One for Our Baby

by John Sandrolini

  “Bet your life on it, bambina.”

  She smiled again, then turned and walked off.

  In ten seconds she was gone.

  10

  I hustled on over to the airport and cranked up the Electra, then zipped over to Long Beach. I caught a break when I saw my partner, Roscoe, hanging around. He’d blown a jug on the DC-3 and was waiting for the mechanic to finish the repair. He helped load my plane while I checked the weather and filed a flight plan.

  It was just after one when I took off. I hugged the coast until I was north of Los Angeles then began a climb at Malibu, up and over the hills. Along the way, I cadged a radio signal from KNOB on the direction finder and dialed in some Big Bill Broonzy. That was good.

  After that, they played an album side from trumpeter Clifford Brown. That was great. Helen and I had seen him play back in late ’54, so it seemed like a good omen.

  As the Electra droned on, Cliff’s aching version of “What’s New?” cut through the heart of the night over the gyrating hum of the props, the soulful notes and the dull buzzing blending into a relaxing rhythm. I leaned back, letting my mind unwind, drifting through the day’s dizzying events.

  The shock of seeing Helen, her love affair with Frank, the rush I got when she kissed me in the doorway, the way she wept when she said she still loved me—all these events played out again for me, the woman in the middle of them whirling and weaving like Salome as she danced through my mind.

  A squall line, rare for the season, boiled up ahead in my windshield. I was so busy daydreaming that I damn near plowed right into it before altering course out to sea to avoid it.

  Brown’s trumpet stayed with me as I flew on amid the lightning flashes, interference slowly enveloping the signal in fuzzy static. I rotated the dial a couple of times, but Cliff faded away, then he was gone. But I didn’t really notice.

  I was still thinking about that kiss.

  * * *

  I finally dropped onto the runway back in Burbank around five thirty just as the first shafts of morning light began creeping above the San Gabriels. Venus shone like a beacon as she shimmied above them in the dawn sky.

  “Good morning, doll,” I said, giving her a wink she didn’t return.

  I taxied back into “Transient,” cut the engines, and threw a pair of chocks around a tire. Then I pulled the foldout bunk down, slipped off my boots, and draped my leather jacket over my chest. The sandman had me under in thirty seconds.

  My dreams were entirely about Helen. They were vivid and sensual and very, very real. None of them would ever be described in Ladies’ Home Journal.

  II

  11

  The cabin door creaked open with a metallic groan, the woman I was holding fading away into the gloom as I raised my head to see who was at the hatch. The dark shadow of the lineman’s head appeared, framed by white light in the opening.

  “Mr. Buonomo? You’ve got a call inside. Someone says it’s urgent—he’s very insistent.”

  “Who is it?” I rasped, my fingers still clutching for the vanishing wisp of Helen.

  “He didn’t say, but he threatened to have my legs broken if I didn’t wake you up. He’s real worked up about something.”

  Frank. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  I sighed and checked my watch. Eight thirty.

  “Tell him I’ll be right in,” I said, the words tripping across my tongue.

  I pulled on my boots and combed my hair back with my fingers. The morning sun was bright, so I slipped on my Ray-Bans to ward it off and stepped down from the plane, trudging off to the lounge toward God knew what.

  * * *

  I picked up the receiver, stifled a yawn, and opened with, “Morning, Frank.”

  “Did you screw her?”

  “What?”

  “Lilah. Did you screw her? Where the hell were you last night? And why are you still in Burbank this morning?”

  “Whoa, easy. I’m not one of your boys, Sinatra, don’t talk to me like that. And I was in the skies over California until five a.m. so, no, I didn’t screw her—but screw you, pal!” I started to hang up.

  “Joe,” he blurted out, “she’s gone. She didn’t show for her screen test and she’s not answering her phone.”

  I felt my heart skip a beat.

  “Gone? Nobody’s seen her? Could she be running late?”

  “Nobody in Hollywood misses a screen test with Zanuck, not one that Frank Sinatra sets up! She would’ve called them anyway. You gotta get over there right away; something’s not right here.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “Do you remember who you’re talking with here? Ten minutes after I call, that piece of shit at Hush-Hush will be asking me for ten thou to keep it quiet—you know the cops tip those guys off. I need one of my guys, Joe, and you’re the best. There’s got to be an explanation, but I need to know something soon.”

  Silently, I agreed. I was starting to feel alarmed, too, as I woke up. “Okay, Frank. I’ll do it. Where’s she live?”

  He gave me the address I already knew, begging me to hurry.

  “I’ll call you from there as soon as I know something. Good-bye.” I banged the phone down, grabbed the Stutz keys off the wall without asking, and headed out.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” I shouted over my shoulder as I ran for the parking lot.

  12

  I kept my cool as I drove, but just barely. I hoped I’d find her at home, maybe asleep, maybe drunk. I wanted her to tell me that she just didn’t want to do the screen test and hadn’t wanted to talk to Frank about it, or that she was sick, or jittery, or anything at all—just so long as she was there.

  I parked right out front and double-timed into the foyer. She didn’t answer her bell after three rings, so I punched all four second-floor bells on the intercom, pushing the door open as soon as I heard the buzzer.

  At Helen’s door, I stopped and listened for several seconds, then knocked firmly. Nothing. I knocked again and called her name, scanning the hallway in both directions, listening for any sounds. Twenty seconds passed. Just to be sure, I waited twenty more.

  Then I pulled my knife.

  I stuck the blade into the jamb and jimmied it around a couple of times. The bolt slid back easily, but the door chain caught firm. I slipped that, too, with a gentle flick of the blade and the door swung inward quietly.

  The place was dark, curtains drawn and all lights out. I closed the door behind me, switched on a table lamp, and surveyed the room.

  A large one-bedroom, neat and well appointed. The furniture was streamline style, black lacquer with green cushions. Chromium lamps capped with dark green shades dotted the room. They looked expensive—and new. It was a smart place.

  A sleek bureau edged out from the wall on the far side of the room. Half a dozen pictures in silvered frames rested on the embroidered silk cloth on top. I recognized the one of Helen’s parents, and one of her and her sister. Several other people looked vaguely familiar from Hollywood. A large autographed picture of Frank from about 1949 stood prominently in the middle. He still had most of his hair in that one.

  I called her name in a low voice, but she didn’t answer. Then I made my way across the carpeted floor to the kitchen. Everything was in order, not even a dish in the sink. A copy of Variety and a pencil lay on the small Formica table next to a bowl of fruit. The back door was locked, but the chain wasn’t hooked.

  I walked back across the living room, toward the open bedroom door. She wasn’t in there, either. The bathroom was more of the same, the sink and bathtub bone dry.

  I returned to the bedroom. Last night’s velvet dress lay on top of the still-made bed. One of the foldout closet doors on the near side of the bed was full open, but the reams of clothing inside hung in neat, orderly rows on their cedar hangers. When I closed the door, the garment hanging on the knob caught my eye—a spaghetti strap navy dress with white piping on a knitted hanger, a laundry tag for Betty Benker pinned to the fab
ric.

  I “hmmmmed” audibly as I added that number to the equation, then turned to survey the rest of the room.

  A large vanity dominated the space on the far side of the bed. I walked over, then bent down to inspect it, my hand coming to rest on a pair of lavender silk pajamas that lay on the cushioned chair back. I knew them well. I bought them for Helen in San Francisco while we strolled through Chinatown one day after lunch. They weren’t cheap, but she loved them and wore them every night.

  I picked up the top and breathed in deeply. Chypre. I closed my eyes, recalling that day on Grant Street, the silk cool and smooth between my fingers.

  I gave the vanity a good looking-over. Bird’s-eye maple inlaid with marquetry and banded with mahogany on the edges—not something you’d buy at Woolworth’s.

  But the top teemed with life like their lunch counter on a Saturday: small glass bottles with French labels nestling amidst a troika of tortoise shell cases in front of a gilt mirror, a silver ashtray, a cut-glass lighter and black cigarette holder, a jade Bakelite jewelry box brimming with enough baubles to send a crow into overdrive, and a pair of ebony hairbrushes with mother-of-pearl inlay, random strands of dark hair protruding from the brushes. It might not have done for Coco Chanel, but just about any other woman would have been thrilled to have that vanity. Hollywood hadn’t been too bad to Helen.

  I moved across to the bed, sitting down on the mohair quilt and scratching my chin with my palm. Nothing seemed amiss, but she clearly hadn’t spent the night, nor had she taken Betty’s dress for her tryout. Yet I had seen her go in the front door last night. Everything had been fine then. So where the hell had she gone?

  I glanced over my shoulder at the nightstand closest to me. A pale yellow Crosley clock and a leather-bound black-and-white photograph sat topside. I took a good look at the man in the picture: leather jacket, sunglasses, dark hair slicked back in waves—the guy had an air about him. And the way he leaned smiling against the side of a polished aluminum airplane brought a smile to my lips. He reminded me of myself years ago.

  Probably because he was me.

  * * *

  I made a second sweep of the apartment but didn’t turn anything up. Then I went over to the telephone nook on the wall and flipped through Helen’s address book in search of Betty’s listing. An L.A. exchange appeared next to her name, along with several men’s names, most of which had been lined out. Hunter hadn’t made the grade. Neither had Johnny, Henry, or Ace. Ace? Some guy named Carmine seemed to have boyfriend duties this week.

  I dialed the number. Someone picked up on the fourth ring.

  “H-hello,” a woman said.

  The voice was small and fragile—it might have broken if you spoke too loudly to it. It sounded shook up.

  “Hello, Betty?”

  “Yes?”

  “Betty, I’m a friend of Lilah’s and I’m trying to reach her. She’s not at home and I was hoping she was with you.”

  There was a long pause, then, “No. No, I haven’t seen her all week. Sorry.”

  “Listen, this is very important. She missed her screen test this morning. I’m worried about her. Do you have any idea where—”

  “I’m s-sorry,” she stammered. “I can’t help you.”

  A man’s voice mumbled in the background, the words fuzzy.

  “Betty—”

  “Good-bye,” she said. “Please don’t call back.”

  There was a click, then a C chord hummed on the line. I cradled the phone.

  Now I was fairly certain something was up. Carmine, or whoever that was in the background, was just going to have to wait for his Cream of Wheat this morning because I was going to speak with Betty Benker just as soon as I could get to Hollywood, and that was going to be pretty damn quick.

  I dialed the operator, but her number was unlisted. Ditto the address. Betty Benker was a ghost.

  But a ghost who sent her laundry out.

  Back in the bedroom, I lifted the navy dress off the closet door and held it up. The tag read Chin’s Hand Laundry, address on North Gower, in Hollywood. That checked. It would be my next stop.

  The laundry slip in my pocket, I took a last look around the room, feeling faint stirrings of Helen’s presence in the familiar objects. I wanted things to be all right for her. For us.

  I snapped off the light, set the lock, and pulled the door gently behind me until I heard the lock click into place. Then I hustled down the hallway and went out the front door.

  A set of eyes followed me as I strode across the porch. When I turned my head, I caught the quick fall of a Venetian blind over a side window. I smiled cheekily in the direction of the busybody neighbor and turned front again. Then my smile just evaporated.

  Two police officers were coming up the walk as I went down the stairs. I nodded smartly and wished them a good morning as I neared.

  Maybe it was their great police instinct, maybe it was just routine, or maybe it was my flightsuit, boots, uncombed hair, and two-day stubble, but something tipped them off that I might not have been a resident of the Regency Court Apartments.

  “Hold it, pal,” the first one said.

  “Yes, Officer?”

  “You live here, Jimmy Doolittle?”

  I made a head shake. “Just visiting a friend.”

  “Who might that be, Baron von Richtofen?” He smiled at his partner like a kid who made a funny in math class.

  It’s always the same with cops, always the wiseass for thirty bucks a day. But I wasn’t going to let on about Helen—that could put Frank in it. So I did the best thing I could—I grinned and said nothing.

  That went over like a one-bladed prop.

  The second bull said, “Listen, Jimmy D, you tell us who you were visiting here or you’re going in on a burglary beef, get me? We’ve got a report of an intruder here.”

  This cop was older and meaner than the first, probably because he knew that patrol sergeant was as far as he was going to go in life and there wasn’t enough booze in all California to help him forget it anymore. He was heavy and tired-looking with blotchy gin-mill skin, the kind of guy who went to work solely to fill the hours between his tours of duty on the barstool. He vibed Fatso Judson, the sadistic guard in From Here to Eternity, all the way.

  I gave up. It was going to happen anyhow.

  “Actually, guys,” I said, “I came to meet Howard Hughes; he wanted to sell me the Spruce Goose for two thousand bucks. I told him to throw in Jane Russell or it was no deal. You would have thought he’d live in a bigger place, wouldn’t you?”

  Two minutes later, I had a comfortable seat in the back of their nice patrol car, handcuffed to a rail.

  The cops came back to the car in five minutes, talking to someone who looked liked Central Casting’s idea of a landlady—thin, spinsterish, hair in a bun. Even the cat-eye glasses.

  She took a long look at me through the car window. I smiled—it seemed like the thing to do. She shook her head back and forth several times and mouthed the word no to the officers. They thanked her, dropped into the car, and let her return to whatever landladies do.

  Fatso glowered at me and poked me in the chest with a sausage link finger. “You’re going down for some questioning, Doolittle.” Then he pulled his jowls into a grin. “And I think I’ll do it myself.”

  I shrugged. I was too worried about where Helen was and what kind of trouble might be brewing to give a damn about him. As the car pulled away, I saw the busybody’s face in the window again. I shot her the bird, drawing just the tiniest fraction of satisfaction when the blinds banged shut.

  13

  Fatso leaned in close, squeezed my cheeks in his weathered paw, and said, “Listen, guinea, we’re going to keep going over this until you give us something. We got a report of a prowler, and we got you, Wrong Way Corrigan, in the same complex looking like he just fell to Earth without any explanation for being there.”

  I stared straight ahead at the wall, his words beating down like someone kickin
g a washboard over and over.

  “You got a private detective’s license in your wallet, but you say you ain’t working on a case. You also have a chink laundry ticket for a Miss Betty Benker of Hollywood in your pocket, but apparently you don’t know her and she said she never heard of you, either. That don’t square, brother.”

  I flexed my lips, cracking the blood dried in the corner, said, “You bore me, Fatso. I went to see a friend and had a wrong address. I’d have found him by now if you hadn’t shanghaied me. I already told you that.”

  He snarled, said, “Tell it again, then. It’s gonna go a lot easier if you stop holding out on us.”

  “You’ve been at this for at least two hours already. Really, don’t you have some hopheads to shake down, or phone calls to make on behalf of the reelection campaign of Chief Pissant? Anything to earn your shit salary today other than knocking the paint off my fenders?”

  This time he only hit me with an open hand, but it stung just the same.

  “We can play this game all day, pal. I don’t get off ’til five,” he said, chuckling with self-gratification. “Besides, the chief is appointed in Alhambra, not elected. Guess that proves you ain’t from around here.”

  “The only thing you’ve proven all day, Mr. Holmes, is that you’re a disgrace to that uniform.”

  He pulled back his hand again, then stopped and looked toward the door.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, growing closer. I could hear two men speaking in elevated tones as they approached. One sounded familiar, an East Coast accent.

  “Lieutenant, that’s my man you have in there and I want him released right now.”

  Frank. I shook my head, made the wryest of little smiles.

  “Listen, Mr. Sinatra, this man is under investigation for breaking into Miss DeHart’s building. And if I understand you correctly, she’s unaccounted—”

  “I sent him over there! Are you paying attention, Lieutenant? If your idiot goons hadn’t pinched him, he might have found her by now, and I wouldn’t be wasting my goddamn time talking to you—I might be holding her instead. Get him out of there. Now!”