Left of Eden

By dennis broe

“Dennis Broe, a renowned scholar of film noir, has written his own hard-boiled noir masterpiece, sprinkled with murder, blackmail, and sexual intrigue”—Peter Kuznick, co-author with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States

“A terse mash-up of hard-boiled prose and good old-fashioned historical research” --Jon Lewis, author of Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
“A well-written, entertaining pastiche of the Chandler/Ross Macdonald style. Its theme – the blacklisting of central Hollywood characters” ––Gunnar Staalesen, author of the Varg Veum novels and predecessor to Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell

Left of Eden is a sordid noir set in postwar Hollywood at the moment when everything in the film industry and the country is about to change because of the looming McCarthy witch hunt and the blacklist. Detective Harry Palmer follows a trail of murder and mayhem that exposes the inner workings of the town and includes: one of the biggest studio heads, New York banker-financiers, writers and directors being hounded by the F.B.I., two-fisted union leaders who act like gangsters, actress wannabees living on the edge, the sordid family of a Hollywood starlet, and the most beautiful and desired woman in the town at the moment.

Palmer has been kicked off the LAPD Homicide Squad for graft but that gives him just the right credentials to try to foil a badger or blackmail plot against activist actor Jason “Gabby” Gabriel for a supposed liaison with the underaged daughter of his former co-star. Harry becomes friends with Gabby who is about to be called to testify about his politics, falls hard for Gabby’s beautiful girlfriend, and must wind his way through the labyrinth of a duplicitous starlet’s family as all around him the bodies are dropping and as everyone seems to want to cash in on Gabby’s fast-talking personality, whether he is alive or dead.

The book is the first of a trilogy about Los Angeles in the 1940s, with the second and third books set respectively in the booming defense industry that surrounds the city and amid the politics and prejudices of the LAPD as Harry grapples with his past on the force. Dennis Broe is a film noir and classic Hollywood scholar who has taught at The Sorbonne and is the author of Film Noir, American Workers and Postwar Hollywood.

Dennis Broe taught Television Studies at the Sorbonne and is the author of two previous studies of the crime film: Film Noir, American Workers and Postwar Hollywood and Class, Crime and International Film Noir. He lives in Paris and haunts the “petite salles de la cinquieme,” the little movie theaters of the 5th Arrondissement, which show American film noirs and Westerns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: dennis broe
• Release date: Mar 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463786871

Book preview

Prologue: The Snakes Are Loose

February 1948

Really, the problem was the damned tie clasp. I had everything pretty well set, but she had given it to me, and though most often I don’t even wear ties, I kept it, and somehow it dropped out of my pocket.

I had been very good at making it look like a suicide. I learned how to doctor evidence in my years on the LAPD. I didn’t usually do it, but I knew how it was done. I wiped my prints off the revolver, wrapped the corpse’s finger around it, and placed it near the heart. I fired once at the heart, and a second time in the head. I let the arm fall with the finger around the trigger. I had the combination to the lock, let myself out, and reset the alarm to make it appear that the door was bolted and sealed from the inside.

It wasn’t until I got back to my hotel room—I live in this city, but I like the impermanence of a hotel—and emptied my pockets that I realized the tie clasp was gone. And just as suddenly, I realized where it most likely was.

I was a dead man. This particular clasp was custom-made. It would be easy to trace to the shop off Los Feliz that specialized in hand-crafted and personalized mementos. And it was personalized. It didn’t have my initials, but it might as well have. It was an engraving of a police badge with a line through it; her way of saying she knew what I had been through. Nice, I’d thought. Thoughtful, maybe even tender.

Now, I thought that any moment my ex-camaradas on the homicide squad would burst through the hotel room door. They might even come with guns blazing, given how they regarded me on the force. Would I have time to explain why it had been justifiable homicide? or even, in an odd way, self-defense? I doubt they’d be interested in my rationale. This was a high-profile disappearance, the polite word the French use for death. They would be eager to make a collar. If I happened to resist arrest, that would prove they were justified in gunning me down and would also save the state a trial that could prove embarrassing for a lot of people in this town.

How did I get myself into this pickle? No, this was a lot worse than a pickle; that word describes a momentary, passing inconvenience. This was a full-blown, death-defying catastrophe, trouble of a kind I really did not want. You could almost say I was planning my own suicide, ’cept I wasn’t. I’d always wanted to test out the hypothesis that your whole life passes in front of you before you die. It wasn’t my whole life passing in front of me; it was really just the events of the last few months, but it felt like a lifetime.

I was caught in the middle of watching this town change, permanently, for the worse, and somehow I had extricated myself in just about the worst way possible. Others had it harder than me, especially Gabby, so I couldn’t complain. Did I think I was some kind of righteous avenger? No, I just couldn’t take the hypocrisy anymore. I hadn’t planned a murder, but it seemed like the right thing at the time. Still does, but now here I sit trying to make sense of events that sucked me into a vortex from which I just couldn’t escape.

I think I hear sounds coming from the elevator. I could be imagining it, but I think I’m hearing footsteps, hushed whispers and the sound of feet massing outside my door. I’m sitting on the bed, and I can’t do too much if they’re not in a talking mood.

I don’t know why I didn’t try to get out, go over the border to Mexico, and hide myself. God knows some of the other people I’ve encountered are talking about doing just that—although they haven’t committed any crime as far as I can tell. I’ve just never run away from trouble. That’s not me.

It’s not that I’m into facing consequences. It’s probably just that I’m too dumb to run, and I have this weird idea that justice is still possible in this system and that if anyone knew the full story, they would judge me differently.

Anyway, it began innocently enough . . .

Act I: A Horse of a Different Color

Late November 1947

***

1

---

I remember that morning very clearly. A chill wind was in the air. You could feel it blowing down the Santa Anita Canyon and on into Hollywood.

The big news was that the studios had gotten together at the Waldorf Hotel in New York and issued a statement saying they were going to be vigilant about no longer allowing communists to work for them. No one knew exactly what that meant; who was or wasn’t a communist since most people were at least friendly with the cause during the war, when Russia was our ally. But big changes were coming and for a while the employment market might be hell.

It didn’t concern me that much. I was nestled in Bunker Hill, in a dilapidated office surrounded by drunks, beggars, and whores—itinerants like me, though I had just moved in. I had my own kind of notoriety, having been kicked off the force after a very public corruption charge. Like those around me, I craved anonymity.

My first move after my dismissal was trying to hire on at the studios as muscle. The week before I had gone to one of the majors, Top of the Line, looking for security work. I had seen the studio head Harvey Bauer coming back from lunch, in his gabardine suit and white patent-leather shoes surrounded by his cortege, and looking every bit like one of the gangsters in his films. Before I could approach him, one of Bauer’s security men, Moose Milkowski, recognized me.

What are you doing here, Palmer? He was a burly ex-cop with a square jaw.

Trying to rustle up a little work, if that’s okay.

Moose grabbed me by the collar and tried a little rough stuff, but I side-stepped him.

We don’t need anybody around here pulling the shit you pulled in Long Beach.

No worse than what you pulled in the Valley, I said, but that was not exactly beefing up my resume. Moose, let’s just let bygones be. We’re all white as satin now.

Moose, never one for extended repartee, was having none of it. He tried to land one on me.

I ducked the punch, grabbed Moose’s outstretched hand, twisted it behind his back, and pinned that beautifully upholstered jaw against a studio backlot wall that was supposed to resemble a Roman coliseum.

The ruckus had drawn other members of Moose’s little squad. Soon I was surrounded, and had to let him go. The group then pushed me out the studio gate and off the lot.

And don’t come back, Moose yelled, in a way that made it clear the interview was over.

So I had opened my own office. The plate glass window on the outer door read Harry Palmer, P.I.

My first customer looked a little mousy when he came through the entrance. Some kind of pencil pusher, I thought.

Good morning. My secretary’s out today, I lied and led him to the back office.

He was tiny, but those little mouse-like eyes glowed with an intensity that seemed to blaze intelligence. I was to find out he was not just brilliant, but also worldly. His appearance of meekness, aided and abetted by heavy, horn-rimmed glasses, was a convenient cover for someone who knew which way bread was buttered in this town and had a good sense of who was buttering it.

Good day, Mr. Palmer, I’m Clyde Dowager. I represent Democritus Studios, and we have a problem.

That’s why I’m here, Mr. Dowager, I said, though I had only just opened and had no idea why I was there.

The problem concerned the studio’s lead actor, Jason Gabriel, or Gabby, as he was known in the industry. Real name, Jason Goertz. Gabby was a tough Jewish kid from Brooklyn’s Greenpoint—the mean streets of Brooklyn—where he grew in the street traffic surrounding the open-air food market.

Like everyone else, I knew about Gabby, or at least his reputation. He was ruggedly handsome with sloppy mop of jet-black, almost curly hair and a foot-long infectious smile. According to Dowager, that smile not only played well on screen, but had also worked to get him out of whatever trouble he blundered into off-screen, often involving starlets.

Tinsel Town had barely refined his graceful, streetwise toughness, and he had used that to inhabit a variety of characters usually just outside or straddling the law. Lately I’d heard rumors that he was involved—perhaps dangerously, given the new atmosphere—in the kind of politics that could get him fired. He was just coming off a huge hit that was the studio’s breadwinner, a boxing picture about a tough brawler in the ring who would not take a dive for the mob, and who paid the price for it.

Dowager was the studio’s accountant. He summarized all this for me, and paused. Are you honest?

As honest as the day is long, I said.

The days are getting shorter.

Exactly.

Dowager smiled. I was what he needed, somebody who might cut an occasional corner or three.

Dowager had seen me the previous week at Top of the Line, and felt that anyone who failed that studio’s security check must have something going for them. Harvey Bauer wanted Gabby, who had scored a major hit for the studio the year before, back in the fold. He had tried to bribe Democritus and Dowager personally to turn Gabby over, even for a single picture, but they were staying put. The interview had ended, as had mine, with Bauer throwing the accountant out of his office and threatening to sink the fledgling studio.

For the moment that’s the least of our worries around Gabby, Dowager said with a frown as he approached the tough stuff. Jason needs a bodyguard, someone who can keep him out of trouble.

You mean a babysitter?

It’s a bit more complicated. Jason is—involved. I’m sure you know of Lina Trainor?

Who didn’t? She was a Hollywood bad girl, a blonde famous for stretching a sweater to the breaking point.

Yeah, she appears in my dreams sometimes. What’s that to you?

Then I remembered she’d been Gabby’s co-star in a Double Indemnity remake the year before, where he was a down-and-out drifter who plotted with her to get rid of her husband and inherit his store so the two of them could live sexily ever after.

More like, what is it to Jason.

He fucked her?

Mr. Palmer, everyone’s fucked her. That’s not a scandal, that’s a promotion. It’s a win-win for both parties.

The problem, Dowager said, was Lina’s entourage, the extended family she surrounded herself with on the set. That included her look-alike sister Lorna, unofficially in charge of her wardrobe and makeup; her younger brother Adam, her hairstylist; and her not-yet-legal daughter Amber, whom she was grooming as her successor and who apparently was notorious for walking around the set nearly au naturel.

He fucked her sister?

Probably, but I think that was just a case of mistaken identity, so no harm done.

Okay, he fucked her daughter?

Or the other way around, but kept discreet, that would also be a promotion.

He fucked her brother? I said, exasperated.

Bingo—maybe. At least, that’s the rumor. We want you to find out if there is any truth to it. We want to know what evidence anyone has, and what they might plan to do with it.

A scandal, Dowager explained, could damage Jason’s career, his next film, and the tiny independent studio, which was hanging on by a thread. In the past year, movie attendance as a whole was down more than 25 percent from the year before, where, just after the war, it had reached an all-time high. No one was predicting a complete collapse, but no one was jumping for joy, either.

Where do I start?

By discreetly interviewing Jason.

Is he bisexual?

Like most actors, I think he’s polysexual.

You mean he fucks anyone?

That’s a bit too limiting. Let’s say anything.

Does anyone have a grudge against him, want what he’s got, is envious of him? Everybody and everyone is envious of him, including me.

This town makes me wonder sometimes what planet it’s on.

Not me. I just conclude, ‘Not earth,’ and get on with my life.

Dowager’s fear was that Gabby would be the target of a badger plot—fairly common around town—where someone with a reputation sleeps around and revealing photos are produced that must be bought back for a hefty price.

This was just one of the studio’s headaches at the moment, Dowager continued. It was the target of another type of blackmail, as federal agents snooped around to find out why Democritus, rumored to have actual commies on the board of directors, was so intent on telling stories that seemed critical of the new pro-business climate. They were especially keen on trying to nail Mick Polski, Gabby’s screenwriter on the boxing film and the writer/director of Gabby’s current film whose subject was big and small-time corruption surrounding Wall Street.

Is there anything else I should know about Gabby before I start snooping?

Well, there is Eva.

I assumed he meant Eva Knox, who like the fort had a solid gold body with brains to match and for the next 10 minutes was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. Dowager assured me though that she had lasting beauty, so I figured she might be around for 20 minutes. She was Gabby’s main squeeze, despite the others he maybe was or wasn’t squeezing.

Dowager showed me a photo of the bewitching Miss Knox, a beguiling dark-haired lovely whose long flowing locks were a perfect match for Jason’s. In the photo she was wearing a barrette and very little else.

Does she have a sister? I asked.

No, Mr. Palmer. When they made her, they broke the mold.

Any chance of fixing the mold?

You’ll have to take that up with Jason. And one more thing: when you talk to him, tread lightly around the subject of his contract. He works under a looser arrangement with us than he had with Top of the Line. But they are always pressuring him to renege. We’ve heard that the pressure is not coming only from the studio, but from their East Coast investors—bankers who know nothing about making pictures, but see Jason as the closest thing there is to a secure investment in this business. They recognize a valuable commodity when they see one. He was the number three box office attraction last year, and like the rest of us at Democritus, he’s trying to do something constructive with his time instead of just jerking around the public.

In my mind I amended that to, while jerking around the public, but that was okay with me. That was the business. This was my first real encounter with it from the inside. Beggars can’t be choosers, and Dowager and Democritus seemed about as honest as you got in this town.

He asked my fee.

100 dollars a day plus expenses, I said, and had to hide my shock when Dowager didn’t blink.

He wished me luck. And the funny little man with the horn-rimmed glasses left my office to return to the dream factory, while I went off to find out what nightmares brewed around it.

2

---

Dowager had told Goetz—or Gabby, or Jason, or whatever his name was—that I was coming, so he shouldn’t have been surprised to see me when I pulled up in my beat-up old coupe to not a palatial, but a modest estate in the heart of Beverly Hills. The lawns were a kind of green you don’t see in Bunker Hill, all shiny and phosphorescent. Jason’s Mexican gardener seemed happy to see me, though I was pretty sure the smile was simply his way of making sure there would be no trouble from what looked like an imposing gringo who might have the smell of a cop on him.

I rang the doorbell. No maid, but two almost identical thin men in what looked like knockoff suits with lean and hungry looks, amplified by a good deal of fear. One had salt and pepper hair, the other was balding.

I’m from Democritus, I told them, working for Clyde Dowager, and here to see Jason.

They didn’t want to let me in, but I pushed past them through the narrow hall and into a spacious living room, where I spied Jason surrounded by a gaggle of mostly photocopies of the two men who’d answered the door.

Jason, having been alerted by Dowager, flashed a huge smile, shook my hand and motioned me to a chair in the back of the room. He introduced me as a friend, and said he’d have time for me when the meeting concluded.

There was a general air of unease in the room and everyone seemed a bit stunned. The man in charge of the meeting was taller than the rest and thinner, with even larger glasses. I quickly gathered this was a strategy meeting—mostly of writers, but a smattering of producers and directors—to determine what to do in the wake of the studios’ compliance with the Congressional attack on some of their members. A blacklist was coming, with talk of hearings where they might be compelled to testify against their fellows.

You all know me as not only a fellow writer, but also a fellow guild member interested in writers being recognized, said the thin man, whose name was Henry Slawson. What happened a few weeks ago—when we were dragged before Congress, and then silenced before we could speak—may be about to happen everywhere in this town. We need to be prepared to fight, but we also need to be prepared for the worst.

Someone piped up from the front row, The Supreme Court will never let this happen, not here.

Slawson’s response was slow and measured, indicating he had thought about this for a long time. The Supreme Court changes all the time. I wouldn’t be sure of anything in this new mood in the country, but together we can defeat it.

Somebody else piped up, But why? Why are they attacking us for supporting Russia when Russia was our ally during the war?

Because, Slawson replied, they may want to launch a new war.

But we’re just writers. What did we do? another man said.

Look this is much wider than Hollywood, Slawson countered. It’s a general attack on unions and progressive forces in this country, with Hollywood as the symbol. We organized successfully into a collective bargaining guild after a very hard eight years, now we’ve had a regular contract for six years. When the craftsworkers, our brother and sister painters, set builders, and technicians formed an anti-sweetheart union, we backed them, and they struck the studios. We got their attention.

A big burly man in the corner with arms slightly thinner than octopus tentacles, who I understood to be one of the leaders of this union, raised his fist in the air and grunted. Two guys the same size flanked him, and I decided that I did not want to meet him in a deserted alley—nor, for that matter, in a crowded alley.

Someone yelled, Damn right we did.

A smile crossed Slawson’s face. We did, but that is not forgotten by the studio bosses. Three of them were in Washington ahead of us before the committee, laying the groundwork for this attack on our union and on us. And the form it may come in is subpoenas, asking each of us to testify against each other.

Is there anything we can do? asked someone from the back row. The mood in the room seemed to be moving rapidly from fear to hopelessness.

Yes, we can organize. Hold rallies like the one coming up in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell, and talk about how un-American the House Un-American Activities Committee really is, Slawson said in a slightly halting voice. He rallied. This backward movement can be stopped, but it is going to take all of us, working overtime along with our studio work and using our public position, to stop it.

A cheer went up from the fellow believers, but I couldn’t help thinking that many of these Hollywood elite—swimming pool radicals, as the press called them—couldn’t wait to just get back to work and put all this behind them.

The meeting broke up with many of what were mostly writers pumping Slawson’s hand and thanking Jason for having hosted them.

Jason congratulated Slawson, but seemed a little anxious to usher everyone out of the room. The big burly man with the gargantuan arms and the two bodyguards patted Jason on the shoulder, somewhat like the Green Giant flicking a fly. Jason later told me he was Hank Ferrell, the founder of an umbrella union that had led the craftsworkers strikes, and now in the process of being blacklisted. Ferrell was apparently a bit of a roughhouse, and he didn’t seem to trust Jason all that much. He definitely smelled cop on me, and gave me a look that indicated that I was persona very non grata.

Don’t know why we need fellas like this snoopin’ around, he said in a way that was supposed to make Jason think twice about me.

I’ll keep an eye on him, Jason joked, but the humor—if there was any—fell on, counting the two bodyguards, six deaf ears.

This sounds very serious, I said once everyone had left.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, Jason said. It might yet all blow over, but I’ll show you something that is serious and may not blow over. He went to the bureau and pulled out a letter without a stamp, delivered, he said, to his door that morning.

Inside were what looked like compromising photos with Jason and, not Adam, but Amber, the slinky 17-year-old. They were in bathing suits lounging by the side of a pool, not touching each other but looking intimate in a way that might fuel the gossip columns for months.

Who took these? I asked.

"That’s the million-dollar question. I remember that afternoon. It was when I was working with Lina on Murder for Three, and one day I was at her house relaxing and basically babysitting Amber while Lina was inside having some publicity photos taken."

I have to ask, was anything going on between the two of you?

Me and Amber? No, no way, said Jason—now as Gabby, flashing that big-time smile that seemed to say that everything was all right with the world, and in the end would turn out fine. The smile had been working well on the silver screen. It was working less well off-screen.

Anyway Lina and I—that was just a momentary thing while we were working on the picture. Eva tolerated it because she was away herself working on a film, but once the shooting on both pictures was over, she would have no more of it.

Eva Knox is your main squeeze?

Mr. Palmer, Eva is Eva and that’s that. Don’t you have an Eva?

No, I never met Miss Right. Or rather, I once met Miss Right but unfortunately at the same time I met Mrs. Wrong. One found out about the other, and that was that. She was a French girl who loved poetry and would read to me endlessly. She’d smartened me up, but it didn’t last.

Jason interrupted my reverie. You were having your cake and eating it too?

I don’t think I said anything about the specific nature of our sexual activity, but yeah, I tried that. It didn’t work. Anyway, I can tell you something about who took the photos. They’re taken from a high angle looking down, which means that someone had access to an adjacent roof. And they’re almost close-ups, which means they were done by a professional photographer using a telephoto lens, likely hired by someone who is out to discredit you.

"I can’t imagine who that would be. I guess I have political enemies now, but I didn’t think