Lone Star

by Ed Ifkovic

  “It’s police work. Stabs in the dark, looking for a light.”

  “Well, I have to contend with the slow simmer of Warner and the hiccoughing panic of Jake.”

  “Scylla and Charybdis,” I said.

  Tansi smiled. “More like Ma and Pa Kettle, fighting over a chicken bone.” But she leaned in. “But he’s already asking for Jimmy, who, by the way, I can tell he doesn’t like, not even having met him.”

  “Why?”

  “He referred to Jimmy and Marlon Brando as the dirt-under-the-fingernails school of acting.”

  “Who else did he ask about?” I wanted to know.

  Tansi whispered. “He asked me if knew Max Kohl.” She turned to Mercy. “Do you know a Max Kohl?”

  “No.” Puzzled. “He didn’t ask me that. It must be a name he picked up after my conversation with him.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “A bit player.”

  Tansi looked confused. “No, I don’t think he’s ever worked for us. At least I’ve never seen him on the Warner list. But he was—or is—part of Jimmy’s world, I gather. Cotton talked to me right after he talked to Lydia. She cornered me in the hall, panicking, and told me about her talk with Cotton. She mentioned Max to him—that he dated Carisa, disappeared, came back. She says his name just came out because she was nervous. Lydia says he’s been seeing her, since Jimmy left her. He calls her. She says he scares her.”

  “What in the world does that mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” She breathed in. “After she was fired, Carisa retreated into that apartment, and Max was seen around town with her. He’d met Lydia through her. But Max had a fight with Jimmy, Lydia said.”

  “Over what?”

  “Nonsense, Lydia said. I don’t know.” She sighed, weary. “I don’t know him. He was Jimmy’s motorcycle buddy, I guess. You know, Jimmy has that other life. Late night, riding his bike at breakneck speed into the Hollywood Hills. I saw him tear past, one night, hands in the air, whooping it up. He was with some other guys.”

  “Is he a suspect, this Max Kohl?”

  “Cotton wants to talk to him. Supposedly, he’d been staying with Carisa, but moved out last week. Lydia learned that from Carisa, who was scared of him, too. Lydia told me that once she told Cotton about Max Kohl, she couldn’t stop talking. And now she feels guilty. Like she got him in trouble. She’s afraid of him.”

  I nodded. “Lord, a new character in Jimmy’s world.”

  Tansi continued, “When Cotton asked Lydia where to locate Max, she said to ask Jimmy.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she said she doesn’t know where he lives. He showed up one night at her place with Jimmy and then alone. He’s stopped in, and they’ve gone out. He sits in the lobby of her building until she comes down. She’s afraid to say no to him. Jimmy would know where he lives. They’re buddies.” She paused. “Or were buddies. I don’t know. I don’t think Lydia is telling the whole truth. I know she doesn’t want Jimmy to know she’s seeing Max, so she’s lying. She’s hoping Jimmy will come back to her. But Lydia just babbles on and on. She said Max was a friend of Jimmy, and then said they had a fight and now hate each other. She told me she’d stopped talking to Carisa, and then said she just spoke to her days ago. I guess she just rambled on to Cotton.”

  I was impatient. “This is madness. Lydia makes no sense. What does this all mean?”

  Tansi shrugged. “Well, Lydia told me she broke down, weeping. Cotton left her alone, but said he’d talk to her later.”

  I turned to Mercy. “This Max Kohl intrigues me.”

  Tansi started rustling papers. “I think Lydia’s hysteria got Cotton to thinking there’s a lot more to this story than he first thought. She couldn’t keep her stories straight.” She looked at her watch. “I have to get back. Jake is a man possessed today. I heard him tell Warner that Jimmy has been nothing but trouble.”

  “All geniuses are,” I said. “Even those who murder.”

  Tansi rushed her words. “Oh, Edna, you certainly can’t believe Jimmy would hurt anyone?”

  “That remains to be seen,” I said. “I like the boy, but last night I saw a dead woman lying in a pool of blood.”

  Tansi gulped. “Oh, God, Edna. Please! I told you not to go there. That neighborhood. Nobody goes there.”

  “It’s not the neighborhood that killed her, Tansi.”

  Tansi whispered, “Yes, you two go there, and you find bodies.”

  I smiled. “Only one, Tansi.”

  “One is too many.”

  Mercy looked at Tansi, who looked exhausted. “Granted,” Mercy said. “But it wasn’t the neighborhood that killed her.”

  “Edna, my mother would kill me if you got hurt during my watch.”

  I stood. “I’m a big girl, Tansi. Have been for many decades, with no complaints. World wars, two of them, haven’t done me in. I doubt this will. I don’t need attending.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  I softened. “I know what you mean, and, all right, I understand. And thank you, dear. But a woman who can’t take care of herself, at any age, is a fool. Trouble for a woman should be, well, temporary.”

  Mercy was smiling, but Tansi looked offended. Mercy stood. “All our nerves are frayed. Tonight, eight o’clock, my apartment, no refusals from either of you. Wine and a tuna casserole and a loaf of homemade bread. And peach cobbler, from scratch. No refusals. The three of us, relaxing.”

  Tansi started to beg off, so I asked her, “Can you give me a lift, Tansi? I don’t want to ask for the studio car. I’d find Jake in the back seat dictating a memo to me about my errant behavior last night.”

  Tansi smiled. “Of course.”

  ***

  Mercy’s efficiency scarcely held room for the three of us, much less the bowls of food she spread out. We all ate too much, and I announced that I never ate tuna casserole because it reminded me of church potluck dinners back in Appleton, Wisconsin, but this—this was manna from the gods. “It’s because I include almond slivers,” Mercy said, “and bits of water chestnut I buy in Chinatown. But I really think it’s the wine talking.” And the peach cobbler: robust, oversized chunks of deep velvet fruit, banked under waves of thick heavy cream, slathered over a brown-tinged crust of brilliant pastry. “This isn’t cobbler,” I announced. “It’s sin.”

  On the hi-fi, Mercy played the same record over and over: Frank Sinatra. Music for Young Lovers. “Jimmy gave it to me. He loves it.”

  I noted the look on Tansi’s face: surprise, and a little hurt. Tansi was getting tipsy, and at one point asked, “Haven’t we heard this song before?” Mercy and I laughed hysterically. We’d heard it a half dozen times.

  “More wine, Tansi?” Mercy asked.

  A knock on the door. We all jumped, with me spilling wine on my sleeve. Red wine, no less. So much for this new blouse, overpriced at Saks to begin with. Mercy switched off the hi-fi.

  When she opened the door, a sheepish Jimmy Dean stood there, head cocked to his chest. “I heard the laughter.”

  “Jimmy, where have you been?” Mercy said. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

  “I know, I know. This Cotton guy questioned me at my apartment a few hours ago. Practically called me a murderer to my face. Quoted the letters Carisa wrote and wagged his finger at me.” He strode into the room, dropped himself into a chair. “I thought you’d be alone, Madama.”

  “I’m allowed to have guests.”

  Jimmy looked at me. “At least they’re friendly faces.”

  I spoke up. “Don’t count on it. Jimmy, tell me, what do you know about this?”

  He’d been drinking; not much, perhaps, but enough to make his eyes glassy. “Nothing. I rushed over to see her right after I left the stupid cocktail party. Okay, I admit that. Just drove there. But she wouldn’t let me in, I swear. We argued. I shouldn’t have gone there. But after that new letter…She said she’d see me burn in hell. Slammed the door. So I left.”

  “How long were yo
u there?” I asked.

  “Minutes.”

  “You tell this to Cotton?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just looked at me like I was a murderer.”

  “What time were you there?”

  “I dunno. Just after six or so. Later. Cotton asked me that.”

  “And you left—when?”

  “I dunno. I’d say minutes later.”

  “You see anyone?”

  “No.”

  I looked at Mercy. “We were there around eight-thirty. And Carisa was dead.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Tansi, comforting him, “You’re not a murderer, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy seemed just to notice her. “I just assume everyone knows that.”

  “Well, where were you today?” Mercy asked.

  “I had to get away.”

  “You always have to get away,” I said. He looked at me.

  “Well, I rode my bike into the hills. I couldn’t stand to be around people.”

  “How did you hear about Carisa?” I asked.

  “Lydia called me.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. Early. From the studio, I guess. She was hysterical. Cotton told me she blabbed about Max Kohl. I don’t know what that’s about.”

  “Who is this Kohl?” I asked.

  “A biker guy. We rode together. He stayed with Carisa. Fooled with her. Then he went after Lydia. Not a nice guy.”

  “And you are?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Not all the time.” A pause. “I didn’t do it, Miss Edna. Do you believe me?”

  “I’d like to.”

  Jimmy turned to Mercy. “Madama, you believe me, no?”

  Mercy nodded, kindly.

  “Tansi?”

  “I believe you.” She emphatically nodded her head.

  “Miss Edna?”

  “Prove to me that you’re innocent.”

  He laughed. “Somehow I knew you’d say that. So how do I do that?”

  “By telling the truth, every bit of it.”

  “I’ve told you…” He hesitated. “I didn’t want Carisa to die. She was making my life hell, but I didn’t want her to die.”

  “So who do you think did it?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “That neighborhood? A robber, maybe. I don’t know. She hung out with some bad types lately. Folks on drugs.” Another pause. “Help me, then, Miss Edna. You and Madama and Tansi. Help me.”

  “Jimmy, I don’t think the police want our help.”

  “The police want to railroad me. I could see it in that Cotton’s eyes.”

  We talked more, in circles, the hour getting late, and there seemed nothing left to say. But he lingered, stretched out on the floor, eyes half closed. Then, looking like he was ready to leave, he stood, walked around the room, inches from each of us, almost slow motion. He poured himself a glass of wine and quietly slipped back onto the floor, at the edge of the love seat where Tansi and I sat. He sat there, Buddha-like, swaying back and forth.

  “I’ve never been good solving problems, you know.” He half smiled. “Just creating them. Obviously. You know, I can’t get away from my mother,” he began. I looked at Mercy, who was shaking her head. “When I was nine,” Jimmy continued, “she died out here in California. She was my only friend, really, not my father, never my father, and she wanted me to dance, to sing, to talk out loud to people. To be something. She told me I was special—one of a kind. Imagine a mother saying that to a little boy. Not famous or good or rich. But special. I felt a glow all over me, like my mother had blessed me. Like I was touched on the head by a hand made of gold. And then she died on me, just left me like that. That cancer eating her away until I had nothing left to hold onto, without a road map. What did she expect, me to do it all by myself? And my father, numbed into silence, sent me back on that long train ride to Fairmount, alone on the Silver Challenger Express, just me. Alone. An orphan now. Me and my mother’s coffin. At each station I jumped off and ran up the platform to see that the coffin was still there—to make sure she was safe. I had to protect her, get her home. Me in my little wrinkled suit, running up and down the platform, out of breath, and then back to my seat. Over and over, till I got home. And then I sat there at the depot, me and the coffin, waiting. I was nine years old. Nine. With a cardboard suitcase and a dead mother.”

  “Jimmy,” Mercy whispered.

  I sucked in my breath. Was this performance? Or was this real, this bittersweet, sentimental monologue? Rehearsed, said so often, the mother story, Mercy had told me about. Real or not, this moment stopped me, brought me to tears. Either way, I was captivated.

  Long silence now. Three women stared down at him, waiting.

  Jimmy withdrew a recorder from his back pocket, waved it at us with a sheepish grin, and then, as we watched, began to play a reedy, high-pitched ballad: Sweet Molly Malone. She wheels her wheelbarrow through streets wide and narrow, c rying cockles and mussels alive alive-o! Plaintive, haunting, utterly perfect. The notes hung in the air, sweet and thin, floated, fell back upon him. Eyes closed, head inclined, he breathed into the instrument, and the song was exact, smooth and seamless. But near the end, inhaling, he missed a note, and the sour note broke the melodic flow. He paused, shook his head angrily, started over. Again the same wrong note. Quietly, he dropped the recorder into his lap, opened his eyes, and started to sob, his body rolling back and forth, his face wet with tears.

  CHAPTER 8

  At the Smoke House the next morning, just outside the studio gates, Mercy and I barely spoke. Jimmy’s late-night appearance and the melodramatic air he played on the recorder, and the awful, sloppy breakdown, lingered about us like a fog you couldn’t escape. Mercy looked tired. Jimmy, I learned, had stayed at the apartment long after Tansi drove me to the Ambassador. I stared into Mercy’s face. I sensed what she was thinking. Jimmy and the dead Carisa. Jimmy and the movie. Jimmy and the bone-marrow-deep sadness. Jimmy and the mother who left him. Jimmy and the unexpected late-night knock on the door. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. God, how quickly and emphatically that man-boy managed to insinuate himself into all our lives.

  “Well,” I began, “I gave my statement to Detective Cotton earlier, and he kept saying: Is that it? I finally told him he was getting on my nerves, and he pouted like a brat. What’s the requisite for becoming detective in L.A.—imbecility? When I say I’ve said my say, I assume others will believe me.”

  Mercy smiled. “Others don’t know you, Edna.”

  “They do now. Or, at least, one quivering soul does. Cotton likes to project a hard edge, a role he’s doubtless learned from Edward G. Robinson pictures. Cell block melodramas. Beneath it all, he’s a mediocre actor playing a part. It’s just that he can’t remember the lines.”

  “That’s because he has none. He’s an extra.” Mercy sounded weary.

  We drifted into silence. Gazing out the window at the sunny landscape, I asked when it was going to rain, and Mercy said, “Next year, maybe.”

  I pointed outside. “Hollywood manufactures everything else. Can’t they fabricate rain to break the monotony of endless, clear, and boring days?”

  “I don’t think you should move here, Edna.”

  “There’d have to be some climate changes first. I’d have to speak with someone.”

  We lingered, dawdled, drank more coffee. A lunch crowd was filing in, and I noticed Sal Mineo walking in with another young man. Mercy followed my gaze. “A little boy, no?” she remarked.

  “Another Jimmy acolyte, that boy with Sal?”

  Mercy flicked her head toward Mineo’s friend. “That’s Josh MacDowell. He was Jimmy’s drinking buddy, but one of the souls discarded along the way.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we’ll have to find out, won’t we?” I insisted. “Do you know him?”

  “To nod to. He works in wardrobe. He’s not an actor. He knew Carisa, too. I remember she ment
ioned him to me. Or maybe Jimmy told me something. I can’t remember.”

  The two men were walking by, but I raised my voice: “Hello.” Said too loudly, I realized too late, some heads turning. An old lady requesting the popular Mineo’s autograph?

  Sal stopped. “Miss Ferber,” he greeted me. Respectful, nodding; the dutiful polite boy. Nice New York boy, transplanted west. But he seemed ready to keep walking.

  Mercy, following my glance, took over. “Hello, Josh.”

  The young man looked at her, without recognition. Sal glanced at her, then at Josh.

  “I was Carisa’s friend,” Mercy continued. And the young man went ashen, his shoulders sagging. “I remember she mentioned you.”

  I looked at him. Nearly six feet tall, perhaps, but pencil-thin, raw-limbed, with prominent Adam’s apple, high cheekbones and deep-set eye sockets, a cadaver-like face, fairly macabre, with an oversized jutting Roman nose. So fair of skin, parchment-toned, he easily reddened. He mumbled something back, but I couldn’t catch the words.

  “What?” From Mercy.

  He cleared his throat. “I still cannot believe it. When Sal called me…” He looked at Sal who seemed to be picking his nose, absent-mindedly, unhappy to be stopped there.

  He reminded me of someone, this loping, giraffe-like young man, with the ladder neck and the exaggerated parts. When he turned to look behind him—for no reason that I discerned—I suddenly thought: Aubrey Beardsley, some fin de siècle aesthete. I’d known so many in another world: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, before the war. Not that war but the first one, the big one, with the Kaiser. That war.

  “Would you like to join us?” I asked.

  Sal rushed his words: “No, thank you.”

  But Josh was already sinking into a chair, his body seeming to unbuckle itself, the joints giving way. Something, indeed, to watch. Sort of like an unglued Houdini.