The Marble Orchard, page 1
part #2 of Black Mask Boys Series
William F. Nolan
The Marble Orchard
***
Mystery fiction's legendary trio, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Erle Stanley Gardner, are back as amateur detectives, following their dynamic, critically acclaimed debut in The Black Mask Murders. Here they interact in a complex, colorful, and ultimately dangerous adventure, a richly textured thriller that also celebrates the joys of love and marriage between Chandler and his exceptional wife, Cissy.
As narrated by Chandler, the adventure begins in East Los Angeles with the discovery of what is apparently the ritual suicide of Cissy's former husband in a Chinese cemetery. Action moves swiftly from the coastal splendors of the Hearst castle, to the abandoned canals of Venice by the Sea, to an ornate hotel on Coronado Island, to the rococo Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill.
The characters are equally diverse: a mysterious screen star known to millions as the Vampire Queen, a concert pianist who discovers surprising romance, an ex-stage actor with a penchant for using his fists, a missing sister who prefers to stay missing, and a pair of muscle-bound punks who don't balk at kidnapping and murder.
Along the way readers will encounter such fascinating real-life personalities as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, America's cinema sweetheart Shirley Temple, comic genius Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and a brash young Orson Welles.
Once again, William F. Nolan expertly evokes the surreal world of Southern California in the 1930s, when Hollywood provided golden dreams for a nation in economic crisis, as the all-time masters of crime fiction return in a bold, inventive new novel that will stun, shock, and delight.
***
From Kirkus Reviews
A thousand dollars is a lot of 1936 dollars, and even though Raymond Chandler's never walked the mean streets he writes about, he's happy to take the money from self-styled "Countess" Carmilla Blastok (Ce Letty Knibbs of Newark) to find her missing sister Elina-especially since he'd like to quiz Elina about the death of her rumored lover, pianist/composer Julian Pascal. The LAPD thinks Julian's death in a Chinese cemetery was a clear case of ritual suicide, but Julian's ex-wife, Cissy, who left him for Chandler years ago, is sure it was murder. With some help from Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner, his buddies from Black Mask (The Black Mask Murders, 1994), Chandler goes after Elina's lowlife companion Merv Enright-and walks right into a mulligan stew of fact and fiction, with many scenes he's evidently planning to hoard for his own later novels. Despite clunky cameos by Orson Welles, Hedda Hopper, Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst, and Shirley Temple, the shaggy story moves along briskly, with detection-on-the-fly very typical of Chandler's own work, and inaccurate social prophecies ("Maybe Los Angeles will someday even lead the way in race relations," muses one character) that mark a nice change from the usual 20/20 hindsight of most historical mysteries. It's not just because of his subject that prolific Nolan may well represent the last of the pulp tradition. Black Mask fans will be waiting eagerly for his Erle Stanley Gardner installment.
***
From Booklist
The Black Mask boys are back, and that's a cause for celebration. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner, introduced as detectives in Nolan's Black Mask Murders (1994), track down the murderer of Chandler's wife's first husband, Julian, who has apparently committed ritual suicide in a Chinese cemetery. Cissy Chandler, not buying the suicide story, puts her husband on the case. Chandler follows Julian's trail to horror-movie actress Carmilla Blastok, who leads the writerly sleuth to a thug named Enright, who may have killed Carmilla's sister. When Chandler gets in over his head, he calls his Black Mask cronies for help. Along the way, Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst, and Orson Welles also make cameo appearances. Nolan has obviously researched the Hollywood of the 1930s thoroughly; his backgrounds are always convincing, even when you don't believe the foreground for a minute. Entertaining for nostalgia buffs.
***
From Library Journal
Nolan's Black Mask Boys-Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner-undertake their second amateur investigation. The apparent suicide of Cissy Chandler's former husband entails visits to East L.A., Hearst Castle, and Venice-by-the-Sea. Various famous people make appearances. Especially good for fans of 1930s historical fiction.
***
"Masterfully penetrates the surreal Black Mask world of Southern California in the 1930s. Nolan has captured the essence of both an era and a literary form in one brilliant exercise."
-Robert R. Parker
***
DEDICATION
This one is for
JOE GORES
Friend, Fellow Detectivist, and the Father of Fictional Hammetts.
Thanks, Joe!
EPIGRAPH
When I finally croak, and they plant me in the marble orchard with all the other stiffs, just make sure my tombstone says: "He was one tough monkey."
-ascribed to Al Capone, circa 1930s
ONE
Murder has always fascinated me. What impels one human being to take the life of another? What was the killer's state of mind at the time of the murder? Exactly how was the murder committed? In what circumstances and under what conditions? What was the motive? Was it a crime of passion or was it planned in advance with calculated malice? What clues have emerged during the investigation? If the killer's identity is unknown then will he, or she, ever be brought to justice?
Take last year's case of screen comedienne Thelma Todd. On the morning of December 16, 1935, her body was discovered slumped behind the wheel of her Lincoln Phaeton convertible in a closed garage above the ocean highway on Posetano Road. A sample of her blood revealed a saturation level of seventy percent carbon monoxide, and when she was found that morning the garage still reeked of engine fumes. The homicide dicks dubbed it a suicide-despite the fact that Todd's body bore the marks of a savage beating. Her blonde hair was streaked with blood, her nose was broken, and she had two cracked ribs.
Reading about the case in the Times last December didn't surprise me. The police were being well paid to ignore the truth about Todd's death. It wasn't suicide, it was murder.
A few people on the inside suspected Thelma's ex-husband, Pat DiCicco. He was known to have a violent temper, and had used his fists on Thelma more than once during the course of their brief, combative marriage. Also, he was the last person she was seen with on the night of her death. He wasn't satisfied with his end of the divorce; he wanted a share in Thelma's place, The Sidewalk Cafe.
But I didn't buy DiCicco as the killer. It was obvious to me that the man behind Todd's death was gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who'd been into Thelma's pants for the past two years. She was a fast stepper (the press called her "Hot Toddy") and had always been attracted to lowlifes. Luciano is as low as they come. His West Coast "business interests" include prostitution, gambling, and drugs-and his attempt to cut himself a large slice of the Hollywood pie is well known within the industry.
Things had gone sour between Lucky and his hot-blooded lady love. Luciano tried to hook her on drugs to soften her up for a proposition. He wanted to lease the third floor of her cafe as a gambling casino. She had refused. Nothing he could say would change her mind.
Thelma was no sap. She knew that Lucky was not a man to say "no" to-not if you valued your health. But she figured he loved her enough to accept her decision. She figured wrong.
To me, the scenario was clear. Lucky has some tough lads working for him: "Icepick Lou" Stresh from Baltimore, "Kid Lobo" from El Paso, "Southpaw Willie" Grimes out of Georgia, and Chicago's pride and joy, Eddie Lasher, who's big enough to earn his nickname, "The Gorilla." "I like to squeeze 'em," he says, and the crushed windpipes of his victims attest to his unsavory preference. Any one of these boys could have taken care of little Thelma, and it was my guess one of them did.
Lucky left L.A. right after the "suicide." Figured it wouldn't be smart to stick around town. It was now mid-April, four months since Todd's death, and spring in Southern California, but that cold Pacific fog continued to roll in every morning before the sun had a whack at it, and I kept the fur collar of my Burberry topcoat turned up to ease the chill. It was just after dawn and the sky was still a sullen gray.
I was standing on the pavement directly in front of the two-car garage where Thelma's body had been found, at the juncture of Posetano Road and Stretto Way in the Palisades. This was an affluent area, with large, sprawling, Spanish-style houses dotting the hillsides at staggered intervals. Banker-doctor-lawyer country.
The garage was padlocked. Its two brass-studded wooden doors were separated by a cement post, and there was a small apartment above it, also Spanish-style, with a terra-cotta tile roof.
A thick swirl of milk-white fog obscured the brush-and weed-covered hillside above me. Below, at beach level, the ocean was sending in its usual heavy artillery; the faint boom of incoming surf against shoreline rocks was muted, part of another world. Up here, at the death site, I felt isolated, cut off from civilized society.
I was absorbing the atmosphere of murder. I was standing where Thelma's killer had stood after he'd closed the garage door on this savagely beaten woman. Did he experience any small degree of guilt or remorse? Did he regret his actions, even slightly? No, not him. This boy was a pro, and he probably enjoyed pulling off his little chore for the boss. Punching out a dumb jane, then dumping her into the Lincoln and starting the engine. Listening to that sweet purr of deadly exhaust.
I shivered, and not just from the fog; this kind of calculated murder was chilling to think about. Huddled into my coat, I walked along Posetano Road for approximately a thousand feet, to the damp row of cement steps leading down to Thelma's Sidewalk Cafe, two hundred and seventy of them, flanked by iron handrails as cold as a pimp's soul.
As part of their "investigation," the cops claimed that Todd had climbed these steps during the night to reach her car. Yet the maid who found her, Mae Whitehead, was on record as saying that Thelma was wearing a new pair of party shoes. If she had climbed those rough cement steps the soles would have been badly scuffed. According to Whitehead, they were pristine. No, Thelma Todd had been beaten and carried to the garage; she sure as hell hadn't walked there.
What if I'd been on Posetano on that particular December night instead of home in bed with Cissy? Could I have stopped Lucky's muscle man? Could I have saved this woman's life?
Probably not. I would have needed a gun, and I don't use guns. Dash Hammett might have been able to do something. He owns a .38 Police Positive, but he doesn't carry it unless he has a reason. I chuckled; Gardner could have used his bow and arrow on the guy-but then again you don't do much hunting at night on Posetano Road.
When I got back into my Duesenberg and drove down to the highway an orange glow filled the eastern edge of the sky. This trip to the murder site had inspired me. I was sure I could find a way to put Todd's case into a novelette for Joe Shaw. Every real-life murder is grist for a writer's creative mill. That's how we work. From a cold garage above the Pacific to the pulp pages of Black Mask.
Sorry about that, Thelma.
***
When I walked into our rented house in Culver City, my wife was seated on the living room sofa in a quilted pink satin robe, perusing Shakespeare. She looked up from the book, smiling.
"I was reading Hamlet again," she said. "The dead have so much to tell us, Raymio, yet cannot."
"The speech from the ghost of Hamlet's father… Is that what you're talking about?"
"Yes." She looked down at her book. "Where he says, 'I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres…' "
"I can think of a ghost or two I'd like to interview."
"Why are people afraid of them? I'd be delighted to meet one."
I smiled at her. Her face was lightly rouged but the paleness of her porcelain skin shone through the makeup, betraying her frailty. Cissy's mind had always been much stronger than her body, although she'd been quite striking in her youth. Several noted artists had painted her, and we kept an oil portrait of Cissy at twenty, bare-shouldered and regal, framed above the mantel. In the painting, her skin has an inner radiance, a glowing translucence like the finest bone china. To me, that beauty had never faded.
"The phone's been ringing," she told me. "I just wasn't up to answering it. I so dislike talking to salespeople."
"It might have been important."
"If it was, they'll phone back." She sighed. "Seems that someone is always trying to sell us life insurance."
"That's the Depression," I said. "People can't find any other job, so they begin calling other people, working on commission for some insurance company, trying to sell enough to eke out a living."
"I'm glad you don't have to do anything like that, Raymio."
I shook my head. "God knows I don't make a living from writing. If it wasn't for our oil stock-"
"Oh, don't let's talk about money." She stood up, hugging the book of plays to her chest. "Shakespeare was such a resourceful man. I'm sure he would have done well in the Depression."
"Sure. He could have written soap commercials."
"Please don't answer me with a wisecrack, darling." She walked over to kiss me lightly on the cheek. "I'm going to lie down for a while. I feel a bit weakish."
I nodded. Cissy spent a great part of each day lying down. The comfortable darkness of our bedroom seemed to satisfy a need in her. She was like a rare hothouse flower that can't be exposed to raw sunlight. When we go out together, for an occasional dinner or concert, it's nearly always at night. She prefers a life in shadow.
This is fine with me, since I'm very grateful to have her. She is my companion, my counselor, my great love. We care for one another deeply and completely, and that's everything. I can't imagine life without her.
As Cissy walked from the room she left behind the faint scent of jasmine. Her favorite perfume. For more than twenty years now the scent of jasmine has always reminded me of Cissy.
I sat down in the burgundy leather armchair in front of the chessboard and picked up a knight. The ivory chesspiece was cool against my fingers. I wondered anew how Cissy could put up with me.
In many ways, I'm a neurotic character. Freud would shake his head over me. Yet almost every writer I've known is neurotic. Writing is not an emotionally healthy occupation. This is particularly true if one writes pulp fiction. At least, that's what Cissy believes. She's waiting for me to write a "socially significant" novel. About my childhood or my life in England. Or about my years in the oil business. I promise her that I'll get around to it, but we both know I probably won't. I happen to take a perverse pleasure in writing about blondes and guns and gangsters, although, as Cissy keeps telling me, it's a creative dead end.
I hope she's wrong. When I finally get around to novels I'd like to do something special with crime fiction, maybe move it up a notch or two toward that rarified area known as "literature." Hammett says he felt the same way once, and that he tried with The Maltese Falcon and almost brought it off with The Glass Key, but failed. He says it can't be done, and that's why he gave up crime novels. He calls The Thin Man "the last of the damn things."
In my opinion, he gave up too soon. His best stuff held the promise of greatness, but he never made that final artistic jump over the line. He says he's working on another novel, with no crime or murder in it, a novel that will win him the kind of critical acclaim he never got as a crime writer. But where are the pages? I think he's kidding himself. He should never have turned his back on what he did best. I think I have a chance to prove the literary potential of crime fiction, but I still have a lot to learn before I try my first novel.
I've thought a lot about what should go into it. It will be about crime, most certainly, and about a man of honor who combats it, a private detective much like the ones I've been writing about for Black Mask. I'll probably call him Mallory. Suggesting knighthood and honor. Or maybe that's too damn obvious. I'm a hopeless romantic at heart; I have to keep reining myself back or I'll gallop off into pathos and sentimentality. At least Hammett was never sentimental. That was one of his strengths.
The phone rang and I picked up the receiver. "Yes?"
"Is this the residence of Raymond Chandler?" The voice was male, hard-edged.
"Yes, I'm Chandler."
"I need to talk to your wife."
"She's not available right now," I said. "Who are you and what do you want?"
"My name's Harker. I'm a lieutenant with Central Homicide. We need to have Mrs. Chandler come down to the morgue to identify a body. Apparently, the gent knew her."
"A dead man?"
"He was the last time I had a gander at him," said Harker. When I didn't respond he cleared his throat uneasily, aware that his cop's humor wasn't playing. "Could you put Mrs. Chandler on the phone?" It was more of an order than a request.
"I told you, my wife is not available. She's resting." I hesitated. "Whose body is it?"
"Wallet identification lists him as Julian Pascal. Had a letter in his pocket addressed to your wife… thanking her for a music book she sent him for his birthday."
