“My clothes keep getting bloody.” My skirt had dried stiff with Spencer Tracy’s blood, and it crackled when I bent the fabric. Little blood bits flew off. “I should change my clothes before you question me.” I tried to stand, and Granny leaned across to push my shoulders down. I sat.
“I’m not questioning you,” Conejos said.
“Sure you are. I saw a cop beat up Spencer Tracy.”
“I’m not questioning you, Penny.”
“Okay, then someone else questions me. I have to be questioned. They’ll take me to Hollywood Division. Change my skirt.” I tried to stand again, and Granny leaned across.
“You’re not going anywhere, Pen. Detective Conejos brought you home, and that’s it.”
I crackled my skirt and watched blood bits fly. Little bits of Spencer Tracy. “I don’t understand.”
“Pen, look at me. Look at me,” Granny said. “Now listen. It’s fixed. The situation, you’re out of it. You never went to that hospital, not the first time, not tonight. The detective didn’t bring you home tonight, because you didn’t go out. You don’t know any Dr. Ostrander. You never saw Spencer Tracy. What you’re wearing, it’s not blood, Pen. I know, yes, it’s blood, but it’s not. You’ll change out of the skirt and give it to me, and it disappears. No blood. We’ll sweep the floor—stop doing that with the skirt—and it’s all fixed.”
“Fixed? You can’t fix what’s happened. I saw it. I fell right next to him. Joe kept hitting and wouldn’t stop, he was kicking, look at my skirt. How can you fix this?”
Poor Granny. He saw how slow I was. I didn’t know that a studio could fix things. Sure, they’d fixed Will so he could leave jail, but that was different and took maybe money and promises, a phone call. How about a crazy cop who beats up a movie star? How can that be fixed? Everyone in the emergency room saw me and Joe with Spencer Tracy, including the nurse, and I doubted that money could fix her mouth the way a contract fixed mine. The kid with red bumps would remember me because I backed into him. I nearly broke his toe. As soon as the cops questioned that kid, he’d say, Some lady came in here and pushed me around, then the nurse threw her out, and he’d describe me, and the cops would visit me at the dorm. All those people in the emergency room, they saw me. Question those people, and . . . and . . . And. God, I was slow.
“You won’t question me,” I said to Conejos.
He shook his head. He didn’t shake it, more a roll from right to left, a serious no.
“You won’t question the nurse or the kid with bumps.”
Conejos rolled a serious no.
“If nobody’s questioned, nobody says they saw me.”
Conejos nodded, a slow and serious nod.
“Studios can do that?”
Nod.
From Granny: “Why don’t you get to bed, Sheryl? Think of that name. Doesn’t it sound good? Smooth, like store ice cream.” He lifted my teacup and walked with it toward the kitchen. “Take off the skirt right here. You won’t be seen.”
I unbuttoned the skirt, and it fell. A beautiful Celanese rayon with shirred pockets. A gift from Rosemary, after she died. I stepped out of the skirt, then kicked it toward Conejos. He picked it up.
Granny yelled from the kitchen: “Slip, too, I’m afraid.”
I looked down at my slip where it stuck, red, to my legs. The skirt had dried, but my slip was tacky with blood. I unbuttoned my blouse, raised the slip over my head, and saw that my bra had blood stains. I stripped off the bra, too, and the girdle. I stripped everything. I gave him everything but my stolen wedgie shoes. I didn’t care if Conejos saw me nude. If I wasn’t here, if I hadn’t watched Joe beat on Spencer Tracy and watched Dr. Ostrander run from a side office to save him, if I hadn’t been driven home by Conejos and I hadn’t sat shaking in the Zanzibar, blood dust in the air, then Conejos didn’t see me undress. Right?
I wore my Cree costume to the dorm. I didn’t sneak or try to be quiet when I climbed the stairs to my room, and I ran hot bath water with the door open. I stole some girl’s bubbles off the counter and dumped a bunch in the tub. It wasn’t my night for a bath, but who cared? Because I wasn’t really there. I’d been fixed.
CHAPTER 35
If you want to get there, you’ll stop, look and listen to the most daring woman in Hollywood.
—Photoplay, November 1940
Friday morning, the day after Joe didn’t beat up Spencer Tracy, I went to see my brother in jail. By ten fifteen I’d walked through the Lincoln Heights lobby. Morning visiting hours, ten to noon. I took out my hairpins. My arm ached from where Joe had grabbed me. I removed my shoe buckles, shook my purse for the guard, let him pat my waist, gave my brother’s name to the clerk, sat in the chair on my side of the long glass row.
Other people came, mothers and sweethearts. They clacked high heels across the dirty floor. Prisoners came to the other side of the glass, talk and laughter and crying. I waited for my brother. I held my hands in my lap, then on the narrow ledge by the glass, then rubbed my sore arm, and finally, when I’d run out of things to do with my hands, when I gave up saying my new name in my head, Sheryl, Sheryl, I walked through someone’s spilled coffee to the clerk.
“My brother’s not here yet. Hey? Where’s my brother?”
“Just a minute.” He sat at a little desk by the door. Little guy, little desk, little bald spot that faced me when he looked down. He shook a sack over the desk, and a pile of Green Stamps fell out. “I hate the taste of these little fuckers, but what can you do. You gotta lick to stick.” He ran a sheet of stamps over his tongue and stuck the whole sheet in a collection book.
“My brother,” I said. “I’m still waiting.”
“Yeah, a minute.” Lick to stick.
I’d waited a minute. My sore arm reached out on its own and swept across the little desk. Green Stamps scattered in the air, big, square bug wings that fluttered, then landed and stuck to the floor.
“Now, why’d you do that?”
“My brother’s not come out, you understand? I’ve been waiting twenty minutes and he’s not come out.”
“No reason—”
“William Harp. William H. Harp.”
“Fine. You spill my stuff, but fine, I’ll look up your damn brother. What’s the name? What’s the H stand for?”
“Nothing. It’s just an H.”
“Harp. Harp. Funny name. I don’t see it on my list.”
I couldn’t read upside down, but I saw the list in his hands. He held it over his Green Stamps book. “How old’s your list?”
“Fresh each morning.”
“And?”
“Well, what do you want me to do? He didn’t come out. Maybe he doesn’t want to see you. It happens, you know.”
Every kraut I kill is gonna have your face. It happens.
“He’s not on your list? Where is he?”
The clerk set his list down. “You come over here, knock my stuff to the floor—probably ruined some of those stamps—you start demanding things, making a fuss, want me to call a deputy? What do you think, you’re a movie star?”
I had a couple seconds of standing in front of the little clerk, a couple seconds, when I knew the difference between Stany and me. Stany could wave arms and send Green Stamps flying and she’d get, Yes, Miss Stanwyck. I’ll look into it right now. I’ll do it myself. What, are you tired? Sit down, take my chair. I know how disturbing a jail is. That was Stany. I had the arm-waving and not the stardom, and the clerk tells me I’m making a fuss. In a year I could wave a few arms and the clerk would say, You’re Sheryl, aren’t you? Aren’t you Sheryl?
One year. In two, he wouldn’t ask my new name, he’d know it, and he’d know me, and he’d say, Sit down, take my chair. All this when I signed my contract. Yes, I’m talking about a jail clerk, so who cares, but not really. Think bigger. I’m talking about every clerk, every assistant, secretary, boss, big buildings and small ones, every city and town. That’s the difference between Stany and me. And the jail clerk was right,
Harp’s a funny name. I needed a star name. I needed to sign my contract with a real name, Sheryl Somebody.
The clerk dialed his phone. “William H. Harp, H means nothing, he’s not on my visiting list. Where is he? William H. Harp, I don’t know. Yes. No, a visitor.” He looked at me. “You are . . .”
“Sister.”
“Sister,” he said. “Yeah. Well, where is he? Where?” He hung up. To me, he said, “William H. Harp isn’t here. He’s no longer a prisoner.”
“He’s free?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. He’s army now.”
“No,” I said. “He has a day. He doesn’t go in yet.”
“I don’t know when he goes or doesn’t go. He’s army, left last night, at some base by now, probably.”
“Who can I talk to?”
“You’re talking to me.”
I grabbed the phone receiver and made to whack him. “Who? You want to keep your head round?”
“Deputy. Deputy!”
From then on, I got more attention.
No, the deputy told me, my brother wasn’t in jail. Passed his physical yesterday. Signed release forms at three that morning, left forty minutes later, all charges dropped as soon as he gets to Kansas and checks in at Fort Riley, two days maybe by rail. He might write from basic training, but maybe not. You know how that is, basic training.
Will was fixed. I was fixed. Paramount fixed both of us. We couldn’t talk.
* * *
“You weren’t there,” Granny had told me last night. “You didn’t see the doctor, you didn’t see Joe, no blood. Madge wasn’t pushed, no blood there, either, and of course there’s poor Rosemary, bless her good soul, may she go to heaven and be with Our Lord, but she wasn’t murdered. Accidental deaths, they’re common in Hollywood. Take Madge. A few hard drinks, and look. She falls. She’s a come-and-go girl, Sheryl. It doesn’t pay to dwell.”
Granny didn’t mean the part about Rosemary, he was confused. I believed Granny, mostly. He was a nice guy. But I’d read the autopsy transcripts, at least part of them, and Joe read them, too. Not all Hollywood deaths are accidental.
I couldn’t talk to Will anymore. Madge was dead, Joe was crazy, Stany at work, and who else to talk to but Rosemary? I’d talked to Rosemary all my life, all our fights and makeups and best friend pinkie swears. I’d been mad for months, both at Will and at Rose, for not caring when I said that Teddy forced me. He did. He forced me, he beat me up like Joe beat Spencer Tracy, he left scars on my back that matched two nails in an office wall at the Buena Park sheriff’s station. And Rose had said it wasn’t the worst that could happen.
She was right, of course. Everything that had happened since Teddy forced me was worse: walking on Rose’s body, seeing her dug up, the autopsy notes, Madge’s swinging, dead arm hitting me in the forehead.
I reached downtown by noon and walked through the main building entrance like I was Sheryl. Coroner’s office, same as before, Whitey at her desk, same as before.
“Do you remember me?”
“So?” She wore a different scarf, purple dots, wrapped at her neck and tucked into a jacket. She’d hidden her neck scars pretty well.
“I wanted my friend’s autopsy report. The coroner said I couldn’t, and I understand, so I’m not asking for that. Not the report, I know I can’t see it, but the transcript.”
“What makes you think the transcript’s less important than an autopsy report? Are you nutso? You get nothing from me.”
“I’m a contract actress at Paramount. I’m Sheryl Lane.” I deleted the extra Y in my head, it was too much.
“Paramount? Why not MGM?”
“Please,” I said.
“Let me look.”
She stood and walked to the file room. The coroner might have been in his office, or not. It didn’t matter, except if he came out and said, Hi, Pen Harp, and I had to explain to Whitey that I wasn’t anyone, I was between Penny and Sheryl and not quite one or the other. I wore Penny clothes, but soon I’d have Sheryl clothes and Sheryl hair, makeup, and voice inflection. My brother’s a soldier, I’d say. We’re so very proud.
“Your friend’s name?” Whitey yelled from the file room.
“Rosemary Brown.”
“Seven hundred, seven oh one . . .” Her voice came muffled through files. “Brown. Is it recent?”
“Yes, recent,” I yelled back at her.
“Got it,” she said. She held a thin file in her hand and waved.
Back to her desk. She looked around in case I’d messed with anything. “You have to sign to check it out. Sign this book.”
I took her pen and signed Penny Harp. I’d never signed Sheryl Lane before, so I didn’t know her handwriting. Whitey didn’t look at the signature. She sat at her desk and watched me open the file and slide out one sheet of thick paper. Rosemary’s death certificate. Most of it I knew: next of kin, funeral home, cremation. I skipped to the right side, to the good parts.
24. Coroner’s Certificate of Death
I hereby certify that I took charge of the remains described above, held an Inquiry thereon, and from such action find that said deceased came to h er death on the date stated above.
The principal cause of death and related causes of importance, in order of onset, were as follows: Neck Wound, Exsanguination
25. If death was due to external causes (violence) fill in the following.
Accident, Suicide or Homicide Suicide Date of Autopsy X
Injured at City or Town of Hollywood County and State of Los Angeles, Calif
Did injury occur at home, industry, or public place?
Home
Manner of injury Cut own throat
Nature of injury Neck Wound
26. If disease/injury related to occupation, specify X
27. Signature A. F. Wagner MD Address Coroner’s Office
28. When required by law Frank A. Nance Coroner County of L.A.
“Suicide? What is this?”
“All the facts.” Whitey kept watching me. She hadn’t moved.
“She cut her own throat?”
“You’re reading it.”
“Who cuts their own throat?”
“Your friend, I guess.”
“How? The cut’s straight across. Who does this? Okay. Okay. If she did cut her throat, if she actually managed to cut, how could she cut straight across? Look. Look at me. I cut here, okay? I’m right-handed, like Rose. I start cutting and—oops—I’m dragging the knife up because I’m right-handed and I have to. I can’t cut a straight line. Plus all the little cuts. Plus she’d be bloody. Oh, God. She’d cut halfway and blood spurting, and how could she cut the rest?”
“Suicide is hard,” Whitey said.
“Where are the transcripts?”
“What transcripts?”
“From the autopsy. You have to have transcripts and a report. Where are they?”
“Did you read the certificate?”
I’d read the certificate. I read it again, again, and again, looking for what wasn’t there. “What’s this X mean?”
“We put the X when that line doesn’t apply. Look at twenty-six, there’s no relation to work, so we X it.”
“But there’s an X in the autopsy line.”
“Right, inquiry only.”
“I was there, at the autopsy, I sat in that hall.”
She shook her head. A pin from her hair fell loose and swung, caught on a long curl. “You saw the autopsy, you saw the surgeon cut her open?”
“No, I told you, I was in the hall. I couldn’t go in. You were there, too, at the autopsy, taking notes. Barbara Stanwyck was there. How could you forget an autopsy with Barbara Stanwyck?”
“Who are you? I didn’t forget the autopsy because there wasn’t one. Why would we? We don’t autopsy suicides unless there’s something to look for.”
“Okay, the inquiry. Where are the transcripts? I want to see those.”
“Transcripts.”
“Yes,” I said. “Inqui
ry transcripts. Let me see them.”
“Currently unavailable.”
Until you’ve stood at the desk of a coroner’s secretary, until she moves to block the door of a file room, little neck scars poking from her purple dot scarf, you won’t understand. The file room stretched behind her, and she could pull any dead person’s file and read it or change information. A man hit by a car on Sunset dies instead in his home, alone. A girl drowns, but wait—she’s not drowned, she choked on an ice cream. Whitey told me the coroner’s in charge, what he says goes, but look where the file room is. She was standing in front of it, changing our stories. If you break into that room, you’d better do it like Joe and I did, before phone calls and favors fly and a girl cuts her own throat.
Joe and I had held the real transcript, a copy, at least. I read about the garrote and how she was tied up, how she chewed off her own thumb to get free, I read until Joe pulled it away and I told him to get rid of the transcript. I told him to. Now it was in pieces stuck to a drain.
* * *
“Suicide? How tragic, how sad,” Granny said, in his office, backstage at the Gardens. “I mean, I knew she was lonely, maybe distraught, but to take one’s own life—”
“Did she bury herself, too?”
“Don’t poke around, Sheryl. You don’t know why it was changed. You don’t know the reasons.” He shoved a Hail the Bullfighters mockup off a chair and let me sit down. “I guess you won’t be our bull now. On to better things. But you don’t have to leave the dorm yet, oh no, I care about my girls. Don’t let it be said I kicked a Gardens girl to the street. You have two whole days to move out. I know, it’s generous, since you can’t be in the show while we’re filming. Mr. Zukor would not like that.”
“Right,” I said. “I know exactly why it was changed. Why is anything changed around here? To protect the studio. My brother gets out of jail and that protects Stany, but in back of Stany is the studio. I get a contract with a shut-your-mouth clause, and that protects the studio, too. Why would someone change Rose’s death to a suicide? I kept asking myself on the bus home, and you know what? I could only think of one answer. One answer, Granny. Someone at the studio killed Rose.”
The Glamorous Dead Page 21