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  Fillmore’s face turned red. He gritted his teeth and glared at Jack.

  Jack took the gun back. He grabbed Fillmore’s right wrist and carried his arm through the proper actions. When his chin was exposed, Jack said, “And you can really hit me. You don’t have to fake it. I know how to roll with a punch.”

  “You’re fucking right I’ll hit you,” Fillmore said.

  “Let’s try it,” the director said. Everyone returned to their marks. The film rolled again. Hayles and Fillmore argued again. Hayles had enough. Jack stepped forward, threatened Fillmore, and let himself be disarmed in the world’s gentlest display of toughness. He dropped. Hayles and Fillmore finished the scene with Jack flat on the ground.

  The director acknowledged it was better, but Fillmore was still too soft. They ran through it all again and again. Fillmore hit Jack with all his might each time. Jack let the blows come. They were nothing compared to the slaps his father had given him out of love or congratulations when Jack was a kid.

  Ten or twelve tender pokes to the jaw later, Jack was done with his day. He knew he should linger, press Ethel to tell her stories, find out more about Hayles, talk to Gertie. Gertie knew more than she was telling. This whole day felt like another script she’d written, like she’d set up Jack to meet Ethel and Hayles, like she was dropping clues. The only bad take of the day was Jack slipping out early instead of playing it like Fillmore’s character would’ve, digging deeper, finding something leading to the truth.

  That was too much for today. Jack checked out. The production company gave him thirty bucks for his trouble. No one mentioned the new suit he walked away wearing.

  Halfway across the lot, on his way to the interurban, a golf cart swung up beside Jack. Hayles sat at the wheel. He stopped the cart and stood up. “I want to shake your hand, kid.” Jack put his hand out. Hayles shook it. While still holding it, he said, “That was some dozen blows you took across the kisser. Didn’t even leave a mark, did it?”

  Jack slid his hand out of the shake. He looked around the alley between soundstages. Nothing but old movie props and sunlight and Hayles and him. “I knew they were coming and rolled with them,” Jack said. “Didn’t hurt at all.”

  Hayles leaned in and inspected Jack’s jaw. Jack stood still. This tenderness, the intimacy of being so close, of knowing this man fucked Wilma while she slept: it unhinged something. Jack kept his voice cool. “Funny thing about those scenes,” Jack said, “is that it’s damn near impossible to knock someone out with one punch.”

  Hayles leaned back and squinted. “Can’t be that tough,” he said.

  “Ever watch a boxing match? How many blows do those guys take from the toughest lugs around? How many does it take to drop them?”

  Hayles shrugged. “I guess. But those guys know how to take a punch.”

  Jack said, “Conditions have to be almost perfect.” He placed a gentle finger just to the left of Hayles’s chin. “You have to land your second knuckle here, exactly. That forces the jawbone up into the brain.” Jack dropped his hand and repositioned himself. “You have to be on the balls of your feet, swing your hips, throw the punch with your whole body. Like this.”

  Jack hauled off and cracked Hayles in the jaw, just like he’d telegraphed. Hayles didn’t have time to be surprised. He dropped. Jack fished the flask of Vat 69 from Hayles’s coat. He took a couple of gulps. Then he hopped into the golf cart, parked it so it looked like Hayles had fallen out of it, and tucked the open flask into Hayles’s hand.

  “And that’s how you do it with one punch,” he said to no one but himself.

  GERTIE, 1943

  GERTIE BURST into the bungalow without knocking. The room was dark. Wilma slept on the loveseat with her head cocked back, jaw hanging slack, and a little string of drool sneaking out of her open mouth. The film projector cast a white light against the wall. The back reel spun. The tail of the film flapped with each revolution.

  Gertie opened the curtains and a couple of windows to let a breeze in. She turned off the projector. She ducked into the kitchen and found the place a mess. She washed the plates and bowls and knives and spoons and mugs from what looked like a four-day diet of peanut butter sandwiches and cereal and coffee. She set a new pot of coffee brewing and smoked a cigarette while she waited. From the kitchen doorway, she could see the back of Wilma’s head resting on the loveseat.

  Busted sinus inhalers told Gertie a more complete story about Wilma’s mood for the last few days, how jumpy she’d been, how much energy she’d had. Okay, Gertie decided. If the kid needs to sleep off all that speed, let her do it.

  Gertie poured herself a mug and sat at the Formica dining room table. The typewriter sat there with her. She picked up the first pages of Wilma’s manifesto and started reading.

  An hour later, Wilma woke up screaming. Gertie rushed over to her and wrapped her in a hug. Wilma twisted and squirmed out of Gertie’s arms. There was something feral about Wilma’s eyes, something that couldn’t comprehend what they were seeing. “It’s okay,” Gertie cooed. “It’s just you and me, safe and snug here.”

  Wilma’s eyes focused in on Gertie. She stared for a second, those blue eyes burning. Then the floodgates opened. Gertie pulled her close and patted her back. Wilma cried it out.

  It took some time for Gertie to get the story: the escape from the bughouse to the Hitching Post, the rape, the film, the punk, and the threat. Wilma told it in fragments. Gertie pieced them together into a chronology that she could understand. It took time, not only to get the key details, but for the rage to well up inside Gertie and for her to find a way to let it subside to a manageable level. Wilma had a lot of crying to do, also.

  After all that, Gertie said, “What was Jack’s old partner’s name?”

  “Which one?” Wilma asked.

  “The old timer. The one who was at the funeral with his sweet little wife.”

  “Hammond. Something Hammond. Dan, maybe. No, no. It was Dave. Dave Hammond.”

  Gertie sat next to the phone and started making calls. She started with the York station. The dispatcher there told her to call someone at the downtown station who told her to call his wife who told Gertie to call Cole’s P.E. Buffet. The waitress at Cole’s brought Hammond to the phone. Gertie introduced herself and said, “Wilma has an emergency. I wonder if you could come over and lend a hand.”

  Hammond asked for the address, took a second that Gertie interpreted as him scribbling it down, and said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He hung up without another word.

  Gertie went into the kitchen and wrapped ice in a towel. She brought it out to the loveseat and pressed it against Wilma’s eyes. Wilma took hold of the towel. “Play a record,” she told Gertie. “It’s feeling like a funeral home in here.”

  Gertie opened the lid of the Victrola. A new 78 sat on the turntable. She read the label. Chester Ellis. The guy Wilma had been in the bughouse with. Gertie worried it would trigger more crying. She lifted the record off the table and started to put it in its sleeve. “No. No. Play that one. I want to hear Chet’s piano.”

  Gertie turned the hand crank to wind up the spring, released the catch, dropped the needle on the record, and gave the room over to the music. Neither she nor Wilma spoke while the side played. When it finished, Gertie flipped it and played the other side. She brewed another pot of coffee. Hammond knocked on the door just about the time the coffee finished brewing and the needle reached the matrix of the B side.

  “I’ll do the talking,” Gertie said. Wilma nodded. Gertie opened the front door.

  Hammond’s right hand rested on his service revolver. His chest ballooned like a rooster’s. His glance darted around the room behind Gertie. Before he stepped inside, he asked, “What’s the emergency?”

  “Wilma’s been raped.”

  “By who? Is he still here?”

  Gertie stepped back from the door. “No. He’s not here.”

  “Is anyone in danger?”

  “We all are,” Gert
ie said. “But not right this minute.”

  Hammond took a second to process this, then slackened. His hand slipped off his gun. He walked inside.

  “Coffee?” Gertie asked.

  “Please.” Hammond walked over to Wilma and kissed her forehead. He sat in the armchair next to the loveseat.

  Gertie came back from the kitchen with three mugs of coffee. She set them out on the table.

  Hammond took a sip without waiting for it to cool. “What’s all the fuss about? Who did what when, and how do we nail this son of a bitch?”

  Gertie said, “You know Wilma was in Camarillo, right?”

  Hammond nodded.

  Gertie said, “Well, she got stuck there. They kept adding time to her sentence. It seemed like she wouldn’t get out. So she cut a deal with a guard named Giroux. She’d play some ukulele at a stag party and he’d get her release papers.”

  “And that was it?” Hammond directed his question to Wilma. “Just play ukulele and you get sprung? That doesn’t sound right.”

  Wilma started to speak. Gertie put a hand on her knee. Wilma stopped. Gertie said, “There was a catch. She had to do a striptease.”

  “So there was no ukulele?”

  Gertie looked to Wilma. Wilma raised her head slightly. Gertie said, “No. There was a ukulele.”

  Hammond chuckled. “A ukulele striptease. Okay. I’ll try to buy that.”

  Gertie clenched her jaw and stared at Hammond for a second. “The ukulele’s not important here. What’s important is that, after the striptease, Giroux dropped a mickey in Wilma’s drink. When Wilma passed out, one of the guys at the party raped her.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “Roderick Hayles,” Gertie said.

  “The actor?” Hammond sipped his scalding coffee. He scratched the gray shadow of a beard creeping onto his face. “I don’t know.” He shook his head and kept running his fingers across the bristles on his cheek. “I just don’t know. It’s a hard case to make, Wilma. There’s no evidence. It’s your word against his.”

  Gertie cut him off. “It’s not,” she said. “We have a film of the whole thing.”

  Hammond took a quick breath in. This turned into a coughing fit. It sounded like he was yanking half his lung up into his throat. He went out the front door and spit in the gravel driveway. When he came back in, he said, “You have film? Is that what this projector is all about?”

  Gertie nodded.

  Hammond shrugged. “Well, let’s see it.”

  Gertie wound the film from the back spool onto the front one. No one spoke while the two reels whirred. Once the tail started flapping again, Gertie threaded the film into the projector. Hammond closed the curtains. Wilma didn’t move through it all. Gertie told her, “Why don’t you go in the back room for this, sweetie?” Wilma shook her head. “Please?” Gertie said. Wilma remained adamant. She’d stay and watch.

  Gertie started the film, watched the men carry Wilma into the room and line up to rape her. After Hayles got started, Gertie said, “That’s probably enough.”

  Hammond kept his eyes fixed on the images on the wall. “No,” he said. “Keep it running.” He dug a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one without taking his eyes off the wall.

  Gertie inspected the men who were gathered around the bed or lined up behind it. They were all Hollywood guys. Gertie recognized a DP she’d worked with when she was doing piecework at Warner. A couple of the men were under contract at Republic. They were back-of-the-stage guys, not exactly extras but not exactly swimming in their own lines, either. She didn’t know their names off the top of her head. Given a little time, she could figure them out. Everybody knew the guy who was doing the deed. He looked his real age without the makeup or soft lighting or finishing school dignity. Still, he was unmistakable.

  When the film ended, Hammond said, “I remember Hayles when he was just a kid. Back in the days of silent pictures. He played the boxer what got killed in the ring.” He took a deep drag from his cigarette, filling his lungs and letting the smoke seep out. “That was a good picture.”

  Neither Wilma nor Gertie weighed in. Gertie turned off the projector.

  Hammond said, “That’s evidence of something, ladies, but it’s not evidence of a crime.”

  “You got to be kidding me,” Gertie said. “It’s film of a famous actor raping my sister.”

  Hammond shook his head. He took another drag and tapped his ash into a square glass tray on Wilma’s coffee table. “It’s film of an actor fucking your sister. Not raping. Fucking.”

  “How is that not rape?” Gertie asked.

  Hammond leaned back in the armchair. He patted down a patch of gray hair over his ears. He turned to speak to Wilma. “Look,” he said. “You went to a stag party. You got naked. You got drunk. You were asking for it.”

  Gertie leaned close to Hammond and raised her voice regardless. “So if you, and I’m talking about you personally, Dave Hammond, go to a stag party and get drunk, are you asking for Roderick Hayles to fuck you in the ass?”

  “It’s different. I don’t get naked. I don’t tease men. Tease a man and you got to expect the consequences.”

  “So how about this, then? All those bastards in Pasadena are teasing me with their money. They go and build their big houses on South Orange Grove and I know they have bundles of cash inside. They’re teasing me with that. So if they get drunk and pass out, it’s okay for me to rob them, right? They’re asking for it, right?”

  Hammond took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke in Gertie’s direction. When the cloud dissipated, he said, “It’s different.”

  He started to say more, but Gertie exploded from her seat. She kicked over the table. Three mugs went flying. Coffee sprayed. The arm of the projector dented on the hardwood floor. The projection bulb popped. Wilma wrapped herself into a ball on the loveseat.

  “It’s the same fucking thing,” Gertie screamed. She picked up the hot projector and flung it at Hammond with all her might. It looped through the air and crashed down onto Hammond’s brogans, crushing his big toe.

  Hammond sprung to his feet. He whipped his .38 from its side holster and pointed it at Gertie.

  Speaking without thinking, Gertie said, “You know, your partner told his wife everything. Wilma knows. She knows everything you’ve been up to. If you don’t help her in this, so help me God, I’ll bury you.”

  Wilma locked a stare onto Gertie with those bloodshot blue eyes. Hammond kept the gun pointed at Gertie’s face. Gertie tried to keep her cool. It was all a bluff, but she could tell from both of their reactions that Hammond had been up to something and Wilma did know what it was. Hammond took several deep breaths. Gertie stared down the wavering gun barrel. Wilma said, “Enough. Enough. Christ. I’ll go back to the Hitching Post if it keeps us all alive.”

  JACK, 1946

  JACK PARKED in front of the Bell house on South Orange Grove. It was one of the richest old boulevards in rich old Pasadena. Even so, the Bell house stood out. It was a kind of ultimate bungalow, seven or eight times the size of Jack’s parents’ house, exponentially bigger than the bungalow Wilma was murdered in. The front porch had more floor space than most dance halls. Long eaves adorned with fir rafters cast enough shade to keep this side of California cool. The first two stories took up enough of Jack’s field of vision to obscure the third story peeking up in the middle of the roof. Everything was expensive wood: cedar window frames, redwood shake shingles wrapping the house, teak window boxes with rows of white and golden flowers, a mahogany front door just wide enough to squeeze through a grand piano and the twelve men carrying it. Before Jack could walk up to all that, he had to contend with the wide, rolling lawn.

  Since he’d spent those months alone in Germany, trying to walk his way back to Allied territory, open spaces made him nervous. He’d learned to stick to tree lines, dense forests, places with rocks to duck behind or bushes to dive into, places where snipers couldn’t take a clean shot at him. E
ven now in peacetime, he couldn’t walk across this lawn without scanning the row of pines separating the Bell house from its neighbors, convinced a soldier was in there somewhere, looking at Jack through the sight of a Karabiner 98k. He kept his eyes on the redwood shakes of this opulent monument in front of him and pushed aside the memories.

  Jack tapped on the front door. The dense mahogany swallowed the sound of his knock. Far to his right, he found a doorbell and pushed it.

  He brought his nose close to the cedar door jamb and inhaled. He could still smell the tree it had once been.

  A burly Filipino in a butler’s coat opened the door without unlatching the chain. He looked Jack up and down in a way that made Jack aware of the Hollywood gangster suit he’d stolen the day before and was still wearing. The butler said, “Yes,” in a way that suggested he wasn’t agreeing with anything.

  “How do you do, sir?” Jack started. He dug one of his father’s business cards out of his suit pocket and handed it to the butler. “I’m an investigator working on an insurance claim.” The butler took the card but didn’t look at it. He kept his glare locked on Jack’s eyes. Something about this triggered Jack’s impulse to say way too much way too politely. “It has to do with a young woman’s untimely death. According to my sources, she was close friends, for a time, with Carlotta Bell. I’m hoping to speak with Miss Bell briefly, if that’s possible. I assure you that she’s not under suspicion of any sort. I don’t wish to take up much of her time. If she could answer just a few questions, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  The butler kept staring at Jack. Silence settled between the two of them. Jack had nothing more to say. The butler offered nothing. He looked at the business card, took a step back, and shut the door.

  Jack stood alone on the brick front porch. A spring breeze fluttered through the flowers blooming in the planters. A bee settled on a pink hydrangea flower. Jack watched it crawl along the petals. He thought about ringing the doorbell again and decided it could wait, so he watched the bee and drank in the breeze instead.