Sheri Cobb South (19 page)

“Oh Kathleen, I’m so sorry,” Frankie breathed.

Kathleen’s lip curled maliciously. “Not half as sorry as Artie is.”

The shifting ground suddenly opened, and Frankie stared horror-struck into the abyss. “Kathleen, you didn’t—you couldn’t have—”

“And why the hell shouldn’t I, after what he’d done to me?” Kathleen’s face contorted with rage. There was no longer any trace of the beautiful starlet, only a bitter young woman bent on vengeance. “I knew just how to do it, too. My granny knew a thing or two about herbs, and sometimes the local girls would come to her when they were in trouble. Some folks used it in small doses for an upset stomach—Artie even kept a canister of the stuff in his office. So I just smiled and said, ‘Yes, Mr. Cohen, I understand, Mr. Cohen, that’s show biz, shall I get you a cup of tea?’ And I brewed that tea strong enough to abort a baby elephant. Only there was no baby there to abort, so he had to flush out his guts instead.”

Her voice held a note of triumph, and she clearly expected a response. Frankie found her voice at last. “Mr. Cohen used you shamefully, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

“Neither do you, Frankie, but I have no choice.”

Kathleen snatched the silver instrument from the desk, and Frankie realized that what she’d thought was a fountain pen was actually a scalpel. She backed slowly toward the door.

“You don’t want to do this, Kathleen.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to. After all I’ve done to be a star, after coming so close, I can’t go to jail. If you won’t fight me, I’ll make it as quick and painless as possible. I owe you that much.”

“I—I won’t tell anyone.” Frankie took another cautious step backwards. “Honest, I won’t.”

Kathleen gave a short laugh. “Do you really think we could just go back to the Studio Club as if nothing has happened? You wouldn’t have to say a word. Roxie’s a smart girl, and Pauline is no dope. They’d take one look at that baby face of yours and know the truth. Face it, Frankie, you’re not that good an actress.”

At any other time Frankie would have been offended by the slight to her acting skills, but at the moment it was the least of her troubles. “Let’s not go back to the Studio Club, then,” she coaxed. “Let’s go to the train station and buy you a ticket back home. I’m sure your family is worried about you. If it’s money you need, I’ll help—”

“I
can’t
go back, don’t you see that?” Kathleen’s voice rose hysterically. “I threw away the love of a good man and whored myself out for the chance to be a star. I killed my own baby! I’ve come too far, Frankie. There’s no turning back for me. Not now. Not ever.”

Still wielding the scalpel, she slowly advanced two steps as Frankie retreated, the synchronized movements resembling a macabre dance
.

“You can’t get away with it, Kathleen. The other girls will ask questions when you return to the Studio Club without me.”

Kathleen’s gaze faltered for just a moment, then she nodded as a solution presented itself. “I’ll tell them you were in trouble. They know you had an appointment with Dr. Winston this morning. I’ll tell them you wanted to get rid of the baby, but couldn’t go through with it and killed yourself instead.”

Frankie took another step backward. And bumped into the wall. In her terrified retreat, she had lost her bearings and misjudged the position of the door. In the time it would take for her to glance behind her to locate it, Kathleen would be upon her. Even as the thought crossed Frankie’s mind, she saw Kathleen’s eyes flash, and knew she was thinking the same thing.

Having gained the advantage, Kathleen pounced on it, seeming to leap across the empty space between them. Frankie flung up her arm to ward off the surgical knife and felt a burning pain as it sliced through the flesh of her forearm. Kathleen drew the scalpel back for another blow. Before she could strike, the crash of shattering glass filled the room. A moment later, a familiar figure loomed up behind Kathleen.

“Mitch!” Frankie cried. “Be careful, she’s got a—”

As Kathleen slashed wildly at the air, Mitch caught her arms and wrenched them behind her back
.
The blade slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor, spinning across the linoleum until it came to rest against a foot clad in black patent leather. Officer Russ Kincaid stood framed in the doorway, his pistol trained on the girl struggling in Mitch’s unloving embrace. The policeman’s eyes never wavered from his target as he bent to pick up the scalpel at his feet, then stepped aside to allow two more uniformed cops to enter the room in his wake.

“Be careful, boys, she’s like a cornered animal—she’s got nothing left to lose. Hang on to her, Gannon, while we get the cuffs on her.”

Mitch was glad to oblige. “Good timing,” he told Kincaid as the sobbing Kathleen was led from the room in handcuffs. “What tipped you off?”

“The taxi driver thought something wasn’t quite right about his fares wanting to be set down outside Dr. Winston’s office in the middle of the night. His description of one of the girls matched Miss Foster, and knowing her history of breaking and entering for a good cause, I decided I’d better check it out. What about you? What made you follow her?”

Remembering his erroneous assumptions about Frankie’s condition, he darted a sheepish glance in her direction. She sat huddled where she had fallen, cradling her bleeding arm to her chest. Her face was white as a ghost, and she stared blankly into space, apparently unaware of anything going on around her.

“I just played a hunch,” Mitch answered with a shrug. “Now, since you’ve got your hands full with Kathleen, I’d better get Frankie to a doctor. That arm needs attention.”

Kincaid opened his mouth as if to protest being saddled with a criminal while his rival walked away with the girl, but duty won out. He gave Mitch a curt nod, then followed Kathleen and her captors out of the room.

Alone with Frankie, Mitch took her gently by the elbow and raised her to her feet. “Hey, kid, come on. We’d better get that arm looked at.”

Frankie, released from her trance, burst into tears. “Oh, Mitch! Oh, Mitch!”

Mitch had faced down two-hundred-pounders on the gridiron without a second thought, but the sight of a crying female filled him with terror. He wrapped his arms around her and patted her awkwardly on the back. “Hush, kiddo, it’s all right now.”

Trembling violently, Frankie sobbed something unintelligible into the front of his shirt. The only word Mitch could understand was “Kathleen.”

“I wouldn’t worry about her if I were you,” he said soothingly. “She’ll probably get off with an insanity plea. Who knows? The insanity might even be real.”

“Real?” Frankie lifted her head from his shoulder and raised her tear-stained face to his. “Nothing in this God-forsaken town is real! Everyone’s as phony as those fake buildings on the back lot. It’s nothing but a bunch of unscrupulous, scheming, immoral, selfish people who don’t care what they have to do or who they have to step on! All the beauty and magic you see up there on the screen, it’s only make-believe. None of it is real!”

She collapsed onto his shoulder and dissolved into tears once more. None of the comforting things her murmured into her hair had any effect beyond making her cry even harder. Finally, in desperation, Mitch tried a different approach.

“Real? Of course it’s not real!” He grasped Frankie by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “You want real? Real is settling down with that nice boy whose mother plays bridge with yours every Wednesday afternoon. Real is growing old bragging about your glory days fifty years ago, when you sang the Snowy Soap Flake jingle on the radio.”

Frankie opened her mouth to protest, but Mitch held up a hand to forestall her.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe there are a bunch of shady folks in Hollywood. But the amazing thing is that those immoral, selfish people—and the good ones too, let’s not forget them—somehow manage to create something that makes the whole country laugh, or cry, or sing, or dance. That’s where the magic is. That’s what made you travel all the way across the country to be a part of it.”

Taken aback by this burst of eloquence, Frankie pondered Mitch’s words for a long moment. It was true that Hollywood housed more than its share of horrible people, like Arthur Cohen and Herbert Finch and, yes, even Kathleen. But there were good people too, people like Roxie and Russ. There was Miss Williams, directress of the Studio Club, who ran a place for girls to live so they wouldn’t be dependent on men like Herbert Finch. And there was Mitch, who was always there for her
,
even when she didn’t want him to be. She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, then looked up at him with a wobbly smile that erased all the terror and grief of the last hour.

“Thank you, Mitch. You always know just what to say.”

Epilogue

Stand Up and Cheer (1934)

Directed by Hamilton McFadden

Starring Shirley Temple

A hush fell over the crowd filling Grauman’s Chinese Theater as the elaborate crimson and gold curtain swept open to reveal the big blank screen behind it. Frankie, carefully avoiding the sight of the empty seat on her left where Kathleen should have been, turned slightly to her right and squeezed Mitch’s arm.

“This is it,” she whispered.

Then the lights dimmed, the big screen flickered to life, and the recent tragedy receded, at least for a couple of hours. “Monumental Pictures presents . . . ” the words on the big screen read, “THE VIRGIN QUEEN, in glorious Technicolor!” The crowd “oohed” and “aahed” at the vivid hues projected onto the screen, colors so bright they cast red and blue reflections onto the faces of the audience. The cast and crew had worked at a frantic pace over the last few weeks, re
-
shooting every scene with the new cameras that were able to film in color. Maurice Cohen had even paid a small fortune to cast the award-winning British actress Barbara Payne as Queen Elizabeth. To judge from the audience’s reaction, all their efforts had not been wasted
.

Frankie, however, hardly noticed the rich brocades of Barbara Payne’s costumes or the swelling violins of the theme music, although both were rumored to be Oscar contenders. Her sole interest lay in two scenes: the crowd scene where she made up part of the mob cheering the queen’s arrival, and the tavern scene where she’d distributed tankards of fake ale as a serving wench.

“I think that’s my arm,” Frankie whispered urgently to Mitch. “See it? Right there!” She pointed toward the screen, where the arms of over one hundred extras (most of which looked just alike to Mitch) waved in greeting to the queen.

“Er, I’m not sure,” hedged Mitch, reluctant to disappoint her.

Before she could pinpoint the location further, the picture on the screen switched to a close-up of Barbara Payne in full Queen Elizabeth regalia.

Frankie’s face fell. “Oh well, I’m sure there’ll be a better shot of me in the tavern scene.”

But the tavern scene was a long time in coming. At last, almost ninety minutes into the film, Miss Payne commanded her dewy-eyed lady-in-waiting in throaty accents, “Take this message to Leicester at once! You will find him at the Rose and Crown.”

Frankie sat upright with a jerk and leaned forward in her seat. “This is it!”

Up on the screen Alice Harper, in Gwyneth’s page disguise, opened the door and slipped inside what appeared to be a tavern, although Frankie knew it was actually a façade built on the back lot and its seemingly solid half-timbered walls didn’t stretch more than six feet on either side of the door. A moment later the door opened again, and William Stanford burst through with much waving of sword.

“My horse!” he commanded a cowering stable lad. Seconds later, he thundered away from the tavern on his trusty steed with Gwyneth riding pillion behind him.

Frankie stared at the screen in dismay. “They cut it!” The swell of the music drowned out her stunned protest. “They cut my big scene!”

The last half-hour of the pictures passed in a blur of flickering images. Frankie was blind to the stirring sword fight and didn’t even notice when Gwyneth fell into Leicester’s passionate embrace while Queen Elizabeth, having lost the man she loved, smiled tragically yet regally down upon them from her throne. At last the picture faded to black, leaving only large white letters reading “In Memory of Arthur G. Cohen, 1881-1936.” Then the house lights came up and the audience, blinking against the sudden brightness, started heading for the exits.

When they reached the red-and-gold splendor of the lobby, Mitch turned to Frankie with a grin. “I liked the sword fights, but I suspect my history prof from A & M wouldn’t recognize half of it.”

“I can’t believe they cut my big scene,” Frankie moaned. “I knew I wouldn’t be the center of attention, but I never expected the entire scene to end up on the cutting room floor. What am I going to tell my family? Everybody back home thinks I’m halfway to being a star.”

Mitch gave her a sympathetic look. “Chin up, Frankie. There’ll be other pictures.”

“Maybe.” Frankie grew pensive, thinking of Kathleen and all she’d given up for a chance at stardom. “Or maybe I’d be better off taking the next train back to Georgia.”

“What do you think of Nevada?”

Frankie blinked at Mitch. “What?”

Mitch shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and jingled his loose change. “I said, ‘what do you think of Nevada?’ I’ve been offered a job there, we could—”

“There you are!” Maurice Cohen, dressed for the occasion in a tuxedo, separated himself from the cluster of people surrounding Barbara Payne and hurried over to join Frankie and Mitch. He took Frankie’s hands.

“Miss Foster, I feel I owe you an apology. After all you did for the studio, and for my family, it seems very poor thanks that we should cut your scene out of the film.”

Frankie, touched in spite of her disappointment, tried to summon up a smile. “Oh well, I guess that’s show-biz.”

 “Indeed, it is. In fact, the film had to be heavily edited for length. We had to cut out several scenes in order to keep the film under two hours. Audiences won’t sit still for longer than that.”