Late the next morning, dropped off at the Burbank studios by my driver, I sensed a shift in the atmosphere on the Giant soundstage. A ripple of euphoria. Not that anyone said anything, to be sure. There was no uncontrolled laughter, not even a barely suppressed smile. This was the world of illusion-from Rock Hudson who strutted past with Chill Wills and smiled at me, to the woman who offered me coffee and pastry and told me how lovely I looked that morning. For a moment I thought I was imagining it, this hum of bliss that covered the studio like a gentle patina on valued wood. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I read human endeavor purposely, and accurately. That was my job, for all the many decades.
And I was sickened by it all. I wanted to get away, even though I had a tedious meeting scheduled with the very people who would feel safe now, secure, the impediment dislodged. Good God.
I’d listened to the radio over breakfast in my rooms, and one of the last news items mentioned the death of Lydia Plummer, Hollywood bit player. Her minor-league credits included the soon-to-be released Rebel Without a Cause and the film Giant, then finishing production. The announcer remarked that she’d died from a suspected drug overdose. Miss Plummer, he concluded, had died at the Studio Club for Women where Mary Pickford once lived during another era of Hollywood glory.
I wanted to talk about the death. I wanted details. Was Lydia’s death a suicide or an accidental overdose? Or something more ominous? What did Max Kohl have to do with this? He’d been in her room-forbidden in the women’s hotel. What about his rumored drug involvement? A needle in the arm? The brutish, powerful Max could easily overpower the zombie-like Lydia, then entering her narcotic heaven. But when I asked George Stevens what he thought, he skirted the subject. So, too, did one of the assistant directors; even the good soul who primed me for the dailies wouldn’t answer.
I tracked down Jimmy, who’d finished a morning of shooting. Dressed as the older Jett Rink, still with the graying temples and dapper-Dan tuxedo, he waved to me, and then was at my side. I waited for him to say something about Lydia, but nothing. I’d have to bring it up, and that made me furious. For God’s sake, what was with these people?
“Come with me,” he said. “Get some coffee.”
Outside, by the gate, was a new car watched by an admiring guard. “My Flat-four 547 Porsche Spyder Speedster,” Jimmy said. “A masterpiece.”
“Jimmy…”
“I’m having ‘Little Bastard’ stenciled on the back.”
“Jimmy!”
“You know, Miss Edna,” he mumbled, a faraway look in his eye, “the only time I feel whole is when I’m racing.”
He’s avoiding the subject, I thought. I sensed something in the eyes, cloudy behind those thick eyeglasses; the awkward movement of his body, the twisting of the head. His own mortality-that, he relishes. Another’s, well, dismissed. I’ll not have that, I told myself. I just won’t. It filled me with rage. So I accepted the invitation, telling him I had to be back to meet Jake and Tansi within the hour. He nodded.
He was explaining the car to me. “I can go 120 miles per hour.” I didn’t listen. I knew nothing of cars. Years back, I’d driven roadsters, clumsy oversized Oldsmobiles and Buicks, especially when I owned my home in Connecticut. Cars were vehicles for getting from A to B, with an occasional side trip to C or D, depending on the richness of this foliage or that gushing mountain waterfall that had to be seen. Other than that, they were instruments of vanity and often folly. But I nodded now, dutifully, as Jimmy gave his enthusiastic oration, all the time running his hands over the steel metallic blue fender, the glistening chrome, the leather so new and supple it seemed just hours from the offering cow.
Over coffee at Hoyt’s Restaurant near Hollywood and Vine, I tried to cut through the dense vehicular verbiage. What fascination do men have with grease and joints and pistons and carburetors?
“Lydia is dead, Jimmy.”
The line stopped him cold, and I saw him bite his lip.
“I know!” he thundered, so loudly that other patrons glanced our way. He leaned into me. “I know.” A whisper.
“Then why is everyone avoiding the subject?” I snarled. “And you, Jimmy, the one she mooned over, despaired over, probably ended her life over.” The last line was cruel, I knew, but I didn’t care.
“I’m not to blame. I was honest with her. She was troubled, Miss Edna. She and Carisa and Max-all the drug users. That’s what killed her. Stuff she put in her body.”
“But do you care?”
“Of course, I do. I’m not an animal, for Christ’s sake.”
I couldn’t read him. Despite his words, which I suspected were heartfelt, his wiry, malleable body suggested something else: a cavalier demeanor, even a frivolous one. It was the way he sat, like a schoolboy ready to flee outside to recess; the way he flirted with the waitress, a momentary flicker of the eyelids, even the deprecating nod to an autograph seeker, his name scribbled on a napkin. Yes, he was bothered, genuinely so, but he was also relieved. That’s the word, I realized: relieved. Out of danger, the prisoner released from his solitary confinement.
“Jimmy, do you think Detective Cotton will believe Lydia killed herself because of guilt over her killing Carisa?”
His eyes got wide with alarm. “My God, Miss Edna, you have a way of stating things in headline form.”
“I’m always the girl reporter in Appleton, Wisconsin-who, what, where, when.”
“You left out why?”
“That I can’t answer yet.”
“Look, Miss Edna. I really didn’t know Lydia well. We dated, had a brief affair. So brief, it might only have happened in her imagination. She got obsessed with me. Like Carisa. Two women a little unhinged.”
“Jimmy, why do you choose women who are ready to spiral out of control?”
“You know, I think it’s the other way around. They choose me. I’m like a magnet. I’m, like, there, and I’m lost myself, and I’m down in the dumps. I’m moody, and they come to me-like I can fill the deep, black hole in their lives. It’s like a paradox. Women seek the men who are the ones they should never go near. You know, like men who are mirror images of their own anguish. That’s me. If I’m at a party, and there’s one girl-sometimes even a guy-who should never seek my company, in a half hour they’re up against me, eyes pleading, hands clutching, wanting me. It’s like they’re drowning, and they don’t want to go under alone. So I run away, and they say, there, another man is cruel to me.”
“Jimmy, you could say no the first time they approach you.”
“You miss the point, Miss Edna. I’m at the same party, trying to find someone who will go under with me. I don’t want to drown alone.”
“All right, all right. But I sense gloating-maybe that’s not the right word here-I sense satisfaction that she’s dead. Nell told everyone, including Detective Cotton, that Lydia was most likely the murderer.”
“Of course she wasn’t. Lydia couldn’t murder. She was so riddled with guilt for everything she did, she’d confess right away to the cops.”
“Or,” I said, flat out, “her guilt made her stick a needle in her arm, choose to die, either accidentally or on purpose.”
Jimmy looked down at his hands, and said nothing.
“I have to go back.” I looked at my watch.
Back on the studio lot, past the gate, Jimmy pulled into a space where, he maintained, he could periodically check on the car. “You have to admit it’s a beauty,” he beamed.
Enough, I thought. Enough.
Josh MacDowell rushed past, a few yards away, his arms filled with costumes. He never looked toward Jimmy and me, but Jimmy, spotting him, rolled his eyes and slunk deeper into the seat.
“You don’t like him,” I said. “And yet you used to be drinking buddies with him.”
“I go out drinking with a lot of folks. Me, who has a low tolerance for alcohol. A couple whiskeys and I’m dancing on a table. But, well, Josh got too familiar.” He turned to face me. “I’m uncomfortable around fem guys like that. I knew Carisa through him, in fact. But you know that. When he drinks, he gets, well, swishier. Is that a word? There’s men, and then there’s men.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”
“You know, Miss Edna, Carisa used to sleep with dirt bags in the industry-to get small parts. Lots of people do it. You’re gonna hear stories about me. There was this director Rogers Brackett, who I knew here and then in New York. I lived with him, I did things. I had to. Or he did things. You know. That’s how I got on Broadway. It’s what you do. Carisa liked to throw that in my face. She used to taunt me. When you’re real famous, it’ll all come out. Or, why are you denying that part of your life? I bet you hang out at Cafe Gale on Sunset, where they hang out. Well, I got all kinds of parts to my life. I’m not too sure what I am. You know? I mean…”
“What, Jimmy? Tell me.”
He banged the steering wheel. “Nothing, Miss Edna. Nothing that has to do with nothing. It’s just that Josh and Lydia talked about me-to people. And Josh has got his grip on the innocent Sal Mineo, a little boy, who stares at me with puppy eyes and doesn’t understand that Josh is using him.”
“How?”
“How does anyone use anyone else? You find their vulnerability, and then you mine it like precious ore.” He bit his lip. “Miss Edna, I got things inside of me that scare me.”
I touched him on the wrist. “Jimmy, you have to find what makes you happy.” I paused. “And someone to make you happy, no matter who it is.”
He looked at me. “What are you telling me?”
“I don’t know much about these things, but I do know that you can’t live your life by someone else’s rules.” I smiled. “But you already know that.”
His eyes got wide. “You’re something else, Miss Edna.”
I started to answer, but he shook his head. “No more.” He swung out of the car, opened my door, and walked me to the gate. “I’m going home.”
“You’re not on call?”
“Not today. I gotta meet Tommy and Polly for dinner tonight. They told me to ask you and Mercy.”
“When were you planning on telling me?” I asked, smiling.
“Right about now. Polly’ll call you later.” He waved. “I’m going home to work on the sculpture of your head.”
“You’ll need a lot of clay.”
He smiled. “I’ll need a lot of nerve.”
Coffee with Tansi and Jake guaranteed the day would move downward. Both were lively and talkative. I was used to it with Tansi, the resident Warner’s booster child. Tansi’s years in Hollywood, I now believed, had made her a little scatter-brained and twitchy. But Jake, with his crisp manner and supercilious haughtiness, seemed to have caught Tansi’s exuberance. For two people who ostensibly hated each other, they exuded an unpleasant camaraderie when I joined them.
Lydia Plummer. Her shadow paradoxically hung over the day, allowing people suddenly to brighten up. How downright sad! Over and over I recalled my brief, scattered words with her on the phone. It broke my heart.
Of course, the conversation centered on Lydia. Originally Tansi had scheduled the meeting to outline my next few days of meetings, preparatory to my leaving within the week. But Jake had asked to join us. Interesting, this development. A day before Tansi would have been annoyed at his intrusion. Now they were the Bobbsey twins at the seashore. They said all the right things about Lydia: how sad, how tragic.
“Warner is preparing to have her body sent back home,” Jake said.
“To where?”
“Lavonia, Michigan. A mother is there. We’ll plan a little memorial tribute on the lot. She had friends…”
“Frankly, you two, I must say that everyone seems rather relieved at her dying.”
“Nonsense.” Tansi glanced over at Jake.
Jake frowned. “Miss Ferber, let me say this. No one wanted to see Lydia Plummer die like that, but she took her own life.”
“How do we know it wasn’t accidental?”
“She was playing with fire. Drugs, Miss Ferber.”
“Or she could have been murdered,” I said, staring at him.
Tansi nodded toward Jake. “I told you Edna thought that a possibility.” She turned back to me. “Jake says that’s absurd.”
“Of course it is,” he crowed. “She killed herself. And the fact of the matter is the whole James Dean thing is over with, Miss Ferber. Odds are she killed Carisa. They’d been friends, they fought, she was angry. Jimmy left her, and she blamed Carisa.”
“So all the strings are conveniently tied.”
“Exactly.” He sat back in his chair, complacent, breezy.
I couldn’t win. Tansi and Jake, two studio lackeys, one admittedly a decent old friend, but myopic, choosing the happy ending. America craves happy endings. In Hollywood even death is a happy ending.
Jake took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Like Jimmy, he smoked king-sized Chesterfields. I hadn’t noticed that. I followed the wisp of smoke across the table and desired one. Tansi noticed me eye the cigarette. “Edna, another one?” She offered me one of her Camels, withdrawing her own pack and sliding it across the table. I shook my head. “Let me try a Chesterfield. That’s what Jimmy smokes.”
Jake wasn’t happy, “Oh no,” he groaned. “Another acolyte.”
“Camels are better for your health,” Tansi insisted, tapping the pack. She pushed it in front of me.
I took one of Jake’s cigarettes, and Tansi lit it for me, striking the match with a flourish. “Tallulah Bankhead has nothing on me,” I said, waving the cigarette dramatically. They laughed, and Jake told me to keep the pack. “Please.”
Tansi placed her cigarettes back into her purse. “I love how Jimmy keeps his pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt with the matches tucked under the cellophane. He forces you to look at that bicep, at the sleeve with the crumpled pack tucked there. Imagine Cary Grant or Charles Boyer doing that. It’s a whole new way of looking like a man…”
Jake lost his buoyant manner, turning sour. “He looks like a juvenile delinquent. A menace to society. And you two…” He stood up. “Women like you,” he looked at Tansi and not at me, “would let a man like that get away with…”
He started to say murder but stopped. He fled the room, the sentence unfinished.
Mercy and I walked into the Tick Tock Restaurant on North Cahuenga, where the sign in the window promised Home-Cooked Meals. “I have a feeling somebody wants to tell me something,” I’d told Mercy earlier. Polly had phoned, telling me the name of the restaurant and the time. Now I spotted the back of Tommy’s head, and for a second thought Jimmy had arrived: that sandy-colored hair, styled into a gentle pompadour, but, lamentably, the red jacket as well. The red badge of slavery, I thought. Hester Prynne wearing the symbol of sin-and, ironically, love. Tommy, suited up for servile fancy.
Polly, spotting us, waved. “Oh, I’m glad you came, Miss McCambridge.” She turned to Tommy. “This is a pleasure. An Academy Award winner. A Pulitzer Prize winner. Both at our table.” Tommy looked confused. “Awards, Tommy,” she said, irritated. “At the top of their profession.” Polly was dressed in a polka-dot dress with a lime-green sweater, buttoned at the collar. She looked cute-little-girl now, wandering from schoolyard hopscotch. She’d even styled her hair-not cinnamon tonight, but a sensible auburn-into a ponytail.
Of course, we talked about Lydia, and Tommy shared his inanity. “The wages of sin are death.” He spoke in a preachy voice, didactic as all hell. Polly frowned at him and delivered her own practiced line: “I always felt sorry for her-she seemed to be always running into trouble.”
Mercy asked, “Were you surprised at her death?”
A pause. Then Polly spoke in a small voice. “I don’t think about people dying.”
We delayed ordering because Jimmy hadn’t arrived, and eventually Polly, glancing one last time at the doorway, drummed her index finger on the menu. “I don’t think he’s coming.” That made everyone nervous, as though Jimmy were the glue that held everything together. His absence meant vacant lots of stalled conversation.
“Just like him,” Polly griped.
“I sense that you asked me to dinner for a reason.” I waited.
Polly and Tommy looked at each other, and Tommy cleared his throat. “That last dinner we had, you know, well, I…we…think that we left you with some wrong impressions. I said some things…”
“Or,” I said, blithely, “you gave me some very clear impressions.”
“No, the whole thing with Carisa,” Tommy began.
Polly spoke over his words. “Miss Ferber, I know that Tommy slept with Carisa.”
“I told her,” Tommy said. “Detective Cotton told her my prints were there. We had a fight, and I confessed. I lied about going with Jimmy, there. I mean…you know…”
Polly leaned in, nodding. “It’s a sickness.” She sighed. “I sort of suspected it all along, you know.”
“Tell me, Tommy,” I began. “Did you go to Carisa’s apartment the day she was murdered? That night, in fact?”
“Why?” Tommy looked at Polly, who seemed frozen in place.
“You see, the super’s granddaughter said Jimmy was there twice that day, within minutes. Once, she sees him up close. A little later, riding on a bus, she sees him running out the door. Jimmy said he was there once. That second time was you, Tommy, right? Connie, the super’s granddaughter, caught a glimpse of someone that looked like Jimmy-red jacket, the look…”
He nodded, unhappy. “Yes.”
“You went then?” Polly blurted at Tommy.
Nervous, looking at Polly, he explained, “I lied to Detective Cotton. Told him I wasn’t there.”
“Why were you there?” Mercy asked.
“Well, she phoned me the day before. She was crazy, you know. She thought she could blackmail me. She was gonna tell Polly I slept with her. You know what she wanted from me? I mean, real crazy. She wanted me to talk to Jimmy-make him come to his senses. She wanted him to say he was the father of her baby. Real nutty. So I stupidly went there, you know, to plead my case.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing. She came to the door, started yelling about Jimmy fighting with her, abusing her, calling her a whore, just minutes before, I guess, and if I thought I was gonna come and abuse her, well, I had another thing coming. She’d call the cops. I got real scared and ran away.”
“Connie thought you ran to a woman waiting for you in a car.”
That stopped him cold. He looked at Polly, nervous. “No,” he stammered. “I parked around the corner.”
“There was no woman?”
Tommy glanced at Polly again. “I just wanted to get away. I thought she’d call the cops. So I ran.”
“Did you see a woman?”
He shrugged. He was starting to sweat.
“So you lied to Detective Cotton?” Mercy said.
“Are you going to tell him I was there?”
“No,” I said. “You are.”
“But he’ll think I murdered her.”
In the awful silence that followed, Polly spoke up, her voice laced with venom. “Well, did you?”