Even though it was eleven o’clock at night, I got Sterling on the phone in no time. I heard Mustard talking with Dex in the background. He wasn’t surprised. “He’s a shyster, ain’t he? A lip. He don’t need no sleep. They gotta keep moving or they die.”
Sterling listened while I briefly told him what had happened, then reiterated Dex’s desire for a meeting at Lincoln Heights.
“If what you’ve said is true,” Sterling said, the beginning of jubilance coloring his voice, “maybe we should hold off for a few days. With this man in custody, I should be able to secure Laird’s release in no time.”
“I only know Mr. Theroux requested a meeting with you and Mr. Wyndham tomorrow, Mr. Sterling. Shall we say ten in the morning?”
“Well, that’s done,” I told Dex when I got off the phone. “But he didn’t go easy.”
“Course he didn’t,” Dex said, looking satisfied; like something had been confirmed. But he didn’t explain.
Mustard drove me home that night in the Sixteen, but we didn’t talk much. We were tired. More than tired. It had been the kind of day that sucks the goodness from your soul.
When I got in, the house was in silence and I was glad. It was possible I heard the radio going in the living room, maybe Marjorie and some of the boarders were listening to a late program, but I didn’t peek in to see. I went to the kitchen and prepared a small plate of “kippers” and a few crackers and a glass of milk to take up to my room, creeping through the house as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to disturb anyone, sure. But, more than that, I really just wanted to be alone with my thoughts.
And my thoughts. What did I think that night? It’s hard to pinpoint now. I know this: I felt a hollowness of soul I’d seldom felt before or since. A kind of emptiness where a happy fullness most often is. I know that I believed in evil on that night. I believed in all the great evil in the world. And I saw it in places where it’s normally invisible. I saw it reaching for me in spots that were usually safe.
Despite my exhaustion, that night it took the sandman a long time to send me over. Several times as I reached the bridge that leads from consciousness to sleep, I felt a hand reach for me. And I stepped back.
When I finally slept, it was a deep, dark sleep. I didn’t dream at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Dex, Mustard and I were uncharacteristically quiet. There was none of the joking and horsing around that usually marked Dex and Mustard’s relationship. And none of the cheerful reprimands from me while trying to keep them in line.
Dex and I were having coffee at our own desks when Mustard came in. Out of habit, he made himself a cup, then left most of it steaming on Dex’s desk when we got underway.
The mood continued on our ride to Lincoln Heights, then in the building as we passed through the gauntlet of flatfoot desk jockeys on our way to meet with Wyndham and Sterling. It was exactly the same path Dex and I had taken more than once. But it was different today, something had changed. Neither of us said it, but we knew. We would have been hard pressed to say exactly how.
Wyndham and his lawyer were altered, as well, in quite different ways than the three of us. There was a delicious joy to them both and they did a lot of back clapping and made many congratulatory sounds. For my part, I was surprised to feel myself recoil when Wyndham touched my hand.
No one noticed.
Neither of them saw how subdued the three of us were or that our interactions with them were not quite what they’d been. I couldn’t fault them that. To be honest, at that moment it would have been difficult for me to pinpoint what was different. But different it was.
“Thank you both for seeing us,” Dex said when the back clapping was under control and we’d found seats around a scarred table in the farthest corner of the room. Even so, their bright mood earned scowls from several inmates chatting softly with their own visitors. There was an unwritten code around visiting at a jail. I’d gleaned that. No matter what the inmate was charged with, and how they likely behaved in other areas of the jail, in the visiting area, everyone was quiet, respectful, on their best behavior. Visits for most were so rare that it wasn’t a privilege anyone wanted to risk. If there was a code, Wyndham was breaking it. I doubted that he cared.
“Well, of course, we were happy to see you.” Wyndham said, beaming. “After all, what else do I have to do? Though Sterling here is confident all will be finished with this nightmare in just a few days time. Perhaps I can take you three for dinner then? Or out on my yacht. Gosh, but I’ve missed the water!”
Dex ignored him. He dispensed with any preamble, going straight for the core of the matter. I envied him his nerve.
“Laird,” he said, “I asked you once—the very first time we met, right here—I asked you straight out if you killed that girl. And now, I’m asking you again.”
“What?” The confusion on Wyndham’s face would have been comical if I hadn’t known just how serious Dex was about his question.
“You heard me,” Dex said.
“I heard you. Yes. But I guess I can’t believe what I heard.” Laird Wyndham wasn’t smiling now.
“Yes, yes,” Sterling said, his usually calm demeanor ruffled. He reminded me of a park pigeon getting the bum’s rush from a free meal. “What’s the meaning of this? These matters have all been dealt with. You told me yourself: they have the killer in custody now. It’s all been resolved.”
“Well, they certainly have a guilty party in custody. But what’s he guilty of? Not murder,” Dex said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
There it was; out in the open. The thing neither Dex nor Mustard nor I had said yet out loud. The thing we’d all felt in our hearts. We believed Xander Dean, as unlikely as it seemed. We knew what he was and we suspected what he was not. He was capable of many things. Hell: he might even be capable of murder. But did he kill Fleur MacKenzie? We did not think he had. That, of course, left the question: if not him, then … who?
“See, it’s all in the timing,” Dex said. “As you know, I saw Rhoda Darrow approach you at the party. She made sure of that. Her job was to catch you in a compromising situation. There would be scandal and outcry. Maybe you’d even lose your contract with the studio. People would stop going to your films. Only nothing went according to plan, did it?”
Wyndham didn’t move at all. He did not blink. His hand betrayed no tic. We looked at him, all of us, waiting for his answer. Finally it came.
“I guess not.” It came out a whisper, but it seemed to echo in the space between us.
“Tell us what you found.” Dex’s voice was gentle now. A father talking to an errant son. A friend. A lover. Someone who cared and would never hurt him. “Tell us,” he said again, even softer this time.
“The girl ….” Wyndham stopped. Ran the insides of his fingers across a stubbled chin. Began again. “The girl was dead.” He ran his eyes over each of us in turn. He was looking, I think, for understanding. I can’t imagine what he found instead.
“Dead?” Dex said, as though surprised, but I could tell he was not. Who was acting now? “But how could that be? If she was dead, wouldn’t you have cried out? Called for help? Why would you just have left her there?”
Wyndham didn’t say anything now. Just shook his head, somewhat helplessly, I thought.
“All right,” Dex picked up the thread again, “you don’t know? I’ll help you out, because I do know … you didn’t say anything, because you knew who did it.”
“I think this has gone far enough.” Steward Sterling suddenly seemed like a child to me. A child playing dress-up in his lawyer father’s clothes. It was something in the helplessness I heard in his voice, despite this attempt at subterfuge, at bravado. There was a rub in the timbre; a quaver, though not a break. And there was something loose and suddenly hopeless, though this might be imagining on my part. “My client doesn’t know anything about anything. Haven’t we been telling you that all this time?”
Dex kicked back in his chair
, the very picture of confident comfort. I wondered how much of it was an act. “Oh, I know what he’s been saying. And I know what you’ve been saying, too, Sterling. Now I wanna hear the truth.”
“I think you’d better leave,” Sterling said, beginning to rise.
“You’re going to kick me out of jail? That’s rich. But no.” Dex’s voice was suddenly cold. “Sit the hell back down. We’re gonna talk this out.”
To my surprise, Sterling took his seat.
“Now I’m gonna tell you a story,” Dex said, once again the picture of relaxed comfort. He might have been sitting in his own office chair. He might have been reclining in his apartment, holding forth to the rats and the cockroaches, tipping back a bourbon and saying what was what. “And the two of you? You’re gonna listen up. Here we go: once upon a time, there were two men. Maybe, for a little while, they fell in love. Or maybe—just maybe—one of them did. And the other, well maybe he was never capable of it in the first place.”
I looked at Dex, really looked at him. What was he saying? I looked at Mustard: his face held the same expression I imagine mine did. Neither of us said anything. No one did. We just wished Dex would get on with it. We wanted to see where this was going.
“But that don’t come into it for a while. Here’s what does: the one man—the one in love—he gave everything he had to give, and it was a lot. The other man, he didn’t reject the first man’s love. He took it. But he took love from everywhere. It was never enough. He took it from other men, from women, from crowds of people who went to see him in the pictures and read about him in movie magazines. Everyone loved him.”
Wyndham was now eerily quiet. Nothing moved about him. But I noticed he had closed his eyes.
Sterling, on the other hand, looked like a man close to breaking. I felt sorry for him, though it’s hard to explain that. Given the circumstances. Given what I know, what I figured right then.
“The two of you fought that night,” Dex’s voice was quieter now. We all had to strain to hear him. “I don’t know what about. I think it was about women, about how Steward needed more from Laird and Laird could only give less. You’d fought and Laird, you went to the party. But Steward, you lurked around, not sure what to do with yourself. You wanted to make it up with Laird—even tried to call him a few times—but he didn’t even seem to care.
“You were outside the bungalow when the girl was brought into the room. You saw her through the window. You saw her naked. Waiting. You knew what her purpose was there: knew she was there to have sex with your lover.”
Lover. The word thudded into the room like an elephant. Laird and Steward had been lovers. Had, in fact, been in love. Of course they had. I’d never thought of it myself, but now that Dex had said it, it all made so much sense. Laird had chosen a wife who would not encumber him, who would allow him to continue to feed his appetites. And his appetites had been wide. Steward hadn’t understood that, not really. He’d fallen in love with Laird and had thought Laird returned the feeling. But Laird probably never had. Not really. Steward had, for Laird, been one of many. But for Steward, Laird had been the one.
None of this was reflected in their faces. Both men remained unchanged. Laird in that place of calm, Steward looking like a violin string: taut almost to the point of breaking.
“And you knew, too, that Laird would have sex with her. He always did, didn’t he? You couldn’t stand the thought of it. He claimed he loved you, but he could resist no temptation. Not the smallest one. And you were angry. Suddenly you were so angry, you couldn’t contain it. You wanted to kill someone. You wanted to kill Laird. But you loved Laird. You could never kill him.”
“So he killed Fleur instead.” I spoke without knowing I was going to, shocked not only by what Dex was saying, but at how right—correct—it felt.
Had Dex expected he would make these accusations and that one of the men—perhaps both—would break down and confirm all he said as true? I think maybe he did expect that. Dex can play at being jaded all he likes. I know him better, though. At heart, he believes that, once you have the answer, justice will be done.
If Dex did hope that, he was left disappointed. There was no weeping confession. No confirmation to aid in bringing matters to their rightful conclusion.
Wyndham never blinked, never moved. In fact, I never heard his voice again. I did hear Steward’s though. “I don’t want to hear another word of this,” he said tightly. “I think you’d better leave before I call the guards and have you removed by force.”
Dex didn’t say anything more but, for me, he didn’t need to. No matter the outcome we knew—the five of us—we knew just what had transpired that night. It was possible that Xander Dean might swing for Fleur’s murder and Steward Sterling might remain free to defend a hundred guilty men and Laird Wyndham might have sex with a thousand willing starlets and still we knew what had really happened on that night.
Is that justice? That’s not justice. It’s just knowing. Sometimes that’s all we have. It just has to be enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I THOUGHT THAT was the end of it. I really did. Dex and I went back to the office. Mustard went off to fix things. We got back to our lives. Mostly insurance claims and cheating wives.
Months later, we heard that Xander Dean had been convicted for the murder of Fleur MacKenzie. I brought the newspaper into Dex’s office, plunked myself down and read the item to him. It was short: Dean had been found guilty. There wasn’t a lot to say.
I felt a twinge, but Dex saw that twinge and he laid it to rest.
“You and me figure he didn’t kill that girl. Fact, we’re pretty sure he did not. They got him on the wrong murder, Kitty, but I’d lay money he’s killed someone sometime. Probably not just once, either. Life has a way of catching us up when we’re not looking. Life has a way of laying us flat when our heads are turned.”
“Are you talking about divine justice?” I asked.
Dex shrugged. Took a slug of bourbon, a hit of his smoke. Then he shrugged again. He seemed to be thinking about how he’d answer me, but I could sense the shape of the words before he sent them into the air.
“That’d be a fancy way of putting it, I guess. ‘Divine justice.’ Sounds almost pretty when you say it like that. And the thing I’m talking about? I’m not so sure it’s pretty. But I like to think that, in the end, a man gets what he deserves.”
“Do you really believe that, Dex?”
He looked me square in the face and nodded his head. “I do.”
It was that look in Dex’s eyes I thought about when, a few weeks later, I was flicking through a movie magazine and a tiny item caught my eye. There had been an incident aboard the Woebegone Dream. While the boat was anchored off Ensenada, the actor’s trusted friend and lawyer had unfortunately slipped into the sea.
“It was a freak accident, so unfortunate,” Wyndham was quoted as saying. There’d been a group of people staying on the yacht, including a starlet named Belle Soul who, judging from the photos, had the longest legs that had ever been. The photographer had posed Wyndham and the girl in front of the yacht. Wyndham’s face was composed in sad lines and Belle was taking a run at it too, but it also looked like the face of a woman who thought her life was about to begin.
Wyndham had told the journalist that, sometime in the night, after everyone had gone to bed, Sterling had apparently gone out on deck and fallen into the drink. No one had been around to see him and pull him back.
In the morning, when it was discovered Steward wasn’t on board, the coast guard had been called and the tender dispatched with crew to look for the missing man. They’d found him a few hours later some ways distant. He was floating. And he was quite dead.
“He was a wonderful man,” Wyndham had told the magazine, and there it was in black and white. “A dear friend. He will be missed.”
I thought about divine justice again then. I couldn’t help it. However it had been dealt out. Had what Wyndham told the magazine been true? M
aybe. Maybe Sterling had just wandered out on deck and tripped, fallen overboard. End of story, end of tale. Maybe Wyndham had killed him, to get him out of the way. Or maybe Sterling and his broken heart had taken a chance with the sea.
From my perspective, though, it all amounted to the same thing. As Dex had said: Divine justice.
There were no signs of foul play.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Death Was in the Picture represents a careful concoction of reality and fantasy. Or perhaps fantasy is too strong a word. More like: a blend of history and what-might-have-beens and even a few perhaps-weres-but-no-one-is-talking-about-them.
Kitty, of course, is fictional, as are Dex, Mustard and the other major characters in the book. A few historical characters have been included, but they skate at the periphery of our adventure and are not central to the action as we experience it. For example, Joseph Breen was a real person, though the situations in which he plays are fictional. He was a noted anti-Semite, though. We have some of his writings and they are as ugly as you can imagine. Daniel Lord was a real person (could I have given the priest that name? I think not), and it is widely thought that the writing of the very first Production Code document was his or mostly so. The Masquers Club exists in Los Angeles and has done since 1925. A splinter of this organization formed the Screen Actors Guild in 1933. The Masquers Ball is my own invention, but the possibility of it was just too delicious to pass up.
What tempted me about this storyline was the fact that the more research I did, the more I realized that not only was it a story worth telling, but aspects of it perhaps needed to be told. Fiction being what it is—particularly fiction told by a first person narrator—the book couldn’t actually be about the themes that give the story heart and pulse. There are shadows of conspiracy here and censorship and sharp loss. But, for the most part, they must remain as hints and shadows, secrets of history, if you will. Certainly, it would be implausible for our Kitty to discover answers to questions that she lacks the inside knowledge to even ask. And so we see the questions at the edge of things, with the darkness swirling about her feet. Mysteries within mysteries. But life is like that.
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