by Ed Ifkovic
“He can be a foolish young man.”
“Miss Ferber, I agree with you about something. He, or someone else, never planned the murder. No one went there with knife or gun or evil intent. This crime smacks of impulse, of anger. A quarrel, heated words hurled back and forth. Tempers flare. She’d a temper, we’ve been told. And Dean’s temper is legendary. So they fight. In a moment of fury Dean, or someone else, hurls the Aztlan statue with such an impact that it knocks Carisa off balance. She trips and hits her head. She dies. Unplanned, unscripted. Anger, Miss Ferber. This is a scenario into which most people can fit themselves at one time or another. It’s just that the person we fling things at usually doesn’t die. And that’s murder. Or, at least, manslaughter.”
I was tired. Standing too long in that hallway, a pain in my shoulder blades; my feet ached. “True,” I admitted.
“All I’m saying is that James Dean is suspect number one. That’s a given. Murder by anger or murder by smugness. Take your pick. His touch is all over that apartment.”
“Was Lydia Plummer murdered?”
“Not according to the Medical Examiner. She’d been dead a couple hours before Max Kohl found her. We documented that. He’s not part of this.” He turned to go. “Gotta run.”
I thought of something. “One last thing. Lydia’s letter to Carisa. The one in which she threatened her. You haven’t mentioned that letter. When Lydia called me, she was frenzied about that letter. She regretted sending it, feared its contents were known.”
Detective Cotton stopped moving. “What are you talking about?”
I explained what Lydia had said, how she was afraid of what would happen if anyone found the letter.
“Are you sure? Miss Ferber, we found no such letter. Jimmy’s letter, yes. Are you sure she wasn’t talking about that threatening letter?”
“Yes, I’m sure she said she wrote a letter, which, from what she said, I assumed you’d found and confronted her with. And I thought you purposely omitted mention of when you and I spoke.”
He still looked baffled. “There was no such letter, Miss Ferber. I think you misunderstood her. She was hopped up, boozed up, incoherent, and slipping deeper into some narcotic bliss.” He saw the look on my face. “I’m not withholding information from you. We found no threatening letter from Lydia. James Dean’s letter was threatening enough.”
But watching him leave, I was not so sure. I knew what I’d heard that fateful night. Lydia may have been rambling, but her words were clear.
I sat for an hour in the Blue Room with the producers and Stevens, nothing important, just idle time spent to make me feel important. Jake Geyser sat at my right hand, a little too close, leaning in, confiding, but looking cowed. Near the end, Tansi joined us, slipping Jake a sheaf of messages. When the room cleared, Tansi whispered, “A minute, Edna.” I waited for Jake to leave, but he stayed at her side. “Edna,” Tansi said, “you will not believe how that detective browbeat Jake.”
“Why?”
Both Tansi and Jake seemed eager to relate the story. Cotton had come on like some gung-ho commando during an interview with Jake that morning. Detective Cotton had largely treated Jake with kid gloves in earlier interviews, Jake told me, as was just. After all, given his position as an assistant to Jack Warner himself, he deserved respect. His voice was high and whiny. “I announced I am a law-abiding citizen of this republic.” Yes, I thought, a republic called Warner Bros. Studio. “He just kept yelling at me, hurling question after question. It was maddening.”
“I walked in on it,” Tansi said. “By mistake. I stood in the doorway and heard Cotton call Jake a bold-faced liar.”
Jake blanched, perhaps as he had when Cotton threw the accusation his way. Now people didn’t call Jake Geyser a liar. Behind his back, yes. His staff doubtless mocked his aristocratic demeanor, his overweening ego, his tweedy sartorial nonsense, and, more so, his unbalanced defense of all things Warner.
Tansi was shaking her head. “Imagine.”
I turned to Jake. “Had you lied?”
Jake’s careful voice broke. “I had to.”
“What lie are we talking about?”
There was anger in his tone. “I misrepresented the times I went to Carisa’s apartment. I was actually there-a bunch of times, negotiating a deal that she had no intention of accepting. It was like a game to her.”
“That’s hardly a grievous lie,” I said, encouraging him.
Tansi touched my sleeve. “Wait.”
“I lied when I said Carisa was contemplating an offer of money. The truth is, Warner gave her a lump sum the day before, but I was told to keep it a secret. But she didn’t give me the signed paper guaranteeing silence. She tricked me. I’m not built for this stuff.”
“Even I didn’t know,” noted Tansi.
“Why keep that a secret?” I stared into his pale face.
“Warner wanted to see how she’d react. Whether she’d follow up with more demands. More letters. Which she did-the morning she died. Another letter. I kept going there. She wouldn’t pick up her phone most times, and I had to deliver a bag of cash.”
“Good God,” I said.
“I know, I know. I’m like an Al Capone runner.”
“And Detective Cotton found out?”
He bit his lip. “The police found the money hidden under a pile of magazines. I lied about the money, said she was considering it.”
“Well, this hardly seems the stuff of massive deception. Why would Cotton assault you today?”
Tansi and Jake looked at each other, conspiratorially. I didn’t like the new linkage. I much more preferred Tansi as Jake’s adversary and my own boon companion. In fact, I much more preferred the Tansi I knew years before, back in Manhattan days, Tansi at Barnard, spirited, fun-loving, cynical; not so wired and taut. And Jake, well, I never liked him and less so now, a man in authority with no moral center.
What he said next proved it. “He went crazy today because I stupidly lied to him again.” He glanced at Tansi, and she half-smiled, encouraging. “I told him Lydia had confessed to me that she killed Carisa.”
“What? My God. Why?”
“I know it was stupid. Tansi and I were talking about how everything was hunky-dory now, Jimmy free of accusation, but Cotton said he didn’t believe Lydia killed Carisa. So I said, well, she had a last talk with me, and she hinted that she’d done it. It was dumb, and I regretted it immediately. But Cotton lost it, really. He said he’d have me up on charges, that I was a fool; that I could lose my job lying to a cop.”
I was stunned. “Why would you even think to lie like that?”
“For a second I thought, why not? It’s over anyway. She did do it. I’m respected here. They’ll believe me.”
I shook my head. Who in this glitter Hollywood had a brain?
“And besides,” I added, “I agree with Detective Cotton. Lydia Plummer had nothing to do with Carisa’s death.”
Tansi gasped. “How can you say that?”
“I just did.”
“Proof, Miss Ferber?” Jake asked.
“I don’t have proof. But it’s what I know.”
“Edna, you’re being…stubborn,” Tansi said. And I almost laughed. Tansi seemed ready to say “ridiculous.” It’s a word I suspected Tansi used a lot. Oh, this is ridiculous. Can anything be more ridiculous than this?
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t like the convenience of Lydia’s death. Too many people are using her dying to forget the case.”
“Maybe they have a reason.” Jake defied me.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
Tansi was not liking this exchange. “Edna, I know you got involved in this because of Jimmy. We all want to help Jimmy, but now he’s helped. He had his army of supporters, and they came through beautifully. You, me, Jake, Mercy, Tommy, the others. The Warner office.”
“Tansi, don’t be a foolish woman.” The words came out too harsh, too strident. Tansi looked hurt, and I considered apologizing, then change
d my mind.
“Foolish? Edna, how could you?”
“I’m just trying to be truthful with you, Tansi. I’m your friend.” But I looked at Jake, who was not an old friend, now glowering, his eyes dark with anger.
“That’s hardly the way friends talk, Edna.”
Jake smirked. “Don’t you find it strange that you and Mercy McCambridge have spent a lot of wasted time running around and making fools of yourselves? Cotton told me you and Mercy visited the super. Even, I guess, harassed his granddaughter.”
Tansi shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d go there.”
“It’s not the black hole of Calcutta, Tansi. It’s L.A., the dark side, the…”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead there.”
“No one is asking you to go there.”
“You know,” Jake said, “we do have a police force.”
I smiled. “Which, I gather, you’re not very fond of at the moment. Or have you changed your mind?”
“I have meetings.” He stood. “James Dean is safe.”
Tansi echoed, “Safe.” She stood.
Jake headed toward the doorway. “You don’t understand, Miss Ferber. James Dean is no longer a person. He’s now a property.” With that, he left the room.
Wildly, insanely, I flashed to Jett Rink, the helter-skelter wildcatter of Giant, that handsome, madcap boy who becomes so rich and powerful that he abandons his moral compass. Property, oil wells, ranches, Reata, Texas. A wasteland of black gold. Vast stretches of dried-out dead land, parched under crimson noontime sun. Buffalo grass where no buffalo roam. Jett becomes the land and the oil under it: in the process he loses his soul. Jett Rink, James Dean: property.
Furious, I managed to stand, grab hold of the table’s edge. “That’s a cruel thing to say about anybody.” But I was speaking to the door he’d closed behind him.
Chapter 18
I sat in the blazing sunshine at a patio table at the Smoke House, staring across the street at the Warner Bros. Studio entrance. By myself, and comfortable. No, I told this person and that one, no; I want to be alone. Pursued by people-Rock Hudson, dressed as Bick, walked by with an assistant director, paused, debated joining me, but then kept moving-I’d fled the soundstage, slowly moving my way to the restaurant. An old woman in a gigantic red sun hat trimmed with garish bluebells, something I’d appropriated from wardrobe, thanks to Mercy’s intervention. “Edna, you’re going outside with no hat? This will have to do. Everyone will think you’re a bit player. It’s too hot out there.” She positioned it on my head, chuckling in her gravelly, cigarette voice. So now I sipped a glass of minty iced tea slowly, meditating. I was happy being alone, despite the circus hat I had to wear.
I was bothered. Tansi’s misguided pique, her rigid personality; and Jake, that weasel. And Jimmy, the luck of the roaring scamp, the boy wonder everyone wondered about. Jimmy and his cryptic talks with me. Who were these elusive, mysterious souls he favored in the long, long hours of night?
The waiter appeared, and I nodded. Yes, another iced tea. No, nothing to eat. I reached into my clutch and extracted one of Jake’s cigarettes. I despised the man, and yet I joyfully, gladly appropriated his cigarettes. I struck a match, lit the cigarette, but barely inhaled the smoke. In the still California afternoon, the hum of unseen freeway traffic beyond some stucco-and-tile buildings, the presence of a single jagged cloud in the unblemished blue sky. I closed my eyes, and relaxed.
I heard a rumble near the studio gates, and, turning, spotted Jimmy tearing out, breakneck speed, on his motorcycle, turning the corner so fast he seemed momentarily parallel to the all-too-close asphalt pavement. A black leather bomber jacket, black boots, a pair of military style goggles on his eyes, doubtless covering those horn-rimmed eyeglasses he was always losing or breaking. He looked very militaristic, the red-blooded Eisenhower soldier liberating Europe.
As I watched him leave, I noted Alva and Alyce Strand on the sidewalk, looking after him. Bounding from a crouching position, they tottered after the disappearing bike, and I wondered whether Jimmy’s crazed getaway was an attempt to ditch the pesky fans. Then, out of breath, the twins stopped, not far from my table, and stupidly waved after him.
I called to them. “Come here.” They hurried over. I reminded them that I’d been at Googie’s with Jimmy. “I’m Edna Ferber.”
“We know you,” Alva said, “because James knows you. He talks about you.”
“You talk to Jimmy?”
They looked at each other. “No, but we hear things. We ask questions.”
“Sit down.” I motioned toward empty chairs.
They shook their heads. They were frightfully identical, the boy and the girl, with shocks of sandy blond hair, with gawky faces and marble eyes. Both clowns. That lamentable gene pool was starved and desolate. Their parents must have been brother and sister. I shivered at the thought.
Alyce glanced at her brother, her eyes panicky. “No, we have to go.”
“Go where?”
She pointed, melodramatically. “We follow James.”
“And where has he gone?”
They looked at each other. “We guess. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes wrong.”
The other picked up the thread. “Sometimes we sit for hours, waiting. And he never shows up.”
Alva grinned, “Mostly we hang out near the studio.”
“We think we know where he’s going today.”
“Yesterday for two hours he sat on his bike in front of the apartment of that girl who died?”
“Lydia Plummer?” I exclaimed.
They shook their heads: “No, Carisa Krausse. Just sat there. We sat far away and watched him sit there. He looked so sad. He never moved.”
“How do you know he’s going there now?”
“We don’t, but he’s headed like in that direction.”
With that they scampered off to a battered car, fenders bent and antenna crumpled. In seconds they were lumbering past. A squeaky horn blew. Alva waved. They were deliriously happy. And decidedly insane. The by-product of a world of celluloid and ticket-stub heartache.
I wondered. Maybe. Just maybe.
At the studio gates, where a small gaggle of autograph-seeking tourists routinely gathered, a vender hawked Glamorland maps of the homes of the stars. I commandeered a yellow cab. I recalled Carisa’s street, not the number, but figured, once there, I’d know where to go, though the driver looked none too happy with that destination. This was foolhardy, I told myself, and surely a waste of time. But I was not concerned with tracking Jimmy-no, I was curious about Alva and Alyce Strand. Simpletons maybe, but something one of them said-Sometimes we sit for hours-intrigued me. I needed to talk to the freakish pair. Perhaps they were the elusive, unexamined witnesses to some key evidence. Perhaps they were the truly bit players in the awful Hollywood caper.
The cab cruised to a stop at the corner of Carisa’s block and I spotted Jimmy in front of Carisa’s apartment, perched on his bike, just sitting there, arms folded, looking asleep, head bent. Surely, I wondered, he can’t sit there for hours? An odd sight: the melancholy mourner, keeping watch. The last keener at the funeral. I paid the fare and got out, a matter of feet from Jimmy.
He was watching me, even though his head was bowed. I walked up to him, feeling especially foolish in the ungainly red sunbonnet, all those bluebells on it, an old lady carrying a purse and wearing a dress I actually bought to wear to the Bucks County summerhouse of Dick and Dorothy Rodgers. It was a frilly wide-skirted cotton smock, with redundant periwinkles aplenty. And here, in down-and-out Skid Row, the stench of greasy food from a hot dog stand, and nearby the burned-out shell of an old car, windows smashed and resting on axles-I looked stupendously out of place. It’s the hat, I thought. Why am I wearing this horrible hat? Passersby might see me as a mad homeless woman who’d doubtless rifled through some abandoned chest of period finery and emerged on the street to scream at the endless flow of traffic.
“Jimmy.”
“It’s you who surprises.”
Quizzical, raised eyebrows, eyeglasses slipping down his nose, “Yeah?”
“Loitering here in front of Carisa’s apartment. It’s a little macabre, no?”
“I find it’s a good place for me to think about things.”
“What things?” I drew closer. I noticed he was sweating.
“Lydia.”
“So you come here to mourn Lydia?”
“It all started here.”
“What did?”
“Carisa dead, Lydia dead. Things happen in threes, you know. Am I going to be the third?” He stared up and down the street, as though watching for someone.
“Why do you say that?”
“What is the thread that goes from Carisa to Lydia to me?”
“Why does there have to be a thread?”
He sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this.” He stared up at Carisa’s window. “Not here. This is where I come to be quiet.” Abruptly, he started the bike, and a dissonant, coughing roar deafened me. I backed up and he raced away, pulling into traffic so abruptly a car slammed on brakes. A horn blared. The driver, a boy with sideburns and a duck’s-ass haircut, screamed at me, “Your son’s an asshole.”
My son. My beloved son. “True,” I answered, calmly, touching my eccentric hat. “This wasn’t what his father and I hoped he’d become.”
The driver, startled, gave me the finger and sped on.
I do so love L.A., I told myself.
“Can you believe that driver?” a voice yelled, and I jumped out of my skin. Alva and Alyce Strand were beside me, so close I could smell their garlicky breaths.
“Are you going to chase Jimmy now?” I didn’t know which one to look at.
“Why?”
“Well, I want to talk to you.” I spotted a restaurant across the street. “Can I buy you lunch, a soda, something?”
They looked at each other. “No.” They turned away.
“I want to share stories about James with you.”