[Celebrity Murder Case 11] - The William Power and Myrna Loy Murder Case

by George Baxt

  “Say, listen. Where do you keep it hidden?” Claire said nothing. “Does it exist?”

  “It exists along with some heavy dictation I gave Amelia Hubbard.”

  “How heavy is heavy?” Fern was staring at Claire over the rim of her glass as she took a healthy swig.

  “Heavy.”

  “Am I in it?”

  “Yes, but I used a different name.”

  “I don’t give a damn one way or another. Claire, I’ve been giving you and me and the business a lot of thought. I want to take over.”

  “It’s nothing like running a bakery.”

  “I never ran a bakery so I can’t make comparisons. I’ll do a good job. I’ll give you a fair cut. I know all the clients and I know most of them like me.”

  “Why shouldn’t they? You always offered to pick up their dry cleaning.”

  Fern laughed and then said, “I think most of the girls would stick with me.”

  “Those who haven’t already made other arrangements. The joy girls in this town move fast.”

  Fern said, “I’ll give you a fair share of the take until after — “ She caught herself.

  Claire smiled. “Fern, my darling, sing no sad songs for me. Just always take care of the two out in Venice, should they need help. I’m doing my damnedest to see them well fixed. From the look of tonight’s …shall we say, donations? … it looks very promising.”

  “Claire, I don’t mind telling you. I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what could happen to you.”

  “Don’t be silly, hon. Either way, it’s a ticket to the boneyard.” She sipped her drink and then said, “Everybody’s listed in my address book, including the phony names they used. That goes for the girls. And when you talk to the girls, don’t push them. If they don’t want to be with you, then that’s that. If you’re doing real well by the girls who stick with you, then rely on them to spread the word. Whores love to brag. It gives them a feeling of self-esteem, like when I paired up Freda Groba, the Hungarian madwoman, with Albert Einstein.”

  “I remember him not being very happy with her.”

  “In the sack he was happy. But out of the sack, when she began to feed him her theory of relativity …” Claire rolled her eyes.

  In a tidy bungalow in West Hollywood on a quiet residential street, the Hungarian whore sat before her bedroom dressing table mirror adjusting earrings. Behind her, a Hungarian violinist by the name of Lazio Biro, in his thirties with hair that grew down to his shoulders, wearing an ill-fitting suit and what he hoped was a soulful expression, was worrying his violin with “When a Gypsy Makes His Violin Cry.” Freda was unaffected by the schmaltzy musicianship, but Freda’s friend Lucy Rockefeller sat on the bed, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Rockefeller wasn’t her real name, but she had adopted it because it made her feel rich. In New York City she had been known as Lucy Vanderbilt and during a brief sojourn in Chicago called herself Lucy Astor hyphen Hutton, but didn’t do too well there because her madam wasn’t a go-getter. It was in Hollywood that she found her true metier as a prostitute and was soon known as Juicy Lucy, not because she wept at the sound of cheap music but because she wept at the drop of a trouser. Her clients got used to her saluting their endowments and then pulling out a rosary and telling her beads what she would rarely tell anyone else. Lucy was a dedicated prostitute who harbored a secret desire to open a School for Prostitution where she would train young women in the fine art of whoring. She had once discussed this with Freda Groba, who had commented in her thick Hungarian accent, “So vot is to teach, dollink? Fawking is fawking, give or take an artistic embellishment. It is a school for men you should be thinking about, the pigs. They need to be taught manners and finesse and the fine art of making a whore feel like a lady instead of a service station.”

  Through her dressing table mirror, Freda could sec Lucy’s tear-stained face. Freda clucked her tongue and shook her head slowly from side to side. She would never go to a movie with Lucy because the young woman sobbed bitterly when the opening credits rolled, sobbing at the expectation of having her heart broken, especially if it was a Greta Garbo film. “Lucy, vot is with the tears? You have heard Lazio play this melody dozens of times. Lazio! Play something fonny!” Lazio leapt atop the bed and began fiddling away with great enthusiasm at “The Flight of the Bumble Bee,” with which he had placed third in a musical competition when his parents were touting him as a child prodigy.

  Lucy said through her tears, “What’s to become of us with Claire going out of business?”

  “Ve’ll do just fine,” said Freda, with true Hungarian self-confidence.

  “Do you suppose Fern might take over the business?” asked Lucy eagerly, her face streaked with mascara.

  Freda thought for a moment. “You know, iz very good idea. Fern knows most of the ropes and vot she doesn’t know, I will teach her.” She thought again. “Maybe I teach her tricks handed down through the centuries by the Groba women. From mother to daughter and etcetera and etcetera until my mother handed the legacy on to me.”

  Lucy was awe-struck. “All them generations of hookers. I guess you’re the end of the line, Freda?”

  “And why so?” asked Freda with ruffled indignation. “I can have baby! I’m still young enough!”

  “Supposing it’s a boy,” asked Lucy.

  Freda’s hands were outstretched. “So I teach boy!” Her eyes now sparkled as she said with pride, “Lots boy prostitutes all over the world, especially in Bangkok. Right here in Hollywood, you know how many male stars began by bartering their bodies?” She rattled off an impressive list, which was interspersed with an astonished “No!” from Lucy while Lazio accompanied Freda with “Love Me or Leave Me.” When Freda had completed her litany, there was a faraway look in her eyes and her face was a study. “Freda?” asked Lucy. “What’s that funny look on your face?”

  “My face has fonny look?”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “I was thinking about Claire’s little black book.” Freda stared at her image in the dressing table mirror. Telltale lines had not begun to appear around her eyes and her mouth. There were no liver spots on the back of her hands. How much time did she really have? Her efforts to become a rich man’s darling in the three years since she had settled in Hollywood had so far been in vain. Short-term options were available, but if she was to be categorized as damaged goods she would do so on her own terms. She had invested her money well with tips from stockbroker and lawyer clients who admired her elan and her joie de vivre, not to say her devil-may-care attitude, an asset drummed into her by her mother, who was now a countess by marriage living in a town house in Vienna with an impressively rich husband. Freda suspected he was being fed death in small doses of strychnine provided by her mother’s secret lover, a young chemist with ambitions to direct motion pictures.

  “That little black book has got to be worth a king’s ransom,” said Lucy. “Have you ever seen it?”

  “No,” said Freda softly, “no, my dear. And I don’t mind telling you, I would kill to get my hands on it.”

  Lucy moved forward on the bed. Lazio was playing the melodramatic and overwrought “Ase’s Death” as Lucy said, “You couldn’t kill, Freda. Not you. You’ve got too good a sense of humor to be a murderer.” Lucy caught her reflection with the mascara streaks, groaned, and went to the dressing table for some fresh tissues and some of Freda’s cold cream. It then occurred to Lucy there had been no reaction from Freda to her statement. Lucy repeated, “You couldn’t kill, could you?”

  “Lucy, my dear friend, there is old Hungarian expression, ‘There is a first time for everything.’“ Their eyes met in the mirror and Lucy was frightened by what she saw. Then Freda smiled, and all seemed right with the world. “Come, my dollinks, or we’ll be late for the orgy.”

  The next morning featured a hazy sun in a cloudy sky. Maidie Casson stood on the porch of her bungalow in Venice Beach and looked out at the P
acific Ocean, where dolphins were playing tag with each other. Maidie’s house was separated from the ocean by Ocean Front Walk, miles of concrete on which abutted other bungalows and many bars and sleazy cafes. Ocean Front Walk was separated from the Pacific by a long stretch of beautiful sandy beach dotted with sun bathers and sun worshipers and a small army of male body builders, who were responsible for this area being known as Muscle Beach. The body builders struck poses and lifted friends on their shoulders or did handsprings while others exercised on the parallel bars and other gym paraphernalia provided by the thoughtful fathers of Venice Beach. Maidie looked wistfully at the beach boys, wishing she was thirty years younger when she would have been strong competition from the admiring girls calling encouragement to their boyfriends. She picked up the bottle of milk she had come out to collect and went inside where a table radio blared for a ten-year-old boy in a wheelchair listening to a popular children’s program. Let’s Pretend, which weekly dramatized a fairy tale.

  “Sounds familiar, Elmer. What is it? ‘Rapunzel’?”

  “It’s ‘The Ugly Duckling.’“ A series of quacks came from the radio. “Sounds pretty ugly. I’m tired of this kid stuff.” He turned off the radio, deftly spun the wheelchair around, and pointed to a table on which was stacked a deck of cards. “Tell me about the future again. Aunt Maidie. Come on, tell me again.”

  Telling futures was Maidie Casson’s avocation. She had no future of her own to speak of and her past wasn’t worth flaunting. The present was some kind of question mark, so Maidie lived from day to day expecting nothing, getting nothing, and so was never disappointed. She loved the boy in the wheelchair, her niece’s son, and her niece paid her handsomely for the devotion. The boy was very little trouble. When not listening to the radio, a recent gift from his mother as the first of the many Christmas gifts he would receive, he read books voraciously, unless he was entertaining a secret desire to be a drummer in a jazz band. He knew that Chick Webb, the colored drummer who led his own orchestra, was a cripple but you couldn’t tell from his performance on the radio. When next he saw his mother, he’d bring up the possibility of her buying him a set of drums. It didn’t occur to him the noise might disturb Maidie and the neighbors, because like all lads his age, he was single-minded.

  Maidie waved the young polio victim to the table, where she commenced shuffling a deck of cards. He had detoured to look out the window at the muscle boys he envied and then resumed his way to his aunt. “Cut the cards,” ordered Aunt Maidie, which he did. She laid out five cards and studied them. “The ace of clubs and the eight and the ten. They’re good luck.” He’d heard it all before and loved it. Maidie was very dramatic with a beautifully expressive face. “Here it is again, the ten of diamonds, the money card.” She laid out five more cards, “Well, hot damn, we’re going to be on the move soon.”

  “Where to?”

  “You know where to. I’ve told you often enough. Someplace that’ll be good for your polio. Some place like maybe Palm Springs or farther out to Palm Desert and you’ll have a swimming pool where we can exercise your legs and have you up and walking again, as good as new. You know, President Roosevelt goes to Warm Springs — you remember that’s in Georgia — to exercise his legs while his mother Sara exercises her mouth. Tough old bird, Sara.”

  Elmer giggled.

  “What’s so funny all of a sudden?’’

  “You. You’re a tough old bird.”

  “Oh yes? Well, I’m not so tough and I’m not that old.”

  “Will my mom come to live with us?”

  “She’ll visit as often as she can.”

  “I didn’t say ‘visit,’ I said ‘live with us.’“

  “Maybe she will.” The phone rang. Maidie placed the cards on the table and went to the phone. “Hello? Well, speak of the devil. Elmer and I were just talking about maybe moving to the desert and maybe you living with us.”

  At the other end of the phone Claire Young said, “No maybes about it. We’ll be together…” She was about to say “for the rest of our lives” but found herself fighting tears.

  “Claire? You all right, Claire?” Elmer had wheeled himself to Maidie’s side and was looking up at her anxiously.

  “I’m fine, Maidie. Let me talk to Elmer for a minute, and then you come back on.”

  “Here he is, honey, as anxious as ever.”

  Elmer took the phone and said eagerly, “Hey Mom, when you coming to see us?”

  “How’s my baby?” She was in the kitchen with Fern, who was staring glumly into a cup of black coffee. An awful lot of bourbon had been consumed the previous evening and Fern’s head throbbed.

  “I’m fine. Mom. Are we really going to move to the desert?”

  “Do you want to live in the desert? It can be pretty lonely, you know.”

  “Maidie says it would be good for my legs. We’d have a pool where I can exercise. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s a terrific idea.” She wondered if any madam had staked out the desert territory but then scrubbed the idea. She wouldn’t live long enough and she’d face problems transporting girls from L.A. “Sweetheart, let me talk to Maidie for a minute. It’s something I don’t want to forget.”

  Maidie took the phone and said, “Before you say another thing, I want you to know he’s perfectly fine. He’s eating good and he loves the radio. Jade Armstrong, the All-American Boy, Pepper Young's Family, Buck Rogers, and I can’t get enough of Myrt and Marge and Eddie Cantor — “

  Claire finally interrupted. “Maidie, listen to me. I’ve got things to tell you …Maidie? Will you shut up?”

  “Sure, sure. What’s wrong. What’s eating you?”

  “Cancer, goddamn it,” she shouted, “that’s what’s eating me!”

  “Oh God,” said Fern, lighting a cigarette, “did you have to hit her with it that way?”

  EIGHT

  In the downtown police precinct from which Herb Villon and Jim Mallory operated, the two detectives sat in Villon’s office drinking coffee out of cardboard containers. Jim Mallory was reading aloud to Villon an item in gossip writer Jimmy Fidler’s column. It was about Claire Young, and Fidler was wondering in print if Claire Young remembered a promising young actress of yesteryear by the name of Audrey Manners. Jim asked Villon, “You ever hear of this Audrey Manners? I don’t remember any actress with that name.”

  Herb sat back in his swivel chair and contemplated a framed print on the opposite wall depicting a timeworn biblical scene of Noah’s Ark at the Ararat landfall. “Audrey Manners was a stunner.” His voice sounded as though it was coming from an echo chamber.

  Jim lowered the paper and stared at Villon. “Did you know her?”

  “I was in love with her.”

  Mallory folded the paper and placed it on Villon’s desk. Intuition told him he was about to hear a very interesting piece of Villon’s history. He wanted to savor the moment and then treasure it. In the eight years he’d been working with Villon, he was frequently frustrated by the man’s reticence. He knew Villon had a mother and father because here he was sitting behind his desk, and Mallory was positive he hadn’t sprung from the top of somebody’s head as Topsy claimed in Uncle Tom's Cabin. He knew there was a sister in the Midwest whom he didn’t particularly like and there was a brother in the armed forces from whom he rarely heard. He knew Hazel Dickson was his lover because when Hazel staked out a territory she trumpeted her triumph to the world.

  “Yes?” said Mallory.

  “Yes what?”

  “You were in love with her.”

  “Didn’t I say that?”

  Mallory was waxing impatient. “Well, don’t leave me hanging there!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Audrey Manners! You said you were in love with her.” He indicated the newspaper. “Jimmy Fidler wants to know if Claire Young remembers her. And then you say you were in love with her. So then what happened?”

  “You’re whining.”

>   “Sorry. Well come on, Herb, tell me about this Manners dame.”

  “She was no dame. She’s a lady.”

  “What’s become of her? Where is she now?”

  Villon looked at his wristwatch. “Probably having breakfast.”

  “Are you in touch with her?”

  “We talk on the phone from time to time. When she has a problem she can’t deal with, I deal with it for her. Like the occasional police shakedown. When the mob tries to step in and threaten her. I’m the white knight galloping to her rescue.”

  “Claire Young? Claire Young was Audrey Manners?”

  “One of Metro’s baby stars.” He sighed and sat forward, extracting a cigarette from a pack on his desk and then lighting it.

  “Now wait a minute! You said you’d never met Claire Young.”

  “That was for Hazel’s benefit. Metaphorically speaking, when Audrey Manners died, Claire Young gave her a decent funeral.

  There really wasn’t an Audrey Manners. Audrey was created by the studio the way Billie Cassin became Joan Crawford, who was bom Lucille LeSueur. Claire erased as much of Audrey as she could. When her secret benefactor set her up in business, Audrey was determined to start fresh. The man was a power at Metro then so he had all traces of Audrey Manners destroyed. Photographs, memos concerning her, all that crap, but judging from Fidler’s column, it wasn’t too thorough a job.”

  Jim said, “I don’t think you can ever wipe somebody off the face of the earth entirely. Somewhere there are dedicated movie buffs who have Audrey Manners photos in their files.”

  “But they don’t know she became Claire Young. She covered her tracks and has kept them covered.”

  “Until now. I wonder who gave Fidler the Audrey Manners tip?”

  “Maybe he didn’t need a tip. He’s been around a long time. I suspect he’s in the little black book along with every other male gossipmonger. You ever meet any of these guys at Claire’s?”