The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  “You can’t make her come back.” Madge crouched and scuffed along the gravel. “You can hurt yourself all you want, but she’s gone. Nothing makes her come back. You’re left with nothing. You don’t know that yet? You can’t even save the blood. You save that blood and it’ll be used against you. I’m not saying drop it. Do what you want, but if you keep it, and the police arrest you, well, what have you got? Her blood from the last place you saw her. Sounds guilty to me. Wait. Here’s another.”

  I dropped the gravel. I felt something mess up inside me, like I’d dirtied a room, like I’d made a choice between holding Rose close and keeping myself out of jail.

  “We’ve got a bunch of drops here,” Madge said.

  “So she stood. This is where she tried to flag down cars.”

  “No. If she’d stood, all the drops would be round, like the first one. These along here are a mess. See the rain, how a drop makes one round circle? Now look. These drops are long. They look like sperm. Yes, they do! You know they do. We all saw the same slides in fifth grade.” Madge held her cigarette to the ground so I could see by its coal a cluster of dried brown drops, some wet again from the rain.

  “So she didn’t stand,” I said. “She was hurt and panicky. She jumped and waved at a car. Oh, God, she must have been scared.”

  “And then ran the opposite way?” Madge looked at me, and I followed her face to her hand, then followed her hand as it pointed through glare from a passing car, past the mess of stains at my feet to a trail of drops nearly hidden at the edge of the gravel. The drops weren’t two feet apart. They were one after the other, a little blood chain that stretched down the gravel into the darkness. Rain fell on my hair and my face. The car’s lamps lit the gravel and then were gone, the car gone, the gravel all dark again.

  “She couldn’t have her hand wrapped and still bleed like that. What happened to the fabric?” Madge flicked on her lighter until it got too hot and she tossed it hand to hand.

  “She did have cuts on her arms. Maybe she got cut on these bushes. That’s what the blood’s from.”

  “On this hedge?” Madge tried to stick her hand in a juniper hedge, and she couldn’t get her fingers in more than an inch. “Gardeners trim these hedges ten times a week. Do you see sharp twigs sticking out? She wasn’t cut here. I say the blood’s from her hand. She dropped whatever wrapped her hand.”

  We couldn’t find fabric anywhere—the drape of rayon I’d cut from my skirt with a glass shard. We shook the hibiscus and looked on both sides of the tall gates lining Sunset. We woke a dog that jumped on his side of an iron fence nearly to its top spikes, trying to bite us. No drape, just the few round drops of blood where Rose had walked Sunset west of Beverly Glen, then the mess of blood where something happened, then the blood chain that led fast the opposite way. By the time we ran back to Madge’s squeaky car, nobody smoked in the triangle park. Rain fell hard. The blood chain had washed off the gravel, and Sunset was clean, with no sign at all that Rosemary had run from whatever chased her.

  * * *

  That night in the greenroom, Madge fought with Apache Girl. The Gardens manager, Granny, had to stand between Madge and Apache. Granny is a man, not a real granny. He looked huge and gray between them, a rock between two feather clumps.

  “This is the thanks I get,” he said. “‘Oh, thanks for hiring me, Mr. Granlund, I promise not to fight before showtime or tear your beautiful costumes.’ And you’re out there with smiles, right? Charlotte, where’s your headdress? Fighting over lipstick. Do I care about lipstick? Here.” He grabbed Madge’s. “Now you’ve got lipstick. Christ. Any more fighting and I’ll throw you in the back of my car and dump you in the ocean. Full house tonight, girls. Someone help Charlotte with that headdress, will you? I’ve got . . .”

  That was Granny. A nice guy in a middle-aged thin-hair way. He was Granny to most of us and Uncle to a few, with a different niece every month. But he could send a girl places. He could lift a girl to MGM with a phone call. We knew it, and tried not to fight.

  “It wasn’t your color,” I said.

  “I know, but I hate her.”

  I tossed Madge my lipstick, and I leaned on the wall near the greenroom door. The greenroom wasn’t green. It was a pasty white with old dirt scuffs near the baseboards.

  “Look at her. Watch her swing those hips at Granny. She’s got no troubles at all. I hate her.”

  “We probably imagined the bloodstains.”

  “Sure,” Madge said. “Oil drips like that all the time. Drip, drip, then splash all around with little sperm tails, then drip-drip-drip the other way down the road. It’s oil.”

  “So it wasn’t oil. Something else, then.”

  “You want to go back and see? You can’t. They’re gone with the rain. Watch Apache. You watching? Somebody sent her carnations.”

  “Here’s what I think happened,” I said. “Rose walked along Sunset and waved at a car. When she waved, the cloth fell off her hand and she bled on the ground. Then the car pulled up and she ran to get into it. Nothing bad at all.”

  “Then next we call hospitals. Somebody picked her up and drove her to a hospital.”

  “I like it,” I said. “I was worried out there, on Sunset. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. What happened to the bloody fabric?”

  “Don’t be simple. You thought what I thought. And if she dropped the cloth when she waved down a car, do you think she’d pick it up before she ran to that car? Do you really think she’d remember to bend down and pick it up? The cloth’s already a bloody mess, right? Wouldn’t she leave it and run to the car? We didn’t find any cloth.”

  “The wind blew it away. An animal took it. Raccoon. Or a coyote.”

  We lined up alphabetically by Indian. Madge shoved around until just before curtain, when she stepped into line in front of me. She shook her orange Chippewa bodice. The name sparkled in orange sequins across her breasts: CHIPPEWA.

  “Here’s what I think happened,” Madge said. “She walked along Sunset and the cloth around her thumb dripped. Just a little, every now and then. She saw a car and waved. She waved her good hand because her bad hand hurts, right? She waves her good hand. The car pulls over and stops close to where she’s standing.”

  The orchestra in the Zanzibar Room began our overture, drums and a long, low clarinet wail. More jungle than Indian.

  “I’m not sure about this part,” Madge said. “If the guy was driving east he might have been alone in his car. He’d cross lanes, then pull up to Rose and open his door. The driver’s side, that’d be next to Rose, if he’s driving east. If he’s driving west, there’s two guys in the car and the guy in the passenger seat is next to her. Either way, door opens, guy tries to pull her in, she fights him, he grabs at her and gets the cloth from around her thumb, but she’s free. She runs—and the car follows. The car’s moving forward or back, depending on which way it’s facing. The car catches Rose, maybe cuts her off. We didn’t see where the blood ended so we don’t know what happens after that. But I think he pulled her into the car.”

  The music grew loud, the greenroom door opened, and we all raised our arms in feathery Vs.

  “Did she know him? The driver, did Rose know him? Is that why she ran?”

  We all smiled wide. Madge had to talk through her teeth. “I don’t know. How the hell do I know? I have no idea why you were on Beverly Glen with your friend, and don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Watch Apache, goddamn her. I pulled most of the pins from her headdress.”

  We step-touched into the Zanzibar, semicircle in front of the bandstand, and turned toward the audience at their cozy tables. Arms down, then reaching side to side, step-touch, sway. Step-touch, sway.

  During the second sway I spotted Stany at a front table close to the bandstand. Third sway, and I saw who she was with: Joan Crawford. Fourth sway to swallow all that, Joan’s eyes and jet gown, to see Stany light a cigarette and finger-wave and smile, and fifth sway I faced the other side of the room, tables
close to the kitchen swing door.

  Small table, crappy, but perfect for Detective Conejos and Officer Joe in his cop uniform. I saw Conejos’s trilby. I saw Joe’s badge. I couldn’t see the gun on Joe’s belt, but I knew it was there.

  Our headliner walked to the mike. Tonight she was just in from New York. They always came just in from somewhere terrific, like New York. Before the ships stopped running they came from London, too, and from Paris or Monte Carlo, or said they did. Now they all came from New York, perky with manicured nails and gardenias tucked in their hair rolls. They smeared petroleum jelly on their teeth but didn’t share with the revue girls. If I turned to look at our headliner, I’d see her mouth sparkle under a gold spotlight. The drums beat her cue, and she sang.

  Transition for us: no step-touch now. We wove between each other, in and out. I’d step out of the weave and see Stany and Joan and then I’d turn, see Joe and Conejos watch me from their crappy table, step into the line and weave, and faces disappeared into colored feathers. Purple for Cherokee, pink for Paiute. Tomahawk and beaded shawl, we love them all.

  My third weave I saw Granny pull a chair next to Joan and sit down. I said Granny could lift a girl to MGM, right? That’s what he did for Joan Crawford. One phone call, two, and Joan had her screen tests and publicity shots. She was just a revue girl and then whoosh, lifted up.

  We Indian girls turned and held hands. We faced the headliner, lifting clasped hands and swinging them down.

  From our mighty plains they come

  They fish in our lakes and streams

  They weave with hands strong and worn

  They live in America’s dreams

  We turned, one girl at a time. Cherokee, Chippewa, Cree. And I saw someone else at Stany’s table, across from Joan, someone I’d seen before on Halloween night in Stany’s backyard. I didn’t know his name, never saw him in light, but he was a thief. He ran past me on the path from Stany’s yard to the road. He left Rose in a hundred glass shards. I’d thought my brother killed Rose, but it could have been this guy, who used hair pomade and unbuttoned his tuxedo jacket to settle in. Did he have cuts on his hands? I couldn’t see.

  My legs went numb. They moved without me. They step-touched. The guy watched me from Stany’s table. He lifted his hand and scratched his nose. Elegant fingers. He couldn’t recognize me, not as Cree Girl. Not in green feathers. My throat swelled. It started shallow, in my mouth, so I had to take air gulps. Then way down my throat I felt tight. I wheezed. My chest lifted high with each raspy breath.

  Next to me, Madge hit my arm. “Watch Apache.”

  I could wheeze and follow directions at the same time. I learned it in Hollywood. I lifted my arms, step-touch, eyes blurry, and ahead of us, Apache stuck one hand to her feathery headdress, which tilted forward and shook over the tables next to the dance floor. Granny saw, too, and ran to help. Behind us the headliner held her last note and we bowed, except for me, because I couldn’t breathe, except for Apache, because her headdress fell into a guy’s T-bone plate. The crowd clapped, except for Conejos and Joe. They weren’t at their table. I looked for them, I looked for Joe’s uniform. I wheezed. I didn’t know they stood behind me until they pressed me on each side and Joe said, “You’re arrested for murder.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Like a fortune-teller peering into the future, the beauty camera’s lens is focused on YOU! And, let us add, it doesn’t miss a single line, wrinkle, or blemish on your skin.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  The Hollywood Division police station was a brick building on Wilcox with a receiving hospital next door, kind of pretty, but out of place in a town that doesn’t use brick. In the dark it looked sad and heavy: a guy whose girl has shoved him into a deep lake.

  I held my vaporizer and kept squeezing that rubber bulb to get medicine in my throat. Then the vaporizer was gone, and I wore a city-issue orange shift, and a matron pushed me through Hollywood Division with rooms of cops sitting and talking, standing at telephones, no exact words but just talk, and once in a while a woman’s sobby cries somewhere down the hall. Across the linoleum, above a long counter that held up talking cops, cigarette smoke floated past two hanging lights.

  A murderess doesn’t get the big room with the long counter. I got the corner room with no windows and the two-hour wait. I got the wood table scored with initials and swear words. When Conejos came in, he stood in the doorway and turned his head toward the hall, like he’d come to the wrong room and he’d stored his own murderess somewhere else.

  He yelled to the hallway, “Water in here!” He turned to me and asked, “You thirsty? I’m thirsty. It’s a hot business. What happened on Halloween?”

  “The Palladium. I told you before.”

  He stood across from me, in front of the door. He’d taken off his hat. His brown hair stuck to the sides of his head. “Yeah, you told me. Tell me again. Pretend I’m deaf and you’ve got to yell. Tell me about the Palladium.”

  “Dancing. Tommy Dorsey and some singers. We went.”

  “And you got there . . .”

  “About ten,” I said. I kept laying my palms flat on the wood table and then curling my hands. Curl, and then flat again. The fingerprint ink on my hands made nice smudge marks. “We got a ride from our dorm. It’s not far, it’s—”

  “Yes, and what happened at the Palladium?”

  “We danced.”

  “And you left together?”

  I curled my hands tight. The ink had left finger ghosts on the table. “No. It was crowded. I lost Rose in the crowd and I walked home. Alone.”

  “Time?”

  “Maybe midnight?”

  “Funny,” he said. “That’s the time a cabbie swears he took Rosemary Brown for a ride. Described her, too. Hard to forget, a girl like that. Fancy ribbons, a big flower in her hair. Green suit that fit pretty good. Oh, and our cabbie swears Rosemary Brown had a friend with her. How did he describe the friend? ‘Not as good looking but okay on a dark night.’ Does that sound like you? Blond hair rolled a lot like yours right now. You breathing okay? Because I want you to keep breathing. We’re just talking here. Hard to be friends with a glamour doll, right? She gets the wolf calls and what do you get? You ever angry about it? You ever think she didn’t deserve all that attention?”

  “Sure, but I didn’t kill her.”

  “It’s hard to be friends with a girl like that, is what I’m saying. Where did the cabbie drive you?”

  “What cabbie?”

  He smiled. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and nodded, like he agreed with me. “Miss Stanwyck—Missy—says she’ll invite me to a premiere. How do you like that? Me at a premiere.” He didn’t look at me. He sat half his butt on the table and took a knife from his pocket to shave his pencil. Everything hit my ear loud: the creaky wood when Conejos shifted weight from foot to hip, his knife flipped open and attacking a pencil, scrape-scrape, shaved curls falling to the table in light poofs, his finger pushing them into a pile. When a detective doesn’t talk, every sound in the room talks for him, and they’re not good sounds. They say, You filthy liar.

  “Tell me again about Halloween.”

  I’m a filthy liar. Filthy. “I couldn’t find Rose. I looked, but so many people—I couldn’t see her. I stood on the gallery stairs and looked for her hair in the crowd, how bright her hair was, but so many people, I couldn’t . . . couldn’t see her, so I left. Got my stuff from Hat Check and left.”

  “The cabbie’s wrong? Is he a liar?”

  “Maybe Rose took that cab. Maybe another girl went with her.”

  “Some girl who looks like you,” Conejos said. “Your height and hair color, your brown coat.”

  “Sure.”

  “Some girl who wasn’t wearing her coat at midnight in the cold.” He pushed and pushed the pencil shavings on the table, a line of wood curls and lead. They popped and flew over carved words and gouges. Liar.

  “Tell me about Rosemary’s friends. She have a lot of friends?” />
  “Girls didn’t like her, but yeah, she had friends. Guys, mainly. I don’t know them all.”

  “She have any guy friends at the Palladium that night?”

  “No. I mean, she danced, but not with one guy.”

  “Okay, what guys?”

  “Sailors and some flyboys. A guy with freckles. One guy in a suit.” All true. I could see them dance in a big clump around Rosemary. I could hear Tommy Dorsey’s horn from the stage.

  “Guy in the suit. What did he look like?”

  “Blond hair. A little short and wide through the chest. His jacket pulled at the shoulders. Tight.”

  “And the freckles?”

  “Different guy. Freckles and brown hair, that’s all I saw. Oh, and he bought Rose a drink.”

  “The drink?”

  “Just a gin fizz.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What?”

  Conejos stood, and the table creaked. “The room’s crowded, right? Packed like a cheese crock. You can’t find your friend. It’s late, you’re tired. You even climb the stairs and look down on the crowd to find her. I’ve got this right? You did this, right?” He sat in the chair across from me and shoved his knife at the pencil bits. “Then how come you know who she danced with?”

  Rose would know what to say. Rose would open her mouth, and words—none true at all—would sail past me through the pencil dust, over scratched initials and foul words from all the liars who’d sat at this table and panicked. Rose would know what to say. Me, I didn’t know. I didn’t say anything.

  “Where did the cabbie take you and your friend?”

  “Don’t you know? Didn’t the guy tell you?”

  “I know,” Conejos said.

  “You don’t need me, then.”

  “Sure I do. You just admitted you were in the cab. You stuck by your friend that night enough to know who she danced with. Then she and you got in the cab and drove—”