by Terry Mort
“You sing beautifully,” I said when she’d finished a couple of bars.
“Thanks. It’s one of my two talents.”
“I’ll bite. What’s the other one?”
“Acting, of course.” She batted her eyes at me, half mockingly. Or maybe totally mockingly.
“Somehow I think there’s a third talent.”
“Could be.” She laughed, and it sounded as though she was sincerely amused. I was glad she had dropped last night’s ice-princess routine. And it wasn’t hard to see how two rather rough characters could have fallen for her. She was brassy, all right, but some men go for that. I didn’t mind it myself.
“Well, stage experience is always valuable,” I said, “but the real question is how you will look and act on film. It’s a different business.”
“I know. I used to date a producer. I kept asking him to give me a try, but he was only interested in one thing and it wasn’t my acting career.” She grimaced at the memory. Not a hopeful sign for Manny. “All I wanted was a chance, but he was a real heel. Even gave me phony diamonds. Can you believe a guy would do that?”
“It’s been heard of.”
“I hope it isn’t him you’re working for.”
“As I said, that’s all confidential until we get to the next step.”
“Which is what?”
“The client wants to meet with you and have a chat before setting up the test. Just to see if you’re . . . simpatico.” I couldn’t help it. The word just popped into my head.
“Oh, sure. That’s fine with me. He’ll see I’m simpatico as hell. I practically ooze the stuff.”
“There is one question, though,” I said.
She smiled flirtatiously. “Well, seeing as how we only just met, the answer’s most likely no, but maybe if you play your cards right. . . .”
“That’s not the question,” I said. “At least not now.”
“Well?”
“What about your relationship with Tony Scungilli?”
“How’d you hear about that?”
“Word gets around.”
“Well, that’s no problem. Tony’s just nuts about the movies. He likes actresses. He said I looked just like one of his old girlfriends who was an actress, too. She died trying to rescue her poodle from a burning building. It was tragic.”
“Funny, I didn’t see that story in the papers.”
“They hushed it up. Don’t ask me why. Tony was real upset for a long time until he met me.” She grinned, as if to say “and who could blame him?” “I showed him your card and he was all for it. Told me to get right on it, so that’s how come I came here today.”
“Do you . . . see Tony as a long-term proposition?”
“I thought a proposition was always short-term. Like one night and maybe breakfast.”
“All right. How about ‘a long-term relationship’?”
“I get it. As for Tony, I don’t know. He’s okay, but no Douglas Fairbanks, if you know what I mean. You know what his nickname is? The Snail. Well, there’s one thing he’s not slow about, if you get my drift. A girl’s just getting started and he’s already finished and halfway through his cigarette. He thinks ‘foreplay’ and ‘afterglow’ are only separated by a dash.”
“A hundred-yard dash?”
“No, the kind that comes between words.”
I was beginning to like her. There’s nothing like a good-looking woman with a sense of humor. She wasn’t someone you’d want to take home to mother, but that wouldn’t bother her any; she could take your mother or leave her. Most likely her own mother, too.
“So you wouldn’t object to moving out and coming back to Hollywood . . . if the test works out?”
“Not for a minute. Tony might get upset. He says he loves me. But if he really loved me, he’d go a little slower, you know? What’s more, the presents have been scarce as hen’s teeth. Just a couple of pearl earrings. I mean, what kind of love is that? Pretty cheap, if you ask me. For all I know, they’re fake too, like those diamonds that other rat gave me. I haven’t had time to get them appraised yet, but you can bet I’m going to. Plus, a lot of the time that boat’s rocking and I get queasy. I like it better on dry land. Besides, all those goons he has around all the time give me the creeps. They know better than to make a play, but they’re always eyeing me, you know? Like they’re wondering what I look like without any clothes.”
“Shocking.”
“Ain’t it?” And she laughed again.
Well, all of that added up to a glimmer of hope for Manny, despite being labeled a “rat.” Catherine was obviously not any more attached to Tony than she had been to Manny. But Manny could offer one thing that Tony couldn’t. With either guy, she’d be holding her nose in the bedroom, but at least with Manny she’d have a shot at the movies. It began to look a little brighter for my client, the more I thought about it. She had said she hoped I wasn’t working for Manny, and that was a dampener. But she would soon figure out that if the test went well and she got a contract, she’d have a lot more leverage with Manny, as well as some jewelry that didn’t come from the five-and-dime.
“So, when do I meet this bird?”
“I’ll make a call and set it up. Are you going back to the Lucky Lady?”
“I don’t feel like it. I think I’ll check into a hotel and charge it to Tony.”
“You might try the Garden of Allah. Lots of movie people hang out there.”
“Yeah? That sounds good. Where’s it at?”
“Eighty-one fifty-two Sunset Boulevard, just across from Schwab’s Drug Store. Any cabbie knows the place.”
“Great. Thanks.” She looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t suppose you get a kickback from that place—for sending people there. I hope it’s not a dump.” She was obviously a girl with a nose for the angles.
“Nope. It’s a nice place. And no kickback. As a matter of fact, I live there myself.”
She turned her head slightly and looked at me slantwise and knowingly. I switched on my choirboy expression.
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” I said.
“A real philosopher, eh?” I imagine she meant to say philanthropist, but I let it go. Either way, I wasn’t one anyway. “Okay. Well, maybe I’ll see you there later.”
“Good. I’ll introduce you to some people in the business. I have a feeling they’ll like you, assuming you like gin.”
“Gin? It’s practically mother’s milk to me, and if you knew my mother you’d know I wasn’t kidding. Well, see you later . . . Bruno.”
After Catherine left, I called Manny.
“The lady in question just left my office.”
“I thought you were supposed to wait to hear from me.” Again, the unwelcome peevishness. “I’m still working on my pitch.”
“It wasn’t my idea. She just dropped in.”
“Oh. Well, what’d you tell her?”
“Not much. I said the client, meaning you, would remain confidential until you actually met with her.”
“Good. She still set on a screen test?”
“It’s the only reason she came in. But she’s very excited about it.”
“I guess there’s no way around it.”
“I don’t think so. And if you want a little friendly advice, I’d play it straight with her. She doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of girl who’d give you three strikes. And you’ve already swung and missed once.”
There was a pause while he swallowed this medicine.
“Did you ask her about Scungilli?”
“Yes, and I don’t think that’ll be a problem. She’s not romantically involved with him.”
“Meaning she’s not banging him?”
“I didn’t say that. I said she’s not romantically involved. It appears to be strictly a business arrangement for her, although she says he’s in love with her. That could be a complication.”
“I suppose he’s showering her with jewelry.” He sounded a little glum at that thought.
“Only pearl earrings, so far. She’s not impressed. Thinks he’s kind of cheap.”
“In that case, I wonder what she thinks of me.”
“Do you really have to wonder?”
“No, I suppose not. Well, all of that can be taken care of. Did you set up a time for us to meet?”
“No. I wanted to talk to you first. Figured you’d have some thoughts on where and when.”
“Better not bring her to the studio. If there’s a bad scene for some reason, I wouldn’t want it to play out in front of so many witnesses.”
“The horselaugh.”
“Right. Bring her to my beach house in Malibu. We had some good times there, and it’s private.” He gave me the address.
“When?”
“Tomorrow at lunchtime. I’ll have a caterer put something nice together. For two. You can scram after you drop her off.”
As if I’d want to hang around and watch Manny maneuver.
It occurred to me that I might have trouble setting up the meeting tomorrow, if Catherine decided she’d skip the Garden of Allah and go back to the Lucky Lady after all. If so, I’d have to go out there and deliver the message firsthand. Well, after what she’d said about Tony’s enthusiastic reaction to her potential acting career, there should be no trouble about that. She might even introduce me to the man. After my experience with the mob in Youngstown, I was kind of curious how Tony would compare to my erstwhile gangster friends back east, if you consider Ohio the east. On balance, though, it would be better to meet her around the pool at the Garden, later. It would save me a trip and also give her the chance to get to know some aspiring actresses and some expiring writers, to say nothing of a stray private dick with impure thoughts. Like Scungilli’s goons, I too wondered what she looked like without her clothes. Finding out might constitute a professional conflict of interest, but as someone once said, perfection is the enemy of the good. Voltaire? Maybe.
“One more suggestion,” I said. “I’d stop by the fanciest jewelry store you know and pick up something big, shiny, and expensive. I don’t think ‘discreet’ or ‘subtle’ will do the job.”
“I already thought of that. And this time I’ll show her the receipt.”
It’s a shame all the romantic poets are dead. True love and sensitive souls like Manny and Catherine deserved an ode. What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Obviously, Catherine didn’t quite qualify as a “maiden loth,” or a maiden of any kind, for that matter. Still, you have to take your romantic inspiration where you find it. And although I wasn’t sure what a timbrel was, I was pretty sure my old English teacher, Granny Graves, would have been pleased that I remembered those lines.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My next call was to Dennis Finch-Hayden at the Art Department of UCLA.
The secretary who answered the phone told me Doctor Finch-Hayden was not in, and she didn’t know when he was expected. She was a little frosty, until I told her I’d been referred to the good doctor by my friends and colleagues at the FBI and, further, that I’d like to meet with him about evaluating a potential forgery of a Monet. She thawed out at the mention of the FBI—and the prospect of a fee, I suppose. Or maybe it was the magic word “Monet.” She said she would make sure Doctor Finch-Hayden got the message and called me back.
The next afternoon, I went to see Professor Dennis Finch-Hayden in Westwood, on the impossibly beautiful campus of UCLA, where impossibly beautiful coeds walked gaily by, wearing saddle shoes and plaid kilts and white blouses, their hair, blond as a rule, tied back casually, faces tanned. Here and there a few boys lounged in the shade wearing letter sweaters, white bucks, khakis, and expressions of confidence. No one was discussing Kant or Keats, but whatever they were discussing made them happy, for they were all smiling and laughing. I envied them their insouciance. In years, they weren’t all that much younger than I was, but in other ways we were from different generations. And certainly from different worlds. And I have to admit to breathing a mild sigh of jealousy. I wondered if they had the slightest conception of their good fortune. Some must have, surely.
Dennis Finch-Hayden’s office was in the university museum, so I had to walk through the main gallery that was festooned with paintings in gilded frames and the floor crowded with statues in marble and bronze, most showing the human form in unlikely perfection. Well, why not. Who wants to look at ugliness in a museum? The rest of the world is filled with it. You want to see ugliness, walk down any city street—even in Hollywood.
These days, mostly because of the Depression, there was a school of thought that wanted to emphasize depressing reality in any sort of art, even including the movies, which were or should have been nothing more than sugar on the corn flakes and uniquely valuable for that reason. But according to the gloom merchants, life was nothing more than a Russian novel in which everything is dreary, right up to and including the point when the main character jumps in front of an express train, while the peasants resignedly starve to death in the background.
I didn’t care about any of that. I had long ago rejected the importance of being earnest. I had worked in a steel mill, so I knew more about the working class than the guys writing about them oh so solemnly. Hell, if I was anything, I was working-class. At least, I’d started out that way. The days in the mill were long and hot, but after work, the pitchers of beer and the shared packets of Lucky Strikes restored tired muscles and even made the work seem worth doing. There really is such a thing as feeling good after a good day’s work.
Of course, I hadn’t worked in the mills for very long; greener pastures beckoned. So I could afford to be philosophical on the subject. But the men I worked with were not beaten down by a sense of hopelessness, even though they all knew they weren’t going anywhere else. Nor did they think of themselves as cogs in some ever-turning gear. Most of them were happy to have a job and to spend time after work with their friends in a beer joint. I’ve forgotten nine tenths of the jokes I heard. But I can tell you there was more laughter than complaining. And if you’ve never tasted cold beer and a Lucky after a full day of hard, sweaty work, you’ve missed something. Add a pickled egg from the jar on the bar and some good-natured vulgarity from a buxom barmaid, and you have a recipe for happiness, albeit temporary.
I found the professor’s office midway down a long hallway off the main gallery. His name was on the door, and although I was expected, I knocked politely.
“Come in!” If this was Finch-Hayden, he sounded energetic and cheerful. “Feldspar?” he said. “Glad to meet you. My name’s Finch-Hayden. My friends call me Bunny.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Silly sort of name, I know.” He said this with a self-assured grin, as if he enjoyed the joke as much as everyone else.
“Well, you’re certainly the first man I’ve ever known who was called that.” The only other “Bunny” I’d known was a girl back in high school; she had the nickname for reasons not difficult to figure out.
“It’s absurd, of course. Been called that since before I can remember. Came from Nanny. She was a ruthless old trout, just the kind to saddle an innocent child with a ridiculous nickname. I’m surprised I don’t have nightmares about her still. Anyway, the name stuck, and I’ve become used to it. Has an element of agreeable irony. Care for some coffee?”
“I’d like that, yes.”
“Splendid.” He pushed a button somewhere and a secretary magically appeared with a silver tray bearing a silver pot, two expensive-looking cups and saucers, the kind that light almost passes through, milk jug, sugar bowl, and a dish of macaroons. All the crockery matched and was decorated elaborately with pink flowers and green leaves. The secretary laid the tray on the coffee table, smiled pleasantly, and then dematerialized.
“I hope you like macaroons. My secretary adores them and therefore assumes everyone else must like them, too. Personally, I don’t care for them. I don’t tell h
er that; she is a sensitive soul. I take them home and give them to my Labrador retriever. He shares her enthusiasm. Every suit coat I own has crumbs in the pockets.”
“I’m an Oreo man, usually.”
“Yes. Now that makes sense, artistically. A simple but elegant circular arrangement in black and white. Very modern. Take a pew,” he said, indicating two chairs separated by the coffee table. “You know, for just a moment I thought you said you were an Oriel man. That’s an Oxford college. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.” He said this without any discernible condescension.
“I’ve heard of it, yes.”
“I was at Magdalene.” He pronounced it “maudlin.”
“And yet you seem so cheerful.”
“Yes. Well, who can explain these things?” He smiled amiably. “It may not surprise you to learn that that witticism has been used before.”
“No, I’m not surprised.”
Finch-Hayden was tall and lean, with hair the color of straw, clear blue eyes, and a hawk nose, which as he told me later was a legacy from a distant ancestor, the Duke of Wellington. (“It’s the only legacy our side of the family got, I’m afraid,” he said.) He was dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, white shirt, and blue-and-white striped tie which I assumed meant something, either a regiment or an old school. (Eton, as it turned out.) I noticed that the buttons on the sleeve of his jacket actually buttoned, a sign of Savile Row tailoring. No doubt Manny Stairs would approve.
Finch-Hayden was not especially handsome, but he was elegant-looking. A Leslie Howard type, you might say. About forty, he exuded good humor and total self-confidence—as witnessed by the gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. When he wasn’t teaching, he was busy cutting a wide swath through the eligible and ineligible women of L.A., New York, and London. At least that was the rumor, and it was not difficult to believe. He had the look, and he had the manner. And of course he was an expert in the arts—a sure winner with wealthy women who liked to give or attend fundraisers. He offered them the chance to combine a little civilized adultery with pre- and post-seduction conversation about Picasso’s blue period. Or Braque’s billiard tables.