“Let me guess,” Horn said. “She saves the Hawk, and they ride off together.”
“Not exactly,” Diggs said. “It’s coming up. Just watch.”
Down below in the courtyard, men with muskets were taking aim at the young revolutionary, who stood proudly against a wall, his eyes on the figure on the balcony. Then, as drums rolled—silently, of course—the camera began cutting between Lucia, her lover, and the drums, each shot of Rose moving in closer until her face filled the screen. Horn saw a range of emotions pass over her features—first shock at her father’s words, then horror at the moment of execution, then a steely determination as she turned to face her father.
Horn sat quietly, his eyes fixed on her. The rest of the film unfolded quickly. That night, Lucia crept into her father’s bedroom with a dagger, intending to murder him as he slept. In the candlelight, her face once again reflected a series of changes. First it showed her hatred for him. But as her glance swept past a bedside portrait of her dead mother, her expression softened into a trace of the love she still held for him. Finally, she placed the portrait on the pillow beside his head, and her expression took on a look of peace. In the final scenes of the movie, she mounted her horse and, as the sun rose and a hawk circled above her, she rode into the mountains to join the revolution against her father.
When it was over, Diggs went up to shut off the projector and begin rewinding the reel. Then he took his seat again. “We liked to lay it on pretty thick back then, huh?” His tone was self-effacing, but Horn could hear the pride underneath.
Horn turned to him. “Good Lord, Dex,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Diggs looked grimly satisfied. “When I promised you an education, I wanted you to see how wonderful she had been at that time in her life. That’s the way I remember her. You should too, my friend, no matter how she ended up.”
Horn nodded, still searching for words. “She was really something.”
“I know. One in a million. Her face, the way she moved. And did you notice how natural she was? Most silent actors came out of the theater, where they exaggerated everything for those in the back rows. Somehow, Rose understood that the camera was different, it could handle subtlety.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
“Hmm?”
“That footage. It’s pretty good stuff, Dex.”
“Oh, yeah.” Diggs allowed himself a smile of self-approval. “It was good, wasn’t it? These days, when I’m shoveling ’em out every few weeks, I forget what it was like to be absolutely passionate about making movies—working with the actors, setting up the camera, getting the look just right. I was a man in love, John Ray. In love with the idea of putting beautiful pictures on a long strip of celluloid. It’ll never be that way again—”
“Maybe it could be.”
“Nope. Not for me, and certainly not for Rose. But damn, we did some good work together, didn’t we?”
He heard the film finish rewinding. “Come on,” he said, getting up. “Let me get this baby back in the can, then there’s that little matter of dinner.”
* * *
They sat at Diggs’ kitchen table eating roast beef sandwiches and sliced pickles and drinking beer. Horn had finished telling the other man what he knew about Rose’s death. They sat in silence for a while, then Diggs began speaking in a reflective tone.
“She called herself Rosemary Gale back then,” he said between bites. “It was just a name the studio gave her, because they thought her real name didn’t have enough pizzazz.”
He seemed to be studying his sandwich. “You know, back when the three of us worked on that horse opera,” he said, “you probably thought I was busy with camera setups all the time, but I saw the looks you two shot each other. Anything going on there?”
“I guess there was,” Horn said. “But it was over real fast, and she was gone.”
“The lady had a habit of disappearing, didn’t she?”
“When I had lunch with her, she told me she left the business the first time around because things didn’t work out. What did she mean?”
“I have no idea. I mean…granted, Pinnacle sank out of sight not long after we made Hawk of Tramonti, so she would have been out of work. But she was an amazing talent, John Ray, right at the beginning of what could have been a spectacular career. You saw how beautiful she was. I’m not exaggerating when I say she was the best natural actress I ever worked with, and one of the best I ever saw anywhere. Better than Swanson, better than Dietrich, and—hell, I know this is heresy—almost as good as Garbo. All she needed was the right roles and a little time to prove herself.”
“But none of that happened,” Horn said. “What brought her down so far?”
“Maybe it was nothing more than the bottle, John Ray. It’s done in a lot of people. I can tell you about that.”
“I’d be surprised—”
“You shouldn’t be,” Diggs said forcefully. “When I first worked with her, young as she was, she already had a problem.”
“Booze?”
“That, and other things. This was Prohibition, you know? It seemed like everything we liked was illegal, and we were all a little wild. I think Hollywood was one of the craziest places on Earth. Everyone drank, everyone played around with dope. If you showed up at a party, people would hand you things—drinks, reefers, it didn’t matter. Things were so out of control, I remember somebody dying at one of those parties.” He shook his head. “Rose was…well, she was part of all that. We ran into each other at some of the same places, and I always left before she did. When we were making that movie you just saw, she would amaze me. She’d be up half the night dancing, then show up early the next morning, face the camera, turn on some kind of interior light, and….” He shrugged. “As I said, she had something.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Rose I knew,” Horn said. “The wild part.”
Diggs shrugged. “People change.” He opened the fridge. “You want another beer?”
Horn didn’t reply, his thoughts off somewhere. Diggs put the bottle in front of him.
“How did she look?” Diggs asked.
The sight of Rose’s face in death rose up again, dark and awful. But Horn knew that was not what his friend had meant.
“Worn down,” he said. “But there was still something there.”
“I wish I’d been able to see her,” Diggs said.
“Like I said….”
“I know. Stubborn woman. It was her damn vanity, I imagine. She didn’t want me to see what she looked like. I wouldn’t have minded.” Horn was surprised at the man’s vehemence.
“And for her to die like that, at the hands of some piece of vermin who wanted whatever money she had in her purse,” Diggs went on. “She deserved better.”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” Horn replied. “I wonder if it’s all as simple as we think. Her death, I mean.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I’m not sure. I just remember small things. For one, Madge—her friend at the rooming house—mentioned a man, someone Rose knew about. She called him the gray man, and it sounded as if he had been hanging around the place for some reason.”
“Well….
“And Rose may have been afraid of something.”
Diggs waited, head cocked to one side.
“I found her at the Anchor Mission down on skid row,” Horn said. “When I asked the guy in charge where she was, he lied, said he didn’t know her. Later, she told me he was just trying to protect her privacy.”
“Maybe that’s all it was,” Diggs said.
“Maybe. But I’d already told him I knew she was there, so why lie? A bartender on Broadway behaved the same way, as if he was watching over her. And when I crossed the street outside the mission to see her, she panicked for just a second, as if she thought someone was after her.”
“That’s a rough part of town, John Ray.”
“I know. Maybe I’m wrong. Then, later
on, just before we said goodbye, she hinted that…. I can’t even remember her words, but the gist of it was that she might have done something terrible, something she was ashamed of.”
“No offense, but maybe she had a lot to be ashamed of,” Diggs said, shaking his head. “It’s a sad story, and a lot of the murders in this town never get solved. Tell you what—” He lifted his beer bottle. “Let’s drink a toast to her and remember her the way she would want us to.”
Horn didn’t move. “Not long ago, I told myself I was going to find out why she wound up in that fleabag of a rooming house,” he said. “I thought I owed her something, and that maybe if I found out what had gone wrong with her, I could help.”
“Well, it’s too late, John Ray. Even with good intentions, you don’t always get to do what you—”
“It’s not too late to find out who killed her.”
“Now wait,” Diggs said. “That’s for the police. Don’t you think you’ve had enough dealings with them? If you get in their way, they’ll come down on you.”
“They’ve already written her off,” Horn said. “You can hear it in their voices when they talk about her. She was a nobody, and she was killed by a nobody. They don’t care. I do.”
“All right, you care,” Diggs said with resignation. His face was lined under the strong kitchen light, and Horn was struck by how old and tired he looked. “And what happens if you find the one who did it?”
“Then we’ll see.”
CHAPTER TEN
The few tables in the cafe were taken, so they sat side by side at the counter. Madge ordered a bowl of chili, the lunch special, and Horn had a grilled sausage sandwich.
“Rosie liked the grilled cheese here,” Madge said. “She’d order it almost every time we….” She stopped, unwilling to take the memory any further.
The cafe was two blocks south of Rook House, and the customers seemed to represent the neighborhood. Most were shabbily dressed, although some still wore signs of gentility—a worn-down fur stole, perhaps, or an old pair of shoes that had been expensive when new. All were older, except for a young deliveryman in an Air Corps surplus bomber jacket whose truck was parked at the curb.
“See him?” Madge said, indicating a thin, white-haired man at the end of the counter. “They say he’s the last one here on the hill who still owns his house.” The man wore a dark suit and tie, and he held his coffee spoon delicately. “He used to be rich as Croesus, but he was wiped out in the crash. His wife died, and his kids scattered. Now he keeps taking in roomers, to buy groceries and pay taxes. He’s down to almost nothing, and his place is full of strangers, but he still has his house.”
“Can I ask you about Rose?” When he had met her at the rooming house, she had seemed to be still stricken by her friend’s murder. He didn’t want to make her unhappier, but he felt he had little choice.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Maybe I’ll feel better, talking about her. I like to talk anyway. I was going to call you sometime.” She crumbled some of the plump, round crackers into her chili and shook some hot sauce over all of it.
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause I knew she liked you. She told me so, after that time you went down to the mission to find her.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “But how could you call me?”
“I had your number. Remember that time you called Rosie? The manager scribbled it on the wall, along with your name.”
The news troubled him. It sounded like one more thing the police might use against him if they discovered it.
Seeing the expression on his face, she patted his arm. “Don’t worry. I scratched it off soon as I noticed it.”
“Then how—”
“I memorized it. PRospect 3391. Right?”
“You’ve got quite a memory, Madge.”
“I know,” she said, her mouth full of chili. “All my life, I’ve been able to remember almost anything I set my mind to, especially words or numbers. When me and Earl were on our way out here about fifteen years ago, we’d stop by the roadside and camp with other people. Everybody was hard up for entertainment. Some folks would play guitar or mouth harp and sing. Me, I’d do memory tricks. You got a dollar bill on you? If you’ll read the serial number off of it, I’ll say it right back to you.”
“I believe you,” he said.
“And if there’s anything I don’t want to remember, I just forget it.” She chuckled. “I guess that leaves room for the things that take up space in my head.”
“About Rose,” he prompted her. “Did she ever have arguments with anyone? You know anybody who didn’t like her?”
“Everybody liked Rosie,” she said in a tone that did not invite disagreement.
“What about this gray man you mentioned? Who is he?” He motioned to the counterman to freshen his coffee and bring Madge another grape soda.
“Just somebody I see around every now and then. Eugene, the manager, seems to know him, but he won’t tell me anything about him. Once I saw him talking to Rose, out on the sidewalk, and later I asked her about him, being my usually nosy self.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She just looked…very far away, almost like she didn’t even hear me.”
“Did she seem afraid of him? When they were talking?”
Madge paused. “I don’t know,” she said. “Agitated. A little nervous, maybe.”
“How did he get that name?”
“I gave him that,” she said, looking amused. “Not ’cause he wore gray. He wore dark colors, mostly. But his complexion looked almost gray. You know, unhealthy. He looked like an old guy who didn’t get out much.”
“If you see him around again, would you let me know? It’s important.”
She nodded, busy again with her chili.
“What about her friends? I understand she’d sometimes run into people—”
“Down on Broadway? I wouldn’t know about that. I don’t like to go in bars. Rose and me would share a bottle in her room sometime. Maybe I like to snoop, but what she did on Broadway was her business.”
“Anybody ever visit her?”
“Just me. Sometimes Doll.”
“Tall redhead? Drives a big Lincoln?”
“That’s right. You know her?”
“Kind of. I bumped into her down at the mission. She thought I was giving Rose a hard time, and she almost chewed my head off. Who is she?”
“Rosie said if I went to the movies more, I’d know her,” Madge said. “I don’t go much, though. Earl and me, we got out of the habit during hard times. Seemed like all the movies back then were about rich folks wearing evening gowns and sitting on white upholstery. Some people liked that, ’cause it helped ’em forget their troubles. But it just reminded us how bad off we were.”
“What about Doll?”
“Well,” Madge said between sips of grape soda, “she’d come by every few weeks. Sometimes she’d leave a bundle of old clothes for Rosie, but Rosie’d usually just take ’em down to the mission. Once, though, I saw a hat I liked, and Rosie gave it to me. It’s velvet, with a beautiful feather. I’ve still got it, but I don’t get many chances to wear it.”
“Maybe you will. Any other friends you can think of?”
“She talks—talked—about this guy Emory something or other. He’s down at the mission. I know she liked him. With him, I think it was even more than that.”
“How so?”
“She said he was sweet on her,” Madge said with the confidential air of a gossip. “But she knew he was too young for her, and he had problems of his own, and they’d be awful for each other. So she told him they should just stay friends.”
One of his problems is his manners, Horn thought. Hecalled for the check and paid up. “I’ll walk you back,” he said to Madge.
The day was cool and crisp, and the sun bounced blindingly off the puddles that stood in the street. The old houses, and the stores scattered among them, looked cleaner but no less timewo
rn after the night’s rain.
“Why all the questions?” Madge asked as they walked.
“Oh…I was talking with a friend last night, someone who knew Rose. And I felt bad just talking about her. And suddenly I knew that there was only one thing that would make me feel better—finding out who killed her. Does that sound crazy?”
“No,” she said. “I hope you find out. If you do, you going to tell the police?” He was silent, and she glanced sideways at him as she tried to match his long strides. “Have you ever been in trouble yourself?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Didn’t take much. The way you acted that time in her room, I could tell you didn’t want coppers around you. Earl was like that, since the cops never treated us fair either. With you, it’s just something you give off. Like the way you can tell a dog who’s been beaten….” She stopped. “I guess that’s not a very nice thing to say, is it?”
He laughed. “That bad, huh?”
“Didn’t mean any offense. But you’re going to have to be careful, aren’t you?”
“You’re the second person to tell me that. Don’t worry.”
They had reached the steps of the rooming house, and she paused. “I think there’s something else.”
“Tell me.”
“A few weeks ago,” she said, “Rosie asked me to do her a favor. Said she had to meet somebody at the Biltmore, and she wanted me to come along—not to be with her, but just to watch, in case.”
“In case what?”
“She didn’t say. But I could tell she was a little worried and would feel better knowing she had a friend somewhere around her. So we got all dressed up—me in my special velvet hat. I’d never even been in the Biltmore, and she said she hadn’t been there in years. She was supposed to meet this person in the lounge, and I went in first, so nobody would see us together. The man at the door was wearing a tux, and he looked at me kind of funny, like he knew I didn’t belong, but I put on my best face and told myself, I’m as good as anybody here. And next thing I knew, a girl showed me to a table, and I ordered a drink. Everything’s really overpriced there, I can—”
While I Disappear Page 10
