Cast the First Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  “What about you, Gene?” I asked. “What’s your story?”

  Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw him shrug. He told me in his languid fashion that he had come from Dallas. Served in the army in the Second World War, wrote for Stars and Stripes, then drifted from job to job before landing at the Herald-Express.

  “And now, at age forty-nine, I’m looking for a steady position,” he concluded. “Thanks to Mr. Hearst.”

  “Maybe you’ll sell one of your scripts to the movies,” Andy chimed in.

  Gene grunted. “Yeah. I’ll hold my breath. Everybody in LA has a script, you know, but mine are the best anyone’s ever seen,” he said for my benefit.

  “What’s your script about?” I asked.

  Andy hooted a laugh. “Don’t ask him that. He won’t tell. So paranoid that someone will steal his idea.”

  “Ideas are the only things writers have,” said Gene dryly.

  “At least tell me the title.”

  “He told me once,” said Andy. “Twilight in the Summer Capital.”

  Gene shook his head as he gazed out the window. “There’s nothing lower than stealing a writer’s work. I don’t tell anyone what I’m writing until I have a contract and cash on the barrelhead.”

  Andy ribbed Gene, asking if he was the one who’d written Gone with the Wind and Ben Hur. Gene chuckled but said nothing.

  As I made the turn onto Wilton, Andy practically broke into “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Three patrol cars sat parked in front of Tony and Mickey’s apartment. A couple of cops huddled in the entrance of the building, while another one looked to be radioing someone from inside one of the cars. The window to apartment 101 seemed to indicate that the police had found someone at home. I hadn’t had much luck on that score lately. I assumed there was a detective or two inside grilling Mickey, if not Tony, as we parked a few yards past the last patrol car.

  “How did you know there’d be police here?” asked Gene.

  “To tell the truth, I was hoping I was wrong,” I said as we turned to look back at the scene through the rear window. “My local-boy-makes-good angle is going down the drain.”

  “How do you mean? This must be juicier than your sweet little profile of a bit actor.”

  “You’d think so. But my paper will never print this kind of salacious story. At least not unless our boy is arrested for murder. Then it’s a tragedy and an embarrassment for the whole town of New Holland.”

  “But I still don’t get how you figured it was your guy,” said Andy from the seat next to me. “Millard only said there was a phone number in Bertie’s pocket.”

  “I figured it would be just my luck if it was Tony. Both men disappeared around the same time. And I knew that Wallis had handpicked Tony for his part.”

  “I thought you said it was just an extra role,” said Andy.

  “Sorry. That was a lie,” I offered. “I didn’t know if I should share what I knew with you two. But Tony Eberle was slated to play the second male lead in Twistin’ on the Beach. Until Archie Stemple fired him for not showing up on the first day of shooting.”

  “No harm,” said Gene from the backseat. “I would have done the same in your shoes. In fact, if this had been my hunch, you wouldn’t be here right now.” His lips betrayed no hint of a smile, but I knew it was his sense of humor again. Sardonic, biting, and as dry as a bone despite the weather. “Shall we get a statement from the boys in blue?”

  “They’ll never let us near the place,” said Andy.

  I grabbed my purse and popped open the door. “Wait here. I think I can get inside.”

  The three cops in the doorway stiffened as I reached the top of the stoop, and the tall, thin one asked if I lived in the building. I told him no, but I was there to visit my friend, Evelyn Maynard, in apartment 102. He thought it over for a moment then asked for my name.

  “Price, go ask the super if she knows anyone named Ellie Stone, will you?” he said to the younger of his two fellow officers.

  Officer Price ducked inside and rapped on 102. A short time later, he reemerged with a bemused Evelyn Maynard on his heels. She said nothing at first, but stared at me doubtfully, almost as if she expected this to be a practical joke of some kind.

  “Do you know this lady?” asked the first cop.

  “Yes,” answered Evelyn.

  “All right, you can go in,” he told me, and I squeezed past, but not without Price “inadvertently” brushing an arm against my bust as I did.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Evelyn once we were inside her apartment.

  “I wanted to apologize for the other day.”

  She cocked her head to the side and fired a skeptical eye at me. “Apologize for what? For not wanting to spend a romantic evening with me? Not necessary. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “But I do. I wanted to apologize that day, but I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I make passes at lots of girls. Get shot down all the time. It comes with the territory.”

  And in that moment I realized I couldn’t go through with my plan to use her to gain access to the police.

  “I confess that I actually came here to see if the police had found Tony Eberle or Mickey Harper next door,” I said. “A man was found dead in a ravine over in Nichols Canyon. He was a producer and he knew Tony. In fact he handpicked him for a role in his picture. I thought maybe the police would come here to find him.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  “Because I’m truly sorry for the other day. I wanted to be honest with you. I’ll go now.”

  She watched me open the door and step into the hallway. Then she followed after me.

  “Wait a minute,” she called. “Come back inside. The cops said they want to talk to me once they’re finished across the hall. Tony’s not here. They’re questioning Mickey Harper in there.”

  The police didn’t haul Mickey off to the station, confirming my suspicions that they were after Tony Eberle. When they knocked on Evelyn’s door, I said good-bye and excused myself. I waited until the cops had shut the door before I rapped on 101. Mickey opened up almost immediately, as if he’d been expecting me. In truth, he probably thought it was the police who’d forgotten to ask him something because he looked surprised to find me in the corridor.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “I already told them everything I know.”

  “May I come in? I need to speak to you about Tony.”

  “I don’t know where he is. Can’t you leave me alone?”

  “Just five minutes, Mickey.”

  He thought it over, probably wondering what he’d done to deserve a roommate such as Tony Eberle. Then he let the door fall open ever so slightly, and I slipped past him.

  The apartment was indeed a bachelor as I’d suspected. No bedrooms. Just a Murphy bed against the wall and a rollaway folded up in the corner. The place smelled of canned beans. There was a kitchenette on one side: a hot plate next to a small sink filled with a couple of dishes and dirty glasses. The only other furniture in the room was an aluminum table with a red laminate surface, two wooden chairs, and a large dresser with a telephone on top. No television, no radio, no pictures on the walls. Through a half-open door on the opposite wall, I could see a toilet and a bathtub. The place screamed desperate straits. Hollywood, how glamorous.

  Mickey located his manners and motioned to one of the wooden chairs for my comfort. I sensed he had nothing to offer me to eat or drink. We sat down. He stared at the floor and waited for me to begin. I reached for the cigarette case in my purse and asked Mickey if he’d like a smoke. He declined.

  “It’s poison, you know,” he said.

  I put the case back and resigned myself to wait until I was outside to light up.

  “I want you to know that I’m trying to help Tony,” I began. “I might even be able to get him his job back on the picture. But I need to find him. Right away.”

  “Really?” he said. It was m
ore of a challenge than a question. “The cops think Tony murdered that producer, but you’re going to get him his job back?”

  “Did he have anything to do with Bertram Wallis’s death?”

  Mickey frowned. Winced. “How would I know?”

  I stared long and hard into his eyes. After a moment he looked away.

  “Why did you lie to me the other day?” I asked finally.

  “Lied? I didn’t lie to you.”

  “You told me you weren’t sure if Tony was here the night before he disappeared.”

  “That’s the truth,” he said, coming to life. “I didn’t see him.”

  “There’s only one room here. How could you have failed to see him?”

  Mickey stammered a poor excuse that he didn’t switch on the lights when he came in. “I didn’t want to wake him. I knew he had to be on set early the next morning.”

  I must have looked skeptical because he repeated his story, more forcefully the second time.

  “Mickey, you’ve got to tell me where Tony is,” I said. “I won’t share what you tell me with anyone. No police.”

  “Why do you want to help? You don’t even know Tony. You’re just a reporter for some hick-town newspaper.”

  Ouch. I patted down my annoyance and told him that my job as a reporter was precisely why I wanted to help Tony. “I have no story without him,” I said. “Every other reporter in Los Angeles will soon have exactly the same information as I do now. Tony is a person of interest in the death of Bertram Wallis. He’s on the run, which only makes him look guilty. If I can find him, he’ll have a chance to tell his side of things. And, if he had nothing to do with Wallis’s death, I think I can convince the studio to take him back.”

  Mickey repeated that he didn’t have any idea where Tony was.

  “I saw you leave here with him last night,” I said, causing him to start. “It was about ten thirty. You and Tony and April left in a Rambler wagon. You turned off Hollywood Boulevard and climbed into the hills. Nichols Canyon.”

  I watched him turn white. He licked his upper lip, as a nervous cat might, just on the spot where the scratch had been two days before. The bruise under his eye had faded and was nearly invisible. I caught myself admiring his beauty and shook my thoughts back to the matter at hand.

  “You’re making this up,” he said. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

  “Do you remember a car behind you on Nichols Canyon Road? A car that sounded the horn when you stopped?”

  Mickey Harper was stubborn. I was sure he and Tony and April had been in the Rambler I’d followed, but he refused to admit it. He just kept insisting I must have followed someone else, because he hadn’t left his apartment. I challenged him again and again over the next two minutes, insisting that I had knocked several times on his door, and he hadn’t answered. But he swore he’d been in, had heard me, but pretended to be out.

  “What do you think the cops would think if I told them about last night?”

  That got him. His big brown eyes grew and filled with what I read as terror. He was about to cry; I was sure of it.

  “Tell me why, Mickey. Why are you holding out on me?”

  He pushed back in his chair and stood up to pace the room, wiping his eyes as he did. I gave him some time to think, to collect himself. He shuffled over to the window, his back to me, and stared out at the three patrol cars and the rain that was still coming down in sheets. His narrow shoulders rose and fell as he stood there, drawing deep breaths or weeping. I couldn’t tell which. Finally, after a full minute had passed, he turned to face me again.

  “I can’t tell you where Tony is,” he said in a steady voice. “Because I don’t know.”

  In the car, my new friends, Andy and Gene, had switched on the radio and were listening to the latest dispatches on the Bertram Wallis investigation. Reports that the police were searching for a person of interest was the only update.

  “So was the kid there?” asked Gene.

  “Not Tony Eberle,” I said. “Just the roommate who swears he doesn’t know where Tony is.”

  “We’ve still got a head start on everyone. We’re the only ones who know who the cops are looking for.”

  “A fat lot of good that does us,” I said. “I need to find the name of Tony’s girlfriend. The roommate still won’t give it to me.”

  “How do you plan on finding her?” asked Andy.

  “The only thing I know about her is that her name is April and she drives a Rambler station wagon.”

  Short of going through the entire Los Angeles telephone directory name by name to find all the Aprils, I had no ideas. And even that strategy was unlikely to produce results. There must have been hundreds of Aprils in the city. Furthermore, Mickey had said she’d only recently come to Los Angeles. She might not even be in the book. And what if she was listed by her first initial only?

  My friends had no ideas to offer. Finding April depended on Mickey Harper, and that only if he actually knew her last name or where she lived. But then I remembered something.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Do either of you two know anyone at Motor Vehicles?”

  It was after two when we reached the top of Nichols Canyon and Bertram Wallis’s mansion. I climbed out of the car, retrieved my camera, and took some establishing shots for my story, if I ever got to write it. Then I focused on the house itself. Of recent construction, the steel-and-glass affair sat at the end of a short drive, hanging over the edge of the hill. From the side of the building, I could see the stilts that held the place up. I don’t normally suffer from heights, but the drop was precipitous. My stomach performed a somersault, and I stepped back. The house’s stilts plunged down the hill some forty feet before planting themselves in the muddy brush. The canyon continued to fall away on a steep grade below. It gave me the willies to think of living in such a place. And what about earthquakes? California was famous for them. How could a few poles hold a huge house up in a temblor? I snapped some more frames, finishing off the roll, as I thought that Charlie Reese could—and would—surely explain the science to me.

  I returned to the car. My pals were still inside. Gene was lounging in the back, and Andy was fiddling with his camera. I rewound the film and stashed it in its canister.

  We watched the gang of reporters outside, huddling under their umbrellas, and talked about Bertram Wallis. If indeed this had been no accident, who would want to dump him over the railing of his terrace?

  Andy shrugged. “I suppose any number of young actors and actresses he used. I’ve heard rumors that he rented beautiful girls and handsome boys. Had his way with them and shared them with other producers and actors.”

  “You mean prostitution?” I asked.

  “Sort of. These young actors are all so desperate to make it in the movies. And they have to eat, too. Some of them earn a little extra by . . .” Andy was blushing. “Well, you can imagine how they earn it.”

  “But where did he find these desperate young actors?”

  “There are people who arrange things. I’ve heard of one guy in particular. Skip something or other. He’s been fixing up the perverts for years.”

  I looked to Gene for his contribution. He blinked slowly and shrugged.

  “‘Love for Sale,’” he drawled, staring off into space.

  “In addition to his orgies and other activities, Bertie was a fair hand with a camera,” continued Andy, not sure what to make of Gene’s tribute to Cole Porter. “It’s well known that he liked to take pictures and shoot eight-millimeter films.”

  “If everyone knew about his orgies, how come Wallis never got raided by the cops?”

  “They bust in every now and then. But guys like Bertie Wallis just pay them off.”

  I suspected my face had gone ash white. This was a lot to digest on my fourth day in Hollywood. I asked myself if Tony Eberle—New Holland’s golden boy—could possibly be mixed up in such sordid behavior. I had no evidence that he frequented Bertram Wallis’s parties, but the producer
had selected him personally for his beach picture, after all. Still, I didn’t want to believe it. For one thing, if it were true, I had no story. The paper would never print such a thing. The success of my trip to California depended on Tony getting back into the beach picture. At least I believed it did. And if he was somehow involved in orgies and prostitution, I might just as well head to Marineland of the Pacific for a couple of days for all the good my journey would do for my career.

  “Anyone else dislike Wallis?” I asked, trying to take my mind off the portrait of the hometown hero that was coming into focus.

  “Sure,” said Andy. “Lots of people hated him. He was an unpleasant guy. There were directors, actors, producers, and studio honchos to start with. And maybe the fathers or brothers of some of the starlets he spoiled.”

  My head was beginning to spin. “Wait, I thought he liked boys.”

  “He was omnivorous when it came to sex.” This was Gene from the backseat. “Ellie, you seem like a woman of the world. Surely you know how things work out here. Wallis liked ’em all. Boys, girls, men, women. He was, in a word, a pig.”

  “And he didn’t pay his debts,” added Andy with a smile.

  “And he was a plagiarist,” concluded Gene.

  “Wow. And no one ever wrote about this stuff?” I asked.

  “Like we said, the studios pay off the cops and the scandal sheets,” said Andy.

  Gene popped the door and jumped out. “Millard’s back,” he said and set off toward the house and the crowd of reporters.

  The police sergeant had new information. He provided the name of the cleaning lady, Patricia Gormley. She lived in East Hollywood and worked three days a week for Wallis. He also told us that based on the condition of the body, the coroner believed Wallis had likely died in the small hours of Tuesday morning, somewhere between two and ten. Finally, he said there had been a party Monday night, attended by as many as fifty people. The police were working on identifying everyone who’d been present.