The door next to the receptionist was wide open. A man, probably in his seventies, emerged with a nurse. The name badge affixed to her scrubs identified her as “Sylvia.” The man was a visitor, for he was dressed in street clothes. Smartly designed wording on his T-shirt read, “Nuts Are Sexy”—and to defray any confusion about what that meant, there was a drawing of an almond beneath the words. He and the nurse were engaged in quiet, serious conversation, momentarily blocking the receptionist’s window.
“If I have to drive three hours to get here, then the person I need to see better keep the appointment,” he was saying.
“I understand. I’m so sorry the doctor wasn’t available. She had to attend to an emergency at the hospital, like I said. Do you plan to stick around? She could be back by three o’clock this afternoon.”
“I can’t wait that long; I have to get back to the farm. Please call me if my father takes a turn for the worse.”
“Of course, and we’ll call you if he takes a turn for the better, too!”
“Thank you.” The man turned to see Karissa and Marcello standing behind him. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Karissa said.
He started to move past them, but when he exchanged glances with Karissa, he did a slight double take, blinked, and quickly moved on. Meanwhile, the nurse Sylvia had disappeared back into the care center hallway.
Marcello approached the receptionist. “We’re supposed to visit Ray Webster. I believe his friend Butch Johnson made arrangements?”
The woman checked her computer asked for their names, and wrote out two visitor passes. Karissa and Marcello stuck them on their clothing.
“Room 111,” she said, indicating the door. “Wait for Sylvia to escort you.”
Karissa and Marcello found themselves in a hallway that looked like any other nursing home or hospital wing. It was lined with doors to rooms, a nurses’ station, and gurneys—some carrying people. It smelled like a nursing home, too, but the place appeared clean and orderly. It seemed like a decent establishment. Sylvia was nowhere in sight; she must have slipped into one of the resident’s rooms.
“You okay?” Marcello asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“After last night. What you called me about.”
“Oh. Yeah. His threat sure was creepy, though. Scared me at the time.”
“I bet he wouldn’t have said that to me. I’d knock his goddamned head off.”
“Who was he, Marcello? Was he at the World Stage just to find me and deliver his so-called message? Butch and the other band members said they’d never seen him before.”
“I don’t know, Karissa. You know Hollywood. It’s got a dark underbelly and there are no secrets. A lot of folks know what we want to do for the festival.”
The nurse appeared from a room. “Hello, I’m Sylvia,” she said, approaching them. “You’re here to see Ray Webster?”
“That’s right,” Marcello said.
“Well, you’re in luck. He’s fairly alert today. I have to ask that you keep your visit short. He tires easily and we don’t want to upset him. His blood pressure is high and he’s at the age when too much excitement could bring on another stroke …”
The woman suddenly frowned. “Oh … I’m sorry, are you family?”
“Friends,” Marcello answered.
She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear, I’ve said too much. I’m not supposed to talk about a resident’s condition to anyone but family. I thought you were with his son.”
“His son?” Karissa asked.
Marcello interrupted again. “We’re close with the family, Sylvia, it’s all right. We know all about Ray’s condition. Don’t you worry. We’ll be careful with him. Thank you for your help.” He took Karissa’s arm and walked on to Room 111 with Sylvia behind.
Ray Webster shared a room with another bed that was currently empty. The ninety-four-year-old man lay with his eyes closed and mouth slightly open. There were various tubes connected to his arms and running under the covers, and a machine beeped softly next to his bed. Karissa thought he looked extremely frail and on death’s door.
“Ray?” Sylvia said in that overly loud nurse’s voice. “Ray, you have friends here to see you.” She addressed them: “He must be asleep.”
Marcello spoke. “Mr. Webster? Hello, Mr. Webster?”
Karissa tried. “Ray? Good morning, Ray.”
It was the unfamiliar feminine voice that jogged him out of his dozing. His eyes darted to the visitors.
“There he is,” Sylvia said, moving to the door. “I’ll leave you to visit.”
“Gregory?” he whispered.
“No,” Marcello said. “We’re friends of Butch Johnson. You know Butch? The saxophone player?”
“Butch?”
“That’s right, Butch. Your friend?”
Webster’s eyes jerked around the room.
“Butch isn’t here, Mr. Webster, but we’re friends of his and we wanted to talk to you. Is that all right?”
The initial confusion on the man’s face seemed to subside, but his voice was weak. “Who are you?”
“My name is Marcello Storm.”
“And I’m Karissa Glover. How are you feeling this morning?”
“Fine.” He coughed a little.
She gave Marcello a glance and he nodded at her to go ahead. “Mr. Webster,” she said, “we wanted to talk to you about your old friend Hank Marley. Remember him?”
“Hank Marley?”
“Yes. Didn’t you play in his band a long time ago? Back in the 1940s?”
“Hank Marley … I remember Hank.” A visible change rolled over his face that displayed a warmth of recall, but also a touch of sadness.
“You played bass for him?” Marcello asked.
“I played bass. Hank. Piano player.”
“That’s right,” Karissa said. “Can I show you a photograph? I’d like you to look at it.” She dug the picture of Hank and Blair out of her purse and held it close to his eyes.
“I need my glasses,” Webster whispered.
They were on the nightstand by the bed. Marcello picked them up. “Here they are.”
The man positioned the glasses on his face. He then took the photograph, held it at arm’s length, and stared at it. He smiled.
“Oh. Hank. And … and …”
“Do you remember the woman?” Karissa asked.
He drew a slow intake of air and then spoke slowly and with effort. “Blair. That’s Blair Kendrick. Oh my. I haven’t thought of them in …. Where did you get this picture?”
“Well, sir,” Karissa said, “I’m living in Blair Kendrick’s old house in Sugar Hill. I found it there.”
“Sugar Hill? You live in Sugar Hill?”
“That’s right.”
“I lived in Sugar Hill.”
“We know. So did Hank Marley. You two were friends, right?”
“One of my best friends. He lived in the same house as me and my wife and son. He gave me my first job as a musician. I was twenty-one. I had to be twenty-one to play in the clubs.”
“What can you tell us about Hank and Blair?” Karissa asked.
“They …” he sighed. “They were in love. They were so much in love. They were not two people; they were one.”
The way he said it took Karissa’s breath away. It was as if he were describing a romance that great poets might write about.
Then he shook his head. “But they couldn’t do nothing about it. Not nothing, no way. He was a black man. She was a white woman. It was forbidden.”
“How did they manage?” Karissa asked.
“They met in secret. Their houses were close; they walked to each other’s homes, snuck in the back way. I sometimes saw her in our hallway. She was a movie star, did you know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The studio would ruin her career. There were laws. Misce—missa—missagen—”
“Miscegenation laws.”
“Yes.
” His eyes twinkled a bit at Karissa. “But it changed in … what year was it? When a black could marry a white?”
“In California, it was 1948.”
He nodded. “California, not other states. Some states, maybe, but not everywhere. That was later?”
“Yes, sir. In 1967, that’s when the Supreme Court made it a federal law that there couldn’t be any discrimination of interracial marriage.”
At that point, Webster looked at Karissa and smiled broadly, revealing very few teeth. “You’re the product of that!”
“Sir?”
“You mixed. I can see that.”
“Oh. Yes, sir. I’m biracial. That’s correct.”
“You half and half?”
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“One of your parents? Black?”
“I don’t know. I was adopted.”
He gave her that smile again. “Well, I can see it. You’re part-sister. Maybe half. Maybe quarter. Maybe eighth. You’re light-skinned. But I see it. You’re a beautiful woman.”
Karissa blushed and looked down. “Thank you.”
“I bet white men say you’re ‘exotic.’”
She laughed. “I’ve heard that a few times in my life, yes.”
He laughed hoarsely. “Bet you don’t like that, huh?”
“Not really.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Mr. Webster—”
“Call me Ray, child.”
“Okay, uh, Ray. What happened to Blair and Hank? I understand Hank just disappeared sometime in 1949. Do you know anything about that?”
Something passed over Webster’s eyes and he coughed. Then he coughed again. Wheezing, he said, “They wanted to get married. Studio said …” He coughed again. “… they would blacklist Blair … threatened Hank …” The coughing became more pronounced.
“It’s okay, Ray,” Karissa said. “Take a breath. Do you need some water?”
“… they were going to kill him …”
“Who’s they?” Marcello asked.
Webster gasped for air and managed to say, “Fr—Franco.”
“Franco?” Karissa asked.
The machine Webster was hooked up to started beeping. His eyes bulged and he appeared to have trouble breathing.
“Oh, dear, we need the nurse.” Karissa placed a hand on Marcello’s arm.
He said, “I’ll find someone,” and quickly left the room.
“Gregory …” Webster whispered.
“Gregory?”
“Talk … to … Gregory …” Then he gasped in pain.
Sylvia and another nurse rushed in with Marcello. “You two need to leave the room, please,” Sylvia said.
They went out to the reception area. “Did he say anything else?” Marcello asked.
“He told me to talk to Gregory, whoever that is. He mentioned Franco—Buddy Franco—did you hear him?”
“Yes.”
“The studio fixer. Did he do something to Hank? Was he the one threatening them?”
“Well, he figures in some of those stories you told me about the night Eldon Hirsch was shot.”
They sat and waited. Marcello got on his phone, answered e-mails, and stepped outside to make a call, while Karissa thought about what she’d heard. It wasn’t much. Webster had been surprisingly coherent for a little while. He probably knew more, if only she could get in and talk to him again. After fifteen minutes had passed and Marcello was back in the building, she approached the receptionist window and asked to speak to Sylvia. She was told to sit down and wait. After another ten minutes, Sylvia came through the door.
“How is Mr. Webster?” Karissa asked, standing.
“He’s had a cardiac incident. You won’t be able to see him now. I asked you not to excite him.”
“We didn’t mean to excite him; we were just talking to him,” Marcello answered.
“I need to get back inside. What is it you wanted?”
“Sylvia, Ray asked us to talk to Gregory about something. Do you know who Gregory is?”
Sylvia frowned. “I thought you were friends of the family?”
“We are.”
“Then you should know that Gregory is Mr. Webster’s son. He was just here a little while ago.”
Karissa felt her pulse quicken. “The man—he was maybe in his sixties or seventies—with the ‘nut’ shirt?”
“That was him, yes.”
“Can you … can you tell us how to reach him?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Nuh-uh. You’re not family. Next time he’s here, I’ll ask if it’s all right if I give you his number. You leave me your name and number, all right?”
Karissa nodded. “All right,” she said, handing the woman her business card.
Outside, as they walked to their cars, Marcello asked, “So, did that accomplish anything?”
“Sure it did. It was corroboration that something bad happened to Hank Marley—and it was because of his relationship with Blair Kendrick.”
“He didn’t exactly say that.”
“Sounded like it to me. If only we could have kept him talking a while longer. He knows more. Maybe his son, Gregory, does, too. Let’s put on our research hats and see if we can find him.”
“There must be a few hundred Gregory Websters in Los Angeles.”
“But do they all have sexy nuts?”
As Karissa drove away from the nursing home, something else about Gregory Webster other than his T-shirt struck her. She wasn’t sure if it had been her imagination, but it seemed that, as he was leaving, the younger Webster had looked at Karissa in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
13
THE MOVIE
The motion picture shifts to a night scene, the exterior of the Ultimate Pictures lot. The camera pulls in slowly to the administration building and a single illuminated window amid the darkness. We penetrate the window and now are inside a spacious office that is lit only by a shaded lamp on a broad desk. The room is full of shadows, the setting reminiscent of something from a German silent film made by the likes of F. W. Murnau or Robert Wiene.
Eldon Hirsch sits with his coin collection, placing his newest acquisition in a slot in a binder. He has the means and the wealth that could give him great pleasure in life, but instead he is alone—an angry, unhappy man. A black-and-white publicity photo, framed and sitting on his desk, is a representation of the obsession that is eating his soul.
It is a recent still of Blair Kendrick, inscribed and signed, “To Eldon—Thank you very much for everything! X X O O—Blair.”
“There he is, playing with his toys.”
Hirsch looked up and squinted into the shadows. The tall, shapely woman was a silhouette, but the white dress she wore took on a ghostly luminescence in the semidarkness. At first, he thought she was Blair, finally come to pay her respects, after hours, in the way he had been desiring … but then he realized he was mistaken. The woman’s outline certainly resembled Blair’s, but she was unfortunately someone else altogether.
“Malena?” Hirsch whispered.
“In the flesh and blood.”
“How did you …? I wasn’t expecting you.” His secretary, Camille, was gone for the night—but he thought he knew who might have let her in.
The woman strolled into the expansive office. She was in her early thirties, a lean, athletically built beauty who spoke with a faint Italian accent. She also had magnificent, flaming-red hair. Malena Mengarelli could have been a glamorous movie star if she had chosen that path. Instead, she had immigrated to join and sleep with her underboss in Las Vegas, who provided her with the means to enjoy an extravagant and indulgent lifestyle among a sinister family of colleagues. Malena wasn’t exactly a caporegime, nor had she ever been “made,” since women never received that honor. Nevertheless, soldiers in the organization did her bidding, and it was well known that anyone who refused her orders would soon, as they would say, sleep with the fishes.
Eldon Hirsch had no doubt that Malena Mengar
elli was a very dangerous person.
“I was in town on business and I thought I’d drop in, pay a visit,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you, Eldon?”
“Not at all.” He stood and started walking toward the bar. “Can I get you a drink?” Then he stopped and nervously moved back to his desk, reaching for the cigar box. “Or maybe you’d like a cigar? You like Cubans, don’t you? Meyer told me so.”
“Sure, I’ll have a Cuban. And a drink.”
Hirsch fumbled with the box and managed to produce a Havana original. He handed it to her and flicked a flame from his elephant lighter. Malena puffed it and sat in the chair in front of the desk. Hirsch returned to the bar. “What’ll you have? Martini? Gin and tonic?”
“Bloody Mary.”
Hirsch spent too much time preparing the drink, retrieving cold tomato juice from the little bar fridge and conscientiously adjusting the right ratios of juice to vodka to spices. When he finally brought it to her, she didn’t thank him.
“You’re not having one?” she asked.
“Uh, no … I’m not. You enjoy it. How have you been? You look well. You look beautiful, Malena. That red hair, God … you sure you don’t want to be in a picture? Technicolor would do wonders for you. I could make you a star. You could be—”
“Hush, Eldon,” she snapped. “Screw your shitty movies.”
Even Eldon Hirsch was shocked when words like that were uttered by a woman.
Malena blew a few smoke rings. “This is good. I’m impressed.”
“I’m glad you like it.” He wanted to ask her why she had “dropped in” but knew to keep his mouth shut. She would bring up the agenda in due time.
She nodded at the coin collection, still spread out on the desk. “I see you’re admiring your baubles.”
Hirsch gave a little laugh. “Yes, yes. I can’t stop handling them. They are something, aren’t they? Their worth increases every day. In ten or twenty years’ time—”
“I know, I know, they’ll be very valuable. Screw your shitty coins.”
The studio boss swallowed and sat back in his chair. He considered pressing the call button and having Buddy Franco step into the room. That, however, would be a huge mistake. Hirsch was fairly certain that Franco was behind her visit.
Blues in the Dark Page 9
