Detour to Murder jo-3

by Jeff Sherratt

  “No, sweetheart,” Sol said. “MGM’s security department protected the studio’s movie stars. The talent was considered property worth millions, and the studio took a dim view of anyone screwing with the reputation or safety of its most valuable assets. Eddie Mannix, head of security, and Howard Strickling, head of publicity, were known as fixers. Their job was to keep the actors in line. When the assets got in trouble, as they often did, the fixers kept their names out of the papers and, if needed, kept them out of jail.”

  I thought back to my days on the LAPD. Over drinks at the local hangout, a cop joint on South Central, the old-timers told stories about how Mannix and Stickling were able to cover up misdemeanors and felonies committed by matinee idols of the day. And a few times they even swept blatant murders under the rug. The detectives who were called out on a case involving an MGM movie star were told not to ask questions, just accept what Mannix and Strickling had to say. If they said the death was a suicide or an accident, that’s how it went down.

  At first I didn’t completely believe what they told us about the studio fixing murder cases. I figured the old dogs were jiving the young bucks, but then I read that Superman had killed himself and I began to wonder. George Reeves, the actor who played the Man of Steel in the popular 1950s TV series, had been found shot to death in his bedroom, but the gun that killed him was discovered nowhere near the body. It had been rumored that Reeves had been fooling around with Toni Mannix, Eddie’s wife.

  “Back in the thirties and forties MGM owned the town. What the studio wanted they got and what they said was law,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s exactly how Jerome had put it,” Rita added.

  “What did he tell you about Vera’s phone call to the security department?” I asked.

  “Mannix took her call and she told him that Al Roberts, a guy who’d already murdered one man, was in town gunning for Jerome. Mannix took the threat seriously, especially since Vera knew the details about Sue Harvey and Roberts and their plans to marry before she took off for Hollywood.”

  “Vera had the movie magazine,” I said. “The one with the picture in it of Jerome and Sue together at a nightclub. The caption said they were engaged. And of course Roberts had let Vera know why he’d hitchhiked to Los Angeles. But he probably wasn’t even aware that Sue had hooked up with a big-time movie guy.”

  “Not according to Jerome. He said Vera had told Mannix that Roberts was boiling mad about Sue being engaged to the actor and he planned to eliminate his competition.”

  “My God, she said that?”

  “Yes, again according to Jerome, she did. She said Roberts had a gun and was dead serious. Then she told Mannix that she could take Roberts out of the picture. Mannix pretended to go along with Vera, even encouraged her. She said she wanted five thousand dollars to get rid of him. But first she wanted to speak personally to Jerome. Mannix told her to call back in one hour. He’d have the actor there. She could speak to him then. One hour would give him time to rig up a call-trace so they could have the police pick her up.”

  “Did she call back?” I asked.

  “The phone records indicate that there were three calls made to the studio from the bungalow,” Sol said.

  “That’s right, Sol. Three phone calls. She did call back, right on schedule. Mannix had summoned Jerome to the security department and he got on the line. She repeated her story how Roberts was coming after him, and how she had a plan to get rid of him permanently, provided someone paid her five thousand dollars.”

  “What’d Jerome tell her?”

  “On orders from Mannix, he told Vera he could get the money, then he told her that they’d have to arrange a meeting to work out the details, but she refused to divulge her location. He tried to keep her on the line so they could finish the trace, but she smelled a rat and hung up. She said she would call back the next day with instructions.”

  “Phone calls had to be traced by hand through the old Crossbar switching mechanism back then. Took several minutes,” Sol said.

  “Then what happened?” I asked Rita.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean nothing?”

  “She never called back. Mannix finally called the cops.”

  “I wonder why she didn’t make the call,” I said, more or less to myself, but Rita answered.

  “She didn’t call back because she was dead.”

  “It’d be hard to make a phone call if you’re dead,” Sol said, lighting another cigar.

  Rita ignored him. “Two days later the police informed Mannix that a woman had been found murdered in a motel. The cops pulled the phone records and saw the calls she’d made to the studio-they saw the same phone numbers you have, Jimmy-and figured she had to be the one who’d offered to bump off Roberts.”

  “Was Jerome nervous about Roberts being in town?” I asked.

  “He said he wasn’t, said they got calls like that all the time. Mannix figured it could be real, but Jerome thought the whole thing was a hoax all along.”

  We didn’t speak for a moment. Sol toked on his cigar, Rita sipped her Chablis, and I sat quietly mulling over what Jerome had told Rita.

  Sol rested his cigar on the rim of an ashtray and looked across at me. “Well, there goes your case, Jimmy,” he said.

  “Why, Sol? Jerome still could’ve done it.”

  “No, not with Mannix, Strickling, and the police involved. Besides, we know about the calls to MGM, so his story rings true. That means only one man had a strong motive to kill Vera.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That Alexander Roberts killed Vera before she could kill him.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The three of us moved into the dining room. Rita had skipped lunch interviewing Jerome, and of course Sol was always hungry. My appetite had diminished once it became obvious that I’d wound up back on square one with the Roberts case. For a moment I’d thought for sure that Jerome had murdered both Vera and Mrs. Hathaway, especially after I found out that the mystery woman and the hired muscle in the Buick were connected to him. But then it hit me: it didn’t all fit, as I’d thought at first. Mrs. Hathaway had told her niece that she was blackmailing someone “high in the government”. Obviously, that didn’t fit Jerome. Anyhow, I still figured he was somehow involved in framing Roberts. But I didn’t know how-or why.

  We had dinner in Sol’s private booth at the back of the room. While we ate, Rita and Sol talked and laughed, and every now and then I jumped in with a word or two just to be social. We kept the Roberts case under wraps, but the subject never left my mind.

  Andre came to the table several times, paying obsequious attention to Sol’s comments about the new piano player and his song repertoire. Sol raved about the guy, of course. I rolled my eyes when he said the entertainer had panache with the ivories, and flair in his voice like he hadn’t heard in years. “By God, Andre, the man sounds a lot like Tex Beneke.”

  Rita leaned into me. “Who’s Tex Beneke?” she whispered.

  “Old guy who used to play the trombone and sing with the Glenn Miller band,” I said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, Mr. Silverman, he does sound like Tex Beneke,” Andre told Sol. “Tex is his kid brother.”

  Rita leaned in again. “Geez, the guy’s kinda old.”

  “About a hundred,” I said.

  Rita left at nine. She wanted to get an early start on the Roberts case. She planned on corroborating Jerome’s story by visiting the old MGM studio in Culver City. It was a long shot, she said; the company has changed ownership a couple of times since 1945, but maybe an old-timer might still be there who remembered the incident.

  Sol told her that Mannix himself had died about ten years ago. Strickling, his cohort, was retired, but he was still around and might remember Vera’s calls. Sol told Rita to stop by his office in the morning. He’d have his people pull the company file that held updated information on prominent and/or notorious people. It would have Strickling’s current address list
ed.

  I didn’t mention my conversation with Mabel, the one where I agreed to pull Rita off the case and have her spend time searching for new clients. With the loan from Sol, Rita could continue with the Roberts case. It wasn’t just about setting the record straight that drove me now. It was personal.

  After Rita left, Sol and I moseyed into the bar. He wanted to listen to the entertainer a while before heading home. “It’s not every day you get to hear Tex Beneke’s brother,” he said.

  I nodded and under my breath added, “Thank God.” But what would it hurt to hang with him for an hour? I had nothing to do but go home to an empty apartment.

  Forty-five minutes later, after the piano player had run though “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” one too many times, I left Rocco’s and headed home. The last thing I heard as I went out the door was Sol shouting out in a deep baritone voice, “One more time, Tex. Take us down the line. Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo…” Sol never could sing worth a damn.

  I drove through the dark streets of Downey. The town was completely quiet, not a car or pedestrian in sight, and the thugs didn’t seem to be following me. Maybe it was past their bedtime. One thing for sure: they could use a little beauty sleep. Anything would help.

  Stevie Wonder’s hit song, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” played on the car radio. The song was an angry blast aimed directly at ex-President Nixon, who had resigned a few months before, but it could’ve just as easily been about me. At least my troubles weren’t fodder for the national media. I wondered how I’d feel if every morning I woke up and read headlines about my life. O’Brien’s broke again. Or O’Brien’s office manager quit today, had to be bailed out by a friend. Better yet, O’Brien’s nowhere with his big case.

  As I swung into the carport behind my apartment building the Chevy’s headlights illuminated my parking stall. I thought I saw a lone figure standing in a dimly lit area several feet to my left, but when I looked again, the image was gone. Whoever had been there must’ve stepped back in the shadows.

  I sat in the car for a few minutes with the lights on and the engine running. Maybe no one was there. Maybe I just thought I saw someone. Maybe, I’m becoming spooked. Maybe all that talk about blackmail, murder, and powerful people after my ass had me jumpy. What was I going to do now? Drive off? Let the bogyman chase me down the street and then drive around the block for the rest of my life?

  I killed the engine and lights and walked to the back stairs leading up to my apartment. My neighbor, Norm, an elderly gentleman, must’ve fallen asleep in front of his TV again. Johnny Carson’s monologue and the laughter seeped through the thin wall as I walked along the outside balcony toward number 2-B-my home. I stopped in front of the door, fumbling for the keys.

  I had the door unlocked and pushed halfway open when I heard a soft female voice close behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Can I talk to you?” the voice said.

  I jerked around, still holding the knob of the half-opened door. The mystery woman in a cashmere trench coat faced me. “Jesus, lady! You damn near gave me a heart attack, sneaking up on me like that. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

  She nodded toward the apartment. “Let’s go in and talk.”

  I pushed her aside and took a quick glance along the balcony and down the stairs. Her musclemen were nowhere in sight. I turned back and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  She shrugged me off. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she said.

  “Okay, lady, who are you? Why are you and your thugs following me around?”

  Her eyes flared. “My name is Kathie Rayfield, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about any thugs,” she said in a voice tinged with defiance.

  “What do you want?”

  “I just want to talk for a moment.”

  My pulse slowly returned to normal. “Are those guys in the Buick hiding around here someplace?”

  “What Buick? What guys?”

  “Cut the crap, Kathie. You know exactly who I’m referring to, the hoods at the In-N-Out burger joint where I saw you the first time.”

  “I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

  My face was only inches from hers. I was close enough to inhale her scent, a flowery fragrance that smelled like it came from a bottle of money. Maybe it was her beauty, the shading of her face lit by the moon, the flash of her eyes, or maybe it was her obstinate denial of the thugs that weakened my resistance. I wanted to believe her.

  “I’m talking about the guys in the Buick-the thugs who were parked at the In-N-Out that day in Chino?”

  She took a deep breath. “Mr. O’Brien, I told you before…wait, I remember now.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Seeing that black car. It followed you when you drove away from the prison. They were right in front of me.” She looked up at the moon, bright in the night sky. “I was following you, too.”

  “A regular parade. I was the clown leading the band.”

  “Then the car pulled into burger place behind you and parked. I wondered who they were, thought maybe they were the police, or investigators working for the DA, keeping an eye on you.”

  “You had nothing to do with them?”

  She looked up at me with those baby blues. “No, I don’t know anything about them. It’s just a coincidence that they were also there. Who were they, anyway?”

  She sounded sincere. I could have been mistaken that day. When she glanced at the Buick after warning me off the case, I just assumed she had been tied in with them. But I hadn’t seen her connected with the thugs since then. If what she’d just told me was true, then that meant there were others who wanted Roberts to remain in prison. However, it seemed like an awfully big coincidence that there would be more than one person or persons interested in my client’s freedom.

  But of course, there were a lot of people who’d be up to their eyeballs in a morass of crap if all the facts about the Roberts murder case came to light. Starting with Frank Byron, the DA back in ’45, the guy who’d duped him into to confessing to Vera’s murder in the first place.

  “You must’ve been waiting for me when I left the prison after my first interview with Roberts. How’d you know I’d be assigned to the case? That I’d be at the prison that day?”

  “Simple.”

  “Suppose you tell me.”

  “News about the Roberts parole hearing was in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, a small piece in the local news section. The article said you were going to be his attorney. It mentioned the day and time when you were scheduled to be there.”

  “The hearing made the papers?”

  “It wasn’t in the Times, just the Examiner. The paper is owned by the Hearst organization. They cover a lot of gory crime stuff. They recently did a retrospective-you know, an article on L.A. in the forties. The piece touched on Frank Byron’s career and mentioned the woman’s tragic death. I have a clipping service that sends me anything in the news even remotely connected to my father.”

  “Your father? What are you talking about?”

  “My father is Francis Q. Jerome.”

  “I see…” So that’s how she was connected with the actor. That’s why she was driving his car. Now it fit.

  “And my mother was one of his wives, Mildred Rayfield.” She paused for a beat. “Her professional name was Sue Harvey.”

  CHAPTER 31

  I flipped on the light as I thought about what she’d just told me. Kathie glanced around. “Quaint,” she said, surveying the decor in my apartment, a couple of beanbag chairs and a portable Zenith TV resting on an end table against the wall. One of the TV’s rabbit-ear antennas was broken. It hung limp like the useless appendage of a neutered donkey. I’d been meaning to get it fixed.

  “Pull up a beanbag and stay a while,” I said, bracing myself in the opening to the kitchenette off to the right. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Do you have coffee?
” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  She glanced around again. “And a table?”

  I nodded over my shoulder toward the kitchenette. “Yeah, all the modern conveniences. The designer insisted.”

  “Let’s sit in the kitchen. I’ll make the coffee.”

  I couldn’t remember the last I had been alone in my apartment with a beautiful woman-any woman, for that matter. Not since my divorce. But I had questions that needed answers.

  “I want to know what in the hell is going on. Why are you here, anyway?” I said.

  “I’ll tell you the whole story while we have coffee.” She shrugged out of her coat and dropped it on a beanbag. Underneath she wore tight fitting, bell-bottom jeans with a plain sleeveless knit shirt. Her figure was just as I’d remembered it-stunning.

  I stepped aside and she marched into the kitchenette. Looking in the cupboard, she found a can of Yuban and proceeded to make a pot of coffee. Soon the fresh-brewed aroma filled the air. She brought two cups and sat at the table across from me. Clutching her cup with both hands, she raised it slowly and took a sip. I waited patiently to hear her story.

  She set the cup down, paused, and focused on the tabletop. “Where shall I begin?”

  I leaned back and folded my arms. “Why are you involved?”

  “As I told you, my last name is Rayfield. I was given my mother’s maiden name when my father at first disavowed my parentage. I was born in Los Angeles, but spent my childhood in Europe. I didn’t really know my father until I was practically grown up. Oh, I knew he’d been in the movies. But when I was a child he was just a name and a face.”

  “Your mother never talked about him?”

  She shook her head. “I rarely saw my mother, even when I was young and living with her in Beverly Hills, before she lost the house.”

  “That must’ve been tough.”

  “After my mother’s marriage fell apart she hung on for a while, but then things deteriorated. She went from a life of luxury, the wife of a big-time movie star-living in a mansion with servants and a five-thousand-a-week allowance-to being a five-dollar party girl. It happened in a matter of a few years.”