Irritable, suffering from the lack of a good night’s sleep, I wandered the Giant soundstage aimlessly, avoiding entreaties by Warner’s staff that I rest, read magazines, have coffee. When I spotted Detective Cotton, who was lolling near a stairwell, jotting something into a small loose-leaf notebook, I grunted, got his attention. I wasn’t happy with my own attitude, to be sure. Certainly the law had no obligation to fill me in on every myriad detail of the case; certainly not. I was a civilian, an East Coast interloper no less; and, frankly, a little too nosy sometimes. Yet Cotton had confided, or seemed to. He had proffered information and seemed to respect me as a confidante. No, I told myself, I feared I’d misread him. I’d thought I might like him. But now I was back to disliking the self-assured, smug warden of the law. He nodded at me, still intent on his jottings.
“Sir,” I said, drawing myself up to my imagined height. “Good morning.”
“Miss Ferber, a pleasant surprise.”
“I don’t know what’s pleasant about it.”
He tucked the pad into a side pocket of his sports jacket. “Something wrong?”
“Frankly, yes. You see, Detective Cotton, when we had that little tete-a-tete in my suite, I thought we’d established a rapport that suggested trust and-” I stopped. The look on his face was slack-jawed, almost comical, a little like that of an excessively loose-flapped hound dog.
“Madam, I did share with you. Honestly.”
“I sense that you mete out morsels of information to designated parties with the hope that one will spark some reaction.”
He laughed. “Miss Ferber, I’m not that complicated.”
“You deny it?”
He looked away, and then back at me. “All right, a little. It’s a technique an old-timer taught me. But must I share every idle speculation I have or every trial balloon I send up?”
“Yes.”
He laughed. “What are we really talking about here?”
I decided to shift the subject slightly. “I have information for you.”
“That’s why I’m here.” He waited.
“I know you’ve been told that James Dean made two appearances at Carisa’s apartment the evening she died, one just before the murder…”
“Or,” he interrupted, smiling, “during the murder.”
“I learned last night that you’ve been lied to. Tommy Dwyer, who, as you know, dresses like Jimmy, admitted to me that he made a visit to the apartment. It seems to me you would have garnered that information from him earlier.”
Cotton laughed. “Miss Ferber, I must tell you that I just assumed all along Tommy was lying to me when he said he wasn’t there. He’s a shifty, unreliable man, not too bright, and he doesn’t know how to lie persuasively. Given Connie Zuniga’s spotty eyewitness account, I figured it was him running out of the building.”
“And you did nothing about it?”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Well, no. But…”
“Look, it was just a matter of time before Tommy confessed. I’ve talked to him, and another investigator talked to him, and we were convinced the third go-round would crack that obvious lie.”
“But this is a bit of evidence that suggests Jimmy is telling the truth.”
“Yes, true. Jimmy was there earlier and not then. Tommy, maybe seven or so. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t return a little later-James Dean, that is.” He paused. “Thank you.”
I nodded. “And I take it you’re not convinced that Lydia Plummer’s death ends this case.”
“Not a bit. That’s a lot of baloney.”
“Baloney?”
He smiled. “You don’t like the word, Miss Ferber? I know everyone around here is ecstatic about her death. People in Jack Warner’s office-not the head man, yet-are placing a large blotted period at the end of the sentence. That’s why I’m here today. To remind everyone, including the killer who might be lurking here, that it ain’t over till it’s over. Let me say this. Lydia Plummer did not kill Carisa Krausse.”
“You can say that with conviction?”
He touched his gut. “I know it here. Street savvy. Years of flatfooting it on L.A. streets, even Skid Row where Carisa lived-a place you seem to like to visit occasionally. Lydia’s death is convenient, not only for the murderer, but for the studio. But it’s not convenient for me. Look, Miss Ferber, Lydia, in her last weeks, was unfocused, a shambles, a weeper, a spurned lover, a bumbling soul, strung out on drugs. When I interviewed her-twice, in fact-she talked of James Dean, their affair, and she had a lot of vicious things to say about Carisa, vitriol I’ve rarely heard about a victim, frankly. And salty, too, a fishwife’s harangue. It struck me as odd, that diatribe, because murderers usually try to temper their dislike of their victims to the police. She didn’t.”
“Really, sir,” I began, “she was an actress. Remember that.”
“Now ain’t that a beautiful epitaph for her. You know, she would have appreciated the line.” He stuffed his notebook into a side pocket. “Miss Ferber, the fact of the matter is my staff verified her somewhat lame alibi for that night. After she left the cocktail party. So, as of a couple days ago, I knew it was impossible that Lydia killed Carisa. She wasn’t in two places at one time.”
“Well…”
“I’m sorry. I suppose I should have phoned you.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Detective.”
“Sometimes there is.” He smirked. “You know that.”
I actually smiled. “At times there is. So what happens next? You’re drawing in the wagons around Jimmy, no?”
He was ready to leave, but then paused, moved closer, an intimate’s closeness. “So far he’s the one with the motive.”
“Think of it, Detective Cotton. Why would James Dean risk everything he’s built up? He’s not a stupid boy, truly. Killing Carisa would draw attention to him. He’s the one who was the object of her madness, the target of her flood of letters-even to Jack Warner’s office. He knew that. So he kills her, and you come swooping down, waving the letters like battle pennants. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by killing her.”
“Well, for one thing,” he said, leaning back against the wall, “your boy seems to believe he has a charmed life. I know all the stories about his manic car racing in the hills. I know all about his nightlife. He’s a risk taker. He lacks common sense. If Jack Warner wasn’t on my back, he’d be making bail right around now. But so be it.”
“He can be a foolish young man.”
“Miss Ferber, I agree with you about something. He, or someone else, never planned the murder. No one went there with knife or gun or evil intent. This crime smacks of impulse, of anger. A quarrel, heated words hurled back and forth. Tempers flare. She’d a temper, we’ve been told. And Dean’s temper is legendary. So they fight. In a moment of fury Dean, or someone else, hurls the Aztlan statue with such an impact that it knocks Carisa off balance. She trips and hits her head. She dies. Unplanned, unscripted. Anger, Miss Ferber. This is a scenario into which most people can fit themselves at one time or another. It’s just that the person we fling things at usually doesn’t die. And that’s murder. Or, at least, manslaughter.”
I was tired. Standing too long in that hallway, a pain in my shoulder blades; my feet ached. “True,” I admitted.
“All I’m saying is that James Dean is suspect number one. That’s a given. Murder by anger or murder by smugness. Take your pick. His touch is all over that apartment.”
“Was Lydia Plummer murdered?”
“Not according to the Medical Examiner. She’d been dead a couple hours before Max Kohl found her. We documented that. He’s not part of this.” He turned to go. “Gotta run.”
I thought of something. “One last thing. Lydia’s letter to Carisa. The one in which she threatened her. You haven’t mentioned that letter. When Lydia called me, she was frenzied about that letter. She regretted sending it, feared its contents were known.”
Detective Cotton stopped moving. “What are you talking about?”
I explained what Lydia had said, how she was afraid of what would happen if anyone found the letter.
“Are you sure? Miss Ferber, we found no such letter. Jimmy’s letter, yes. Are you sure she wasn’t talking about that threatening letter?”
“Yes, I’m sure she said she wrote a letter, which, from what she said, I assumed you’d found and confronted her with. And I thought you purposely omitted mention of when you and I spoke.”
He still looked baffled. “There was no such letter, Miss Ferber. I think you misunderstood her. She was hopped up, boozed up, incoherent, and slipping deeper into some narcotic bliss.” He saw the look on my face. “I’m not withholding information from you. We found no threatening letter from Lydia. James Dean’s letter was threatening enough.”
But watching him leave, I was not so sure. I knew what I’d heard that fateful night. Lydia may have been rambling, but her words were clear.
I sat for an hour in the Blue Room with the producers and Stevens, nothing important, just idle time spent to make me feel important. Jake Geyser sat at my right hand, a little too close, leaning in, confiding, but looking cowed. Near the end, Tansi joined us, slipping Jake a sheaf of messages. When the room cleared, Tansi whispered, “A minute, Edna.” I waited for Jake to leave, but he stayed at her side. “Edna,” Tansi said, “you will not believe how that detective browbeat Jake.”
“Why?”
Both Tansi and Jake seemed eager to relate the story. Cotton had come on like some gung-ho commando during an interview with Jake that morning. Detective Cotton had largely treated Jake with kid gloves in earlier interviews, Jake told me, as was just. After all, given his position as an assistant to Jack Warner himself, he deserved respect. His voice was high and whiny. “I announced I am a law-abiding citizen of this republic.” Yes, I thought, a republic called Warner Bros. Studio. “He just kept yelling at me, hurling question after question. It was maddening.”
“I walked in on it,” Tansi said. “By mistake. I stood in the doorway and heard Cotton call Jake a bold-faced liar.”
Jake blanched, perhaps as he had when Cotton threw the accusation his way. Now people didn’t call Jake Geyser a liar. Behind his back, yes. His staff doubtless mocked his aristocratic demeanor, his overweening ego, his tweedy sartorial nonsense, and, more so, his unbalanced defense of all things Warner.
Tansi was shaking her head. “Imagine.”
I turned to Jake. “Had you lied?”
Jake’s careful voice broke. “I had to.”
“What lie are we talking about?”
There was anger in his tone. “I misrepresented the times I went to Carisa’s apartment. I was actually there-a bunch of times, negotiating a deal that she had no intention of accepting. It was like a game to her.”
“That’s hardly a grievous lie,” I said, encouraging him.
Tansi touched my sleeve. “Wait.”
“I lied when I said Carisa was contemplating an offer of money. The truth is, Warner gave her a lump sum the day before, but I was told to keep it a secret. But she didn’t give me the signed paper guaranteeing silence. She tricked me. I’m not built for this stuff.”
“Even I didn’t know,” noted Tansi.
“Why keep that a secret?” I stared into his pale face.
“Warner wanted to see how she’d react. Whether she’d follow up with more demands. More letters. Which she did-the morning she died. Another letter. I kept going there. She wouldn’t pick up her phone most times, and I had to deliver a bag of cash.”
“Good God,” I said.
“I know, I know. I’m like an Al Capone runner.”
“And Detective Cotton found out?”
He bit his lip. “The police found the money hidden under a pile of magazines. I lied about the money, said she was considering it.”
“Well, this hardly seems the stuff of massive deception. Why would Cotton assault you today?”
Tansi and Jake looked at each other, conspiratorially. I didn’t like the new linkage. I much more preferred Tansi as Jake’s adversary and my own boon companion. In fact, I much more preferred the Tansi I knew years before, back in Manhattan days, Tansi at Barnard, spirited, fun-loving, cynical; not so wired and taut. And Jake, well, I never liked him and less so now, a man in authority with no moral center.
What he said next proved it. “He went crazy today because I stupidly lied to him again.” He glanced at Tansi, and she half-smiled, encouraging. “I told him Lydia had confessed to me that she killed Carisa.”
“What? My God. Why?”
“I know it was stupid. Tansi and I were talking about how everything was hunky-dory now, Jimmy free of accusation, but Cotton said he didn’t believe Lydia killed Carisa. So I said, well, she had a last talk with me, and she hinted that she’d done it. It was dumb, and I regretted it immediately. But Cotton lost it, really. He said he’d have me up on charges, that I was a fool; that I could lose my job lying to a cop.”
I was stunned. “Why would you even think to lie like that?”
“For a second I thought, why not? It’s over anyway. She did do it. I’m respected here. They’ll believe me.”
I shook my head. Who in this glitter Hollywood had a brain?
“And besides,” I added, “I agree with Detective Cotton. Lydia Plummer had nothing to do with Carisa’s death.”
Tansi gasped. “How can you say that?”
“I just did.”
“Proof, Miss Ferber?” Jake asked.
“I don’t have proof. But it’s what I know.”
“Edna, you’re being…stubborn,” Tansi said. And I almost laughed. Tansi seemed ready to say “ridiculous.” It’s a word I suspected Tansi used a lot. Oh, this is ridiculous. Can anything be more ridiculous than this?
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t like the convenience of Lydia’s death. Too many people are using her dying to forget the case.”
“Maybe they have a reason.” Jake defied me.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
Tansi was not liking this exchange. “Edna, I know you got involved in this because of Jimmy. We all want to help Jimmy, but now he’s helped. He had his army of supporters, and they came through beautifully. You, me, Jake, Mercy, Tommy, the others. The Warner office.”
“Tansi, don’t be a foolish woman.” The words came out too harsh, too strident. Tansi looked hurt, and I considered apologizing, then changed my mind.
“Foolish? Edna, how could you?”
“I’m just trying to be truthful with you, Tansi. I’m your friend.” But I looked at Jake, who was not an old friend, now glowering, his eyes dark with anger.
“That’s hardly the way friends talk, Edna.”
Jake smirked. “Don’t you find it strange that you and Mercy McCambridge have spent a lot of wasted time running around and making fools of yourselves? Cotton told me you and Mercy visited the super. Even, I guess, harassed his granddaughter.”
Tansi shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d go there.”
“It’s not the black hole of Calcutta, Tansi. It’s L.A., the dark side, the…”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead there.”
“No one is asking you to go there.”
“You know,” Jake said, “we do have a police force.”
I smiled. “Which, I gather, you’re not very fond of at the moment. Or have you changed your mind?”
“I have meetings.” He stood. “James Dean is safe.”
Tansi echoed, “Safe.” She stood.
Jake headed toward the doorway. “You don’t understand, Miss Ferber. James Dean is no longer a person. He’s now a property.” With that, he left the room.
Wildly, insanely, I flashed to Jett Rink, the helter-skelter wildcatter of Giant, that handsome, madcap boy who becomes so rich and powerful that he abandons his moral compass. Property, oil wells, ranches, Reata, Texas. A wasteland of black gold. Vast stretches of dried-out dead land, parched under crimson noontime sun. Buffalo grass where no buffalo roam. Jett becomes the land and the oil under it: in the process he loses his soul. Jett Rink, James Dean: property.
Furious, I managed to stand, grab hold of the table’s edge. “That’s a cruel thing to say about anybody.” But I was speaking to the door he’d closed behind him.