“Don’t get him started on that fucking mouse, Charlie,” Lawford said, chuckling. “He’ll take it back to Steamboat Willie and ‘Turkey in the Straw.’”
They crossed the street, went past the Crystal Arcade and the Carnation Ice Cream Parlor.
“Who are the girls at these parties?” Davis said. “I assume if this is verboten, the fräuleins are of ill repute.”
“The question is whether they’re of ill repute willingly,” Charlie said.
They came to a large wooden map and Lawford took out his lighter and flicked its spark wheel to see better.
“Tomorrowland, man,” Davis said, pointing to the top right corner of the map. “That’s where Frank and I rode on that little motorway in 1955 in that TV special when they opened the park.”
“Neat,” Lawford said.
“Disaster,” Davis corrected him. “Traffic jam on the Santa Ana—I mean a horror show, even for SoCal. Hundred-degree heat meant gummy tar on Main Street, snagging the moms’ high heels. Counterfeit tickets, so sardine-can crowds, which meant the vendors ran out of food and drink. Plumbers’ strike, so no water fountains. The company rushed the open, so the best rides weren’t even running yet. Only thing really open was Autopia, which was just regular cars. Tomorrowland was pretty much Todayland.”
“We’re going here, to Frontierland,” Charlie said, pointing to the top left corner of the map.
“Lead on, Macduff,” said Lawford.
“I came in early this morning and Tarantula was dead drunk at his desk,” Charlotte continued on the phone. “He’d dropped the keys in the bathroom. I unlocked the file cabinet. After about twenty minutes I figured out the filing codes and found a bunch of stuff about young girls. And boys. And that’s where Violet was. She’s one of a number of young women who live with this investment manager, John Boyle. It’s sick, Margaret, sick. They pass these girls around like canapés.”
“Where can I find Violet?” Margaret asked.
“I’ve seen a lot of horrors in my day and on this beat,” Goode said. “I covered Black Dahlia and Lupe Velez. I covered Jeanne French, her face beaten into pulp, ‘Fuck You, BD,’ written on her torso in her own lipstick.”
Margaret could hear Goode puffing on her cigarette at a rapid clip. Something was off. Her friend’s mind seemed to be unspooling.
“There’s no way I would ever be able to get any of this into print. You have no idea the stories they’ve killed. Amazing stories, multiple sources! Studio bosses forcing Bette Davis to have an abortion! Joan Crawford’s skin flick! Why Hearst killed Thomas Ince! A three-part series on Uncle Walt rolling out the red carpet for Leni Riefenstahl! Clark Gable’s secret love child with Loretta Young! On and on. All of them buried.”
“Charlotte, what did you find out about Violet?” Margaret said. “What’s wrong?”
“I have never seen anything like this, and I covered Chaplin marrying two sixteen-year-olds! Not at the same time, of course. And Errol Flynn’s statutory-rape trial. Benny Benson! Ed Tierney! Natalie Wood! Vicious! Everyone knows that these men like girls—literal girls! But this takes it to a new level of sickening! The question is what can I do about it. Nightlife will never print it—”
Her rant continued unabated. This wasn’t Charlotte’s normal almost-manic state; this was something more extreme, her words almost indecipherable, her breathing frenzied.
“Charlotte, honey, calm down,” Margaret said. She might need to go to her friend, see for herself what had triggered Charlotte. “I have your home address. I’m coming. Stay put, okay?”
The line went dead.
Charlie led the way across the park, Lawford and Davis following him, past the Frontierland Shootin’ Gallery, where two armed guards stood, guns in their chest holsters, jackets off. They looked somewhere between Mafia thugs and FBI agents, Charlie thought, in that twilight space where private security guards dwell, tough and not to be trifled with, but badgeless.
They entered the Mexican town square, El Zocolo, where a mariachi band performed “La Bamba” on the Mexican bandstand, and a crowd of men salivated while watching two dark-haired teenage girls dancing some kind of courtship dance. One of the girls was dressed in a formfitting blouse and high-waisted skirt approximating the traditional china poblano; the other was clad as a charro, with an enormous black sombrero. Charlie paused and looked at their cherubic faces, which made him think of a child, of his own daughter, Lucy, though these girls’ outfits were made to convey a sexuality they wouldn’t grow into for years.
“Come on, amigo,” Lawford said, pulling him along, “vámanos.”
A song began blaring from behind them; Charlie turned to see the Golden Horseshoe, an ersatz saloon that was currently serving as a very real one. They walked up the porch and looked inside, where a burlesque singer dressed as a cowgirl regaled the audience with a song.
“A miner from the Klondike came a-strollin’ in the place,” she sang. “With nuggets in his knapsack and whiskers on his face. He said, ‘A kiss I crave,’ and I said, ‘Sir! Not until you shave!’ A lady has to mind her P’s and Q’s!”
The saloon was packed with drunken men and girls who could be their daughters or granddaughters.
“Do you see her?” Lawford asked.
“No,” said Charlie. “Not here.”
They stepped back from the saloon doors.
“We probably shouldn’t act as if we’re looking for someone,” Davis said. “We should blend.”
“If we really want to blend, we need to grab girls,” Lawford said. Seeing Charlie’s and Davis’s alarmed faces, he quickly added: “I don’t mean that literally. I’m just saying, we’re sore thumbs here. Especially Sammy.”
“Hey!” said Davis.
“What’s over there?” Charlie asked, nodding to the river, beyond which sat Tom Sawyer Island, festooned with tiki torches, bubbling with human activity. He walked over and onto the dock, where an immense steamboat sat still in the man-made river, bathed in moonlight. Lawford and Davis joined him. In the distance came the faint deep beating of shamanic drums.
“It sounds like the climax of Sergeants Three over there,” Lawford said.
“The pornographic version, maybe,” Davis said. “Our version doesn’t have full-frontal.”
“The version in my trailer did,” said
