Chapter Eleven
«And that's a picture of me and Eva with Louis B. Mayer.» Gloria stabbed at the black and white snapshot with a scarlet talon. «He died the same year – just a month or so after Eva.» She gave me a sly look from beneath her false eyelashes. «You know what they say his last words were?» «Cut and print?»
She laughed that smoky laugh. «Nah, but that's not bad, baby. Nope, his last words were 'Nothing matters.'» «That's depressing.»
Amused, she turned the next page of her photo album. «And here's me and Eva with Tony at the Troubadour.» I studied the three faces. Gloria and Eva had made a pair of knockout bookends, one fair, one dark, Snow White and Rose Red – and the frog prince sandwiched between them. Tony Fumagalli was not, by any stretch, a good-looking man: short, swarthy, heavy-jowled – and chomping on a cigar in every picture. «So what was the attraction?» I asked Gloria.
«Money, I guess. Power, definitely.» She started to turn the page. I stopped her. «So what went wrong? Did he slap her around?» «Now that she would have understood.»
I stared at her, trying to put two and two together. Something that Eva couldn't forgive or understand, something that neither Eva nor Tony nor anyone else wanted to talk about… «He'd been married before, hadn't he?» I was thinking aloud.
Gloria's baby blues remained pinned on the photo of her and Eva and Tony. The Three Graces: Faith, Hope, and I'll Break Your Knee Caps. «Annulled,» she replied.
Annulled. But that could have been because Tony was of Italian descent and – all things being relative – a good Catholic. I scanned his pug-ugly face. Or maybe not. «Was he… gay?» I asked slowly. Gloria's head tossed like a pony slipping its bridle. «Baby, was he ever!» «Are you serious?»
She nodded. «He was as queer as a two-dollar bill. Evie caught him one afternoon prancing around in garters and hose and a corselette. Red garters and red corselette.» What the hell is a corselette? I said, «Tony Fumagalli was a transvestite?»
«Imagine if that had got around!» Gloria crowed with laughter and the poodle pack came scurrying in from the next room. She began tossing colored doggie candies out of the pockets of her mint green hostess gown. «Smoked chicken nothing! They should have named him rubber chicken.»
Talk about a motive for murder. I could see Tony F. deciding he needed to shut Eva up before she spread that story around town. «Did he threaten her?» I asked Gloria.
«I doubt it. He still thought he could get her back. You know, give her time to cool down. He didn't know our little Eva. She had an appetite like a shark.» «An appetite for…?» «Sex, baby, sex!» I nodded understanding. «Do you think he was afraid she'd tell someone?»
Gloria's eyes were shrewd. «If he'd wanted to stop her mouth, he'd have had to kill her on the spot. What would be the point three days later? Besides, there are no secrets in Hollywood.» There were one or two left, but they did seem to be unraveling fast. * * * * *
I was waiting for the bus on Beverly Drive when the long black limousine pulled up in front of me, and Mr. Clean, aka Clyde Wells, got out smartly from the passenger seat.
My companions at the bus stop, all apparently employed in local domestic service, observed in interested silence as he opened the rear door and nodded encouragingly at me. «Mr. Fumagalli requests a word.»
What word would that be? Murder? Unexplained disappearance? Granted, that last would have been two words.
«I'll give him a call,» I said. «Is he in the phone book?» As much as I'd have loved to talk to Fumagalli in controlled surroundings, I didn't think going for a ride in his long black limousine was a smart move. «Mr. Fumagalli prefers face-to-face.» «Fist to face, did you say?»
Clyde grinned. «That was a slight misunderstanding, Mr. North.» He nodded again to the dark interior of the car. I could see someone sitting there in the shadows: dark suit, dark sunglasses, and a giant pinky ring. «Please don't keep Mr. Fumagalli waiting.»
I thought it over. If Fumagalli wanted me dead, I'd already be dead. Of course he might want to oversee the next round of roughing up, but…probably not. I glanced at my bus stop companions.
«My name is Timothy North. If something happens to me,» I said, «the last place I was seen alive was in Frankie Fumagalli's limo.» An elderly woman in a peach-colored maid's uniform giggled.
«Now you're just embarrassing yourself,» Clyde told me sadly as I moved past him and ducked into the backseat.
Hey, I have seizures; not much embarrasses me anymore. I didn't say that, though. I settled across from the man in the suit and Clyde slammed the heavy door shut. The limo glided off soundlessly. I watched my bus stop companions slide out of the frame of the tinted windows.
«I appreciate your time, Mr. North,» said a dry voice, and I turned to check out Frankie Fumagalli. «May I offer you a drink?»
He was in his late forties, slim and gray and tired-looking. He must have taken after his mother's side of the family, because he had none of Tony's ugly heaviness – or raw power. In fact, he looked like any worn-out corporate executive after a long, hard day of mismanaging employee retirement funds. Tony the Cock's son, Frankie the Weenie. «Thanks,» I said.
He turned to the built-in bar, used a pair of tongs to drop a couple of cubes of ice into a short glass, poured a generous dose of Bulleit Bourbon, and handed it to me.
I took a mouthful. Oaky and smooth, like liquid smoke. I swallowed, comforted by the velvet burn through my belly.
«I think there's maybe been a misunderstanding,» my host remarked, watching me with his sad, dark eyes. «I got a very…troubling visit from a couple of detectives with the Glendale Police Department. They seemed to be under the impression that someone in my employ might have been harassing you.»
I said, «Mr. Clean in the front seat there has tried to throw me down a couple of staircases; maybe that's what they were thinking of.»
«I have no control over what my employees do in their spare time. If there's some history between yourself and Clyde, I'd like to see it worked out in peaceable fashion.» He studied my face in the sickly light. «What do you think the trouble is?»
«I think the trouble is you're afraid if I keep digging into Eva Aldrich's death I'm going to discover Eva's reasons for breaking off her engagement to your father, and that I am going to publish those reasons in this book I'm writing.»
«You couldn't be more wrong,» he said, and he smiled. His teeth were surprisingly yellow, but I guess when you're a mob boss no one can make you go to the dentist if you don't want to. «If you were to publish something scandalous about my father, I'd simply sue you for everything you own – and I'd make sure that you never worked again.»
«But the damage would be done,» I said with a calm I didn't feel. I'd never seen eyes deader than those gloomy black ones gazing at me unblinkingly now. «The book would be published and the secret would be out. It's not much of a secret in this day and age, but you're in a traditionally macho line of work, and image is everything, I guess.»
After a moment, he observed, «I've noticed that cocky guys like you annoy a lot of other guys. Maybe that's what's happened between you and Clyde. Maybe you just…bug him. You're starting to bug me.»
I'd be lying if I said his words didn't give me a qualm or two. I made myself ask, «Is that what happened to Raymond Irvine? Did he get on someone's nerves?» «Who?»
«Raymond Irvine. He started a book on Eva Aldrich back in 1963, but someone forced his car off the road on Mulholland Drive.»
«Oh, the reporter,» Frankie said, lifting an indifferent shoulder. «Like I said, guys like you bug other guys.»
My hands, clasped around the glass with ice, were growing cold. I said, «I'm not a tabloid writer. I don't write gossip. Unless your father killed Eva, or had her killed, I'm not interested in writing about his sexual preferences.»
