[Celebrity Murder Case 04] - The Talking Pictures Murder Case Read online

  Roland showed a trace of a smile. “Especially one friend with a crystal ball.”

  “That's for me to know and you to find out “ She pointed a beefy finger with menace. “I want you to start lining up talkers for Annamary, Jack, and Willis.”

  'They're washed up.”

  “Like shit they are!”

  “Okay, so Schenck wants them. Schenck’s desperate. United Artists needs pictures They need stars. Who've they got? Chaplin? He makes a picture every five years. Pickford? She's done her first talker playing a southern whore. How do you think that's going to go over with the audiences who prefer her as a perennial teenager with long curls?”

  Marie said coldly, “It's going to go over big. I saw Coquette at a screening and she's wonderful You forget she trained on the stage. Mary'll quit when she's good and ready, like my Annamary. “

  “And what about Fairbanks? Who does he choose to write his first talker? William Shakespeare, may God have mercy on him. And Schencks sister-in-law, Norma Talmadge. Did you see her talker New York Nights? You could cut that Brooklyn accent of hers with a reaper “

  “Norma's different. She doesn't care anymore. Peg, her mother, is as shrewd as I am. She salted away millions for Norma and her sister Connie. And Norma's screwing young Gilbert Roland, she doesn't give a damn about anything else. Well, my kids give a damn, damn it!”

  “Kids!” snorted Roland. “Annamary's thirty-five, Willis is over forty, and Jack hasn't drawn a sober breath in years.” He rolled his chair back with a ferocious shove and shouted, “I don't want them on this lot!”

  Marie was out of her chair like a ball shot from a cannon, clutching his lapels with fingers of steel. “You stinking son of a bitch! You'll never break their contracts. They’re ready to play, you be ready to pay! Every penny and that's millions!”

  “I’ll blacklist them in every studio in the world! They'll never work in pictures again!”

  “Oh yes they will! And right here at Diamond! And you're going to pay them every nickel you legally owe them!”

  “Don't you threaten me!”

  Marie backed away from him, her face magically transformed into an astonishing mien of ladylike serenity “I am not threatening you, Alexander I am simply stating facts By the way, I understand your wife is thinking of making a comeback in talkers. Nice girl, Helen. Good actress. Good woman. Too good for you. By the way, have you told her about this latest … 'find' of yours … what's her name? Oh yes. Alicia Leddy …”

  “You bitch.”

  “My stomach's rumbling. Must be time to eat. Tomorrow, after lunch. Shall we say two o'clock?’ I’ll expect to meet you here and decide on the first talkers for my kiddies. By the way, what are those ugly discolorations on your face? Bed sores?”

  Bristling with rage, Roland waited until she left the room, then shouted into the intercom, “Jason!” He overrode Jason's meek “Yes, sir.”

  “That twat who took notes at the Mayer session. Call Mayer and tell him to fire her. She's one of Bertha Graze's spies!”

  In his puce-and-orange striped private office, Jason Cutts did not do as he was told to do. First he gave the switchboard a number, and when he heard a familiar voice cooing at the other end, he said briskly, “Well! Have I got something for you to die for! His holiness has ordered me to phone the prince of darkness at Metro and tell him to fire the twat that took notes at the ecumenical council. And Mama Marie just got through strafing him and slashing below his belt, which I'm sure she'll relay to you herself in good time Is that enough for now?”

  “Oh, that's just lovely,” cooed Bertha Graze into the phone while demolishing a bar of chocolate-covered halvah. “And by the by, keep your ears open for any byplay involving Dolly Lovelace and her father's suspected murders I've been getting a lot of bad vibrations all day. “

  In the studio commissary, Jack Darling and Alicia Leddy sat with Rita Gerber, Alicia's traveling companion on the Twentieth Century Limited. Rita was telling them, “I no sooner get out to the Fox lot than they tell me they're lending me here to Diamond to do a musical with Lotus Fairweather and Donald Carewe They're both so old they'll have to photograph them through sheet metal. And me in a musical!. I’m as melodious as a bull elephant in heat! Who's that prancing to the hot food counter?”

  Jack recognized Jason Cutts, Alexander Roland's assistant, and identified him “He's a very nasty fairy. Around the lot he’s known as 'Stinkerbell'. Alicia demurred. “Oh, I think he's darling. He's been so helpful advising me on decorating my duplex. He's covered the walls with the most unusual prints of characters from the Arabian Nights. You know, like Ali Baba and the forty thieves and Scheherezade and”—she was blushing, much to their surprise—”you should see the positions they've gotten into.”

  Rita asked, “Ali Baba and Scheherezade?”

  “No, Ali Baba and the forty thieves. I think it's time I got back to the set.”

  “What's the hurry?” asked Rita “I'd like to get to know Jack here better.”

  Alicia stood up “I better get back We're a week over schedule and it's only supposed to take four weeks to shoot but now it's three weeks already and I suppose that costs Mr. Roland a lot of money.”

  “Hundreds of thousands, kiddo,” advised Jack.

  “Oh my! Mr Roland might kill me!1'

  “If he has to,” agreed Jack After extracting assurances from both of them that they’d phone her, Alicia hurried back to soundstage 6.

  “Got a cigarette?” Rita asked. After they both lit up, she asked Jack, “I'm sure you heard about your former father-in-law's murder.”

  “I’m sure even the deaf, dumb, and blind have heard of it.”

  “I used to know Dolly a long time ago.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Before she went into pictures. We modeled dresses for Worth.”

  “With a figure like yours, I don’t doubt you.”

  “I was real sad when I read about her suicide. But now they say she might have been murdered You got any idea why?”

  “If I did, I'd be sitting in an office in police headquarters, spilling what I know,”

  “You mean they haven't brought you in for questioning?”

  Jack was studying the smoldering end of his cigarette “No, they haven't. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it, I'm a little surprised they haven’t. I suppose they'll get around to all of us,” In response to her questioning look, he added, “My mother, my sister, her husband. But we had no reason to kill them. I certainly didn't. You must have seen the picture of me … holding her.”

  “It made me cry.”

  “Did it? Did it really? I think most people found it repulsive.”

  “I thought it was touching But then, I cry when I read The Five Little Peppers.”

  “I don't think I’ll ever love again the way I loved…the way I love Dolly We had something real special together, something that doesn't happen but once in a lifetime. My lifetime, anyway. Hers too. I know that for sure. I've had lots of affairs and I’ll go on having lots of affairs but it won't be like it was with Dolly. You don't know what I mean.”

  “Sure I do. You and Dolly lived my dream. I'm jealous. I want with somebody what you had with Dolly. But, gee, she was certainly something. Her father used to come and pick her up every day after work.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Every day, rain or shine. Great-looking guy he was I could have gone for him myself. All year round, even in the winter, he had this gorgeous sexy tan You know what I mean. I mean you knew the man.”

  “Sure, but out here, there's nothing unusual about a tan, so I guess I didn't really notice. Anyway, whether men are sexy or not doesn’t interest me. I'm strictly for the girls.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a smile, “I been warned you're a lady-killer.”

  “You have? When was this? We only met an hour ago.”

  “You passed me on my way to Alicia's set “

  “And I didn't notice you?”

  I guess no
t.

  “I'm noticing you now. How do you like it out here?”

  “I wish I knew. I been on this mess for eight days now and they say it's got six more weeks to go. I play Lotus Fairweather's kid sister. Granddaughter would be more like it. They’re spending a small fortune on this turkey. They're shooting in this new two-strip Technicolor”—-Jack let out a low whistle—”and they got about a hundred dancers and singers in costumes that cost so much they'd give the Secretary of the Treasury indigestion Baby, if anything happens to screw up the works on this one Mr Roland might have to hock his Diamond .”

  “It couldn't happen to a more deserving rat.” He thought for a moment and then drenched her with charm. “You're so pretty, and you have such a sweet personality. How come you're still single?”

  “I'm not. We haven't lived together for years. He's a very sick guy “

  “That's too bad What's the matter with him?”

  “He suffers from chronic failure.”

  “Is that why you quit him?”

  “I quit him because when I started getting some good parts on Broadway, my success went to his fists. He used to try knocking me around until one day I flattened him with a frying pan. As soon as I can get the time off, I'm heading for Reno.”

  ‘When are you free for dinner?”

  What about Alicia?”

  “I'm not interested in eating Alicia.”

  “Anyway, she's got her hands and her bed full with Alexander Roland.” She mentioned the name of a New York actor. “I been seeing him a couple of times.”

  “You don't sound very enthusiastic.”

  “Weell …” She drew the word out like a strand of chewing gum “He's only here a couple of months and already he’s going Hollywood.”

  “In what way?”

  “He's taking tennis lessons, for instance.”

  Samuel Goldwyn was waving his hands impatiently as Sophie Gang wished this story conference would draw to an end. Stretched out on the couch with his eyes closed was Goldwyn's latest writing captive from New York, Ben Hecht. Hecht, with Charles MacArthur, had written a big Broadway smash, The Front Page, a few years earlier, but he had accepted Goldwyn's offer on his own. MacArthur preferred to remain in New York with his wife, the brilliant Helen Hayes, who had just given birth to Mary, their first child. Goldwyn was speaking with a pained expression “Her lawyers tell me I owe Vilma Banky one more picture, so I have to honor the contract, and everyone in this business knows I'm an honorable man.” Sophie’s face turned beet red as she tried to keep from choking “But that terrible Hungarian accent of hers? What do we do with that accent?”

  Hecht spoke quietly “We put her in a convent as a nun who has taken an oath of silence. She never has to speak a word “

  “Ben! You're a genius! Positively a genius!”

  “Trouble is, I don't know anything about nuns or convents.”

  “So what? So you go to a convent and talk to the Mother Shapiro! I mean, when I did that movie where Ronnie Colman looked for somebody in a church—”

  “Sanctuary,” said Sophie, wishing she could go somewhere and find some for herself.

  “Who gives a damn!1' exploded Goldwyn, “It didn't make any money But to find out what goes on in a church, I had my rabbi phone Saint Mary's, and he spoke to the rectum “

  Hecht stifled a yawn. He was bored with Goldwynisms. He was sure Sam had a writer who wrote them for him daily. Goldwyn was too shrewd a showman and too wily a businessman to swim in an ocean of malapropisms. But on the other hand, when he was negotiating Hecht’s contract and professing to be bleeding copiously from the writer's greedy demands, he pleaded, “Ben, stick with me and this will be the pinochle of your career. Now he heard Goldwyn yelling, “You're not paying me any tension! You're half-asleep!”

  “No I'm not, Sam I think better with my eyes shut It’s the way I like to sit in a movie house, too.“ He moved to an upright position, filled his pipe with tobacco, and then torched it. “Sam, forget about Vilma Banky for five minutes and let's talk about the murders of Dolly Lovelace and her father “

  “Why should I waste my time! Let the police talk about them!”

  “Oh, they're doing a lot of talking about it. I've got a news writer friend. Hazel Dickson—she's very thick with Herbert Villon.”

  “Who's he?”

  Sophie Gang provided the information “He's the youngest chief inspector in the business He’s in charge of the investigation.”

  “Did I ask for you to put your two cents in?”

  “No, but I was just longing for the sound of my own voice for a change.”

  “It's a very interesting case, Sam,” said Hecht. “Did you know the girl?”

  “Of course I knew her. I'm a legend! I know everybody! The only ones I don't know are the ones not worth knowing! Isn't that right, Sophie?”

  “Me hear no evil, me see no evil, me speak no evil.”

  “Who the hell asked for a speech?” To Hecht he said, “I was at her funeral, wasn't I?”

  Hecht said, “Everybody goes to everybody's funeral in this town. Not out of respect, but out of curiosity.”

  Sophie said, The honest ones go to make sure they're dead “

  Sam wheeled on her. “Don't you have to go to the toilet or something?”

  “I just went!”

  “Go again?”

  “Why?”

  'To make sure!”

  “I knew old man Lovelace in New York.” Hecht had nailed their attention. “He worked as a stagehand. In those days, Dolly was working as a model at one of those high-class, overpriced salons on Fifth Avenue The old man watched her like a hawk. Used to pick her up after work. It's hard to figure how she got away to make it into pictures. He was a knockout of a looker. Fairly tall, built solid, and sported a tan all year round. Never knew of a wife or any other member of the family. Ezekiel used to drink in the same bar I frequented on Eighth Avenue. Sometimes he talked to me, sometimes he'd take his beer to a table in a remote corner and sort of mumble to himself. You know, Sam, I think he was in love with his daughter.”

  Goldwyn was aghast “Are you suggesting I make such a dirty picture?”

  “I'm not suggesting anything. I think the old man had a deep dark secret that made him overprotective of his daughter. I think that's why they might have been murdered. You see, I was always questioning in my mind the old man's tan. I began to wonder if maybe there was some colored blood in the family.”

  Sophie Gang said, “My cousin Jenny married a half-breed “

  “What's the matter with her?” asked an astonished Goldwyn “She couldn't find a whole one?”

  Sophie Gang asked Hecht, “This writer friend of yours …”

  “Hazel Dickson.”

  “Right. Have you told her your theory?”

  “We had breakfast together downtown this morning I told her then She thinks that's why some photographs might have been stolen when the old man was slain.”

  With his chronic impatience, Goldwyn said, “I didn't see nothing in the papers about no missing pictures “

  “You probably will pretty soon. So anyway, back to Vilma Banky and the convent So here we have Vilma as Sister Nellie Nausea …”

  “I want the whole kit and caboodle of them in for questioning,” Herbert Villon was telling Jim Mallory, who was jotting down names on a pad. The three Darlings and Willis Loring Sounds like a vaudeville act.”

  Villon tapped a memorandum on his desk. 'The coroner was sober when he made these tests?”

  “I swear on my wife's grave “

  “She isn’t dead “ The detective merely smiled “So there were traces of poisoned cookies in their stomachs. You searched Ezekiel's kitchen thoroughly?”

  “Fine-tooth comb. No cookies. As for Dolly's house, it had been cleaned out thoroughly after the funeral.”

  “I want you to talk to her neighbors “ Mallory nodded. “See if she had any visitors the day she committed suicide. We know the old man had one visitor, the so-ca
lled sissy man, if we can trust a snot-nosed kid who spies for a hobby. Who knows? Maybe we turn up a visitor of Dolly's who arrived with a box of cookies and got her to eat one. Maybe sissy man tempted Ezekiel with a chocolate-covered graham cracker.”

  “I like the ones with the raspberry jelly inside.”

  “You ain't been poisoned, you dummy!” He reached for a copy of Screenland magazine and flipped the pages. “Now, here's a cutie I'd like to slip a little something to. She's just been signed by Harry Cohn at Columbia “ He held up the magazine for Mallory’s attention. “Now, ain’t this here Barbara Stanwyck something?”

  SIX

  In the vastness of the hygienically white kitchen of Annawill, a black empress named Hettie McLeod sampled one of her own freshly baked tollhouse cookies. Her husband, Dakota, reached for one too and was rewarded with a slap on his hand

  “What's the matter with you, woman? You got enough cookies there to supply a troop of Girl Scouts.”

  ‘The doctor says you got to lose fifty pounds and you gonna lose them fifty pounds or you gonna lose me!” Dakota recognized the fire in her eyes, he had seen those conflagrations often enough. Hettie continued munching and lecturing “One day soon the phone's gonna ring and it's gonna be our agent telling us it's our turn up at bat again. We gonna be back in pictures because they's talking and they ain't no better-talking black actors around here then you and me! Look at that Lincoln Jefferson whateverthehellhisnameis that got himself signed up at Fox. Now he calls himself Stepin Fetchit! Stepin Fetchit! The toady! Well, he's starring in something called Hearts of Dixie. And can he talk? Why, you can't understand a word he says. But my friend Prunella, she's in the picture, she tells me they scream themselves silly watching him in the rushes. Stepin Fetchit indeed'“ She began demolishing another cookie and then mused aloud, “You know something, Dakota?”

  “What's that?”

  “I think we's too refined.”

  “Well, hell, woman, we got an education. We got high-school diplomas!”

  'That's damn right and that's what's damn wrong. Here's what we gotta be doing “ She began humming “Alabamy Bound” and, with her right hand elevated and batting the air, she did a combination of a shuffle and a stmt. “Yassa, boss, heah ah cums. Heah ah is, yo' faithful Mammy, Hydrangea. Yassa—”