“And you’ve seen Clara and Bugsy Siegel together, in both those places?”
“Yes, I have. I’ve seen Clara at Bugsy’s table at the Trocadero at least three or four times, and just a couple of weeks ago she was sitting in his box during the Santa Anita Derby.”
“Did they seem like they were together?” I asked. “I mean, were they kissing or holding hands or anything like that?”
“Well, Bugsy Siegel is married, so I don’t know if he’d be so brash at an event as public as the derby,” Hedda said. “Though maybe he would. God knows those gangsters have a dozen mistresses each and no shame whatsoever.”
“But you didn’t actually see them being romantic.”
“No,” Hedda said. “Still, I think the implication is clear. Bugsy doesn’t keep pretty girls around for the scintillating conversation.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bugsy is some big-time gangster. So what’s he doing in Hollywood?”
“Same thing his type does everywhere they go,” Hedda said. “Gambling, prostitution, protection rackets.”
“He’s part of the Italian mafia?”
“No.” Hedda shook her head impatiently at my ignorance. “He’s in the Jewish Mob.”
Though the restaurant was near empty and there was no one within twenty feet of us—our waiter having disappeared back into the kitchen—still Hedda leaned forward across the table and lowered her voice to make sure we weren’t overheard.
“Bugsy Siegel and his partner Meyer Lansky are part of the National Crime Syndicate. Here in California, Bugsy works under Jack Dragna—he’s the head honcho in LA—and Bugsy’s main lieutenant is Mickey Cohen. He’s also backed by Lucky Luciano, who’s currently in prison in New York, but is still pulling the strings same as ever.”
I nodded slowly, trying to keep all this straight.
“What you have to understand,” Hedda said, exhaling slowly, “is that these guys have their fingers in pies all over Los Angeles. All these trendy nightclubs and restaurants are partially owned by them, or pay money to them. Like the Trocadero, for instance. It used to be owned by Wilkerson, who also owns my main rival paper, The Hollywood Reporter. Wilkerson sold the Troc two years ago to Nola Hahn, who also owns casinos in Glendale, which are operated by the mob. Then the Troc got passed to Felix Young, another gambler who’s connected to Schulberg, a movie producer who used to work for Paramount. So you see, it’s all intertwined, they’re all in bed with each other.”
I got the sense that Hedda was giving me these generalities because she didn’t want to reveal the specifics of how this pertained to Clara.
“So what’s the real connection with Clara and Bugsy Siegel?” I pressed. “What makes you think he’d want to kill her?”
Hedda paused, unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of an interrogation.
“Well,” she said, flicking the ash off her cigarette. “It’s just a theory really. Nothing I would put in print without evidence.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said doggedly.
“Have you heard of Thelma Todd? ‘The Ice Cream Blonde’?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. Thelma Todd was an actress, part of a female comedy duo similar to Clara and Lillie.
“Well, she died four years ago. She was found in her garage, killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. The police said it could have been because she was locked out of her house by her lover Roland West, that she was just trying to keep warm. Or they thought she might have done it on purpose. Suicide.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Well, if you read my article I wrote at the time, there was a lot more to it. First off, she was found with a broken nose. The police said she might have fallen forward when she passed out in the car, but my sources say there wasn’t any blood in the car. Second, why would Roland West lock her out at all? She was always staying out late, that was nothing new for him to pitch a fit about. But here’s the real kicker—Thelma owned Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe. Have you seen it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s in the Pacific Palisades. From what I hear, Lucky Luciano wanted to put a casino upstairs of the cafe. Luciano and Thelma Todd used to go around together, before she started seeing West. But Thelma didn’t want the mob running a casino out of her cafe, because the business was her baby, and she wanted to keep it for herself, free and clear. So she turned him down flat.
“Next thing you know, she’s dead in her car, no suicide note, and an autopsy report that says ‘no marks of violence upon the body’ even though the cops that found her told me there were bruises all over her arms, besides that broken nose.
“And to cap it all off, she was at the Trocadero that night, before she died. So Luciano and any of his little stooges in the joint would have seen exactly when she left.”
Hedda leaned back, trying to read the persuasiveness of her theory on my face.
“So that’s what makes you think Bugsy Siegel might have killed Clara,” I said slowly. “The similarities in the cases—two actresses killed after running afoul of two gangsters that knew each other.”
“Yeah. And the fact that they were both at the Trocadero the night before their deaths.”
“They were?” I said in surprise. I hadn’t heard that yet. “Clara was at the Trocadero the night before she was killed?”
“The whole cast was,” Hedda said. “It was a birthday party for one of the crew.”
“Was Bugsy Siegel there too?” I asked.
“He sure was,” Hedda said. “Sitting right at his usual table.”
“Huh,” I said, also leaning back against the high padded back of the booth. Now I felt a little more convinced. But what would be the motive? Clara hadn’t owned a restaurant like Thelma Todd. Could Bugsy have been upset because Clara broke up with him?
“Now that’s my primary theory about the murder,” Hedda said. “But I do have an alternate idea of who the father might be.”
“You do?” I asked.
“I noticed somebody else chatting to Clara at the birthday party. Her co-star.”
“Clark Gable?”
“That’s right. They looked plenty friendly.”
“He’s married to Carole Lombard.”
“That never stopped him before. You know he married Carole the same month his divorce came through from Rhea Langham.”
“They seem happy, though,” I said, remembering how Gable and Lombard had held hands all through Clara’s funeral service.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Gable impregnated some young starlet.”
“What do you mean?”
“You really don’t read my column,” Hedda said, grinning toothily. “You should. Five years ago he knocked up Loretta Young while they were filming The Call of the Wild. Loretta was only twenty-two at the time. She disappeared for a few months to have the baby, then hid it in an orphanage. Eighteen months later, she pretended to adopt it. They call the baby Judy Lewis, since Loretta married Tom Lewis in the meantime, but anybody who’s seen the ape ears on the kid’s head knows that it belongs to Gable.”