Alta Journal is pleased to present the fourth installment of a five-part original fiction series by author and Alta contributor David Talbot. Each week, we’ll publish online the next portion of “Murder on the Starlight Express.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading, and sign up here to be notified by email when each new installment is available.
This Alta Serial is a fictional account of a 17-day, cross-continental whistle-stop tour that carried Warner Bros. stars (including the author’s father, Lyle Talbot) from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The train journey took place during the depths of the Depression, and its purpose was to promote the new movie 42nd Street and entertain the public at each city along the route, spreading good cheer in the run-up to president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration.
The fourth act opens with the Starlight Express approaching Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Act 4
I did my best to be Bertie for the rest of the train trip. I kept the stars out of trouble, mostly. They were generally subdued. Like I told the FBI men, Herbert Swindell had been liked, even loved, by the Warner Bros. actors. They knew he cared about them; he offered them a shoulder to cry on, and often they collapsed on him. I would never replace Bertie, they realized that. But the Starlight troupe tried to behave for me, because they knew Bertie would want it that way.
In Toledo, there was a near riot when a crowd the police estimated at 25,000 swarmed the tracks. Like in Yuma, you could see the wild-eyed desperation in the people’s faces. Tom Mix rode his horse into the crowd, and for some reason, that calmed them down. Mix was dubbed the Ambassador of the Starlight Express, because he seemed older and wiser than the rest. But in Pittsburgh, he got drunk and rode King onto the floor of a nightclub. Thank God I had emptied the chambers of his six-shooters, and I was able to convince reporters it was a publicity stunt.
Despite the nonstop press demands on me, my anxiety grew as we neared Washington, D.C. If Spike O’Donnell’s suspicions were right, Talbot and I realized, Bertie’s murder was wrapped up in the FDR inauguration. It was a political crime.
Then again, Hollywood was filled with stories about gangsters who wanted their cut of the motion picture action. Was Bertie a victim of some mob boss? Somebody like Spike O’Donnell?
And, of course, there was the irate actor. If he had killed Bertie because of his secret files on the studio’s stars, Jack Warner would sweep it under the rug. The last thing Warner Bros. wanted was an uproar among its leading players. There was already an ominous rumor that the studios planned to slash actors’ salaries because of the Depression decline in box office revenue.
When we went back to the train that night and told Mrs. Parker and Mr. Dellums, they, too, immediately recognized the gravity of our fix. We needed honest lawmen to solve Bertie’s murder. But the case had been taken over by the FBI. Hoover’s G-men might be national heroes, but we didn’t trust them.
After talking it over late that night in the Malibu Beach car, our little group decided we’d hunt down whoever had murdered Bertie. As we discussed our plan, sitting in the beach chairs, a brightly painted, foam-crested wave crashed on the wall in front of us.
We knew we were in over our heads. We were tilting at powerful men. But we weren’t entirely alone. As it turned out, Mrs. Parker and Mr. Dellums had met the incoming First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, because she supported the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and various liberal causes. They would use that connection to try to tip off FDR about the dark maneuvers against him.
Eleanor Roosevelt got back to Mr. Dellums soon after we disembarked at Washington’s Union Station. Franklin was being inaugurated the next day, and she was too busy to meet with Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker. But Louis Howe, the trusted adviser to both Roosevelts, would confer with them in his room at the Mayflower Hotel.
I was not a principal player in the unfolding drama I’m about to relate. My fellow sleuths—Mr. Dellums, Mrs. Parker, and Talbot—performed the starring roles. Most of the time, I was holed up in my room at the Willard, near the White House, where I was busy orchestrating the inaugural festivities of the Starlight troupe. Then, too, as the FBI’s prime suspect in the case, I was wise not to show my face.
But I felt like a general, fielding reports as the battle progressed. Sometimes my fellow combatants called on my room phone. Occasionally they even dropped by in person. None of us had ever run an operation like this before. I was suddenly a strategist, matching wits against a ruthless enemy. I was committed heart and soul to the clash. But I felt the danger.
I feared that Sam Bullock would kick in my door at any moment, that he would wrap his big hands around my throat again. That he’d finish the job this time.
Sometimes it was Bullock’s face—flushed and pulsing—that hovered over me in my clammy sheets at night. Sometimes it was that of the sinister-looking intruder on the train. And sometimes it was the belligerent star. In my sweaty dreams, they all wanted me dead.
At the appointed time, Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker strode through the long, ornate lobby of the Mayflower Hotel, lit by a skylight and gold chandeliers, and headed for the elevators. A few people took note of the unique couple—the middle-aged, jazz-bobbed white woman and the well-dressed, somewhat younger Black man. After all, Washington was more of a southern city in those days, separate and unequal. But the observant refrained from snarling comments as Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker passed by.
The elevator took Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker all the way to the presidential suite. Franklin Roosevelt was writing his immortal “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech at the Mayflower. But he was nowhere to be seen. The two were ushered into a dark bedroom, whose drapes were drawn. The room was stuffy; it reeked of cigarette smoke.
“I’m over here.”
Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker stared into the gloom. They saw a pair of brown shoes, apparently attached to someone who was lying on the floor on the far side of the bed.
“Mr. Howe?” ventured Mrs. Parker.
“I think best when I’m lying down.”
As the visitors adjusted to the sepulchral light, they beheld a man who looked more dead than alive. He was all bones, and his receding hair had all but left him. Yet his eyes were blazing like two fiery coals.
“I hear you have some information for me.”
After some initial hesitation, Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker told Howe about the terrible murder of the Warner Bros. publicity chief, how compromising files on the studio’s stars had been stolen. They wanted to solve the crime, not just for Bertie’s sake but to protect the president-elect. If the files fell into the wrong hands, it could become a political scandal. The FBI was running the investigation, but the G-men seemed, well, shady. They took turns telling the story, which came flooding out of them both.
There was a long silence. Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker could hear the ticking of a clock somewhere in the room.
“I gather that’s not the only dirt Hoover wants his hands on—about your stars,” Howe said finally. Then he coughed, a wet, raspy sound. “He doesn’t like Franklin much either. Eleanor even less. Too liberal, too outspoken…for a lady.
“You know, I’ve been with the Roosevelts for 20 years. Lived with the family. Helped him shit and piss when he first got polio. I saw his presidential potential years ago. Saw Eleanor’s courage, too, saw her gift. I was offered a job as an oil executive, could have made a lot of money. A lot. But I turned it down, to stay with Franklin and Eleanor. I stayed broke.”
Howe was quiet for a moment.
“My wife recoils from my touch. She thinks I’m a failure.”
Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker were stunned by the confession. They wondered where Howe was going.
“Now they’re moving into the White House,” he continued.
Again, there was a long pause.
“I would do anything…anything…to protect them.”
Howe was overcome by another racking cough.
“Thank you,” he finally managed. And Mr. Dellums and Mrs. Parker knew it was time to leave.
Talbot drew the toughest assignment. Knowing that Hoover was besotted with Hollywood celebrities, he finagled an invitation to dine with the FBI director at Harvey’s, the Connecticut Avenue restaurant he frequented. Talbot walked bravely into the lion’s den that preinaugural night and came out with a prize bone.
Hoover was already sitting at his regular table on a little dais with his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, when Talbot approached. The intimate relationship between Hoover and Tolson was the secret that everyone in the know knew about. Hoover, who was pushing 40 at the time, was a compact man verging on the fleshy, despite the strict physical guidelines for FBI agents. He called the tall, lean, midwestern-handsome Tolson, who was five years younger, Junior and had had him rapidly promoted through the FBI ranks until he was the bureau’s number-two man.
Hoover was speaking to his deputy at his machine-gun-like clip, fueled by a miniature bottle of Old Grand-Dad whiskey, which the maître d’ had slipped discreetly to him. The alert Tolson, who always sat facing the door to block unwanted glad-handers, was the first to greet Talbot.
As the evening went on, the dashing movie star dazzled the two G-men with Hollywood gossip. It was not much more than you could read in the show business magazines, but Hoover and Tolson seemed to inhale it. Hoover wanted to know what Ginger Rogers was really like. The word had somehow spread in the press that Rogers’s mother, Lela, and the nation’s top cop were romantically linked, even though Hoover insisted, “I’m married to the FBI.”
Hoover kept the flow of whiskey coming as he slurped his usual green turtle soup and then tore into his rare steak. His bulldog looks were widely remarked upon in the press, and Talbot noticed that he consumed his dinner with canine-like gusto.
As he downed more Grand-Dads, Hoover seemed to grow more possessive of Tolson, who he thought was paying too much attention to Talbot.
“Those gangster pictures you star in,” said Hoover gruffly to Talbot. “All that stuff Warner Bros. turns out…it’s a lot of hooey. Glamorizes the criminal underworld.”
“I think Mr. Hoover is right about your studio,” Tolson said, in quick agreement.
“Some Hollywood studios want to tell the FBI story,” Hoover announced, as if it were news.
“Well, in our pictures, the bad guys always take a fall in the end,” Talbot pointed out. “But making the G-men heroes—that’s a swell idea.”
Hoover was not to be appeased, however. By then, he was on his fourth Grand-Dad, and he couldn’t contain his belligerence.
“Everyone falls for you Hollywood pretty boys.” Hoover glowered openly at Talbot. Tolson looked down at the white tablecloth, all too familiar with the FBI chief’s jealous fits.
“One of my men is coming to my home later this evening—he’s carrying reports about Warner Bros. personalities. Damning information.”
Talbot was speechless. Hoover thought he had the actor cornered. He went for the knockout punch. “Maybe you’re in those files too.”
Hoover sounded almost boastful. But Tolson knew the director had gone too far and shot him a meaningful look. It was the revelation—really the confirmation—we were searching for. Hoover’s henchmen had taken possession of Bertie’s files. The top cop stopped at nothing to get his hands on confidential information.
Talbot brushed aside Hoover’s rash disclosure with a chuckle, like it was just dinner-table talk. But, of course, he knew the significance of what Hoover had let slip. The electricity of the revelation shot through Talbot. It took all of his actor’s training to maintain his composure for the remainder of the dinner.
After Hoover ordered his usual vanilla ice cream dessert, he confined his conversation to the inaugural balls planned for the next evening. Other than a cutting aside about Roosevelt “not doing much dancing,” his remarks were anodyne.
Hoover was not given a dinner tab, Talbot noticed when the table was cleared and they stood up to go. Were all of the FBI chief’s meals complimentary? the actor wondered.
As the two G-men departed in a chauffeur-driven armored car, Talbot hurried down the street to a phone booth. He knew whom to call.
This is not an eyewitness account, let me tell you right away. I pieced together this incident from various reports I heard.
Later that night, Sam Bullock came striding up the brick steps to Hoover’s home, a new two-story abode in the leafy northwestern part of the city. The house was decorated with framed photos of Hoover with various boldface names, including pictures of him and Tolson dining with celebrities at the Stork Club, and with paintings and faux-Greek sculptures of male nudes. Bullock carried the files stolen from Bertie’s train compartment.
At the top of the steps, Bullock was confronted by a short but sturdy man who stepped abruptly out of the shadows. Blunt words were exchanged. Bullock dropped the package with the files and lunged for the man, grabbing him roughly by his overcoat lapels. Bullock had the physical advantage. But suddenly a second man stepped behind Bullock, raised a gun, and fired one shot into the rear of his skull. He fired a second shot into the FBI man’s fallen body. Then the shooter’s accomplice quickly picked up the files, and they both fled.
Hoover sent his bodyguard outside to investigate the shooting. I don’t think the FBI chief ever fired a gun in action. He only looked tough in pictures. But he hated to lose. And that night he did. He lost the files that could’ve given him leverage over Roosevelt, and over FDR’s best friends in Hollywood. As for Bullock, he was just one more bureau martyr—killed in the line of duty by the bad guys.
Was Bullock ambushed by Babe and Dingy? Did Spike O’Donnell give them the shoot-to-kill order? Was it approved by Louis Howe? To this day, I don’t know for certain. Like I said, I wasn’t there. All I know is, Bullock met a violent end. So did the man who blew a hole in Bertie’s brain. I was told that he was thrown out of a skyscraper window in Chicago.
Was it fair for Bullock and the triggerman to die that way? They didn’t have their day in court. But then, neither did Bertie. Justice is elusive. Justice is blind. Ask anyone.
I was told President Roosevelt later made a deal with the devil—that’s the way he operated. FDR got to have his New Deal, got to save the country, got to go down in history. In return, Hoover stayed in office. His law-and-order reputation grew. Warner Bros. even made a gushing movie about the FBI—G Men, starring, yes, Jimmy Cagney and Ann Dvorak.
“I don’t care about your personal life, Edgar. That’s your business,” FDR told him—or so I heard. Of course, that wasn’t the fair-minded way that Hoover worked. He used all the sleaze he could find, even against fellow homosexual men. Roosevelt was a different sort of power player. “I don’t care about all the free meals, the gifts, the winning horses at the racetrack. Just don’t fuck with me.” Hoover got the message.
Roosevelt and Hoover weren’t the only ones to work out an agreement following the Starlight Express caper. Spike O’Donnell turned his beer business legitimate after President Roosevelt ended Prohibition. He even lectured in England and the United States on the evils of organized crime and testified before a Senate committee on how to steer the nation’s youth away from criminal temptations. Of course, he was shot at once more, and this time, he was wounded by a .38-caliber bullet, which lodged a half inch from his heart. But O’Donnell recovered and lived a long life, finally dying of natural causes and being laid to rest with his beloved wife at St. Mary’s Cemetery. The luck of the Irish.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. At FDR’s inaugural parade, Tom Mix and King performed crowd-pleasing horse and lasso tricks, and later, the cowboy star conferred with the new president in the Oval Office. Meeting with reporters afterward, Mix proclaimed President Roosevelt “the real McCoy.”
The next day, we steamed back to Los Angeles aboard the Starlight Express. On our return trip, there was no fanfare, no whistle-stops. That was a good thing, since Bertie was no longer there to orchestrate the publicity events or ghostwrite the actors’ press statements. But the ghost of Herbert Swindell certainly hovered over us all.
Hours before we reached Los Angeles, Mix strutted into my compartment in those fancy boots of his. I was staring out my window at the Arizona high country, with its endless terrain of ancient rock formations and chaparral, now cast in shadows by a cloud-filled sky. Mix told me in his made-up twang that he had written a farewell letter to the Starlight troupe, and he wanted me to type it on Warner Bros. stationery for everyone before we all dispersed back to our routines.
“Why, sure, Tom.” We were on a first-name basis by then. “That’s a crackerjack idea.” That’s why everyone on the train called Mix “Mr. Ambassador.”
When Mix left, I read over his statement, which he had scrawled with a pencil. There were lots of erased words and cross-outs. “We are nearing the end of the trail we blazed across the continent and back again,” it began, “spreading to the best of each and everyone’s ability what sunshine and happiness we could along the way.”
It was stiff and corny, and I was embarrassed for Mix. But, for some reason, it choked me up.
“So, as we part,” Mix concluded, “let us think of each other kindly and speak kindly of each other, thereby continuing the object of this trip to indefinite good.”
I was editing it in my mind as I started to cry.
“All of us, no matter what tongue we speak, the form of our body, or the color of our skin, are brothers and sisters underneath it…”
I didn’t change a word before I distributed the warmhearted letter to everyone—not only the celebrities but all those who worked on the train.
Well, not everyone—I skipped the philandering star in the compartment next to mine. No, it turned out, he didn’t kill Bertie; nonetheless, I resented him. Not only because of the way he had upset Bertie but also because of the way he loudly pleasured the Busby Berkeley girl. By the end of the train trip, it had gotten under my skin.
“As Confucius so beautifully expressed, ‘Fortunate is he who has a friend,’” Mix’s letter signed off. “We are very fortunate, for we have made many friends on this trip. For that, I am eternally thankful.”
I served for only a few weeks as the interim Warner Bros. publicity chief. The studio replaced me with someone older and more experienced (and, yes, paler). During that brief interval, it felt strange to be stationed in Bertie’s office. I was surrounded by his memorabilia, the glossy photos of him posing with Warners stars—Errol Flynn, Mary Astor, Dick Powell, and, of course, Rin Tin Tin. Then there was his hippo collection—the figurines of the bulky beast were everywhere, clay ones, glass ones. Some were artful creations, some were cheap gag gifts, the ones sold in tourist traps.
“Hippos are slow and methodical,” Bertie had explained to me one day.
It was a curious obsession for someone so fast and flashy.
“Also, they never forget a thing,” he added.
“You’re thinking of elephants, Bertie.”
“Hippos, too.” He always insisted on being right.
During those lame-duck days at Warner Bros., I made up my mind that the publicity racket was not for me. Instead, I decided, I would learn the detective trade. The sleuthing bug had bit me during the Starlight journey. I became more interested in finding out the truth—no matter how unspeakable—than in making people believe in make-believe.
Mrs. Parker, Mr. Dellums, and Mr. Talbot—or Dottie, C.L., and Lyle, as I came to call them—went on to pursue their own careers. Sometimes we all came together again, when I got tangled up in especially troubling murder cases. But those are stories for another time. We’re coming to the end of this one.
While I was holding down the fort in Bertie’s office one afternoon, I received a big package in the mail. When I opened it, Bertie’s files on the Warner Bros. stars came spilling onto his big desk. There was no note, no return address. I knew immediately what to do. I picked up the silver cigarette lighter on Bertie’s desk and burned all of the documents, tossing the ashes into the wastepaper basket.
Some things should remain unknown.•
ACT 5 »
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David Talbot's latest book is Between Heaven and Hell. He is the founder of Salon magazine; the author of Brothers, The Devil's Chessboard, and Season of the Witch, and a journalist and columnist who has written for the New Yorker, Time, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others.
