South Alvarado shimmered, indifferent. Up and down the steep-sloped street, stucco storefronts and white-painted homes gleamed as if laundered overnight. Sitting on a low wall midway up the hill, Tom looked up as a bright-yellow trolley car approached, rumbling and squealing, clanging a warning as it braked on the incline, packed to standing with shoppers and office workers heading downtown. He turned back to his Los Angeles Times and the latest news on the Taylor murder. Compared with the bold headlines and shrieking speculation of the previous evening’s Herald, it was a model of reserve.
The story took up but half the front page, allowing for the possibility that some readers might be more interested in the failing arms talks between China and Japan, the conclave of cardinals electing a new Pope in Rome, or the latest news on Arbuckle’s retrial in San Francisco – the jury deadlocked, again. Even so, the main picture was of Mabel Normand, looking rapt and alluring in a studio publicity shot, swathed in off-the-shoulder furs and an enormous velvet hat, her glamour undercut by the melodramatic headline Linked in Sinister Drama of Mystery and a caption suggesting she had been questioned in connection with the murder.
Tom drank in the detail. Beside the picture of Normand was one of Taylor, a quarter the size, and a graphic photo-diagram reconstructing the murder: a crude sketch of the gunman and his flailing victim superimposed on a crisply focused photograph of Taylor’s front room. The gist was how Times investigators had dug up four witnesses who saw a stranger behaving suspiciously near Taylor’s home the evening of the murder – one even provided a detailed description of the man’s clothing. All very convincing, but nobody could doubt that what most readers would remember was the photo of Miss Normand.
He looked across the street at the fashionable residential block opposite. Alvarado Court. It was a five-minute stroll from the modest frame house he rented, but it could have been a million miles away. Eight elegant duplexes grouped around a pretty courtyard garden open to the street. Wrought-iron balconies added a slash of Spanish zest to the white walls and green tile roofs. A central flower bed eased the eye towards a vine-clad sun pavilion. Stillness enveloped everything. The place was built to exude peace, solidity and discreet wealth. It did the job well: not a sign remained of the outcry raised twenty-four hours before when Taylor’s murdered body was found by his manservant arriving for work.
A honk from a dusty black Ford pulling in across the street. Tom smiled as Thad Sullivan began to dismount awkwardly from under the tattered canopy, rear first, the machine groaning and listing on its springs, the footplate creaking under his weight. He walked over, hand outstretched in greeting, delighted to see his old partner again. It really had been too long.
‘Fine morning, Detective Sullivan,’ he said in his best brogue.
‘Ah, shur ’tis,’ was the even broader reply. It never failed to amaze Tom how decades in New York and four more years in Los Angeles had so little impact on Sullivan’s broad Kerry accent, even when he wasn’t kidding around.
Sullivan slammed the car door and crammed a hat over his graying hair. He cut an impressive figure. It wasn’t so much his height as the fact that he looked to be equally wide as well, and at the shoulders rather than round the belly. The huge frame was topped by a head so rock-like it could have been hewn from a cliff face. Back in the old days in New York, when they worked the Eighteenth together as patrolmen, he had seen men mistake Sullivan’s bulk and shambling manner for slowness or stupidity. It was an assumption they invariably came to regret.
‘Looking stylish as ever, I see.’
‘You always could spot a man of refinement,’ Sullivan laughed. His wife, Eleanor, never let him out of the house unless he was as spick and span as any man on a detective’s salary could be. ‘How’s it going, anyhow?’
‘OK, I guess. Business is a bit slow.’
‘Can’t be bad if you’re on to this already,’ Sullivan said. ‘What’s your line on it? Are you Lasky’s promise of unlimited resources?’
He pointed at the Times. Tom had read the front-page vow from Jesse Lasky, co-founder with Zukor of the studio, to subsidize the police investigation to ‘any extent that might hasten the capture of the assassin’. He had guessed that would not go down well with Los Angeles’ finest, implying that they weren’t up to the job. Still, the question took him by surprise. How could Sullivan think he was working for Lasky’s again?
‘C’mon, Thad. You know that’s never going to happen.’
‘So who’re you working for?’ Sullivan demanded. ‘Or am I not supposed to ask, now you’re a private inquiries man?’
‘You can ask,’ Tom laughed. ‘But you might be left hanging for an answer.’ It was awkward, and if Sullivan had pushed, Tom probably would have told him straight out about Sennett. But as it was, the detective gave him a crooked sort of glance and muttered something about knowing your pals. Tom didn’t catch it all, but saw a chance to change the subject.
‘The press boys got a run on you with these witnesses, didn’t they?’ he said, pointing to the Times again.
‘Get away, would’ya,’ Sullivan growled, taking the bait. ‘It was we gave ’em all that. “Investigators for the Times”, my arse. We took the statements from Mrs MacLean and her maid within hours of Taylor’s body being found. And the service station guy and the streetcar conductor came forward to us, not the blasted Times.’
It was always thus. Everyone stole the credit when the cops did well, and screamed blue murder when they didn’t. Tom followed Sullivan through the pretty courtyard garden until he stopped outside the last house in the corner on the left.
‘This is Taylor’s place,’ Sullivan said, searching his pockets for the key. Between this duplex and the one cater-cornered to it was a passage running out to some garages and the adjoining street. He followed Tom’s gaze down along it. ‘Reckon that’s where our killer waited his chance to get in – we found a mess of smoke butts under the jacaranda out back. Everything points to him leaving that way, too.’
‘Makes sense,’ Tom said, twisting round to look at the windows and balconies overlooking the gardens all the way round the courtyard. ‘Anyone out of place would’ve been spotted down here. It’s like a fishbowl.’
‘You said it,’ Sullivan agreed. ‘It’s mostly movies living here, and you know how picky they can be.’ It was one of Sullivan’s favorite gripes – the snootiness of movie folk. ‘Fancy people, right enough. Main witness is married to that actor fella, Douglas MacLean – you know him? And that other one – Edna Purviance – she lives next door along.’
‘Seriously? Purviance was here?’ That was a surprise. She was one of Charlie Chaplin’s leading ladies. Made a big splash just the year before in The Kid, his biggest hit to date. A name for reporters to get excited about.
‘I didn’t see that anywhere.’
‘One of the first on the scene,’ Sullivan confirmed. ‘But she kept her name out of it. Must have a good publicity man. Not that she saw anything. It was the MacLean woman got the goods on the killer. Lives right there.’
Sullivan pointed at the house on the adjacent corner, its entrance no more than fifteen feet from where they were standing. ‘She got a grandstand view as our man came out the door, right here, and walked round into the alley. Looked her straight in the eye, cool as you like.’
‘Guy must’ve had balls of brass,’ Tom said. ‘Why didn’t she call the cops? Surely she must’ve heard the shot?’
Sullivan shook his head. ‘You know how it is in a place like this. They don’t expect bad things to happen. The MacLeans’ maid said she heard a shot but Mrs Mac overruled her. Decided it was an auto backfiring and refused to hear any more of it – not even when this tough walked past a few minutes later. Wasn’t until Taylor’s man Peavey arrived in the morning she realized she’d been a helluva lot too polite.’
He grunted and unlocked the door. ‘Come on in, and mind where you walk.’