“So you don’t know if he was with her?”
“No, I don’t, but I just had that feeling. You know? Like she was waiting.”
“Why?”
“Because suddenly I felt that I’d seen her sitting there before. I don’t know exactly, but something about her made me remember. Like she’d been one of the people that visited Carisa. One of her actress friends. Maybe with him. I don’t know. I mean, you know how it’s like in the back of your head, and then it’s there, sort of. It all happened so fast. I’m on the bus and it’s moving, and so I’m thinking that maybe he dropped something off.”
“What did she look like?”
“I dunno. She was just one of the girls that come here. I kept thinking-she’s in the movies, maybe. Maybe Julie Harris from East of Eden. James Dean and her together.”
“You can’t describe her?” I asked.
“I thought I just did.”
Both of us waited, expectant, but nothing followed. Connie seemed edgy now, as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
“And you told this to Detective Cotton?” I asked.
She nodded.
I turned to Mercy, who stared back. Cotton hadn’t mentioned any of this to me, certainly; but why should he? It was his investigation, not mine. He meted out information piecemeal as was his desire, though it bothered me-this sin of omission. Then, like a hot flash, I experienced a wave of fear: yet another block in the wall being built around Jimmy.
Connie was mumbling something else. “I also told him about Alva and Alyce.”
“Who?” From Mercy.
“You know,” I said, “the twins, the boy and girl who follow Jimmy around.” I turned to Connie. “They were here that day?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Crazy. Those two. They’re always around. Somehow they learned James Dean comes here and sometimes they wait in the restaurant across the street, watching. I don’t know if he even talks to them. They are so weird, those two. Always together, running around like maniacs or standing on the sidewalk, staring.”
“So they were here that afternoon?”
“Yeah, that’s what I told the detective. When the bus stopped at the next stop, I noticed they were running up the street, turning into my block. Almost arm in arm, hurrying, like they knew James Dean was there. A couple times when I talked to them, they’re, like, out of breath. Was he here? What’s he like? What did he say to you?” She grinned. “I told them he always talks to me, and they go crazy.”
Her grandfather interrupted. “Connie, you talk to these crazy people? And you lie to them?”
“It’s not, like lying, Abuelo. It’s like we’re in the movies. Sometimes I imagine whole conversations with James.”
“Such foolishness.” He shook his head but never took his eyes off her face.
An absolutely beatific look washed over her; a quietude, a softness in her already gentle features. “It’s James Dean,” she breathed, so reverential that no one said anything. She wrapped her arms around her body, swayed a bit, and closed her eyes. “It’s James Dean. Not on the screen. Here. In my hallway. In my house. Here. Who else can say that? Not my friend Jennie. The star she’s come closest to seeing was Montgomery Clift in a car. Passing by. That doesn’t count, if you think about it. James Dean, well, he smiled at me.”
Chapter 15
Rock Hudson’s publicist had called twice, trying to set up a luncheon. I’d resisted but Tansi, walking in as I was stumbling through an excuse, mumbled in a tinny, schoolmarm voice, “Oh Edna, you have to, it’s Rock Hudson.” I found myself grinning. And, oddly, I agreed to a hasty lunch in Jack Warner’s private dining room. Now, sitting with the brilliantly handsome man in that quiet chamber, platters of untouched food delivered to us by obsequious servers who promptly bowed and disappeared, I stared across the table. I wondered why I’d taken an instant dislike to him. Steely eyed, suspicious, Rock stared back, a sliver of a smile on those beautiful lips.
“You seem uncomfortable.” His voice was throaty, a careful mannered drawl, rich and full.
“I’ve never really liked very, very tall men. You notice I’m very small.”
Suddenly he roared, Texas-style gusto, probably learned from my novel, his hand slapping his thigh. “And I thought you didn’t like me because of my personality.”
“I don’t know you, personally, that is,” I said evenly. “All I know is the matinee idol up there on the screen.”
“And that’s not me?”
“Do you believe it is?”
Again, the mesmerizing eyes, the purposely jutting chin, the graceful turn of the long rugged body in the Texas millionaire denim shirt. “There is someone called Rock Hudson, you know.”
“He’s an invention.”
He smiled broadly. “True, but I don’t remember the other person. That bumbling, frightened, wide-eyed lad from Winnetka, Illinois, named Roy Fitzgerald.”
“You like your success?”
“Of course.”
“Is that why we’re having lunch, so you can assure me that you’re happy in your celluloid world?”
A long silence, Rock playing with a fork. He put it down. “Jimmy Dean,” he said, finally.
“Magical words, no?”
“Not to me. I hear he’s seduced you into his fragile web.”
I laughed. “Good God, Rock, give me some credit.”
He held up his hand, palm out. “I don’t care about Jimmy, Miss Ferber. I care about this movie, and what he’s capable of doing to it. Sinking it. Giant is a milestone for me, a film that’s moving me one more step away from B-movie oblivion. That’s where I was three or four years ago. Jimmy’s playing fast and loose with his fame. I don’t. I’ve worked hard. I’ve bowed and scraped and played the game. I’ve totally embraced this invention-as you call it-called Rock Hudson until it’s cash at the bank.”
“You’ll still be a star.” My hand dramatically swept from his face down across the table.
“Not if the movie is killed.”
“No one is killing the movie. Not on my watch.”
Rock sat up, sucked in his breath. When he spoke his words were clipped, his face scarlet, his dark eyes piercing. “I think he’s a murderer. I do.”
“Rock, for heaven’s sake.”
“There’s something wrong with him. You know, Miss Ferber, in Texas we shared a house. He was a filthy pig, he was brazen, he was purposely rude and foul. Christ, he spit on the floor, he,” a pause, “did a lot worse things, I tell you. In Texas, working with George Stevens, we sensed-I sensed, Liz did, so did others-that here was our future. This movie would always say something about us. But Jimmy acted like it didn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters to him.”
He frowned. “He puts his private life out there. Everyone can talk about it, mangle it.”
“And you don’t?”
He looked alarmed. “Only I’m in control of my private life.” He drew his lips into a thin line. “That’s why it’s dangerous to get close to a guy like Jimmy.”
“You might be colored by the same brush?”
He hesitated. “Exactly.” Then he smiled. “No chance of that. He hates me. I hate him. If I have to talk to him, he refuses to answer me. A baby boy, a slaphappy puppy.”
“This doesn’t make him a murderer.”
“Miss Ferber, one thing I know that some folks around here don’t know is that it can all disappear in a flash.” He pointed around Jack Warner’s well-appointed room with the plush gray carpeting, the cascading draperies. “I fought my way here. I’m not gonna let it vanish. Warner has to play this murder his way.”
“What if Jimmy is innocent?”
That seemed to surprise him. “The Jimmy Deans of this world are always guilty of something.”
“Have you no sins?”
“Rock Hudson is an invention, as you said.” He grinned. “He’s been created without sin.”
“That’s not answering my question.”
He faltered. “I just want to do my job, Miss Ferber.”