The Last Embrace Read online

“Tell us exactly where you were and what you saw,” Pico said in a softer voice.

  “When the girl ran past, with the man chasing her, I slunk into the nearest side street,” Taylor continued. “I didn’t want to be around if the cops came. But my motorbike was on the Boulevard, so I made my way back up. As I reached my bike, a car passed me. I couldn’t see the driver, but there was a woman in the backseat. Her face was pressed against the glass. It was the same woman. She didn’t look scared. I would have remembered that. More like she was trying to figure something out.”

  “What kind of car was it?”

  “A black Studebaker. About a year old. I wish I could remember the entire license plate. I only remembered the first part because it’s my birthday.”

  “What do you mean, your birthday?” Magruder said.

  “I was born on July 24, 1925. 7/24.”

  “You could have sent an anonymous letter to the police, describing what you saw,” Pico said, an edge in his voice. “Especially after you read the paper.”

  “I know.” Taylor hung his head. “But I was too scared. I couldn’t admit it to myself, because of where I’d been.”

  “Cuz you’re a fucking homo perv coward, that’s why,” Magruder said.

  “There’s no cause for that kind of language,” Pico said. “What made you change your mind, Mr. Taylor?”

  “Confidential magazine’s found out about me. They’re preparing a story. Lily convinced me I have nothing to lose.”

  “We appreciate you coming forward. It took courage,” Pico said. He pulled out a piece of blank paper. “One last question, sir. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old niece who’s got a terrific crush on you. Could I please have your autograph?”

  Taylor gave a weak smile. “She’s not going to want it after tomorrow.”

  “Are you kidding? She’ll be the envy of all her classmates.”

  Taylor took the pen, asked for the girl’s name, and scrawled, Follow your heart and never let anyone tell you what to do. Take it from someone who knows. Your friend, Rhett Taylor. October 17, 1949.

  Lily and Pico dropped Rhett off at the run-down Hollywood Hotel, where he’d decided to hole up under a false name until the uproar over his revelations to the police died down. Then Pico drove her home.

  In the dark of the car, his hand groped for hers.

  “Will you sit closer?”

  She scooted over, studying his profile in the dark, the classic nose that started high in his face and came down straight and long, the curve of his lips. They didn’t speak.

  “That was a tricky piece of work back there, the way you coaxed him in from the cold,” Pico said at last. “I’m impressed.”

  Lily gave a wry smile. “It was my specialty back in Europe, with the Reds. Everyone’s got a trigger, you just have to find it. Money. Power. Sex. Fame. Revenge. Occasionally you even get one to turn because it’s the right thing. But in my experience, right and wrong aren’t always so obvious.”

  “If it helps us catch Kitty’s killer, it’s the right thing,” Pico said through clenched lips.

  “So what’s your next step?”

  “Finding the car. It shouldn’t be too hard, with Rhett’s description. No one saw Kitty Hayden alive after she got in that car. So when we get an ID on the owner and learn who was driving it that night, we’ll be closing in on the killer.”

  “You’re assuming Kitty stayed in that car. Maybe she jumped out, or the man dropped her off, and then the real killer found her.”

  “Whoever drove that car the night of October seventh has information we need. We’re going to find him. It’s the best lead we’ve had yet.”

  Lily gazed at the sleeping city just outside the window, trying to puzzle it out. She gathered the night about herself, the people she knew, felt them moving across a huge stage in all directions—Pearl Heglund sleeping in her apartment. Alex kissing another mannish girl in a bar. Magruder tossing back a nightcap, counting his ill-gotten gains. Harry Jack in his kitchen, reheating a midnight snack of Campbell’s tomato soup. Gadge asleep in his new bed, a fireman’s hat clutched in his arms. Max hunched over his studio workbench, tinkering with his werewolf. Mrs. Potter and the girls in the old creaking house. Rhett Taylor slumped on the hotel sofa over a drink. She gathered them all, trying to weave them into a pattern that made sense, but she only felt a strong foreboding. The old children’s prayer went around and around in her head: If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Sitting next to Pico, their thighs and shoulders warm and touching, Lily shivered.

  CHAPTER 31

  October 18, 1949

  Pico was back at work by eight a.m. For once Magruder had beaten him in. Or maybe he’d never been home. There was a rumor he kept a cot in the warrens of the LAPD building. Now he swaggered over.

  “You believe that load of crap from last night?”

  Pico looked up. “Best tip we’ve gotten all week.”

  “I want to read the report before you send it over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m your senior partner, that’s why. You let me take the lead on this, Pico.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you won’t?” Pico said, glad he hadn’t told Magruder what Pearl Heglund had learned from Keck’s file.

  Magruder’s voice grew soft.

  “You’re really beginning to bother me,” he said. “You take yourself too seriously, when the truth is, you’re green as a Victory cabbage. Don’t forget about Vranizan.”

  “Taylor said Vranizan wasn’t the one behind the wheel. But whoever owns that Studebaker has got to know something about what happened.”

  Magruder grew contemplative, not an emotion Pico usually associated with the older cop. “It may not be so simple, old son.”

  “We need to run those plates this morning,” Pico said stubbornly.

  “Relax, amigo. I put in the trace first thing this morning.”

  Pico was on the phone when Magruder walked in.

  “The car the homo told us about? We got an ID,” he said.

  “That was fast work.”

  “It’s hot. Reported stolen off the RKO lot October seventh.”

  Pico smashed his fist into the steel desk and cursed.

  Magruder looked almost cocky. “Told you not to get your hopes up.”

  “So who’s it belong to?”

  Magruder scanned his sheet, and Pico got the feeling he already knew exactly and was just doing it for show.

  “Fella by the name of Roy DiCicco.” Magruder clicked his teeth.

  “He work at RKO?”

  “Stuntman.”

  “Let’s bring him in.”

  “What’s this all about, fellas?” Roy DiCicco said, sitting in a room in police headquarters. “Seems like a lot of fuss over a stolen car.”

  A tall muscular fellow, DiCicco was thirty-two and single. He told them he lived in a guesthouse in Santa Monica and didn’t know Kitty Hayden personally, though he remembered her from the lot, you didn’t forget a face like that. His name had come up clean, except for a narcotics charge in ’46 that had been dismissed.

  While Magruder interviewed him, Pico studied the stuntman’s calm demeanor, contrasting it to the twitchiness Vranizan had displayed when they’d asked him about the fur. They’d been over it several times now, the stuntman recounting how he’d walked out of work on October 7 and found his car missing from the RKO lot. DiCicco had gone back inside and called the police, who’d taken a report. Then a friend had picked him up from the lot and they’d spent the evening in San Pedro, barbequing white croakers and playing poker. Around two a.m., DiCicco had gone to sleep on the friend’s couch, rising early to take the streetcar to work. Pico asked for the name and number of his friend.

  “You’re not going to call him, are you?” DiCicco asked.

  “Any reason we shouldn’t?” Magruder asked.

  “What’s this all got to do with my car?”

  The cops watched suspicion dawn on DiCicco’s face. Th
ey’d asked about Kitty. They wanted his friend’s name to check his alibi.

  “Hey, now,” he said nervously. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a law-abiding guy.”

  Magruder smiled, all teeth and lips.

  Something moved behind DiCicco’s eyes. “If you find any dope in the car, it’s a plant,” he said.

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Magruder said. “Awfully nice wheels you’ve got, by the way. The union must be doing well by you fellas these days.”

  “I’m a car buff,” DiCicco said. “That’s where all my money goes.”

  Magruder nodded. “We’ll check on that too, but it looks bad, son. Girl you work with disappears. And the same night, you claim your car is stolen out of the RKO lot.” He leaned forward with lightning speed, lifting DiCicco out of his seat by his collar.

  “Did you kill Kitty Hayden?”

  DiCicco made a series of unintelligible noises. “No,” he finally choked out.

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No.”

  “What do you know?” Magruder shook him like a rat.

  “Nothing,” DiCicco squeaked.

  Magruder let go and the man slumped.

  “Check my alibi,” he said. “Why would I report my own car missing to the police if I killed her?”

  “To throw off suspicion, in case a witness spotted the girl in your car that night,” Pico said.

  “Shut up,” Magruder said to Pico. He shoved Roy DiCicco hard. “Get out of here, punk. But stick close to home. If we’re not convinced by what your friends say, we’ll haul you back in.”

  Roy DiCicco got his hat and adjusted his jacket. His cheeks were red and blotchy.

  “I think you’re forgetting that I’m the victim here. I just want my car back.”

  “Well?” Magruder said when he was gone.

  “He’s scared about the reefer business,” Pico said. “He knows there’s a connection between his car and Kitty’s murder.”

  “That’s it?”

  “He got more nervous as time went on. Vranizan was nervous from the get-go.”

  “Guilty conscience?”

  “This is Hollywood,” Pico said. “Even the criminals are actors. And the Academy Award for most convincing pack of lies goes to…”

  Magruder turned his meaty face on Pico. “You think Vranizan stole DiCicco’s car and used it to abduct and kill the Scarlet Sandal? And that set him off on a murder spree?”

  “Or DiCicco killed her, then covered his tracks by reporting his car stolen.”

  “I’ve got an APB out. Soon as the car turns up, the crime lab boys will be crawling all over it. Pray for prints.”

  “Should I go verify DiCicco’s alibi?”

  “I’ll go,” Magruder said. “They got a shack down in Pedro, sells smoked albacore by the pound. Want me to pick you up some?”

  “Why, thanks. That’s mighty white of you.”

  “White?” said Magruder. “What would you know about that, amigo?”

  Pico finished writing up the Rhett Taylor interview, then wrote up Roy DiCicco’s. Then he grabbed a pastrami sandwich. Magruder returned, dumping a package wrapped in butcher paper on his desk. It had a gamey, smoky smell that wasn’t unpleasant.

  “Nobody home,” Magruder said. “I’m gonna send you back there at the end of the day.”

  Twenty minutes later, they got the word: a prowl car had found DiCicco’s car parked at the Compton train station. It looked like it had been there a few days.

  They left headquarters and drove south down Normandie, past the bean fields and farms, dairies and orchards. Compton was a tough white town of blue-collar workers who labored in the factories of Southeast Los Angeles. But with all those pumping oil derricks, it felt more like Tulsa. Many of the lots went back a quarter mile, deep and hidden, little fiefdoms where sunburned Okies gathering for cockfights on Saturday nights and housing covenants kept Negroes out. Even colored servants had to be gone by sundown.

  The police tow truck was there when they arrived, preparing to impound the car. Pico searched the inside and the trunk, finding old newspapers, tools, a girlie magazine, and a dirty flannel shirt. The techs would go over it with a fine-tooth comb, dust for prints, but Pico’s heart fell a little. For a moment there, they’d seemed on the verge of something, but things were fizzling like yesterday’s champagne.

  “They took my prints,” Max gulped over the phone to Lily.

  He sounded more hysterical and unhinged than the day he’d grabbed Fumiko in front of the rooming house.

  “Twice now they’ve come to RKO and hauled me away in front of everybody. It’s so humiliating. They take me downtown and grill me. Today they asked if I stole a car off the RKO lot and used it to abduct Kitty. What am I supposed to say to that?”

  “You’re supposed to say no,” Lily paused. “Unless you did.”

  “How can you even say that?”

  “Whose car got stolen?”

  “Some guy named Roy DiCicco. A stuntman.”

  “Did Kitty know him?”

  “She never mentioned him. I never saw them together.”

  Max described his police grilling. He seemed especially upset that they’d found fur from the Mighty Joe Young model on Kitty’s suit.

  “How do you think that got there?” Lily asked.

  “Maybe she was playing with it, or dusting it or something, the night she was killed. But remember I told you one of the models disappeared? Maybe the killer took it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lily said. “They’ll clear you. They won’t find your prints on the car.” She paused. “Will they?”

  “Of course not. But I’m afraid for my job. You should see the way the bosses look at me. And I have to work, Lily. If I can’t build my creatures, I might as well die.”

  “Stop talking about dying.”

  “Something doesn’t smell right,” Harry Jack said, after Lily finished recounting her conversation with Max.

  They were sitting at a soda fountain on Sunset, Harry treating them to banana splits. He figured he’d be treating for months, after hitting the jackpot with his Mickey Cohen shoot-out photos. Every paper in the world was screaming for them, the Mirror’s Rights Department working overtime. And every licensing deal was a fifty-fifty split.

  “So this guy reported the car stolen October seventh?” Harry said after a while.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he talk to RKO security before he called the cops?”

  “He says he went back inside and called the police.”

  “Wouldn’t he have talked to the guard at the gate?”

  “Guess not. Culver City cops came right out.”

  “Culver City?” Harry said excitedly. “That’s right, it’s not LAPD territory.”

  Lily suddenly remembered her brush with Officer Tranow outside Dr. Lafferty’s office. “They’re crooked, those cops. And they’re in bed with the studios.”

  “It’s a company town,” Harry agreed. “If Roy DiCicco called them from RKO, the studio operators must have put through the call.”

  “So?”

  “You want to know what’s going on,” Harry said, “ask a studio operator. They know everything. Which stars are having affairs, how many child extras they need on any given day, whether a picture has made money.”

  “But they must route hundreds of calls,” Lily said, recalling her stint with David O. Selznick.

  “Not hundreds to the police.”

  “Can you find out?”

  Harry slid off his stool and went to the pay phone to call his friend, RKO operator Edith Blyton. Soon he was jotting notes on a napkin. Lily joined him in the phone box to listen in.

  Harry put his hand over the receiver. “This gal at RKO remembers the call.”

  “Ask her what time Roy DiCicco called the cops,” Lily said.

  “Eight-oh-five,” the answer came back. “They took a report and stayed forty-five minutes.”

  Lily thought hard. “Ask her wha
t day.”

  “We already know that.”

  “Just verify it.”

  Harry repeated the question, then listened and nodded. “She just checked the calendar and she’s sure. Her sister had a baby October ninth and she’d been counting down the days.”

  Harry thanked Edith and hung up and they filed glumly back to their booth.

  “I still think it’s odd he didn’t talk to RKO security,” Lily said.

  “Maybe the car was never stolen. Maybe Roy DiCicco reported it missing and the Culver cops came out and took a report and played along.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because DiCicco needed an alibi for October seventh.”

  “That’s quite a long shot. Do we know anything else about this stuntman?” Lily asked.

  “I can call back and ask.” Harry pulled a fistful of coins from his pocket.

  When he returned five minutes later, his eyes glowed with excitement. “Edith says there’s a rumor his brother works for Jack Dragna.”

  Lily’s mind whirled like a spinning top. Maybe Dragna had used the brothers to get to Kitty. “Jeez, why didn’t she tell us that in the first place?”

  “She didn’t know it was important.”

  “I think I’m beginning to see.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. Edith says the brothers are estranged. It’s Cain and Abel and Roy’s the good one. Wants nothing to do with his brother’s rackets.”

  “We’ve got to tell Pico right away.”

  Pico was on the phone trying to reach the DiCicco alibi when a pencil hit him.

  It was Magruder on his phone, motioning frantically.

  Pico hung up—the line had rung about twenty times already to no avail—and walked over. The older cop’s eyebrows drew together as he scribbled. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He replaced the receiver.

  “I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “That was a waiter at Panza’s Lazy Susan in Hollywood. Claims he served dinner and drinks to Kitty Hayden and a guy named Max the night of October seventh and overheard them fighting.”

  Pico crossed his arms. “Why didn’t he call earlier?”