The Monet Murders: A Mystery

by Terry Mort

  You might think that the writers would have enough comradeship among themselves, and to some extent they did. But theirs was a brotherhood of despair. They all were constantly depressed by the nature of their assignments, and that got in the way of the kind of sophisticated banter they nostalgically longed for. They wanted a salon but were in a saloon, and they knew it. They wanted to write books and sell them and live on the royalties, but they couldn’t make nearly the amount of money doing that that they made here, so they sold out.

  I lifted myself out of the water, feeling childishly good about the condition of my body in contrast to the creative types, who collectively had the muscle tone of a dumpling. I noticed a few approving glances from the naked-starlets-volunteer-un-synchronized-swimming show. Maybe they thought I was “somebody.” Maybe not. It didn’t matter. For the time being, I was merely a starlet aficionado, because that hour with Myrtle had been sufficient. For the time being. But I made a mental note of the more interested glances.

  “How many criminals did you catch today, my beamish boy?” asked the head man, whose name was Bob something. I suppose a private detective should be alert to names, but I have always operated under the theory that the best way to approach life is to edit it carefully. I have no trouble remembering useful information. The rest, I sift through quickly and discard most of it. I had no interest in cataloging the wreckage at the Garden. And in the great wide world, there was plenty of bad news to ignore.

  “Criminals? I only saw one, and he hired me.”

  “A producer, in other words.”

  “My lips are sealed. Professional confidence.”

  “Perhaps they will unseal once you’ve had one of these.” He handed me a tall frosted glass. It was a gin and tonic. Or at least there may have been some tonic clinging desperately to one or two of the ice cubes, but if so the gin didn’t seem to notice it, nor did I.

  I blinked a time or two as I swallowed, thinking that a gin and tonic without the tonic ought to be called something else. And then I noticed yet another writer emerging from his bungalow. He was coming down the Spanish-tiled steps from one of the upstairs apartments. He was a recent arrival to the Garden, but I recognized him: I had met him several months ago at Thalberg’s party—the same party where I’d met Manny Stairs. At that party, he’d been playing the piano and singing a comic song about a dog and believing that he was entertaining the crowd when in fact he was annoying them so thoroughly that when he finished, they booed him. The air had gone out of him in an instant and he’d seemed to shrink right there, and he wasn’t that big a man to begin with—maybe five-seven or so in his shoes. I remember asking Ethel who he was, and she said “Him? Nobody. Just a writer.”

  As an aside, Ethel’s attitude was pervasive among the producing class, and that was yet another reason why the overpaid writers hated themselves for staying. In New York or London, a writer was “somebody”; not here, though. One big-time producer called them “schmucks with Underwoods.” Anyway, I’d felt sorry for the guy for making such a fool of himself, and when the disapproving crowd had dispersed I’d gone up and introduced myself and said I’d enjoyed his song, although I hadn’t, particularly. He’d smiled sort of wanly and told me his name. Turned out he’d been a famous writer back in the twenties—made all sorts of money, but then lost most of it through too many parties, too much travel, and the other usual culprits. He’d thought the party would never end, but it had for him, around the time of the Crash. Now, a few years later, he was here trying to repair his fortunes in the movie business. He didn’t seem all that old: possibly not even forty, maybe a bit older, although it was hard to tell. His wife, apparently, was difficult. That was not a unique situation in this town.

  More importantly, he was the one who had given me the idea that I’d used with the Youngstown money-laundering sting operation. He had worked the whole thing out as a scenario in one of his books; and at that party, when I’d told him I had actually read his books, he became very chummy. No surprise there. When I asked him what he was working on just then, he spilled his whole story—after learning that I was not a writer, aspiring or otherwise.

  Some months had passed since that party, and I felt pretty sure he wouldn’t remember me, but I was wrong. He came straight up to me, smiling, and held out his hand.

  “You’re the actor with the funny name. We met at Thalberg’s.”

  “Actually, now I’m the private detective with the funny name. My acting career died shortly after birth, unlamented by all.”

  He nodded. “Wise decision. This business is no place for adults, unless you’re on the money side. How about a drink?”

  “Sure.” Mine was about gone by then. We went over to the bar and poured two more gins and then sat down at one of the poolside tables.

  “Did you ever make that movie about the money-laundering scheme?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “You remember that, eh? No. It never got past the treatment stage. Too bad. I thought it could work.”

  I was tempted to tell him that it did work—so tempted, in fact, that I did tell him. I just gave him the broad strokes, leaving out locations and names, but positioning myself as an undercover operative for the FBI, which was nothing more than the truth, although not the whole truth. His eyes grew wider and wider as I explained some of what had happened.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said when I had finished. He was almost giddy with pleasure. “I knew it was a good idea.” He looked at me with increased respect. “So all the time that you were out here posing as an aspiring actor, you were really a G-man.”

  “More or less.”

  “But now you’re in private practice.”

  “Yes. The FBI was too big an organization. I like being my own boss better.” Once again, something close to the truth.

  He nodded ruefully. “I understand.” He gestured over to the lineup of swaying writers. “All of us out here are used to being our own bosses. If we put something on paper that we like, it stays there. Not here. Here you get a committee looking over your shoulders every minute. Do you realize that they actually expect us to keep regular office hours?”

  “I’ve heard.” We were silent for a while, puzzling sadly over the indignities you had to endure in exchange for a thousand a week. “What are you working on now?” I asked finally.

  “Between projects. That’s why I came to the Garden—to relax and unwind. I just got fired from an epic called The Redheaded Woman. They gave it to some woman from New York to finish. They said my approach was too serious. And guess who is set to star in the picture? Jean Harlow! Ha! I guess they’ll put a wig on her. Either that or hope the public doesn’t notice that the redheaded woman is a platinum blonde.”

  “You don’t seem too upset about being fired.”

  “It happens. As long as the checks keep coming, I can put up with just about anything.” He looked as though that was almost true. But not quite. He sighed without melodrama. He seemed more depressed than he wanted to admit.

  “Do you ever get tired of being yourself?” he asked.

  “I guess everyone does, now and then.”

  “Some more than others. You know who I’d like to be? Hobey Baker. Ever hear of him?”

  “No.”

  “Before your time, I suppose. He was a little before me, too, at Princeton, but we all knew about him. He was like a blond god on the football field. And in the hockey rink, too. He was handsome and gifted and celebrated in the newspapers. He played football without a helmet, and his blond hair was always visible even in the most terrible scrums. We all idolized him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was killed in the war. Actually it was just days after the war ended, I think. He was taking his Spad out for a test run and crashed. An athlete dying young. Do you know that poem?”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Smart lad, to slip betimes away / From fields where glory does not stay / And early though the laurel grows / It withers quicker than the
rose. I sometimes think that sentiment applies to writers, too. The ones who have early success. Far better to get it over with early than to wither away on Hollywood and Vine. Ha! A good pun.”

  He was silent for more than a few moments, obviously remembering something he didn’t want to share.

  “Shall I call you Hobey from now on?” I asked, after a while. The idea appealed to him, and he perked up and grinned.

  “Yes! By god, I can kill two birds with one stone—lose myself and become my hero. Good idea. How about a drink?”

  “Suits me.”

  “So tell me. What are you doing out here? Working on anything interesting?”

  “More or less. Not government business, of course. Private.”

  “And? Anything juicy? A story idea is always welcome.”

  “Well, kind of.”

  “Well? I’m always interested. Don’t worry. I won’t say anything.”

  That seemed unlikely. I’d heard he was famous for taking notes during a conversation—a habit that irritated almost everyone he met. But I figured I owed him something, and besides the gin had made me a little incautious—that, plus I was still miffed about the studio’s moving Myrtle out; so I gave him the broad outlines of the Manny Stairs story, mentioning no names. I suppose he could put two and two together if he wanted to. Truth to tell, I didn’t care.

  “Interesting,” he said, when I finished. “The woman was an exact double. Yes. Very interesting.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do a treatment on it and shop it around.”

  “No, no. Of course not. But it might make a good basis for a novel some day.”

  Well, that was all right. Novels take a while to write and by the time he finished, if he ever did, I’d most likely be on to something new.

  Catherine Moore had been a secretary in an insurance office in Santa Monica. Manny Stairs had given me the address, and even though his studio cops had checked the place and turned up nothing, I figured it was at least worth double-checking. The office was in a five-story commercial building on Santa Monica Boulevard, not far from the pier. The exterior of the building had a crack running up the side from the first floor to the second, maybe the result of the last earthquake. Based on that, I didn’t like taking the elevator, but I did anyway, to the third floor.

  The elevator operator was an ancient character with a nasty squint. He wore a shiny maroon uniform topped off with a bellman’s cap. The brass buttons had lost their shine back during the Spanish-American War. He smelled strongly of cigars and misanthropy. Well, I couldn’t blame him much; what kind of life would it be, spending all day in that windowless cell, going nowhere but up and down—a metaphor that even the meanest intelligence would appreciate? I mean, when you think about it, you have to wonder how some people, most people, probably, manage to make it through the day. Who was it that said most people live lives of quiet desperation? Thoreau? Yes. Well, he had it right. And wouldn’t my old English teacher, Granny Graves, be proud of me. Truth is, though, I didn’t care much for Thoreau. I like a little style with my philosophy.

  I got off on the third floor after giving the elevator operator a quarter. The office was halfway down the hall. The door was one of those half-wood, half-frosted-glass standard office doors. The letters on the frosted glass said HARVEY MILES, LIFE INSURANCE AGENT TO THE STARS. That was not surprising. Everyone was something to the stars in this town—wiener maker to the stars, trash collector to the stars, periodontist, undertaker, toupee maker, you name it. Even my card said that Bruno Feldspar was private detective to the stars. They have a similar thing in England where every purveyor of anything wants to get a royal warrant. “By appointment to His Royal Highness, chamber-pot maker.” Well, the stars in Hollywood are this country’s royalty—everyone knows that, and in my view they’re lots more useful; they entertain and they can’t start wars, two things that put them ahead of any king and his family.

  Of course, most of the stars are preening dimwits and worse, but that just makes them less dangerous. Just think what might happen if they got involved in politics. I remembered Manny’s comment about most of them being Reds, but I put that down to fashion and the herd instinct, which I guess are essentially the same thing. They were all for the masses because they didn’t have to associate with them.

  The receptionist looked up and smiled when I walked in, which you would think should be standard procedure, but I’ve walked into plenty of offices where they don’t pay any attention to you until they’re good and ready. It’s a way of pretending to be in charge.

  The receptionist was about as homely a creature as I had ever laid eyes on, so maybe that’s why she was pleasant. She was wearing a blue polka-dot dress of the kind you remember your grandmother wearing, and her hair was pulled back into a tight bun. She had a single eyebrow and a Cyrano nose. And she was as thin as Olive Oyl.

  I returned her smile without any effort.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I hope so.” I gave her a business card.

  “Oh,” she said, visibly impressed, a sign that she’d seen too many movies or had too many fantasies.

  “Is Mr. Miles in? I’d like to have a quick chat with him. Won’t take long.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid he’s not in today. There’s a big convention of general agents in San Diego. He’s down there all this week.”

  “So you’re holding down the fort.”

  “Yes. There’s no one else in the office. Mr. Miles works alone. Is there anything . . . I can help you with?”

  The usual way of handling this question from a woman is to smile roguishly and see what develops, but in this case she was being utterly sincere in a professionally friendly way. She had looked in enough mirrors to understand that flirtatiousness wouldn’t be her strong suit.

  “I hope so. I’m on a private case trying to trace a woman who used to work here—Catherine Moore.”

  “Oh, yes. She left last week. She said she was going to get married. But you know, there were some police earlier this week looking for her, too. Has she done something wrong?”

  “Nothing illegal. She’s not in any trouble. It’s more in the line of a personal situation.”

  “Oh, I see.” She lowered her voice and became confidential. “You know, if those policemen last week had only told me that, I would have been, shall we say, a little more cooperative. But they were rude characters.”

  “They weren’t real cops. Just studio security.”

  “Oh. Well, perhaps that explains it. One can’t expect much from those kinds of people. Anyway, I just said nothing and sent them away with a flea in their ear. Mr. Miles was out on a sales call, and they didn’t wait. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, because he doesn’t know anything about where she went.”

  “But you do?”

  She shrugged knowingly. “I have an idea.”

  “Care to share it?”

  “I might.” She paused and looked at me with a pretty good imitation of slyness. “But you know, times are hard, and a secretary doesn’t make much money.”

  Life is full of surprises. It’s not every day you get shaken down by a secretary in a polka-dot dress.

  “Would five bucks help?”

  “Yes, but ten bucks would help twice as much.”

  Well, it was Manny’s money. I gave her two fives, which she folded primly and tucked away in a plastic change purse.

  “Well?”

  She lowered her voice even lower, even though there were just the two of us in the room.

  “That whole story about getting married was a lie. She just wanted to get out from under . . .” Understanding the double entendre, she smirked and didn’t blush. “Get out from under a relationship with some man who was rich but not especially . . . simpatico. I suppose that’s who you’re working for.”

  “Could be.”

  “Is your client simpatico?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I’m not surprised. Catherine wa
s not very bright and she was not very efficient, but she was very good-looking in a trashy sort of way. She knew when she was being taken advantage of. She looked exactly like a former movie star. Minnie David.”

  “Really? Do you think she’s still in town?”

  “She told me she was going to quit this job and go out to one of the gambling ships and work as a cigarette girl. She said she could make twice as much money from tips alone, looking like she did. And I wouldn’t put it past her if she found a little sideline, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. But if she was that, shall we say, mercenary, I’m surprised she ducked out on her steady client.”

  “She said some things are not worth any amount of money. Besides, he may have been rich, but he was cheap, you know? She had those bracelets and that pin he gave her appraised, and you know what? They were fake. Not worth fifteen bucks. She said guys like him never married girls like her. They only wanted one thing. Well, that was all right as long as the diamonds were real. But when they gave you fake stuff, they were just taking advantage.”

  “What about the evening gowns?”

  “Department store. Nothing special. Just copies of the real thing. She could make anything look good. Some women are like that.”

  Yes, some are.

  “But those dresses were another signal that this arrangement was not only temporary, but not very profitable. You know?”

  I knew.

  “And there was something else. He never offered to get her a screen test. She kept waiting but he never did, until finally she asked him about it straight out and he said she wouldn’t like the business. She was too classy. Can you believe that? If there’s something she wasn’t, it was classy. But he just wanted to keep her for his girlfriend. If he’d offered to make her a star or something, she would’ve listened and maybe stuck around even with the phony jewels.”