by Donis Casey
Bianca walked out into the hall. Her expression was like marble. She said, “Who’s Jenny, George?”
George glanced at Fee, who looked stricken. “I don’t know,” George told her. “I don’t know a Jenny. Maybe she’s one of his spirit guides.”
“Spirit guides. I know that he thinks he has spirit guides. Why didn’t he ever talk to me about his spirit guides?”
“He knows you’re a skeptic.” George was as gentle as possible. “Go back to the hotel with Fee now, darling. In the morning we’ll talk about what you discovered. There’s nothing more you can do here. Come back tomorrow. You won’t be of any help if you’re so exhausted you can’t see straight.”
* * *
It was nearly ten o’clock when Bianca and Fee got back to the Ambassador. Beatrice shared a cab with them. No one said a word until they bade each other good night in the hall. Bianca did not have the strength to undress. She fell on top of her bed fully clothed. She thought she was too tired to sleep and would spend a long night staring at the shadows on the ceiling, so she was startled when Fee shook her out of unconsciousness. The room was still dark.
“What is it?” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Fee said. “That was George on the telephone. Rudy died. I’m sorry.”
~ Once broken, a heart is never quite the same ~
A light rain was falling just after dawn when Bianca finally made it to Campbell’s Funeral Church at Broadway and 66th, where Rudy’s body had been taken a few hours earlier. The street in front of the mortuary was packed with people. Mourners, Bianca figured, jammed shoulder to shoulder and refusing to move. So many people, and so soon after Rudy passed. What were they expecting to happen, she wondered? The cabbie inched through the crowd blocking the street, honking his horn incessantly as damp gawkers pressed their faces against the windows to see which celebrity was inside. Bianca stared straight ahead, pointedly avoiding eye contact with altogether-too-festive ghouls who called her name and demanded photos/autographs/kisses. She supposed she should have expected such a thing, but the half-party, half-riot atmosphere frightened her. How was she going to get from the curb to the door of Campbell’s without being ripped limb from limb by a mob that professed to love her?
The cab rolled to a stop in front of the funeral home. Bianca was about to tell the cabbie to drive on when three nightstick-wielding cops elbowed their way through the crowd and surrounded her as she dashed inside. She was met in the lobby by Frank Campbell himself, looking equally prosperous and lugubrious in a black suit and tie, his white hair tidily slicked back from his forehead.
“My goodness, there must be thousands of people outside,” she said. “How long has this been going on?”
“Ever since Mr. Valentino’s remains arrived here at about one this morning. Mr. Ullman has announced that mourners may file through to pay their last respects to Mr. Valentino starting at noon today. People have been gathering ever since.”
Rudy would hate this, Bianca thought, thousands of strangers gawking at his body like a sideshow attraction. How could George allow it? She did not offer her opinion. “Where is Mr. Ullman?”
“He left a few minutes ago, but he told me he will return shortly. Please let me escort you to the Gold Room. We’ve arranged a private viewing room for Mr. Valentino’s special friends.”
Campbell marched off, unaware that Bianca was not following. She couldn’t move. She had not had much of a reaction since Fee told her that Rudy was dead. It didn’t seem real, and she was happy to live in denial for a few minutes longer.
Campbell threw a questioning glance over his shoulder when he realized she was not behind him. “Miss LaBelle?”
She braced herself and followed him down the hall. “Who else is here?” She didn’t really care, but talking was a small distraction.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ullman just left. Mr. James Quirk is paying his respects right now. Otherwise, you are the first.”
Campbell turned and gestured toward the arched entryway to a chapel off the end of the hall. Bianca hesitated, inhaled, then took two purposeful steps into the Gold Room. Rudy lay on a satin-draped bier, a lace pillow under his head. He was dressed in a formal dark suit, his hair beautifully combed and pomaded. His ravaged face was covered with so much makeup that it looked like a mask. A kneeling bench had been placed before the bier, with tall white candles at the head and foot. A forest of fan palms and giant arrangements of flowers stuffed the chapel from floor to ceiling. A bust of the Virgin sat on a plinth at Rudy’s head, gazing down at him benignly. Several velvet chairs were arranged in a row before the casket. Bianca sank down onto one of them.
“He doesn’t look real, does he?”
Bianca started when Jim Quirk spoke. She hadn’t noticed that there was anyone else in the room. Quirk was sitting at the far end of the row. He got up and moved next to Bianca.
“Are you all right, darling?” he said.
Bianca blinked at him. She hadn’t considered how she must look. Like the bottom had fallen out of the world, surely. “I’m all right. Stunned, I guess. I thought he’d pull through.”
“We all did. I was outside the hospital when he died, you know. They brought out his body in a basket.”
“A basket?”
“A big coffin-shaped wicker basket.” He folded his arms across his chest, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“How is George holding up? I haven’t talked to him since Rudy…” She couldn’t say the word.
“Somber, of course, but holding up well. He has a lot to do. Rudy’s brother, Alberto, is on his way here from Italy. Rudy named George as the executor of his estate. He’s making all the arrangements.”
“Why is George going to let the public gawk at him? Rudy would never go for that.”
“I’m guessing it was Campbell’s idea and George bought it. Free publicity, you know.”
Bianca sagged. “Oh, Jimmy. If I die while I’m still famous, I’m going to have Fee bury an empty coffin with my name on it and then smuggle my body back to my family in secret.”
“I won’t tell if you’ll tell me where your family is, first.”
“Forget it. By the way, I read your profile of Rudy and me in Photoplay. Nice job.”
“Thanks. Will you sit down with me soon for another interview?”
“Shut up, Jimmy. I’m not here to talk business.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry. He looks terrible, doesn’t he? Not like himself at all.”
In truth Bianca had been avoiding a close look at the body. She stood up for a better view. Quirk was right. Rudy looked terrible, waxy and unreal. But Bianca had seen an inordinate number of dead bodies in her short life, and none of them had resembled their living selves. Her vision blurred as her eyes flooded with tears. “Oh, Rudy,” she sighed.
Quirk appeared at her side. “You saw him last night?”
“I did. He wasn’t conscious, but he was talking.”
“What about?”
She shot Quirk a poisonous look. “Quit working for five minutes, will you?”
He seemed shocked at the accusation. “I’m not. I mean, it’s just that…”
“Just what?”
“There’s something strange going on here, Bianca. Rudy didn’t die a natural death, did he?”
Bianca sat down heavily. What on earth was she going to say to that? James Quirk may have been Rudy’s friend, but he was a Hollywood journalist and the managing editor of Photoplay. Yet he knew everyone who was anyone—who was feuding, screwing around, going broke, breaking the law. Could he help in her quest to find out who murdered Rudy? Could she trust him?
She’d have to think about that. Trusting the wrong people had gotten her into trouble before. “Talk to me after the funeral, Jimmy.” He seemed satisfied with her sort-of answer. He handed her his pocket square and she wiped her eyes. A smear of d
ark mascara came off on the handkerchief. “Oh, Lord, I must look a mess.”
He patted her hand. “You look lovely, Bianca.”
“You’re a liar, Jimmy Quirk, but thanks.”
~ Two Weeks Later, Back in California, our Story takes a Turn ~
Private detective Ted Oliver made the long drive from Santa Monica, through Los Angeles, to the foothills outside of Pasadena for his weekly meeting at the estate-cum-fortress of mobster K. D. Dix, in order to deliver the weekly progress report on his investigation into the mysterious death of one Graham Peyton.
K. D. Dix was a small, plump, elderly woman with white hair and round, rosy cheeks. She was charming and motherly, always cheerful, it seemed. One would never know to meet her that she was the capo of a vast crime empire and a cold-blooded killer.
A few months earlier, in February of 1926, a violent Pacific storm off the Southern California coast had uncovered a human skeleton, buried for years under a rockslide at the foot of the Pacific Palisades, near Oliver’s apartment in Santa Monica. The unfortunate mug whose bones were unearthed had once been Graham Peyton, a notorious grifter, bootlegger, dope peddler, and seducer of innocent young women. Peyton had been on Dix’s payroll when he disappeared five years earlier, along with fifty thousand dollars. Dix wanted to know how his bones had ended up on the beach and who had been responsible for putting them there.
When he had agreed to take on the job, lured by the promise of a big payday, Oliver was under the impression that Peyton had been a low-level syndicate operative who thought he could get away with skimming a little off the top and had been bumped off by some other thug for the money. A classic double-double cross. No big loss to humanity. No one should have cared about the death of such an unsavory character. But as it turned out, K. D. Dix cared very much.
Graham Peyton was her son.
Oliver always tried to stick as close to the truth as possible when he talked to Dix, since she was not forgiving of lies. But there was one very large truth that he avoided mentioning at all.
The beloved actress Bianca LaBelle, née Blanche Tucker of Boynton, Oklahoma, and Dix’s son, Graham Peyton, had had quite a history before Peyton disappeared off the face of the earth and Bianca became one of the most famous women in the world. Bianca had told him so herself.
His life was not his own anymore, but his thoughts were still private—at least until the dreaded day when Dix would finally lose patience with his failure to deliver Peyton’s killer and order one of her enforcers to crush his thumbs in a vise. If and when that happened, Oliver feared that he would spill everything he knew about Bianca LaBelle and Graham Peyton, whether Dix asked him about it or not.
Dix had rubbed out a lot of people in her time—some in revenge for her son’s death, some for thinking they could cross her, some simply in the course of business or on general principal—and Oliver had a gnawing premonition that one of these days he was going to be one of them. Because he suspected he had already figured out who killed Graham Peyton, and if he could manage to avoid it, he had no intention of telling Dix.
The question now was how long was he going to be able to keep his boss off Bianca’s trail, keep himself alive, and keep Dix from hurting someone he was beginning to care very much about? It didn’t matter to him that Bianca LaBelle was a star of the silver screen and he was a lowly gumshoe who had eked out a living by getting the goods on cheating spouses—until he had gotten himself mixed up with a murderous lady gangster.
Oliver had been at this investigation for over six months, and he didn’t know how much longer his nerves were going to be able to take the constant dread and outright fear that ate at him every waking moment and invaded his dreams.
Oliver hated these meetings.
Every week, he dutifully gave Dix the rundown on all the records he had checked, all the people he had questioned, all the information he had gathered, and all the progress he had not made. He had told her from the beginning that the likelihood of his unearthing her son’s murderer after all this time was slim to none. But his digging had uncovered treason from other quarters within Dix’s organization. She had never suspected that Mr. Ruhl, her second-in-command for over thirty years, was stealing from her until Oliver unmasked him, so she insisted that he carry on. K. D. Dix was not a woman to be crossed. Dix had an army of goons to do her bidding, but she was not averse to doing her own dirty work. A small, elderly woman could usually get close enough to an unsuspecting schlub to throw acid in a face or shove a shiv into a carotid artery. She also knew an excellent never-fail recipe for concrete overshoes.
When Oliver met with Dix in her comfy Edwardian parlor, he made it a point to sit on the couch farthest from her throne-like leather wingback chair. As a bonus, this gave him a clear view of Dix’s latest bodyguard, Juan, who hovered in the corner like a menacing shadow and said nothing. Oliver didn’t know if the man’s name was actually Juan, since Dix had never introduced him or even acknowledged his presence, but his black hair and brooding black eyes gave him a Latin look, so Oliver figured Juan was as good a handle as any. After a while Oliver hardly noticed him in the corner any more than he noticed the floor lamps.
Dix poured the tea herself out of a silver service into delicate china cups. The pastries, artfully arranged on a chinoiserie tray, looked delectable. After all, most of Dix’s pleasure establishments were fronted by bakeries. But Oliver was never able to choke down any of the little cakes. After she was done with him, Dix would wrap up a few petit fours in brown paper and insist that he take them home. He usually handed them to someone on the street when he got back to Santa Monica.
But today, just as he was making a move to stand, so near his escape, Dix said, “Hold on, Ted. There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
Oliver said nothing, watching Dix in silence as she finished her tea, waiting for her to enlighten him. K. D. Dix was no longer the gorgeous little firecracker from San Francisco who had freed herself from a violent pimp by means of a Colt .44, but age had not dimmed the ice and fire in her blue eyes.
“Have you been following the news about Rudolph Valentino’s death?”
Oliver’s forehead wrinkled. An odd thing for Dix to bring up. “How could I not? It’s all over the papers. Especially since they brought his body back here to Los Angeles for burial.” He had actually met Valentino briefly, at Bianca LaBelle’s house. But he wasn’t going to tell Dix that.
“I want you to take a recess from investigating Graham’s death and look into it for me. In the past few months, I’ve been hearing whispers that there was a plot to get rid of him. I didn’t put much credence in the rumor. Hollywood is rife with rumors. But now…” Her voice trailed off and she sighed.
“You think somebody offed Valentino?” He almost added, “Why do you care?” but caught himself in time.
She got the gist anyway. “You needn’t look so skeptical. You don’t need to know the details, either. My associate in New York tells me that Valentino’s doctor tested him for poison and found a lethal dose of arsenic in his tissues.”
“You want me to go to New York?”
“That won’t be necessary. I already have operatives in New York, but I don’t think the answer is back there. I have a job for you here in California.” She placed her teacup on the side table and folded her hands in her lap. “What do you know about Tony Cornero?”
Oliver flopped back down on the couch. “Tony the Hat. He owns a fleet of freighters and smuggles Canadian whiskey into Southern California. He anchors his ships off the coast and unloads the liquor into speedboats to bring it to the beaches, where trucks pick it up and distribute the goods to his customers.”
She nodded. “Tony has come up with an ingenious new sideline. He’s converted one of his freighters into a casino and christened it the Monaco. It’s anchored off the coast beyond the three-mile limit. Cornero ferries the high and mighty out for an evening of gamb
ling and debauchery beyond the reach of the law. It’s only been going on for a few months. It’s an experiment, but I hear it’s turned out to be quite a lucrative one.”
“A high-class gambling joint just outside of U.S. jurisdiction. That shows a lot of ingenuity. I’m surprised that no one has thought of it before.”
“Look into Tony’s business dealings. I’d like to know who his backers are, if any.”
“I doubt if he needs backers. The guy’s a millionaire. In fact…” Oliver didn’t finish the thought. It would be right up Dix’s alley to muscle Cornero out and take over his operation. All she needed to know was who she’d have to eliminate in order to do it. “How does this figure in with Valentino?”
“Rumor is the Chicago outfit is trying to expand their territory onto the West Coast and has been making overtures to Cornero. My inside man tells me that Valentino was involved somehow, maybe as an investor, but I don’t have any solid information. There will be a memorial service for him in Hollywood on the fourteenth. I want you to be there, see if anybody interesting shows up, anybody from Chicago or New York.”
Oliver nodded. Capone and his cohorts had been interested in expanding their business onto the West Coast for years. Southern California had plenty of homegrown organized crime of its own, so Dix and her ilk wouldn’t appreciate the competition. He stood up again. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
~ Embroiled in a battle he can never win, Oliver wonders how he can quit the field. ~
Oliver parked his roadster by the side of the coast highway below Santa Monica and sat down in the sand to watch the sun set over the Pacific. It always took a long time for his heart rate to return to normal after these meetings with Dix.
Oliver didn’t see anyone on the beach, but he suspected that he had been followed. K. D. Dix, the most ruthless—and most unlikely—mobster on the West Coast, kept a close eye on her hired hands. Oliver didn’t care if he was being tailed. Let Dix’s goons gawk at him all they wanted. In fact, maybe he’d sit here until tomorrow, just to torture whoever was watching him.
