Dangerous to Know

by Renee Patrick

  On stage, the brunette’s eyes shone as she reached her big finish.

  I’ll see you there no matter who’s in view

  I’ll let them stare as I envision you

  With beauty rare, filling my heart anew

  I see you there

  She blew a kiss to the heavens and walked off to scattered applause. A Mae West impersonator, the seams in her face powder visible from the cheap seats, strutted out next, delivering one-liners with one-tenth the original’s verve.

  “Mae West has two versions of her costumes made,” I told Simon. “One’s looser, so she can sit down in it. That way, no wrinkles.”

  Simon deftly feigned interest. He was trying, I had to give him that.

  The waistcoated man bounded down the stairs and summoned a school of waitresses. White shirtsleeves flashing, gold tie shining in the inky gloom, he was the fish most likely to be noticed darting hither and yon in this spurious seascape. I wasn’t surprised when he made his way to our table.

  “Good evening to you. Rory Dillon.” His accent I recognized from my New York childhood: Irish, with the blunt nasal notes of the North. “I hope you’re better behaved than that last lot of Ready’s friends. Holy terrors they were. Had to clean one of the tanks after they left.”

  Simon handled the introductions. Rory held his gaze an extra moment. “A repeat visitor if I’m not mistaken, Simon.”

  “I may have come in out of the rain once or twice.”

  “And sure it rains a powerful lot in California. Have you been tended to? Can I bring you anything?”

  “Actually,” I said, “we stopped in because I understand Jens Lohse used to play here.”

  “You knew Jens, too? Tragic, that. Did you hear Carol do ‘I’ll See You There’? Jens’s songs are on the bill all week.”

  “How often did he perform?”

  “He was part of the Monday and Wednesday bands.” Rory leaned close to the table. “Our dark secret. We call every band the Merry Mermen because we paid to put the name up there. Kidd Captain’s the only constant and he’s always well lubricated before the curtain goes up. Jens truly dazzled when we took requests. You couldn’t stump him at all.”

  “Thanks to his magic music book.”

  “That bloody thing. Used to tell him I should have hired it instead of him.”

  “Is there any chance it could be here?”

  Rory considered the idea. “Somebody would have tripped over it by now. You’re looking for it?”

  “It hasn’t turned up anywhere else.”

  “I’ll have a quick look ’round and let you know. Enjoy yourselves in the meantime.” With a wink he was gone. The Mae West impersonator still made with the tired wisecracks.

  “So you’re a Club Fathom regular?” I asked Simon.

  “I’ve been here once or twice, like I told the man.”

  “And what brought you in out of the rain?”

  Simon swigged his cocktail. “The reputation. You hear a place is bad news, you stay away. Until a night comes when you feel like bad news yourself.” His eyes dared me to press for details.

  Time for a small sip of my own drink.

  Fake Mae turned the stage over to a soft-shoe duo, their patter better than their steps. A flutter of motion by the entrance caught my eye. A woman came in draped in a midnight-blue cloak. She blinked nervously, terrified her eyes would never adjust to the dark. A waitress led her to the stairs. Errol Flynn greeted the woman warmly and guided her into his banquette as if she were a Buick with balky steering. When she shed the cloak, I saw she wasn’t Flynn’s wife, the French actress Lili Damita. She was younger than Damita. Younger, even, than me. California, where a girl of twenty-five gets put out to old-maid pasture.

  Rory emerged from a service door adjacent to Flynn’s booth. He welcomed his marquee guest’s companion, then beat a path back to our table. “No sign of Jens’s book,” he said, “unless it’s propping up the foundation of the building. Lord knows it’s big enough for the job. Wish I could tell you more. We’ll be doing a few more of his songs, so stick around. First round’s on the house. Tell Ready all is forgiven, provided he brings that one fella back. He’ll know the one I mean. I’ll check on you later.” Another wink and he was away again, a barracuda among sharks.

  I reached for my purse. “You don’t want to stay?” Simon asked.

  “He told me what I came to learn. And the entertainment’s unlikely to improve.” I dropped a few dollars on the table. “Shall we go?”

  “Provided you don’t mind a roundabout route.” Simon rose and held my chair. Then he lumbered drunkenly forward, swerving toward Flynn’s banquette. I couldn’t see the actor, only his date, her face flush with compliments and liquor. Simon made a startled noise and slapped the wall above Flynn’s head. “Sorry, old man. Wrong turn.” He reeled backward down the stairs to where I waited, by the service door Rory had popped out of.

  Simon pushed it open. It gave onto a grimy corridor. He leaned in, checked behind the door, and smiled. Then he pulled me into the hallway after him.

  “What are we doing?” I whispered.

  “Building inspection. I work for the county on the side.”

  A shadow fell on the floor and we heard Rory’s clipped brogue addressing Flynn. Simon stepped out and joined them. I followed suit.

  Errol Flynn gazed placidly up at us, a man accustomed to having his evening interrupted by strangers. The woman at his side held a napkin over her chest like a shield.

  “Sorry for the intrusion, folks,” Simon said. “Mr. Flynn, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed you in Robin Hood.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Flynn’s voice was every bit as breezy as I’d hoped. “If you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Now I’d like to return the favor.” Simon rapped the wall behind Flynn, one of the decorative portholes in the center of it. “I thought you should know this wall has been modified.”

  “Has it?” Flynn said.

  “There’s a compartment not visible from this room. My guess is the porthole is two-way glass and a camera is behind it.”

  Flynn studied the porthole over the tip of his cigarette. “Two-way glass, you say.” He then grinned impishly at Rory, who hadn’t cracked a sweat. “You cheeky bastard.”

  “I thought if it worked for you…,” Rory said.

  The woman threw down her napkin. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “I’ll explain later, pet,” Flynn told her.

  “But that camera might not provide the best angle. Would you excuse me?” Simon pushed down the stairs past me, seizing a busboy by the collar of his white jacket. He manhandled him to the banquette and shoved him into a seat next to Flynn’s now-bewildered consort. “This young man brought your water. Has an odd way of walking, I noticed.” Simon hoisted the busboy’s foot into the air. The woman yelped as the busboy clawed at the table, sending cutlery clattering.

  “There’s no call for this,” Rory cautioned.

  “Yes, there is.” Simon hiked up the cuff of the busboy’s trousers. Strapped to his ankle was a small camera, two cords extending up the pant leg. “What the porthole doesn’t see, the help does.”

  “Like James Cagney in Picture Snatcher!” I yelled.

  Simon glanced at me. “You know that was based on Ruth Snyder’s actual execution.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  The most divine sound cut me off. The rich laughter of Errol Flynn, practiced at appreciating absurdity. “Rory, you’re a devil and no mistake.” He turned to Simon and me. “Sir, madam, I thank you for taking pity on my ignorance. And miss, may I say what a lovely dress you’re wearing. Now, Millicent,” and with this he faced the woman, “I daresay the prudent course of action is for us to call it an early evening. We can’t leave together, so I’ll see you to the door and into your ride home. Pardon us, won’t you?” With a bow, he swept fair Millicent away, leaving us with Rory and one perplexed and contorted busboy.

  “So,” Rory said.
“I expect you two have more questions.”

  * * *

  “GRAND MAN ALTOGETHER, Flynn. Very sporting attitude. It’ll be the death of him yet. Fancies himself an Irishman even though he’s from Tasmania. Worst of a bad lot, them. But I play along.”

  Rory’s Ulster accent echoed off the ceiling. His office consisted of the bare essentials, as if the room had been stripped for parts. Clearly, his home was the nightclub’s floor.

  “At least we know how Club Fathom got its sterling reputation.” I aimed for a sneer but didn’t pull it off.

  “People come because they hear it’s shady. We can’t disappoint them, can we?” A buccaneer’s smile from Rory. “Full credit for the idea goes to your man.”

  “Who?” My heart sank. “Not Jens.”

  “A Lohse production, start to finish. I maintain it in tribute to his genius. That, and it pays off like a fruit machine. He’s the one pointed out people request those booths for a bit of privacy and it wouldn’t take much to refit them. The masterstroke was him saying the picture studios have people whose job it is to hush up scandals like the kind that unfold in those booths. The money’s already set aside. Be a waste if nobody claimed it.”

  “How did it work?” Simon asked.

  “Exactly as Jens said it would. We send along the photographs. The studio sends over a big fella who yells and breaks a few ashtrays. Whole show’s for nothing, because he’s there to pay me off. I tack on the cost of the ashtrays.”

  “But then that star never comes back,” I said.

  “True, love. He even tells his friends, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go to the Fathom.’ But he won’t say why. The friends get consumed with curiosity, and the horses are on the track again. Jens predicted that, too. Nary a name sullied, and the money goes to its earmarked purpose.” Rory shook his head, marveling. “A thing of beauty, no? Streamlined. Like something Henry Ford dreamed up.”

  “It’s contemptible,” I said. And I meant it.

  “Blame your friend Jens. A pure businessman, he was, which is my respectful way of calling him a bastard. He saw all manner of sins at those parties he worked, other clubs. Only he forgot none of it. The mussed hair. The lipstick on the collar. And he turned what he knew into money. I’ve no idea how many rackets he had going. He’d rope me into things I had no clue about. He’d target legitimate types, society people and the like. Do it indirectly, keep himself out of it. For instance, he had me bump into this actress, Charlotte Hume. Did you see The Defense Rests? Brilliant. I tell her I know her husband, say something like, ‘He was quite impressive in court last Friday at four seventeen.’ A highly specific time sticks in the brain, Jens always said.”

  He’d stolen the idea from Hiram Beecher. A crooked number plants a hook in the memory, Beecher wrote in How to Be at Home in the World. I felt sick to my stomach.

  Rory kept talking. “Charlotte goes home and tells the husband, who thinks, ‘Jesus, I was nowhere near court last Friday at four seventeen. I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been, frolicking with someone not my lovely wife.’ After he shites himself, another party bumps into him and requests financial assistance. Jens would throw some of the proceeds my way. Him manipulating it all without showing his face.”

  I fumed at Rory across his barren desktop. “Why did you tell that story? Why did you mention Charlotte Hume?”

  “Because her husband, Donald Hume, is solicitor for and close friend of your boss, Addison Rice.” His chair creaked as he sat back. “You think I’d talk to you without first finding out who you are? Not a whisper about your man Simon there, but Addison’s name came up soon as I mentioned yours. You made me feel uncomfortable in my own establishment, Miss Frost. I’m only responding in kind.”

  He’d succeeded brilliantly. How could I make nice with Donald and Charlotte now that I was privy to Donald’s infidelity and Charlotte wasn’t?

  “As ruthless as they come, Jens,” Rory said. “Practical, too. Almost knew when to get out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last time I saw him, he said he was packing it in. Selling his operation outright. Names, pictures, detailed record of misdeeds, all on the block. No idea who’d be buying it, though.”

  I had an inkling. “Malcolm Drewe?”

  “Christ, Jens wasn’t tangling with him, was he?” Rory shivered. “Jens said he was after a pot of money and had plenty of irons in the fire. Haven’t a clue what those other irons might have been. I trust he settled up with his partner first.”

  “Partner?” Simon asked. “What partner?”

  “Here, I’ll show him to you.” He unlocked a desk drawer and handed Simon a photograph. It had been taken in the corridor outside Rory’s office. In it, an angry Jens, hair falling into his eyes, brandished a finger at a smirking blond man.

  Whom I’d met before.

  Hello again, Mr. Ames.

  “Took it myself, with one of the wee cameras,” Rory said with pride. “Jens never knew I was there.”

  “This man was Jens’s partner?” I asked quietly.

  “Aye. He’d come in when Jens was here and they’d slip away for serious conversation. I asked Jens who he was, and Jens called him a ‘music lover.’”

  “Why’d you take their picture?”

  A sly smile. “It’s what Jens would have done.”

  “Has the man been here since Jens stopped coming in?”

  Rory thought a moment. “I believe so.”

  I turned to Simon. “That’s the man from my building.”

  Simon studied the photograph, his fingers unconsciously massaging the spot on his skull where Peter Ames had brained him. “You’re sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Keep it, with my compliments,” Rory said. “I’ve other ways of remembering Jens. He won’t soon be forgotten at Club Fathom.”

  21

  THE BUZZ OF discovery staved off the night’s chill better than my coat. As we crunched across the gravel-covered parking lot, I praised Simon for how ably he’d plumbed the depths at Club Fathom, not only sussing out Rory’s racket but confronting him about it.

  “I’d noticed some odd details on my earlier visits. I didn’t put them together until tonight. What I want to know is how you pulled Malcolm Drewe’s name out of the ether.”

  “I’ll explain when we’re on the road.”

  Simon’s coupe represented several steep steps down from the showy sedan he piloted for Lodestar. As he took out his keys, I glanced again at the photograph of Jens and Peter Ames. Seeing Jens’s hostile expression reminded me I had an entirely new sense of the composer now, and my glow of excitement began to fade.

  “It’s early yet,” Simon said. “Where would you like to go?”

  I was wondering whether a studio driver could afford the Cocoanut Grove when the doors of the Chrysler next to Simon’s car opened. Two men emerged, moving quickly to block us in. One in a brown topcoat, the other in threadbare navy. Simon instinctively swept me behind him. “Help you fellas?”

  I felt the photograph get plucked from my hand. Behind me, Peter Ames titled it toward the light. Surprise flitted across his face, only to be replaced by the same smirk he displayed in the image.

  “Ah, Jens,” Peter said. “Chaos forever in his wake. You got this from that mick pansy, I presume.”

  “Rory’s a pansy?” Simon asked. “You sure? He didn’t make a pass at me.” He stared levelly at Peter. If they’d ever met before—if, as Gene suspected, they were working in tandem—then I was witnessing two performances worthy of statuettes at the next Academy Awards.

  “Thank you for leading me to this.” Removing a cigarette lighter from his pocket, Peter set the photograph aflame and dropped it to the gravel. “I didn’t know it existed.”

  “Then what were you searching for at my apartment? Jens’s book?”

  “Was someone in your apartment? You notified the police, I hope.”

  Peter wouldn’t even do me the courtesy of lying convincingly, his line readings devoi
d of life. He ground out the smoldering remains of the photo.

  “I was there, too. Got a blow to the head for my trouble.” Simon stepped closer to Peter. So did the two topcoated underlings. More importantly, Peter retreated. Simon’s bravado had intimidated him—and he knew I’d noticed.

  Thrusting his chin toward me, Peter asked, “Did Mr. Dillon relay anything else about me?”

  “Only that you’re a lover of music. I had you pegged more as a film fan. Your name’s not Peter Ames. Did you swipe that from The Mad Miss Manton?”

  “A trifle, that picture. Still, one can’t miss a Stanwyck. I understand you know her. Consider me jealous. She’s well matched with Henry Fonda in Manton. They should do another picture together.”

  “Do you like Marlene Dietrich?”

  Peter’s eye twitched. I took that as a no. “I should inquire about anything else pertinent Mr. Dillon might have. Won’t be a moment.” He spoke a few words in German to his stooges, then walked toward the club. The two men faced us with an uneasy swagger. We were in a dark corner of the parking lot, but enough people were present to cause problems.

  Simon smiled at the man in brown. “How goes it, Fritz? You speak English? What about you, Heinrich? Sprechen sie?” No reply was forthcoming. “So you didn’t hear there are pansies in there? You can go in if you want. The Kaiser’s waiting.”

  Neither minion moved. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “I speak some German. Peter’s orders were vague. I’m not sure these two will actually stop us from leaving. We should find out now while the odds are in our favor.”

  “How are they in our favor?”

  “They’re not going to get any better.” Simon raised his hands and stepped forward.

  Brown Topcoat drove his fist into Simon’s stomach. The air came out of Simon in a rush as he slammed into his car. The air came out of me when I screamed.