by Stuart Woods
An hour later, he had moved into his new cottage, had everything put away and had been confronted by his empty closets. He went down to Rodeo Drive and into an old-line Beverly Hills men’s shop and, inside of an hour, had chosen suits, jackets and odd trousers, two dozen shirts—dress and sport—half a dozen pairs of shoes, plus ties, socks, underwear. While the shop’s tailors worked like beavers to cuff his trousers—the only alterations needed, since he was a perfect 42 long—he chose tennis whites, golf shoes, three hats and a trench coat for chilly evenings. It was an orgy of shopping, and he had never enjoyed anything more that hadn’t involved sex. He paid in cash, which took a big bite out of his five thousand dollars. At a hundred and fifty bucks for a suit, it added up. He put on a new outfit and ordered everything else delivered to the cottage before the day was out. Then he went grocery shopping. That night, he grilled himself a steak, had a swim in the Harrises’ pool, listened to the radio for a while and turned in early.
NEXT MORNING, HE WAS AT Centurion bright and early. He waited while the gate guard affixed a sticker to his car window—artwork of a Roman centurion—then drove to the administration building and entered his new office. Jenny was already at work.
“Good morning, Rick,” she said brightly. “Your office is ready. I’ve cleaned everything out.”
A cardboard box sat on her desk with what had apparently been John Kean’s desk contents. Rick picked up a framed photograph of a couple, beaming at the camera. “Is this Kean and his wife?”
“Yes,” Jenny said. “Her name was Helen. Pretty, isn’t she?”
Rick nodded.
“Oh, one thing,” Jenny said. “I spent all day yesterday trying to get the safe opened, but our usual lock and safe people couldn’t do it. It’s a Schneider, a German model, and apparently it’s impossible to open without the combination. I looked all over the office, thinking John might have hidden the combination somewhere, but I found nothing. You want me to have it hauled away?”
“Leave it,” Rick said. “I think I may know somebody who can open it.”
“Good luck,” she said. “Oh, Eddie Harris said to let him know when you came in. Shall I call him?”
“Sure.” Rick went into his office and arranged his desk, placing an old photograph of his parents on the desktop. They were wearing flying clothes and standing in front of an old World War I Jenny. Then he looked up a number in his address book and dialed it.
“Jah?” a gutteral voice said.
“Hans, it’s Rick Barron. I’ve got a safe I want opened.”
“Rick,” the man replied plaintively, “you know I’m not doing dis no more. I’m an honest man now.”
“Don’t worry, it’s strictly legit,” Rick said. He gave him the address.
“All right,” Hans sighed. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“It’s a Schneider,” Rick said. “Can you handle it?”
“Please, Rick, not to be insulting me. You vant a new combination?”
“Yes.”
“Give me some numbers.”
“Okay. Ten, fifteen, twenty.”
“You are having no imagination, Rick, you know dis?”
“I’ll leave twenty bucks with my secretary.” Rick hung up in time to greet Eddie Harris, who was walking through the door, followed by a middle-aged man in a business suit. Rick recognized his old boss from the LAPD immediately.
“Welcome aboard, pal,” Harris said, pumping his hand. “I want you to meet somebody. Rick, this is Chief Davidson of the LAPD.”
“Chief, how are you?” Rick knew the man had held the job for less than a year, and rumor had it he was already on his way out.
“Pretty good, Rick. Raise your right hand.”
“What?”
“Do it, Rick,” Harris said.
“Do you swear to uphold the laws of the city of Los Angeles and the state of California and to protect and defend the people of this city?”
“I guess I do,” Rick replied.
“You’re now a lieutenant on the LAPD,” Davidson said, handing him a gold badge in a wallet. “If you’ll excuse me, Eddie, I’ve gotta run.”
“See you around, Brian.” Davidson left.
“I thought the badge might come in handy,” Harris said to Rick. “The chief sells them to the right people for a hundred and fifty bucks. You ready to go to work?”
“You bet.”
“Come on, then.”
Rick paused at Jenny’s desk. “A little German man is going to show up to open the safe. Watch him and see that he doesn’t take anything out of it.”
“He’s a thief?”
“He used to be. Don’t worry, he’s harmless.” He handed her twenty dollars. “Give him this when he’s finished.”
Harris grabbed the money and handed it back to Rick. “Get that from petty cash,” he said to Jenny.
She handed him a pad of chits, and he signed one.
“You’ll be able to sign, yourself, after today,” Harris said. “Don’t spend your own money on studio stuff. Now come on.”
“Where will you be?” Jenny asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Rick replied.
Harris led him to the electric cart and began driving. “Sleep well last night?”
“You bet.”
“I saw you in the pool. You’re pretty athletic.”
“I swam at Santa Monica High,” Rick replied, “and I played on the tennis and golf teams at UCLA.”
“Useful sports,” Harris replied. He pulled up in front of Clete Barrow’s cottage. “Here we go.”
Barrow was sitting in a barber’s chair while a woman lightly applied makeup to his tanned face. The shiner was hardly noticeable.
“Hey, Clete,” Harris said. “Remember this guy?”
“Indeed,” Barrow replied. “I never got your name, chappie.”
“It’s Rick Barron.” They shook hands.
“Ah, yes. I hear you’re our new top copper around here.”
“You heard right,” Harris said. “Listen, I’ve got someplace to be. I’ll leave you guys to chat.”
Rick walked him to the door.
“You’ve just started work,” Harris said as he left. “Good luck.”
Rick turned and went back into the dressing room.
Barrow stood and stretched. He was wearing a handsome military uniform with a red jacket. “So you’re the new nursemaid, eh?”
Rick laughed. “I guess I am.”
“Think you can keep up with me?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Is it your job to keep me sober?”
“I was told that’s impossible. Eddie just wants you to show up for work every day.”
“Not an unreasonable request,” Barrow said, checking his hair in a mirror. “Well, come on then, let’s do it.” He led the way to his own electric cart, and they set off.
“Where you from, Rick?” Barrow asked.
“Born in Georgia, came out here as a boy, grew up in Santa Monica. How about you?”
“England, old boy; a village in Kent, south of London. I was meant for the Navy, but after Dartmouth I opted for the Royal Marines. Served out my obligation, then was attracted to the stage. A scout from Metro saw me in a play in the West End, and the rest, as they say, is history. How long were you a cop?”
“Eight years.”
“That’s long enough, surely.”
“Long enough.”
“Eddie is a good chap. Give him what he wants and he’ll always be your friend. He’s certainly been mine.”
Rick nodded. “What’s this picture you’re shooting?”
“A Khyber Pass horse opera, with pretensions of quality,” Barrow drawled. “Nothing special, except for the money they’re spending on it. We did the exteriors last month out in some godforsaken part of the desert. Now we’re doing the interiors.” He stopped at a soundstage door and swept inside, with Rick in his wake, introducing him to the director, the assistant director, the producer and a dozen other peop
le.
“We’re ready for you, Clete,” a woman with a clipboard said. “Take my chair,” Barrow said to Rick, pointing to one with his name printed on the canvas back.
Rick sat down and watched as Barrow strode onto the set, that of the commanding officer’s office at an Indian Army outpost. The scene was shot over and over, from different angles, with close-ups for the various actors. It went smoothly, and Rick thought that Barrow made a commanding figure in the gorgeous uniform.
The shooting occupied the morning, then Barrow took Rick to the studio commissary for lunch, where he was introduced to another dozen people, mostly actors that Rick had seen in movies. After lunch, they returned to the soundstage, and a scene was shot on another set, this one a moonlit terrace with a very realistic painting of mountains in the distance.
During a break, Rick approached Barrow. “I should get back to the office for a while. What are you doing for dinner?”
“Joining you, I should think,” Barrow replied. “Pick me up at my bungalow at six?”
“Will do.” Rick left the soundstage, and an assistant drove him back to the administration building in Barrow’s cart.
“The safe’s open,” Jenny said as he entered his office. “What a funny little man.”
“He’s the best safecracker on the West Coast,” Rick replied.
She handed him a key. “He made this for a lockable compartment inside the safe,” she said. “He said you’d be interested in its contents.”
Rick went into his office and, using the new combination, opened the safe. There was nothing in sight. He used the key to open the interior compartment and was stunned at what he found. Bundles of twenty-, fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills were stacked in the compartment. Rick did a quick count and came up with an approximate figure of twenty-two thousand dollars. There was also a manila envelope in the compartment and a Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. He took the clip out of the weapon and worked the action. It had been loaded, cocked and locked. He replaced it in the safe and opened the manila envelope.
Inside was an eight-by-ten glossy photograph of John and Helen Kean in bed with another couple, caught in various sex acts. The other woman was even more beautiful than Helen Kean, and the other man was a handsome Mediterranean-looking man who Rick thought looked familiar, but he couldn’t place the face. He checked the envelope, but the negative was not present.
He looked at the photograph again. There was nothing arty or posed about it, and it left nothing whatever to the imagination.
Rick locked the photograph and the money in the safe and went out to Jenny’s desk. “Do you know if John Kean had any family?”
“Just his wife, I think. There was a lot of talk about it after the . . . incident, and from what I heard, nobody had any idea what to do with his personal effects or any estate he might have had. I guess it all goes to the state, or something, not that he had any money. My impression was that he spent everything he made. Word was, he and Helen lived pretty high on the hog.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. He went back into his office and sat down. He took the photograph from the safe and looked at it again. None of the four participants seemed aware of a camera. The whole thing smacked of blackmail, and judging from the amount of money in the safe, it seemed that Kean was on the collecting end.
But Kean’s being a blackmailer didn’t square with his suicide, let alone his murder of his wife. Unless somebody had staged the event. Rick’s first impulse was to call Eddie Harris and tell him about this, but he hesitated. Harris had hired him to take the load off, not to add to it. He locked the safe. He’d think about it for a while, see what he could come up with.
Later, Rick left his office, picked up his car and went to have his second successive dinner with a movie star.
7
RICK DROVE TO CLETE BARROW’S bungalow, enjoying his new car. He loved the Ford’s V8, and the transmission was smooth as silk. Obviously the motor department at Centurion had done a lot of work on the car, above and beyond the cream paint job. The upholstery was cream leather with red piping, and the original dashboard had been replaced with beautifully varnished burled walnut. He had a feeling he had seen the car in a movie, but he couldn’t quite place it.
The front door of the cottage was open. “Hello?” he shouted through the screen door.
“Come on in, old boy!” Barrow shouted back. “Be with you in a minute.” Barrow came out of his dressing room, wet, clad in a terry robe. “Fix yourself a drink. Be right with you.”
Rick went to the bar and opened a Coca-Cola. He figured the best way to deal with Barrow’s drinking was not to let the man get him drunk. He strolled around the living room, looking at the pictures. There were no framed glossies of movie stars, or scenes from Barrow’s films; instead there was a collection of small oils and watercolors, mostly landscapes of what Rick assumed was the English countryside.
Barrow came out of his dressing room clad in a double-breasted blue blazer and white trousers. His thick, blond hair was slicked back, still wet. “Shall we, then? We’ll have to take your car, since mine is, well, incapable.”
“It’s right outside.”
Barrow closed the door behind him but did not lock it. “Hey, that’s a beauty,” he said, looking over Rick’s car. “I’ve seen it in a film, haven’t I?”
“That’s what I thought, but I can’t place the film.”
“No matter.” Barrow settled himself into the passenger seat.
Rick turned the car around and drove out the front gate, accepting a salute from the guard with a wave. “Where to?”
“Where do you live?”
“Bel-Air.”
Barrow whistled. “That’s quite an address for so recent a copper.”
“I’m renting Eddie Harris’s guest house, or one of them.”
“You own a dinner jacket?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Let’s go pick it up, then we’ll go to my place and I’ll get mine. I think we should go out on the town to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“My new minder, old bean.”
“Look, Mr. Barrow, let’s get something straight.”
“Clete,” he replied. “Let’s get that straight first.”
“Clete, I don’t really give a shit what you do with your evenings or how much you drink, as long as you show up on time until this picture is done. You don’t have to have dinner with me or be my pal, or take me out on the town, all right?”
“May I call you Rick?” Barrow asked politely.
“Of course.”
“Rick, if I wanted to stay drunk for a month and never show up at the studio again, there wouldn’t be a damned thing you could do about it. I, like all drunks, am sneaky and resourceful.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Rick replied, turning toward Bel-Air.
Barrow laughed. “All I’m saying is, I’m happy to have the pleasure of your company. Most of my friends are married or living with women. I don’t have many single mates to tie one on with, you see?”
“In that case, let’s go out on the town.”
“Righto.”
Rick turned down his secret drive and pulled up in front of the cottage.
“Well, what a fine hideaway,” Barrow said, opening the front door and walking in. “I see you’ve just moved in.”
“Yeah, I haven’t got all my books put away yet. I’m going to grab a shower. Can I get you anything?”
“Just point me at the bar.”
Rick rolled his eyes.
“Relax, chappie,” Barrow said, chuckling. “Unlike most drunks, I can control it, if I want to.”
“Suit yourself,” Rick said. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the cabinet, there. I haven’t had time to lay in a stock of anything else.”
“Bourbon is not my idea of whiskey,” Barrow said, “but if it’s all that’s going . . .” He headed for the cabinet.
Rick showered and dressed in his new tuxedo. When
he came out, Barrow was sitting on the couch, a drink in his hand, listening to the news on the radio.
“We’re going to be at war soon,” Barrow said sadly.
“You really think so?”
“Hitler’s not going to stop until somebody stops him, and who but us? The French are useless.”
“You really think Roosevelt would take us into a war?”
“Not you—us. The Brits.”
“Oh.”
“Churchill is right, you know, but nobody will listen to him.”
“If you say so. Shall we go?”
Barrow left half his drink in the glass and headed for the car. “Say, that’s my dinner suit you’re wearing.”
“It is?”
“They made it for me to wear in Hilyard’s Choice, last year.”
“Centurion wardrobe supplied, and Eddie told me to keep it.”
“Fits you perfectly, old chap. Savile Row couldn’t have done better.”
They got into Rick’s car, and following Barrow’s directions, Rick drove up Sunset and turned into the Hollywood Hills, climbing more and more until they turned into a narrow dirt lane at the top of a ridge. They stopped in front of a Spanish-style house built into the hillside and hidden from the road by trees and rhododendrons.
Rick followed Barrow up the steps and into the house. They entered a foyer and emerged into a large living room, comfortably furnished. Two sets of French doors opened out onto a terrace and pool, and in the dusk, the lights of the city were beginning to show. The view was spectacular.
“Won’t be a moment, old boy,” Barrow said. “The bar’s over there.” He pointed at a bookcase.
Rick walked over to the shelves, puzzled, but on closer inspection the books turned out to be spines glued to the paneling. He found a handle and pulled. The “bookshelves” swung open, revealing a beautifully designed bar, complete with crystal glasses.
“A far cry from my cabinet,” Rick muttered to himself. He drank another Coke and watched the lights of LA come on.