Murder in Disguise

by Mary Miley

  That did make me cry. I blinked hard and dabbed my eyes with the napkin. Right on cue, the waiter interrupted with our soup and pimento sandwiches, allowing me to regain my composure.

  ‘Mildred, you are the dearest person on earth! You’ll never know how much I appreciate that offer. But I’m going to be fine.’ I told her about David’s house, where I planned to live for the next couple of years, and reassured her that I would have enough money to get by. In her blunt, pragmatic way, she gave a nod of acceptance and changed the subject.

  ‘Barbara Petrovitch tells me you are still working on the investigation. She’s been keeping me informed as to your progress.’

  ‘I know it seems like I should stop, now that I’m not working for Douglas any longer, but Barbara is, well, not exactly a friend, but I care too much to drop her like that. Besides, I’m helping the police on this and another matter.’

  She smiled like a proud mother. ‘Quite the lady detective!’ she said as she took a dainty spoonful of the hot soup without pressing me for more information. I like that about Mildred: she isn’t your typical nosy parker.

  In twenty minutes, we’d finished our meal. We parted on the sidewalk and went our separate ways – Mildred to her marketing, me to buy a newspaper and head home. I watched her go, wishing with all my might that I would see her tomorrow. Monday morning, back at the studio. Back at the job I’d loved so much. In a way, it reminded me of the insecurity of vaudeville: one day you had work and were living high, the next day your act split up or the manager handed you your pictures and you scrounged for every nickel. ‘There’s always another job on the horizon,’ my mother used to say. I looked up the street toward home. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the horizon from where I stood.

  What I could see startled me. Across Santa Monica and a block to the east, a movie theater was emptying out. People spilled out the double doors, jostling one another as they turned right or left on the wide sidewalk. At first, I didn’t believe my eyes. I blinked and stared. One small figure stood alone at the edge of the curb, looking both ways for traffic before crossing to my side of the street. It was Kit.

  She reached the sidewalk and turned away from me, heading in the opposite direction. The direction I was going. She didn’t see me, I was certain.

  Well, that was one mystery solved. Now I knew what Kit was doing when she wandered off during the day. I should have thought of it before now. The pictures were something a deaf person could enjoy as much as a hearing person. She’d miss the music, sure, but none of the plot or the dialog, as long as she could read the titles, and Kit was a great reader for her age. For any age. I had been amazed at the books she’d been taking home from the library.

  Instinct overrode common sense, and I called out to her to wait, forgetting she couldn’t hear me. So I hurried along in the same direction, losing sight of her for minutes at a time, but seeing her when the crowd thinned. The sidewalk was crowded with Sunday strollers and shoppers, but I’d catch up to her at the streetcar stop ahead. Meanwhile, it was interesting to watch her walk along, not too fast, pausing occasionally to look at a window display.

  The house on Fernwood was more than two miles away, but she kept walking past the streetcar stop. Perhaps her pocket money didn’t stretch that far.

  I trailed her for a few blocks before coming alongside her. I laid one hand on her arm. She jerked it away and spun around, then smiled her recognition. It was a lovely smile, and it served to remind me how seldom I saw it.

  ‘Are you going home?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘May I walk along with you?’

  Another nod.

  Since it was impossible to have a conversation without facing one another, we threaded our way through the Sunday strollers in silence for a while. When we paused at a corner stop sign, I took the opportunity to face her and ask, ‘What film did you see?’

  ‘The Lost World.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t seen that one yet. What did you think?’

  She shrugged. ‘Childish. But I liked the part at the end, when the professor gets his revenge.’

  Not for the first time did I sense an eerie maturity behind Kit’s solemn manner, and I wondered, not for the first time, how an eleven-year-old could be so unlike any eleven-year-old I’d ever known. And I’d known a lot of them. I’d been eleven myself for many years through several different acts, and I flattered myself that I knew how they spoke and thought and behaved. Kit didn’t act like a kid that age. She couldn’t be eleven.

  ‘How old are you, Kit?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  The direct approach having failed, I shifted gears. We walked for another few blocks as I plotted the next scene and kept an eye out for a drug store. The second one we passed fit the bill – I caught sight of its soda fountain through the plate glass window.

  I touched Kit’s arm. ‘Now here’s good luck! Just when I’m thinking about root beer, I spy a soda fountain. How ’bout it? My treat.’

  Nod.

  We went inside and settled onto two stools. A skinny boy who looked about fourteen bustled up. ‘What’ll ya have, girls?’

  ‘Two root beers, please.’

  ‘Floats?’

  I looked at Kit. She nodded. ‘One float, one plain.’

  ‘You know, when my mother was headlining in vaudeville, we could afford treats like this every day. Then after she died, I went years without the taste of a root beer or a soda. So now I really appreciate them.’

  Kit gave that some thought before asking, ‘You were all alone?’

  ‘Vaudeville is kinda like a family. The people managing whatever act I was with kept an eye out for me. But I had no family.’

  ‘No pa?’

  ‘My father died before I was born. He had some family, but I didn’t know about them until last year. My mother’s family disowned her when she went on stage. They thought performing was sinful. She never had anything more to do with them, never talked about them, never even wrote to tell them I was born.’

  She frowned as she stirred her float with the straw. ‘How old were you when she died?’

  ‘Twelve, I think. I’m not always sure of my age. Back when I was in vaudeville, it changed so often, I didn’t always keep up with the true number. In my younger days, when my mother was singing and I was working song-and-dance acts, we had to pretend I was older to dodge the Gerry Society, so my mother would make up my face and dress me in older-girl clothes before I’d go before the judge.’

  ‘What’s Gerry Society?’

  ‘A bunch of pinched-faced do-gooders who think children under sixteen should be banned from the stage. The law didn’t exactly forbid all performance – it said kid performers couldn’t move about on the stage. They could sing or recite poetry but they couldn’t dance or move. So the Gerry spies would sit in the audience and report to the cops any young-looking kid who moved.’

  She was visibly intrigued. ‘Did you get put in jail?’

  ‘The object wasn’t to jail the kids; it was to run them out of the business. The cops would take the kids before the judge, and the kids would swear they were sixteen. If the judge didn’t believe them, they’d get fined.’

  ‘Did you ever have to go to court?’

  ‘We got caught any number of times – some states enforce the laws more vigorously than others – but usually Mother paid someone off before we had to appear in court. I remember once in Alabama we were making such good money, she just paid the $25 fine each day. “The cost of doing business”, she called it. Whenever I had to appear before a judge, Mother would make me up to look older, covering my freckles, putting lipstick and rouge on my face and red lacquer on my fingernails, and I’d wear a padded brassiere, until sixteen didn’t look so unbelievable, even when I was twelve.’

  The image made Kit giggle.

  ‘Then when I got older, it was the reverse. I was working kiddie acts and needed to look younger than my age, so I’d accentuate my freckles, wea
r my hair in braids, flatten my chest, avoid make-up or nail lacquer of any sort, and wear little girl sailor dresses.’ I waited to see if she would take the bait. She did.

  ‘So how old are you really?’ she asked.

  ‘Guess.’

  Kit frowned in concentration for a minute before she replied, ‘Twenty-one.’

  I shook my head. ‘Twenty-six.’

  Her eyes couldn’t have gotten any wider if I’d said seventy-six. ‘I thought you and Myrna were the same age.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve always looked a good deal younger than I am. I’m the oldest one in our house. Myrna’s only twenty. Helen’s twenty-four, and I think Melva and Lillian are twenty-two or twenty-three. What about you? How old are you, I mean, how old are you really?’

  An uncomfortable silence followed. I waited, my hands clasped in my lap, my head cocked to one side, and my gaze fixed on her face until she gave in. After all the information I’d shared with her, it must have seemed stingy not to be honest in return. At least, that’s what I was betting on.

  ‘Thirteen.’

  My original estimate when we’d first met had been twelve, but as I’d come to know her better, I’d revised that upwards, so her response seemed believable.

  ‘I know why I lied about my age all those years,’ I said. ‘But why did you? You’re not on stage.’

  ‘If I was younger, Ma could be younger. She wanted people to think she was younger, especially after she met Joe. When we moved to Joe’s house, she wanted him to think I was younger so he wouldn’t bother me.’

  That explained why the child looked like something out of the Oz book, with her mismatched clothing and sexless haircut.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to lie about it any longer. Wouldn’t you rather be thirteen?’ She looked uncertain at first, then she gave her trademark nod. Taking advantage of what was, for Kit, a chatty mood, I continued with my questions. I wanted to know about this Joe person and how long he’d been in the picture. ‘Have you and your mother lived in Los Angeles all your life?’

  ‘Where her job was, we lived. San Francisco or Sacramento, other cities. Once she started being Joe’s girlfriend, we didn’t move around any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Joe’s boss of most clubs in LA. He got Ma gigs in any one she wanted. That’s how she met him, singing in one of his clubs.’

  ‘A long time ago?’

  ‘A few years. Two, maybe.’

  That piece of news meant I wouldn’t have to ask an awkward question: whether this Joe fella was her father. If he’d only been around for two years, that was unlikely, but not, I reflected, unthinkable. He could have fathered a child thirteen years ago and come back into the picture recently. But like as not, Kit was illegitimate, like me. Like David.

  I wanted to know more, in case there was a chance of finding more of her relatives. ‘So what do you think of this Joe? What’s his last name?’

  She shot me a mean look before turning to her float. She fished out a few bites of ice cream and I figured I’d pushed the interview off the cliff. But no.

  ‘Joe Addy Zone,’ Kit said. At least that’s what it sounded like she said. Addison, probably. I could look it up in the city directory. ‘At first, I liked him ’cause Ma liked him ’cause he was rich and had the prettiest house you ever saw. Then I hated him ’cause he was mean. He didn’t like me either.’

  ‘Is that when your mother started telling people you couldn’t speak?’

  ‘She didn’t tell people that. I just never said anything. She didn’t know I could read lips so good. And there was nothing to say. She was asleep when I was awake, or she was with Joe. She didn’t tell Joe anything about me, ’cept how old I was and that I was deaf. He decided I was a moron all by himself. I saw him tell people I was too dumb to go to school. That’s what everyone thinks, so I just let ’em think it. You thought it too. I know you did.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. I didn’t think you were a moron. I thought you were rude.’

  That arched her eyebrows but quick. I pressed my advantage.

  ‘So I take it you know your address?’

  The dramatic roll of her eyes answered that question louder than words.

  ‘Very well then, shall we stop by and pick up some of your things?’

  She shook her head. She had relied so long on gestures to speak for her, she didn’t waste words when a shrug or a nod would do.

  ‘Why not? Surely you have clothes and other things you’d like, and some of your mother’s stuff?’

  ‘That’s all gone by now.’

  ‘It’s only been a few days since her death. Suppose we go see?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘If you have a key, we could go when Joe wasn’t there.’

  She shook her head violently.

  ‘Can you tell me the address, so I could go? By myself, I mean.’

  Another severe shake of the head. I had no choice but to let it drop. Still, I might have enough information now to find an address if I read through all the entries in the city directory that started with AD. AT, maybe it began, maybe Addyzone. Artyzone? Ardesone? Ar … Then it hit me. Ardizzone. If you didn’t know how the Italians pronounced the last letter of the word, if you had only read it and never heard it spoken, you would say it the way Kit did: Ar-dee-zone.

  Rose Ann’s sugar daddy was the gangster, Joe ‘Iron Man’ Ardizzone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Bringing Iron Man Ardizzone on stage certainly changed the plot. I telephoned Carl Delaney when I reached our house, as soon as I was certain Kit had gone upstairs. Nonetheless, I turned my face to the wall as I spoke, in case she passed through the back hall on her way outside. I heard him give a low whistle after I’d finished relaying what Kit had told me.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ I asked Carl.

  ‘If you’re thinking that Iron Man Ardizzone killed Rose Ann Riley, I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’

  ‘The puzzle pieces fall into place, don’t they? Rose Ann left Los Angeles looking for work. She couldn’t take Kit so she dropped her off with a huge suitcase at the home of a cousin she barely knew. I think she wanted out—’

  ‘—and her lover had other ideas.’

  ‘You know about him?’

  ‘Iron Man? All too well. We pick up his gang’s dead bodies on a regular basis. He’s a ruthless sonofa— excuse me, ma’am.’

  ‘Kit said he was mean. She didn’t define that, but maybe he was beating Rose Ann or threatening her. Rose Ann ran off to look for jobs so she could move far away from him. She wasn’t even planning to come back to Los Angeles to get Kit; she was going to send for her. I thought that irresponsible at the time – now I think it was prudent.’

  ‘Iron Man must not have appreciated her streak of independence. So he hunted her down in San Diego, sent someone to knock her around a little for discipline’s sake, and maybe when she wasn’t biddable enough, decided to teach her and any future ladies a lesson. Drinking wood alcohol would kill her in a way that would look like an accident. No questions asked.’

  ‘Poor thing – she didn’t run far enough away.’

  ‘I’m not sure any place was far enough away. A big city crime boss like that has contacts all over the country he can call for favors.’

  ‘You know what I just thought? It must’ve been Ardizzone who hired that gunman from Chicago who came here last year and shot Bruno Heilmann, that director. Remember? We figured out he was from Chicago, but never could connect him with anyone here.’

  ‘Like he was calling in a favor from a boss in another city.’

  ‘Right. Doesn’t Ardizzone control all the bootlegging and dope in this city?’

  ‘Except for the Chinese and their opium.’

  ‘Carl, can you find out the address where Kit lived? She said the house belonged to Ardizzone, but it wasn’t his wife’s house.’

  ‘I can try, although if he was trying to hide a house he bought for his mistress,
it’d be as easy as putting it in some other name. Why do you want to know? Tell me you aren’t thinking about going over there.’

  ‘No, not any more. At first I wanted to go with Kit and get some of her things, but she wouldn’t spill the address. She said there was no use in going, that all her things would be gone by now.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kit pass by on her way to the kitchen. I heard her rummaging around in the pantry. Pure instinct caused me to lower my voice even though I knew she couldn’t hear a word I said. ‘Listen, Carl … Don’t say anything about this in front of Kit. I’d rather she continue to think her mother’s death was accidental poisoning.’

  ‘You think she doesn’t know who Ardizzone is?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She knew his name and said he owned lots of clubs. He’s in the newspapers now and then, and she reads them every day.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but no one in the papers describes him as a gangster boss. They wouldn’t dare. He’s never been convicted of anything, not even a traffic violation. Reporters use the word “businessman” when referring to Iron Man. We know who he is, and we’d love to nab him – so would the Feds – but he’s slipperier than a greased eel. Besides, there are plenty of places Kit could have seen his name besides the newspapers. A piece of mail, a laundry ticket, a light bill, an engraved cigarette case.’

  He made a good point.

  ‘I’ll see if I can turn up his whereabouts the day she was killed,’ he said.

  I was sure a man like Iron Man would have an iron-tight alibi.

  On Monday the postman brought another batch of letters from vaudeville friends about transfigurators. A ukulele musician told me that the Great Fulgora had been playing in New York last year – something that astonished me because I assumed a man who had not been young when he performed with my mother in the 1890s would be long dead or at least retired by now. ‘I don’t think he’s still working,’ wrote my ukulele friend, ‘in any event, he’s not listed in Variety, but he was going strong when I saw him last March. He opened in street clothes and, in full view of the audience, made ten changes in costume, leaving the stage dressed in women’s clothing and in less than five seconds, he reappeared in full masculine evening clothes.’ I’d have liked to see that!