Wild Cards XVI: Deuces Down

by Michael Cassutt

  “Probably threatened to have him killed,” came the equally morose answer.

  “Doesn’t seem like her style.”

  “The guy could have made a fucking fortune,” Benton said. “Gone from studio to studio, set to set, keeping actresses young.” Benton reflected for a moment. “Probably a good thing he didn’t. It would have killed the industry. The public wants a new flavor at least every few weeks.”

  Finn was pondering something else his father had said. “But does he really keep her young . . . physiologically young? Her face may look twenty-three, but what kind of shape is her heart in? Her lungs?” They were rolling down Sunset Boulevard at the best speed the van could manage. Mercedes, Posches, and Rolls went flying past their tail lights like malevolent red eyes. “The break-in,” Finn suddenly blurted.

  “What?”

  “The break-in a few days ago. Nothing was taken, but the files had been rifled. The insurance policies are in there, and a medical exam is attached. It would prove that Kelly wasn’t a wild card.”

  “So, what’s your point?”

  “They’d know it was somebody near her, and Stan is the only constant.”

  “Hey, I’ve directed most of her movies,” Benton argued.

  “Most, not all. You heard her. Stan’s done her make-up ever since High Noon. She’s never married, and she never stays with any leading man much past a few months. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who held the wild card.”

  “So who took him?” Benton. “And did they kill him?”

  Worms seemed to suddenly go crawling through the pit of Finn’s stomach at his father’s blunt statement. “I don’t know. It depends on who took him. It’s a power worth preserving. I think. I hope.”

  Finn turned up the hill toward Bel Aire and they rolled past the guard gate. The guard gave them a wave. A few minutes later they were home.

  His mom was full of questions, and Finn began giving her the rundown while he wolfed down a slice of pot roast. Through the kitchen door they could hear Benton making a call in the living room.

  “. . . Grace is down with the flu. I’ll be rearranging the schedule, but it’s no problem.”

  Since Finn’s last remark to his mom had been that Kelly looked like the portrait of Dorian Grey, he and his mother exchanged incredulous looks at the lie. Benton hung up the phone and reentered the kitchen. Finn waved his fork at his father. “How can you say that? You said yourself, without Stan there is no movie.”

  “So we find him,” Benton said. “You find him.”

  “What!?” Finn’s voice rose to a squeak. “I’m a med student.”

  “You’re a joker.” Finn watched his mother flinch, and he felt the beef turn to bile in his gut. His parents had always been careful to call him a “wild card” not the pejorative “joker.” Now his father had said the word, and he felt an aching grief as if the love and acceptance which had been the foundation of his life had suddenly proved to be a fraud. “You know the world. I can’t involve studio security or the police, and you’ve already had some great ideas. I’m depending on you, Bradley.” His father’s eyes were pleading. “I’m close to retirement. I just wanted to go out on top, not fired off my last film.”

  We all have our griefs, Finn thought.

  After dinner Finn went to Stan’s house. He had the key that Kelly had thrust at him, and it was where all the detectives started in the TV shows. It was a tiny white bungalow on the south side of Los Feliz Boulevard. On the north side were the Hollywood Hills and the homes of the rich and very famous climbing the scrub-covered folds and canyons. On the south were modest houses and ethnic restaurants, groceries, laundromats, shoe repair shops—the kind of place where normal people lived.

  The front door opened directly into a long living room with hard-wood floors underfoot and several throw rugs. Finn avoided them assiduously. He had learned the hard way that hooves and throws didn’t mix. There was a shabby green recliner in front of a television set, and a couch that hardly looked used. There were built-in book-cases on most of the walls, and they were crammed with books.

  There was a double glass door that divided the living room from the dining room. It was a charming room with built-in buffets on either side of the west window, and an array of china displayed behind the glass mullions in the doors. There was a plate on the table with the remains of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. A salad on a salad plate. A glass of red wine. It was sad and very uninformative.

  Feeling like a voyeur, Finn proceeded to the bedroom. There was a large four poster bed, meticulously made with a canopy and dust ruffles and throw pillows. There was a large window looking northwest toward the hills. Finn gave a glance out the window, then snapped his neck around for a longer look. From the window he could see the upper story of Kelly’s house. Finn trotted back to the main rooms of the house. All the drapes were tightly closed. He returned to the bedroom and those wide open drapes.

  After another look at the lights in the movie star’s house Finn began riffling through the bookcases in the bedroom. Not surprisingly there were a lot of books about the movie business. There were also lot of books about Grace Kelly. Finn flipped through a few of them skimming a sentence here, a paragraph there.

  On the dresser was a framed picture of Stan standing next to a marlin hanging by its tail from a wooden scaffold. This was a familiar picture to Finn. Every male in southern California had a picture of himself next to a big fish he’d caught in Mexico. In the photo Stan was a good deal younger, and he was smiling off to the side as if to someone out of camera range. That was odd. Most of the mighty hunters beamed directly into the camera. The frame was also anomalous. It was an elaborate silver affair.

  “Must have been really proud of that fish,” Finn muttered as he turned over the photo and looked at the back. There was a hand-written notation. La Paz, June 1954.

  The date hit some memory or association. Finn stood struggling with that sense of reaching for something just beyond reach. Then it hit. He lunged back across the bedroom, and pulled down one of the biographies of Kelly. He flipped quickly through the pages.

  The start of principal photography was delayed on To Catch a Thief due to Kelly’s exhaustion. She recuperated for several weeks in Mexico before returning to begin work. . . .

  There was more, but Finn had what he needed. Kelly and Stan had both been in Mexico in June of ’54. Question was, were they together? Finn flipped forward a few more pages to the section about Prince Rainier of Monaco.

  Odds makers in Vegas were offering two to one that Kelly would wed the dashing prince, but it was the cynics who didn’t believe in fairy tales who made the best choice—in 1955 Hollywood’s princess declined the offer to join European royalty.

  Finn closed the book. He looked back at the framed photo. He looked out the window at the distant lights in Kelly’s home. The lights went out. Grace Kelly had gone to bed. “She didn’t marry Rainier because she couldn’t,” Finn said aloud. “She was already married to you. Wasn’t she, Stan?”

  It was an idiotic thing to say, but it was the only thing that made any sense. The only explanation for why the make-up man had stayed so loyal for all those years.

  “All those years while she was fucking every new leading man. You were a schmuck, Stan.” Finn shoved the book back into its place on the shelf. “And you need to go home and go to sleep. You’re talking to yourself, Bradley, my man.”

  The next morning he put in a call to the Myth Patrol. He knew he needed help, and he didn’t know who else to ask. They met at Dupar’s, and Finn outlined the situation.

  “So tell me again how all us wild cards are brothers under the skin, and how I ought to spend my free time rescuing an ace,” Goathead mumbled around his double bacon cheeseburger.

  Finn hadn’t counted on ace envy entering into the equation. “He’s not an ace. He’s a deuce. This is not a major league power.”

  “He’s a seventy year old man who can make woman look young,” Goathead argued
. “If that’s not a sure means to unlimited sex I don’t know what is.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t always put your head in the gutter,” Clops said. He rolled his eye at Cleo.

  “She can’t understand a fucking thing I say.” Goathead leered at her. “Hey baby, want to fuck like frenzied ferrets?”

  “##$%&&*****” Cleo dumped her chocolate malt in Goathead’s lap.

  Clops grinned as Goathead cursed and mopped at the sticky mess. “Looks like she understands just fine.”

  “Guys, could we focus here,” Finn said, waving his hands in the air. “Where do we start?”

  “Hollywood and Cahuenga,” Clops said confidently.

  The Myths were standing beneath an old brownstone building on the corner. The dark upper windows threw back the sunlight in sharp jagged glints. Cleo was glaring at a drunk who stood swaying and leering at her from across the street. Goathead was leering at a couple of female hookers just down the block. Finn stared at Clops.

  “Okay. We’re here. Why are we here?” Finn asked.

  Clops pointed to a corner window. “That was Philip Marlowe’s office.”

  Finn fought down the urge to rip off the cyclops’s head. Forcing a mild tone, he said, “I hate to break this to you, but Marlowe was a character in books. Then he was a character in the movies. He’s not real.”

  Okay, Finn thought, as Clops looked like a kicked puppy, it wasn’t your most diplomatic moment.

  Surprisingly it was Goathead who came to the big joker’s defense. “No, he’s right. We’ve got to get in the space. Think like a detective. Find the character.”

  Wonderful, beneath Goathead’s hairy chest beats the heart of a method actor, Finn thought.

  “I think a tough, no nonsense Bogart approach,” Clops began, only to be interrupted by Goathead.

  “Well, that leaves you right out.” replied Goatboy. “Whoever plays our detective, you’re destined to be the loyal sidekick. You’re not leading man material.”

  Cleo glared at Goathead, and all the snakes hissed at him. The joker jumped back. Cleo laid a hand on Clops’s arm, and gave him a blazing smile. Finn was dazzled. She really was beautiful, if you just ignored the snakes. There was a barrage of Turkish being directed at Clops, then one halting English word.

  “Gorgeous,” Cleo said, and smiled up at the Cyclops again.

  A tide of red swept from the base of Clop’s throat to the top of his ears. “You really think so?” he asked the joker girl. She nodded vigorously. “Would you like to have dinner tonight?” he asked. Cleo nodded again.

  “Gee, isn’t that just . . . swell,” muttered Goathead. “I’m going home.”

  “Wait,” Finn cried. “We haven’t. . . .”

  But Clops and Cleo were strolling off with her arm tucked through his, while tourists on a bus gawked out the window and shot photos. Goathead went clattering off around the corner. Finn took a last look up at Marlowe’s window. Inspiration did not descend. Finn headed off down Hollywood.

  In the old days the Boulevard had been a magical, glamorous place. Now it had fallen on hard times. The street was lined with cheap tourist shops selling tee shirts, tacky memorabilia and maps to stars houses. Hookers, male, female and joker, worked the corners, fading down side streets when an L.A.P.D. cruiser would roll past. Down those side streets the robbers waited. They generally left the hookers alone. Tourists were easier targets.

  Finn, depressed and in a brown study, wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going or who he passed. He had to tell his father he couldn’t do this, and they had to call the police. Then a familiar voice called out to him. “Hi, Bradley.”

  “Tanya.” He looked around, but he didn’t see any evidence of a boyfriend or even one or two of the Bimbo Battalion. “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is not a good part of town for you to be in.” She laughed. “No, I’m serious.”

  “So escort me,” she demanded.

  Finn felt like a sun had started burning down in the pit of his belly. The warm good feeling spread upward and broke out in a broad grin. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

  “I was going to Musso and Franks. Have you eaten?”

  Banishing the thought of the short stack of pancakes, egg and sausage he had consumed only two hours before, Finn shook his head no. “But Musso’s is tough for me. Pretty much nothing but booths and narrow isles. Do you like Chinese?”

  Tanya nodded. “But only in Chinatown.”

  “Do you know Hop Li’s?” She shook her head. “Come on, you’re in for a treat. I’m parked over by Grumann’s.” She slid her arm through Finn’s and the bright glow seemed to explode out the top of his skull. He forgot about Grace Kelly, the movie, even Stan. He was prancing down the Walk of Fame with the prettiest girl in Hollywood.

  Tanya did have a pretty good location. Off Melrose on the fringes of Beverly Hills. Lunch had been terrific, and he didn’t mean the food. They had talked for two hours, and by the second hour Tanya kept laying her fingers gently on his wrist. Once she had even brushed a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. Finn offered to drive her home. She agreed with a secretive little smile and then briefly touched the tip of her tongue to her bottom lip. Finn sensed she was going to invite him in. Then during the drive to North Hollywood Finn had started to worry. What if she lives in one of those nineteen fifties apartment buildings with the concrete and metal exterior stairs. There is no way I can negotiate those.

  Tanya directed him up a quiet street off Melrose, and Finn felt his spirits soar. The street was lined with nineteen twenties duplexes. Most were not aging well. There was missing stucco, missing tiles on the Spanish roofs. Tanya’s was differentiated by the fact it had beautiful landscaping. She followed his look. “I take care of the landscaping in exchange for half the rent.”

  “Wow, you’re an incredible gardener. You could do this professionally,” Finn said enthusiastically then realized from way the skin around her mouth tightened that he’d said the wrong thing. “Look, I wasn’t suggesting it as the fall back position when you don’t make it as an actress.”

  She gave him a smile, and it was the first one Finn had seen that didn’t seem calculated. “You’re a nice guy, Bradley Finn.” He felt the same rictus tightening of his cheek muscles as his smile went thin. “And no, I don’t mean that as a kiss off. I mean it as a come on.” And she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. Her tongue flicked out to explore his lips. Finn suddenly couldn’t breath. “Now come on in.”

  The duplex was sparsely furnished, something which he suspected had more to do with poverty then design. But it was clean and almost obsessively neat and the spicy scent of incense gave it an exotic feeling.

  Tanya walked backwards down the short hallway, unbuttoning his shirt as they went. Finn was willing to follow. At that moment he would have followed her anywhere. She yanked off her tank top, took Finn’s hands, and cupped them around her breasts. The skin was warm, slightly sweaty, and very soft. He ran his thumb across her nipples, feeling the roughness as they puckered. She pushed his shirt off his shoulders. He felt it slid across his back and down his side and his horse hide quivered at the tickle.

  Gasping, he pulled her close and kissed her. The flesh on their chests seemed to lock together, glued by sweat. Tanya tugged him forward. Finn opened one eye to see where they were going.

  It was then that, if not sanity, practicality returned. Finn looked at the bed. “I can’t use that.”

  That seemed to rattle her. “What?”

  “I can’t get down like that. And even if I could I’d squash you. I weigh about four hundred pounds.” She retreated several steps. Too much information, Finn though with a cringe. Didn’t need to mention the weight thing. He could feel his erection dying.

  She glanced at the walls of the room. “So what do we do?”

  “Put the mattress on a table.” A new worry intruded. “Do you have a dining room table?”

  She looked arou
nd the room again. “Yeah, but I don’t want to make love in there.”

  “We could carry it in,” Finn suggested and cringed because he thought he was sounding desperate. Probably because he was desperate.

  “There’s not enough room,” she said.

  “Yes there is if we set it horizontal to the foot of the bed.”

  She was looked desperately around the room again. “It won’t work. Look, what do you say we hold this thought, and you come back later. I can get some help moving the table. . . .”

  “What, you need movers? How big is this table? I can move the table.”

  She was staring past his shoulder. Nausea replaced the earlier hot tingle of arousal. For the first time Finn took a hard look at the bedroom. He noted the way the track lighting spotlighted the bed. He spotted the tiny shotgun mike nestled next to one of the light cans. Careful mincing sidesteps with his hind feet brought him around to face the side wall. It wasn’t a large hole. It didn’t to be. He wasn’t sure if he saw or only imagined the glint of light off the camera lens. It didn’t matter. He gulped down tears of rage and shame and went galloping out the door of the bedroom.

  Harry Gold popped out the bathroom door, and waved his arms over his head. “Whoa, whoa!”

  Finn reared, forelegs pawing the air. It was a trick that usually made people step back. Harry Gold froze and stood staring admiringly up at Finn. Suddenly Finn realized what was holding the producer’s unwavering attention. Finn felt his balls trying to retreat, and his penis pulled as far back in his sheath as was possible. He dropped back to all fours and rushed past the porn producer. He felt his horse shoulder connect with Gold. There was a loud thump and a shout of pain from the little man.

  Finn didn’t look back. He sprinted for the front door. As he charged through the living room, his hind brain noticed the dents in the carpet where furniture had stood. Far from being sparsely furnished, the room had been packed with furniture. They had moved it for him so he would have a straight shot to bedroom, led by his dick. Shame and humiliation were a foul and oily taste on the back of his tongue. Bradley yanked open the front door.