There was a clicking noise, then Roger’s voice: “Hey, Vicky,” he said. “Soaking up some California sun?”
Vicky glanced at the gray, overcast light blooming behind the window shades and wondered why everyone thought California was always sunny. “Not exactly,” she said. “How are things with Troy?”
“He’s got a new attorney. Stan Smith over in Riverton. My bet is he’ll testify against Jason Bellows.”
“He’ll be lying.”
“You’re still thinking about the caller, aren’t you? Adam said the caller isn’t your client. You don’t know who he is. He hasn’t hired you to represent him.”
Vicky wasn’t sure when she had gotten to her feet, but she was pacing the small bedroom, marking out the space between dresser, window, and bed. “You spoke to Adam about this?”
“He called this morning, and I told him.”
She made herself take a breath before she said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” She was flying out late this afternoon—a two-hour flight to Denver and another two hours in the airport before she caught a nineteen-seater that would skim above the snow-crusted plains and land in Riverton about eleven.
She was about to close the cell when Roger said that Annie had something else.
“Did you get the email I sent this morning?” Annie’s voice again, laced with elements of excitement and pride. “I convinced the U.S. attorney’s office to send over the updated list of parolees.”
“Good work,” Vicky said. Then she thanked her, closed the phone, and stared at the inert object in her hand a moment before she dropped it back into her bag. She was awake now, her heart pounding in her ears. She went into the living room looking for Susan, but there was no sign of her. The apartment was quiet except for the sound of a filmy curtain billowing in the breeze. On the kitchen counter, she found a note scrawled in Susan’s handwriting: Went for coffee and muffins. Back soon.
“Back soon,” Vicky said into the silence. And wasn’t that the way it had always been between her and Susan? Always going away from each other somehow. A weekend planned just for the two of them, yet they had spent yesterday talking to two old movie people about nothing that had anything to do with Susan. They would spend most of today together, Vicky had promised, doing whatever Susan wished. Walk the beach, eat lunch at that little restaurant Susan loved down by the marina. But it was Susan who had said, “Let’s go to Hollywood. We can walk around, see the sights, have lunch. Come on, Mom. You’re dying to see where Charlie and the other Arapahos were. Admit it.”
Vicky had burst out laughing. “Okay, I admit it,” she said, and that made Susan laugh. Then Vicky had gathered her into her arms and held her close and whispered that she was sorry work was interfering with their weekend.
“You can’t help it,” Susan said. The old sharpness gone, a kind of resolve and acceptance in her tone. “You’re always working.”
Now Vicky sank onto the chair in front of Susan’s laptop and typed the keys that eventually brought up her email. She scrolled through the usual junk until she came to the line that said Holden and Lone Eagle. Subject: parole report.
She opened the message and read down the list—a mixture of familiar Arapaho and Shoshone names mixed in with names like Regan and Hillard and Harris from Riverton and Lander. The name Kiki Wallowingbull jumped out from the middle of the list and stopped her for a moment. Then she read on. Close to the end was the name, Will Thunder Redman. Arapaho, twenty-nine years old.
She hit the reply key. Good work, Annie, she wrote. Now I need the address for Will Thunder Redman from the county department of probation and parole. Tell them we’re trying to solve a crime. Let them know we’re working on their side!
Vicky sent the email, then wrote down the name of Will Thunder Redman on the back of a stray envelope she found on the desk. She drew sharp, black lines under the name of the caller.
THEY TURNED OFF the Hollywood Freeway and started into Cahuenga Pass—Cahuenga, the Place of Little Hills in the language of the Gab rielino Indians who had once lived here, according to the LA guide that Vicky had picked up in the bookstore a half block from Susan’s apartment. The guide lay opened on her lap. Outside the slopes rose in rugged clumps, covered with dried brush and occasional eucalyptus trees. Houses were tucked at the far end of driveways that spiraled upward. Scrub brush and prickly pear grew here, the guidebook said. Stands of cottonwoods and eucalyptus trees, with red-tailed hawks circling overhead.
“I wonder where the tipis were,” Susan said, glancing out her window. “Imagine what the neighbors thought. A camp of Indian tipis and a horse corral.”
“Not too far up the pass,” Vicky said. It was a guess. She doubted anyone knew where the actual site was. She could picture the white tipis shining in the moonlight, little campfires glowing. Horses, carriages, and cars rattling past on a dirt road.
“Charlie could have stepped off a cliff or something.”
“Someone would have found his body.”
“Suppose nobody wanted it found.”
The same thought had been moving at the edge of Vicky’s mind since they had spoken to Norma and Hugh yesterday. The studios controlled everything, Norma had said.
“What a scandal!” Susan pushed on. “I mean, Indian jumps to his death after getting dumped by movie star. Wouldn’t have been good for the box office.”
Vicky stared at the clumps of scrub brush and sage with yellowish blossoms flashing past. Even worse would have been a murder. Arapaho kills another Arapaho in jealousy over a movie star named Missy Mae Markham. What would the fan magazines have made of that?
“If there’s anything in the police records”—Susan gave her a quick sideways look—“Brett will find it. He’s good.”
“You like him,” Vicky said. She watched Susan for a moment, studying the shape of her profile, the little bump at the top of her nose, the light and shadow playing over her cheekbones, the straight black hair cut in angles around her face. Somewhere in this grown-up and confident young woman was the image of the little girl with shy black eyes that Vicky carried in her heart.
“Oh, more than like,” Susan said, throwing another sideways glance. “I think Brett’s the one.”
Vicky didn’t say anything. She couldn’t remember when Susan had seemed so happy. She tried to concentrate on what Susan was saying, something about how Brett would meet them for lunch and how Vicky would love the restaurant they were going to.
HOLLYWOOD WAS A twenty-minute horseback ride from Cahuenga Pass in 1923. It took almost forty minutes to drive down, thread into the traffic on the freeway, and follow the stop-and-go traffic down Hollywood Boulevard and onto Vine Street, the engine making the familiar clicking noise. Parked cars lined the curb. Susan pulled in alongside a sedan and stopped, ignoring the honking horns and squealing brakes. “Selma and Vine,” she said.
There was no trace of the old studio, yet the guidebook said that the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company had occupied a yellow barn on the corner. The studio backlot spread across two complete blocks—an area now filled with shops, offices, restaurants, parking garages, traffic-clogged streets, and blasting horns. At some point, the barn had been moved. Susan started down Selma, turned onto Highland and pulled into a parking lot adjacent to the original yellow barn with green doors and a white sign on the roof that said Hollywood Heritage Museum.
Stepping past the green door, Vicky thought, was like stepping into the past. They strolled along the plank floors, past displays of photographs and props, clothing and makeup, and old cameras. Vicky stopped in front of an exhibit with The Covered Wagon splashed in black foot-high letters across the back wall. Arranged in front were tanned and beaded hide shirts and moccasins, rifles and pistols, a wagon wheel, a large mahogany camera with brass fittings set up on a tripod. Among the items were photographs of covered wagons coming across the desert, an old building that looked like a fort. Another photo showed Indians with naked chests, clutching hatchets and spears, climbing down the rocks of
a canyon toward the wagons pulled into a circle.
She was aware of Susan at her side. “The ancestors,” Vicky said, holding out a hand toward the photos. “Charlie, William, James, Goes-in-Lodge, and the buffalo Indians. They’re all there.”
They remained in front of the exhibit for several moments, held by the mementos and the photos and something else—the sense of the people. Touching the past, Vicky thought, the way things had been. Finally she walked over to the life-sized cardboard figures set up along the opposite wall, conscious of Susan beside her. Above the figures was a banner that said Stars of the Past. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, stopped in a smile or a nod or a wave, frozen in time. And here was Missy Mae Markham, a childlike figure with golden hair and a white dress, smiling demurely over one shoulder. Standing together were the cowboy stars Bill Hart and Tom Mix and Gene Autry and, taller than the others, with a stoic face beneath the brim of a white Stetson, dressed in black, was the figure of Tim McCoy.
Outside, Vicky pulled her camera out of the jumble in the bag and walked around the building until she found the shot that James had taken all those years ago near a corner of the barn. In the photo, the name Lasky was visible on the sloping roof. There were black shadows falling down the wall. She stared into the viewer and tried to imagine Charlie Wallowingbull and William Thunder on either side of the beautiful white woman with long, curly blond hair.
She snapped the picture, then took a picture of Susan, a strip of sunshine on her face, the breeze blowing her skirt against her legs. Susan fell in beside her, and Vicky was aware of the rhythmic clack of their footsteps on the sidewalk, the thrum of traffic as they walked back to the car.
They drove toward Hollywood Boulevard, parked in a garage, joined the other pedestrians crowding the sidewalk, most of them tourists in jeans, tee shirts, and walking shoes, cameras bumping against their chests. They dodged the tourists peering in windows of the souvenir shops that lined the block. Vicky could see the crowds bunched in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the pagoda-like roof sheathed in copper lifting overhead.
Groups of people wandered about the forecourt, bent over the concrete panels with the signatures, foot- and handprints of movie stars. Vicky found herself staring down at the prints of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, then Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. She realized that Susan had wandered to the other side, engrossed in other signatures and prints. There didn’t seem to be any order, just a juxtaposition of names from different eras—Tom Mix in one place, Roy Rogers in another. There were prints of John Wayne’s fist and Betty Grable’s legs alongside their signatures.
It was then that she caught a glimpse of the signature carved into the cement a few feet away: Tim McCoy. The prints were large—the wide handprint, fingers outstretched and generous somehow; the long boot print that seemed to have been made with determination. She stooped over and ran her hand over the prints and the signature.
“Mom!” Susan’s voice cut past the conversations around her. She looked up and saw Susan waving her forward. She worked her way around the tourists hovering over Marilyn Monroe’s slab to where Susan was standing. At her feet was a looping, childlike signature that looked as if it had been scribbled with some difficulty: Missy Mae Markham.
“Do you think she cared about either of them?” Susan said.
Vicky bent over and set her own hand over the print. Such a small hand, a child’s hand. The footprint was also small. “I don’t know,” she said.
They followed the Hollywood Walk of Fame—the bronze stars set into the sidewalk, an entertainer’s name engraved on each star—to the Egyptian Theatre a short distance away. There were fewer tourists milling about the gray-and-brown concrete panels in the forecourt. Palm trees swayed overhead.
Vicky opened the guidebook and read out loud: “Imitation of an Egyptian temple. Completed in 1922. The Egyptian was the site of many motion picture premieres, among them The Covered Wagon, the first epic Western. A long line of limousines drew up in front of the theater. Stars, producers, directors, and other celebrities stepped out beneath the klieg lights and strolled the red carpet to the entrance. Crowds gathered outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the movie’s stars, Lois Wilson and J. Warren Kerrigan, as well as such beloved stars as Missy Mae Markham. Prior to the screening each night, Arapaho and Shoshone Indians performed on stage.”
Vicky bought tickets at the box office, and she and Susan stepped into a theater that was larger than she had expected, with rows of velvet seats and a gilded sunburst above the screen. According to the guidebook, there had been a large proscenium in front of the screen where the Indian show took place. She wondered what Charlie and William and the others had done to entertain the white audiences. Performed traditional dances? Roped wooden steers? Pranced around with hatchets and spears, hopping and hollering because that was what the audience expected?
She had to get out of the theater. The weight of the past was heavy; the indignities and the lack of respect they had endured, white audiences howling with laughter and clapping for more.
She hurried across the forecourt, past the crowd bunched in front of the box office, conscious of the tap-tap of Susan’s footsteps behind her. Nearby was the Musso & Frank Grill where Susan had made reservations earlier. “I figure we should lunch where all the stars lunched back then,” she said.
The restaurant was like a set piece from a 1920s movie, with wall lamps that glowed against the dark paneled walls. Circles of light swept over the red leather booths. They were shown to a booth at the front, near a paned-glass window. Outside the traffic lurched past and people strolled by, like props and actors in a silent movie. Beyond the tourists with baseball caps and jeans and cameras, beyond the parade of compact sedans and oversized SUVs, Vicky could almost see Arapahos and Shoshones riding down the boulevard on their way to the Egyptian Theatre.
“We’re expecting someone else,” Susan told the waiter just as Vicky spotted Brett hurrying across the street, dodging the traffic. He took long strides, looking about, arms swinging at his sides. In his right hand was a large manila envelope.
31
VICKY HELD HER breath, not taking her eyes from the brown envelope as Brett slid into the booth. In the top left corner, in neat black handwriting were the words LA Police Records. There was a small bulge in the middle. He had found something.
She took a sip from the water glass that the waiter delivered and tried to will her heart to stop jumping. Brett and Susan had entered their own little world, she realized. She might as well have been seated on the other side of the restaurant. Holding hands—Vicky could see their clasped hands just below the edge of the table—leaning in close and smiling at each other. Not speaking, just engrossed in some conversation with their eyes. She was surprised at the pang of regret that shot through her. It should have been like that with Adam, instead of the push-pull relationship they had fallen into. Her fault, she knew, attempting to push herself into the relationship, then pulling herself free. Afraid of the control, not wanting it.
And yet, with John O’Malley, they could drive across the rez, sit in his office, hardly speaking at all and yet each knowing what the other was thinking. When they did speak, they could finish each other’s sentences. He would tell her to be careful; he never told her what to do. She blinked hard and pushed away the images.
“Oh, sorry, Vicky.” Brett squared himself at the table, directing his attention to her. “Didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I haven’t seen Susan since Saturday and . . .”
“It’s okay.” Susan patted his arm. “Mom understands how it is with us.”
Brett leaned over the table. “I want you to know I’ll always play straight with your daughter. I love her very much.”
Vicky felt herself nodding, swallowing back the lump in her throat. In her head was Adam’s voice: I love you. I love you. And those were always the times when she had pulled away.
The waiter was hovering over the
table: Did the gentleman and ladies care for a cocktail this afternoon? No, they did not. Were they ready to order? Yes, they were. Salads for the ladies, a hamburger for the gentleman. Then the waiter slipped away into the soft buzz of conversations and the swooshing noise of plates being served at a nearby booth and people being shown to other booths.
Brett picked up the envelope and worked a finger under the flap. “You were right about one thing,” he said. “There aren’t any police reports on a dead Indian from April 1923.”
Not a surprise, Vicky thought. If a report existed, McCoy would have found it. And yet, she had hoped . . .
“But I did get something from the LAPD records.” Brett pulled out a white sheet of paper, a form of some kind with black type above the lines. “A missing persons report,” he said, handing the sheet across the table. Vicky took in the top lines at a glance: Los Angeles Police Department. April 12, 1923. She read down the page: Person Missing: young Arapaho Indian. Name: Charlie Wallowingbull. Temporary residence: Indian camp, Cahuenga Pass. Occupation: employed by Lasky Studio in show at Egyptian Theatre. Last seen at camp about six o’clock the evening of April 10, 1923. Report filed by Tim McCoy.
“Looks like he waited for Charlie to show up before he went to the police,” Brett said.
“Did they investigate?” Susan said. She was caught up in it, Vicky realized. A young Arapaho making her way in Hollywood, caught up in the disappearance of another Arapaho, as if Charlie had disappeared yesterday. But wasn’t that the way it always was for her people? Whatever had happened in the past seemed always a possibility in the present.
Brett pulled another sheet from the envelope and gave it to Vicky. “This is all I found,” he said.
Another official-looking form with a typed paragraph near the top, the letters ragged and smeared-looking. Vicky read out loud: April 14, 1923, Disposition of Missing Person Report. Tim McCoy, employed by Lasky Studio, stated that he believed movie star Missy Mae Markham may have information concerning Charlie Wallowingbull, reported missing April 10. Contacted Elvin Hall, Lasky spokesman. Informed that Miss Markham has been in Arizona and couldn’t possibly have any knowledge of missing Indian. Hall said that Wallowingbull was a disruptive and unreliable employee, ill at ease away from his natural surroundings on a Wyoming reservation. The studio has conducted its own investigation into his absence and concluded that Wallowingbull returned to his reservation of his own accord. Investigation closed.
The Silent Spirit Page 28