by Helen Knode
Dorene moved her lower lip. Doug looked at McManus for a reading. McManus shrugged and crossed his fingers.
Doug’s beeper beeped. He stood up and pointed me to a love seat in the corner. There was so much junk piled around, we could’ve hidden almost anywhere. McManus ducked into the kitchen. He knew the terrain; he didn’t kick any paper sacks. Doug crouched behind the love seat with me.
Ten seconds went by ... twenty...
The screen door creaked. Hannah Silverman’s voice: “Mrs. Johnson?...We’ve never met but you know Daddy, my father, Jules Silverman.”
Hannah was putting on saccharine sweet. The screen banged shut, footsteps approached the couch. I smelled expensive perfume and heard bracelets clink.
Hannah said, “A friend of mine came to see you this morning. Daddy needs to know what you told him.”
Silence. A small swish and a thud. I guessed that Hannah sat down on the coffee table.
She said, “What did you tell my friend, Mrs. Johnson?” Her tone was wheedly and singsong.
More silence.
Hannah said, “What is it?”
More silence. Hannah said, “I don’t understand. What’s in the kitchen?”
I peeked over the back of the love seat. Dorene was pointing out where McManus was hiding. She had her arm lifted; she had enough energy for that.
Hannah said, “Is there something in your kitchen?”
Dorene nodded. She had energy for that, too. I signaled to Doug: Dorene's blowing our cover.
Doug stood up right away. I stood up with him. Dorene made a whimper sound. Hannah swiveled around and saw us. Standing up, she said, “This is entrapment.”
McManus appeared from the kitchen. Hannah looked down at Dorene. Dorene closed her eyes.
Hannah said to Doug, “You haven’t proven anything.”
What had happened to the screaming princess? She was being superrestrained—not like her normal self.
Doug said, “We’d like to speak to your father.”
Hannah dug out her car keys. “Daddy had a heart attack last night. It was a mild one, but he thinks it’s time to clear the air before you people kill him.”
At “heart attack” McManus and Doug exchanged a look. Hannah said, “I appreciate your loyalty, Mrs. Johnson. I’ll tell Daddy.”
Dorene sat there with her eyes closed. Hannah walked outside; Doug followed her. I watched them through the front window.
Gadtke stepped out from the bushes and caught Hannah. He handed her his cell phone. I heard him say, “Call Daddy-poo. Tell him he can have a lawyer present.”
McManus leaned down and poked Dorene. “You’re faking it, lady. Now we know.”
Dorene did not twitch, did not move. She looked mummified.
JULES SILVERMAN was convalescing at home. I reviewed what I knew about him as Hannah walked us through the house. Producer and philanthropist; liberal, recluse, perennial Hollywood cheese. The public saw Silverman as the conscience of the Industry. Movies buffs saw him as a spiritual heir to Louis Mayer: a producer of wholesome high-budget entertainment. He’d made mountains of money in the business, but never a great movie. His films were almost never revived except for Cinemascope festivals or festivals of kitsch. I’d only seen one Jules Silverman Presentation. It was a ’50s Bible epic—and one was enough.
Hannah led us into a huge den in a far wing. The den was slate and glass, the furniture was contemporary, and the art belonged in a national gallery. Jules collected the French Impressionists. An oil portrait of him and Hannah hung above the fireplace. The mantel showcased a single Oscar—his Irving Thalberg Award for producing. Awards, plaques, and tokens of presidential esteem filled the shelves. A model stood on a stand by the door; he’d built a cancer ward for a local hospital.
Hannah said, “Daddy?”
A big fire was burning in the fireplace. Jules Silverman sat in a wheelchair in front of it. He wore pajamas and a cashmere robe. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip and an oxygen cylinder; a plastic tube fed into one nostril. There was a table at his elbow. It held water, pills, a jug of carrot juice, and that card from Hannah I’d seen: “Daddy—love, love, love, forever and ever and ever.” A uniformed nurse sat behind him on a couch. She was reading Variety and fanning herself. The den was baking hot.
Hannah said, “Daddy, the police are here.” She had a wispy little-girl voice just for him.
Jules wheeled around and gave us a cold look up and down. Hannah bent over him whispering. The nurse took Variety and walked out of the room. We watched as Hannah fussed with Jules. Except for age and sex, the Silvermans were identical. And they had the same imperious edge. In Hannah it was snottiness; in Jules it was condescension. Hannah got down on the floor to adjust Jules’s pajama cuff. The cops exchanged a glance. I remembered what Steve Lampley had said about the demented father-daughter act.
Hannah stopped fussing and introduced us. Jules indicated the couch. Doug and I sat down. Jules wheeled himself to face Doug. Hannah pulled up an ottoman so she could sit by her father’s knee. McManus and Gadtke sat in chairs out of Jules’s line of sight.
Doug cleared his throat. Jules said, “You’re the detective who was involved in the Burger King incident.” His voice was strong.
Doug nodded.
“Then we find ourselves in a similar situation. Like you, I’m the victim of attempts to destroy my character and reputation with no basis in fact.”
I saw Gadtke nudge McManus and make the jerk-off sign—very discreet. The heat in the den was getting me drowsy; I almost smiled.
Doug opened his notebook. Jules said, “Yes, write this down. I did not murder Georgette Bauerdorf on the morning of October 12, 1944.”
Hannah stroked her father’s thigh. Jules said, “Write that down.”
Doug didn’t write it down. He said, “What is your relationship with Mrs. Dorene Johnson?”
“Dorene never told the Stenholm girl anything, because there is nothing to tell. The Stenholm girl came to me pretending that Dorene—”
Doug cut him off. “Please answer the question, Mr. Silverman.”
Hannah said, “You must stay calm, Daddy.” She squeezed his thigh and frowned at Doug.
Jules patted her. He said, “I met Dorene during the war. We socialized when she worked at Metro, but weren’t close. I haven’t seen her in forty years or more.”
Doug checked his notebook. “You did not visit Mrs. Johnson at the Casa de Amor in Culver City on Monday, August twenty-seventh?”
“No.”
“How long have you supported her financially?”
Jules nodded. “I was told you were a clever man.”
Gadtke made the jerk-off sign again. Only I saw it; McManus was watching the Silvermans.
Jules said, “It’s true, I pay Dorene’s bills. That sounds suspicious given what I just said about our relationship, but Dorene was the girlfriend of a very good friend. He left her with nothing, and it’s not as if Dorene could go out and work. You’ve met her—she’s been drinking heavily since I’ve known her. Some years ago she asked for help, and I’m fortunate to be able to make that kind of gesture.”
Silverman lifted a hand to indicate our fabulous surroundings. Doug checked his notebook. He said, “Miss Stenholm contacted you on Monday, August twenty-seventh. She claimed to have new information that implicated you in the death of Georgette Bauerdorf.”
Hannah said, “Arnie is such dreck.”
Jules said, “I don’t remember the precise date. She made several attempts to blackmail me.”
Doug said, “Mr. Tolback has provided a chronology for us.”
Hannah leaned up and whispered in her father’s ear. Doug said, “Miss Silverman?”
Hannah said, “I haven’t told Daddy what happened at Lynnda’s last night. I wanted to wait until he was feeling better.”
Doug said, “We’ve impounded your twenty thousand dollars, Mr. Silverman. It will be returned to you after we make our case.”
“You h
ave the negatives also, I trust.”
Hannah said, “It isn’t our twenty thousand dollars—it’s Lynnda’s. All this is her fault. Why should we pay for her negligence?”
Jules said, “And I’m not convinced she wasn’t involved in the blackmail herself.”
Hannah stroked his thigh. “Daddy, Lynnda called today. The police threatened her with a tax audit. She practically threatened me if you didn’t help her.”
Jules spread his hands to include all the cops. “You see how it is, gentlemen? When you reach my position, everyone wants something from you. I retired from public life because of the constant demands.”
Gadtke smirked. But I gave Jules credit. The cops had seen him naked and getting spanked, and he turned it from an embarrassment into a persecution conspiracy.
Doug said, “You were scheduled to attend a party given by Barry Melling for Scott Dolgin on the night of August twenty-seventh.”
Jules shook his head. “Melling told you that, no doubt. He called me from the party a number of times and begged me to come. He thinks he’s a friend of mine. He thinks he can use me to break into the film business.”
Hannah stroked her father’s thigh. She said, “Barry’s a bug.” Jules nodded. “You must understand something. The Stenholm girl didn’t actually think I murdered the other one. She wanted a movie deal. She couldn’t obtain it by valid means so she tried to extort it from me. But I don’t extort easily, and I don’t believe in free rides. My father repaired shoes in Boyle Heights. Everything I have, I earned the hard way.”
Jules coughed. It was a miniscule cough, but Hannah leaped up. She pressed a button on the wheelchair.
“I’m calling the nurse, Daddy! These people are leaving!”
Doug stood up. McManus and Gadtke followed his lead. Doug said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Silverman.”
The nurse burst in on the run. Hannah gave Jules a glass of water and a pill. Doug, McManus, and Gadtke walked out. I was slow to follow them; the heat had me half asleep and sweating.
Hannah caught up from behind and shoved my shoulder. She said, “Get out of this house!”
I stopped dead. We were alone in the hallway. I said, “If Barry’s a bug, why do you sleep with him?”
Hannah gasped.
“Or does he just lick your Gestapo boots?”
“You little nobody! I’ll have you fired—!”
I counted on my fingers. “Edward Abadi, Arnold Tolback, Barry Melling. You’re lucky your father is Jules Silverman. You’d never get laid otherwise.”
Hannah swung her arm back and tried to slap me. I ducked, she missed. I caught her off balance and pushed her into the wall. She fell over a Degas bronze and started to scream at me.
I ran outside and joined the cops on the front terrace. We crossed the circle drive to the fountain. The cops took off their sport coats and loosened their ties; everyone was sweating from the den. The spray from the fountain felt good. I thought about all the questions they should have asked Jules Silverman.
Gadtke pulled a dangly orange thing out of his jacket. It was a rubber chicken. He went, “Weeeeee! Ker-splash!” He tossed it into the fountain and let it bob around in the water.
Hannah stormed onto the terrace. She screamed, “Get that bitch off this property now!”
She stormed back into the house.
Doug raised his eyebrows at me. I said, “What about Ted Abadi, or the MGM transcripts stolen from Greta’s apartment? What about Silverman’s thumbprint on the lightbulb?”
Gadtke scooped the chicken out of the water. He squeezed its beak and did a chicken squawk. “I’m a self-made rooster! My pappy boffed little red hens in East L.A.! Now I have a big old coop in Malibu!”
Doug said, “Sergeant McManus checked the evidence locker. The lightbulb was discarded years ago.”
McManus nodded. “The note said that the glass broke.”
I said, “There’s still the lab report.”
Gadtke shook the chicken’s head. McManus said, “That isn’t sufficient. We need a confession or a sober Dorene— if she’ll retract her original testimony, and even then...”
Doug said, “It was a first interview. We were feeling Silverman out to gauge our shot at a confession.”
McManus nodded. I said, “Maybe the heart attack will help.” Gadtke pointed the chicken at Doug. The chicken squawked, “We both averted tragedy at Burger King! They tried to deep-fry my rubber ass for a sandwich!”
I laughed. Doug smiled and shook his head.
McManus said, “He’ll never confess. He’s had fifty-eight years to rationalize his conduct and convince himself he’s innocent.”
The chicken squawked. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to choke her! It was an accident!”
Gadtke grabbed the chicken’s neck. “He’s choking the chicken! Aagghh!”
Everybody had to laugh; even McManus laughed. I said, “But the heart attack could help. Silverman might be afraid of God.”
McManus said, “If he really did have a heart attack.”
Doug nodded. “If he did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WE LEFT McManus and Gadtke parked on the road above Jules Silverman’s compound. Gadtke had his cell phone out: he was checking medical sources for confirmation on the state of Silverman’s health. They told me that Jules pulled a sick number after Ted Abadi was murdered. He was suddenly diagnosed with kidney stones, pancreatitis, eczema, and a smorgasbord of other complaints. It restricted the Sheriff’s access for months.
I rode back to town with Doug. He took the coast highway east and turned inland at Sunset. I asked if that was the scenic route to Culver City. He said he didn’t want to drop me at the Casa de Amor just yet. He wanted to see the Bauerdorf apartments and the place where Neil Phillips and I had talked. I said fine, I didn’t have any better ideas.
Doug wasn’t in a discussing mood. I asked why he was anxious for a break in the case. He shook his head. Did someone give him a deadline? He shook his head. Why hadn’t he told me about the blackmail attempts plural? He’d heard it from Tolback a week ago? He shook his head again. He said he wanted to think and I could figure out the whys myself.
So he drove and I stared out the window at the plush real estate. By the time we hit Brentwood I was falling asleep. I dug out my herbal pep pills and swallowed four dry. Doug saw me make a face. He tapped my leg and pointed to the backseat. I looked behind, saw a bottle of water, reached for it, and drank down half in one breath. Doug didn’t comment. He checked his watch, then the clock on the dashboard. It was 6 P.M., and the going on Sunset was slow.
I couldn’t guess why he needed a break in the case. I could guess why he didn’t tell me about the blackmail attempts: he didn’t trust Greta. He’d decided early on she was mentally unstable. He’d known that her address and appointment books were fiction; he’d known that her revived career was fiction. Nothing she said in the last months of her life was reliable. Without corroboration, Doug wouldn’t believe she’d told Arnold Tolback the true facts.
Now we had partial corroboration. But I couldn’t see that it helped us much. When I laid out the whole scheme, it didn’t make sense.
Greta said she tried to blackmail Jules Silverman three times. The first try was in March. The last try was August 27, the day of the night she was murdered.
She used a different lever each time. The first time it was Steve Lampley’s library find—the transcripts for the abandoned book on the blacklist at MGM. The second time it was the picture of Silverman getting spanked. The third time it was Mrs. Dorene Johnson.
The second and third attempts happened for sure. Lynnda-Ellen and the Silvermans confirmed the second, the Silvermans confirmed the third. The first attempt was less sure. Jules had finessed it in the interview. He only mentioned Georgette Bauerdorf; he never mentioned the HUAC stool-pigeon stuff or selling out his Jewish colleagues. But two items said the first attempt happened. One: Hannah made Tolback fire Greta in March. Two: the transcripts
were stolen from Greta’s apartment sometime last winter. Technically they might be called a coincidence. Add them to Greta's claim and Steve Lampley’s suspicion and they were good enough for me.
What I didn’t get were the demands. Three blackmail attempts, three different levers—but the same demands all along?
Tolback said she’d asked for money and a movie deal. Jules Silverman said the same thing. So did Dale Denney’s misdelivered message: “My client says to forget the second part. It isn’t doable.”
But—
GB Dreams Big was barely conceived by last March. Why would Greta be thinking movie deal at that stage? More: why would she think her only chance for a deal was blackmail? I tended to believe Steve Lampley’s guess. Greta went after Jules the first time to dislodge Hannah’s alibi. She wanted a confession on Ted Abadi; she thought Hannah had killed him.
Then—
Greta wrote GB Dreams Big. She wrote it in the months between the first and second blackmails. Neil Phillips reworked it. He talked her out of naming Silverman the killer. They agreed to show the script to PPA when they were finished. But right before she was due to take GB Dreams Big to Len Ziskind, she tried to blackmail Jules again.
I lost the logic there.
I looked over at Doug; he was focused on traffic. Doug would say the logic stopped because she'd become mentally unstable. I had to factor that in. Did she forget about Ted Abadi? Why would she strong-arm Jules for a movie deal when they hadn’t gotten PPA’s response to GB Dreams Big? When PPA hadn’t seen it yet?
I snapped—
It was something Tolback said. “Len and Jules are tight—Jules has money in PPA.”
I sat up. That was it. At some point Greta must have learned that Jules Silverman and Len Ziskind were friends. She knew then there was no hope at PPA. Ziskind and Nevenson hadn’t lied: they never saw GB Dreams Big. But Greta couldn’t tell Phillips they were screwed—Phillips didn’t believe Silverman was the bad guy. She tried to go around PPA by putting pressure on Jules with the spanking picture. Jules agreed to pay twenty grand but no more. So she tried a third blackmail with what she’d heard from Dorene Johnson.