by Ed Ifkovic
“Manuel Vega’s granddaughter recalled seeing a woman sitting in a car in front of the apartment the night Carisa was killed. She was on a bus, but looked, and thought she saw Jimmy running out of the apartment building. Of course, we learned that it was Tommy, but she thought it was Jimmy. She thought he was joining a woman who was waiting in a car.”
“That wasn’t me. I’ve never gone there.”
I rushed my words. “I asked Connie about the car. She couldn’t describe the woman, but the car she recalled. Vividly. A brand-new Chevy Bel Air. Shiny turquoise with white top.”
Tansi shook her head. “So? Do you know how many such cars there in L.A., Edna? Dozens. We’re car people out here, and it’s a popular car. We like our cars…”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “That’s why Connie mentioned it. She likes cars, too. And movie stars. Like Jimmy. But that got me to thinking. Tommy ran out—Carisa didn’t let him in—but he was not joining the woman in the car, waiting there, watching. There had to be a reason Connie would notice, even if it didn’t quite register with her. She obviously sensed someone waiting in front of the place where she lived. Like a lot of kids, she’s in tune with street life. She spent her hours anticipating the visits of James Dean, her idol. So it stayed with her. Tansi, I think you were there that afternoon. I think you went there, for whatever reason, despite what you’ve said, and watched. You were watching for Jimmy, too. And you saw Tommy run out. And you went in to see Carisa…”
“No, for God’s sake, no!” Tansi thundered. “This is preposterous. Really, Edna.” A tinny laugh. “This is not one of your melodramatic fictions, you know.”
I sighed. “I only wish, Tansi. But my instinct tells me…”
Tansi swirled around in her chair, then looked at Mercy, her eyes searching her face. “Mercy, tell her. Are you hearing this story? A matchbook and a car. A thousand of one of them, hundreds of the other. Circumstances.”
Mercy looked down at her hands, and she seemed surprised they were shaking. There was sadness in her voice. “Edna.”
I held up my hand. “You must have gone to the apartment after Tommy fled, somehow got inside, argued with Carisa—probably about the letters she sent Jimmy and Warner, including the horrible one that very day to Warner, the threat about Confidential; and I know you probably didn’t want to go there. And the argument escalated and you threw that statue…”
“There!” Tansi thundered again. “Listen to yourself, Edna. Think about what you’re saying.”
I waited. Then: “You’re going to say you were never in that apartment.”
“Yes, I am saying that.”
“But you went.”
“Edna, talk to Detective Cotton. We’ve been through this, all of us. I was fingerprinted. We all were. Mercy—not you, but Jimmy’s prints, Tommy’s, even Nell’s. Nell was there. That surprised me. Did you think about that? Jake, his prints were all over the place. Lydia. She’s the one to look at. Jake, he’d paid Carisa off. He told me he went there a dozen times. He pleaded with her…” She stopped, out of breath.
“And so he did. And everyone liked to believe Lydia killed her. Nell believed the story. You finally got her to move out of Lydia’s room and into your own place. Nell started telling everyone that Lydia did the crime.”
“Everyone believed that.”
“I didn’t. Detective Cotton didn’t.”
“How do you know? Why didn’t she…well, her prints…Edna, you know that Detective Cotton said…he told me, in fact…my prints were nowhere inside that apartment. Nowhere.” She sat back, triumphant.
“That’s right. Your prints were nowhere to be found,” I sucked in my cheeks. “That got me to thinking. How is it possible that the statue had only one partial print of Jimmy’s fingers, and a lot of smudges? And whoever rifled through her desk, messed up her letters, and probably absconded with a letter or two, left no prints there. None. A murder done in anger, unpremeditated, would mean that the frantic amateur would invariably leave telltale evidence behind. But nothing.”
“I told you, Edna. I never went there.”
“As I say, it got me to thinking. Then I remembered. Mercy and I went there right after leaving Warner’s cocktail party. I remember how we went in our grand, rather elegant attire—our fancy dresses and, of course, our gloves. What women would go to a party like that without gloves? I had them, Mercy had them, and, I recall, you had them. All the women had them. It’s what you do at such a party. If you left the party and went there, sat in your car waiting, you must have gone straight from the party. In your gloves, Tansi. No prints. Earlier that day Warner had got that last, horrible letter and his office was in an uproar. That panic punctuated the party, I recall, though largely undiscussed. But you were bothered. So you went there, rushing from the party…”
“No. Edna, please.” Tansi’s voice was lower now.
“I’m afraid so. But I have to admit—the matchbook, the car, even the gloves—all could be explained away by an adroit lawyer. The matchbook got me to thinking. But there was one point that finally convinced me.” I paused, carefully planned my words. “The night Lydia died she called me, largely hysterical and crazy, but, through all the blather and nonsense, a couple things were clear. She was despairing Jimmy’s leaving her, true—that probably led to her death, one way or another. But she was also bothered by Nell’s moving out, at your prompting, even though that day you’d all enjoyed, at Nell’s request, a reconciliation lunch. No hard feelings, you said Nell told you. Except that it left Lydia more maddened. She called me because you mentioned how helpful I was to you—and to Jimmy. Lydia probably misunderstood you. Certainly you never expected her to seek solace from me. But she called, rambled on and on, probably gave me clues to her impending death, which unfortunately I misread, and then she hung up. Later on, she overdosed. Probably on purpose, but maybe not. We’ll never know. Max Kohl wandered in, and for a while seemed a perfect suspect. I also realized that he’d probably returned to Carisa’s apartment the time I was there with Mercy in order to get the money he suspected Warner had paid to Carisa. She probably blabbed about it. The police would find it later. But that’s another story. Anyway, I’m getting off track here.”
I breathed in. “But Lydia said something curious to me. She was bothered by the discovery of a letter she’d stupidly written to Carisa, a letter that, like Jimmy’s, made idle threats and dumb accusations. A letter written in anger. Lydia was afraid that its contents, revealed, would draw attention to her. Well, I mentioned that letter to Detective Cotton, thinking he was holding back information, but it surprised him. He’d not found such a letter. In fact, he just assumed Lydia, in her narcotic haze, was really talking about Jimmy’s letter.”
“She was…I know she was.” Rapid, spat-out words.
“No, she wasn’t. It was a moment of lucidity for the tragic girl. And that’s why I had to talk to Nell. The three of you had lunch that day. The so-called reconciliation lunch that reconciled no one. And Nell, at my prodding, recalled that the subject of letters was brought up, Carisa’s letters to Jimmy and Warner. The Jimmy letter, too. And then the subject turned to Lydia’s letter—and its contents. It was all part of the conversation, and Nell thought little of it. She assumed you knew something from Cotton that she didn’t. No one paid it any mind. But Lydia did. She thought that Cotton had found her letter. And then Nell told me that, in fact, you mentioned it at lunch. You brought it up. A few drinks, friendly chat, easy going, it just slipped out. No one knew about that letter. The only person, besides Lydia, was the person who probably took it from the apartment, either on purpose or by accident. You, Tansi, you.”
A long silence, the three of us sitting there, with me staring across the table at the frozen, hardened face of the woman I knew as a child, a young girl, a young woman. Tansi, daughter of one of my oldest friends. Tansi, rigid now. Silent. Finally, she growled, ready to defend herself. But the lips quivered, the iron resolve shattered; the hands suddenly darted to her f
ace, and she covered her eyes. When she removed her hands, her eyes were misty, frightened. She swallowed, then tossed her head back and forth, and sort of smiled.
“My God, Edna, my God.”
“Tell me, Tansi.”
“I had to do something. Don’t you see?” She waited.
“Tell me, Tansi. I don’t see. This is impossible for me to see.”
Tansi’s hands were shaking. Mercy reached across the table and touched the back of one wrist, a loving, comforting gesture. But Tansi recoiled, as from snakebite, and tucked her hands under her armpits.
“I had to. To protect Jimmy. Somebody had to. Nobody was doing anything. Jake was playing games, back and forth, going nowhere. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Those letters scared me. Warner kept telling Jake to take care of it. It drove me mad. Jimmy’s so helpless, a boy, a child. He’s…gentle. He’s not built for this. I’d watch him and see the sadness, the hurt. You all see it, Edna. Everybody does. He can’t help himself. He told me that story of his mother dying and how he couldn’t do it alone, and my heart broke. And so I knew Carisa would do him dirt. I knew her, you know. I’d seen her in Marfa. She was all over him, just horrible. He couldn’t stay away from her. It was me who got her fired. She had to go. And then the letters started arriving.”
“But the studio was handling it, no?” Mercy said.
“No, they weren’t. They didn’t understand Carisa. Before she left Marfa, I talked to her, so I knew she was crazy. I knew what she was capable of. Not the money, not the baby. She wanted to destroy Jimmy Dean. The public James Dean. James Dean: the best thing that ever happened to Hollywood. Look at him—sensitive, moody, beautiful, talented. You know, I can’t tell you how kind he was to me in Marfa. And here. Only a woman could understand the kind of hatred Carisa had for him after he left her. Warner, Jake, they thought cash and threats would do it…”
“So you went there?”
“It took all I could do to drive into that neighborhood. You can imagine. I was scared to death. Everyone in Hollywood always warns you about Skid Row. I’d never been there. But I went one afternoon, after the first letters, found the apartment, but she wasn’t home. So I wrote a harsh letter and left it under her door—scribbled, dumb, angry. I said some dangerous things. But I said, Call me. I gave my number. Call me. We need to talk. And God, the stuff I said in anger. I just scribbled nonsense. Call me. And she did. She said my letter was sufficient for a lawsuit against Warner. It scared me. I went back there, and yes, we sat in that restaurant—that grimy bar and grill with the filthy tables and the greasy men, and she laughed at me, at first. She said I was one of Jimmy’s patsies, some sex-starved spinster who he could wrap around his finger and she’d had enough of it. She knew things about him, she said, dirty things, things he’d done with…with people. I tried to talk sense to her. Why hurt him? He’s on the verge of being one of the great actors of our time. Like Cary Grant. The next Montgomery Clift. Brando. But she kept laughing, and I wanted to kill her. I realized I was in too deep now, pleading with her, but then she quoted from my letter. ‘Wait till Warner hears about this,’ she said. ‘You’ll be out of a job, baby.’ And the more I pleaded the more she laughed. She said she was going to Confidential magazine. Then she got mad, wild, screaming at me. I had to run out of the place.”
“The matchbook?”
“I never thought about it. I remember smoking cigarette after cigarette. Her, too. Both of us like furnaces.”
“But why did you go after the cocktail party?”
“I knew Jimmy wanted you to go,” she looked at Mercy, “and you said no. But I saw you were intrigued, Edna. That’s why I said stay away. I didn’t want Carisa telling you all those garbage stories, the filth about him. And I didn’t want any mention of my stupid letter. Then that day that last letter came—the threat to talk to Confidential. After Jimmy ran out of the party, I decided to slip out, unnoticed. I figured he’d go there, to her. I sat there in front of her place, furious with Carisa, and I saw Tommy, that fool, running out. I hid my head but he wasn’t looking. Then the Strand twins, like frantic cockroaches, ran by, looked up at the apartment, and then ran off. It seemed like everything was going crazy. I was so angry. I went in, up the stairs, pounded on the door. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, opening the door. ‘The woman who will never get into his pants.’ That’s what she yelled at me. ‘What is this—visit Carisa day at the Warner Bros. Studio? Am I on the bus tour?’”
For a moment Tansi’s hands covered her face. “I pushed my way inside—yes, I was dressed for the party—and stormed around. She stood there laughing. ‘Look at you, all gussied up from prancing around in a party dress that would be old on a fifteen-year-old girl.’ Stuff like that. Then she said, ‘It’s no use. I got money from that eunuch Jake. Lots of money. Men are stupid. But money can’t buy me. I have a story to tell!’ Blindly, I swear I didn’t know what I was doing, I picked up that statue and threw it. Somehow it slipped, hit her in the shoulder, and she fell and hit her head. You know, it happened so fast. I just stood there.”
“She was unconscious?” From Mercy.
An awful silence. “I could see she was dead. All that blood. Just like that. It happened so fast. I, like, woke up, Edna. And I’m staring at a dead woman. I rushed around the apartment, thinking that no one knew I was there. All that clutter, that paper. A packrat. I remembered my letter, the things I said. I just panicked, opening drawers, and I found stacks of letters, one bunch in a rubber band. And on the top was my letter, folded inside the envelope I’d left it in. She’d scribbled on it in pencil, SAVE. In capital letters. That scared me. SAVE, she’d written. I grabbed that bunch of letters and put them into my purse. And then I left. No one was around. No one.”
“And Lydia’s letter was there?”
“That was stupid of me. I burned my letter, of course, and the others, one of them Lydia’s, which I read first. And then, when we were having lunch, the subject of the letters came up, and I’m staring at Lydia who’s been drinking, and I went on about the letters to Jimmy and Warner and talked of Jimmy’s nasty letter. I said Carisa should have been used to getting threats by mail. After all, Lydia, I said, there was yours, your accusing letter. I said it right to her. I realized my mistake, I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth, but I kept talking about Cotton and his investigation, and Lydia got drunker and then she went home. I could have slapped myself, but I thought—no one knows.”
“Tansi, you should have come forward…”
“No,” she said. “I couldn’t.”
“What if Jimmy had been arrested?” Mercy asked.
“Oh, I knew he wouldn’t be. Warner would take care of that. It had to be Max Kohl or Lydia. Either one. When Lydia died, everyone was safe. I put the idea that it was Lydia in Nell’s head earlier and that was that. Jimmy, well, the studio would never let him be charged with murder.”
She stopped. The word “murder” stayed in the air, and she trembled. “Oh, Edna, what do I do? It was an accident. It just happened. She fell…”
“But you hid it from Detective Cotton.”
“I know, I know, but I couldn’t face it. Now what?” She sucked in her breath. “Somebody had to do something, for God’s sake. Jimmy can’t help himself. No one would ever accuse him because there was no reason for him to hurt her because it would hurt his career. And his career is who he is. He’s an actor. You watched the dailies, Edna. Jett Rink. You wrote Rink before you knew Jimmy. Like a genius.”
“What if Lydia had been arrested?” Mercy insisted, breaking into Tansi’s ramble.
But Tansi wasn’t listening. “You know what happened in Marfa? I’m running errands for Stevens, nonstop, but at night Jimmy’d sit with me, talk to me, tell me about his mother, Fairmount, his motorcycle, his nephew Marcus, his dreams. Just talk, talk, talk. The Little Koffee Kup, with two K’s. The barbershop, the drug store. And then the stupid Carisa mess started. I’d warned him when he first started looking at her. She was playing a Mexic
an cook and goofing off. Stevens said get rid of her when I told him. I did, gladly. But she’d already started causing trouble for Jimmy. Tantrums, crying. Once she slapped him. He slapped her back. She said she’d kill him. Then we got her out of there, shipped her to El Paso, back to L.A. Jimmy was happy, but he told me that she would be a troublemaker. And do you know what I said to him? I’ll take care of it. I had no idea what I was talking about, but I meant it. Being around him does that to people. You’ve seen it.”
I watched her eyes get cloudy, dreamy. “The night she was gone, everyone was playing Monopoly or playing records or something, and Jimmy said let’s go for a ride. He took your old rattletrap car, Mercy, since Stevens took away his car for speeding. And we drove out under the Texas night sky, way out among the brush and the jackrabbits, and we sat in the car and talked and talked and talked. For hours. I mean he talked—the way he does. I just sat there. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. And he had this six-pack of Lone Star beer, and we drank them all in Coca-Cola cups, there, under the stars, and munched on boxes of crackerjacks he got from someone. When I started to hiccough from that beer, he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. He just did it. Once, quick. There I am hiccoughing like a fool, and he kisses me on the mouth. James Dean. Jimmy. And I smelled his stale tobacco breath, his beery breath, that raw smell, and then, you know, he just started up the car, glanced at me with a sliver of a smile, and he dropped me back to the hotel.”
CHAPTER 22
I’d been sitting at Mercy’s kitchen table for hours, a lazy afternoon spent watching her make dinner. Outside it was raining, a drizzly L.A. rain, a foggy low-lying mist settling over the lemon grove I could see just beyond the kitchen door. I found it tremendously relaxing, this drifting afternoon, as Mercy deftly chopped glistening stalks of celery, garish carrots, red potatoes, overripe tomatoes, tossing the colorful piles into a large cast-iron pot, already simmering on the stove with crackling, diced onions in lemony butter. Mercy’s soup—“my passion,” she told me, “my love.” A concoction to be blended with chunks of blood-red beef cubes, heated until the flavors merged, announced themselves to the small room, and served with a loaf of dark bread rising in the oven.