And I ran down Avenue L, I passed Zukor’s office and Bing Crosby’s trailer and the scoring stage where Dorsey was recording—I could hear the horns, see the red stage light flashing, he was there right now—and I passed that, too, turned left on 12th Street, turned right at Stage 16, and there, the tin shed, the flat, ugly tin shed. Next to it, one stretch of the back wall before it disappeared behind Stage 16. Shadowy, dark. Specks of steel caught light from RKO’s kliegs next door, the gray of barbs twisted to a corkscrew.
Who else would pull Rose off the wall, pull her from a tangle of barbs? Who else but security, keeping people out and in. Protecting the studio.
If it was true, if Rose were somehow held here, tied up, panicking, chewing her thumb, if she got loose and climbed the back wall, if she fought the barbed wire, any Paramount security guard could have pulled her down. Any of them could have done it. Paramount had many security guards, and I knew one of them, and that one guard had investigated the death of Rose.
“Penny? Is that you? Penny?”
Hi, Joe. Yes, it’s me. I’m cold and I’ve just run two baseball fields. Oh, my God, I’m cold.
CHAPTER 38
Marlene Dietrich looked like a breath of champagne, or what every man wants but seldom can afford to pay for.
—Photoplay, November 1940
Joe held my wrist and walked me to the tin shed. His hand was hot.
“We’ll talk in here,” he said. “No one will know.” Joe squeezed my wrist. He opened the shed door with a key.
I held on to the door jamb. “How often do you use the barbed wire, Joe?”
“Go on in. The light cord’s to your right.”
“I’m not going in.”
“Sure you are.”
“Don’t touch me, Joe. Do you have wire that’s not barbed?”
“Fine, you have a choice. Go in, or have those guys locking Stage 32 hold you and call Mr. Zukor.”
The two security guards at Stage 32 faced away from us. They hadn’t seen me yet. I could yell. A quick turn, see me, call Zukor, and I’d never be Sheryl. Sheryl hadn’t noticed the barbed wire, hadn’t dug out a thin garrote. Joe yanked my wrist and pulled me into the tin shed.
“Get the light cord.”
Every part of me shook. I hit the light cord with the one hand I had free, but I couldn’t grab it. Joe reached in front of me, caught the cord, and pulled. A bulb lit and swung over long tables with tools and metal parts, machine oil and pulleys and broken boom mikes and folding chairs and stacks of leather work gloves.
“Pen, are you all right? You’re shivering.” He led me to a workbench and sat close, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.
It sounds peaceful, sitting together on a bench. I saw the barbed wire spools at the far end of the shed, where light barely reached. On top of them, smaller spools of wire, not barbed but smooth and round. Stacked spools. Paramount must use a lot of wire. And Paramount has stains, lots of them, even in the tin shed, little ones on the concrete floor and one big, dark stain under the bench where we sat, right under me. A stain so big I had to scoot forward to trace its edge with my foot.
“You’re not here to see me,” he said. “I wish you were here for me, I really do. But you didn’t know I’d be here. I’m usually not here at night. No, don’t say anything. Let me think. You’re here to solve it. I don’t blame you, Pen. She’s your best friend. I understand. But some deaths don’t get solved. No matter what you do, no matter what’s done, you don’t get an answer. Say you discover a killer,” Joe said. He kicked at a bent nail on the floor. It hit my crepe shoe and bounced. “What then? Think about it. No, don’t say anything. Can you call the police? Conejos doesn’t care, he’s on to other cases. People get killed in Hollywood, not just suicides but real deaths like murders. He doesn’t have time to waste on a suicide. Can you call the newspapers? They never heard about Rosemary’s death. They don’t know who she is. They won’t believe you. Will you confront the killer? He’ll either laugh because Rosemary’s death was a suicide, or he’ll kill you. Either way, I don’t see a good result.”
“I thought you liked me.”
“Oh, I do,” he said. “I like you too much. You look good in trousers. Are you cold? But I wish you hadn’t come, Pen.”
“I was looking for what Zukor was cleaning up.”
“There’s nothing to clean, Pen.”
“What about the wire?”
“Wire?”
“All this wire.”
“Are you listening to anything I’ve said?”
I was. He’d just said that whatever I did, whoever I told, Rose’s death didn’t matter. And all the while I was turning, turning, to one wall, then another, imagining Rose in this shed sitting on this bench with wire twisting her wrists and ankles, alone in this shed. She chews off her thumb. She chews and screams. The wire slides off her wrists, and she twists it off her ankles, too, she runs out, and her blood soaks into the concrete to mark her terror. She runs to the back wall. She climbs, her arms tangled in barbs and blood. Joe comes. He stands behind Rose, silent and staring. I’d seen him silent and staring before, not in my imagination but in real life, when he’d kicked Spencer Tracy unconscious. Anyone who can kick Spencer Tracy can kill a no-name girl and it won’t matter, whatever I do, whoever I tell.
“What are you thinking?”
“You said you like me, you just said.”
“I do, I like you too much,” he said. “I don’t think of the studio when I’m around you.”
“That’s good,” I said.
He looked at the tin ceiling and then at me, at my face, my eyes. “No,” he said. “You’re still shaking. Why are you shaking, Pen?”
“Stany’s picking me up. She might be there right now. I’m jumping the wall. She knows I’m here.”
“Over the wall, through that big cemetery? That big, dark cemetery?”
“Dark cemetery, yes.”
“Where anything can happen. Cemeteries are scary places. I’d never walk through there alone at night. Penny, you’re going to sign your contract.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Well.” He slapped my thigh and stood up. He stepped on the edge of the dark stain. “Let’s get you over the wall. That barbed wire is tricky.”
Tricky, yes. With RKO’s kliegs roaming the night and two guards cussing each other by Stage 32:
You broke the lock.
You idiot, we’ve got the wrong key.
Say that again to my face.
“Hurry,” Joe said. He took a dust mop from the shed and lifted the barbed wire with the rag end to make space between the wire and the wall. I climbed a step stool, then pulled myself to the top.
“Keep your head low. Where are those guys? Pen, pull yourself through. Fast, I’m throwing the mop down.”
My hands scraped, my leg caught an edge of barb, ripping the trousers, a shallow cut on my leg from wire that had gouged chunks down Rosemary’s arms. When I looked back, I saw my body slide over the wall, and the wire glinted and rolled along, a sharp tinsel strand in RKO’s cast-off light. Barbs jabbed my leg and sprang free when I fell into the cemetery.
Joe stood on the Paramount side of the wall. I brushed my hands on my new, ruined trousers. My legs stung. Neither of us moved, Joe by the tin shed, me on somebody’s grave, breathing fast.
I called to Joe on the other side. I put my hand on the rough wall between us. “Am I in danger?”
“Of course not,” he yelled. His voice came over the wall through cold air, the other guards arguing behind him. “Not if you sign your contract.”
CHAPTER 39
We drove some seventy-five miles out of Hollywood into the ranch country to get a load of Mr. Power with a wave in his hair and a glint in his eye and Linda Darnell in his arms, and never were we more rewarded.
—Photoplay, November 1940
Valentino is buried in Hollywood Cemetery. His ghost is rumored to walk the graves, but I wasn’t afraid, not after
the whole Mary Pickford story. I felt safe thinking of Valentino in bed at the Gold Palms and young Mary in the tunnel, trailing her hand on the concrete like I did, with a torch, with her mom waving her forward, with Zukor floating above it all and passing a hand over them with his blessing. Then Douglas Fairbanks came along to fuck it up.
No, Valentino didn’t scare me. No ghosts scared me tonight. I had a new fear that trailed me through the graves and pushed me when my heels caught. One man with barbed wire: Joe. Two men with a secret: Joe and Miles Abbott. I’d be all right when my contract was signed. Joe said that.
I slid through the bars at the cemetery’s front gate. I waited ten minutes for Stany.
“You’re annoying,” Stany said. “And what happens if Bob wakes up and I’m gone?” She’d reached across and opened her passenger door. Her hair was in curlers.
“It’s Joe. He killed Rosemary with wire from the tin shed. And I know why. Rose saw someone leave the hospital, someone famous.”
“You’re making no sense. Shut the door, you’re letting the cold in. I just got the car warm and now you’re letting in cold air. Calm down, will you? Are you bleeding in my car?”
“I don’t mean to bleed.” I told her about Madge’s extra job and Dr. Ostrander’s extra job and the silver garrote I’d found behind the Florentine Gardens. Stany pulled up at the Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard, I mean Santa Claus Lane, and the Christmas trees at every lamppost turned the street green.
“Madge and Dr. Ostrander, fine,” Stany said. “Every studio has doctors on retainer. I could have told you that. MGM practically takes over Cedars of Lebanon. I don’t know any other hospital with so many stars going in and out. So, sure, other hospitals do it, too. But how do you fit in Rosemary Brown?”
“The first part we know. On Halloween, Rose brought me to your house, and she broke a window and fell in. She cut her thumb, bad. I sent her to Sunset to flag a car. She was taken to Hollywood Receiving, and the room was packed full of Halloween people. Busiest night of the year. She left. That’s her story, what we know. Let me link it to what I’ve found out.”
“Link it,” Stany said. “I’m wasting gas here.”
“I’ll talk fast. When I discovered Rose had been at that hospital, I kept thinking, where did she go? When she left the hospital, did she come home? Who drove her? But what if she didn’t go anywhere? What if she left the emergency room and walked down the side of the building toward the street? She’d pass that door, the one Dr. Ostrander used the night Joe beat up Spencer Tracy.”
“It was terrible,” Stany said. “But I heard nobody hit Spence. He had an accident.”
“Yes, an accident. Right outside Dr. Ostrander’s door. On Halloween, Rose would have to pass the same door, and what if the door opened? Rose saw a woman who had come to Dr. Ostrander for help because she was pregnant, and a star can’t be pregnant. Not if she’s single. Rose saw who it was. Bad timing. If Rose had stayed in the emergency room, she’d be here now. She’d be alive. What I don’t know—what I wish I knew—was who it was. Not the star. Who cares about the star? I mean who else, besides Dr. Ostrander, was there? Whoever it was, they recognized Rose. That person took Rose and locked her in the tin shed at Paramount.”
“Why would this person lock her up? Who cares if Rosemary sees some star leave a hospital?” Stany said. “Even if there’s a star, that doesn’t mean the star had an abortion.”
“No. You’re right. Maybe she heard them talk. Yes, she heard them talk. She had to know.”
“You mean she had to know in order to fit your theory. If Rose saw a secret abortion, why not pay her off?”
“Yes, that’s what Granny said.”
“Trust Granny. He’s very smart.” Stany looked at herself in her rearview mirror. Her lip line was smudged. The Christmas trees shone through the car and made her hair green. Her curlers sagged.
“Pretend Rose won’t take a payoff. Pretend, okay? What would the studio do?”
“Offer her more money,” Stany said. “Give her a job. A contract. They’d do exactly what they did for you.”
I couldn’t make anything fit. Dr. Ostrander and Madge, they had two things in common. Rose fit only if she knew how Dr. Ostrander helped Paramount. Three people with two things in common. First thing, all three worked for Paramount. Second thing, Dr. Ostrander and Madge, two of the three, were involved in illegal abortions. Rose saw someone leave, someone important. She had seen someone, or she just didn’t fit.
“Stany, I’m so angry. My whole body is mad.”
“You think your body is mad, but really you’re tired. You’ve been sneaking around, and you’re worn out. Oh, God, what do I do if Bob wakes and I’m gone?” She pressed the ignition, and the car died. We sat in her dark car on Santa Claus Lane. Trees flickered on the lampposts, and a single car drove by, the first since we’d parked. Stany shifted behind the steering wheel and faced me. “You know that squirrel dress?”
“Is this going to be a long story?”
“I hate it. I only let you wear it because I hate the dress. I don’t care that you sewed a scarf on the hem. I never want to see the dress again, I’m throwing it out. My husband bought me that dress. Why would I wear gray? Why would he think I’d wear gray? And you know what else? I lied to you. No, another lie, an important one. Just—just don’t interrupt me, okay? I told you I saw my mother fall off a streetcar. I didn’t. Yeah, that’s how she died, but I never saw it happen. Push in the lighter for me, will you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Push. In. The lighter.”
“Your mother. Why lie?”
“Don’t be simple, Pen,” she said. “You only get one story. Everybody gets just one, even me. If I’m there when she dies—that is, if I see her get pushed and fall and break apart—then that’s a few more seconds I get to spend with my mom. I don’t care what happens during those seconds. I just want them, is all. She’s my mom, and I want every second.”
“And your son? Do you want all the seconds with him, too?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You haven’t gotten a word.” She punched the ignition, and the car roared. “You need to know about Rosemary because you want every second, that’s what I’m telling you. It’s an analogy.”
“And the squirrel dress?”
“No analogy there. I just hate the dress.”
“I’ve got to make something fit,” I said.
“I feel like that every day,” Stany said. “Here’s the thing. Once you sign your contract, nothing fits. You stop asking questions. Nobody gets to ask them. No more questions. If you want to make something fit, you have—let’s see—about thirteen hours. Go in. Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER 40
And so it goes, babies, babies, babies, soothing troubled hearts and bringing joy to movie homes.
—Photoplay, November 1940
I slept ten hours. Then I took a bus to Olympic and, at a filling station near Madge’s old car, I spent my loose change on gas. I bought one canful. I poured gas on Madge’s distributor cap, and another car pulled off busy Olympic and parked at the curb in front of me.
Conejos rolled down his window. “Let me help,” he said. He stretched his legs, then his arms, and shoved his hat on. He left his jacket in his car. “You start the car, and I’ll pour.”
“Why? If you’re arresting me again, I’ll have to leave the car anyway.”
“Just start the car.”
I turned the key, pressed the ignition button, then cough-cough, chuff-chuff-chuff. Conejos walked to my window. I rolled it down.
“I’ve been waiting on the next block for the last three hours,” he said. “I talked to Miss Stanwyck this morning.”
“Miss Stanwyck? What happened to Missy?”
“I’m not happy with that name. It sounds impolite.”
“Impolite, from the guy who called me Rose’s killer.”
“Nothing against you,” he said. “I thought you were a killer at the time.”<
br />
“Maybe I killed Madge,” I said.
He looked at me, a round face, like Daisy’s but bigger. It was almost four in the afternoon, and the sun hit his hair and neck. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I might be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
“Besides, Madge was an accident and Rose was a suicide.”
“Yeah, I heard that. Listen, can I get in? It’s hot out here.”
I spread my hand to the passenger seat, and Conejos jogged around the car.
“So you talked to Stany—Missy—Miss Stanwyck,” I said.
“Yeah.” He shut the door, and the seat squeaked. He settled in, his neck sweaty. “She called me. I don’t know how she got my home number.”
“You don’t?”
“All right, I might have given it to her.”
“I’m late. Can you say why you’re here?”
“Missy told me your theory. She doesn’t believe the theory, of course, and neither do I. I’m not on the Rosemary Brown case anymore.”
“There’s no case. It was suicide.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m told. So there’s no chance that Rosemary saw some big movie star leaving the hospital on Halloween. It’s a far-fetched theory, don’t you think?”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Just hold on, will you? Christ, I arrest you once and you can’t find a kind thing to say.”
“Twice. You arrested me twice. In public, and once in front of my family.”
“I want to know why. Why do you think Rosemary Brown saw someone at that hospital?”
“Now you want to know. I can tell you and not be arrested?”
“There’s no murder,” he said. “You’re no longer a suspect if there’s no murder.”
“Then everything you said about me was true. Except for the murdering part, and the kidnapping. That night, on Halloween, I went in a cab with Rose, and she brought me to Stany’s house.”
The Glamorous Dead Page 25