That arranged, Tom cooked up a pot of coffee on the stove and headed back, cup in hand. In the parlor, the girl was fast asleep, barely visible on the couch, a few wisps of tawny hair and the rhythmic shush of her breathing the only evidence of a body beneath the bunched-up blankets. Closing his bedroom door, he sat and took a long draught of the reviving brew. In the wardrobe mirror he caught sight of himself, hunched on the edge of the bed, arms a jumble of angles and bones, hair a sleep-mussed mess of black curls, lips pale against the shadow of another day’s beard. He rubbed his eyes again with the heels of his hands, before dragging a large leather suitcase out from beneath the bed, just as he did every morning, his gaze catching inevitably on the big yellow transit label on the lid, his name stencilled on it, care of Famous Players-Lasky on Vine Street – another painful echo.
Snapping the case open, he pulled out a loose-leaf notebook and scribbled an account of his movements the day before: names, places, times, expenses. Other crumbs too about Swann and the girl, the faces he’d seen gambling and whoring at the fun palace the night before. He replaced the notebook, shut the case, checked his wristwatch. Time to wash, shave and dig out some decent duds. Bathroom-bound, he stopped at the parlor door and took another look. She was asleep still but had turned over, her shoulders bare, much of the blanket bunched on the floor. He stepped in, draped it over her again as she murmured dreamily into the upholstery.
FIVE
South Alvarado shimmered, indifferent. Up and down the steep-sloped street, stucco storefronts and white-painted homes gleamed as if laundered overnight. Sitting on a low wall midway up the hill, Tom looked up as a bright-yellow trolley car approached, rumbling and squealing, clanging a warning as it braked on the incline, packed to standing with shoppers and office workers heading downtown. He turned back to his Los Angeles Times and the latest news on the Taylor murder. Compared with the bold headlines and shrieking speculation of the previous evening’s Herald, it was a model of reserve.
The story took up but half the front page, allowing for the possibility that some readers might be more interested in the failing arms talks between China and Japan, the conclave of cardinals electing a new Pope in Rome, or the latest news on Arbuckle’s retrial in San Francisco – the jury deadlocked, again. Even so, the main picture was of Mabel Normand, looking rapt and alluring in a studio publicity shot, swathed in off-the-shoulder furs and an enormous velvet hat, her glamour undercut by the melodramatic headline Linked in Sinister Drama of Mystery and a caption suggesting she had been questioned in connection with the murder.
Tom drank in the detail. Beside the picture of Normand was one of Taylor, a quarter the size, and a graphic photo-diagram reconstructing the murder: a crude sketch of the gunman and his flailing victim superimposed on a crisply focused photograph of Taylor’s front room. The gist was how Times investigators had dug up four witnesses who saw a stranger behaving suspiciously near Taylor’s home the evening of the murder – one even provided a detailed description of the man’s clothing. All very convincing, but nobody could doubt that what most readers would remember was the photo of Miss Normand.
He looked across the street at the fashionable residential block opposite. Alvarado Court. It was a five-minute stroll from the modest frame house he rented, but it could have been a million miles away. Eight elegant duplexes grouped around a pretty courtyard garden open to the street. Wrought-iron balconies added a slash of Spanish zest to the white walls and green tile roofs. A central flower bed eased the eye towards a vine-clad sun pavilion. Stillness enveloped everything. The place was built to exude peace, solidity and discreet wealth. It did the job well: not a sign remained of the outcry raised twenty-four hours before when Taylor’s murdered body was found by his manservant arriving for work.
A honk from a dusty black Ford pulling in across the street. Tom smiled as Thad Sullivan began to dismount awkwardly from under the tattered canopy, rear first, the machine groaning and listing on its springs, the footplate creaking under his weight. He walked over, hand outstretched in greeting, delighted to see his old partner again. It really had been too long.
‘Fine morning, Detective Sullivan,’ he said in his best brogue.
‘Ah, shur ’tis,’ was the even broader reply. It never failed to amaze Tom how decades in New York and four more years in Los Angeles had so little impact on Sullivan’s broad Kerry accent, even when he wasn’t kidding around.
Sullivan slammed the car door and crammed a hat over his graying hair. He cut an impressive figure. It wasn’t so much his height as the fact that he looked to be equally wide as well, and at the shoulders rather than round the belly. The huge frame was topped by a head so rock-like it could have been hewn from a cliff face. Back in the old days in New York, when they worked the Eighteenth together as patrolmen, he had seen men mistake Sullivan’s bulk and shambling manner for slowness or stupidity. It was an assumption they invariably came to regret.
‘Looking stylish as ever, I see.’
‘You always could spot a man of refinement,’ Sullivan laughed. His wife, Eleanor, never let him out of the house unless he was as spick and span as any man on a detective’s salary could be. ‘How’s it going, anyhow?’
‘OK, I guess. Business is a bit slow.’
‘Can’t be bad if you’re on to this already,’ Sullivan said. ‘What’s your line on it? Are you Lasky’s promise of unlimited resources?’
He pointed at the Times. Tom had read the front-page vow from Jesse Lasky, co-founder with Zukor of the studio, to subsidize the police investigation to ‘any extent that might hasten the capture of the assassin’. He had guessed that would not go down well with Los Angeles’ finest, implying that they weren’t up to the job. Still, the question took him by surprise. How could Sullivan think he was working for Lasky’s again?
‘C’mon, Thad. You know that’s never going to happen.’
‘So who’re you working for?’ Sullivan demanded. ‘Or am I not supposed to ask, now you’re a private inquiries man?’
‘You can ask,’ Tom laughed. ‘But you might be left hanging for an answer.’ It was awkward, and if Sullivan had pushed, Tom probably would have told him straight out about Sennett. But as it was, the detective gave him a crooked sort of glance and muttered something about knowing your pals. Tom didn’t catch it all, but saw a chance to change the subject.
‘The press boys got a run on you with these witnesses, didn’t they?’ he said, pointing to the Times again.
‘Get away, would’ya,’ Sullivan growled, taking the bait. ‘It was we gave ’em all that. “Investigators for the Times”, my arse. We took the statements from Mrs MacLean and her maid within hours of Taylor’s body being found. And the service station guy and the streetcar conductor came forward to us, not the blasted Times.’
It was always thus. Everyone stole the credit when the cops did well, and screamed blue murder when they didn’t. Tom followed Sullivan through the pretty courtyard garden until he stopped outside the last house in the corner on the left.
‘This is Taylor’s place,’ Sullivan said, searching his pockets for the key. Between this duplex and the one cater-cornered to it was a passage running out to some garages and the adjoining street. He followed Tom’s gaze down along it. ‘Reckon that’s where our killer waited his chance to get in – we found a mess of smoke butts under the jacaranda out back. Everything points to him leaving that way, too.’
‘Makes sense,’ Tom said, twisting round to look at the windows and balconies overlooking the gardens all the way round the courtyard. ‘Anyone out of place would’ve been spotted down here. It’s like a fishbowl.’
‘You said it,’ Sullivan agreed. ‘It’s mostly movies living here, and you know how picky they can be.’ It was one of Sullivan’s favorite gripes – the snootiness of movie folk. ‘Fancy people, right enough. Main witness is married to that actor fella, Douglas MacLean – you know him? And that other one – Edna Purviance – she lives next door along.’
‘Ser
iously? Purviance was here?’ That was a surprise. She was one of Charlie Chaplin’s leading ladies. Made a big splash just the year before in The Kid, his biggest hit to date. A name for reporters to get excited about.
‘I didn’t see that anywhere.’
‘One of the first on the scene,’ Sullivan confirmed. ‘But she kept her name out of it. Must have a good publicity man. Not that she saw anything. It was the MacLean woman got the goods on the killer. Lives right there.’
Sullivan pointed at the house on the adjacent corner, its entrance no more than fifteen feet from where they were standing. ‘She got a grandstand view as our man came out the door, right here, and walked round into the alley. Looked her straight in the eye, cool as you like.’
‘Guy must’ve had balls of brass,’ Tom said. ‘Why didn’t she call the cops? Surely she must’ve heard the shot?’
Sullivan shook his head. ‘You know how it is in a place like this. They don’t expect bad things to happen. The MacLeans’ maid said she heard a shot but Mrs Mac overruled her. Decided it was an auto backfiring and refused to hear any more of it – not even when this tough walked past a few minutes later. Wasn’t until Taylor’s man Peavey arrived in the morning she realized she’d been a helluva lot too polite.’
He grunted and unlocked the door. ‘Come on in, and mind where you walk.’
SIX
The curtains were shut to keep out prying eyes, but the sun forced its way in, illuminating the interior with a spectral light. They stood taking in the dead man’s parlor. The only indication that anything amiss had occurred was an upturned chair beside the antique writing desk, and a small dense stain on the carpet in front of it.
‘So, mister private inquiries man,’ Sullivan said. ‘What do you make of this?’
Tom ignored the jibe, determined to play along, certain Sullivan would already have forgotten the diagram on the front of the Times.
‘Well, in the absence of a body, you’ve got the advantage over me, Thad. But at a guess, that stain on the carpet is where Taylor leaked his life away when he was shot. And unless you and your boys have been messier than usual, he was sitting in that chair when the bullet hit him, or he knocked it over as he fell to the floor.’
‘A regular little Pinkerton, aren’t you?’ Sullivan scoffed. He strode over to the window and pulled one of the curtains back, flooding the room with a disconcerting air of normality.
‘That’s where he was lying, all right. Laid out like the mortician had already been in. Suit coat buttoned up, arms by his sides, legs together. The cops on the call didn’t even figure he’d been shot until the morgue van arrived to take away the body. Some fool decided early on this was natural causes, and because the body was so neat and tidy, everyone believed it. They only spotted the bloodstain and the hole in his back when the coroner’s man arrived and lifted him. Add to that, there was a two-carat diamond ring on his finger, a platinum watch in his vest, a silver cigarette case and a wallet with seventy-eight dollars in his pocket. More cash and a checkbook in the bureau, and a pile of gold jewelry in a drawer upstairs. So robbery wasn’t the motive, and it’s not like the killer was disturbed and had to make a quick getaway. Any ideas?’ Sullivan stared at him, an eyebrow cocked quizzically.
Tom shook his head. ‘Ne’er a one. What do you reckon yourself?’
‘To be honest, I’ve no clue either. For the shooter to walk out in front of a witness like that – I never heard the like. Unless he was an out-of-towner brought in for the job and didn’t fear being recognized. But even so.’
‘What about this Sands guy – the one the papers are talking about?’
‘DA would love us to think it was him,’ Sullivan said. ‘That would make it nice and easy. Sands was Taylor’s valet until August last, when he took off for no obvious reason with his master’s auto, clothes, cash, and went on the lam – forged checks, the lot. Heavy damage to Taylor’s bank account. One curious detail was Taylor took four months to swear out a complaint. Why wait so long? We’ll have to review that too now, I guess. But sure, Sands is nice for this, except for one big problem.’
‘The witness?’
‘You got it. Sands worked here every day for a year. Got real cozy with Mrs MacLean next door. She says categorically it wasn’t him.’
‘She’s not covering?’
‘For murder? Why would she? Anyhow, the service station guy knew Sands, too. He agrees it wasn’t him. And it figures: why would Sands ask directions to a house he worked in for a year?’
Tom thought about it. He knew the guys at the gas station. It was where he always filled up his Dodge. Real friendly every time, and they always called him by name. Those guys made a big point of knowing their customers.
‘What’s the DA say to that?’
Sullivan’s smile was skeptical. ‘Woolwine? Not a lot. All he wants is to give something to the papers and get them off his back. Look, I’ve got to check the stove in the kitchen, so you have your look around. And in case you’ve forgotten, that means look only – don’t disturb anything while you’re about it.’
Tom curled his lip at Sullivan’s back, then poked his head into the neat little dining room next door. Nothing much to note, except along one wall a line of framed photographs of movie stars: Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge, Betty Compson. There were men there, too – among them Wally Reid and Jack Pickford. All the pictures were inscribed. The one nearest the door was from a pretty, virginal blonde: For William Desmond Taylor, Artist, Gentleman, Man! Sincere good wishes, Mary Miles Minter. Lasky’s biggest up-and-comer, they said. The next Mary Pickford, they said. Except they’d been saying it a couple of years now and she showed no sign yet of knocking the queen of Hollywood off her throne.
Back into the parlor, more photographs. In pride of place on the bureau, one of Taylor posing beside a fine McFarlan auto, big as a charabanc, a liveried chauffeur behind the wheel – the defining symbol of movieland success. Beside it was a smaller portrait in a delicate silver frame. This was of Mabel Normand. There was another of her on the bookshelves by the wall, and a third, largest of all, mounted in a polished walnut frame on top of the piano. Tom examined it. She was an odd-looking creature, with those huge, half-hooded eyes. Beautiful, no doubt about it, with that little-girl ringlety innocence so favored by the movie-going public. Once, at a party, he saw her light up a room with her laughter. A comical kind of beauty, he supposed.
In the kitchen, he found Sullivan bent over the potbelly stove, poking around in the ash. Time to broach the crucial question.
‘You see all the photographs of Mabel Normand out there? Not exactly the face of a killer, you think?’
‘Can’t be ruled out.’ Sullivan rolled a shoulder stiffly as he straightened up and replaced the lid on the stove. ‘Even if she didn’t do it by her own hand, the killer most likely slipped in when Taylor walked Normand out to her car. Her driver was waiting where I parked just now. Question is: what was she doing paying Taylor a visit anyway?’
‘Didn’t he invite her over?’
‘Only she knows that. Says she phoned him from her bank downtown and came over to pick up some book he’d bought for her. But Taylor’s driver says he was sent over to her place with a book earlier. Why didn’t he take both at the same time?’
‘Maybe Taylor sent the wrong book?’
‘Yeah, maybe. It was Ziegler and Wallace interviewed Normand last night. Said they didn’t get much of a sense of her. She was so darned upset. But I say guilt never stopped anyone sobbing. And she is an actress.’
‘Which, as you’re always telling me, is as far from real life as anyone can get,’ Tom insisted. ‘Besides, I can’t see why she’d do it. I mean, everybody says she was practically engaged to Taylor.’
‘Everybody but her, you mean. You saw what she said in the Times: “Just good pals.” But, you know what? He had a photo of her in a locket in his breast pocket. I wouldn’t mind having a good pal like that.’
Sullivan harrumphed and made an
obscene gesture. ‘Something funny was going on. Why else would she deny it?’
‘They’re all running scared since Arbuckle, I know that,’ Tom said. He also knew he wouldn’t get as good a chance again to find out whether Sennett’s name was in the frame.
‘Do you think she’s maybe protecting somebody? Yesterday’s Herald said the squad was following up a jealous ex-lover angle.’
‘The Herald, is it?’ Sullivan gave him a withering look. ‘Well, there’s a steaming pile of gospel truth in that rag every evening, isn’t there? But you know these guys. You can be sure he had more than one iron in the fire. And him old enough to be—’ Sullivan stopped himself, gave a loud tut and another disbelieving shake of the head before continuing. ‘Look, if Normand claims she wasn’t engaged to Taylor, what’s to be jealous about? It doesn’t add up. Especially when no one even noticed he’d been shot. It’s like they were all so busy trying to clean the place out, Taylor was the last thing on their minds.’
‘Cleaning it out? How?’
The big man threw his hands in the air, exasperated. ‘Look, you know it was this Peavey, Taylor’s negro man, who found the body when he arrived for work at seven thirty, right?’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Well, this Peavey calls himself a valet.’ Sullivan raised his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘But from what I’ve seen he’s more the chambermaid type. He woke half the neighborhood with his shrieking when he found Taylor. That’s when Purviance and the MacLeans got involved. Came over to see what was the matter, saw the body and – good citizens of movieland that they are – got on the telephone immediately to report it to … guess who, Tom?’
Sullivan’s sarcasm was enough to give him an idea of what was coming next, but he shook his head just the same and invited Sullivan to enlighten him.
‘It wasn’t us – that’s for sure. No, they called their pals over on Vine.’ There was bitterness to Sullivan’s tone now, as if he’d never cease to be astonished by the depths to which movie folk would sink. ‘I mean, who calls the police any more just because they’ve got a corpse on their hands?’
The Long Silence Page 3
