Jarrico slid the box into the van. The others followed, each carrying another similarly shaped carton. I pictured three dead wives lying in pieces in the furrier’s refrigerator. They loaded the boxes into the vehicles and went back inside the building, then came back again with more cartons and put them in the cars.
I decided I was being silly. Obviously they weren’t body parts; they were fur coats. “Have we caught three blacklisted Hollywood men robbing a fur store?” I whispered to David.
“Would furs be stored in cartons like that?”
“No, I guess not,” I said. “What could they have in there?”
As if on cue, Biberman slipped, dropping the box he was holding, and several disc-shaped round cans, about an inch thick and twelve inches in diameter, rolled out of it and across the blacktop.
David stifled a laugh. “Those are film cans,” he whispered. “They’ve been using the furrier’s refrigerator to store their film.”
“Why?” I asked, as the men finished loading their vehicles, and David and I, crouched down, ran back to his car.
“They made an independent movie,” he whispered. “It’s called Salt of the Earth. Wilson wrote it, Jarrico produced it, and Biberman directed. They all worked for free and raised the budget from private investors. It’s a dramatized documentary about a union strike by poor Mexican-American mineworkers in New Mexico. I read the script. It’s wonderful, sort of Italian neo-realism, like Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thief.
“The studios, and some congressmen, and Howard Hughes, all tried like mad to keep them from making it. There were demonstrations against the film. The cast and crew were thrown out of their hotel in New Mexico. Before they were finished shooting, the State Department deported their Mexican leading lady for no reason. And two of the buildings they were using were burned down.”
I couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“The union, the IATSE, tried to keep every crew person in Hollywood from working on it. And to keep every laboratory in the country from processing the film. They must have been hiding the work print in the furrier’s refrigerator so it wouldn’t get set afire by some patriotic citizen.”
“Jesus,” I sighed. “I thought this was America.”
“Apparently it is except when it’s under stress,” he said with a sigh.
We followed the caravan at a safe distance to an old dilapidated bungalow on the outskirts of L.A., where they unloaded the cans. Through one of the small windows, we saw a five-foot-high Rube Goldberg–like apparatus full of wheels and levers, and a little four-by-six-inch screen. David told me was a Moviola, a film-editing machine. “This must be their secret editing room,” David whispered.
Suddenly, I felt a presence behind me. I whirled around and saw the tall, white-haired man coming up the driveway, only two feet away, with a large flashlight in hand. He shined it in my eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Oh, shit, I’d blown it. “Uh, hi,” I said. “I’m Naomi Weinstein. I guess I’m a little early for breakfast at Nate ’n Al’s.”
“Oh, Christ,” he sighed. “We’ve blown it,” he shouted to the others, who were still inside.
“Shit,” shouted Biberman. Jarrico threw up his hands.
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m not going to tell anybody. And I’m sure my friend isn’t either.”
“Then why did you follow us here?” Wilson demanded.
“I was only hired to find out one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Who wrote The Brave One? Who deserves the Academy Award?”
Wilson laughed. “And Trumbo sent you to me?”
I nodded.
He doubled over laughing some more. He told the others through the window and they laughed, too.
Finally it became quiet enough for me to ask, “Why is that funny?”
“Trumbo wrote The Brave One,” said Wilson. “He’s just trying to get extra publicity over it by confusing everyone.”
“Are you sure?”
He shook his head. “I can’t be sure. That’s Trumbo’s master plan. He’s trying to shame Hollywood into ending the blacklist without exposing the people who buy our work.”
I did have breakfast at Nate ’n Al’s, the New York–style deli in the middle of Beverly Hills. But with David instead of Wilson. During which David pointed out to me that neither Wilson nor Trumbo was Jewish, so my theory about everyone in Hollywood being so must be wrong.
I wrote up my report on David’s Smith-Corona standard—mentioning nothing about the Wilson-Jarrico-Biberman odyssey—and handed it to Norman Chandler in person in his palatial office at the L.A. Times. He was an imposing man, reminded me of Franklin Roosevelt. He read it. “There’s not one actual admission in here. Trumbo says Wilson. Wilson says Trumbo. It’s all a farce,” he said.
“I think that was the idea,” I added.
“That fucking Trumbo, pardon my French,” he muttered, handing me a generous check for my services and expenses. Still, I had a feeling he wasn’t about to give me a glowing reference.
David dropped me off at the train and kissed me goodbye almost as if he meant it.
I read two Agatha Christies and a Raymond Chandler as the train took me back across the country. I guess it hadn’t been my shining hour. Or my country’s.
Note
Except for Naomi’s involvement, all of the events of the story are true, although I’ve tampered slightly with the timeline.
When Salt of the Earth was finally, against all odds, completed, it was blocked from distribution in the United States by the studios and the IATSE—which forbade all the union projectionists in every movie theater in the country from running it—while it went on to win the French equivalent of the Oscar as Best Motion Picture of the Year.
In 1958, the year after The Brave One debacle, another blacklisted writer, Ned Young, won the Oscar for The Defiant Ones under a pseudonym. In 1959 Kirk Douglas hired Dalton Trumbo under a pseudonym to write Spartacus for $50,000, and they let the story leak. Soon Otto Preminger hired Trumbo to write Exodus under his own name. And the blacklist was effectively over for Trumbo, Wilson, and the few other best known of the hundreds of writers, directors, actors, craftsmen and women who’d been drummed out of Hollywood. But the lesser known vast majority of them never worked in the motion picture industry again.
In 1973 Trumbo was finally given his Oscar for The Brave One. He was presented an Oscar for his earlier pseudonymous writing of Roman Holiday many years after his death.
The Writers Guild has spent the last twenty-six years trying to correct the credits on films made during the years of the blacklist.
The research and columns of Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times and recollections of Christopher Trumbo (the boy on the Schwinn) contributed immeasurably to this history.
Murder at the
Heartbreak Hotel
MARK TERRY
WHEN FATE BLOWS open a shamus’s office door, you can never tell who’ll walk through. It could be a hot dame in a cool silk dress or a gun-packing gangster intent on harm.
It could even be Elvis.
I WAS CONTEMPLATING my checkbook when my office door swung open and Alicia Kingston stepped through. I dropped the black hole of my checkbook into the desk drawer where I kept the bottle and smiled pleasantly at the woman. “May I help you?”
“You’re Jakob Hull, the private investigator?”
“Yes ma’am. Have a seat.”
She plopped into one of my two office chairs, tucking a lock of her short, curly blond hair behind one ear. “You . . . you’re confidential, right?”
“What you tell me will be private,” I said.
She was maybe in her thirties, maybe in her forties. It was kind of hard to tell. She had the kind of voluptuous figure that was no longer fashionable—it disguised her age but didn’t hurt her sex appeal. “I mean . . . really private,” she said.
“Really private,” I agreed.
“Rea
lly, really private?” She had a wispy voice, like a little girl’s voice, and it went with her slightly plump body and vaguely innocent blue eyes.
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “But maybe I’ll know more when you tell me what you’d like me to do.”
“Oh. Well . . .” She rummaged in her Nebraska-size purse and retrieved a large mailing envelope. “Do you . . . can you find people?”
“Yes,” I said, once again back on firm ground. “Is there someone you’d like me to find?”
“Yes,” she said.
I waited for her to tell me who she wanted me to find, but she was going to be one of those clients and it was going to be one of those days.
“Who is it you’d like me to find?” I finally asked.
“Elvis,” she said.
I first shifted my gaze to the window, which offered no inspiration, then to my framed private investigator’s license, which offered even less.
With a sigh, I said, “Elvis, uh, who?”
“Elvis Presley,” she said, which was exactly what I was afraid she’d say.
I thought that over, debating responses. The first one that came to mind was: “Have you tried Graceland?”
The second one was along the lines of: “Get out of my office,” with a colorful metaphor or two inserted somewhere in the middle of the sentence for emphasis.
Then I remembered my checking account balance and said, “Elvis Presley,” which wasn’t a question, merely a statement, and a repetitive one at that.
“Why yes,” she said.
“The Elvis Presley,” I said, cautiously narrowing it down.
“Of course,” she said. “The King.”
“That one,” I said.
I thought of the checkbook. I thought of the bottle in the bottom drawer of my desk. They were inherently related, these two thoughts.
Alicia Kingston reached into the envelope and retrieved a snapshot. “This is the man I want you to find.”
I examined it gingerly. It sure looked like Elvis Presley. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
“In Detroit. At Cobo Hall. There was a convention of Elvises.”
Ah-ha! A clue! My God! A clue! “So,” I said. “This person is an Elvis impersonator.”
“Oh no. He’s the real thing. Elvis Presley. I saw his driver’s license.”
One step forward; two steps back.
“When, uh, did you see his driver’s license?”
She faltered, her creamy complexion taking on a rosy tinge. “Well . . . I . . .”
Hmmm, I thought. There’s a story here after all.
I made a wild guess, my particular specialty. “Did you sleep with him?”
She slowly nodded.
“Why,” I said, “do you want me to find him?” And I hoped the answer wasn’t: I’m carrying Elvis’s love child.
She once again dipped into the mailing envelope and handed me the contents. There were a number of photographs of Alicia Kingston performing upon Elvis Presley what in some southern counties was referred to as an “unnatural act.” Actually, it looked pretty natural in the photographs, but I’m just a private eye in a small northern Michigan resort town.
In addition to the photographs was a neatly typed letter demanding five thousand dollars or copies would be sent to Alicia’s husband. She would be contacted and instructed on when and how to deliver the money.
I opened my top drawer and found a blank contract. I slid it across to Mrs. Kingston and handed her a pen. “I think I can help you,” I said.
Once she was gone I retrieved the bottle from the bottom drawer. Maalox, it said on the side. I took a swig and toasted my P.I.’s license. “Here’s to gainful employment.”
MAURICE WINSTON HAD a head as smooth and hairless as a solar reflector, a thin humorless mouth, and the domineering arrogance of a first-class concierge. I stepped up to his desk at the Grand Bay Resort and handed him the snapshot. “I’m looking for this man,” I said.
Maurice didn’t smile, smirk, or snicker, but he couldn’t control the gleam in his eyes. “Jakob,” he said, “I believe Mr. Presley is dead.”
“Come on. You’ve got the Elvis, uh—”
“The Amazing Elvis Extravaganza,” he completed.
“Yeah. That’s it. Starts tomorrow, right?”
“Correct. Will this gentleman be attending?”
“I hope so. Are there any reservations for Elvis Presley?”
Unblinking, Maurice said, “Several.”
“Several?”
“There are seven.”
“How do you plan on keeping them straight?” I asked.
I wouldn’t have sworn to it, but I think Maurice smiled. Just a tiny bit. Then I got the room numbers of the seven Elvises. On my way out, Maurice said, “So this is your new career, Jakob?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a licensed private investigator now.”
“My niece says your class on the American detective novel at the university was the most enjoyable class she took.”
“I’m much happier as a P.I.,” I said.
“Perhaps Prozac would have been easier,” Maurice said.
“WHY?” SHE DEMANDED of me, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Why is Elvis doing this to me?”
I patted her hand and said nothing. Elvis was doing this to her because she was a gullible flake, but I didn’t think that would go over well. Her check hadn’t bounced and we had a contract. Satisfying her delusions was all part of the service. In her mind Elvis was alive and well; he had not grown old and fat and addicted to over-the-counter medications. The reality of Elvis’s ignominious death never registered on her in any way, not as an ode to the dark side of fame, not even as an advisory for the positive effects of a high-fiber diet. To her Elvis was alive and well and bopping her in a Motor City motel room.
I assured her I would do my best to locate Elvis Presley and retrieve the negatives. In the meantime, she was to sit tight and wait for him to contact her.
THE NEXT DAY I paid another call to the Resort, intending to knock on the seven Elvises’ doors, looking for the man in the snapshot. I stepped into the lobby, all spacious atrium, soaring spaces, and glittering poshness. I stopped dead in my blue suede shoes. The lobby was jammed with about thirty men who were, well . . . Elvis. Some of them were dressed in rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, others in brown suits, jeans, and tee-shirts, you name it. But each and every one of them resembled, in some way, the man in the snapshot. Elvis had not left the building. Elvis had tripped and fallen on the Xerox machine.
I groaned. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maurice laughing.
I fought my way through the Elvises, looking each of them closely in the face, trying to match one of them to the photograph. It was about as possible as looking fashionable in a white jumpsuit when you’re a hundred pounds overweight. These men all had black pompadours, long sideburns, and fried grits accents. I eliminated a few, trained investigator that I am: too young (twelve), female (sex change?), and Japanese . . . (nah!) There were two who were very overweight, doing an Elvis-late-in-his-career routine, no doubt. Finally I made it to the front desk where Maurice was calmly waiting for me.
“Hello, Jakob,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
I held up the photograph for him to re-examine. “Have you seen him?”
“Nearly a hundred times.”
I sighed. “How many are there?”
He handed me the flyer for the Amazing Elvis Extravaganza. It advertised 101 Amazing Elvises. I was looking for an Elvis in an Elvis stack. “One hundred and one,” I repeated in a stunned whisper.
“Yes,” Maurice said. “And I understand the Grand Finale is a mass chorus singing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ a capella.”
Before I could respond, Maurice patted my hand and suggested I go into his office and put my head between my knees. Instead, I went knocking on the doors of the performers who had registered under the name of Elvis Presley. The first two doors I knocked on didn’t draw a response. The third door did�
�it swung open. An unlocked, open door to a private eye is like steak tartare to a pit bull. I glanced cautiously up the hallway, then down, then stepped into the room.
“Hello? Elvis? You in here?”
Elvis was not present. Alicia Kingston was. She was lying in the middle of the floor with a knife through her heart.
DETECTIVE RAY CHURCH glanced at me over his reading glasses. “Why are you here, Jakob?”
“I’m a big Elvis fan,” I said.
“Let me rephrase that.” Church paused long enough to glance into the middle distance with his blue-gray eyes, then said, “Why are you here, Jakob?”
There was enough menace in the second version to count as re-phrasing, so I told him about my search for the Elvis who was blackmailing Alicia Kingston.
“Huh,” Church said, using the edge of his notebook to scratch at the silver hair at his temples. Church was a big, powerful man in his mid-forties who looked like he spent a lot of time in a fishing boat with a rod and reel in his hand. As a matter of fact, he had retired from the St. Louis P.D. and moved to Grand Bay two years ago, hoping for just that. “Well, Jakob, I guess we’ll have to round up the, uh, usual suspects.”
“Usual?” I said.
“Work with me, Jakob,” he said. “Work with me.” He shook his head and muttered, “Show business.”
IT WAS THE oddest lineup in history: six Elvis imitators leaning against a wall in an open conference room provided by Maurice Winston. It was like that old ad: short ones, fat ones, even ones with . . . well, no chicken pox, at least not as far as we could tell. The Elvises who had legally changed their names to Elvis Presley ranged in age from twenty-two to fifty-three and seemed to range in weight from a ninety-eight-pound weakling to a three-hundred-fifty-pounder who looked like a heart-attack-in-training. The seventh Elvis in the room was the guy who ran the Elvis Extravaganza, and his legal name was Myron Shalton. Everybody called him Big Elvis. Shalton was in his fifties and looked like what Elvis would have looked like if Elvis had lived, spent a couple months at Betty Ford, changed his diet, hooked up with a personal trainer, and aged gracefully.
Show Business Is Murder Page 15