AHMM, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  A series of ascending turns led to Star Bright Circle, one of the many hillside cul-de-sacs with flat lots and a magical overview of Los Angeles that extended past the downtown high-rises, long a favorite of celebrities who could afford a fancy pricetag that lately had reached seven and eight figures, going back to the heyday of Ramon Navarro, Cary Grant, and Randolph Scott, and more recently Diane Keaton, Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt, and briefly my ex, Stevie Marriner, the one-time “Sex Queen of the Soaps."

  Marnie's two-acre estate was situated behind a shoulder-high wall of natural stone topped by coiled barbed wire. The gate slid open to the numerical code fed me by Laura, and I drove into a rustic courtyard where, were this France, D'Artagnan might have met up with Porthos, Aramis, and Athos. The open-faced garage had space for six cars; adjacent to it was an empty stable.

  "Pretty hoity-toity, huh?” Laura said, indicating the house. “When she went shopping for a place, this here reminded her of a house she stayed in the south of France, Provence, when she was there filming Adieu Times Two a couple of years back. Piece of junk, you ask me, but it got my sweet girl an Oscar nomination, so what the hell. That place was in the hills above Luberon National Park and here was Griffith Park, so Marnie didn't even quibble about the price. Wrote out a check on the spot."

  The house was typically village provincial, unpretentious in design and construction. A comfortably sized living room was furnished simply around a hand-built fireplace of eccentric stone that stretched from the natural wood floor to the wood-beamed ceiling. The kitchen was twice as large and outfitted with top-of-the-line professional appliances, a well-stocked walk-in freezer and larder, and a carved wood dining table large enough to seat a dozen or two without crowding. A wrought-iron staircase took me upstairs to three bedrooms feeding off a mezzanine lounge, whose stucco walls featured framed posters of the movies that had starred either Marnie or Laura, the only signs of star ego anywhere.

  I hung out there for a few minutes, enjoying the view of the Griffith Park Observatory before heading back to my Jag to fetch Laura, who'd insisted on locking herself inside until I checked out the house for a stalker in residence.

  Halfway down the stairs, I heard noises that suggested her fear might be well placed.

  They were coming from Marnie's master bedroom, a room I'd given cursory inspection, barely a glance, anxious not to invade her privacy.

  I pulled Laura's .45 from inside my belt, got a good two-handed grip on it, and used my foot to ease open the bedroom door. Jumped inside and did a lot of that robotic twisting around the police do for real as well as on Law & Order, ready to squeeze the trigger if it came to that. Instead, it came to a couple of pigeons that had flown in through the patio window that overlooked the courtyard. They were psycho in a major way, banging into walls and knocking over doodads trying to find their way back out.

  I windmilled my arms and shouted instructions that finally got them soaring in the right direction, but not before they'd rewarded my good intentions with a series of pigeon bombs that caught me on the head and shoulders.

  I stepped onto the patio to curse them farewell.

  Looking down, I saw the front passenger door of the Jag was open.

  Laura wasn't in the car or anywhere visible.

  * * * *

  After ten or twelve minutes of exploring the grounds, I found her cowering at the rear of a stall in the stable, knees drawn to wattles and anchored by a trembling grip. The place smelled of equestrian history and fresh dung I assigned to squirrels, rats, skunks, coyotes, and other park animals scavenging for food or seeking shelter from bad weather. I kicked aside a stale pile and, settling along side her, said as gently as I could: “Laura, you okay?"

  At first, she looked at me like I was a stranger, but recognition set in and she ripped me full of guilt with her icicle stare, challenging, “Where were you when I needed you? The stalker, he came after me, handsome. I saw him first, though, and I got away. Got away. Got away. Where's the gun? Go after him. Go get him. Okay, handsome? Now. You'll do that?"

  I eased out of my jacket and used it to blanket her. “What did he look like, Laura?"

  "What do you think? Like you said. Big handlebar he had, and gussied up for a ball or something. An old fart, moving like the dickens, but I spotted him before he saw me and got in here in the nick of time. Go now. Find him for me and kill the SOB.” She pressed a bony hand against my cheek. “For me, handsome, and I'll owe you big time,” she said, like she was offering me a free pass to her bedroom.

  It was the same tone she'd used on the drive here from the Burbank Studios, a failed try at recreating the insinuatingly passionate voice of her stardom years, while resurrecting one memory after another, like they were a cure for her cough and the cobwebs of time.

  Some of Laura's stories I remembered from our brief history together, others from her uproarious, outlandish visits with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. They flowed out of her like she was reading from a well-rehearsed script, leaving no doubt they were imprisoned in her memory as well as the autobiography that rode the bestseller lists for half a year, Dane, Down & Dirty.

  "I was once a hooker, you know that?” she had said early in the drive, anxiously, needing to hold center stage. I played along. “Yeah, top of the batting order in Hollywood's blue-ribbon pussy palace, a favorite with all the important chippy chasers at all the talent agencies and studios. How I met the gent who engineered the breaks that landed me my contract with Warner Brothers and in bed with every star and costar you care to mention—no names, please—and even a leading lady or two."

  When Laura tired of those anecdotes, she opened a new chapter. “I suppose you know I was roommates with Marilyn? She was always Norma Jean to me and I was always Dubinsky to her. My real name, did you know? Jack Warner, Steve Trilling, they heard that and said, No way, which is how I got to be Laura Dane. From the Fox movie Laura, with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, because Colonel Warner said I resembled a blond Gene, and Dane rang his bell better'n Dana did. The moguls at Fox decided on Marilyn after she picked Monroe in honor of her granny, but that's old news already.” Laura rattled off a telephone directory of names rich and famous from the Fifties and into the Sixties, challenging me to guess who of them had been bedded first by her, then by Marilyn. Abruptly changing her mind with a flick of the hand. “Let's us just call it a tie, okay, baby? Although I hate to admit I never made it into the White House any more than the White House ever made it into me."

  Abruptly, she changed the subject. “You know I was AA?"

  "Heard something about it somewhere."

  "The career turns sour, the need turns more and more to sour mash, so to speak. Can't get a call through or a callback from anybody who could throw me a life preserver. Won't even try to describe what it looks like below the bottom, but I was there, baby, riding the merry-go-round to nowhere, until I woke up one day knowing I wouldn't wake up some day if life kept leading me on this way. So, I quit. Cold turkey after one last fling with Wild Turkey, you dig? I dragged myself into AA, said hello to familiar faces, and signed autographs for the others, and stuck with it, still, one day at a time. Anytime I felt like abandoning the wagon, which was often, I helped myself to a smoke. The habit climbed up to two, sometimes three packs a day, but it kept me off the sauce, and I'm still here, so that's that."

  Now, when Laura paused for a dry mouth cough in the middle of telling me how she'd come to work for Hollywood's most notorious madam in a mansion above Sunset Plaza Drive available almost exclusively to the elite of show business, I said, “You think it could be a guy from those days who's finally acting on a grudge he's been holding for forty years?"

  "Baby, when I loved ‘em, they stayed loved. And loving."

  "How about when you and Marilyn were roomies, or maybe somebody at Warner Brothers who—"

  "No and no, and..."

  It was as if she'd stumbled onto an idea that made sense.

  She snapped her face to me and broke out a ha
lf smile edged in hope. “There was this gawky-looking kid, a gofer trying to make his mark, sucking up to Hal Wallis, Johnny Huston, Jerry Wald, even Mike Curtiz, who was busy turning the English language into a jigsaw puzzle when he wasn't taking Bogie or Flynn through their paces. Crawford was playing him for a pet until she wangled that Oscar, and after, that's when he became my uninvited shadow. Finally, I had to say something to Trilling about the pest not leaving me alone. Before the day was over, the kid was on his way to the unemployment line.” She played with the notion. “Elrod was his name. Elrod Stump. You know what any studio would do with that moniker he ever got signed on as an actor. Stumpy, everyone called him. He bothered me a while longer before the murder put him out of commission."

  "The murder?"

  "Stumpy caught on at Monogram, or maybe it was Republic, and got involved in a love triangle with some B actress and the exec who booked the studio's casting couch. Next anybody knew, the exec was dead and a judge was sending Stumpy to San Quentin to learn how to make license plates."

  "That might account for the forty-year hiatus."

  "What?"

  "This Stumpy holds a grudge against you for getting him fired, which led to the murder and the conviction. His need for revenge festers for forty years before he's finished serving out his sentence or gets paroled. And your stalker is back, only now with your murder on his mind as well. How's that sound, Laura? Make sense?"

  "What?"

  "What I was suggesting about Stumpy?"

  "Who?"

  "Elrod Stump. Your stalker."

  A deep crevice developed between her brows. Then, her eyes brightened with enough wattage to light a premiere at Grauman's Chinese. “That's him, the bad apple! You nabbed him, handsome. Bless you.” She pushed herself off the dirt floor and onto her feet with a suddenness that brought on a sonic change in her pulse and caused her to falter. She reached for the wall as dizziness buckled her legs and swooned.

  I caught Laura before she hit the ground, cradled her in my arms, and stepped from the stable into the courtyard, anxious to get her into the house. Even in a fading daylight, backlit by the exotic blend of orange, lavender, and scarlet painted across the skyline, I recognized the man moving in on me by his elaborate handlebar mustache.

  * * * *

  Marnie skipped out of the limo idling across the courtyard, calling, “It's okay, he's with me,” and raced toward me shouting her aunt's name, asking, “What is it? What's wrong? What's happened to her? Is she all right?” She tripped over a moss-covered rock jutting from the ground and vaulted forward, belly-flopping on the dirt.

  Mustache Man wheeled around and helped her up, stepping back while she shook the surprise from her face and dusted herself off. Once again he had moved with a speed belying his age. “I'm fine, Mr. Hatcher,” she said. She tugged her sweater and a pair of jeans that fit her like body paint into place, covered the rest of the distance between us, and waited for me to tell her about Laura.

  "A fainting spell that doesn't look to be serious,” I said. She let out enough breath to stir a windmill. I asked, “She do that a lot?"

  Marnie's modest overbite disappeared behind pursed lips while she weaved her head left and right in slow motion. “Not as often as we have to change her sheets,” she said.

  "What's his story?” I said, inclining my head toward the Mustache Man.

  "Let's get Aunt Laura to her room first, okay? Clifton, give Mr. Gulliver a helping hand, won't you?"

  * * * *

  We settled in armchairs across from one another on the mezzanine landing, separated by a glass-topped table decorated with fashion magazines and outdated issues of Daily Variety and TheHollywood Reporter, silently waiting for Marnie to finish with Laura and join us. Mustache Man avoided me by leafing through the trades, while I subtlety examined him over the top of a W Magazine whose cover offered one of those sexily posed someones mostly famous for being famous.

  On close inspection, there was something tricky about his face. It didn't match the body that had traded in the fancy dress for casual wear, tailored slacks, and a camel's hair jacket, high collar dress shirt open at the neck, showing off a gaudy sterling silver cross nesting on a bed of reddish brown hair.

  He looked up from his Reporter, caught me staring. “Clifton,” he said. “Clifton Hatcher.” His voice stronger, far more vibrant than it had sounded at the studio. “Miss Nichols told me all about you on the ride over. I read your column once in a while, Mr. Gulliver. It's not so bad."

  Once in a while.

  Not so bad.

  Mustache Man knew how to win friends.

  I said, “What don't I know about you?"

  "Enough to fill one of your columns,” he said, suddenly my greatest fan, his overripe smile exposing an abundance of capped teeth. “I'm an actor. You probably figured that out by now."

  "The face isn't familiar."

  "Not even under this ton of makeup, but someday,” he said. “It's for a Brynie Foy movie shooting next door to Miss Nichols's film on a third of the budget. My friend the casting director got me the gig knowing I needed a credit to keep from losing my SAG medical. Only a bit, one line, delivered by an old geezer.” He rose and took a few tottering steps away, touched his brow with the back of a hand like he was measuring a fever, tilted up his chin, and recited in a British accent: Yes, so teddibly hot for this time of year. His makeup was better than his accent.

  "And you made a wrong turn on your way over and wound up on the set of Melancholy Baby."

  "Knew from the trades it was Miss Nichols's flick. I'm a big fan, so when I heard the shoot was so close to ours, I took a chance and headed there instead of for the lunch wagon. Arrived in time to see her entering her trailer. Guessed that might be Laura Dane with her. Her aunt, and an actress my pappy admired in his day. Time ran out and I had to split before I could catch them to say so much as hello."

  Marnie had rejoined us in time to hear his gushing adoration and picked up the thread. “I asked around after you and Auntie Laura left and learned the shoot on Stage Eight was pirating a standing set from the Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson shoot, Two Guys from Surrey. Natty, my flack from the publicity department, went looking for me and located the man with the mustache, Mr. Hatcher here. Since seeing is believing, I invited him to come home with me, so she could meet him and confirm for herself it was no stalker closing in on her today."

  He pressed a palm to his heart. “A beaucoup thrill,” he said, enthusiastically, pronouncing it bow-coop. “And you won't forget about the autographed photo, will you?"

  "I have a better idea,” I told Marnie. “One that can put an end to this stalker business once and for all."

  * * * *

  Marnie motioned us into Laura's room after about twenty minutes.

  Laura was propped up in a reclining position in her canopy-covered bed, under a pair of lace-trimmed pillows.

  Her eyes struggled for focus as I pushed Clifton Hatcher forward, hands locked behind his back, urging, “No tricks, nothing stupid, if you know what's good for you,” loud enough for her to hear. At her bedside, I announced: “Look at the gift I brought you, Laura. This him? This the stalker you spotted at the studio today?” She reared back against the pillows. “Not to worry. He's cuffed."

  She raised her head and squinted against the dull light, signaled me to bring the Mustache Man nearer. I applied pressure to Hatcher's shoulder blades, moving his face to within inches of hers. She studied him through eyes that quickly grew wide with alarm. “Him, yes!” she said.

  "I also want you to hear him speak, confirm it's the voice you heard on the phone,” I said, then pulled Hatcher upright and ordered, “Recite the words I told you, mister."

  Hatcher said, “I am as close as your shadow, Laura, and will be coming after you soon,” in what I imagined he imagined was a nifty impression of Pacino as Scarface. How this guy got any acting jobs was beyond me.

  Laura made a frightful noise. “Yes! Yes! Him, the SOB! Get the poli
ce!” she said and managed to pull the covers over her head.

  Marnie eased Hatcher aside and, comforting Laura with her voice while she worked back the covers enough to level a kiss on her aunt's forehead, said, “The police are here already, dear, waiting outside to take him away once you've provided positive identification."

  "Positive, positive, positive!"

  * * * *

  A half hour later, the limo was whisking Hatcher and his autographed photo of Marnie back to the studio, and she and I were relaxing against my Jag, alone except for park creatures noisily scavenging in the hillside brush, exploring the truth of what had occurred today.

  "The trick with Mr. Hatcher, I can't thank you enough for that, Mr. Gulliver. I think it's enough to satisfy Auntie Laura she doesn't have a stalker to worry about anymore."

  "There is no stalker, is there?” I said.

  "Yes, there is—in Auntie Laura's mind. Back to haunt her forty years later. Before that, she was getting daily calls from her agent, Meyer Mishkin, about a costarring role he said she was perfect for, with Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin in a Budd Boetticher film coming up at Universal."

  "All of them long dead and gone."

  "Not to Auntie Laura ... The stalker made his first call soon after Meyer Mishkin called saying Gail Russell had been cast in the role and she sank into a deep depression, spent days in bed, bemoaning that Gail Russell has a bigger drinking problem than she ever had, so what was that all about?"

  "It must be tough on you, Marnie."

  "The half of it."

  "The cough, her weight loss—the other half?"

  Marnie stared into the darkness. “She's my auntie, Mr. Gulliver. I'd still be Marnie Who? not Marnie Nichols, if not for Laura Dane.” She twisted around and pressed herself against me in a hug to end all hugs. Plastered my lips with a kiss that set my mouth on fire and was over far too soon. She whispered, “Thank you for recognizing her condition early on and playing along anyway,” then hurried back inside the house.