“I remember when Valentino died. We all sobbed.”
“Imagine what Mary Pickford did. Watch those stairs. You have a flash?”
“No.”
“Here’s matches. It’s all I have.”
I took the matches and started down.
The girl tugged on my sleeve. “The money.”
I handed her my four dollars.
“Your suit,” she said.
“Right.” I climbed out. We changed clothes, in a way. She took my suit—skirt, jacket with satin lapels—and I snapped off trousers and an Orphan Annie blouse from the clothesline. “I’ll be cold,” I said.
“Grab that cardigan over there. It’s not mine. None of this stuff is mine.”
“Keep this lid open, will you? I don’t want to be in the dark.”
“It’s not bad,” she said. “We use the tunnel a lot, to hunt around. I found Bing Crosby’s snuff.”
“Exciting,” I said.
“I could sell it.”
“Keep the tunnel lid up,” I said.
About eight wood stairs brought me to a concrete and dirt tunnel under Marathon Street. I had to bend a little. Mary Pickford at fourteen would have run right through, head up, to Valentino. She wouldn’t have met cobwebs. The tunnel then would have been clean. I hit floating strands of cobwebs every foot or so, in my nose, on my hair, long strings of broken dust. I’d gotten about ten feet when I heard thump and the tunnel went dark.
“I can’t see in here. Hey! Keep the lid up!”
A scraping sound, pallets dragged over a tunnel mouth. Then quiet, and a car’s muffled zoom overhead.
I scraped a match on the concrete wall and saw enough to keep going. Every ten feet or so I scraped a match. Scrape and walk, scrape and walk, until the matches ran out. The laundry girl had only given me three. After the last match died, I stood for a while and forgot which way I’d come. When I stepped forward, I hit concrete. I set my fingertips on the wall and used them to follow the tunnel.
I could hear rats, I’m sure of it. Rats and tunnels, they’re partners. But Zukor wouldn’t creep along tunnels from Paramount to the Gold Palms, kicking a rat or two on the way. I’ll bet some studio guy had rat cleanup duty. Studios think of everything.
What do you do for Paramount?
Oh, I kill rats in the tunnel these guys use to visit their girlfriends. How about you?
Me? I don’t do much. Just give abortions to movie stars.
Crazy world.
Beats the bread line. At least I don’t sweep cigarette butts, like that guy there.
You want to know how I got from one end of a blackout tunnel to the other? My stomach and heart kept chasing me. I wanted to hug my knees and rock. Instead, I followed my fingertips along the concrete wall and I made up conversations. I thought of every dumb job at Paramount: elephant handlers for Mr. DeMille; nurses delivering Benzedrine; painters who zebra-stripe donkeys; one girl who can sing but not talk, and another who talks and has singing dubbed by the first girl; a diction coach who whacks a stick on her desk and makes both girls repeat vowels. Lots of dumb jobs, right to the end of the tunnel, another set of stairs to a hatch that lifted to a dark room.
In the room I felt for a light, bumped a wall, and traced fingers from the wall to inside a cool basin. I pulled against the basin to help me climb the last few steps beyond the hatch. Then a door opened, and someone pushed a button, and the room lit, white and harsh. The tunnel had ended at a men’s room.
I stood halfway out of the hatch next to a line of urinals. My eyes hurt and narrowed, brightness after the tunnel. Both my hands pressed in a urinal basin, but I couldn’t move them. I’d be seen.
I’d be seen anyway. The guy would see three stalls to his left, and he’d use one. He’d come out of the stall, look right, and see a sink, three urinals, an open hatch, and half a girl leaning out of a hole in the floor. Or he’d go directly to a urinal. Then open hatch, girl. Either way, he’d have to see me. I was leaning into a men’s room with my hands flat inside a porcelain urinal. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Little footsteps, short, tapping footsteps, shoes with taps clicking on tile. Water sounds, trickles, silence. Silence, and out of it a hard panting, and behind the panting, silence.
He’d grab me. He’d pant close to my ear, and I’d feel my ear go hot, and everything white in this room would turn dirty. I knew what happened next. I waited for it. I felt it nudge my hip at the edge of the tunnel hatch. A hard nudge, and another. I held my breath. My eyes opened.
A dog, between me and the stalls, paws balanced over a floor drain, squatting. Black terrier against white porcelain, white tile, white paint, staring at me with round black eyes, open mouth, and wet tongue.
The door creaked open partway and a man’s voice called in, “Toto, come. Let’s go. No more pee time. You done here?”
The dog turned toward the door and clicked, paws on tile, furry tail. The man shut the door. I waited, then I left, too.
I was on 4th Street by the admin building. No dog, no man’s voice. The studio was quiet this late, only a few people, mostly security strolling with hands in their pockets. Two workmen drove a truck past me. A third man stood in the truck bed and balanced a small airplane, wings up, then down so the plane cleared buildings. I’d been to Paramount at night. The trick was to walk like you’re exactly in the right place, you’re here on purpose. I walked the streets like I belonged, one thirty in the morning, two security guards at Avenue P, Stage 18. Somewhere, Toto walked with a man. Everything else, quiet.
I’d come because of what I’d told Joe after my meeting with Adolph Zukor: What’s Zukor cleaning up before I come back? Zukor thought I saw Abbott fixing Lorraine, and he was right. I just hadn’t known what I’d seen. What does Zukor think I know, and what is he cleaning up before I come back? I knew the answer to the first question, and I needed an answer to the second. I wasn’t supposed to be on the back lot, so that’s where I went, to the back lot, to find out what needed cleaning.
* * *
I belonged on Avenue M, by the publicity office. That’s how I acted: Oh, I just left something earlier, and I’m fetching it now. I waved to a security guy. I waved to the guy in the truck bed leaning the airplane this way and that. I took pretend keys from my pocket and jangled them. Move and don’t move, Stany had taught me. I jangled the pretend keys in my hand. I looked like I’d come from home, casual, my trousers and cardigan. Move and don’t move. I stopped at the publicity office, I moved and didn’t move to the door, I turned the knob.
Locked. Pretend keys wouldn’t open a real door. No sound on Avenue M. I looked around me: no planes, no security, and Preston Sturges’s office next door with its wide, striped awning. Two metal poles held the awning over Preston’s window. The poles were nailed to stucco, and I knew how soft stucco was. Rose had pulled stucco chunks from my back after my one date with Teddy. Stucco crumbled. I crossed to Preston’s office and leaned all my weight against one of the poles, then pulled back hard. I leaned, then pulled. Leaned and pulled. The nails holding pole to stucco loosened and gave, and I fell with the pole in my hand, the awning tipped like a loose eyelid, a truck turning at the corner onto Avenue M.
The airplane truck, without the airplane. Three guys in the cab. They stopped the truck in front of Preston’s office.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
One guy in coveralls jumped from the truck and helped me stand. “Are you hurt? Did this pole break off?”
“I’m not hurt,” I said. “All I did was lean on it. I was looking for my keys—” I moved and didn’t move. Just my head moved, looking for the keys. I’d dropped them when the pole broke, damn, where are they, here on dark Avenue M?
“There they are,” I said, and I picked up my pretend keys. My fingers shook. Make each move on purpose, Stany had said.
“This pole is dangerous.” The guy ripped striped canvas off the pole and leaned the pole against the buildin
g. “But you’re okay?”
Fine, no problem, get in your truck, drive off. Wave, beep-beep of the horn, three guys waving. That’s what should have happened.
“Wait, give me that pole.” The guy tipped the pole away from the stucco wall of Preston’s office. “We can’t have poles falling on pretty girls.”
“No, it’s okay. The pole is okay.” I grabbed the pole and tugged it toward me.
The guy tugged back. “What kind of Paramount man would I be if I left you with a pole that already attacked you once?”
“I’m okay. Plus,” I said, “we don’t want that pole getting lost. It has to get fixed to the building. I mean, look at this awning.”
The guy looked at the pole, the awning, the stucco. “I have tools in the truck. Hey, guys.” He waved to his two friends in the cab. “We’re needed here.”
“Isn’t that nice,” I said. “Aren’t I lucky.”
Three nice guys in coveralls. One said, “Looks like it got tore out.”
“Recent, too. Where’s security when you need them?”
“Knock that loose plaster. Here, hold the pole . . .”
They’d forgotten about the pretty girl. I backed toward their truck and then on down the street until I stood in front of Abbott’s office again. I didn’t have my pole to help me break into his office, but I did have my pretend keys. I took them out of my pocket and held them in my right hand and walked from the street up to Abbott’s door, and I stuck a pretend key in the door. Still locked. I step-swayed to the right, to where my shoulders reached the bottom of Abbott’s office window, and I looked over at the three Paramount workers. Paramount should be proud of workers like that. Here it was near two in the morning and did they slow down, did they sit in the break room and argue about who’d follow Toto and pick up doggie doo? No, they did not. They kept busy on Avenue M, reattaching a pole so I couldn’t use it to bust open the publicity office.
I placed both palms against Abbott’s window sash and pushed up. The window rose. It hadn’t been locked. I’d broken the pole clear off stucco for nothing. I pushed the sash open as far as I could, and then pulled myself up so my stomach balanced on the window frame.
I’d done this before, at a different window higher from the ground, on Halloween. I’d climbed into Stany’s window to help Rose, and there was an instant, just a flicker, when I balanced on Abbott’s window frame at his office at the Paramount lot and I also was balanced on Stany’s window frame, like I could bounce my legs for momentum and swing back to Halloween and climb down the ladder and go back, go back, to before Rose fell into Stany’s house. But it was just a flicker, a quick there and gone, and I swung forward so I slid into the publicity office headfirst to the floor. When I sat up and looked out the window, I saw the three workers still making Paramount proud, one holding the pole, one a wrench, one a can of sardines. I could smell the sardines from inside, on the floor. The guys never looked at me. I shut the window.
The publicity office held a chair and a secretary’s desk, a window seat and a wall filled with publicity shots in silver frames: Paulette Goddard smiling, Bing Crosby smiling, Dottie Lamour smiling, George Raft smiling, Carole Lombard playing golf and smiling, Claudette Colbert in profile and shadow, smiling. To the right, behind the chair and desk, were more chairs and desks, and behind them, a door with a painted sign: MILES ABBOTT, PUBLICITY.
The door was locked, for a while. I didn’t have a metal pole, but I did have a metal letter opener I’d grabbed from the secretary’s desk. A little wiggling in the lock, a lot more twisting than I’d done with a hairpin at the coroner’s office, a big shove that cracked wood around the lock assembly, and I was in. Easy. I looked at Abbott’s office, spread with lacy, dim light from a side window, and on top of his desk, through stacks of papers and files, script changes, press releases, carbons, and letters to and from that I could barely read in the dark:
To our friends at [enter name here],
Paramount Pictures rolls out the red carpet for Santa Claus and YOU on Saturday, December 21, at eight o’clock in the evening. Bring your favorite elf and your camera, because you won’t believe who is helping Santa distribute gifts this year!
Cal,
Miss Davis remains with Jack Warner, but ooh la la, as the French say! You’re right that something’s up. In 1941 you’ll see Miss Davis on screen with Paramount’s most handsome star. Oh, and the French is a big hint. Sshh for now. You can bet you’ll be the first to know!
Yours truly,
Miles Abbott
Hymie,
No offense taken on the Movie Mirror pics. You’re absolutely right; we should have kept her from the punch bowl. But like I said, our studio will not be holding a Santa night this year, so rest assured you are not being slighted. If plans change, I’ll ring you. You can bet you’ll be the first to know!
Yours truly,
Miles Abbott
Miles,
Your job is to watch your people. Mine is to write about them. The next time you tell me to shut up about Charlie, I’m putting Paulette with him in a two-page spread. You asshole. You know what I’m talking about.
Hedda
Worthless. The letters and scripts—worthless. I searched his desk, the cabinet at the side wall, telephone file, a box full of receipts and invitations. I needed a list of names, something that said, In October, Madge referred five girls to me for abortions, and I sent them to Dr. Ostrander. Yours truly, Miles Abbott. I didn’t find a paper like that. I should have broken into the payroll office, because if Madge had an extra job, then she was paid for that extra job.
It wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t know Madge’s last name, so I couldn’t look up her pay stubs. But Zukor had to be cleaning up something. Otherwise, why ban me from the lot?
The entire length of 6th Street was empty. Avenue M was empty. The publicity office was empty, except for me, and I lifted the receiver on Abbott’s telephone. I thumbed through Abbott’s telephone file. I dialed Stany.
* * *
Ring ring. Ring ring. Click.
“Mmm hmm.”
“Stany? It’s me. It’s Penny.”
“Who?”
“Penny.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t kidnap your son.”
“What are you doing? What’s the time? It’s—Penny, it’s two a.m. Awww, I hate you so much.”
“I’m stuck. I can’t leave Paramount’s back lot. How do I get out of here?”
“Oh, Penny.”
“No lectures. What’s another way out? I can’t go by the guardhouse.”
“What are you doing at Paramount?”
“No lectures.”
“I won’t lecture, but you’re not supposed to be at Paramount.”
“Stany, help me.”
“How did you get in?”
“The tunnel that leads to the admin men’s room.”
“That old myth. No, really, how’d you get in?”
“Just help me.”
“Walk out, like I do. If the guard asks questions, just say who you are.”
That works for Barbara Stanwyck, but not for Sheryl Lane, not yet.
“Okay, then jump the wall by the tin shed. Everyone does it. I mean, everyone trapped in the back lot. You land in the cemetery next door, you walk out to Santa Monica Boulevard.”
“You’ve actually jumped that wall?”
“Of course not. I don’t know anyone who’s jumped that wall. When I’m at Paramount I’m supposed to be there. I’m not sneaking around, and neither is anyone I know. Except you.”
“I’ll jump the wall. Stany, pick me up, please? I don’t have money for a cab. I’ve got a car, but it’s stuck on Olympic.”
“I hate you. I should call Adolph Zukor myself and rat you out. Twenty minutes. No, half an hour. I need to wake up. If you’re not by the cemetery gate, I swear I’m leaving.”
“I’ll be there. Half an hour.”
“Oh—Pen. Be careful on that jump. That barbed wire
will shred your clothes.”
* * *
I couldn’t move my hand. I couldn’t hang up the phone. It was cold in the office, and I’d never been so cold. Shaking cold. I thought of the wall behind the tin shed that rose high and ran the length of the back lot. That high wall. That barbed wire spiraling along the high wall that separated Paramount from Hollywood Cemetery. The wall I’d seen every day next to Stage 16, when I’d walked to Stany’s trailer for the squirrel dress. I hadn’t noticed the wire before, but now I added it to my memories: Joe leaning against the high wall, arms crossed, uniform pressed, cigarette in his mouth, barbed wire a long, thick, dull coil over his head.
Of course the wall had barbed wire. Of course it did. Otherwise, every tourist in town would find a way to hop that wall and land in the Paramount back lot.
And Rose’s arms had cuts, jagged pokes and scrapes, and those wounds had bugged me, because how can a girl get cuts from plain old skinny wire? She doesn’t. She gets cut through the neck when the wire is pulled, she spurts blood, and she dies, and that’s all.
Barbed wire and a skinny garrote. I knew Paramount had barbed wire. Did the studio use skinny wire, too? Where would a killer get other wire, the thin, deadly kind, enough to wrap Rose’s neck?
I couldn’t think about wire. I had to leave Abbott’s office, push the door, look up and down Avenue M, past three workers hoisting an awning, and—now—run in my Wallflower shoes to 6th Street. I hugged myself in the cardigan. I shivered. I wouldn’t think of wire. I turned left, turned right, ran.
If barbed wire cut Rose’s arms, the barbed wire coiling the Paramount wall, then Rose was here and she died here. How many kinds of wire does a studio use? Where do they keep it? The extra wire—spools of it, probably—how was it stored? Would they store it with supplies?
The tin shed. The long tin shed, stuffed full of supplies. Hammers and gaskets and stacks of pallets and trays of penny nails.
The Glamorous Dead Page 24
