Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (2 page)

Six miles up the road, another motorist, this one heading south, spotted the speeding car. As the two vehicles neared each other, the second driver became alarmed. The touring car was heading directly at him, its driver seemingly oblivious to his presence. Finally, at the last possible moment, the southbound driver veered off the road as the touring car zoomed past in a cloud of dust.

Not once did the woman at the wheel look back. She continued at breakneck speed, her hair flying in the wind, toward her northern destination.

That was, if she had any destination at all.

7:00 A.M.

If he hadn’t hurried, Henry Peavey might have been late, and today of all days he didn’t want to disappoint his employer. Peavey’s workday officially began at seven thirty, but he’d gotten an early start this morning because he had an extra stop to make. Mr. Taylor, who suffered from frequent heartburn, had asked his faithful valet to pick up a bottle of milk of magnesia for him on his way to work. Peavey paid for such purchases out of his own money, and Mr. Taylor always reimbursed him. No receipt was ever necessary. Mr. Taylor would simply ask how much Peavey had
“spent to keep him comfortable” and then gratefully hand over the amount in cash.

Such an arrangement would have made it easy to pull some fast ones on Mr. Taylor, but his valet wasn’t likely to engage in such shenanigans. Until coming to work for Mr. Taylor, Peavey had lived a rather hardscrabble life. As valet to William Desmond Taylor, one of the leading film directors in Hollywood, Peavey had landed a very good gig. He wasn’t about to jeopardize that—especially not after everything he and Mr. Taylor had been through these past few days.

Hurrying out of his $5-a-week lodging house on East Third Street, Peavey sashayed down the block to
the Owl Drug at the corner of Fifth and Los Angeles Streets. Henry Peavey, it must be understood, never walked anywhere. He swished; he swayed; he swung his hips. At the Owl Drug, he traipsed through the aisles of elixirs and syrups, his many scarves fluttering, his hands in constant motion. At the counter
he paid $1 for the blue magnesia bottle and a handful of peppermints.

Medium height, slightly overweight, Henry Peavey would turn forty years old in a month’s time, but he looked younger. He possessed a certain je ne sais quoi, a love of life that was entirely his own. He wore bold ties and colorful knickers with striped socks. If he was sometimes the object of stares on the trolley or catcalls on the street, Peavey didn’t care. When someone called him a name, he was apt to spin around, arms akimbo, and sass them right back.

The trolley ride to the fashionable Westlake district, where Mr. Taylor lived, took only a few minutes. Clutching the bottle of milk of magnesia inside his coat, Peavey stepped off the running board and braced himself against the chilly air. Temperatures had been in the low forties at five o’clock that morning and hadn’t risen much in the last couple of hours. Peavey hurried past the Mission Revival houses that lined Alvarado Street. No, he definitely did not want to be late to work today. Not after all Mr. Taylor was doing for him.

The valet’s troubles had begun several days earlier, after leaving Mr. Taylor’s house at the usual time, an hour or so after sunset. As he sometimes did when he was feeling a little frisky, Peavey had wandered down the block to Westlake Park instead of hopping back on the trolley to Third Street. There, an undercover policeman had appeared as if out of nowhere. The Los Angeles Police Department didn’t like Negroes in the park, let alone Negro queens wearing loud clothes making passes at other men. Cruising the parks was one of the very few options for gay men looking to meet each other, especially gay men of limited means like Henry Peavey. But such fraternization was actively discouraged by the LAPD, and so Peavey had been hauled down to the station, where he’d been booked on charges of vagrancy.

It was Mr. Taylor—dear, shining, sterling Mr. Taylor—who’d put up bail, and who’d promised to appear in police court this afternoon on his valet’s behalf. Peavey hoped that Judge Joseph Chambers might look a little more leniently on him with a man of Mr. Taylor’s reputation standing beside him. After all, Mr. Taylor was one of the most important movie men in America, the head of the Motion Picture Directors Association. His newest film—aptly titled
Morals
—was playing in theaters all across the country. If Mr. Taylor requested it, the judge might reduce the charges against Peavey. He might even dismiss them altogether.

In his many years of service, Peavey had
“worked for a lot of men,” he’d say, “but Mr. Taylor was the most wonderful of all of them.” Certainly he felt fortunate that a man like William Desmond Taylor was standing up for him now, in Peavey’s time of need, and after only six months on the job. Some bosses wouldn’t do half as much for employees who’d given them many years of loyal service. But Mr. Taylor was a man among men, Peavey had come to believe.

Shortly before seven thirty, he arrived at Alvarado Court, the complex of eight semiclassical structures on the corner of Maryland Street, where his employer lived. Each building was divided into two duplex apartments, with pyramidal hipped roofs capping the white stucco facades. Boxwoods grew outside each apartment, and in the center of the courtyard, behind a line of date palms, an unfinished white-marble-columned pergola reflected the pink morning sun.

Walking through the courtyard, Peavey passed the homes of several other movie people. On his left was the bungalow of Edna Purviance, frequently Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady, most recently in the smash hit
The Kid
. Directly in front of him, at the end of the courtyard, resided Douglas MacLean, a popular actor Mr. Taylor had directed in two films costarring Mary Pickford, the biggest star in Hollywood. Less than a year ago, Peavey had arrived penniless on the train from San Francisco. Now he stood on the edge of a very glamorous world.

Reaching the last unit on the left side of the courtyard, number 404B, Peavey hurried up the three shallow steps to the door. As he did every morning, he retrieved the rolled newspaper from the stoop. The milkman had left a bottle of milk, but for now Peavey let it be; he had his hands full with the paper and the magnesia, and he needed to prop open the screen door with his shoulder as he fumbled for his key.

Suddenly it occurred to Peavey that something wasn’t quite right. As he slipped the key into the lock, he noticed that all of the lights in the apartment were blazing. Was Mr. Taylor already up? Had he been reading all night? Peavey knew this sometimes happened. As a busy director, Mr. Taylor never had enough time to keep up with his reading. Not long before, he’d gestured toward a pile of books and told Peavey in a weary voice,
“I’ve got to read all these.” Such were the demands placed on important men, Peavey understood.

Putting aside his concerns, Peavey pushed open the front door and prepared for
his usual morning routine. He would draw Mr. Taylor’s bath and give him a couple of spoonfuls of milk of magnesia, then fix his breakfast of two soft-boiled eggs, toast, and a glass of orange juice while his employer was soaking. But as soon as the valet got the door open and glanced inside the apartment, Peavey realized he’d been right to feel uneasy.

He saw Mr. Taylor’s feet.

Peering farther into the room, Peavey saw his employer lying on the floor, flat on his back, parallel to his writing desk. His feet were maybe a yard from the door, and his arms were straight at his side. Mr. Taylor was fully dressed in jacket, waistcoat, and tie; he was still wearing his shoes from the night before.

“Mr. Taylor?” Peavey asked.

At the sound of his valet’s voice, Mr. Taylor did not stir. He seemed almost stonelike.

“Mr. Taylor?” Peavey asked again.

That was when he noticed the blood under his employer’s head.

Henry Peavey screamed. The bottle of magnesia slipped from his hands and smashed on the steps as he turned and ran.

Peavey’s screams woke the neighbors. Up and down Alvarado Court, lights went on and window shades snapped up. People looked down into the courtyard to see Mr. Taylor’s valet running about like a madman, crying and waving his arms.

Later, it would be said that all of Los Angeles heard Peavey’s screams that morning—indeed, that his screams reached across the country and beyond. For the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the hunt for his killer would launch an odyssey of greed, ambition, envy, desire, betrayal, accusation, heartbreak, intrigue, triumph, and revenge. And when it was finally over, Hollywood—and the world it had already begun to shape so profoundly—would never be the same.

But somewhere many miles north, a beautiful woman in an expensive automobile heard nothing at all. She may still have been driving like lightning even then, putting as many miles as possible between herself and Los Angeles. Or she may finally have stopped, pulling over to the side of the road and slumping over the wheel, running her fingers through her windswept hair and glancing up at her bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror.

At some point she turned the car around and headed back toward home.

SIXTEEN MONTHS EARLIER

Like a cat, the little man with the unblinking eyes moved through the corridors of his company headquarters on New York’s Fifth Avenue, fleet of foot and all ears. His employees, clustered around file cabinets or taking refuge in stockrooms, didn’t hear him approach. They just turned around, midsentence, and there he was, his beady black eyes fixed upon them. Standing just five feet four, their boss had a narrow face, a sharp nose, and eyes one colleague would describe as
“long like an Indian chief’s.” His name was Adolph Zukor, and he was president of the world’s largest and most influential film studio, Famous Players–Lasky.

But
his employees called him Creepy.

On the morning of Thursday, September 2, 1920, the forty-seven-year-old movie chief watched silently as his staff scurried back to work. Rarely did Zukor speak to his underlings. He communicated mostly through a glance, a stare, a frown. When he did utter words, his voice was soft, precise, and deliberate. Today, as always, Zukor wore an expensive but understated bespoke suit and a gold pocket watch. He enjoyed conjuring an illusion of old money, though the cauliflower ear on his left side suggested rougher, more humble beginnings.

Soundlessly Zukor made his way to the elevator, where the operator knew better than to speak to the boss unbidden. The only sound as they ascended eight floors was the low metallic creaking of gears and pulleys.

Striding into his elegant mahogany office, Zukor could look out over a commanding view of New York’s midtown. Across the street gleamed the white marble of the new public library. Beyond that, the iron of the Sixth Avenue elevated railway rusted in the dewy morning air. And in the far distance, Zukor’s keen eyes made out the theaters he owned in Times Square. Every month, it seemed, there were more of them. One day, the film chief vowed, he’d own every single movie theater in the country. And after that, the world.

When all his dreams were realized, he’d rule over his empire from an office much higher than the eighth floor.

In New York in 1920, it was all about height. New skyscrapers were going up all the time, competing with each other to reach the clouds. The diminutive Zukor had decided he wanted to join the sky-high club. A year earlier he’d
spent $4.4 million for the old Putnam Building, which ran the entire west side of Broadway between Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth Streets. The block had belonged to John Jacob Astor, one of America’s richest men from one of its oldest aristocratic families. But Astor had gone down on the
Titanic
, and now the block belonged to Zukor, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary who’d come over in steerage. Zukor was planning to spend another half a million to turn Mr. Astor’s building into a palatial skyscraper, raising the roof ten, eleven, or maybe even twelve stories.

Such stature mattered to Zukor, who’d been forced to stand on a box to peer into the kinetoscopes in his arcades when he’d first started out in show business seventeen years before.

In the years since, Zukor had accomplished a great deal. But his achievements were nothing compared to what he had planned.

This morning, as always, his newspapers had been carefully laid out for him by his secretary. Zukor read as many as he could lay his hands on—all the New York papers, of course, along with selected others from around the country. Glancing down at the headlines, he frowned, no doubt displeased by what he read.

ROB
.
HARRON SHOT
—
FILM STAR IN CRITICAL CONDITION

MOVED INTO PRISON WARD AS POLICEMAN

PLACES HIM UNDER ARREST

This was not good. Robert Harron might not have been one of Zukor’s employees, but a scandal at one studio could affect them all. The film industry had hit a difficult patch these last several months. Revenues were down; calls for censorship were up. With mounting concern, Zukor read the account of Harron’s troubles. The popular young actor had been staying at a hotel on West Forty-Fifth Street. He claimed he’d dropped his pistol as he was unpacking his trunk, and accidentally shot himself in his chest. What made the situation worse was that Harron’s gun had been unlicensed—a serious crime in New York under the Sullivan Act. That was why Harron had been clamped in the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital.

No, not good at all. These silly, imprudent actors. Didn’t they know how much was at stake?

Zukor knew.

He knew exactly how much they all stood to gain—right down to the cent—and how much they all might lose.

Seventeen years earlier the film business had been a jumble of careening, colliding, freewheeling interests, with dozens of companies in various cities, all of them risky, unstable ventures. Now the movies were
the fourth largest industry in the country, behind steel, railroads, and automobiles, and it was largely Zukor who’d made that happen. He’d risen above the fray to tame and control the tumultuous bazaar, transforming what had begun as a novelty act, hatched up in Edison’s lab to display in penny arcades, into an industry worth
three quarters of a billion dollars a year. Wall Street, largely wooed and won over by Zukor, was now pumping millions into the movies, with
returns of 500 to 700 percent not uncommon.