The Last Embrace (37 page)

From below came shouts, and words she couldn’t make out as uniformed men crashed through the underbrush. Lights played over the hillside, the beams illuminating Rhodes and his injured stepson. The security chief had no way of knowing how far away his pursuers were.

“Stop right there or we’ll shoot the girl,” Rhodes shouted into the night. “There are three of us and we’re all armed. And after we kill her, we’ll pick you sorry bastards off one by one as you come over the hill.”

Lily wanted to yell down that it wasn’t true, but knew her voice would tell Rhodes exactly where to aim. The RKO security chief waited, gun at the ready. Stanley pressed his hands against his belly, trying to stanch the flow of blood, his hands sticky with it.

There were more shouted commands from below. The cops continued their ascent. “I’ll give you till the count of three,” Rhodes shouted. “One…two…”

The crashing sounds stopped. Lily heard Pico’s voice, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Don’t hurt her,” he shouted up. “We’re doing what you asked. But I want to hear her voice. Lily, are you all right?”

Just then they heard movement to the right and a lumbering shape appeared. Lily recognized Magruder, creeping along, trying to get close enough for a shot. Rhodes saw him too. He aimed and fired.

From the shadows came a scream, then something crashing down.

“Magruder,” came Pico’s anguished cry, then a string of curses.

“I warned you that we’re armed,” Rhodes screamed. “Try that again and the girl dies.”

Pico’s voice, heavy with desperation, floated up. “You’ll never get away with it. Every prowl car for miles is on its way up here.”

“Call them off,” Rhodes said. “Go back to your car and radio them that the suspect has fled up Pacific Coast Highway. Do it, or I swear to you, I’ll kill the girl.”

No, Stephen, don’t do it!
thought Lily.
You’re my only hope. If you retreat now, I’m finished. He’ll run me to ground like a fox. But if I call out, he’ll know where I’m hiding and I’ll die all the faster.

Breathing shallowly, Lily looked around for a weapon. Spotting a rock the size of a grapefruit, she picked it up. Then, knowing she’d only get one chance, she aimed and heaved it at Rhodes’s head. It flew through the air and hit his temple. Rhodes fell backward. Lily saw the glint of metal as the gun fell from his hand. She sprinted for it, scooping it up, finding the trigger, and spinning around, hands clasped and extended like she’d been taught, aiming right for the security chief’s chest.

“Freeze,” she screamed. But Rhodes wasn’t moving. Next to him, Stanley moaned as blood soaked through his shirt and seeped into the ground.

Lily swallowed.

From below she heard a shout.

“What’s going on?” came Pico’s voice, bouncing up the canyon. “I swear to God, if she’s…”

“I’m fine, Pico,” Lily called, keeping her eyes on the fallen men. “You can come rescue me now.”

“Hold on,” Pico bellowed. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

One side of Lily’s mouth twitched. Just then Frank Rhodes braced his arms against the ground and she thought he might try to rise.

“Stay down,” she ordered. “Or I shoot you in the thigh. And maybe I miss by a couple inches, know what I mean? Everyone knows girls can’t shoot straight.”

Rhodes’s mouth twisted. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he slurred.

“But you were too vain and sure of yourself. Playing God. You’re about to get the justice you deserve, Rhodes. I’m just sorry it comes too late for Kitty Hayden and those other girls.”

“What was she to you, anyway?”

“You might say she was the only family I had left.”

Lily heard a commotion just below the sign. Pico’s head popped up, then the rest of him, gun drawn. He gaped.

“Well, I’ll be damned, Lily. I guess you didn’t need me after all.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Stephen,” Lily said. “I need you very much. Now will you get over here so I can put down this gun? My wrist’s starting to ache.”

October 19, 1949

I
t was dawn by the time she finished recounting everything that had happened. Frank Rhodes and his stepson were in the medical ward of the county jail, under arrest for murder. Their cohort, Louie, was dead of a broken neck from his fall.

After a long series of interviews, the last remaining pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place.

“So Magruder wasn’t in league with Rhodes after all?” Lily asked Pico, feeling numb as they sipped coffee in the hallway of the LAPD headquarters.

Pico looked solemn. “He was dirty, and that’s going to come out, but he wasn’t a murderer. He proved it last night. He died trying to rescue you.”

“Then he didn’t kill Bernard Keck?”

“No. Rhodes’s thugs did. That stepson of his is a real piece of work. Turns out he has a rap sheet as long as your arm and five aliases. Narcotics, petty theft. Assault with a deadly weapon.”

“I thought Magruder dropped you off at the Farmers Market so he could go back and kill Keck.”

“He wanted me out of the way so he could go to Paramount and get more autographed photos for his kid. That’s what was in the manila envelope in his briefcase.”

“Then why’d he hide it?”

Pico shrugged. “Maybe he was embarrassed. A grown man…But he loved that kid. Left quite a nest egg for his nursing care.”

“So how
did
Rhodes find out about Keck?” Lily persisted.

Pico wouldn’t meet her eyes. “My father,” he said at last. “Kitty had threatened to go to the DA if the LAPD kept stalling. Then one day Hollywood Division gets a call from Bernard Keck asking all sorts of questions. My father went right to Rhodes. Apparently dear old Dad’s been on the payroll at various studios for years. I knew some of it but had no idea how deep it went.”

She touched his cheek. “What will happen to him?”

“His pension’s suspended and they’ve launched an investigation. I don’t think they’ll be able to sweep it under the rug this time.”

“What about you?”

“I’m on leave until they sort everything out.”

“I’m very sorry, Stephen. But you’re not like your father. You have nothing to fear.”

Lily’s brain moved backward, unwinding the tape of memory. Suddenly she clutched Pico’s hand, hoping beyond hope.

“Max?” she said.

Pico’s jaw twitched. He shook his head. “Gone.”

A series of images came to her—Max, his face aglow as he described the werewolf movie he wanted to make. Leaning against a wall in his studio, explaining the magic of stop-motion animation. The purity of his convictions and the ferocity of his rage as he brought the terrarium down on the producer’s head. His howling-mad unrequited love for Kitty.

“Did Rhodes kill him too?”

“We’re looking into it. He denies it.”

“And what about Mrs. Potter and Beverly?”

“They’re gone. Cleared out, left your roommates high and dry. Turns out they were only leasing that place. They owe the owner six months’ back rent.”

“They’re blackmailers. They sold information about Kitty to Frank Rhodes.”

“They ever come back, the police will want to bring them in for a long talk. And there’s a reporter who keeps showing up saying you two are old friends from Berlin and she wants to see you. Violet McCree. My buddies have been chasing her away.”

“Keep doing it, please.”

Lily looked out the window. She was grateful to have survived, when so many others hadn’t. And to be here with this man, who stood awkwardly before her. Outside, another flawless California day was under way. It still felt strange to see the blue sky, the red tile roofs, and the tropical foliage. And yet this landscape was imprinted on her psyche. It was the New World. The land of limitless possibility and expansion. Of shucking off the past like last year’s frock, of reinvention and second chances. And then something clicked and Lily realized that it was where she belonged. It was home.

She turned to Pico and her smile grew more somber. “What about Kirk Armstrong?”

“He issued a statement through the studio saying he’s very sorry about everything that happened, but he wants to make it clear he had nothing to do with any of it and reiterated that he only knew Kitty Hayden casually from the studio.”

“Beverly played me a tape of Kitty admitting the affair and naming Kirk as the father.”

Pico looked at her. “But where’s the proof?” he said. “And it’s bizarre, but I heard the editor of
Confidential
talking on the radio this morning and he didn’t even mention Kirk Armstrong. I guess Violet’s too busy with the Rhett Taylor scandal.”

Lily thought about how both Armstrong and Taylor were signed to Warner Brothers. Again, she saw Violet McCree hurrying alongside the rooming house. With the photo of Kitty and Kirk that Mrs. Potter had sold her? She recalled Vile Violet taunting Rhett about how the studio had hung him out to dry.

“I think Jack Warner cut a deal with that
Confidential
reporter to hand over Rhett Taylor if she killed the Kirk story. Oh God, I wish none of it had ever happened.”

“Then I never would have met you.” Pico leaned in, and his face loomed closer. She saw those lips, the tawny skin, the long, straight nose that had so captivated her, it seemed like ages ago. She lifted her chin toward him and felt her jaw throb where Rhodes had hit her with the pistol butt.

“Be still,” he said, his mouth inches from hers.

And then they heard a voice.

“Whaddaya mean, we can’t come in? I’m a staff photographer with the
Mirror
and Gadge here has known her for ages. Why, we’re practically family.”

And then Harry Jack stomped into the police station, awkwardly holding a bunch of flowers.

“Lily,” he said, the delighted look on his face fading as he saw Pico. “I’m so glad to see you.”

He paused, wiped something from his eye. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

October 29, 1949

L
ily and Pico were walking out the door with her belongings, moving them to her new apartment, when a pretty girl with a fresh, scrubbed face walked up to the Wilcox Boardinghouse for Young Ladies.

She carried a battered brown suitcase in one hand and a
Daily Variety
with an advertisement circled in red in the other.

“Howdy and good day to you,” she said. “My name is Ruby Ann Packard and I have just arrived from Montgomery, Alabama. I understand that there is a room to let at your fine establishment.”

Lily pushed her hair out of her face. “Pardon me?” she said.

“I’ve come out here to be an actress. I’ve had major parts in seven theatrical productions back home and I was voted ‘most likely to succeed’ in our high school yearbook. So I sure hope that room is still available.”

She handed the newspaper ad to Lily, who took it and read:

“Might you be Mrs. Potter?” the girl asked politely.

“Why, no,” Lily said, startled. “She’s gone away.”

“But this is the place where they’re letting the room, isn’t it?”

Lily examined Ruby Ann Packard’s hopeful face.

For the briefest second, she hesitated.

Then she smiled.

“Come in, Ruby. There’s a room that’s just become available.”

T
hanks to Cecilia Rasmussen, who writes the delightful
L.A. Times
“Then and Now” column, where I first learned about Jean Spangler’s short and tragic life.

Ray Harryhausen, the master, generously shared his recollections about working in Hollywood and the techniques he pioneered in stop-motion animation.

Several books shed light on the era:
From the Land Beyond Time: The Films of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen
by Jeff Rovin and
Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life
by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton. Also helpful was the DVD of the 1949 movie
Mighty Joe Young,
especially the audio commentary and the interview “featurette.”

Stephen Chiodo kindly showed my boys and I exactly how stop motion works, patiently answered my endless questions, and vetted a key scene. Any mistakes that remain are solely mine.

Librarian Carolyn Cisneros at the American Film Institute Library got me started researching behind-the-scenes Hollywood.

Laura June Kenny’s memoir
Fleeing the Fates of the Little Rascals
gave me insight into early Hollywood. Steve Stevens and Craig Lockwood’s book
King of the Sunset Strip
provided firsthand accounts of life inside Mickey Cohen’s circle. Autobiographies by Cohen and Hollywood journalist Florabel Muir brought the era to life, though I diverged from history as needed to suit my creative purposes.

Writer gals Kerry Madden, Lienna Silver, Heather Dundas, Ellen Slezak, Diane Arieff, and Diana Wagman offered coffee and comments, and Donna Rifkind read the novel in manuscript and made it better.

Marissa Roth provided friendship and walks. Co-
madre
Julia Spencer-Fleming inspired me on the road and off.

Thanks to Anne Borchardt and to everyone at Scribner and Pocket, especially Maggie Crawford, Susan Moldow, Louise Burke, Katherine Monaghan, Kathleen Rizzo, and Dave Cole.

Hurray for librarians everywhere, those wonderfully sly, subversive supporters of literacy who are the unsung heroes of American letters today.

And last, thanks to my family, David, Adrian, and Alexander, who had to live with me while I wrote this book. Watching
Joe
through the fresh eyes of my children brought home the timeless magic and wizardry of this art, which gave me a new respect for what Harryhausen and his mentor, Willis O’Brien, created so many years ago.