While I Disappear

by Edward Wright

  He studied her as she spoke, unsure as to how much he could trust her. In the short time he had known her, she had never given him reason to doubt her. But he reminded himself of the man she had chosen to be with, and he decided to retain a small, healthy dose of doubt.

  “From what I’ve heard, that kind of thing happens around him a lot,” he said. “Just yesterday, you told me not to go up to his room, remember?”

  “Yes. I’d heard Willie saying he wanted another chance at you. And Jay laughed and said it would be worth paying for damages to the apartment just to see it.”

  She shook her head. “I suppose I was naive about Jay at first. But I’m also capable of changing my mind before it’s too late. I decided to leave him.”

  “Good for you. But what happened to the job?”

  Something in her smile suggested self-mockery. “There was a morals clause in my contract. Goldwyn Girls are supposed to be above reproach. Did you know that? They decided there was something wrong with the company I was keeping.”

  “Let me guess.”

  She nodded. “Jay’s been useful to Mister Goldwyn, but apparently that wasn’t enough to cancel out the awfulness of my associating with him. So they terminated my contract. Mister Goldwyn told me himself, which was thoughtful of him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. It may actually be a good thing, because it was the other reason I decided to leave. I enjoyed the work, but all the girls are just window dressing in these big, gaudy movies, you know? I’m better than that. I’ll take some time off, and after a while I’ll be back.”

  “I’m sure you will. What does Jay think about all this?”

  She glanced at her watch. “He doesn’t know yet. About the job or my leaving.”

  “Is it smart to sneak away like this? He could come after you.”

  “I know. He could find me easily. But he won’t go to the trouble. Like a lot of powerful men, he enjoys having others attach themselves to him, bask in his importance. For a while, I enjoyed doing that. Now that I’ve lost interest, he will too.”

  She seemed about to go on, so he waited.

  “Some day I think I’ll be ashamed of the time I spent with him. But not yet. Did you ever ride a bicycle?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, my sister and I were real hellions on bikes, always daring each other to do things. There was this steep street a couple of blocks away from our house. We would race down it. I was the first to lift my hands over my head. Then she did it too, and before long she would put her feet up on the handlebars and hands in the air. I was humiliated until I learned to do that. One day I came up with the ultimate risk: feet up, hands high, and eyes closed.

  “I won. I also broke my collarbone.”

  “You a tomboy,” he said. “That’s hard to picture.”

  “Here’s why I’m telling you this silly story,” she said. “I never thought I’d experience that ever again, that same feeling of risk and adventure and flirting with disaster. Until I met Jay.”

  “I think I understand,” he said, remembering once again Emory Quinn’s story of the woman at the fights with the fleck of blood on her glove. “Is this the reason you wanted to see me?”

  “No. Could I have one more cigarette, please?” As he lit it, she cupped her gloved hand around his, and he caught a pleasant, flowery scent. “I wanted to see you one more time. You strike me as a decent man who’s had a hard time. I also wanted to apologize for being part of that terrible night. And one last thing—”

  “What?”

  “When you spoke to Jay in the car that night, I could tell how important this woman Rose was to you and how desperately you wanted to know who killed her.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I don’t think Jay killed her. He can be brutal. But I don’t think he’s capable of killing anyone, or ordering anyone killed. That’s just my intuition, and you can believe it or not.

  “But I think Jay knows something.” She paused, thinking, then resumed, speaking slowly and carefully. “A young woman was murdered in a car out on the highway the other night.”

  He leaned forward. “Yes.”

  “The morning before you came to the hotel, I was with Jay in his apartment. We had been out late, and he was supposed to wake me up when breakfast arrived from room service. But I was already awake. I heard Jay’s voice through the door. He was talking to Willie, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him so upset. I heard the words killed another one and something about a Yellow Cab and a lot of cursing, and then your name.

  “By then, I’m embarrassed to say, I was standing by the door, where I could hear a little better. He said the words He did too good a job. Ormaybe it wasI did too good a job. Andthen, just as they left the room, he said one more thing. It sounded like I hear the fucker’s back in circulation.” She laughed lightly. “Not exactly Goldwyn Girl language, is it?”

  “No. But it fits your pal.”

  “Those were his words. Or almost. They were opening the door at the same time, and I couldn’t be sure of the first part of the sentence.

  “Then the door slammed. I went out, and there was breakfast, untouched, and the morning paper. That’s where I found the story about the young woman, the cab driver, who was killed. Did you know her?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Jay mentioned her by the pool. But only to say how sorry he was to hear about it.”

  “If she was a friend of yours, like Rose, I’m sorry. I want to stress again that I don’t think Jay is responsible for killing anyone. He’s capable of a lot, but not murder.”

  She heard the doorman’s voice and looked up. “Your cab is here, Miss Lamont.” The man came over and picked up the two large suitcases. Horn got the rest.

  “Glendale airport, please,” she told the driver when the bags were loaded. Turning to Horn, she said with a faint smile, “That’s all you’re going to get from me. Unless I see you again.”

  By now, his last remaining doubts about Eden Lamont and her motives had dissolved. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you in the movies. Goodbye, P.J.”

  She removed her right glove and touched his unmarked cheek. “Do you mind? This is all the goodbye I get from this goddam town.”

  * * *

  He drove west past the Brown Derby to where the tempo of Wilshire picked up a few beats, and he found a cafe. He sat there over eggs and toast and several cups of coffee, thinking.

  Jay Lombard knew who killed Cassie. If that was so, he knew who killed Rose. For reasons of his own—reasons that could range from the charitable to the criminal—he had decided to say nothing about it. But the tough little lawyer knew, and Horn hoped that with the right tools, the information could be extracted from him. Maybe the police had the tools.

  Paying up, Horn asked the cashier about a phone and was directed to the pharmacy next door. Once in the booth, he dialed Luther Coby’s number at the Hall of Justice. The detective and his partner were working down in San Pedro that morning, Horn was told, and wouldn’t be back until afternoon. He decided to try later.

  Another nickel got him Mad Crow at home. The Indian enjoyed sleeping in, and he sounded only half awake.

  “Remember Eden?” Horn began without much preamble. “I just talked to her. She overheard Lombard and Willie talking about Cassie the morning the story showed up in the papers. Lombard was in a lather, yelling about somebody doing too good a job and being back in circulation.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m not sure I—”

  “Just listen.” Horn repeated everything he could recall from Eden’s account. “It’s a little complicated, but I’m sure he was talking about the man who killed her. He knows who did it.”

  “Sounds like he might, all right.” Mad Crow was beginning to wake up. “Thanks, Nee Nee,” he said away from the mouthpiece. A moment later, Horn heard slurping sounds as Mad Crow started on his coffee.

  “I’ve tried to raise Luther Coby,” Horn said, “but he’s not around now. We need to fin
d some way to put pressure on Lombard to come up with the name.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe we can narrow it down a little.” Fully awake now, Mad Crow repeated Eden’s words. “Suppose the man said I did too good a job, instead of He did,” Mad Crow said.

  “That could have been it. She said she wasn’t sure.”

  “All right. Then the next thing was something like I hear the fucker’s back in circulation. But she couldn’t be certain because of the noise from the door.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Suppose what he said was I put the fucker back in circulation.”

  “I did too good a job,” Horn repeated slowly. “I put him back in circulation.”

  “Right. If that’s what he said, then it’s pretty clear he was talking about—”

  “A client.” Horn gripped the phone. In an instant, a disjointed image began playing across his mind like a home movie: A sandy-haired man, stooped over in the bright sun, hefting large rocks as the tendons in his broad forearms jumped under the skin like snakes. Horn muttered the beginning of a curse word.

  “What is it?” Mad Crow asked. “Do you know something?”

  “Lewis De Loach,” Horn said.

  “Doll’s husband?”

  “Right. Ex-husband. He got in some kind of trouble with his studio and was fired. Lombard represented him.”

  “What was the trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him once, and he danced around the answer.”

  “Well, think about it for a minute,” Mad Crow said, his voice dropping into a ruminative rumble. “It wasn’t just a contract dispute. You wouldn’t hire a hotshot defense lawyer for that. Maybe it was something more serious. Maybe even something criminal.”

  “Well, if it was criminal, you’d expect the police—”

  “Oh, my innocent friend,” Mad Crow said. “Now I remember why you needed me to ride alongside you all those years, across the prairies and deserts and mountains, protecting you from all those evildoers—”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Just this: If Lewis De Loach, who may have been still married to a movie star at the time, got caught at something dirty, it wouldn’t have been the first time a studio chose to wash its own dirty laundry. In return for them not calling in the federales, maybe he agreed to go quietly.”

  Horn was silent. “You told me Lombard had some influence with Sam Goldwyn,” Mad Crow said. “Maybe he had some with Magnum Arts too. So, even though he didn’t exactly get De Loach off clean, it’s possible he kept him out of jail. And if that’s so, it would make sense for Lombard to say he put him back in circulation.”

  “This is a lot of guessing, Indian. De Loach is probably too young to have known Rose back then. Doll said somebody almost killed him the other night, and he sure looked beat up when I saw him the next day at the sound stage where she was working. The only reason I can make room for any of this is because Doll was there the night Tess was killed, and she’s connected to both Rose and De Loach. But I have a lot of trouble imagining—”

  “I know,” Mad Crow said, his voice softening. “She’s a lot of woman, and you don’t want to go down that trail. Like you said, it’s a lot of guessing. So let’s stop guessing and start digging. We need to find out what De Loach did that was so nasty even Jay Lombard couldn’t save his job. Who would have that information? More important, who could get it for us?”

  Horn was silent for a moment. “Dex,” he said finally. “I hate to say this, but if anybody could find out, he could. He’s worked in this town for a long time, and he knows some folks at just about every studio.”

  “Good luck,” Mad Crow said wryly. “How does he look to you now?”

  “Oh, Hell. He told me a lot of lies. And I still need some explanations from him. But he doesn’t look nearly as likely as he did. I never wanted to believe he could have done it.”

  “But you did, didn’t you? Me too. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t drive right over to his place the other day and wring his neck. So call him. What can he do except cuss you out and maybe run you down with that beat-up Plymouth of his?”

  “He could do worse,” Horn said. “He could stop calling me his friend. Maybe he already has.”

  * * *

  A telephone call won’t do it, Horn thought, pumping a third nickel into the phone. He needed to see Dex face to face. Evelyn answered his ring and told him her husband was at the studio doing paperwork.

  “I’m not sure he wants to talk to you,” she said.

  “Can’t say I blame him,” he responded.

  He drove north through Hollywood and over the Cahuenga Pass and soon was pulling up in front of the main gate of Medallion. “John Ray Horn to see Dexter Diggs,” he said to the guard in the shack.

  “Uh…” The guard was in his thirties and solidly built. Horn didn’t recognize him, but the expression on the man’s face said the name had clearly registered.

  “Just call him, will you?” Horn said in what he hoped was an ingratiating tone. “He’s in his office.”

  After some hesitation, the guard dialed a number and spoke guardedly into the phone. Then, holding the receiver away from his ear, said to Horn, “No, sir. He doesn’t want to see you. And I’ve got orders to… Hey.”

  In a second, Horn was out of the car and pushing his way into the shack. He snatched the phone out of the guard’s hand as the man placed his other hand on the butt of the revolver he wore in a holster at his waist.

  “I know who you are,” the guard said. “You don’t get in.”

  Because of the confined space, they stood inches apart. Horn could smell the other man’s hair oil and see a patch his razor had missed.

  “I don’t want in,” Horn said, keeping his voice low. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble either. You know, I used to work here just like you do. One thing I remember is how Mister Rome didn’t want you guys walking around with loaded guns. So either load it or club me with it. Or go outside, have a smoke, and give me a few seconds on the phone.”

  They stared at each other so long, Horn began to see the comedy in the situation. Showdown at the main gate. Then, with a what-the-hell look, the guard allowed his expression to relax and stepped just outside the shack.

  “Dex?”

  “What do you want?”

  “A few minutes of your time.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. I’m getting close, Dex. To the answer.”

  “You already found it, remember, cowboy? I’m your villain. It’s time to call the sheriff and have me hauled away.”

  “I thought so for a while. I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “Goodness gracious. I’m overwhelmed.”

  “Come on, Dex. Five minutes. I won’t try to get onto the lot. You can meet me here at the gate.”

  “Why should I?” Horn thought he heard an opening, a crack in Diggs’ obstinacy.

  “We go back a long way, and you want to know the answer as much as I do. Rose was important to a lot of people. I’ve got an idea I want to tell you about. Five minutes.”

  He could hear Diggs breathing into the phone.

  “Please, Dex.”

  A minute after he had thanked the guard and parked his car on the street nearby, he saw Diggs coming out, striding briskly, a grim set to his square jaw.

  “Thanks,” Horn said. “You want to go over to the Roundup? We’d be more comfortable there.” The Roundup, a cafe located a half-block away, was a favorite hangout for Medallion people, especially the wranglers who worked on the westerns.

  “I’m fine right here,” Diggs said, looking at his watch, the meaning clear.

  “All right.” They sat in the Ford, and Horn began talking quickly about his meeting with Lombard and his conversation with Eden. Halfway through his account, he suddenly realized that Diggs knew nothing about Cassie’s death—had not, in fact, known Cassie at all. A
wkwardly, he told of her efforts to find Rose’s killer, then her own death.

  “God,” Diggs said under his breath. “I’m sorry. Especially for Joseph. I knew he had a niece, but….”

  “She was special,” Horn said. “She could be hard to like sometimes, because she was so mad at the world, and she lumped me in there too. But I watched her change. It was a little bit like watching somebody grow up, except with her it happened fast. She was on her way to finding out who she was and what was important to her.”

  “What a waste. How is Joseph taking it?”

  “Pretty hard at first. But now he’s just plain mad, and determined, and we’re working on this together.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing,” Diggs said. “But the two of you sometimes were a bad influence on each other, as I recall….”

  “We’re older now,” Horn said. “We won’t be busting up any saloons.”

  “Are you working with the police? The one who came to see me?”

  “Sure.” Whenever I can get him on the phone.

  Horn quickly finished summarizing his talk with Eden. Diggs listened intently. Five minutes had long since passed, but he showed no sign of leaving.

  “Lewis De Loach,” Diggs said reflectively when Horn finally stopped.

  “What do you think?”

  “Does it matter? I hardly know the man, except by reputation.”

  “All right. Tell me about his reputation.”

  Diggs thought. “Brilliant. Good screenwriter, but doesn’t like criticism. Great with a particular kind of acid dialogue. A little too quick with his fists. You probably know he’s a kind of athlete, and he seems to enjoy picking fights over the slightest things. Usually wins.

  “Ladies’ man, too,” Diggs went on. “Word was, he fooled around a lot while he was married to Doll Winter, dipped his wick in quite a bit of the talent pool at the studio. And there were rumors….” Diggs stopped.

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t like to slander anyone without facts,” Diggs said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “No. I won’t make the same mistake about him that you did about me.”

  “Then don’t,” Horn said. “But would you find out what you can about him? Especially the reason he was fired.”