Cast the First Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Even with the humiliation, the mocking, the cruelty, and the regrets—my God, the regrets . . .”

  He never completed his thought, pivoting in a new direction.

  “Tony’s not like me. He can’t accept the humiliation. He can’t live without the adoration. He craves it. And he knows it would disappear if people thought he was a queer.”

  “Is he?”

  Mickey folded his hands and looked away. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “April’s no better than me,” said Mickey, ignoring my comment. “She’s a whore just like me,” he added with a shrug, as if it weren’t perfectly obvious.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Who do you think introduced Tony to Bertram Wallis? How do you think she survives? She’ll give it up to anyone who might help her get ahead. That’s the one difference between us. She does it for herself. I did it for Tony.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1962

  Light usually wakes me, but Mickey had drawn the shades. I slept soundly and late, lying in the Murphy bed—in proper pajamas for a change—and dreaming of a lazy morning with nothing more momentous to worry about than the crossword puzzle. I dreamt of nothing in particular. Just thoughts of pillows and blankets. Nothing could be safer or more comfortable. The world could continue spinning through the heavens, but I was catching another few winks as it did. Then I heard the metallic click of a key turning in a lock. I sat bolt upright in the bed, expecting to see Chuck Porter and his cat burglars in tow, just as the door opened. But it wasn’t Chuck. Nor was it my second choice: Dorothy Fetterman. In the framed light of the doorway, I distinguished a solitary figure. Tall and slim and holding a bag, he switched on the light. It was Tony Eberle.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, alarmed. “Where’s Mickey?”

  “He must have gone out. He said I could stay. I left my hotel.”

  Tony closed the door behind him and entered the room tentatively, as if each step might trip a landmine. He circled around the bed, glaring at me the whole time, and approached the dresser.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re out,” I said, trying to ingratiate myself.

  Fat chance of that. I was a reporter from his hometown with more dirt on him than he would ever be able to scrub off. And now I was sleeping in his bed and chumming around with his best friend, who knew every secret I did and then some.

  “I turned myself in, you know,” he said, reaching into the middle drawer and scooping out an armful of clothing. He stuffed the lot into the bag and reached for more.

  “That’s not why they let you go.”

  “Nope. I got a fancy lawyer to work his magic. Now, thanks to you, I’ve got to get out of here before Dot finds out April can’t give her what she promised.”

  “The thermos?”

  He stopped emptying the drawer for a moment and turned to regard me. It seemed an idea had come to him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’ve got the pictures. So you can give them to me, I’ll give them to Dot, and everything’s square again.”

  “Except I’m not going to give them to you.”

  “What if I just take them?”

  “Do you really think I’ve got them with me?”

  Tony made a feeble attempt to intimidate me, taking a menacing step in my direction with clenched fists. Perhaps he’d learned that in acting class. But I wasn’t biting. Tony wasn’t a tough guy. He was a pretty boy.

  “Where are you going?” I asked once he’d abandoned his threatening posture and turned his attention back to the dresser.

  “Why should I spoil your fun? You’ll find me anyway.”

  “Are you and April running off?”

  “I’m getting as far from Hollywood as I can.”

  “What about Mickey?”

  Tony stopped stuffing again and, holding several pairs of briefs in his mitts, stared back at me. “What about him?”

  “You’re just going to leave him behind?”

  “He’s a big boy now.”

  “He’s your oldest friend, isn’t he? And maybe more than that.”

  Tony threw the underwear to the floor in anger, and, despite the tension of the situation, I had to resist the urge to snigger at the spectacle.

  “I’m not queer!” he roared at me. “I have a girlfriend. And Dot. And there’ve been plenty of other girls, believe me.”

  I said nothing. Just watched him from the bed.

  “Do I look like a fairy to you?” he continued once the silence in the room had grown too loud. “Do I mince around like a pansy? Do I?”

  “Of course not. Neither does Rock Hudson or—” God, I’d nearly said the name of the actor in the photographs. But then I realized that Tony must have known already. April had stolen the pictures, after all. So I said the name, and Tony didn’t flinch.

  “I’m not queer, I’m not queer, I’m not queer,” he repeated over and over, turning away from me.

  “Okay, Tony. But won’t you reconsider? What will become of Mickey if you abandon him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m going to do.”

  “I can get you back in pictures,” I said. “Dorothy wants the photographs so badly that she’ll arrange things.”

  Tony faced me again. “Do you really think Dot will do anything she doesn’t want to?”

  “But I’ve got the photographs.”

  “And as soon as you give them to her, I’m out again. Besides, do I want to make it by blackmailing my way into movies?”

  “I can give her the photos and reason with her.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about Dot. She lies; she’s ruthless. And she always wins. Everything’s ruined for me. My career’s over. I’ve got to get away from here. Away from Dot and Bertie Wallis and Skip Barnes and all the rest of them. Pathetic, disgusting people who’ve spoiled everything and everyone.”

  “What about April? She has her own ambitions.”

  “She loves me and will give up her dreams for me. We’ll disappear. Find some place decent to live. And we’ll never look back at what happened in this cesspool.”

  Tony sat on one of the two wooden chairs and hung his head. He fell silent. I slipped out of bed and approached him with caution. Deep in his misery, he may not have noticed me at all until I put a hand on his shoulder. He began sobbing, and there was nothing I could do to comfort him. I just stood there, hand resting on his shoulder, until he grabbed it and held it to his cheek.

  “Don’t tell them how you found me,” he said, pleading with me. “Don’t say you saw me like this.” He gazed up at me with the most beautiful, shining eyes I’d ever fallen into. “Please.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Dry. I hardly recognized Los Angeles without the rain.

  I looked up at the tall white building as I stepped from my car. This was a different world from the one Gene Duerson inhabited. Miles from the life Tony Eberle and April Kincaid led. A different reality from Mickey Harper’s. And mine, too, for that matter. I could see a light in the fifth-floor corner apartment. She was in. The doorman buzzed her and announced me, and moments later Dorothy Fetterman opened the door.

  “Ellie,” she said simply, and stood to one side, a signal for me to enter.

  She was dressed casually, in a manner of speaking. An oversized, loose-fitting wool sweater and simple white capris. She managed to look elegant even when lounging around the house. Ever the proper hostess, she offered me a drink, and we sat down for a chat.

  “No date on a Saturday night?” she asked.

  “I guess we’re both washing our hair this evening.”

  She coughed a phony little chuckle. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I want to talk to you about Tony Eberle.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  I wasn’t about to tell her I had. She surely felt double-crossed by April and was itching
to get her hands around her skinny neck.

  “No. But I wanted to revisit our discussion of a new role for Tony. Remember you promised me you’d arrange it.”

  “I said I’d put him in a picture if you got me what I wanted. And if he wasn’t involved in any way in Bertie Wallis’s murder. Neither of those conditions has been met.”

  “You didn’t recover a certain photograph stuffed inside a thermos?” I asked, feeling her out. Though I was fairly sure she knew I’d outwitted her hunting dogs with the decoy photo, I wanted to hear it from her. She obliged me.

  “We’re beyond the point of being coy, aren’t we? I know you let my boys find that thermos. You knew they wouldn’t realize there was more hidden somewhere else. Quite clever of you.” She paused to reflect. “And sloppy of Mr. Alden.”

  “Then you believe I have the photographs?”

  “Yes, I do. It surprised me. I had assumed you were bluffing. I thought Tony’s little girlfriend had taken them from you. She swore to me she had them. Described them in great detail. But now I see. April didn’t take them from you. You took them from her.”

  “Something like that.”

  Dorothy sipped her aperitif. Perhaps she thought she was nearing the end of her quest to retrieve the photographs. What would I want with them, after all? I’d hand them over to her for a reasonable sum, a promise to put Tony back into a picture, or a job. That was her first offer.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she began. “That’s why you’ve come, after all.”

  I was listening.

  “You know how important it is for me to have and destroy those photographs. You’ve done a remarkable job in finding them. Succeeded where I couldn’t. In fact, you’ve overcome my earlier doubts and convinced me that I want you on my staff.”

  “Will I be working with Mrs. Gormley?” I asked, batting my eyes and smiling eagerly. “Or Bo Hanson and Gene Duerson?”

  “I’m offering you an important position,” she said, a touch flustered. People didn’t usually mock her and her generous offers, I was sure. “You’ll assist me on delicate matters that require a woman’s touch. You’ve proven to be a very capable investigator. You’re smart. You have imagination. Why wouldn’t you accept the job?”

  “Because I don’t trust you, Miss Fetterman.”

  “Please, call me Dot.”

  “Miss Fetterman,” I repeated. “I don’t believe you’ll deliver what you promise. Or you’ll fire me as soon as you have what you want. Or you’ll ask me to do things I can’t, in good conscience, do.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Tony Eberle.”

  Dorothy stiffened in her seat. Then she reached for a cigarette from the box on the table.

  “So you tricked me. You said you hadn’t seen him.”

  “And you tricked me when you sicced Mr. Alden on me at Musso and Frank.”

  Dorothy expressed true surprise. “That’s what’s upsetting you? Miffed because a handsome man flirted with you only because I paid him to do it? Not the fact that three gorillas tore apart your room?” She twittered. “Really, I thought you were made of sterner stuff.”

  My nostrils flared. It had felt great to toss my drink on Andy Blaine the night before, but I needed finesse to work this situation. And I’d only taken a first sip; I wasn’t going to waste a good glass of whiskey on Dorothy Fetterman’s sweater.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Mr. Alden should have tried to charm the photographs out of me yesterday. Then perhaps you’d have them in your manicured mitts now.”

  She didn’t like that. Her mirth vanished.

  “All right. Tell me what you want.”

  “I’ve told you. Tony gets a contract for a real picture. Signed and ironclad. Then you’ll get your photos.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. “Nothing for the clever little girl from the back of beyond?”

  “The price just went up to two movies,” I said. “One more smart remark and Tony’s going to be starring in those pictures.”

  She tapped her cigarette into the ashtray. “I’ve got to know that the photographs are safe. Please tell me no one can get at them before you hand them over to me.”

  “No one.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “You can’t. But Mr. Alden couldn’t find them. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  She held up both hands in surrender. “All right, Miss Stone. Tony will get his contract. A second male lead in two upcoming pictures. We’ll start with The Colonel’s Widow. There’s a nice role for a young cavalry officer.”

  “Bertram Wallis’s movie?”

  “Yes. Mr. Balaban is determined to make it, even more so now that Bertie’s gone. We’ll have to change that title, of course. It’s awful. I’ll have our legal department draw up the contracts and send them over to his agent. What was his name again?”

  “Irving Greenberg.”

  “Oh, God. That old geezer? I thought he was dead.”

  Mickey was waiting when I returned to the Wilton Place apartment with a bag of potato chips and a fifth of whiskey under my arm.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Saving Tony’s career.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to Dot.”

  “I was. She agreed to draw up a contract, ironclad, to guarantee Tony two pictures. Good roles, including one as a cavalry officer in the film Wallis wanted to make. The Colonel’s Widow.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Despite my gratitude and growing affection for Mickey, I couldn’t quite bring myself to share the details of the photos with him. I still wasn’t sure how much I could trust him, whether he would betray everything I said to Tony and April, whom I didn’t trust either. After all, if they ever discovered the key inside my camera, all they would need to get into the safe deposit box was the address of the bank and my driver’s license. April was close enough to the height and weight described on my license to pass for me in front of a bank clerk who hated his job and couldn’t care less who fiddled around with the safe deposit boxes inside the vault.

  I cracked open the bottle and poured myself a drink. I sensed Mickey disapproved.

  “I appealed to Dorothy’s better nature,” I said, returning to his question.

  Mickey scoffed at me. “You know they were sleeping together, don’t you?”

  “That seemed obvious.”

  We talked for a couple of hours. We even laughed. But the conversation turned serious when I asked Mickey about his childhood.

  “You must have had a tough time.”

  “I used to pray to God that I’d change. I didn’t want to be a fairy. Nobody does. At least not when they first realize it.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I said, gathering my courage. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to my question.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  “A younger sister. Donna. Why?”

  I weighed my words carefully. Did I truly want to know the answer? And would it resolve anything in my heart? Would it amount to a comfort? Or simply confuse me? But the pull was too strong. I wanted to know, so I asked.

  “Did Donna know? Did she suspect?”

  He drew a deep breath as he considered his answer. “Of course. After a while, at least. Everyone else did. My mother, my father, the kids at school. They made my life miserable with the taunting. Everyone except Tony.”

  “He didn’t tease you?”

  “A little, maybe,” said Mickey with a sad smile. “But we were so close. I forgave him.”

  “And your sister?” I prompted. “How did she know?”

  He shook his head wistfully. “Kids are dumb, you know. They don’t have the experience. The only thing they know is what they’ve got. So Donna was my little sister. I was her brother. She loved me. She hated me sometimes. And later, when she understood, she was embarrassed by me. It must have been hard on her.”

  I wanted to
pursue the matter, but Mickey said he didn’t want to discuss it.

  “Hey, let’s invite Evelyn over,” I said to change the mood.

  Mickey shrugged. “I hardly know her. But if you’re looking for love . . .”

  Evelyn Maynard answered the door in a housecoat, her head wrapped in a red kerchief, like Rosie the Riveter. She brandished her cigarette holder as if it were . . . well, a rivet gun.

  “Ellie. The answer to my dreams. What are you doing here, angel?”

  “Staying across the hall for the time being. Mickey was gracious enough to take me in last night. Join us for a pajama party?”

  “Thanks for fixing the sink,” said Mickey once Evelyn had settled in on the corner of the Murphy bed. There were only two chairs in the place.

  “Don’t mention it. I heard the cops got Tony. Too bad.”

  “He’s out,” I said. “Got a good lawyer. Probably far from here by now.”

  Evelyn glanced at Mickey, surely wondering how he was going to manage the rent without his friend. She took a drag on her cigarette and asked if I was moving in. Mickey wrinkled his nose at the smoke but kept quiet.

  “Afraid not,” I said. “I’m holding out hope Tony will come back. I still think he’s going to be a star.”

  The three of us chatted into the small hours, getting to know each other better. I felt more and more comfortable with them. At some point late in the evening, I even confessed that I had a crush on Paul Drake. They both laughed.

  Evelyn was funny in a wicked way. A remarkable mimic with a wide range, she imitated singers like Connie Francis and Brenda Lee with uncanny skill. I could have done without her spot-on version of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “I Want You to be My Girl.” She was every bit as annoying and creepy as little Frankie. And with Mickey singing backup, I nearly ran from the room.

  Evelyn said she had something called Jiffy Pop in her apartment, and she dashed across the hall to get it. Ten minutes later we were coughing up smoke and eating burnt popcorn. More fun to make than eat. We discussed the release of Francis Gary Powers by the Russians and Jacqueline Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House, which both Mickey and I had missed. Evelyn had enjoyed it, though. We played charades, but that fizzled out. Awkward with three people. Evelyn suggested we play spin the bottle. That was my cue to go to bed.