“Wait a second, now,” Hammond said.
Jack looked down the barrel at Leslie Bell and said, “Let her talk.”
Gertie said, “A lot of what Hammond told you was probably true. He just left out the first part of the story. The way I figure it, before your father or Parker got to Wilma’s, Hammond or Bell came by and killed her. Then they called a couple of dicks in hopes of pinning it on one of them. Parker got there first. He got knocked out and dragged into the bedroom. Either Bell called Hammond at the York Station or Hammond slid out and waited for your father. Either way, Hammond walked in right after your father did. This way, he could cover it up. If anyone looked deeper into things, they’d find that both your father and Herbert Parker were at the scene of the murder. One of the two of them would swing. Bell and Hammond would be in the clear.”
Jack looked at Bell and said, “Is that right, Dave?”
Hammond didn’t answer. Bell placed his hands on the arms of the club chair and shifted his weight.
“Stay in that chair,” Jack said.
Bell sat back.
Gertie said, “Only thing I’m not sure about is which one of these two bastards did it. My guess is Bell. He’s vicious. Dave, here, is kind of a nance.”
Jack looked over his shoulder at Hammond. Hammond still sat on the piano bench with a hand warming his wounded knee. He stared at the Turkish rug under his feet. Bell did something. Jack could see movement out of the corner of his eye. He started shooting before he could fully turn back and aim. The first shot missed wide and lodged into the oak paneling. Jack was more careful with his next two. He aimed for the middle of Bell’s chest and shot twice. The force of the bullets threw Bell back into the chair. Jack sent a fourth and fifth shot into Bell’s head. The luger in Bell’s right hand dropped to the floor.
Jack turned back to see Hammond rushing after Gertie. Gertie dropped the Springfield and screamed. Jack fired at Hammond. The Browning clicked. Empty. Jack swung it, butt first, into Hammond’s chin. Hammond tumbled down. Jack kicked him as he fell, catching the chin again. Hammond lay on the hardwood floor. Out cold.
Jack threw down the Browning and looked for his Springfield. Gertie had it in her hands. “Come on, Gertie,” he said. “We gotta cheese it.”
Jack hopped over Hammond and ran out of the room. He reached the stained-glass front door before he heard Gertie yelling, “Jack! No!”
Jack swung around and raised his fists. There was no one in the foyer to fight. No one seemed to be in that giant house but Jack and Gertie. Gertie yelled, “Get back in here.”
Jack paused at the doorway. He took several deep breaths. He couldn’t make heads or tails of things. He wanted to run but a thought from Gertie popped in his head. Bell’s wife had seen him there. Renny had seen him. Bell was a heavyweight. Either the cops or Bell’s boys would come after him. There was nowhere to run.
Gertie called out again, “Jack, I have an idea. Come back.”
Jack took a deep breath. He walked across the foyer and back into the sitting room. Gertie stood over Hammond. Hammond slowly pulled his arms underneath himself. “First thing you do,” Gertie said, “is knock that fucker out again.”
With all the adrenalin pumping through his veins, Jack felt like he could knock out Joe Louis. He grabbed Hammond’s lapel, spun him around, and launched another right into Hammond’s jaw. Lights out. It’s always easier to knock a man unconscious the second time.
“Give me my gun,” Jack said.
Gertie took a step back. “What for?”
“I’m gonna kill this fucker. He killed Wilma.”
Gertie kept backing away. “No, Jackie. Bell killed Wilma.”
Jack shook his head as if he were trying to rattle his brain loose. “How? How? How?” His arm was still outstretched, waiting for Gertie to hand him his gun. “How do you know?”
Quietly, in her most soothing voice, Gertie said, “Sit down, Jackie. Breathe deep.”
Jack let himself flop onto the piano bench. The seat was still warm from Hammond’s ass. Jack pulled out his tobacco pouch and forced his shaking fingers to roll a cigarette.
Gertie kept her distance. “Think about it, Jackie. If Hammond did it, Bell wouldn’t protect him. He’d let him dangle. He’d have him killed, if he had to. But Hammond would cover for Bell. There’d be an angle in it. Money. A little power over a powerful man.”
Jack nodded. He lit his smoke. Fingers still shaking, but his head clearing a little. “Bell reached for a gun. He was going to shoot me.” He nodded to himself. “A murderer would try to kill you, not tackle you.” Jack set a steadying hand on the edge of the bench and squeezed. He took a long drag, pulled the cigarette from his lips, leaned his head back, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Hammond tried to tackle me. He tripped me and cuffed me downtown when he could’ve just shot me and been done with it. It couldn’t have been him who killed Wilma. He was never a killer. He never had it in him, did he?”
Gertie stepped closer. “That’s it, Jackie. You’re coming back to me.”
She leaned over him, placed a tender hand on his cheek, and gazed at him with those dazzling blue eyes so much like Wilma’s. Thoughts flashed across Jack’s brain like lighting in a summer storm. Did Gertie know all along who killed her sister? Is that why she always steered me in the right direction and figured everything out so quickly? Did she enlist me not to investigate, but to kill Bell? Gertie smiled at him. He didn’t want to believe it. But evidence was evidence, even for a lousy detective like Jack.
Gertie lifted her hand off Jack’s cheek. She patted his shoulder twice and walked over to the phone sitting near Bell’s fresh corpse. She said, “Now follow my lead and we’ll be just fine.”
JACK, 1946
JACK DIDN’T KNOW the homicide cop from Pasadena. By the time the guy made the scene, Jack and Gertie had told their story enough times to have it down pat. The pair sat on the bench near the front door. The sleuth introduced himself as Jimmy Carmody. He sat on the short end of the L-shaped bench and said, “So, tell me what happened here.”
Gertie looked at Jack. Jack nodded. He ran through the lines of the script Gertie’d put together on the spot. “Bell hired me to coax Hammond into dropping by for a visit. He didn’t say why. I didn’t want to take the job. Hammond’s my old partner. But Gertie and I were out at Al’s Continental tonight when we ran into him. I laid it all out on the table. Hammond said, ‘Hell, I’ll swing by.’ So the three of us rode over here in my little coupe. Hammond’s Ford is still downtown. We should’ve taken that. We could’ve talked on the way. As it stood, we had no idea what was going down between Hammond and Bell. We get here. Hammond pulls out a picture of Bell and some hooker in the act. Turns out Hammond’s shaking him down.”
“Blackmail?” Carmody asked.
Jack nodded. Gertie handed Carmody the picture from her purse. “I picked it up from the floor,” she said.
Carmody slid on a pair of reading glasses and studied the picture. “I guess I can figure out which one’s Bell. Go on.”
Jack said, “Well, Bell wanted me to shoot Hammond. He told me to do it. But I’m no killer. I’m not even a detective, really. I don’t have a license or anything. I think Bell meant to hire my father.”
“Your father a detective?”
“Was.”
“Retired?”
“Dead.”
“Murdered?”
Jack shook his head. “Not unless you know something I don’t.”
Carmody said, “Go on with the story. Bell tells you to kill Hammond and you won’t do it.”
“Right,” Jack said. “So Bell says, ‘Hell, I’ll kill the dirty son of bitch.’ He digs out a luger and points it at Hammond. Only Hammond got the drop. Unloaded his clip into Bell. Five or six shots. It wasn’t fully loaded. But he shot that heater until it went click.”
Carmody rubbed the stubble on his face. A red mark still ran across his cheek from where the pillow had been pressed against it when the call came in.
Jack reckoned Carmody couldn’t have been awake for more than fifteen minutes. “And Hammond’s a cop, huh?”
Jack nodded.
“The two of you saw all of it.”
“We did,” Gertie said.
“Christ on a cross,” Carmody said. “It’s a good, old-fashioned shitstorm.” He called one of the crime scene guys into the room. “What’s Hammond’s hand look like?” he asked.
Jack felt a flush of panic. Of course they’d check for powder nitrates to see if Hammond had been the one to shoot the gun. And Hammond hadn’t shot, had he? Jack couldn’t remember.
The crime scene cop said, “Covered in residue.”
This took Jack a second. He vaguely remembered Hammond accidentally firing the gun on Third Street. Was that tonight? It seemed like months ago. But, no. It was barely hours ago. Jack stifled a relieved sigh. Lucky.
Carmody asked, “Is he singing, yet?”
“Nah,” the cop said. “He’s out of it. Don’t know his own name. We asked him about Roosevelt, he thought we were talking Teddy.”
Carmody turned to Jack. “Why’d you knock him out?”
“I didn’t want him to pin this mess on me.”
Carmody nodded, more to the thoughts in his head than to Jack’s response. “Aren’t you a cop, too?”
Jack shook his head. “I’m barely back from Germany.”
“Yep,” Carmody said. “Good you brought a witness. Good you knocked him out.” He rubbed the pillow dent on his cheek. “Bell didn’t happen to give you a receipt when he hired you, did he?”
Jack checked his wallet. As luck had it, the receipt Renny’d given him was tucked behind the twenties. Jack pulled it out and passed it over. Carmody studied it.
“I’m going to keep this receipt and this photo,” he said. “And you’re going to keep your mouths shut.” He looked over his reading glasses with the face of a stern father in a Hollywood picture. “Go home and forget any of this ever happened. You didn’t see shit. You don’t know shit. Got it?”
Jack stood first. He put out a hand to help up Gertie. Gertie took the hand and pulled herself to her feet. Jack said to Carmody, “We’re like a couple of ghosts. Say poof and we’re gone.”
Carmody leaned forward on the bench seat. He rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. He let out a long, heavy breath.
Jack and Gertie vanished before he had time to look up again.
EPILOGUE: JACK, 1947
JACK SAT ALONE in the darkened Highland Park movie theater. The newsreel and cartoon and short had run their course. The Republic logo shimmered across the screen, followed by the title—Darkness and Sweet—and top billing. Tom Fillmore as Hank Chelsea.
In the opening scene, a vixen with wild, curly hair runs screaming out of a bungalow and into a street. A man whose face is hidden in shadows walks after her. She runs right, runs left, dodges his grasp a couple of times. She makes a play for the bungalow again. The man forces his way in. Screams followed by silence.
In the next scenes, Tom Fillmore as Hank Chelsea returns from Germany to find out his wife has been murdered. He travels around Los Angeles in search of the killer. He knows who to visit and what questions to ask. He leaves a trail of corpses in his wake, but finally catches up to the big money man running a gambling casino in the North Valley. There’d been some blackmail, some extortion. Chelsea couldn’t be fooled. All it took was for him to point a heater at the big man, and the big man sang like nightingale. Chelsea’s buddy in the Pasadena PD swung by to make the appropriate arrests. Justice was restored.
The movie had been Jack’s idea. A few months earlier, he’d dropped in at the Studio Club in hopes of getting Gertie to speak to him again. She’d shut down once she’d found out he killed her pal, Herbert Parker. Jack couldn’t forgive himself for that. He felt like Gertie’s forgiveness was the best he could hope for. So he pitched a movie to Gertie. He said, “We write what happened to us, but we fix everything. We make the world simple again.”
Gertie was an easy sell. She started swinging by Jack’s place early mornings, before that first studio call. They’d talk over ideas. Gertie would type. She’d turn the jumbled thoughts into snappy dialogue and fast-paced scenes. It didn’t take her long at all. Ten working days plus a couple of weekends. Jack was more than a little impressed by the way she’d work. He was amazed, really. Whenever he told her this, she’d shrug and say, “I’ve written dozens of these.”
Selling the script was an education for Jack, too. Even though Gertie worked for the studios and did the thinking for a couple of directors, she wouldn’t take credit for the screenplay. “They don’t really pay women,” she told him. So she’d gone to the back room at Musso and Frank’s and sold the script to some sweetheart scribbler there. Jack had gone with her. She’d pointed to Jack and said to the writer, “See this palooka? You change a word and he rearranges your face.”
The old dandy just nodded. He passed the project off as his own, got paid a couple of grand for it, and the three of them divvied up the dough. Jack insisted Gertie should get half, he and the dandy should split the other half evenly. The dandy was probably more intimidated than convinced. He agreed, anyway.
Jack even got a small role in the production. He played the big man’s butler. He and Gertie had written the butler as a Filipino, but come shooting time, all the Filipinos on contract at Republic were out in Lone Pine, playing Comanches in a John Ford picture. So they changed the name of the butler to Ronnie and Jack said his line.
Gertie was nervous when Darkness and Sweet hit theaters. She told Jack that they were poking a sleeping bear. Jack wasn’t worried. He’d seen his share of cover-ups in the LAPD. Buried shit tended to stay buried. And he’d followed up on this one, found out that Lavinia Bell and her butler Reynaldo both made out like bandits. Between a huge life insurance policy, a modest inheritance, and pockets of cash they kept excavating among the crevices of that old house on South Orange Grove, they had it made. They weren’t about to start digging up any corpses.
As for Dave Hammond, he wasn’t in a position to dig up anything. He retired from the force within days of the Bell shooting. His knee wasn’t healing, so he’d taken to using a cane to get around. And his head didn’t really come back from those two concussions. He couldn’t remember what happened that night. He called Jack once, about a week afterward, to meet him down at Cole’s and fill him in. Jack went down, Springfield loaded, ready for trouble. But Hammond was hazy and hobbled. Jack had never seen him look so old. Hammond had asked, “What happened after I jumped you outside of Al’s?”
“You don’t remember?”
Hammond shook his head.
Jack piled another lie upon all the rest. He said, “You dragged me up to Bell’s. Bell tried to shoot me. You got the drop on him.”
Hammond had a fork in his hand at the time. His hand started shaking. The fork rattled on the plate so much that a waitress stopped what she was doing and took the fork from Dave. Hammond whispered to Jack, “I never killed anyone. Thirty-seven years on the force. Never killed anyone.”
Jack looked him in the eye. “You killed Bell,” he said. “You saved my life.”
Hammond pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket. He buried his face in it.
After Darkness and Sweet ended, Jack walked out to the concession counter. He’d gotten to know the girl who worked there over the two weeks the movie’d been running. He leaned against the counter and said, “How’s life, Edie?”
Edie grazed her fingertips across the paper hat her boss made her wear to work. “Glamorous as always.”
Jack pulled out his tobacco pouch. He rolled a cigarette, handed it to Edie, rolled a second for himself, and lit them both. Edie took a long drag and blew smoke into the low ceiling of the lobby.
“You staying for another showing, Mr. Chesley?”
“I was thinking about it.”
This was the last day of the run. One more showing, then it would be replaced by a mus
ical with that kid from The Wizard of Oz. Jack couldn’t see himself leaving the theater now.
“Is your lady friend joining you?” Edie asked.
“I don’t think so. The studio keeps her pretty busy.”
“Tell me about it.” Edie spread her hands wide, as if she were presenting the concession stand for sale. “Life in show business.”
Jack ordered his dinner from Edie: a hot dog, a bag of popcorn, a bag of peanuts, and a bottle of pop. He finished his smoke and went back into the theater after the newsreel. He ate his hot dog during a cartoon about a party girl; he ate his peanuts during a Three Stooges short. Then the Republic logo came across the screen again.
The theater was mostly empty. He could hear footsteps clicking down the aisle. The sound was sharp and hollow, like a woman’s high heels. She paused at Jack’s row, then came down and sat next to him. He knew without looking it was Gertie.
Jack kept his eyes on the opening scene. Gertie reached over and grabbed his bag of popcorn. Jack offered what remained of his bottle of pop. Gertie said, “I have my own.”
Tom Fillmore came onto the screen again. He was everything Jack wanted to be: beautiful, smart, one step ahead of everyone else. A good detective. A man who could figure things out based on the evidence in front of him. A man who didn’t need his ex-sister-in-law to solve the mystery and explain the solution to him. A man who could walk through the filth and depravity of the modern world and come out clean. A man who saw death and inflicted death and wasn’t haunted by it. A man who lived in two dimensions.
Jack gave himself over to the flickering images at the front of a shadowy room. All the while, he knew in the back of his mind that this movie’s run would end in an hour. The world would return to three dimensions. Justice would never be restored. He’d still have massive holes inside dug out by the war and Wilma’s murder. But he was scarring up just fine. And he was ready to follow Gertie toward whatever madness she flung him into.
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