by Ed Ifkovic
Suddenly, all our inclined heads swiveled as one to the doorway where Liz Taylor stood, bathed in the shrill honey-yellow glare of the outside light; just stood there, and in that moment seemed to take possession of the room. A statue, elegant really. And so dangerously perfumed and lipsticked and coifed that the line of dumbstruck men, positioned on the sofa, seemed frozen in a kind of saliva-drooling awe. Really, I mused, for God’s sake. She wore a satiny black cocktail dress, clinging, sequined, with a diamond necklace and on that wrist a diamond bracelet. Jack Warner’s bauble.
Behind her stood two paper-doll cutouts, an interchangeable young man and young woman, both in tweedy suits and horned-rimmed eyeglasses.
She spoke into the silence. “Where’s Jimmy?”
From the balcony Jimmy, unseen, cried, “Liz, you came to my party.”
Liz didn’t know where to look. “I told you I would.” A voice that was curiously Southern in texture, lilting, sweet.
Liz looked around and caught my eye. She nodded. But her look swept the room, and her eyes narrowed. “Jimmy, you lied to me.”
A pause. Jimmy’s drunken titter. “I lie to everyone. It’s my job.”
Liz fumed. “You said everyone from Giant would be here. George and Chill Wills…and…” She nodded over her shoulder. “I had them drive me here, knowing I’d be late for a house party an hour from here…” Her face closed up, furious, tears in her eyes. “Why do you do these things?” She drew her lips into a tight line.
At that moment one of the men on the sofa—one of the waiters from the Villa Capri—stood, dizzy with drink, emboldened, and sputtered, “Miss Taylor, I…” Suddenly, the room seemed to unloosen, relax. Mercy turned to me, Tansi took a step forward, Tommy and Polly walked away from each other. But it was all jerky, unsure movement, like a mechanical toy that wanted oil. It clearly alarmed Liz who, glaring one last time at the now-silent balcony, turned and fled the house, leaving a cloud of gardenia perfume that covered us like bedroom fantasy.
Silence. Then Tansi sputtered, “Well…”
Mercy whispered, “I love a woman who knows how to enter a room.”
I whispered back, “Anyone can enter a room, Mercy. The secret is knowing that when you leave that room, you take all the oxygen with you.”
No one moved. Jimmy clamored down and seemed surprised people were still there. “Was Liz actually here?” No one answered him.
I faced Mercy. “When can we leave?”
Tommy belched, made a drunken apology. He ricocheted his way to the bathroom, headed first in the wrong direction. So he’d never been there, I realized. On his way back, he carried a black-and-white photograph in a gold-gilt frame. Face flushed, hands shaking, he waved the photograph at Jimmy.
“What?” asked Jimmy.
“Why do you have this picture of you and Max Kohl on your wall?”
Jimmy squinted, pushed his glasses up his nose. “I dunno. At some bike race,” he mumbled. “Like we raced in that competition outside of Salinas.” It was a snapshot of Jimmy and Max, both on motorcycles, both staring into the camera with insolent, hardened glares, looking like twins in worn leather jackets. “It’s me on my bike. It ain’t nothing.” He shrugged.
Tommy shook. “I don’t see any pictures of high-school chums here, Jimmy.” Sarcastic, sloppy. “Just that creep who scares everybody that bumps into him.” Polly, holding his forearm, her nails into his sleeve, kept whispering, “Enough, for God’s sake. Do you know how you’re coming off?”
Quietly, almost to himself, Jimmy muttered, “Maybe because we never were high-school buddies.”
Then Jimmy left the party. He simply did a half-bow, almost regal, and walked out his front door and didn’t return. Tansi joined me and Mercy, so close I could smell her perfume.
“Mercy,” I said, “let’s leave.”
Tommy was confessional now, hiccoughing his way through forbidden tales. “Max Kohl,” he kept yelling, louder and louder. He spun tales of Jimmy’s dark, clandestine life, a life squandered in the shadows of Hollywood valleys and hills. Polly couldn’t shut him up, and I didn’t want him to. Something was being said here. Tommy faced me. “You know why Carisa died?” He paused, looking from me to Tansi to Mercy. “It wasn’t the money or even that baby. That baby could have been a dozen different guys’ baby. Jimmy never slept with her, you know. The real reason was that she was going to expose his filthy sex life. That’s why, I’m telling you.” He went on. “It was Josh and Carisa who plotted revenge. Jimmy threatened Carisa. He got scared. Don’t forget Fatty Arbuckle, for Christ’s sake. Scandal’s gonna kill him.”
I broke into the rambling speech. “So you’re saying Jimmy killed Carisa?”
Tommy, blurry eyed, “I ain’t saying nothing. About that. I’m saying that Jimmy shouldn’t have a picture of him and that…that…man Max on his wall. It’s not…”
He stopped. Tansi began to move, and she was furious. She stood in front of Tommy. “This is a crock and you know it. How dare you call Jimmy one of…one of those people.”
Tommy rolled his head back and forth. “I’m sorry to offend the head cheerleader of his fan club…”
He didn’t finish because Tansi had slapped him full in the face.
***
Weary, I stepped into the hotel lobby, after a mournful goodbye to Mercy whose parting words were, “Edna, you do know how to show a girl a good time.” I smiled wistfully. On the drive back no one said a word, with Tansi and Nell silent in the back seat, Tansi still shaking and a little embarrassed. Neither she nor Nell said goodbye, just rushed out of the car.
Jimmy was sitting in the lobby. “Edna,” he called to me. And I started. He’d never used just my first name before. Always Miss Edna. “I’ve been waiting.”
I smiled. “For me? You could have found me where you left me. At your home.”
“I had to get out of there. Everything got wrong there. I had things I wanted to share with you, but Tommy ruined everything.”
“It’s late.”
“Can I talk to you in your room?”
“Not tonight. I’m tired.”
“I…”
“Jimmy.” I was irritated. “You’ll just spend the time talking about yourself—your sad, hapless vision of your sad, hapless life.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, loudly.
“I don’t know what’s fair with you. Just what are the rules? They’re your rules in your universe. Meanwhile a young woman has been murdered…”
“And you think I don’t care, that I’m that selfish?”
“Yes.”
“I…” He stopped.
I sat down in a chair facing him and spoke quietly. “Tommy said some nasty things about you. About your life…your…” I stopped.
“I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before. Tommy gets drunk and always says the same old story. He thinks I’m supposed to be that hayseed kid on a tractor in Fairmount, the two of us ambling past the cemetery and stealing crab apples up the road. You know, I wasn’t his friend in Fairmount.”
“He’s your shadow.”
“And that’s driving me crazy. Everybody is driving me crazy.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Leave him behind. I have to.” He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, then put them back on, pushing them up his nose. He looked around. “Yeah, I’ve done a lot of strange things. Hey, what can I say? It’s me. But Tommy makes up a lot of it. You know, I tried to get him bigger roles in Giant and Rebel. But he’s wooden, phony. He acts. It ain’t my fault. He resents me. And I know when he’s drunk it all comes out.”
I stood, turned to go. “Good night, Jimmy.”
“Wait.” He reached into his pocket. “I wanted to give you this book.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not James Whitcomb Riley, all that frost on the pumpkin and jingle, jingle bells and clippity clop, clop…”
He grinned. “No.” He handed me Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. “My favorite book. I give co
pies to everyone I respect.” I took the volume from him. I’d read it a decade before, vaguely liked it—was oddly not surprised that he was attracted to it.
“It’s a lovely story,” I said.
He touched my sleeve. “It’s me, Edna. A man is stranded in the Sahara after a plane crash, you know, and he meets this alien, the little prince who comes from a planet the size of a home, come to earth to find the secret of life. When I first read it, I found the greatest line: ‘It is only with the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ Think about it, Edna. That’s how to see the world: caring, love—all there inside you. You know, if you ever meet a little man with golden hair, he’s the one, Edna. The little prince. Don’t you see? The beautiful golden-haired prince has come onto Earth for a short time, the blink of an eye, and then…is gone. Don’t you see, Edna? Briefly, and then gone.”
I drew in my breath. “Jimmy.”
“Me, Edna. Me.”
I looked at him. Behind his thick eyeglasses those myopic eyes glistened with wetness.
***
Late at night, alone in my rooms, I sat by the window staring into L.A. nighttime. One boulevard after another of shattered lifetimes, fragile lives silhouetted against spotlighted palm trees. The slender paperback of The Little Prince lay nearby, a talisman of supernatural power. Taken from Jimmy’s hand, it seemed to possess energy. How foolish I am! A pleasant enough book, enchanting, really, but too simplistic, too ethereal. Nothing of the nuts-and-bolts of real people, my forte.
Unable to sleep, I’d ordered a pitcher of martinis, though I intended to sip but one. I sat there, the martini glass sweaty, and I made mental notes. The murder. The murder. The murder. Carisa and Lydia and Josh and Sal and Tommy and Polly and Nell and…and…Bit players suddenly writ large.
I thought about Jimmy and his gift of The Little Prince. Well, a step up from that Hoosier hack. But then I recalled Jimmy’s recitation of that pivotal, theatrical line: “It is always in the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Essential. Invisible to the eye. The heart. What was invisible to the eye here? What needed to be made visible, translated into the stuff of evidence? What compels a murderer? What? What?
I sipped my martini, finding it too warm now. I put down the glass and stared across the room at The Little Prince. James Dean. JD, the monogram of the disenchanted. Juvenile delinquent. The little prince. Lost star in the heavens. Lone star in the Marfa desert.
I reached over and extracted the last of the cigarettes I’d taken from Jake Geyser, idly flipped open the matchbook I’d stuck under the cellophane—My God! I’m imitating Jimmy now—struck a match and watched it burn against the black window before me, the heat touching my fingers. I finally lit the cigarette. The last in Jake’s pack, the king-sized Chesterfields, so I crumpled and tossed it into the basket nearby. I sat there then, smoking, barely inhaling because I rarely did that anymore, and my mind suddenly focused, like reversing binoculars and seeing everything up close, etched, vivid; the distant almost invisible world now as big as a sun star. And there it was.
At that moment I knew.
CHAPTER 20
But the following morning I wasn’t so sure. I had a theory, a reasonable idea of what happened, but the corners of my conclusions were ragged, shifting. I lingered over coffee, bit into the cinnamon toast I’d ordered, popped a strawberry into my mouth. I needed to talk to Mercy, who knew these people. No—not these people—this world. Hollywood beliefs, the cock-eyed value structure, hermetic and glass-enclosed, that conditioned these movie folk to move to dark and ugly extremes. Worlds on celluloid: worlds in real life. Blurring perhaps? Overlapping?
James Dean, his words to me one night. We come to believe what they write about us, and then we force the others around us to genuflect in agreement.
I got confused. The strawberries were tart to the taste, and I grimaced. How is it California, perpetual sunshine and acres of lush fields, can produce such bitterness out of brilliant light and bracing air and a paintbox blue sky?
Quite simply, it does.
I dialed Mercy’s number and caught her at home. “Can we meet later to talk?”
“Edna, you sound so serious.”
“I am. I have an idea.”
I heard Mercy breathe in. “About the murder?”
“Yes.”
I found a phone book in the desk drawer, leafed through it, and found what I was looking for. I dialed the number.
“Good morning,” a deep, firm voice answered.
“Mr. Vega,” I said. “I have more questions.”
“Yes?”
“But not of you. I have a request.” I wanted to talk to his granddaughter Connie.
“But she is not here, only weekends, you know. I believe I told you that. During the week she stays with her mother.”
“Could you give her my number?”
Again, the hesitation. “My daughter works. And, well, it’s summer. Connie stays with her cousins, the beach, the outdoors, friends…”
“I’d like to try.”
“I need to reach my daughter first.”
“Of course.”
Fifteen minutes later, still sitting there, the phone rang, and I answered it on the first ring. Vega said his daughter, reached at work, deferred to his judgment. And he agreed. There was no guarantee Connie was home, though it was still early morning. Chances are she would still be in bed. “You know how young people are,” Vega said. “And it’s a hot summer.”
Connie, groggily answering the phone, had already been awakened by her mother, who told her I would be calling. The girl seemed wary, perhaps unused to conversations with older strangers. A good thing, that I approved. Much of contemporary child rearing alarmed me; children in the post-war era were coddled, indulged, foolishly flattered. They would become insolent, demanding adults in a day soon after my death. They would be, the thought did not please me, James Dean.
Connie and I spoke for a few minutes, my questions this time more directed, less diffuse. Now, truly, I had a clearer vision of what I needed to know. So we reviewed the same story, and Connie seemed irritated when I brought up the woman she had seen waiting outside Carisa’s apartment, the woman she thought was waiting for Jimmy/Tommy as he ran out of her building. I wanted Connie to describe the car. Not surprisingly, Connie was filled with details now. I smiled. Young folks know cars, especially in the car culture world of California. They might not look closely at people, perhaps, but at objects of desire, yes, indeed.
I thanked her and hung up.
Later on, sitting in the commissary waiting for Mercy, I fiddled with a napkin, jotting down words in a list, methodical, the way I take notes for my novels. My quick, inquisitive eye, scanning library archives, historical tracts, yellowing newspapers in dim, dust-choked rooms. I know how to grasp the salient point, that gold nugget of anecdote, some revelation of character. Now, pensive, I listed what I considered a concise rationale for my theory. Yes, I thought. Well, maybe.
Mercy surprised me, and I jumped. “Edna, the studio will provide you with reams of wonderful writing stationery,” she said, grinning. “A napkin?”
“There was a time when I could remember the minutest details. These days, well…”
Mercy slipped into a chair. “I have gossip for you, Edna. I was weaving my way through the Byzantine maze of the back lot and there was little Nell Meyers, probably still with echoes of African chants in her ears and the resounding boom of Tansi’s lovely slap against Tommy’s face. And she’s walking with a quaint cardboard box, prettily tied with a red string. Nell, it seems, is leaving her job. Today.”
I started. “What? Why would she do that so suddenly?”
“I asked about that. She said she’d actually resigned two days ago, told her boss, but didn’t tell us at Jimmy’s.”
“And why not? It seems the natural thing to do—to tell your friends.”
“She said she wants
to go away quietly. I guess Carisa and Lydia dying spooked her. She told me Hollywood’s not right for her. She’s going to a small hamlet in Pennsylvania, where her mom’s from, I gather.” She stopped. “Edna, what’s that look on your face?”
I had blanched, shifted in the seat. “This is not good news, her leaving.” Nell, fleeing with a cardboard box and a Greyhound ticket to some dirt road corner of civilization. Speaking rapidly, I outlined my ideas to Mercy, who turned pale, but added, finally, a caveat. “Edna, these are random bits of information, compelling, I have to admit. But this notion about Nell. Well, isn’t that a stretch?”
“What else have we got?” I asked. “We have to stop her. I mean, she’s not leaving today, is she?”
Mercy nodded. “That’s what I find strange. Yes, she is. Ticket in hand.”
“We need to do two things,” I said, staring at the ragged napkin before me, frayed and crumpled. “One, you find Nell. If need be, stall her from leaving. And I need to run this by Detective Cotton. I need his advice here. And,” I added, eyebrows rising, “we may need him to get to Nell.”
While I phoned Detective Cotton, Mercy went looking for Nell, who seemed to be making a sentimental round of goodbyes to people who scarcely knew her. Bustling down a hallway, I spotted Mercy. She shook her head as I approached, nodding toward a doorway where Nell lingered. She was with a make-up artist, chatting away, her cardboard box resting at her ankles. Nell said a hearty goodbye to the woman, and the woman looked annoyed. Nell, however, was smiling. “I will miss you people.”
Mercy mumbled to me. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Could I have a minute of your time?” I said to her as she turned from the doorway, but Nell closed up, the smile gone. She looked nervous. “Why?”
“About Lydia.”
Nell shook her head. “No. Don’t you see? I don’t want to be part of this any more.”
But I persisted. Mercy joined in, speaking softly and even smiling, and Nell found herself sitting across from us in the commissary. I sat there, iron-willed, jaw set, eyes sharp and focused.
“Nell, I just need to ask you something.”
