`And what was the name of his ship?'
She opened her mouth to tell me, I believe. But something shifted rapidly and heavily in her mind, and closed off communication. `I'm afraid I don't remember.'
She looked up at me with black opaque eyes.
`What did he do before he went into the Navy? Was he a photographer?'
She looked back over the years. `I think he had been a boxer, a professional boxer, not a very successful one. He may have been a photographer, too. He was the sort of person who had been a number of things, none of them successfully.'
`Are you sure his name wasn't Harold?'
`Everybody called him Mike. It may have been a nom de guerre.'
`A what?'
`A fighting name. You know.'
She breathed deeply. `You were going to show me some pictures, Lew.'
`They can wait. You could help me most right now by telling me what you can remember about Carol and Harley and how you got to know them.'
Tensely, she looked at her watch. `I'm due in a story conference in one minute.'
`This is a more important story conference.'
She breathed in and out. `I suppose it is. Well, I'll make it short and simple. It's a simple story, anyway, so simple I couldn't use it in my series. Carol was a country girl from Idaho. She ran away from home with an AWOL sailor. Mike Harley came from the same hick town, I think, but he'd already been in the Navy for a couple of years and seen the world. He promised to take her out to the coast and get her into the movies. She was about sixteen and so naive it made you want to weep or burst out laughing.'
`I can hear you laughing. When and where did you happen to meet her?'
`In the early spring of 1945.1 was working at Warner's in Burbank and spending weekends in various places. You know the old Barcelona Hotel near Santa Monica? Carol and Harley were staying there, and it's where I-well, I got interested in her.'
`Were they married?'
`Carol and Harley? I think they'd gone through some sort of ceremony in Tia Juana. At least Carol thought they were married. She was also thought Harley was on extended leave, until the Shore Patrol picked him up. They whisked him back to his ship and Carol was left with nothing to live on, literally nothing. Harley hadn't bothered to make an allotment or anything. So I took her under my wing.'
`And brought her to see Joe Sylvester.'
`Why not? She was pretty enough, and she wasn't a stupid girl.
Joey got her a couple of jobs, and I spent a lot of time with her on grooming and diction and posture. I'd just been through an unhappy love affair, in my blue period, and I was glad to have somebody to occupy my mind with. I let Carol share my apartment, and I actually think I could have made something out of her. A really wholesome Marilyn, perhaps.'
She caught herself going into Hollywood patter, and stopped abruptly. `But it all went blah.'
`What happened?'
'Harley had left her pregnant, and it began to show. Instead of grooming a starlet, I found myself nursing a pregnant teen-ager with a bad case of homesickness. But she refused to go home. She said her father would kill her.'
`Do you remember her father's name?'
`I'm afraid not. She was using the name Carol Cooper for professional purposes, but that wasn't her true surname. I think her father lived in Pocatello, if that's any help.'
`It may be. You say she was pregnant. What happened to the baby?'
`I don't know. Harley turned up before the baby was born. The Navy had finally kicked him out, I believe - and she went back to him. This was in spite of everything I could say or do. They were elective affinities, as I said. The Patient Griselda and the nothing man. So seventeen years later he had to kill her.'
`Was he violent when you knew him?'
`Was he not.'
She crossed her arms over her breast. `He knocked me down when I tried to prevent her from going back to him. I went out to find help. When I got back to my apartment with a policeman they were both gone, with all the money in my purse. I didn't press charges, and that was the last I saw of them.'
`But you still care about Carol.'
'She was nice to have around. I never had a sister, or a daughter. In fact, when I think back, feel back, I never had a happier time than that spring and summer in Burbank when Carol was pregnant. We didn't know how lucky we were.'
`How so?'
`Well, it was a terribly hot summer and the refrigerator kept breaking down and we only had the one bedroom and Carol got bigger and bigger and we had no men in our lives. We thought we were suffering many deprivations. Actually all the deprivations came later.'
She looked around her fairly lavish office as if it was a jail cell, then at her watch. `I really have to go now. My writers and director will be committing mayhem on each other.'
