Cast the First Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  Cursing April Kincaid, I righted myself and wiped my muddied hands on the only thing I had handy: the front of my wool skirt. Then I grabbed the object—a small thermos bottle—and sloshed back to my car.

  My hands trembled as I shook the thermos to confirm my suspicions. There was no Irish coffee inside; I was sure of that much. In fact, there was no liquid at all. But something jounced lightly back and forth within. I pried off the cap, unscrewed the stopper, and upended the vessel to dislodge its contents. A cylinder slipped out into my muddy lap. It was paper, rolled tightly together and bound with cellophane tape. Photo paper. When I opened it, I knew why Dorothy Fetterman had been so desperate to get her hands on the photographs. If I’d had a mouthful of Coca-Cola, I would have spat it out against the windshield and called my eyes liars.

  I confess that the photographs, seven in all, unsettled me. I’m no prude and understand people have their peccadilloes and secrets, but here was a Hollywood star kissing another man on the lips. A big kiss. A wet one. An extremely famous, talented, and sexy leading man. A manly man, to echo Andy’s words from the first day I met him. And there he was kissing a handsome young man full on the lips in three shots. And more in the other four, including two where his kissing partner had dropped his trousers and drawers as if for an army physical. And the leading man was holding said other man’s . . . penis in his hand, mugging for the camera, as two other men looked on and laughed. The very last photo took the fun and games one giant step further. There was no mistaking what was being done and by whom. If ever the photographs surfaced, they would end the actor’s career and probably get him arrested for sodomy as well.

  Yes, I was shocked. And I felt a knot in my stomach. It shook me hard, and my discomfort was compounded by my disappointment in myself for thinking that way, for wanting that famous actor to be “normal.” Straight. Not queer. Not the way I suspected my own brother had been.

  I loved my brother, Elijah. And his death nearly five years earlier still harrowed my soul with a violence that could take my breath away. I had worried and fretted for him, even as I felt I might be able to accept him. But at the same time, I had agonized over the revulsion and shame and suffering he would either heap upon himself or have heaped on him by the outside world. The abandonment, or perhaps downright disowning, by my father would have crushed him. I’d experienced heavy doses of that medicine from my father for years, and I certainly would not have wished it on my beloved brother.

  I caught myself and drew several restorative breaths. I shook thoughts of Elijah from my head and asked myself, why? Why had the pictures upset me so? Would I have preferred it if the man in the photographs had been performing the same acts on a woman? I’d seen a couple of dirty magazines in my day, even watched a stag film with fifteen other undergrads at a drunken party in college. But those actors had been anonymous, and it was impossible to discern their faces in the gritty, poorly focused movie. I didn’t enjoy the dirty magazines, though I found them informative. And the blue film was awful, even if we all laughed in attempts to cover our discomfort.

  I managed to reel in the scandalized panic I was feeling. Self-analysis, like looking into a mirror, had always helped me to tame my most frightening doubts and loathing. I’d been able to talk myself into measured responses and reactions. And so I did as I sat on my hotel room bed staring at amateur pornographic pictures of an actor I’d once lusted after. Him. The one who’d looked so sexy in the torn T-shirt. The manly man who’d invaded so many of my erotic dreams. That one. He wasn’t who I thought he was. But why should he have been? I certainly didn’t live my life to suit others. Why should he?

  Putting my shock to one side, I considered the implications of the photographs in April Kincaid’s possession. While it was possible that Tony had given her the scandalous pictures, I thought it was unlikely. More probably, April had grabbed them from Bertram Wallis’s bedroom at some point when she was inside the house with Tony. And that pointed to a terrible possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. That April had killed Wallis herself. Again I recalled the man from the Charlie Horse Diner in Barstow. He’d said April would do anything to get what she wanted. I wondered what she might have wanted from Wallis. Perhaps simply to protect Tony. Wallis had just fired him from the picture, after all. And what about her own wicked behavior? According to Mrs. Gormley, April had been a regular at the parties, always on the arm of a different rich man. I asked myself if I believed April capable of such an act. Of murder. And my answer was yes.

  The photographs in my possession frightened me more than anything I’d ever laid my hands on. Too many people wanted them. Too many people would suffer if they ever surfaced. I lay awake in bed, hoping the lock and the flimsy door could withstand the efforts of an intruder bent on getting inside. I rose several times to investigate a noise in the corridor or voices in the alleyway below my window. Instead of counting sheep, I found myself counting the cast of desperate people who wanted the photographs enough to take them from me. And if I stood in their way, how much were the pornographic pictures worth to them? Enough to kill me to get them?

  First in line was April. She’d already stolen them once, and I doubted she would hesitate to grab them again. And I had no reason to trust Tony Eberle or Mickey Harper. The sum total of my experience with Mickey consisted of trying to work around his lies. And I’d only met Tony once.

  Dorothy Fetterman, and by extension the studio, wanted the photographs. She’d kept me close for more than a week in the hopes that I’d lead her to them. And that meant any of her henchmen might kick down my door at any moment, even that snake Chuck Porter. Or Archie Stemple. He’d disliked me from our first meeting. And he’d shown a violent streak, even in public settings, that made me nervous.

  Cops, reporters, blackmailers. The list grew as the minutes passed. And what of the matinee idol in the photographs? I could picture him, sweaty muscles flexing as he snapped my neck in order to recover the evidence that could—in the wrong hands—kill his career.

  At four, I rose from bed again, slipped into my robe, and pushed the dresser against the door. I doubted that would save me from a determined burglar, but it might give me enough time to jump from my second-floor window into the trash cans in the alley below.

  Now I was truly paranoid and losing my cool. I checked on the photographs once again, ensuring they were still in the thermos. They were, of course, but in my sleep-deprived, frightened state, I needed to see them to be convinced. I wanted to hide them better. My suitcase was no Fort Knox and would be one of the first places someone would search. Then I remembered Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. His alcoholic character found devilishly clever spots in his apartment to hide bottles of liquor from his brother. Everywhere from dangling from a string out the window to stashing one behind a grate in the bathroom to stuffing another inside the vacuum cleaner bag. I had no vacuum, no string, and no heater grates at my disposal, but there was the ceiling light fixture. Ray Milland had squirreled one up there as well. Feeling that was my best option, I dragged the chair to the middle of the room and clambered up with the thermos in my hand. Too short, I couldn’t reach. The bed was only inches higher, and I was still several inches too low to slip the thermos into the frosted-glass shade.

  I slumped on the bed and considered my options. There was Marty the bellhop. He was tall. But I couldn’t risk adding a coconspirator to this plan. The photographs were too toxic to share with anyone. I was alone until 9:00 a.m. when I planned to run to a bank and take a safe deposit box to secure the pictures.

  But what to do until morning? Despite my own efforts to convince myself that it was only paranoia, I had a terrible premonition that someone was coming for the photographs. Hadn’t I told Chuck Porter that I had them? Or knew where they were? And he’d told Dorothy, who’d already approached me for them. Why had I lied? I looked at my watch then at the door. It was half past four.

  I pulled the thermos out of my bag and shook the photographs out onto the bed. After removing
the tape again, I flattened them as best I could on the desk. These were three-and-a-half-by-fives. I scanned the room, searching for someplace to hide them. Then my gaze fell on the door. On the hotel rates posted on the door, to be precise. I made my way across the room and considered the small picture frame. Holding one of the photographs up against it, I saw that it was just about the right size. I took down the frame and went to work. A few minutes later, I’d replaced the rate card on the door with the explosive pictures hidden inside. They were invisible. But then I had a thought. Again remembering Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, I decided I needed a decoy. I undid my recent work, removing one print from the bunch. One that showed the actor kissing the younger man full on the mouth. I rolled it and wrapped it with tape, then slipped it back inside the thermos. The other photographs stayed in the frame, which I rehung on the door.

  I stashed the thermos in my suitcase under the bed and switched off the light. It was nearly five, but I felt safer. Safe enough to doze off sometime later. I slept. I slept hard. Until a banging on the door roused me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1962

  Waking from a deep sleep, I fumbled for my watch on the bedside table, knocking it to the floor in the dark. The door banged again, prompting me to bolt from the bed and grab my robe to cover myself. A voice growled from the corridor, demanding I open up. I dashed to the window and yanked open the curtains, letting in some light. More banging at the door and a furious rattling of the knob.

  “Who is it?” I shouted.

  “Police,” came the answer.

  I pulled the dresser back from the door and unlocked it just before it burst open, knocking me backward onto the bed. Chuck Porter and two men in wet overcoats stepped inside.

  “Police?” I shrieked.

  He stood above me, face calm, and he motioned to his thugs to search the room.

  “I’m calling the police,” I said, pushing myself off the bed.

  But Chuck blocked my way, placing a firm hand on my right shoulder and maneuvering me back into a sitting position on the bed. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “What you’re doing is criminal. This is breaking and entering. And impersonating a police officer.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, turning to check on his goons.

  Chuck Porter’s two men looked vaguely familiar, and I was pretty sure they were the same gorillas who’d emptied Bo Hanson’s trailer onto the muddy ground two nights before. Now, as I watched them rifling through the chest of drawers and the desk, I struggled to control my alarm. They were going to find the photographs.

  “Okay, fellas,” said Porter. “Under the bed. And be quick about it.”

  Chuck Porter and his two thugs decamped shortly after pulling the thermos from my suitcase beneath the bed. They performed a few more perfunctory look-sees before deciding there was nothing else to find. The last thing I remember of their visit was Chuck gazing back at me from the door as he closed it on his way out. His eyes fixed on mine for a fleeting moment, before looking away in shame.

  With the most damning photographs secure in a safe deposit box at the Metropolitan Bank on Vine Street, and the key to the box hidden between the film and the shutter inside my Leica, I returned to the hotel to pack my bags. I felt unsafe there. As I passed through the lobby, Mr. Cromartie and Marty the bellhop avoided my gaze, both trying to melt into the upholstery and the heavy curtains.

  “He paid you off, didn’t he?” I said, stopping to confront them. “You took the money and turned a blind eye as they broke into my room.”

  They said nothing. Cromartie coughed, and Marty just stared back at me as he fiddled with the buttons on his wrinkled tunic. On my way out the door twenty minutes later, the old man behind the desk made a feeble attempt to stop me. Something about settling the bill. I told him he’d already been paid.

  I dragged my bag to the car in the nearby lot and threw it into the trunk. As I climbed into the driver’s seat, a voice called my name from the sidewalk. It was Mickey Harper.

  “They’ve arrested Tony.”

  “Get in,” I said, and we drove off.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “What happened?” Mickey asked as I headed east on Hollywood.

  “I decided I didn’t like the hotel.”

  I was still wondering how the three of them—Mickey, Tony, and April—fit together. Were they acting as a team, taking turns deceiving and distracting me? Or were there secrets they kept even from each other? That was one of the reasons I didn’t tell Mickey about the raid on my hotel room. I didn’t trust him.

  “Where are you going to stay?” he asked as I turned onto Wilcox.

  “I’ll find another hotel, I suppose.”

  We sat in silence for almost a minute. Then Mickey said I could stay with him. “That is if you don’t mind sharing a room with a man.”

  “Why would you invite me to stay with you? You don’t even like me.”

  “I like you very much, Ellie. More than you know. You took me in when those cops beat me up.”

  “Your affection’s not always evident,” I said.

  “It’s hard for me to trust people.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have any choice in the matter. I have to trust you now. But that’s no reason not to like you.”

  “You don’t need to have anything to do with me.”

  “I need you for Tony.”

  “Tony has you,” I pointed out. “And April.”

  My eyes were fixed on the road. I didn’t see Mickey sigh, but I heard him. It was a subtle lament with a hint of frustration. Or was it annoyance?

  “Something about her you don’t like?” I asked.

  “I hate April. I always have.”

  “He’s got a lawyer,” said my old pal Sergeant Millard.

  He’d agreed to meet me despite the unpleasant end to our date. We were seated a couple of feet apart on a bench in a corridor of the Wilcox Avenue police station in Hollywood. “A good one, too. Your boy’ll be back on the street by tomorrow.”

  “Where does a penniless actor find the funds to engage a top-notch lawyer?”

  Millard shrugged. “Beats me. So what do you want?”

  A few officers passed by, heels clicking on the floor as they went. I waited until they were out of earshot.

  “I’d like to speak to him,” I said, leaning in to keep our conversation private. “Tony Eberle, not the lawyer.”

  “And why should I let you do that?”

  “Because you were a gentleman about our date, and I’m sorry for how I behaved.”

  God, that was hard to say, but I felt it was my only option. Appeal to his better nature, apologize for my rudeness, and hope for the best. He hadn’t been expecting that, I could tell.

  “Funny how people dish out apologies when they need something.”

  A cop escorting a sad-looking man in handcuffs neared us. The prisoner looked like a middle-aged accountant who’d propositioned the wrong streetwalker and discovered a vice squad officer beneath the makeup. The policeman acknowledged Millard with a nod and continued down the hallway.

  “I don’t think his lawyer would approve of me letting a reporter in to talk to his client,” Millard said at length.

  “You’re right, of course. Even if he trusts me and might tell me something that could be of use to you.”

  “Nice try.”

  “No, I mean it. His phone number was in Wallis’s pocket. The two argued. Tony knocked him down, watched him vomit all over himself on the floor. Obviously you suspect him, or he wouldn’t be here. A smart Jewish lawyer’s going to get him off, and you won’t get that promotion you’ve been wanting. Maybe he’ll tell me something you can use.”

  “First of all, I didn’t say the lawyer was Jewish,” said Millard. “And, by the way, he isn’t. And second of all, you’ve got a lot to learn if you think things work that way in the big city.”

  “It’s not
a crime to let me talk to him, is it?”

  “So you’re going to be a jailhouse snitch, is that it? I thought you were on this Tony Eberle’s side.”

  He was right, of course. I had no argument for that. Millard was a tougher nut to crack than the police back in New Holland.

  “You know, it kind of hit me like a slap when you jumped out of my car that night,” he said as he stood to show me out. “Maybe I came on a little strong. Can’t blame a guy for that. But if I’m saying no to you today it’s not because you gave me the air. It’s just not done that way, is all.”

  I nodded and thanked him just the same.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll let you know when we release him.”

  “I left the hotel.”

  “Where can I find you, then?”

  “I’m staying at Tony Eberle’s apartment.”

  “I got to hand it to you,” he said with a chuckle. “You got a knack for putting yourself in the middle of things.”

  Outside the station, I ran into April Kincaid, who was approaching from the direction of my parked car, where Mickey was waiting for me. She huddled in her jacket in the light, misty rain, eyes on the wet sidewalk, and didn’t see me until I called her name.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I tried to get in to see Tony.”

  “So you can write more lies about him?”

  “I haven’t written any lies. And I’m not going to try to explain to you what a reporter does.”

  “You have no business here.”

  “Mickey asked me to come.”

  “What’s that little fairy got to do with this?”

  “Look, April. I came to help Tony.”

  “He doesn’t need your help,” she snapped. “And he doesn’t need Mickey, either. I’m taking care of things.”