by Mary McCoy
I took one last look at Cassie’s darkened window, then pulled myself away and set off toward the gas station.
I didn’t pass a single car on the road as I crept through the quiet residential streets of my neighborhood. Not even a porch light was on. Santa Monica was better lit but almost as desolate. I threw back my shoulders and crossed the street to the gas station, trying to look like a perfectly respectable person with a very good reason for making a phone call in the middle of the night. Which, I reminded myself, I was.
Picking up the receiver, I inserted some change and dialed the phone number Millie had given me. I wondered if it was in Las Vegas and whether she’d made it there or not.
The phone rang at least ten times. I was about to hang up when I heard a click, a flare of static, and then a voice that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to call, Alice.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“About as far away from Los Angeles as you can get in six hours,” she said. “My life might be forfeit and all, but I’m not going to make it that easy for them.”
A husky laugh filled my ear, then suddenly there was nothing on the line but the static and the sound of Millie’s shallow breaths. A snarl entered her voice. “No one’s listening in, are they?”
“I’m on a pay phone,” I said. “There’s no one listening.”
“So, what did you think of my letter? Colorful reading, wasn’t it?” And just like that, the cheery, easy manner was back in her voice. “Pity it isn’t true.”
I gasped. “What do you mean, it isn’t true?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. Irma’s dead and Conrad did it, sure as sunshine. I just didn’t actually see it happen.”
I processed this for a moment, and then it dawned on me what Millie was saying and why she’d been in such a hurry to skip town once her letter was in my hands.
“You’re protecting Gabrielle,” I said.
She heaved a sigh. “An ill-considered promise I made to your sister. Annie has handled some pretty desperate cases in her day, but I’ve never seen her this fixated on rescuing anyone before. I swear, her backup plans had backup plans.”
“And you’re one of them.”
“A dozen people saw me leave the party with them,” Millie said. “But Conrad and Gabrielle are the only ones alive who saw what happened next. I’d had a bit too much to drink that night, and Conrad feared I was going to upchuck on his leather interior. He told me to get lost. Not that I mind in hindsight.”
Suddenly I felt like I had a stick of dynamite pinned into the front of my skirt. Millie could have been a hundred miles away by then or across the border, where no one could touch her. Yet it was hard to fault her—she could have done that the night Irma was murdered. Instead, she stuck around, wrote that letter, and made sure it got into my hands because that was how Annie and her friends operated. They were loners, except when it came to protecting one another. Then they were like a pack.
It was then that I noticed the black Rolls-Royce idling in the gas station parking lot. Had it just pulled in, or had it been sitting there the whole time? I tried not to stare, instead taking in as much detail as I could from the corner of my eye, memorizing the plates, the face of the man at the wheel.
“Alice, knock the wax out of your ears. I asked you a question.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that…”
She ignored me. “Did you show it to Jerry or not?”
“No,” I said. “What am I supposed to do with it, anyway?”
“Know any honest cops?”
I didn’t answer. Even I knew how the police department worked in Los Angeles. If you were white enough, rich enough, famous enough, powerful enough, there were few charges you couldn’t shake. If I showed that letter to the wrong cop, it might as well have never been written.
“Yeah, me neither,” Millie said.
“I don’t know what to do, Millie,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
There was a burst of static on the line.
“Like what?”
“Like any of it. Who I’m supposed to trust, where Gabrielle is now, who tried to kill my sister.”
“Listen, gumdrop,” Millie said. “The thing about what happened to your sister is, I think you already—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what Millie was trying to tell me, because at that moment, a thick, gloved thumb pressed down on the telephone hook. My body went stiff with fear as I felt a coarse cotton shirtsleeve brush my shoulder, and hot, wet breath that stunk of tobacco on my neck.
“Get in the car,” a man’s voice whispered in my ear.
The black Rolls-Royce roared to life, its tires squealing as it completed a hairpin turn in the parking lot and pulled up alongside us. Shaking, I turned around to see the face that went with the voice. As I did, he caught my arm and twisted it behind my back. The pay phone receiver dropped from my hand and dangled by its cord inches from the pavement.
He had a meaty red face and the bulk of a prizefighter beginning to go to seed, but he was still plenty strong and plenty dangerous. We hadn’t formally met, but I would have known Rex anywhere.
I struggled frantically, but the time to run had passed. Even if I could have slipped out of Rex’s grip, at that moment the back door of the Rolls-Royce swung open and another man leaned forward, arms outstretched to catch me if I broke free.
I fought anyway. I flung my weight against Rex’s grip and opened my mouth to scream in the hopes that I might attract a neighbor or a passing car. I barely got out a squeak before he clapped his free hand across my mouth. One hand there, one pinning my wrist between my shoulder blades, he marched me to the car and stuffed me into the arms of the other man waiting in the backseat. Rex climbed in after me and slammed the door, so I was sandwiched tightly between them.
“Drive,” he said.
I froze in my seat between the two men, folding my arms and shoulders in close so I didn’t have to touch them. My whole body shook.
Wordlessly, the driver put the car into gear and hit the gas. We turned out of the parking lot and ran a red light through an empty intersection. It hadn’t taken more than a few seconds, and with a sick surge of fear, I realized that no one had seen a thing.
From the front seat, a familiar voice asked, “Was all that really necessary, gentlemen?”
Rex and the other man were muttering their apologies before Conrad Donahue could even turn around, but Conrad didn’t seem to hear them. His stormy eyes were fixed right on me. I stared back.
“I’m so sorry if we frightened you, Alice, but I had to speak with you right away. It’s about your father.”
The movie magazines called Conrad Donahue “the man with the golden throat.” I’d heard that voice in at least a dozen movies, but there was something about it that the microphones couldn’t capture.
When I was nine, I came down with pneumonia. The coughing kept me awake all night and nearly tore my lungs to ribbons. In the middle of one of my crying and coughing jags, my mother came up to my room with a small glass of hot whiskey with honey and lemon mixed into it. When I drank it, it settled my chest and soothed my crying, and the last thing I remember before I drifted off to sleep was my mother’s voice murmuring, “Hush now. Be still. All will be well.”
Even after I’d been tossed into the backseat of his car, Conrad’s voice filled me with that same sense of calm. His voice reached out to me, and I felt myself bend toward it. This man was the man I’d seen on the big screen, composing love songs for Joan Blondell on a ukulele or running through a rainstorm into Olivia de Havilland’s arms.
“Normally, I wouldn’t track you down in the middle of the night like this, but I’m worried about your father. I’m afraid he might do something rash.”
The pain on his face, the tenderness in his voice, seemed so real, it was impossible to reconcile them with what I knew about Conrad Donahue, and what
I knew he was capable of.
Almost as if he’d guessed at my thoughts, Conrad said, “You’ve heard things about me, is that right? Unkind things?”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. Fear turned me into a rag doll, and all I could do was sit there and hope that if I hushed and was still, all would be well.
“Your father has gotten himself mixed up in some very dangerous business, Alice. I want to help him, and I need you to help me. Have you ever heard him mention anyone named Gabrielle?”
I shook my head.
“Have you heard that name anywhere else? Maybe from one of Annie’s friends?”
Hearing my sister’s name on his lips, hearing him talk about my family like he knew us, made my skin crawl.
“I don’t know anything,” I said, my voice trembling as I spoke. “Let me go.”
A sneer flickered across his upper lip and he laughed, then muttered something to the driver. A few minutes later we were idling in front of the County Hospital.
Dread settled over my thoughts like a thin layer of frost.
He doesn’t know she’s here. He can’t know she’s here.
“Speaking of your sister,” Conrad said, “I’d like to show you something.”
He reached over the backseat and caught me under the chin, drawing my face close to his. His lips brushed my ear as he whispered, “A little birdie told me that Annie Gates is here at County Hospital, and far less dead than we’d all supposed.”
A wave of dizziness passed over me as Conrad’s thumb pressed into my throat.
“I want you to know exactly how easy it would be for me to walk into her room and put a pillow over her face.”
My head spun and Conrad’s laughter buzzed like static in my ears, and when the whimper passed my lips, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere else. He let go of my chin and pushed me so I fell back against the seat.
Then he turned to Rex and said, “Tie her up.”
Rex leaped to attention. “Should I gag her, too?
“What’s the point?” Conrad asked, then murmured some directions to the driver.
We crossed the river and drove north until we reached the winding, narrow roads and switchbacks of Griffith Park. The farther up we went, the darker and more remote it became. All I could do was stare straight ahead, and all I could think about was that eventually, they were going to stop the car. I didn’t dare think any further than that. Conrad had been right—there was no reason to bother with a gag. No matter how loudly I screamed up here, it wouldn’t matter.
As Rex taped my hands behind my back, I studied the other man in the backseat, desperately trying to find something in his face that seemed human, something that would not allow Conrad to hurt me. I saw nothing promising in Rex, but I held out hope for the other man. He was plain-looking, neither handsome nor brutish, and wore jaunty blue polka-dot suspenders. I tried to meet his eyes, but the man stared intently out the window of the Rolls-Royce.
The driver turned onto a shell road and slowed down as the car jostled and rocked over the bumps. Dense masses of coastal sage scrub encroached on the road, and oak trees created a canopy that seemed to close in on us. Finally, the driver pulled off to the side of the road and parked.
“Get out,” said Conrad.
My legs turned to water as the man in the polka-dot suspenders dragged me out of the backseat by the elbow. Conrad stood at the rear of the car and snapped his fingers for the driver. As the old man stumbled around to the back, Conrad slipped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me to his side. He stood behind me, his chest pressed to my back and a hand on either shoulder. I tensed at his touch, and he chuckled softly in my ear.
“Open it,” Conrad said, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he was about to open a Christmas present.
As the driver turned the key, I thought, He’s enjoying himself. The more I flinched from him, the more scared I was, the more he seemed to like it. And he couldn’t wait for me to see whatever was inside the trunk. I squeezed my eyes shut and prepared myself for the worst. Maybe they’d found Gabrielle. Please, I thought, not another dead girl.
I guess I got my wish. It wasn’t a girl Conrad wanted to show me.
It was my father.
He was bound with tape at the wrists and ankles and gagged with a dirty kitchen towel. His hair was greasy and mussed, his eyes blackened, his normally impeccable suit stained with mud, oil, and blood, but he was alive and struggling furiously against his bonds.
Conrad nodded to Rex, who untied the towel from around his my father’s mouth. He gasped and retched and panted for breath, red-faced and wide-eyed. When he saw me looking down at him, his eyes went from wide to wild.
“Conrad,” he wheezed. There were bruises around his neck, too, and his vocal cords sounded like they’d been shredded. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“And I haven’t,” Conrad said. His fingertips slid down my arms, lingering along the sides of my breasts before coming to rest on my hips.
I tried not to move, but there was the tiniest hitch in my breath, the smallest shudder in my arms, and I knew that he’d felt it. I knew because he chuckled again and pulled me closer to him until my bound hands rested between his legs.
When I met my father’s eyes, I tried to look like I wasn’t afraid.
“I’m just out for a midnight drive with the youngest Gates daughter. She must be the smart one, because she sure ain’t the pretty one, right?” Conrad said with a nasty bark of laughter. “But maybe she’s not so smart after all,” he continued. “Because when I ask her a simple question, all of a sudden she doesn’t know anything. What do you make of that, Nicky?”
Conrad jostled me by the shoulders as he spoke. “She doesn’t know a single thing, just like her dear old dad. So, I’m struck with an idea. Maybe if I get the two of you in the same place, give you a chance to put your heads together, maybe you’ll think of something you know after all.”
“I didn’t know about the detective,” my father said, struggling to sit up. “I didn’t know he knew Annie.”
Conrad regarded him scornfully. “Clearly.”
“I just need another day or two,” my father said, pleading. “I can find the girl, Conrad. It’ll be like nothing ever happened. Believe me, it’s better if we do this my way. Nobody else has to get hurt.”
“Nicky, you’ve had plenty of time. You’ve had so much time that it’s given me the opportunity to do a little thinking myself, and from where I’m standing, you’re starting to look like an awfully convenient solution to my problem.”
I tried to stop myself from shaking, but it only made it worse. The harder I shook, the closer Conrad pulled me. My heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings.
“Let’s say you were overwhelmed with guilt by what you did to that poor dancer, and you decided to end it all. Let’s say you left behind a very detailed note confessing what you’d done and asking your family to forgive you. You couldn’t find the girl, Nicky, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to make yourself useful.”
As Conrad’s words sank in, my father began to scream and cry and thrash his feet against the inside of the trunk, pulling at the tape. Rex took a step toward the car, and for the first time, I noticed the gleaming barrel of a revolver holstered at his waist.
When I saw the gun, I screamed, too. Conrad hadn’t brought us here to talk, I realized, and this wasn’t some plan he was cooking up for another day. It was all about to happen.
I shook Conrad’s hands off me and leaped toward the car. I don’t know what I was planning to do. Throw myself between Rex and my father? Wrest the gun out of his hands with my hands tied behind my back? There was nowhere I could run, and Conrad recaptured me immediately, tightening his grip around my waist. The moment I felt his hands on me, I realized my mistake. Conrad realized it, too.
“What’s this?”
He spun me around to face him and patted at the front of my skirt.
As Conrad stuck his hands down the fro
nt of my skirt, I turned my head and tried to make eye contact with the man in the polka-dot suspenders and the driver. Neither one would look at me; they just stared at the tops of their shoes. Rex looked, though. I could hear him laughing. But I didn’t scream or flinch while Conrad’s hands went everywhere, not even when he stuck me in the hip with the pin I’d used to hold the letter in place. Instead, I stared at the men with tears in my eyes and imagined how much I’d enjoy watching them rot in prison.
Conrad had the letter in his hands now, and I watched the expression on his face change as his eyes flicked back and forth across the page. No one spoke or even moved. When he was finished, a slow smile spread across his face. He gripped the letter in his fist and shook it at me.
“You stupid little bitch.”
His fist swung down and cracked me across the face. The blow stung, but not as much as the crisp edge of Millie’s letter, which filleted the skin under my eye. My head spun and I fell to my knees. Towering over me, Conrad drew back his hand and struck me again, this time catching me under the chin.
Splinters of light exploded in my eyes as my teeth clashed together, and I thought I could hear my father screaming something strangled and hoarse and very far away. My cheek felt slick with blood, and when I spat, that was blood, too.
“If you thought that was going to work, you’re even dumber than your sister.”
He pulled a lighter out of his pocket, lit the corner of the envelope, and waved it under my nose. “So much for your letter.”
He dropped it to the ground and let it burn.
“Get up.”
I was about to pull myself up off the ground when I realized that listening to Conrad would probably get me another fist in the face. I spat another mouthful of blood, then hunched over on my knees, pretending to retch into the dirt.
“I said get up.” Conrad’s voice was more agitated this time.
I stayed where I was on the ground but looked up to see Conrad circling me and jeering. I saw Rex and the man in the polka-dot suspenders watching, waiting to be told what to do next. And behind them, I saw my father, who had taken advantage of the distraction to free his hands.
