Lone star

confess right away to the cops.”

“Or,” I said, flat out, “her guilt made her stick a needle in her arm, choose to die, either accidentally or on purpose.”

Jimmy looked down at his hands, and said nothing.

“I have to go back.” I looked at my watch.

Back on the studio lot, past the gate, Jimmy pulled into a space where, he maintained, he could periodically check on the car. “You have to admit it’s a beauty,” he beamed.

Enough, I thought. Enough.

Josh MacDowell rushed past, a few yards away, his arms filled with costumes. He never looked toward Jimmy and me, but Jimmy, spotting him, rolled his eyes and slunk deeper into the seat.

“You don’t like him,” I said. “And yet you used to be drinking buddies with him.”

“I go out drinking with a lot of folks. Me, who has a low tolerance for alcohol. A couple whiskeys and I’m dancing on a table. But, well, Josh got too familiar.” He turned to face me. “I’m uncomfortable around fem guys like that. I knew Carisa through him, in fact. But you know that. When he drinks, he gets, well, swishier. Is that a word? There’s men, and then there’s men.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“You know, Miss Edna, Carisa used to sleep with dirt bags in the industry-to get small parts. Lots of people do it. You’re gonna hear stories about me. There was this director Rogers Brackett, who I knew here and then in New York. I lived with him, I did things. I had to. Or he did things. You know. That’s how I got on Broadway. It’s what you do. Carisa liked to throw that in my face. She used to taunt me. When you’re real famous, it’ll all come out. Or, why are you denying that part of your life? I bet you hang out at Cafe Gale on Sunset, where they hang out. Well, I got all kinds of parts to my life. I’m not too sure what I am. You know? I mean…”

“What, Jimmy? Tell me.”

He banged the steering wheel. “Nothing, Miss Edna. Nothing that has to do with nothing. It’s just that Josh and Lydia talked about me-to people. And Josh has got his grip on the innocent Sal Mineo, a little boy, who stares at me with puppy eyes and doesn’t understand that Josh is using him.”

“How?”

“How does anyone use anyone else? You find their vulnerability, and then you mine it like precious ore.” He bit his lip. “Miss Edna, I got things inside of me that scare me.”

I touched him on the wrist. “Jimmy, you have to find what makes you happy.” I paused. “And someone to make you happy, no matter who it is.”

He looked at me. “What are you telling me?”

“I don’t know much about these things, but I do know that you can’t live your life by someone else’s rules.” I smiled. “But you already know that.”

His eyes got wide. “You’re something else, Miss Edna.”

I started to answer, but he shook his head. “No more.” He swung out of the car, opened my door, and walked me to the gate. “I’m going home.”

“You’re not on call?”

“Not today. I gotta meet Tommy and Polly for dinner tonight. They told me to ask you and Mercy.”

“When were you planning on telling me?” I asked, smiling.

“Right about now. Polly’ll call you later.” He waved. “I’m going home to work on the sculpture of your head.”

“You’ll need a lot of clay.”

He smiled. “I’ll need a lot of nerve.”

Coffee with Tansi and Jake guaranteed the day would move downward. Both were lively and talkative. I was used to it with Tansi, the resident Warner’s booster child. Tansi’s years in Hollywood, I now believed, had made her a little scatter-brained and twitchy. But Jake, with his crisp manner and supercilious haughtiness, seemed to have caught Tansi’s exuberance. For two people who ostensibly hated each other, they exuded an unpleasant camaraderie when I joined them.

Lydia Plummer. Her shadow paradoxically hung over the day, allowing people suddenly to brighten up. How downright sad! Over and over I recalled my brief, scattered words with her on the phone. It broke my heart.

Of course, the conversation centered on Lydia. Originally Tansi had scheduled the meeting to outline my next few days of meetings, preparatory to my leaving within the week. But Jake had asked to join us. Interesting, this development. A day before Tansi would have been annoyed at his intrusion. Now they were the Bobbsey twins at the seashore. They said all the right things about Lydia: how sad, how tragic.

“Warner is preparing to have her body sent back home,” Jake said.

“To where?”

“Lavonia, Michigan. A mother is there. We’ll plan a little memorial tribute on the lot. She had friends…”

“Frankly, you two, I must say that everyone seems rather relieved at her dying.”

“Nonsense.” Tansi glanced over at Jake.

Jake frowned. “Miss Ferber, let me say this. No one wanted to see Lydia Plummer die like that, but she took her own life.”

“How do we know it wasn’t accidental?”

“She was playing with fire. Drugs, Miss Ferber.”

“Or she could have been murdered,” I said, staring at him.

Tansi nodded toward Jake. “I told you Edna thought that a possibility.” She turned back to me. “Jake says that’s absurd.”

“Of course it is,” he crowed. “She killed herself. And the fact of the matter is the whole James Dean thing is over with, Miss Ferber. Odds are she killed Carisa. They’d been friends, they fought, she was angry. Jimmy left her, and she blamed Carisa.”

“So all the strings are conveniently tied.”

“Exactly.” He sat back in his chair, complacent, breezy.

I couldn’t win. Tansi and Jake, two studio lackeys, one admittedly a decent old friend, but myopic, choosing the happy ending. America craves happy endings. In Hollywood even death is a happy ending.

Jake took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Like Jimmy, he smoked king-sized Chesterfields. I hadn’t noticed that. I followed the wisp of smoke across the table and desired one. Tansi noticed me eye the cigarette. “Edna, another one?” She offered me one of her Camels, withdrawing her own pack and sliding it across the table. I shook my head. “Let me try a Chesterfield. That’s what Jimmy smokes.”

Jake wasn’t happy, “Oh no,” he groaned. “Another acolyte.”

“Camels are better for your health,” Tansi insisted, tapping the pack. She pushed it in front of me.

I took one of Jake’s cigarettes, and Tansi lit it for me, striking the match with a flourish. “Tallulah Bankhead has nothing on me,” I said, waving the cigarette dramatically. They laughed, and Jake told me to keep the pack. “Please.”

Tansi placed her cigarettes back into her purse. “I love how Jimmy keeps his pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt with the matches tucked under the cellophane. He forces you to look at that bicep, at the sleeve with the crumpled pack tucked there. Imagine Cary Grant or Charles Boyer doing that. It’s a whole new way of looking like a man…”

Jake lost his buoyant manner, turning sour. “He looks like a juvenile delinquent. A menace to society. And you two…” He stood up. “Women like you,” he looked at Tansi and not at me, “would let a man like that get away with…”

He started to say murder but stopped. He fled the room, the sentence unfinished.

Mercy and I walked into the Tick Tock Restaurant on North Cahuenga, where the sign in the window