. I’m sorry you had to see the things you saw.”

  I wasn’t angry with Mr. Fleming, yet I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes as I stepped out into the alley.

  “Yeah, me too,” I whispered.

  It was afternoon by the time I made it back to the hospital, and Jerry was waiting for me. Judging by the dark look he gave me, he’d been waiting for some time.

  “Should I be impressed that you hung around here long enough to brush her hair before sneaking out?” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Jerry,” I said. “But—”

  Jerry raised a hand and cut me off before I could cook up a lie. He spoke softly, slowly considering each word he uttered. “I don’t even want to know where you’ve been this time.” He rubbed his temples and winced, then looked back up at me, dark eyes blazing. “First you stage a break-in at your own house. Then you wander over to the Stratford Arms and introduce yourself to Rex and Ruth.”

  My jaw dropped. “Were you following me?”

  Jerry ignored my question. “You are keeping me from my work, and you are putting yourself and your sister in danger. I know you want answers, kid, but what you are doing now is a distraction, and I don’t have time for it.”

  I bristled. “Why didn’t you just tell me what you knew from the start?”

  Jerry rolled his eyes and enumerated his reasons on his fingers. “Because I have a job to do. Because you’re a child. And because, for some reason, I thought that after four years apart, you might actually want to be here with your sister, not out playing detective.”

  “I just want to find out who did this to her.”

  “And I might know that by now, if I hadn’t been following you all over the city making sure you didn’t get killed,” Jerry said, giving me a disgusted look.

  Annie had been gone almost four years, and I’d never done a thing. I used to think it was because I didn’t know what to do, or how to help, or even where to start looking. But as I sat by her bed that first night in the hospital, all I could think of was how none of that mattered. I should have tried. It was a bad feeling, but hearing Jerry’s words, I suddenly felt a thousand times worse. Annie was half dead, her body broken. Someone had to keep her safe—someone needed to be here when she woke up, or when she didn’t. I was the only one who could do those things for Annie, and I hadn’t been doing them.

  It was easier to look at it from a distance, to pretend it was a case from one of my detective stories. I wanted to believe I could look for clues, find the patterns, piece them together, and save the day. Even if I could, it wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t bring her back, or fix our miserable family, or make up for the years I’d spent without her, but that was beside the point. I wasn’t a detective. Jerry was. He was the only other person trying to find out what had happened to Annie, the only other person who seemed to care about her, and all I’d done so far was get in his way.

  Maybe it was the soapy coffee I’d had a few hours before, or maybe it was the guilt. I didn’t have time to pinpoint the exact cause of the queasy knot in my stomach before I was doubled over the wastebasket heaving.

  Jerry cleared his throat, got up, and filled a cup of water from the tap. He handed me a handkerchief and patted me on the shoulder, offering comfort like he had seen it in a movie once but never actually tried it before himself.

  “Did I ruin everything?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the handkerchief.

  “You didn’t ruin everything,” Jerry said. “The reason nobody’s found Annie is that nobody’s looking for her. If you’d said anything they could use, they’d be here right now.”

  “What are you going to do next?” I asked.

  “What I’m going to do next is keep my word,” Jerry said, cracking his knuckles and stretching his legs. “On the phone I said I’d tell you everything, and I intend to. Besides, you did manage to get away from Rex. I suppose you deserve a little credit.”

  “Like I said before, your sister and I worked together, in a manner of speaking. Annie knew all the girls who came through the Stratford Arms. She kept tabs on a bunch of other places like it, too. She knew who was new in town, who was having a rough time, and who worked for Rex and men like him. She helped them all when she could. She’d cover a girl’s rent, or give her a place to stay for a week or so if she ran into trouble. Once she even paid for a girl’s bus ticket back to Fort Wayne.

  “I get a lot of missing-persons cases, a lot of parents from small towns whose daughters run away to the city. Sometimes when I’d hit a wall on a case like that, I’d give Annie a call, and more than half the time she knew exactly where to find the missing girl, even if she’d changed her name, lied about her age, or dyed her hair. What’s more, she knew when not to help. There was this one client I had a while back, a salesman from Fresno, who seemed like a real creep. Nothing in particular—I just had a bad feeling about him. I showed Annie the picture of the girl he said was his daughter, and from the look on her face I knew she knew exactly where this girl was, but she wouldn’t say a word. And I didn’t push her on it, either. She had a good gut instinct for things like that.r />
  “I always paid her for the information. She said she didn’t need it, but I worried about her. Didn’t know how she was taking care of herself, though she always seemed to have a roof over her head. Never stayed in the same place for long, though. Every couple of months, she’d pick up everything and move to another furnished room in another part of town.

  “Then a few days ago, Annie calls me, asks for my help. She says that one of her girlfriends had gone out the night before and hadn’t come back. And that was only the beginning.

  “I do a little digging around and find out that Annie’s friend was last seen at a bar called Marty’s, where she was picked up in a car along with two other girls and taken to a private party hosted by Conrad Donahue.”

  “The Conrad Donahue?” I asked, leaning forward so far I nearly fell out of my chair. I wasn’t one to swoon over movie stars, but for Conrad Donahue, I made an exception. He had thick, dark hair, a finely chiseled jaw, and eyebrows that might have seemed unruly, if not for the way they framed his moody, haunted blue eyes.

  “I’d wipe off that dreamy look if I was you. Donahue is nobody you’d want in your autograph book.”

  “What did he do?”

  “There were three of them at the party—the actress Camille Grabo, a dancer named Irma Martin, and another girl, a runaway, probably a little younger than you.”

  Conrad Donahue was the biggest star Insignia Pictures had, and I doubted it was a coincidence that Camille Grabo had turned up in my father’s safe and Conrad’s party.

  “At some point that night, Irma and the younger girl got into a car with Mr. Donahue, and that’s the last anybody saw of them,” Jerry said.

  I swallowed hard. “And my father’s involved in that, too?”

  “You know how your father got where he is? He used to be a talent scout. His job was tracking down pretty girls, taking their pictures, and trying to make them stars. He had some luck at it, too. You know Delia Montrose? The one who played the nurse who falls in love with the patient at the TB hospital? She was one of your father’s finds.