by Ed Ifkovic
We ordered. Tommy said he wanted red wine. For once, I was indifferent to the menu, quickly ordering the first chicken dish I’d spotted, and recommending sirloin steak, rare, when they hesitated. Tommy’s finger, I noted, had been tapping the steak listing, the priciest item on the menu. He gulped the first glass of wine so quickly the wine steward, taken off guard, had to rush to refill the goblet. Polly eyed Tommy. A warning.
“You’re in Giant and Rebel?” I asked Tommy.
“Not so’s you’d notice me.” He pointed at Polly. “Both of us.” She nodded. He paused. “You know I had the lead in the Fairmount High School production of The Front Page. Got a review in the local paper. I showed Jimmy a copy.”
“Yellowed and worn at the edges,” Polly mocked, cruelly.
“How does it feel to be a part of Jimmy’s world?” I asked, knowing it was an explosive line.
Polly spoke and was furious. I noted a trace of lipstick on her front tooth, a spot of pink that looked like a stain. “If Jimmy has a ‘crowd’ we’re not part of it.”
“Not true, Polly,” Tommy bristled. “We do hang out with him.”
Polly looked at me, breathed in deeply. “We’re on the fringe. Tommy’s the snapshot in the high-school yearbook Jimmy keeps opening to by accident. He’s looking for other people and Tommy’s in the way.”
Tommy shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, Polly.”
“So just who are his friends then?” I asked.
For a moment Polly debated her answer. “Jimmy has circles of friends, some overlapping. Some secret and hidden. Some obvious.
“Meaning?”
“The girls he hangs out with. Dates, maybe. Maybe sleeps with.”
Tommy spoke up. “You see, Jimmy can’t really settle on a girl. I mean, he seemed serious about Pier Angeli, but her mother stopped that. He wanted to marry her.”
Polly smirked. “That was just talk, Miss Ferber. Look, Jimmy’s career is what drives him-not marriage. I think ninety per cent of that was PR. Jimmy the lover of the Italian beauty. Great photo shoot stuff. On the set, at clubs, dancing at Trocadero, late night snacks at Barney’s Beanery.”
Tommy glared at her. “He did care for her.”
“Jimmy doesn’t care for people,” Polly said. “Women-girls-are fodder.”
“What about Carisa’s claims?” I interrupted. “The letters?”
That seemed to stop Polly cold. She looked at Tommy. “Carisa is unstable-was unstable, I mean. Sorry. Jimmy said she was-in his cruel phrase-available for lonely nights in Texas. Frivolous. Nothing more. Marfa was boring, over a hundred degrees in the shade. At night you could play Canasta and drink Canada Dry with Jane Withers. Whoop-di-do. So he’d go off. And waiting there was Carisa, smiling and opening her shirt.”
“And Lydia? How does she fit into all this?”
“You know, just another actress mooning over Jimmy.”
Tommy lowered his voice. “Did you know that Lydia and Carisa were roommates once, a year back, before Carisa had to rent in Skid Row. Lydia moved into the Studio Club to get away from Carisa.”
Polly smirked. “Each one blames-blamed-the other for drug use, Miss Ferber.”
“Lydia is a sad wreck of a girl,” Tommy added.
“And yet Jimmy dated her.”
Another shrug of the shoulders. “Well, again, dating,” Tommy said. “He rebounded from Carisa and Pier. He finds Lydia waiting in the wings. Calling him. They go out, he gets sick of her, he ignores her. She cries. He sees her again. He leaves. He had to. She’s so…clutching. Jimmy doesn’t want to be around drug users, you know. He likes to be the only person acting weird in a crowd. Lydia is too much trouble. He dumped her.”
Polly added, “She had a falling out with Carisa, real nasty, but I know she’d been to Carisa’s apartment lately.”
“How do you know that?” Tommy asked, surprised.
“She mumbled it to me one night.”
“Where was I?”
“Worshipping at Jimmy’s shrine.”
He made a clicking sound with his tongue.
“You both are not painting a pretty picture of Jimmy and women here.”
“Because there’s none to be painted,” Polly said. “Jimmy doesn’t want anyone to say no to him. He’s that insecure. And when anyone likes him-truly likes him-he then has to make them hate him.”
“Do you hate him, Polly?” I asked, bluntly.
A hesitation, a flicker of the eye. “No, I don’t hate him. I’m someone he doesn’t even see. ‘Tommy’s dating a telephone pole with a nest on her head.’ That’s how he once referred to me.”
“I told him that wasn’t nice,” Tommy mumbled.
“Thanks for the support, lover.”
But in that brief moment, staring at Polly’s face, I saw something: melancholy, sadness, some regret. Polly, sensing my probing eyes on her, became self-conscious, broke a piece of bread into pieces and scattered the pieces on the tablecloth.
“What about his other circles?” I asked, sitting back. Amazing, I thought, how easy it is to let people talk when you just tap into their anger.
“The bikers,” Polly said. “Sometimes Jimmy rides the night away with his motorcycle buddies.”
“Like Max Kohl, Carisa’s friend?”
“I’ve only seen him a couple times. A scary guy, built like a longshoreman,” stammered Tommy.
“But they had a fight,” Polly said. “So I heard from Jimmy. I don’t know why.”
“He’s into race cars. Fast bikes. Like Jimmy.”
“I heard that Max Kohl has been calling on Lydia.”
Polly spoke up. “Yeah, Lydia told me. She’s none too happy.”
“But you don’t know him?”
Both shook their heads.
“I think he did bit parts for a while, but I’m not sure,” said Polly.
“Why am I not surprised?” I smiled. “Hollywood is the land of bit parts.”
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “You make it seem like a crime.”
“Only if it leads to murder,” I said.
Tommy and Polly looked at each other, then back at the tablecloth, suddenly fascinated with the fine linen.
For a while they talked of Jimmy’s movie-lot friends, the crew members he associated with, carpenters, best boys, and not so good boys and girls, usually drawn into Jimmy’s temporary kingdom by a shared interest in race-car driving, late-night revelry, interest in jazz music or oriental philosophy or bullfighting. Like a shuffled deck of cards, Polly noted. “Each time a new hand is on the table, there are different face cards.” She smirked. “And older women. Geraldine Fitzgerald. Mercy McCambridge, and his agent-his ‘Moms,’ he calls them. The only women that really matter to him.”
“Why?” I asked, seeing myself in that unwelcome covey.
They both shrugged.
While they talked, Tommy drank. Occasionally Polly glanced at him, tried to get his attention, and, once, nodded at the wine bottle. I ordered a second bottle of my nefarious prop for this one-act play. I barely sipped my drink and scarcely touched my food. But Tommy and Polly ravished theirs. At another time I would have been pleased, for I value souls who understand the delights of the kitchen. I would have routinely condemned Tommy, had I not seen the beneficial results of getting him drunk.
When Tommy excused himself to go to the rest room, I was waiting. “Polly, what’s your involvement with Jimmy?”
The question caught the young girl by surprise, for she actually jumped, then looked at Tommy’s disappearing back.
“What?”
“I thought I saw something in your eyes when we were discussing Jimmy’s less-than-decent relationships with women.”
She smiled. “I underestimated you.” She sighed. “I could lie to you, Miss Ferber, but I’m not going to. Jimmy and I had a moment-one moment, that’s all. A moment of weakness on my part, but a moment of sheer cruelty on his. Jimmy takes possession of other people’s property. I’m Tommy’s, and even though Tommy
has nothing-no hope, no future, not even me some day-Jimmy had to be cock in the hen coop.”
“So,” I sympathized, “a moment. But you still seem to have a lot of emotion.”
“What?” She whispered the word.
“It was more than a moment for you, Polly.” The declarative sentence, I thought, more powerful than the interrogative.
Polly started to say something, but then, gulping, started to sob. “I thought I did it for revenge,” she mumbled. “You know, Tommy does whatever Jimmy does. Don’t get me wrong. I care for Tommy. I do. But something was said, an overheard remark, that led me to suspect that Tommy had a…a moment with Carisa Krausse.”
“Carisa!”
“She was Jimmy’s in Marfa. But Tommy has to have what Jimmy has. A rumor I never mentioned to Tommy. Carisa likes to sleep around with any…” She paused. “I’m not being very nice.” She dabbed her moist cheeks. “It’s probably something I just imagined.”
“But you thought you’d get back at her,” I said, focusing.
She ran her tongue over her upper lip. “I’m lying a little. You see, I’ve always had a sort of crush on Jimmy. Of course, you can’t tell him. I just can’t shake it. You see, when we first got here, I wanted Tommy to be Jimmy-ambitious, focused, and handsome.”
I smiled. “And since that moment with Jimmy, nothing.”
“I’m back to being wallpaper.”
“Is it possible Carisa’s baby was Tommy’s?”
Polly blanched. “Oh, my God!”
“And Tommy never…” I stopped. Tommy staggered back to the table. Polly, nervous, started munching on a roll, her tear-strained face turned away.
“Talking about me?” he asked, slurring his words.
“Yes,” I confessed. “I’ve gathered that Jimmy has yet another circle. I talked with this fellow Josh MacDowell today, a friend of Sal Mineo.”
Polly shot a quick glance at Tommy, who’d turned pale.
“What did I say?” I asked.
“Josh is very musical.” Tommy grinned.
“Stop it.” Polly glared at him.
“Musical?”
Polly, confidentially, “In Hollywood when you suspect any man likes, well, other men, you ask if he’s…musical. Like a code word for a touchy subject.”
Tommy bellowed loudly, “Jimmy doesn’t like swishy guys.”
“Yet Josh was a drinking buddy.”
“For a real short time. Now Josh has his sights on Sal Mineo, who’s sixteen and doesn’t realize he’s musical.” Tommy thought his line hilarious, and started laughing, but stopped and said with a sneer, “A bunch of freaks.”
Polly turned to me: “The one area Tommy will not imitate Jimmy.”
“Meaning?”
Tommy announced, “Jimmy’s an experimenter. He got all his breaks in California and New York through a sissy named Rogers Brackett, some queer radio producer with connections. Jimmy lived with him in New York. He met other men who got him parts on Broadway. Jimmy did what he had to do.”
“So you mean he sleeps with men?”
“Well, somebody hinted him and this Max Kohl had something going on, but maybe not. Because Jimmy likes to hang out with tough guys. He goes to parties in the Valley, homes of movie execs and hot shots who are that way, where there are guys who experiment.” Tommy was speaking too loudly, but sloppily, dragging the words out. “But I think Jimmy likes it too much.” He waved his hand in the air. “Who knows?” He hiccoughed.
I listened closely, realizing that Josh MacDowell had used the same word: experiment. Jimmy experimented with other worlds. The portrait of a young man in search of…of what?
Polly, glancing at her blotchy face in a compact mirror, left to repair the damage. Tommy stared at me. “So that’s our Jimmy,” he smirked. “You feed us and we give you his story, at least the part with the warts. Which is why, I guess, you fed us. But he’s the biggest star on the lot. Can you believe it?”
“You resent him, Tommy.” Another wonderful declarative sentence.
“No, I love him. He’s my buddy.”
“But I’m thinking maybe it should have been you who plays Jett Rink and Cal Trask and Jim Stark. All the rebels and sad boys.”
“I was the lead in The Front Page.”
Daggers drawn. “Don’t you get tired of being his shadow? Maybe, if James Dean wasn’t around, there’d be a Thomas Dwyer, in a red-nylon jacket. Girls asking for your autograph.”
Suddenly he looked at me, and his eyes got wet. “When is it my turn, Miss Ferber? When?”
I sighed, touched the back of his hand. “He seems to have all the luck.”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. “That’s it, exactly. Luck. Damn luck, really. That’s all it is in this God-awful town. And who you sleep with. Jimmy’ll sleep with trolls for a part. He has, and look where he is. Ugly old men with potbellies. Women who wear sable coats with nothing on underneath. He told me. Christ. Now he’s king of the world. Wherever we go, people scrape and bow. In Googie’s they sit behind the glass partition and stare. They mob him. One movie. One! And I’m there carrying his coat. Me.” He looked at me through sloppy tears. “He’s a dirty man, Miss Ferber. Not only that unshaven look, the sticky unwashed hair, Christ, even the dandruff, but inside. Inside.” He paused. “But I can’t stop loving him…” He trailed off.
Polly returned to the table. She looked at Tommy, whose face was wet with tears.
She looked at me, wonder in her eyes. I sat there nodding.
My God, I thought. I’ve had them both weeping. She metamorphoses from the witch of the west into a weeping soda-fountain shop girl; he, the meek of the earth, metamorphoses into a barroom drunk, filled with ill-defined anger at his meal ticket.
A successful dinner.
“Are you having dessert?” I asked, cheerily. “I hear the creme brulee is the best in California.”
Chapter 10
The next morning I phoned Mercy. “I need an accomplice.”
“Aiding and abetting is a part I’ve played in many movies.”
I was thinking out loud. “Carisa pushed someone too far. Despite her madness and her drug use, if that’s to be believed, Carisa seemed to draw people in. What we do know is that different roads led to her-and to Jimmy. Josh a high-school pal of hers. Josh introducing Jimmy to her. Jimmy dating her. Jimmy leaving her for Lydia. Lydia her old roommate and on-again off-again friend. Max Kohl seeing her before and after Jimmy. Max Kohl a biker buddy of Jimmy.” I was also thinking about Tommy Dwyer, maybe stepping out on Polly with Carisa. And Polly suspecting their tryst.
Mercy clicked her tongue. “There’s too much Jimmy in the picture.”
“Mercy, our aim is not to solve the murder, really. That’s Detective Cotton’s bailiwick, troglodyte though he strikes me. No, I think we have to prove Jimmy’s not guilty. He’s our worst enemy here, of course, hostile to everyone, especially the police.”
I could almost hear the smile. “And you need me as an accomplice for what?”
“You can start by being the driver. I don’t think Warner wants the studio car idling in questionable neighborhoods.”
“We’re cruising Rodeo Drive?”
I chuckled. “I vowed never to return to Carisa’s apartment after that night, but I’m afraid we have no choice.”
“I’ll gas up the getaway car.”
By noon Mercy’s Ford sedan pulled up in front of Carisa’s apartment house, and we surveyed the building in daylight. Still Skid Row. Broad daylight revealed grime and decay and utter disregard. Defeat in the tired buildings; defeat in the struggling, shuffling souls. A man dressed in a winter coat, huddled in a doorway, stared into the street. A rickety car pulled up in front of a pawnshop, and an obese woman in a flowered muumuu and loose sandals started to drag what I thought was a brass coat rack across the sidewalk. I stared, mesmerized. A little girl in shocking pink pedal pushers trailed the large woman. A soiled, used-up street. A hint of naughtiness in the jaunty walk of a couple of
spangled girls. It reminded me of Pigalle, touring France one hot, hot summer with Noel Coward and Louis Bromfield. They always insisted on cultivating Parisian life in the grimier, suspect avenues, those wags, dragging me along for shock value. As I stepped out of the car, a young woman, so rail-thin and pale she seemed not even to be there, floated by, smiling, smiling. A haunted, parched face; the hunger of reaching zero.
Rapping on the door of the first-floor apartment, I recalled the superintendent’s name from that awful night when I sat in his meticulous kitchen, light-headed from the sickening sight of a dead woman’s body. Manuel Vega seemed happy to see us, ushering us in with a cavalier bow. An old-school gentleman, Vega was in his seventies, a tall willowy man with a shock of absolute white hair and, these days at least, a fuzzy white beard stubble. Skin the color of hazy mahogany, he seemed youthful, robust, though he moved carefully and employed a lion’s-head cane. He spoke a deep, resonant English, no accent, though I had expected one. He looked a casting department stereotype of the old hidalgo of the hacienda. Instead, he spoke with the spacious, lazy drone of the typical Angelino-a stereotype of another persuasion.
He insisted we drink lemonade, his own creation, a liquid so transparent I thought it water. It had tartness undercut by a surprising sweetness that satisfied. Superb, I told him.
“How may I help you?” he asked, bowing again.
I explained that Mercy and I–I called her Mercedes, and the man nodded-were looking into the death of Carisa, strictly as a favor to a friend who stood accused, a young man in danger of being falsely charged of a murder he didn’t commit, a man who…
“James Dean?” He cut me off.
I started. “You know him?”
“My granddaughter is a huge fan. Sitting through East of Eden a dozen times. She took me to see it, in fact. She insisted. A marvelous movie.”
“Why did his name come to mind?” I asked.
He smiled. “He’s famous, and you are here now.”
I sipped the lemonade. “Interesting.”
“Well, I like the movies now and then, though I’m getting old, ma’am. You see, I was in the movies when I was young, the silents of course, once in a scene with Valentino himself. And in one of Mae Murray’s wonderful comedies. With the little money I made, I bought this house of six apartments for a song, and here I am, years later, as the streets get sadder and sadder.” He shrugged his shoulders.