“Maybe she just visited Rudolph Valentino or some other squeeze from her era, but sure, appreciate it. In return, I can walk your pooch, clean your oven, or supply you with pricey distilled spirits.”
“Chivas will do nicely,” I said. “Once we make some progress, we’ll toast.”
“Love that optimism,” he said. “Blue Label in a fancy box work for you?”
“Plain is fine.”
“You ain’t plain.”
CHAPTER
16
Know thy cemetery.
What began as Hollywood Memorial Park and Spiritual Gardens sits on fifty urban acres a couple of blocks east of the Paramount lot. Back when Hollywood was Hollywood, several studios made their home in the neighborhood, surrounding the cemetery and making it the butt of jokes.
Where do old actors go to die?
Forest Lawn if they’ve got cab fare, Hollywood Memorial if they don’t.
Or:
The place is a drag.
How so?
Agents drag useless clients in. Then they dig extra holes for themselves and jump in.
Like the Aventura, the place had fallen into disrepair until a fire-sale purchase ten years ago. Unlike the Aventura, full up, no more rooms in the inn.
The new owner’s history of developing amusement parks, and the rechristening to Hollywood Legends, fueled rumors that a “morbid Disneyland” was in the works. That sparked the expected preservationist outrage along with panic in families whose loved ones were interred in the ornate crypts, mausoleums, and granite-marked grave sites crowding the crumbling facility.
Lawsuits were filed, an arbitration board set up, compromise reached, with the purchasers assuring they had no intention of altering the cemetery’s essential nature and promising to plow millions of dollars into renovation. Five years later, defects had been remedied and the families received notice that their maintenance fees were being quintupled. A second rash of suits led to Compromise 2.0: The owners agreed to double fees for five years, then tack on another twenty percent for the next fifteen, while obligating themselves to binding arbitration for any future increases. In return, they’d be allowed to offer “tasteful supplementary services on the property that maintained the dignity of this venerable, hallowed site, so rich in Los Angeles cultural history.”
Examples of “tasteful” were classical music concerts and fundraisers for worthy causes.
What actually ensued was a steady stream of rock and hip-hop concerts, private parties, and filming of movies and rock videos. A gift shop memorializing the “high and mighty who chose to entrust their eternal remains to Hollywood Legends” was built. Every Halloween a cinematic masterpiece titled Buckets of Blood was screened, and tour buses were encouraged to make the park part of their circuit. Pathway markers directed gawkers to the graves of departed stars. The gift shop thrived.
Early outrage about rank commercialism sputtered, as it always does in L.A., profits from the “supplements” keeping the maintenance fees reasonable, everyone content.
Perfect for a city where the county coroner runs a retail website and guides driving pimped-up hearses cruise past the manors of dead rich people, doling out schadenfreude.
In L.A., death—the kind of death that attracts tour buses—is a production, no more, no less.
—
I got to the cemetery just after opening at nine A.M., parked on Melrose, and walked under a rococo stone arch topped by a menacing mop of wisteria. Lovely morning, warm, balmy, honey-lit.
Once you got past a Florentine fountain and a long, skinny reflecting pool reeking of chlorine, the gift shop was the first thing you saw.
The photo Milo had emailed of Thalia was as faithful as a DMV shot could be. One eyebrow arched higher than the other. Amused.
I showed it to the girl at the register, a young Latina with a gentle voice and a ready smile. To her side was a collection of coffee mugs silkscreened with the faces of film stars. A separate pyramid displayed beer steins featuring the sneering, acromegalic mien of a dead punk rocker named Billy Stink. Other wares included snow globes, T-shirts, stuffed animals, windbreakers, fuzzy hats with gravestone logos. A board game called Six Feet Wonder.
Too early to attract shoppers to all that treasure. I had the clerk’s attention.
She said, “Sorry, don’t know her.”
“May I ask how long you’ve been working here?”
She hesitated.
I said, “She hasn’t been here for over a year.”
“Oh. Then I wouldn’t see her. Ten months.”
“Is there anyone who could help me?”
“Is she your grandma?”
“Great-aunt, just passed,” I said. “She told me she came here to visit someone and I’d sure like to know who. Kind of a roots thing, you know?”
That confused her.
“Family research. I’m from Missouri, trying to learn about my California relatives.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’ve got cowboys from Texas in my family—maybe Pedro will know.”
She got on the phone, called, hung up. “He’ll be here soon.”
Ninety seconds later, an older man wearing gray work clothes and a canvas hat entered.
He looked at me, then the clerk. “Tina?”
“This gentleman wants to know if his aunt came here to see anyone so he can find some family.”
She held up the photo.
Pedro said, “Yeah…I think but not for a long time.”
I said, “Aunt Thalia hasn’t been here for over a year. She just passed away herself.”
He was unmoved. No surprise, considering his job. “She’s your aunt, you don’t know your family?”
“I’m from Missouri, haven’t seen the California branch for years. Do guests sign a register or something that tells you who they’re visiting?”
“Nah.”
He took another glance at the photo. “You want to look around, now’s the time. Hour or so, we’re going to have people looking at him.”
Pointing to the Billy Stink cups. “Purple hair, green hair, they’re always doing some kind of a ceremony. You wouldn’t believe what they leave on his grave.”
The girl said, “Ick.”
I offered a conspiratorial frown.
He said, “Yeah, it’s gross. Like to help you, but we don’t follow anyone around, see where they go. Our rule is don’t get nosy unless you see something illegal. Like the tour buses, they’ll be pulling up soon, after they’ve seen the Chinese Theatre, Ripley’s, all that junk.” To Tina: “Tell him what they buy.”
She said, “Mostly hats but they’re always asking for food.”
Pedro said, “Like this place gives them an appetite. Anyway…”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. “I’ll just walk around.”
Pedro said, “I can tell you where not to bother with. You turn out of here you’re going to see the big mausoleums, then a section that used to be a fishpond till they got rid of it to make room for people like him.”
I said, “Dead musicians.”
“Overdoses,” said Tina.
Pedro said, “That crazy girl Patsy who did the heroin and had her car painted with pills and marijuana leaves? People leave dope near her stone. I used to call the cops, they said throw it out so now I just throw it out. Is your grandma related to someone like that—are you?”
I smiled. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Then you can avoid all that. After that, it’s the Grand Mausoleum, which is all comedians from a long time ago, then the Regency Mausoleum, which is producers and directors and studio heads. They don’t get a lot of visitors. You related to any of that kind of person?”
“Nope.”
“There’s also a Jewish part over by the southwest.”
I shook my head.
“The Jews leave rocks,” said Pedro. “The real old graves, from when we opened—1892—are out back against the back wall. You looking for something that old?”
“Unlikely
.”
“Okay, after that, it’s up to you, friend.” He plucked a cemetery map from a rack near the register, lifted a souvenir pen from a can, and circled the areas he’d listed.
Tina cleared her throat.
I said, “Happy to pay.”
“Map is five dollars, pen is four.”
I gave her cash.
Pedro said, “You should pay me commission, Tina.”
She colored.
I said, “Thanks for the help, sir.”
He leaned in, sniffed, and pretended to examine my hair. “Don’t see no green or purple roots, you’re not going to leave anything gross—last time it was a dead bat.” He chuckled. “Unless you got some tattoos under those nice clothes.”
“Not a one.”
“I was in the marines, never messed with my skin even with a semper fi. Someone never fought, why would they do that?”
He left.
I said, “Some guy.”
Tina said, “Tell me about it. He’s my dad.”
—
I walked by the mausoleums and a terribly wrought bronze sculpture of Billy Stink, the rocker two-handing a mike and grimacing as if his colon had corroded. The rest of the dead-musician section was small, just a couple of rows, and when I got closer I realized the markers weren’t stone, they were some sort of resin. Nor did they mark actual resting spots. Jim Morrison was buried in Paris, Jimi Hendrix in Renton, Washington State, Keith Moon in Wembley, England, all facts attested to by the writing on the memorials.
Virtual burial. Sign of the times.
When I got past all that and found myself facing acres of bona fide markers, the truth of Pedro’s reservations hit me hard. Hundreds of grave sites. Unless I happened upon a Mars, what could I hope to achieve?
Even with that, all I’d have was the ancestor of a hundred-year-old woman.
I was about to leave when I spotted a man carrying a rake and an oversized dust-bin toward the rear of the cemetery. Same work clothes as Pedro but his headgear was a pith helmet. Younger than Pedro but not by much.
I caught up with him.
Florid, heavyset guy with a Boston terrier nose and massive forearms. “Yeah?”
I said, “My great-aunt used to come here and I’m trying to find out who she visited.” I showed him the photo.
He said, “Nice lady, she always went to the same section. She tipped me for nothing. Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“She passed away last week.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry to hear it. She dressed nice, could walk okay for her age. Let me show you.”
He looked at the twenty I offered. “This is more than she gave. You got a nice family.”
He pocketed the bill, guided me to a single row toward the center of the cemetery, and left.
Well-weathered headstones, death dates ranging from the forties to the early sixties.
The tallest marker caught my eye. A good foot above the others, three plots from the end, black granite speckled with gold and topped by an exquisitely carved red granite crown.
Lemuel Leroy Hoke, Jr.
July 31, 1892–August 9, 1954
“My Kingdom Is of This World.”
The gangster who’d purchased the Aventura in the thirties and turned it into a haven for gamblers, adulterers, and other seekers of entertainment before being busted for tax evasion.
I phone-googled. Hoke’s name showed up in a list of pre–Bill Parker thugs. Convicted and sentenced in 1941.
Deceased thirteen years later, no mention if in custody or after release.
Four years prior to Hoke’s death, the hotel had been bought by Conrad Grammar. Soon after, Thalia was a full-time resident, paying far more than a civil servant could afford.
Buying up real estate using mystery funds.
My Kingdom.
A self-styled monarch. Misspelled Monark?
Had moving Hoke’s girlfriend in been part of the arrangement with Grammar? A sweetheart deal for a sweetheart?
In 1941, Thalia was twenty-three, Leroy Hoke, nearing fifty.
Money and power gravitating, as it always does, to youth and beauty?
Hoke’s year of death reminded me of something else. I looked up the leather-bound gift book in Thalia’s library.
Something Smithee…Robber’s Destiny.
Published in 1953, just prior to Hoke’s passing.
This guy got it. A man dying behind bars reminiscing?
Or sending a warning to his youthful paramour?
Hoke’s gravestone was dusty. No flowers, no sign of a recent visit but the crown atop the grave said it all. So did the inscription inverting Jesus’s declaration.
Self-proclaimed royalty.
Monark loves Midget.
CHAPTER
17
Milo said, “Our sweet old lady really was a gun moll?”
I said, “Or at least a gangster’s love interest.”
“This from a gravestone.”
“A grave she visited regularly until she grew feeble. The chronology fits. So does Hoke’s prior ownership of the hotel and Thalia’s being able to afford staying there after it was sold. He went to San Quentin but that doesn’t mean he stopped doing business, and Thalia being his outside agent explains her real estate buys. Her early knowledge about foreclosures and other bargains would’ve been perfect synergy. And when Hoke died ten years later, she could’ve inherited everything, off the books.”
“Hoke ever get out of Q?”
“Haven’t checked, yet. Wanted to call you first.”
“A gangster’s gal…even if it’s true, you see it connecting to her death seventy years later?”
“Maybe she wasn’t worried about a psychopath in her family. What if Hoke’s descendants paid her a visit and nosed around the topic of Great-Grandpa’s dough?”
“That sounds like a scary visit,” he said. “You didn’t describe her as frightened.”
“True, but if she was able to conceal a long romance with Hoke, she was an expert at hiding her feelings.”
“Hundred-year-old siren worried about Bad Seed’s bad seed,” he said. “Mr. Waters and/or Mr. Bakstrom.”
“Or the woman they’re apparently sharing.”
“Okay, it’s somewhere to go, thanks. Let’s see if San Quentin keeps decent records, talk to you later.”
—
Back home, I got on the computer. Nothing on Leroy Hoke beyond a mention in a list of old-time L.A. gangsters published in an academic article on policing in L.A.’s pre- and post-Parker days. The author, a history professor at the U. named Maxine Driver.
I reached her at her office.
She said, “Hoke? No one’s ever asked me about him, he was pretty obscure. Usually, they want to know about Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen.”
“Hoke didn’t make the big time?”
“From what I can gather he was up there in terms of criminality. But unlike Bugsy and Mickey, he avoided the limelight. Who exactly are you and why’re you asking about him?”
“I’m a psychologist working with LAPD. It’s a long story.”
“I’m a historian, we’re used to that. Can someone vouch for you at the police?”
“You bet.”
She called Milo, phoned me back.
“I’m free in an hour. For an hour. Pizza Maniac in the Village.”
—
The restaurant was a brick-walled beer joint for students, with pizza as an afterthought. I got there first, and per Maxine Driver’s instructions ordered a small white pie with mushrooms and a pitcher of Bud. The beer I got to carry to a table. The pizza was served by a distracted-looking kid just as a woman’s voice said, “Perfect timing.”
Maxine Driver was in her late thirties, tall, lithe, Asian, with a short glossy do that evoked the Flapper Era. Clinging black slacks and a matching sweater emphasized the sparseness of her frame. She toted a huge black purse. A big diamond glinted from her left ring finger.
“Dr. Delaware? Maxine.” H
er handshake was strong, dry, business-like.
“Thanks for meeting me.”
She peeled off a crescent of pizza and nibbled a corner. “Good timing for dinner. My husband practices gastro at Santa Monica Hospital. Colonoscopies until eight P.M.”
She smiled. “Hope that doesn’t ruin your appetite.”
Mentioning her marital status to set boundaries? The rock on her finger would’ve sufficed. Then again, attention to detail would serve her well in her profession.
I said, “Worked at a hospital for years, no problem.”
“Which one?”
“Western Peds.”
“Kids,” she said. “I couldn’t handle seeing them sick.” She incised another millimeter. “You’re not indulging?”
“Small pie,” I said. “All for you.”
Maxine Driver laughed. “I have to remember about male appetites. David—my husband—could snarf three of these and claim he was dieting. Anyway, Leroy Hoke: I looked up my records, didn’t find much but made you a copy of what I have.”
Out of the purse came a manila envelope. Neat black lettering on the flap. HOKE, LL.
I thanked her, offered to pour her a beer.
She said, “Only if you’re having. Food’s one thing, drinking alone has a weird alkie feel to it.”
I filled two mugs. She kept working at the slice of pizza, daintily but steadily. A surgical scalpel versus Milo’s buzz saw.
When she finished chewing, I held up the envelope. “I’ll read every word but if there’s anything between the lines—”
“You want something psychological?” she said. “A personality analysis? I’m not one of those historians who think they’re Freud. But even if I was, there’s not much known about Leroy other than he was bad to the bone. A rawboned character. I guess in that way he was different.”
“From other mobsters.”
“L.A.’s scene was mostly urban—transplants from the East Coast. Mickey and Bugsy were both originally from New York, as were a lot of the guys who came out here to explore their options. L.A. was considered wide-open territory. Before Bugsy invented Vegas, everyone thought we were going to be the next Sodom. Wild Bill Parker eventually disabused them of that notion, but before he came on the scene, the organized scene was thriving. The movie business helped because there was a natural affinity between actors and bad guys. Any thoughts about that? Psychologically speaking?”
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