“You’re not against me looking into it a little, are you, Frank?”
He flinched, as if I’d raised a hand to strike him. “No. Not in the least. Oh, those tapes and notes you mentioned?”
“Yes?”
“No sign of anything.”
He showed me the top right-hand desk drawer that she kept locked — using a key from her center drawer to open it (not the greatest security) — and revealed it as empty. Had the Ruby tape been in there? If so, someone knew about the handy key, because the drawer showed no jimmy marks.
“Now,” he said, “she might have hidden them away in one of her filing cabinets — there’s a separate room for those, ten four-drawer files. It would take hours to go through them.”
“Would you mind if I did that?”
“Could it wait till after the services?”
“No,” I said. “I need this done as soon as possible. I’ll make a call and have a man or two join me, from our Manhattan branch. In the meantime, if you’ll show me to the file cabinets, I’d like to get started.”
“Well, then, uh... I guess it’ll be all right. There’s family coming in, as you might imagine, and... but all right. Those tapes are Flo’s legacy of sorts, and if you find them, that will be a good thing.”
“If they are here,” I said, “everyone in the house will be better off having them removed.”
The puffy reddish face went blank with thought. Then he said, “Look — if you do find the tapes and notes, promise you won’t give them to that kid Revell. He’d write his own book. When the time comes, maybe you can give that material to Flo’s friend Bennett Cerf, and he can assign some real writer to it.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
But the two A-1 agents and I did not find the Dallas tapes or notes. The cabinets were brimming with publicity releases and 8-by-10’s, as well as clippings of Flo’s columns carefully arranged by month and year, and coverage by other journalists of her own celebrity. It was not dull — “Hey, Mr. Heller... take a look at this Marilyn shot! Miss Cheesecake 1951!” — but it was also not fruitful.
One small piece of luck came my way when I got back to the Regency around eight P.M. The red-vested bartender in the hotel’s chichi red-and-brown basement piano bar had been on duty Sunday night when Flo stopped in for that after-TV-show drink. She’d seemed cheery and “maybe a little high,” he said, and had joined a nice-looking younger man in a dark-corner banquette (her regular spot), drinking gin and tonic, staying around till almost two A.M.
“Did you recognize this younger man?”
Bald, bulky, the bartender in his forty or so years had seen it all. “The gentleman had been in here before with Miss Kilgore, yes.”
“Was he a hotel guest? Did he sign the tab to his room?”
“Miss Kilgore was paying, sir.”
I made my way through the layers of subdued lighting and drifting cigarette smoke to a Negro piano player in a tux, noodling Cole Porter with a nice jazzy edge. He’d also been there Sunday night. Had Flo met a date at the club? Of course, man! Real lady like Miss Kilgore wouldn’t come listen to me play by herself. Was Miss Kilgore’s date a regular? Couldn’t say, man, couldn’t say.
Apparently all ofays looked alike.
Soon I was sitting in Flo’s favorite booth with a nice-looking younger man of my own. He wore a collarless black suit with a gray button-down shirt, no tie — apparently he was in mourning, too — and his black hair was Afro-style, though this was apparently a perm, since he was white. Hell, he was pale. A slender five ten, he had the finely carved features of a male fashion model.
“I appreciate you coming up here to talk to me, Mr. Rusk,” I said.
“Julian, please,” the hairdresser said, with an English accent that might have been real. “And do you prefer Nate or Nathan?”
“Either is fine,” I said. “Something to drink?”
He liked that idea, and I waved a waitress over. He ordered a gin and tonic (“In honor of my late and very much lamented client”), and I had a vodka gimlet. On the phone, he’d known immediately who I was — familiar with my minor celebrity courtesy of magazines and tabloids, and aware that I was a good friend of Flo’s.
Despite the possibly faked English accent, there was nothing effeminate about him — he was as masculine as Rock Hudson. But it was clear he was gay — something undeniably flirtatious flickered in his manner.
His eyes, which were a dark green, flashed and he smiled just a little. “Are you looking into her murder? I hope.”
“Murder? My understanding is the coroner leans more toward accidental death.”
“He didn’t find the body, did he?” Rusk sipped his drink. “I could have told you my story on the phone, couldn’t I? But you wanted to talk to me in person. Why? So you could look at me when I answered your questions. To what end? So you can size me up as a witness, or possibly a suspect.”
I laughed just a little. “So far you’re just answering your own questions.”
“Touché. All right — do you want to grill me, or should I just tell my tale?”
“Go ahead and start. I’ll jump in as need be.”
He sighed grandly. “Well, I let myself in around eight forty-five that morning. Came up the same back staircase used by the servants.”
“You had a key?”
“Yes. Not many did, but I fixed Flo’s hair on a more-or-less daily basis. Not always so early, mind you — she had a television taping at eleven. Her dressing room is on the third floor, near that hideous Black Room, off the master bedroom — that’s where she always had her hair done. I turned on my curling irons, and just idly walked into the bedroom, never thinking for a moment she would be there.”
“Why? She shared it with her husband, didn’t she?”
“Oh, she hadn’t slept there for years, Nathan. They slept apart, Frank and Flo — don’t let their breakfast broadcasts fool you.” He shook his head. “I knew she was dead, right away.”
“Just with a glance?”
“That’s all it took. She was sitting up in bed, propped up with a pillow against the red headboard. The bed was spotless, as if she’d slipped under the covers and never moved an inch. She was dressed... very peculiarly.”
“Be specific, Julian, please.”
“All right. Well, normally she’d sleep in pajamas and old socks and her makeup would be off and her hair would be washed and just a mess, waiting for my rescue.”
“I see.”
“But she was dressed almost as if she were going out — hair in place, makeup on right down to her false eyelashes. She was in a blue matching peignoir and robe — nothing she would ever wear to bed.”
“She was reading.”
“Was she? That book, Seven Days in May? She read that months ago. She discussed it with me! And it was laid on her lap so perfectly, so you could read the title... only that was upside down — not in the right position for her to be reading it.”
“Julian, that’s a nice piece of deduction.”
“Thank you, Nathan. You know, it was cold out that morning — we had a real cold snap. But the air-conditioning in the bedroom was on. Why?”
“If it was murder, perhaps to delay decomposition. Make the time of death harder to determine.”
“Well, I guess you put my little deduction to shame, didn’t you, Nathan? Let’s see... is there anything else? The light was on, the overhead light, that is, not the nightstand. There was a water glass at her bedside, and a pill bottle, and her latest drink... but she was positioned in the very middle of that big bed and couldn’t have reached either of them.”