The girl went back to playing with her Kleenex. I sensed a jaded little brain considering all the angles, all the possible outs. Finally she sighed, “Call me Lorna. If I’m going back to Iowa I should get used to it.”
Millard smiled; Harry Sears lit a cigarette and poised his pen over his steno pad. My blood pressure zoomed to the tune of “No Madeleine, no Madeleine, no Madeleine.”
Russ said, “Lorna, are you ready to talk to us?”
The former Linda Martin said, “Shoot.”
Millard asked, “When and where did you meet Betty Short?”
Lorna mussed up her Kleenex strips. “Last fall, at this career girl’s place on Cherokee.”
“1842 North Cherokee?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you became friends?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Say yes or no please, Lorna.”
“Yes, we became friends.”
“What did you do together?”
Lorna bit at her cuticles. “We talked girl talk, we made casting rounds, we bummed drinks and dinner at bars–”
I interrupted: “What kind of bars?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean nice places? Dives? Servicemen’s hangouts?”
“Oh. Just places in Hollywood. Places where we figured they wouldn’t ask me for ID.”
My blood pressure decelerated. Millard said, “You told Betty about the rooming house on Orange Drive, the place where you were staying, right?”
“Uh-huh. I mean yes.”
“Why did Betty move out of the place on Cherokee?”
“It was too crowded, and she’d tapped all the girls for a dollar here, a dollar there, and they were mad at her.”
“Were any of them particularly mad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure Betty didn’t move out because of boyfriend trouble?”
“I’m sure.”
“Do you recall the names of any of the men Betty went out with last fall?”
Lorna shrugged. “They were just pickups.”
“What about names, Lorna?”
The girl counted on her fingers, stopping when she got to three. “Well, there were these two guys at Orange Drive, Don Leyes and Hal Costa, and a sailor named Chuck.”
“No last name on Chuck?”
“No, but I know he was a gunnery mate second class.”
Millard started to ask another question, but I held up my hand to cut him off. “Lorna, I talked to Marjorie Graham the other day, and she said she told you the police were coming by Orange Drive to talk to the tenants about Betty. You ran then. Why?”
Lorna bit a hangnail off and sucked at the wound. “Because I knew that if my picture got in the papers as Betty’s friend my parents would see it and make the police send me home.”
“Where did you go when you rabbited?”
“I met a man in a bar and got him to rent me a room at an auto court in the Valley.”
“Did you–”
Millard silenced me with a chopped hand gesture. “You said you and Betty made casting rounds together. Did you ever get any movie work?”
Lorna twisted her fingers together in her lap. “No.”
“Then could you tell me what’s in that film can in your purse?”
Eyes on to the floor and dripping tears, Lorna Martilkova whispered, “It’s a movie.”
“A dirty movie?”
Lorna nodded mutely. The girl’s tears were rivers of mascara now; Millard handed her a handkerchief. “Sweetheart, you have to tell us all of it, from the beginning. So think it all out, and take your time. Bucky, get her some water.”
I left the room, found a drinking fountain and cup dispenser in the hall, filled a large paper container and returned with it. Lorna was speaking softly when I placed the cup on the table in front of her.
“. . . and I was cadging at this bar in Gardena. This Mexican man–Raoul or Jorge or something–started talking to me. I thought I was pregnant, and I was desperate wicked bad for money. He said he’d give me two hundred dollars to act in a nudie film.”
Lorna stopped, slugged down the water, took a deep breath and kept going. “The man said he needed another girl, so I called Betty at the Cherokee place. She said yes, and the Mexican man and me picked her up. He got us hopped on reefers, I think ’cause he was afraid we’d get scared and back out. We drove down to Tijuana, and we made the movie at this big house outside town. The Mex man worked the lights and ran the camera and told us what to do and drove us back to LA, and that’s _all of it, from the beginning_, so will you call my folks now?”