The Woman Who Fell From Grace

by David Handler

  “How’s your pappy?”

  “We don’t talk much anymore,” I replied.

  Gus nodded. “Know jus’ what you mean. He can get ornery. Specially when he got liquor in him.”

  I glanced over at his dozing pal with the walker to see if we were disturbing him. We weren’t. “There was a fellow who used to work here before the war, Gus.”

  His face lit up. “Billy.”

  I leaned forward. “Billy?”

  “That’s your name — Billy. Knew I’d get it.”

  “I never lost faith. A bellhop, Gus.”

  “Lots of bellhops here in those days, sure. Fine ladies and gents coming and going. They all stayed here. Roosevelt, Dewey. Harry S. Truman. I once fetched Harry a fifth of bourbon. A fine gent. Tipped me ten bucks, he did.”

  “How about the movie folk?” I asked.

  “Them had deep pockets all right,” he sniffed, “but short arms.”

  “There was one guy who did real well by them though, wasn’t there?”

  “Weren’t me.”

  “Who was it, Gus?”

  His bleary eyes got a faraway look. “Hit the jackpot, he did. Got hisself a fancy new car. Fancy new job.”

  “Here at the hotel?”

  “Naw, he got hisself into the easy pickings.”

  “Where did he go, Gus?”

  Gus yawned, scratched his stubbly cheek and didn’t answer me. I took out a twenty and laid it on his knee.

  “I don’t want your money, Billy,” he said, staring at it.

  “I know. It’s a gift. Buy yourself something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a handkerchief. Where did he go, Gus?”

  Gus took the money and folded it carefully and stuffed it in the pocket of his overalls. Then he scratched his cheek again and told me where the lucky bellhop went.

  I found him mowing the grass.

  I brought Polk Four with me. I knew I’d get nowhere without him.

  “Have a word with you, Roy?” I called to him.

  He looked at me, then at Polk. Then he spat some tobacco juice and climbed down from the tractor mower and waited silently for one of us to say something.

  “When did you come to work here, Roy?” I asked.

  He stared at me blankly.

  “About fifty years ago, wasn’t it? You were working at the Hotel Woodrow Wilson when they offered it to you. Good pay, room and board. Glazes sure have taken fine care of you, haven’t they?”

  He kept on staring, jaw working on his tobacco.

  “Fern wondered why they kept you around all these years,” I went on. “Now we know why — to keep you from talking about Sterling Sloan’s murder, right?”

  He froze. Then his pale, deep-set eyes shot over to Polk Four. “Polk Two know ’bout you being here?” His voice was thin and reedy, almost a whisper.

  “Let’s leave my granddad out of this,” Polk replied calmly.

  “I’d call him, if I was you,” Roy warned.

  “I’d sit down and have a talk with Hoagy and myself, if I were you,” Polk countered. “How would that be?”

  Reluctantly, Roy said, “If you say so, Sheriff.”

  “I say so, Roy. I do indeed.”

  Roy shut off the mower. We sat on the low stone wall that edged the vegetable garden. The peacocks strutted around us, watching us. Lulu growled at them from next to me and got honked at for her trouble. She burrowed into the ground at my feet and kept quiet after that.

  Polk took off his broad-brimmed hat and placed it on his knee. “Want to tell us about that night, Roy? The night Sloan died?”

  Roy watched the peacocks a moment, shifted his bony rump, spat some juice. “Manager, he sent me up there from the front desk,” he began slowly. “Said to get ’em whatever they needed. Said something funny had gone on up there. He looked real nervous about it.”

  “Why did he send you?” Polk asked.

  “Thought I know’d how to keep my mouth shut,” Roy replied.

  “Evidently a keen judge of character,” I observed. “What did they need up there, Roy?”

  “Towels. For the blood. Blood everywhere. Him on the floor with his brains spilling out. She were screeching her head off. Rex Ransom were there, only him went back to his room to be sick.”

  “That’s my Rex,” I said. “Did she have the gun?”

  Roy shook his head.

  “Did you see the gun?” I pressed.

  He shook his head again. “Me and the house detective got him up on the sofa. Movie doc got there in a minute. Weren’t much he could do though. Didn’t have to be no doc to see that. Then this producer fella got there.”

  “Melnitz?”

  “Never know’d his name. He pulled Polk Two aside and them two talked real quiet. Were the producer did most of the talking — one of them real persuasive types. Another doc come, signed some papers. I stuck around, in case they needed anything.”

  “And did they?” asked Polk.

  “Later that night,” Roy replied. “Two, three in the morning when the guests were all asleep. House detective got a van from somewheres. Him and me took up the rug, cleared the furniture out, all them bloody towels. Drove it all out to the dump and ditched it there. He told if I were smart and forgot what I seen, I’d do okay for m’self, and if I weren’t, I’d be right sorry.”

  Polk stared down at his trooper’s hat, his brow furrowed. “Who paid you off, Roy?” he asked, his voice quavering slightly. “Was it this Melnitz?”

  Roy cleared his throat. “Were your great-granddad. Were Polk One. He called me to his big fancy law office next morning, give me five hunnert bucks. And a job out here. In case I got loose lips, I reckon. I took it. Sure I did. We all did. Times were bad. Them movie people could afford it. They wanted to pay money to cover the thing up, crazy not to take it.”

  “Laurel Barrett didn’t shoot him, did she, Roy?” I said. “The Glaze family wouldn’t have taken care of you all these years if she had. It was someone a little closer to home, wasn’t it?”

  Roy stared at me,

  “Who else was there that night, Roy?” I asked. “Who else was in the hotel room?”

  Roy glanced nervously at Polk.

  “Tell us, Roy,” commanded Polk.

  Roy spat some juice into the dirt.

  “Who was it, Roy?” demanded Polk. “Tell us, or so help me I’ll haul you into —”

  “Hidin’ in one of the bedrooms,” Roy muttered. “I saw ’em in there talking with the sheriff, real upset. Door was half closed, but I saw who it were. It were Miss Alma. Alma Glaze were in there.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PAM BROUGHT ME OUT my costume for the VADD Ball. My red velvet coat, waistcoat, and knee breeches were on a hanger. The rest was in a long white box — white silk stockings and black buckled shoes, white linen neckcloth and ruffled cuffs, black felt tricorne hat. There was one other box, squatly shaped.

  “What’s in that one?” I asked her as Lulu sniffed over all of it.

  “Your wig, dear boy,” Pam replied, smiling. “Freshly powdered.”

  It had a little pigtail at the back of the neck, held together with a black ribbon.

  “Isn’t all of this a bit silly, Pam?” I asked, trying it on in the mirror. I looked a little like Norman Bates’s mother. I certainly looked more like her than I did Tom Jefferson.

  “Of course it is. That is the point — it is a charity benefit.”

  “I could just wear my tux.”

  “You could not,” she huffed.

  “I don’t look terrible in my tux.”

  “I’m well aware of that. However, this is a costume ball, not a Friars’ Club roast,” she reminded me airily. “Please, Hoagy. It’s all been decided, and I’ve way too much to do to argue with you.”

  She did have a little to do. A thousand guests would be arriving by horse-drawn carriage that evening right after the movie. Trucks had been pulling up all week with party tents, tables, chairs, portable dan
ce floors and toilets, floodlights, food, liquor, flowers. An army of carpenters and electricians were still putting it all together on the north lawn, while an assembly line of caterers was inside glazing the hams, baking the rolls. It was enough to send an average person bouncing off the ceiling. Pam was merely a bit flushed.

  She started out the door. “A favor, Hoagy?”

  “Sure, Pam.”

  “The family wishes for Gordie to appear at the ball, being the poster child and all, and the poor thing has the glums over it. Hasn’t said a word or eaten a morsel all day.”

  “What makes you think I can bring him around?”

  “He does happen to —”

  “Like me,” I acknowledged sourly. “I know.”

  “A lad of keen intelligence but questionable taste.” She smiled. “Would you take him his dinner? Chat with him?”

  “Soon as I get into my costume.”

  It took me a while. I had to climb into my breeches and stockings, put on my collarless muslin shirt, my neckcloth, my cuffs. It wasn’t easy, and I wasn’t happy with the way any of it looked until my coat was on and my hat was positioned rakishly atop my wig. I cut quite a figure in the mirror now. Erect. Commanding. Utterly Jeffersonian. I couldn’t wait to see how Kissinger looked in his.

  Lulu sat on her chair, watching me intently.

  “Impressive, no?” I said.

  She started coughing. She doesn’t know how to laugh.

  “Hey, I haven’t made fun of your taste in men, have I?”

  Stung, she got down from the chair and started her way mournfully up the staircase. I knew where she was headed — under the bed. Bowser hadn’t shown last night. She’d been in a snit fit over it all day. Okay, it was a low blow from me. But hey, she started it.

  I know Pam was impressed when I went into the kitchen to pick up Gordie’s dinner. The place was mobbed with caterers. She didn’t even seem to notice them.

  “Truly magisterial, dear boy,” she exclaimed, checking me out from head to toe. “And how are the shoes?”

  “I’ve worn more comfortable bowling shoes,” I replied, hobbling over to her. “Women’s bowling shoes.”

  Charlotte came in from her office, frazzled and rushed. But not so rushed she couldn’t stop and stare. And start snickering at me.

  “Ignore her,” Pam told me. “You’re a stirring sight.”

  “I’m just glad Merilee isn’t here to see this,” I grumbled.

  Pam opened a drawer and pulled out the Polaroid. “One must capture the memory,” she declared, snapping my picture.

  “I’ll take that film.”

  “Nonsense. It goes in tomorrow morning’s post.”

  “I’ll get you for this, Pam. You owe me now.”

  “Yes, dear,” she said patiently. She handed me Gordie’s tray. “The carriages for the theater leave in thirty minutes. Don’t be late.”

  I heard my phone ringing as I hobbled across the courtyard toward Gordie’s rooms. It was Polk Four. He sounded very, very down.

  “I tried, Hoagy,” he said, his voice low and choked with emotion. “I really tried.”

  “Tried what, Sheriff?”

  “Granddad. I-I went out to see him. Told him everything we know. Laid all my cards out on the table. Even told him we know he was involved. … ”

  “And?”

  “He was very calm about it. Didn’t get upset or anything. Just said that for the good of the valley and for my own future I should leave well enough alone. He said it’s one thing for some outsider to try digging up old bones, but another for me. He said he was disappointed in me. Like I’m some kind of little boy. I’m sheriff of this county! Three women have been murdered! I asked him point-blank who it was he phoned that set those two boys on you. He refused to tell me. I don’t know what to do now. I may have to nail him for obstruction of justice if we’re going to get anywhere. I don’t know, Hoagy. I sure don’t … ” He trailed off, was silent a moment. “It’s all starting to sink in, you know?”

  “What is?”

  “Who I am, what I stand for — it’s all corrupt. Everything that the LaFoons have built in this valley is corrupt.”

  “This from the man who was so sure that justice had the upper hand here.”

  He breathed heavily in the phone. “I’ve never been so depressed in my entire life.”

  “And you’ll stay that way if you keep on thinking like you are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you can’t deal in absolutes, Sheriff. Not when you’re talking about people. Your family wasn’t as clean as you used to think it was, and it’s not as dirty as you think it is right now. The truth is somewhere in between. It always is. I don’t know what else I can tell you, except that life sucks. But I think you’re already catching on to that.”

  I hung up and went next door. Gordie flicked off the TV when he heard me knocking. He asked who it was. I told him. He said I could come in. I did.

  If the kid was gloomy, you could have fooled me. He started giggling the second he saw me.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded, setting his food down on the coffee table.

  “You are.”

  My close personal friend Sadie seemed to think Gordie’s dinner was for her. She started hungrily for it. I scooped her up.

  “I am not funny,” I said, putting her down on the sofa. “I’m a piece of living history. You can learn an important lesson from all of this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like don’t ever get talked into going to a costume ball.”

  Gordie’s face darkened. He withdrew from me.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked him.

  No reaction.

  “Looks great,” I observed. It did, too. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, greens. I wouldn’t get to eat until after the movie, and Oh, Shenandoah is one long movie. “If you don’t eat it, I will.”

  Still no reaction.

  “Suit yourself.” I sat down, stuffed a napkin in my sleeve and calmly went to work on a wing.

  “Do I gotta go, Hoagy?” he finally said.

  “Don’t want to, huh?” I said, munching.

  “More than anything in the whole world.”

  “Then don’t.”

  He brightened considerably. “Really!”

  “Really. It’s their thing, not yours. You didn’t sign on as a performing seal. Anybody says different, you tell them to talk to me.”

  “Gee, thankth, Hoagy,” he said gratefully.

  He glanced down at the plate with interest. I nudged it over toward him. He went for the drumstick.

  “What were you watching?” I asked as we ate.

  “My favorite movie ever,” he replied eagerly. “Theen it maybe a hundred timesth. Wanna watch?”

  “You bet.”

  He reached for the remote control and flicked the tape on. James Garner and Donald Pleasence were emerging from a tunnel into the darkness. McQueen was helping them. The climax of The Great Escape, one of my three favorite McQueen films. The other two are The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt. I’d hate to have to pick one over the others. The Germans were on to them now. The searchlights came on inside the compound, machine guns fired, all hell broke loose. Off our heroes fled into the woods, each to pursue his own artfully conceived date with destiny.

  If only real life were so neat. If only Sterling Sloan’s murder made such sense. It didn’t. The damned pieces still wouldn’t fit together, no matter how hard I tried to make them. Say Alma Glaze was Sloan’s mystery lover. Say he wanted to break it off when the picture wrapped and she didn’t, so she showed up at his hotel room with a gun and blew his head off, the lover scorned. So far so good. Goldwyn’s people and Alma’s own people would be equally eager to cover it up. Only, who ran over Alma a few months later, and why? Why had Fern screamed? Whom had she seen in Vangie’s room with Sloan? Not Alma — it was Alma herself who reported the outburst in her diary. Who had torn those final pages out? Why? And why had all of th
is reared its ugly head now, five decades later? Who was still being protected?

  Lots more questions. And these answers weren’t so easy to grab on to. Every time I reached for them they seemed to slip farther and farther away.

  “Oh, boy, here’th my favorite part,” exclaimed Gordie, breaking into my wondering.

  McQueen was on his own now. Coburn had found a bicycle, Bronson a rowboat. Garner stole a plane. The others tried the train station. Not McQueen’s style. He was looking for his own brand of transportation. It was while he was getting it that it suddenly happened — it all became clear to me. Horribly, finally, clear. So clear that I sat right up, stunned and dumbfounded. What can I tell you — sometimes it happens that way.

  I wish I could say I was happy it had. I wasn’t. The truth is, I felt lousier than I had in a long, long time.

  “We have to talk, Frederick,” I said into the phone after he said hello.

  “Is that you, Hoagy?” he inquired in his husky, elegant voice.

  “It is.”

  “I’m just climbing into this ridiculous costume … ,” he groaned. “Go right ahead and talk. What’s on your mind?”

  “I know it was you who hired those two goons to get your mother’s diary off of me.” I waited for him to respond. There was only breathing from his end. I plowed ahead. “You were going to sneak it to the tabloids for a lot of money — money you desperately need. Taking it off me outside your office was your best shot. Once I had it with me at Shenandoah it would have been too obvious that an insider was behind it.”

  “I see,” he finally said. He sounded weary and defeated. He sounded old. “And what else do you know?”

  “I know it was you who Polk Two phoned after I visited him at his house. It had to be you — you were their contact. You sent them out there to kill me.”

  “Now that’s not true, strictly speaking,” Frederick protested. “I only meant to scare you. Get you to concentrate on your work and forget about this other business.”

  “And I know why. It’s time for all of this to end, Frederick. I’ve no desire to hurt you or anyone in your family. Merely to see justice served. It’s time for us to talk.”

  He breathed in my ear some more. “Yes. Okay,” he said heavily. “I’d prefer to do it in person if you don’t mind.”