Girl Reporter

Leaving work that night, Hop called Jerry at the Examiner to see if he’d meet him for a quick nip. After some mutual job griping, Hop feigned casual:

“Hey, Jer, remember, oh, fuck, over a year ago, closer to two, that story about that missing starlet? The one whose handbag they found in Griffith Park?”

“You’re kidding, right? Of course I remember. Spangler, Jean. We covered it for a week. Thought it might be Daughter of Black Dahlia. But those stories come once in a newsman’s life, right? That’s what the managing editor told me. We were sure they’d find her body, hopefully split in two. Or maybe split in four, raise the stakes a little,” Jerry said, in full-blown burnt-out city editor mode. He curled his hand around his chin and looked wearily at his friend.

“But they never did. Find the body,” Hop said.

“Nope. My guess is one of those defrocked docs downtown putted her—probably accidentally—and buried her in one of those old caves.” He lit his cigarette, then tilted his head, as if reflecting. “If we hadn’t had those delectable eight-by-ten studio glossies to stretch across the front page, I don’t think we’d have given it day two.”

Hop almost smiled before realizing he wasn’t meant to. Jerry shook

his glass, as if trying to knock loose a few last drops.

“You know,” Hop said. “I met her once.”

“Did you now, Hoppy boy?” Jerry took a long, thoughtful drag on

his cigarette. “Were you the poppa?”

“I said I met her.” He grabbed one of Jerry’s cigarettes. “Didn’t say I met her.”

“Knowing you, you can see where I’d get confused,” Jerry said, with a flicker of a smile. “So why the sudden interest?”

“No interest. Someone came to see me. The girl who introduced

me to her.”

“Yeah?”

“She seemed a little scared. Even now.”

“Well, I remember there were rumors that Jeannie with the Dark Brown Hair—that’s what they wanted to call her if we’d gone another week with the story—was bed hopping with a couple of toughs, Mickey Cohen’s boys, so I’m not surprised she’s scared.”

“But you never thought it was a mob deal? Her disappearance.”

“Could be. Is that what this girl thought?”

“I don’t know. Who … Do you remember the reporter who worked

the story for you?”

“Jim Mackie. You know him?”

“Sure, I think I met him— “

“But didn’t meet him, eh?” Hop grinned. “Gentlemen never tell, Jerry. You know that.” Jerry winked at him and Hop felt, suddenly and simultaneous with

the first flush of the gin, the reassuring warmth of his oldest friend, dearest pal, cracking a sad-eyed smile. He resisted the urge to shove him, press his fist encouragingly into his friend’s arm.

“So how’s my wife, handsome?” he said instead.

“Hell on wheels, Hop,” Jerry replied, not batting an eye. “You

oughta know.”

Hop cocked his head and nodded.

“After all,” Jerry continued, “she learned it all from you.” Taking a

quick belt, he added, with a glimmer in his eye, “But, when she feels like it, so nice to come home to.”

“Really?” Hop said, then added, with a shrug, “I don’t remember that.”

After Jerry left, Hop took a seat in a phone booth. Gotta get to the bottom of this. Why speculate? Not the kind of thing to let fester. He called Central Casting. They had a number for Iolene Harper and the exchange was Lincoln Heights. He dialed.

“I’m trying to reach Iolene.”

“She ain’t here,” a man’s voice said.

“When’s she due back?”

“Man, she ain’t coming back.”

Hop felt something unstick inside his chest.

“What do you mean? Where’d she go?”

“Where they all go,” he said, and then laughed without a hint of

mirth. It was either sad or cruel. Hop couldn’t tell.

“What does that mean?”

The man sighed and it sounded like a far-off whistle. “Look, pal,

she’s gone. Long gone, know what I’m saying?”

“But I just saw her.” Hop was surprised at the strange pitch in his own voice. Suddenly, things felt more urgent.

“She was here yesterday. She’s gone today, greenhorn. Guess you lost your chance.”

Hop felt his throat go dry. What did he mean “lost your chance”?

Did this man know who he was? He hadn’t said, had he?

“Who is this, anyway?” Hop asked.

The man laughed again, even more hollowly. Abruptly, Hop could half see, as if right before his eyes, the dark room, the browned bottle of Old Crow, the pulled shades and open dresser drawers. The sinking aftermath of a hasty exit. A man in a chair with a pint or two of bourbon in him. A man seeing everything shattered in a stroke.

“Buddy,” he said, voice blurred. “You had your chance.”

The click in Hop’s ear felt like it came from his own gut. What had just happened? And what did it have to do with him?

Running over to a post-premiere party at the Ambassador that night, shuttling around high-strung actresses, each with the same shade of Forever Amber No. 2 rinse and the same Dior dress, and dragging the male lead from the back kitchen, where he was giving a starry ingenue her first taste of cocaine, Hop was all smiles and shiny hair and sweet nothings. But everywhere he turned, he half expected to see Iolene standing there, eyes low-lidded, sexy, filled with disgust. It was you, Hop. Never miss a chance to climb, you knew what a little palm greasing would get you, didn’t you? You showed them what you were made of, pulling curtain after curtain across that night, across Jean Spangler, until no one could see a thing. A magician without the ta-da. And magicians never reveal their secrets.

The next morning, Hop woke up with Iolene’s voice strumming through his head, accusing him, beseeching him, trying to hook him into her fear, her guilt, that weight in her eyes. If she’d left town, why? What was she so afraid of? What could the danger be now? And could it touch him somehow?

Hop called the Examiner office, trying to get Jim Mackie on the phone.

“He’s not here. Try the courthouse or Moran’s or the precinct house or …”

He finally found Jim Mackie at the Pantry on Figueroa and Ninth, reading the Mirror while shoving a plate of waffles into his mouth.

“Is this where you hide out to read the competition?”

“Fucking Hop of the World. As I live and breathe. Didn’t think you’d darken the doorstep of this joint again. Don’t you slum exclusively at Romanoff’s these days?”

“You got some syrup on your chin, Mack. And neck.”

“Fucking purple shirt you’re wearing.”

“Lilac, chump.”

“Pardon moi, motherfucker.”

“I’m not here just to flirt, Mack,” Hop said, sitting down at the counter next to him. “Can you help me out? You chased the Jean Spangler story back in ‘49, am I right?”

“Spangler… Spangler…” He took a long gulp of coffee with cream. “Call girl? No, the actress who took a dive out a window at the Biltmore?”

“No, no. The one they never found. Just her purse strap and a note in Griffith Park.”

“Fuck me, I remember. The one with the ten-foot-long gams. Ogul’s girl.”

“Ogul?” Hop remembered the name. Little Davy, they called him. A hood in Mickey Cohen’s crew. One of his so-called Seven Dwarves.

“Yep. Right before he took a one-way ticket to oblivion. He was going up on conspiracy charges and beat town or beat the devil not long after Spangler evaporated.”

“That so?” Hop rubbed his face with his hand. What was he getting himself into? Cohen may have just been sent up the river for tax evasion, but did Hop really want to go fishing in those waters?

“That be so, my friend.”

“Did you follow the Kirk trail? You know, the ‘Dear Kirk’ note they found in her purse?”

“Yeah. Because it was a sexy angle, I spent a lot of time trying to wade through the moat around Kirk Douglas. He was in Palm Springs at the time, though, so as bad as he lied about knowing her,

he couldn’t lie his way into becoming a real suspect.”

“You think mangled abortion?”

“It sure seemed the straightest line, Hoppy. And it’s one the cops

shrugged their way into.”

“But you don’t buy it.”

“I don’t have to buy it,” he said, wiping a slick of syrup from his

chin. “It’s been bought, sold, and put into storage.”

“You got pushed off the story.”

“Not in so many words,” he said, waving his fork. “There were just

other stories with more gas.”

“If you’d had two more days to run with it, where would you have gone?”

“To the Little New Yorker or Sherry’s to talk to a couple of Cohen’s

boys. But I doubt it would have gotten me anywhere.”

“Why?”

“They were all lying low because of Davy Ogul’s vanishing act. Spangler had dallied with Ogul, or so said those in the know. But they’d parted ways a while back. I couldn’t find out much more, since both parties were conveniently dropped off the face of the earth.”

“Some coincidence, Ogul getting invisible the same week, eh?”

“According to my PD sources, the last true-blue sighting of Spangler wasn’t by her cousin when Spangler left the house. Later that night, she was eyeballed at a restaurant—I think the Cheesebox —with some goons.”

“Yeah?” Hop said, trying to recall all the jazzed-up tips he’d passed to reporters and even a few cops. He was pretty sure this might be one of his own fictions being rolled back out to him. Fuck, Hop, you really make your own trouble.

“So she’s no longer a possible victim of some snazzy sex criminal. Instead she becomes, well, you see it, a two-bit mob whore.”

“And a much less interesting case to the press, who have plenty of richer Cohen ore to mine?”

“Something like that. And you know, this was when there was some bad blood brewing at the old LAPD. But I didn’t stay for the dance. The bosses tossed me over to cover the Cohen crew shakeup. Gave Stanger—”

“Spangler.”

“—Spangler to the girl.”

“The girl?”

“The girl. Frannie Adair.”

Twenty minutes later in the Examiner city room, Hop straightened his tie.

“Tell me, Miss Adair, what’s it like being the only lady in the pen?

She had been easy for Hop to spot, the sole pair of heels and the only ass worth a glance in the sweeping room full of sweat-stained, unshaven ginks. Frannie Adair, all ginger curls and round cheeks, like three months off the farm, until she spoke. Twitching her freckled nose, she shot back at him, “What’s it like going over to enemy lines, turning stooge for the plastic factory?”

“It has its advantages,” Hop said, rolling with it. This girl didn’t look like she suffered fools.

“Likewise,” she said, nodding and angling her head toward the smoky newsroom. “These boys don’t tip their hats and there’s the occasional pinch in the elevator, but I haven’t bought my own beer yet. And you?”

“Likewise. Only they do tip their hats to me.”

“I’ll bet,” she said pointedly. “I hear you’ve done more

whitewashing than Tom Sawyer.”

“If I was that good, you wouldn’t know about it, would you?”

“Well,” she said, eyes narrowing, “it’s just a rumor, but we’d all like to know how you pulled off that Simmons deal. One night, Mr. Wild West himself punches a cop in the jaw, resisting arrest—we hear—for getting caught with a needle full of horse in his neck, the next thing: the Herald-Express, our near-and-dear sister paper, runs a story about how Mr. Busted-Jaw Cop is no hero. In fact, he sent his wife to the emergency room the week before, beaten so raw they had to slide her nose back into the middle of her face.”

Pausing, she poked her pen on Hop’s lapel before adding, “Then, a day later, charges against Wild West Simmons go puff.”

Hop tried not to smile. “I know the story you’re talking about, but only thirdhand. I hear it was all an honest mix-up.”

“I’ m sure.”

Truth was, it had been a combination of hustle and luck. He hadn’t been sure the cop’s wife was lying (although he was pretty sure she was). Why should that stop him from passing along the story to a salivating reporter? It wasn’t his job to find out who was telling the truth. He knew what his job was.

“So it turned out the cop’s wife had an ax to grind?” Hop shrugged. “That reporter should’ve checked his facts before condemning the guy. I’m sure you would have.”

“You got that right, Mr. Hopkins,” she said, capping her pen. “I don’t fall so easy. Not even if you batted those long lashes at me all day long.”

He took her for a bowl of chop suey at a small place around the corner. She smoked while she ate, digging for stringy pork. They sat on adjacent stools at the counter—”So I don’t have to look into those big blue eyes of yours,” she’d said.

“Spangler. Yeah, I had the story for about a week,” she said, then lifted her eyes from her food and crooked her head toward Hop. ‘You must know more about it than me. She was with your studio, right?”

“I wasn’t working for them then.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. What do you want from me? What could I tell you that you couldn’t read in the papers?”

Hop pushed his food away and rested his elbows on the counter, turning his head toward her.

“Nothing. Maybe. I don’t know.” He was trying to be careful. To strike a balance. He wanted to find out if there were any leftover threads dangling from the case without pulling a few new ones loose in the process. He said, “A friend of mine who knew the girl came to see me. She was a little shook up.”

“Why? That was almost two years ago.” She was getting more interested. He could tell by the way she lowered her fork from full

keel.

“I don’t know. She left before I could find out.”

“So go ask her. Telephone her.”

“She’s left. No forwarding number.”

“Close friend, eh?” She wiped her lips with her napkin. “So why do

you care?”

Hop tried to decide if this Adair girl was attractive or not. He thought so when he first spotted her in the newsroom, breasts like

hard little peaches against her tailored suit. Big cow eyes and a firm mouth. Legs that worked coming and going.

But something in the way she spoke seemed like each word she uttered sent out a hundred-yard stretch between them. Or like she was behind a pane of glass. And not in a way that made him want to rap on it, asking for admittance.

“The point is,” he said, resting his finger on the edge of her sleeve, “I can’t seem to puzzle out what got her so shook up. I figure if I find that out, maybe I can help her.” This wasn’t all true, but it was true enough. Maybe. Hop couldn’t untangle his motives. There was something about covering his own tracks—tracks he thought he’d long ago covered. And sure, there was something else. Something about Iolene’s accusations. And something, too, about the coltish fear in her eyes and the idea that maybe he—the fixer—could make it disappear.

Frannie shook off his finger and speared herself a water chestnut. “Mr. Hopkins, I’d like to help—well, no, actually, I don’t care. But I couldn’t help even if I did. Read my stories. That’s all I know.”

Something in the way she returned so intently to her congealed chop suey, which was among the worst he’d ever tasted, made him more sure of her interest. She had something. He wondered what it could be and how you’d get something like that out of a girl like that.

“How would I get something out of a girl like you,” he said, taking a chance on the honest approach. “And note: I’m not batting my eyelashes.”

She grinned, exposing a chipped tooth. Somehow, the sight of it stirred Hop and a few dozen yards fell away.

“Let me think on some things, Mr. Hopkins.” She set her fork down and grabbed for her purse, the grin slowly giving way to concentration. Slowly.

“Call me Hop.”

“I can’t call a grown man Hop.”

“That’s right.”

At the end of a long afternoon at the studio spent mostly trying to coax a fresh-faced, teenage star out of marrying a Mexican mariachi musician she’d met in Tijuana, Hop drove out to Lincoln Heights to find the address Central Casting had given him for Iolene.

As he got closer, he realized he’d been in this area before, back in his short stint working for Jerry at the Examiner when he first came to town. He’d covered a story about a gambling shop above a Salvation Army. Bettors were strolling in, having some coffee, listening to a little of the gospel, then slipping upstairs to lay down some green on the Cardinals over the Sox in five.

He’d sized up Iolene for classier digs. In fact, he had a vague memory of her saying she shared a small apartment with a girlfriend in one of the sparkling pink and gray high-rises of Westwood. “The manager thinks I’m her maid, but I’m not particular,” Iolene had said with a shrug.

This particular strip of road was a big step down. And when Hop began to get closer, he felt kind of lousy for her. Sure, a Negro girl, no matter how finely turned-out or how talented, was never going to be the next Ava Gardner, but Iolene had always worked steady in the past, small parts singing in supper clubs, dancing in large revues.

When he reached the right number, he saw it was a house, small, with a sagging overhang and split into apartments. One set of windows was covered over with sun-rippled newspapers. An overflowing, rusted metal trash can teetered on the lean strip of brown lawn.

Hop, feeling conspicuous in his pressed linen suit and his lemon-yellow pocket square, dashed up the walk as quickly as possible. A directory, just a faded index card taped beside the door, revealed no clue as to which apartment Iolene lived in, if she lived there at all. Her name didn’t appear.

Hop paused a moment before trying the door, which wobbled open. There were two apartments on either side and an old pine staircase leading to the second floor.

“What the hell,” Hop decided out loud before rapping on the door marked no. 1.

No answer.

He turned instead to no. 2, from which he could hear a faint thrum of bop. He’d barely completed a brisk knock when the door flew open and a petite colored woman in a red wrap stood before him.

“Honey, I, honest, don’t know where he dusted. He could be clearway to Chicago with those stones for all I’ve been made aware,” she said, shaking her head.

Hop stared at her. Had everyone in this building skipped town? “What stones?”

The woman curled her mouth in thought. “You ain’t the fella from Treasury.”

Hop tried a smile. “No, ma’am. Another white guy.”

She laughed, tugging her wrap closer to her chest, hand still on the door. “You ain’t so white.”

“Well, then help a brother out,” he said with a grin. “I’m looking for an old friend, Iolene. She still live here?”

“Oh, you her daddy?” She smirked, shaking her head. “No Iolene here, boy. Another colored chick.”

“Are you sure? Lived with a man. I talked to him on the phone.”

“So why didn’t you ask him where your girl went?” Her eyes slanted, just perceptibly. ‘You sure you ain’t law?”

“So sure it hurts,” Hop said, as lightly as he could. “We worked together, sort of.”

She paused a minute, locking eyes with him. Then, “A man, Barber, lives in number four upstairs. He had a woman here now and again. Name of Louise.”

“Pretty, about so high, light skin?”

She nodded, tilting her head knowingly. “That the way you like’em, Mr. High Yella?”

Hop skipped over her question. He wanted to be sure Louise and Iolene were one and the same. “With a really distinctive voice, low and soft?”

“Oh, man, what you take me for, Arthur Godfrey? Yeah, Louise sang,” she sighed, as if deciding. Then, “At a joint on Adams near Jefferson Park. King Cole is the name.”

Hop felt a ripple of relief. Not a complete dead end. He looked back at the woman, leaning on the door frame. “What’s your name?”

She smirked. “Just call me Gorgeous,” she said, beginning to shut the door.

“Thanks, Gorgeous.” Hop quickly pulled out a five-spot. “You’re swell…”

Smirk sliding away, she tucked her fingers around the bill and the door swung shut.