Lone star

“But I’m thinking maybe it should have been you who plays Jett Rink and Cal Trask and Jim Stark. All the rebels and sad boys.”

“I was the lead in The Front Page.”

Daggers drawn. “Don’t you get tired of being his shadow? Maybe, if James Dean wasn’t around, there’d be a Thomas Dwyer, in a red-nylon jacket. Girls asking for your autograph.”

Suddenly he looked at me, and his eyes got wet. “When is it my turn, Miss Ferber? When?”

I sighed, touched the back of his hand. “He seems to have all the luck.”

Tears streamed down his cheeks. “That’s it, exactly. Luck. Damn luck, really. That’s all it is in this God-awful town. And who you sleep with. Jimmy’ll sleep with trolls for a part. He has, and look where he is. Ugly old men with potbellies. Women who wear sable coats with nothing on underneath. He told me. Christ. Now he’s king of the world. Wherever we go, people scrape and bow. In Googie’s they sit behind the glass partition and stare. They mob him. One movie. One! And I’m there carrying his coat. Me.” He looked at me through sloppy tears. “He’s a dirty man, Miss Ferber. Not only that unshaven look, the sticky unwashed hair, Christ, even the dandruff, but inside. Inside.” He paused. “But I can’t stop loving him…” He trailed off.

Polly returned to the table. She looked at Tommy, whose face was wet with tears.

She looked at me, wonder in her eyes. I sat there nodding.

My God, I thought. I’ve had them both weeping. She metamorphoses from the witch of the west into a weeping soda-fountain shop girl; he, the meek of the earth, metamorphoses into a barroom drunk, filled with ill- defined anger at his meal ticket.

A successful dinner.

“Are you having dessert?” I asked, cheerily. “I hear the creme brulee is the best in California.”

Chapter 10

The next morning I phoned Mercy. “I need an accomplice.”

“Aiding and abetting is a part I’ve played in many movies.”

I was thinking out loud. “Carisa pushed someone too far. Despite her madness and her drug use, if that’s to be believed, Carisa seemed to draw people in. What we do know is that different roads led to her-and to Jimmy. Josh a high-school pal of hers. Josh introducing Jimmy to her. Jimmy dating her. Jimmy leaving her for Lydia. Lydia her old roommate and on-again off-again friend. Max Kohl seeing her before and after Jimmy. Max Kohl a biker buddy of Jimmy.” I was also thinking about Tommy Dwyer, maybe stepping out on Polly with Carisa. And Polly suspecting their tryst.

Mercy clicked her tongue. “There’s too much Jimmy in the picture.”

“Mercy, our aim is not to solve the murder, really. That’s Detective Cotton’s bailiwick, troglodyte though he strikes me. No, I think we have to prove Jimmy’s not guilty. He’s our worst enemy here, of course, hostile to everyone, especially the police.”

I could almost hear the smile. “And you need me as an accomplice for what?”

“You can start by being the driver. I don’t think Warner wants the studio car idling in questionable neighborhoods.”

“We’re cruising Rodeo Drive?”

I chuckled. “I vowed never to return to Carisa’s apartment after that night, but I’m afraid we have no choice.”

“I’ll gas up the getaway car.”

By noon Mercy’s Ford sedan pulled up in front of Carisa’s apartment house, and we surveyed the building in daylight. Still Skid Row. Broad daylight revealed grime and decay and utter disregard. Defeat in the tired buildings; defeat in the struggling, shuffling souls. A man dressed in a winter coat, huddled in a doorway, stared into the street. A rickety car pulled up in front of a pawnshop, and an obese woman in a flowered muumuu and loose sandals started to drag what I thought was a brass coat rack across the sidewalk. I stared, mesmerized. A little girl in shocking pink pedal pushers trailed the large woman. A soiled, used-up street. A hint of naughtiness in the jaunty walk of a couple of spangled girls. It reminded me of Pigalle, touring France one hot, hot summer with Noel Coward and Louis Bromfield. They always insisted on cultivating Parisian life in the grimier, suspect avenues, those wags, dragging me along for shock value. As I stepped out of the car, a young woman, so rail-thin and pale she seemed not even to be there, floated by, smiling, smiling. A haunted, parched face; the hunger of reaching zero.

Rapping on the door of the first-floor apartment, I recalled the superintendent’s name from that awful night when I sat in his meticulous kitchen, light-headed from the sickening sight of a dead woman’s body. Manuel Vega seemed happy to see us, ushering us in with a cavalier bow. An old-school gentleman, Vega was in his seventies, a tall willowy man with a shock of absolute white hair and, these days at least, a fuzzy white beard stubble. Skin the color of hazy mahogany, he seemed youthful, robust, though he moved carefully and employed a lion’s-head cane. He spoke a deep, resonant English, no accent, though I had expected one. He looked a casting department stereotype of the old hidalgo of the hacienda. Instead, he spoke with the spacious, lazy drone of the typical Angelino-a stereotype of another persuasion.

He insisted we drink lemonade, his own creation, a liquid so transparent I thought it water. It had tartness undercut by a surprising sweetness that satisfied. Superb, I told him.

“How may I help you?” he asked, bowing again.

I explained that Mercy and I–I called her Mercedes, and the man nodded-were looking into the death of Carisa, strictly as a favor to a friend who stood accused, a young man in danger of being falsely charged of a murder he didn’t commit, a man who…

“James Dean?” He cut me off.

I started. “You know him?”

“My granddaughter is a huge fan. Sitting through East of Eden a dozen times. She took me to see it, in fact. She insisted. A marvelous movie.”

“Why did his name come to mind?” I asked.

He smiled. “He’s famous, and you are here now.”

I sipped the lemonade. “Interesting.”

“Well, I like the movies now and then, though I’m getting old, ma’am. You see, I was in the movies when I was young, the silents of course, once in a scene with Valentino himself. And in one of Mae Murray’s wonderful comedies. With the little money I made, I bought this house of six apartments for a song, and here I am, years later, as the streets get sadder and sadder.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“But you know James Dean?” Mercy asked.

“I don’t know him. It’s my granddaughter who told me he comes here to visit. I didn’t pay attention to the comings and goings. In this neighborhood if I get the rent, I’m a happy man.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“Never.” He paused. “Or at least I don’t think so. So many young boys and girls come and go, visiting the Krausse girl, that I didn’t pay attention, you know. So long as everything was proper. Proper, you know. But Connie, my granddaughter, is here on weekends. She tells me-you know who I saw leaving the second floor apartment? James Dean, she says. I say who? And she shows me his picture in a movie magazine. She wants to ask for his autograph, but doesn’t have the courage. And so she takes me to see East of Eden, and I say-yes, that’s the lad. Looks different, though. That red jacket he wears.”

I held my breath. “What can you tell us about him?”

He looked around his small kitchen, seemed to frown at a cobweb he spotted above the sink. “Nothing. He comes and goes.”

“Often?”

“Not a lot. I can’t say. My granddaughter watched for him on weekends. I don’t know. I’m old. I nap in the afternoons and go to bed early. I’m up at four, and the apartment building is sleeping.