But I didn’t have anywhere to disappear to. I listened to voices for a while, not through Rose’s autopsy door, but upstairs. I guess the ceiling above me was thinner than the walls. A woman’s calm voice, a man’s, another man yelling the only words I could understand: “Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling!” Then that faded, and a door slammed and took all the voices somewhere else. I stood, I stretched, I wiggled my toes in my new shoes half a size too big; I walked the long hall and got bored doing that, and nobody else seemed to walk the long hall, so I tried doorknobs until one turned. I went into Posting Room Five.
I stood in another white autopsy room with an enamel table and a white-sheet-covered lump. In back of the lump I saw a sink, a hose, cupboards, and no windows. A folding chair sat by the table. I walked to the chair and pushed it so it moved and the legs scritched. I looked at the white sheet. I knew whatever lay under that sheet wasn’t Rosemary, but inside me I didn’t believe it. It’s possible to know something for sure, like I knew Rose was in a room down the long hall, but still feel like I was looking at my best friend’s body and all I had to do was take one corner of the sheet and lift it and there she’d be, dead but there. I needed her. I missed her so much. My hand reached for the sheet but didn’t touch it.
I let my eyes follow the sheet lumps, because now that I stood close I saw not one lump but lots of little ones, little rises and falls of the sheet. I saw where the cotton skimmed ankles and settled high on dead toes, then fell around the table end. I saw the fabric lie flat on a stomach, up for ribs, and then mound at the side like a woman’s breasts when she’s sleeping. It wasn’t Rose but it could have been, and that’s probably why I lifted the sheet from the top edge of the table and pulled it away from the body.
She had no face. I saw bloody hair and a neck, and in between was a skin jumble like someone put the puzzle together wrong and gave up, then messed with the pieces. But her body was fine, beautiful, not Rosemary’s movie star breasts but someone’s. I had that feeling again like Rosemary stood beside me, the feeling I had in the Los Angeles Amazon, Rose looking with me where the face had been. I didn’t turn this time so she could disappear. I made myself look at the dead woman and think of Rose, and I started to cry.
Twelve days before, we’d both danced to Tommy Dorsey at the Hollywood Palladium and Rose laughed when a guy dipped her backward on the huge dance floor, with the Pied Pipers singing “I Wouldn’t Take a Million” and Rose spinning into another guy’s arms. She leaned toward me, away from him, and yelled, but in the noise it sounded like a whisper: “I’ve got a secret.”
Nothing good can happen after someone says that. Look at the woman on the table, where her secrets led her. Now Conejos called me a suspect and I couldn’t tell Stany the secret, and I had to find, on my own, what happened to Rose, or I knew Conejos would blame me for her murder.
“Here you are,” Stany said.
I pulled the sheet over the woman’s messed face.
“Don’t worry about that, I’m a tough broad from Brooklyn. I’ve seen worse in a street fight. I have loads to tell. Are you ready to go, or do you want to visit the posting rooms and stare at all the corpses?”
“Just this one.”
She linked her arm through mine and turned me toward the door. “We’ll have a good cup of coffee and we’ll talk. You know what I said about your hair? Don’t use talc after this place. You’ll never get the smell out until you wash. Here’s my plan. I tell you everything, and we decide what to say to Conejos.”
“Stany, I’m a suspect. He’s not going to be all nice and question me like I lost my best friend. He’s setting up the lights right now for a grilling.”
“He wouldn’t do that with me around.” Her hair looked brown under the sharp lights.
“No?”
“First I tell you what I know. Then you tell me. We’ll solve this together.”
No, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
CHAPTER 6
How to Get a Raise Without Asking: Tips the stars wish they’d known when they were struggling wage earners!
—Photoplay, October 1940
“I’ve got a secret,” Rose said on Halloween night. I barely heard her.
“Just one?”
“Oh, catty.”
“Tell me the secret.” I caught her arm before she danced away.
She danced and danced. She lifted the sailor cap from her partner’s head and swung it above her own. He laughed and dipped her, then held her close and sang so loud I could hear him above the Pied Pipers, above Connie Haines’s lovely, deep voice, above Dorsey’s orchestra on stage, his trombone. Rosemary slapped her sailor light on the mouth, and instead of singing, he hummed.
She wore green crepe with a peplum and a skirt that split up her thigh. She’d pinned a fresh orchid against a side roll of gold hair, and she’d painted her lips pink, extra wide lines.
I looked dull beside her: black rayon dress with a front drape that nobody saw because ten thousand people stuffed the Palladium. I had red lips, but every girl had red lips. I looked like every girl, but Rose—she looked like a star.
Rose dumped her sailor and danced now with a carpenter from Paramount. I recognized him from the back lot. I danced all evening with the same guy, who watched the stage instead of me and who held me so loose I tripped and he didn’t notice. He yelled to me when skinny Frank Sinatra came on stage, but that’s all.
“We’re going,” Rose said in my ear. She pulled my wrist, and I don’t think my dance partner noticed. Rose weaved me through people, bodies, noise, through the huge, round room with its ceiling of a circle, then another circle, then another, all connected at the stage like wrist bangles and then flaring above the dance floor to the galleries, where the real stars sat and ate roast beef. I didn’t want to leave.
“The guy you danced with,” Rose said. She stood by the hat check and handed her receipt to the girl. “He’s out there dancing by himself.”
“Naw, he’s got Frank Sinatra.”
Rose laughed.
“And you’ll tell me this big secret?”
“We’ll go there now. The secret isn’t a place, but it’s happening at a place.”
“Where’s the place?”
“Just follow,” she said. She took our coats from the hat check girl and handed me mine. I took my coat and my handbag and tucked both under my arm. I was too warm to wear a coat.
Outside, the air felt breezy and cool on my arms. Midnight, too late for trick-or-treaters but early for a Hollywood Thursday, so traffic buzzed on Sunset, and Rose raised her hand at the curb. A cabbie pulled over.
“I don’t have money for a cab,” I said.
“I’ve got money. We’re not going home yet.”
I got in the cab with Rose. I didn’t hear what she told the cabbie. He angled his rear mirror to stare at her, and he’d drive, stare, drive, stare. I’d had three gin and sevens, and I watched buildings blur through my side window: Sunset Boulevard, past the Trocadero and Ciro’s and The Players, all lit from the fifty klieg lights that scanned skies for the Palladium’s opening. The street became quiet and leafy past UCLA, and then the cabbie turned at Beverly Glen. One block up he stopped at a corner park.
“What are we doing?”
“We’ll walk from here,” Rose told the cabbie. He asked for her phone number instead of a tip, and Rose just laughed. He left us by a small triangle park. Ahead, a Beverly Hills street of big houses and yards that looked black in the dark but I knew would be perfect and green in daytime, every bush and palm frond vibrant. Houses here looked unnatural from the front. They were stage houses behind high hedges where nobody lived and nobody needed to sweep the front stairs because no dirt settled on them, ever. They had narrow drives hidden on one side where the trash cans stood, where people parked cars and hid their dirt.
We walked past them to a short street, turned right, and up a bit to North Faring Road.
“You know how I’ve been short on money,” Rose said.
“Well, yeah, not anymore. Don’t you like how I pay my part now? Rent?”
“I appreciate it like you can’t know.” My shoe hit a rock, and I stumbled. “Couldn’t you show me this secret later? I wanted to stay at the dance. Celebrate! Paramount, Rose. A major production.”
“We’re Farm Girls.”
“I don’t mind being typed. We’re on the back lot. Would you rather be at Central? At least we’re not the Old Maid.”
“I wanted to be the Femme Fatale. We turn here. Is this Faring? Turn left. Up the hill.”
“Why do rich people live on hills? My feet hurt. Plus, they have to curve streets.”
“Shh,” she said. She stopped in deep shadows and put a hand on her chest. She breathed fast. “I’m nervous. I didn’t tell them I’d bring you.”
“Bring me,” I said.
“I needed money, Pen.”
“What?”
“I didn’t save like you did. If you’d told me in time, if I knew we were moving, I’d have saved too, right?”
“Bring me where? Who didn’t you tell?”
“I’d have saved, right? You know I would.”
I faced her but I saw only her outline. Her shoulders, the orchid’s petals a small black flare that stuck to her head. The lamppost across Faring lit me, but she hid in the dark. I felt wrong, I felt stuck to the road. “Rosemary, what is it?”
“It was a joke, to start.” Her voice was low, flat. “I’m small, and upstairs windows are small, and nobody locks their windows here, Pen. It’s not like at home. These houses, the second floor sashes lift right up and I can fall in, then run down the stairs and unlock the kitchen door. Nobody sees. The kitchen goes to the driveway all along these roads. Nobody sees! It’s so easy. If we cut right through there, we’ll be in the backyard.”
“You’re robbing them,” I said. “You’re robbing them.” A car’s engine revved and sped toward us, past us, me in the street’s light.
“You could say it that way,” she said. “Or you could say it different.”
“How? How is it different? You sneak into people’s houses and rob them. What do you do with the stuff?”
“I don’t do anything. They have a fence.”
“They? They? The people you’re meeting? Who are they, Rose?”
“Don’t yell at me, Penny. I didn’t have to tell you or bring you here.”
I closed my eyes. Holmby Hills on Halloween, past midnight, witches’ hour. My mom used to call Halloween “snap apple and candy night,” but I don’t know why. I’ve never heard of a snap apple.
Another car drove past us. Rose tugged at the coat over my arm and pulled me into her shadows.
“You can’t be seen. You have to learn to dodge headlamps.”
“Right, and the cabbie that asked for your number won’t remember you. Rose, you’re in trouble.”
“I’m cold. Hold my handbag, I’m putting my coat on. Aren’t you cold?”
“Where are you meeting these people?”
“Just up Faring. There on the left a little ways—see the cut in those bushes?” She took her bag. “Okay, we can go.”
In Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, anywhere rich in LA, it’s hard to judge distance because the roads aren’t set in city blocks. I can’t say we walked two blocks or three because the road curved with high bushes and gates, and once in a while a house was set so far back that the driveway became its own road. As soon as we’d passed into Holmby Hills, old-fashioned lanterns on poles lit the streets. We walked until Rose stopped at a narrow opening between bushes. A brick path ran between them to a solid wood gate.
“This is the house,” she said. “The guys should be here.”
“And you know where you’re at.”
“Sure,” she said.
“You know whose house this is.”
“Someone rich.”
“Oh, Rose. We both took the tour. Past Hank’s house, down the hill. Pickfair is somewhere close, I can’t remember. Johnny Weissmuller’s long pool. We took the tour.”
“I remember the bus gave me a headache. All those fumes. You don’t know whose house this is. You couldn’t find Pickfair, especially in the dark. It’s a maze up here.”
“But I know Faring.” I looked past Rose to where the nearest driveway started and curved up and around to a house out of view. “Up there is Claudette Colbert’s house. There’s no missing it. I remember. That means this is Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck’s house, right here.”
“No,” Rose said.
“It is.”
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“Are you scared? I am,” I said. “I just walked nearly half a mile uphill to watch you rob my favorite movie star’s house. We’ll be kicked off the back lot, and I haven’t even met her yet! At least let me meet her before you ruin it all. Two cars just passed me and probably are calling the cops right now.”
“Lower your voice. I don’t pick houses, one of the guys does.”
“Guys? How many guys? How many houses, Rose?”
We stood on Faring. We hadn’t moved. Rose stared up the driveway like she could see through the dark to who lived in that house but wasn’t home. Like their names were painted on a sign: THE ROBERT TAYLORS LIVE HERE.
“Stany, huh?”
“How many houses, Rose?”
“Voice down. Don’t yell. Fifteen in Beverly Hills. So far. Nine in Bel-Air.”
“God. Oh, Jesus God.”
“I climb a ladder and try windows. All they’d have to do is lock them, Pen, but they don’t.”
“We’re leaving.” I grabbed the sleeve of her coat and walked her so the driveway disappeared from us and became all tall bushes.
“I’m not leaving, Pen.”
“It’s Barbara Stanwyck’s house. You understand?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“You’re witless.”
“Let go of my arm. You talk to me like I’m stupid. I know where we’re at.”
My body hit an ice wall. Not a real wall, I hit the kind that pops from the ground when I see a truth I should have seen before. It’s an invisible ice wall, but feels real. “You knew. You pretended you don’t know who lives here. You knew and you brought me along. Oh, my God.”
“Shh, quiet. I don’t know why people think I’m stupid when I plan all the time. I’m not stupid. I didn’t have money so I made a plan.”
“You have money now, though. You have two jobs—”
“—that pay almost nothing. I’m not talking hairnet money, I’m talking bucks. I love Will, I do, but I can’t be a Farm Girl here or at home.”
“How about in prison? You’ll go to jail and so will I, for not turning you in.”
She stopped pushing against me. “You, too?”
“Well, yeah.”
“No, you won’t. You didn’t do a thing.”
“Except follow you to a robbery. Hear you confess that you robbed all these houses. Stand in the street so I can be recognized once Stany calls the police and tells them someone broke in.”
She fell against me, and I hugged her. I hugged her tight, and I hated her then for being witless and more like my kid than my best friend. I was witless. I never asked where she got her money. We needed it, and there, she’d open a hand and spread out dollar bills. I took them, and I didn’t know whose fur, or necklace, or diamond-drip earrings got cut up and resold downtown. I didn’t think, on North Faring Road in the dark, of Rose’s anger, so big she had to bring me along while she robbed Stany’s house.
“You can’t rob Barbara Stanwyck. We work on her film.”
“Okay,” Rose said.
“We’ll go to the backyard and tell your guys.”
“I’ll go. You stay here so they don’t see you.”
I said okay, I wouldn’t move. I believed her, and she believed me. I waited for Rose to pull herself up the wood gate and swing her legs over. I set my handbag and coat on the bricks and followed her, hand
s on the gate top, pulling with my arms until I could swing over one leg. I don’t know how Rose did it so fast, with a coat on. I scratched my leg on the swing-over.
At the other side I couldn’t see anything in the dark. Then I saw her scuttle from shadows like a bug. I followed like another bug: Run into shadows, wait, look around. Run to the next shadow. I was witless. On Faring we’d stood in the street, where old-fashioned lamps showed me to passing cars. Here on the service path where nobody would come for hours, I hid my whole body and ran from light like a roach.
The path was paved with loose rock. I didn’t have to watch Rose now, I could hear her shoes sink and scatter gravel while she marched along. I tried to match my steps with hers so she wouldn’t notice the extra rock shifting behind her. She wouldn’t have listened. She thought I stayed on Faring like I’d promised. Another girl would think, I’ll bet she broke the promise and followed, but not Rose. I said I wouldn’t move, and she believed me.
But then, I believed Rose when she agreed no one should rob Stany.
I heard male voices. I couldn’t tell who spoke, or words. They came from beside trash cans at what I thought must be Stany’s property, because that’s where Rose stopped kicking gravel and ducked behind a hedge. I crouched about two feet from Rosemary’s hedge. I saw two figures, one short, one tall, both talking in whispers, both wearing black or brown and on their faces, too: Rose’s guys, the guys, them. Arguing enough so the whispers gave off their real voices. I might have known them, but I couldn’t guess. I knew tall and short guys, ones who yelled but pretended they whispered. The ones here could be them, or anyone else.
Rose left the hedges. She disappeared from me then, and one guy, then another, disappeared, too.
I kept crouched on the path. Nothing, no sound for ten minutes. Then glass cracking, glass hitting, clink, Rose’s yell and some other yells, two assholes running from Stany’s backyard past me and down the loose rock, and after that, no sound.
I couldn’t move at first. I tried, but I shook. My legs and my arms shook. I couldn’t stand, so I put both hands on the gravel. I crawled, hands and feet, knees up like I was squatting, to the grass edge by the trash cans. I saw the part in a hedge that led into Stany’s backyard. Through it, I saw lawn chairs and a table, a huge, quiet pool, a ladder against the back of two stories, and at the top, under a Spanish tile roof, a window frame with no reflection because the glass was gone. Rose was gone too, fallen into Stany’s dark house.
The Glamorous Dead Page 3