by Ed Kurtz
“But that’s….no, Frank. You have to leave. You promised.”
“You say that like I’m lying to my poor old grandmother. I promised a couple of gangsters, darling. Crooks. Who cares what I say to them? As far as they’re concerned, I’m already gone. It’s finished, all of it. Thanks to you.”
He showed his teeth in a broad grin and kissed her on the cheek. The driver looked at them through the rearview mirror for a moment, until Grace met his gaze. She sat still for a moment, her mouth open, before blinking rapidly and asking the driver if she could smoke in the taxi.
“Help yourself,” the driver said.
She helped herself. And while she smoked, she thought about the eighty-five hundred dollars she’d just wasted on a life she knew she couldn’t really save.
23
L.A., 2013
The Royal Blue was in a wretched state of disrepair. The marquee didn’t look safe to stand under, the concrete façade was crumbling, and the window to the box office was boarded up with a handwritten sign bidding customers to buy their tickets inside. Even the sidewalk was cracked and overrun with tall green weeds. The theater looked like it should be condemned, but sure enough they were in the middle of a late-night revival of The Elephant Man. According to the tattered ad pasted to the front door, tomorrow began their three-day Howard Hawks retrospective, only five bucks per show. Slightly worried that the roof was going to fall on me before we were done, I pulled the door open and let Lou walk in ahead of me.
The inside was somehow worse. I felt like I was in one of those 42nd Street grindhouses from the eighties, with the mildewed carpet torn to ribbons and the musty curtains on the walls festooned with cobwebs and thick dust. We went across the lobby, past ripped posters for forthcoming features of past years, to the concession stand, where a languid teenager with ironic horn-rimmed glasses raised his substantial eyebrows at me. Below him stood a glass cage filled with stale, radioactive-yellow popcorn. My stomach tightened.
“Is the manager in?”
“I’m the assistant manager.”
Lou and I exchanged a look.
She said, “Does Helen Bryan work here?”
“I don’t think I have to answer that. Are you cops?”
“We’re friends of hers,” I said.
“Then you know she don’t work here anymore.”
“Was she fired?” Lou asked.
“She quit.”
I said, “Did she quit, or just stop showing up?”
The kid scrunched up his face.
“You know so much, how come you’re asking the questions?”
“I was guessing,” I said. “Which was it?”
“Look, man, that girl was trouble. I’m not trying to talk about your friend, but she had problems, all right? So when she didn’t show, nobody was really all that bugged by it, you know what I mean?”
“When was that?” Lou asked.
“Her last shift, you mean? Thursday, I think. No—Wednesday. About a week ago now. Norm figured he’d let her know she didn’t have a job no more when she came in for her last check, only she never came in. Far as I know it’s still sitting in his office.”
“Nobody thought that was cause for concern?” I said.
“What, she’s our problem now? Places like this, we got a high turnover, man. I been here nine months and I’m an old veteran.”
“You just like all the old movies, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“How about silents?”
“Sometimes. Some of the European ones were okay.”
“Ever heard of Angel of the Abyss?”
“What about it?” the kid asked. He was losing his patience with me, if there was much there to begin with.
“It’s a lost film from the twenties,” I said.
“I know what it is—why’re you asking about it?”
“I thought maybe Helen had an interest in it.”
“I don’t think she would’ve known about that. She wasn’t really all that into film.”
“She worked at a theater, didn’t she?”
“I used to work at a filling station and I don’t give a shit about gas.”
“Doesn’t everybody like movies?”
“Sure, whatever’s new and popular. Something like that, though? Takes a special breed of film geek to have even heard of it.”
“Like the Silent Film Appreciation Society?”
“I don’t know what that is, but sure.”
“Couple of ladies Helen knows, as it turns out.”
“Hey, I said she worked here but I never said we were best friends. Maybe she was into old silent films, what do I know? She just never struck me as the type, that’s all.”
“You never saw her talk to a nice old lady? Leslie Wheeler?”
“How old? There was some really old broad used to come in here to talk to her. Figured she was her grandma. Seventies, maybe eighties.”
“This lady was in her fifties,” I said.
“Then I don’t know. Helen sold Ju Ju Beans and Cokes to a lot of nice old ladies. Some of them were chatty. Best I can give you.”
“All right,” Lou said, “don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re just concerned friends, you understand?”
“I hope you find her and I hope she’s okay,” the kid said, “but that’s the end of what I know. She wasn’t here long, and then she wasn’t here at all. Like I told you, she didn’t even pick up her last check—or her street clothes, for that matter.”
“Come again?”
“She’d change into her uniform when she got here.” He tugged at his dorky red suspenders. “I don’t choose to wear this crap, you know.”
“And when she left the last time, she was still in uniform?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
Lou said, “Can we get a look at those clothes?”
The kid grimaced.
“Come on, man.”
I said, “It might help.”
“Sure, but I can’t just let you poke around the chick’s clothes, can I? That’s weird.”
Lou shrugged her shoulders. I reluctantly took a twenty from my wallet and laid it on the glass counter. The kid snorted.
“Are you kidding?” he said.
“Kids these days,” Lou snarked.
I dropped another Hamilton. The kid swiped them both and said, “Right this way, sir.”
So hard to find good help.
* * *
Helen came to work on what would be her last day in a small lime green T-shirt and ripped blue jeans. I presumed she kept on her underwear and socks, because that was all she’d left in a locker that didn’t lock outside the manager’s office behind the concession stand. With the kid looming nearby, I turned the shirt inside out while Lou went through the pants. A second later, she said, “Wallet.”
I dropped the shirt. Lou opened the wallet.
Inside was a Massachusetts driver’s license, a debit card, thirteen bucks, Ray Warren’s business card, and a folded-up piece of scrap paper. Lou handed me the wallet and unfolded the scrap. On it was written the name Tim in a childish scrawl, beneath which was a phone number. Lou didn’t miss a beat; she whipped out her mobile in a hurry and dialed the number.
“I’m looking for Tim?” she asked in a falsely meek voice when someone picked up. “No one there called Tim? All right, sorry to bother you.”
She clicked off and peered at the scrap.
“Maybe it’s supposed to say Tom,” I offered.
Lou smiled, said, “I think I got it. Come on.”
The kid pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “Wait, you’re just going to take her wallet?”
Lou said, “Yep.”
The kid shrugged.
* * *
Around the corner from Canter’s on Fairfax Avenue, Lou stopped in front of an ATM, where she stopped and shoved Helen’s debit card into the slot.
“Good plan,” I said. “Clean out her account and she’ll
have to come back from wherever she is.”
“Not exactly,” Lou said, adding, “Fucko.”
The display prompted her and she opened up the scrap of paper. I chuckled softly, realizing right away what she was up to.
“I have a pretty terrible memory,” she said, plugging in the last four digits of “Tim’s” telephone number. “I keep a little list just like this for PIN numbers and shit like that, disguised as phone numbers in case anybody gets a hold of it. It’s not a new trick, and since Tim seems to be bullshit—abrafuckingcadabra, Blackstone.”
The PIN worked. Lou grinned at me with pride.
“Impressive,” I said. “Now what?”
“Let’s see what she’s got in there.”
She navigated a few options until the machine spat out a statement on a small receipt. Lou yanked it out and said, “Holy shitballs.”
I looked over her shoulder at the tally at the bottom and said, “You can say that again.”
Helen Bryan had three-quarters of a million dollars sitting in her savings account.
24
Hollywood, 1926
Looking upon herself in the washroom mirror, Grace beheld the perfect model of the “New Woman”: black bob, pixie face of alabaster, small bust and boyish figure. The new Colleen Moore. Tomorrow’s in-girl. Perhaps even the first new star of the forthcoming talking pictures revolution—why not? Her voice wasn’t bad. She had what it took and she had the scars to prove it, though none to show on camera. All of Grace’s scars were scored inside, raked deep by the circuit, by the blood she’d seen, by that relentless impulse to conquer the world she was never sure was her own. But she would survive Angel of the Abyss, just as she’d survived the vaudeville circuit, and her afternoon meeting with Famous Players people was going to be her first step into a bright new future.
She was to see Joseph March, the director, and Alan Rivers, the Famous Players representative, at March’s home on a sprawling, remote strip of Malibu beach. No script had been sent, not even a description of the picture at stake, but by telegram Grace read that March was shown footage from Angel by none other than the great Jack Parson himself and was, in his own words, “positively mesmerized.”
The trouble, of course, was Frank. He maintained his cloistered presence in her bungalow, forbidden to go out unless absolutely necessary and going stir-crazy day by day. He wanted to go back to work, to buy cigarettes and drink merrily with her at speakeasies as they’d done before. Grace wouldn’t have any of it.
“You might as well be a wanted man,” she tried to explain. “You’ll be killed the moment one of those awful men sees you or hears word you’re still in Los Angeles.”
“That’s all bluster,” he countered. “You have to understand it’s costly to kill a man for thugs like them. You can’t just go around gunning for whomever you please, or else half the town would be bleeding in the streets. It’s a calculated thing, and I’m just not worth it.”
“Are you willing to stake your life on that?”
“Beats being crammed in a cage,” Frank complained.
“Or mine?”
He sighed heavily. “Grace, darling—I wouldn’t dare pull you down into something like that, not even on a longshot. What’s the percentage in hurting you?”
“I’ve seen them. I know who they are.”
“Practically everybody does. These guys aren’t ghosts. They’re practically famous in their own right—like you’re going to be.”
“Oh, no,” said Grace, flitting about the bungalow in search of her pearls for the meeting. “I’ll be famous, all right—but not like them.”
“You know what I mean. And trust me, you’re safe as a babe in her crib. We both are.”
“Trust,” she parroted, rolling her tongue over the word and its meaning. “If that’s all I’ve got to go on, I might as well drop the rest of my vanishing fortune on the races.”
She regretted saying it immediately. Frank’s mouth tightened, wrinkled. He averted his eyes and rose to pour himself a brandy from Grace’s bar.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to go to this meeting now. I’ve lost all faith in Jack Parson and his ridiculous little film, but there’s still a chance for me in this business and it starts here. Please don’t go anywhere. Take a nap if you want, drink everything in the house, just stay put, will you?”
“I have a better idea,” Frank said after a belt of his drink. Grace scrunched up her face, waiting for it. “How about I drive you?”
“Are you crazy?” Grace boomed. “Listen, Frank—I’ve a condition letting you stay in my place and that means staying put.”
“It’s either that, or I hit the nearest speakeasy and take my chances. Your choice, doll.”
“I—you…”
Grace stammered, then stamped her foot.
“You’re impossible!” she cried.
Frank said, “I’ll get my coat.”
* * *
It might not have been Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair, but Joseph March’s “little house on the beach” remained a sight to behold. Great marble columns supported the roof over the sprawling front porch, which wrapped around one side of the house and became a path to the enormous swimming pool sparkling within view of the Pacific.
“They build the pools first,” Frank said as he pulled the car up on the circular drive. “Then they figure out how much space is left for the house.”
“What a spread,” Grace said.
Frank stopped the automobile in front of a wide set of six marble steps leading up to the front door, which was festooned with stone grapes on the vine. He whistled and killed the motor.
“Now you be a good boy and sit in the car,” she said as she opened the door. “That’s what drivers do and you, my friend, are a driver. Just as you said.”
“Just as I said,” Frank repeated with a knowing grin. “Go on. Get famous.”
“I very nearly am,” she said, and stepped out of the automobile, resplendent in a white silk gown with ruffled sleeves, a string of pearls, and a rosy-pink cloche hat atop her head.
Grace climbed the steps and was met at the top by a tuxedoed colored man who held open the front door and lowered his eyes when she entered the vestibule. She gave him a sharp nod and walked into a white wonderland of stone and glass, twinkling chandeliers and fresh, fragrant flowers in elegant vases. The door shut behind her and the servant vanished from sight just as Jack Parson materialized and exclaimed, “Grace, my dear!”
Jack appeared more refined than ever in a proper suit and tie, and more astonishing yet, he was grinning ear to ear. He stepped lightly over the marble floor to meet her and embraced his starlet with vigor.
“I feel as though I’m about to marry off my own daughter,” he said close to her ear. “A proud papa I am, though. Terribly proud.”
“I’m here to meet a director,” she said with a small laugh, pulling away from his arms. “No one’s brought out the blotter yet, Jack.”
“You don’t know how thrilled he is—thrilled, Gracie—with what he’s seen of our picture. And to be perfectly honest, I’m thrilled myself. Now that I’ve cracked it, I feel more alive than I ever have. I can’t believe I ever doubted it. Angel will never be topped, not by me, anyhow.”
“Why, Jack,” she said with batting eyes, “you sound almost…human.”
“A heartbreaker is what you are. Come, they’re in the projection room.”
“Projection room?”
“This house is a monstrosity. Pagodas, a sundeck—a pipe organ! And the swimming pool you saw from the drive is only one of two. Pictures pay, pretty baby. Just you wait.”
“I’m sick of waiting. Let’s go meet the gang.”
“You said it,” he said with an arm extended for her to follow. “Come on.”
She hooked her arm in his and together they crossed over to the farthest door from the front, their steps echoing hollowly throughout the grand marble vestibule. Behind the door was a narrow hallway that en
ded at another door. And behind that door was Joseph March’s projection room.
Two raised rows of four red chairs faced the doorway, in which three men sat in the dark with white faces reflecting the flickering screen before them.
“Hold it,” said one among them. “Hold the picture, I said.”
The smoky light emanating from the window above them petered out and the lights came on to fully reveal the movie men. From the trio advanced a short man in a tweed suit who squinted at Grace as he offered her his hand.
“Joseph March,” he said. “Damn glad to know you, Ms. Baron.”
From March’s right, a bald man in round spectacles half-bowed and said, “Alan Rivers. That’s some picture you and Jack are putting together. I can’t say I completely understand it, not with so much left to do I suppose, but it’s a corker.”
“We were just discussing your eyes,” March explained. “One grows so tired of the Pickford model, the ‘Papa, what is beer?’ ingénue. That’s out—”
“—Bow and Bara have proven that much,” Rivers put in.
“Yes, and Louise Brooks. And bankably, reliably, more to the point. This is an industry, after all, and a businessman likes to know what he’s getting himself into.”
“Naturally,” Grace demurred.
Jack cleared his throat and shifted his weight.
“Our boy Jack mightn’t agree,” March said with a chuckle. “Yes, now of course we’re artists in our way, old boy. Don’t pop your collar.”
“They’re a million miles ahead of us in Europe,” said Jack. “The Reds, too.”
March straightened up and shot a look at Rivers, who pursed his mouth and cleared his throat.
“The Reds,” March said. “Well, we’ll get to that.”
“We still produce eighty percent of the world’s pictures,” said Rivers. “Right here in Southern California. There must be a reason for that.”
“Of course there is,” Jack said. “We can shoot three hundred days a year, fourteen hours a day. You can’t do that in Moscow. And the land is cheap as dirt. Any man with a nest egg can start a fledgling studio out here if he’s got half a brain.”