by Helen Jacey
Lauder grimaced but he said nothing. It was better for me to go along with things and act as if I’d been duped. ‘Shimmer didn’t look the type to use.’
‘Yeah? You an expert on addicts or something?’ He glanced at me. ‘Guess you could be one yourself.’
‘I’m not.’
Lauder ignored this. He pulled onto Sunset Boulevard and joined the flow of traffic heading east towards Downtown.
What did I know? Shimmer couldn’t refuse an old bad habit? She was selling heroin at her mystery meeting? Did she taste too much of her own wares?
A suspicious mind wouldn’t help now. It certainly wouldn’t lead to Rhonda. She was now out in the big wide world. I hoped she was with company who could take care of her.
Good luck, girl.
‘I need a drink,’ I blurted out, without thinking. Lauder looked at me. Then he said something I didn’t see coming. ‘All right.’
The tavern was quiet, virtually empty, a Downtown watering hole. A long bar with around twelve chrome stools with tatty leather seats lined one half of the room. Years of grime had solidified in pockets on the cracked floor tiles.
I sat in a booth at the back while Lauder ordered drinks. The fact he’d acted on my wish and brought me here was slightly unnerving. I had ordered a scotch with ice. He didn’t flinch or give me a lecture. Maybe he’d bring back a double.
I needed it. Shimmer was dead. Had I somehow played a part?
A painfully thin woman, somewhere in her mid-forties, sat alone at the bar. Her dress had seen better days. It was faded dusty pink, with yellow stains, and too big for her. A round faded lace collar told me the dress had to be a decade or more old. She was checking out Lauder as he paid for the drinks. As he walked past her, she mumbled to herself, waving a long cigarette holder as if to make a point. Lauder gave her a nod. Thoughtful of him, but she missed it, knocking back her drink.
A trio of young GIs fooled around at the end of the bar, sniggering at the tragic wreck. Easy prey. I felt sorry for her. I had a soft spot for female drunks. One theory I had about Violet was that, once rid of me, she’d hopped on a boat back to the US. Now she could search for her Monty unfettered by me, a kid. But the trail ran cold and the bottle gave the warm comfort she needed.
So I always did a double take at female bums and soaks in case of any family resemblance.
What I really liked was that female drunks really didn’t give a damn. With each hiccup, they stuck two fingers up at all society’s notions of being ladylike.
A harmony group crooned out of the jukebox, the volume low. They sang about love like candy that they couldn’t get enough of.
A couple smooched in the first corner booth. The guy was about fifty, well preserved, sliding his hands up and under his younger lover’s jacket. All the hallmarks of an office romance. Maybe Lauder and I looked like one, too. One that had long gone sour, with nothing left to say, fueled by habit rather than affection.
Lauder sat down opposite, sliding over my drink and a packet of nuts. ‘Thanks,’ I said, avoiding his eye. He grunted some kind of acknowledgement.
As awkward for him as it was for me.
He’d got himself a glass of beer. Without saying anything, he offered me a smoke. I took it. This was a first.
I leant into the flame of his lighter, inhaling. I didn’t like admiring his thick lashes so I pulled away abruptly, inhaling too fast. My coughing fit, which left me puffing out spurts of smoke like a novice dragon, was timely. Lauder seemed too preoccupied to notice or smirk.
He spoke quietly. ‘Tell me exactly what happened. From the moment you got there.’
‘I’ve got nothing to do with it!’
‘Talk.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Shimmer answered the door. She wouldn’t let me in. I gave her the message as well as I could through a one-inch gap. She said she understood. As I was leaving, she called me back. She had a message, she said. So I went back, with no intention of staying long.’
‘Your first fuck-up.’ Lauder exhaled over the table, virtually into my face. I wafted the smoke away.
‘I figured I should hear her out. But she tricked me, played me. Talked about me being sent by “Kaye”, and I fell for it. Hook line and sinker. I wasn’t exactly prepared for chat, remember? Then she pulled a gun on me!’
‘What?’
‘A pistol. Looked like I wasn’t getting out alive unless I talked. So I did.’ I took a ladylike sip.
‘What did you say?’ He controlled his voice. The same muscle woke up in his cheek. If not for the fact that there were witnesses, I would be on course for another clip round the ear.
‘I said that a cop sent me because I was running errands for him. I invented a name. Lee. She bought it.’ Was he buying it? I met his eyes. They were opaque, giving nothing away. We were both hardened poker players but I fancied my chances today.
‘Go on.’
‘She said they just had this funeral to go to.’
‘Whose? Where?’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe family? I don’t really remember. I was focusing on getting out in one piece.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘Nothing at all,’ I lied. ‘She sure didn’t trust me. Just gave me the message.’
Relax. Your sordid affair is safe with me. For now.
‘She say anything about anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
I shook my head. ‘She let me go. Whole thing lasted a couple of minutes, tops, give or take thirty seconds of her beating on me.’
‘Where is this funeral supposed to take place?’
‘No idea. Maybe that’s where Rhonda’s gone? You know if she had family?’ I asked, to pad it out a little.
‘See anything else that strikes you now? In hindsight?’
Yes, there is, as a matter of fact. Rhonda is sick as hell and you don’t care.
Sticking to the lies I concocted with Shimmer felt good. Honor among fallen women.
Lauder leant back, taking another glug of beer, staring into space. His face was back to normal; no emotions visible under that finely chiseled veneer. Was he cut up? Something was up but I had no idea. But I’d spent my whole life concealing my feelings and I knew when somebody else was doing the same.
A GI was feeding the jukebox. On his way back to his pals at the bar, the soak used her arm as a barricade. ‘Soldier boy,’ she bawled. ‘Buy a lady a drink.’
He halted, saluting her, the uniform lending him more gallantry than he deserved and she beamed with pleasure. Maybe he’d wear it when he fucked her a few hours later. I tried to switch off my dark thoughts but the other GIs cracked up laughing as their buddy opened his wallet. Maybe they’d all take their turn with her.
Lauder gazed at me, watching the drunk. ‘The trouble is we both know you’re a very good liar.’
‘What? I’m not lying! What have I got to lie about?’
‘Maybe Shimmer paid you to bullshit me.’
‘That’s crazy! She nearly killed me. I know my place with you. You think I’m going to blow it, with all the stuff you’ve got on me? I’m doing exactly what you want. And even if she had, it didn’t get her very far, did it?’
He stared at me. Unreadable as ever.
The possibility that Lauder could have set the whole thing up with Shimmer, a test of my obedience before he really put me to work, still had some currency in my calculations. If she was in cahoots with Lauder, she could have warned him in advance that she’d given me fake leverage. Maybe she was his little piece on the side. No. I couldn’t see Shimmer being his type, but nothing would surprise me anymore.
With her death, this theory was fading fast. Even if the visit had been an elaborate test of my obedience, Shimmer had died before she reported back to him.
An ugly thought crossed my mind. Shimmer’s death meant she could never let slip – even accidentally – that she’d given me dirt on him.
I knew about Lauder’s mistress. I just
had to find out her name.
‘Anything else I should know? She say anything about going any place after?’
‘That’s it.’ I glanced at him, trying to read his mask of a face. ‘Why, it is suspicious?’
‘Nope, straightforward OD. Along with the other two. Frank Acker and Darlene Heymann. Movie types. OD-ed as well.’
I stared at him. ‘She was with a couple?’
‘A man and a woman.’
What? So, possibly not a couple? He wasn’t going to reveal much to me.
Shimmer had said a business meeting. Rhonda had mentioned a guy. The grass had hit me by that point and my memory was hazy. I could have got it wrong. She was dead and Rhonda was gone. What could I do about anything now?
It was pointless asking but I did anyway. ‘Who are they?’
Lauder looked at me and thought about it, weighing up how much I should know. ‘Darlene Heymann is Otto Heymann’s daughter.’ Clearly I should know who he was. My face must have blanked.
‘Heymann Brothers?’ Lauder said. ‘The Heymann Brothers Studio? Darlene is – was – the middle one of three. In her forties. Used to be a wild child. Typical rich kid problems. Maybe she had a mid-life relapse and went back to her fun-loving ways. Frankie Acker is an actor, twenties, signed to the studio.’
‘They were dating?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘But they knew Shimmer?’
‘You tell me. Not exactly from the same side of the street. Somehow they hooked up. Shot themselves up, that’s it.’
‘Was it…sexual?’
‘No.’
He talked as if he trusted me. It was unnerving. I knew he could turn nasty as quickly as a toupee spins in a hurricane.
I focused back on the soak, proving herself to be the main attraction. She had perked up a bit, swaying on her stool, clutching her newly acquired man’s muscular arm for dear life.
If there had been a sexual element to the deaths, he wasn’t telling me. Maybe the Hollywood machine would kill that story. But I saw Shimmer entwined with a couple, vomit drying across their faces, eyes lifeless like worn-out marbles. But she was as dyke as they come. And in love. Really in love.
The whole time I’d been with Lyle, she lay dead.
Was it my fault, somehow? Failing the first Lauder mission?
In my keenness to get leverage, had I failed her somehow? No. She had laughed in my face at Lauder’s threat. Anyhow, he had given her two days to get back, and she was dead within that time. She was intent on her meeting, a little smashed. She had been sober when I arrived, though. She partook with me and I’d encouraged it. Rhonda had wanted her clearheaded, hadn’t she?
I suddenly felt sick, my mouth dry.
No. Don’t blame yourself.
Lauder loosened his tie.
I stubbed my cigarette out in a tin ashtray advertising root beer. ‘Poor Shimmer,’ I said, without thinking.
Lauder looked at me. ‘What?’
‘Just sad, isn’t it?’
Lauder shot me another hard look. ‘Shimmer messed up. She should have paid up when asked. You did what you were told to do, if you are telling the truth.’ He looked at his watch and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small purple card, tossing it on the table in front of me.
I picked it up and read it in the gloomy light. Nightshade Club was written in a curling, embossed silver font. ‘Malvin’s got a load of Chronicles for you to check out. See if you can find a link between anything in the personal columns and that card.’
I didn’t quite get it. ‘What’s the Nightshade Club?’
‘I don’t want to see your ugly mug for a while, so this is homework. Don’t get any funny ideas about going walkabout.’
Then he got up and headed for the door. So much for goodbye.
I slumped down in my seat. I remembered I had no idea where I was. ‘Wait, you’re just leaving me here?’
Lauder turned, at the door. ‘Work it out,’ he snapped, in earshot of the whole bar.
My face must have fallen. A romance gone very sour.
The soak giggled loudly. ‘Some gentleman you got yourself. Not like my guy.’
36
I was in the garden at Holloway. Digging for something I dreaded to unearth. The screws hovered around me, forcing me on. The spade struck something hard. A skull, encrusted with mud and stones. Billy was there, pleading with me to leave, but I screamed at him that I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me go! I had to dig. Billy suddenly became Lena, immaculately dressed, her hair in a turban with a large ruby brooch. Mud from the spade splattered her shoes. She held up a couture gown for me; a silvery satin number, with sequins over the shoulders and waist. She taunted me – time was running out to change into it for the dance. Impossibility paralyzed me, but I had to finish my work first. Why wouldn’t she understand that? Lena was knocking back the champagne now, warning me a storm was brewing. Suffocating, dark clouds filled the sky. And then she was gone. I was quite alone in the grounds of the prison. Fear gripped me and I wandered aimlessly around, calling out. And then the wave came; huge, solid, curving, bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral, rising up like a gigantic wall, coiled like a cobra before its fatal strike. I couldn’t run. It was crashing down on me and I was stuck on the spot, unable to move.
I lurched up, covered in cold sweat. A recurring dream, every bit as dreadful as the time before.
I jumped up and showered. Lauder’s homework could wait. I wanted to know what the papers reported about Shimmer and the couple.
Shimmer, dead. It still didn’t seem real.
Out in the street, the headlines screamed ‘Hollywood Socialite and Young Actor’s Tragic Death’ and ‘Heymann’s Daughter’s final troubles’. I bought the Los Angeles Chronicle and a couple of Hollywood gossip magazines from the newsstand and headed to Tina’s for my morning coffee.
I settled down in my usual chair on the sidewalk, to read up on the life and times of Darlene Heymann and Frankie Acker.
There was a photographic portrait of Darlene’s family, from the 1920s. Otto Heymann and other suited men flanked the lavishly jeweled Heymann women in some enormous drawing room. Young kids trussed up in formal clothes stood at the front. The men were large, balding and with moustaches. Darlene was about twenty, her eyes focused somewhere just beyond the lens, giving her a dreamy look behind a thin smile. She was just going through the motions. Next to Darlene, her skinny mother Nancy Heymann was an elegant creature, who knew exactly how to pose in her straight flapper dress. Standing next to her elegant and petite mother, Darlene was a giantess in the making.
That must be tough. Hollywood didn’t exactly love Amazons.
I flicked through the papers. There were no photographs of her beyond twenty years old. Strange, as she was now considerably older, just the odd reference to her living in an artistic community. A few gossip columnists assumed Darlene and Frank were even dating, using the words ‘her young male confidant,’ the article loaded with innuendo. Frank had had minor roles in a few Westerns before the war, signed to the Heymann Studio. He came from Wyoming where his parents had a ranch. He was one of three brothers. One had died in the war, a hero. Frank had served but was discharged due to losing the hearing in one ear in an explosion.
The message was the same in all the papers. Darlene and Frank, odd buddies, were just victims of a low-lifer who supplied the evil narcotics. The families requested privacy and gave no comment. It had been a bad year for the Heymann Studio. A series of flops and now this, a nightmare.
Shimmer was pronounced as being an Ellen Cranston. Just a nobody from Compton, a desperado who preyed on a rich couple. The drugs were found in her bag.
No family crisis for the likes of the Cranstons, no posh portraits.
No mention of the true family she’d made, with Rhonda.
I folded the papers and pushed them away. I sipped my coffee.
Maybe she had been a pusher. I had no idea.
One thing I did know – girls like me and
Shimmer dragged our pasts around as if they were trickster cartoon shadows mocking us behind our backs. The city she had been so intent on leaving now ensnared her forever, because she’d been born on the bottom rung and needed to fund an operation.
I lit a cigarette and pondered. Would Rhonda claim Shimmer’s body? Or would Shimmer just end up cremated, her ashes flushed down the toilet of some facility? Lauder would know, but I wouldn’t ask. I shivered; he could end up doing the same for my unclaimed remains one day.
I couldn’t get Rhonda out of my mind. Who would take care of her with her fragile health? Unease niggled at me but I was powerless. I had to forget it.
Maybe Lauder’s stupid homework would be the distraction I needed. I took out the card again and examined it. The Nightshade Club. Probably some den of nastiness he had stuck his claws into. Lauder would get a kick out of me sitting on the bug-infested carpet of the Astral, wading through columns pointlessly for hours on end.
Boring.
Damn him.
I’d do it my way.
I went to the phone booth and asked the operator to put me through to the Los Angeles Chronicle. When I was connected, I asked for the office where I could place a wedding announcement. A young man’s voice came on the line. A pleasant, slightly bored voice. ‘Barney Einhorn speaking. How may I be of assistance?’
I asked, ‘Dumb question, but how do I place an announcement? Do I have to come in person?’