“That’s right, sometime yesterday afternoon.”
Hector finished looking at the pictures. He handed the file back to Aggie.
She said, “Much as I appreciate the offer for a meal, I’m not up to eating.”
“Me either, now. So we’ll drink.”
“I need to get back to the paper,” Aggie said. “I have some research I want to do. I don’t think this girl is the first to be murdered by this bastard. I have some old pet unsolveds I want to look at. Ever hear of the ‘White Gardenia’ murder?”
“Nah. Done here in Los Angeles?”
“Yeah, a woman named Ora Murray, in 1943. Maybe the Georgette Bauerdorf murder, too.”
“That one got by me, too,” Hector said. “But I’m in and out of Hollywood, you know — a script here or there. Taking a meeting. I don’t like this town.”
“What’s your interest in this, Hector?”
“That’s a different story,” he said. “That’s one that takes more time than I have now and involves some real risk for a reporter who might want to chase it. Let me just suggest this to you. You get a chance, get yourself some art books. Get a stiff drink, then lay out those photos you’ve got there against some prints of Salvador Dali’s Art of Radio. See if you can shag a copy of the now defunct surrealist magazine Minotaure, particularly Issue 8. Dali did that cover, too. Check out a photo by Man Ray called Minotaure. And there’s another work, it’s called Anatomie als Braut, by Max Ernst.” Hector had taken out his own subscription to Minotaure after the Keys hurricane...never quite able to put it all behind him in 1935.
Aggie scowled. “God you’re weird. Are you telling me this killing has something to do with art?”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first, either.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I heard a story once,” Hector lied. “Heard it from a federal agent, based in D.C. Guy named Tilly. You should call him. But don’t mention my name. He hates me.”
Aggie smiled crookedly. “Was it money or a woman?”
“I have to choose?”
***
The radio on low: Ghosts of Yesterday.
The Christmas trees were still lining Hollywood Boulevard and the city must have had some post-war mad money because it was still paying to keep them lit.
Hector pulled into the lot of the hotel and tossed his keys to a bellhop. “Point her nose out,” he said.
The kid shrugged. “Don’t like backing out, eh?”
“I like fast exits,” Hector said.
The elevator operator looked to be a vet — he was missing his left arm. Hector went to reach for the gate, trying to be helpful, and drew a scowl. “Sorry, partner,” he said.
“That’s my fucking job,” the vet said, pulling the gate shut.
Rita answered Hector’s knock. She opened the door and hugged him tightly. “We’ve been worried.”
“Me too.”
Orson emerged from the bedroom. He was wearing a smoking jacket...puffing on a pipe. Very Hollywood. Orson finally looked reasonably rested. “I closed down the set today,” he said. “I couldn’t go in now. What have you learned, Hector? Say that poor woman isn’t Betty.”
Hector walked to the wet bar and poured himself a Scotch. He drained that and poured another. “Afraid I’d be lying, folks. It was Betty. I’ve seen the pictures.”
Orson looked stricken. “As bad as they say?”
“Beyond your darkest dreams.”
Orson collapsed onto the couch. “She was really cut in half then?”
“Yes,” Hector said. “She looks like something pulled from your Crazy House set. And I expect that’s deliberate.”
“Probably in many ways,” Orson said. “The Mercury Wonder Show used to be set up right there in almost the same place she was found. I used to saw women in half there — maybe on that very lot.”
“And the victim has direct ties to you,” Hector said. “She actually helped you create a set full of mannequins that predict her own mutilation.”
“I should leave the country,” Orson said. “I could call Darryl Zanuck. He’ll help me out — find me work overseas.”
Hector considered that. “Might be the thing to do. I had a tip HUAC may be coming after you, too. How much of your picture is left to film in the States?”
“Just the shootout...the Crazy House scenes, in other words,” Orson said.
Rita was watching them, chewing her nails. Hector said, “How quickly could you do that?”
“If we started tonight, and shot through the day tomorrow, I could get it done,” Orson said. “Then we were headed back to Mexico for some last things down there, now that the weather is better.”
“Then that’s what you have to do,” Hector said. “Get your crew going on that showdown. Do it off the books, if you can, Orson. Let the suits and the cops think that the set is still closed. Do it with a skeleton crew — guerilla-style. While you do that, I’ll run interference and keep digging. I’ll do what I can to deflect attention from you. I figure late tomorrow, day after at the latest, the cops are going to identify Betty. Then they’ll get scrambling. That’s when your name and your ties to Betty could enter the investigative stream.”
Rita poured herself a drink. “What about you, Hector? Who protects you?”
Hector shrugged. “I’m not sitting still, M. I’m banking on the axiom a moving target is harder to hit.” Hector checked his watch. “That said, I’ve got to get back to my favorite bar.”
He spent two hours in the Pacific Dining Car’s bar, waiting for a phone call that never came.
Sighing, Hector settled up and slipped out the back and navigated alleys until he found a cab to take him to the hotel where he was hiding out.
“A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.”— Orson Welles
SQUEEZE PLAY
38
Hector called Agent Edmond Tilly at six in the morning, Los Angeles time. It was nine in the District of Columbia. “This is all insane, Hector,” Edmond said. “I’ve confirmed your reports of the murders in Key West in 1935, and of the ones in Spain. The stuff in Mexico? Well, the records are spotty.”
“Well, the other two should be enough,” Hector said.
“Enough to convince me, but I don’t have any authority over this murder case in Los Angeles,” the agent said.
“So Russ wasn’t going for it, huh?”
“He’s at best a functionary — in no position to do much that’s useful,” Edmond said. “And he strikes me as unimaginative. So no, your LAPD buddy didn’t go for it. He thinks this Elizabeth Short was a sex crime victim.”
“Short? Elizabeth? You’ve identified her, then?”
“We haven’t told LAPD yet,” the agent said. “That’ll happen by noon, your time. But yes, she’s Elizabeth Short of Medford Massachusetts. Age twenty-two. She was five-six, 113 pounds...black hair, green eyes. Pretty enough. Last seen leaving the Biltmore Hotel on the night of January 9. She has a missing ‘week’ between the ninth and the morning of January 15, when she was found cut in half on Norton Avenue.”
Hector knew where she’d been — crashed in Orson’s Crazy House set on the studio backlot...arranging mannequins and painting the faces of mutilated clowns on the walls of Orson’s indefensible set.
Almost as if it was on cue, Agent Tilly said, “We had another tip on your friend Orson Welles, Hector. Oddly enough, it ties to this case. Someone has accused him of Beth Short’s murder. Seems she was allegedly seeing a man named George. Seems Welles’ real name is George Orson Welles. Hear Welles also used to do magic shows for service men on the site where Beth Short was found. He used to cut women in half there. Damning stuff.”
“Wild stuff,” Hector said. “Fanciful stuff. Bullshit.”
Edmond said, “Like surrealist artists killing ingenues, you mean?”
“Yeah, like that.”
Edmond wasn’t finished. “I hear also that Welles actually fi
led an application a few days ago — an application to serve as a morgue assistant. He did that just a few days before the body was found. Figure Welles either wanted to look at his work a last time, or have a last shot at destroying evidence.”
Hector said, “Well, that one is hard to explain.”
“LAPD made a run out to your rented bungalow last night, Hector. They had a tip that Welles might be found there, covered in blood.”
“I skipped on that place yesterday afternoon,” Hector said. “Getting ready to head home to New Mexico. What’d you find?”
“A big empty,” Edmond said. “You wouldn’t know where to find Welles, would you?”
“Why?”
“We’re hauling him in for a deposition. In the course of discussing some political matters — some leftist fundraising issues — we may want to ask him some questions about Beth Short. I mean, Director Hoover would certainly not balk at the notion of solving what’s shaping up to be California’s most infamous murder. The ‘Crime of the Century’ they’re calling it.”
“I thought the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping was the ‘Crime of the Century,” Hector said.
“That was last decade’s crime of the century,” Agent Tilly said. “Where can I find Welles?”
“I don’t know,” Hector said.
“Did I mention production of his latest movie, The Lady From Shanghai, was shutdown yesterday — the day the body was found. I’m told it’s shutdown today, too,” the agent said.
“Interesting....”
“If you know anything, Hector....”
“I’m fresh out of revelations, Agent.”
“I had a call last evening from a reporter — some woman named Underwood. She knew some things I can’t figure out her knowing unless she’s one of your broads. Or someone else you’re using toward your own still mysterious ends.”
“Jesus, you give me way too much credit,” Hector said. “You arrest Mercedes Marshall yet?”
“No, but the stuff with her daughter is a wonderful cudgel,” the agent said. “You have no idea what an effective motivational tool it is to haul in some lefty degenerate painter or photographer and be able to level a statutory rape charge at them — quite a motivator.”
“I’ll bet.”
“If you were Welles, what would you do, Hector?”
Hector thought about it. “First, I’d have to know I was a suspect to know to run,” Hector said. “Then, not being savvy about these things, but knowing I was being looked at for a murder, I’d probably make a run for the border. Mexico, probably.”
“You think he’d be dumb enough to fly down?”
“He’s a genius,” Hector said. “Everyone says so. But that doesn’t mean he’s smart.”
“If you get a line on him, Hector...”
“You’ll be my first call.”
“You being a friend and all, I wouldn’t be upset if you were to tip him to our interest in the murder...”
“What? So he can ‘fly’?”
“That’s right. But only tip him to our interest. You wouldn’t want to become an accessory, after all, would you, Hector?”
“No, I wouldn’t want that.”
“And you wouldn’t want HUAC taking an interest in you, would you?”
“Not that, either.” He hung up. To the phone Hector said, “Asshole.”
***
Hector had kept the call to the FBI agent short, so he didn’t think it could be traced. Nevertheless, he drove around for an hour until he was sure he had no tail. Then he drove to the studio.
He knocked on the door several times before a dwarf — a longtime gopher of Orson’s named “Shorty” Chirello — let Hector in.
Orson was seated in a chair, smoking a cigarette. He smiled thinly when he saw Hector. “More news?”
“None of it good,” Hector said. “Did you really apply to be a morgue assistant?”
“Yes.”
“In God’s name, why?”
“Verisimilitude, for my Crazy House set.”
Hector sighed. He said, “I saw some real painters out there moving around on the lot. The labor strike is settled?”
“So I’ve heard,” Orson said.
“You finish the Crazy House scenes?”
“Yes,” Orson said. “We still have the mirror scene to finish — we’re about three-quarters through that.”
“But the Crazy House set could be struck?”
“Torn down, you mean?”
“More or less,” Hector said.
“Yes.”
“Then I suggest you throw a tantrum,” Hector said. “Pitch a bitch about how shitty it looks. Get the real painters in here and let them go to town to their own inspiration.”
“Wipe out the evidence, you mean,” Orson said. “I suppose I’ll have to cut the material from the film, too.”
“That’s months down the road. And with some careful editing...” Hector shrugged. “But that’s thinking too far ahead. Right now, you need to transform that set. You need to move it away from the crime photos I’ve seen. And another thing, when could you leave for Mexico?”
“Tomorrow afternoon? Say, early evening?”
“Perfect,” Hector said. “The feds are close to moving on you, for HUAC stuff, but also for the murder, maybe.”
“Oh, Good Christ.”
“We still have some cards to play,” Hector said. “Have Shorty make your arrangements. You’ll want to make it look like you’re flying to Paris.”
“But if they are looking for me...trying to keep tabs...I mean, if I fly, Hector, they’ll know before I ever get on that plane...to Mexico or France or wherever.”
“That’s right,” Hector said. “We’re going to count on them knowing.”
***
Rita Hayworth was standing by the door, smoking. She said, “I’ve been thinking about your novel-in-progress, Squeeze Play, Hector. Do you know yet if your hero, Owen Walters, survives his predicament? Does he get the girl and walk away clean?”
“Nobody’s ever clean in my books, and I don’t write many, if any, happy endings,” Hector said. “But I’m leaning toward Owen at least getting out with his life.”
“And the girl?”
“Jury’s still out on her.”
***
Hector had taken up station at his usual stool at the Dining Car’s bar. For the hell of it he dialed the Marshall house — the number had been disconnected.
He called John Huston’s place: a servant said John and his family were in Mexico with the Bogarts, scouting film locations.
Hector walked outside and bought an afternoon paper and read about “Elizabeth Short” and her “werewolf” murderer and brought it back in to read more while he drank.
Breathless stuff — even Aggie’s reportage rubbed Hector the wrong way.
Motion behind him in the mirror behind the bar — a busty blond in a black dress and hat...her face covered by a black veil. She pulled off black gloves and raised her veil to kiss Hector on the cheek.
“Hello, Hector,” Rachel said.
“In bullfighting there is a term called querencia. The querencia is the spot in the ring to which the bull returns. Each bull has a different querencia, but as the bullfight continues, and the animal becomes more threatened, it returns more and more often to his spot. As he returns to his querencia, he becomes more predictable. And so, in the end, the matador is able to kill the bull because instead of trying something new, the bull returns to what is familiar. His comfort zone.”— Carly Fiorina
FEMME FATALE
39
Rachel’s hair was again its natural blond, grown out long and wavy. She had some laugh lines now — at least she’d found reason to laugh. Her full lips were painted dark crimson and her eyes shadowed umber. Her tailored jacket and skirt emphasized her bust and long slender legs.
“You’ve hardly changed,” Hector said.
“You haven’t either,” Rachel said.
“You’re abilities as a liar
seem to be waning.” He held up his pack of cigarettes. “You still smoke?”
“Only with friends.”
Hector lit two cigarettes and placed one between her lips.
“You’re torn, aren’t you?”
Hector shrugged. “How so?”
“Between kissing and killing me.”
“Why not do both?”
A sad smile. “You sound like one of your characters.”
“Or all my characters sound like me.”
The bartender said, “Anything?”
Rachel thought about that and said, “You know how to make a mojito?”
“Sure,” he said.
“One of those, then.” She smoked her cigarette, then she said to Hector, “I hear you met my father...and that you beat him nearly to death.”
“I’ll get it right next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she said. “He’s past your punishment for what he did. It was so many years ago.”
“He destroyed you from the inside out,” Hector said. “He’s not through paying yet.”
Rachel shrugged. “I’m the one who cracked inside...twisted into something terrible. Something destructive and inhuman.”
Hector looked away...then looked at his drink. “You killed Beverly, by yourself? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, Hector. I killed them all. I was sick, but I was rational. I could reason, in my own way. Bev was someone I met on the boat...a fellow traveler to use a phrase that used to be innocent. I was trying to make art — I had myself convinced of that. I did what artists do, copied the works of others. Or so I told myself.”
She sipped her mojito. “Nobody makes them as good as you do.”
“Because I use more liquor.” Hector wet his lips. “Artists put down a copy of a drawing or painting next to a pad of paper or an easel, and they draw or paint that, Rachel. Maybe they even trace it. Writers retype or hand-write another writer’s short story to get a feel for doing it...for putting the words together, just so. Maybe they break down the plot of a novel and then rewrite that book to the other author’s plot outline as an exercise.”
Rachel nodded. “I know. But I used real people. I suffered for father’s notions of art. It seemed everyone else should suffer for mine.”
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 26