He doesn’t answer, just looks down at her.
“Because you weren’t ready, Ben—that’s why. I wanted to wait and do it together.” She smiles. A cruel smile. Her eyes glint. “Now you’re going. You’re going and you’ll be meeting with producers who wouldn’t have given us the time of day before. And you didn’t even check with me to see what my schedule looked like.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Don’t sweetheart me, Ben. Just tell me. Will it be Spielberg you’ll meet with from DreamWorks? Or Geffen?”
“Honey, I’m sure neither—”
“It might be! Xerxes walks around here with a fucking hard-on all the time waiting for it!”
Ben tries to place his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugs them away. “Anita,” he says, “you know I’ll do what I can for you. I’m sure there will be a part—”
She grins. “Oh, there had better be a part, Ben. And not just for me. Have you talked with your brother?”
Ben sighs.
“He should be in on the meetings, don’t you think? He found her, Ben. Why not at least try collaborating on a screenplay? He’s out there already. They’re staying at the San Vicente Inn. Do you want the number? Have you even called to tell him when you’re arriving?”
“I wasn’t sure how long he’d be out there.”
Anita laughs. “That’s bullshit, Ben. Rex is doing a show. Isn’t this the show you said you wouldn’t miss, no matter where it was?” She stares at him for several seconds. He doesn’t meet her gaze. “And what about Flo? What are your plans for her? How many pieces of silver will you take for her life?”
“Aw, jeez, Anita—”
“I’ll be out there, Ben,” she promises. “I’m not sure when, but I’ll be out there. You can count on that.”
She turns on her heel and storms out, slamming the door behind her.
God, Ben thinks. What an overwrought actress she can be.
Richard’s walking down the steep incline of San Vicente Boulevard from their guest house to his rental car. The sun is strong overhead, the scent of lilies in the air.
“Yo, Sheehan,” comes a voice.
He looks up. Across the street is Detective Lee, getting out of his car, which he’s parked illegally.
“Hey,” Richard calls. “Wrong side for today. Street cleaning.”
Lee dismisses the warning with a wave of his hand. He hurries across the street. He and Richard shake hands.
“You heard about the body then?” Lee asks.
Richard nods. “Just a girl, huh?”
“Pretty young, near as we can tell.” He belches a little, covering his mouth. “Sorry. Had a steak-and-pepper sub for lunch. But it was arsenic that killed her.”
Richard smiles. “Arsenic, as found in ant paste.”
Lee shrugs. “You draw the conclusions.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t yet. But I’m trying.”
Lee looks down the street. “She lived near here, right? The Lawrence dame.”
“Want me to show you?”
Lee grins. “Lead on, Sherlock.”
Richard walks with him the rest of the way down San Vicente, crossing at Santa Monica. The boys are out in full force today, in their Daisy Buchanan cutoffs and sleeveless flannel muscle shirts. A couple of them check out Richard, who’s wearing shorts himself—although khakis—and a white-ribbed tank top. He catches a glimpse of himself in the window of A Different Light bookstore. I look as good as any of these WeHo movie star wannabes, he tells himself.
He notices one guy in particular looking at him. He realizes who it is too late to duck.
“Richard? Richard Sheehan?”
It’s Scott—the one boyfriend to ever dump him. The only one Richard had ever wanted to keep, before Rex, and the only one who hadn’t wanted him in return.
“You know this guy?” Lee asks as Scott rushes up from the street.
“Yeah, he’s an … ex,” Richard says before Scott bounds at him like a panther, wrapping his arms around him.
“Richard! Oh, my God! What are you doing in L.A.?”
“Visiting—I—”
“Oh, my God, it’s so good to see you. You look fabulous! Really!”
And, Richard hated to admit, so did Scott. Still blond and chiseled. Still broad shouldered and small waisted. Still … so goddamn perfect. He’s wearing bike shorts and a tight white-ribbed tank, exposing every cut and every definition.
He’s completely ignoring Lee, moving up close into Richard’s face. “I saw your article. About the old lady movie star.” He shudders dramatically. “Oh, Richard, everybody’s talking about it out here. I mean, she was the first. The one who started all this. How exciting it must have been for you.” He pauses. “I live here now, you know. I’m acting. Living in New York was holding me back—you know what I mean?”
Richard manages a smile. “Films? Television?”
“Commercials mostly. But I was on Party of Five. Played Mitchell Anderson’s date. Did you see it?”
“I haven’t had much of a chance lately to watch TV.”
“I understand, with all the exciting work you’re doing.” He smiles again. God, what a smile. “Though I told my agent I don’t want to only do gay parts. That’s how you get typed—you know what I mean?”
“I guess so.”
Scott laughs. “So are you here about The Biograph Girl? You know, they just dug her up.”
“Yes, I’m here covering the story.”
“Well, keep me in mind when they make the movie—and you know they will. Everybody here is sure of it.” He winks. “You know, it really is good to see you again, Richard. I mean that. I’ve thought about you often.”
Richard eyes him. “Hey, buddy, you’re the one—”
“We all make mistakes.”
He sounds sincere. Richard looks at him. He’s gorgeous. Richard can’t deny he still finds Scott very, very attractive. He stands there in front of him so perfect—so available. And, last Richard knew, HIV negative.
“So what are you doing this week?” Scott asks, moving in even closer. “Maybe we could—”
No. This is not good.
“Scott,” Richard says abruptly. “I’m with—” He looks over at Lee, who’s backed off and stands looking at his nails while Scott slobbers over Richard.
“Him. I’m with him,” Richard says.
Lee looks up. He looks startled, to say the very least.
“Him?” Scott asks.
“Yeah.” Richard swallows. “Yeah. Scott, this is—this is Philip.” Richard reaches over, pulling the sixty-year-old detective closer to them.
“You’re with him?” Scott asks again, looking back and forth between Lee and Richard.
“Yes,” Richard answers. “Philip. Scott. Scott. Philip.”
Lee looks up at Richard cagily. He smirks. “Well, that’s what they call me, but the girls all call me Phyllis,” he says, shaking Scott’s hand.
Richard smiles uncomfortably.
“Well,” Scott says, pulling back now, “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No. No problem,” Richard says. “Good to run into you.”
Scott gives a little wave as he moves off down the street. He keeps looking back at Richard and Lee, as if to convince himself. Richard pushes Lee along in the opposite direction.
“And what, may I ask, was that about?” the detective snarls.
“Forget it. Sorry to drag you into it. I just needed to get away from him. But thanks.”
Lee shrugs. “Don’t mention it. Wait’ll I tell the wife. She’ll get a kick.”
“Scott can just be a little—you know, aggressive.”
“And your defenses are down.”
Richard sighs. “Something like that.”
Lee shakes his head. “Don’t know how you gay guys do it. Keep on in the face of AIDS. Me, I’d have given up long ago and never hit on another soul.”
Richard says nothing.
“It’s a terrible thing. Cutti
ng kids down in their prime.”
“Well, there are new drugs,” Richard says, a little too defensively. “People aren’t dying like they were. The virus gets eradicated.” He pauses. “Well, it becomes undetectable.”
Lee shrugs. “So they say. I just have a hard time believin’ in miracle cures.” He pauses at the curb. “Westbourne’s over here, no?”
Richard looks across the street. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s West-bourne.”
They cross over to a twisting avenue lined with palms. The gardens are lush here, leafy ferns and sharp yuccas, orange birds-of-paradise poking out of the greens with their pointy little faces. The cypress trees are tall and ragged. The houses are small, more like cottages, with red-tiled roofs and white stucco exteriors. It’s so unlike New York. The side streets of West Hollywood are leafy and cool and green. Just off the main drag, the world suddenly goes lush with green palms and white cala lilies.
Richard stops halfway down the block past Melrose. “This is it,” he says, pointing up at one house. “This was where Florence Lawrence lived.”
Lee laughs. “I was going to say, ‘And died,’ but caught myself.” He squints up at the cottage. There’s a line of knotted blue cactus dividing the property, and a small garage out back. Yellow roses grow wild over a trellis out front. “Well, somebody died here anyway.”
Richard stares at the place. He’s been here a number of times since coming to L.A. Each time he stands on the cracked sidewalk looking up at the peaceful, tidy little cottage, he gets the same sensation. Sadness. Loneliness. Dreams dying long, drawn-out deaths—despite the pretty roses and thriving ficus trees.
“Here.” Lee’s handing him a slip of paper. “You asked for ’em. The names of the missing.”
Richard takes it. He looks at what’s typed there. A list of names. Girls’ names.
“Maybe you can help me find out something about them,” Lee says. “We’ve already been able to eliminate several, because their ages didn’t match the corpse. These are what’s left. Don’t go publicizing them yet though. I’m giving it to you only on account I need your help.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Richard promises.
“There’s more. I want you to help me get in to talk with the old lady. I understand she’ll be out here in a few days for a whole round of TV appearances.”
Richard lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t know that. Ben doesn’t do a very good job of keeping me informed. Detective, I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get in to see her.”
“Do what you can,” Lee tells him. “I can’t force her to talk yet. But the exhumation raised a whole lot of questions, and we feel she might have some answers.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” Richard promises him. “But I still don’t believe Flo did anything wrong.”
“And what makes you able to state that so categorically?”
He shrugs. “Call it a reporter’s instinct. It’s never failed me before.”
“Maybe you’re right. But the question is: How does she define wrong?”
Richard just sighs. They shake hands. Lee heads back up the street. Richard takes one more look at the cottage: the last house Florence Lawrence lived in during her time in Hollywood—the place from which she walked away when that girl’s death gave her the chance.
He glances down at the list of names. Six in all.
Ann Kiely. Norma Cooney. Heloise Harker. Jean Ott. Teresa Sabatini.
And Margaret Butz.
He folds the list in half and slips it into the back pocket of his shorts.
Spring 1937
I put in the roses. I wonder if they’re still there, if they could have survived all these years. Yellow roses, as I recall. Just a few bushes, out in front, to remind me of my old farm in New Jersey, where I had hundreds of roses. Molly loved tending to them. Watering, powdering, dead heading them in June so they’d bloom through the summer.
I close my eyes and see it still, that little cottage where we lived. The softly swaying palm trees on the street, the white stucco of the walls. Molly sitting on the picnic table out back, eating a slice of watermelon and spitting the seeds out into the grass. “Hey!” Bob would shout. “You want to grow a watermelon bush?”
How you’d laugh, Molly. And when you swallowed a seed that time, Bob joshed that it might take root in your stomach. You looked over at me with those big innocent eyes of yours with a momentary flush of fear—until my expression reassured you that such a thing was impossible. Lunacy. And then you laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
I can still hear you. Like the wind chimes outside my window. Your laughter—tinkling, brittle in the breeze.
“Flo, you are such a card!”
I was dancing a hula. Buzzy with rum and cigarette smoke. What were we celebrating? May Day? Decoration Day? Who remembers? It didn’t matter then—it doesn’t matter now. It was just one of our parties: Molly and Bob and Marian and Lester and the boys.
And me.
“Oh, Flo,” Molly called, “let’s make you a grass skirt!”
She and Lester began gathering palm leaves, tying them together with a long twine. It looked crazy, but I tied it around my waist, continuing to hula to the music Bob’s friends were strumming on their guitars. A snapping bonfire was blazing and Marian was cutting wedges of pineapple for all of us. The moon was overhead and the sweet smell of marmalade chicken on the grill was in the air.
Yes, we did have some happy times together. There was laughter in that little cottage. It wasn’t always gloom and misery. There was lightness and gaiety, music and merriment.
I won’t let the sorrow crowd out the rest.
And yet …
Molly standing over me, her eyes wide and bloodshot.
“Flo, don’t cry.”
The pain had returned. Lester stood at the foot of the bed, shaking aspirin into his hand. “Take these, Flo,” he said, handing the powdery white pills over to Molly, who cupped them to my mouth. She followed with a glass of water, and I swallowed the pills down with a sip.
Oh, how Lester wanted so much to cure me. To find the trick that worked. But I’d come to accept the fact that a cure was impossible for what ailed me. Some people think doctors can put scrambled eggs back into the shell. I knew no doctor held the power to fix me.
“What’s wrong with her, Lester?” Molly asked, as if I weren’t even in the room. “Yesterday she was dancing around the yard.”
He came up beside her to stare down at me. “I don’t know,” he said. “The pain just comes over her and she can’t seem to even get out of bed.”
I just watched them. Said nothing.
Lester had become my friend as well as my doctor. There was no one else in his life: no parents, no wife, no children, no nieces or nephews. I suspected that there had never been very many in his life, that he’d never really had friends before. At least not like us. Lester always seemed a little bewildered by Bob and his boys from the sound department, how boisterous they were. He’d blush at their racy jokes, recoil just a little from the language they used. Bob would tease him about girls. “Aw, come on, Les—a big manly hunk o’doc like you? You must have to fight ’em off.”
Lester would just smile meekly and that all-encompassing red blush would take over his face and arms. “No, no,” he’d protest, as if Bob weren’t joshing him. “Really. No girls. I’ve never had any girls.”
“Leave Lester alone,” I’d tell Bob. “I’m all the woman he needs.”
And he’d beam up at me. I mean, really beam. Lester was devoted to me. The way Harry had been—no, more the way Ducks had been. He wanted so much to make me happy—to make me well.
“Will you stay with her?” Lester asked Molly, snapping his black medical bag shut.
“Of course,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and looking into my eyes. “I’ll never leave her.”
“Good.” He smiled sadly down at me. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Flo.”
I didn’t respond.
&nb
sp; He let himself out through the kitchen. Molly took my hands in hers.
“How do you feel now, Flo?”
I just closed my eyes.
“Give the pills time,” Molly said. “Lester is certain they’ll help.” She looked down at me. “He’s in love with you, Flo,” she said.
I just turned my face on the pillow.
“Really,” she continued. “I think he is. The way he’s always coming by. Always so concerned about your health.” She lifted a damp compress from the side table and replaced it across my forehead. I opened my eyes to look up into her face. She smiled.
“Molly,” I managed to say.
“What is it, Flo?”
“You don’t need to sit here with me,” I said hoarsely.
“I told you. I’m not leaving. Not until you feel better.”
She took my hand. What a sweet child. Even after my cruelty to her, she’d come back. She came back and told me she’d never leave again. And she didn’t. No matter that I was sometimes cross or often sad or frequently sick. Molly never left again. She stayed right there, right by my side, making me laugh, urging me to dance, pressing cold cloths on my head.
Movie Mirror came out a few days later, after I’d managed to get back on my feet. I think Bob had brought it over while I was sick to give me something to read. I remember the issue so distinctly. A picture of Bette Davis was on the cover.
“Look, Flo,” Molly said. “Here’s a photo of you inside.”
“Me?”
I looked up from the stove, where I was stirring a pot of beans. I lowered the blue flame and wiped my hands on my apron, going around the table to peer at the magazine over Molly’s shoulder. Lester was sitting to her right. I was making both of them dinner to thank them for their care.
“Yes, it’s you. See there?”
I did see. Me, from twenty years earlier. And there, next to mine, was a picture of Flossie Turner, also from the old days. Below the photos was a headline:
UNWEPT AND UNHONORED
“Let me see that,” I said.
Molly handed the magazine up to me.
“Is it a good story?” Lester asked.
I read it in silence.
The Biograph Girl Page 38
