by R. G. Belsky
I think.
We talked about ourselves some more, asking each other questions and filling in a few of the blanks left over from our first conversation.
I wanted to know more about her three marriages.
“Well, the first one was to a TV soap star. I was very young then, in my early twenties. Then I married a movie producer. That lasted a couple of years. After that, I tried one more time. With another entertainment agent. We stayed together for more than ten years, although the marriage itself pretty much self-destructed before that. And that’s pretty much the whole story. Since that last divorce, I’ve been on my own.”
“You sure seem to like show-business people, huh?”
“Actually, I prefer anyone besides show business at this point.”
“Then why did you marry so many?”
“I just go where my libido takes me,” she smiled.
“Do you want to get married again?”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen at my age. But you—you can bounce back from the failed marriage with this woman Susan you told me about. Find someone new, live happily ever after—all that stuff.”
“You think?”
“Sure, you’ve got a lot of good qualities that any woman would find attractive.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re cute.”
“Be still my heart.”
“You’re funny too. Not always as funny as you think you are, but still funny.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“You’re smart.”
“Good again.”
“And you’re not afraid to speak your mind.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s an admirable quality, I think. Of course, maybe not all women would agree with me on that.”
“Let’s put it down then as a maybe,” I said.
“All in all, there are lots of reasons for a woman to be attracted to you.”
“How about you?” I said. “Do you find me attractive?”
“Like I told you before, I’m too old for you.”
“That’s not the question.”
“You should be looking for someone your own age.”
“Okay, do you find me attractive in a boy-toy kind of way?”
“Yes,” she smiled, “I do.”
“Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way,” I told her. “Now we can eat.”
Over steaks, baked potatoes, and salad, we eventually got around to Laura Marlowe again. Sherry repeated the account of how troubled Laura was—and how she regretted not being able to help Laura when she came to her office so distraught just before she died.
“It wasn’t just the overnight stardom that messed up Laura,” Sherry said. “She was unhappy long before that because of the way her mother kept pushing her in the entertainment business, even though Laura just wanted to live some kind of normal life for a young girl. I understand she broke with the mother at one point. More than once, or so I’m told. There was a period of a year or so before she became a big star where Laura just dropped out of sight. The mother couldn’t find her, no one knew what happened. When she finally did turn up, she was getting work in Hollywood. Somehow the mother got herself back in the picture then. I’m not sure how, but the mother was a very strong-willed woman, and Laura wasn’t able to stand up to her. But she tried.”
“How?”
“Not long before she died, while she was making her last movie, Laura dropped out of sight again. No one realized it, but she simply disappeared for a while. Everyone thinks it was a mental breakdown, but I suspect it was more than that. I think she was trying to break her mother’s hold on her again. And, when that failed, maybe that put her in the hospital. Anyway, it was a very troubled time. I always think that when she came to me at the end, it was one last try to break away from her mother. But it was too late.”
“She just ran out of time at the age of twenty-two,” I said.
Sherry nodded.
“There was something else going on too. The money. After her first two big hits, Laura was worth a lot of money. The contract for Once Upon a Time Forever, her third movie, was for $5 million—a tremendous amount in those days. There were at least a half-dozen other pending multi-million-dollar deals out there waiting for her to sign. For her mother and the people around her, it was the big payday they’d been dreaming about. But Laura threw a big monkey wrench into all of that. In the months before she died, she filed a lawsuit to gain access to her own money. It turned out the mother had control over it until Laura was thirty. The money stayed in a kind of trust fund or something until then. Laura wanted an accounting of what her mother had done with the money she’d made so far and wanted the agreement ended so the money was in her name. She probably would have won the suit too. If she had lived.”
“Didn’t anybody ever look at the mother as a suspect?”
“No reason to. They had this guy Janson.”
“And now that it’s turned out he didn’t do it? I mean the money business does become a pretty good motive for murder for someone else.”
“For her mother?”
“Or somebody else who stood to lose a fortune. Like maybe the husband. And you said the movie company had millions at stake too.”
She laughed. “Beverly’s a lot of things, but she’s no murderer. And she certainly wouldn’t kill her own daughter. Laura meant everything to Beverly; she lived out her own life and fantasies through her. As for Holloway, he was a wormy little guy, but he really did love her. And movie studios play hard ball with their stars, but they don’t murder them.”
“Okay, maybe none of them are murderers, but I know one person in Laura’s life who was.”
“Who?”
“Thomas Rizzo.”
I asked her again if she’d ever heard anything about Rizzo’s involvement with Laura. She said all she knew was what I’d printed in the paper.
I told her about my encounters with the Rizzo men in the car. And about the visit I had from Tommy Jr. after my article appeared. That seemed to shake her up a bit. She said she didn’t want to talk anymore about Thomas Rizzo. She seemed scared of him. A lot of people were scared of Rizzo. Maybe I should be too.
* * *
After dinner, we took a cab to her place. She lived in a two-story brownstone building in the West Village. It sure looked like a nice place. I hoped she would invite me to see the inside. We got out of the cab and I walked her to the door. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point. Finally I made the first move.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“It’s late,” she said.
“Not that late.”
“I have to get up early.”
I leaned over and kissed her.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She didn’t kiss me back. Instead, she pulled away and put out her hand to me to say goodnight.
“I have to get up early,” she repeated.
I shook her hand. I didn’t know what else to do. I felt foolish.
“Thanks, I had a great time,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“I really did.”
She looked at me sadly now.
“You’re a good one, Gil Malloy,” she said.
“So are you,” I told her.
“No,” she said, “I used to be. A long time ago.”
Then she turned around and went inside.
Chapter 25
MY plane landed at LAX in Los Angeles a little after 11 a.m. local time the next day. I picked up my baggage, rented a car, and bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times, which had not put the story of my arrival on Page One. By noon, I was headed north up the I-405 freeway toward Hollywood.
Despite all the glamour attached to Hollywood, it looked remarkably ordinary.
People walking around in short-sleeve shirts and shorts and casual clothes. Brand new office buildings, health food stores, and fast food places. I did pass some famous spots I recognized. Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The Wax Museum. Frederick’s of Hollywood. I kept going until I got to Hollywood and Vine, then parked the car and got out.
This was the legendary cross street in the heart of Hollywood, the place where dreams were supposed to come true. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was on the sidewalk here, with its roster of all the famous movie stars immortalized in cement. But for every one that made it, there were thousands more who didn’t. They sometimes called it the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I wondered if Laura Marlowe had stood here once, more than three decades ago, and dreamed about being a star. Off in the distance, I could see the hills of Hollywood with the famed Hollywood sign sitting there like a beacon, calling all the starry-eyed dreamers to this town to have their hearts broken. Laura Marlowe followed her dream here, and it got her killed.
I got back in my car. It took me nearly an hour until I found an address in Santa Monica where the movie executive told me Glimmer Productions used to be. There was an office supply store there now. I parked in front and got out. It was a modern, one-story building that looked like it had been built within the past few years. I pushed open the front door and went inside.
“Can I help you?” a young woman behind the counter said.
“I’m looking for some information,” I said, flashing her my friendliest smile. “I’m a newspaper reporter from New York.”
I took out my press card and showed it to her. She was probably about twenty years old. She was wearing a T-shirt with the name of a band on the front that I’d never heard of. She had a ring through her nose. I suddenly felt very old talking to her.
“There used to be a place called Glimmer Productions at this address,” I said. “Did you ever hear of it?”
“No, but I’ve only worked here four months.”
“How long has this store been here?”
“About a year or two, I think.”
“What was it before?”
“A phone store.”
“And before that.”
“I have no idea. We’re talking maybe five or six years ago.”
“The place I’m looking for was here thirty years ago.”
“Thirty years! Wow, I wasn’t even born then. You might try the manager. He’ll be in later. He’s been here a lot longer than me.”
“How old is he?”
“Oh, very old.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe thirty-five, thirty-six.”
“Which would make him about five or six years old at the time we’re talking about.”
She thought about that for a second. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “No good, huh?”
“No good,” I smiled. “But thanks for trying to help.”
I went outside. I’d hoped it would be easier than this, but it never was. I looked up and down the street. There were lots of stores. A deli. A drugstore. A couple of restaurants. A dry cleaning store. A car wash. Maybe someone at one of them had been around thirty years ago.
It took me nearly an hour before I finally found what I was looking for. The owner of the dry cleaners proudly told me that his family had run the business there for nearly half a century. There was even a wall behind him filled with framed newspaper clippings about many of the celebrities that had come in there over the years.
“My father, his father before him, and now me at this very same spot,” he said. “There’s not too many family businesses around these days. But we’re one. My name is Louis Balducci. The third generation of the Balducci family to run this dry cleaning business.”
I told him what I was looking for.
“Oh, the movie place that used to be down the street,” he said.
“You remember it?”
“Sure. Of course, I was just a kid then. Working in my father’s store. But I used to see all the pretty girls going in and out of that place. Let me tell you—I still remember some of them. It was like a young boy’s fantasy, watching that parade of beautiful women.”
“I’m trying to track down someone who might have worked there. Hopefully, one of the people who ran it if they’re still alive. I know it’s a long shot, but . . .”
“Oh, I know who ran it.”
“You do?”
“Sure, she did.”
He pointed to the wall of framed newspaper clippings behind him. Then he reached up and took one down. He placed it on the counter in front of me. The headline said: CALL HER MISS OR MS., BUT DON’T CALL HER MADAME. There was a picture of an attractive older woman posing in front of a mansion. The caption identified her as “Jackie Sinclair—businesswoman, entrepreneur, and legendary Hollywood party giver.”
The article said she’d been the queen of the porn movie business once, turning out large numbers of them—first for second-rate movie houses and home projector use in the days before home video came along, then stuff for the VCR market. She published her own magazine, opened up a nightclub on Sunset Strip, and became known for the wild parties she hosted in the Hollywood Hills. It all came crashing down for her in the 1980s, when she was busted by the cops for running a ring of high-priced prostitutes. According to the charges, she catered to movie stars, executives of the major studios, and politicians. She was the Heidi Fleiss of her time, the original Hollywood Madame. But then, as quickly as the charges were brought, they were suddenly dropped. Since then, the article said she had made a fortune by investing shrewdly in the Los Angeles real estate market. She lived in a big house on Mulholland Drive that used to belong to Bobby Darin.
“She was the head of Glimmer Productions?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Balducci said.
“And you knew her?”
“She came in here all the time. She even kept coming for a while after the movie place closed. That’s why I put this up when I saw it in the paper. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, but I sure remembered her. She’s a part of the history of this store, of this block—just like all the other famous people that came in here.”
“I wonder if she’s still alive?”
He shrugged. “Probably. That article wasn’t written that long ago.”
I looked down at the newspaper clipping again. He was right. It was from five years ago.
“You wouldn’t know how to find her now, would you?”
“God, no.”
I looked at the newspaper picture of Jackie Sinclair one more time, especially the house on Mulholland Drive behind her.
“That’s okay, you’ve been a big help.”
I checked the map in my car for Mulholland Drive, then drove over there. It was a street filled with beautiful homes. I looked for one that resembled the one in the picture in the paper. I couldn’t be sure, of course, she would still live there—but it was a place to start. It turned out to be a tougher job than I expected. There were too many houses, and a lot of them were set back from the road so far I couldn’t see them very well. Finally, I stopped and asked a man on the street if he knew where Bobby Darin used to live. I asked it like I was a tourist on a tour of the stars’ homes. He gave me directions to an address about a mile away. When I got there, I recognized the house as the same one in the picture. But there was a problem. A security fence surrounded the property. There was an intercom at the front gate. I pushed the button.
“State your business, please,” a deep voice said at the other end.
“Does Jackie Sinclair live here?”
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Gil Malloy, and I’m an attorney from New York City,” I said, giving him the little speech I’d rehearsed on the ride over. “A client of mine recently died, leaving a large amount of money to Ms. Sinclair. We’re trying to track her down to make her aware of this
inheritance.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“Are you there?” I asked finally.
Still nothing. Then I saw someone walking down the driveway toward me. A security guard.
“You’ll have to leave,” he said when he got to the gate.
“Why?”
“This is private property.”
“Is there any way I can reach her?” I asked.
“You can leave a number, if you want.”
“Will she call me?”
“You’ve got thirty seconds to do whatever you’re going to do before I call the police,” he said.
I took out a piece of paper and scribbled down my name and phone number and the hotel where I was staying. I handed it through the fence to him.
“Tell her it’s really important,” I said.
“Have a nice day,” he said as he began walking back toward the house.
Chapter 26
I DROVE into downtown Los Angeles and found Parker Center, where the police headquarters is located. I told them who I was and asked to speak to somebody who handled cult cases. Eventually, I wound up in the office of a lieutenant named Marty Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom said he was part of a special unit that had been set up to deal with cults and other violent groups.
“Did you ever hear of a group called Sign of the Z?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was a long time ago though.”
“They might have killed someone in New York.”
“Who?”
“Laura Marlowe.”
“The movie star? The one that’s been dead for thirty years?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t they catch somebody for that?”
“They did, but it looks now like they got the wrong man.”
“Right, I heard about that.”
“There may be more murders too.”
“Who?”
“Abbie Kincaid.”
“The TV reporter who got shot?”
“Yes.”
