A Cast of Killers (9 page)

Dalmas flipped through more pages, illustrating with articles and reviews what had happened.

Realart’s first production under Taylor was
Anne of Green Gables.
It was a hit, with Taylor receiving praise as the director, but Minter was being compared unfavorably with Mary Pickford. The movie was followed by
Judy of Rogues Harbor, Nurse Marjorie,
and
Jenny Be Good.
With each picture, Taylor was praised and Minter panned.

Then, with no public explanation for her sudden disappearance, Taylor made ten films without Minter, including
Huckleberry Finn, The Soul of Youth, The Furnace, The Top of New York,
and
The Green Temptation.

“You see,” Dalmas said, “by the time Taylor was murdered, he was on top of the world, but Minter was just an embarrassment to the studio. They still had her under contract, even used her in minor pictures, but basically they just considered her dead weight. The Taylor scandal gave them a perfect excuse to get rid of her once and for all. The same with Mabel Normand at her studio.”

Vidor absentmindedly rubbed the brown spots around his temples. “That’s an interesting theory,” he said, “but what does it have to do with Taylor’s being killed? You’re certainly not suggesting the studio killed him to set up an excuse for firing a couple of bad actresses?”

“Of course not,” Dalmas said, pushing the magazines aside. “But the way they used the murder for their own benefit, they might as well have. I know this doesn’t help us find out who the killer was, but I think it says something about the world that Taylor, and probably the killer, lived in. I mean, to the studio, ruining someone’s career was a small price to pay to get rid of a bad investment. Hell, you know things went on inside those movie studios that would have made the Taylor scandals seem like Mack Sennett comedies if they ever got out.”

“That’s what the publicity departments were for,” Vidor said. “To see that they never got out.”

Dalmas picked up the blue book he’d brought out with the magazines. “That’s my point. The studios looked out for their own interests at all times, making sure we all believed what they wanted us to believe. And they didn’t care one bit what side effects their efforts might have, like who they might hurt, or what truths they might be helping to obscure. Even if some of those truths were—“

“The truths about a murder.” Vidor finished the sentence.

Dalmas nodded. He handed Vidor the blue book. “In making sure that everyone knew about those M.M.M. panties, and about Mabel Normand’s affair with Taylor, the studio could very well have inadvertently steered reporters’ attentions away from what should have been their primary concern: a man had been killed. I mean, like I said, all anyone ever seemed to write about were the scandals.”

“Not bad,” Vidor said. “Maybe this script will say more about Hollywood than I’d even planned.”

Dalmas said, “It’s something to think about.”

Vidor looked at the book in his hand. It was entitled
‘Round the Room,
and was the autobiography of Edward Knoblock. Knoblock was a playwright who had written
Kismet
and worked on motion pictures, including the classic Douglas Fairbanks production of
The Three Musketeers.
Knoblock had been staying in Taylor’s bungalow at the time that Taylor’s secretary Edward Sands robbed Taylor.

Vidor opened the book to a photograph of Knoblock with fellow writers Somerset Maugham and Hugh Walpole.

“He just calls himself a ‘bachelor’ in the book,” Dalmas said with a smirk, “but hanging around with those two, I’d have to make the same guess about his sexual preferences that you’re wanting to make about Taylor’s. They were great writers, but they were both queer as three-dollar bills. They were all friends of Taylor’s, too.”

Dalmas found for Vidor a twenty-five-page section recounting Knoblock’s days in Hollywood, his friendship with Taylor, and the trouble with Edward Sands. Combined with what little Vidor had already learned about Knoblock, this presented quite an intriguing addition to Taylor’s life story.

In the summer of 1920, at the suggestion of actress Neva Gerber, Taylor moved from an apartment on Orange Street to a vacant bungalow across from MacLean’s own, at 404 Alvarado Street, which he rented for the steep price of $132 a month. He hired Sands as his personal secretary and a man named Earl Tiffany as his chauffeur—both recommended by friends at the studio.

When Taylor, suffering from stomach problems, decided to take a vacation in Europe, and seek medical advice there, Knoblock gave him the use of his London townhouse while Knoblock himself, writing scenarios for Paramount, stayed at the Alvarado address.

Knoblock liked the bungalow, but didn’t like Edward Sands at all, feeling that Sands always seemed to be nosing around in his personal affairs.

About a month after Knoblock moved in, Sands asked if he might have the final week of Taylor’s trip off, so he could get married and honeymoon on Catalina Island. Knoblock didn’t hesitate to grant the request.

The next day, a trunk arrived at the bungalow, in which Sands said he was going to pack his belongings for his new home.

Sands left while Knoblock was at the studio—and never returned. The day before Taylor was due to return to Los Angeles, Knoblock telephoned the Catalina Hotel, where Sands said he would be staying, and was told that Sands had never been there. And no one at the studio or in the bungalow court who knew Sands had been told anything about a wedding.

When Taylor returned home, he discovered that his checkbook and his entire wardrobe, as well as many smaller, personal things, were gone. In a bedroom wastebasket were sheets of paper on which Sands had practiced forging Taylor’s signature.

Taylor called his bank and was told that Sands had cashed at least one check for five thousand dollars and several smaller ones.

Sands had also stolen one of Taylor’s automobiles (likely a McFarlan touring car, which was later found, wrecked, in a Los Angeles suburb).

In the following weeks, Taylor fired Tiffany, and hired Henry Peavey as his cook and Howard Fellows as his chauffeur. He apparently never saw Sands again, though the bungalow was broken into, and an envelope arrived one day containing pawn tickets and a note saying that he could find some of his stolen possessions at a pawnshop outside San Francisco. The envelope was delivered to Taylor’s address, though the name on it was not William Desmond Taylor—it was William Deane Tanner.

Vidor closed the book, set it on the table. Nearby a librarian was trying again to roust some of the vagrants hogging space from legitimate patrons of the library.

“Do you think Sands was Taylor’s brother?” he asked Dalmas.

“Well,” Dalmas replied slowly, thinking it over. “He certainly seems to have known Taylor’s real name, which was more than anyone else knew at the time. I hate to think of someone killing his own brother, but from everything you told me, and from everything I’ve read, Sands looks as good as anybody to be the killer. I mean, the chauffeur himself, Tiffany, said Sands always carried around a little pistol, like the one that did Taylor in. Doesn’t anyone have any pictures of Sands?”

They stood up to leave. Outside, the snow was blowing harder than before, slowing even more the snail’s-pace midtown traffic. As they waited for a cab to approach, Vidor thanked Dalmas for his help.

“My pleasure,” the writer replied. “Besides, I figure the more sensational this mystery is, the more Hollywood will be clamoring for your next one.”

“
Exit Screaming?”
Vidor asked.

“Of course,” Dalmas said with a grin. He spotted an unoccupied taxi and stepped into a curbside snowbank to attract the driver’s attention. “You think I do this detective work because I like it?”

11

The spots at his temples aggravated him. They were in no way uncomfortable, so he could discard Betty’s worrisome diagnosis of skin cancer; they were just damned unattractive—shapeless splotches of discoloration that reminded King of the spots on his grandfather’s hands when Vidor was a child in Galveston—spots that, even more than his own wrinkled forehead and sagging eyes, betrayed the ineluctable fact of old age.

He adjusted the angle of his new hat from Bloomingdale’s, imagining himself in the bathroom mirror as others must see him. Tilted just so, the hat hid most of the discoloration. But seeing in his reflection a vanity that his grandfather—a musician whom Vidor fondly recalled running his bent and spotted fingers magically along the neck of his violin—never once displayed, Vidor settled the hat more naturally, comfortably, on his head. He wanted to look his best for Colleen Moore, whom he planned to meet that morning, and for everyone at the party that Gloria Swanson was throwing that night, but he knew that trying to one-up nature was a lost cause. For the first time in his life, Vidor had lately begun to feel his age, seventy-one. He fastened one of the monogrammed silver buttons of his blue blazer, slipped his new Brooks Brothers trenchcoat over it. It was not such a bad figure he cut, all things considered.

One week and three days had passed since he had arrived in New York. Outside, the snow had let up, but the sky was still overcast, concrete gray. According to the morning
Times,
it shouldn’t be too cold for the walk through Central Park that Colleen Moore had planned to kick off her and Vidor’s reunion.

Finally, Moreno continued. “A lot of people were hurt by Bill Taylor’s murder. Lost their jobs, their careers, some lost much more. Do you really think it’s a good idea to dredge it all back up again?”

“Who said I was dredging up the Taylor murder?” Vidor heard Moreno’s long-distance distorted laugh. “I’ll play it any way you want to, King,” Moreno said. “I’m just wondering if you know what you might be getting into, if you
should
try to tell the Taylor story. That is, assuming you even know the real story.”

“Do you?” Vidor asked.

Moreno laughed again. “Hell, I don’t think anyone knows the whole story. But I think I know enough not to run around New York and Hollywood sounding out new theories to everybody. Somebody might not want to hear some of those theories.”

Vidor took off his coat, leaned back against the headboard of the bed, careful not to wrinkle his blazer.

“Why not? Taylor was killed over forty years ago,” Vidor said.

“Well,” Moreno’s voice droned monotonously beneath the static of the connection, “you and I are still around. Maybe we’re not the only ones left from the—“ he seemed to chuckle again, “the good old days.”

A wave of excitement came over Vidor, as it dawned on him that Moreno had a specific reason for calling, that Moreno had some specific knowledge that would aid his search for Taylor’s killer. Moreno had talked to Taylor on the very night of the murder. And Moreno—now, over the phone on a long distance call from Los Angeles—seemed frightened.

“You sound afraid of something. What is it?” Vidor decided to hazard a guess. “Is it Edward Sands?”

Now Moreno’s laughter drowned the static almost eerily, mocking Vidor with an air of superiority that confirmed Vidor’s feeling: Moreno knew something.

“Sands?” Moreno said in a near falsetto. “Sands jumped on anything in a skirt. Faith MacLean wouldn’t let the man near her. Edna Purviance either. He considered himself a royal cocksman, even though he was ugly as a boot.”

“Hell, King, you knew Taylor. He was a major director. Paramount didn’t want anything getting out that might be scandalous. Especially after the Arbuckle fiasco.”

Now it was Vidor’s turn to laugh. “Well, they sure did a good job saving his image,” he said sarcastically. “Twenty years of front-page stories about assumed identities, extortion, and women’s underwear.”

Moreno waited until Vidor was silent, then said, “Maybe they did a better job than you think.”