by Jerry Ludwig
We’re both staring at Reva in her booth.
Talking through the glass. To Detective Sergeant Arzy Marshak.
“He mustn’t see me. Not here,” I say.
Go, GO! Jack Havoc says.
I turn on the motor and we gun away.
28
Arzy & Harry
“So did you happen to see Roy Darnell arrive at the theater last Sunday night? Before the screening began?”
It’s the first question of the day Arzy Marshak asks. It won’t be the last.
The morning sun beams idyllically down on the Brentwood estate where a Hollywood legend lives. It’s the start of what will turn out to be a very long day. Arzy sips orange juice hand-squeezed from the trees in the spacious yard. He sits beneath a sun umbrella, beside a turquoise pool large enough to stage an Esther Williams water ballet. Opposite him, in the navy blue swim trunks with the U.S. Marine Corps logo, featuring no paunch, good muscle tone, also drinking orange juice, although his is laced with vodka, is Arzy’s host—“Wild Bill” Wellman. White hair, trim white mustache, skin tanned brown. Steel blue inquiring eyes.
“First I noticed him was inside the Academy,” Wellman says.
“Was he alone?”
“I’m not sure. I was on the other side of the theater. Heard a commotion in the far aisle. Looked over and saw Roy with a bunch of people swarming around him. It’s like that when someone who’s hot shows up at one of these screenings. Everybody likes to get near ’em, maybe some of the prosperity will rub off.”
“So he might have been with someone—”
“Or he might’ve been alone. Wasn’t anyone with him when he congratulated me in the lobby after the show. I mean, we went off together and got pie-eyed. Just the two of us.” The blue eyes probe. “I told you all this on the phone the other day.”
“Just trying to fill in a few details. How did Mr. Darnell seem to you—after the show?”
“Elated. Like he’d seen a good movie.”
“A real goodie.”
“Before your time, wasn’t it?”
“I’m a fan. Seen most everything you’ve directed. From Wings to The High and Mighty.”
“Sounds like you’re a flyer.”
“Close. Semper fi. Airborne.”
“Korea?”
“Yeah.”
“How was it?”
“Just like Battleground.”
“Except for the happy ending,” Wellman says. “We had one. You didn’t.”
“Hey—I’m here.”
“Still do any jumping?”
“On the weekends sometimes. When I don’t have anything else to do.”
Wellman pours more juice in Arzy’s glass. “Bet you could tell some stories.”
“Matter of fact, that’s what I want to do. Write stories for movies.”
“War stories? Cop stories?”
“Got a bunch of both.”
“How’s the story you’re working on now?”
The old bastard’s fast. “Haven’t got the ending worked out yet.”
“Bet it’s the one about the Hollywood star who gets his dick caught in the wringer and can’t get it out.”
“That’s one way to go.” Then, “So basically you saw Mr. Darnell at the start of the movie and after it ended.”
“Yep. See, in between all the lights were out. You really think he did it?”
Arzy shrugs. “I’m just a bird dog. Keep my eyes open and go where it takes me. But you don’t buy it?”
“Me? What do I know? You’re the pro. Far as I’m concerned, Roy’s a nice guy with a strong tennis backhand, who can hold his liquor. But if you think he killed his wife and went boozing with me afterwards like nothing happened, then—”
Wellman pauses. Arzy takes the bait. “Then what?”
“Then he’s even a better actor than I thought he was.”
Arzy nods and closes his notebook. He likes what he hears: in between, when the lights went out, Roy was on his own.
• • •
Harry Tigner is at the Crossroads of the World. It’s an inconspicuous courtyard on Sunset near Highland. A dozen small offices surrounding a European-style kiosk. The tenants include an accountant, a barber, a dentist, an insurance broker, an escrow firm, and the office of Aaron Fisher, Private Investigations, which turns out to be an office slightly bigger than a phone booth, with autographed glossies on the wall of several contented clients. Harry doesn’t recognize any of their faces. Maybe Arzy would.
Fisher himself is a chesty kid with big shoulders, wearing a blue V-neck sweater over a white button-down shirt. Dirty white sneakers. Looks scarcely old enough to buy beer legally. Slouched behind a desk small enough to have been swiped from his junior high school homeroom. He seems unperturbed that Harry has come knocking on his door this morning. Almost flattered.
“Figured someone’d be along after a while,” he says. “But just for the record, how’d you find me?”
“Adrienne Ballard Darnell’s checkbook,” Harry says. “She wrote two checks payable to your office. For services rendered.”
“Uh-huh.”
That’s all he says. The punk is going to make me fish for the details, Harry thinks. Here we go.
“Care to tell me what those services were?”
“Well, I don’t know, there are fiduciary responsibilities in my business. Clients count on my discretion, you know, confidentiality.”
“Your client’s dead. You don’t want to obstruct an ongoing police investigation.”
Fisher grins. Makes him look like a Norman Rockwell character. Fuckin’ red hair and freckles and all. Enjoying himself. “Of course not. Just want it made clear for the record that I’m behaving in an ethical—”
“Don’t annoy me, transom-peeper. Or I’ll step on you.”
Fisher’s smile fades. Color goes out of his face. Leaving the freckles in bold relief. Like an instant case of chicken pox.
“Just for the record, how’d you get to be a P.I.?”
Fisher shrugs. “Took some criminology courses at Santa Monica J.C. Got all As. Worked as a traffic cop in Pacoima for six months. Passed the civil exam for P.I. with flying colors. Hung out my shingle—and here I am.”
“How’d you happen to connect with Mrs. Darnell?”
“She was looking for someone. Found me in the Yellow Pages. I got myself listed by my first name, double ‘A’ so I’m at the top of the page.”
“Terrific. Tell me what you did to earn your fees.”
“I did two jobs for the lady. Second one was to serve the divorce papers and a domestic court subpoena to Darnell. Got him outside Romanoff’s when he was signing autographs. He took a swing at me. Missed, of course, sozzled sonuvabitch. Fell in the gutter.” He snickers. Seems disappointed Harry doesn’t join in.
“Tell me about time number one.”
“That was the fun time. Miz Ballard, I mean Mrs. Darnell, wanted to test Mr. Darnell’s fidelity.”
“You set him up.”
“Well, let’s just say I put temptation in his path—and he ran after it like a horny little bunny.”
“Who was the bait?”
“Just some girl. I hired her. Mrs. Darnell coached her. I told her what to do. Darnell did the rest.”
“Where’d you find her?”
“In Scandia. She was at the bar. I bought her a drink, we chatted a little. She’s studying acting, aren’t they all? Okay, I said, y’busy tomorrow night, I got a part for you to play. One performance. Two hundred bucks. She said she’d want it in cash. I said it was a deal.”
“Name.”
“Chris Patterson. She said.”
“She said.”
“Yeah, I think it was a phony moniker.”
Monniker. This sleazy pseudo–Sam Spade Jr. Providing
dead-end leads.
“I need to know what she looked like.”
“About five-four, long dark red hair and—”
“Don’t tell me. Show me. Show me the pictures.”
He hesitates. But only for a second. Then goes to the file cabinet, unlocks it, finds an envelope. Tosses it across the desk to Harry, who looks at the photos. Roy Darnell caught flagrantly in the act. Getting it on with a drop dead gorgeous gal. Some guys have it all and it’s still not enough. A couple of the pictures show her face clearly.
“I’m gonna hold on to these,” Harry says, rising.
“Be my guest.” That shit-eating Norman Rockwell smile again. “I’ve got the negatives.”
“Yeah. I bet you do. Don’t do anything with them unless you check with me first.”
• • •
Arzy Marshak is being given a lesson in how to properly cool a thousand bodies.
“I lower the thermostat to sixty-seven degrees,” explains Reese Shelton, the manager of the Academy Theater. He lets Arzy see as he adjusts the dial on the wall near the front of the theater. “Normally, you’d think that’s too cold for comfort. But you have to allow for the combined body temperatures of nearly a thousand people—that’s how many seats we have. Add in all those 98.6s and it’s perfect by the end of the first reel.”
“Think you’ll fill the place today? A weekday matinee?”
Shelton leans closer to Arzy. Confiding. “There are quite a few of our members who aren’t working at any given time. Besides, it’s a rare showing. A golden oldie called Kentucky, with Loretta Young, she’s still very well-liked by our members. Walter Brennan won the Oscar for it.”
“First time they gave an award for Best Supporting Actor.”
“You’re absolutely correct.” Shelton looks at Arzy with new respect.
Arzy waits while Shelton locks the protective plastic cover on the thermostat—“So no one else can fool with it.” Arzy idly looks up at the golden ten-foot-statue of Oscar looming over them. It reminds him of the giant robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Gort was his name. “Klatoo barada nikto.” The instructions that activated the unstoppable robot. Just behind the statue, there’s a curtain covering a doorway.
“What’s through there?”
“A backstage exit door,” Shelton says.
Shelton is a brisk, precise little man, wearing rimless glasses and a beige lightweight summer suit without a crease on it. He leads the way back up the side aisle. The first patrons are trickling in for the showing. “About where was Mr. Darnell sitting on Sunday night?” Arzy asks.
Shelton points at a row twelve back from the front. “Around there. On the aisle. I noticed him when I came down to adjust the air conditioning.”
“Was he alone?”
“There were other people in the row. A Star Is Born is one of our most popular attractions. We had to turn away thirty or forty latecomers.”
“Who was with him?”
“I’m not sure if anyone was. He might have been alone or not. I mean, I wasn’t keeping tabs on him. Even if he is a star, as far as we’re concerned he’s just another Academy member. No special privileges.”
“Like reserved seats.”
“Exactly.” They’re moving into the narrow lobby now. There’s a mousy attendant at the door. Checking Academy membership cards. Those are shown for admission. The forecourt outside and the sidewalk beyond are filled with socializing moviegoers. Arzy catches a glimpse of Walter Brennan, taller than you think, signing autographs near the curb.
“Wait,” Shelton says. “I think there was a woman with him. Auburn hair, worn in a page boy. She comes here now and then. Or am I thinking about a couple of weeks ago? Mr. Darnell might’ve been with her at the Hitchcock double feature.”
“Can you be sure?”
Shelton turns on him. In a huff. “Really, Sergeant, I’m not here to call the roll and keep track of who’s sitting with whom. I’ve got a lot more responsibility than that.”
“Maybe if you think about it for a moment—”
“You want to know that sort of gossip, go ask them!” He points out toward the curb. At the autograph hounds surrounding newly arrived Loretta Young.
Arzy goes outside to watch. Waits until the feeding frenzy around Loretta Young abates. Then the half dozen fans retreat from the front of the theater. Arzy moves in on them while they’re delightedly gazing at their still-wet signatures.
“Hi, can I talk to you guys?” He shows them his badge.
A teenage boy sporting an Angels ball cap says, “We’re not makin’ any trouble. The manager says we can be here if we don’t block the entrance.”
Arzy explains that he’s not here to roust them. Just to glean some info. “Were any of you here on Sunday night when A Star Is Born was playing?” They all were. So far, so good. “Did you see Roy Darnell?”
They all nod. Curious now.
“Did he come alone?”
“Nah,” says the Angels fan, “he came with Reva.”
The others laugh.
“Who’s Reva?” Arzy says.
An anorexic teenage blonde with bad skin says, “Otis is just teasing you. Reva’s one of us. She’s a big Darnell fan. They weren’t together, they just walked up together.”
“Did Roy Darnell meet anyone here?”
“I think I saw him with that redhead,” says Otis, the Angels fan.
“The one he went to the Trapeze preem with?” says another.
“Yeah, her.”
“She wasn’t here last Sunday.”
“Sure she was,” the skinny blonde says.
“That was weeks ago, Marcie. On Hitchcock night.”
Arzy interrupts the round robin discussion. “Who we talking about?”
“This new broad Roy is dating,” Otis says.
“What’s her name?”
He shrugs. “Ask Reva. She got her.”
“What do you mean, she got her?”
“Her autograph. She got her autograph.”
“In her crumb book,” says Marcie, the blonde. “She’s nobody.”
“But she wrote her name in Reva’s book?”
“I think Reva snapped a picture of her, too, with Roy.”
“Where’s Reva? She here?”
“She was. You just missed her,” Otis says. “She took off after she got Walter Brennan.”
“Reva what?” Arzy flips open his notebook. “What’s her last name?”
• • •
“Sure, that’s the gal he was with. A real looker.”
Harry Tigner is showing one of the photos he got from Sam Spade Jr. to Garry Foley, the KTLA-TV cameraman who covered the Trapeze premiere. Harry has folded the photo so that only the face of the woman with Roy Darnell is visible.
“You wouldn’t happen to remember her name?”
“I was too busy grinding away with my camera—and staring down her cleavage. But Darnell probably introduced her to Georgie Jessel. They always introduce their dates, like we’re all at a party.”
“What happens to that footage?”
“We keep it on file for a while. Want me to look and see if I can find it?”
Harry says he sure would. And he waits. He’s left word with police dispatch where he is, so Arzy can find him if he has to. Now he sits in the TV station’s newsroom. Reading a copy of Variety to fill the time. It’s like it’s written in another language. People are “ankling to Gotham.” An actor is “giving the perf of his career.” The “web’s o. and o.’s are etching record quarterly profs.” Foley returns. With regrets.
“Sorry, I checked and you’re a day late. They’ve recycled those tapes.”
“What’s recycled?”
“Reused. They don’t keep much on permanent file. Makes you feel like you’re creating sand castles t
hat wash away with the tide.”
Another dead end.
Harry gets in his unmarked cop car and drives west up Sunset. Maybe he’ll check out the Hotel Bel-Air where the sting took place. Maybe someone there remembers something. But, quite fortunately, Harry catches a red light on the Strip just beyond Ciro’s.
• • •
Arzy Marshak is camped out on the street across from the apartment house in Santa Monica. It’s dark now, and he’s been listening to a salute to Sinatra on his car radio. It’s Ol’ Blue Eyes’ birthday. Arzy wonders if he’ll still be sitting here on Frank’s next birthday. But now there’s action.
A Nash Rambler desperately in need of a wash drives into the carport of the apartment house. A pudgy woman in her forties, dressed in a rumpled lilac-colored suit, gets out and lumbers up the stairs to the second floor landing. Either tired or blitzed. Maybe both. She enters the only unlit apartment.
Arzy follows. Up to the apartment door. He knocks. Waits. There’s stirring inside. “Who is it?” the woman’s voice calls.
“Mrs. Hess? I’m Detective Marshak—”
The door is yanked open. The woman looking belligerent. Suit jacket off, holding a wet towel in her hand, a red salsa dribble on her white blouse. “It’s about Reva, isn’t it? What’s she gone and done now?”
The voice is eighty-proof margarita. Goes with the salsa. Arzy reassures her, “No, no, Reva hasn’t done anything wrong, I just want to talk to her. She might be able to help me on a detail in a routine investigation.”
She invites him in. “That damn daughter of mine is out of control, I don’t know what to do with her. They picked her up for shoplifting the other day in Hollywood. I had to beg to get ’em to let her go.” Absently rubbing the wet towel at the stain on her blouse, making a widening wet blotch. “What can I do? I can’t watch her every minute, I have to work, and if I stop off for a cocktail after work at El Coyote with the girls from the bank, well, then I come home and here you are on my doorstep.”
Arzy hears El Coyote. Goes with the salsa and margaritas. “Why don’t we both sit down, Mrs. Hess. You’ve had a hard day and I don’t want to add to it.”
There are four chairs at the dining room table. Two of them are cluttered with piles of newspapers. The other two chairs are about the only clear space in the living room, dining room, or kitchen. Swaying stacks of magazines and cardboard boxes clutter every available surface, even along the walls. All the kitchen counters are filled to overflowing with groceries, canned goods of every description piled two and three high, boxes and boxes of breakfast cereals, spaghetti, macaroni, crackers, cookies, condiments and spices, bottles of ketchup, soda, juices, and liquor. It looks like Mrs. Hess is about to go into competition with the A&P.