Dangerous to Know

by Renee Patrick

  For the assignment I’d selected Warren Fisk, one of Addison’s accountants and a devotee of the game. He was also such an unassuming milquetoast I had difficulty recalling his name. Fortunately, I had Hiram Beecher’s hints at hand. Beecher was the former lard salesman turned authority on business communication whose book How to Be at Home in the World had become a national sensation and my personal bible. Why do people remember jokes? Because silliness sticks in the memory! he’d advised. A warren is where rabbits live, so I’d picture a rabbit the same sandy shade as Warren’s hair wearing his horn-rimmed glasses, leaping in a perfect parabola. Damned if it didn’t work like a charm.

  Warren sprang from his car outside Gene’s house the instant he saw me. “I would have picked you up,” he said.

  “No need for that”—leaping rabbit—“Warren.” As we climbed the rickety steps to Gene’s door he took my arm, and it dawned on me he might have the wrong idea about why I’d asked him along.

  * * *

  “DON’T TELL ME you and Edith are at it again,” Gene said.

  “We’re not at anything. She wants to do a favor for a friend and I’m in a position to help.”

  Once inside I’d buttonholed Gene, busy propping up a leg of his wobbly card table with a Saturday Evening Post. Gene sighed and squinted up at me. I took in his dark brown hair and realized two things: he needed a trip to the barber, and I’d missed him and his easy self-confidence. I was glad I’d freshened my face powder and lipstick before coming over.

  Gene pushed himself to his feet. The table still wobbled. “No surprise Miss Dietrich didn’t get the white-glove treatment she’s accustomed to. Don’t get me wrong. Carl Wingert’s thorough. But he doesn’t go for social niceties. Still, I’ll call him.” He held my gaze for a moment. “Oh. You want me to do it now.”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad time. The game hasn’t started yet.”

  “Yeah. We wouldn’t want to interrupt the game.” Gene was no fan of bridge, either. He glanced at Abigail. “Let me see what I can do.”

  As he stepped out of the living room I walked over to Abigail. She sat by herself dealing cards while—leaping rabbit—Warren built drinks at Gene’s modest bar.

  “Some solitaire to pass the time?” I asked.

  Abigail giggled. “Just making sure Gene has all fifty-two cards.” Her fingers moved dexterously, laying out four suits in record time, then executing a fleet shuffle.

  “Better keep the stakes low,” I told her. “Matchsticks only. Remember, what little I know about bridge I learned from Grand Slam with Loretta Young.” My relationship with Abigail would have been so much simpler if I could have disliked her. But it was impossible to harbor ill feelings toward this slip of a woman with her huge Kewpie doll eyes and halo of tight brown curls. The hint of helium in her voice filled her every utterance with wonder, perfect for her job as a schoolteacher. Abigail had already endured so much pain—her husband, Teddy, gunned down in the line of duty—that I felt petty for questioning her motives or her sincerity. Like everyone Abigail encountered, I wanted to do something for her. And I had something in mind.

  I leaned in and nudged her. “What do you think of our fourth?”

  “He seems very nice. He certainly knows his bridge.”

  “That’s why I brought him over.”

  “And I can tell he’s quite taken with you.”

  “What?” I recoiled so fast my head swam. My best-laid scheme ganging aft agley before card one had been dealt. “Forget me. I wanted to put you two together.”

  “As partners? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, I insist. Bunny should play with you.”

  “Bunny? Who’s Bunny?”

  “Have I got a nickname already?” Bunny—No! Leaping rabbit!—Warren hopped over with a tray of weak-looking whiskey highballs, believing he had a tiger by the tail.

  “No, um, Warren, sorry. I meant someone else.”

  “Lillian seems to think we should be partners tonight,” Abigail said.

  “I don’t agree. Only way to keep the game interesting is to team the novices with the old hands. You are a novice, aren’t you, Lillian? I’d be happy to show you what I know.”

  How was this evening unraveling so fast? “Or … or,” I found myself shouting, “the ladies could take on the fellas!”

  “Maybe next time,” Abigail said in the soothing voice she undoubtedly used on surly children. “Tonight you and Warren should be together.”

  She’d already committed his name to memory, too. “Fine. As long as I’m the dummy. Being the dummy works for me.”

  “You might want to be the declarer for once,” Abigail said. “It wouldn’t hurt to try something new.”

  Same to you, I longed to holler in her face.

  Bridge, a game of clues and evidence, should have been right up my alley. But it had never captured my fancy. I played solely for the snacks, preferring the five-card stud poker my uncle Danny had taught me around the kitchen table in Flushing. Abigail and Warren did their best to convey some of bridge’s strategic intricacies, but having two people hold forth on a subject you didn’t care for didn’t mean you learned twice as much. It meant you listened half as long.

  When Gene finally returned, I pounced on him with relief and dragged him into the kitchen. Where, to my dismay, I saw neither hide nor hair of any snacks.

  “Where’s the food?” I asked, keeping a lid on my alarm.

  “Are we doing food? We really expect to play for that long? I have pretzels somewhere. And sandwich fixings.”

  “Grub courtesy of Loaves and Fishes Catering. Did you reach Detective Wingert?”

  “Yes, and he’s not exactly thrilled Miss Dietrich is second-guessing him. I wouldn’t be either, given what he told me. There’s nothing to work with. It’s tough to consider Jens Lohse missing when he has no place to be missing from. He hasn’t had a fixed residence since he got bounced from his last place for not paying rent. Lohse convinced the landlady, a Mrs. Fuchs, to take messages so he could still get work as a piano player, and she let him leave his car there. Wingert gave it and his place the once-over and found nothing out of the ordinary. He’s pretty sure Lohse went to Mexico to get his visa.”

  “Who gave him that idea?”

  Gene blinked at me. “Your pal Marlene did.”

  “Wingert didn’t talk to anyone else?”

  “Who else is there? Nobody knows where Lohse lives.”

  “If Jens went to Mexico, why is his car still here?”

  “Because it’s a heap. Wingert says the shape it’s in, it wouldn’t make it to Long Beach.”

  “Then how did Jens get to Mexico?”

  “By bus. Or thumb. There are ways, Frost.”

  Ravenous, I scavenged sandwich supplies. The drawer containing the cutlery was stuck. Gene pounded the countertop to work it loose. “It doesn’t sound like this Wingert investigated at all.”

  “He did exactly what I would have done.” Gene’s words were chillier than anything in his icebox. “Miss Dietrich may not be satisfied, but the LAPD did its job.”

  So much for using my vaunted connections to unearth more information on Jens. Gene and I prepared a platter of substandard sandwiches in silence, presenting them to our partners as if they’d been hand-delivered from Chasen’s. I was paired with what’s-his-name. Within an hour the four of us were playing gin rummy, and I was home in bed by ten thirty. Another giddy night in Hollywood’s social whirl.

  6

  ADDISON’S ANNUAL SANTA Breakfast for Hollywood Helping Hands—or the Brentwood Boys Brigade, as I thought of them—wasn’t about to organize itself, so Saturday meant a hard half-day at my desk. The breakfast was Addison’s favorite charity event, because he could don the suit of the world’s most famous fat man and ho-ho-ho to his heart’s content. Our youthful charges received a hearty breakfast with gallons of cocoa, plus photographs with Santa and toys handed out by the biggest stars of the silver screen. Charlotte Hume had graciously agreed to fi
ll in for Mrs. Rice as hostess, leaving every other aspect of the following Friday’s festivities, from answering the first doorbell chime to peeling the last peppermint stick off the damask curtains, my responsibility.

  I was scratching my head at some paperwork I’d obviously filled out myself when the telephone rang. My gratitude for the break proved short-lived.

  “How’s tricks, princess?” came a chipper voice.

  “Hello, Kay.” Kay Dambach and I had once lived in the same boardinghouse and been nigh on inseparable. Then the aspiring newshound had landed a gossip column earlier in the year, a direct result of her indirect involvement with the murder case that brought Edith and me together. Katherine Dambach’s Slivers of the Silver Screen had limped out of the gate, picked up by a handful of newspapers and hampered by a lack of scoops. I had taken to cutting short if not outright ducking her telephone calls; her relentlessness since climbing onto the lowest rung of success’s ladder, forever badgering me for dirt on Addison’s parties, had put a strain on our friendship.

  She started in again. “The ol’ blank page blues have me down. You don’t have any tidbits for Mother, do you?”

  If she only knew. “I’m afraid not. It’s been pretty quiet around here.”

  “About that. Addison’s name is usually stamped all over the Hollywood social calendar, yet he hasn’t hosted a bash in weeks. What gives?”

  I cursed myself for blithely wandering into Kay’s trap. “Mrs. Rice is traveling, that’s all. Say, she might have a few observations for your readers when she returns.”

  “Oh, goody. A matron back from abroad telling me the French have a word for it. That always plays.” She sighed. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with Addison being at that New York dinner where the smuggling racket was cracked? Scuttlebutt is some Paramount people may be implicated.”

  Clever Kay, ferreting out the facts. “No, Addison’s simply being a good boy. I should run. I’m rather busy.”

  “Doing what, if Addy’s not throwing any parties?”

  “You’re forgetting the Santa Breakfast. It’s the highlight of the holidays!” I proceeded to talk Kay’s ear off, telling her who had been invited and how many rashers of bacon stocked, until she threw in the towel. She was, I had to acknowledge, a fair little reporter.

  I hung up the receiver. After a moment, the unannounced woman cleared her throat again. The first cough had been so soft I’d assumed it was a dewy leaf brushing against a windowpane.

  “Forgive me,” she said, “but I seem to be turned around.”

  “Striking” scarcely did her justice, but one had to start somewhere. She resembled a precocious child’s drawing of a beautiful woman: vivid slashes of brow above wide eyes, ebony hair parted dramatically down the middle. And as in a child’s drawing, her features were strangely flat and lifeless.

  I leaped to my feet nonetheless, slamming my knee resoundingly against my desk. I recognized the woman. Hedy Lamarr had appeared in exactly one American film—Algiers, with Charles Boyer—but she was already being promoted as the world’s most beguiling creature, the latest in a line of luscious European exotics like Greta Garbo and my new best friend Marlene Dietrich. In person Lamarr more than lived up to the billing, even when dressed in a belted camel trench coat and clutching a borrowed man’s fedora. I hadn’t been told to expect the actress, but famous faces turned up at Addison’s on a regular basis.

  “Happy to help, Miss Lamarr,” I said, massaging my kneecap. “Where are you to meet Mr. Rice? The dining room? The conservatory?”

  “His laboratory.” She gave the word a foreign spin, pronouncing it like Boris Karloff. “He promised to show me his inventions this morning. You’re lucky to work for such a brilliant man. I should have paid closer attention to the directions I received at the door.” She pointed back down the hall with surprisingly thick, utilitarian fingers. She had a mechanic’s hands.

  I was setting her back on course when Addison ambled by, carrying what looked like a shoebox with a telephone dial on it. “Hedy! There you are! Did Lillian waylay you?”

  “Hardly. Is that what I think it is?” Animation stole into the actress’s eyes for the first time.

  “Yes, my Magic Tuner. Allows you to change the station on your radio from another room using static frequencies. The Philco people have a similar product in the works, but I’ve made a few refinements of my own.”

  “You must explain this fascinating device to me after I powder my nose.” After a second round of directions Lamarr excused herself, leaving Addison and me with nothing but his Magic Tuner and a protracted silence for company.

  “Hedy’s very interested in engineering,” he said.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Asked more intelligent questions about radio equipment than the people who used to work for me.”

  “It’s grand to meet people with common interests.”

  “Thought I’d show her what I’ve been tinkering with. Given the global situation I’ve been spending more time in the workshop. And Hedy tells me she’s quite bored with the roles they’re giving her.”

  I was perhaps the only person in the world who’d accept Addison entertaining a goddess while his wife was abroad at face value, taking them as partners in scientific inquiry. “I can imagine,” I said. “I’ve only seen her in Algiers.”

  “Which I screened again recently. I forgot Charles Boyer was in it. He’s a fine Pepe Le Moko, but seeing him reminded me of Mayerling, which only made me think of Albert Chaperau. Now Donald tells me Chaperau may not even have produced Mayerling, can you imagine? Everything the man told me could be a lie! And I introduced him to people! My friends!”

  Addison may have been fabled for his frequent, grandiose parties, but he took sociability seriously. He genuinely loved people, from walks of life high and low. That enthusiasm was the reason I enjoyed working for him. Now here he was, reduced to showing a crateful of wires to Hedy Lamarr instead of entertaining the town, the notion he’d betrayed some communal trust eating him alive. As he wandered off to wait for his ardent admirer, I vowed to do what I could to aid his cause.

  * * *

  JENS LOHSE HAD formerly resided in a shabby bungalow court off Vine Street in Hollywood. Beige paint flaked off cottages huddled around a balding courtyard, the stooped palm tree at its center like an abashed stand-in.

  Mrs. Fuchs, the owner-manager, had propped her bungalow’s door open so she could survey her empire from the shade. Her hair was the same vague blue as her cardigan. She nodded at the photograph of Jens I’d dug out of Addison’s files.

  “That’s him, only he don’t live here no more,” she said, her voice hoarse from hollering at tenants through doors. “Police even came by asking about him. What’d he do to you?”

  “He entertained at my boss’s home. We’re thinking of hiring him again.” Neither statement technically a lie. I was unduly proud of myself.

  “Leave a telephone number and I’ll tell him you were here.”

  “You’ve been taking his messages for some time, then.”

  “Six weeks or so, since he came clean about not having rent money. I don’t abide freeloaders. But it’s not Christian to keep a young man from earning his livelihood. He needs to look stable, like he has a permanent address, or he can’t get work.” She settled herself in her chair, drawing the sweater around her shoulders. “I know a thing or two about show people.”

  “I’m sure you do. Is Jens a stable young man?”

  “For a piano player.” She cackled. “He never gave me no trouble, ’cept when I had to tell him to knock off his music when it got late. Always noodling on that keyboard.”

  “Would it be possible to have a look at his bungalow?”

  Mrs. Fuchs’s eyes flicked to a door across the courtyard. “No. New tenant already moved in, soon as my son and I repainted. There’s nothing of his in there, anyway. We hauled it all out, including that ancient piano of his. Gave it to my church with Jens’s blessing. Everything else
is at the junkyard, ’cept a box of odds and ends he asked me to hold on to for him.” She leaned forward, stopping just short of the sunlight. “Why do you need a look at his place to hire him for a party?”

  An excellent question, Mrs. Fuchs. “He borrowed some music the last time he played for us. I’ll get it from him later. Did I see Jens’s car out back?”

  “The convertible? He’s got to leave it somewhere, although if you ask me it couldn’t move with a stick of dynamite under it. Gonna hang a ‘for sale’ sign on it soon.”

  I went out to an alley behind the bungalow court. A trickle of water ran down its center from an unseen source toward some unknown estuary. I hadn’t set foot back here before speaking with Mrs. Fuchs and had no idea what Jens’s car looked like, but there was only one convertible. The boxy LaSalle sagged on knock-kneed axles, its accordion roof in tatters, bright yellow finish faded to the color of advanced jaundice. The passenger door shrieked as I opened it. Twigs were strewn across the seat and floorboards, the wilderness laying claim to the car. I forced the door shut and inspected the trunk. It was locked.

  Taking a circuitous route back, I passed what Mrs. Fuchs indicated had been Jens’s bungalow. A voice came through the patched window screen, that of a young woman singing scales.

  There was no trace of Jens Lohse here anymore. I didn’t know why I’d bothered to come.

  I returned to Mrs. Fuchs’s cottage. “Would it be possible to see the box Jens left behind?”

  “Must be some special music he borrowed from you. Is Bing Crosby after it?” Still, she padded to a closet and retrieved a box, placing it on a table where I couldn’t readily abscond with it. No treasure trove lay within, merely a broken watch, some blank postcards from Vienna and Berlin, and a stack of books.

  The topmost one I recognized. Jens had read Hiram Beecher’s How to Be at Home in the World as thoroughly as I had, the pages of his copy dog-eared. Had I introduced myself to Jens at Addison’s party, we would have had a subject to discuss. Flipping through it I didn’t turn up any marginalia or scraps of paper. Next was a book by an author named Karl May. A western, judging by the cover illustration, and in German, no less.