by Lanyon, Josh
“That’s right. Frankie took over the organization when the old man lost his marbles. Clyde’s one of his enforcers.” She gave me an admiring smile. “You don’t mess around, do you? You’ve got the A-list baddies mad at you.”
* * * * *
I’d wondered if I might run into Jack at the station—and how I was supposed to react. I’d interviewed a few closeted cops when I worked as a reporter, but Jack seemed pretty relaxed about his orientation. Of course, I’d never seen him on the job; maybe he was different when he was on the clock. In any event, I didn’t run into him, so I left the police station and caught a bus back home.
As the bus rumbled along, flashing in and out of shade, I found myself thinking about Tony Fumagalli. If his son and heir was bothering to send hired muscle after me, there had to be something wrong with Fumagalli’s alibi. Some weakness that wasn’t obvious at first—or second, third, and fourth—glance. But if the police hadn’t found the chink in Fumagalli’s armor, what were the chances that I would stumble on it?
What I didn’t get was why it mattered to Fumagalli, with the old man now senile and living in a nursing home. By all accounts he was in increasingly poor health; by the time the book came out, Tony F. could easily be dead. And even if he wasn’t, prosecution was highly unlikely.
But what if prosecution wasn’t what Fumagalli Jr. feared? What if there was something else at risk?
What?
It clearly had to do with Eva’s death—or did it? It had to do with Eva, that much was sure. But if Fumagalli really had an unbreakable alibi for the murder, then the only other thing I could think of was the mysterious end of his engagement to Eva.
Why had she broken the engagement? Someone had to know. Gloria and Roman had supposedly been her closest confidants; it was inconceivable that she hadn’t spilled the beans to one or both of them in the three days before her death.
But was finding the answer to that riddle going to get me off the hook or just guarantee me being taken out?
It was moot anyway because Fumagalli wanted me to give up writing the book, and I couldn’t do that—wouldn’t do that. So either way, I had to keep going, and the more I knew—knowledge being power—the better my odds of survival.
The pulse of bright sunlight and deep shade was starting to bother me. I didn’t suffer from reflex epilepsy, and so far I’d never had a seizure triggered by outside stimuli, but I was feeling a little susceptible at the moment. Not to seizures so much as life in general. I closed my eyes, put my head back, and immediately thought of Jack. I shut that line of thought off instantly.
I liked Jack a lot—too much—and he basically thought I was a good-looking liability. Not a lot of room to go from there.
Instead, I made myself think about the night of Eva’s murder. She had been found stabbed to death with a bloody tarot card stuck to her bodice. Where had the tarot card come from? Surely Eva hadn’t walked around with The Lovers card in her handbag?
Roman Mayfield had done a couple of readings at the party, but not for Eva. I’d read several accounts of the evening, and they all had made a point that Eva did not have a reading. Granted, the readings had not been serious, more high spirits than a spiritual high.
The card had come from Mayfield’s tarot deck, that much had been established, but Mayfield had left the deck with his cape—yep, cape—hat and driving gloves in the bar at the hotel, which meant that at least thirty people had access to it. Besides, by the late ‘50s, the Garden of Allah was hosting more than its share of call girls, con artists, and riffraff. And, in fact, one theory was that Eva had fallen prey to a crazed transient. It wasn’t a popular theory, but it did have its merits.
If someone had deliberately swiped the card and followed Eva out to Stephen Ball’s cottage, then her murder had been sort of premeditated. Not completely premeditated because no one could have counted on Mayfield bringing his tarot deck to the party and doing a reading—could they?
Of course, the simplest explanation was that Mayfield had palmed his own tarot card and planted it on Eva’s body after he killed her, but that would be stupidly incriminating. Besides, what motive did he have? And besides that, his movements were accounted for during the evening.
Although I hadn’t seen the accounting myself.
* * * * *
There were two messages blinking on my answering machine when I let myself into my apartment. One was from a bookstore letting me know that they’d found a copy of the original Life magazine with the photo layout of the night of Eva’s murder.
The second was from my publisher, and the news was good. Stephen Ball had finally agreed to see me.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t like Stephen Ball.
In fairness, I hadn’t liked him even before we actually met. I never thought much of his acting and I loathed his politics. I’d seen way too many documentary clips of him testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee about communists in Hollywood. He had retired from film and television at least a decade earlier, and now spent his free time on golf courses or attending lifetime achievement banquets.
Our interview was held poolside at his Beverly Hills home. Ball was drinking Tom Collinses while the current Mrs. Ball—a nineteen-year-old former Victoria’s Secret model—practiced her high dive at the end of the park-sized pool.
“I’ll be frank with you,” Ball said after I’d been seated at the large umbrella-shaded table and handed a highball glass, “I’m not happy about this book of yours.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Let’s not play games, son. You’re digging into Eva’s death and that’s a painful subject for a lot of us.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said. “Half a century.” I sipped my drink and waited for his response. I didn’t bother pointing out that there weren’t “a lot of us” left.
Ball had to be in his nineties now, but he could easily have passed for fifteen to twenty years younger. He was tall and deeply tanned with unnaturally coal-black hair and equally coal-black eyebrows and mustache. He’d had some work done around his mouth and eyes, but nothing too ridiculous. His eyes were so blue I half suspected contacts. They studied me coldly.
“And you’re going to write this goddamn book with or without my cooperation,” he commented, “so I might as well give you the facts. If you’ve been talking with that fruitcake Roman Mayfield, you could use a few facts.”
“You’re not one of Mayfield’s clients?”
“Hell no.” He snorted. “Oh, sure, I read my horoscope in the paper. Everyone does, but that’s as far as my interest in the occult goes.”
There had been a photo of a much younger Ball and the Seer to the Stars in Mayfield’s photo gallery, but maybe he had outgrown that interest early. I decided to move in another direction.
“You were a leading suspect in Eva Aldrich’s death, weren’t you?”
He said shortly, “She was found in my bungalow. Yes, you could say I was a leading suspect. Although I think the police always knew Will Burack was the real culprit.”
“Meaning you believe Burack killed her?”
“You’re goddamn right. He was the only one with a motive. That alibi of his was tissue paper. I don’t know why the cops didn’t force the truth out of him and that lying, treacherous broad he was shacked up with.”
Like how did he think the police were going to force the truth? Rubber hoses and bright lights? Mildly, I asked, “You were having an affair with Eva, weren’t you?”
“That was over a long time before,” he said, dismissing. He picked up his glass, drinking and watching me over the rim with his chilly blue eyes.
“You were engaged to her for a short time when she first arrived in Hollywood,” I agreed. “She married Burack instead. So maybe it wasn’t an affair, maybe you were just sleeping together.”
He gave a crisp laugh and nodded to me as though acknowledging a point in a game. “Maybe so. We’d just finished making a picture together.
Danger in the Dunes. The old fire was still there.” He winked at me.
“But she was engaged to Fumagalli.”
“That dago!” He raised his glass to the swimwear model who’d made another perfect dive off the board at the end of the pool. “There was no way she was going to marry him.”
“Do you know why she broke it off? Was it because of you?”
“Probably.” He smiled a dazzling white smile. I suspected dentures. “Like I said, the old chemistry was there.”
“What happened the night she was killed?”
He picked up the pitcher of Tom Collins, topped off my drink and then leaned back, folding his arms across his tanned chest.
He drawled, “What do you think happened?”
“I think you arranged to meet her at your villa.”
His gaze held mine for a long moment, and then he relaxed. “I guess there’s never really been much mystery about that. Yes, I gave her my keys and told her I’d meet her there in about half an hour. The party was winding down by then, but even so, I couldn’t get away as quickly as I wanted. Finally I managed to slip out. I walked out past the pool yard. I remember thinking how quiet it was. You could hear the music from the hotel. They were playing ‘An Affair to Remember.’ I remember how bright the stars were.” His smile was suddenly strained. “There were only a couple of people in the pool by then.”
He fell silent.
I waited.
“The lights were on in the villa. It looked…welcoming.” He cleared his throat. “The front door wasn’t quite latched. I pushed it open and stepped inside. She was lying on the floor between the bedroom and the front room. Her eyes were open.” His own eyes rose out of the horrendous past and met mine. “I knew at once she was dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was.
“She’d been wearing this dress…lots of filmy layers in a pale shade of pink. You know the kind of thing women wore back then. It was like…a cloud around her. It was splotched with her blood. There was blood everywhere. I’d never seen so much blood. They never did get it all out of that tile.”
“Did you notice the tarot card right away?”
He said slowly, “Not at first. She was, as I said, soaked in blood. It took my eyes a few moments to adjust, to recognize it—lying on her chest—smeared in her blood.”
“Not pinned to her dress?”
He shook his head. “It looked like someone had deliberately placed it on her.”
I glanced at the tape recorder winding away in the bright sunlight. “For the sake of argument, if Will Burack didn’t kill Eva, who would be your second guess?”
He stared at me for a long time, then he turned to watch his junior partner perform a tight little somersault off the diving board.
“Gloria Rayner,” he said.
* * * * *
It was dusk by the time I made it back to Glendale. I met Jack going out through the arched entranceway as I was coming in.
My instinctive delight dissolved. He was dressed for an evening on the town: boots, tight-fitting jeans, body hugging silk T-shirt. He checked for a moment, seeing me.
“Hey, Tim.”
“Hey, Jack.”
“Good day?” He didn’t look guilty exactly, just sort of uncomfortable.
“It was,” I said, and I was pleased that my voice sounded relaxed. A little flare of malicious humor prompted me to ask, “Hot date?”
“Oh…” He offered a lopsided smile—no sign of the dimple at all. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You can go as far as you want,” I assured him—and if I’d had dimples, they would have showed. No way was I going to let him know that this mattered to me. He already thought I was some pathetic loser; the last thing I wanted was for him to think I placed unreasonable significance on the fact that we’d had sex. In fact, I felt almost giddy with relief that I was able to pretend that it meant nothing—that he meant nothing. I’m not even sure where it was coming from. Maybe from the same place that final wisecrack comes right after they line you up against the wall and point the rifles. “Have a good one,” I said, and I went on through the archway, leaving him standing there framed in the bougainvillea.
Once safely inside my apartment I got a beer from the fridge and uncapped it with unsteady hands. I dropped down on the couch and chugged half the bottle, then sagged back and put the cold bottle against my hot forehead. It was stuffy as hell in the apartment, but that wasn’t my problem.
No, my problem was I had a migraine coming on. And I still didn’t have an ending for my book, the mob was mad at me, and I was dangerously close to falling for a guy who didn’t give a damn about me.
“Well, hell,” I said softly. I put the beer down, went into the bathroom, and rummaged in the cabinet for some Tylenol. Catching my expression in the mirror, I sneered.
“Get a grip,” I said.
Putting Jack out of my mind, I popped a couple of Tylenol and got to work.
I had finished transcribing the interview with Ball and entering my notes into my laptop, when something occurred to me.
Pulling my copy of Mayfield’s The Mystery of the Tarot off the shelf, I looked up The Lovers card.
Two Lovers stand in front of the Tree of Knowledge. The man represents the rational, conscious, practical mind. The woman symbolizes the intuitive, subconscious, and mystical. The man gazes upon the woman, the woman looks skyward toward an archangel who blesses their union. Upright, this card in a reading bids the querent unify both intellect and intuition. A choice must be made: will the querent follow the dictates of her heart or “use his head”? The answer lies in surrendering to a higher spiritual power. The card is also known as The Twins.
I stared at the page thoughtfully, then reached for the phone. I dialed Stephen Ball’s home. Naturally I didn’t get Ball himself, but I left a message asking him to call as I needed to verify some facts. I had a feeling it was going to take more than one message to get hold of Mr. Matinee, but I was prepared to keep calling until I got an answer.
Turning off my laptop, I gave some thought to dinner. To my relief, the migraine turned out to be just a bad tension headache, which surrendered to the pain relievers and a ham sandwich. The lights were still out at Jack’s place by the time I took my shower and went to bed, but it was still early in the evening.
And it was none of my business.
It was still none of my business at one o’clock in the morning, when I gave up on sleeping and got up to watch some Perry Mason reruns. All the same, I couldn’t help noticing that Jack’s porch light was still on, as I heated up the teakettle.
Settling on the sofa with a mug of tea, I watched Perry dispensing law and order.
I wasn’t fretting about Jack anymore—well, not much—but my brain couldn’t seem to turn off. I hadn’t let myself think about Frank Fumagalli and his pet goon all day, but now that I had nothing else to keep me busy, I couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy. Okay, a lot uneasy. I had no idea what to do about Fumagalli. How far was he liable to take this? Would he put a contract out on me if refused to drop the book? Was that what happened to Raymond Irvine back in ’63 when he started research on his book?
The doorbell rang and I spilled my tea. Even decaffeinated hot tea has an energizing effect when you pour it in your lap. I jumped up, shrugging out of my bathrobe, and then stood there, immobile, listening to the doorbell buzz a second time.
Did hit men ring first or did they just knock down the door and blast you where you stood? I slunk over to the door, peeked out in time to see Jack turning away. I yanked the door open.
He swung back to face me; his smile was tentative. “I didn’t wake you, did I? I saw the light was on.”
“No. You didn’t wake me.” I made an effort to do the friendly thing, more for my sake than his. “How was your date?”
He shrugged.
I ran out of things to say. Why was he here?
“Can I come in?”
Without a word, I stepped back
and let him in. He glanced at the TV, at my discarded bathrobe, and the mug on the floor. “Listen,” he said, and stopped. He gave me a funny, uncertain look.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Tonight…I’d agreed to go to this concert over a month ago. I couldn’t cancel.”
Something tight inside my gut slowly let go. “It’s okay,” I said. “You already said you weren’t looking for anything serious.”
“I’m not, but…” His eyes zeroed in on mine. “I kept thinking about you all evening.”
“You did?” Maybe I shouldn’t have sounded quite so surprised.
“I did. I was wondering how your day went. And what you were doing. I kept thinking about last night.”
“I…” I shrugged. “Me too.”
Jack’s dimple showed briefly. “Anyway, I was wondering if you had plans for the rest of the night?”
I wondered if I was still dreaming. Maybe I hadn’t woken up at all, and I was still tossing and turning in the bedroom, dreaming that I had put the kettle on and was watching Perry Mason reruns—and that Jack suddenly appeared at my door saying nice things and wanting sex. It seemed like the kind of thing I’d dream.
Jack was still smiling, but he tilted his head a little like he was listening for something he just couldn’t hear. His smiled slipped a fraction. “No?” he asked after a moment.
My heart did one of those little end zone victory dances, but I did my best to stay stoic. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I really wanted to find out how this episode of Perry Mason ends.”
“Ah.” Gravely, he studied Perry’s grim, blue-jawed visage. After a long moment, he looked back my way. “It’s the ex-wife of the other rancher.”
I gazed at him, and I couldn’t keep from smiling. “I think my schedule just opened up.”
Chapter Ten