American Blonde (22 page)

Flyin’ Jenny: Red, White, and Blonde
premiered that night at Carthay Circle. As if we didn’t have a care in the world, Hal MacGinnis and I walked the red carpet followed by Babe and Les Edgar, and other Metro stars. Babe and I posed cheek-to-cheek, sisters Jenny and Bonnie Dare in person, Mr. Mayer’s newest discoveries. Hal and I smiled for the cameras, hands clasped, arms around each other. The all-American couple, except that he liked men.

Reporters wanted to know about Barbara Fanning. What really happened? Had she been drinking? How were we bearing up in the wake of her tragic death? Did we think it was strange that Nigel Gray had disappeared so quickly after Miss Fanning died? Why had MGM sent him away? Where was Nigel now? Where was Pia Palmer? Was Nigel really on a publicity tour, or was that a studio-invented excuse for keeping him out of the spotlight?

Hal deflected each question. Over and over, he brought the topic back around to
Flyin’ Jenny
, to the important work Nigel was doing in England to promote
Home of the Brave
, and speaking of
Home of the Brave . . .
Bernie tried to push us toward the theater as quickly as possible, but then Zed Zabel spoke up and over everyone. “Weren’t you the one who found her, Kit Rogers?”

“Yes, I was.” Someone—Bernie or Hal—placed his hand on the small of my back, trying to steer me away.

Zed fixed his eyes on me. “And everything they’re telling us—is that the way it happened?”

“No comment.”

Everyone fell silent. Zed Zabel’s eyes gleamed like an animal’s. “Are we supposed to deduce, then, that all is not what it seems?”

“Why don’t you ask Howard Strickling or Whitey Hendry? Or, better yet, the coroner?”

Bernie shoved me up the carpet before I could say anything else. “Do you realize what you just implied?” He gave me an earful all the way to our seats, smiles plastered on our faces so that no one would know there was a problem. Bernie pointed at me. “Stay.” He marched off toward the exit.

Hal leaned in to me. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“She was my friend. She was your friend too. You think I’m going to abandon her right now when she isn’t here to fight for herself?” I caught his eye and gave him my worst look. “I should have told them everything.”

Twenty minutes into the picture, I was too restless to sit still. Sitting still wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I got up, ducking low, stepping over feet and legs, and slipped out of the theater. I asked the usher for the pay phone, and he directed me to a wooden booth in the far corner of the lobby. Inside, I dropped a nickel into the slot.

“Dunbar Hotel,” someone said.

I asked for Johnny Clay Hart. He answered on the first ring, sounding out of breath. “Are you playing tonight?” I asked him.

“The Downbeat till ten or so, then we’re going to join the jam session at Jack’s Basket Room.”

“What’s the address?” Because I didn’t have a pen, I repeated it twice so I would remember.

J
ack’s Basket Room sat at Thirty-third and Central Avenue and was owned by heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson. I parked as close to it as I could get, and walked the rest of the way through the heat of the people and the scene. I wore my premiere gown—a sleek emerald green—which made a
swish-swish
sound, like bird wings, as I went.

Men in zoot suits, bright as peacock feathers, sauntered by and shouted things at the white policemen who patrolled on foot. “Hey, baby,” men called to me. “Where you goin’, girl, and can I come along?” The air was smoky and smelled like curry, red pepper, garlic. I could hear music coming from an open window, wailing like a woman.

A policeman cut through the crowd, his mouth moving, already talking before I could hear him. “Turn around, Miss Hollywood. You shouldn’t be here.” His badge said “Phelps.” He had a big red nose that looked like he blew it too much.

“I’m going to see my brother.” I kept walking, which meant he had to fall in line next to me, elbowing his way through the crowd.

“These clubs are breeding places where crimes are planned and carried out. No place for a white woman, especially by herself, especially one so recognizable.” He grabbed my arm, made me stop. “A little white girl about your age was found not far from here today, cut in half. Worst crime I’ve ever seen committed on a woman. You want that to happen to you?”

“I’m going to see my brother,” I said again, snatching my arm away. I was mad—a kind of dark red mad, the color of blood. It had started with Mudge’s death and the closing of the investigation and the meeting with Dr. Murdoch.
Poison.
And someone breaking into Mudge’s house and stealing the flask, and now, tonight, the reporters. “My friend died and I need to see my brother. You can either walk me there or let me go.”

Officer Phelps called me every name in the book, and then half-dragged me the rest of the way. “The next time I see your face, I want it to be on the movie screen.”

Jack’s Basket Room was a great, rickety barn of a place. All it lacked was sawdust on the floor. There wasn’t a single open seat, so I stood as close as I could to the front. Police lingered in doorways and along the walls, keeping their eyes on the crowd.

I looked around at the faces, mostly colored, but also white, Mexican, Creole. You could hear the steam rising off the stage. A battle was heating up between the two tenor saxes, Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon. I thought: The best thing about them is they don’t play for anyone else but themselves. They’re making music because they love to play.

When a spot opened up down front, I took it, ordering myself a Jack’s basket, which was fried chicken and french fries, and a beer. Up on the stage, the musicians changed, overlapping, interrupting each other, but the music continued to build, the steam still rising. The Downbeat was one thing, with its jazz and bebop, but here, anything went.

I let myself get lost in the music, and felt myself relaxing a little, the anger fading to a simmer. I was done with my food when I thought I heard my name—not Kit Rogers, but Velva Jean—and when I turned I could see my brother and Butch and their drummer across the room. I wove through the tables and set my bottle down among the glasses of whiskey they’d collected and a stack of white napkins. Johnny Clay picked me up and hugged me hard, and Butch gave me his chair.

It was too loud to talk, so I watched the musicians and shouted along with the crowd.
Go, go, go!
The drummer, Sherman Crothers—the young colored man from Mudge’s funeral—beat on the table with his sticks.

Butch leaned back in his chair, fished around in his pocket, and came up with a pencil stub. He picked up a white napkin and scrawled something down as my brother, guitar in hand, jumped onto the stage. Sherman followed, springing toward the drums like he couldn’t help himself any longer. Butch stood, slid the napkin over to me, took a drink of whiskey, turned the glass upside down, and dragged his guitar out from under the table.

This is for you.

Up on stage, he said something to the horn players, the ones who’d been playing for the past half hour, and off they went, nodding and waving to the crowd. Butch and Johnny Clay plugged their guitars into an amplifier, and then Butch laid one hand on the microphone—the hand with the tattoo—and said in that whiskey-and-cigarettes voice, “Seems everywhere I turn these days, I’m hearing about folks who died too young. Someone once said, ‘Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.’ Here’s to the heroes.” He closed his eyes and, without guitars or drums, he sang:

They tell me of a place where my friends have gone

They tell me of that land far away

And they tell me that no tears ever come again

In that lovely land of uncloudy day.

At the exact moment I almost walked out—nose and eyes stinging, feeling ambushed, feeling jumped from behind—the guitars roared in like B-29s, and Sherman began beating away at the drums. The sound was bigger than the three of them, bigger than all of us gathered there. It was angry. It was loud. It was going to raise the roof and blow it all the way to the moon. My brother’s guitar throbbed out the bass line, sounding more like five guitars than one. Butch’s guitar howled and moaned like an animal, like something in pain. It was everything I was feeling—a low-down, raw, bloodred angry. I sat for a long time and then I got to my feet, like everyone else, and danced where I stood.

Butch lit a cigarette one-handed, never missing a note. The broken bottle neck smoked like he did, up and down the strings. His hair fell across his face, and in that raspy barroom voice, the one he’d blown out years ago, he sang as he played.

Ready or not, I’m comin’ around

You can hide if you want, but I’ll hunt you down . . .

The music found its way under my skin and into my blood and way, way down into my bones until I was charged and electric and could do anything.

Not gonna stop for kingdom come,

You better hide, girl, you better run . . .

As the crowd beat on the floors and the tables, swaying and shaking body against body, white skin, black skin, the policemen who had been leaning against the wall stood straight and tense, hands on their weapons.

’Cause ready or not, I’m comin’ for you . . .

The crowd shouted, cheering the music onward and upward and outward so that I knew it pushed its way out onto the street, into the skin and blood and bones of the people walking by, which meant soon everyone on Central Avenue would catch fire, just like we had, and feel themselves burning where they stood.

He gets it, I thought. He always has. This music—the soft and the loud—is exactly how I feel. And that, maybe, was the worst thing about Butch Dawkins, that he got me and knew me but could only ever go so far with it before he turned tail and ran like hell. Or maybe it was that he just didn’t think of me the same way I thought of him.

It was four a.m. when they gave up the stage. Outside, the crowds on the street were as thick as the ones in the clubs. If anything, the avenue was busier, louder, just getting started. Police wove through the streets and sidewalks, and for all the sense of life and celebration, there was an air of tension underneath it all, as if we were inside a pressure cooker and any minute the lid might blow right off.

We left Butch and Sherman at the Dunbar Hotel, and then Johnny Clay walked me to my car, even though I wanted to keep going and find another place, other music. He blew three perfect smoke rings, which drifted over our heads like balloons. “You don’t want to see it in the daytime. The whole avenue smelling like beer, cigarette butts on the ground, trash on the street. It’s a place built for night, Velva Jean.”

I wondered if I was a person built for night, if there was such a thing. I felt warm and dangerous from the beer and the music. I didn’t want to go home and go to sleep, because that meant I would have to wake up and think about what to do and what was next and how to prove what had happened.

Too soon, we found my car. My brother chased away the teenage boys who were leaning on it, setting off firecrackers and smoking a pipe they passed around. He kicked at the wheels like he was checking the air.

I said, “Mudge was asphyxiated.”

Johnny Clay whistled. “Strangled?”

“According to the chief autopsy surgeon of Los Angeles County, she was poisoned. Almost everyone who was at Broad Water that weekend has access to Benzedrine and Seconal. I should have asked Dr. Murdoch about them, but I didn’t think of it. You drank from the flask the night before, in the limousine, and Sam drank the rest on the red carpet. I gave the flask back to Mudge just before the picture started. It was empty by then. She wouldn’t have filled it up again till we got home, before we left for Santa Monica.”

“Did she drink at the airfield?”

“She left the flask in the car. The next time I saw her with it was at the pool at Broad Water.” I thought of Mudge’s flask lying on her lounge chair, of all the people coming and going. She had left it out in the open, unguarded, for hours. There would have been plenty of chances for the killer to slip off the cap, drop something in, give it a shake. “It could have been anyone.”

“Who’s to say the guy that did this isn’t after other actresses? Or maybe some of the other party guests? Or other people from the movie? Until we know why it happened, you got to be on your guard, little sister.”

“I already am.”

“Do you think it was Nigel?”

“I don’t know. The studio seems to be doing all it can to protect him.”

“My money’s on the wife. You want me to come stay with you?”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Johnny Clay. But thanks.”

I was just past the oil derricks of La Cienega when a truck the size of a moving van came barreling up behind me. The street was nearly empty, but instead of passing me it moved up too fast on my tail. I slammed on the gas and shot ahead, the headlights dropping back in the rearview mirror.

I eased off the gas a bit, but only a bit, and then the truck moved into the left lane so it could pass me. I eased off the gas further so that he could go on by, but instead the truck pulled up alongside me and swerved into my lane. I slammed the brakes and went skidding off the side of the road, knocking my head against the steering wheel.

I sat, catching my breath, knuckles white. I checked my mirrors and looked around. I turned too fast, over my shoulder, and my head started to pound. The roadside was empty except for me. Wilshire was nearly empty too.

I opened the door and got out, testing my legs, making sure they still worked, and watched as, in the distance, the taillights of the truck continued west toward the ocean.

At home, I examined my forehead, where a bump was forming. Then I went to the kitchen and stood at the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil, ready to catch it before it whistled so the sound wouldn’t wake Helen. I poured the water, dropped a tea bag in, and carried the cup into the living room.

I set the cup down and picked up an issue of
Photoplay
from the coffee table, then
Ladies’ Home Journal
and
True Story
. They all featured Nigel Gray’s face, brooding and handsome and dignified. “How Nigel Gray Faces Life Without Love,” said one. “Nigel Gray Grieves,” said another. “Nigel Gray Remembers Barbara Fanning and the Life They Could Have Had,” said a third.