“Oh, yeah, I saw her. But just to fuck her.”
Rita turned red.
“Excuse my French, angel face. But you’re a lawyer. I figured you heard it all before.”
The nurse brought our coffee, Frank poured about a gallon of cream in his, stirred, then added a healthy dose of sugar and stirred some more. Rita and I sipped ours black.
Francis Jerome remained quiet and took a sip of his coffee concoction. He set the cup down, raised his hand up and moved it slowly about, defining the dining room. “They call this room the Douglas Fairbanks Lounge. I made a picture with Doug late in his career. He was a worse drunk than I was. We called him the bad example.” He laughed. “As long as he stayed alive, nobody could point to me and say I drank too much, but then he died.”
He took another sip and stared straight ahead. “Anyway, that was long ago.”
“Can I ask you about Sue Harvey?” I said.
“It’s been years since anyone asked me about her. Sad, such a waste.” He bowed his head.
“You were married to her, weren’t you?”
He looked up; his eyes were tired and bleary. “If you want to call it that.”
Jerome had been engaged to Sue in 1945, the year Al Roberts’s story had been made into a movie. I figured I’d ask him about that. “Ever hear of a movie called Detour?”
A big grin surfaced Jerome’s face. “I don’t think any prints still exist, but it was the worst picture ever made. Some kind of docudrama.” He chuckled. “It mentioned Sue, so naturally we got our hands on a copy. It was a joke and totally inaccurate. We ate popcorn and at first we laughed. But…”
“But what?”
“All that stuff about Al Roberts.”
“What about Al Roberts?” I asked, pressing.
“Who’s Al Roberts?”
“The guy in the movie?”
“Oh, yeah. Sue got a little teary eyed. But what the hell, it was only a movie.”
“What about your marriage to Sue?” Rita asked, in a reverent tone.
“Oh, goddamn it. Everyone said the marriage wouldn’t last. Even Joanie told me to stay away from her. Told me she was trouble with a capital T. Imagine Joanie saying something like that.” He frowned and shook his head. “But anyway, MGM threatened to put me on suspension if I went through with it. That tough little bastard, Eddie Mannix, a honcho at the studio, and his boys even tried to scare me off.”
“But you still went through with the marriage?”
“I couldn’t help myself.” His eyes rolled. “Sue was so hot. Long blonde hair, tits out to here. My God, she exuded sex.”
“I saw her picture. She was very pretty,” I said, but Jerome didn’t hear me. He was back in his world.
“A few romps in the hay with a goddess cost me a lot of dough. When we broke up, I gave her the house on Doheny. But it was worth it.”
“You don’t happen to remember the phone number at the house, do you?” I asked.
He looked up at me, confused. “Huh?”
“Do you remember her phone number? Sue’s phone number?”
“It’s funny, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember the number: Crestview 6-5723.”
He paused a moment and fiddled with his scarf. “Why in the hell wouldn’t I remember it?” he shouted.
Rita wrote the number on her card, but I already knew it by heart. It was the other Beverly Hills phone number on my list that Sol had pointed out.
“What happened to Sue after you two split up?” Rita asked, quietly.
“I lost track of her for awhile, but I heard things. Bad things.” Jerome fell silent for a few seconds, then went on: “She fell on hard times. Lost the house and started a slow downhill slide, got in with a bad crowd, booze first; drugs followed, then prostitution. She’s dead now, you know.”
I let out a breath. Sue was dead. Christ, there goes another lead. But the odds hadn’t been on my side to begin with. The trip out here wasn’t a total waste, however. I had a name to match another phone number on my list. Still, what good would that do, now that Sue was dead? But, hey, the coffee was great and I learned a little about Joan Crawford and I almost met Mary Astor.
I was ready to leave, but Rita kept the conversation going. Maybe she liked the old guy. He was colorful. “Why’d your marriage break up?”
“My sweet little wife couldn’t stay away from her ex-boyfriend. The son-of-a-bitch. I think he eventually killed her.”
I perked up. What was he saying? Was he telling us that Roberts may have murdered Sue Harvey? He couldn’t have. “Alexander Roberts?” I asked.
“No, not that jerk. John Barr.”
“Who’s John Barr?”
“You never heard of John Barr?”
“Afraid not.”
“A lousy cowboy actor, that’s who he was, a real asshole with a short fuse. Strictly B-movies. Sue was shacking with him when I met her. One day shortly after the marriage, Barr and I got into it, a real slugfest. He was a lot younger and before the movies he’d been a professional prizefighter. He put me in the hospital. Made all the papers. Hedda wouldn’t let the story die; embarrassing. I was shooting a high-toned weeper at the time. MGM had to close down the set for almost two weeks while I recuperated. The guy never worked a day in Hollywood after that.”
“Where is John Barr now?” I asked.
“In San Quentin. He murdered his wife.”
CHAPTER 14
Sunday morning I rattled around inside the apartment doing nothing, really. Reading the Times, I came across an article about the Grateful Dead concert at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco. What’s the story with these guys, anyway? Their stuff isn’t worth a damn. I guess I’m stuck in the sixties, the greatest music decade-ever. I popped a Beatles tape in my stereo, listened for a while, then put in Otis Redding and played his hit single, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” a few times. I sat back and took a sip of coffee. Yeah, that’s cool. The guy had soul. Maybe he invented it. Sad-he died in a plane crash three days after recording the song.
I debated organizing my sock drawer, but instead turned on the TV. The L.A. Rams were hosting San Francisco. Should be a good game. It was a sellout, so the local station carried it live. I settled back with chips, dip, and a few cold cans of Coke and spent the next three hours watching the game. With their new quarterback, James Harris, the Rams beat the crap out of the 49ers. I’d grilled a couple of hot dogs during halftime and while I ate I talked to the chair, reflecting on my marriage.
In my past life, I had been known to take a drink on occasion-and everything was an occasion. I’d have a few in the morning to make it through the day, and a few during the day to get ready for the night, then at night… Yeah, I drank all the time and I drank a lot.
It started when I was patrol cop on the LAPD. Maybe it was the job, maybe it was me, or maybe I was just a drunk at heart. But anyway, I got hooked. Gin, vodka, cheap whisky, expensive French wines… I didn’t care; I’d guzzle it down, wipe my mouth and ask for more.
When it came to the bottle, my wife, and me-well, let’s just say not all stories have a happy ending.
Barbara and I had wed just out of high school and the marriage had been rocky from the start-too young, too many bills, and too little common sense, I guess. But the boozing was the worst of it. You can’t hold on to a marriage while hobbling around on eighty-six proof anesthetic crutches.
After she divorced me, my friends-the few that remained anyway-got on my case. One by one, they soon disappeared. Sol stuck by me, and he was relentless, determined to get me sober. He never gave up and he never let up. There were times when he came at me like a runaway freight train, screaming and threatening. Other times he’d just sit and talk calmly, sometimes for hours, using reason and logic. Not once did he put our friendship on the line and I loved him for that. One time, after a particularly ugly scene at Rocco’s, he threatened to take me out back to the parking lot and introduce me to someone I really didn’t want to meet. I didn’t remember how I got home that night. For all I know I crawled on my hands and knees.