The Ticket Out (25 page)

He said, “But you can't put this in your article. It makes Greta look bad.”

“What if I don't agree with you?”

“Wait until you hear—you'll agree.”

I shrugged and Lampley cleared his throat. “You know her fiancé was murdered a year ago and the murder hasn't been solved.”

I corrected him without thinking. “You mean Hannah Silverman's fiancé.”

Lampley shook his head. I thought I'd blown my best-friend status, but he just said, “It's incredible the things Greta didn't tell people. When I first met her, you know, she was a sweet, straightahead Midwesterner. She never lied and she trusted everybody.”

I glossed over my gaff. “I've also heard two different stories. Greta said that Abadi broke off his engagement with Silverman, but Silverman says that Abadi dumped Greta—”

Lampley cut in. “Hannah's a liar. The fact is, the same day Ted was killed he had dumped Hannah and asked Greta to marry him.”

“I never heard the marriage part.”

“It's true, but the engagement was going to be secret until Greta revived her career. See, when the agency dropped Greta, Ted dropped her, too—that's when he started dating Hannah. He was nothing if not ambitious, Ted was.”

I couldn't peg Lampley's tone. It felt like he wanted to sneer at Abadi—then it hit me why. Mark had said that Lampley followed Greta from Kansas. Maybe he'd torched for her all these years. Maybe they'd had an affair—although if I knew Greta, I doubted it. Lampley was the loser, Abadi was the winner. Abadi had looks and killer drive, and a primo foothold in the movie business.

I said, “How long were Abadi and Greta together initially?”

“Three years, ever since he signed her at film school.”

“And how soon did they hook up again after Abadi started seeing Silverman?”

At that, Lampley did sneer. “Ted never
broke off
with Greta at all. See, that's the thing—he couldn't let her go. Hannah was the
official
girlfriend, because she was a better career move. But even Ted couldn't stomach her, or her demented father-daughter act.”

I said, “Who's Hannah Silverman's father?”

Lampley paused. “You're kidding.”

“I'm not kidding. Who's her father?”

“Jules Silverman. Her father is Jules Silverman.”

Yow,
Jules Silverman.
My mind started to race.

Silverman was a very gray Hollywood eminence; only Lew Wasserman was grayer. He'd made a fortune as a producer in the '50s and '60s. Then American movies got too gritty and he retired to philanthropy and liberal causes. He was now past eighty and a semirecluse; he never left his Malibu estate. But he still had clout. The studios still listened to him, and he played a major role in local politics. Barry knew him. I'd heard Barry call him “Julie” not long ago.

I said, “What's the ‘father-daughter act'?”

Lampley shook his head. “I can't give you details. I only know the two of them are unnaturally close.”

Maybe I was tired, but I didn't see where this was going. I said, “So Hannah and Jules are unnaturally close. And so?”

Lampley said, “And so it looked like the police weren't going to solve Ted's murder, and so Greta decided to solve it herself.”

“How?”

He said, “See, Jules was Hannah's alibi for the night of the murder. I should have guessed that Greta might try to pressure him—I could kick myself for not guessing. But Ted was such a worthless asshole, and I just couldn't believe she'd do something illegal—”

I got it.
I saw Greta's whole plan in a flash. I saw the spanking picture, and I saw the old guy in it. The old guy was Jules Silverman.

I said, “She was going to break down Hannah's alibi by going after her father. Is that it? Greta thought that Jules was covering up for her.”

Lampley nodded. “And I gave Greta information that she could have used to blackmail Jules. See, I don't have absolute proof that she tried to extort him, but I do know that she asked your boss, Barry Melling, to publish the information in the
Millennium,
and Melling wouldn't do it.”

The word
information
threw me. Was a dirty picture “information”? I said, “Greta never told me she knew Barry.”

“They met through a mutual friend, Scott Dolgin. Dolgin introduced them, and Melling wouldn't leave Greta alone after that. He said he'd print her information, but only if she slept with him. Fortunately, Greta wasn't stupid.”

I shook my head. Dolgin and Greta; now Barry and Greta. I'd been lied to yet again.

“What exactly is this information?”

Lampley said, “You know I work at the Academy Library parttime.”

I nodded.

“I was put in charge of cataloging old material that had never been organized. In the process, I came across transcripts from an abandoned book project, an oral history of the blacklist at MGM. The subject interests me, so I read the transcripts. Over and over, ex-employees identified Jules Silverman as a HUAC stool pigeon. It was widely known at the time, apparently, but never discussed. And because of Silverman's public profile, some of the people still wouldn't confirm the story for print.”

It
wasn't
the spanking picture. Still: fifty-year-old blacklist revelations? It didn't strike me as a viable wedge.

Lampley said, “You see what something like that would do to Jules Silverman's reputation.”

I shook my head. “The blacklist is ancient history. People don't care about it anymore.”

“You're wrong—Silverman has enemies who would care. The evidence is all there, and contradicts Silverman's own story of how he opposed the blacklist covertly by employing the unemployables. See, according to this, Silverman got his break at MGM by squealing on his competition, most of whom were liberal or left-leaning Jews. People don't realize how anti-Semitic HUAC was, underneath the anticommunist rhetoric. And Silverman handed the committee a lot of Jews.”

I said, “Barry would never print that. Not even if there were five Gretas and they all slept with him simultaneously.”

Lampley didn't smile. He said, “It gets worse. According to the transcripts, Silverman was a major suspect in an unsolved murder from 1944. The victim was a USO hostess named Georgette Bauerdorf, who was killed in West Hollywood.”

The initials hit me full-on.
GB.
Georgette Bauerdorf.
Georgette Bauerdorf Dreams Big.

I didn't jump up and dance around. I sat very still and said, “Where are those transcripts? I'd like to read them.”

Lampley made a tight face. “They're gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone'?”

“It's my fault—I told Greta about them and I shouldn't have.”

“When was this?”

“Late February, around the time Tolback fired her.”

I said, “Arnold Tolback?”

Lampley looked at me. “She took that job to get close to Hannah's new boyfriend, but Hannah found out and made Tolback fire her. Did Greta ever tell you
anything
?”

I shrugged. “We never talked about our personal lives. We talked about movies.”

Lampley nodded like, Of course. He knew about the One Idea in Greta's head.

He said, “Greta told me she wanted the transcripts to show to Neil Phillips. You know Neil?”

I nodded. “And his MGM jones.”

Lampley nodded. “I was an idiot to believe her. I lent her the transcripts and said I needed them back right away. But she kept them for weeks, Neil says he never saw them, and then they were stolen from her apartment—”

Lampley suddenly couldn't go on. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He said,
“Oh, god.”

I said, “And you think she was murdered for the transcripts. You think Jules Silverman stole them, and killed her because she knew what they contained.”

Lampley didn't look up. “He's too old. I think someone did it for him.”

“But you don't have proof.”

Lampley didn't answer.

I sat and studied his bald spot. Until yesterday I would've bought the act whole: repressed guy under emotional strain hides eyes as he confesses guilt. “Oh, god” was a nice touch. But now I didn't believe him. Some, most, or all of what he said could be false. There was no way to check if the transcripts even existed. So the question became: why was Lampley telling me this? If I believed him, what did it accomplish?

I glanced over at the TV set. The anchorman said, “And those are the top news stories for Tuesday, September 4, 2001.”

It was Tuesday already. Greta had been dead for a week.

 

H
ANNAH
S
ILVERMAN
lived across the coast highway a half mile south of the college. Lockwood had warned me not to bother her or Arnold Tolback. But Lockwood wasn't reachable and Silverman was close: I decided things had changed enough that I could take the risk. Leaving Lampley to his lecture, I drove down to Silverman's house, parked, and rang the fence bell.

Nobody came. I went to the car, dialed Silverman's number from the car phone, and got her machine. I thought about hopping the fence one more time. But a neighbor was washing his car, and I had to think again. I looked around and saw some letters sticking out of Silverman's mail slot. I checked a return address: it was outgoing mail.

I turned my back to the neighbor and quickly flipped through the letters. One to TreePeople, one to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. One to Mr. J. Silverman, Ramirez Canyon, Malibu.

Two miles away.

I slipped the envelope out, opened it, and skimmed the card. Hannah had written: “Daddy, you're always in my thoughts. Love, love, love, forever and ever and ever.”

Not hard to memorize. I stuck the card and envelope back, got in the car, and made a U-turn onto the coast highway going west. At Ramirez Canyon I made a right into the hills.

The road climbed and climbed, and changed from asphalt to gravel. Way up the gravel, I found the entrance to Silverman's estate. Two huge granite pillars flanked a huge wrought-iron gate. A wrought-iron fence fronted the property for hundreds of yards. You couldn't see the house: it was hidden by a forest of imported trees.

I drove past the entrance, turned around, and parked on the side of the road. I set the emergency brake and settled down to watch the gate.

That got old real fast. It also made me sleepy.

I shook myself awake and picked up the car phone. I called Information, then the Producers Guild. They gave me the name and address of Arnold Tolback's company—AT Productions in Burbank.

I dialed the AT Productions number. The woman who answered said that Mr. Tolback wasn't in. I kept her talking and led around to the subject of Greta Stenholm. She said that Greta worked at ATP for four months as assistant to one of Tolback's assistants. She said that Greta was very competent; it was a surprise when Tolback fired her. I asked where Tolback might be found and the woman said, “Try the Chateau Marmont.”

Jules Silverman's gate wasn't moving. I started the car, put it in neutral, and rolled down to the coast highway. At the highway I stepped on the gas. I turned on Sunset and took it all the way into West Hollywood.

There was a black Porsche parked in the Marmont's breezeway. I pulled around in front of it. A valet was holding the driver's door and a guy was just getting in. It was the guy from the smashed pictures in Hannah Silverman's office. The fraternity boy—shorter, younger, and having a better time than her.

I jumped out of my car and ran to the Porsche. Tolback was fooling with his shoulder harness. He heard me coming and looked up.

I said, “I want to ask you some questions about Greta Stenholm.”

He said, “And you are?”

“Ann Whitehead. I work for—”

He laughed. “Yeah, I know you. You're that loudmouth critic everybody hates.”

I said, “Why'd you fire Greta last February?”

Tolback was wearing a blue blazer; he got a pen out of the breast pocket. “Give me something to write on.” He snapped his fingers.

I dug into my jeans and found a gasoline receipt. Tolback grabbed it from me, wrote on it, and passed it back.

“Go to that address after eight-thirty tonight. Tell Lynnda I invited you, and tell her I said they can all kiss my ass. Say it exactly like this, loudmouth—Arnie says,
“Kiss my pimple-free kosher ass!'””

Tolback laughed and peeled out of the breezeway. The engine noise rattled my teeth. I read what he'd written: “Lynnda-Ellen, 3617 Whitley Terrace, Whitley Heights.”

I stuck the receipt in my pocket. Just what we need, I thought: another new name.

 

I
WALKED INTO
the lobby of the newspaper. Mark and Vivian were standing by the switchboard, huddled together. I walked up behind them and said, “Hey.”

Vivian turned. “There you are! We wondered if something had happened.” She squinted at me. “You don't look so hot.”

I said, “Eating and sleeping might help.”

Mark patted my arm. “Welcome to real journalism. Have you solved the murders yet?”

I gave him a sarcastic smile. Vivian said, “Did you find my groupie at least?”

“I did, thanks, at The Short Stop with two teenage groupettes.”

“What'd she tell you?”

“You were right—those girls know things. Can you guys spare any cash?”

Vivian shook her head, but Mark reached for his wallet. Vivian said, “You'll tell me later about the groupie.”

I nodded as Mark handed me thirty bucks. He said, “When are you coming back to the section?”

“Thanks.” I stuck the money in my jeans. “I don't know—tomorrow, next month, I don't know.”

I turned to leave. Vivian held on to me, lowered her voice, and pointed. “Speaking of finances, get a load of that.”