Chapter 26

August 5-6, 1996

Monday afternoon/Early Tuesday morning

Ihad a rough idea how to get to UCLA, so I stubbornly refused to consult my Thomas Guide. After several wrong turns, I found myself at the south end of the campus. I parked in visitor parking, then walked a couple blocks south, and had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen – a barbeque salad with an Arnold Palmer.

Finished with that, I then took the longest walk I'd been on in a very long time. Once I was back on campus, I asked a couple of students to direct me to the film department. The one didn't know, the second just pointed north. So I kept walking north.

The campus was lovely, lots of interesting architecture and old growth trees. The kind you don't often see in Los Angeles. I kept asking for the film department and continued to be sent north. Finally, a third student said, "You want Melnitz. It's in the northeast corner." That's when I realized I'd parked in the completely wrong place. Even before I found the film department, I began to dread the walk back to my car.

The Melnitz Building was brick with large metal-framed glass windows at the front. Very sixties. Immediately, you walked into a two-story lobby with paneled walls decorated with movie posters. To my right was a box office which was shuttered, in front of me double doors that must have led to a theater. They were also locked. To my left was another set of doors that was open to a hallway.

A long hallway, presumably running the length of the building. It was a typical public building: shiny linoleum floor, acoustical tiles on the ceiling, faded pastel colors on the walls. Doors off the hallway went to recording rooms, editing rooms, screening rooms. I doubted any of that was what I was looking for.

About halfway down there was an open space with some vinyl seats bolted to the floor. It looked straight out of an airport terminal. A couple of students—one guy and one girl—sat there, talking.

"Hi. I'm looking for a professor of film history. He's working on a project about postwar set designers."

They looked at each other. The guy shrugged like he had no idea, but the girl said, "You're probably looking for Aletti. I took his class on neorealism after World War Two. It sounds like something he'd be into."

"Okay, do you know where I could find him?"

"The offices are in East Melnitz. You just go down the hall, out of the building and right into the next one. He's probably not there, but his office hours will be posted."

I said thanks and walked away. A few minutes later, I found myself walking the halls of a largely empty building. I read the professors' names as I went. No luck on the first floor. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and kept looking. Halfway down there was an open door. Someone I could ask, was my first thought. But when I got there, I saw that Louis Aletti was one of three professors who occupied the office.

Inside, I found a young man in his early to mid-twenties. He was sorting some papers on a distressed and distressing sofa.

"Hi, you're not Professor Aletti, are you?"

He chuckled. "I'm his research assistant. Who are you?"

"My name's Dom Reilly. I was at the Academy Library this morning and they said Professor Aletti was doing research on set designers after the war."

Not exactly true, but whatever.

"Um, actually, he's researching gay set designers." He said the words ‘gay set designers' very clearly. I assumed people often heard ‘gay sex designers,' which was something else entirely. Having navigated the difficult part, he continued, "We're examining the impact of sexuality on the film arts. The school is finally putting together a queer studies program. Professor Aletti is hoping to teach a class in both departments and also publish a paper on the subject."

"I see," I said. "And you are?"

"Eldridge Hall. I got a B.A. in Women's Studies last year. My focus, though, was sexuality. That's how I ended up here. Can I ask why you're interested?"

"I'm working for the family of Patrick Gill. I believe he was Ivan Melchor's lover."

"He was, yes. What are you doing for them?"

"I'm looking into the murder of a woman named Vera Korenko. She was Patrick Gill's fiancée for less than a year before her death in 1949."

"I'm pretty familiar with Ivan Melchor. I know that he and Patrick Gill were together from sometime in the late forties until his death."

"They met in 1948."

"Really?"

I explained to him the coding in Melchor's appointment books.

"Thanks. I'll take a look at that. Are you saying that Patrick was engaged to a woman while he was seeing Ivan?"

"I think it was a relationship of convenience. Most of the time they spent together a women named Gigi was also with them."

"Beards."

"Yes. Lesbian beards."

"The best kind."

"Can you tell me anything else about Ivan and Patrick?"

"They lived very quietly. They weren't active politically. They socialized mainly at home with a small circle of friends."

"Was Skip Harkness one of those friends?"

"Yes."

"Did you talk to him?"

"He passed away four years ago. I did talk to his partner though… So, Patrick Gill is dead, right?"

"No. He's not."

"The house he shared with Ivan was sold last year. We thought it was because he passed—though, I couldn't find an obituary."

"He's in a home. He's senile… has dementia… whatever they're calling it now."

"Oh, I see. Would it be worth our time to try to talk to him?"

"That's tricky. His sister doesn't know he's gay."

"Um… he lived with a man for more than two decades."

"I know. He's much older and they weren't really close during that time. She's romanticized his relationship with Vera. Thinks her death is the reason he never married."

"But…" he stopped. He was clearly angry that a gay relationship could be so invisible.

"Explain to me how you're going to connect Melchor's sexuality to his design work?"

"He and Skip Harkness, and a number of other designers, were very influenced by Greek and Roman architecture and sculpture, and then the renaissance artists Michelangelo and DaVinci who themselves were influenced by the Greek and Romans. You see the influence clearly in the films Venus de Memphis, New York in Twilight and The Langley Boys. All of which were directed by Cecil Ryland, who placed coded gay references into the story and action."

I could imagine him having long and confusing conversations with Junior.

"Is Ryland still alive?" I asked. He would be someone else to talk with.

"No, he was one of the early victims of AIDS. They didn't even realize what had happened to him until years later."

"In your research you didn't run into a woman named Gigi? Like the musical?" He seemed like the kind of gay guy who'd benefit from a musical theater reference.

"No, we'd only have run across her if she worked in the industry. We're not looking at all of Melchor's friends, just the ones who were involved in moviemaking."

This was feeling like a dead end. Still, I gave the kid my card and thanked him for his time. Before I was able to leave the office, he said, "My boyfriend and I are totally into mysteries."

Not wanting to get into a conversation about Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, I nodded awkwardly and said good-bye.

It took forever to get back to my Jeep. It had to have been at least a mile. Probably much more. By the time I turned over the engine it was around four. Rush hour had already begun. Having learned my lesson, I got out my Thomas Guide and looked up Faring Road. Looking at the map I noted that the UCLA Film Department was nearly in Holmby Hills.

Roughly five minutes later I sat in front of 401 N. Faring Road. Ronnie had said it was a tear-down and he'd been right. The house was gone. Even the foundation had been ripped out. All that remained there on that particular afternoon was a giant hole in the ground.

This was where Ivan and Patrick had lived happily for decades. All of that was gone now, knocked down and ripped away. I couldn't help feeling that's what would eventually happen to the property Ronnie and I owned. It would change, disappear, become something else, forgetting we were ever there.

I drove away trying to forget I'd ever had that thought.

The next morning, I walked into The Freedom Agenda around eight-thirty. I was planning to make a pot of coffee the minute I got to the back, but as soon as stepped into the area I was stopped cold. Tacked to the walls were Andy Showalter's drawings. Not the ones he'd drawn of the Nazis invading Poland, but the ones he'd drawn of Sammy Blanchard. The ones that told the story of his buying a gun for her. There were only five sheets, but they clearly told the story of what happened. Not only the story of Andy buying Sammy the gun, but the story of Sammy going to Pete Michaels' house and shooting him.

Lydia and Karen had hung the drawings on one wall—actually, copies of the drawings Karen had made at a place that did oversized copying for architects—but still, they sent a message. Otherwise, the conference table was set up just as it had been for Anne Michaels.

I was still gawking at the artwork when Lydia came out of her office. She'd beaten me there. She wore her most professional suit, the one she wore to court when she wasn't sure of the outcome. Navy blue and sharply tailored—the way generals had their uniforms cut—she paired it with a bright white silk blouse underneath. She didn't wear any kind of tie or bow with it, just left it open at the color so that you could clearly see the gold crucifix she wore around her neck. One that wasn't simply a gold cross; it was one that had a small, suffering Christ tacked to it, as though to remind everyone that injustice had been happening for a very long time.

"What are you up to?" I asked.

She simply smiled. "How was yesterday? Are you making progress for the Karpinski boys?"

"I'm finding things out. Not necessarily what I need to find out, but I'm definitely getting a complete picture of Patrick's life and how Vera might have fit into it."

The bell rang over the front door. It was Karen. I'd never seen her arrive this early before. She was often late and ran on what she called CP time—Colored People time. I'd noticed two things about that. One: Lydia never said anything about her being late. And two: When it mattered, Karen was there. Which probably explained number one.

I was telling Lydia some of the things I'd learned about Patrick Gill, when Karen came back with three notebooks that held anything we might need for this deposition.

"Karen, could you call Eyes on Justice? They should be here by now."

"I'll try, but they don't pick up the phone until nine."

I wondered how she knew that since I never saw her before nine, but… that might be another reason Lydia never cared about CP time. Just because Karen wasn't at her desk didn't mean she wasn't doing her job.

The bell over the door rang again. We walked out to the lobby. It wasn't Eyes on Justice, it was Sammy Blanchard and her attorney, Wesley Colcott. The show was about to begin.