“No, I don’t.”
“What can you do?”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Another hesitation. “Check Max’s files. His letters.” She clicked her tongue. “His papers. I always joked that he kept a tell-all diary, but I don’t know. He did jot things down. Maybe…”
“I’ll call Alice.” I was ready to hang up.
“Call me, Edna. I’ll be at Metro all day. I’ll wait for your call.”
“I may want to see you there. Late today.”
“I’ll leave word at security.” The striking of another a match. Another intake of smoke. “Edna, be careful. Murder.” As I started to replace the receiver, I could hear her voice quivering. “Please be careful. This story already has an unhappy ending.”
When I told Alice what I wanted, she immediately invited me to her home. I didn’t mention my suspicions, and strangely she didn’t probe. “I can’t go into that room yet,” she confided. “I will eventually.” Then her voice dropped, melancholic. “It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Max that I want to remember.”
Sitting with Alice in her living room, I had no desire for pleasantries, though I nodded and smiled. Instead, my mind was riveted to that workroom behind the closed door. Ava’s words and my wide-awake suspicions. Max’s murderer was out there, cocky perhaps, confident, because the L.A. police had no substantial leads. Yesterday a back-page mention in the Times noted that the police were stymied. Neighbors spotted nothing unusual, and no one had come forward with information. Nothing. A blank page. I suspected the authorities were beginning to chalk the cruel murder up to a political killing, perhaps a random, maddened one, the embittered public rhetoric on Communism fueling some fringe fanatic’s dubious quest to purify America from unsavory elements. My mind sailed to America First, the group Desmond Peake belonged to-and Larry Calhoun.
Alice detected my edginess, so our socializing ended abruptly when she stood, pointed to the door of the workroom, and said, “Whatever you want, Edna. Please feel free.” She waved toward the door. “Max’s world.”
“Alice, did Max keep a diary?”
“Just a journal in which he jotted down things.” She smiled. “Ava always joked about Max’s secret diary, a treasure trove of inner sanctum gossip that Hedda Hopper would kill to get her hands on. He always laughed about it.”
“I suppose the police have gone through the room more than once?”
“Yes, three times, in fact, before they unsealed it. I know they leafed through the journal because one of them mentioned it. But what could they find? Business receipts, appointments, innocent stuff.”
“Did they take anything away?”
She shook her head. “A list of his clients. Addresses, phone numbers. Mainly former clients, of course.” A pause. “I never got it back.”
“Do you know who was interviewed?”
Again, she shook her head. “I mean, I guess they spoke to Frank Sinatra-because of that stupid threat. Ava told me that. I think Sophie Barnes because she worked for him. They talked to the folks at the Paradise. Harry the bartender. Ethan and Tony, I think. I’m not sure. Lorena, I know. Mainly because I was there that night. Checking in on me.” She shuddered and smiled sadly. “I’m still suspect number one, I suppose.”
“Do you believe Frank would kill Max?”
“Of course not. Frank threatens to kill someone any time he’s out drinking. It’s the way he is.” She paused. “Edna, Frank has never said a mean word to me. Not one. Even though Lenny and Tony and Ethan constantly badmouthed me.”
“A knight in shining armor?” Sarcasm in my tone.
She smiled. ”In some way, yes.”
She left me alone in the small, cluttered room that hadn’t been dusted since the murder. I’d walked into the room the last time I was at the bungalow, observing the clippings piled on the desk, the sloppy mess of scripts, the accordion files. Nothing had been moved. Max’s desk and chair and file cabinets still bore the faint patina of fingerprint residue. At first, daunted by the messy piles of papers, sagging cardboard boxes stacked in corners, accordion files bunched in heaps, I had no idea what to do. My cursory look-over last time had told me nothing, but that was idle curiosity. Now, focused, I tried to reason out my calculated moves. Had the police actually spent time sifting through all of this? I doubted that. A week’s work here, hours of drudgery. The death of a Commie might not warrant such fastidious attention by the sheriffs in town.
I sat at Max’s desk and stifled a sob as I touched the desk mat and his favorite fountain pen. Notoriously he’d always gnawed on the tip of the stem, a nervous habit I now found endearing. A desk calendar was filled with notations, deadlines, scribbles. I checked the dates listed. Another tug at my heart as I observed a dark line drawn through all the days of my visit, with nothing else scheduled. One word: “Edna.”
But I got busy. One drawer held nothing but receipts bound by elastic bands. Another held trade magazines, issues of the Hollywood Reporter and Variety; another was jam-packed with abandoned scripts and headshots. The desktop was cluttered with clippings relating to the blacklist, his most recent and passionate obsession. A few jottings in the margins, but mostly dotted with angry commentary: “Ridiculous!” “Impossible!” “C’mon now!” “Oh, really?”
I could hear Max intoning these fevered exclamations as he annotated the clippings. But no name was highlighted, other than those of his friends…and his own.
But I stopped looking through this pile because I believed, to the depth of my soul, that the blacklist, while playing a crucial role in this horrid murder, was tangential to finding the murderer.
In a file cabinet I located the manila folder containing a list of his clients, a carbon copy of what the police confiscated, but was startled to realize how few clients were active during his last year. An alphabetical stack of clients’ folders. I glanced at Sol Remnick’s file, which contained a headshot of the dead comic actor. An early photo. Sol onstage in New York, looking like the sad sack he played, though a younger version. Another in a minor role in some Hollywood movie, dressed as a businessman with briefcase-a debonair and fashionable gentleman. Sol the bit player in grade B movies.
Tony’s file had a notation that the sad comic had called to terminate his contract. Max had scribbled, “A fool.” Liz Grable’s termination was a day later. Max’s notation was bittersweet. “Tony got to her. Poor Liz, going off in every direction but the one she needs to find.” I liked that. I searched for Ethan’s file, but there was none. Of course, he was not an actor. There would be no headshot. His one script had been rejected by Max-and Hollywood. So brief a moment in entertainment that he didn’t warrant a manila folder.
Nothing was clicking-nothing. But inside his desk, in the center drawer, I located his journal. It was not a diary, true, despite Ava’s gentle teasing, but a thoughtful man’s random jottings on the course of his day, reminders of conversations, obligations, even some notations on the folks who trooped through his office. Small paragraphs about people whose names meant nothing now-this one stopped in, that one phoned, others demanded meetings. A multitude of anonymous souls, forgotten. Dead end comments: “Fired for the third time.” “Called to say hello…moving to Kansas.” “Hates the part.” On and on. Carelessly dated, with whole months slipping by before another dated entry. I stopped when I came upon a two-page summary of a talk he had with Sol about Frank Sinatra. I read comments about Ava, and, as expected, they glowed with the friendship.
There was also a paragraph about Liz and Tony, both sitting in that room with him, both berating him for his inattention to their piddling careers. Sad, wistful reflection, Max ruing the day he ever got involved with both of them. “Oh well,” he concluded, “you do a favor for someone and it can come back to give you pain. Or acid indigestion.” Echoes of Max’s soft humor.