The Fame Thief (18 page)

“The photographers did that,” I said. “Messed with the bed like that.”

“Talent,” Tyrone said. “Somebody had an eye.”

“In the printer,” Rina said, “there’s a list of the people who were arrested. Two other women, four men. The men were all gangsters, according to what I found. One of the women was referred to as a showgirl, and the other one, it said ‘Occupation unknown.’ Although one paper in New York called her a ‘party girl.’ ”

I said, “Ouch.”

“What’s funny is that someone bailed everyone else out. Like instantly. Even the girls. I mean, I can see somebody paying to get the guys out, but the girls? But they left her in overnight for the photographers.”

“Setup,” Tyrone said.

“That’s it.” I looked over the list of those arrested. Other than Stamponato’s there were no familiar names. “Do you have stuff on these people?”

“In this,” Rina tapped a beat-up three-ring notebook, with a picture on it of some kids who were apparently called The Jonas Brothers. They had been extensively restyled with facial hair, glasses, warts, and ugly hats in practically every color a marker comes in. She looked at me, looked back down at the notebook, and said, “From fourth grade. Disney dorks.”

I picked it up and was rewarded by its heft. “Good work.”

“Mostly junk,” she said. “The guys have all got the same story, and most of them ended up floating in oil drums.”

“First thing on the job questionnaire,” Tyrone said. “
Do
you float?
”

Flipping through the notebook, I backed up until the bed hit the backs of my knees. I sat. “What about the Kefauver Committee? The testimony?”

“There’s a
ton
of it,” Rina said. “But it’s not cross-referenced, and it’s not searchable, and it’s not all in one place. Most of it’s indexed by gangsters. They made her come in, Dolores La Marr, I mean, to testify, and it got almost as much publicity as the jail thing. Place was full of cameras. I found some video and stills of it, and she looks nervous, poor thing. Some of the real wonk sites say she went back again, but I haven’t found anything about that. Go to the third tab in the notebook, there’s a transcript.”

I leafed through it. After the swearing in and all the formalities, they got right down to business.

Senator Durkee: Is it fair to say that you know John Roselli?

Miss La Marr: I don’t know whether it’s fair, but sure, I know Mr. Roselli.

Senator Durkee: How well would you say you know him?

Miss La Marr: Better than I know you, better than I know my milkman. How well compared to what? You got some kind of scale in mind?

Senator Kefauver: Miss La Marr, you will be civil while you’re in this hearing room.

Miss La Marr: Well, how about him asking a straight question?

Senator Durkee: This might be a way to approach it, Miss La Marr. Do you call him Mr. Roselli or do you call him Johnny?

Miss La Marr: Johnny.

Senator Durkee: And Owney Madden?

Miss La Marr: What about him? You mean, do I call him Johnny, too?

Senator Durkee: Do you call him Owney?

Miss La Marr: Actually, I call him Killer. It’s a nickname.

Senator Durkee: And a colorful one, too. Just to move things along, I’m going to read some names of people we believe to be your acquaintances. You just answer “first” or “last,” depending on whether you call him by his first name or—

Miss La Marr: Yeah, yeah.

Senator Durkee: —or his last. Sam Giancana.

Miss La Marr: First.

Senator Durkee: Anthony Mostelli.

Miss La Marr: First. Tony, not Anthony.

Senator Durkee: Thank you for the clarification. Benjamin Siegel.

Miss La Marr: He’s dead.

Senator Durkee: But when he was alive, you called him—

Miss La Marr: Benny.

Senator Durkee: Not Bugsy?

Miss La Marr: I didn’t have enough life insurance to call him Bugsy.

Senator Durkee: Roberto Pigozzi.

Miss La Marr: Bobby Pig. That’s what other people call him. I don’t call him anything. I only met him that—that day.

Senator Durkee: You are referring to the day of your arrest?

Miss La Marr: Actually, it was the day before, when we landed in Vegas. I was arrested in the A.M. on the next day.

Senator Durkee: Noted. Thank you. You say “we” arrived in Vegas? Who else was with you?

Miss La Marr: You know who was with me.

Senator Durkee: For the record, Miss La Marr.

Miss La Marr: For the record, you know who was with me.

Senator Durkee: I must insist that—

Miss La Marr: I was with George.

Senator Durkee: George. That would be the film actor George Raft.

Miss La Marr: Good heavens, it would.

Senator Durkee: Mr. Raft is married, is he not?

Miss La Marr: For ages.

Senator Durkee: But you travel with him.

Miss La Marr: It was a plane, not a railroad car.

Senator Durkee: How many other passengers were aboard?

Miss La Marr: None.

Senator Durkee: Sounds intimate. You are, in a sense, intimate with all these men?

Miss La Marr: Not in any sense I recognize.

Senator Durkee: Intimate enough to fly to Las Vegas alone with one of them and to go to a party where the others were guests.

Miss La Marr: (Consults with counsel) George is a friend. The party was a party. Like a million parties.

Senator Durkee: And how many female guests were there?

Miss La Marr: You already know.

Senator Durkee: The booking records at the Las Vegas jail indicate three females.

Miss La Marr: Well, cops can usually tell the difference.

Senator Durkee: So there were only three women present. And four men.

Miss La Marr: Is that a question?

Senator Durkee: Not a very large party, was it?

Miss La Marr: What’s that supposed to mean?

Senator Durkee: An intimate gathering. One and one-third men per girl.

Miss La Marr: It was a (expletive) party.

Senator Kefauver: Order. There will be order in this committee room. Young woman, you will watch your language.

Miss La Marr: Dirty minds deserve dirty language.

Senator Durkee: Do you know what Anthony Mostelli does?

Miss La Marr: He’s in business.

Senator Durkee: What Sam Giancana does?

Miss La Marr: He’s in business, too.

Senator Durkee: What Benjamin Siegel did?

Miss La Marr: He owned things. He owned the hotel we were all in.

Senator Durkee: So you’re telling us that you’re unaware that these men are, or were, all suspected of being engaged in organized crime?

Miss La Marr: Not now, I’m not.

Senator Kefauver: You’re saying you’re not aware?

Miss La Marr: I’m not unaware.

Senator Kefauver: Please make an attempt to be clear in your answers.

Miss La Marr: Tell him. Tell him not to ask his questions backward.

Senator Kefauver: Miss La Marr—

Miss La Marr: “So you’re unaware”? How am I supposed to answer that? Jeez, get a new writer.

Senator Durkee: You are an actress, I believe.

Miss La Marr: You believe correctly.

Senator Durkee: The other two women at the party with you, the party of June 23, 1950 in the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, are they actresses, too?

Miss La Marr: I don’t remember. We didn’t talk.

Senator Durkee: Would it jog your memory if I were to tell you their names? They are Miss Kelly Brannigan and Miss Ella Cowan.

Miss La Marr: Kelly’s an actress, or supposed to be. I think Ella’s a showgirl. In Vegas. They have a lot of showgirls in—

Senator Durkee: So. With only three women present, all either actresses or “supposed to be actresses” or “showgirls,” and all the men accused criminals, how would you describe the tone of the party?

Miss La Marr: Refined. Regular Amy Vanderbilt get-together. I’d call it a
soiree
.

Senator Durkee: Please share with the committee the names of the men who were present.

Miss La Marr: You mean, before or after?

Senator Durkee: Before or after what?

Miss La Marr: The cops came. Before the cops came, or after they were there?

Senator Durkee: After the police—

Miss La Marr: Gee, there’s a surprise. All the big guys left just before the—

Senator Durkee: With all due respect, everything you say here goes into the permanent record and must be verified. The men who were there when the police arrived were booked by the Las Vegas police. That means I have a source I can use to verify your answer.

Miss La Marr: Yeah, right. Probably nobody’s paying you at all not to bring up the names of—

Senator Kefauver: Miss La Marr. You will confine your answers to the questions that are asked you.

“Boy,” I said
, closing the notebook. “She gave as good as she got. I’ll finish reading this at home.”

“She didn’t stand a chance,” Rina said.

“Bunch of old white men,” Tyrone said. “Nothing’s changed much.”

“Okay.” I got up. “You’ve earned your money. Try to find the rest of her testimony. Now where’s Kathy, and what’s she doing?”

“Out with Dick,” Rina said. She hooked her hair with her fingers and combed it back behind her ears, something she did when she was nervous, although she wasn’t aware of it. “Looking at houses.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s looking at houses. He’s got like five of them lined up for her.”

“Has she inherited money? Is there oil in the back yard?”

“Dick’s a realtor.” Rina blinked rapidly and licked her lips
and shot a glance at Tyrone. “He says she can make a lot of money if she sells this place and buys a cheaper one.”

“In a fucking cow’s hat,” I said. “She is not selling—”

“It’s hers, Daddy,” Rina said.

“And let me guess. Good old Dick, he represents the sellers of the houses he’s showing her. And he’ll represent her if she sells this one. Double-dipping.”

“Double-what?”

“He gets both commissions. Not even legal in eight states. How do you feel about it?”

“I hate it,” Rina said. “This is my house. It’s where I
live
.”

“Different color eyes,” Tyrone said. “Sees everything two ways at the same time. Smile at you, cut your throat, both of them look just fine.”

I said, “Huh?”

“My mama. My mama doesn’t like people with different color eyes.”

“I’m with your mama. Tell Kathy to call me,” I said to Rina.

She fanned herself with her hand, looking even younger than usual. “I’ll
ask
her, not tell her. She’s been waiting for you to get all crazy about this.”

“Well,” I said, “tell her she hasn’t even
seen
crazy yet.”

“Dick says he’s the man who
owns
Tarzana,” Rina had said as she walked me out. And in some respect, he did: As I zigzagged the streets, feeling my blood pressure mount into the Yosemite Sam zone, I saw sign after sign:
FOR SALE BY RICHARD
“
DICK
”
STIVIK
. A significant number of the signs also said, like a melancholy footnote,
REDUCED
. I had a feeling these weren’t the houses old Dick was showing to Kathy.

Our house wasn’t just walls and a ceiling on a piece of dirt. It
meant
something. I rebuilt half of it by hand. I dug part of the swimming pool before coming to my senses and hiring some nice guys who, in retrospect, were probably in the country without official blessing. Employing my special expertise, I replaced every door and window in the place, most of which would have yielded to a weak argument, with stuff even I’d have trouble opening, including a metal front door you could hit with a Humvee and still not break down.

It was the house Rina grew up in. Kathy and I had been happy there, as happy as we got, anyway, and that was pretty happy in the year or so after Rina was born.

I scribbled down addresses as I went, and then I pulled over and called Louie the Lost.

“I forgot this number,” Louie said when he came on the line. “Been so long since I seen it, feels like I been reincarnated or something. You know, all wavy, like something you see underwater.”

“And how are you?”

“Alice—you remember Alice?”

Until he made a memorable wrong turn one night, Louie the Lost had been one of LA’s top getaway drivers, and the thing about getaway drivers is that there’s no hurrying them. “Yes, Louie, I remember Alice.”

“I’ll tell her that. Hard to get a smile out of her lately, what with you not around. Anyway, she’s gotten into pots.”

I looked at my watch again. After six. “Pots.”

“You know,
pots
. The things you put stuff in and they break when you drop them. Pots.”

“Got it. Pots.”

“There’s more to pots than dried mud,” Louie said. “Who’da thought?”

“I certainly wouldn’t.
Pots
, you say, and I think
mud
.”

“They throw them, did you know that?
Throwing pots
, you heard anyone say that?”

“I may have.”

“Well, forget it, it’s not what you’d think. You know, Alice tells me her women’s group—she has a women’s group—is gonna start throwing pots, I’m picturing these middle-aged—if most people live into their hundreds—these middle-aged ladies going to Builders Emporium or someplace, buying a bunch of pots and tossing them at each other. Like stress reduction or something: Tense?
Break some pots
. But nope, that’s not—”