As she came around the side of Ron’s bungalow a few minutes later, she saw a young man coming up the walk with a file folder in hand, and she hastened her step. She got to the door just as he was leaving.
“Perfect timing,” Ron said, closing the door behind the courier.
“Did you get your catnap?” asked Charlotte.
“Mmmm.” He nodded. “Feel as good as new,” he said cheerfully, adding, “For about forty-five minutes, that is.”
She looked at him with sympathy, then nodded at the folder. “So what have we got?”
“Iris may have forsaken her old life, but she wasn’t incognizant of her place in history,” he said. “Ever since she left Hollywood, she’s had me keep a clipping file. I hired a clipping service for her.”
“Did she ever come out to look at it?”
“Once a year. She’d stay here, and we’d go over her affairs. She usually came out in February or March so we could take care of tax business at the same time.” He went over to the chair, and took a seat. Then he placed the file on the coffee table and opened it up.
Charlotte stepped over a pile of papers on the floor, sat down in the other chair, and put on her reading glasses, half glasses with tortoise-shell frames that gave her a professorial air.
“These are the clippings.” He started leafing through the, articles. “As you can see, it’s just the usual stuff. Until about two years ago, when we started getting these.” He lifted an article out of the file. “This one’s from Variety.” But there were dozens of them.
It was a classified advertisement, with the bold-face heading CASH REWARD. The rest of the ad read “Information wanted on the whereabouts of Iris O’Connor, Hollywood screenwriter from 1939 to 1952.” This was followed by a phone number with a Hollywood exchange.
“This was the first. As you can see, it’s dated February, 1988. They ran in the entertainment press for about four months, and then stopped.”
“Did you ever call the number?” she asked.
“Yes. The party wouldn’t give me his name. The reward was substantial: five thousand dollars.”
“Someone wanted to find her badly.”
He nodded. “I offered to hire a private detective to track down the person who had placed the ads, but Iris would have nothing to do with it. I think she knew, or suspected, who was trying to find her.”
“Do you know who it was?” she asked, knowing that even if he did, he wouldn’t have told her.
He shook his head. “But I know who might know.”
“Who?” asked Charlotte.
“Charlie Perkins,” he replied.
“Charlie Perkins!” she exclaimed, repeating the name out of the past. At one time, it had been one of the most hated—and feared—names in Hollywood. A former FBI agent, Perkins had been HUAC’s chief investigator in Hollywood; some would have said its chief inquisitor.
He nodded.
Why would Charlie Perkins know who was after Iris? she asked herself. She stared at Ron’s long, bassett hound face, and he stared back as if to say, “Figure it out for yourself.”
“Iris testified in executive session,” she said.
Ron nodded. “Didn’t it ever occur to you to wonder why she and the others with whom she testified were permitted to testify in closed session while everybody else had to go to Washington and take the witness stand?”
“As I recall, there was some explanation; that it was a rehearsal for a public session, or something. But what you seem to be suggesting is that she made a deal: closed session in exchange for naming names.”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” he said.
Iris had left Hollywood shortly after testifying, and it was widely assumed that she had been blacklisted, but if what Ron was hinting at was true, maybe she had left because she couldn’t live with herself anymore.
“Are you telling me that Iris was a friendly witness?” Charlotte asked, talking as much to herself as to him. “You are! And you’re also telling me that someone had been trying to find her. Probably someone whose life was ruined as a result of her HUAC testimony.”
Ron sat quietly smoking his cigarette.
God knows, enough lives were ruined, Charlotte thought. She also thought of what Tracey had said about Pamola being a ghost out of Iris’ past who had come back to haunt her. Maybe his comment had been more prescient than either of them had realized at the time.
“You’re getting warm,” said Ron as he took a handful of peanuts. “You haven’t come by your reputation as a detective undeservedly.”
“Some detective. The thought never even occurred to me that Iris might have left town for another reason. But how do you know that the person who’s looking for her is looking for her because of her HUAC testimony? Why not a long lost cousin or someone she owes money to? And why all these years later?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m just guessing. The first ad appeared in February of 1988, just after an article appeared in the L.A. Times containing previously unreleased testimony from the executive session in which Iris testified. The reporter had gotten the transcripts through the Freedom of Information Act.”
“In other words, the person who placed the ads might have just found out that Iris was a stoolie.”
He nodded. “A lot of people were out turning over rocks after that article appeared: scholars, victims, relatives of victims. Iris wasn’t the only one who was exposed as a friendly witness.”
“You’re the one who should be the detective, not me,” she said. “I didn’t know about any of this. I must have been in New York when the article was published. Did you represent her at the executive session?”
Ron nodded.
“Then you know who this person might be.”
He nodded again. “But you’re not going to get any more out of me. I’ll get you Perkins’ address,” he said.
“I’m surprised he’s still alive,” Charlotte said. Somehow she always expected villains like Perkins to have succumbed to their own venom.
“Alive and well, like a lot of other scoundrels,” said Ron.
Going over to his desk, he placed a call to his secretary, and returned a moment later with a slip of paper bearing an Orange County address. “Let me know how it goes,” he said.
Charlotte rose to leave. “Ron, about the cancer …” she said. “I hope …”
He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just as well. I don’t have any fight left in me anymore.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I don’t care,” he explained. “Like this case I’m working on now. A rock musician who smeared shit all over the walls of a hotel room. In the old days, when people got into trouble, they at least did it with style.”
“Polito in a pinch,” she said, repeating a slogan from the old days. Then she reached out—it wasn’t up anymore, she noted sadly—to give him a hug.
“Don’t ever say Ron Polito never did anything for you,” he said as he held out her jacket for her.
“You know I would never say that.”
As he closed the door behind her, she thought of how many secrets he would be taking to the grave with him.
13
After leaving Ron’s office, Charlotte bought a map and located the street where Perkins lived. She felt like a Nazi-hunter who’s finally discovered that the villain he’s been searching for is living in a suburb of Buenos Aires. She drove out there after getting a bite to eat at the hotel. Perkins lived with his wife in a tract house in a development; like a thousand others in his town, like a million others in California. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a small backyard with a high fence. Talk about the banality of evil, she thought as she rang the doorbell. She hadn’t called in advance for fear that he wouldn’t want to see her, but she needn’t have worried. He welcomed her as warmly as he might have an old high-school acquaintance. As far as he was concerned, they were both products of the same era; the fact that they had played on rival teams didn’t seem to matter.
After proudly introducing her to his wife, he ushered her into a wood-paneled family room, where the television was tuned to a popular quiz show, and asked his wife to bring them some cake and coffee.
Though she had seen Perkins’ photograph in the newspapers many times during the blacklist era, Charlotte had never actually met him before. He still looked much the same as he had then, with the addition of a couple of extra chins. He belonged to the type that could be labeled genial all-American: tall, beefy, and blond (now gray). He looked like everybody’s favorite high-school football coach.
Actually, there were many people, even those who had played on the opposing team, who had not disliked Perkins, recognizing that although he had chosen a contemptible career, he had carried out his job with competence, and, to the degree that it was possible, fairness.
“I’ve come about Iris O’Connor,” she said, once she was settled in on the couch with her cup of coffee.
“What about her?” he asked.
“I want to know how she testified. Everyone in Hollywood thought she left town because she was an unfriendly witness, but I have recently learned that she was in fact a friendly witness.” She didn’t let on that her reason was Ron Polito.
Perkins gave her an appraising stare from the depths of his plastic-covered recliner. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference if I tell you,” he said finally. “The records are all open to the public now anyway, if you wanted to take the time to seek them out.”
“I’m in a hurry,” she snapped.
Perkins leaned his head back against the recliner, and stared out at the spinning wheel on the game show. “As I recall, she testified in Los Angeles in the winter of 1952, in executive session.”
Charlotte nodded.
“I actually remember it very clearly,” he said. He looked over at Charlotte and smiled. “She testified third; she was wearing a green suit.”
He was playing this for all he could, Charlotte thought.
“She named all the usual names—no surprises there.”
Those who were subpoenaed had often tried to get off the hook by naming self-confessed Communists who had already been disgraced in the eyes of the Red-hating public, and had nothing more to lose.
“To our surprise, really, she didn’t stop there,” Perkins continued. “She went on to implicate others, people whose names had never come up before. I remember it so clearly because it was such a coup for us.”
“Who were they?” asked Charlotte, who had never had much patience for this kind of game-playing.
He smiled again. “You know the answer already. That’s why you’re here. To confirm your suspicions.” He nodded slightly at her, signaling an affirmative reply. “Well, your suspicions are correct.”
What was he talking about? she wondered. She hadn’t even told him about Iris’ murder, much less about her theory that the murderer was someone who was out to avenge Iris’ testimony.
He shifted his attention from the show back to Charlotte, baffled by her puzzled reaction. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Isn’t what why I’m here?”
“To confirm that she testified against you.”
“She testified against me!” she repeated dumbly.
“Yes. You, among others. But your name was the real coup for us. Her associate, Charlotte Graham—who would have thought that you were a Communist?”
“But I wasn’t a Communist!” she protested.
“Yes, but you associated with Communists, didn’t you? Iris O’Connor foremost among them.”
“Iris was my screenwriter for ten years. We did seventeen films together. Of course I associated with her.” She paused for a moment to calm herself; she was practically yelling at him. “But even she wasn’t a member of the Party. Not that I knew of, anyway.”
“The Screen Writers’ Guild was infested with Communists,” he said.
The logic was mind-boggling. Iris was a Communist because the Screen Writers’ Guild was infested with Communists. Charlotte was a Communist because she had known Iris. “Talk about guilt by association!” she said. It was almost as bad as the actor who had been at the same bullfight with Picasso.
Perkins merely shrugged.
And what about the effects of Iris’ testimony on her own career? she wondered. In one overpowering wave, it all became clear to her. The reason she hadn’t been able to get work wasn’t because she had been too old to play young women and too young to play old women, but because she had been blacklisted.
“I was blacklisted?” she asked.
But even as she spoke, she knew it didn’t make sense. People who were blacklisted knew it, and had the opportunity to salvage their careers by renouncing their Communist pasts. Ron Polito, for one, had made a career out of guiding blacklisted actors and screenwriters through the tricky waters of rehabilitation. But no one had ever told her that her name was on a list.
“A better term would be graylisted.”
“Ah! Graylisted,” she repeated. Graylisted explained it, she thought. Tarnished enough that no one would hire her, but not black enough to be rehabilitated. A gorge of bitterness rose in her throat. Iris must have known what she was doing. You didn’t name names to HUAC—even just as an associate—without recognizing what the consequences would be.
For a moment, she felt faint. How could she not have realized what was going on? All that time, she had thought the reason she wasn’t getting work lay with her. All those years she had felt guilty for not doing enough to help; when she had unwittingly been cheated out of ten years of her career.
“Who else did Iris list as her associate?” She spat out the last word.
“Let me think,” said Perkins, leaning his head back against the recliner again, his hands folded calmly over his bulging belly.
“Or, better put,” she said, “what other lives did she ruin?”
Perkins didn’t seem to take offense at the venom in her voice. She supposed that forty years of such questions had inured him to their sting.
“She named a lot of names. Well over fifty …”
Charlotte gasped. Where was Iris’ sense of morality, her self-respect? She hadn’t just sung the same old song, she had sung a whole repertoire.
“Almost all of them were people whose lives had already been ruined, to couch my reply in your terms,” he said amiably, “except for—” He raised a finger. “There was someone else.”
“Who?” she prompted.
“Linc Crawford.”
Charlotte leaned back as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She remembered that afternoon well—it had been at the Marmont, in fact, when Linc had been called away from the poolside for a phone call.
He had returned a few minutes later, his tanned, handsome face ashen. “Jesus!” he had said. “That was J. Edgar Hoover calling to tell me that my passport’s been revoked. He said it wasn’t in the best interests of the United States for me to travel abroad. I have to testify before HUAC.”
Unlike Charlotte, Linc had actually attended a few Communist Party meetings in his youth. Partly idealism, partly curiosity, he said. Partly stupidity, he said in retrospect. But he had also served with distinction in the Army during the war, and was about as loyal an American as they came.
After Hoover’s call, he had gone to Washington to testify. He had admitted attending a couple of Party meetings, but he denied that he was a Communist, and he refused to name anyone he had encountered at those meetings.
“War Hero Admits He’s a Commie!” the headlines had screamed. “Crawford Bares Commie Past”; “Crawford Confesses All”; “Screen Idol is Ex-Red.”
He had taken the honorable path. He wouldn’t even hire someone like Ron to stand by his side, much less stoop to signing on with one of the “smear and clear” organizations—if you named names, they’d get you cleared. Or even worse, buy a clearance, in the same way that medieval sinners bought indulgences from corrupt clerics to save themselves from perdition.
He had paid dearly fo
r his scruples. He didn’t go to jail, but he didn’t get any work either. He slipped into a depression, started to drink. His wife sued for sole custody of their two sons, and won. Even his life insurance was canceled because his chances of living out a normal life were too slim. “On a par with a gangster or a steeplejack,” the insurance agent had told him.
Then, four years later, came Red Rocks. A talented, iconoclastic young director named William Ireland had been willing to thumb his nose at the studios, and take a chance on Linc. From the start, everyone involved knew that Red Rocks was going to be a classic. It was also going to be Linc’s comeback vehicle.
But by the time Red Rocks was released, he was dead. The insurance agent had been right about his chances of living out a normal life.
Charlotte had never quite gotten over Linc’s death. If she couldn’t punch Perkins in his fat, smug nose, she at least wanted to leave him with some stinging retort, but she was too stunned to say anything, and ended up stumbling blindly out of the antiseptic tract house and into the opaque sunshine of the late California afternoon.
She remembered nothing about the drive back to Hollywood, except a stupefying numbness. And the glare of the freeway: the harsh, disconnected light that reduced everything it touched to the flat, emotionless status of an object, that penetrated into every corner and ground down every projection. She had the feeling that the soft underside of her own life, and that of Linc’s as well, had just been exposed to such a light, a light that revealed secrets that had long been concealed, and that accentuated the deep wounds and the ugly scars. She wanted to just switch it off, and go back to that soft darkness, but now that she had seen what was there, there was no getting it out of her mind. With time, she hoped, the harsh glare would fade. The wounds and scars would still be there, of course; but they would be less disturbing if their ragged edges were allowed to recede back into the shadows.
Murder on High Page 20