Bannerman's Law (20 page)

₁₈

By the end of her first hour with Lisa's computer files,
Molly Fa
rr
ell had ruled out any personal involvement be
tween Lisa and the Campus Killer. There was no mention
of him anywhere, no sign of interest or concern. Nor, in
her diary file, was there any suggestion of tension between
Lisa and any of the several young men she saw socially.

Molly came on a reference to an abortion that Lisa had apparently undergone two years earlier. She had used the
diary to sort out her feelings about it and her reasons for
not telling the father, a law student who had subsequently
graduated and moved to Sacramento. They still kept i
n
touch, just
f
riends, no romantic involvement. Molly erased
the entire entry. Ca
rl
a could live without knowing it.

Except for a few other letters to distant friends, virtu
ally all entries made in the last three weeks of her life
had to do with a master's thesis titled,
“
The Panic of
192
7—A
Study of the Film Industry's Transition from
S
i
lents to Soun
d—T
he Economic and Human Cost
.”

Molly scanned through it, stopping occasionally to read
sections of it more carefully. She had no idea what she
was looking for except, possibly, something new and inter
esting about an actress named Nellie Da
m
eon. She tried
to avoid becoming absorbed with the overall subject matter
but, like Lisa, she found that she was especially struck by
the human cost of the transition.

Lisa recognized that in any industry the loss of a liveli
hood can be frightening, even devastating. But there are
always other jobs, no matter how humble, that can put
bread on the table. What do you do, though, when you've
been a star? Become a waitress? Pump gas?

In fact, some did. Molly found a reference file marked
“
Casualties
.”
It listed more than a hundred actors and
actresses who were adored by fans one month, unemploy
able the next. Louise Brooks, Zeigfeld star, film star,
ended up homeless for a time, living on a bench in Central
Park. Later a sales girl at Macy's. Karl Dane, once billed
as
“
The Funniest Man in the Movies
”
until his thick
accent did him in, was reduced to running a hot dog stand
near the main gate of the studio where he'd been a star. People avoided it. They were embarrassed for him. Dane
shot himself in 1934.

The file listed many more suicides of one kind or an
other. Some used alcohol, others speeding cars; many did
it with drugs. Lisa had written a long section dealing with the widespread use of drugs, especially cocaine, in the
Hollywood of the twenties. Molly was surprised. She had
somehow thought that recreational drugs were a more
modern phenomenon. But she forced herself to scan for
ward. The drug scene of the twenties had no apparent
relevance to the question at hand. What could Lisa have
found that might explain why anyone would feel the need to kill her? Or
to destroy
these files once she was conve
niently dead by another means?

Lisa's first mention of an asylum called Sur La Mer
had made no impression on her. It was on her
“
Casual
ties
”
list. A number of movie people had been sent either
there, near Santa Barbara, or to the Motion Picture Coun
try House and Hospital in Woodland Hills.

It did not appear again until Molly came to a file
marked
“
Field Trips
.”
Lisa had planned visits to both
places and about a dozen others such as the archives at
MGM
/
UA, Universal Studios, and the Hollywood Mu
seum. She had apparently been welcomed at the Motion Picture Country House where she interviewed some of the
very few survivors of the period but she was turned away
by Sur La Mer. Her notes said that she would try again.

Suddenly, there it was. Lisa had typed the word
PAY-
DIRT\\\
Beneath it, NELLIE DAMEON TALKS. It was followed by a remembered transcription of their conversation. Molly read it and found it initially disappointing. All
Lisa had had, apparently, was a brief conversation with an
aged actress who seemed to think Lisa was one of her
children. She, and someone named
D'Arconte.
There was
another reference to an unnamed woman, born 1931 or
1932, who had a strawberry birthmark on her throat. This
was followed by several terse notes in question form.
Among them,
“
Why barbed wire and booby traps
?”
and “
Per the young doctor, Feldman, who are
these people?”
'

“
DiDi
?”
Molly called Lisa's friend who had been in
the kitchen making phone calls.
“
Could you look at this
?”

She made room for her at the screen.

Ca
r
leton Dunville the younger knew what was coming.
He had heard the same speech from his father every year
since his last in prep school, usually on the occasion of
his birthday. It would begin with the words,
You are a
Dunville.
It would last for six minutes. It would end, in
this case, with a patient explanation of why Joseph Hickey
had to die.

There was no need. Mr. Hickey was, and would remain,
a blackmailer. It made no difference that he had committed at least two felonies in the process, he hoped, of guarantee
ing his future. In fact he had little to lose and he knew
it
.
If caught, he would strike a bargain. He would suffer, at
most, a few months' inconvenience and the cost of a good
lawyer. But his testimony would be a disaster. It would
destroy the work of three generations. It might, in the end,
ruin hundreds of lives.

Hickey had, in any case, sealed his own doom. Not
through his insolence. Not even through his venality. He
had done so when he allowed that unnamed policeman to
associate him, no matter how indirectly, with Lisa Bene
dict, opening a possible avenue of investigation that could,
conceivably, lead to his association with Sur La
M
er. But
he had also, bless him, identified the primary suspect in his own death and even suggested the means.

“
What was Hickey working on, officer
?”

“‘
The search for the Campus Killer, he said
.'
`

“
On whose behalf, unnamed officer
?”

“
For one of the families, he said. He didn't say
which
.''

“
We'll question them all. But he must have learned
something. Got close
.''

“I
guess. Too close
.''

“
You are a Dunville
,”
Ca
r
leton the elder began, inter
rupting his reverie. It was as he feared. His father was adhering strictly to the script.
“
It is not something you
chose
,”
he was saying.
“
Nor, God knows, did
I.”

”I understand that, Father. And I understand where my
duty lies
.”

He said this last in the hope that his father might forgo
the first minute or so of the speech in which he usually
misquoted Emerson:
“
When Duty whispers low,
Thou
must, the
youth replies,
I
will
.”
Or, depending on the
circumstance at hand, he would quote Longfellow's obser
vation that, in this world, a man must either be an anvil
or a hammer.

Whatever.

The middle part of the speech was similar to those
heard by every young man of his acquaintance who hap
pened to be born into a family of wealth, influence, and
social standing
...
to say nothing of self-importance. It was an enlargement on the theme,
You are a Dunville,
as
in, You are a Rockefeller, a Kennedy, or a Mellon; except that the burden of being a Dunv
i
lle was infinitely greater
and the advantages fewer.

A Mellon could choose to become, say, a marine biolo
gist or a concert pianist.
A
Rockefeller could decide to be governor of any state in which he owned a house. A Ken
nedy could divorce. He might even marry a Protestant someday. A Dunville could do almost none of the above.
He
could
marr
y—a
lthough none of them had. And he
could breed children to his heart's content, as all of them
had. Sometimes on
order, although
there had not been much of that lately. It had been almost two years since
Sur La Mer had a member of ch
i
ldbea
rin
g age. The girl,
Lisa Benedict, might have served. She was certainly attrac
tive enough although boyish in physique. On the other
hand, perhaps not. Narrow hips. And her babies would
probably have been redheads. There was seldom much call
for redheaded children.

“
Carleton
...
are you listening to me
?”
Ca
r
leton the elder was
f
rowning.

“
Every word. Yes
.”

His father had been wel
l
into the third part of the
speech. It concerned riding the tiger. No way to dismount.
It had grown too big. What his grandfather, Count Victor,
had started as an accommodation for one or two fugitives had grown over more than sixty years into a network that
defied the imagination. There were hundreds of them out
there. Thousands, if one counted their progeny. Sons and
daughters, most of them legitimate, some purchased. There
were grandchildren. In-laws. There were people out there who were four generations removed from the founders of their families and of their fortunes. Families that three
generations of Dunvilles had created. Not a one of which
had existed before 19
31.

Carleton the younger loved to look at the names, keep track of their lives, update their profiles. It was astonishing
to watch, really. There were, among the Sur La Mer
alumni, some thoroughly despicable people who had, over time, become relatively decent and productive human be
ings. Or who had produced second and third generations
who were relatively decent. Perhaps their new environ
ments had something to do with it. And their training,
with annual re
f
resher courses, certainly deserved much of
the credit. And perhaps, over time, the infusion of new
and less predatory genes through marriage. Ca
r
leton found
that he took an honest pleasure in those who had done
well. Some had built
fi
nancial empires. More than a few
had entered public life. There were, currently: one senator,
two congressmen, two mayors, a federal judge, and as
sorted lesser officials still with bright futures ahead of them. Several had attended service academies and had
risen steadily within the military. Some were educators. A
few were even clergy.

These, the best of them, he rarely bothered. Only in
the direst emergencies would their patriarchs be called on to do a service, as Don Corleone used to put it. For that,
there were more than enough of the worst of them. For
many who came to Sur La Mer as rotters continued to be
rotters for generations to come. The S
ni
ders of Philadel
phia, for example. The Ma
r
eks of Los Angeles. Especially
the Mareks.