by Michael Mayo
Miss Wray said, “Absolutely not. Hazel is part of this.”
I leaned back in my chair and said, “There’s no reason for Connie to leave,” but she shook her head and slipped out.
After the door clicked shut, Sleave said, “We have spent the afternoon speaking with the studio in California.”
Grossner muttered, “The long-distance charges alone are going to be astronomical. Twenty-five dollars just to connect.”
Sleave paid no attention and said to Miss Wray, “We have come to a decision. If indeed the situation is as you describe it, we will not comply with this extortion. But we will, of course, provide you a bodyguard. He should be at the hotel when you return from the reception.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice was cold.
Sleave tugged at his vest and cleared his throat. “We have spoken to several senior executives in both the legal and production departments, and if these pictures are indeed not of you, then the studio has no real reason to accede to these demands. Of course, since you choose not to share the contents of these pictures, we cannot be certain. In fact, we have only your word that they exist—”
“Hazel has seen them, too. She saw them first.”
Hazel’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, they’re horrible.”
Sleave didn’t sound like he believed her. “So you say, but unless we can examine the material, paying six thousand dollars is simply out of the question.”
Miss Wray stared at him for a long time before she opened her purse and took out a small leather address book. She looked at me and asked if she could use the phone. “It will be long distance,” she said, looking at Grossner. “I’ll take care of the twenty-five dollars.”
“Of course,” I said. The lady had brass.
She picked up the handset and said to me, “This is the private number of Merian Cooper. He directed the picture. But that was two years ago. Since then he has been promoted. Yes, Mr. Selznick was in charge of the studio while we were making the picture, but he recently resigned and now Mr. Cooper runs things at RKO.”
She looked at the book and dialed “O.” Beads of sweat popped out on Grossner’s forehead.
“Operator, connect me with Los Angeles, California.”
Grossner held out a hand, pleading. “Please. We really think it best if we do not involve Mr. Cooper’s office. That is what we have been trying to do all afternoon. I am sure we can accommodate anything you desire.”
She put down the phone. “I want this to be settled right away without so much as a whisper from Louella Parsons. I have been through this before and it will not happen again.”
Things had started that morning while she was at the premiere. Hazel was at the hotel where the studio had put them up—the Pierre. Hazel had been her stand-in on King Kong. They’d become friends and the studio brought her along so Miss Wray would have some company while she was promoting the picture. As nice as it was to stay at a tony joint like the Pierre, Hazel and the production manager of King Kong had fallen for each other, and she really wanted to go back to California to see him. She stayed at the hotel that morning accepting flowers and congratulatory telegrams and the like. She opened all the messages and kept them together in order of importance so they’d know who needed a telephone call that day or a personal letter or a signed eight-by-ten glossy.
The little package that they delivered to the room was with a bunch of telegrams. It was a thick sealed envelope. “Fay Wray—Personal” was written on the outside.
Hazel opened it and found a small book or booklet. When she opened that, a handwritten note fell out. It read: “$6,000 or we send copies to every newspaper, fan magazine, and gossip column in the city. Have the money ready in 24 hours.”
Miss Wray said, “Show it to them.”
Hazel opened her purse and took out the note. Sleave snatched it out of her hand. He quickly passed it to Grossner, who gave it to Ellis. Sleave said, “Let’s see the book.”
Hazel looked at Miss Wray. She nodded and said, “It’s all right. It has nothing to do with us.”
Hazel reached into her bag again and produced a thin book. She held it with her fingertips like it was white hot. As she passed it to Sleave, I could see that the cover was thick, flexible paper and Kong was printed on it in blue lettering.
The two lawyers did a poor job of hiding their intense interest in the book. They may have steamed up their glasses.
After they’d had their look, the taller one cleared his throat and said, “This is absolutely outrageous. Scandalous.”
The shorter one said, “It is a blatant violation of our copyrighted material, our sets and costumes.”
“No,” Miss Wray interrupted. “That’s not me and those are not our sets. We didn’t shoot anything in New York. It was all on the Culver City lot.”
They didn’t shoot anything in New York? That surprised me. Freddie Hall had explained how they used movable models and shot one frame of film at a time, but I can’t say I really understood it. I knew it must have been some kind of trick photography for the city stuff because I’d have heard about it if they’d really wrecked an El train, or if there’d been a giant ape on the Empire State Building. But I didn’t think about any of that while I was watching the picture. It was only when she said it that I thought about how they did it. While I was in the theater, all of it—Skull Island, the big wall, the dinosaurs—they were real, real enough, anyway. I didn’t want to think about the reality behind them. I enjoyed being fooled.
Ellis demanded the book and flipped through it quickly. Whatever it was, he’d seen worse. Or better. He went to hand it back to the lawyers, but Hazel grabbed it and jammed it into her bag.
The detective took a slug of his gin and said, “All that funny stuff there in the book has something to do with this movie, right? King Kong? Don’t know anything about that but it’s easy enough to see that it’s not you in the pictures. Still”—he turned to the lawyers—“if you want to do this the easy way, pay ’em. Six thousand dollars isn’t even chicken feed. My captain told me that the studio wants this handled without any official police involvement, is that right?”
“It’s publicity, bad publicity, that we’re worried about,” said the shorter one. “But we’d like you to be available if the situation were to become uncomfortable.”
Ellis nodded in agreement. “Of course we can handle that, but it’s been my experience, in matters like this, that the people on the other end won’t have anything to do with a cop, even if I’m helping you unofficially.”
The lawyers looked at each other and nodded.
“That’s why I suggested we meet here. Quinn has a lot of experience handling cash without calling attention to himself.” Ellis’s smile had a nasty edge.
I said, “Sure. We can call Detective Ellis’s precinct and talk to some of the officers he works with if you’d like more details on my bona fides. They know exactly what I do. Firsthand, you might say.”
Ellis’s nasty smile disappeared and before I could name names, he jumped in. “I’m just saying that where the law is concerned, Quinn works both sides of the street. Hell, he runs a speakeasy. He has dealings every day with guys who are not one hundred percent legit. They trust him, and I can promise you that he won’t run off with your money. That’s about all you can ask for in a go-between.”
There was some more back and forth with the lawyers, and they agreed that when the guys with the dirty picture book called again, they would stipulate—that was their word, stipulate—that I was to be their representative. And for the six grand, they wanted every copy of the book. That’s when Miss Wray piped up again and said she’d be happy if she could get assurances that all the books had been destroyed. The lawyers seemed disappointed.
After that, they started to get pissy about my fee. I cut it off. “No discussion. It’s ten percent, no matter how it turns out. You make a deal for me to drop the money, I get six hundred bucks whether it goes through or not.”
They didn�
��t argue the point.
Finally, I said, “One more thing. Do you have any suspicions as to who’s behind this?”
The lawyers shook their heads. So did Hazel and Miss Wray, though they cut their eyes at each other like they were thinking something else.
“So you don’t think it could be somebody who’s got a grudge against the studio or Miss Wray? Somebody who just got fired?”
More head shaking from the four of them.
“All right, then. I’ll ask around to see if any of the guys I know are involved. I haven’t heard of anybody who’s working a racket like this, but maybe somebody knows somebody who does. That’s assuming you’d like to know who you’re dealing with.”
Miss Wray spoke up first. “I just want to be sure nobody else ever sees those pictures. That’s all I care about.”
She wanted them destroyed. The lawyers and the studio just wanted to be sure nothing put a dent in their ticket sales.
Hazel whispered something to Miss Wray, and they had a quick quiet conversation before they stood up. She said, “Give him the book, Hazel. He’s got to know what he’s dealing with.”
Then she turned to the lawyers. “We’re going now. We’re late for a reception. You must understand how important this is to me. I will not hesitate to call Mr. Cooper at any time. Please remember that. Your positions may depend on it.”
She said that with the sweetest smile you ever saw, and for the second time, at the mention of Cooper’s name, I saw them sweat.
On their way out, Hazel handed me the little book and said softly, “If you learn anything at all about who’s doing this, come to the Pierre immediately and contact Fay before you talk to them.”
Chapter Three
After the RKO gents left, Ellis sat there working on his gin. He was wearing a well-cut navy suit with a boldly patterned tie. His striped shirt had a tight white collar and a silver collar pin. A little overdressed, and he didn’t look as good as I did. I had a lightweight double-breasted charcoal worsted that fit unusually well, a white shirt that didn’t pinch my neck, and a wine-red tie. Never bothered with collar pins myself.
“Didn’t mean for them to drop in on you cold, like that,” he said. “I was gonna call, but we had a floater. Young girl, possible suicide. Chewed up by a propeller. I hate to see that.”
“What’s your part in all this?” I asked.
“Not much. This is so much crap. Some guy made some dirty pictures that look like some other broad and he figures maybe he can pry loose a little scratch from the movie studio. I can’t see why the hell they’re even giving him the time of day, but what do I know? They got in touch with Boatwright, my captain, said they wanted somebody on hand who would be discreet while they decided what to do. For now they want police advice, not involvement, so here we are.”
He was the guy they’d call for something like that. Ellis had a reputation for knowing which rules to bend, not talking to anybody he shouldn’t be talking to, and never embarrassing the department. His tight-ass captain found him useful and had learned not to ask too many questions.
“I had another reason to see you, too. Talked to a guy from the Sanitation Department. He’s gonna come by, look you over, tell you what you gotta do for your licenses. Walk you through it.”
“How much?”
“With him, couple of drinks and a fin. For starters.”
“That’s better than the bastard from the Fire Department. He’s an asshole. Wanted fifty to walk in the front door. We gotta find somebody else.”
Ellis said, “He’s supposed to be the best, but he’s not the only one who can help us.”
You see, I was facing a terrible turn of events right then. Franklin Goddamn Delano Roosevelt had been elected. He was going to be inaugurated on Saturday, and he had promised that the first thing he was going to do once he was in office was end Prohibition. So, within a year or so, I’d have to go legit if I wanted to continue selling alcohol. And other than delivering the occasional bribe, dealing hooch was all I knew how to do. Now, dammit, I was going to have to do it legally, and I had no idea how to go about that. Ellis was helping me get to the right people to lubricate the system and make my legalization go as smooth as possible. That meant paying off the right guys, and not paying off the wrong ones. Until then, my payoffs and deliveries went mostly to men near the top, not the grunts I’d be dealing with day to day when I went legit.
But back to the matter at hand. Ellis said, “The sanitation guy can wait. For now, let’s figure that whoever has these pictures is going to get in touch with the broads tonight or tomorrow. When the studio men get the money and have the details, call me. I’ll tag along to keep the captain happy. If it goes down right, maybe these studio guys will call me again when there might be real money involved.”
I didn’t say anything. Hell, $600 was real money to me.
“Call me when you know something,” he said and left.
I poured a short brandy and took out the book.
It was about five inches by seven inches, bound on the short side with a couple of heavy staples that looked to be made out of copper. The covers were soft thick textured paper. Inside was a mix of words, drawings, and photographs. The first page read: “Kong is the Beast. She is the Beauty.”
There were two pictures on the facing page. The first was a pencil or crayon drawing of a snarling gorilla’s head that looked a lot like the real King Kong but not exactly. The second was a full-length photograph of a blonde on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. She could have been Miss Wray in that first scene, with the same tweed jacket and a dress almost to her ankles. But unlike Miss Wray, this blonde’s dress was slit open to midthigh, and her jacket and blouse were unbuttoned, displaying a lacy bra that was being tested to its limits. The blond hair looked almost exactly like Miss Wray’s under the cloche hat. The face was sort of like hers. If I’d only seen the ads in the papers, I might think it was her, but anybody who saw the picture would know this wasn’t the real thing. Must have been pretty tricky getting her to open up her clothes like that without attracting a lot of attention on the observation deck.
In the next shot, she was in a little fruit stand and reaching for an apple. It looked like the photograph could have been taken on the streets of New York. It didn’t have that clean, no trash, no horse manure look of a city street in a movie. The caption read: “Destitute, she is reduced to stealing food.”
The next photo was of the girl in a diner. It looked like another real place. Blouse still unbuttoned, she was sitting across a table from a guy whose face you couldn’t see, just slicked-down dark hair. The caption was: “Salvation! A job with a moving picture company, and a voyage to a far distant land. . . .”
The next photo was of the girl in a shower stall. The billowing steam covered the key body parts like little clouds. It didn’t need a caption.
The next was the only one that looked at first like it could have come from the picture. It was captioned: “The producer wants to see if she can express fright and tells her to imagine the Beast!”
The blonde was wearing what looked to me to be the same filmy fairy-tale dress that Miss Wray wore in that scene on the ship. Long, dangling sleeves, wide neckline that didn’t cover her shoulders, a shiny woven belt that crossed under her breasts and then came down in a Y at her crotch. But where Miss Wray looked like she was really terrified, this girl looked like she just broke a nail. Not that most guys would have noticed. She didn’t have anything on under the dress, north or south.
The next was another drawing, this one of the ship at anchor by the island. The caption was: “At last! She arrives at the lair of the Beast!”
Then there was another photograph of the blonde being taken from the ship, I guess. She was still in the fairy-tale dress with her arms spread wide, gripped at the wrists by the hands of a couple of colored guys. I think she was supposed to look like she was afraid and screaming again, but it still didn’t wash.
The caption was: �
��Led to the altar to be a Sacrifice to the Beast!”
The stone altar in the next photo looked an awful lot like the one in the real movie. There was a lot of smoke and stone steps going up to two stone pillars about six feet tall with leopard skins piled around and human skulls on the pillars with weird symbols carved into them. The blonde was tied between the pillars with thick, scratchy-looking ropes. She was supposed to be screaming in terror at the next picture, a guy in a gorilla suit surrounded by fake trees no taller than he. It was a good gorilla suit with a really nasty face that looked a lot like the one in the first drawing. But it was still a gorilla suit, a gorilla suit with a hole in the crotch. Inside the gorilla suit was either a black guy or a white guy who’d smeared his Johnson with shiny black greasepaint—a different kind of blackface, I guess.
In the next photo, her dress had been ripped, revealing that she really did have a great set of knockers, though you couldn’t see them clearly through the smoke. You could see that she wasn’t a natural blonde.
The last picture surprised me. In that one, the dress had been torn open and she was spread-eagled on a big black furry hand. It didn’t have the threadbare look of the props in the other photos, and the girl had been carefully posed and lit. She just looked great. I mean, it was one of those images that stays with you for a long time.
Twelve pictures. The ship and the first Kong shot looked to me like they’d come from the real moving picture. But I knew I could be remembering it wrong. The shots on the observation deck and the fruit stand didn’t have anything to do with what I’d seen on the screen that morning. The real city was spread out behind her in the photo on the observation deck, and the deck didn’t look anything like that narrow little ledge that the real Kong put her down on, and it didn’t have the round thing at the top where he hung on while the bastards in the planes shot him down.
But what was really unusual about the little book was how clear and carefully detailed the drawings and photos were. Most of the dirty picture books you saw weren’t much better than those cheap little Tijuana bibles, crude quick sketches that some guy had knocked off in a few seconds and then printed on the cheapest pulp paper he could find. This was quality workmanship. Somebody spent a lot of time and money re-creating the stuff from the moving picture, and he’d taken a hell of a lot of care to get exactly what he wanted in each image. In one close-up of the blonde, you see the elaborately elongated eyebrows and you could count her lashes.
