I woke with a start: the face of Max’s murderer flashed before me. A suspicion, yes, but I felt it to the core of my being. Only one person, without a doubt. I lay there, trembling, as Ava’s provocative words spun around in my head. Those casual words-how she dwelled on that last evening of Max’s life and the whereabouts of the featured players in this Hollywood dark movie. The Hollywood script we both were living.
Dressed, refreshed with two cups of coffee and orange juice, I phoned Ava, afraid I’d be waking her after a night of insomnia. But she answered on the second ring, her voice hurried. For a second I heard disapproval. “Ah, Edna, good morning.”
“Ava, I’m sorry to call so early. You were expecting another call?”
I heard her lighting a cigarette, the striking of a match. “Francis was supposed to be here. We’re going to Metro today. I have work to do and he has to talk to one of Dore Schary’s minions about his canceled contract.” She seemed out of focus, as though she’d pulled the phone away from her ear. “A desperate attempt. He’s not happy.”
“Is he ever happy?”
She laughed. “Edna, of course. But it’s never when you’re around.”
“Well, thank you.”
She rushed her words. “No, no, that’s not what I mean. Lately, he’s…”
“I know,” I broke in, impatient. “Ava, something you said the other night got me thinking about Max’s murder.”
A nervous titter. “My God. What?”
“I know something, Ava.”
Suddenly I could hear her start to sob in quick, choked gulps. “I don’t know if I want to hear this, Edna.”
I had little patience, so my words were sharp. “Of course, you do.” I breathed in and went on. “Ava, this is between you and me. No one else. Listen to me. Here’s what I think happened.” And methodically, as though checking off a to-do list, I spelled out my reasoning. Ava didn’t say anything, though now and then I could hear her sighing or clearing her throat. When I was finished, I waited, pensive, listening to the eerie silence. “Say something, Ava.”
She hesitated. “You have no proof, Edna.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What can you do?”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Another hesitation. “Check Max’s files. His letters.” She clicked her tongue. “His papers. I always joked that he kept a tell-all diary, but I don’t know. He did jot things down. Maybe…”
“I’ll call Alice.” I was ready to hang up.
“Call me, Edna. I’ll be at Metro all day. I’ll wait for your call.”
“I may want to see you there. Late today.”
“I’ll leave word at security.” The striking of another a match. Another intake of smoke. “Edna, be careful. Murder.” As I started to replace the receiver, I could hear her voice quivering. “Please be careful. This story already has an unhappy ending.”
When I told Alice what I wanted, she immediately invited me to her home. I didn’t mention my suspicions, and strangely she didn’t probe. “I can’t go into that room yet,” she confided. “I will eventually.” Then her voice dropped, melancholic. “It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Max that I want to remember.”
Sitting with Alice in her living room, I had no desire for pleasantries, though I nodded and smiled. Instead, my mind was riveted to that workroom behind the closed door. Ava’s words and my wide-awake suspicions. Max’s murderer was out there, cocky perhaps, confident, because the L.A. police had no substantial leads. Yesterday a back-page mention in the Times noted that the police were stymied. Neighbors spotted nothing unusual, and no one had come forward with information. Nothing. A blank page. I suspected the authorities were beginning to chalk the cruel murder up to a political killing, perhaps a random, maddened one, the embittered public rhetoric on Communism fueling some fringe fanatic’s dubious quest to purify America from unsavory elements. My mind sailed to America First, the group Desmond Peake belonged to-and Larry Calhoun.
Alice detected my edginess, so our socializing ended abruptly when she stood, pointed to the door of the workroom, and said, “Whatever you want, Edna. Please feel free.” She waved toward the door. “Max’s world.”
“Alice, did Max keep a diary?”
“Just a journal in which he jotted down things.” She smiled. “Ava always joked about Max’s secret diary, a treasure trove of inner sanctum gossip that Hedda Hopper would kill to get her hands on. He always laughed about it.”
“I suppose the police have gone through the room more than once?”
“Yes, three times, in fact, before they unsealed it. I know they leafed through the journal because one of them mentioned it. But what could they find? Business receipts, appointments, innocent stuff.”
“Did they take anything away?”
She shook her head. “A list of his clients. Addresses, phone numbers. Mainly former clients, of course.” A pause. “I never got it back.”
“Do you know who was interviewed?”
Again, she shook her head. “I mean, I guess they spoke to Frank Sinatra-because of that stupid threat. Ava told me that. I think Sophie Barnes because she worked for him. They talked to the folks at the Paradise. Harry the bartender. Ethan and Tony, I think. I’m not sure. Lorena, I know. Mainly because I was there that night. Checking in on me.” She shuddered and smiled sadly. “I’m still suspect number one, I suppose.”
“Do you believe Frank would kill Max?”
“Of course not. Frank threatens to kill someone any time he’s out drinking. It’s the way he is.” She paused. “Edna, Frank has never said a mean word to me. Not one. Even though Lenny and Tony and Ethan constantly badmouthed me.”
“A knight in shining armor?” Sarcasm in my tone.
She smiled. ”In some way, yes.”
She left me alone in the small, cluttered room that hadn’t been dusted since the murder. I’d walked into the room the last time I was at the bungalow, observing the clippings piled on the desk, the sloppy mess of scripts, the accordion files. Nothing had been moved. Max’s desk and chair and file cabinets still bore the faint patina of fingerprint residue. At first, daunted by the messy piles of papers, sagging cardboard boxes stacked in corners, accordion files bunched in heaps, I had no idea what to do. My cursory look-over last time had told me nothing, but that was idle curiosity. Now, focused, I tried to reason out my calculated moves. Had the police actually spent time sifting through all of this? I doubted that. A week’s work here, hours of drudgery. The death of a Commie might not warrant such fastidious attention by the sheriffs in town.
I sat at Max’s desk and stifled a sob as I touched the desk mat and his favorite fountain pen. Notoriously he’d always gnawed on the tip of the stem, a nervous habit I now found endearing. A desk calendar was filled with notations, deadlines, scribbles. I checked the dates listed. Another tug at my heart as I observed a dark line drawn through all the days of my visit, with nothing else scheduled. One word: “Edna.”
But I got busy. One drawer held nothing but receipts bound by elastic bands. Another held trade magazines, issues of the Hollywood Reporter and Variety; another was jam-packed with abandoned scripts and headshots. The desktop was cluttered with clippings relating to the blacklist, his most recent and passionate obsession. A few jottings in the margins, but mostly dotted with angry commentary: “Ridiculous!” “Impossible!” “C’mon now!” “Oh, really?”
I could hear Max intoning these fevered exclamations as he annotated the clippings. But no name was highlighted, other than those of his friends…and his own.
But I stopped looking through this pile because I believed, to the depth of my soul, that the blacklist, while playing a crucial role in this horrid murder, was tangential to finding the murderer.
In a file cabinet I located the manila folder containing a list of his clients, a carbon copy of what the police confiscated, but was startled to realize how few clients were active during his last year. An alphabetical stack of clients’ folders. I glanced at Sol Remnick’s file, which contained a headshot of the dead comic actor. An early photo. Sol onstage in New York, looking like the sad sack he played, though a younger version. Another in a minor role in some Hollywood movie, dressed as a businessman with briefcase-a debonair and fashionable gentleman. Sol the bit player in grade B movies.
Tony’s file had a notation that the sad comic had called to terminate his contract. Max had scribbled, “A fool.” Liz Grable’s termination was a day later. Max’s notation was bittersweet. “Tony got to her. Poor Liz, going off in every direction but the one she needs to find.” I liked that. I searched for Ethan’s file, but there was none. Of course, he was not an actor. There would be no headshot. His one script had been rejected by Max-and Hollywood. So brief a moment in entertainment that he didn’t warrant a manila folder.
Nothing was clicking-nothing. But inside his desk, in the center drawer, I located his journal. It was not a diary, true, despite Ava’s gentle teasing, but a thoughtful man’s random jottings on the course of his day, reminders of conversations, obligations, even some notations on the folks who trooped through his office. Small paragraphs about people whose names meant nothing now-this one stopped in, that one phoned, others demanded meetings. A multitude of anonymous souls, forgotten. Dead end comments: “Fired for the third time.” “Called to say hello…moving to Kansas.” “Hates the part.” On and on. Carelessly dated, with whole months slipping by before another dated entry. I stopped when I came upon a two-page summary of a talk he had with Sol about Frank Sinatra. I read comments about Ava, and, as expected, they glowed with the friendship.
There was also a paragraph about Liz and Tony, both sitting in that room with him, both berating him for his inattention to their piddling careers. Sad, wistful reflection, Max ruing the day he ever got involved with both of them. “Oh well,” he concluded, “you do a favor for someone and it can come back to give you pain. Or acid indigestion.” Echoes of Max’s soft humor.
Give you pain. I repeated the words to myself.
Give you murder, I thought.
And then I found what I wanted. A scribbled account on one page, Max’s summing up of a brief but troubling talk he’d endured. A spitfire exchange, Max acknowledging that he’d lost his temper. I smiled at that: if I jotted in my own journal the times I flew off the handle, usually for trivial matters best ignored, the collected volumes would outnumber the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Battles royale, Edna Ferber style. High dudgeon, my only gear shift.
Max had responded to a cheap yet vicious accusation, and he wasn’t happy with his own anger. That didn’t matter to me. What did was the fury hurled at him. Not death threats, nor some intractable ultimatum, not even a cruel personal jibe. Nothing the police would latch onto as motive for murder. But the dreadful words, illuminated as they were on that yellow page, especially filtered through my early-morning suspicion, told me that my hunch was on target.
I slammed shut the journal and sat there, my fingers intertwined, my knuckles white. Yes, I thought. Yes.
Alice watched me as I walked into the living room where she sat, tense, her face rigid. “Edna, did you find anything?”
“We’ll see,” I muttered.
Alice stood. “You did, Edna. I can tell.”
“We’ll see,” I repeated. “I have to go, Alice.” My mind was elsewhere. “Could you call me a taxi?”
While we waited, standing in the doorway, she touched my shoulder. “Edna.”
I looked at her and attempted a smile. “I’ll call you, Alice. I promise.”
“Edna, I’m worried now. You seem so…determined.”
“Alice, I know what I’m doing.”
As I stepped outside, walking the pathway toward the approaching taxicab, I started to tremble. The projectionist was running the last reel of a sad movie, and I was now the unwitting protagonist.
The taxi scrambled to an abrupt stop in front of Hair Today on Hollywood Boulevard, and I lurched forward, banging my shoulder. “Am I to believe the state of California actually gave you a license?” I asked. The cabbie was obviously a movieland hopeful, a sandy-haired fresh-scrubbed lad with hooded hazel eyes and a pile of headshots on his passenger seat. When he thanked me for the meager tip, I heard a Midwestern twang. Iowa, I thought, or Kansas. Flat and nasal, reminding me of an enamel pan dragged across a sidewalk. Welcome to Hollywood.
Hair Today was a glitzy salon with black-and-green art deco stenciling on the plate-glass windows. An overly large neon sign announced the preposterous name and, though it was broad daylight, still blinked and hummed, the red letters popping on and off. Inside, I spotted a row of bubble-head helmets, under which women idly browsed through movie magazines.
Liz Grable stopped what she was doing, a comb in one hand, scissors in the other. She froze, ignoring the remarks her client was making, and nodded toward me. A woman in a frilly blue blouse with a name tag sewn on approached me and asked whether I had an appointment, but I was already moving past her. Liz, mumbling to another woman to finish up the disgruntled customer, walked toward me, a slow-motion walk, the comb and scissors held before her like weapons. Two western gunslingers pacing each other at high noon.
“What happened?” A voice hollow, strained.
“May I talk to you a moment, Liz?”
She spun around and bumped into a small table, which teetered. “I’m working.”
“A minute of your time.”
“I don’t know…”
“It has to be now.” I raised my voice.
She looked over her shoulder as a catlike squeak escaped from her throat. “Follow me.” She yelled to the woman up front. “I’m on a break.”
“You’re not on a break, Liz. Not until…”
Liz cut her off. “I’m on a break now.”
I followed her into a back room, a tiny space where cardboard boxes were stacked to the ceiling, shelves lined with hair products. For a moment I was overcome with the heady scent of lotions, cloying tropical fragrances. A face buried in a bouquet of gardenias. Fainting time at the funeral parlor. But near the back door there was a small table with two folding chairs, empty coffee cups bunched and stacked together in the center. Liz motioned for me to sit down.
“What?” she said, breathless.
“I need your help.”
“Tony…” she faltered.
“I want you to tell me what you remember about the night you went to see Max at his home.”
She looked puzzled. “I already did. I told you everything.”
“Yes, indeed. But I didn’t get to ask you the right questions.”
“Miss Ferber, please. I don’t want any trouble. Last night I threw Tony out of my place and he was…”
“That’s a good move, Liz. I applaud that. You need to start making the right decisions for your own life. But I have to insist now-tell me about that night. Every little detail.”
She looked helpless. “I don’t know…”
Hotly, “Of course you do. Now start at the beginning. What time did you go to Max’s?”
She started to cry. “I can’t help you. I can’t think…”
“You can, Liz. Stop crying and talk to me. Let’s create the scene. You were sick of Tony, you wanted to get back into Max’s good graces, and you decided to see him. What time?”
She thought about it. “Early. I don’t know. It was light out.” She brightened. “Max said Alice had just left-gone to see you and Lorena at the Paradise. Just left.”
“Good. Now imagine everything you did-saw that night.” Slowly, methodically, prodded by me, Liz reconstructed the events of that awful night. Step by step, her voice tentative but then assuming confidence, Liz told me her story, but this time, prompted by me, she added details she’d previously omitted. I could tell, as she stammered through her memory, she had no idea the impact of what she was telling me. She paused after each sentence, trying to weigh its significance herself, but she was thinking only of one person: Tony.
She told me what I wanted to hear. “Thank you, Liz.” I stood.
“It doesn’t matter, Miss Ferber. I mean, I don’t got nothing to do with anybody any more.” She stood, smoothed her dress. “I got to get back to work.” A moment’s hesitation. “This is about Tony, isn’t it?” She waited, her lower lip trembling.
“Thank you, Liz. You’ve been a big help.”
“Tell me, please.”
“There’s nothing to tell you yet,” I insisted. “I’m just asking people some questions.”
A flash of fire in her eyes, the words spat out. “I don’t believe you, Miss Ferber.”
No one was home at Sophie Barnes’ shabby apartment complex on Santa Monica Boulevard in the flats, a third-floor walk-up over a hardware store and a green grocer. I’d taken the address from Max’s files. I expected her to be sitting at home, quiet in a small apartment, listening to Mary Noble, Backstage Wife on the radio. No one answered the doorbell upstairs and I tottered back down to the lobby. My eyes scanned the rows of mailboxes. I turned to face a tiny sunburnt man holding a broom and dustpan, a glint in his eye, amused at something, rocking on his heels.
“You seem a happy man,” I observed.
He chuckled. “You got some look on your face, lady.”
“Which communicates what?” I began to push past him.
“It says how dare Sophie not be at home.”
That gave me pause. “How do you know I’m here to see her?”
“Well, the other four apartments got lost souls inside them, including the one across the hall from Miss Sophie’s. Young folks from Nebraska or Ohio who work in diners and department stores, strutting around like they already are up there in the movies, and at night they prowl the streets hoping for dreams to come true.”
“And Sophie has no dreams?”
He didn’t answer, tucking the broom and dustpan into a small closet under a stairwell. As he straightened his body, he rubbed his lower back, groaned, stretched. “Getting old, ma’am.” He glanced up the empty staircase. “She’s got little old ladies complaining about them flights of stairs.”
“No other visitors?”
“No one as I can see.”
“I thought she’d be at home.”
“Well, ma’am, some folks gotta have themselves a job.”
That surprised me. I just assumed Sophie, leaving Max’s employment in a huff, had resigned herself to a life lived with early suppers and genteel canasta and Arthur Godfrey.
“And who are you?”
“The superintendent.” He nodded toward a closed door. “That’s my apartment right there. The wife is probably pinned against the door eavesdropping on us now. She’s got less of a life than me.” He chortled, his head bouncing up and down.
“Can you tell me where she works?”
Sophie, he volunteered, worked part-time a couple days a week in a real estate office around the corner. “Pays the rent,” the man muttered. “Barely.” Leading me outside, he pointed me in the right direction, though when I glanced back, he was still standing on the sidewalk, that same bemused look on his face.
The real estate office was a cubbyhole occupying the corner of a flat-roofed stucco building, the anteroom the size of a closet, where Sophie Barnes now sat leafing through a movie magazine-Movieland, I could see from the doorway. There was an office behind it, the door shut, a brass plate announcing Private. She scarcely looked up when I walked in, engrossed in her fan magazine, and she mumbled something about Mr. Janssen being gone for the day. Then, recognizing my face, she sucked in her breath and dropped the magazine on the top of others. Photoplay, Modern Screen. “Miss Ferber.”
“Hello, Sophie.” I moved closer and smiled. “You recognize me? We spoke on the phone years ago and…”
Abruptly, glancing back at the closed door, “I know you. You were at the Paradise with Alice and Lorena that night. Someone pointed you out to me.”
“That’s right. You were there with friends.”
“Yes, I was.” Brusque, unfriendly.
“Is something the matter, Sophie?”
She shuffled the movie magazines on her desk, and then neatened the pile slowly. Her fingertips drummed on the top one. Betty Grable smiled at the camera, leaning against a white pillar.
“I don’t want to be bothered.” She looked away.
“I’m here for Max.”
At the mention of his name, she flinched, and her right hand flew to her cheek. “Max.” She said his name softly. “He’s dead.”
“Sophie, someone murdered him.”
Her eyes got wet, and she rubbed them with the backs of her hands. Her words were whispered. “Who would do that to Max?”
I slid into a chair in front of her desk. “I have some ideas, Sophie.” I waited patiently. Her eyes were hard, but there was something else there now: curiosity.
“What do you want from me?” Her fingers drummed Betty Grable’s face.
“I think you can help me.”
She gasped, threw back her head. Red blotches on her neck. A hand gripped the edge of the desk. When she looked back at me, her eyes betrayed fear. “I warned him.” She swallowed her words.
“How?”
“He was playing with fire. That support of those men. Max talked a blue streak about politics, but he just…talked. I’d know if he was a Communist. I knew all his business.”
Flat out, “Of course, he wasn’t a Communist.”
“I know. He wasn’t. But he had to get involved in that brouhaha, him and Sol yammering all day long. So angry at the way the country was going. And now he’s dead.” She blinked wildly. “And…Sol.”
“Why did you leave him, Sophie?”
A long silence. She fiddled with the copy of Movieland. She held a pencil in one hand and idly doodled on the cover, black lines drawn across Betty Grable’s pristine and glossy complexion. Finally, nervous, she picked up all the magazines and dropped them into a drawer. She smiled thinly. “Mr. Janssen gets angry when I read them. He says they’re trashy. But when he’s out of the office…” She flipped her hands in the air, a devil-may-care gesture. “I spent a lifetime with Max and with movie stars.” She chuckled. “That is, people who wanted to be movie stars. So it sort of got into my blood. It’s a bad habit to break.” She rolled her eyes.
“There are worse habits, Sophie.”
She nodded. “Now I set up appointments for newcomers to L.A. to look at cheap apartments. Not quite the same thing, is it?” She stared into my face. “With Max, I felt a heartbeat away from the world of the movies.”
She lapsed into silence while I waited. “Miss Ferber, I was a very foolish woman. I’m certain you’ve heard the stories about me. I’m sure I was the laughing stock of that crowd. Ava and Frank and…Alice.”
“No, not true,” I told her. “Max worried about you, as did the others.”
“Well, I made a fool of myself. I let myself believe that he and I had closeness-but we did. We spent years as a team. But when he got married, it knocked me off balance. I felt-betrayed. I was a foolish, foolish woman. So I got bitter and I made things worse. I walked away. I’ll show him. The bastard. He’ll miss me. He’ll beg…” She waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Sometimes you do something that you know is all wrong, like you can see yourself outside of yourself and you say, stop, stop, stop, but you can’t.” Her voice was strained and weary, almost a whisper.
“You miss him. Sophie.” An epitaph for both of us.
Suddenly she was crying. “What do you think? He was such a good man. He gave me a life I thought I’d never have. On the outside it was nothing-the old maid in the front office. But we laughed and told stories and…” She closed her eyes. “He never made me any promises he didn’t keep.” She reached into a drawer and took out a tissue, dabbed at her eyes. The crumpled tissue dropped into her lap, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Sophie. You’re not the first woman who’s tumbled like that. You were a woman who…”
“But foolish, foolish.” She seemed surprised the tissue was not clutched in her hand.
“I need you to help me now,” I said, and she sat up, a puzzled look on her face.
“How?”
“That night at the Paradise. You were there with friends and…”
“And I had a fit, stormed out of there. A birthday party I ruined.”
“But why?”
She sighed. “Those are my friends, those three women. My only friends. We play cards together, see movies, travel to places for the day, shop and gab. But mostly we get on one another’s nerves.” Her laugh was brittle. “We’re the only friends we got. Well, that night Mina, one of them, the most annoying, spotted Alice at your table, so, of course, she had to tease me about it. I took a little of it. After all, I’m used to the cruelty of other people who get something out of hurting others. But I simmered. A slow burn, let me tell you. The party went on, but I sat there quietly, nursing this one drink I always allow myself when I go out.”
“Then you exploded.”
She shook her head back and forth. “A class act, no? You three ladies had left there by then, and my mood was getting darker and darker. Ethan was in the booth with a drunk Tony, and he sent over a bottle of wine for the birthday girl. I’d been ready to head out of there, but that wine meant I’d have to stay longer. Nobody was ready to light the damn candles. After a half bottle of free wine, Mina chided me again about Alice-chubby Alice, not even a pretty starlet to intoxicate Max. And a murdering widow, a mob wife. It was getting late. I’d wanted to leave an hour earlier. When they lit the candles on the cake, I exploded and”-she laughed out loud-“ruined the evening for everyone.”
“Well, it sounds to me like you enjoyed yourself. At the end.”
A twinkle in her eye. “It did feel good to see frosting on that beastly woman. She hasn’t talked to me since. Candles in her blue hair.” Her voice got low. “Then I learned the following day that Max was shot to death, and…and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Could I ask you some questions?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Did you see Liz Grable walk in?”
She looked perplexed. “The actress?”
I beamed. “She’ll be happy hearing you call her that.”
She grinned. “I’ll bet. A first time for everything. She used to drop by at the office to pester Max. She was seeing…Tony Pannis.”
“Not any more.”
Sophie’s face fell. “Yes, I did see her. Later in the evening, though. I was ready to get out of there. She walked in and stood in the doorway. Just stood there. We all looked up. She caught me looking at her and she backed up. She looked…I don’t know…hurt. I figured she was there to see Tony, but I know she didn’t like going to the Paradise because that’s where Tony drank and got nasty and weepy and stupid.”
“So she left?”
“I guess so. I turned back to my friends and when I looked back at the doorway, she wasn’t there. Gone. What does she have to do with this?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, you don’t think that she killed Max, do you?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Well?”
“I don’t know.”
She harrumphed, and then seemed to think better of it. “I’d be surprised. She always struck me as sort of pathetic.” Then her eyes widened, frightened. “You don’t think that I killed Max, do you?”
“No.”
But her eyes were wary as she twisted in her seat, staring over my shoulders. “I stormed out of there but I didn’t go to see him. I swear. I told the police that.”
“Could you answer one more question, Sophie?”
That stopped her. A small voice, nervous. “What?”
She gave me the answer I expected.
Late afternoon, refreshed from a pot of coffee at a diner across the street from Sophie’s office, I sat by the window and watched Sophie hang a CLOSED sign in the door, lock up, and slowly walk down the sidewalk, headed in the direction of her apartment. A half hour later, a taxi dropped me off at Culver City where I mentioned Ava’s name. As promised, she’d left my name at security, but the guard at first seemed hesitant to call her. I raised my voice. “She’s expecting me, young man.”
“Mr. Sinatra is here.”
“So what? She’s expecting me.”
“Of course.” He dialed a number and waited. He refused to look into my face, but finally said, “Here. She wants to talk to you.”
Ava did not sound happy to hear my voice. “Oh, Edna, you did come, after all.” Then she whispered, “Your phone call this morning jarred me.”
“It was meant to.” I stared at the guard who was biting the edge of a fingernail. “I have things to tell you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Is Frank there?”
Surprise in her voice. “He’s at a meeting. Why?”
“I’d rather see just you.”
“I’ll walk down to meet you.”
I was directed to a small lounge that boasted one china plate on which one stale doughnut rested, centered on a table with magazines. I examined a freshly mounted poster of Show Boat on the wall. Perhaps, I grumbled to myself, in the future I’d best travel with a magnifying glass, all the better to view the teeny-tiny letters of my name buried at the bottom. I was but one degree of niggardly separation from the key grip and best boy.
Men’s voices drifted in from the hallway, one of which was Desmond Peake’s. I suspected security had promptly alerted him to my annoying presence, and he’d scurried from his warren to greet me. He peered into the room, eyes slatted. “Miss Ferber, two days in a row you’re here. A pleasure.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I was until a second ago.” He was tickled by his own humor.
I smiled. “Then there’s hope for you yet, Mr. Peake.”
“Ava expects you?”
“You already know that.”
He sat down next to me, and twisted his body around to face me. “A banner day here at Metro. Frank Sinatra is back on the lot. The exile returns, at least temporarily.”
“Another one of your favorite people.”
He ran his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “I have so many.”
“Mr. Peake, may I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“Clever boy.” But I wasn’t smiling now. “Tell me, do you think Max Jeffries was murdered by some misguided patriot?”
He stammered. “What?” Then, back in full control, “Of course not.”
“You say that with such certainty.”
He took a long time to answer, as though weighing his words. “Admittedly there could be a crackpot out there, some vigilante, but I don’t think so. Wouldn’t someone like that-a victim of some delirium-target a higher profile name? Someone like…I don’t know…an actor like Larry Parks, currently in the news. Someone who’s already appeared before Congress. Max was a small-time offender, though I admit he’d been spotlighted in the press. But a hoodlum wouldn’t seek him out.”
“What about someone in your America First organization?”
He bristled. “We’re patriots, and non-violent. We’re theorists, constitutionalists, loyalists. We…”
“Don’t murder?”
A thin sliver of a smile, indulgent. “Of course not. We want names…not obituaries. We’re true Americans, Miss Ferber. We want apologies, recanting, and loyalty oaths. People do make mistakes, and we forgive them, so long as they acknowledge the error of their ways.”
I shivered at that, but went on. “So who killed Max?”
“I assumed all along it was some personal vendetta.” He stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Miss Ferber. I have appointments. I trust Ava Gardner will take care of you.”
“She already has.”
A puzzled look on his face as he backed off.
“Oh, Mr. Peake, one more question.”
He stepped closer. “What is it?”
“Larry Calhoun is a member of your organization?”
“You already know the answer to your own question.” He started to walk off.
“I have a favor, Mr. Peake.”
He turned back. “And what is it?”
“I’d like to talk to Larry. I have a question for him. Could you please ask him to call me?”
He deliberated, his brow furrowed, but then he nodded. Without another word, he disappeared into the hallway.
A few minutes later Ava stepped into the room. “I see Desmond has been here already. He sputtered at me as we crossed paths.”
“Well, he actually served a purpose today. He told me something I wanted to hear.”
Ava scoffed. “Edna, what?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. She cradled my elbow under hers, our shoulders touching. The scent of jasmine, heavy and cloying. “Let’s go back to my dressing room.”
I accompanied her down the hallway, neither one of us speaking. Smiling, she bowed me into her rooms. I expected a familiar Broadway dressing room, small and cramped, the sickening smell of old stage makeup and mouse droppings. The lingering bite of sweat and spit. Instead Ava escorted me into a spacious three-room suite, with a stocked kitchen and bathroom. I swept my hand around the room. “I guess you’re a star.”
“That could change in a heartbeat, Edna. Tomorrow I can be back in a closet with has-been darlings.” She looked worried. “Right now Francis is trying to woo himself back into the contract with Metro.”
“Will it work?”
She shrugged. “He can be charming.” She glanced toward the shut door, then up at a wall clock. “I expect him here in a bit.” She moved around the room nervously, looking into a mirror, playing with lipstick on a tabletop, reaching into her purse for a cigarette. “He can also be a bumbler.”
Determined, I reached out and held a hand against her shoulder. “Ava, stop moving.” Both of my hands held her shoulders as I looked up into her face. “Ava, I want to go back to our conversation this morning.”
She looked away for a second, her eyes lingering on the closed door. “Edna, you scared me.” Almost a whisper.
“Did I really?”
A wistful smile. “I suppose not, but I’m…scattered. It makes sense, but I don’t see how you can prove…”
I let go of her and she toppled into a chair. I sat down. “I think I can now. I need one more conversation. Well, maybe two. Maybe Larry Calhoun. But I need to talk to Ethan now. Can you reach him here?”
She picked up the phone. I listened as she chatted with someone in accounting, who at first refused to believe he was talking with Ava Gardner. Irritated, she hung up the phone. “He’s on break in the commissary, Edna. But he’s with Tony, who’s looking for a job here. Ethan is trying to get him some work. God knows what he can do!”
I frowned. “This is not good. I want to talk to Ethan alone, without Tony. This is a wrinkle I didn’t anticipate.”
“You want to wait until Tony leaves?”
I shook my head vigorously. “No. Not this time. I seem to deal with the brothers Pannis together all the time. The whole world does. This time will be no different, though unwelcome.” I stood. “Having Tony there is not good.”
“Edna, I don’t think it’s a good idea…”
I raised my voice. “I never said it was, Ava. But it’s the only thing I can do now.”
She fidgeted. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Edna!”
“No, Ava. If I’m wrong, I don’t want you there.”
“And if you’re right?”
“Then the game is over.”