The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  “I’m leaving.”

  “—to Beverly Glen. Sit down. Your friend paid off the cab. You hated her. I mean, look at you. Of course you hated her. You know she won a speaking role on that movie you’re in? Yeah, I thought you didn’t. One day on set and she’s noticed. Your big group of extras, and she’s the one. She didn’t even know. Kind of makes you feel ordinary, doesn’t it? You feel small? Your director told me—what’s his name? Stargill? Real character, him. Gave me a tour of the back lot and wore two hats the whole time. He says Rosemary Brown looked too good on camera and he was trying her in a speaking role. He’ll have to reshoot the wedding scene she was in, that’s how much she stood out. And I was thinking—sit down—how angry you’d be. Your first movie and here’s that goddamn Rosemary hogging the camera.

  “You watched her. You knew how you looked next to Rosemary. A doll like her, who’d notice you? So you’re angry. Hell, I’d be angry. I’d say, Hell, I’ve had enough. I’d see her dance all over one guy then another, and I’d drive her somewhere quiet. Beverly Glen. I’d pick up whatever I found—wire, maybe—and I’d say, Hey, Rosemary, look over there, and she’d look, and I’d take that wire and pull it tight in my hands and loop it on her neck and pull—I’m so angry I’d pull—and she’d drop and bleed, and I’d pull until my arms gave.

  “I’d pull that wire and then see I’d pulled so hard I strangled my own hands. I’d cut the wire through my palm. So when I danced in the line revue later, a couple weeks even, I’d show my scabby palm to the crowd. I’d have to. And if a detective sat in the crowd and watched me, what would he say? He’d see that long cut on my palm. What would he say, Penny?”

  I slid my hands off the table, and Conejos caught my right wrist. He turned my hand over and squeezed my wrist so hard I couldn’t keep my fingers curled. My hand opened.

  “You know what he’d say? He’d think of the rotting dead girl you buried close by so you could kick her. Stomp on her. He’d think of what this world lost because you hated real beauty. I saw you prance in that line tonight, and I pushed my steak with my fork and thought what a racket, a line of showgirls so we don’t notice tough meat at four dollars a plate. And I thought maybe I’d leave.

  “Then you turned your hand to me. Not a lot, but enough. I saw the gash real plain, like I’m seeing it now. Deep cuts heal slow, don’t they? So I hit Joe with my fork. Oh, you were dancing your little Indian heart out, and that cut on your palm danced right along. I stopped thinking about the goddamn dry steak. I told Joe, I leaned over and I hit him with my goddamn fork and I told him, ‘Fuck me deaf and blind, Joey, I’ve caught myself a killer.’”

  CHAPTER 14

  I Want a Divorce: Tragedy is sometimes the surest road to happiness.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  Years ago—this was when Mom was the first mom, before the flood—she’d take Will and me deep in the orange grove to rake branches. After the Santa Anas, branches would kick loose and scatter, and here we’d come, Branch Patrol, ready to rake and tug those branches to the end of a row. Hot work, dusty afternoons. Mom saved all the twigs with blossoms, and when we got home she’d stick them in a vase and set the vase upstairs in my room, on my dresser. I’d be cut and scratched from dragging branches. I’d be tired and mad. Here I’d done Branch Patrol when I could have jumped double Dutch with my friends. Then I’d get in bed, with the window open and no light, no breeze. And I’d smell them.

  The things a girl remembers when she’s locked in a room. Conejos left me alone a good hour. Me and my jail dress, my autographed table. Me crying about orange blossoms. I couldn’t explain to Stany. She thought I cried about the arrest, and I let her think it.

  Joe unlocked the door and let her in. He didn’t look at me. He held the door wide, and while Stany walked past him, he stared at the ceiling. The door stayed open, but Joe left. It was late, after midnight, maybe more. Stany came around the table and knelt in front of me. She gave me a hankie.

  “Wipe those tears. I mean it, stop crying. Christ, I can’t stand a woman who cries. See me? Am I crying? Well, shut up, then. When I cry you’ll know there’s something to cry about. Where’s that nasty little man?”

  “Joe?” I rolled her wet handkerchief into a ball.

  “No, the nastier one. He charged me for your godawful prison dress. You’ll need to schedule with him to get your feathers tomorrow. Their—what do you call it?—oh, hell, their wardrobe is closed for the night. Can’t think of the name.”

  “How long does Conejos say I should sit here?”

  She stood, and the hem of her gown fell nearly to the floor. Almost touching, but not quite. A spray of sequin roses covered her bodice, all cream-colored, and the gown cream, too, in rayon. She could kneel all she wanted, and when she stood, no wrinkles. “I paid your bail,” she said.

  “I’m a murderess. There won’t be any bail.”

  “Not for you, maybe. But for me . . .” She winked and smiled. “See this hand? I’ve got your handsome detective’s balls right here. I can tug to the left and he’ll turn left. He’ll do anything I want. And I just met a judge who thinks I’m Stella Dallas. He watched the picture three times. I didn’t get you for free, but I got you. I promised you’d stay in town. You will, won’t you? You cost me the goddamn horse I was going to buy this weekend.”

  “Stany, I can’t—”

  “Shut up. And I found you a lawyer. Marty, come in and meet our charity case. Don’t move, Pen, I’m just kidding. It’s not charity. Marty’s charging me the other horse I was going to buy.”

  I wondered why Barbara Stanwyck talked a judge into bail. I wondered why she paid the bail, why she came to the station and paid a lawyer to come, too. She believed I didn’t kill Rose, but how much can someone believe when they’ve only known you a couple of weeks? Two weeks. I wondered, and I yawned, and

  Marty the lawyer stood there in his tuxedo, the same black-haired guy who’d sat with Stany and Joan Crawford at the Gardens, the same guy I’d seen in Stany’s backyard on Halloween.

  “I’m a divorce lawyer,” he said. “I might not be able to help.”

  “The absolute best divorce lawyer.” Stany pulled out the chair where Conejos had sat and let Marty the lawyer sit down. “He took care of Joan’s divorce from Franchot, and she couldn’t be happier. And divorce is a kind of murder, when you think about it. Yes, they’re not far off, not really. Marty, you’re what Pen needs.”

  Marty pushed Conejos’s pencil shavings to the floor with his clean hand, short nails, cuticles pink and soft. His hand looked like the rest of him. He didn’t look like a guy who rubbed ash on his cheeks and forehead and then let a girl climb some ladder into a stranger’s house. I couldn’t imagine him holding the ladder. He was the guy I saw on Halloween, I knew it, but he wasn’t, too. Joan Crawford’s divorce lawyer sat across from me, not a thief.

  “Penny? You there?” His forehead reflected light from the ceiling bulb. His wide, clean face leaned toward me.

  “Here,” I said.

  Stany slapped the back of my neck. “Wake up. Act outraged. You’re innocent, so act it.”

  “She’s tired,” Marty said. “Look at her eyes. How about this. For tonight, tell me what you told the detective, and we’ll meet again tomorrow.”

  “She can do that,” Stany said, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have much to tell, simple stuff like the cab ride, guys dancing with Rose, me with a wire at Rose’s neck, and none of it came out. I wasn’t tired. I was scared. I stared at my new lawyer, and my knees bounced. I didn’t know what I should say.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said, and then didn’t leave but stared at me, too, and Stany got bored, I think, because she said, “Fuck this” and grabbed my arm, and we left.

  * * *

  “Life shoves a stick in your ass. Hard. We get to roll around and cry, Oh, I’ve got a stick in my ass, or we get to ignore the fucking stick. Act professional.” Stany hitched her cream gown to her knees and drove that way, fast. She pr
essed the brake with one foot and gas with another, and her car whined. Her wipers thumped rain off the glass. Roads empty, she ignored a red light on Wilcox. “Men, they get whiskey or a slut and it’s aaaall better. Nothing’s changed but they’ve got their whiskey and their slut and it’s better. What do you and I get? You know the last time I saw my mother? I’m on the sidewalk, and I look up, and here she’s getting shoved off a streetcar. Slam, Mom on the street. And the sidewalk. She’s pretty much all over me, too. Am I crying?”

  “No.” I needed to tell someone everything. I needed help.

  “I learn my lines. I fight for my roles. I tell Jack Warner I’m the one to play Pioneer Woman, or Stella Dallas, or Eve. I’m on time, and I’m grateful.”

  Not Stany, I couldn’t tell Stany. Not Will, either. The lawyer, Marty—he’d want to know what I’d told Conejos. He scared me. Maybe I’d talk to Granny, he seemed nice and hadn’t fired me yet, and didn’t blame me for the body dug up behind his nightclub. Or Madge, I could talk to Madge. She’d already helped me find blood. Yes, I’d tell Madge.

  “You listening?” Stany pulled up in front of the Florentine Gardens. She kept her foot on the brake and the car running. She geared into neutral. “I’m telling you, the only morals we’ve got are how we work our profession. You get a role, you practice. You get a lawyer, you talk. Now, get out. We’ve got early call, and you’re going to be there. You’ll stand around and do what you’re told, then you’ll visit Marty and tell him the truth, and on Sunday you’ll come with everyone else to my house and act perfectly normal. Get out of my car, Penny.”

  “I’m grateful,” I said, and I said it again when the doors to the Gardens were locked and I couldn’t get in. Stany didn’t wait to see me home safe. She was in second gear before I closed her car door. I stood in the dark between the nightclub and Hollywood Boulevard. Ten steps through rain to the left, and I turned down the building’s side. More steps, and I stood in back where Conejos thought I’d buried Rose.

  But if I’d done what he’d said, strangled her on Beverly Glen and buried her here, how did I move her body? Five miles or more, Sunset to here, and I didn’t have a car. Conejos didn’t explain that part. I don’t think he cared.

  I had to pass over the dirt that wasn’t dirt now but mud. I let the rain hit my face and jail dress. I left muddy footprints in the dorm, and I couldn’t wake Madge. The empty bottle lay next to our mattress, and she slept off her drunk.

  CHAPTER 15

  Recently Wally Beery was fortunate enough to outwit a gentleman who might have grown considerably richer at his expense.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  I found Marty’s office from the card Stany gave me:

  MARTIN MARTIN, ESQ.

  DISCREET FAMILY LAW

  SUITE 302 6391 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  FITZROY 5212

  An elegant card. A card matching the man I’d seen at the Gardens.

  I had taken the bus downtown. Marty worked in an office building next to two lots for sale, and I could see Bullocks Wilshire from the lobby. I had to stretch on tiptoe and look over the fence past the two empty lots plus the junk sticking up from those two lots: rusty metal, a couch tipped on its short end. Over the fence, past the two empty lots and a NO DUMPING sign, Bullocks rose in green copper cake layers high to the clouds. I’d been in that Bullocks but never bought anything. The shopgirls can tell who has money and who wishes they did. Someday I’ll buy a dress at Bullocks Wilshire, and I’ll have three shopgirls trail me with live mannequins: “This one? The gown with the tulle peplum? It will show off your skin.”

  I stood in Martin Martin’s lobby a long time. I didn’t want to see him. I knew he wanted not to help me but to find out if he’d been seen at Stany’s on Halloween night. I waited past my four p.m. appointment time, and the elevator man sat on his stool watching me each trip down when the elevator doors shoved open. I could walk in an autopsy room and lift a sheet, but I couldn’t enter an elevator.

  “The ride’s free,” said the man. “You don’t have to pay.” An old guy with a bell cap and a big wad of gum. “What floor? We’ve got more than the lobby, you know.”

  “Martin Martin,” I said.

  “Third floor. I told you it’s free, right?”

  I stepped in. The doors shut in my face, and I listened to the operator gossip. The best gossip is from elevator guys. If you want to know what goes on in this city, ride an elevator. Ride a few of them. I don’t know why, but people pretend elevator guys don’t exist. They get in, the doors shut, and life stops until the doors open again. People should listen to elevator guys, because what happens between floors makes party gossip for a week. My guy today had some good stuff.

  “—gets in with her dog, Miss Swanson, I mean, and the dog’s bigger than she is, right? One of those racing mutts, I don’t know the name, skinny as hell . . .”

  “Greyhound?”

  “Naw, not the racers. Not a greyhound. Big like that, and skinny.”

  “Great Dane. Dalmatian, wolfhound—”

  “Hound, that’s right. Some kind of hound. Skinny as hell. She’s got a pink collar on this dog, and I can see it’s a male, it’s got the business hanging on his behind, and a thin dog like that, you can’t hide the business. So she ignores me and ignores the dog, and that dog smiles right at me and backs up to the corner and does you know what, all the while she’s pretending she can’t see a thing, can’t smell a thing, and the door slides open. I say, ‘Miss Swanson, your dog just shat in my elevator.’ I say it that way, ‘your dog shat,’ very formal. Here you go. Third floor.”

  “What about Miss Swanson?” Outside the elevator a sign listed tenants and numbers. MARTIN MARTIN, ATTORNEY AT LAW, SUITE 302.

  “Half a story on the way up, half on the way down. The ride’s more exciting that way.” He grinned and let the doors close. I knew I’d have to tip him if I wanted the end of the story. Elevator men make good money around Hollywood.

  I knocked on Suite 302. I knocked right on Marty’s painted name, twice, then I opened the door to a reception room. His secretary could have gotten up, opened the door for me, but she didn’t. She’d sat waiting for me to come in.

  “Penny Harp? You’re late. Mr. Martin may have to reschedule.”

  Mr. Martin probably had a house to rob. Probably all the stuff in this room came from a home in Bel-Air: two Chinese dogs on a mantel, fire burning in the fireplace below, white chairs, one wall all mirrors like the Paramount studio commissary, white tables with oriental vases and plants, and in back of the secretary, a short wall covered with tufted white silk. The wall looked like a headboard, with the secretary sitting in bed instead of at her desk. Her sweater looked to me like a bed jacket.

  “I’ll see if he’s still available.” She got out of bed and knocked on Mr. Martin’s office door. She opened the door wide enough to stick her head in.

  I heard Marty’s voice. “Penny? Of course I’m here.”

  I’ll admit, my voice cracked when I talked to him. At first I wheezed. I sat down across from his round desk.

  “Start with your arrest,” Marty said. “What did you tell Detective Conejos?”

  “I told him the truth.”

  “Which is . . .”

  “The truth.”

  “Right,” he said. “What I mean is, tell me the truth, too.”

  “We were at the Palladium, and I lost Rosemary. I looked for her, and then at midnight I went home.”

  “Home is . . .”

  “The Florentine Gardens dormitory.”

  “Do you share a room with other girls? Did anyone see you come home?”

  “I shared a room with Rosemary and two other girls, but we don’t talk to each other. Those girls have one side of the room, and we have the other. I mean, we had. Now I share my side with someone else.”

  “Do you like my desk?”

  “I . . . what?”

  “My décor.”

  “I
guess. White’s hard to keep clean.”

  “Styled after Louis B. Mayer. Have you seen his office? What am I saying, of course you haven’t. L. B.’s desk is huge and round like mine. Much bigger. I had the whole thing scaled down, to fit the room. I have several clients from MGM, and it makes them feel comfortable. It’s extremely important that I make clients comfortable.”

  “I’m comfortable,” I said.

  “White is hard to keep clean, but that’s the point, isn’t it? If I can keep this desk clean, I must know what I’m doing. Is your seat comfortable?”

  “Sure.” A white chair, slats on the back that looked like huge chicken wire. I kept squeezing the armrests.

  “It’s extremely important that you’re comfortable, Penny. The more comfortable you are, the more you’ll trust me.”

  “I trust you,” I said. Lying’s not a sin if you want to be an actress.

  “Tell me again. What happened on Halloween? Everything you can, from the beginning.”

  Some people are too clean. Like this office. He said if he kept his desk clean, he knew what he was doing. Liar. He didn’t clean that desk, his secretary did. She had to wax the thing every night, I could tell by looking. If I bent my head I could see fingerprints in the wax.

  “And remember to call me Marty,” he said. “Like we’re friends.”

  “Marty,” I said. “I lost Rose at the Palladium. I looked for her, but no luck. I went home.” In my head, I saw Gloria Swanson’s dog squat and strain in the elevator. “Okay. I’m sorry. You want more? I can fill it out some. You want a lot more? I’ll try. We were at the Palladium. The people. The crowd! You’ve never seen so many people. Ida Lupino wore the most darling shift, sort of a wrap-around thing that tied here, above the hip. Rolls in her hair like you’d think she owned a bakery. And the dancing—”