Make Believe

“True, but at the Paradise, under Ethan’s watch. But I sense a bit of the actor in him. A bad one, yes, but I detect cleverness in him. Acting the fall-down drunk allows him to get away with things. Oh, poor Tony, the sad drunk on Saturday night. Poor Liz, putting up with him. Poor Ethan, the guardian angel. Well, what can you expect from a drunk?”

Again, the hesitation. “Well, maybe.”

“Ethan mentioned that he and Tony are headed back to New Jersey.”

Now she laughed out loud. “Ethan has been threatening to do that for a while. He claims to be sick of L.A., that he is saving Tony from a drunk tank and death. God, back in Hoboken he’d disappear into a package store and never come out. But L.A. is in Ethan’s blood. Go to the movies with him sometime-he’s like a little kid, all revved up, almost giddy. ‘They make movies here!’ he once chirped at me. Imagine!”

There was a rush of voices behind her. “You’re busy.” But I added, hurriedly, “I called for a reason. Do you have Liz Grable’s phone number?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

A long pause. “Liz?”

I stammered. “I told her we’d have a talk.”

“Really?”

My request puzzled Lorena, though she gave me Liz’s number as well as that of her hair salon.

“Call me, Edna. Before you leave.”

“We’ll talk, Lorena. I promise.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “Call me. Do you know how rare it is in L.A. to talk to someone who listens to you?”

When Liz Grable was called to the phone in the hair salon, she began talking immediately, her voice loud, angry. “You were supposed to call this morning, Tony. I want my goddamn key.”

I broke in. “Miss Grable, I’m afraid…it’s Edna Ferber calling.”

Silence, heavy breathing. In the background women’s high-pitched voices, a lazy voice on the radio. Finally, Liz spoke into the receiver, her words clipped, wary. “Miss Ferber? What do you want?”

“We haven’t spoken…”

“I’m at work. I’m busy.” She repeated, “What do you want?”

Good question, I reflected: what did I want? Ava’s comments had me mulling over the circumstances of the murder, prodding me to dwell on the night of the murder and the people-the players- involved. Who was where that fateful night? And, of course, missing from the equation was Liz Grable. Tony admitted to calling her from the Paradise Bar amp; Grill, but claimed she wasn’t at home.

“I was wondering if you’d join me for lunch.”

She didn’t answer at first. Someone nearby called her name. “What?”

I repeated my invitation. “I thought it would be nice…”

Bluntly, her mouth too close to the receiver. “Why?”

“Liz, we barely had time to talk at Ava’s when we met.”

She gave out a false tinny laugh. “I wonder why.” Her voice had a whiny, hollow tone, as annoying as grit in your eye, and it baffled me that she believed she could be an actress. Perhaps in silent pictures, one more fledgling actress tied to the railroad tracks with the locomotive barreling down at her. The Maiden’s Mistake; or, How Lizzie Caught the Train.

A deep breath. “I’m curious about something.”

“Like what?”

“Your…perspective on the murder.”

“Max?”

“Yes.”

A heartbeat. A whisper. “I have nothing to say.”

“A short conversation.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” A slight, phony laugh.

“People don’t let you talk, Liz,” I began. “Tony and Ethan dominate, and Frank…well…”

“Is a bastard,” she finished for me.

“It’s unfair to you, Liz.”

“You said it.”

“That’s why I thought…well, you must have ideas. You’ve been around…”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know.”

Exhausting, this disingenuous probing on my part. Liz, the unfriendly witness-to use that sickening and destructive phrase so happily employed by the HUAC in Washington. Are you now or have you ever been…?

“I’d like to hear you.”

“I don’t think so.”

I shifted gears, so blatant a move I expected her to slam down the phone. “We started talking about Cimarron that night. You mentioned my heroine Sabra Cravat, the land rush, your family settling there. The Sooners. Your family in Oklahoma.”

The abrupt shift in my words startled, but I had little time for the diplomatic niceties of journalistic interviews. The train was coming down the track. Excitedly, Liz told me, “My grandpa was late for the land grab then, so we missed out, but he had some wild stories.”

“I wish he’d been someone I’d interviewed when I was there.”

She tsked. “Too bad. Yeah, but you’d have to talk to the dead.” She considered her line funny because she chuckled.

“That’s a problem I have when I research the past.”

“A killer, no?” Another sigh. She covered the receiver and her muffled voice addressed someone nearby. She came back on the line. “All right, Miss Ferber, I can get out of here early afternoon. Say one o’clock?”

I agreed to meet her at Jack’s Luncheonette two blocks over on Hollywood. “One o’clock,” I stressed.

“I know how to tell time.”

When the taxi dropped me off at Jack’s, she was already standing in the doorway. Nervously, she shook my hand, a quick, blustery gesture, and then mumbled something about almost changing her mind. As the waitress seated us. Liz told me over her shoulder, “I’m not one to talk about people, you know.”

“Neither am I, Liz.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Hey, you make living talking about people.”

I grinned. “But they’re not real. I make them up.”

“I wouldn’t be too happy seeing myself in one of your books.”

“Why not?”

She tilted her head and rubbed an ear. She held up the menu in front of her face, shielding her mouth. “I’m the dumb blonde who’s got dreams that get her nowhere. That picture is all over the movie screen now, that kind of broad, and it ain’t the real me. I ain’t daffy.”

I made eye contact with her. “You shouldn’t let other folks tell you what you are, Liz. That’s a secret most women don’t know. Invent yourself, and stick with it.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Nobody believes that I got a brain. I mean, Tony thinks he’s smarter than me.”

I assumed my Magnolia Ravenal Southern-belle voice. “Get out of here!”

For the first time she laughed out loud. I joined her.

We ordered sandwiches and coffee. “I like your dress,” she said. “It goes great with your white hair.”

She sat back, relaxed. The waitress filled water glasses and Liz frowned at her retreating back. “A girl that skinny should never wear her hair like that.”

I hadn’t noticed. “Tell me something, Liz.” I put down my glass. “You were the one who knocked on Max’s door the night he died, right?”