The Long Silence

by Gerard O'Donovan

  ‘Christ!’ Tom roared, so loud it took even him by surprise. One old fisherman, a good fifty yards off, looked round and waved vacantly, then turned away again. But that was the only response it elicited and a lurch of fear washed through his gut as he noticed Sanchez reach inside his jacket.

  ‘Wait, no, please. Look, I didn’t have any beef with Madden. It was some other guy, in a Packard tourer. They had an argument, and he blasted Madden in the back. I even tried to warn him, but it was too late.’

  Nothing but cold hard stares, an expectation of more.

  ‘C’mon, look, the cops didn’t find a gun, right?’ Tom pleaded. ‘How would I have got rid of it, out in the street? I couldn’t. Soon as the shooting started, a crowd ran out. Somebody would have seen me with a gun. But they didn’t, because the gun was off down the street in the goddamn Packard, along with the guy who fired it.’

  Tom broke off, out of breath, out of ideas.

  Cornero looked over his shoulder and rattled off something that sounded like Mexican. Sanchez barked out a short, hard reply, and impatiently brushed some invisible object from the palm of his left hand, then turned back to the ocean and took up staring again.

  ‘Maybe there’s something in what you say,’ Cornero said. ‘Jimmy here thinks we should kill you anyway. In that respect, you’re lucky, because he follows my lead, not the other way round, and I like to remind him of that every now and again. So I’m giving you a chance to convince me. What was it you wanted with Madden, if not that?’

  Tom didn’t mean to give it all away but, once he began, pretty much the whole story came out. Cornero settled back against the rail, the sun bouncing off his snow-white slacks and sweater, the swirling wind failing to unsettle a hair on his head, listening carefully to every word. The goons stood by, Sanchez stared at a ship steaming out across the bay, and Tom Collins, stuck in the middle, sweated like a spit-roast hog into his brand-new shirt as he talked. About Normand, Sennett, Taylor and the rest.

  ‘So you decided it was Shorty shot Taylor,’ Cornero interjected. ‘Why not tell the cops instead of you going after him?’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ Tom insisted. ‘Like I keep saying, all I wanted was a line on Miss Normand. I never believed Madden shot Taylor, especially not after I met and spoke with him. I couldn’t see it, no way.’

  ‘What made you so certain?’ Cornero was more relaxed now. ‘Even I thought it might’ve been Shorty when I first heard. And I was mad as hell because I already told him to leave Taylor alone. The man was a pompous old fool, poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, but he didn’t need killing. I had to stop it getting out of hand.’

  ‘You stepped in?’ Tom stared closely at Cornero. There was something here that either made perfect sense or none at all. And he hoped, for his own sake, it would be the former. ‘Why would you get involved over a stupid punch-up? That’s one thing I can’t get my head around. Why is Miss Normand so important to you all?’

  Cornero shrugged again, less convincingly this time. ‘She ain’t. Least, not to me. To Shorty, sure, she was a gravy train. But there was more to it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like things you really don’t wanna know,’ Sanchez interjected loudly, his back still turned to them.

  ‘Oh, I want to know,’ Tom said, his annoyance getting the better of him. ‘Everybody going round sticking a murder on me – you’re damn right I want to know.’

  Cornero put out a hand to stop Tom from saying more. ‘Jimmy’s right. All you need to know is soon after those two tangled a big slice of Shorty’s action died off, and he blamed Taylor for kicking up dust about it. I was worried he would do something stupid. So I put a stop to it and told him to back off. Taylor fancied himself a crusader, maybe, but he had no clout. To single him out was stupid. There had to be another reason for Shorty’s problems. Like someone trying to muscle in, maybe.’

  ‘The cops know nothing about this?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Of course not. And you better make sure they don’t get to know it either, or I’ll know where it came from.’

  ‘So why tell me?’

  ‘Because you’re going to put that knowledge to work, for me.’

  Tom looked up. The sky was just as blue as before, but he could feel the storm coming. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do I mean?’ Cornero scoffed, pushing himself away from the rail. He wasn’t as tall as Tom but he gripped him by the upper arms and stared hard in his eyes. ‘I mean, if you say you didn’t kill Shorty, then you better find out who did, and quick. You’re the one playing detective, so go do some detecting. If you’re so smart, you find out who put Shorty on the slab and tell me.’

  Tom’s protestations fell like feathers on stone.

  ‘Somebody’s got to die for Shorty, Mr Collins. That’s how we do business. Life for a life. Yours will be acceptable, if it comes to it. But as you’re already in trouble with the cops over this, you’ll be pleased to have a chance to clear your name. Either way, you don’t have a choice. You find Shorty’s killer or I get Jimmy here to take you for a one-way trip out there.’

  The Mexican half turned from the rail again and rasped what sounded like a well-used punchline at him. ‘An’ he ain’t talkin’ Hawaii.’

  Cornero laughed out loud, a deep goose-like honking that didn’t sit well with the pressed-white gentleman image. Probably didn’t get much practice.

  ‘Wally,’ Cornero said, ‘give Mr Collins one of our cards.’ The goon produced a calling card from his pocket, bearing the name and telephone number of the Stralla Shipping Company of San Pedro, Southern California.

  ‘You can call me there any time. Leave a message, I’ll get back to you quick. But don’t take long over this. Couple of days, it better be done.’

  Cornero turned away, the audience over. Tom felt one of the apes grab his elbow, but this time he shook it off and started back down the boardwalk on his own steam. He’d gone just seven paces when he heard Cornero speak again.

  ‘Hey, Collins. This cop who came last night and messed up your face. His name Devlin, maybe?’

  Tom turned, no longer surprised by Cornero’s omniscience.

  ‘Yes, it is. Why?’

  Cornero ignored the interrogative, nodded thoughtfully and turned his back again, leaning in towards the Mexican, talking in low Latin tones whipped away by the wind.

  Tom lowered his eyes and walked away, the glare of the sun washing the boardwalk red with the dazzle of the dying day. All he could think of was putting as much distance as humanly possible between himself and those men, yet every footstep seemed an effort. Finding himself back amid the happy tourist throng brought a crumb or two of comfort, but not enough. People were crowding against the sea-rail, young and old alike, staring out in wonderment as sun, sky and ocean staged a gloriously flaming color play on the horizon.

  The wind caught a young woman’s murmur to her beau as they held each other tight, entranced. ‘Ain’t it heavenly.’

  Thoughts tumbling, all Tom saw were the flames of somewhere else entirely, licking at his feet.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The kid was gone but he had left a parting gift: a glob of spit on the wheel side of the seat and the unsettling memory of his gap-toothed cackle. Tom wiped it away with an oil rag, drove off the pier as quick as he could through the throng and didn’t pull over again until he was well outside the Santa Monica limit. Only then because he remembered a shack near the old veterans’ hospital in Sawtelle where a man could procure a shot of such throat-ripping rye it didn’t so much steady the nerves as stick ’em to the canvas.

  By the time he hit Spring Street, it was dark, the home-time crowds thinning, a smattering of storefronts still spilling light on the sidewalk. At the Alexandria he tipped the washroom boy a buck to have his rig sponged and pressed. He emerged twenty minutes later looking reasonably well spruced, considering. The hotel’s famed marble lobby was crammed with Saturday-night revellers, milling about beneath glittering Italian cha
ndeliers on the so-called million-dollar carpet – that being the amount of business done on it every day. Movies made up a good part of the crowd, and Tom soon found himself surrounded by a circle of merrymakers from Lasky. From all the backslaps, handshakes and agreement on how swell he looked – despite the evidence to the contrary – it was clear they were already full to the foaming brim with fellow feeling. A consequence of being kicked off early from a shoot they had worked on for weeks under some new German director.

  ‘Stap mit the laffing, I insist you!’ Herb Bascom japed, aping the director’s fury and sending the group careening into one another, laughing.

  Chuck Havers, the soberest of them, told Tom their release came after the director had a volcanic crack-up, trashed the set and walked off the picture when one of his players didn’t turn up a second day running.

  ‘Leon Mazaroff was the guilty party – y’member him?’ Havers asked. ‘Good guy, but a real Muscovite. So serious. Always with the long face and how he’s an artist. Not your unreliable type. Or not usually.’

  ‘Sure. A dance man, isn’t he?’ The name rang a bell. Pale face, sharp features, thin limbs. ‘Moves like he’s walking on crushed velvet. Worked over at Realart—’

  ‘Vo ist that ferdamte Russischer? Ay kill heem!’ Bascom howled, lurching drunkenly in on them. ‘Goddamn Kraut was poppin’ blood vessels by the second, Tom. I never saw nothin’ funnier since the war.’

  Bascom swayed away, topping up his high spirits a mite too openly with a flask pulled from his pocket. By then another bell was clanging for Tom.

  ‘Wasn’t Mazaroff a regular on Bill Taylor’s list?’

  Havers’ face clouded over. ‘Jeez, poor Bill. You heard about that?’

  ‘I’d be a dumb ox if I hadn’t.’

  ‘No, I mean ’bout him and Mazaroff,’ Havers said sotto voce. ‘About them two being – how’s that song go – “bachelor buddies so gay”?’ A hefty elbow nudge and he looked down as Havers crudely circled the thumb and index finger of his left hand and wagged another through.

  ‘Taylor?’ Tom was so taken aback he coughed. ‘You can’t be serious? The whole world says he was with Normand.’ But he wasn’t even certain he believed that anymore.

  ‘Why not her too? And the Minter girl,’ Havers leered. ‘Taylor wouldn’t be the first to run both ways. Maybe if he kept it in his pants, he’d still be alive. All I’m saying, that’s the word goin’ round. Explains why Mazaroff’s so grief-stricken he can’t work, don’t it?’

  ‘You really are serious.’

  ‘Sure I am. It’s not like I ain’t sad for the guy.’ Havers was getting defensive now and Tom had to wonder if he knew more than he was letting on. Either way, Havers shut down the subject with a grunt and a sideways glance as a burst of laughter drew their attention back to the main group. One of the guys had returned from the cloakroom, hair slicked down with soap, doing a mincing impersonation that could be of nobody other than Valentino.

  ‘Speakin’a pansies,’ Havers laughed, ‘damn wop’s shooting on the stage next to ours. But they’re on nights so we never catch a glimpse – just the whiff of his perfume when we come in mornings.’

  Tom watched the heaving shoulders, the streaming eyes as the others lapped up the Latin-lover routine, thinking he’d just about had enough of it. His wristwatch read ten after seven. Fay was being fashionably late. Even as he was thinking it, a thunderous slap landed on his back and he barely managed to stop himself from pitching forward into the others.

  He whipped round, hands bunched, automatic.

  ‘Whoa there, Tom – it’s me, Mickey.’

  Blinking, he saw red hair, a high brow, wide cheek bones and a mile-wide smile resolve into the handsome, bespectacled features of Marshall ‘Mickey’ Neilan, arms wide, palms up, inviting an embrace.

  He dropped his guard and found himself engulfed in a bear hug.

  ‘It’s good to see you, y’big Celtic brawler. Where you been?’ Neilan said from the tangle of limbs.

  ‘You want to watch who you go thumping like that, Mickey. Someday it’ll come back at you.’

  Neilan stepped back, palms up in mock innocence, his accent a thick brogue. ‘Ah, go on, Tom. Sure it was only a little tap.’

  He had to admit it was mild by Neilan’s standards. His reputation as a prankster was second only to that of Fairbanks on the lots. He got away with it by being one of the colony’s best-known directors. That and his irrepressible Irish charm, of course – or so he liked to put it about. In reality, he was one of few in the colony who was born and raised locally, in San Berdoo, albeit of Irish stock. Over the years, Tom had worked with him, played cards, got drunk with him, and if Neilan’s star was rumored to have dimmed a little of late, he was still regarded by many – most of all himself – as the life and soul of every party.

  But for once Neilan displayed no interest in joining the fun. He was already backing away, pulling Tom with him.

  ‘You seen the Swan here, Tom?’ This a whisper in the ear, although Neilan made no secret of the fact that the latest in his long line of marital indiscretions was with the colony’s most glamorous rising star, Gloria Swanson.

  Tom admitted he hadn’t. ‘It’d be hard to miss her, Mickey. But I’ve been busy getting my ear poisoned about Bill Taylor.’

  The pale blue eyes narrowed and Tom belatedly remembered Neilan was one of Taylor’s best friends – always going off for boozy weekends to a lodge house at Mount Lowe with Tony Moreno, Jimmy Kirkwood and that gang. He’d been invited to join them once or twice, but something else had always come up.

  ‘Christ, I’m sorry, Mickey. I forgot you and Taylor were close …’ He stopped, lost for words, until something more obvious at last occurred to him. ‘Can I ask you a question, though? You being so tight with him and all. Have you any ideas about who was behind it?’

  Neilan regarded him sadly, then shook his head. ‘Come on, Tom. What do I look like – the cops? Why ask me that?’

  ‘Every gossip in town is competing to blacken Taylor’s name. Not ten minutes ago someone was telling me …’ Tom repeated what Havers had said, without revealing the source.

  Neilan cursed, but kept a hand on Tom’s arm. His exuberance had fallen away completely now and he was clearly upset. ‘I never heard anything so dumb. Bill was straight as a die. I never met a more stand-up fellow. Too goddamn concerned for other people for his own good, if you ask me.’

  Tom was about to ask if he was referring to Mabel Normand – she being, he knew, another great pal of Neilan’s – but stopped. The director was staring off into the middle distance, having some kind of a brainstorm.

  ‘You know, it’s a coincidence seeing you here, Tom,’ he said, his tone hushed. ‘Downright strange, now I come to think of it. Not two weeks ago, right here in this room, Bill was asking me about you.’

  ‘Taylor? I hardly knew him.’

  ‘Well, he knew you.’

  ‘Did he say what it was about?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I forgot it until now. Must’ve had a few too many cocktails that night, I guess.’

  Every night, Tom thought. ‘So?’

  ‘So, we were fixing to go to the lodge at the weekend when out of nowhere Bill asked if I could recommend someone to make some discreet inquiries on his behalf. I guess he thought with my track record I’d know the score. A matter of honor, he said, all stiff and proper. You’d laugh if anyone else put it that way, but not Bill. So I told him about you, how you’d gone out on your own, and how he wouldn’t find a better man for the job. Straightaway he remembered you from the lot. Said he always liked you.’

  ‘You tell him where to reach me?’

  ‘Sure, I think so. Like I said, I had a few. He didn’t get in touch?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious? Did you tell the cops about this, Mickey? Can you remember anything else he said?’

  Neilan began shaking his head, then thought better of it. ‘No, but hang on … Yeah, I asked him if it was to do with that valet of
his. You know the one – Sands – who ran off to Mexico last year with his auto, then tried to bilk more money from him?’

  ‘The one every cop in the state is searching for? Of course I know, but only since I read it in the papers, Mickey.’

  ‘Right.’ Neilan looked up, surprised at his vehemence. ‘Bill was mortified over Sands, you know. Took it real personal. But this wasn’t about that. He told me straight it was’ – Neilan pulled his shoulders back, adopting Taylor’s fake English accent – ‘“Another matter entirely. Too close, too dangerous”. That’s how he said it, exactly like that.’

  Tom could hardly believe his ears. ‘And you haven’t told the cops?’

  Neilan shook his head.

  ‘But you have to, Mickey. It could be important. I know someone on the detective squad you could talk to.’

  ‘No, Tom. No cops.’ Neilan raised his hands, defensive. ‘I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like at Lasky right now. Everybody’s terrified they’ll get drawn in by this, pulled under. Eyton called us over, said Zukor insists anyone with a public face, anything we got to say about Taylor has to go through them from now on. On pain of dismissal. I got a big one set to roll next week, Tom. My first in eight months. I need it. I really need it. Bill was a great man, but I’ve done what I can. He’s gone. I got to go on living.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ Tom insisted. ‘How could telling the cops hurt?’ He was doing his best to keep his exasperation under control, but it hardly seemed to matter. Neilan was too self-absorbed even to notice.

  ‘I don’t know, Tom. I just can’t risk it. Any taint at all, Zukor will shut me down. Charlie as good as told me to my face.’

  ‘You told Eyton about this?’

  ‘Not about you, no. I didn’t see the point.’ Neilan looked away, awkwardly.

  ‘But about Taylor being worried?’

  ‘Of course, couple of days ago. He said he’d get it to the right people.’

  Whoever the right people were, it seems it didn’t include the cops.

  ‘Jesus, what in hell are they trying to do?’ Tom said, thinking out loud.