People in movies have a sensational now about them and a mysterious past. That’s what acting is: when Miss Julie first appears you have to hold your breath because of this sweaty, barefoot young woman wanting to dance now, on midsummer’s night, with castanets in her nervous hand; but you have to see all the way back down an uncertain corridor to her past. Gilda was like that, as sexy as a photograph: she made you notice and left you wondering.
She laughed and tossed her strawberry-blonde hair when men wondered why she hadn’t been in movies. And she never let on that she could have been. That was too much like boasting, and Gilda wanted presence to speak for her past. Explaining was so unglamorous. But one day in 1938, she could have been in a picture. Gilda was born in Santa Monica in 1921, and she was a girl who used to hang around the studios. She got noticed. One day a fellow asked her if she could dance, and was she old enough. “Sure,” she said straightaway, never liking to be seen thinking. They were making Strike Up the Band at Metro and she was in the chorus if she wanted for the “Do the Conga” number, with Busby Berkeley as the choreographer.
And Gilda was there, waiting for wardrobe, when this other guy came by.
“Hi, doll,” he said. “You sing a little?”
“Sure.”
“One look and I knew it. Want to work?”
“I’m working here.”
“Days, right? I mean a position.”
“What sort of position?”
“I got a boat. Offshore. Nice class of people we have. I run a show and it’s quality stuff. You know Errol Hill?”
“No.”
“He produces for us.”
“Singing and dancing?”
“Exactly.”
“What would I make?”
“Why don’t we talk on the way?”
The guy was Tony Cornero and he had worked out how you could get outside legal city limits off the Santa Monica beaches. So he had a big boat out there, the Rex, as a pleasure palace with gambling, and he had a ferry service—water taxis—going from the pier. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and Cornero was soft on Gilda, which suited her. She did a couple of numbers every night, and then she’d circulate, talking to the customers. Tony was a very faithful guy. He never went with anyone else, and Gilda respected that. So she flirted, but she kept herself for him.
Well, Earl Warren, the California attorney general, got after the boat and when he busted them, Cornero took Gilda to Las Vegas. They stayed there for a few years, and in 1945 they went to Havana. But Tony had the notion to start up the gambling boat again after the war, and he went back to California. Gilda remained in Cuba because of Ballin Mundson. He was an older man, gray-haired with a scar on his face and a dangerous gentleman act. He had a casino in Argentina but he came to Havana several times a year for a “holiday.” He spent a lot of his time there, with the Germans living on the island. In 1945, Mundson asked Gilda to marry him. He told her he would overlook her checkered past, hold no grudges or suspicions, and take her as she was. She never thought she was anything she shouldn’t be. This tolerance was like iced water on your tummy as you soaked in the tub. It frightened her. But Mundson was attractive: the more condescending he was the more she wanted him. She wanted to be in bed with him so she could examine his scar.
They married and he took her to Buenos Aires. Mundson had a manager at the casino, Johnny Farrell, and Gilda could tell that he was jealous of her. He thought she had disturbed the nice arrangement he had with Mundson. At first she wondered if Johnny was in love with Ballin, but she never saw any evidence, so she decided it was just a money and power thing. She got used to Farrell being frosty with her; she enjoyed it. In return, she let Johnny see her talking to other men so he’d have to decide whether to tell Mundson or not. He got this constipated face and held his silence.
Ballin Mundson had a secret deal with the Germans in South America. Except that Ballin was cheating them, so some of them came to Buenos Aires to settle with him. He killed one of them and got away in a small plane, but the plane crashed in the sea and everyone assumed he was dead.
Johnny took over the club, and Gilda started to like him. He was more relaxed without Ballin and his swordstick. Gilda was always drawn to men who didn’t like her; it made her feel the more seductive. But Johnny was angry with her, told her he was guarding her for Mundson. Keeping me prisoner? asked Gilda. Just to irritate Johnny, she did an act in the floorshow, “Put the Blame on Mame,” with a striptease that made him stiff with embarrassment. If Johnny wanted her, Gilda thought, why lie to himself?
Mundson wasn’t dead, he was in Rio. He came back one night, and he just took it for granted that Johnny and Gilda were lovers. People always had their minds made up about her, as if she were their invention. But old Uncle Pio shot Mundson when he went after her. People she hardly thought of were often waiting to rescue her. This time Mundson was really dead.
“We should get away,” Gilda told Johnny.
“The two of us?”
“Sure.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Don’t, if you don’t want to.”
“Do you love me?”
“Sure.”
“How do I know?”
“Ballin knew.”
They went to Miami, and Johnny ended up working for Santos Trafficante. He and Gilda were married. But nothing worked out well for Johnny. The more he mistrusted her, the more she provoked him. And the Mob didn’t appreciate a man who couldn’t keep his wife under control. Johnny was found dead in the harbor in 1961. Gilda moved around. She had been Hyman Roth’s mistress for a while in the 1950s, and she was with Fredo Corleone for a time. These men liked her because she had been with Tony Cornero. They loved her out of loyalty to the code.
Today, she’s in a home in Pasadena. She has bad arthritis and needs constant nursing. A check for her bills comes in the first of every month from a Florida bank. That’s why the nurses still gossip about her. They tell stories that awful gangsters are paying for her because of all she did for them. They’ve assumed that her disability is a reward for being so bad. So they chatter away in the gap between this sad old lady and her shady past.
HANK QUINLAN
Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, 1958,
directed by Welles
On October 4, 1957, his sixtieth birthday, Hank Quinlan would be obliged to retire as police chief of Los Robles. How could that Libra keep calm at such a prospect? It was just as Tanya had told him, across the border, when he asked her to read his fortune: “You haven’t got any. Your fortune is all used up.” Quinlan knew that. He was clear in his mind that he would die anyway, from candy bars and corn chips, in his stinking house, if he didn’t have to pull his terrible weight around on police business. So he acted accordingly. It had always been a likely conclusion.
He had been born in 1897 in San Diego, the son of an Irish-American stoker in the navy and a Mexican woman. He was a half-breed when the type was rare and the name damning. As a child, he had thought it was too much bad luck, and contemplated an adult life in which he moved away and opted for one race or the other. His name was American, and he could pass for white, but in his feelings he suspected he was more Mexican. He believed in horror, in the Church and in fortune-telling; he hadn’t much faith in making money or being a success. Occasionally it occurred to him that there was a dark fate contained in his misfortune. For he had a mind that dealt in logic and intuition simultaneously, guessing a thing and working out how it might be so.
When he was seventeen, he married a girl, the only girl who didn’t sneer at his mixed blood. She was a Danish blonde, Eva Anderson, and he was proud of her. He joined the city police force and enjoyed wearing the uniform. In 1916, Eva was murdered. She was strangled in their own home. There was blood in her blonde hair. There were a few things stolen and there were words in Spanish daubed on the wall in her blood. So the stupid detectives worked it out that Mexican thieves had done it. But Quinlan had a hunch it was another Dane who had
been after Eva before Hank came along. He talked with the detectives. He even said, “Look, I’m half Mex. I think I know.” But they told him he was distraught and he should leave the case to them. Everyone in the San Diego police felt good when they got a couple of Mexican kids and charged them. The two were executed, but Quinlan knew they were innocent.
Next year, the Dane enlisted in the army, so Quinlan followed him. They went to the same training camp, the same regiment, the same troop ship. Quinlan never talked to the Dane, never gave a hint of knowing who he was, and the Dane avoided him. But he watched Quinlan. Except that if you’re fighting an enemy, it is hard to watch out for one of your own, too. One day in a Belgian trench, the Dane got it, a bullet in the forehead just below his helmet. Not in the back, that might have been noticed. Quinlan called to him, so the guy would turn around, the only time he ever spoke to the man.
When Quinlan returned from the war, he moved to Los Angeles and he was promoted to detective. He was on the William Desmond Taylor case, and he got to question Mabel Normand one sweltering afternoon in her bungalow at Sennett. He had another of his hunches, but then the word came down to go vague on the case. That sickened him. He didn’t like the big cities and having to work with other cops and the D.A.’s office. Quinlan couldn’t abide being denied when he was right; he looked for a smaller setup, one he could arrange in his own way.
So in 1925 he moved to Los Robles. He was an assistant at first, but he could see that in a few years he would make chief, and the place suited him. Los Robles was two small towns split by the border. Los Robles was American, and Robles was Mexican. It was the one place Quinlan had known where his own mixed blood felt natural. He spoke good Spanish, so he made useful contacts on the Mexican side. With that, he became an even better cop than just hunches and hard work could manage. From 1929 onward, he was chief and he ran things the way he wanted. There was action in a border town, of course—knifings, immigration matters, some gambling and whoring, a little drugs. The Grandis controlled most of it, and they came to an understanding with Quinlan. They kept things tidy, they stayed in business and he got the “license fee” every year. It happened everywhere, and there were no outsiders and no undue violence. The wrong people never got hurt or upset. Los Robles got a good reputation, and it became a favorite honeymoon spot. The town managers appreciated Quinlan, even if they didn’t invite him to banquets. They gave him every latitude and kept out of his way.
There were two murders in Quinlan’s time, and for one of them there was no evidence. Hank knew who the killer was, so he told his deputy, Pete Menzies, to keep riding the guy until his nerve cracked. One day in 1935 they went to call on the suspect, and he came out at them headlong with a gun. Menzies was dreaming. He slipped in surprise and Quinlan had to protect him. The guy fired his gun; Hank was hit in the leg. Menzies shot the killer dead. But Quinlan had a limp ever afterward, and he put on a lot of weight. Menzies was full of guilt and gratitude for Hank, and he swore he’d never desert him.
Quinlan didn’t marry again. He was the recipient of pity; ladies in Los Robles baked pies for him and invited him to Sunday dinner. But, in truth, he hadn’t enjoyed marriage much. Eva had always wanted to talk and Hank was a more reflective person; his hunches came out of being quiet and peaceful. Living alone didn’t trouble him. Whenever he felt horny, he’d just stroll over the border and spend the night at Tanya’s. She never talked when he didn’t want it, and she could always guess what he was hoping for without him having to tell her. The two of them trusted instinct.
From 1950 onward, Quinlan saw retirement coming up. There was a deal of time still, sure, but he knew what he would have to do. He waited for the right kind of case. By 1957, he was restless because nothing had come along in his damned settled town. Hank had done what he could to stir things up. He’d spread talk that had Joe Grandi worried; Joe kept on coming to him with wild versions of his own rumors. Hank had told that Mexican shoe clerk, Sanchez, that Marcia Linnekar had the hots for him.
That did it. Just over the border, and on his side too, Rudy Linnekar’s automobile was blown up. With Rudy driving and his latest girl friend on the blue leather bench seat beside him. What was left of the girl they could strain through a sieve, but they found one of Rudy’s shoes on Main Street—with his foot still in it. Much too much dynamite had been used, an extravagant amount, suggesting spike and passion.
Quinlan knew that Sanchez had done it, just as he knew Rudy would warn a Mexican off seeing his daughter while Marcia would welcome sex with color. Hank planned to frame him as he’d done before with thieves, and then let Pete Menzies realize how he’d rigged the case. If that didn’t quite work—because Pete might stay loyal—here was a bonus for fortune: a solemn Mexican narcotics man, Mike Vargas, who had just happened to be near the car when it blew, just about to kiss his new blonde American wife. Hank couldn’t see how Mexicans were getting away with stuff like that with white women, even if this one was a thick armed tramp and Vargas too much a fool to see it.
Vargas tried to interfere. He thought Sanchez must be innocent, because the kid had appealed to him as a fellow Mexican. Vargas had seen the shoebox empty in Sanchez’s house where later Hank had “found” the sticks of explosive. So Quinlan just tweaked his Mexican tail. He got a gang to go over to the motel where Mrs. Vargas was staying and they raped her some and shot heroin into her so she was a wreck. Of course, Vargas could never have worked it all out: he had lousy instincts. But Pete was around to help him and Hank let the trap close in like a warm sleep.
He knew Pete had a recorder on him, he was so jumpy but so awkward; he moved as if he had a boil under his arm. Quinlan let the whole story spill out down by the filthy river, and there was Vargas lumbering along behind them so dumb he couldn’t even keep the reverb down on the player. In the very end, it was Menzies who shot Quinlan. But Hank plugged Pete, too, and the two old friends went within minutes of each other. Hank had a hunch that way they could be on the same troopship to wherever they were going. There was never any reason why a cop who could think for himself had to submit to retirement.
RAMON MIGUEL VARGAS
Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, 1958,
directed by Orson Welles
He was “Miguel” in Mexico and “Mike” in the U.S., a man of twin allegiances, a Mexican citizen, an investigator of unworldly talent and distinction, but someone not entirely trusted. It was said of him that Vargas could never turn a blind eye. It made him a liability, an earnest man in a land of necessary compromise.
Ramon Miguel was born in Mexico City in 1926, the son of Escobar Vargas, a teacher and writer of adventure stories, and Jane Shannon, an American woman of considerable private fortune who had come to Mexico to buy Aztec treasures for her father’s museum. At their level of society, a mixed marriage was a mark of originality, so long as the couple lived south of the border. Miguel was born and raised in a lovely house in the mountains, with servants, horses and an extensive library. He spoke English and Spanish, he learned American manners and jokes, and his parents looked forward to him having an illustrious career.
In 1944, he entered the University of Mexico, where he studied history, captained the polo team and was a convivial member of a conservative dining club. Upon his graduation, he was awarded a scholarship so that he could attend UCLA for two years to study American government. While there, he wrote a thesis, The Serpent and the Eagle: The Mexican-American Relationship, which was subsequently published in both countries and reviewed by William F. Buckley as “political science waving the flag of Ouida … yet sound for all that.”
Vargas returned to Mexico City in 1950 and was made an inspector in the Security Division of the police. In 1953, he was transferred to the Narcotics Division, and in the succeeding years he was prominent in a number of arrests and seizures along the border. By then, he had a reputation for diligence and probity not easily escaped; it made the government very content to confine him to the detection of drugs. It was in 1957 that
he met and fell in love with a young American woman, Susan Benyon, who was working as a courier in the area of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.
When their marriage was announced, a government official spoke to Miguel’s father, intimating that possibly Susan was a risky consort to so promising a career. The official could not speak unequivocally, but Susan’s father was under suspicion for involvement in drug trafficking, and there were unquenchable rumors that Susan herself transported drugs and might even have insinuated herself with Miguel to facilitate that work. Miguel was outraged by this devious manifestation of racial prejudice, but in view of the concern he did agree to marry discreetly and honeymoon in Los Robles. “It’ll be perfect,” promised the brave Susan.
The day before the nuptials, he dozed serenely after he and Susan had made siesta love. When he awoke, there was his betrothed, smiling at him, and showing him a fresh plaster cast on her arm.
“Michael, my dear one, guess what?”
“What?” Impeccable in English, but not supple.
“I broke my arm.”
“As we made love?”
“No, you silly. I slipped out of bed and I fell on the bathroom floor. I actually heard the crack—I was afraid it might have woken you.”
“I never stirred.”
“No, I know. You had excelled. So I simply ran over to the hospital and they set me—all in an hour. Wasn’t that splendidly efficient?”
“Perhaps you will not be fit enough for the honeymoon.”
“Don’t you dare to even think that!”
So they were married, with the train on Susan’s dress draped very artfully across her fat arm in all the photographs. They made their way to Los Robles and got caught up in all the troubles of the Linnekar killing. Mike was so solicitous, he sent Susan off to a motel while he consulted on the case with the horrible, fat police chief who smelled of refried beans. How was Mike to know that the motel in question was out in the middle of nowhere, with a hopped-up jitterbug as the only authority in sight? It wasn’t his fault that the gang of greasers had come by, with a boss woman who sounded like the Devil, and done such unspeakable things to her. No, she didn’t want to talk about it, or care to remember the look in their bloodshot eyes.
Suspects Page 27