Hollywood Gothic

by Thomas Gifford

  One of the cats sidled across Purcell’s mountainous chest and abdomen, stretched his long black neck, licked up some tea from the mug. The cat looked up, fur on his head spiky and greasy like a punk-rocker, and ran his tongue along his whiskers.

  “But you couldn’t ignore this somewhat shady quality about him. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cookie? There must be some English muffin somewhere …”

  “No, really, Vernon, it’s all right. Go on.”

  “Well, Morty had a minor position as a studio accountant, which seemed somewhat amusing, because he looked like such an active, rascally fellow, glint in his eyes, kind of a handsome smirk … but he’d been in training in the Korda organization as a teenager before the war, had shown an ability to work with figures. Then, one day in the late spring or summer of 1947, Morty Morpeth disappeared. Who would have cared? People run off all the time, go home, float off into the Pacific. But one very hot dry day there was a serious brushfire in one of the canyons above Beverly Hills, lots of wind swirling around, movie stars’ homes endangered, sirens going off all day, the same old story. The authorities had to make a thorough sweep through the burned hillsides looking for any bodies, any human remains of any kind. They found two, a child of about five, and a man who, as you can predict, turned out to be Morty Morpeth. At first they couldn’t identify him … he was naked, but he was only a little singed at the edges, not burned to blackened bones. And the police discovered that he hadn’t died of anything related to the fire … he had died of a bullet fired at close range into his skull.” Another cat clambered clumsily toward the tea, and Purcell gently pushed him away, muttering, “Now, now, Horace, you know you don’t like tea. … Naturally the discovery of the body, which had been stuffed down into a natural rocky depression and partially covered with rocks—well, this was news. Who the dickens was he? Well, the police began to comb their missing-persons files, began to call relatives and friends of missing persons to come down to the morgue and have a gander at the remains of Mr. X.

  “Inevitably the wheel turned round and round, and it was Mrs. Morpeth’s turn—”

  Morgan swallowed a gasp, asked through clenched teeth, “Do you know Mrs. Morpeth’s first name?” She coughed behind her hand.

  “Prudence, I seem to recall … Penelope … I’m not quite sure. It’s all in my newspaper-cutting file. Y’know, Tobias, I’m rather surprised you don’t know all this. I mean, after all …”

  “What are you talking about, Vernon? I’m no movieland wax historian.”

  “No, no. The Maximus connection!” He sighed, pursed the tiny lips in the vast gray reaches of his face, clasped his fat hands across his tummy, and slowly ripened. “Morpeth was a Maximus employee … I’d have thought you’d know the lore there.”

  “No, Vernon, I don’t recall it ever coming up.” He felt his breath shortening, his adrenaline giving an extra squirt.

  “Well, no matter. Simon Karr did a better job than I’d thought. Simon was a public-relations specialist, a free-lance, who specialized in keeping things out of the paper, and Maximus—I suppose Solomon Roth—hired him to put the lid on the Morpeth murder. You know how Solomon is, wants nothing bad to speckle the Maximus shield, and a murder—a particularly mysterious and publicized murder—is bad, a ton of mud about to slop all over the shield. So Simon Karr went to work with his contacts, and they included everybody, people at the Times, the morgue, the LAPD, everybody. Greased a half-dozen palms, I suppose, and the whole thing went to the dead-letter office.”

  “What did I tell you about Vernon?” Challis said to Morgan. “He was bound to know … but one thing, could you check your file for Morty Morpeth’s wife’s name? It’s important.”

  “Get down, my little kitties.” He pushed himself forward, to the edge of the couch, and gritted his teeth deep within his suet face. He waddled to a corner of the room where the cardboard boxes, tattered and torn, bulged with soiled manila folders, covered unfinished wooden shelving, the top of an ancient Philco radio-phonograph; piles of the cartons tilted precariously toward the ceiling, completely blocking one window. He turned on a table lamp, and the grass skirt on the hips of a hula dancer began to rotate slowly. He took a fringed, motheaten pillow with the silk lettering “Honolulu 1941” from the top of one box and dropped it on a nosy cat. “Here it is,” he wheezed. “Very incomplete.” He thumbed through the slim file. “But the woman … the woman … aha, I was close, by gum. Priscilla, that was her name, Priscilla Morpeth.” He offered the file to Challis, who took it, began to read. Morgan got up and stood looking over his shoulder.

  “Say, I’ve just thought of something else,” Purcell interrupted. “The story that got out and went the rounds, strictly word of mouth, was that Morpeth had embezzled a million bucks from Maximus. Sure, it comes back to me.” A cat shrieked as Purcell trod on its tail, but he took no notice. “Morpeth embezzled the million—and it struck me as not unlikely, given the charming-scoundrel impression he’d made on me—and that his colleagues in rascality had shot him and taken the money for themselves.” He shrugged. “Sounded good when I heard it in one studio commissary after another. Hung together beautifully. And Roth certainly wouldn’t have wanted that to get into the papers. Make Maximus look like damned fools … a million was a hell of a lot of money in 1947. The only problem with the story was that it was too good, do you see? Perfect. And I knew that Simon Karr had been working on it day and night for a week or two. Two and two always make four in Karr’s world. … In the real world”—he chuckled—“it’s usually five or nine or seventeen. Get it? I think the whole thing was Simon’s exercise in creative writing. That’s all we did then anyway, make up stories. Do you see my point, miss? The one cardinal rule about movie people—all of them, the best and the worst, the kind and the cruel, the decent and the plain criminals—you must realize that they always lie. Not often, not merely almost always, but invariably. It’s part of the business. They lie from good motives and bad. They lie to convince you … or themselves … or somebody who just happened to walk into the room. It’s their nature. They’re like children, and as often as not you shouldn’t even hold it against them. You know they’re lying. They know they’re lying. The truth never occurs to them. So Simon Karr took his job seriously, was paid a great deal of money for muddying the waters, and made up this wonderful tidy lie.” He sneezed, stuck out his tongue, and tweezed some hair out of his mouth. “Fur balls. That’s the problem with cats. They get fur balls all the time … they’re like cows with their cuds, they’ve all got big wads of fur in their tummies. Live with them, you’re going to get fur balls, too. It’s in the air.” He slid his sneakered foot under a medium-sized cat, slowly lifted it off the floor while steadying himself on the arm of a broken chair, and flipped the cat through the air. It passed Challis’ head, looked around with only a hint of mild concern, and landed calmly on a pile of books and newspapers. Purcell looked at Morgan and Challis apologetically. “It’s the only exercise I get. I have phlebitis in my other leg.”

  Challis thanked him for all the help.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Tobias. Anytime. And I’m delighted that you’re alive and well after the plane crash. I’m building quite a nice murder file on you. Did you kill her, by the way? None of my business, I realize …”

  “Justice is blind,” Challis said.

  “Ah, that good lady. She’s not at home hereabouts, I’m afraid.” He wheezed happily.

  “Is Simon Karr still alive, Vernon?”

  “Aha, I thought you’d never ask. Yes, he’s still alive. More or less. Sequestered in a very fancy hostelry for the old, the infirm, and—I’m told—gangsters on the lam. That last bit may be apocryphal. And may not. Do you know where Marineland is? Well, you get out that way, south of there, its Rancho Mafioso something. No, no, merely an attempt at levity … it’s not far from San Clemente, not too far from La Costa … Pacifica House, I believe. Not to be confused with Mr. Nixon’s home.” He wheezed another laugh and saw them to the do
or. “Good-bye, Miss Dyer. Take good care of my old friend Tobias Challis. Don’t let Hollywood do him any great harm.”

  22

  THE OCEAN EXPLODED LIKE BLUE-GREEN crystal on the reddish-brown rocks at the base of the cliffs. The breeze blew cool, moist fog from the direction of Catalina, and the pots of flowers hanging from the awning braces swayed like colorful dancers in an old movie. Behind the fog the sun burned yellow and cast a Renoir softness across the long flagstone walkway and the lazy expanse of Pacific. Turning back toward the long, elegant white hacienda crowning the slope of green perfectly trimmed grass, Challis saw the old people in bathrobes, nightgowns, leotards, bathing suits, and wheelchairs promenading on the veranda. One old codger wore an ice-cream suit, a broad-brimmed white hat, white shoes, smoked a long greenish panatella. A male attendant separated from the slow-moving crowd of Fellini extras and set off down the path of finely crushed pink stone. He was pushing a wheelchair which contained an old man, or what was left of one. There were no legs. There was an eyepatch. There was a mane of white hair, a hearing aid, and knuckles broken and rearranged by arthritis. Morgan was breathing the fresh air, humming under her breath.

  The attendant slid the wheelchair to a stop. He was a tanned beach-and-surf type, healthy and eager to please. “Morning,” he said with a smile like ivory in the klieg lights. “This is Mr. Simon Karr. Mr. Streeter, Miss Dyer … have a nice chat. I’ll just go along and have a chair over on the lawn. Call me when you’re all through. Enjoy yourselves and let me know if you’d like any iced tea, just anything—”

  “Go, for Chrissakes, Duke, we get the idea.” Simon Karr’s voice was larger than the remnant of his physical self.

  “Yessir—”

  “You’re a nice boy but you talk too much.” He cocked his small, shrunken head beneath the waving white pompadour, and looked at Challis. “Whoever the hell you are, pal, you got here in the nick of time. I could do my last buck and wing at any moment. And don’t sing no sad songs for me, as the man said. I am ready … how are you, miss? May I say that you are one foxy lady? Is that the proper colloquialism? I must rely on Baretta and Starsky and Hutch to keep up with the outside world, so you can appreciate how much trouble I’m in … but, what can I do for you? You mentioned crazy old Vernon Purcell—does he still smell so bad? I’ve never visited his cage, but word gets around.”

  “It’s pretty fragrant,” Morgan said.

  “Not so loud, sister. You’ve learned about hearing aids from Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride pictures. This little bastard is like a CIA bug, picks up everything … Duke over there farts, pardon my French, and I’ll hear it over here. There’s no escape unless I unhook, some big temptation with the kinda bullshit, you should pardon me again, they talk around this joint … unhook, unplug, and shove off, that’s my motto. So what can I do for you?”

  “Vernon told me that you did a special job for Maximus Pictures back in forty-seven, a little reverse PR, keep something out of the papers … ring any bells?”

  “Solly Roth, is he dead yet?”

  “No, not by quite a hell of a long way.”

  “Too bad. I never particularly liked Sol. He was such a sanctimonious old turd, even when he was younger. Miss, you’re just going to have to excuse my French. Seems I can’t get through a fucking sentence—see there, that’s what I mean—without resorting to illiterate vulgarity. Ah, yes, Solly Roth and his wimp of a son. Christ in heaven, what a wet bunch that family was. Except for Kay. Now, there was a girl with spunk. Until the Wimp wore her down. Am I telling tales out of school? Well, so what, eh? Who cares? In a week I’ll be dead! With any luck, let me add. Did I do anything for Solly in forty-seven? Hell, yes, I held him up is what I did. Fifty grand to put the lid on a murder and an embezzlement … guy’s name was lemme see, Morton? Was that it?”

  “Morpeth,” Challis said.

  “You know why I couldn’t stand Solly? I’ll tell you. He never worked on the holidays, always went to temple, did the whole shtick, which is fine, but you know how you get a feeling about a guy? Well, I always had the idea that Solly did that just for show, y’know? That he didn’t really give a fuck one way or the other … which just boils down to I didn’t like the putz, don’t tell me.” His one eye blinked, momentarily confused. His head swiveled from side to side like a ventriloquist’s dummy and a fist knotted against the arm of the wheelchair. “You know, miss, I look at you, you know what I think of? Nooky, I think of nooky … I remember nooky surprisingly well for a man as far gone as I am. Does she remind you of nooky, young man? Eh?”

  “Incessantly, Mr. Karr … but about you and Solomon Roth and Morpeth … what was the story?”

  “Story? No story … the little schmuck, some kinda English war hero, stole a million or so from Solly … we figured his accomplices knocked him off and took all the money.”

  “Who filled in the blanks?”

  “Solly and I, we worked on it together. We just tried to figure it out … funny thing how it was all sort of in the family, though that helped, to be perfectly frank.”

  “All in the family,” Challis said. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it was a friend of Morpeth’s who identified the body. His wife … well, Priscilla—say, is she still alive? What a crazy bunch they were … is she? Still alive, eh?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Karr. Go on.”

  “Well, Priscilla was weird, told fortunes and read tea leaves, always wearing a sheet with stars painted on it … had a little storefront place on Sunset, the part down by Elysian Park, Dodger Stadium. God, what a zoo. Anyway, this crazy Priscilla was acting like an idiot, fainting spells, the fucking vapors, so Morpeth’s old chum, been his teacher or something, or knew him at Rank … anyway, this friend of Morpeth’s wound up working for Solly, the guy who identified Morpeth’s body for Priscilla—”

  “Who went to work for Solomon Roth?”

  “Everybody involved, actually … Morpeth’s pal was what’s-his-name, that stuffy majordomo type from central casting …” He shrugged jerkily as if the movement hurt him.

  “Graydon,” Challis said. “Herbert Graydon.”

  “He’s the one, went into the morgue and told ’em sure, that’s old Morpeth … Herbert Graydon. A class act, Herbert. Pompous stuffy old cunt.” He hawked and spit onto the pink path.

  “How did you keep it quiet, Mr. Karr?” Morgan’s voice had a soothing effect on the old man. He lifted one runny eye and twisted his bleached lips into a smile.

  “The way I always kept things quiet. They always thought I was this magician type who could fix anything … that’s why my price was so high, eh? Shit, I just paid everybody off … cops mainly. It didn’t take much, either. A grand here and there, a man could buy a new car for a grand in the old days … or take his family on a nice vacation. I suppose I used three, four grand of Solly’s fifty getting mouths shut, a reasonable business expense. Now, that particular case, Morpeth, was another man who went to work for Solly … we always had our little chats up in Griffith Park or down in Chinatown or out by the water, we’d eat little cardboard containers of shrimp and walk along the Santa Monica pier and I’d tell him what I was trying to keep quiet and why, he was an honorable man but he was open to this kind of whatchamacallit, blandishment. I’d tell him my side of it, what kind of money was involved, and he’d tell me if it was the kind of investigation he could soft pedal. He was homicide, of course, and the funny thing was, he said homicides were the easiest ones to quash, said nobody really gave a good goddamn about most homicides … he worked on the Black Dahlia thing, did some technical advisory work on some pictures, was a hell of a cop, and in his spare time fixed a thing or two here and there for Simon Karr … like Morpeth.” The old man, his memory and appetite whetted, slumped back exhausted, lips working against one another as if chewing an invisible string, knuckles fluttering on the arms of the wheelchair.

  “Tully Hacker,” Challis said.

  The old head nodded spasmodically. “Tully Hack
er,” he whispered. “Tell me, young man, is he still alive? He … seemed like a man … who knew how … to stay alive but … he was in a dangerous … line of work.” The fronds of a Boston fern blew near the old man’s face, trying to caress him. A nice gesture. “But people get old … and die.” He sighed. “Most everybody dead, of course … pussy, I close this eye … dream about pussy. They better have … pussy … where I’m going …” He gasped softly. Morgan strolled along the railing to the cliff’s edge, motioned unobtrusively to Duke, who nodded, got up at once. “The real article,” Simon Karr concluded, fell silent, his one eyelid drooping like a crumpled tissue. He was asleep, and Duke rolled him away.

  Heading back through the fog sweeping the freeway, Morgan asked him what came next.

  “The only thing I’m sure I can’t do is stop,” Challis said. “We’ve got the diaries that show Aaron to have been a shit, we’ve got a ton of checks written to Priscilla Morpeth by Kay Roth, Goldie, and Jack Donovan over a period of nearly a quarter of a century. And we know that Priscilla’s husband, Morty, was murdered in 1947 … that he embezzled Maximus money …” Challis cranked the Mustang’s side window down, sniffed. “I think this heap has got an exhaust leak coming into the car. God, what have I come to?” He sighed, took a deep breath.

  “What do you make of all the supporting players getting into it? The butler, for God’s sake—maybe he did it, Toby!”

  “You never know. Anything can happen in Hollywood.”