Lone star

“Yes, right after it all happened. Now, days later, she’s got that story perhaps, but maybe she can recall some other things.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

As Mercy’s car stopped in front of the apartment building, I spotted Vega at the curb, shuffling garbage cans. Up and down the street, curbs were dotted with broken-up pails, dented tins, lopsided cardboard containers, overflowing with debris. The junk in Carisa’s apartment would fill dozens of such containers. But was there one tidbit of useful information in those mountainous stacks of L.A. Times, Collier’s, Movie Life, Stardom Magazine, movie scripts, rehearsal notes, cards and letters and bills, paid and unpaid? The important letters-maybe just one letter? — were gone, taken by the murderer.

Vega watched us step from the car. He was perspiring, his face flushed; and he wore a stained Hawaiian shirt over white linen trousers, rolled up above his ankles, showing bare feet tucked into sandals, unstrapped, the leather worn.

“Ladies.” He bowed, one hand gripping his lion’s-head cane. He wiped his brow with a large white handkerchief. “A surprise.”

“We apologize for intruding, Mr. Vega,” I said, “but we were hoping your granddaughter Connie might talk to us. You said weekends…”

He looked behind him, back to the house. “She’s inside, in the kitchen, supposedly peeling avocados, but I suspect her nose is buried in Modern Screen.” He grinned.

“A favor, sir. Would you mind if we had a word with her?”

“Still the same story?”

“Yes, I’m afraid. Has Detective Cotton been around?”

“Again and again. He has the persistence and stubbornness of a deadly bull dog that keeps coming at you.”

Quietly, he led us into the kitchen. With the curtains drawn over tattered blinds and the only light coming from a dim-watt bulb over a table, the room was a surprise: cool, serene, monastery-like, the street noise distant, not even a ticking clock. I heard the rhythmic scraping of a knife against avocados, each lifted from a wicker basket and then sliced into, the rough-knotty green skin deftly peeled back, and the lush, overripe green meat turned quickly into an earthenware bowl, and another lifted up. Green, slimy fingers attached to a skinny little girl who sat at the table, her eyes faraway, her movements mechanical. At the other end of the table, pristine and untouched, a copy of Photoplay, unopened.

“Connie,” her grandfather said, rousing her. “Will you please share your story with these two fine ladies?”

“Story?”

“The day Carisa Krausse died.” He paused. “They’ve come just to see you.”

The young girl nodded, stood, wiped her stained hands on a towel, and then sat back down, facing us, hands folded on the table. She smiled.

Vega set glasses of lemonade before us, and I was pleased. I remembered the exquisite drink. I sipped mine, and resisted the temptation to smack my lips.

Connie was a beautiful child, with something of her grandfather’s rich mocha coloration; the high cheekbones, the slender nose, the round black eyes, deep and clear; the long straight black hair, so shiny it looked greased, touched with abundant and rich oils. Aztec girl, I thought. Mexican girl. Oddly, I thought of the statue that had been hurled at Carisa: that grotesque green replica of an Aztec girl, with protruding belly and flattened features. A far cry from this ravishing girl; this untouched girl, so innocent, sitting among avocados and kitchen shadow; yet overwhelmingly exotic, sensual. Handmaiden at some ancient shrine.

“Thank you, Connie.” I stopped, looking at the girl’s moving lips. “What?”

“Have they caught the murderer?”

I realized the girl was afraid, living there in the house. “No, not yet.”

Mercy said, quietly, “Did you like Carisa Krausse?”

The girl shook her head slowly. “Not really. Abuelo,” she pointed to Vega, “doesn’t want me to bother the tenants.” He nodded at her. “But we’d say hello. I always wanted to ask her questions because she’s like an actress, and I wanna be in the movies someday. Only one time I saw her after James Dean left, and I had to say something. She said she was gonna marry him. But after that, well, she didn’t talk to me. She was, you know, strange.”

“Strange?”

“She’d yell at nothing, like a little wild, she’d…” Her voice trailed off.

“You ever see who visited her?”

She nodded. “Sometimes lots of people. Movie people. I figured. Some not so nice.”

“Why?” From Mercy.

“Loud, rough. Scary.”

“But not all.”

“No.” Her face brightened. “I started watching the first time I saw James Dean come in. I couldn’t believe it.”

“How did you know him?”

She shifted in the chair, got up and poured herself lemonade. She was wearing a simple blouse, but she had on a poodle skirt lacking the appliqued poodle at the hem. Instead she had a hot rod car embroidered there. A long skirt, neat and pressed, over saddle shoes with bobby socks. I smiled. I could be looking at a girl in New York City or Tampa or Keokuk, Iowa.

“Maybe he came before but a lot of good looking, you know, guys came to see her. But then I saw East of Eden and he was in the movie magazines and suddenly everybody is talking about him. And then he was here. Here!”

“You talked to him?”

She blushed. “Once. I bumped into him in the hallway, and, and he said, ‘How are you?’ I didn’t say anything except mumble, but he just looked at me, he smiled at me, and I couldn’t move.”

Vega said, from across the room, “Since then, she has his pictures on the walls of her room, and she buys the magazines, and she waits by the window when she’s visiting me…”

“Abuelo!” she blurted out, mortified. “He’s a star. All my friends want to hear my story. They ask me everything…”

“Was he here the day Carisa died?” Mercy asked softly.

For a moment she seemed confused. “What?” I asked.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble. He’s not in trouble, is he?”

“No,” I answered. “Just tell us what you know.”

Warming up, excited: “Well, I saw him that afternoon.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember the time. I told Detective Cotton I couldn’t remember the first time but it was late in the day.”

“The first time?” That surprised me.

“Yeah, well, he was here twice that day. He came back.”

I looked at Mercy. “Early? Late?” From Mercy.

“I told you-the first time was late afternoon.”

“Before five?” I asked. The cocktail party, from five to seven. Jimmy’s brief appearance, his leaving at-what time? Six or so?

“No, after. I was watching TV before that. I was talking on the phone with my friend, and she was going to the movies.”

“What did Jimmy do?” I went on.

The girl grinned. “Jimmy. You call him Jimmy?”

I nodded, feeling schoolgirlish: the president of his fan club.

“I’m afraid so.” Mercy caught my eye. She was amused.

“Nothing. I saw him on the sidewalk, coming onto the stoop. So I cracked the door and stared into the