Hollywood Lost

by Collins, Ace;

  “I don’t remember it being taken,” Sparks retorted, “but it must have been snapped at the Grove. I had supper there with my date that evening. Tommy Dorsey’s band was playing, and, if you want, I can list a dozen people who know when I arrived and when I left. For your information, my bill was twenty-two dollars and I left a ten for a tip.”

  “And that is your date?” Barrister asked.

  “Yes,” Sparks replied, “that’s Leslie Bryant. She hails from The Show Me State and is real proud of that fact.”

  “And what did you do after you left the club?”

  The actor, his manner still relaxed, smiled, “We went back to my place to check out the view.”

  “And when did you take her home?” Barrister asked.

  “The next afternoon,” he said unapologetically.

  “So she spent the night in your home?”

  “We’re all adults here.” Sparks looked over to his boss before bragging, “Most women who come home with me do spend the night. It might be immoral in your world, but the last time I checked it’s no crime. At least not in this state.”

  Barrister looked to Jenkins and nodded. The cop once more opened the folder this time retrieving an eight by ten photograph. After holding it to where only Barrister could preview it, he handed it to Sparks. As the actor studied the image all the color drained from his face. Getting up from his seat, Yates looked over his biggest star’s shoulder and shook his head.

  “Mr. Sparks,” Barrister began, his tone as deep as the ocean and as dark as midnight, “do you know where that picture was taken?”

  The actor shook his head, “How could I?”

  The cop continued, “Sometime yesterday or last night Leslie Bryant was strangled. She was then dumped in a vacant lot. And, as she was still wearing the same clothes she wore on your date and her makeup had evidently not been touched up, there seems to be a direct link to her time with you. I suggest you give us the whole story as to what happened this weekend. If I hear it all, perhaps you’ll find a way to convince me why I should not book you on suspicion of having murdered this young woman.”

  “You shouldn’t book me, because I didn’t do it,” Sparks, his voice now low and measured, explained.

  “Then give me some reasons,” Barrister calmly demanded. “I want to know why I should believe you.”

  “We had a good time on our date,” the actor admitted. After folding his arms he added, “She came to my place and spent the night. The next morning, as a way of thanking me for the evening, she cooked me breakfast. We talked for a while, and we admired a car that my friend Dalton Andrews had given me. I even took her for a ride in it.”

  “Andrews gave you a car?” the captain asked. “That’s awfully generous. You must have done something really nice for him.”

  “Actually, I won it in a bet. He bet me his V-12 Packard against my V-12 Auburn that I couldn’t get Leslie to spend the night with me. When I got up that morning, I called and told him he’d lost and I wanted the car. He brought it over and then walked the five miles back to his place.”

  “Did he talk to Miss Bryant?” Barrister asked.

  “Not really, but he saw her sleeping in my bed and later in the living room.”

  “Where did you and Miss Bryant go after you left your house?”

  “To her apartment,” Sparks quickly assured the cop. “I had a tennis game with Clark Gable at three, so I got her home around two. I took her to the Hollywood Arms Apartments in the Packard.”

  “What did you do last night?” Barrister demanded.

  “I grabbed a bite with Clark, went home, and read over a script. We are finishing shooting a movie this week, and I had some lines I needed to learn.”

  “Was anyone with you?”

  Sparks shrugged, “Sally Glenn called about nine. She’s got a small part in the film. We talked for a while, and then she drove over and ran lines with me. She left about midnight. That’s when I went to bed.”

  Yates chimed in, “Glenn works for us. If she’s on the lot, I can call her in to confirm that.”

  “For the moment,” Barrister explained, “that won’t be necessary. But we will likely check it out down the line.” He turned back to his suspect, “How long were you home alone last night before that call?”

  “About two hours. Once I finished the match, Clark and I ate at the Derby, and then I drove up to my place.”

  “I’d stake my life,” Yates chimed in, “that Flynn might be a bit of a character, but he’d never hurt anyone. It’s just not something he’s capable of doing.”

  Barrister grimly smiled, “If your word was all it took then we’d drop this matter right now, but the law requires a bit more than just having someone vouch for you. We need facts that can be substantiated. I’ll admit, at this moment I can’t put Mr. Sparks where we found the body, though, when the story runs tomorrow, we are hoping for witnesses to step forward, but I suggest that it would behoove him to make sure he isn’t holding anything back. After all, until I find something that says otherwise, I’m thinking he was the last one to see Miss Bryant alive.” The cop looked back toward the actor, “And usually the last one to see someone alive is the first person to see them dead. You figure out what I mean by that.”

  The policemen got up and moved toward the door. Just as Jenkins turned the knob, Yates called out to them. “You forgot something.”

  Barrister frowned, “No, I want you to keep the newspaper and the photo. Maybe they will stir something inside you that will prove there are some things more important in this town than Galaxy Studios and the movie business. In my mind, one of them is a young woman’s life.”

  16

  June 15, 1936

  What in the name of all that is holy did you do?” Yates demanded.

  Sparks slipped off the desk and into a chair. Picking up the black-and-white photo, he studied the image and shook his head. Leslie Bryant’s body was twisted in such a way that she could have been sleeping, but no one slept with their eyes open and with their mouth twisted in such a grotesque manner. At least no one he’d ever known.

  “Flynn,” Yates pleaded, “what did you do?”

  The actor dropped the photo back on his boss’s desk and ran his hand through his wavy hair. “I didn’t do anything I don’t always do.”

  “Well, that sure says a lot,” the studio head cracked. “This might surprise you, but I try to keep from knowing what it is you do when you aren’t at the studio. And you know why?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Because your stunts have cost me thousands. And they’ve been the fodder for more news stories than I care to list. And there would have been even more if Ellen Rains hadn’t worked with me to kill some of them. This morning you told me all your stunts just drummed up box office. Well, let me tell you something, murder doesn’t do that.”

  Flynn balled his hands to fists, looked up, fire in his eyes, and shouted, “So you think I killed her. You think I put my hands around that woman’s throat and watched the life drain slowly from her body.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Yates said, “but those cops might just be thinking that, and you are going to be in their sights. They’ll be watching you day and night waiting until you slip up. And the reporters will be tagging along after you as well. You’ll be under a microscope. You won’t be able to go anywhere without a thousand eyes following your every move.”

  Flynn pulled himself out of the chair, his mind whirling, and walked over to the window that looked out on the back lot. He studied the activity below until he remembered a courtroom drama he’d made two years before. Turning, he set his jaw and pointed toward his boss.

  “You get your legal team on this now. You pay them big bucks to keep you out of trouble with everyone from the censors to the White House. Now it’s time you make them work harder than they’ve ever worked before.”

  “You don’t order me around,” Yates shouted. “I made you.”

  “But I can
unmake you,” Sparks said with a droll smile. “If I get tagged for murdering Leslie Bryant, then the publicity that comes with it will take your whole studio down. Jacob, you make this go away. I don’t care if you have to frame your son for this crime, you just make it go away.”

  Yates frowned, “I don’t like this.”

  “You knew what you were getting when you signed me,” Sparks stressed. “Now it’s time to save both me and your legacy. You see, from this moment on Flynn Sparks and Galaxy Studios are tied together at the hip.”

  “OK, Flynn,” the mogul growled, “you win. I’ll get my lawyers at work on it today. I’ll bring in more if I need to. The cops won’t be able to touch you. And I’ll make sure Ellen Rains is working on our side as well. But it’s not going to be easy. Look at that picture, this is pure TNT.”

  “My survival means your survival”—the actor announced as he walked toward the door—“and I want both of us to live a long time. Now, I’m going back to the soundstage and going to work. And tonight I’m going to rest easy because you aren’t going to let anything happen to me.”

  17

  June 15, 1936

  Jacob Yates sat on a bench just beyond a formation of giant boulders in a deserted section of Los Angeles’ famed Griffith Park. The normally energetic and impatient man was uncharacteristically quiet and patient. Though there were the sights and sounds of nature all around him, he saw and heard nothing. Still wearing the dark blue suit he had put on at six this morning, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, seemingly staring into a small pond. His mind was so locked in on his suddenly overwhelming problems that he failed to even notice his appointment walk up the paved path on his left.

  “Why meet here?” Ellen Rains grumbled as she took a seat beside the studio mogul. “I’m not a big fan of nature.”

  “For a couple of reasons,” Jacob Yates cracked, “the first is symbolic. A man who, just a few years later, shot his wife gave this land to the city, and then he spent time in prison for the crime. He was wealthy and respected until one stupid move ruined him. Kind of reminds me of myself. My dumb move might have been signing an unknown hick, changing his name to Flynn Sparks and making him an American icon. Of course, now that I think about it, giving a guy a name like Sparks and have him burn down my studio might have been foreshadowing on my part. Now that is irony on a large scale.”

  “I’m sure,” Rains shot back sarcastically, “if I wait long enough, you’ll explain that to me in words that make sense. History lesson or not, I still don’t like having to hike down a trail for a half mile just to meet with you or anyone else for that matter. As you can see I’m wearing heels. In fact, have you ever seen me when I didn’t wear high heels? And Jacob, heels are made for looks, not exercise!”

  He ignored Rains complaints as he continued his lecture, “Before this was a park it was an ostrich farm. I figured out today that I’ve spent two years emulating that species of bird. No matter what crazy or outlandish thing Sparks did, I just ignored it or I paid a few bucks and tried to make it go away. So I’ve had my head in the sand.”

  “Glad you figured yourself out,” the woman shot back, “but you were doing that long before you discovered Sparks. Besides, I’ve always thought you were more like a turkey than an ostrich.”

  Jacob Yates frowned, turned his gaze from the boulders and looked the woman squarely in the eye. “The other reason we are meeting in the middle of nowhere is that I’m not a big fan of folks knowing you and I are spending time together. It reeks of disaster, especially now.”

  “Who put a tack in your chair?” Rains demanded. “Why all this gloom and doom? You didn’t mind meeting me in your office the other day. In fact, the last time you and I tiptoed around and hid in the shadows was thirty years ago when I was a college student and you were trying to make it as a photographer.”

  “I’d rather not remember those days,” he hissed. “I hated winters in New York. In fact, I hated everything about that city.”

  “Fine. Now what’s got your feathers ruffled? Now you’ve got me talking about birds.”

  He frowned before charging forward. “Here’s the bad news, and I mean really bad news. It seems your Hollywood Madman has struck again. Or did you already know about that?”

  “I had no idea,” she replied, her eyes suddenly alive with interest.

  “Then let me spell it out; another woman’s been strangled.”

  “I should have been told,” she complained. “Of course, I’ve been on the MGM lot all day, maybe there’s a message waiting at the office.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t know,” Yates barked. “I was beginning to think I was the last person to find out anything important in this whole blasted town. Imagine that, I got the scoop on Ellen Rains.”

  “Did you get the details?” she breathlessly asked.

  “This is not something to be excited about,” he scolded the writer. “A woman died, shouldn’t we have a moment of silence or say a prayer or something?”

  “Let the dead take care of the dead,” Rains mockingly suggested. “I have readers that want ripe information. So did they tell you any good details? I need to know everything.”

  “The cops didn’t want to share much with me, but they did demand to question Flynn Sparks. Seems he was the last person to see the woman alive.”

  “Who was it that got killed?” Rains demanded. “They obviously know. And why has the press not gotten the information yet?”

  “Crime beat reporters,” Yates explained, “are probably getting the story now. The victim was one of our recently signed actresses—Leslie Bryant.”

  The woman’s eyes almost fell out of her head, “My word, she spent the night at Sparks’s house on Saturday.”

  “And thanks to you, the whole world knows that,” the studio boss quipped. “Now that I think about it, you were the one who created this whole mess. If you hadn’t run that photo and blurb in your column no one would have likely connected Sparks to the girl. Or if they had, it would have been much, much later. You set my guy up.”

  “How was I supposed to know the girl was going to get murdered?”

  Both went mute. Yates’s eyes locked on a robin building a nest in a fruit tree while Rains followed the antics of a squirrel as it bounced up and down on the lawn. It was the still-shocked woman who finally broke the silence.

  “Wish someone would invent a phone a person could carry in a purse. I’d sure like to break this story.”

  “I’d like to bury it,” he snapped.

  “Not if you’re smart,” she reasoned. “This could be a huge break for the movie concept I gave you. And, speaking of that, how are your people coming along with a script?”

  “It’s a little weak,” he pointed out. “In a whodunit, it helps to know who did it. Until the case wraps up we can’t make a movie.”

  “If you wait until that happens it will be too late,” she corrected him. “Let’s beat the cops at their own game. You take all the information that I give you, then you figure out who did it even before they do.”

  “I’m not Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, or Nick Charles,” he assured her.

  “Never thought you were.”

  Yates looked at the woman as if she were crazy, “You mean release a movie and frame someone for the crimes?”

  “No,” she smiled, “I don’t want to hang this on anyone who is innocent. I might be a bit cutthroat, but I do have some standards.” She tapped her foot for a few seconds before posing a question. “Who has the best mystery and crime writers in the business?”

  “My studio, but what difference does that make now?”

  “Then put them to work solving this mess,” she suggested. “They’re smarter than Bill Barrister and his team. So just keep pushing them. Give them the budget to dig deep and get more leads. Right now you’ve got enough information to shoot the first third to half of the picture. Put that into motion. You can even create the posters and ads now.”

  “It hasn’t even
been cast,” he whined.

  “What is Dalton Andrews working on right now?” she demanded.

  “Nothing except for a couple of retakes. He has a few weeks off.”

  “Give him the role as Barrister.”

  “He looks nothing like him,” Yates pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she admitted, “but Barrister will love having folks think he’s handsome and thin. I wish I could remember his partner’s name?”

  “He was in my office today,” the studio boss announced, “I remember it well—Barry Jenkins.”

  “Sparks is the right age and build,” Rains slyly offered.

  “The cops have a frame around him for killing Bryant,” Yates noted. “Your column pretty much puts his hands around the woman’s neck.”

  “That makes it all the better,” she chuckled. “It will be perfect for publicity. I can’t wait to write a bit in my column about the man the police suspect as the Hollywood Madman actually playing the cop trying to catch and convict him.”

  “You’re actually serious,” he whispered.

  “Of course,” she replied. “I have a piece of this picture, and I want it to be huge box office. Sparks and this real-life murder mystery will bring in the fans, and the media will love it. When can you start filming?”

  “I guess next week.”

  “Good,” she smiled, “wardrobe and sets will be easy. You can even shoot some things on location. Now get to work, Jacob, and I’ll go back to my office and start writing a dynamite story on Leslie Bryant’s murder. I can almost read it now . . . a star on the rise snuffed out and police suspect America’s greatest actor. Wow!”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he sighed. “Right now, as I look into the future, I just see my studio being sold off piece by piece on an auction block. Then you can write a story with the headline, ‘Sparks Destroys Galaxy.’ ”

  “Not bad,” she laughed, “but I won’t have to use it. Sparks and this case are not going to ruin you, they will make you even more powerful. I know what I’m doing. Just make sure your writers figure out who the real murderer is before we film that last scene. If they beat the cops to that we’ll have a movie people will be talking about fifty years from now. Got to get back to the office. Bye-bye, love!”