The Sharpest Needle

by Renee Patrick

  On my way to the Bronson Gate, I passed Barney Groff. The studio’s security kingpin, sheathed in the smoke of the cigar he aggressively puffed, didn’t notice me. I was tempted to tip him that Kaspar Biel was back in town, but opted to keep that bulletin to myself. When you regularly squared off against a bull, it behooved you to keep a red rag up your sleeve at all times.

  TWENTY

  The address listed for Carter Muncy in the telephone directory included a fraction – 1194½ – so I expected a guest house tucked protectively behind a main residence. Instead my taxicab abandoned me before a shabby cottage at the very rear of the lot. Either the larger structure had never been built, or it had pulled up stakes out of embarrassment and moved to a better neighborhood, leaving no trace of itself on the mottled lawn.

  The heat seemed more oppressive on this down-at-heel street, beating down with an intensity verging on the personal. It dissipated what remained of the head of steam I’d built up. A combustible mix of indignation and fury had propelled me here. Now the notion of a solo confrontation with the man who at best had misled me about writing the Argus letters and at worst was a murderer lost all appeal. The trouble was I had nowhere to loiter while dithering over my next move. The closest store was three blocks away. Even shade trees were scarce. I stuck out like a sore thumb in a neighborhood of broken fingers, and was sweltering to boot. Plus, the longer I stood there, the greater the chance Carter Muncy would spot me from his window.

  The walk to the G&M Market nearly did me in. I arrived to discover their pay telephone was too close to the register and its all-ears clerk. I soldiered on to the Tick-Tock Lounge, home of dank shadows, lukewarm beer, and a booth with a door.

  Edith didn’t answer. Likely Mitchell Leisen was still berating her about Barbara Stanwyck’s hat.

  I fed another nickel into the slot, poised to dial Gene. But my fingers faltered. I couldn’t tell him the whole story, not yet. Muncy had called me hot to relay ‘something important’, likely some invented revelation intended to incriminate Clarence Baird’s killer. I had to hear what Muncy had to say, so I could pass the information to Gene along with the correspondence irrefutably proving he’d penned the initial Argus letters. I wanted to deliver the entire package, as tastefully wrapped as in my Tremayne’s days.

  But while Muncy had no reason to suspect I’d tumbled to the truth, I had every reason to be leery of being alone with him.

  I hadn’t spoken to a soul, yet it had already gotten close in the phone booth. I cracked the door, peering out at the bar and wondering if Muncy frequented the place. The bartender, an anchor tattooed on his forearm and a leer imprinted on his face, asked if I needed anything. I said no, shut the door, and spun the dial without thinking.

  ‘I was hoping you’d call,’ he said. ‘How was the big weekend trip?’

  ‘Simon, do you have a few minutes to help a gal in need?’

  I took the precaution of meeting him outside the market, not the bar. No sense tempting fate. Simon pulled up in a newly polished Lodestar Pictures sedan. ‘Better than my heap for your purposes,’ he said. He held up a hand as I made to open the front passenger door. ‘The lady rides in back. Walk me through this harebrained scheme again.’

  ‘It’s not harebrained. It’s simple and it’s brilliant. Carter insists he has news for me. I need to know what it is, but don’t want to visit him alone.’

  ‘In case he murdered somebody,’ Simon said flatly.

  I ignored him. ‘So I’ll pop in while running errands for Addison. If he sees a car and driver waiting outside, he won’t try anything.’

  ‘Why don’t I just come with you?’

  ‘He’ll never talk if I show up with … muscle.’

  ‘I’m your strong-arm boy now?’ He grinned, the prospect pleasing him enormously. ‘Always wanted in on that racket. This stunt sounds excessive to me.’

  ‘Maybe it is. But I want to be careful.’ I paused. ‘Kaspar Biel is back.’

  He turned completely around to face me. ‘Biel? The Nazi? He’s involved in this?’

  ‘I don’t know. But just in case—’

  Simon gunned the engine, the sound like a cannon shot down the sleepy street. ‘Give me directions to this Muncy’s place. I trust there’ll be a gratuity at the end of this.’

  Muncy’s porch sagged further when I stepped onto it. I didn’t bother looking back at Simon, waiting in the car at the curb. Why would I? I was merely visiting an acquaintance as part of my oh-so-busy day.

  The cottage’s screen door didn’t sit flush in its frame, the front door beyond it slightly ajar. Through the opening a man stared at me. I leapt back a step but managed not to yelp in fright.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said loudly. ‘Carter?’

  Hearing no reply, I inched closer, the floorboards trumpeting my approach. I opened the screen door, pushed the front door wide. The man I’d mistaken for Muncy was actually actor Richard Dix, gazing to the left soulfully if stiffly. Little wonder, considering he was made of cardboard. Muncy had dedicated a chunk of his front room to a life-size display promoting The Lost Squadron. I’d seen the movie years ago in New York. Muncy had salvaged this artifact from the scrap heap. Lettering beneath Dix’s stoic features reminded me: Not A War Picture.

  I called Muncy’s name again. Nothing.

  I’d started turning toward the street when I heard Simon close the car door. He strode briskly up the long walk, a chauffeur bringing the pair of gloves I’d forgotten. The porch groaned as he joined me. ‘This looked wrong from the street,’ he said.

  ‘It feels wrong from here.’

  Gently, he eased me back and entered the house. I followed and understood at once why Muncy opted to live by himself in a rundown house as opposed to a tidy apartment. He needed the space.

  Richard Dix appeared to be ogling Clara Bow, featured on the enormous display across the room for Call Her Savage. Another relic delivered from the trash. Film posters in varying conditions hung from the walls, with more stacked in rolls on the floor. Piles of magazines – Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Movie – waited next to them. Muncy would undoubtedly claim they were organized according to a meticulous system, the way my old neighbor Mrs Dunphy insisted there was order amidst her chaos. With the room’s low ceiling and drawn curtains, I felt like I’d stumbled into a museum after hours. I smelled dust, mildew, and other, more pungent odors.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Simon whispered.

  ‘He’s a collector,’ I replied at the same volume.

  ‘Collector of what?’

  He ventured deeper into the house. I did likewise, despite my reluctance to leave the narrow patch of sunlight admitted by the open door.

  A scent asserted itself, catching in my nose, my throat. A terrible feeling overcame me, and I realized belatedly I’d had a premonition. That was why I’d raced here from Paramount. I knew what I’d find as soon as Edith had proposed her theory.

  Simon retreated a step, raising a hand to his face. ‘Stay there,’ he instructed. I should have listened to him.

  Flies buzzed lazily around dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, as if they’d had their fill but were sticking around to guard their bounty from interlopers. A spoon on the table was askew, pointing to—

  Carter Muncy. He lay on the floor, curled in on himself protectively. But it was too late: blood had soaked through his shirt, into the gray-green mat bunched beneath him. His still-open eyes stared at me. I swung mine away. A poster of Sylvia Sidney hung on the wall behind me, her coquettish gaze Muncy’s last sight on this earth.

  Somehow I negotiated the parlor without triggering an avalanche of bric-a-brac, Simon on my heels.

  ‘There must be a phone in this mausoleum,’ he said, wincing at his word choice.

  I fought through the fog in my head. ‘What?’

  ‘Time to call the police.’

  The thought took me a moment to articulate. ‘No. I’ll call them. You were never here.’

  ‘My turn to say it. W
hat?’

  ‘You can’t be part of this. Lodestar will fire you when they learn you used their car to drive me to a murder scene. And you’ll have to deal with Gene.’ The idea gave Simon pause; their previous run-ins hadn’t exactly been cordial. ‘I’ll tell him the truth. I took a taxi here, because Carter had telephoned me.’

  ‘Morrow will raise hell.’

  ‘I can handle it. What I can’t handle is being in this house a moment longer.’ I reached the front door—

  And froze. Outside, a woman stood on the sidewalk. She had passed the long path leading to Muncy’s home, stopping to admire Simon’s borrowed car. She squinted at a folded newspaper in her hand, then the addresses of the surrounding houses. She had come in response to a classified ad, surely, seeking a room to let, interested in purchasing a used sewing machine. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, uncertain. Her black shoes had a bright shine to them. Unfortunately, so did her navy suit, beginning to show its age.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Simon whispered.

  ‘You’re not here, remember. Let’s wait until she leaves.’

  I thrust a knuckle into my mouth and bit down on it. I was fine. Nothing was going to happen. Carter Muncy was not going to hurt me. He had been dead for some time, by the look of him, so his killer had long since fled the scene.

  Although we hadn’t searched the house, had we? If I didn’t get out of here soon, I knew, I was going to start shrieking. And that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  The woman drifted back toward Muncy’s pathway, glossy shoes echoing on the sidewalk. Her eyes took in the cottage. Good Lord, had Muncy taken out an ad to sell some of his memorabilia? Was she looking for him?

  No. She began pacing back and forth in front of the house, as if she were waiting for a ride.

  I closed my eyes and took shallow breaths. Something rustled somewhere in the house. More squirrels, I thought. I heard a second sound, not initially recognizing it as my own whimpering.

  Simon placed both hands on my shoulders. His gaze beamed steadiness and reassurance. I concentrated on his eyes and slowly the mental static cleared, his calming signals finally coming through loud and clear.

  The woman gave up and walked away, the hard soles of her shoes punishing the pavement.

  ‘Let’s make sure she’s gone,’ I said. ‘Count to a hundred.’

  I made it to forty-seven. The screen door banged shut behind Simon. There was no sign of the woman. I broke toward the market and its pay phone. Simon went to the car. He drove past without glancing in my direction.

  Gene had left for the day. My call was routed to a colleague of his named Pulaski. He dispatched several uniformed officers to keep me company until he arrived. I waited for them outside Muncy’s house and made it plain I wouldn’t be going back in. Pulaski made his entrance twenty minutes later, a thickset blond man with ancient eyes in a youthful, pudgy face. He asked his questions in a diligent fashion. I suggested he contact Detective Morrow as soon as possible because of likely connections to Clarence Baird’s murder. His nod indicated he’d take the idea under advisement.

  I left the scene at the earliest opportunity.

  Unwilling to face Mrs Quigley, I used the building’s back door. Miss Sarah, naturally, had set up camp just inside it for the evening. She considered me skeptically.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I told her to no avail.

  Upstairs, I stripped off my clothes. They didn’t carry any scents from Muncy’s house, but I’d wash them anyway. Then I took a bath, hoping to scrub away the residue of the day. Sadly, even a lifetime supply of Lux, the soap used by nine out of ten screen stars, wouldn’t have been up to the job. I had changed into a plain blue housedress when Mrs Quigley called my name.

  Her hands fluttered around her hair as she stood in the lobby giggling and flirting with Simon. As I came down the stairs, I heard her call him ‘Gene’. Simon smiled and didn’t correct her. I extracted him from Mrs Q’s clutches and we stepped outside.

  He looked me up and down. ‘You all right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  I told him. He studied me as I spoke, his thumb occasionally brushing the scars on the side of his face.

  When I finished, he said, ‘You were cool back there.’

  ‘I was a wreck.’

  ‘In the way any normal thinking, feeling person would be. Having the presence of mind to keep me out of it? That was pretty special.’

  ‘You shouldn’t get hurt for trying to help me.’

  ‘Let me help you again by taking you to dinner. That is, if you feel like eating. Just tell me where you’d like to go.’

  The sun had set hours ago, but it remained hot. ‘Do you have any sardines at your place?’ I heard myself ask him.

  ‘I have more than sardines. Went shopping yesterday.’

  What was I doing? ‘I’m not even that hungry,’ I said.

  I looked at Simon. He looked back, flummoxed. This is probably a mistake, I thought. But then our mistakes are the only things we can truly call our own. And at that moment, what I wanted – what I craved – was something that was indisputably mine.

  He stepped closer. I waited. I wondered what those scars on the side of his face would feel like under my fingertips.

  He kissed me. I kissed him back. The scars were rough and warm.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Out of necessity, my morning would begin with a serious stint at the telephone. I went downstairs with a sequence of calls in mind, expecting it to change. Miss Sarah traipsed by without a glance, casting doubt on the endeavor.

  Gene had to be first, however much I wanted to put off speaking to him. I gambled that if I called early enough, I could skate by with leaving a message.

  No such luck. He pounced on the phone at once and instructed me to stay put, as he was on his way over. I assured him I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  That vaulted Addison from also-ran to place position. I quickly explained why I would be late. He expressed his condolences and told me the day was mine.

  Next, I tried Marion. I didn’t have a number at Wyntoon, so I rang up the beach house. But her staff had been trained with Prussian discipline. When I couldn’t wheedle the necessary digits from them, I requested that Marion telephone me at once.

  By this point my fellow tenant Mr Pendergast had taken up residence in the lobby, awaiting his turn on the horn. He gave me the fisheye over his newspaper. My most winning smile didn’t cut any ice with him as my fingers took the dial on a final spin.

  ‘I thought you’d call last night!’ Edith erupted. ‘I’ve been worried sick. You shouldn’t have rushed away like that.’

  Sure, I know that now, I thought. ‘This conversation might play better in person,’ I said, and promised to come to the studio as soon as I could. With one more apologetic grin at my neighbor, I hurried upstairs. Detective Morrow would be visiting on official business. I wanted to look the part.

  The stubble on his face and his wrinkled collar told me Gene had been on the go for hours. Caffeine fueled his sluggish movements. I’d rearranged my front room furniture for this interview, and as we sat down I realized it looked like the set for some drawing room drama. Only appropriate, as I was about to deliver a performance. I would excise Simon entirely from my account of the previous day, rendering it lightly untrue. From the stories my uncle Danny had repeated, lying to the police was behavior the late Liam Frost engaged in on a regular basis. I truly was my father’s daughter.

  Curtain up.

  Gene had the opening line, inquiring about my well-being. I thanked him for his concern. ‘I guess Detective Pulaski got in touch with you. He seems thorough.’

  ‘He only seems that way. You caught him on a good night. He roused me not long after you left. Muncy’s murder is likely tied to Baird’s, so they’re both mine to deal with. You certainly know how to keep a fellow hopping.’ Only his thin, weary smile convinced me he was joking.

  ‘Muncy was kill
ed Sunday night,’ Gene continued. ‘Likely by someone he knew. His body wasn’t moved to the kitchen, so odds are he led whoever shot him into that room.’

  ‘Do you know when it happened?’

  ‘Doc’s preliminary estimate is late in the evening. Ten, midnight, around then.’

  In other words, well after the train from Hearst’s ranch had arrived in Los Angeles, giving my fellow passengers plenty of time. And Kehoe and Biel had left San Simeon even earlier.

  ‘You told Pulaski that Muncy had news for you,’ Gene said through a yawn. ‘That’s why you went to see him? Any idea what the news was?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I have to confess that’s not why I showed up on his doorstep.’ After a calming breath, I told him about Edith’s discovery that Carter Muncy had written the original Argus letters, and her thesis that some as-yet-unknown party allied with Muncy had also killed poor unsuspecting chatterbox Clarence Baird.

  Gene didn’t interrupt. He sat perfectly, disturbingly still. Only when I finished talking did he turn to consult my wall clock, as if he’d been timing me.

  ‘Let me make sure I understand.’ He measured each word with precision. ‘You learned Muncy had written the letters. Meaning he could have killed his friend Baird. And you went to see him alone?’

  ‘That wasn’t the plan. Edith was supposed to come with me, but she—’

  ‘Edith? What good would Edith have done? The woman is five foot nothing. She could live in my shirt pocket. I like her, but she’s nobody’s idea of a deterrent.’ Gene hoisted himself from his chair to stalk around my apartment. He didn’t raise his voice, though. Part of me wished he would. ‘Still, it would have been better than you confronting him by yourself. What were you thinking?’

  To sell my amended version of events, time to let my emotions get the better of me. Funny how easy it was. ‘I was upset. No, not upset. Furious. Carter tried to use me. He fed me a sob story about needing to help Edith and me get to the bottom of Clarence’s death, and it was a trick. I felt sorry for him, and it was all a dirty trick.’