The Last Embrace Read online

She couldn’t believe the police had missed the photo she’d dropped in the living room, the pulled-up carpet in the bedroom closet, the envelope beneath.

  And then it hit her with the force of a thunderclap. The sleazy manager! He would have picked up the first photo, gotten interested, then found the others she’d left half stuffed in the bedroom closet. To a guy like him, those photos were a gold mine. He could sell them to a porno outfit or use them to blackmail his tenant. And if he recognized the girl in the photos as the infamous “Scarlet Sandal,” he might stash them safely away until the heat died down.

  If Lily confessed to lying and sneaking into Freddy Taunton’s place, it would be her word against the manager’s, and who would believe her, especially if the photos had disappeared? From the look in Magruder’s eyes, she had little doubt that he’d toss her in jail for breaking the law and interfering with the murder investigation.

  No, Lily needed proof before she said anything about the photos.

  After Magruder left, Lily plotted her day over coffee and toast. By eight a.m., she was riding the bus on her way to RKO Studios in Culver City to find Max Vranizan. The horizontal city was bathed in golden light, making everything shimmer—glitzy department stores, nightclubs, restaurants, record company headquarters, and swank apartments. Farther off, a beige shroud of smog blanketed the horizon, the legacy of the factories and refineries that had sprung up during the war. Amid the morning traffic Lily saw a new phenomenon: white government coupes that said “air quality control.”

  Lily got off a block from the studio, found a taxi, tipped the driver $5, and asked him to take her through the studio gate.

  “Tell the guard it’s Miss Kessler, just in from New York, to see Mr. Max Vranizan in Special Effects about the model-making job,” she told the driver.

  Lily had grown up on the fringes of the movie industry, which had proved handy once in a newly liberated part of France when they’d captured a little Nazi who’d refused to speak, even after being roughed up by the Maquis. When it was the Americans’ turn, Lily made small talk and learned he greatly admired Charlie Chaplin and hoped to move to Hollywood after the war and become a comedian. Lily explained that she’d gone to school with Chaplin’s daughter. If he cooperated, she’d use her contacts to get him a screen test. Soon he was dictating names and locations—it turned out he was the paymaster for more than a hundred Nazi agents left behind liberated lines. After the man told all he knew, Lily’s bosses handed him back to the French, who promptly shot him.

  The RKO guard waved them through gates that rose like castle walls. Inside, the studio resembled a factory more than a fairy tale, a series of nondescript hangars and bungalows. The taxi cruised past a glass and muslin building stenciled with the words SOUND STAGE 1. Then a western town appeared, complete with Main Street, saloons, hitching posts, and townspeople in homespun cloth. Men bent over movie equipment. A camera on a dolly. Someone yelled, “Action,” and a passel of cowboys on horses came galloping up, scattering pedestrians.

  Lily memorized the landmarks so she could retrace her steps. In the rearview mirror, the driver grinned.

  “I was a soundman here before the war. But the studios have cut back and I needed a steady job when I got out of the service.” He slapped the dash. “Got a mortgage and a kid on the way.”

  They pulled up to a warehouse and the cabbie gestured with his cigarette. “That’s where they do the special effects.”

  Lily studied her driver. “Any chance you know this Max Vranizan?”

  “Nope, but you won’t have any trouble. They don’t get too many pretty girls on those monster movie sets.”

  As her eyes adjusted to the artificial light of the warehouse, she realized the cabbie had brought her to the wrong place. A row of seamstresses sat bent over sewing machines, working pedals. Off to the side, two women sewed appliqué onto high heels.

  “Is this Special Effects?”

  “You ask over there.” A man with a heavy accent gestured into the next room, where a team of women ironed Renaissance gowns while a supervisor urged them to hurry, everyone on the set was waiting. Steam hissed from the irons, mingling with the acrid smell of perspiration that rose from garments previously worn under hot stage lights.

  Lily kept walking.

  In the next room, a beautiful woman was being fitted in an evening dress, three ladies kneeling, pins in mouths, hemming her gown. She looked familiar. With a shock, Lily realized it was Ingrid Bergman.

  “Excuse me,” she asked again. “Could you please direct me to Special Effects?”

  A seamstress rocked back on her knees. “You’re in the wrong building, dearie,” she said. “Step outside, go left one block, turn right and it’s the first building on the left.”

  Lily followed her instructions and saw actors hurrying by in costumes from the last two thousand years. Props rolling along on wheeled carts, a man leading a white Lipizzaner stallion. Lily came to a white two-story building with grand columns that reminded her of George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon. This couldn’t be it. Was she lost again? Seeing a group of modest buildings to the right, she walked in to ask, but before she could say anything, a horse-faced woman wearing a severe suit appeared.

  “It’s about time.” She threw up her arms, striding toward Lily. “I called the agency at seven a.m. He’s been holed up since yesterday afternoon and we’ve already gone through three—”

  “But—”

  “And I’ll be gone most of the day.”

  The woman clasped Lily’s wrist and tugged her like a determined shepherd dog into a large office with two secretarial desks facing each other.

  “No excuses. I’m sure they told you he doesn’t like to hear them.”

  Lily knew her ruse was about to be discovered. “I think there’s been a—”

  “That’s quite enough,” the woman said. “And you’d better not try that with him.” She stepped back, appraising Lily. “Now. Where’s your steno pad?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Honestly, these agencies today, I don’t know what’s—”

  “I’m not a secretary,” Lily said, but at that moment a door opened and a tall husky man in gray flannels stepped out from an inner office. From behind round spectacles beamed a brisk intelligence.

  “Here she is, sir, I’m so sorry. I—”

  “Thank you, Myra. Come along, then,” the big man said in a hoarse voice, holding the door. “We’ve got a lot to get through.”

  Myra shoved a steno pad and two pencils in Lily’s hands and pushed her into the man’s office.

  “You can go now,” she told a girl slumped with exhaustion inside, steno pads stacked beside her. The girl left.

  The man in the suit exuded an aura of power. Lily hesitated. She could either confess the truth now and get thrown off the lot or try to turn this case of mistaken identity to her advantage. Perhaps she could learn something about Kitty’s murder if she kept her eyes and ears open.

  Lily walked to the just-vacated chair and sat down, knees pressed together demurely, steno pad on her lap. From downcast lids, she examined her new boss and saw a brash, ungainly, and yet somehow charismatic man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair. Leaning back in his leather chair, he tapped a pencil against his palm, eyes focused on the far wall, where a framed and signed poster of Gone With the Wind hung.

  “The first item of correspondence is a letter to LB,” the man announced, propping his feet on the enormous desk stacked high with papers.

  Lily waited for the rest of the name, but the man launched into the memo, approving the loan of an actress to MGM for a picture.

  He concluded, “Sign it, ‘dictated but not read by David O. Selznick.’”

  Lily blinked and looked up. She’d spent the last five years abroad, but even she knew that name. She stared at her first Hollywood mogul.

  “Ready?” Selznick drummed his fingers on the desk.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Selznick.” Lily recovered herself. “I didn’t catch LB�
��s last name.”

  Selznick looked disgruntled. “Mayer. Louis B. My, you are green. But if you caught everything else, you’re everything the agency promised. Now. The next letter is to…”

  Lily flipped the page.

  “Miss Betty Goldsmith, New York, New York.” Selznick’s eyes twinkled. “Would you like to know who she is?”

  “Why, no, Mr. Selznick, I—”

  “She’s my foreign rights coordinator. Now, if we might begin…”

  “Of course, sir.” Lily bent her head.

  Selznick dictated in a brilliant but meandering style that reminded her of a Dickens novel, and he stopped often to take calls. When he began a long phone discussion with someone about Howard Hughes, Lily slipped out to use the powder room.

  As she returned, a woman ran into Selznick’s outer office, clutching a steno pad.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” the woman said. “My son threw up blood on the way to the babysitter’s and I had to rush him to the hospital.”

  Lily saw the notepad and realized who the woman was. Luckily Selznick was still on the phone, arguing good-naturedly with someone named Leland. She hurried to the young woman and led her back to the lobby.

  “Don’t you worry about it, honey,” Lily said, “the studio sent me over on loan from, uh…Special Effects. Why don’t you go back to the hospital and stay with your son? We’re fine for today.”

  “Do you really mean it?” the woman cried.

  “Here.” Lily slipped her a $20 bill. “Buy him some toys, and tell the agency you worked all day. Same if they call tomorrow. And let’s keep it between us, shall we?”

  In any other city, the woman would have wondered what was going on. But this was Hollywood, where people did crazy things to get discovered. The girl thanked Lily and hurried away.

  Harry Jack woke up wondering why he was on the couch. Then he saw the kid in the kitchen, cramming a piece of bread into his mouth. He also smelled him.

  “It’s shower-time for you, kid—Gadge,” he added, remembering the odd name the kid had given him yesterday. He’d said that was the name pinned to his shirt when the people at the orphanage had found him.

  Harry lit a cigarette, took a hit, and exhaled thoughtfully. After his windfall at the Mirror, he’d taken the kid to lunch at Taylor’s Steakhouse and then offered to drive him back to the orphanage, but Gadge wouldn’t tell him the name and where it was located. The kid had stuck to him all day and had ended up falling asleep at a craps game, so Harry had no choice but to bring him home. But the kid couldn’t stay here.

  “I’m sorry kid, but you’re going to have to go back.”

  “I’ll help you take pictures. You can teach me how to use that camera.”

  Harry examined the lit cherry of his cigarette. “You want I should train my competition?”

  “I’ll help you set up shots. Be your assistant.”

  “I don’t need an assistant. And you’re not supposed to set up shots in the news business,” Harry said, even as he considered the beat-up tricycle in his trunk that he tossed into intersections whenever a car accident needed a more tragic touch. Other photogs kept battered strollers, squashed shoes, mangled lady’s purses.

  Harry went to get a towel and some old clothes out of his dresser. When he came out, the kid was shoving something into his knapsack. Harry scrambled eggs, toasted bread, and made coffee while Gadge showered. He ate half the breakfast, drank his coffee, and read the paper. The water kept running. Harry tapped another cigarette out of his pack and looked for his silver lighter. He loved that lighter. It reminded him of a girl. She was a cigarette girl at the Trocadero, and a big wheel had left it on the table one night and she’d given it to him. Harry recalled Gadge shoving something into his knapsack. He knew where his lighter was.

  Stomping to the bathroom, he flung the door open. Steam filled the room. Behind the curtain, the kid sang a nursery rhyme, his voice high and pure. Harry grabbed the knapsack and tiptoed out.

  Poking through Gadge’s belongings, Harry found his lighter shoved inside a ratty wool sock. He also saw a red strap sticking out of a sweater. Curious, he tugged and it came free.

  It was a lady’s fancy high-heeled sandal. Harry knew where he’d seen the shoe before. Or rather, its mate. Yesterday, in the canyon. It had been strapped to the ankle of the dead girl.

  Just then, something hit Harry in the back.

  “Put that back,” Gadge shrieked. “It’s mine. Who said you could go through my stuff?”

  Harry dropped the shoe and the lighter. He grabbed the kid and held him, fists pumping, at arm’s length.

  “You tricked me into taking a shower so you could steal my stuff,” Gadge cried.

  “Calm down, kid. Nobody wants your crappy stuff. I went into your backpack because you stole my lighter and I wanted it back.”

  “I just wanted to look at it because it’s beautiful. I would have given it back.”

  “You collect beautiful things, do you? Where’d you get that shoe?”

  “What’s it to you, mister?”

  “It belong to someone you know?” Harry’s low voice invited confidence.

  The kid shook his head. “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  The kid looked up anxiously. “In a street.”

  Harry wondered what Gadge knew about the shoe’s owner.

  “That shoe belonged to a woman who was found strangled yesterday in Hollywood. You know, under the Hollywood sign. You were in the car when I drove out there to take photos.”

  The kid blanched. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “That shoe is evidence in a murder.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. Honest.”

  “For Pete’s sake, I know that. You’re just a kid. But the cops will want to talk to you.”

  The boy got a hunted look in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m a runaway, they’ll just lock me up or put me in another lousy home. You don’t know, mister. The staff treat us worse than prisoners. Some of them like to hurt kids.”

  Gadge stuffed clothing back into his rucksack. “It’s been nice knowing you, but I’ve got to get moving.”

  An image came to Harry of Gadge smiling into the camera and holding up the red high-heeled shoe. A photo like that could break the Scarlet Sandal murder investigation wide open. And Harry could sell versions to every paper in town. It would be his ticket to a cushy staff job anywhere he wanted. Harry placed an arm on either side of the hallway to block the kid’s escape.

  Gadge looked like he was about to cry. He tossed the red leather sandal at Harry’s feet. “Take it,” he said. “That old shoe is nothing but bad luck.” He shouldered his knapsack.

  “Hold on a minute,” Harry said. “Why don’t you eat breakfast, then you can show me where you found it?”

  “Why? You going to take a photo and sell it to the papers? Will you give me half, on account of I’m your assistant?”

  What an operator this kid was! “I’ll give you a quarter,” Harry said.

  “Deal. But only if you don’t take me to the police.”

  Harry knew it would be out of his hands once the pics hit the paper.

  “I promise.” Harry chose his words carefully. “But if they come looking for you, that’s another story.”

  “Can I tell them you’re my uncle? Say, what’s your name, anyway? You know mine.”

  “I’m Harry Jack.”

  “Well, hey howdy, Harry Jack. And don’t worry about the competition. I don’t want to work for any cruddy old newspaper. I’m figuring on a job with the studios.”

  The nerve of this kid, Harry thought. “Those are a different kind of camera, son. Moving cameras. So how long have you had that shoe?”

  The kid counted on his fingers. “About a week. Found it early in the morning, on my way down from the old estate to get breakfast after the Van de Kamps deliveryman makes his rounds.”

  “What estate?”

  “Above Franklin. It’s abandoned. I co
me down around six a.m. to swipe a bottle of milk and some cottage cheese. And I saw it there and it was pretty so I took it.”

  “What street?”

  “Off the Boulevard. It’s near a nightclub.”

  “There are nightclubs all along the Boulevard,” Harry said, exasperated.

  “Between Hollywood and Sunset. I remember that. A few blocks east of Vine.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “Was there anything else nearby? Clothing? Jewelry?”

  “If there was, I would have taken it. You can sell nice things like that.”

  “What about a purse? Papers?”

  The kid paused. “Nope.”

  “Did you see any signs of a struggle?”

  “Like bloodstains or a knife? Nope.”

  At that moment, they heard men yelling and feet pounding the sidewalk below. Harry went to the window and saw a man getting beat up. Grabbing his camera, he ran out the door, his shirttails fluttering behind him.

  “You wanna be a shutterbug?” Harry told Gadge. “Your first lesson starts now.”

  The beating that Harry saw from his window was taking place in front of an appliance repair shop that occupied the ground floor of an apartment building across the street.

  As Harry and Gadge raced downstairs, people were already gathering. Some were cheering wildly. A lone Samaritan loped off to flag down help. Into the fray ran Harry Jack, snapping away, Gadge behind him, screaming gibberish and covering his eyes.

  And then Harry stopped. He removed the camera from his face. He looked stunned.

  “Shorty Lagonzola, is that you?” he called.

  The man had his fist back, ready to slam into the victim’s face. He turned, and his mouth gaped.

  “Harry? Harry Jack?”

  Just then they heard a police siren.

  “Son of a bitch,” Shorty said. “The watch commander promised to have the station zipped up tight. Something’s queered it. I’d like to stay and catch up, Harry, but we’ve got to go. C’mon, boys, fun’s over.”

  Shorty and his cronies jumped into the waiting car and tore off.

  Harry watched the crowd mill around the police car, everyone talking at once. Someone pointed to Harry and his camera.