Beverly Hills Dead

51

Tom Terry sat in his car across the street from Hank Harmon’s apartment house and watched a passel of photographers and reporters mill around. The shades were drawn on Harmon’s windows upstairs, and there was no sign of life.

Then Tom saw a prewar Chevrolet convertible, with the top up, edge out of the parking lot behind the building, driven by a woman. He wasn’t sure it was Harmon, but he was going to find out.

The Chevy turned up the hill, away from Sunset and the photographers, and accelerated. Tom started his car and followed, staying well back. The car made a couple of turns, then headed back toward Sunset. Tom made a note of the plate number and followed. The convertible turned up Coldwater Canyon and began climbing the mountain. As it crested the ridge at the top, it pulled over, and the top went down. Hank Harmon was at the wheel, and she seemed to believe that she had gotten away from her pursuers. She started down the other side of the mountain and into the San Fernando Valley.

Tom followed her for another twenty minutes, until she turned into a residential neighborhood and then into a driveway. He stopped down the block and watched her get out of the car, take a couple of suitcases from the trunk, ring the doorbell, then go inside. Tom made a note of the address.

He made a U-turn and, back on the main road, found a phone booth. He called the city desk of the newspaper that had run the Hopper piece about Harmon and, without giving his name, gave the man who answered the make, model and license plate number of Harmon’s car and the address of the house she had run to, then he got back into his car and drove back to L.A. As he came over the mountain he passed the car of a photographer he knew, going the other way. His work was done, for now.

He had another date, though. He drove to the bar where he had first met with Hal Schmidt of Milwaukee, went inside, took a booth and ordered a drink. Schmidt was ten minutes late. He slid into the booth, and Tom signaled the waiter for one more drink.

“How you been, Hal? Settling into L.A.?”

“I’ve been well, thanks, Tom, and I’m enjoying the city. The quality of the women is a definite improvement over Milwaukee.”

“I can believe that. You want some dinner?”

“Sure.”

Tom picked up the menus along the wall and handed Schmidt one. They ordered dinner and another drink.

“I guess you’re wondering why I called,” Schmidt said, looking pleased with himself.

“Yeah, I am,” Tom replied.

“I’ve got something for you on those party membership cards your boss received.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I guess you know my boss at the union is a party member.”

“I figured. He’s also chummy with the mob, you know.”

“Yeah, I’ve met Mickey Cohen in the office.”

“Seems like he’s working both sides of the street,” Tom said.

“The party is not above dealing with anybody it finds useful,” Schmidt replied.

“You want to be careful with Cohen,” Tom said. “He’s easy to get chummy with but hard to shake, and he can play rough.”

“That’s good advice I already gave myself,” Schmidt said. “As I was saying, the party will deal with anybody it can use. I made a call to Milwaukee, to a guy I used to know who ran the local office, until recently. A few weeks ago, he heard from a guy at the union named Murray Fox. Now Murray used to live in Milwaukee, too, back when Louise and I were seeing each other, and he knew about my signing her up for the party. He asked my buddy to photostat her party card and send it to him.”

“Aha,” Tom said. “Progress. Did he give it to somebody at Centurion?”

“Hang on; I’m not finished. About three months ago, the party sent Murray to New York for some special indoctrination. They do that from time to time. He was based in the local office there, and he would have had access to the membership files. Now, I don’t know for a fact that he was the one who copied the other guy’s card, but he’s a very good bet.”

“Okay. Let’s assume he got hold of both Louise’s and the other guy’s cards. Who did he give them to?”

“Hang onto your hat, Tom.”

“Come on, Hal; the suspense is killing me.”

“He gave them to Leo Goldman.”

Tom sat back and shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all, Hal. We both know that Goldman is playing for the other team. How would he even know this Murray Fox?”

“He doesn’t know him; Murray just mailed the two photostats to Goldman.”

“This still doesn’t make any sense, Hal.”

“It does if you know how the party works, and you obviously don’t.”

“God knows, that’s true.”

“I already told you the party would use anybody to further its ends, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, for some reason not known to me or, probably, to Murray either, the party wanted it known that Louise and your other guy... what’s his name?”

“Sidney Brooks.”

“Yeah, Sidney Brooks, the writer. For some reason, the party wanted it known that these two people are party members.”

“But why would they want that? You’d think they’d protect their members.”

“This was around the time when the subpoenas went out, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I guess it was.”

“Well, try this for a scenario: the party knows HUAC is investigating Hollywood, and they don’t necessarily view that as a bad thing. Maybe they want it known that prominent members of the Hollywood community are Communists or fellow travelers, because it makes the party look good for the public to know that well-known Americans in a glamorous field see things the party’s way.”

“Boy, if I was a Communist Party official, that’s not how I would run things. Don’t they have any interest in protecting their members?”

“Not necessarily. You remember how the hearings went, right?”

“Yeah. A whole bunch of people got cited for contempt of Congress and are going to go to prison, unless the Supreme Court saves them.”

“Right. Now the reason that happened is because the two party lawyers advising the twenty or so people who got subpoenaed, told them to use the First Amendment as a defense. If they had told them to use the Fifth Amendment, instead, they wouldn’t be facing prison, because taking the Fifth can’t be construed as contempt.”

“So, you’re telling me that the party wants a bunch of its most prominent members to go to prison?”

“Yeah, and to get blacklisted, too. What’s better publicity than a martyr? I’ll tell you: ten martyrs. If they’d taken the Fifth at the hearings, it would all be over. Okay, maybe they would have been blacklisted anyway, but they wouldn’t go to jail and become martyrs.”

“So why did they pick Leo Goldman to send the party cards to?”

“My guess is they did the same thing at other studios, too; maybe all of them. Leo is just the noisiest anti-Communist at Centurion.”

“Hal,” Tom said, calling for the check, “I owe you one.”

Driving home, Tom’s excitement turned to anxiety. How was he going to tell Rick Barron that the guy he had just promoted to a big job was the guy who sent him his wife’s Communist Party membership card? Certainly, if he did that and word got back to Leo, he’d make an enemy of Leo Goldman. And, Tom reflected, in this town, word always got back.