Where the Truth Lies (33 page)

She wore Alice’s mandatory blue-and-white pinafore, the well-starched front of its “apron” stiff across her breasts. Her legs were in white stockings that ran for cover up the hem of her dress with a graceful curve, hiding amid a slew of petticoats. In this she differed a bit from Disney’s Alice, who, I always thought, had been given cow legs. This Alice’s legs were beautifully slim and tapered. Despite the absolute respectability of her hose, I am sure there were men in the crowd who looked at those white stockings and at where they went, and envisioned what they met there.

Her singing had momentarily transformed this small corner of the sun-drenched park into an intimate cabaret. She’d made her Alice song into a torch song, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a yearning song, like “Over the Rainbow.” When she finished, the crowd that had gathered applauded her so loudly that passersby wondered what had elicited such a response and came over to see what they were missing.

Clapping enthusiastically, Vince asked me, “What do you think of her?”

I shouted over the applause to him, “How can she be that beautiful and sing so wonderfully?”

He nodded his head. “You know, they’re probably paying her not a cent more than Tweedledee and Tweedledum there. I bet she’s nonunion, too. So you definitely do think she’s good?”

“I love her,” I shouted back.

Alice was now making the rounds of the audience, which had formed a circle around the bandstand: curtseying to those who had something to say to her, shaking hands gently with children, introducing them to her friends Tweedle A and B, who were proficient at bumping into each other in a funny way and waving busy-fingered waves to the crowd. When someone in the crowd reached to touch Alice’s hair, one Tweedle interposed his big belly between them and shook a scolding finger at the offender. It was clear that the two Tweedles were also doubling as “handlers,” those who ventured out with Disney characters to serve as their bodyguards.

A determined look came over Vince’s face, even behind his sunglasses and broad-brimmed hat. “Look, I want to help her out. She’s too talented to be doing this for the next ten years. Trouble is, if I have my manager contact Disney, they’ll give him a total runaround, we won’t find out who she is, and meanwhile they’ll realize what they’ve got and they’ll sign her to a five-year contract. She’ll never be heard of again. I’ve got to let her know who I am. Is that okay with you?” It was so different with Vince. Here he was, asking for my approval, my permission for him to be Vince Collins. He warned me, “I mean, you know if I get spotted by this crowd, it could get messy. You okay with that?”

“Speak to her. I’ll try to block you as best as I can.”

Alice was working her way around the circle. She shook hands with a little girl next to us.

“I hope you are having a nice time here today,” she said in a skillful imitation of Kathryn Beaumont’s voice from the Disney movie. She gestured at her costumed cohorts, who were playing a game of patty-cake behind her. One took a roundhouse swing at the other, who ducked it. Alice laughed to a nine-year-old, “I’m afraid my friends Tweedledee and Tweedledum are making quite a spectacle of themselves. What silly boys they are!” One of the “boys” hugged the other, and both were back to being friends. Alice smiled. “And the more they fight, the closer they become!”

She passed by us, and Vince called out, “Miss Alice!” and asked her for an autograph. When she saw the WED Guest card he offered for her to sign, she looked up at him, aware that this was someone whom the management viewed as a VIP.

Vince whipped off his sunglasses as I blocked the side view of his face. “Kiddo, listen, my name is Vince Collins, I do some singing myself. Do you recognize me?”

She put her hand to her chest in a very un-Alice gesture. She said, minus her British accent, “Oh, Mr. Collins. I grew up listening to your albums.”

Vince smiled at me, amused by how her response aged him. He said to Alice, “Great, look, you sing incredibly well. Like Peggy Lee when she started, with some Blossom Dearie, too. I want you to promise me you’ll keep at it. It’s very hard in our industry. No one makes it. But you can make it.” Vince pulled a business card from his wallet. He put a big grin on his face, so that anyone looking would think he was saying what a nice time he and the little woman were having here in Disneyland. He beamed at her, “Listen, I know you can’t talk. This is the card of my manager, his name is Billy Bishop. Call him tomorrow. When the secretary tells you he’s not in, say that ‘Sir Ron Lyman’ told you to call.”

“Sir Ron Lyman,” Alice repeated.

“Sir Ron Lyman. Billy will take your call when he hears that. We’ll see if we can set up some auditions for you, for TV, records. You may not see me again, but the world is going to see you again. I want you to know that.”

Alice took the card and quickly hid it in a pocket in her pinafore. She reverted to her British accent and cried out to the crowd, “Oh, I think I see the White Rabbit, I must follow him.” She waved to Tweedledee and Tweedledum. “We must leave or the Queen of Hearts will be wanting my head! Good-bye everyone! Have a golden afternoon here in the Magic Kingdom!”

The two Tweedles flanked her protectively as she turned and rounded a corner. They were as effective at manipulating the crowd as entertaining it. As people started to follow the lovely blonde, the two intervened, pretending to be fighting again, allowing Alice to step over to an unmarked door in the side of the Mad Hatter’s Hats concession. A Fantasyland security officer (dressed in a purple frock coat and green top hat) was keeping the door just slightly open. Alice ducked in and began her descent into the underground of the park—which Disney cast members referred to as “backstage”—where there were changing rooms for the employees and a break room where one could have a soda, a sandwich, or a smoke.

“Do you think she’ll call?” I asked Vince as Dee and Dum followed Alice through the doorway and the crowd dissipated. We were now walking back toward Main Street, to depart via the same secret passage by which we’d arrived. Vince took off his cowboy hat for a moment and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Hard to say. She’d be risking her job if she did. But she can’t play Alice in Wonderland forever.” He looked at me as if he’d been foolish. “I wasn’t trying to show off, you know.”

“I know that.” I did know that.

“You don’t hear many fresh-sounding voices. I was a shameless Como impersonator when I started out; there was nothing original about me. It’s exciting when somebody comes up with a new instrument.”

Here Vince had taken the time to help this girl, running the risk that someone in the crowd would spot him and a mob scene would ensue, and he was afraid I’d think he was showing off. He and Lanny might at one time have been a duo, but they certainly were not a matching pair.

The drive back to L.A. was a bit depressing. We both knew that tomorrow we had things to discuss that were not going to be pleasant. We didn’t talk about it, not one bit. Vince had put up the Skyliner’s patented Hideaway roof, which lifted automatically out of the trunk, as the evening had gone quite cool. On the push-button radio, he tuned in a “Beautiful Music” station (a format that usually called for large doses of Mantovani and Tony Bennett) and we talked about the passing scenery until Vince’s voice came over the radio singing“Non Dimenticar.” He snapped off the radio and we drove for a long time without talking.

For dinner, he took me to the restaurant at the Hotel Bel-Air. It was quiet and comfortable there, he said, and very private. We parked near the reception office, which was in its own building, separate from the hotel. Getting to the restaurant required crossing over a lovely footbridge that spanned an idyllic pond. We stopped midbridge to look at the swan that floated sedately near a willow whose tendrils grazed the surface of the water. It looked to all intents and purposes exactly like the Disney rendition of the riverbank where Alice’s older sister had been reading to her when her adventures began.

The swan was the logo of the Hotel Bel-Air. I’d seen its likeness at the main gate.

I indicated the swan to Vince, who looked more vulnerable without his cowboy hat and sunglasses, squinting into the setting sun. “Look at her,” I said. “She’s a trademark and doesn’t even know it.”

Vince grimaced. “There’s a lot more she doesn’t know. See, there are coyotes in these hills.” He gestured to the scrubby slopes behind and above the low, elegant bungalows of the hotel. “Some nights they come down here and manage to kill the swan. There’s no effective way to stop the coyotes, so it’s easier for the hotel to simply have a ready supply of swans available to replace the dead ones on a regular basis.”

I looked at him to see if he was joking, but clearly he wasn’t. “That’s horrible!” I responded. “But do coyotes swim?”

He shook his head. “They come down in pairs. The first coyote races toward the east bank of the pond, snarling like crazy, and this frightens the swan, who swims away and gets out of the water on the west bank. Where the other coyote is silently waiting. He kills her, and then the other coyote comes around the pond or over this bridge and the two of them share the feast.”

I could picture the entire scenario. And as I pictured it, for some silly reason, I gave the coyotes the names Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

TWENTY-TWO

The next afternoon found me pulling up to Vince’s home around threeP .M. He had asked if we could start late, and I was all for obliging him. I wanted to be as reasonable as possible prior to giving him the third degree.

I parked my car in the motor court outside his home.

Basically, I had one edge going into this. I knew something about Vince (and Lanny) that he didn’t know I knew. I had to play this one little ace up my sleeve as if I were holding a flush. First I had to question Vince all around the topic of the last night the two of them saw Maureen, knowing—as no one else knew—that she had died there in Florida at the Versailles, almost certainly in their hotel suite. If I watched Vince carefully, led him disingenuously around the terrain of that time period, perhaps he’d slip.

After I’d covered that time frame as much as I felt was credible, I then planned to lead him into related areas so that he’d feel as if he were out of the woods. I’d ask him how he felt about her death, how it had affected his working relationship with Lanny, did he believe the public’s response to their partnership was altered by the sordid event, et cetera. I would let this become an airy and philosophical discussion.

That’s when I’d have to steel my nerves and play my ace for its full worth. There would be one moment, and one moment only, when I could calmly say to him something like“Yes, but when you packed her in the case with the lobsters and crabs, did you alert Sally Santoro’s boys in New Jersey about this or were you planning to unpack her yourselves after you checked into the hotel?” Perhaps this would not be the exact question (the moment and context would decide that), but it would certainly be the one and only time I could knock the wind out of him with one blow to the solar plexus. Then I’d have to bluff impeccably, putting across that this was merely one of many bits of inside information I had gleaned about Maureen’s death.

The beauty of my position was that I was not with the police. I did not have to read Vince his rights. In point of fact, he didnot have the right to remain silent. Just the opposite. He was contractually obligated to N&N to cough up what he knew. To any other interviewer, he could simply say, “No comment.” Saying that to me would cost him a million dollars.

I walked through the walled-in courtyard to Vince’s door. I liked him. I had a crush on him. I was going to sleep with him no matter what. Oh, I suppose if I found out that he was a murderer and turned him over to the Miami authorities, he should probably not expect a conjugal visit from me in prison. That reminded me that an electric chair nicknamed Old Sparky was still percolating away in Florida, doing an inhumanely inefficient and protracted job of burning its victims from the inside out.

Here comes Vince to the door. I hear his footsteps. Yes, there he is in a lightweight olive sweater with a turtleneck collar, black-and-gray trousers, black socks, black loafers. Someday I would help him off with his clothes. Let me see if I (eager and self-promoting young thing that I am) can bait and spring a saw-toothed trap for him.

“Hi.” He smiled with a set about his lips that indicated this was not going to be his favorite afternoon. “Thanks for accommodating me on the time. We can go as late as you like.”

Anything he casually offered I was going to nail to the table while it was out there. “That’s good,” I murmured. “I do think this may take us late into the evening.”

He shut the door behind me and followed me into the house. He indicated the dining room. “I thought that might be the case,” he said. “So I’ve arranged for a hot and cold smorgasbord to be brought in from Scandia’s. I had them lay out the dining room for us. We can work through dinner if you like.”

I looked in the dining room and saw place settings and matching linen, water and wineglasses, a full set of cutlery, including fish and salad forks, dessert plates, and coffee cups.

The table was set for three.

“We’ll be having company?” I asked, a bit annoyed. If he thought that he was going to checkmate me by bringing in a third party, he was well mistaken. I watched from the dining room as he walked over to the living room couch, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

“Yes, I have a fairly big surprise for you.” He took a drag and exhaled. “Actually it’s a big thing for me as well. I’ve asked Lanny to join us today.”

I felt as if an intravenous drip of ice water had just hit my bloodstream, and yet at the same time my mouth went dry.

“Lanny?”

Vince nodded, biting at his lower lip. “Yeah. You know, this will be the first time we’ve seen each other alone, at close quarters, in over thirteen years. Look at me.” He stretched out his hand and there was a small shake to it, although Vince the actor could have been faking that quite easily. “I’m nervous as hell.”