We stayed on Wilshire for miles and miles. Occasionally I’d get beaten through a light, but there was never a cause for panic. Parker had given no indication of spotting me; in fact, he was driving with the caution of a man who didn’t want to attract attention. He went on and on, at a steady forty miles per hour, out of Beverly Hills and past Hancock Park, more miles east, still traveling at a measured pace, taking the bend around Hoover Street, past the hospital and into the shabby downtown area. I remained three cars behind and tailed Parker around Pershing Square, a rundown playground for derelicts and hustlers.
Parker took a left on Hill, a right on Fourth, crossed San Pedro, and finally hooked a short left onto an unpromising dead end with the Turkish monicker of Omar Avenue. He pulled up to the curb in front of something called the Pill Building, a shabby, gutted five-story mousetrap that yearned for a wrecker’s ball. Parker got out of the Rolls. He looked at the building and then at the car, in a worrisome, agitated manner, as if concerned for its safety or, perhaps, visibility. Omar Avenue was a very dead end with a boarded-up diner and shuttered pharmacy and a dingy beauty parlor with yellowing photographs of prehistoric hairstyles in the window, the kind of parlor that serviced old ladies or maybe people who placed bets on horse races. Omar Avenue was not used to Rolls-Royces, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing Parker could do about it, so he locked up and disappeared inside the Pill Building.
I had pulled up in back of a parked Hudson on Fourth Street and was getting out, when a blue Pontiac raced past me and took the turn on Omar very sharply, stopping abruptly in front of the Pill Building. I ducked behind my car and observed two men emerge from the Pontiac. They were both in their early thirties. One was wearing sunglasses, a natty blue sports jacket, and wheatcolored slacks. His hair was clipped very short. The other guy needed a shave and was attired in a suit of such a peculiar cut that it looked to have the wooden hangers and paper stuffing still inside. He had a curiously baby face behind the growth of beard, with an infant’s fatty jowls and the thick eyebrows of an adolescent who had been carpeted with body hair overnight. Most prominent on his pale face was a nose that went down and then abruptly out, like a Rockaway shoot-the-chute. He stood jiggling on the balls of his feet, punching one hand lightly into the other.
The natty man with the small mouth leaned in through the window of the blue Pontiac and spoke to the driver, a heavy-set type with a gray fedora pulled way down on his forehead. The fedora nodded, then drove down the street and out of view. The two men stood on the sidewalk and gazed at the yellow building for an uncertain moment; then the one with the crewcut nudged the one with the eyebrows and they walked inside.
I straightened up and got out from behind the Chrysler, heading down Fourth and across Omar. I walked carefully up to the Pill Building and peered through a fly-stained pane of glass wedged loosely in a splintery door. The door said “Fuck You” in lipstick. Through the smeared glass, I saw the two men waiting, silhouetted against a window at the end of the narrow, unlit lobby. Their faces were dimly illuminated by the opening of elevator doors. They got aboard, the doors closed, and I cautiously entered the building.
The lobby of the Pill Building couldn’t have passed inspection in Calcutta. Part of the fake marble wall was decayed away, leaving in its wake a dangling vine of exposed electrical wiring. A phone booth next to a stairwell was gutted and urinous, the receiver swinging ghost-like in the draft caused by the opening and closing of the front door. The lobby floor was filthier than the men’s room of a nuthouse: cigarette butts and candy wrappers had been stamped flat and black. Scattered beneath the stairs were newspapers and ancient, discarded condoms, aged as brittle as stemware. They lay unattended, coffins of the unborn, wreathed by garlands of dust.
Across from the elevator was a ruined directory. Letters and numbers were missing in profusion, leaving a pathetic, gap-toothed shorthand: “Abramtz, Dentit,” “Nelson & elo, eal Esta.” There were a couple of novelty firms, Royal Publishing Co., and a sprinkling of chiropractors, appraisers, and lawyers who chased the lawyers who chased the ambulances.
The elevator had stopped at four.
I raced silently up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I stopped on the landing below the fourth floor and heard a door closing at the end of the hall, then continued on up. The hall was very long, wide and high-ceilinged, like that of a municipal hospital. As in the lobby, there was only the natural light of an open window; the electrical fixtures had all burned out, bulb by bulb, like the tenants of the Pill Building.
A light went on behind a closed door. I tiptoed down the hall and flattened myself next to the occupied office. The frosted glass on the door read “S. Haller, Antiques and Jewelry Appraised.” I heard voices.
“Johnny, good to see you,” a voice said. “Hope this isn’t an inconvenience.”
“Certainly not. Anyway I can help.” Parker sounded strained.
“Have you ever met the congressman?”
“No, I haven’t, Davis, but I’ve heard marvelous things about him.”
“Well, let’s get on with it,” jollied the first voice. “Johnny Parker, meet Congressman Dick Nixon.”
“I’ve enjoyed your movies greatly,” said a third voice, pitched deep but thin. This was obviously the congressman.
“Delighted to meet you, Dick,” said Parker.
There followed the silence of shaking hands.
“Let’s go inside,” said the first voice, Davis. By its assurance, I took a guess and matched it up with the mug in the sunglasses. I heard a door close inside the office; low sounds followed, but they were not distinguishable as words. I would have to get closer.
Next to the appraiser’s office was a darkened door that read “P. Elwood, Dentist. We Use Gas.” I extracted a penknife from my jacket, and with the enthusiasm of a Boy Scout, had Elwood’s door opened in a matter of seconds.
The door squeaked slightly, opening into a small reception area, bare except for a half-dozen folding chairs and a low metal table covered with magazines. I pushed the door closed, but kept the lights off. There was noise coming from the appraiser’s office, but still no conversation. I followed the battered linoleum down a short hallway to Dr. Elwood’s dental chambers. The door was open. It was a small glum office, the final resting place for a dental career that probably began with a correspondence course. The shelves were lined with old instruments, many of which looked unused, some in their original boxes. Moldings of bridgework smiled at me like the glee club of a graveyard.
I seated myself in the motorized chair reserved for patients; the sink next to it was so deeply stained that I figured Elwood crapped in it during office hours. He was either the least successful dentist in Los Angeles or the office was some kind of a front. But it had one towering thing going for it: through a common wall you could hear every word uttered in the adjacent office.
“I think we’re all agreed,” Davis was saying, “on the need for utmost confidentiality on this. Whatever we say here, stays here. That should be our guiding principle: say here, stays here.”
“Absolutely,” said Parker. “But I’d like to emphasize that I can only speak for myself here; you realize that I can’t speak for the entire industry.”
“Of course,” replied Davis. “Congressman, you have a few comments?”
A congressional throat was cleared. “Thank you, Mr. Davis,” Nixon began. “First of all, I’d like Mr. Parker to know that the House Committee on Un-American Activities deeply appreciates the effort he is making to help us crack the hard shell of Communist activity in our great movie industry.” It sounded like he was reading from a sheet. “Without the patriotic help of industry leaders, our investigation is doomed to fruitlessness.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Congressman,” Parker said, after a moment’s awkward silence. “I’m sure that you’ll find that we in the movie business are as eager as you are to clean up. The picture business, first and foremost, is an American business.” He paused and fumbled for words. �
�This investigation, though, when do you foresee it going public?”
“You mean public hearings?” asked the congressman.
“That’s right.”
“No date has been set as far as I know,” Nixon said. “Mr. Davis, do you know?”
“The committee wants to gauge the extent of the subversion before opening up into the public sphere,” said Davis. “We don’t intend to go on a fishing expedition. When we undertake actual hearings, Dick Nixon and the other great members of the committee will be prepared to name names.”
“Of course,” said Parker. He sounded very unhappy. “But we don’t want a lot of indiscriminate name-calling, do we?”
“There won’t be any indiscriminate name-calling, Mr. Parker,” said Nixon, in a stern, hand-on-the-Bible voice. “I can assure you of that. You have my word that this is going to be a sober, responsible investigation of the extent to which the Red shadow has fallen over Hollywood.”
Another uneasy silence followed.
“I think Mr. Parker would like to know why we wanted to see him today,” said Davis.
“As soon as you called,” said Parker. “I cleared the deck of appointments.”
“Don’t think we don’t know and fully appreciate that,” Davis replied. “But you’re a busy man, so let’s get on with it. We’re frankly concerned, Johnny, about this Adrian business. Now we all know that Walter Adrian was on our preliminary list as a fully identifiable, card-carrying Communist, dedicated to the goals of the Party. As you and I discussed last week, his continued employment might be of great embarrassment to Warner Brothers.”
“That’s correct,” stammered Parker. “But as I told you, there were no grounds for dismissal and the writers have a very strong union. The only way to handle the situation was to make the contract negotiations with Adrian as difficult as possible. We were proceeding along that route when, of course, the suicide …”
“We have information at our disposal,” Davis interrupted, his voice dull and relentless, “FBI information on the Adrian death.”
“FBI?” Parker’s voice was a virtual canary chirp. I got out of the dentist’s chair and moved to a stool by the wall, placing my ear flush to it.
“There is information to indicate that Walter Adrian was murdered,” Davis continued. “That is why we had to see you today.”
“This is FBI information,” Nixon repeated, coming down hard on the magical initials. These guys kept saying “FBI information” as if it were a voodoo incantation.
“There’s evidence of murder?” asked Parker.
“Not court evidence, but strong circumstantial evidence, apparently. The congressman and I haven’t seen it, actually,” Davis went on, “but the source is unimpeachable. What we are telling you, of course, is top secret. It is imperative that no one learn Adrian was murdered or even that there is suspicion of murder.”
Parker said something like “of course.” He did not say that a private detective had been shot at the previous afternoon and that said detective also suspected foul play. The executive was obviously playing his own game and the case was getting more muddled by the second.
“It’s not that we don’t have complete confidence in you, John,” Davis said with utmost sincerity. “But this is very explosive stuff. Not a word.”
Nixon got into the act.
“Let me say, in fact, that we have great confidence in your integrity and candor. But this is a matter involving grave matters of national security,” the congressman said, emphasizing “grave.” “You see, the FBI information indicates that Adrian was murdered on orders direct from Moscow. The word was out in the Red police underground that Adrian would step forward and pass on critical information to the House Committee, information concerning the operation of the Communist Party in Hollywood, and in show business in general.”
“Communist espionage, you see,” Davis added, “is well aware of the imminence of the investigation.”
“Communists murdering writers?” Parker’s tone approached shell shock.
“You can see what chaos would follow if this information were made public,” said Davis.
“Certainly,” the executive mumbled. “Was Adrian about to contact you? Is that a fact?”
“The great tragedy of the Walter Adrian affair,” Nixon intoned, “is that we will never know. To be perfectly candid, Mr. Parker, Adrian had not yet come to us, or given any signals that he would. I would imagine that a dedicated, hardcore Communist would have to go through a great deal of painful soul-searching before reaching such a momentous decision.” This kid Nixon sounded like a radio preacher. And I, for one, couldn’t figure Walter running to the law to tell them which of his friends belonged to the Party. It didn’t sound like him, it didn’t wash. Yet as hokey and outrageous as it was to assume that Walter had been bumped off on orders from some drab-suited Stalinist torpedo, it bothered me. It bothered me because there was something nuts and out of focus about this whole case, something that no one was talking about, not Walter to me in New York, nor Walter’s friends at his home. There were loose ends of fear and mistrust that Nixon’s and Davis’ cockamaymie theory could conceivably explain. Maybe Walter was scared enough to talk, maybe someone did find out and finish him off, if not by Kremlin orders then by personal motivation. Nothing made a great deal of sense in the matter: the Red knock-off theory was no more implausible than Walter swinging on the back lot, or the cops getting an FBI report on my pinko record, or my sitting in a shabby dentist’s office eavesdropping on a Warner Brothers executive and a U.S. Congressman.
“You can see why no one must hear of this,” said Davis, “and why we must get to the roots of this operation before too long.”
“The plain fact is,” the congressman said smoothly, “that the way the Communists enforce discipline—using Adrian’s death as an example—it’ll soon be impossible for us to get the information we need.”
“I see,” Parker babbled. “Naturally. We’ll do all we can. Within the limit of the law, of course; we have to be subtle.”
“Subtlety,” announced Davis, “is of the essence. That’s our watchword.”
“Are the L.A. police being brought in on this?” asked Parker.
The room fell silent.
“Not unless it’s an absolute necessity,” Davis finally said. “Too many boneheads in the department. They could blow this thing wide open.”
“That’s what I would think,” the executive concurred.
“Now, let’s not go overboard on this,” Nixon interjected. “The Los Angeles Police Department contains some of the finest men in the country: dedicated, patriotic Americans. All Mr. Davis is saying is that this is one of those cases where too many cooks would spoil the broth.”
“Exactly, Dick. That’s how I see it,” Davis reassured him. “So, Johnny, to wrap this up in a neat package, we need your fullest cooperation at the quickest possible speed, in getting us names and witnesses. We don’t want a wave of murders, so we’ve got to smash this thing before it gets out of control.”
“I understand.”
“And of course,” said Davis, “everything to be done in as circumspect and unobtrusive a manner as possible.”
“Rest assured …” the Warners executive began to say, but never finished. The other men arose with much scraping of chairs on the floor.
“I think we should leave first, Dick,” Davis told the congressman.
“Fine,” he replied. “I hope Mr. Parker didn’t find this a too out-of-the-way location. I know how busy he must be at the studio.”
“No problem,” Parker said manfully.
“But we must meet under these kinds of conditions,” Nixon continued, “to outwit a very shrewd and determined enemy. The only way to defeat deviousness and guile is to show a little deviousness and guile yourself. That’s what the American people don’t understand yet. They still think the Russians are our friends, they still think we’re fighting the Germans together.”
“Check,” Davis concurre
d.
“But we’re not,” Nixon went on.
“That’s right, we’re not,” Parker said, somewhat halfheartedly, I thought. I got the impression that Nixon was standing a half-inch from Parker, breathing a civics lesson into his face.
“No, we’re fighting an enemy skilled beyond our imagination in the arts of subversion and espionage,” Nixon said urgently. “Who would have thought this great movie industry of ours would be honeycombed with men and women whose first allegiance was to Moscow.”
“As much of a shock to me, sir …” Parker attempted to say.
“So we’ve got to fight this fight,” Nixon was unrelenting, “in places like this. Lonely, drab places. Meeting in secret, in hiding. Like a war. Because that’s what this is, a war.”
“Dick, we’ve got to go,” Davis said.
Final salutations were exchanged, then the two men left the inner office and walked out into the hall. I hustled back to Elwood’s reception room and listened at the door. There was nothing to hear but two pairs of footsteps echoing down the hall. They paused, then exited via the stairs. I waited. Five minutes later, Parker took his leave, locking the office and walking briskly to the elevator. I heard the elevator doors open and close, then opened Elwood’s door a crack and saw that the hall was empty. I closed up the office and raced for the stairs. The elevator was at three and descending. I flew down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the street, turning the corner just as Parker emerged, blinking into the sunshine. He affixed sunglasses to his skull and disappeared inside the Rolls. I opened up my Chrysler and slid way down in the seat. The Rolls started up and moved out, taking a left on Third. I waited a beat and then resumed my pursuit of Johnny Parker. It was clear to me that all the action was flowing his way.
Hollywood and Levine Page 9
