by George Baxt
“An item of gossip isn’t actually blackmail.” She was buffing her nails. “I think this one in particular is a subtle suggestion by the lady that she’s a bit strapped for cash and all contributions would be accepted agreeably.”
“Nicely reasoned, Mrs. Homblow. But have you considered what fresh cans of peas are about to be opened, if they haven’t already been opened?”
Harlow asked, “What have peas got to do with this?”
“I adore peas,” said Myrna, “especially cooked in a cream sauce with sliced mushrooms and sprinkled with paprika.”
Powell said smoothly, “Class will come to order or there’ll be an outbreak of knuckle rapping. What I had in mind, ladies, is that this sort of thing could be an invitation to murder.”
Harlow asked, “What’s murder got to do with a can of peas?”
“It’s merely a metaphor. Baby.” He patted her check gently while noticing again the grayish pallor of her usually porcelain-white skin. “And stop putting on the dumb act, we know you’ve had a couple of years of college.”
Myrna placed the buffer on the dressing table top. “Bill, you think Claire Young might be murdered.”
“Well, I’ve certainly been entertaining the thought.”
“Now really, Bill …” said Myrna.
He said smartly, “I like making all the money I make. I like my beautiful house and my cars and taking Baby to expensive restaurants. Hell, woman. I’ve worked my butt off for years to get all this!”
Myrna said, “That’s a strong case. Go ahead. Kill her.”
“I’ll be your alibi!” volunteered Harlow.
“There you go. Bill. You’re all set. Choose your weapon.” Loy was captivated by the glow on Harlow’s face. That’s true love, Myrna told herself, that’s genuine true love. Bill won’t do better. He’d be a fool not to marry her.
“It’s got to be the perfect crime,” said Harlow.
“Oh, absolutely perfect,” agreed Myrna.
“I’m delighted you two are enjoying yourselves.” Powell looked at Harlow. “You didn't really cross the lot in that outrageous garment?”
She laughed. “Of course not. I brought it back to my suite and put it on there.” She was on her feet. She crossed to him and kissed him. “I’ve got to get back to the fitting room. Myrna. I’ll bring the robe back later.”
“There’s no rush. Baby.” She went to Harlow, took her hand and led her to the door. Harlow’s fingers were ice cold. And it was such a warm day. At the door, they embraced.
“See you later!” said Harlow airily and she was gone.
Myrna asked. “Bill, is she well? Her fingers are icy cold.”
“There's something wrong there. The color of her skin isn’t right either. Oh well, it’s probably another one of her colds.” Myrna said, “She’s had at least four this past year. What she needs is a complete check-up and I’ll phone Mama Jean and tell her so.”
Powell was lighting a cigarette. “Have you forgotten so soon, Mrs. Homblow? They are Christian Scientists. They don’t believe in doctors.”
“I hope they believe in dentists. I’d hate to think of them nursing swollen jaws for an eternity. Asta was a perfect little beast this morning.”
Powell brightened. “You went to see the little fellow?”
“He was part of the shoot. Asta and me in an M.G.M. chinchilla coat in the sweltering heat on Wilshire Boulevard. They would assign a photographer with a wooden leg.”
Powell put a hand over his eyes. “I know what’s coming.”
“Exactly,” corroborated Myrna, “I was so embarrassed. The photographer. Albert Garber, wasn’t. The studio should pay for the dry cleaning.”
“You think of everything, don’t you, mommy.” He tweaked her nose. “When do you and your lord and master kiss and make up?”
“He’s not my lord and master, which is the seed of the problem. And as for being kissed by him, like his precious imported wines, he prefers me at room temperature. The hell with him, do you suppose Louis has heard by now?”
“Indubitably. There’s probably a council of war underway in his office right now. Many tears on his part ending with a fainting spell. The man should have been an actor.”
In Louis B. Mayer’s office, he was flat on his back on a couch, eyes closed with Benny Thau kneeling at his side and slapping a wrist. He looked knowingly at Howard Strickling, the head of publicity, who sat in a chair stifling a yawn. In a chair beyond him, her elbows on the desk and her hands propping up her motherly face, sat Ida Koverman, Mayer’s wise assistant and hatchet woman.
Benny asked his recumbent boss, “Louis, can you hear me?” He turned to the others. “I think this one’s real.”
Ida Koverman snorted. “They’re never real.” Strickling chortled. Koverman looked at him, thinking, He knows where all the bodies are buried because he put most of them there.
Mayer’s eyes were open and glaring at Koverman. “Ida, you’re fired.” Thau helped him to sit up. Koverman sat back in her chair and examined some fingernails. They were blood red. She might have been tearing at somebody’s throat.
Koverman said, “What about Claire Young?”
Mayer was on his feet, raging about the immense room. “She’s doing this for revenge! Revenge, I tell you! Revenge!”
Strickling said, “After all these years she’s getting around to revenge?”
“Why not? She was a pretty smart kid. Now she’s older so she’s probably smarter.”
Strickling reminded Mayer, “Louis, Claire Young’s operation isn’t exclusive to M.G.M. I’m sure there’s a lot of eyeball rolling and chest thumping over at Warner’s, Twentieth, and Columbia.” Mayer asked, “You’re telling me her clients arc stars? Nothing but stars?”
“Not exclusively,” said Strickling. “Also some featured players, directors, producers, writers …”
“And I suspect some Seventh-Day Adventists,” said Ida dryly.
“You shut up!” snapped Mayer. “I told you you’re fired!” Koverman raised a leg and straightened a stocking seam.
“You know, Louis, if there are some players you’re looking to drop, you can always exercise the morals clause,” Strickling said.
Mayer’s face lit up. “Of course! The morals clause.”
“That’s right, Louis,” said Koverman. “You can get rid of Wally Beery, Bill Powell, Robert Taylor, Gable, Walter Pidgeon …”
The thought of dropping all his big moneymakers made Mayer clasp his hands in front of him and look beseechingly at the ceiling. His eyes erupted with tears and Koverman said under her breath. “Oh Christ, I should have known.”
Mayer said through what he hoped were heart-rending sobs, “We’ll be finished! There’ll be no more M.G.M.!” Benny Thau, handed him a tissue. The sobs subsided as he dabbed at his eyes.
“Howard,” demanded Mayer in a cold voice, “what are you going to do about Claire Young?”
Before Strickling had a chance to reply, Koverman interjected, “Louis, shouldn’t you discuss this with Zanuck and the Warners and Harry Cohn?…”
“What!” Mayer raged. “I should let them know I’m worried?”
“Louis,” said Koverman, “they know you’re worried. They know everybody’s worried. Even Asta is worried.”
“That mutt goes to a whorehouse?” He pronounced it hoorhouse.
“That mutt eats from the Thin Man series,” said Koverman. “Instead of sitting around on our duffs waxing dramatic, we should start worrying about what it’ll do to the box office. If this inflates into a woozer of a scandal and names get named, they'll be condemning us in every church around the world, and that’s an awful lot of movie patrons except in darkest Africa.”
Mayer shouted, “Howard!”
Strickling said, “We’ve got to get our hands on the book.”
“If it’s in a safe-deposit box, all is lost,” said Koverman.
Strickling scoffed. “You think she runs to the bank every time she wants to jot something down in that damned book?�
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Mayer glared at Benny Thau. “Well, Benny? Have you nothing to suggest? You just sit there like a statue?”
Thau said softly, “Kill her.”
* * *
Only in the rarefied atmosphere of the circus known as Hollywood could an Amelia Hubbard create herself. She was a public stenographer exclusively to the studios and the stars. It was her secondary profession. Her greatest claim to fame was that she was the most recognizable female extra in films, right up there with the indomitable Bess Flowers. They were the elite of extras known as Dress Extras. They had accumulated over the years extensive personal wardrobes, mostly acquired cut-rate but still in good condition from local thrift shops. Happily these clothes were largely movie star hand-me-downs and therefore had very impressive labels. Dress Extras provided their own clothes when on call and frequently looked more impressive than the stars. They were on call for elegant party and dinner sequences, for weddings, and as members of opera and theater audiences. They were recognizable to audiences, albeit anonymous, because directors selected them to surround the stars and enhance the scene. Sometimes they were given a line or two to speak, which increased their paychecks. Usually they were seen saying to their hosts, “It was a lovely evening” or “Next time at our house!” unless the fictional hosts were royalty.
Amelia was another refugee from the M.G.M. studios along with Claire and Fern. Amelia’s problem was her height. She stood five foot nine in her stocking feet and most leading men were anywhere from five six to five eight. In her brief sortie as a featured player, Amelia was always either seated or lying on a divan. If the scene positively required her to stand, either a small trench was dug for her to stand in or the actor stood on a box. Amelia soon realized her days in front of the camera were numbered, so she wisely enrolled in a secretarial school and just as wisely let directors and casting directors know that extra work was not beneath her. Being both proficient and well liked, Amelia was soon profiting from two careers. Unfortunately there often were dry spells when work in both areas slackened off and her current dry spell was a very dry one.
Claire and Amelia were working in Claire’s bedroom. Fern was downstairs manning the phones, which required very little attention now that word of the little black book had gotten around. Amelia’s long legs were crossed and her stenographer’s pad rested
on her knee as Claire dictated in fits and starts. When Claire was sure of her thoughts, there’d be a steady flow of words. But frequently there were long pauses while she contemplated censoring herself. Several times Amelia blushed. She was neither a prude nor a prig, not with her tenure in Hollywood, but much as she had heard about the town’s bacchanalian orgies, she’d never heard about them in such shocking detail.
“Oh come on now, Amelia. All your years in this town you’re telling me you’ve never been to an orgy?”
“All I know about orgies is what I’ve seen in C. B. DeMille and Erich von Stroheim epics. But for crying out loud, smearing peanut butter and jelly all over a girl and then …My God, kids eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time!”
“That’s where it begins,” said Claire matter-of-factly. “Wait till I get to the chocolate sundaes. Where was I?”
Amelia read aloud: “An invitation to an orgy at Lionel Atwill’s home in the Hollywood Hills is more sought after than an invitation to the White House.”
“Okay, I remember.” Claire lit a cigarette, exhaled, and then resumed dictating. “The men were stark naked and hopping about the ballroom on all fours. The women straddled them, beating their backsides with leather strips provided by the host. It was like a rodeo with the men trying to buck like broncs and the women hanging on to their necks to keep from falling off. At one orgy there were two heart attacks and one stroke in addition to a few nosebleeds.”
“God,” said Amelia.
“Don’t editorialize,” cautioned Claire. “Atwill’s orgies were very elegant. One of the girls told me John Barrymore stood stark naked on the ballroom balcony twirling sparklers while reciting a soliloquy from Hamlet. He moved her to tears.”
“Claire, you don’t really expect this to be published? If it is, these people could sue!”
Claire might have said, I don’t give a damn. If this thing is published and they sue, I won’t be around for the trial. She knew it wouldn’t be published in her lifetime. But having these personal memories committed to paper was as important to her as the black book and its list of assignations and participants. The phone rang. She knew Fern would get it and if it was important, she’d buzz her.
Amelia was thinking, John Barrymore naked and twirling sparklers. It’s a wonder he didn’t burn himself. She heard a buzzer and watched Claire pick up the phone.
Dr. Mitchell Carewe was trying to control his anger though the tongue in his mouth was on the verge of becoming blisteringly uncivil. She had barely said hello when he asked, “Have you gone out of your mind? Putting the black book on the market!” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you know what it could do to me?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea what it could do to anyone.”
His words blistered her ear. She took a drag on her cigarette and winked at Amelia, who was thinking Claire was an incredible woman. She told Amelia about her cancer as though she had a date to play cards. Though she knew the news shocked and sorrowed Amelia, she got right down to the business at hand with alacrity and enthusiasm. It was as though her death sentence had given her the freedom to unlock her inner self and dig deep into and release the hidden resources of strength and power she had sequestered for so many years. She heard Claire saying, “Are you finished, Mitch? I’m giving dictation to Amelia.”
Amelia knew that ‘Mitch’ would be Dr. Carewe. Now why would a nice guy like Dr. Carewe be giving Claire a hard time? This led her to dwell exclusively on the doctor. So charming. So distinguished-looking. So expensive. She’d seen him once about a minor ailment on Claire’s recommendation and she could still remember the thrill of his touch. It had been a long time since she had filed in her memory some thrilling touches.
Claire said, “I promise you, Mitch, you have nothing to fret about. After all, my dear Mitch, my death is in your hands.”
Amelia winced.
Carewe said, “I believe you, Claire. But what you’re doing, it’s so unlike you.”
“No it isn’t, Mitch. It's just another face of prostitution.” Claire hung up the phone, took a last drag on the cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and said, “Now for Mr. Louis B. Mayer.”
FOUR
Hollywood was awash in emergency conferences. Producers conferred with stars, stars conferred with their agents, wives conferred with wives as to what action they should take against their husbands, if any, and mistresses considered socializing with men in other professions than acting. Maître d’s conferred with chefs, gossip columnists conferred with their editors, and on it went. Lillian Hellman, in Hollywood with her lover, Dashiell Hammett, creator of The Thin Man, dubbed the studios the League of Notions. And amazingly enough, Claire Young was oblivious of the emotional earthquake she had created.
A conference of another kind was taking place in a Chinese restaurant called the Doll’s House. It was situated on Fairfax Avenue off Wilshire and owned by Jimmy Woo, a man in his thirties who was always quick to confide that he was actually a Mandarin prince descended from an emperor nobody had ever heard of and therefore could not check up on. The food was extraordinarily good and inexpensive, and detective Herb Villon, who lunched there at least once a week, suspected that Jimmy Woo had another source of income from the clandestine opium trade that Villon knew had escalated in Los Angeles during the past five years.
Villon was at a favorite table with his long-time and long-suffering paramour, Hazel Dickson, and Villon’s assistant, detective Jim Mallory, who was a shy and reticent man prone to harboring a variety of passions for a variety of actress. Four years earlier they had been involved in a case with Marlene Dietrich and Jim was stil
l recovering from his case of unrequited love, ignoring the song lyric that said unrequited love’s a bore. The three were attacking a plate of assorted appetizers, though Hazel was favoring a concoction whipped up for her by Jimmy Woo, who guaranteed it would obliterate her hangover, a recipe Woo said was handed down through the centuries from a woman ancestor who had claimed she was raped by Marco Polo, her reputation saved by a Mandarin emperor who had a taste for damaged goods.
“I don’t understand Claire doing this,” said Villon, munching on a sparerib.
“I do,” countered Hazel knowledgeably.
Villon eyed her with suspicion. “Are you responsible for starting this emotional epidemic?”
Hazel said matter-of-factly, “Claire started it. She had Fern Arnold toss the ball to me and I went for the touchdown. I’m making lots of bucks.”
“Swell,” said Villon, “now you can pay me back the C-note you borrowed too long ago.” She ignored the statement. Hazel was always borrowing from him and never paying back, looking on the money as a much deserved bonus. “Okay, Hazel, so why is Claire killing the golden goose?”
“The goose isn’t golden. It’s the eggs she lays.” Hazel was feeling much better and her appetite had improved. She was working on a second helping of appetizers, even though aware there were several succulent main dishes to follow. “I’ve known for a long time Claire’s been hurting for money. She’s not as smart a businesswoman as Madam Frances and those other flesh dealers. They take a fifty-fifty cut. Claire docs seventy-thirty, the thirty for herself.”
“That’s pretty dumb of her,” said Villon.
“She claimed it got her a better class of girl.” Hazel was attacking a lobster roll with a fork and Jim Mallory winced. She had a policy of showing food no mercy and Herb and Jim were well aware of it, but her table manners were execrable. Dining with a star she was Dainty Daisy personified, even taking the precaution of dabbing at her chin with a napkin to catch any dripping juices, rather than working her tongue like a windshield wiper which she was now doing.
“Golden eggs or no golden eggs, Claire’s shot herself in the foot.”