Dead to Me

by Mary McCoy

  Cyrus shook his head. “Millie would be the one to do that. Not that Irma really had any people. There might have been a sister in San Antonio—I’m not sure.”

  “Who’s Millie?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated,” Jerry said, trying to change the subject.

  “It isn’t. Millie’s a friend,” Cyrus said. “She and Irma live in the same building. Or at least they used to. They were tight, like me and Annie were.”

  He stood up a little straighter when he said it, like somebody was about to pin a medal on his shirtfront. I wasn’t surprised that he felt that way about Annie, but there was one question that nagged at me.

  “If you and Annie are so tight, why haven’t you been to the hospital?” I asked.

  “The hospital?”

  Cyrus cocked his head to the side and squinted like he was trying to see me through a dense fog. Jerry swore under his breath.

  “She’s—she’s still alive?” he whispered.

  He turned to Jerry, his eyes searching the detective’s face for a sign that it was true.

  Jerry put up his hands and took a step back. “I was going to—”

  Cyrus didn’t let him finish.

  “I don’t care what you were going to do,” he said.

  His hands clenched into fists at his side, and for a moment, I thought he might take a swing at Jerry.

  “Calm down, Cy.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Cyrus looked like a wire about to snap even though he hadn’t touched Jerry, hadn’t even raised his voice.

  “The last time I saw you, I didn’t know where she was—I swear,” Jerry said.

  Cyrus unclenched his fists as he considered Jerry’s words.

  “If I’d known, I would have told you, Cyrus,” Jerry said.

  He stepped forward now and placed a hand on the boy’s arm. Cyrus’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a long, weary breath.

  “I just wish I’d found out sooner,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” Jerry said. “She’s in pretty bad shape. She hasn’t woken up yet, but the important thing is, she’s alive.”

  Cyrus turned to me, a sad half smile on his lips.

  “So I guess that’s why I haven’t been to see her,” he said. “I don’t know anything I didn’t know two days ago, and I’m not sure I want to know. Annie was the strongest person I ever met, and they got her anyway. If you think you and Jerry can do any better than she did, you’re either very brave or you don’t understand what you’re up against.”

  I knew he was scared, and as I listened to him talk, I began to wonder if I’d been scared enough.

  “What are you still doing in town, then?” I asked. “Why don’t you just leave?”

  From his station, the chef with the knife bellowed Cyrus’s name while carving slabs of meat from a standing rib roast with great speed and violence. Cyrus nodded to him and carried the tray of dirty plates back to the industrial-steel sinks that lined the back walls of the kitchen. Once he’d unloaded this, he passed through the swinging kitchen doors and disappeared into the sea of diners. A few minutes later, he returned laden down with a teetering pile of dishes and highball glasses and joined us back in our corner of the kitchen.

  Breathing heavily under the weight of the tray, he said, “I can’t leave Millie here by herself. And besides, I need the money. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.”

  I saw then that Cyrus wasn’t so much thin as underfed. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible, working in a place where you were surrounded by steaks and lobster all day, but then, I guessed that probably wasn’t what Cyrus got to eat.

  “You have to go now. Both of you. I don’t want to get fired.”

  We’d had our five minutes, and I didn’t want to get Cyrus fired, either. I started for the door, but Jerry wasn’t so easily dismissed.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  Cyrus was already halfway to the sink when Jerry asked. The stack of dishes swayed dangerously before he caught them and eased them back into place. Slowly, he turned around, a weary, hounded look in his eyes.

  “I told you I don’t know,” he said, shifting the heavy tray to his other shoulder. “I can’t help you. I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything. I don’t know who hurt Annie. I don’t know where the girl is, and I don’t want to know. Do you want me to wind up like them?”

  I could tell he wasn’t telling the truth, not all of it. But then I wondered, why should he? Jerry had plenty of chances to tell Cyrus that my sister was still alive. He could have done it this morning. He could have done it the night he’d sent me home from the hospital, but he hadn’t.

  On top of that, Cyrus was afraid. One of his friends was dead, one was in the hospital, and what was in it for him if he talked to us? As far as he was concerned, I was a spoiled rich girl and Jerry might as well be a cop. He wouldn’t talk to us unless he was desperate.

  “Besides, we both know the person you should be asking is Millie,” Cyrus added.

  Jerry made a face at the suggestion.

  “I know,” Cyrus added, “but that’s not my problem. You know I’m right.”

  Jerry stood there for a moment, waiting for more, but Cyrus was done talking. Eventually, Jerry took the hint and started toward the kitchen door, but I hung back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know Jerry hadn’t told you. I didn’t even know you existed.”

  “It’s not your fault, Alice,” Cyrus said.

  He watched the door until it swung shut after Jerry, and we were alone. Then he grabbed me by the arms and leaned in close to me. I jerked back, startled by his touch and the urgent look in his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this, Alice? I know you’re smart. I know you think you can handle this, but you can’t. You don’t have to get yourself killed trying to prove how much you love her.”

  Anger flared up inside me. I didn’t like the way this boy talked to me like he knew better than I did, or the protective tone in his voice. I didn’t like the way he assumed things about me even though we’d only just met. I had nothing to prove, and this had nothing to do with love.

  I pulled free from his grasp.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I said.

  By the time Jerry and I left Musso & Frank, the parking attendant, the bartender, and the maitre d’ were all giving us dirty looks. We didn’t linger in the parking lot to discuss what had just happened. No sense in being more memorable than we already were.

  We drove east on Hollywood, then south. In the rearview mirror, I could see the HOLLYWOODLAND sign nestled in the hills. Big as it was, it was easy to forget about the sign sometimes. You could go weeks in the city—you could go weeks in Hollywood—and not see it once, and then suddenly, you turned a corner and there it was, neglected, ugly, and embarrassing. The H had fallen down the previous year, and no one had even bothered to put it back up. Missing panels dotted the remaining letters like knocked-out teeth.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as Jerry turned onto a side street just south of Fountain Avenue.

  He pulled the car over and pointed out a rooming house halfway up the block, a three-story stucco covered in flaking whitewash.

  “Millie’s place,” he said. “Cyrus was right about one thing. If anyone knows something, it’s her. She and Irma live right across the hall from each other. Or they used to.”

  “They were friends?” I asked.

  “Best friends, and that’s a rare thing between actresses. Especially the kind with careers that haven’t quite worked out.”

  “Were they ever in anything I’d have seen?”

  “Maybe. People thought Millie was the pretty one, but Irma was the one with the real talent,” Jerry explained. “She started out in the burlesque houses and worked her way up. That girl danced alongside Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland, and she held her own. It should have been the beginning of something for her.”

 
“What happened?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Oh, the usual. A bottle, a needle in the arm, money troubles, and a lot of bad boyfriends. She had a good head on her shoulders despite everything. She kept working, kept her problems as much a secret as she could, never wound up in a flophouse or a jail cell. In certain circles, she was still considered a working actress.”

  “In Conrad’s, though…” I trailed off.

  “Just a thing to be used up and thrown away,” said Jerry, finishing the unpleasant thought for me. “His sense of things, not mine. Annie always had a very high opinion of Irma. So did I.”

  “Then what’s your opinion of Millie?” I asked.

  “Not so high. She can’t tell the difference between good attention and bad attention,” Jerry said, opening the car door. “Also, she happens to be Camille Grabo.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. I guess she had been in a few things I’d seen before—the front page of the tabloids and the picture in my father’s safe.

  “Her real last name is Grabowski. She changed it when she hit the big time, or when she was at least headed that way.”

  “But you said Camille Grabo was at the party.”

  “A Hollywood party,” Jerry said. “She was Camille Grabo to everyone in that room, and will be until the day she dies. She’s a laughingstock to them.”

  “Then why did she go in the first place?” I asked.

  Jerry shrugged. “Millie still loves a party, and I guarantee you, she didn’t care what anyone in that room thought of her. Come on, let’s walk.”

  Soon we were standing in front of the apartment house, and I saw that despite its shabbiness, it was a cheerfully landscaped little place. Lemon and pepper trees hugged the building walls, and a sloppy jacaranda shaded the front stoop, dropping lavender blossoms all over the sidewalk and lawn.

  Jerry stopped beneath the tree and took off his hat, holding it to his chest. “So, are you very brave, or just a girl who doesn’t understand what she’s up against yet?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but I didn’t like the way he pulled Cyrus’s words out of his hat like a magician’s silk, like there was another question hidden behind them.

  “What’s the difference?” I asked, frowning at him.

  He cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is, I can’t go up there with you. You asked before if there was anybody who might talk to you a little more freely than to me. Well, if there’s anyone who fits the bill, it’s Millie.”

  “So, the not-having-a-high-opinion thing, that goes both ways?”

  “She hates my guts,” he said. “But I don’t care about that. What I really want to do is take a look around Irma’s apartment.”

  “Where do I come in?”

  “Millie, for all of her faults, was rather devoted to Irma. I’ve poked my nose around here twice already, and both times she’s caught me and told me to get the hell out. What I need you to do is go up there, knock on her door, see if you can get her talking. I’ll be right here at the foot of the stairs. If I see you get in, I might have a chance.”

  “What am I supposed to ask her? What if she’s being watched? What if she doesn’t answer?” I asked.

  “There’s no way Millie would pass up an opportunity to put on one of her performances for you. Trust me, she’ll answer.”

  Ducking under the bough of a lemon tree, I stepped into the arched stairwell. It was poorly lit and claustrophobic, but I took a deep breath, balled my hands into fists at my side, and climbed. My heels clicked on the tiled stairs, too loudly for my liking, and I realized that Jerry had only answered the least important of my three questions.

  The hallway I stepped into was almost as dim as the stairwell, but at least it was carpeted, silencing my approach. I knocked at the apartment door, three firm raps. There was no answer, so I knocked again and put my ear to the door. I heard the sound of running water, but couldn’t decide whether it sounded like a faucet or a broken toilet. Otherwise, it was perfectly quiet in Millie’s apartment.

  If there was anyone who had a reason not to open her door to strangers, a reason to be deeply, truly afraid, it was Millie. She’d been at the party the night Irma was murdered. She must have seen something.

  I wondered what Jerry had been thinking sending me up here alone. I’d agreed because he’d said it was okay, because he’d said he’d be standing at the foot of the stairs if anything went wrong. But how could he promise something like that? A trace of panic fluttered in my guts. He’d said “Trust me,” and I had, and all he’d had to do was agree to let me tag along.

  So deeply was I contemplating this that I didn’t realize that the sound behind me was a doorknob turning.

  By the time I’d realized it, the door was already open. And by the time I began to run, the arm was already wrapped around my throat, and by the time I started to fight, I was already inside the dead girl’s apartment.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you not to lurk in corridors?”

  Then she giggled. She actually giggled, as I stood there struggling to catch my breath and will my heart back to a regular tempo.

  “Oh, don’t be mad,” she said, flashing a dazzling, dimpled smile at me. “I was just having a little bit of fun. Cy called the minute you left the restaurant. He said you might be coming over.”

  This was all Millie offered in the way of explanation or introduction or apology for scaring me half out of my wits. I was too preoccupied to be angry about it, though, because sure enough, Millie was Camille Grabo. Gone were the penciled-on eyebrows, tight sweaters, and platinum cotton candy hair that made up her signature look, but even if I hadn’t known who she was, I would have known she was trying not to be recognized. Of course, she was overdoing it in typical movie star fashion. She’d dyed her hair black and cropped it into a severe bob, then tried to hide her face behind a pair of round dark glasses and a black hat with a veil attached to the front. It was like she’d forgotten the whole point of a disguise was not to call attention to yourself.

  “You’re Camille Grabo,” I said stupidly, stammering a little bit. I’d been around lots of famous people before, but never a notorious one.

  She looked at me as though she didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about, then waved me off. “Oh, darling, I get that all the time.”

  She could say whatever she liked, but she was Camille Grabo. I knew it, and she knew that I knew it. She gave me a cool, level gaze and a smile that didn’t come anywhere close to reaching her eyes.

  “In any case, please call me Millie.”

  We shook on it, and I realized that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t sure what to ask her. Millie wasn’t the kind of person who needed any prompting to talk.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” she said. “I’m a little on edge these days. I haven’t been sleeping much, and there’s so much to do.”

  Without further explanation, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. I trotted along after her toward the back of Irma’s apartment. It was a pretty place, several rooms connected by arched doorways, hardwood floors that gleamed with a fresh, dark varnish. The furniture was old but good-quality stuff. But little things here and there seemed wrong. There was a shelf of records, but no record player. Strangely empty spots in the front room, gaps on the floor and walls where it seemed likely that there’d once been a lamp, an end table, a clock, a painting. I took in as much as I could without lagging behind.

  In Irma’s bedroom, I found more of the same. An empty jewelry box, a picked-over wardrobe, and on the dresser a worn leather kit containing a strap, a syringe, and a spoon. I turned away from that bit of grimness, and something else caught my eye. Irma’s bedside table was covered in framed photographs, dusted, immaculately arranged, cherished. Several were of movie sets, one of the columns of palm trees that extended for blocks up Highland Avenue. There was one of her and Millie in matching black bathing suits, wearing enormous headdresses made of fake fruit on their heads and laughing like goons
. And there was one of her and Annie, glamorous and smiling in their sunglasses and red lipstick as they rode the merry-go-round at the Santa Monica Pier.

  “I thought someone should go through her things and make sure there was nothing here that would look wrong, if you know what I mean.” Millie ignored the drug paraphernalia on the dresser as she crossed the room and plucked the photograph of her and Irma off the table. “I was looking for that,” she said, dropping it into the canvas bag she carried with her. She sat down at Irma’s vanity and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a stack of letters. She handed them to me. “Go through these, won’t you? Pull out anything that looks, you know, wrong.”

  “You mean anything from you,” I said.

  If Millie heard the contempt in my voice, she ignored it. “Now you’re getting it.”

  I flipped through the stack of letters. Most were postmarked from San Antonio, but a few were local, a few had return addresses I recognized, and one bore a chilling inscription that made my eyes go wide: Open If I Am Dead or Missing.

  In the whole pile, there were only a handful of notes from Millie.

  “Here,” I said, handing them to her. She took them, then went back to flipping through Irma’s address book, tearing out whole chunks of pages as she went. She stuffed these into the bag with the photograph.

  The rest of the letters I stacked to the side for myself. If Millie asked what I was doing, I planned to tell her I was only tidying up. But she was too busy rooting through Irma’s makeup to notice.

  “So, where’s Jerry Shaffer?” she asked, testing out a half-used tube of lipstick she’d found in one drawer. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring him along. Or vice versa. You can’t possibly be old enough to drive.”

  “I’m old enough,” I said, even though I didn’t actually know how to drive.

  Once she’d finished sifting through the vanity, Millie moved on to the nightstand, which seemed to contain nothing but pill bottles, all murky brown and green glass with tan paper labels and names like secobarbital and Nembutal. I’d seen similar ones in my mother’s bedside table. Millie tossed these on the bed, too, but I noticed that she slipped one or two into her bag.