by Donis Casey
Oliver sat on the sand for hours, until the sun was well down, bleaching the color out of the sky, wondering about the real reason K. D. Dix cared a fig about the death of Valentino. So what if he was connected to Tony the Hat?
It was already quite dark by the time he parked his roadster on the street in front of his building in Santa Monica and trudged up the stairs to his one-bedroom flat above a clothier.
Someone was sitting on the stairs in the dark stairwell. Oliver pressed himself to the wall at the landing and slipped his hand inside his jacket to grip the handle of the .38 in his shoulder holster.
“Who’s there?” he said.
“Is that Mr. Oliver?” The voice that answered sounded like it belonged to a kid.
Oliver let out a breath. He hadn’t realized he was holding it. “Who wants to know?”
The figure stood up, a dark shape at the top of the gloomy stairwell. “Western Union, sir.” He walked down the stairs and into the weak yellow light coming from the single bulb hanging from the ceiling over the landing. He was a kid all right, maybe fourteen. Too young for facial hair but old enough to have a bad complexion. He was dressed in a gray Western Union uniform.
He held out an envelope with Oliver’s name printed on the front.
Oliver took it. “Why didn’t you just shove it under the door?”
“I was told to put it into your hand, sir.”
Besides, you wouldn’t have gotten a tip, Oliver thought, as he dug through his pockets for a coin to give the boy.
The courier gave him a saucy grin as he pocketed the quarter and bounded down the stairs. Oliver stared at the envelope for a minute and sighed. Well, no use to stand out here on the landing. Whatever the news was, it wasn’t going to get any better with time.
He paused before he put the key in the lock. He did that a lot these days, taking a second to steel himself for any surprises that might be waiting for him behind the door. Just because a guy is paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get him.
The apartment was so dark that he had to rely on his familiarity with the layout to stumble across the floor to the table lamp and flip it on. Either everything was as he had left it or whoever had searched the place had not bothered to tidy up Oliver’s mess in the process.
He walked into the kitchen and laid the envelope on the table, then removed his tie and poured himself a stiff drink before he sat down. He ran a finger under the sealed flap, withdrew the telegram, took a slug of gin, and began to read.
NEED YOUR HELP STOP GO TO MY HOUSE TOMORROW AT 7:00 A.M. STOP THEY’LL BE EXPECTING YOU AT GATE STOP SEE THAT YOU’RE NOT FOLLOWED STOP BL
He absently lowered his glass to the tabletop. “Aw, shit,” he murmured. He hadn’t seen Bianca LaBelle in months, not since he had questioned her about her connection to Graham Peyton. He hadn’t expected to ever see her again, really. They didn’t run in the same circles. In fact, last he heard, she had gone to New York, same as a dozen other luminaries, to maintain a vigil at Valentino’s bedside. The late star’s body had arrived in Los Angeles yesterday. Bianca had probably come back to town on the same train.
When Oliver met Valentino at Bianca’s house during—what else—a party, the actor had struck him as a dark, perfectly put-together presence with an intense gaze. At the time, Oliver only had eyes for Bianca, so his memory could be faulty.
What could she possibly want from him? He didn’t need any more complications in his life right now. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to drive to Beverly Hills tomorrow to meet with her.
~ It Can’t be a Coincidence, so Maybe it’s a Conspiracy. ~
There was a new guard at the iron gate that separated LaBelle’s estate, Orange Garden, from the rest of the world. Oliver gave his name, and the guard seemed surprised to actually find him on the admittance list. Bianca LaBelle probably didn’t get many visitors who drove rattletraps and wore off-the-rack suits. He parked his Ford in the circular drive in front of the house and made his way to the front door. The huge, carved wooden entryway to Bianca’s mansion made Oliver feel like he was a Visigoth demanding entry at the massive gates of Rome, and just about as welcome.
It took a few minutes for Bianca’s snippy maid, Norah, to appear and crack open the door enough for him to slide into the foyer.
Norah was a rather pretty woman, but she always looked like she smelled something a little bit off. Of course, that could just be him.
“What’s this all about?” he said.
Norah took his hat. “Miss LaBelle wants to talk to you.” She started walking toward the living area without looking to see if Oliver was following.
“How long has she been back from New York?”
“Just since last night. She came back on Mr. Valentino’s funeral train.”
Last night? She must have sent the telegram to him during one of the train’s layovers. “Can you give me a hint about what she wants?”
“I really don’t know, Mr. Oliver.”
Norah led him into an office off the cavernous living room. He had never been in this room before. He expected that he could visit a different room every day for a month before he saw them all.
This office unmistakably belonged to someone in the motion picture business. One wall was lined with film canisters. A projector stood in a corner. A large but unglamorous wooden desk sat under the bank of windows that looked out onto the pebbled deck and the swimming pool. The desktop was neat, containing only a blotter, some fountain pens, and a pile of scripts. And a telephone, one of those new kinds with a cradle on top to hold the receiver.
“Have a seat, Mr. Oliver.” Norah hung his hat on a rack beside the door and gestured to the leather chair in front of the desk. She pointedly looked at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes to seven. “Can I bring you anything? Coffee?”
“Just some water, thanks.”
“Miss LaBelle is on a telephone call to New York.” Norah paused, making sure he was properly impressed. He was, and not just because the call was coming from three time zones away. A long-distance trunk call from New York to Los Angeles cost more than fifteen dollars for three minutes and God knew how much for each minute thereafter. Norah continued, “Please wait here. She’ll be in shortly. In the meantime, please don’t touch anything.”
Oliver sank back into the upholstery and folded his hands over his stomach. “Don’t worry, doll. I’ll be good.”
The minute Norah closed the door, Oliver pulled the pile of scripts toward himself and rifled through them. Only two were treatments for new Dangereuse flicks. The remaining five or six were all over the map. Helen of Troy. Yeah, Oliver could see it. The Blue Parrot. Something Happened. That one was a comedy. The proposed male lead was that English guy Ronald Colman. Had Bianca ever done a comedy? Most of the Dangereuse movies had some laughs in them. She’d probably be really good in a comedy.
He pushed the pile back to the corner when he heard Norah fiddling with the knob, then stood to relieve her of the tray she was carrying. A glass, a carafe of water. A couple of cookies.
He had just lifted one of the cookies to his mouth when the door opened and Bianca walked in. She was clad in a black, drop-waist linen dress with a gray-and-white-patterned inset in the elbow-length sleeves and a scarf of the same pattern tied around her hips. Her remarkable green eyes were enhanced by a smoky gray shadow and delicately outlined with kohl.
He had thought he was prepared, but every time he saw her in the flesh, he was stunned. Nobody could be that gorgeous in real life. The cookie ended up in his lap, then slid onto the floor when he stood up.
If she was aware of his awe, she didn’t show it. She waved him back down and pulled a side chair up to the desk beside him. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Oliver. I need a favor. Do you think you could get away from Dix long enough to look into something for me? I hope it won’t take long. I’ll pay you, of course.”
/> “It depends. What do you have in mind?”
“I want you to help me look into Rudy’s death.” The look of shock on his face must have been apparent, for she hesitated. “What’s wrong? You surely know my friend Rudy Valentino died.”
Oliver recovered quickly. “I don’t live under a rock. You surprised me is all. Why do you want to look into it? The papers said he died of peritonitis.”
“I’m telling you different. I believe it was murder. And I expect you to keep that to yourself, Mr. Oliver.”
“What makes you think he was murdered?”
“Last July, while Rudy and I were finishing our movie…”
Oliver interrupted her. “You and Valentino did a movie together?”
Bianca slid him an incredulous side glance. Was he joking? Did he not read the trade publications? She thought everyone in the world knew that LaBelle and Valentino were finally going to be on the screen together. Oliver’s expression was perfectly sincere, and Bianca almost laughed aloud—not at Oliver, but at herself. For a moment she had forgotten that the motion picture industry was not the center of the universe and neither were she and Rudy.
“Yes, it’s called Grand Obsession. It’s set to be released early next year. We were supposed to go on tour together…” A welling of emotion caught her off guard as it dawned on her that that would not happen now that Rudy was truly gone. She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “…next January, after I wrapped this new Dangereuse I’m working on and he was finished with the Son of the Sheik tour.”
“Wow, a flick with the two of you will make a wad of money. Especially now that…” He hesitated when he saw that finishing his observation would distress Bianca. He started over. “Will you still have to do the tour on your own?”
Bianca looked down at her tightly clutched hands. She relaxed her fingers with an effort and placed her hands loosely in her lap. “Probably with more appearances now than ever,” she admitted, then sternly forced herself to return to business. “While we were still shooting Obsession, Rudy told me that somebody was out to get him. He showed me a note that someone left in his dressing room. It said, ‘Valentino will die.’ And then he did.”
Oliver leaned forward and perched one elbow on the desktop. “I imagine that people as famous as you and Valentino get notes and letters from wackadoos all the time.”
“True. But what you don’t know is that Rudy was poisoned. He knew it, too. The doctor said it was arsenic, administered in a massive dose that ate right through him. I’m almost sure a fake magician and his fake assistant were hired to doctor his drink during a party he attended on the night he collapsed.”
So it was true! Oliver tried not to look too interested. “I didn’t read anything about that.”
“No, his manager is keeping the whole thing under wraps. But I promised Rudy that I’d find out who poisoned him, and I will, no matter how long it takes. That night the imposter magician stuck a needle Rudy’s his arm as part of his magic act, and at first I thought that had to be what killed him—something on the needle. But the doc said the needle wound was clean and it had to be something he ate or drank.” She filled Oliver in on the imposter Rahman Bey and his ersatz assistant and her suspicion that Rudy’s drink was poisoned at Barclay Warburton’s party.
“I did everything I knew to find out who the imposters were or who hired them, called in every favor I was ever owed by everyone I could think of on the East Coast. Bupkis, as Alma would say. But I’m no investigator. Not to mention that I can’t cross the street without drawing a crowd, so I need your help. Your discreet help.”
He leaned back into the leather chair, still trying to digest the fact that in the space of a day two women had put him on the same case. Two women he could not resist for totally different reasons. “What do you have in mind?”
“I want you to go to Rudy’s burial next week, see who shows up. See if you can see anything or anybody suspicious.”
“I think I can wrangle an invitation.”
“I’ll get you an invitation,” Bianca said. “I’ve already told his agent that I’m asking you to come. The memorial service is going to be at the Church of the Good Shepherd on the fourteenth, and afterward, they’ll take his body to Hollywood Memorial Park for interment.”
“What or who am I looking for? Did he give you any names, anybody he was suspicious of or any idea who might have had it in for him? Anything I can sink my teeth into?”
“Rudy gave me two or three leads. He’s had some trouble with some bad people, gambling debts and the like. Also, he thought maybe the Black Hand or the Fascisti had it in for him.”
“Yeah, I know of the Black Hand. A loose bunch of mobsters, Italians, mostly. Blackmailers. But they’ve been pretty much muscled out by organized crime in the past few years. But the Fascists? What could any Italian have against Valentino? I’d think he’d be their hero, being Italian himself and all.”
“Mussolini thinks he’s a traitor to Italy because he applied for American citizenship. Rudy told me that his films have been banned in Italy. The weird thing is that while Rudy’s body lay in state in New York, a bunch of thugs in black shirts calling themselves the Fascisti League of North America muscled into the funeral home and stood like an honor guard beside the coffin for a whole day. They brought this huge wreath of flowers with a blue satin ribbon that said ‘From Benito Mussolini.’ Could that be some sort of sinister message, a taunt? Anyway, I’m hoping that you can take advantage of your mob ties—or perhaps I should say mob acquaintances—and see if you can find out anything. I’ll pay you well.”
Oliver tried his best to keep his expression neutral. This was almost the same job that Dix had given him, except, of course, Dix had named the mobsters she wanted him to investigate. He was going to have to approach this cautiously. He didn’t want Dix to know that Bianca was on the same warpath. “You’re saying you want me to ask Dix if she knows anything? Believe me, you don’t want K. D. Dix to spare you a single thought. Besides, she told me in no uncertain terms that until I find out who killed her son, I work exclusively for her.”
“I don’t particularly want Dix thinking about me, either. She doesn’t have to know I’m involved. In fact, you don’t have to bring it up with her at all. There must be other people in her organization you can talk to. Make some discreet inquiries. Can you manage that without her finding out? If there’s anything to the mob connection, surely there’re whispers about it in the underground.”
“Well, Valentino’s death is big news, so I can ask around, you know, curious-like.” As he spoke, he had a nagging feeling that Bianca being involved in any way with this unsavory business was asking for trouble. He also knew he’d do anything he could to help her. He had realized that after he felt a stab of disappointment that she had called him Mr. Oliver instead of Ted.
“Nose around this Black Hand connection, will you? I’ll have more leads for you soon. I’m going to Falcon Lair as soon as you leave and retrieve some of Rudy’s papers before anyone else can get to them.”
“Falcon Lair. Valentino’s place up the hill? Won’t the servants object to your snooping around?”
She was surprised that he would ask. “Of course not. They all know me. I’ve already made arrangements for Luther—he’s the caretaker—to let me in. As a matter of fact, why don’t you come with me? You may recognize something significant that I wouldn’t.”
She was right, and he was tempted. But he couldn’t take the chance that Dix would learn that they had been seen together at Valentino’s estate. “I think it’d be better if you go by yourself. I want to dig into the Italian connection first. And listen, when I do go to the burial, pretend you don’t know me. Don’t draw any attention to me. I’d like to eyeball the crowd, see if anybody stands out, and I’ll learn more if I’m invisible.”
She didn’t question him. “All right. I’ll let you know if I find something
interesting in Rudy’s papers.” She stood. He was being dismissed.
He stood, too, grabbed his hat from the tree and put it on. “By the way, I’m sorry about Valentino. He seemed like a nice guy. I know you were friends.”
She smiled. He had said the right thing. “Thank you. We were.”
“I read about the funeral they had for him in New York. Sounds like it was a circus.”
Bianca groaned. “It was pandemonium. Women were fainting in the streets. Some girl even tried to kill herself in front of the mortuary. A bunch of ghouls pretending to be mourners stole all the flowers off his bier and cut hunks out of the draperies. The funeral itself was horrible. Pola…that’s Pola Negri. She and Rudy had been dating. Anyway, Pola finally got to New York after Rudy died, just in time for the funeral. She made a spectacle of herself, screaming and fainting and weeping. She had a big floral arrangement made for his casket that spelled out her name with red flowers. The press loved it. She told everybody that she and Rudy were engaged, and I know for a fact that that’s a flat-out lie. She made it all about her.” Bianca turned white with indignation as she recounted the tale. Her hands were clutched into fists.
“Mary Pickford kept telling me that Pola was probably really grief-stricken, that Europeans don’t believe in hiding their feelings. But I think Mary was just trying to keep me from strangling Pola. Before Rudy died, I thought she really cared for him, but now I think she was using him. What Pola loves is the camera. When she finally made it to New York, she brought her publicist with her. Anyway, I’ll bet money that she makes a big scene at the burial next week, so don’t be surprised at her histrionics. The train trip back here was horrible, too. There was a morbid crowd and film crews at every stop. People kept trying to force their way onto the train. As we got close to Los Angeles, we heard that there were thousands of people waiting at the railroad depot downtown, so we decided to stop in El Sereno and secretly take his body the rest of the way to the undertaker’s in a hearse. And I have to live through another extravaganza when they bury him next week. At least the burial is invitation only.”
