“I’m going in.” I stood and stretched. Across Hollywood Boulevard, Joe watched me from inside his dark squad car. “Early call tomorrow,” I said. “Give me that rock.”
“What, this?” Three inches of concrete in his hand.
“See the windshield of that car? What’ll I get if I hit it?”
“The cop? One buck. I’ll give you one whole dollar and a picture frame. I took the frame from Errol Flynn’s house.”
A pretty good windup, solid release, and the chunk sailed from my hand toward a windshield that reflected all the lights of the street. If I’d thrown the rock from in front of Joe’s car, I’d have to watch myself do it—throw the rock at my own reflection. I’d be like Rosemary pounding a hand on her glass face. But I threw at an angle, and I missed. The chunk hit a fancy blue Packard on its fancy door. It rang like a dinner bell.
“You still can’t throw a goddamn ball.” Will tugged my skirt. “Thanksgiving?”
“Why not come here? Bring them here. I’m under arrest. I shouldn’t leave town, I’m being watched.”
He answered no or yes—I don’t remember. I don’t think I heard. I was seeing Rose see herself in a window.
CHAPTER 23
Technicians at one of the big studios have developed the echometer, a device that pursues elusive sound rebounds to their source so that they may be put to death.
—Photoplay, July 1929
When I was twelve, I didn’t like kissing games. Rose called me silly. She said kissing is good, especially when you’re twelve and it’s July and dark and firecrackers sell a nickel a string on 4th Street. She bought three strings, then stole matches from her Aunt Lou.
Here are the rules: Light a firecracker and throw it. If it explodes in the air, nobody gets kissed. You pass the match to the next player. If it hits the ground first and then blows, you get to choose two people and they have to kiss. If it’s a dud, you have to kiss someone. The game is fun with a lot of people. The game isn’t fun when there’s me and Rose and Will and Teddy, a heat wave, a hot night, airless, and we’re playing in Aunt Lou’s yard so Will and Rose can kiss without getting in trouble. That meant I had to kiss Teddy every time.
Aunt Lou yelled out the screen door, “Rosie, you seen my matches?”
Rose held the matches in her right hand, a firecracker in her left. “Where did you set them last?”
“Hell, then. It’s hotter than a good French whore. I’ll try the bedroom.”
She’d look for another ten minutes, easy. Rose lit the firecracker. In the glow I saw the outline of mounds across the street. A watermelon field. Rose aimed the cracker for Will. “If this were a snowball, I’d hit your eye out.”
When you’re twelve, it’s how you flirt.
Will laughed, Teddy peeled crackers off the string, I watched Rose, and Rose threw the lit cracker far over us. It fell on the ground and then blew. Teddy tossed the string to my brother and pulled me by the hand into the mock orange. We shoved between bushes and porch, and he kissed me hard on the mouth, no tongue, because he couldn’t work his tongue and his hands together. One tooth jabbed me. His face dripped and smelled like the watermelon we’d broken an hour ago. Hot watermelon vines. His hands felt up my shirt to my chest.
“Time,” Will said. Will had to call time twice to get Teddy from the mock orange. “Time,” Will said. “Above the waist only. What are you doing?”
I pushed down my shirt.
“Why don’t your bubs get pointy?” Teddy asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“Rose has—”
“Kiss Rose then.” I left the bushes. I bent a branch so it snapped him.
Aunt Lou stood on the porch in her housecoat, rocking on fat ankles. “You lighting those firecrackers with my matches?”
Rose lit another. “If this were a snowball, I’d take out your whole eye.”
“You’ve never seen snow,” Will said.
Rose threw the firecracker and kissed Will quick, in front of everyone. He didn’t pull away, so Rose pushed on his chest because she’d thrown the lit cracker straight up. She pushed him. She probably saved his face. Instead, the cracker blew by his ear and he fell.
“That’s what you get,” Aunt Lou said. “That’s what you kids get for swiping my matches.”
“He’s bleeding,” Teddy said.
Rose on her hands and knees, screaming. “Willie,” she said. Her shirt parted, and I saw her breasts and how Teddy was right. I stared at her breasts. She held my brother’s head and screamed and wiped blood off his ear with a finger. I saw the whole picture like my eyes were a telescope and I watched them in the distance, at the far side of a field. My brother’s ear trickling blood, him not moving; Rose’s shirt; Teddy kneeling, too. Rose’s screams, across a field. I smelled sulphur and hot melon. I was twelve with sore breasts and telescope eyes.
“What are you doing? Don’t stand there, get your dad.” Teddy grabbed my ankle and shook me.
CHAPTER 24
Kidnappers always have been one of Hollywood’s most horrible menaces.
—Photoplay, November 1940
“We’ll play golf in the morning with Jack and Mary,” Stany said, “then a dinner party at Zeppo’s. A small group, nothing fancy. Zep and his wife, a horse or two. I’m kidding about the horse.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “You’re sure.”
“Eugene’s going duck hunting. He’d better shoot enough to share. And, let’s see, Hank’s staying home with the family. Oh, here’s Preston. Preston! Bill wants you in Stage 9. Emma’s decided to hibernate. First the shedding and now this. Are snakes bound by contract? No, don’t answer.” To me: “Okay, I wasn’t kidding. Zep lives on a ranch, so several horses are invited. What’s Thanksgiving without a horse? You don’t have plans?”
“I think so. My family’s coming. Are you sure Thanksgiving’s tomorrow? I don’t know what to do with them. Where will they stay?”
“Your wardrobe’s improving,” Stany said.
“I borrowed from Madge.” Madge borrowed it from Rose. And Rose borrowed it from—who? Who had money for wool gabardine with thick gold braid? Lavender wool so thin and smooth I crunched the skirt in my hand and it never wrinkled.
I wasn’t going to wear Rose’s clothes. I meant it at the time. When Madge first picked through Rose’s clothes I’d wanted to burn them. Then Will and I talked, and I slept and woke, and in the closet the lavender dress started humming. You’ve never, it said. Never in your life. I tried on the dress. I had a list of things that I’d never, all girls do, and I didn’t want the dress to be on that list.
“I’ll wear the squirrel dress on set,” I said, and I did. I sat by my fake parents. Madge sat by hers. We all sailed on a ship that didn’t exist, and in its dining room that really was Stage 10 at Paramount, the buffet food began to smell. The fake chefs sliced prime rib that smelled old like I’d worn it for days.
Preston signaled, and Stany became Jean the gambler, who looked at her compact mirror, and what she looked at was us: Farm Girl and Femme Fatale and Wallflowers and Career Girls and Old Maid. We all tried to get Hank’s attention while he sat in a booth. We’d been coached: look coy and friendly. Not too friendly. Don’t overact or get up. Don’t move, Farm Girl.
Jean, not Stany, studied the room through her mirror. She talked to herself, like perfect girls do when they see the rest of us. How we all wanted Hank but couldn’t get him. Stany, I mean Jean, of course, in the most beautiful gown on the set: her black sparkling shortie and a crepe skirt with a split that showed her leg each time she stuck it out to trip Hank. He walked past Stany’s table, where—oops!—she tripped him and then blamed him for it.
Take four. She stuck out her leg and Hank, fourth time, didn’t know it was there. He tripped.
“Lunch,” Abbott said. I changed out of the squirrel dress and stood on 11th Street looking for Madge.
“Wait,” Stany said. She was still dressed like Jean the gambler. I waited and watched her watch Aven
ue P. I couldn’t tell why she watched. I looked down Avenue P and saw three armored knights dragging a wooden horse to a sound stage. I saw a security guard hitch his crotch.
Stany watched the wrong avenue. She should have watched the corner of Avenue L, because that’s where Detective Conejos and Joe marched around, onto 11th Street, where we stood.
Conejos reached us and shook my arm with his hand. “Is this her?”
“Yes,” Stany said. “Her.”
“Me?”
“Nobody kidnaps my son,” Stany said.
“Your—”
“He told me,” she said. “Do you know the mess I cleaned up that night? You have any idea?”
Joe pulled my arms behind me. I heard the rattle of handcuffs. “You’re arrested.”
“Why?”
“Breaking into my house,” Stany said. “Trying to steal my kid. Leaving your blood on my heart pine floor. I had to refinish that wood, and I’m not happy.”
“What? I didn’t break in. Your kid—”
“My kid saw you on Saturday night,” Stany said. “At my house, where you ate all the shrimp. He comes to me, he says, Mommy, the lady. I know her. I say, Why aren’t you in bed, you little fuck? And he says, I know her, Mommy. The ugly skirt lady. I saw her on Halloween, she was here. I’m no idiot, Pen. I don’t believe a half cup of what the kid says, but this time—”
“I didn’t—”
“This time—”
“Fingerprints,” Conejos said. “It’s great luck for us that you’re a murderess. We matched your booking prints to ones found at Missy’s on Halloween.”
“Detective Conejos called me this morning to say the prints matched. I’m so mad at you. You left a mess in my home,” Stany said. “I should write you a bill. One broken window and a whole wood floor. Plus the towels Harriet used to sop up blood. She used every towel in the house plus a mop. Do you understand the mess?”
“Not kidnap, it was robbery . . .” I couldn’t stop. I kept yelling. There’s a rule that says the worse trouble you’re in, the more you need to yell. It’s not a very good rule, but there we were, me and Stany, on the Paramount back lot, yelling.
“Robbery,” she said. “Sure. That’s why nothing was taken. A Tang horse on the dresser, and it’s still there.”
“A horse?”
“Shut up,” Conejos said. “Shut up, Penny Harp. You and your lies. We put together what happened. We reasoned it out.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s reason in private and not with the whole cast.” A few girls clapped. Stage hands, Wally the makeup guy. Preston stood with his gallon coffee cup, happy, planning his next script. He took a flask from his jacket and sprinkled his cup. Preston-style thoughts rose from his head: A girl tries to kidnap a movie star’s son and botches it, then fate makes her the movie star’s friend. Yes, he could see it. Yes, he’d make them yell, too, but funnier, more bouncing around.
“You must have known Missy’d be gone,” Conejos said. “You met her on set that day and heard her talk about evening plans. You went to the Palladium, then you took a cab. Rosemary Brown insisted on coming with you. I don’t think she knew your plans, not Rosemary. She came with you and when she saw what you planned, she tried to stop you.”
“She what?”
“Tried to stop you,” Conejos said. “We found her prints at Missy’s, with yours. Anyone with a heart would have stopped you. For one woman to take another’s child—Miss Brown couldn’t allow it. And you couldn’t allow her to interfere.”
“I get it,” I said. “I killed Rose and then climbed the ladder.”
“No,” Conejos said. “Get it right. We found Rosemary Brown’s prints inside Missy’s house, which means you killed your friend after she climbed the ladder to stop you. She fought and you pushed her against the window.”
“You’re saying the window broke and cut her neck?”
“You picked up some glass,” Stany said. “In your right hand. You shoved that glass into Rosemary’s neck. Poor you, the glass cut your palm at the same time.”
“This is garbage,” I said. “Stinking garbage. If you want truth, how about this? Rose climbed that ladder. She broke the window. Stany, the blood on the floor was mostly hers.”
Stany didn’t like my version. She shook her head and the beads on her top bounced, but not enough to make Preston notice. Not enough bouncing at all. Comedy has to move quick, snap-your-fingers fast, dialogue spinning. Time for a pratfall. Someone has to slip, hard.
“Why would Rosemary Brown want my son? She had no reason. You told me yourself she’d landed a speaking role.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “If I took a cab, how did I bring a ladder?”
Joe pushed me then, down Avenue P, and I walked. I kept yelling at Conejos, “Did I find the ladder? Did I steal it from someone’s garage? Did you think about the ladder?”
We all walked—Joe, Conejos, Stany, Preston, extras, stagehands, cows, Egyptians, whoever and whatever was on the lot, and me handcuffed—down the long Avenue P to the security booth at the Bronson Gate. A parade, led by me in lavender gabardine.
“Did I carry Rose’s body? Did I put her bloody corpse in a cab? Where would I hide a stolen kid? Who is thinking here? What happened to Rose’s clothes? Are you all dumber than me? Stany? You said you were my friend.”
“Oh, not that et tu stuff, Pen. Nobody does Shakespeare in Hollywood.”
Anyone who watched from the front would think me a star. They’d see a blond woman on a stroll, hands behind her back and all her followers, her people. If you’d stood at Paramount Pictures outside the Bronson Gate, that’s what you would have seen. It’s what my mother saw, and my brother, Will, and Daisy, waiting on the other side.
“Where did you get that dress?” Will asked. Not hello, not Why are you in handcuffs leading all these people, and who are the idiots in the cow suit, just his face stuck between the gate scrolls and Where did you get that dress?
Joe unlocked the Bronson Gate, and it creaked and swung.
“You know exactly where I got it,” I said. Conejos squeezed my arm and walked me past my family. “Why? Why did you bring Mom? And Daisy?”
“Thanksgiving,” Will said. “You told us to come. What’s the surprise? We wanted your dorm key. What did you expect? Were you going to cook?”
“So Hollywood has brought you to this,” Mom said. “Handcuffed in front of your mother.” She wore her best hat and gloves. Her shoelaces dragged, untied. She held Daisy’s hand. I think Daisy was crying. She had her eyes squeezed hard, and no crying sounds, not from our Daisy.
Conejos sat me in his car. If I hadn’t been handcuffed and shifting to sit without cracking an arm bone, I could have waved to them all. They stood inside and outside the Paramount gate. Friends and enemies and family, a good crowd scene for Preston.
The heroine is arrested unjustly. She waves to her family from the police car, hoping for a sign of support, but none comes. Her mom and brother stare but don’t wave. She’s crushed. Then Stany lifts a delicate hand in friendship.
No, make it betrayal. Scratch that last. The friend shakes a delicate fist.
Scratch again. Move instead to heroine’s sister. Two-shot on Mom and little sister. The silent little sister lifts her arm to the police car. Cut away to heroine sobbing, unable to help her sister or herself. Then Mother begins to sob. Perfect. The heroine has to hurt when her mother hurts. Cut to heroine’s face, extreme close-up on heroine’s face. End of scene.
CHAPTER 25
Paulette’s new Mexican coiffure is a Hollywood sensation. The center part continues down the back, and the side braids are interwoven with velvet ribbon that ties in a bow.
—Photoplay, November 1940
Mexican hookers are mean. They’re beautiful, sure, they all look like Dolores Del Río. But they sleep in their makeup. They carry knives in their girdles, and they file their hairpins to points. They wear an extra layer of clothes to cover their bruises. They’ve been thrown out of their h
omes. Not even their mothers speak to them. It’s true; everyone knows it.
The three Mexican hookers in my jail cell made sure I sat in a corner. One stood in front of me, one to my right side, and one to my left. I could draw a dot to dot and make it look like a wall of hookers cut me off from the world. They spoke Spanish and laughed a lot, and the middle one, in slinky red rayon, lifted her skirt to show me she didn’t have on underwear. Oh, they laughed! Show the girl how you can squeeze your thighs and make whistle sounds. Show her how far down your throat you can suck. Use her finger. I don’t speak Spanish, but sometimes I could tell, depending on what followed their talk.
I lived in a jail cell for four nights with the hookers. I didn’t wear an orange shift like the first time I was arrested. I kept my lavender dress, but I wished I hadn’t. There’s not much you can do with wool gabardine after three Mexican hookers and four nights on concrete.
The hookers slept two at a time, I think so I couldn’t attack them. Once when the two side hookers were stretched on the concrete, sleeping, the middle one sat on the flat cot and cried. Her hands shook, and she rubbed them together. I pretended to sleep, but my corner was dark, and I had my eyes open. I watched her scratch and rub her hands. I had made my mom cry and watch me get arrested, and my insides felt like I’d been swept with a sharp rake, my eyes swollen and raw, but I think this hooker had it worse.
I liked her then. She had something wrong with her hands, and she didn’t want the others to know. She couldn’t eat much, but neither could I. Oatmeal in the mornings, for lunch chicken or meat loaf sandwiches, and stew at night, every night. Turkey stew for Thanksgiving. The night guard would walk by our cell and make kissy noises, and the hookers all waggled their fingers or shoved out a hip and answered in Spanish I didn’t understand.
The Glamorous Dead Page 13