“You decided on revenge. Kill Max, and somehow blame Alice who got away with murder one time but perhaps not a second. Leave the pistol on the hall table so that Alice, returning, might pick it up, thinking Max had been careless with his gun. A possibility. Relying on chance. Alice feared guns, and, unfortunately for you, gingerly picked it up with index finger and thumb so that the cops immediately had doubts about her as suspect. She was still, of course, a possible killer. Chance.”
“Alice did…” His voice trailed off.
“No, that plan failed. Lenny is gone, the brother revered and loved. A decision by you to avenge-cool, calm, collected. A deliberate man, waiting, waiting. Timing. Always timing, you said. And that night at the Paradise the stars came together. Alice is out of the house. You watched her having a drink and leaving for the movie with Lorena and me. Max, nursing his wounded jaw, at home alone.” I looked at Frank who was entranced by my voice, barely blinking. “It was a crime of opportunity.”
“Preposterous,” Ethan growled again.
I shook my head. “You left the bar, headed down the street to Max’s, a short drive, rang the bell, followed him back to his workroom on some pretext, and when Max sat down, you shot him in the head.”
Silence at the table, Tony breathing hard. Frank’s hand, I noticed, rested on Tony’s shoulder.
Ethan’s voice was thick with venom. “Ask Tony. Ask Harry the bartender. I never left. When you all stopped back for a nightcap, I was there, watching over a drunken Tony, our usual night at Paradise.”
“Not so,” I said, checking off one more point in my head. “One thing bothered me later that night. You spend a lot of time stopping Tony from drinking. I’d seen that before at Ava’s. Yes, that night Tony was morose, having lost his comedy spot. But you let him drink. You seemed to encourage it. All right, let Tony drown his sorrows this one night. You knew Tony would drink until he passed out, which he sometimes did, slumped there in the booth until closing when it was time to drive him back to Liz’s. That bothered me.”
“Ask Harry.”
“I don’t have to ask Harry anything. I talked to Sophie Barnes today. She recalled Tony slouching in the booth, crumpled in a corner, snoring. And you’d disappeared. She considered you’d gone into the kitchen or backroom, which you probably did. But she recalled that she glanced back as she stormed out-some fifteen or so minutes after she’d first looked-and only Tony was still in the booth.”
“You’re right. I run a bar. I was in back.”
“At one point Liz Grable came looking for Tony, walking in and spotting him drunk and passed out. She backed out, headed home. She’d had it with both of you. She told me this afternoon that Tony was by himself.”
“I told you…”
“But I pushed her and she remembered that your car wasn’t in the parking lot in its usual spot. She knew it because Tony doesn’t drive and relies on you-you always brought him home. On the nights when she met Tony there your car was in its usual spot, right of the back door. Well, that night it was gone. But she paid it no mind. After all, you weren’t inside with Tony. She wasn’t surprised to see Tony by himself. Disgusted with him, she went home.”
“I was…” He clammed up.
“Something else. When Larry Calhoun was handing you the papers for the sale at the Ambassador, he sniped that he’d chosen not to hand them over at the Paradise to a drunk. I wondered, by chance, if he’d stopped in that night and you weren’t there. Desmond Peake is putting in a call to him and…”
He held up a hand. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. “You got it all figured out, right?”
“Yes, I do. You slipped out and murdered Max. You could accomplish the deed in less than a half hour. Considerably less, in fact. It was a question of timing, Ethan. You’re right on the money. Timing in Hollywood is everything.”
Ethan was biting his lip like a frenzied chipmunk. He reached for the empty coffee cup and rattled it.
“Ava told me to look at the players and where they were situated. And that led me to you, Ethan.”
Ethan shot a fierce look at Frank. “Is that why you’re here, Frankie boy? To take me in? To play the tough guy one more time? To catch a murderer and hand him over? The boy from New Jersey who made it big slapping handcuffs on the boy who never got a chance? Is that it? High muck-a-muck Frank Sinatra. Boozy kingpin. Shoot-‘em-up crooner.” He raised his voice, shrill, metallic. “I didn’t come out here to pick up crumbs off your table. Lenny told me…it…it was all ours for the picking. I hoped they’d arrest you, Frank. Haul your ass off to prison. You, who threatened to kill him. Maybe Alice, but I thought…you. You or Alice-I didn’t care. Big shot. You and Ava, two drunks. Alice killed Lenny and what did you do? Nothing. She murdered him. You let it go because Ava told you to. Alice got away with murder. Murder! At that moment I knew what I had to do.”
“All right, stop,” Frank said slowly.
“I hated Max. He is everything Hollywood did to me that is rotten. He dashed my dreams-made light of my script. My blood was in there.”
“Oddly, Ethan, in this dreamland out here, where everyone makes up stories, you still couldn’t make anyone believe in you.”
He smiled. “And there was that Commie sipping cocktails with Frank and Ava. Like he was one of them. It was all perfect, really, so logical. The pieces of a puzzle coming together, piece by piece. Exquisite, mostly. The stars in alignment. For once…with me.”
Suddenly Ethan swung into me, a jack knife move, but Frank stood, moved behind me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. I could feel his touch, his fingers pushing into my flesh. A comforting move, and welcome. He simply stood there, not saying a word, as Ethan glared.
“Sure thing, Frankie boy. You know how you call everybody a bum? Well, you’re a bum.”
Frank measured his words. “I may be a bum, Ethan, done my share of rotten things, but I also know that Max didn’t deserve to die.” He lifted one of his hands while the other still rested on my shoulder. “Sometimes you gotta do the right thing. Right, Edna?”
“Yes.”
Frank pointed at Ethan, a bony finger aimed at his chest. Ethan stiffened and wrapped his arms around his chest. “Edna’s a smart cookie, wouldn’t you say?”
Ethan spat out his words. “I would have gotten away with it if she’d stayed in New York where she belongs.”
Frank’s hand grazed my cheek affectionately. “Hey, welcome to Hollywood.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ava and Frank smiled into the camera at the premiere of Show Boat. I folded my copy of yesterday’s Los Angeles Times so that I could stare at the two lovers at the gala event at the splashy Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Two days ago, July 17. The day before that event I’d sat with Frank in the commissary at Metro. Three days ago. Two days ago. Both lifetimes in the past. Worlds far from me as I sat in the first-class compartment of the American Airlines plane, headed back to New York.
Tonight Show Boat would premiere in Manhattan, though I’d not be there. I’d be in my bed with a tray of food, catching up on mail and friends.
Hollywood was history. The past is over.
Frank Sinatra told me that one night, but it turned out he didn’t really believe it either.
Three days ago, the beginning of that long afternoon as Frank signaled to security to step in, then two police officers appearing, though Ethan, sitting there with his lips drawn into a straight line, his eyes filled with hatred, refused to move. Spine rigid, hands gripping the edge of the table, he demanded to be left alone, ordering the cops around in a fierce and chilling voice. He had to be lifted from the table bodily, his fingers pried off the edge; and even then, held in the air like an errant, spoiled child, his knees still bent and his fingertips curled, he set his face into a stony mask. He said nothing as the cops hauled him away, his body catatonic. He didn’t look back when Tony plaintively called out his name.