I pulled out slowly and drove to the front pump. Arnie was talking to Mr. Flash Pants.
“Needs gas,” I yelled through the open window.
“Nah,” said Arnie adjusting his baseball cap. “Gauge is broken. I filled her up.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Just fill it every few days,” he said. “Cost you a bundle to fix it.”
At least the radio worked. I turned it on and discovered that the Japanese had shelled Corregidor for five hours, but General Wainright was holding on. I also learned that the Nazis had executed seventy-two Dutchmen for aiding the Allies and that if you want steady nerves to fly Uncle Sam’s bombers across the ocean, you should smoke Camels.
By eleven I was parked in the driveway outside the home of Richard Talbott, Academy Award winner, shoo-in nominee for another in 1942 and, from what I had heard, a man who could hold his booze, but not very well.
CHAPTER 7
The chimes echoed deeply inside of Talbott’s house. I looked around the grounds, which were on a slight rolling hill on Alpine just off Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The grass was well trimmed, the bushes neatly clipped, and the birds chirping happily in front of the big white house that dated back to the bad old days and had probably belonged to some silent film star who passed this way but once. I hit the chimes again and listened to them carom their three notes beyond the door. Then it opened.
Jeremy calls it deja vu. He even wrote a poem with that title. I couldn’t see why it didn’t have a straight American name like, “Haven’t I Been This Way Before?” or “(Seems to Me) I’ve Heard That Song Before.”
The woman in a light blue dress stood in front of me with her arms folded. She was a beautiful blond named Brenda Stallings, who hadn’t aged in the four years since I last saw her. She had been wearing a blue dress the first time she had greeted me just before she seduced me and later shot me in the back. I can’t say it was good to see her.
“I came to return your bullet,” I said.
Brenda Stallings had been a wealthy society deb about fifteen years earlier. She had doubled for Harlow, and then had a short, successful film career before marrying a blackmailing twerp actor named Harry Beaumont, who was now lying somewhere near Rin Tin Tin in Roseland cemetery. But Brenda was an actress. She didn’t blink as she took a step back to let me in and said, “You may keep it if you like.”
I stepped in and she closed the door. A few feet from her now I could see the changes. She was still beautiful, still had the body and the carriage, but shadows around the corner of the mouth and eyes hinted at what she had been through if someone looked close enough, which was what I was doing.
“How did you find me?” she said, walking ahead of me without looking back. Her legs were great and her yellow hair still bounced softly on her neck. I’d been through it before. Yes, I had.
We stopped in a living room that looked like the set of a Fred Astaire movie, blacks and whites and keep your hands off. It was Brenda’s style. I looked around for the Oscar. There were two of them on the white piano. She caught my look.
“The one on the left is Richard’s for Captain Daring,” she said. “The other,” she went on walking over to it and touching something on the back, “you may recall.” Flames spurted out of the Oscar’s gold head. She picked up a cigarette from a gold box on the piano, lit it, and put the Oscar back.
“I recall.”
Her cold blue eyes looked at the burning end of her cigarette and then at me.
“Please.” She pointed at the various pieces of furniture, and I tried to figure out which one I’d be least likely to leave a stain on. I could have gone to the piano bench, which was also white, but I can’t play the piano and I’d feel silly. I sat on the white arm of an overstuffed chair.
“I’m looking for Richard Talbott,” I explained. “He does live here, doesn’t he?”
She nodded and smoked staring at me. She wasn’t going to make it easy. As I recalled, I had done her a reasonably good turn when last we met, but she wasn’t the kind to show gratitude, or weakness, or much of anything if she could help it.
“He lives here and so do I,” she said, reaching for a gold ashtray.
“I live in Hollywood in Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse,” I said, looking around and finding two huge painted portraits on the wall over the doorway we had entered. One was of Brenda Stallings, bronzed and queenly in white. It had been in her old house, not too far from here. The other portrait was Richard Talbott wearing a blue pea coat with a robust, healthy tooth-filled smile. Brenda had done her best to make the house and Talbott her own. In the old house the portrait had been of Harry Beaumont. If my memory served me right, there was a superficial similarity between Beaumont and Talbott.
“How’s Lynn?” I tried, looking at Brenda with my best party smile. Lynn was her daughter who now must be, hell about nineteen or twenty.
Brenda put out her cigarette and dropped lazily into the armchair across from me. She had done that too when I first met her. It was, I decided, a scene she played well and did over and over.
“Lynn is fine,” she said. “We don’t see much of each other. She’s in New York going to school and seriously interested in a not-too-young producer. What do you want with Richard?”
“I thought I’d save his life,” I said.
“Would you like a drink?” she came back.
“Water with ice would be fine.”
“Will lemonade do?”
“Sure.”
Brenda eased herself out of the chair and took a leisurely trip across the black-and-white checkerboard rug and out of the room. I heard her off somewhere giving orders in something that might have been Spanish. She was back in a few seconds.
“Carlotta will bring your drink in a few moments,” she said, going to the piano, picking up another cigarette, and putting it back down again. She was nervous. Maybe it was me, seeing me again and remembering some bad times. Maybe it was something else.
“Has Talbott had any threats?” I asked. “Any problems?”
“Richard’s primary threats are to his liver, and his primary problem is his capacity to serve as a receptacle for the entire importation of scotch into California.” She smiled prettily as she spoke and searched for something to fiddle with.
“Lady, you are a real expert in picking your men,” I said.
“I do seem to have a certain talent for it, don’t I?”
“Talbott,” I said.
“Yes, Richard.” Her sigh lifted her breasts under her dress and demanded my attention. It was her scene, and I let her play it. “He and a producer are out for a late-morning business session at one of Richard’s favorite bars, of which there are several within vomiting distance.” She looked out the window and then up at her portrait and touched her hair before going on. “It’s some sort of big foreign deal, and I doubt if they will be back for some time. Do you plan to tell me what it’s all about? This scene could stand cutting …”
At which point Carlotta, wearing a black dress and being very tiny, came in and handed me a tall lemonade with ice and a little smile. Brenda drank nothing. Carlotta walked out. The whole thing was very elegant, and I wasn’t.
“There’s a nut who’s got it in for Talbott and a few other movie people,” I said. She looked at me seriously.
“Richard is used to that,” she said. “So are most stars.”
“This one has probably killed someone.”
Something hit her in the gut, and she didn’t have time to be pretty about it.
“So, I’d like to find Talbott, talk to him, warn him, and maybe set up some protection for him while he stays off the streets till I catch the guy,” I went on.
Brenda moved toward me. I gurgled some lemonade, which was too sweet, and looked for some place to put it without leaving a ring. There was no place. I held it.
“There was a call yesterday,” she said. “Richard said it was just a stupid fan, but he was shaken by it. It might …”
“Of course,” she said. The act was dropping fast now. We had gone beyond her usual lines, and the scene wasn’t going to end in a seduction or a burst of anger. Maybe I’d get a glimpse of the Brenda Stallings buried under a decade and a half of Brenda Stallings. Her pink mouth opened slightly. I remembered that pink mouth. She started to say, “Toby, Mr. Peters I-”
“Hold it,” I jumped in. “This producer Talbott is with. Did he know him? I mean before.”
“No,” she said. “He called this morning and … you don’t think?”
“Sometimes I do, like right now. What did the guy look like?”
I got up and walked over to her. The front was dropping fast. Her hand went to her forehead and brushed away her hair.
“I didn’t see him. I was upstairs. Richard-”
“Did he have a name? The producer?”
“I’m trying to think.” And she was. She pressed her hand to her forehead to urge the memory out. “Resnick, I think.”
“How about Ressner,” I cued her, taking her arms.
She nodded weakly.
“That’s my man,” I said.
“It’s going to happen again,” she whispered and sank against me. She felt soft and good and smelled great, but I put her down gently and fast. “Where does Talbott like to hold his meetings? Brenda, where?”
“I’m trying,” she said. And she was. I backed away to give her some space. “Let’s see. He’s taken me to Buddy’s on Gower, the Manhattan off Fairfax, Trinity’s American on Hollywood Boulevard, the-”
“I’ll start with those,” I said, “and call you if I strike out. If he checks in, tell him that Ressner is a dangerous nut and to get away from him fast, find the nearest cop, and duck. You got that?”
She nodded.
“Toby, I’m sorry I shot you.”
“Apology accepted.” I went out of the room and just barely danced past Carlotta, who had been eavesdropping and didn’t have time to get away.
“Try the Manhattan first,” she whispered.
“Gracias,” I whispered back and ran out the front door and toward my new Ford.
The sky was closing in again as I pulled onto Santa Monica and tried to keep from going over the speed limit. I pushed the outer edges, flipped on the radio, which sputtered and gave me nothing, turned it off, and reached over to the glove compartment for my.38, which, of course, wasn’t there but back in my room in the white box.
Traffic started to back up on me, and I didn’t know how long I was taking. My watch didn’t help, the radio didn’t work, and my inner clock was foul. A Yellow cab with a sign on top saying GROUP RIDING IS PATRIOTIC GO YELLOW stopped abruptly in front of me and I almost plowed into him. Something did hit me from behind and the sound of metal hitting asphalt tinkled in my ear. I leaped out just as the guy who had plowed into me sped past with his head hunched down. My rear bumper lay in the street. I picked it up and shoved it into the narrow backseat through the front window. The car was too small to take the whole thing into the rear, so some of it had to stick out the passenger window.
“There are days, God,” I said to myself, “when even I don’t appreciate your sense of humor.”
There was no parking space open on Fairfax. I hadn’t expected one. I pulled in next to a fireplug, got out, and ran for the Manhattan. Outside, I pulled myself together, tried to stop panting, and stepped into the near-total darkness.
There were eight or nine people in the place. Three at the bar, the rest in booths. Even this early a guy was playing the piano and singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” I looked around for Talbott but didn’t spot him. I still didn’t know what Ressner looked like.
The bartender was a young guy in a red vest, white shirt, and red tie. I hurried to the bar.
“What will you have?” he said.
“Richard Talbott,” I answered. “I’m from Paramount. He has an urgent message. Has he been in here today?”
The bartender looked me over, wondering about the mugs studios hired to deliver messages.
“He was here with another guy,” he said.
“The other guy. What did he look like?”
The barkeep shrugged. “Dunno, kind of tall, dark glasses.”
“When did they leave? Where did they go?” I pushed.
“They didn’t leave,” he said. “They’re in the back.”
The back was apparently behind some heavy velvet red drapes. I pushed away from the bar and headed for them. Behind me I heard someone at the bar calling for drinks.
Beyond the drapes was a small alcove and a narrow corridor. Just inside the corridor was a men’s room and a ladies’ room. Beyond that were two doors. I pushed open the first door, which led to a medium-size private room with a few tables, a bar in the corner, and chairs. The room was empty, but an amber light was on in the ceiling and a Dewar’s Black Label sign glowed over the bar. I moved to the bar where two glasses stood and touched a small red liquid pool near one glass. It looked thick and brown in the light. It felt sticky and familiar.
Drops of the liquid spotted the tile floor and left a trail to the corner of the room where an emergency exit door stood. It was slightly open. I pushed it and started to step out. The sky was going black again. I had time to notice that and some vague shapes in front of me when something caught me in the stomach. Some agonized animal bellowed “Arggghh,” and I had the feeling that I was being turned upside down and thrown on my back by a giant baby. Then there was nothing.
Koko the clown came and perched on my nose. Behind him someone spoke. I thought the voice said, “Too late again,” but I wasn’t sure. Koko grinned down at me and wanted to play.
I didn’t want to play. This was it. I wasn’t so far from fifty, with no money in the sock, a body that threatened to leave me, an ex-wife…. The hell with that. I’d gone over it before. Get up and keep going, I told myself. Koko could skate around and play tricks on Uncle Max. The Nazis and the Japs could throw what they had at us. My job was an easy one. Just get up and go back to work, but I couldn’t do it. My eyes just wouldn’t open. I suggested a game to Koko, sly fox that I was. If he’d open my eyes, I’d play with him. I chuckled, knowing that if he helped me open my eyes I’d be awake and I wouldn’t have to play with him. I’d have a more dangerous game to play. Koko, the sucker, agreed, and my eyes opened to a bright light. I closed them again.
“This one ain’t dead,” an incredulous voice said.
“He’s bloodier than the other one,” came another voice. “You hear me fella?”
“I hear you,” I said.
“What he say?” came the first voice again.
“I think he said ‘I dare you,’” said the second voice. I opened my eyes again and turned from the flashlight to look into the open eyes of Richard Talbott. They were big and brown and dead, and rain was pelting his famous cheeks. So much for Brenda Stallings’s luck and mine.
I tried to sit up, but hands held me back.
“You better just lie there till an ambulance comes,” came the first voice, which, in the cloud-covered darkness, I could see belonged to a cop in a raincoat, a young cop.
“I’ll get pneumonia lying here,” I told him. “And I’ve got a bad back.”
The second cop was not much older than the first.
“I think you better not move,” he commanded.
I sat up and looked over at Talbott. There was a knife sticking out of his chest, just about where the other one had been posted in Grayson.
“You think I did this?” I said, wiping rain and blood from my face.
“I don’t think anything,” said the second cop. “But you’re not going anywhere.”
“Hell, Sol, let’s get him inside,” said the younger cop. “There’s no point in our standing out here in the rain. If he w
ants to move, it’s his worry.”
Sol grunted and looked at me.
“O.K. You try anything and you get this flashlight across your face,” Sol warned.
“Just what I need,” I groaned and let them drag me through the exit door and back into the private room in the Manhattan.
They sat me on a chair and found some towels to sop up the blood in my hair. I could feel the cut but not how deep it was.
“You want to tell us what happened?” tried Sol’s partner, the kid.
“No,” I said. “I’ll just have to tell it again. Call Lieutenant Pevsner or Sergeant Seidman at the Wilshire station. They’re Homicide. Tell them what you found and that I’m Toby Peters.”
“You a cop?” said Sol.
“No,” I said. “A victim.”
“You kill that guy out there?” said the kid.
“That guy is Richard Talbott,” I said, closing my eyes.
“The big actor?” Sol cried.
I nodded.
“The guy with the scythe gets ’em all,” said Sol wisely.
“The long and the short and the tall,” I agreed and closed my eyes, pretending to go out again.
CHAPTER 8
“Well Toby, my lad,” a mellow voice broke through wherever I was dreaming, “we have a new theory about you.”
I opened my eyes to the placid face above me. It was a tolerant face, the face of a man of sixty or more who had seen much and wanted to go home to a hot bath and a drink. He could have been a priest or a soldier. He could even have been a cop, but I guessed that he was a doctor. The white uniform and stethoscope around his neck were my best clues. It also helped that I recognized the emergency room at L.A. County. I’d been there often enough before.
“My name is Dr. Melanks,” he said, picking up a thick file. I knew it was mine. I remembered the time Doc Parry had held it up with a shake of the head not much different from kindly Doc Melanks’s. Parry was off in the Pacific somewhere seeing cases even more interesting than mine. I was used to thick files about me. I even took kind of a perverse pride in them.
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