Lone star

“I lied when I said Carisa was contemplating an offer of money. The truth is, Warner gave her a lump sum the day before, but I was told to keep it a secret. But she didn’t give me the signed paper guaranteeing silence. She tricked me. I’m not built for this stuff.”

“Even I didn’t know,” noted Tansi.

“Why keep that a secret?” I stared into his pale face.

“Warner wanted to see how she’d react. Whether she’d follow up with more demands. More letters. Which she did-the morning she died. Another letter. I kept going there. She wouldn’t pick up her phone most times, and I had to deliver a bag of cash.”

“Good God,” I said.

“I know, I know. I’m like an Al Capone runner.”

“And Detective Cotton found out?”

He bit his lip. “The police found the money hidden under a pile of magazines. I lied about the money, said she was considering it.”

“Well, this hardly seems the stuff of massive deception. Why would Cotton assault you today?”

Tansi and Jake looked at each other, conspiratorially. I didn’t like the new linkage. I much more preferred Tansi as Jake’s adversary and my own boon companion. In fact, I much more preferred the Tansi I knew years before, back in Manhattan days, Tansi at Barnard, spirited, fun-loving, cynical; not so wired and taut. And Jake, well, I never liked him and less so now, a man in authority with no moral center.

What he said next proved it. “He went crazy today because I stupidly lied to him again.” He glanced at Tansi, and she half-smiled, encouraging. “I told him Lydia had confessed to me that she killed Carisa.”

“What? My God. Why?”

“I know it was stupid. Tansi and I were talking about how everything was hunky-dory now, Jimmy free of accusation, but Cotton said he didn’t believe Lydia killed Carisa. So I said, well, she had a last talk with me, and she hinted that she’d done it. It was dumb, and I regretted it immediately. But Cotton lost it, really. He said he’d have me up on charges, that I was a fool; that I could lose my job lying to a cop.”

I was stunned. “Why would you even think to lie like that?”

“For a second I thought, why not? It’s over anyway. She did do it. I’m respected here. They’ll believe me.”

I shook my head. Who in this glitter Hollywood had a brain?

“And besides,” I added, “I agree with Detective Cotton. Lydia Plummer had nothing to do with Carisa’s death.”

Tansi gasped. “How can you say that?”

“I just did.”

“Proof, Miss Ferber?” Jake asked.

“I don’t have proof. But it’s what I know.”

“Edna, you’re being…stubborn,” Tansi said. And I almost laughed. Tansi seemed ready to say “ridiculous.” It’s a word I suspected Tansi used a lot. Oh, this is ridiculous. Can anything be more ridiculous than this?

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t like the convenience of Lydia’s death. Too many people are using her dying to forget the case.”

“Maybe they have a reason.” Jake defied me.

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

Tansi was not liking this exchange. “Edna, I know you got involved in this because of Jimmy. We all want to help Jimmy, but now he’s helped. He had his army of supporters, and they came through beautifully. You, me, Jake, Mercy, Tommy, the others. The Warner office.”

“Tansi, don’t be a foolish woman.” The words came out too harsh, too strident. Tansi looked hurt, and I considered apologizing, then changed my mind.

“Foolish? Edna, how could you?”

“I’m just trying to be truthful with you, Tansi. I’m your friend.” But I looked at Jake, who was not an old friend, now glowering, his eyes dark with anger.

“That’s hardly the way friends talk, Edna.”

Jake smirked. “Don’t you find it strange that you and Mercy McCambridge have spent a lot of wasted time running around and making fools of yourselves? Cotton told me you and Mercy visited the super. Even, I guess, harassed his granddaughter.”

Tansi shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d go there.”

“It’s not the black hole of Calcutta, Tansi. It’s L.A., the dark side, the…”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead there.”

“No one is asking you to go there.”

“You know,” Jake said, “we do have a police force.”

I smiled. “Which, I gather, you’re not very fond of at the moment. Or have you changed your mind?”

“I have meetings.” He stood. “James Dean is safe.”

Tansi echoed, “Safe.” She stood.

Jake headed toward the doorway. “You don’t understand, Miss Ferber. James Dean is no longer a person. He’s now a property.” With that, he left the room.

Wildly, insanely, I flashed to Jett Rink, the helter-skelter wildcatter of Giant, that handsome, madcap boy who becomes so rich and powerful that he abandons his moral compass. Property, oil wells, ranches, Reata, Texas. A wasteland of black gold. Vast stretches of dried-out dead land, parched under crimson noontime sun. Buffalo grass where no buffalo roam. Jett becomes the land and the oil under it: in the process he loses his soul. Jett Rink, James Dean: property.

Furious, I managed to stand, grab hold of the table’s edge. “That’s a cruel thing to say about anybody.” But I was speaking to the door he’d closed behind him.

Chapter 18

I sat in the blazing sunshine at a patio table at the Smoke House, staring across the street at the Warner Bros. Studio entrance. By myself, and comfortable. No, I told this person and that one, no; I want to be alone. Pursued by people-Rock Hudson, dressed as Bick, walked by with an assistant director, paused, debated joining me, but then kept moving-I’d fled the soundstage, slowly moving my way to the restaurant. An old woman in a gigantic red sun hat trimmed with garish bluebells, something I’d appropriated from wardrobe, thanks to Mercy’s intervention. “Edna, you’re going outside with no hat? This will have to do. Everyone will think you’re a bit player. It’s too hot out there.” She positioned it on my head, chuckling in her gravelly, cigarette voice. So now I sipped a glass of minty iced tea slowly, meditating. I was happy being alone, despite the circus hat I had to wear.

I was bothered. Tansi’s misguided pique, her rigid personality; and Jake, that weasel. And Jimmy, the luck of the roaring scamp, the boy wonder everyone wondered about. Jimmy and his cryptic talks with me. Who were these elusive, mysterious souls he favored in the long, long hours of night?

The waiter appeared, and I nodded. Yes, another iced tea. No, nothing to eat. I reached into my clutch and extracted one of Jake’s cigarettes. I despised the man, and yet I joyfully, gladly appropriated his cigarettes. I struck a match, lit the cigarette, but barely inhaled the smoke. In the still California afternoon, the hum of unseen freeway traffic beyond some stucco-and-tile buildings, the presence of a single jagged cloud in the unblemished blue sky. I closed my eyes, and relaxed.

I heard a rumble near the studio gates, and, turning, spotted Jimmy tearing out, breakneck speed, on his motorcycle, turning the corner so fast he seemed momentarily parallel to the all-too-close asphalt pavement. A black leather bomber jacket, black boots, a pair of military style goggles on his eyes, doubtless covering those horn-rimmed eyeglasses he was always losing or breaking. He looked very militaristic, the red-blooded Eisenhower soldier liberating Europe.

As I watched him leave, I noted Alva and Alyce Strand on the sidewalk, looking after him. Bounding from a