The Empty Glass (17 page)

46.

A
nother drink?” Billy asked me.

“Sure.”

He poured me another, then one for himself.

He drank his off in a gulp; I sipped tentatively at mine, but since he was already pouring himself another shot, I figured I should catch up. I swallowed it. “Who was the man?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know. We should just stop talking now. We’ve already said too much.”

“
You
have.”

“That’s what I mean. I want to show you something.”

He reached into a drawer, removed a paperback with a red cover, opened it, and read aloud: “Didn’t I have Borden’s ironclad assurance a Big Story was out there somewhere in our sprawling, sports-starved metropolis just waiting for Charley Evans, columnist and feature writer, to break it? What more did I need, a Ouija board?”

He put the book down and smiled with pained resignation. “There’s more,” he said. “Korea, psychology, the dark side of boxing, but it’s all pretty blah.”

“What is it?”

“Caryl Chessman’s novel. He wrote three books in prison. One of them this:
The Kid Was a Killer
. And it’s not about his life. It’s about boxing. Well, sure it would be fascinating to read a novel from a killer and kidnapper if the whole thing weren’t so tedious.”

“I don’t know what this has to do with Cal-Neva.”

“Caryl stopped women with a red light and raped them. The man in the photos drugged and raped a young star. Don’t step into that black circle, Ben. I know there’s a Big Story out there somewhere in our sprawling, blood-starved metropolis just waiting for Ben Fitzgerald, deputy coroner, to break it. But Big Stories are dangerous. Do yourself a favor: Walk away from this. Get back to your life.”

“Who was the man with Sinatra at the lodge?”

“Christ, you really want to know.”

I nodded.

His hands were shaking. He had a drink. And then another. And still another for good measure. Then he held the bottle out to me.

“No thanks.”

“It’s good stuff. I just bought it.” He was slurring his words. “Came into a little cash just recently. I tell you that?”

“You told me that.”

He removed a folder from his desk and from it took a stack of prints. He put them on the table.

They still smelled of darkroom chemicals. “Go on,” he said. “Take a look.”

47.

I
can’t tell you what I felt when I saw those pictures, Doctor: the sickness and the sadness, the depths of the depravity. There were a dozen or more prints showing Marilyn on the floor of Chalet 52 crawling around, just lying there or wallowing, blasted out of her mind. Wasted.

According to Billy, when Sinatra saw the pictures, he said, “They’re pretty sick, aren’t they?” And Billy said, “Yes, they are.
Really
sick.”

“What do you think I ought to do with them?” Sinatra asked, and Billy said, “Burn them.”

“Did you make any copies?” he asked.

“No,” Billy lied.

I see the photos when I close my eyes, Doc. I can’t get them out of my head: Marilyn, sick and moaning under the man who was wearing my shirt—and then wearing nothing at all.

48.

P
ucini never advertised. It didn’t need to. It was co-owned by Sinatra and Lawford, so it was booked until Doomsday. To get a reservation, first you had to know the Secret Name of God. Not to mention His number. Then you had to call Him. If you happened to finally reach Him, and told Him your name, and asked Him for a reservation, He would put you on hold, look for a pencil, send a flood, burn a bush, and tell you, “No.”

The maître d’ that night was hardly God, but he acted like it. He took a swift look at me, an almost imperceptible up-and-down that registered everything he needed to know before he smiled thinly and said, “Sir?”

“I’m looking for Jo Carnahan,” I said.

Over his shoulders, down the aisle that led to the stage, I saw her sitting on the curved edge of a white booth to the right. She was facing the front door. Her Kool was in a holder, and she gestured with it as she spoke; smoking was a form of punctuation for her. She smoked the way other people use commas. The diamonds that hung like teardrops from her ears sparkled in the light from the high chandeliers.

Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Orchestra played on the stage you could see past the cigarette girls, like French maids, who roamed the aisle between two rows of banquettes.

“That’s her,” I said, pushing the maître d’ aside and walking toward the tables.

“I’m afraid you can’t—”

It turned out I couldn’t: I stopped when, around the pane of leaded glass that obscured part of Jo’s table, I saw the man.

•   •   •

C
aptain James Hamilton of the LAPD was a drinking buddy of Chief William Parker; they’d worked together in Army Intelligence during the war. In civilian life, Hamilton started out as chief investigator for the police commission, but—like Hoover—he was secretly conducting investigations
of
the police commission . . . and reporting what he’d learned about his colleagues back to then–deputy chief Parker.

Hamilton used surveillance (Fred Otash, Bernie Spindel) to eliminate and intimidate his enemies. And when he torpedoed Parker’s rival, Thad Brown, Parker promoted Hamilton to captain and chief of the Gangster Squad, or the Intelligence Division.

But under Hamilton, the Intelligence Division didn’t seem so interested in the bad guys: Hamilton and Parker wanted to know where film star bodies were buried, which studs were flits, which starlets were lezbos, who’d fucked whom, who liked little boys, who drank too much, and whose arms were studded with needle tattoos.

Hamilton was Bobby Kennedy’s favorite cop. Back when he’d been a member of the Kefauver Commission, Bobby had operated out of Hamilton’s office while in L.A., and Hamilton turned his own best men into Bobby’s drivers, valets, and security guards.

So I didn’t walk over to Jo. Instead, I fired up a Kent and found a seat at the bar by the window and hung my hat on the hook. I ordered Wild Turkey from the man behind the bar in his black jacket with a shirt and a tie that was almost as red as his nose. His hair shone blue with oil.

“Waiting for a date?” the bartender asked.

“You could say that,” I said. “Actually, I wonder if you could send a note to a friend: just a note on a napkin to a lady across the room?”

“Of course, sir. Where is she?”

“She’s the woman in white ermine at Captain Hamilton’s table,” I said. Then, on a napkin, I wrote “Miss Carnahan: phone call for you from Delilah.”

And when one of the efficient, white-jacketed waiters arrived at the bar with a silver tray, the barkeep handed him the folded napkin. “Table fifteen,” he said.

I lit another cigarette and watched through the smoke as Jo read the note, leaned to the side, and looked toward the front desk. Her eyes were round and she was white, but she hadn’t seen me. She daubed her lips with a napkin and said something to Captain Hamilton, then stood and adjusted her ermine. She walked (I would say glided) down the aisle through the tables to the front desk.

Her face fell when she saw me. “Ben.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“You can’t be here. What if he sees me with—”

“There’s a parking lot in back.”

•   •   •

Y
ou are having problems with the tape again. Or at least it seems that way; the fact is that the eleventh reel is finished. It is time for the twelfth. You remove it from the Sony, mark the cardboard box with my name and the number eleven, then spool the new tape onto the reels, hitting
PLAY
, then
REWIND
, and
PLAY
.

Finally, you hit
RECORD
, smile up at me and, as if giving an orchestra their cue, say, “Five, four, three, two—”

•   •   •

A
ll that bullshit about investigative journalism,” I said outside, “but what ends up in your column is trick-golf shots and Bob Hope. You weren’t investigating a story, Jo: You were investigating
me
. For your boyfriend.”

“You don’t understand.” She was beginning to cry. “I wish I could make you—”

“You knew I was at Verona. You
told
him. That’s why he showed up—”

She pulled away. I slapped her.

“—pretending to be Johnny.”

“Ben—”

“Let me tell you something about your handsome captain, Jo,” I said, shaking her shoulders. “He raped Miss Monroe. They drugged her and took pictures. It was blackmail. They wanted the diary.”

“No. They wanted the tape.”

“What?”

“I want you to see someone,” she whispered. “His name is Fred Otash. Ask him about Rock Hudson.”

She opened her purse and took out her pen and was writing something in her reporter’s notebook when I heard the captain’s voice: “Jo!”

I turned.

Captain Hamilton stood, a bantam barrel of a man, by the Dumpsters at the door leading out from the kitchen. His right arm was in a sling. I probably don’t need to tell you he’d been shot by Johnny, Doc. The point is that he wore a bespoke suit—pocket square, pearl tie pin, pocket watch with gold chain. Drill-sergeant eyes popped from pink skin scrubbed to a raw sheen. Maybe the eyes had started out as blue but now looked boiled, like pale pearl onions in a gimlet glass. His crew cut made it impossible to tell if his hair was gray or blond, but bristles of hair jutted from the rolls of red skin on his neck.

“What have we here?” he said. “A little backdoor tête-à-tête.”

“Hello, James,” Jo said. “This is—”

“Ah, don’t tell me: the fabled Delilah!” I smelled gin and Hai Karate as he stepped toward me. “So you’re the bastard who’s been stealing my clothes.”

49.

T
he Champagne Orchestra was playing “Tiny Bubbles” as Captain Hamilton escorted Jo and me to his banquette near the stage. It was covered in a white cloth, red candle in the center, the ravaged remains of dinner—lobster Newburg, steak béarnaise—sitting on the uncleared plates beside the napkins and the baskets filled with breadsticks.

The banquette was a padded white half-moon around which two other couples sat:

Steve McQueen and Neile Adams.

Red Buttons and Helayne McNorton.

“Now,” Captain Hamilton said as I sat between him and Jo on the curved booth that faced the front door, “I suggest we all get to know each other. Everyone, this is a friend of Jo’s. A very, shall we say,
good
friend of Jo’s. And, as I’m so fond of saying, any friend of Jo’s is a friend of mine.” He turned to Jo. “Darling, make the introductions.”

Nervously, she said, “Ben Fitzgerald, this is Captain James Hamilton.”

“We’ve met,” I said.

“Steve McQueen and Neile.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, sure.”

“And Red Buttons and Helayne.”

“Now,” Captain Hamilton said, “you were saying, Jo darling.”

“Sorry?”

“When I stepped outside, I found you and this . . .
friend
speaking. You said, ‘Rock Hudson.’”

“James.”
Jo smiled. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I asked a question.”

“If the lady doesn’t feel like talking—”

“Mind your business, Delilah, and I’ll mind mine.”

“Very well then.” She broke into her Annie Laurie voice: “What Hollywood Heartthrob’s’s shrinker told his wife that the snakes he saw in inkblots meant the male penis, dear ones?”

“Really, Jo—”

“Seems this Giant of a film star had an affair with a married male friend, then went to the man’s house and had dinner with the man’s wife. Surely Heaven does not Allow that! He had an affair with his very own agent in Palm Springs. His Magnificent Obsession? Picking up boys on Santa Monica Boulevard.”

“You saying Rock Hudson is a queer?” Steve asked.

“I’m a reporter, darling.”

“You’re goddamn Annie Laurie,” said the captain. “And that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“—quest,” Lawrence Welk said from the stage. “Captain Hamilton?”

The blue spotlight turned to Captain Hamilton. Steve McQueen and Red Buttons smiled, then clapped.

“We’re taking requests,” Lawrence Welk said. “What-a would-a you-a like to hear?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to hear nothing.”

Jo slipped a piece of paper over my left thigh.

The captain noticed: “What—?”

I grabbed the paper and raised my hand. The spotlight spun to me.

“
You
, then, sir.”

I blinked.

“What’s your request?”

I said the first thing I could remember, the first thing out of my mouth, which was—

“‘Young World,’” Lawrence Welk said. “The Ricky Nelson hit, sung by the lovely and talented Miss Kitty Wells. Miss Kitty, please invite Mr. Fitzgerald up to sing with you.”

The next thing I knew I was onstage looking down the aisle flanked by the white booths and all those minks and martinis, standing beside Kitty as Lawrence Welk said, “A-one an’ a-two.”

I couldn’t remember the words, and though the spotlight blinded me, I kept thinking I saw Jo with tears in her eyes, mouthing the lyrics that I had forgotten as Lawrence Welk danced with the “Champagne Lady.”

Applause.

I squinted into the light, bowing, watching Steve and Red and Jo clapping. The captain didn’t clap.

He was waiting for me to return.

But I did not. I bowed and waved and ducked past the low podiums behind which the musicians sat in powder-blue tuxedos and slipped around the cyclorama into the back stage filled with wires, and heard Lawrence strike up “Bubbles in the Wine” as I pushed through the kitchen, and out into the parking lot.

50.

M
ight want to pace yourself,” the bartender said. “The night is young.”

“The night was young five years ago, maybe.”

“The night is as young as you want it to be. And as long. If you keep drinking.”

“Amen to that,” I said. I was canceling time like a ticket, pulling hands from the face of the clock. I didn’t want the time.

I didn’t need it.

The bar along the left wall was festooned with colored Christmas lights and stained with what remained of powdered snow sprayed around the mirror, against which rows of bright bottles and a heavy cash register sat. The bar itself was long and dotted with coasters and empties and a catsup bottle, a few napkin holders, a hurricane lamp, and plastic ashtrays from other bars in other, better parts of town.

After maybe the fifth shot, I told myself,
I’m done now
—and meant it—but there were all those sirens in the night. This was the rationale. I suppose there are always sirens, but
that
night I was sure they were for me. The clothes that I was wearing belonged to L.A.’s chief of police; the monogram on the pocket was his, and he knew I was in love with his mistress.

“You ever,” I said, “been with a woman who lied to you?”

“Is there any other kind? I mean since Eve?”

“Guess not.”

“She break your heart?”

“They
both
did,” I said.

•   •   •

I
woke the next morning in the back of my car parked in a lot fringed with weeds that had grown over the fence. It had rained in the night and the rutted tracks in the dirt were filled with water. You probably wonder how I ended up out there. It wasn’t just that I was drunk. The fact is I couldn’t go home. Remember how Jo had seen lights in my hotel? (Sorry, Doc:
apartment
.) Well, they’d been there when I returned “home” from the bar last night, too. No one had been in the lobby; the bar had been closed, and my key hadn’t worked in my lock.

So I ended up out
here
, feeling springs in my back.

I wiped crumbs from my eyes and dried spit from the edges of my mouth and opened the back door and walked to the front. I pulled my pockets inside out, revealing bar napkins with scrawled messages and numbers so confusing they might as well have been Sanskrit. Change fell, too, along with my keys and the paper Jo had slipped me:

“Fred Otash Detective Bureau,” it read, “1342 Laurel.”