commentary: “Ridiculous!” “Impossible!” “C’mon now!” “Oh, really?”
I could hear Max intoning these fevered exclamations as he annotated the clippings. But no name was highlighted, other than those of his friends…and his own.
But I stopped looking through this pile because I believed, to the depth of my soul, that the blacklist, while playing a crucial role in this horrid murder, was tangential to finding the murderer.
In a file cabinet I located the manila folder containing a list of his clients, a carbon copy of what the police confiscated, but was startled to realize how few clients were active during his last year. An alphabetical stack of clients’ folders. I glanced at Sol Remnick’s file, which contained a headshot of the dead comic actor. An early photo. Sol onstage in New York, looking like the sad sack he played, though a younger version. Another in a minor role in some Hollywood movie, dressed as a businessman with briefcase-a debonair and fashionable gentleman. Sol the bit player in grade B movies.
Tony’s file had a notation that the sad comic had called to terminate his contract. Max had scribbled, “A fool.” Liz Grable’s termination was a day later. Max’s notation was bittersweet. “Tony got to her. Poor Liz, going off in every direction but the one she needs to find.” I liked that. I searched for Ethan’s file, but there was none. Of course, he was not an actor. There would be no headshot. His one script had been rejected by Max-and Hollywood. So brief a moment in entertainment that he didn’t warrant a manila folder.
Nothing was clicking-nothing. But inside his desk, in the center drawer, I located his journal. It was not a diary, true, despite Ava’s gentle teasing, but a thoughtful man’s random jottings on the course of his day, reminders of conversations, obligations, even some notations on the folks who trooped through his office. Small paragraphs about people whose names meant nothing now-this one stopped in, that one phoned, others demanded meetings. A multitude of anonymous souls, forgotten. Dead end comments: “Fired for the third time.” “Called to say hello… moving to Kansas.” “Hates the part.” On and on. Carelessly dated, with whole months slipping by before another dated entry. I stopped when I came upon a two-page summary of a talk he had with Sol about Frank Sinatra. I read comments about Ava, and, as expected, they glowed with the friendship.
There was also a paragraph about Liz and Tony, both sitting in that room with him, both berating him for his inattention to their piddling careers. Sad, wistful reflection, Max ruing the day he ever got involved with both of them. “Oh well,” he concluded, “you do a favor for someone and it can come back to give you pain. Or acid indigestion.” Echoes of Max’s soft humor.
Give you murder, I thought.
And then I found what I wanted. A scribbled account on one page, Max’s summing up of a brief but troubling talk he’d endured. A spitfire exchange, Max acknowledging that he’d lost his temper. I smiled at that: if I jotted in my own journal the times I flew off the handle, usually for trivial matters best ignored, the collected volumes would outnumber the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Battles royale, Edna Ferber style. High dudgeon, my only gear shift.
Max had responded to a cheap yet vicious accusation, and he wasn’t happy with his own anger. That didn’t matter to me. What did was the fury hurled at him. Not death threats, nor some intractable ultimatum, not even a cruel personal jibe. Nothing the police would latch onto as motive for murder. But the dreadful words, illuminated as they were on that yellow page, especially filtered through my early-morning suspicion, told me that my hunch was on target.
I slammed shut the journal and sat there, my fingers intertwined, my knuckles white. Yes, I thought. Yes.
Alice watched me as I walked into the living room where she sat, tense, her face rigid. “Edna, did you find anything?”
“We’ll see,” I muttered.
Alice stood. “You
“We’ll see,” I repeated. “I have to go, Alice.” My mind was elsewhere. “Could you call me a taxi?”
While we waited, standing in the doorway, she touched my shoulder. “Edna.”
I looked at her and attempted a smile. “I’ll call you, Alice. I promise.”
“Edna, I’m worried now. You seem so…determined.”
“Alice, I know what I’m doing.”
As I stepped outside, walking the pathway toward the approaching taxicab, I started to tremble. The projectionist was running the last reel of a sad movie, and I was now the unwitting protagonist.
The taxi scrambled to an abrupt stop in front of Hair Today on Hollywood Boulevard, and I lurched forward, banging my shoulder. “Am I to believe the state of California actually gave you a license?” I asked. The cabbie was obviously a movieland hopeful, a sandy-haired fresh-scrubbed lad with hooded hazel eyes and a pile of headshots on his passenger seat. When he thanked me for the meager tip, I heard a Midwestern twang. Iowa, I thought, or Kansas. Flat and nasal, reminding me of an enamel pan dragged across a sidewalk. Welcome to Hollywood.
Hair Today was a glitzy salon with black-and-green art deco stenciling on the plate-glass windows. An overly large neon sign announced the preposterous name and, though it was broad daylight, still blinked and hummed, the red letters popping on and off. Inside, I spotted a row of bubble-head helmets, under which women idly browsed through movie magazines.
Liz Grable stopped what she was doing, a comb in one hand, scissors in the other. She froze, ignoring the remarks her client was making, and nodded toward me. A woman in a frilly blue blouse with a name tag sewn on approached me and asked whether I had an appointment, but I was already moving past her. Liz, mumbling to another woman to finish up the disgruntled customer, walked toward me, a slow-motion walk, the comb and scissors held before her like weapons. Two western gunslingers pacing each other at high noon.
“What happened?” A voice hollow, strained.
“May I talk to you a moment, Liz?”
She spun around and bumped into a small table, which teetered. “I’m working.”
“A minute of your time.”
“I don’t know…”
“It has to be now.” I raised my voice.
She looked over her shoulder as a catlike squeak escaped from her throat. “Follow me.” She yelled to the woman up front. “I’m on a break.”
“You’re not on a break, Liz. Not until…”
Liz cut her off. “I’m on a break now.”
I followed her into a back room, a tiny space where cardboard boxes were stacked to the ceiling, shelves lined with hair products. For a moment I was overcome with the heady scent of lotions, cloying tropical fragrances. A face buried in a bouquet of gardenias. Fainting time at the funeral parlor. But near the back door there was a small table with two folding chairs, empty coffee cups bunched and stacked together in the center. Liz motioned for me to sit down.
“What?” she said, breathless.
“I need your help.”
“Tony…” she faltered.
“I want you to tell me what you remember about the night you went to see Max at his home.”
She looked puzzled. “I already
“Yes, indeed. But I didn’t get to ask you the right questions.”
“Miss Ferber, please. I don’t want any trouble. Last night I threw Tony out of my place and he was…”
“That’s a good move, Liz. I applaud that. You need to start making the right decisions for your own life. But I have to insist now-tell me about that night. Every little detail.”
She looked helpless. “I don’t know…”
Hotly, “Of course you do. Now start at the beginning. What time did you go to Max’s?”
She started to cry. “I can’t help you. I can’t think…”
“You can, Liz. Stop crying and talk to me. Let’s create the scene. You were sick of Tony, you wanted to get back into Max’s good graces, and you decided to see him. What time?”
She thought about it. “Early. I don’t know. It was light out.” She brightened. “Max said Alice had just left- gone to see you and Lorena at the Paradise. Just left.”
