by Mary Miley
‘No, you’re right. If you find her or hear anything, call back to this number, and I’ll make sure someone’s close by to pick up. We’ll keep in touch that way. And try not to worry, Jessie. We’ll find her.’
Yes, but alive?
THIRTY-NINE
Myrna wanted to be dropped off on Sunset Boulevard near our Fernwood house. ‘I’ll walk the boulevard until I drop, then take a taxi home,’ she said. We had no photographs of Kit but her unruly dark hair, stick-thin body, and huge eyes made painting her visual portrait a snap. And how many deaf children were walking around Hollywood alone at night?
I drove to the library for a second look and found them getting ready to close. The librarian knew Kit but hadn’t seen her in days. So I turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard and drove as slowly as I could get away with, my head turning from right to left as if I were watching a game of ping pong. Pedestrian traffic was light this time of night; the sidewalks would become more crowded as the evening wore on. Motorcar traffic was light as well, light enough to let me make a U-turn at Normandie and start back toward the opposite end of the boulevard; once there, another U-turn took me back to where I’d started.
Stores were closed or closing, but restaurants and clubs provided noisy oases of activity on every block as patrons surged in and out and on to the evening’s next episode, and reporters and cameramen hovered to capture any famous faces. Without the sunshine to bring up the temperature, a penetrating chill had descended on the city. I hoped Kit was wearing her jacket. For the first time in my life, the sight of uniformed cops walking the pavement did not make me twitch. I knew they were keeping eyes peeled for our missing girl. Visions of Rose Ann’s battered body on the table in the San Diego morgue tortured me. I prayed her only child would not suffer the same fate at the same hands.
Twice I left the Ford idling at the curb while I stepped inside a drug store to call Carl’s desk at headquarters, hoping for news. When there wasn’t any, I resumed my creep down the boulevard. At one point, I saw Lillian coming out of a drug store; later I caught a glimpse of Larry and Helen speaking earnestly to a street vendor. I waved and kept going.
Cutting over to Santa Monica Boulevard, I repeated the process, driving down its long stretch first east, then west, watching both sides of the street as I crawled along. As midnight approached, I gave a pass down Sunset, hoping to see Myrna to give her a ride home. I didn’t.
Back at David’s house, I made a final telephone call to the police station. There was no news. By now, there was not a fiber of optimism left in me. Kit wasn’t lost. She didn’t get lost. She’d been snatched.
‘Any word?’ called Myrna as she came in the front door.
I tried to reply but couldn’t speak. Tears burned my eyes, and I swallowed hard. Myrna put her arms around me and hugged, which only made it worse.
‘The police are still out looking,’ she said. ‘They’ll look all night. They’ll find her, I’m sure. We need to get some sleep before we fall down. First thing in the morning, we can start out fresh.’
I threw the deadbolt on the front door and trudged up the stairs, wondering if I’d had dinner that night or not. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry, and I couldn’t have kept anything down anyway.
At the door to my bedroom, I stopped and gave a sharp cry, unable to trust my eyes. Someone was lying on my bed.
Kit. Sound asleep.
Coming up behind me, Myrna said, ‘What’s the matter? Oh!’
Of course, Kit couldn’t hear the noise we made. I rushed to the bed and shook her. She came awake quickly, her hair sticking up in all directions and a crease from my chenille bedspread on her cheek. Looking from my face to the clock, she snapped, ‘Where have you been? It’s after midnight!’
Myrna, moving faster than I could, threw her arms around the girl. ‘Oh, Kit, we were so worried! We thought that horrible man had kidnapped you!’
Weak with relief, I rose. ‘I’ll call Carl’s desk at once,’ I said. ‘And Helen.’
Unable to reach anyone at the Fernwood house, I left the message at the police station and trusted an officer would soon run into Helen and the other girls on the street. Mindful of the hour, I said I would bring Kit back the following morning.
‘I’ve not been able to contact Helen,’ I told Kit. ‘So I left word that you would be spending the night here. You can sleep on the sofa downstairs, and I’ll drive you home in the morning.’
Kit shook her head. ‘I’m not going back. I don’t want to live with Mrs Reynolds.’
‘Kit, you can’t go with Helen and Larry. Their lives will be very rough, almost like camping, and you won’t have another soul to talk to or even a library for books. Mrs Reynolds is your cousin, and she has a nice house full of books and friends with children your age, and she wants you very much.’
‘If you make me go, I’ll run away, like from deaf school when Ma made me go there. I don’t want Helen. I want to stay here. With you. You have room – I saw the empty bedroom. I can bring the cot Helen bought, so you don’t need to buy furniture, and I don’t eat much, so I won’t cost much.’
The idea was preposterous, but I was too tired to argue. I had been operating for the past few hours on sheer terror, and now that the crisis had passed, I felt like a deflated balloon. I thought numbly of my mother – and I know I sounded like her – when I put Kit off with that old parental favorite, ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning.’ I handed her my extra pillow and a blanket from the closet. ‘Take these downstairs and sleep on the sofa.’
Myrna’s exhausted eyes met mine, and we shook our heads.
Early the next morning, I drove Kit back to the Fernwood house and helped her persuade Helen and her mother to let her stay with Myrna and me.
FORTY
‘She really won’t be much trouble,’ I explained to Carl that evening when he stopped by our house after work. We were sitting in the living room with its large picture window that overlooked the walled garden. I was still a little uncomfortable having Carl in David’s house, but there was no getting around the fact that I was going to be seeing Carl now and then. I’d have to get used to the idea of him in David’s domain.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘Upstairs unpacking. I ordered a duplicate of the furniture Myrna chose for her room, and they delivered it this afternoon. I wasn’t here, but Kit told the men where to put everything. Now she’s organizing her clothes, happy as a clam. Why shouldn’t she be? She got her own way, the wretched child.’
‘It didn’t sound like anybody had to break your arm to get you to agree.’
I grinned. ‘I guess not. I really am fond of the kid. I can see some of myself in her. We both had to grow up fast and learn things early on. Too early, but we didn’t have any say in that.’
‘You ready to be a mother?’
‘I’m ready to be a big sister.’
‘That sounds about right. Good luck to you.’ He raised his gin and tonic to me in a mock toast. ‘Did the newlyweds get off today as planned?’
‘They drove off in Larry’s truck this afternoon, I heard. I wasn’t there. I was at the studio. I talked with Helen this morning though, and her mother.’
‘I hope Mrs Reynolds wasn’t too disappointed to lose Kit?’
‘Frankly, I think she was relieved. She was willing to step up and take the child when there was no one else, but Helen wasn’t exaggerating about her poor health. She really doesn’t get around very well, and Kit can be a handful. Besides, we promised Mrs Reynolds that Kit would visit at Christmas and that’s just four weeks away. Can I freshen up that drink, mister?’
‘Sure can. Thanks.’
Myrna breezed in through the front door. ‘Hi, Jessie,’ she said. ‘Hi, Carl.’
‘Hello to you, Miss Loy. How is Warner Brothers’s finest actress today?’
Myrna sent Carl one of her high-wattage smiles and kicked off her shoes. ‘There’s a big push on to finish up with Why Girls Go Back Home. They oughta c
all it Why Girls Can’t Go Back Home, we’re working so late every day. I have only a small part playing a girl named Sally Short, but I have to stay until the director dismisses us all, even if I’m not in the scene. Is there any food in the kitchen, Jessie?’
‘Kit and I have eaten, but there are some leftover chicken wings.’
‘Copacetic.’ She padded off into the kitchen on stocking feet.
‘So, tell me about Tuesday’s raid,’ I said when we were alone again.
‘The plan worked like a charm. Not knowing who the snitch is at headquarters, I couldn’t tell anyone anything. I drove the streets of the warehouse district until I spotted one with a blue door. Then, one by one, I contacted a dozen officers and had them meet me near La Grande Station, and then I did the same for some federal agents. None of them knew about the others until we had all gathered – I didn’t want anyone knowing I was assembling a large force – and by then it was too late for anyone to squeal to Joe Ardizzone.’
Sometimes I wonder just how deaf Kit really is, because she seems to hear just fine whenever anyone is talking about a topic she cares about. Maybe she’s just psychic. Whatever the reason, she appeared at the top of the stairs, took one look at Carl’s lips, and clamored down to the living room to position herself in a chair where she could see both our mouths.
‘Hello, Kitty Kat,’ Carl said, raising his eyebrows at me in a question that was easy to read. Kit read it too.
‘I can stay. I want to hear too.’
I nodded and Carl continued. ‘The captain wasn’t too happy with me for not letting him in on the raid, but he could have been the snitch for all I knew – and he still could be – so I’m not apologizing. I don’t need to – he’s pleased enough with the results and eager to take credit for the sting. We found the warehouse with a blue door just like you said, Kit. We surrounded it. Then we just walked inside. There were only two men there at that time of day and they couldn’t put their hands up fast enough. Didn’t have to fire so much as a warning shot.’
‘And was it a big haul?’ I asked.
‘Huge. Like Kit said, this is Iron Man’s main warehouse, with thousands of cases of hooch piled high plus a good deal of cocaine and heroin and some morphine and other dope.’
I couldn’t help but think back on the time a few months ago when crooked detectives had stolen the dope they found at Director Bruno Heilmann’s house after he was murdered and tried to sell it on the market. Much of the illegal booze that was seized found its way back into the public trough when cops sold it to speakeasies. ‘How are you going to make sure all that contraband isn’t stolen by crooked cops?’
‘No doubt some of it will be, but we’ve got an army guarding the place to prevent wholesale theft, and also to prevent Iron Man’s boys from trying to repossess it. So on Tuesday afternoon, I filed my report. At that point, it was too late for a stool pigeon to warn the gang, but I expect he stole a peek at it so he could learn where the information came from.’
He looked at Kit. ‘Naturally, I didn’t mention your name, and I never will. I said only that “an informant” told me the Fort Knox location. A gangster named Daniel O’Rourke – that’s your friend Danny Boy, Kit – was later found murdered in an unusually brutal manner, so I’m figuring they thought he was the informant.’
‘I wonder why,’ I mused. Then I saw Kit’s cherubic smile, and it hit me like a landslide. Somehow, that child had engineered this. I was certain of it. But how?
I’d seen that smug smile before. When? Where? I sorted through the file cabinet in my head until I reached Saturday night after Helen’s wedding, when Kit had joined Carl and me on the front porch and Kit was telling him everything she knew about Ardizzone’s operation. What had she said? ‘I think Fort Knox is a great name for a secret warehouse. Be sure to write that in your report.’
And Carl had done just that.
‘Kit,’ I asked, with an artlessness that I hoped matched her own, ‘was it Joe Ardizzone who thought up the name Fort Knox for the warehouse?’
‘No, not Joe. It was Danny Boy. He thought it was funny. It was his little joke.’
‘Did others call it that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Miss Innocence Personified.
With nothing more than a few well-aimed remarks, this thirteen-year-old deaf girl had crippled the biggest bootlegger in the state while cold-bloodedly arranging the torture and murder of the underling Ardizzone believed had ratted him out, the same man who had killed her mother.
I looked uneasily at the child I had just taken into my life – a child who had conned California’s biggest gangster and a savvy police detective, not to mention an experienced swindler like myself, in a ruthless scheme to avenge her family the only way she could. Just like Vesa Leka.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was first discovered historical fiction as a child, I was curious to know how much of what I’d read was history and how much was fiction. Did the Scarlet Pimpernel really rescue the young French dauphin during the Reign of Terror? (Sadly no, the boy died in prison.) Was the ‘Great Game’ young Kim played in India real? (Yes, and some would say, ongoing.) Usually a trip to the encyclopedia would answer my questions; sometimes a biography gave me the true story. That’s why I like to separate fact from fiction at the end of my novels.
My main characters, Jessie, David, and Kit, are products of my imagination, but many others are real. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks reigned over Hollywood in the 1920s and started their own studio. Myrna Loy was not yet a famous actress when my story takes place, but she really did live with girls named Lillian, Melva, and Helen (although their characters are made up). Joseph ‘Iron Man’ Ardizzone headed up the LA crime world for many years. He was such a nasty piece of work, his own men murdered him in 1931. His body was never found. The Great Fulgora was perhaps the most talented of all transfigurators on the vaudeville stage. Another like him was Fregoli, an Italian transfigurator. You can see his act at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP_e43T4zNM? Most of the vaudeville acts I mention in passing were real acts. Olga Myra was the aunt of a friend of mine who performed in the 1920s with her unique violin contortionist act. I’ve seen several pictures from the newspapers of her odd act. Adele Astaire was far more famous and talented than her little brother Fred, although he is remembered today and she is not. For a short history with darling pictures of young Fred and Adele, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W5wbKffWHo. While everyone knows of Helen Keller, almost no one remembers that she performed a vaudeville act for a few years with her interpreter. She tried and tried to learn to speak – it was one of the few things she couldn’t master. Hear how she sounds at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ch_H8pt9M8. It might give you some idea of how Kit sounded – although Kit’s deafness struck her later than Helen Keller’s, which meant she could more accurately make the right sounds.
Pickford-Fairbanks was one of the highest quality studios in Hollywood; it was also one of the most innovative. Moon Motors was an important automobile factory in St. Louis in the days before Detroit had a monopoly on car production. The Great Depression put them out of business. The Busch factory and the story of Bevo are true.
I am especially indebted to Carolyn Schmid, the former librarian at Douglas Freeman High School in Richmond, VA, for sharing her own story about becoming deaf at a young age and learning to lip-read. Her help in creating the character of Kit was invaluable. Silent film buffs at the Library of Congress’s annual Mostly Lost workshop helped me understand the filming techniques Douglas Fairbanks used in making The Black Pirate. And, as always, my thanks go to Donna Sheppard, retired editor from Colonial Williamsburg, who taught me more about writing than any professor.
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