He relaxed and picked himself out a chair. He lit a cigarette. Clark was smiling. “I don’t suppose you’re in any mood to hear what I’ve got to say?”
“It better be good.”
“My name doesn’t mean anything to you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “I’m Maxine’s first husband. She told me about you, said you were O.K.”
I let him talk.
“Fowler, what’s your angle on what happened to Maxine?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Do you believe it was suicide?”
I repeated I was not concerned with what it was. I was leaving it up to the proper authorities.
“How about your thinking, do you leave that to the proper authorities, too?”
“Look, Mr. Clark. You’re a big guy; you can muscle your way in here, and make me listen to you, but if I’ve got to think — it costs money.”
He curled his lip like he was going to spit. Out came his wallet and he dropped two one hundred dollar bills on my desk. “Think,” he said.
We blinked across the desk at each other. The big boy got impatient. “Well?” he demanded.
“I’m thinking,” I told him, and stretched it as far as it would go. “I’m thinking you’re the biggest jerk who ever sat in that chair.”
He didn’t like it. He spread himself over the top of my desk. “One more crack like that, Fowler, and I’m going to start bouncing you off the walls.”
“Sit down,” I said. “Let’s get this straight — just as if you’d walked in here like a normal person. I’d as soon take your money as the next guy’s, but I want to know what it’s supposed to be buying.”
He sat. Then he smiled. “I think we’re going to get along, chum.”
I let it pass.
“If I seem a little anti-social, skip it. I just wound up five years at Quentin.”
I nodded, and extended my hand. “Welcome, brother.” I told him about being sent up there for a year on the bum manslaughter rap in the de Spain case. We gabbed like a couple of old grads at. homecoming. We hated some of the same people.
Clark explained he’d been out a couple of months when he heard Maxine was on the rocks. He wanted to do something about it. He still had some dough and some connections. Things broke just right and he was able to get her a part in a road company by spending a little and putting a bit of pressure on the right people.
“I’m a gambler, Fowler,” he explained. “You’d be surprised at some of the people who are into me for different things. Everything was all set The night Maxine was supposed to have pulled the dutch act, I saw her, and we talked over the whole thing. That’s when she told me about you. She thought you were a pretty good egg. What I’m getting at, Fowler, is there was no reason for her to commit suicide. I’m willing to bet those two Cs and whatever more it takes to prove it wasn’t.”
I said O.K., I’d take him on. “Now how about cutting me in on all the details of Maxine’s past?”
He told me what he could. She had started in show business as a kid in New York, around the nightclubs. She was mostly a showgirl, occasionally stepping out of the line to do a specialty — nothing very startling.
During that period she met Clark, and it was love. They got married and Maxine put away her dancing shoes and became a housewife. Part of being wife to a gambler was providing a little sex appeal to all night poker sessions. Clark didn’t say so, but I gathered she was used for sucker bait.
Then one of their customers, Jake Reed, a Hollywood producer, took an interest in her and talked Clark into letting her sign a contract. They moved to California and Maxine surprised everyone by registering a hit in her first part.
It looked permanent, so they bought a home in Brentwood and settled down. From Clark’s point of view, it was a good deal. He found plenty of men around the picture colony who liked to gamble, and Maxine’s position in the industry gave him almost amateur standing, which didn’t hurt the take.
Everything was wonderful until the story started making the rounds that Jake Reed and Maxine were double-crossing him. Clark ignored the gossip until one night at a party he got too heavily loaded and put an end to the story by punctuating Mr. Reed with a .38 slug.
Clark was tried for second degree murder. Maxine stood by him all the way, but when he went north, the studio said get a divorce or get out of pictures. And that was that. She got the divorce.
The rest of Clark’s story was only things he had heard while at San Quentin. She had married again — an actor named Wally Burke. It hadn’t lasted. Then the fadeout on the picture career.
I asked him if Maxine had always been a heavy drinker. He was emphatic in stating that as long as he knew her, she had done very little drinking.
“There’s just one more thing, Clark,” I said. “I might want to talk to some of Maxine’s old friends to get their slant on her. Have you any ideas on who I might look up?”
About the only one he could think of was a girl who used to be her stand-in and secretary, a girl named Marion Trenton. He didn’t know where I’d find her.
I said thanks, I’d manage, and he’d hear from me.
Marion Trenton was in the phone book. Finding her was that easy. I called and found her at home. I explained I was a private investigator interested in the Keyes suicide. I’d like to talk to her about it.
She was most obliging and had a very pleasant voice. I might come right over.
She lived in an apartment just north of Hollywood Boulevard. It was a proper arrangement for a working gal — about fifty bucks a month, one room and kitchenette, in-a-door bed. She had it dressed up with lamps and books.
She went with it — vaguely resembling Maxine, I think mostly in build and coloring. She had something of the same kind of turned-up nose. Her eyes were almost as large, and her mouth had the same interesting pout. I was making the comparison with Maxine at her best. This kid didn’t have quite as much, but she’d taken care of it. She was a very modest, quiet girl and spoke with what I suppose was an interesting sort of whisper.
I qualified her right away. She had been Maxine’s closest friend all the way. Her death had been a shock, but not particularly a surprise to Miss Trenton.
“She kept on saying it was a waste of good liquor for her to go on living.”
“Tell me,” I said, trying to keep my eyes off her legs, “was she always a heavy drinker?”
“No. No, she always drank a little, but it didn’t get serious until a couple of years ago,” she replied, plucking at the hem of her skirt.
“About when would you say she began to lose control?” I concentrated on the cigarette in my hand.
Miss Trenton thought a minute. “Just before she and Mr. Burke were divorced.”
“Before?”
“Yes. I recall it was one of the things which broke up their home.”
“There were others?” I asked. “Such as...”
“I’d rather not...” she said, and I let it drop. She wouldn’t be any good to me hostile.
“Look, Miss Trenton,” I urged, “you probably knew Miss Keyes better than anyone else. Would you mind giving me a thumbnail sketch of her life, while you knew her?”
She was sweet about it. In general, Miss Trenton’s story up to the time of Maxine’s divorce from Johnny Clark was a rehash of what he had already told me.
Shortly after the divorce, she made a couple of pictures with a leading man named Wally Burke. The studio publicity department rigged up the usual phony romance, only this time it took. When her divorce was final, she married Burke. They bought a house in the Outpost, and for a time it was love in bloom.
There was, Marion recalled, some whispering at one time that Maxine was falling for her director, a Hungarian named Andre Zolta. But Marion discounted this. They were just good friends. Zolta’s manner might have appeared strange in America, but it was, she assured me, simply continental.