The halls again, a few benches and then swinging doors at the end. Through them a secretary and an office door beyond. The usual dark wood. It could have been any man’s office, except for the vegetable smell.
“Here’s Mr. Nance’s noon appointment.” His secretary with her guest smile, pretty except for her nose and eyes, puffy cotton scarf at her neck. Small scars that her scarf didn’t hide, from her chin to her earlobe, little white scratches like somebody had shaved her face.
“Yes,” I lied. Yes, the coroner’s noon appointment.
“You’re lucky. Mr. Nance likes his lunch, and it’s not often he schedules straight through.”
“I’m lucky,” I said.
“I’ll tell him you’re here.”
No, that wouldn’t work, not if the coroner expected two gurney guys. I followed the secretary. “I’d like to surprise him.”
She stopped. Her smile stopped, too. “What’s your name?”
“Pen Harp. I want to surprise him.”
“He’s married,” she said, and I knew why Mr. Nance liked his lunches.
From inside the office: “Whitey, is that my twelve o’clock?”
Whitey?
“Send him in, then.”
I sent myself in, and his secretary pulled my jacket sleeve.
“Dr. Nance?” I saw round glasses and a round face sitting at a desk. Piles of paper hid the rest of him.
“Mr. Nance, she pushed me—”
“I mean Mister,” I said. “Mr. Nance. I’m not your noon appointment, but I have a question. One little question.”
I still wore my Paramount makeup, so I looked pretty. I smiled at him. He smiled back and stood.
Whitey didn’t smile at all. She said, “I told her to leave, and she just—”
“It’s fine,” said Mr. Nance. His smile made his face rounder. He’d parted his hair on one side, brown on top and gray by his ears. He looked like an old baseball on top of a black suit. “One question?”
“A little one.”
He pointed Whitey back to the door. “A little question, then. You are . . .”
“Penny. My best friend was killed a few days ago. May I please have a copy of the autopsy report?”
“That’s your question?”
“Yes, Mr. Nance.”
He smiled again. “I wish I could give you a better answer, but autopsy reports are confidential. They can upset families, and they hold information best left to professionals. You said your friend was killed?”
“A few days ago. Her name was Rosemary Brown.”
“It’s an open investigation, yes?”
“Yes. Her autopsy was held here.”
“Penny, right? I’m sorry, Penny. I can’t let you look at files during an investigation. Have you talked to the police?”
Of course I had. No, not really talked to them. They’d talked to me, questioned me, arrested me. That kind of talking doesn’t hold much information.
Whitey appeared at the door. “Your noon is here. Your real noon.”
Mr. Nance held out his hand, and I shook it. He apologized again and said something else I missed because I’d turned to leave. He wasn’t the right person anyway. His office didn’t have Rosemary’s file. No filing cabinet in here, only a desk, lots of papers, some chairs, a little lean-back couch where Whitey and Mr. Nance shared their lunches and maybe dinners, too.
Out in the hallway, Whitey ignored me. She led the noon appointment into Mr. Nance’s office. I saw her desk and behind it an open door, and inside I saw shadows and file cabinets, rows of them. Lots of people die in Los Angeles County and they’re buried or burned, but they live on in Whitey’s file room, locked in a drawer, alphabetically. Rose lived there, I knew it.
Whitey didn’t move until I walked past her. “You heard what he said. You got your answer.”
“Sure,” I said.
The door to Mr. Nance’s office closed, and Whitey sat at her desk. She took her lunch box from a drawer, opened it, and lifted out a wrapped sandwich. “Unless you like grape jelly, you should scram.”
“I love jelly.”
“Scram anyway.”
“You could find out stuff about anyone, couldn’t you? Anyone dead?”
“So?” She bit crust from her sandwich. She sat right in front of the file room doorway, framed in it like a publicity shot.
“I’ll bet you find out about picture stars, how they die, stuff like that.”
“So again,” she said.
“Like Jean Harlow. You know stuff about Jean Harlow, how she died?”
She wiped a purple smear off her cheek. “I know stuff you’d die to find out. You’d kill your mother to know this stuff. Sure I know about Jean Harlow.”
“You go to the pictures?”
“What is this? What do you want?”
“I have a friend,” I said. “She’s famous. Maybe you want to meet her.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Barbara Stanwyck.”
“You know Barbara Stanwyck? And in return I tell you about Jean Harlow?”
“No,” I said. “Not Jean Harlow. Just a girl nobody cares about, not famous. Rosemary Brown.”
“Barbara Stanwyck for Rosemary Brown,” she said. “That’s what you’re trading?”
“It’s a good trade. You dropped jelly on your scarf. It’ll stain.”
“Get out of here,” she said. “I’m buzzing the cops.”
All the way to the Florentine Gardens, on the bus, I saw the shadowy file room in my head, how the cabinets lined walls and made the center walk narrow, with barely room to turn and pull out a drawer. I saw Whitey and the grape stain that ruined her scarf. Cotton sucks up fruit stains, and you can’t get them out.
CHAPTER 30
Hollywood has rarely dared to be different. And when it has, the result has seldom been profitable.
—Photoplay, November 1940
Joe said, “Listen to yourself. Do you know how you sound?”
“I shouldn’t have told you my plan. I thought you’d listen, after what you said yesterday. You said you liked me.”
“I like you, Pen, but I don’t believe you. I said that yesterday, too. I don’t believe anything you say, and I can’t—no, I won’t—help you.”
“I’m not stealing anything. The file room is right behind the secretary’s desk. I won’t have to go in the coroner’s office at all.”
“That’s because you’re not going near the building,” Joe said. “You’re not doing it. Here comes Mr. Abbott. Break’s over.”
Outside Stage 10, a group of girls saw Abbott and took last puffs on their cigarettes before flicking them down the street. Paramount must pay one whole guy to sweep dead cigarettes each day.
“I should have kept my plans to myself. I know exactly where the file is, easy to reach, I don’t have to break into an office.”
“You’re grieving. You’re upset about Madge.”
“I still want that file.”
“Why is it important?”
“I should be allowed to read it. I’m the one up for murder. Shouldn’t I read whatever helps my case? I have a terrible lawyer. No, that’s not true. He’s a good lawyer, if you want a divorce.”
“You can change lawyers. You don’t have to use Stany’s. Get a free one.”
“I know. But I need to keep this lawyer. Don’t ask me why, it’s all confused. I have Marty, and I can’t change him, but he’s not trying his hardest to prove me innocent.”
“You can request the report through your attorney. Have you talked to Marty at all?”
“About the report? Yeah, I have. He agrees it might be important. He says he’ll ask for all the notes on the case.”
“Well, then.”
“I keep thinking of what Stany said. After the autopsy, she told me everything she could remember.”
“Wait. She witnessed the autopsy?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“Why would I? I’m just a beat cop.”
“Stany said the cut in Rosemary’s neck goes in about half an inch and then angles up. Stany’s theory is that a guy killed Rose, because a guy would be taller and his first instinct would be to pull up on the garrote. See? In, then up. Stany said she noticed the angle, but nobody else did. If the autopsy surgeon described the angle in his notes, maybe it proves I’m innocent. How could I stand behind Rose and then pull up on a wire? We were the same height.”
“She was flat on the ground, not standing. You were behind her. Then the natural action would be to pull up.”
“You’re saying I killed her?”
“I’m saying you’re not breaking into the coroner’s.”
“You need to read the autopsy report. It will prove that I’m not Rose’s killer. You say you don’t believe me, okay, I might be lying, but that report tells the truth. You like me, right? At least, you want to like me. Then learn the truth.”
“Hey, you,” Abbott said. He stood in the Stage 10 door, boxy blue jacket with shoulder pads, Paramount mountains on his tie. He pointed to the unlit red bulb above the doorway. He yelled, “Are you working for him or me? Fuck your boyfriend when you’re not working.”
“All I mean is, I won’t let you make a mess,” Joe said, but I’d already run toward Stage 10.
* * *
That night we sat in Joe’s patrol car. Rain hit the car’s hood, heavy drops, fast, so I couldn’t see more than a few feet before the air turned silver.
“What if I get a callout?”
“You insisted on driving,” I said.
“I could have followed you here, like before. It’s simpler to be in the same car, that’s all.”
“Leave me. I’ll go in, break the lock on the file door, steal the report, and then you’ll pick me up when you’re done. Five minutes start to finish.”
“Five minutes. I can’t believe I’m sitting here while you plan a burglary.” He leaned his head back and shut his eyes.
“For information,” I said. “I have a right to information about my own case.”
“What time is it?”
“A little past one. Joe.”
“Mmmmrrr,” he said. He was falling asleep.
“A Mexican hooker. She said something to me in jail. The second night. I couldn’t sleep—you know what it’s like to sleep on cement? She didn’t sleep, either, and she had the cot. She said, Gabashya estubo. What does it mean? She whispered it.”
“Mmmm.” He scooted around on the seat. “She’s a pachuca. Any coffee left? Give it here.”
He drank coffee from a thermos. Rain made a silver world outside the car. A guy could stab a girl outside Joe’s window and we’d see tinsel thrown at Joe’s car by the handful. Silver tinsel. Daisy and my dad in front of our Christmas tree throwing tinsel on branches. Daisy couldn’t have been much past two.
“So she talks in slang.”
“What?”
“Your pachuca,” Joe said. Rain hit the car. “‘Gabacha, ya estuvo,’ that’s what she said. ‘White girl, I’m done.’”
All that silvery rain. This year I’d go home for Christmas. Mom in a housecoat drinking the Knotts’ wine, the dog choking on ribbon, handmade presents that could have been sweet but weren’t, tatted hankies and fudge made from marshmallow creme. I hadn’t returned for a big day since I moved to Hollywood, but this year—yeah, I’d go. Especially this year, since Will was in jail. But first, at Woolworth’s, I’d buy tinsel for Daisy. Five isn’t too old to throw tinsel.
“I see someone,” Joe said.
“You’re lying.”
“By the door. Look out my side. No, lean over. Lean more—there. Where the building ends, beyond the second wall. See?”
“Where? I don’t see—” And then I did see an umbrella held by someone tall, and another someone pressed close so they both stayed dry. “It must be them. The tall one’s Frank Nance. He’s the coroner. Shortie’s his secretary.”
“Whitey?”
“Yeah, Whitey.”
“They’re leaving.”
“A late dinner,” I said. “On his couch. I’m going.”
“Don’t do it, Pen. I could arrest you.”
“Then as soon as Stany pays my bail I’ll come back. You can stay here if you want.”
We ran and got drenched, those few yards to the hearse dock. Someone had sandbagged the little dock against flood. The hearse entry stuck out two feet from its swinging doors, two feet that weren’t covered by roof. Sandbags propped the doors by a freight scale and lined up so the two feet open to rain couldn’t wash the whole floor. Trickles of water ran between sandbags and wet the hearse entry hall. Joe stepped over the bags and then pulled me onto the dock at the start of the hallway.
“Let’s leave.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Damn it, where do we go?”
“Left, I think. Left.”
Down to Posting Room Three, trailing water. All quiet there, so on to Posting Room Two. We reached the end of the hall and heard a car’s motor.
“Hearse,” Joe said. “Stay here.” He turned the knob of the posting room. “Locked. They shouldn’t come down this far. You stay and I’ll check it out.”
He meant well. He tried to protect me, I think. He wanted to believe me, that I was innocent. Or maybe he thought I’d discover he was the killer. He jogged back to the loading dock, protecting me or himself. I followed a little, to Posting Room Three, and tried the door. Locked. Voices at the hearse entry: “You standing around? Give me some help, officer.”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said.
“I’ve got two corpses to weigh and a widow who left her husband’s balls in bloody specks on her couch. You got something more important than that? Move your wetback ass.”
Then Joe’s yes, sir again and the sound I hated, the sound I closed my eyes against, wheels of a gurney on the linoleum, fast, rolling toward Posting Room Three.
I twisted the doorknob of the next room. Locked. I twisted another one. I tried all the doors, but they were locked tight. The one room I could open I hid in. Dark, and I bumped something soft on a table. I didn’t open a posting room. I’d hid in the cooling room, with a table and a wall of refrigerated crypts. Cold air and cold metal. Full crypts, with leftovers stacked at the end like soft bricks. I didn’t know this at first because the room was dark. I held out my hands and bumped a table, beyond that the crypt doors on each side, the wall of soft bricks at the end. I knew they weren’t bricks. I knew they weren’t bricks. Corpses: hacked, withered, dangling corpses in sheets, tagged and stacked in the cooling room.
I heard the cooling room door open, and I saw the wedge of light grow when the door opened wider, and I glanced around and then fell.
I became a soft brick. I snuggled close to the brick beside me and pulled its sheet loose so it covered me, too. The cold air made my shirt stiff.
Then I smelled them—the bricks—and then that voice: “Get the other corpse. You can hear, right? Get the other and bring it. Damn, look at those holes. You want holes like this? Use a shotgun, close range. What are you doing? You gonna listen to me or run get that corpse?”
Joe’s feet in the hall, running, like he was told. Through my sheet I saw a bright, round globe on the ceiling and nothing else. I rolled against the brick next to me, and I shifted the stack. I hadn’t meant to. The bricks pressed against me, hard, and I had to brace my feet on the wall so the whole stack wouldn’t slide.
“Roll her in here,” said the voice. “Put ’em next to each other. What are you looking at me for? Fill out the tags.”
“Do you know their names?” Joe’s voice.
“Fuck it. I’ve got to do your job, too.”
Scratching sounds, sheets rustling, the loud voice yelling at Joe. I couldn’t hold my feet on the wall. I tried. I lifted one hip so my left foot braced harder, then the other hip, then I kicked at something that touched my leg. My feet slid, the pile slid, and we all slid, one brick on another, rolling, thumping on the cold floor.
/> I needed them to be bricks, they had to be, because underneath all those bricks I breathed, and all I got was brick, brick, brick in my mouth and nose. They were heavy and solid, they pressed me down, and I had to open my mouth. I needed to scream.
“You standing there? Clean it up. Shit. I thought those corpses came alive. All I need is rotten bodies. You never know what’ll happen in this fucking place. Fucking rain. Clean it up, I said.”
Footsteps across the room, the stack shifted, and a live hand slid through the sheets to me. Joe covered my mouth with his hand. He waited, he pushed here and there to clean up, and more footsteps retreated to the hall, to the hearse.
“Don’t move,” Joe said.
“Joe? Don’t leave. Oh, my God. Joe?”
“I’m here. I’m shutting the door. Okay? You’re okay. Let me— it’s fine—follow my voice. I’m not leaving you. Now I’m locking the door, walking—let me roll off these bodies. Don’t cry, Pen. They can’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“Grab my wrist. Can you stand?”
“All these people.”
“Lots of people die, Pen. This is a big city. You’re not breathing good.”
“They covered me, Joe. They bounced on my chest. Some of them moved on their own.”
“Let’s go,” Joe said. “Enough for tonight. We’re wet, you’re half-frozen—”
“No.”
“We’ll warm you up,” he said. “Take this towel. Rub your arms.”
I took it, a sheet, not a towel. The body underneath was nude and yellow, a woman, scrim wrapped thick around her head. She slid, arms first, toward the wall and hit a crypt door. I held the sheet in one hand.
“That’s it,” Joe said. “We’re leaving.”
The Glamorous Dead Page 17