Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  Marty Magnin. I should have known.

  “… were so helpful. If we can get the mother and the daughter together, and you, well, if you are thinking of doing a book on this, Jack, I don’t need to tell you, because you are a very bright man, what the ratings of The Oprah Winfrey Show are, and what that means in terms of copies sold, you can become a very rich man—”

  “I have to hang up now, Ms. Brown.” This time I did.

  Marty Magnin was in meetings all day. Sydney Allen was on his way back to New York on the Cosmo jet.

  I drove out to Trancas to be alone. I walked on the beach and watched the sun set, and when I got home, my answering service said that Barbados Brown had called three times, Oprah Winfrey twice, and a Mrs. White in Anaheim, who had not left a number.

  The telephone rang at nine the next morning.

  “Yes.”

  “Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  A note of uncertainty. “Jack Broderick?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Lily White.”

  The Mrs. White from Anaheim. I did not know any Mrs. White in Anaheim. I did not know anyone in Anaheim. I thought of hanging up, but there was something about the voice.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  It was coming back to me now. Lubricated or unlubricated. The Socially Responsible Single. A one-night stand in a terrace condominium in a less Grosse Pointe with a divorced mother of two. Things to dislike about sex. The bad breath in the morning. The curly strand of pubic hair on the tongue. The acrid smell of postcoital micturition. The tenured professor of fucking’s downside. Would you please go? Just call a cab and go. Go. Please go. And go I had. To meet Melba Mae Toolate in a cab heading in the wrong direction. “Of course I remember you.” Better than you could possibly ever know. From your bed to Blue Tyler’s latest disappearance and Meta Dierdorf’s murder. To Arthur French and Chuckie O’Hara and U.S. Senator Denis Maxwell (“Max”) Riordan, R-Fla. “What are you doing in Anaheim?” My bright voice. “Visiting Disneyland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are the children with you?” The Mensa child. Were you hurting the man, Mama, when you were biting him. What was her name? Fern. And the boy. His peepee sometimes sticks up like the man’s. Terence. “Terence and Fern.”

  “No.”

  “So you’re visiting Disneyland?” Emphasis on the “you’re.” I was sounding inane.

  “I’m here for a convention of travel agents. At the Disneyland Hotel.”

  Of course. She was a travel agent. In the travel business, you tend to meet people with return tickets. “A perfect place for it.” Another inanity. “Disneyland.”

  “I was wondering if perhaps …” Her voice trailed off. “… we could have a drink.” She hesitated. “Or something.” The “or something” carried a hint of sexual invitation, and she immediately tried to haul it back. “I mean …”

  “I’d like that.” Considering all that had happened since I left her apartment that night a few short months before, I probably at least owed her a drink. On the other hand, perhaps my life would be neater had she not thrown me out with my openreturn ticket. Certainly it would be less complicated. And would have affected fewer people. “What’s good for you?”

  “I don’t have a car. All the convention meetings are here at the hotel, so I didn’t …”

  “No problem. I’ll come to you.” I’ll come to you was Hollywood talk. I was sounding like an agent. At least I didn’t say Let’s do lunch.

  “It’s in Anaheim, it must be far, I mean, I’ve never been here before, everything seems so far, there’s no need to put yourself out, I can get a cab …”

  I wondered why she was so nervous. “Don’t be silly. It’s not that far.” Only a hundred miles round-trip. “Say noon. Twelve-thirty. At the hotel. I’ll call up from the desk. We can have lunch with Mickey and Minny.”

  “With who …”

  “Mickey and Minny. Mouse. Disneyland.”

  “I’m sorry. I should’ve got that. That’d be nice, Jack.”

  The traffic was lighter than I anticipated and I was early arriving at the hotel. There was no answer in her room. I looked in the coffee shop and the dining room. She was not in either place. The lobby was full of travel agents and their families wearing Mickey Mouse headgear and carrying Disneyland paraphernalia. I checked out the newsstand. She was not there either. I called her room again. No answer. I went to the reception desk.

  “Welcome to the Disneyland Hotel, sir, how may we help you?”

  “Do you have a Mrs. White registered?”

  The room clerk pressed some keys on his computer. “A Mrs. B-for-Barbara White, Miss G-for-Georgia White, Ms. L-for-Lily White, or Mrs. P for—?”

  “L-for-Lily,” I said.

  “She checked out, sir.”

  “Checked out? When? I just talked to her a couple of hours ago, I was supposed to meet her here …”

  “About fifteen minutes ago. Let’s see.” The room clerk bent over his computer again. “Her room was prepaid, four days, she’s leaving a day early, I had to tell her she couldn’t get a refund on the last day, prepaid is nonrefundable.”

  “Do you know where she was going?”

  “LAX. She was taking the airport bus.”

  “When did it leave?”

  The clerk checked his watch. “It actually won’t leave for another five minutes, at twelve forty-five.”

  “Where?”

  “In front of the hotel, sir. Ask the doorman. You can’t miss it.”

  She was sitting on the bench at the LAX bus stop, wedged between two elderly women travelers, a Valpack and two small suitcases at her feet. A pair of enormous white-rimmed sunglasses nearly covered her face, which was propped in her left hand, two fingers drumming against her lips, and she seemed oblivious to the conversation the two women were loudly carrying on over her, the rides they had taken, the food they had eaten, the presents they had bought for their grandchildren. For a moment I thought of not intruding on her. If she had suddenly decided after we talked to return to Detroit without seeing me, then who was I not to respect her change of heart, and the reason behind it. Ours was an interlude with consequences unforeseen by me, and at the moment I did not need further consequences. Then she removed her sunglasses, and when she looked around she saw me.

  “Hello, Lily.”

  She stood and smoothed the wrinkles from her lavender linen dress. “Hello.”

  She appeared to be several months pregnant.

  “I shouldn’t have called you,” Lily White said, avoiding my eyes, stirring the spoon around in her iced tea. “But I suppose the only reason I came to this damn convention was to call you. You see, after we … well, after that, I figured out who you were. I mean, even in Detroit, the Brodericks aren’t exactly unknown. It’s not a family that’s spent a lot of time incognito, is that the right word?”

  On the money.

  “Then when I got pregnant, I was going to say you were the father, even though I knew you weren’t, I was very careful, if you remember, and I’m a lot of things, but I don’t think I’d make a very good extortionist. I want you to believe that.”

  I did. She had after all cut and run.

  “I was just desperate. Panicked. But I couldn’t go through with it.” A rueful smile. “Even if I could’ve got away with it. Which I doubt.”

  It was not a confession I had ever expected to hear at a coffee shop in Disneyland. “Do you know the father?”

  “I seem to gravitate to men with Hertz rent-a-car agreements.” I remembered the self-deprecating tone. “And they to me.”

  “Couldn’t you have got it fixed?”

  “Yes. Sure.” She took a deep breath. “But I wanted the kid.” She seemed to be searching for words. “You see, when I found out, Harry …”

  I tried to remember Harry. “Your ex-husband?”

  A quick nod. “… he wasn’t exactly understanding. He said I was an”—she paused and swallowed hard—�
�an unfit mother. And he was going to try and get custody of—”

  “Listen, you don’t have to tell me this.”

  “Who else can I tell it to? Donald fucking Duck? Some shrink? I don’t like shrinks. It’s like confession, except you’ve got to pay for it.” She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red. “You probably don’t remember that babysitter I had.”

  The fat one with the zits I had given a ride home to. You can feel me up if you want, she had said. “I think I gave her a ride home.”

  “She told Harry I was …” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “You know,” she said finally. I could imagine what the babysitter had said. She fucks everybody, you know. Her parting shot when I declined the invitation to feel her up. “I don’t think he really wants the kids. I know Patty doesn’t, she doesn’t even like them.” Patty. The second wife. “It’s only … some men are just shits, you know that? And it’s like they’ve got to prove it every now and then.”

  It was not a proposition I was prepared to argue. It takes something of a shit to cruise a Socially Responsible Singles session, the object to milk his gland.

  Some men are shits. All men are snakes. Two sentient women reflecting on my gender.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t drop this on you.” She smiled. “Especially as you were meant to be part of my game plan.” She put her sunglasses back on. “Look, I missed the bus, can you give me a ride to the airport? And that’s all I want from you, I promise.”

  I waited until Lily’s plane to Detroit pulled away from the gate. Her amniocentesis had indicated the child was a boy, her travel business was on the upswing, finally, cross your fingers, and she thought Harry would back off his threats, he was too cheap to go through a custody hearing anyway, I just needed someone to talk to, you’re like a priest, you know that, all you do is listen, like in confession, and boy, do the priests love me, I’m better than Court TV.

  “You can call me, you know.”

  “I’ll try not to, Jack. But thanks.” She gave me a quick kiss, then, as she started down the ramp, turned and said, “I’ll be okay.”

  I thought she would be. I had met her only twice, but Lily was a woman who expected to be bruised, and she also expected to prevail.

  Not a bad combination.

  I got stuck in traffic on my way home from LAX. As I turned up Chadbourne Avenue, I saw the television truck outside my house, and kept on driving past it.

  II

  It was a circus.

  Oprah broke the story. Blue Tyler had been discovered after all these years, only to disappear once again. She had a daughter, and Jacob King was the father. As I had refused to appear, I then easily became the villain of the Oprah scenario: I had seen and interviewed Blue Tyler and was trying to copyright her life, in hopes of getting a large book contract and multimillion-dollar movie deal; that I was scarcely broke and had no need for such a hustle went unmentioned. It was a slow news period, and after Oprah aired, finding Blue Tyler became a national scavenger hunt, with Rolling Stone, People, the National Enquirer, and the other sleazier supermarket tabloids holding out the prospect of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars for whoever found her. WHERE IS BLUE TYLER? ran a headline in the Los Angeles Times, and variants followed in newspapers across the country. The police department in Ypsilanti, Michigan, released the mug shots taken when Melba Mae Tyler was arrested there in 1979 for possession of controlled substances, and Herb Pallance, the manager of Farmer Dell’s in Hamtramck, scoured the surveillance videos at Location 27 and came up with a sequence showing Melba shopping; with computer enhancement, it was shown on Hard Copy, with Herb providing commentary on Melba Mae Toolate’s clever use of rebate coupons, especially on double-coupon day at Farmer Dell’s. Herb also mentioned that he remembered me, and that he suspected from the start that I was taking advantage of Melba, because he was the only one who had believed her when she said she was an old-time movie star, a friend of Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, and people like that, it was something she did not want to talk about and he respected that, unlike me. People ran a cover story, under the slash, WHO WAS BLUE? WHERE IS MELBA?, with the cover photo a shot of Melba Mae Toolate pushing a loaded shopping cart at Farmer Dell’s; that same week, both Time and Newsweek put Blue on the cover, the Time cover showing Blue receiving her baby Oscar from Clark Gable, while Newsweek’s cover was a photo of Blue and Jacob King at the premiere of Red River Rosie. Every day, there were Blue sightings. In Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon, and New Mexico; in Louisiana, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. Camera crews nested outside Chuckie O’Hara’s house in the Hollywood Hills, and telecopters flew over Arthur French’s ranch in Nogales, not realizing that he and his knee replacements were still in residence at Willingham; the nightly news shows ran clips from Little Sister Susan and Carioca Carnival and Lily of the Valley and Red River Rosie. As Blue’s favorite director, Chuckie was interviewed on all the major networks and cable systems, and the grainy newsreel footage of his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee was replayed from coast to coast. Arthur kept out of sight, not even contacting me, his silence a reprimand. Once more my picture was in the news, and the photographs no newspaper or magazine or TV channel could resist were the mug shots taken after I was arrested for killing Shaamel Boudreau, front and side views, with the booking number NYPD-45-23-9387. “The Curse of the Brodericks” was another story line, with all the old and salacious stories of sex and money and intrigue in high places. On Prime Time, Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer agreed that the public’s right to know mandated that I share any information I might have about Blue Tyler, and that I answer questions about whether I had a sexual relationship with her, the first time this came up. My alleged attempts to copyright Blue’s life became a Nightline show about journalistic ethics, with R. W. Apple of The New York Times pondering the responsibility of the press, as usual ponderously (how that responsibility applied to me I was not sure, although it was a subject I had seen him cogitate on frequently on TV, usually after the press had overlooked a savings-and-loan or atomic-waste scandal); Ted Koppel said I had declined an opportunity to appear on the show “for whatever reasons of his own, reasons he must think valid” (“Or profitable,” R. W. Apple interrupted), and Pauline Kael talked about the dark and perverted sexuality of Blue Tyler’s film presence; she was the only one on the show who made any sense. Then Geraldo. With three women who claimed to be Blue Tyler’s daughter, one even saying she had been in touch with her at a homeless community in Alaska, via a Ouija board. Inside Edition was contacted by Maury Ahearne, and, after a deal paying him $7,500 for one-time use was negotiated, he went on the air with the photos of Meta Dierdorf, her bush and her breasts distorted on camera by squiggly lines, and with the letters identifying the mystery woman of Blue’s youth. Maury neglected to say how he had come upon these finds, nor was he asked; he also hired my agent to represent him, both for television appearances and for future sales of the Meta Dierdorf photograph, the Blue Tyler letters, and what my agent called “other evidentiary material in his possession,” meaning, I suspected, those tapes of Blue’s that he had duped. Unsolved Murders reran its old segment “Who Killed Meta Dierdorf?” with a coda added about Meta’s liaison with J. F. French; the coda also subjected J.F.’s alibi—his attendance at the preview screening of January, February in Santa Barbara the night of the murder—to a scrutiny so filled with innuendo that it would have been actionable had he still been alive. Both Raul Flaherty’s Messenger of Death: The Life and Times of Jacob King and Waldo Kline’s Jake: A Gangster’s Story were scheduled for reissue by their publishers. August Johnson, the manager of the Autumn Breeze trailer park and RV encampment, was interviewed by Bryant Gumbel on the Today show, and on Good Morning America, eyewitnesses in Detroit described to Charles Gibson how Eduardo (“Teddy”) Burke fell to his death from the upper deck at Tiger Stadium on the day he became Blue Tyler’s seventh husband. On the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Norman Podhoretz argued that the cou
ntry’s morbid fascination with a woman who was both promiscuous and a sexual deviate and who had given birth out of wedlock to a killer’s child showed the deleterious effect of liberalism on the nation’s moral core. That Blue might have had a lesbian affair with Meta Dierdorf made her a cover girl on The Advocate, and the New York Film Festival announced that it would open its fall festival with a retrospective of Blue Tyler’s films, with Blue as the event’s special guest of honor.

  There was only one problem.

  No one could find Blue Tyler.

  In the end, she called Arthur.

  She had been on the road ever since she left Hamtramck, always heading west, however haphazardly, traveling by bus and Amtrak, sometimes hitchhiking, a week here, three weeks there, traveling light, with just the one old suitcase still held together by a piece of rope. Twice a month she would go to the Western Union office in whatever town or city she had stopped, call the number Jimmy Riordan’s legitimate people had given her years before, and wait for her semimonthly check to be telegraphed to her. She stayed in motels and RV camps, always paid cash in advance, and discouraged overtures of friendship. When the stories about her began to break and her photograph seemed to appear simultaneously on all the nation’s newsstands and television channels, she knew it was only a matter of time before she was discovered, and not in the studio-controlled way she would have chosen if she still had script approval of her own life.

  It was when this realization finally struck home that she telephoned Arthur in Nogales, only the second time she had called him in forty-two years, and the first since her arrest in Ypsilanti in 1979. The Mexican maid said Arthur was still in Los Angeles recuperating from knee surgery, she could not give out the number, but if there was a message it would be relayed to him.