Dead Extra Page 19

  “Looks like I’m being framed,” Chesley said.

  He told Hammond that Wilma called him. She had an incriminating photo that she’d stolen from Chesley. Chesley wanted it back. She told him to come over and bring a hundred and thirty-two dollars. The number was that specific. One hundred thirty-two. So he gathered the cash and came by to find Wilma lying dead on the floor. “You showed up not two minutes later.”

  “So you brought the hundred thirty-two?” Hammond asked.

  Chesley nodded.

  “In your wallet?”

  Chesley nodded again.

  “Toss that wallet over to me.”

  Chesley did. Hammond opened it, pulled out six twenties, a ten, and two singles. He stuffed them in his own pocket and tossed the wallet back to Chesley. “Where’s the photo?” he asked.

  Chesley shrugged. “Not here, as far as I can tell. I thought I knew all of Wilma’s hiding places. She must’ve gotten a new one.”

  Hammond nodded. “We won’t look too hard,” he said. “We’ll play this simple. I’ll keep your hush money. You drive out of here with Parker’s car. I call in a couple of favors. We say she fell in the tub. Everything’s jakeloo.”

  “One problem with that,” Chesley said. He reached back and flipped on the bedroom light. “Come back here and take a look.”

  Hammond holstered his heater and walked to the back of the bungalow. Chesley stood over Wilma’s bed. Parker lay there tangled like a discarded rag doll.

  “Is he dead?” Hammond asked.

  Chesley shook his head. “Passed out.”

  “You drag him here?”

  “Nope.”

  Hammond lifted his peaked cap and rubbed the bare skin underneath. “We’ll play it the same way,” he said. “You drift out of here. Leave the car. I’ll wake up shamus and put the squeeze on. He’ll pay. We’ll call it an accident. All will be forgotten soon.”

  Chesley chewed his bottom lip for a piece. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I think that could work.”

  “Close the door behind you,” Hammond said.

  Chesley cleared out.

  Hammond went into the kitchen. He grabbed a quart pot off the stove. It looked clean enough. He filled it with water, headed back to the bedroom, and dumped the water on Parker. Parker sprung to his feet like an alley cat. “What gives?”

  Hammond shifted the pot to his left hand and held his gun with the right. “I got you dead to rights, peeper,” he said.

  Parker looked around the room. “Where am I?”

  “Where’d you go tonight?”

  Parker took a deep breath. He nodded to himself. “Okay,” he said. “I know.”

  “Good,” Hammond said. “And now maybe you can tell me why you murdered Wilma.”

  “Murdered? Wilma’s dead?”

  “Don’t play coy with me. You killed her and I caught you.”

  Parker reached into his back pocket. Hammond wiggled the gun. Parker didn’t react to the threat. He pulled out a handkerchief and comb. He wiped the water off his face and slicked back his hair. “We both know I didn’t kill her,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. No one kills a girl and then goes into her room to take a nap. I was set up. I suppose you showing up with that gun is the last scene of the setup. So what do you want?”

  “What do you have?”

  Parker stashed the comb and handkerchief in his back pocket. He took his wallet out of the front pocket. It was fat with cash. Wilma must’ve been blackmailing him, too. Parker grabbed a stack of bills. “Five large,” he said. “More or less.”

  Hammond tossed the pot on the bed. He took the money with his left hand and kept the heater trained with his right. He stuffed the money into his bulging front pocket. “Five large gets you clear,” he said.

  Parker shuffled past Hammond and toward the front door.

  “Keep your eyes off the floor,” Hammond said. “And don’t vomit on the premises. I still have to clean this mess up.”

  In Leslie Bell’s sitting room two years later, Hammond summed up his story. He said, “And from there, everything worked to plan. I stripped Wilma, got rid of her soiled robe, stuffed her face-first into the tub, called Frenchy, and told him my story. Eggs in the coffee.”

  Jack took a seat on the bench next to Hammond. He shook his head violently enough to loosen a few strands of hair from their pomaded place. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who framed my dad and Parker?”

  Hammond rubbed his knee. “It was no frame,” he said. “Your dad killed Wilma. Simple as that.”

  GERTIE, 1944

  JULY 14, 1944. Gertie noticed the cop as soon as he stepped inside the joint. Tall and lean, ropy muscles under policeman blues, he reminded her of her brother-in-law Jack. Former brother-in-law. The cop couldn’t have been more than a few months past his twentieth birthday, but something about him looked older. It was in the eyes scanning the room. There was something serious about them, like he’d already been to Germany and back, or maybe had just seen too much death here in Los Angeles.

  Gertie’s dinner companion prattled on, something about a pair of shoes he’d seen Veronica Lake wearing on the lot the other day. If he’d been half as charming as he thought he was, she’d have listened. Instead, she watched the young cop. He caught her looking at him and headed straight for her.

  She took a quick mental inventory. What had she done that could lead to arrest?

  Well, this dinner date wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up. It was all about her selling a screenplay to this dandy. He was a novelist who’d lucked into a big-money studio contract. Only problem was, he had no idea how to write for pictures. He’d been assigned a crime movie. Nothing special. Just the usual corpse at the beginning and a pretty boy talking tough until he finds who made the stiff stiff. The dandy was a pretty boy, all right, but he couldn’t fit into the rest of it. He had no idea how to kill someone, in fiction or otherwise. And even if he did, he’d be more interested in solving the mystery of where the actress got her lovely pearls than of who committed this made-up murder. So the dandy did what so many of the other scribblers on the studio dole did: he hired Gertie to write his screenplay for him. It was her little cottage industry. All hush-hush. Maybe a little fraudulent, but doubtfully illegal.

  Not the type of thing that inspires the law to crash Gertie’s gimlet and cake.

  The scribbler’s love life wasn’t exactly legal in the State of California, either. But he was here with Gertie—a woman—and there was nothing too obvious to suggest that they couldn’t be a couple. Gertie nodded to the cop as approached her table and tried to figure the angle.

  The cop asked, “Gertrude Greene?”

  Gertie saw no harm in admitting that.

  “We need you to come down to the coroner with us.”

  “Us?” Gertie asked, because there was only one of him.

  “You’re the only next of kin we can find.” The cop held out his hand. Gertie tossed back the rest of her gimlet. Next of kin? It must be her mother.

  The scribbler stood. “I’ll come along.”

  Gertie shook her head. He already had his screenplay. She already had her money. She doubted she’d cry over her mother’s body. She didn’t want to. But this dandy was so safe, such a doll, that his sympathetic eyes could turn on her waterworks. She ran her fork across the icing on top of her cake, licked the fork clean, said goodnight, and followed the cop out.

  The kid didn’t say much on the drive down Sunset other than to answer how her next of kin had died: “Slipped in the tub. Hit the edge face first. We suspect she was drinking.”

  “I haven’t seen my mother in so long,” Gertie said. She counted the time in her head. She’d moved out when she was sixteen, which would make it—could it be already?—ten years. “I’m not even sure I’ll recognize her.”

  The cop turned on the siren and gunned it. He weaved around cars, occasionally whipped into the opposite lane to pass, and took turns sharp enough to tax his wartime retreads. Gertie cou
ldn’t see the angle in this, either. Her mother wouldn’t get any more dead. What was the point in racing? She wasn’t sure if the cop wanted to impress her or scare her. He did neither. If he just wanted her to shut up, well, his driving accomplished that, at least. They charged through Silver Lake, Echo Park, Chinatown, and eventually over the bridge into Boyle Heights.

  When they climbed out of the cruiser at the city morgue, Gertie forgot to breathe for a few seconds. It was strangely beautiful. A marine layer had settled in, making the moon less of a ball in the sky than a general glow. Fog glistened around the globes of electric light along the sidewalk. The building itself looked like a turn-of-the-century dance hall: long granite steps, high windows with keystones over them, austere bricks, delicate stonework. A light was on in the attic. Gertie could see the wooden rafters through the window. Just above it, like the morgue’s own crown, was a marble sculpture. It resembled a looking glass in a bed of flowers, like something from the Brothers Grimm, maybe.

  The boy in blue tapped the small of Gertie’s back and led her inside. He still had nothing to say. His silence was fine in the car, with city lights racing by and the bells of the interurban cars ringing and drivers laying on horns to let the kid know that, police cruiser or not, this driving wasn’t right. But here at the quiet morgue, with the ocean air seeping under her skin, Gertie needed a little dialogue to fill in the empty spaces. As they crossed the marble foyer of the morgue and took the automatic elevator down to the basement, Gertie started chatting again. “I’m surprised you grabbed me to do this instead of Wilma. She should be home.” Because Gertie had invited Wilma to join her and her friend at Musso and Frank’s. He was springing for dinner. He’d just as happily feed the both of them. But Wilma had worked a long shift that day. She said she was staying in, taking a bath, going to sleep early.

  “Wilma?” the cop said. He opened the elevator door. Gertie stepped out.

  “Wilma’s my twin sister,” Gertie said. “She lives in Highland Park. It’s closer to here than Hollywood. You should’ve called her first. She has a phone and everything.”

  The cop grunted. Gertie wound the film back a few frames and looked at it again. Maybe he hadn’t added a question mark to Wilma’s name. Gertie stared down the dim hallway to the bright room a dozen steps away. She was here to ID her mother, right? Her mother was the drunk. Her mother was the one likely to slip in a tub and die. And her mother’s death was the death that Gertie could handle. Her mother had never given much of a shit about Gertie or Wilma, hadn’t been to Wilma’s wedding or the funeral for Wilma’s husband, hadn’t gone with Gertie to visit Wilma in the mental hospital or helped out at all. Nothing. No word for a decade.

  It was her mother under that sheet Gertie was rapidly approaching, wasn’t it?

  Gertie wanted to ask the cop, but here they were already, turning into the bright room. Another flatfoot in uniform stood next to a corpse on a metal table. He was a short guy, maybe a hard heel over five-foot-two. His eyes had a way of looking in Gertie’s direction and somehow not seeing her. The coroner—or at least a man in a white coat—sat behind a metal desk on the other side of the room. He was bent over, writing something on the paper in front of him. His bald spot sparkled under the overhead lights. Drawers lined the adjacent wall, a card catalog of corpses. Everything smelled like iron and antiseptic and blood. The cop led Gertie to the metal table.

  “Please tell us who you see under the sheet,” he said. He nodded to his partner. The little flatfoot lifted the sheet.

  Gertie took a glance and gasped. She could’ve been looking at herself lying on that metal morgue table. That could’ve been her face with the broken nose and cold lips. It looked so much like her. Those same blue eyes and clusters of freckles and wild red hair. Gertie said, “Wilma?”

  The flatfoot whipped the sheet down again. The cop turned to the coroner and said, “Gertrude Greene has positively identified the deceased as her sister, one Wilma Greene Chesley of 243½ Newland Street, Los Angeles, California.” The coroner checked a box on his form. Gertie reached for the sheet again. The flatfoot held it down.

  “What happened to her neck?” Gertie asked. “Why was there blood pooled along her throat?”

  “She had a broken nose,” the flatfoot said.

  “I know she had a broken nose. I saw that. Why was her neck bruised?”

  The cop who’d led Gertie in grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her away from Wilma’s body. “Come with me, Miss Greene.”

  Gertie yanked her arm out of the cop’s hand. She grabbed the sheet over Wilma. The flatfoot pushed her. The cop wrapped his arms around her midsection and pulled. Gertie got just enough of the sheet to see under it again. Deep bruises, like a sunset spreading from purple to red to yellow, lay across Wilma’s throat. The cop lifted Gertie and turned her away from the table. Gertie held on to the white sheet. The flatfoot pulled it from his end. The cop started to carry Gertie away. She let go of the sheet. “All right! All right!” she screamed. Her legs grew wobbly. She would’ve hit that polished vinyl floor if the cop hadn’t held her in his arms. “All right.” Sobs started flooding out now. “Give me a break.”

  The coroner hopped to his feet. He rolled his desk chair over to Gertie. The cop set her down on it. Gertie let the tears flow as they would. The coroner and the cop rolled her into the dim hallway. “It’s okay,” the coroner said. He reached behind his white coat, pulled out a handkerchief, and handed it to Gertie. Gertie blotted her eyes. A thick streak of mascara blackened the cloth. The coroner knelt in front of her. “You just lost your sister. It’s okay to cry. Take your time.”

  Gertie nodded. She closed her eyes to squeeze the tears out, and when she did, she saw the bruises on Wilma’s neck. As much as everything seemed to be falling apart around her, she was smart enough to keep from saying what she wanted to say more than anything: that Wilma didn’t die by falling in a goddamn tub. Wilma had been murdered, choked to death, and Gertie knew exactly who did it.

  JACK, 1946

  JACK STARTED to cry. Not heavy sobs. His old man had beat that habit out of him before Jack started grammar school. Not even a whimpering cry. Just the tight-lipped, tears-sneaking-out-of-the-corner-of-the-eyes kind of cry, the kind of cry he’d learned to fight through on the schoolyards and street corners of his childhood. He watched Bell across the room. Surely Bell had a gun somewhere. Gertie had Hammond’s Browning. Jack had his Springfield. Hammond had nothing or he would’ve shot it already. Three guns in the room. Two on his side. He let another tear slip.

  Christ. His father had killed his wife.

  Gertie was the first to react. She walked over to Jack and put her hand under his chin. “Stand up, Jackie.” Her hand guided him to his feet. She held his face so he was looking straight at her. She said, “Take your hanky out and wipe your face.” Jack closed his eyes, squeezed out the last of the water, and wiped his face. He took a deep breath. He told himself to pull it together at least until he left Bell’s house. Crying would be for times when no one had a weapon or a motive.

  Gertie took her hand off Jack’s chin. She snapped her purse open and took out Hammond’s Browning. She put it in Jack’s hand. “Point this at Bell,” she said. “Don’t let him shoot me in the back.”

  Jack aimed the Browning at Bell. Bell rocked in his chair. He stared at Hammond. Hammond didn’t move.

  Gertie said, “About half of that story you just heard is true. Think about it. Your father didn’t kill Wilma. It doesn’t make any sense. Hammond said the old man was looking for a picture and hadn’t found it. You know your father. Do you think he would kill Wilma before he got her to give him the photo?”

  Of course not. She was right. Jack lowered his aim to Bell’s chest. It made for a bigger target.

  Hammond spoke up. “It was probably an accident, Jack. He probably just meant to scare her and went a little too far.”

  Gertie put her thumb on the button of Jack’s chin and her forefinger just underneath. She held his face
so he had to look at her. She asked, “When you were a kid, how many times did your father beat you within an inch of your life? How many times did you see him beat your mother? How many times did you see him strong-arm a thug? Did he ever fuck up? Did he ever accidentally kill anyone?”

  Jack shook his head. The old man knew what he could and couldn’t do. He knew his own strength. And, by 1944, he would’ve been too damn old to accidentally kill someone.

  Hammond started to protest. Gertie reached into Jack’s blood-stained coat, pulled the Springfield from its holster, and pointed it at Hammond. Hammond piped down.

  Gertie said, “I know the photo he was looking for. I have a copy of it in my purse.” She took a couple of steps back, tucked the Springfield under her arm, and dug the photo out. It was a small one, three-and-a-half-by-five inches. She held it up for Jack to see.

  It looked like the postcards they sold in the back room of that antiquarian bookstore over on Cahuenga. “I don’t get it,” Jack said. “Why would my father be looking for a dirty picture? Why would Wilma have it? Why would you have copies?”

  Gertie said, “Look at the man on the bottom and look at the man you’re pointing a gun at.”

  Jack did both. It was a picture of Bell. The more he looked, the more he recognized the woman on top. It was the broad in charge of the Hitching Post. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Jackie, you’re a sweetheart, but you’re a terrible detective.” Gertie slid the photo back into her purse. She pointed the Springfield at Hammond. She laid it out for Jack as simply as possible. “Bell was extorting money from Wilma and me. Wilma got sick of it. She found that picture your dad took, and she gave it to Bell’s wife. Bell’s wife got hot under the collar and told Bell to kill the caper. So Bell killed it for a couple of months. He stopped sending your old man over to collect money. He stopped giving Ma Breedlove a cut. He left me and Wilma alone. But you don’t stay in a business that gets you a house like this if you let some little chippy working in a hash house get the better of you. As soon as Bell’s wife stopped looking, he took action. He either killed Wilma or he had Hammond do it.”