The Monet Murders: A Mystery

by Terry Mort

  Later that afternoon as I sat at my desk tossing cards into my hat, Marion called back.

  “You’re a fast worker,” I said.

  “Your tax dollars at work. I got an answer for you. Yankee Re-Insurance. It’s a mid-sized outfit in Boston. Our contact there is the vice president for security. We do each other favors now and then. Not me personally, but the Bureau.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “George Eliot.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Anyway, we’ve worked with him before, and he agreed to be the beard for Elizabeth Bennett, who it seems is one of their top fraud investigators. I gave him a description of her, based on what you’ve told me. So if anyone wants to check, she’s covered.”

  “Great! What’s their address? I’ll have some business cards made for her.”

  He told me, and I thanked him once again.

  “Happy to be of service. Just keep your eyes open out there. Reds under the beds and all that.”

  “You got it. How’s the local sting going?” I was referring to “our” case against Youngstown’s finest Mafiosi.

  “Still building.”

  That was fine by me, although it did seem that Marion was taking his own sweet time about it.

  The phone rang just as I was about to leave the office.

  “Hiya, Sparky.”

  “Ah! ‘Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman.’”

  “Smooth talker,” she purred. “One of yours?”

  “Sure, what did you think?”

  “Cute. Well, I got something for you.”

  “Will it cost me dinner?”

  “It’s not that kind of something. Besides these days it takes more than dinner. I found out some stuff. Are you going to be at the Garden tonight? I am.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Got a date, huh? Well, you can tell her this is all business. It’ll stay warm.”

  “‘It’?”

  “You know. I’ll be there at eight. It’ll be worth your while.”

  “‘It’?”

  “You know,” she laughed.

  “Deal. See you then.”

  I called Myrtle’s answering service and left a message that I wouldn’t be able to come to Malibu that night. It was business, I said, and more or less believed it.

  I got to the Garden about halfway through the cocktail hour. The writers, most of them, were gathered around the pool, and the dumpy brunette was trying to teach the rest of them the basics of the Mexican hat dance. The combination of gin and general physical collapse was not a good foundation for this kind of thing, and most of their steps looked less like dancing and more like someone half-heartedly crushing a cigarette or a caterpillar. But they didn’t seem to mind. The dumpy brunette had brought along three fifths of a mariachi band to supply the music. I learned later that she’d found the Mexicans in a diner on Sepulveda, and I wondered whether it was the same one Rita Lovelace had worked in before being discovered. The Mexicans had stopped there after doing an afternoon wedding and were happy to pick up a few extra dollars playing for a pathetic bunch of drunken gringos.

  Not everybody was dancing, though. Sitting over to the side, by himself, was my friend Hobey. He was holding the inevitable glass in his hand and staring at it, as usual, looking for answers that he knew weren’t there. He looked profoundly discouraged and more than a little seedy. He was wearing an unlikely-looking tweed jacket—unlikely for Hollywood, that is—and a button-down white shirt with an orange-and-black knit tie that didn’t extend past the third button of his shirt. He looked more like a prep-school classics teacher than a writer of screenplays. I decided I shouldn’t interrupt his gloomy reveries, but he looked up and saw me and smiled wanly and beckoned me over to his table.

  “Not interested in the Mexican hat dance?” I asked.

  “I got over dancing in the Twenties. Danced from New York to Paris and on the boat in between, practically non-stop. My wife liked—or I should say likes—to dance. She’s studying to be a ballerina, if you can believe it. How many thirty-five-year-old beginning ballerinas do you know?”

  I knew there was some sort of mystery about her, something like Mr. Rochester’s first wife, though not that dramatic, so I didn’t follow up that line of conversation.

  “Have a drink,” he said. There was a bottle of gin and another of tonic, a bucket of ice, and several unused glasses.

  “Thanks. Expecting a party?” I asked, indicating the clean glasses.

  “Always expect a party. That’s my motto. Usually it doesn’t happen. Usually you’re disappointed. But to expect anything less is to surrender.”

  “Surrender to what?”

  “Things.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ve got to combat things, even when you know you’re going to lose.”

  “Sounds pessimistic.”

  “No, romantic.”

  I knew him well enough by now to understand that when he said “romantic,” he wasn’t talking about women. Not entirely, anyway.

  “I’ve been sitting here thinking deep thoughts,” he said.

  He looked it. I merely nodded, knowing I was about to hear these deep thoughts whether I was interested or not.

  “I’ve been thinking about the difference between a romantic and everybody else—and especially your basic garden-variety sentimentalists.”

  “Yes?” I wondered if I really needed this.

  “Yes. Here’s the difference. A romantic knows he will always be disappointed, that nothing is permanent or reliable, that the last party might very well be the last, even while he looks forward to the next. A sentimentalist thinks things will go on, love will never end, the sun will come up tomorrow, and the weather will always be fair. A romantic is always a tragic hero, a sentimentalist is always a . . . Rotarian. Or should I say Optimist? Ha!”

  “You don’t expect the sun tomorrow?”

  “I think it’s likely. But it was Hume who said that that expectation is merely the result of habit or custom. There’s no reason to think it will. No reasonable foundation for believing it. Not that Hume was a romantic, you understand.”

  “I never thought he was,” I said.

  I don’t think he heard me; or if he did, he paid no attention.

  “But you see, the romantic has an advantage,” he said, “because he expects disappointment. Knows it is lurking in the shadows or around the corner. Maybe over there in the oleanders. The sentimentalist never sees it coming and is shattered when it does. I feel sorry for them, now and then.”

  From where I was sitting, I could see what was actually happening in the oleanders. Oh, those naughty writers.

  “But, you know,” he continued, “that’s what makes ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so perfect—the permanence of the lovers’ passion is such a contrast to the impermanence and disappointment the rest of us have to endure.”

  “You speak from experience.”

  “Brother, do I.”

  I nodded, sagely, and fixed my drink. I wondered why he was feeling low this particular evening. Maybe he’d gotten fired again or had had another screenplay rejected. Or maybe he was still stuck trying to finish the novel he was working on, the one about a man with a difficult wife. Or maybe he was between love affairs. Or he’d gotten a letter from his kid asking for money. Maybe all of that, and a few other things too. One thing was certain, though—he was pretty drunk. And his tedious philosophizing was one more reminder to me of why it’s always better to be alone when you want to have more than one or two drinks—assuming you have any regard for the feelings of your fellow man.

  We sat there in silence, him brooding, me pretending to brood sympathetically.

  But I’ll say this for him—he wasn’t the kind of person who stayed morose for long, drunk or not. He took a few long drinks, refilled his glass, lighted a Camel with a match from a Trocadero matchbook. Then he looked over at me, brightened up, and asked what I was working on now.
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  “Anything juicy?” he asked.

  My first instinct was to fall back on client confidentiality. But then I remembered I didn’t really have a client. I’d been paid off and dismissed by Charles Watson. If I was working for anyone, it was for the cops, and they didn’t pay. They regarded that sort of thing as money going in the wrong direction. Not for the first time, I wondered what I expected to get out of this case. Maybe I was just trying to satisfy my own curiosity. Maybe helping the cops was in my long-term, if not immediate, interest. Or maybe it was something else. But whatever the reason, I was still involved, and it occurred to me that my friend Hobey was a writer; his stock in trade was figuring out plots. So maybe he could shed some useful light. Also, I had an hour or so before Catherine was due, and I’d far rather hear his angle on the story than listen to more theorizing about romantics.

  “How much time have you got?” I asked.

  “Ah. That is the question. Are you speaking existentially or practically?”

  “Practically.”

  “I have until this bottle is empty, at which point I will have to get another one, and at that point I will be available until that bottle is empty, but I make no guarantees of perfect sobriety beyond the second bottle. Why? Is it a long story?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Good. I like long stories. Tolstoy, for example. He wrote some shorter pieces, but his best work is long. Very long. I think Anna Karenina is better than War and Peace, although both are long stories. Maybe just a touch longer than they need to be.”

  “I agree.”

  “There’s talk of making a movie of Anna Karenina. Who do you think should play her?”

  “Garbo, I suppose. She seems the logical choice.”

  “Bah. I think they should use Mae West. That would make it a comedy. We all need a good laugh these days, and incongruity is the soul of comedy. Everyone knows that. They’d have to change the ending, of course. No one would believe Mae West would kill herself over a man. Most likely she’d throw Vronsky under the train after slapping him around a little. Then she’d go and find someone else. Dime a dozen. Men, I mean.”

  “That would mean changing the story, a little.”

  “Who cares? The great unwashed mass of moviegoers out there don’t know any better. They don’t know Anna Karenina from Little Orphan Annie. And the studios certainly don’t care about creative integrity. They don’t have any trouble changing a writer’s endings—or beginnings or middles, for that matter. No problem. Presto, change-o. Believe me, I know. Buy a title and then write a whole new story, and I use the word ‘write’ in the broadest possible sense. They could turn Anna Karenina into a musical with Busby Berkeley choreographing the dance numbers and Irving Berlin providing the songs. Eddie Cantor as Vronsky. Harpo Marx as Karenin, the husband who suffers in silence. What do you think?”

  “I could see that,” I said.

  “Me, too. Speaking of length, do you know what Doctor Johnson said about Paradise Lost?”

  “No.”

  “He said ‘None wished it longer.’ Ha. But we seem to be wandering off course.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “We were talking about the case you are working on. Tell me the long version, omitting no details, pertinent or otherwise.”

  So I did. It took a while. In the middle, he called a timeout to get a fresh bottle of gin.

  “What do you think?” I asked, when I was finished. “Kind of confusing, isn’t it?”

  “Confusing?” he asked. “Not at all. It’s as plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face. Watson’s your man.”

  “How do you figure that?” Of course, Watson was a suspect, but I didn’t see that there was enough clear evidence of anything for Hobey to be so positive.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. But instead of launching into his theory, he paused for several seconds, looking at me with a kind of glassy, otherworldly expression, his face suddenly pale, his skin seeming to grow tighter over his face. Then he yawned, closed his eyes, and passed out. I felt his wrist, just to make sure there was still a pulse. There was. And he was taking easy, although shallow, breaths. What’s more, he was smiling, so I figured he wasn’t having a heart attack. I also figured this wasn’t the first time this had happened, so I didn’t feel bad about not sending for an ambulance. He’d wake up sooner or later, and the stairs to his upper-floor bungalow apartment were only a few feet away. Besides, I noticed Catherine Moore coming into the pool area from the front of the hotel. She saw me and waved.

  “Hiya, Sparky,” she yelled. The Mexican hat dancers didn’t notice. The noise of the band drowned out her all-purpose greeting.

  She was wearing a dress made out of silver sequins, as far as I could judge, and her hair had been recently re-platinum’d to match. Somehow the silver motif accented her flawless complexion. For a woman with a few miles under her keel, she remained astonishingly youthful and vibrant looking. I felt the stirrings of impure thoughts.

  She came bouncing over to the table, smiling flirtatiously, innocent of underwear.

  “You look lovely,” I said, truthfully. A little gaudy, maybe, but lovely nonetheless.

  “Thanks. Who’s your friend?” she asked as she sat down and poured herself a drink. “Is he alive?”

  “In a sense. He’s a writer.”

  “Too bad for him. I hear those guys make decent money, but they get fired all the time. Makes ‘em nervous.”

  “I’ve heard that too.”

  “And when it comes to getting a little action, writers are way down on the totem pole. Even producers’ nephews have more pull with the girls, you know? Nobody jumps in the sack with a writer except the girls who just got here from Akron, or some place in Ohio. They’re still dumb enough to believe everything people tell them. It doesn’t take them long to get wise, though. Personally, I’d rather sleep with a private dick than a writer any day.” She winked elaborately and patted me on the knee. “I speak from experience, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She examined the sleeping Hobey with a critical eye. “He’s not bad-looking, though, in a faded sort of way.”

  I had a feeling Hobey would have appreciated that. He was at the stage of life and career when even halfhearted compliments were welcome. What’s more, I also had the feeling that he was reveling a little bit in his failures. Or maybe wallowing was a better word. His alter ego, Hobey Baker, was an “athlete dying young” as well as a war hero, and so appealed strongly to this Hobey, who was neither an athlete nor a dead hero, but who was feeling the clammy hand of creative failure, which to him was another kind of death. This wasn’t amateur psychology on my part; he’d told me as much one night as we split a bottle of gin.

  “How’s the screen test coming?” I asked Catherine. “Scheduled yet?”

  “No. We decided it wasn’t necessary. You know?” She smiled slyly. “I mean why bother? We both knew I’d pass. You think Marion Davies had to take a screen test? Not hardly. I’ll say this for Manny, though. He didn’t take much convincing to see that light. Not after last time. He knew it was either the green light for Catherine or the highway for Shorty.”

  “Well, that’s a step in the right direction.”

  “You said it. Tomorrow I’m going to start electrocution lessons. Ha, ha! That was his word. He meant elocution, of course. Manny don’t always get his English straight. I think he thinks in Jewish and then translates it in his head before he talks English. Sometimes it comes out somewhere in the middle, especially when he’s talking fast.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “And speaking of English, there’s this guy from London who says he’s a lord somebody. Lord Helpus, most likely. He’s going to be my teacher, but if you ask me he’s probably a phony. I mean, if he’s such a high-and-mighty lord, why is he giving ‘electrocution’ lessons to anyone, let alone someone like me, just starting out?”

  “It does make you wonder,” I said. And she was probably right. The
town had more than its share of “aristocrats” who began life selling vegetables in Covent Garden and picked up their accents listening to the BBC, before coming to sunny California where no one minded a phony as long as he had a plausible story. “But I’m sure you’ll do well with your lessons.”

  “I think so too. But if it don’t work out, I guess I can always be a private dick’s girl Friday. I can chew gum, sit on your lap, and crack wise with the best of them. Whaddayah think, huh?”

  “Can you type and take shorthand?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  “Not a bit. The job’ll be there if you need it, but I don’t think you will.”

  “Me neither. If I flop as an actress, I’ll probably marry Manny. It’d just be another kind of acting, and I won’t need lessons for that.”

  “Since you mentioned it, what exactly does this private dick’s brand-new ace assistant have to report?”

  “The things I do for love,” she sighed, insincerely. “For example. To get anywhere at all, I had to spend the afternoon in bed with Tony.”

  “Nice for him.”

  “I know. But not so great for me. I told myself what I was doing was a little bridge maintenance. You know, keeping that bridge open in case this deal with Manny falls apart, which I don’t think it will, but you never know. But that was a pretty big pothole I filled up, let me tell you. Tony must’ve spent the morning eating oysters.”

  “I’ve heard they do work.”

  “They work for him, that’s for sure. But after a couple of hours the oysters wore off and he passed out, which was just a little too convenient, if you ask me, because he didn’t have to explain why there wasn’t something sparkly in a velvet box for me as a present in exchange for what had just happened. Not that he was expecting me that day or anything, but you’d think a guy like Tony would have a stash of sparklers set aside for just this kind of last-minute thank-you. Maybe dip into that safe where he keeps all the jewelry people leave behind when they can’t pay their gambling debts. You’d think he’d unbuckle a bit, and I’m not talking about his pants, which he unbuckles PDQ, like everything else he does when it comes to the bedroom.