The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  Stany sat by her husband, but it took me a while to see her. I saw Bob Taylor and nobody else. And I couldn’t breathe! Bob Taylor in a tuxedo, the most beautiful man in Hollywood.

  “Look at you, Pen,” Stany said. “Someone dipped you in white chocolate and colored you pink. You positively clash with the room.” Stany wore gold lamé. She probably itched. “I was just telling Junior here, why, look at Pen, I thought she’d wear horns, and here she came as a pink marshmallow.”

  “I enjoy marshmallows,” Bob said. He looked at me when he said it. At me. He stood.

  “Junior,” said Stany. “Pen, this is my husband. Sit away from him, on the other side. A little farther. There, that’s fine. Aren’t we cozy? Pen, order what you want, but we’re leaving in one tiny minute. Are you coming with us? Don’t spill on yourself. Chiffon’s a nightmare to clean. Junior, light me a cigarette, hmm?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Just for a drink,” Bob said.

  “Granny called us, all panicked,” Stany said. “I hear someone didn’t sign her contract.”

  Marty leaned across to me. “Where did you go today, Penny?”

  “Nowhere. I went to see a doctor.” Marty in a tuxedo was exactly like Marty in a lawyer suit. Nothing changed. He was Marty, and his fingernails were clean.

  “Did your car stall? Was there an accident?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Then why? Why give up a chance? Look at these girls in here. Do you think any one of them wouldn’t trade places with you?”

  “Marty, are you still my lawyer?”

  “No,” he said, “not since the charges were dropped.”

  “Then shut up, will you?”

  Stany said, “We’re headed to Ciro’s. It’s a mess in this room. Are you coming?”

  “I’ll stay and root for the bull.”

  “Junior, drain your glass. Why the hell are you here?”

  Stany didn’t mean Junior. She meant Miles Abbott, behind me, his tie loose and his jacket unbuttoned. Around him, the sound crew bent boom mikes and tested sound.

  “It’s business,” Abbott said. “Farm Girl forgot her appointment. She kept everyone waiting. Everyone.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said.

  “Then what? You can’t keep Adolph waiting. Adolph Zukor is everyone. You think you’re a star already,” Abbott said. “You think stars don’t have rules.”

  “Penny knows better, don’t you, Pen?”

  “Stany, I’m not signing the contract.”

  “Oh, Penny. Penny. Here I thought we’d be twins. Junior, we’ve done our bit. I’m ready to leave. Grab my wrap. Marty, are you coming or not?”

  “Meeting time,” Abbott said. He pulled me away from the table, through crossed electrical cords and reflectors, picadors and Lorraine the bull, into the Zebra. Two bartenders served drinks.

  “Dirty martini,” he said. “And not that Mexican shit, either. With two olives, please.”

  “Gin fizz,” I said.

  “Who cares what you want? No,” he said. He grabbed a bartender’s sleeve. “Don’t serve her anything. She’s in trouble.”

  “Gin fizz,” I said.

  “You want to ruin me? Is that your plan? Me, what I do for the studio, important work I do for the studio?”

  “I have no plans to ruin anyone. I’ll shut my mouth.”

  “Damn you. Goddamn you. Why didn’t you sign? What does it take?” The bartender slid a martini glass along the bar, two olives. Abbott swished the olives on their little stick, and then lifted them to his mouth. He sucked on the olives and talked through them, words mixed with liquor. “We had a whole crew waiting. Wardrobe, Wally and his team, those people can’t run whenever you come strolling in. You cost us money, damn it. That’s not how it works.”

  “Tell me about Madge’s parents,” I said.

  Abbott rolled his olives and sucked. “It’ll make a goddamn good war picture.”

  “I didn’t get my drink.”

  “That’s because you’re nobody. Goddamn Mexican olives.” He spat an olive pit into his hand and threw it. “Zukor’s lined up Bette Davis to play the mom.”

  “You mean Madge’s mom.”

  “Whoever. He got a hell of a trade from Warners.”

  “Bette Davis is too young for that role.”

  “Not in this story. Now Madge is ten, but precocious. A better fit for the storyline, and then there’s the homecoming scene, mother sees daughter, the audience cries.”

  “So they’re really out of Paris? They made it?”

  “How do I know? Wait for the script, will you?”

  “Did you kill Madge?”

  “Did I—what?”

  “Did you?” I said. “Did you kill Madge, push her off the deck?”

  He laughed. He held his glass by the stem and lifted it like a toast.

  “Madge worked for you,” I said.

  “And a hell of a job she did. I put her in your dorm to watch you, not help you. From what I heard, she was drunk and didn’t need the push.”

  “And Rosemary? Did you kill her?”

  “Just sign your goddamn contract, will you? I save these girls,” Abbott said. “I don’t have to. Not all studios extend this little benefit to Central Casting girls. What would those girls do with spare kids? Where would they go? Home to Nebraska? Who’d fucking talk to them if they’re pregnant? I save their lives, and if I wanted to kill, I’d do it right now and make sure the whole room heard me.”

  “You were there,” I said. “Oh, God. You were at the hospital on Halloween.”

  “Doing my job.”

  “For Bette Davis.”

  He slammed his glass on the bar. Glass broke and flew. He shouted at me over the orchestra. I don’t remember what he said, except, “Fuck you. Fuck you, little nobody, little—” Something about Zukor, fuck Zukor, too, but I was walking away from the bar. I was so angry I shook, as angry as I’d been last night in Stany’s car, my whole body mad. I had one more person to talk to. Not Granny; fuck Granny and his Hail the Bullfighters film. I mean Joe, the guy I couldn’t fix, murderer Joe, moonlighting as security to the film crew.

  * * *

  Not scary Joe, in the tin shed at Paramount by the spools of sharp wire. Not empty Joe, kicking Spencer Tracy. But at the Gardens? All those people? Film crew and lighting, singers? He’d be security Joe. I was stupid. I thought I’d find him and he’d yell because I’d crossed someone’s mark. He’d push me to the back, out of camera angle. Then I’d ask him, and he’d tell me: Who killed Rose, you or Abbott? Which one of you killed her because she wouldn’t stop screaming?

  “Get out of the way,” he said. “Don’t you know you’re on someone’s mark? You’re beautiful. I’m mad at you.”

  “You or Abbott, one of you killed her,” I said. I yelled it across the Zanzibar. With everyone else yelling, too, only Joe understood. I walked through tables to the kitchen door. The tourists watched me and whispered. I was somebody. Who was I, in my pink chiffon? What was my name? Where had they seen me?

  “Everyone’s staring,” Joe said.

  “Who was it? On Halloween. You picked up Bette Davis from Hollywood Receiving. Abbott was there, too. Rosemary saw. She began screaming and wouldn’t stop. You and Abbott, one of you had to kill her to shut her up. Who did it? Did you kill her, Joe?”

  He grabbed my arm, fast. He pulled me through the kitchen, more noise and pots rattling. A cook smoking a cigar and stirring, stirring. Through the alley door, me tripping on pink, the skirt tearing at the doorframe, and we stood in the alley by the garbage cans and the dug-up dirt around Rose’s grave. Trash and cold air. A wire garrote still leaning on garbage. He wasn’t security Joe anymore. He had flat eyes.

  “You listen,” Joe said. “Rose was screaming. I didn’t kill her. I could have. I really could have killed her, and I thought about it.”

  Down the alley, a guy on Santa Claus Lane fought with his girl—“Come on, you promised, it’s Christmas
”—and through the Gardens wall, far into the Zanzibar, the first notes of the bull song floated out. Film would roll, the headliner posed by the orchestra, dressed in picador gold, feeling her teeth with her tongue, testing smears of petroleum. Lorraine offstage, balancing the stupid bull hat, framed by Picador Girls. The lights would be hot. They’d cover the stage, dance floor, audience. Guests in the Zanzibar: All this for a moving picture? Real movies aren’t made like this.

  Joe in his Paramount brown, with me in the alley, said, “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t have to. I’m not a killer, Pen.”

  “You were supposed to pick up Bette Davis.”

  “Who told you? How do you know?”

  “You pick up girls after their abortions. Don’t deny it. I already know. Does Paramount pay you, or do you work for Abbott?”

  “I work for the studio. Don’t hate me, Pen. I couldn’t stand if you hated me.”

  “Who do you work for tonight? Warners or Paramount? Do you need to stand guard in the Zanzibar, or are you a Hollywood beat cop, or are you working for Abbott?”

  He pushed me to the building wall. My head hit the stucco. He put his hands on the wall; he stood close to me and caged me between his arms. My heart beat fast and my face was cold, the wall brittle against my head, the air icy between us, his breath cold, too. I’d been here before, pushed against stucco. I’d felt the dry peaks and swirls against my back, felt them rip and break and crumble when I’d slid down the wall.

  Not Teddy tonight. Not Teddy. It was Joe.

  “I didn’t pick up Bette Davis. I couldn’t.”

  “No, you had to kill Rose instead. Back up, Joe.”

  “Am I a killer? I helped you break into the autopsy files.”

  “You beat Spencer Tracy bloody.”

  “No, I didn’t, remember? You never saw that. He fell. There must have been rock on the sidewalk, or he tripped.”

  “I know what I saw. Back up, Joe. Right now.”

  “You’re not remembering the right way. You don’t understand about Rosemary. Our idea was, I’d wait for her to calm down and then I’d untie her and fix everything, then take her home.”

  “Our?”

  “Mr. Abbott and me, and that lawyer, Martin. He waited for Rosemary at the hospital, but once she started screaming, it was clear that she couldn’t go with him. She had to go with me to be fixed.”

  “Marty was there?”

  “I told you, she was screaming. Martin left. Mr. Abbott said, ‘I’ll take Miss Davis, you stop that girl screaming.’”

  “You locked her in the tin shed.”

  “I was supposed to take her to your dorms but I couldn’t, not like that. She wouldn’t calm down. She kept screaming and pounding her fists, she didn’t know where she was or who was taking her. I couldn’t bring her to the dorms. I put her in the shed so she’d calm down. I didn’t lock her in. I should have, but I didn’t lock the shed. I didn’t need to, because I’d tied her hands and feet. I just tied her so she’d calm down. She kept screaming, Pen. I had to hit her. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, okay, I’ll gag her and tie her up, and wait for her to calm down.”

  “She screamed when you brought her to the back lot?”

  “I took her through a tunnel.”

  “I know the tunnel.”

  “I carried her. She wasn’t heavy. I put my hand on her mouth.”

  “Then you could have let her go.”

  “No,” he said. “She needed to talk to me, or to Mr. Abbott, so we knew she’d stay quiet. She hadn’t been fixed yet. And I left her in the tin shed.”

  “She got loose. She bit off her own thumb to get out of those ropes. You killed her and buried her right here.”

  “I didn’t kill her. Mr. Abbott got back and we went to the tin shed. We were going to fix her, that’s all, and we saw blood! We saw blood, oh, God, it was sprayed all over, but no girl. I don’t know what happened. Maybe she did kill herself. That’s what the coroner says, and we should believe him.”

  “She buried herself, too? Why call me a murderess? Why tell me I’d get the gas chamber?”

  “By then you were a murderess, don’t you see? Detective Conejos thought you were, and it was a good story, and Mr. Abbott had to fix it somehow.”

  “I’m finished here,” I said, and I put my hand on Joe’s chest and shoved him. He moved a little and I saw his flat eyes, and felt his cold hands heavy by my neck.

  “I didn’t know about her thumb. I’m not a killer.” His breath froze and cracked air between us. I was wrong. I said I’d been here before, the night Teddy pushed me against another wall in another town. The walls scraped my back the same way, ripped my dress just the same. But even as I was raped, it was always Teddy doing it. He’d never changed as he’d hit me, not like Joe. Against this wall, in this town, Joe was gone. He was two flat eyes, flat, heavy arms, no Joe inside, caging me to the wall. From the Zanzibar the headliner’s refrain:

  The mighty bull and the Mexican girl

  On the streets of Rialto at dawn

  The bull lowered his head

  Toward the brown girl and said

  If we live through today then we’ve won

  “She had to be fixed.” His hands came to my neck, circled my neck, and tugged up. “Someone fixed her.” He squeezed, hard. “Like this.”

  “Let go of my neck.”

  “Suicide,” Joe said. “I tried to clean up the blood. You saw it, didn’t you? In the shed, it’s in the cement. I did what I could. On every little thing, nails and bolts and bolts of electric cord, under the tables, the ceiling. I had to scrub the ceiling!”

  “Let go of me. Please, Joe.”

  He held my throat tight and rubbed my skin with his fingers. He was cleaning blood in the tin shed with Rose, and she bled beside him and he cleaned it up. He said he hadn’t killed her, she was gone when he came back with Abbott, but he saw her now. Blood smeared her face, her body, the wall. Blood pulsed from her hand and neck. I saw her, too. I felt her throat close and seal. Her hands—my hands—pulled at cold wire. I beat the hard wall of Joe’s chest. Behind us, in the Zanzibar, horns and drums grew. Picadors faced the bull.

  “Do you believe me? It’s the truth.”

  I couldn’t answer. Joe’s voice floated and sank through the Zanzibar’s drums. I just hung. He opened his hands and I gasped, then slid down his chest to the dirt, limp.

  Do you believe me?

  * * *

  “Pick her up. She’s dead? Carry her.”

  “I didn’t kill her.” Joe’s voice.

  “Pick her up.” The other voice.

  Then I was lifted and carried, and Joe climbed the staircase that led to the dorm’s back door, three floors up, where girls banged all the time but nobody let them in. Madge had stood on that deck once, looking at roofs over Hollywood Boulevard, before her neck broke on the stairs. Now Joe carried me up those stairs, he set me against that dorm door, and when I opened my eyes, all I saw was pink chiffon. My Irene gown. Then, through chiffon, klieg lights from the Palladium down the street, flashing gold and swaying. Then Joe at my side, and then, at the stair rail, Marty Martin.

  “You can leave, Joe.”

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “She’s fine. She’s with me.”

  “She’s with me, and I’m not leaving.”

  “Are you nuts? Are you crazy? You nearly killed her, and anyone seeing her right now is going to know you nearly killed her, and do you want that? I’m trying to fix you, goddamn it, so leave!”

  Joe crouched in front of me. Behind him, the kliegs outlined his head in gold. His cheekbones shone from the stage door opening, closing, opening, flashes of light on and off. He was beautiful. My hand lifted and touched his face.

  “I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  I tried to nod. My throat hurt.

  “Let Mr. Martin fix you. You know that, don’t you? Mr. Martin will fix it.”

  Fix? What was there to fix? What ha
d I done worth fixing? But Joe was beautiful, and the kliegs on Santa Claus Lane step-swayed, step-swayed, a halo, and light from the stage door lifted his cheeks high above me, and I nodded again and closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was Marty Martin, not Joe, in the glow of kliegs.

  “Can you stand?” He didn’t want an answer. He yanked my hair, and I stood. “Can you talk?”

  “I . . . My throat’s sore.”

  “Come to the railing.”

  “No.”

  He punched my face. A bone cracked above my eye, hot water pouring under my skin through my eye, cheek, mouth. I turned and beat on the dorm’s back door like I’d beat on Joe’s chest. Nobody answered this door, ever, we knew better, nothing good stood outside of it beating, wanting in. Nobody would answer, but I beat anyway.

  Marty yelled. “You could have had two years. You could have shut your mouth. Do you know how much money it takes to live like these people? To dress like they do and go to their parties? Because I have to go to their parties. Do you know?”

  “Let me in let me in let me in,” I said.

  “Yes, your friend Madge said that, too.”

  I stopped beating the door. My face pulsed, like being hit with a rock in the same place. Pulse. I turned to Marty. “What do you mean, Madge said that?” Pulse.

  “When she stood there, just like you. She hit that door.”

  “Why did she hit the door?”

  “Because I brought her here. Because you told her some wild story about Rosemary breaking into houses. And me a thief. You shouldn’t have told her that. She thought I had helped your brother break into a house.”

  “You did.”

  “The night I dropped you off, I’d had enough. I parked down the street and went to the Gardens. I was waiting for you, it should have been you, but your friend Madge came out of the bar with quite a few things to say, and she’d say them to Mr. Zukor if I didn’t help. I told her, why don’t we climb these nice stairs and talk about it? And really, nothing could help find her parents. How could a lawyer do anything? How could I? How could Paramount? It’s a movie studio.”