“I came in early this morning and Tarantula was dead drunk at his desk,” Charlotte continued on the phone. “He’d dropped the keys in the bathroom. I unlocked the file cabinet. After about twenty minutes I figured out the filing codes and found a bunch of stuff about young girls. And boys. And that’s where Violet was. She’s one of a number of young women who live with this investment manager, John Boyle. It’s sick, Margaret, sick. They pass these girls around like canapés.”

“Where can I find Violet?” Margaret asked.

“I’ve seen a lot of horrors in my day and on this beat,” Goode said. “I covered Black Dahlia and Lupe Velez. I covered Jeanne French, her face beaten into pulp, ‘Fuck You, BD,’ written on her torso in her own lipstick.”

Margaret could hear Goode puffing on her cigarette at a rapid clip. Something was off. Her friend’s mind seemed to be unspooling.

“There’s no way I would ever be able to get any of this into print. You have no idea the stories they’ve killed. Amazing stories, multiple sources! Studio bosses forcing Bette Davis to have an abortion! Joan Crawford’s skin flick! Why Hearst killed Thomas Ince! A three-part series on Uncle Walt rolling out the red carpet for Leni Riefenstahl! Clark Gable’s secret love child with Loretta Young! On and on. All of them buried.”

“Charlotte, what did you find out about Violet?” Margaret said. “What’s wrong?”

“I have never seen anything like this, and I covered Chaplin marrying two sixteen-year-olds! Not at the same time, of course. And Errol Flynn’s statutory-rape trial. Benny Benson! Ed Tierney! Natalie Wood! Vicious! Everyone knows that these men like girls—literal girls! But this takes it to a new level of sickening! The question is what can I do about it. Nightlife will never print it—”

Her rant continued unabated. This wasn’t Charlotte’s normal almost-manic state; this was something more extreme, her words almost indecipherable, her breathing frenzied.

“Charlotte, honey, calm down,” Margaret said. She might need to go to her friend, see for herself what had triggered Charlotte. “I have your home address. I’m coming. Stay put, okay?”

The line went dead.

Charlie led the way across the park, Lawford and Davis following him, past the Frontierland Shootin’ Gallery, where two armed guards stood, guns in their chest holsters, jackets off. They looked somewhere between Mafia thugs and FBI agents, Charlie thought, in that twilight space where private security guards dwell, tough and not to be trifled with, but badgeless.