Hollywood and Levine (5 page)

“You're killing me,” he said evenly. “I'll rephrase the question: why did you come out here?”

“Like I said five minutes ago, I'm an old friend of Walter's.”

“An old friend who just happens to be a peeper.” Wynn pretended to laugh and played with the keys of Adrian's typewriter. He was a small wiry man, with pitted olive-yellow skin and gray-green eyes that were at once bored and unhappy. You could have lost a small dog in his eyebrows; the cop's hairline appeared to begin at the bridge of his nose. Wynn's teeth were stained horse-yellow from his pipe sucking, and his lips were as thin as two blades of grass. He was professionally hostile, but not ugly hostile; just unimaginative, dull, and a pain in the neck.

Wynn had two other detectives along for the ride and they sat with exaggerated disinterest in two canvas chairs against the wall. They were called Lemon and Caputo and they were as sharp as a couple of bowling balls. Lemon had dirty blond hair and the sullen pudginess of a beach boy gone to fat; Caputo was tall, dark, and wide. He kept a small smile and a large hat on the entire time.

“Even peepers have friends, Lieutenant,” I told Wynn.

“Not the ones I know.” He aimed bluish smoke at the ceiling.

“He was dead when you got there?” asked Lemon. It was his first question, but Wynn had already asked the same one twice.

“Not quite. He was finishing an aria from ‘Pagliacci.' Then he died.”

“Your good friend croaks and you make funnies,” Wynn mumbled in fake solemnity. “I don't figure it.”

“Listen, he was a friend, but not my closest buddy on earth,” I told him. “Who are we kidding? I ran into him in New York and he asked me to come out here and check on something for him. I got here, went directly to the studio, and found him dead. I am stunned, upset, and confused. But he was not, repeat not, my very best friend.”

“And you don't know what the trouble was?” Wynn asked.

“No.”

“And you flew out here anyways?” This was Caputo's contribution. He looked at Wynn as he said it, but Wynn was looking at his pipe.

“For three hundred bucks, I'll fly to a lot of places,” I told Caputo. “Also, like I said, he was a friend.”

“But not a good friend,” Wynn said softly.

“That's right.”

Wynn put his hands on Adrian's desk and hoisted himself up. Caputo and Lemon rose from their seats like twin slices of toast.

“I guess that'll be it for now, Levine,” the lieutenant said.

“LeVine, like Hollywood and Vine.”

“I don't care how you pronounce it. In my book L—e—v—i—n—e is Levine.”

“Except in my case.”

“Fuck it. LeVine.” He didn't have the energy to squabble over the matter. “Anyhow, don't fly out of town or we'll fly you back at your expense. I'm pretty sure this is suicide and I'd like to wrap it up by tomorrow or the next.” He paused and donned his hat. “But I don't like that he needed a peeper.”

“He didn't like it either,” I told Wynn.

“I'll bet he didn't.” The cop shook his head in a lawman's bewilderment at the endless variety of human folly. “What'd a guy like that make, couple g's a week?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“So he strings himself up.” It was beyond him, beyond me as well. Wynn stared at me carefully. “He queer?”

“Not that I know of. I hadn't seen him for a long time before New York, but I never knew him to go that way.”

“People change out here,” the lieutenant said. “It's the sun does it. They want to try everything.”

“I'd be surprised, Lieutenant, that's all I'm saying.”

“Okay.” Wynn turned to the court jesters. “Let's beat it.”

“You know,” I told Wynn, “if it's not suicide, it's murder.”

He didn't bat an eye. “Not if I can help it. There's no evidence of homicide. And thank God for it. Movie industry murders are nothing but trouble. Let's clean this up fast and neat, huh, LeVine? Seems to me there's been enough pain here already.”

He turned and walked out of the office, trailed by Huey and Looey. Wynn was a lot brighter than I first guessed, and instinct told him to close the case. I sat behind Walter Adrian's desk for a few silent minutes, waiting to hear what my instincts had to say.

They finally spoke up, and then I left the Writer's Building for an apprehensive ride to the home of Walter's new widow.

The Adrian house was located in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, a couple of miles northwest of Hollywood. I rehearsed my heartbreaking revelation all the way over, until it sounded so polished and elegant as to be altogether useless. If your husband just died at the end of a rope, dangling in the wind like a side of beef, carefully chosen words could not cover the ugliness any more than a new suit could make him look alive. I decided to drop the frills and pauses and tell it straight.

My decision was beside the point. By the time I arrived at the huge Tudor-style home on Escadero Road, the driveway was already crowded with cars, one of which belonged to the Los Angeles Police Department. The news had been broken, the news had spread.

I parked across the street and walked over to the sprawling, elegant, two-story house. It looked like a refugee from some sheltered, old-money eastern neighborhood, the kind with its own security force. A double chimney blew white smoke into the night air, huge sheltering trees brushed their limbs against the roof. All the lights were on and I didn't want to be there.

As I walked up the front steps, two cops emerged from a side door and got into their squad car. The car backed slowly out of the driveway, its red light flashing in a gesture that seemed more ceremonial than official. It went up the street, turned right, and vanished.

I rang the bell. It chimed loudly, over the mortuary-pitched conversation of what sounded like close to a dozen people gathered inside. A pale, stocky man with a bulbous nose and curly hair came to the door and stared at me. He was wearing glasses with lenses so thick that his eyes seemed to float hugely behind them, like dark stones on the floor of a fish tank.

“Yes?”

“My name is Jack LeVine, a friend …”

“Of course,” the man said softly, opening the door and stepping to one side, “the private detective who found Walter.” He held out his hand as I entered. “I am Milton Wohl, a screenwriter and a dear friend of Walter's.”

I shook Milton Wohl's small, damp hand—imagine squeezing a pork kidney—and stepped into a foyer. The house was dense with hushed and urgent conversation, rich with the odors of liquor and perfume.

“Do you know Helen?” Wohl asked solicitously.

“No, I don't.”

“Fine,” he said, for no reason at all. The writer was clearly shaken by the events of the evening. “I'll introduce you.”

Wohl led me into the living room and I got an inkling of the kind of life Walter had lived in Hollywood. The room was at least forty feet long, with polished wooden beams lining the low ceiling. A fireplace took up the far wall, flanked on either side by full suits of armor blindly guarding the blaze, the iron plate glowing a dull, Dark Ages orange. Bookshelves lined the paneled walls, jammed to overflowing with leather-bound classics and popular fiction, pre-Columbian figurines, and somebody's favorite collection of little glass elephants.

Small spotlights were affixed to the ceiling, shining on a series of brilliant medieval illuminations depicting the progress of an autumnal battle for someone's honor. Horses reared, their curiously human eyes staring at the heavens, bearing faceless warriors on their backs. A golden-haired woman, clutching a red arrow and a torch, hovered in the air. She looked bemused.

The woman on the couch by the fireplace was neither golden-haired nor bemused. Her hair was long and red, and she was as beautiful as any woman I have ever seen. She rose and walked toward me.

“Helen,” said Wohl, “this is Jack LeVine.”

“I am so terribly sorry,” I told her.

Unexpectedly, and to the evident surprise and faint displeasure of the men and women standing and sitting about the room, Helen Adrian embraced me. I tentatively hugged her in return. She looked up at me, her jade-green eyes touched with red.

“It must have been horrible for you, Jack.”

“Pretty rough.”

“You'll have a drink?”

“Please. Bourbon and water.”

“Of course.” She turned to Wohl. “Milt, could you get Jack a bourbon and water?”

Wohl examined me curiously, his eyes submerged in still water behind the bullet-proof specs. Then he slipped away, less than delighted to be handling the butler duties.

“Sit beside me, Jack,” said Mrs. Adrian, lightly touching my lapel. “Let's talk for a while.”

She led me across the room, all eyes following our progress. I felt like the proverbial bare-assed gentleman in Macy's window. We sat down on a long yellow couch, directly in front of the fire. Mrs. Adrian moved close to me and all I could do was stare. It was not any particular feature that so astonished me, not the delicately arched nose or the perfect teeth or the remarkably large and attentive eyes; it was, rather, a white hot intelligence that gave her face its poised and startling symmetry. I couldn't get over her. She was most certainly in shock, but it seemed to me a surface condition. Dive below to the heart, or up to the brain, and you would find someone with a firm hold on reality.

She leaned very close to me. “Jack, the police said it was suicide,” she whispered. “I don't believe that.”

“Why not?”

“He's been upset, but not that upset: It's not in Walter's character to do that. He's not a quitter.” She spoke precisely, emphatically.

“No, he wasn't.” I made the painful change in tense. I didn't really know whether Adrian was a quitter or not. At this point, it hardly seemed to matter. “But he was very much in the dumps when we spoke in New York.”

Mrs. Adrian reached over and picked a large brandy snifter off an end table. A couple of shots of cognac glittered in the lamp and firelight; she swirled the liquid about and gazed down into the glass, a fawn at a pond. There was a tap on my shoulder. Wohl with my drink. I took it and thanked him. He looked fondly at Mrs. Adrian.

“She's taking it marvelously, isn't she?” said the writer, as if she wasn't there. “Just marvelously.”

Mrs. Adrian looked up at him. “You don't have to stay here, Milton, really.” She smiled, just a little. “Please don't feel that you have to.”

Wohl didn't know if he was being paid a compliment or asked to leave. The fire behind us lit his thick glasses into two miniature blazes. He nodded and sipped some ginger ale.

“Milton was Walter's best friend,” said Mrs. Adrian. “He's been so terribly wounded by this.” Now it was like Wohl wasn't there.

The writer leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I'd like a few words with you when you're done with Helen,” he said, then straightened himself and joined a few other people who were standing in a clump, intently watching Helen and me talk.

“He really Walter's best pal or was that just talk?” I asked Mrs. Adrian.

“Everyone was Walter's best pal. That was his problem.” Her voice turned a little bitter.

“This would seem to be the wrong town for deep friendships.”

“God, is it ever.” She downed some cognac. “I mean. Walter could be as calculating as everyone else out here. It's a law of nature. But down deep he was so goddamn trusting.” Her face crumpled up, then she turned her head and abruptly wept into a corner of the couch. It was way overdue. I patted her on the shoulder.

“Why don't you go stretch out for a while,” I told her. “Cry your eyes out. It's time to stop being brave.”

A thick-featured and large-boned woman in a peasant blouse and blue skirt appeared. Her hair was wrapped in a bun so tight it looked to be pulling her face in half.

“Helen, take Mr. LeVine's advice,” she said not too gently. “You ought to get some rest.”

Mrs. Adrian got up slowly. She sighed, and looked to be ready for a long cry.

“Jack LeVine, this is Rachel Wohl, Milton's wife.” She made a last attempt at playing hostess. “You'll come back here tomorrow, Jack, around suppertime?”

“Of course,” I told her, aware that everyone had heard the invitation.

Mrs. Adrian took my hand and squeezed it as hard as she could, which wasn't very hard at all. Then she circled the room and thanked everyone before heading up the stairs, followed by Rachel Wohl. When she disappeared from view, the volume in the room went up a decibel or two, as if a cautious hand had adjusted a knob.

I stood up and Wohl sprang to my side.

“You're not leaving, are you?” he asked.

“Thought I'd circulate.”

Wohl smiled agreeably and took my arm. “Fine. You must meet some of us.”

The writer shepherded me over to a tense group of people seated in a semicircle by the bar. They included the sandy-haired cowboy actor Dale Carpenter, screenwriter Carroll Arthur, Jr., and his wife June, Henry Perillo, a carpenter and an official in the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a German composer of movie scores named Sig Friedland, and Adrian's agent, Larry Goldmark. I was greeted with the restrained enthusiasm usually accorded an insurance salesman.

“Pull up a seat,” said Goldmark, a pale, svelte figure of perhaps forty. He was drinking and chewing gum at the same time.

Wohl got a chair for me. “We want to hear all about it, Jack. And don't think you have to spare us; we'd like to know exactly what happened.”

“So would I,” I told him. Wohl got himself a hassock and we both sat down. “What do you want to hear about, folks?”

Goldmark looked at the others, knotting his hands together. “Did he leave any kind of a note?” he asked.