The concierge stared at Keegan, and Keegan stared serenely back at him. It was good to see the man rattled.
“Do you perhaps have a business card?” the man finally asked.
Keegan fished one out of the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it across the desk. The concierge pulled on a pair of reading glasses and squinted down at it. He made a face. “‘A private investigator’,” he said aloud, with great distaste.
In a place like the Chateau Marmont—a hotel famous for misbehavior and secret trysts—a PI was as malapropos as a Baptist at a brothel. Still, Keegan wasn’t about to let it get to him. He smiled at the concierge. “The old lady hired me,” Keegan said. “She’s expecting me.” He leaned a little forward and dropped his voice. “And believe me, buddy, I have zero interest in the seedy goings on in your little flophouse.” He leaned back and smiled. “Just do us both a favor and get on the phone.”
The man gave his head a wearisome little shake. His disdain was palpable. Still, he turned his back and picked up the house phone on the stand behind him. “Please take a seat,” he said, without deigning to glance in Keegan’s direction.
Keegan went over and sat on an uncomfortable wooden bench against the room’s far wall. He leaned back and kicked his heels out, feeling a little smug. He’d report to the old lady, and the rest of this Saturday would be his own. Don Drysdale was on the mound tonight, and the radio weather report said it would be a perfect seventy degrees at Chavez Ravine when he threw the first pitch. The Dodgers had won the first two games, and Keegan could smell a sweep in the making. Life was sometimes good.
It couldn’t have been more than two minutes later when Frank the Boxer strode up outside the French door. He opened the door, leaned in, and waved Keegan over, all smiles. Keegan stood and glanced at the concierge, who immediately busied himself with highly important tasks behind his front desk. Keegan smiled and followed Frank out to the courtyard.
“You’ll have to excuse Klaus,” Frank told him, nodding back at the lobby’s door. “He’s supposed to keep the world at bay for everyone in here. It’s more or less his job to be a complete ass.”
“In that case, I commend him,” Keegan allowed. “He’s very good at what he does.”
It was sunnier in the Chateau’s garden courtyard today, and there were more voices in the air, perhaps because it was a Saturday morning. They passed the small oval swimming pool. A young woman sat on the edge with her legs dangling in the water while two young men splashed around her in the water. It looked like some kind of well-heeled mating ritual.
The girl wore a blue one-piece bathing suit with a ruffled plunging neckline and a pair of oversized sunglasses. She sat, leaning to one side with her calves crossed, as if she were posing for a magazine cover. Her glossy brunette hair was shoulder length and shaped in careful waves. Both her hair and her pristine bathing suit suggested that she planned to be seen by the pool, but she had no intention of actually going in. Keegan looked away and then glanced back at her. He knew her from somewhere.
This time, when they got to the bungalow’s gate, Frank opened it for Keegan without hesitation. Keegan stepped through and paused outside the bungalow’s front door, which stood ajar.
“Go on in,” Frank told him brightly. “She knows you now. You’re officially one of the gang.”
Keegan nodded. He pushed open the door and stuck his head in the dark room. “Mrs. Fletcher?” he said.
“Mr. Keegan.” The old lady’s voice came from the darkness. “Do come in.”
Keegan pushed the door wider and stepped into the dimly lit front room.
Ida Fletcher was sitting on the sofa today, facing the large console television. On the screen, George Raft was talking to an old man in a book-lined library. The old lady barely glanced at Keegan before she turned her attention back to the television.
Frank pushed the door shut behind them and took a seat on the sofa next to Fletcher, which left the armchair for Keegan. He went over and sat in it. It was too soft, and it smelled of hairspray.
Zinnia, the old lady’s much younger companion, was in her same spot at the kitchen table, reading a paperback under the hanging lamp. It was a different book, Keegan noted—an Agatha Christie novel this time.
Keegan crossed his legs and cleared his throat, but Frank the Boxer shot him a wry smile and shook his head. He nodded at the television. Apparently, Keegan’s report would have to wait until the next commercial break.
Keegan leaned back in the chair and looked around the shabbily furnished room. The chairs and lamps and tables were old and mismatched, though they looked like they had once been expensive. They might have been the offerings at a church-basement rummage sale in Beverly Hills. At the Chateau Marmont, elegance was clearly a secondary concern to privacy.
Again, Keegan thought he could detect the faint whiff of marijuana in the air. He looked from Frank to Zinnia and back again. Cannabis didn’t seem like the old lady’s kind of vice—and he doubted she’d condone it in the other two. The smell had probably been lingering in the folds of the heavy drapes for weeks before the three of them checked in.
Keegan watched the old lady watch television. The screen lit her gaunt face with a jittery, blue-tinged energy. She might have been a beauty in her youth, Keegan thought—what with her pointed nose, those high cheekbones, and her widow’s peak. It would have been her green eyes, though, that turned heads. They still held a calculating, youthful intelligence.
On the television screen, George Raft was riding through the night in a convertible with an actress Keegan couldn’t name, and then a Kool-Aid commercial came on the screen, and Ida Fletcher turned her attention to Keegan.
“And what do you have to report, Mr. Keegan?” she said.
Beside her, Frank the Boxer gave Keegan a nod of encouragement. This was his cue. He was on. He just needed to act naturally and never look at the camera.
“I made the rounds,” Keegan told the old woman. “The Newport house is fine—locked up tight. It turns out your nephew is staying at the Bel Air place, though. He says he just got into town.”
The sly smile faded from Frank’s face. Behind him, Zinnia set her paperback down on the kitchen table without bothering to mark her place.
Keegan felt an invisible shift in the dimly lit room, a small tectonic tremor that set everything on edge.
A Slinky jingle started up on the television. It seemed much too loud in the room’s sudden silence.
Something had happened, and Keegan had no notion of what it might be. He looked from Frank to the old lady and back again.
“My nephew?” Ida Fletcher said. Her voice sounded thin.
“Danny Church,” Keegan told her. “He said he was your nephew. He had keys to the place. So, I thought—”
Zinnia was staring down at the table now, her head tipped into the oval of light from the overhead lamp. She seemed to be holding very still, listening.
“He seemed surprised to find the house empty,” Keegan went on, filling the silence—not sure what to say and what to keep to himself. “He drove a red Jaguar.”
“Yes,” the old lady said. “That would be my nephew. I wasn’t expecting him. I suppose he’s just passing through on his way…?” She let the question trail off.
Keegan measured his words before he spoke. “He made it sound like he planned to stay in town a while,” Keegan told her. “He wanted to talk to you about some business—”
“Did you tell him where I am?” the old woman asked, cutting him off.
Keegan shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “You said not to tell anyone. I agreed to tell you he wanted to see you, though. I said I’d pass the message on.”
Frank leaned forward on the sofa. He glanced from Fletcher to Zinnia and back again, as if hoping for a signal. “The thing is,” he said, “the kid’s caused a bit of trouble in the past. Things have become a bit strained.”
Keegan nodded. The news came as no surprise. Danny Church had struck him as trouble
from the get-go. “He told me he wants to open some kind of restaurant here in town,” he told Fletcher, guessing it was probably best to get everything out in the open. “He’s going to ask you to invest in the venture.”
The George Raft movie came back on the television, but Ida Fletcher didn’t seem to notice. She bit her lower lip and stared down at the oval rug on the floor between them. Zinnia turned now and watched the other two from the kitchen table.
“Look,” Keegan said, “if I did something wrong, I’m happy to go back there and—”
“You did nothing wrong, Mr. Keegan,” the old woman told him, still looking down at the rug. “The problem lies entirely with my nephew.” She raised her eyes to Keegan. “I’m sorry to put you in the middle of a little family squabble.”
She looked at Frank the Boxer then, appealingly, as if he might offer help—but none seemed forthcoming, so she turned her attention back to Keegan. “Give me a few days to mull the situation over,” she told him. She gathered herself straighter, and her old imperious manner seemed to reemerge. “Until then, please stay away from my nephew, Mr. Keegan,” she said. “I urge you to have nothing to do with him. Is that understood?”
“Crystal clear,” Keegan told her.
She turned her face to the television then, though she didn’t seem to be actually watching it. It was another of her signals. Keegan was being dismissed.
Frank cleared his throat. He stood and crossed to the door. He opened it and sunlight flooded in from the little garden.
Keegan rose to his feet. “Well, it was good to see you again, Mrs. Fletcher,” he lied. “I’ll await your instructions.”
The old woman gave no answer, just stared blankly at the television—though the vacant expression on her face hinted that her thoughts were far away from George Raft and the actress Keegan couldn’t name.
Keegan stepped past Frank and out into the bungalow’s little walled-in garden. The door closed behind him. He’d been expecting Frank to walk him back to the lobby, and he stood flat-footed a few seconds among the ferns and the hanging baskets of lavender, before he opened the gate and headed out into the hotel’s courtyard. It was not the meeting he’d expected, but he had a baseball game to go to. He wasn’t going to let the old woman and her ne’er-do-well nephew ruin his mood. He headed back towards the lobby.
As Keegan passed, the young woman still sat posing on the pool’s edge. The two boys now sat on either side of her with towels draped over their tanned shoulders. Their damp hair was tousled. Keegan watched them as he walked. It was impossible not to. They were just too perfect, all of them. Even the lighting seemed designed for their moment. The girl laughed suddenly at something one of the boys said, and even the sound of her voice rang familiar. She threw back her head in a way that looked practiced, camera savvy.
Keegan was almost to the lobby door when he heard his name called. He turned to find Frank the Boxer chasing him down. Keegan stayed by the French door and let Frank come to him.
“Sorry about all that,” Frank said, grinning sheepishly. He was a little out of breath. “It’s the nephew. He’s always stirring up trouble. Always wanting things. We weren’t expecting to see him, that’s all.”
Keegan nodded.
“The truth of it is,” Frank said, “Mrs. Fletcher? Well, she’s very impressed with your work so far. In fact—” Rather than finish the sentence he pressed an envelope into Keegan’s hands. “Think of this as a bonus,” the boxer said. “Just keep the kid at bay a while until you hear from her.”
Keegan looked down at the envelope in his hand. It felt as thick as the first one, maybe even a little thicker. The first pile of cash might have passed as a legitimate retainer from a woman too rich to know the value of a dollar. This envelope felt like a bribe.
Frank seemed to sense Keegan’s reluctance and backed away a step or two, hands held up in a pantomime of innocence. “Just take it,” he said. “She wants you to have it. It’s nothing. Really.”
Keegan nodded. Sure. Okay. Fine. He had a baseball game to get to. He turned and opened the lobby door.
He passed through the lobby and was back out on the street, digging for the car keys in his pocket, when the realization finally hit him: the girl he’d seen at the pool was Natalie Wood. The idea caught him up short. He’d had a movie-star sighting. Mrs. Dodd would be thrilled.
HE HADN’T PLANNED on going to the office—it was a Saturday, after all—but the second envelope of cash made him wary. He didn’t like having that kind of money lying around the house. Best to lock it up in the office safe.
Up on the sixth floor, he slipped the money out of the envelope and bent counting it out on Mrs. Dodd’s desk. It was in different denominations this time, and the bills were facing every which way. There were a good number of fives and tens slipped in among the hundreds. It was like someone had swept together a stash of money in a hurry. He could picture it happening back in the bungalow while he was passing by Natalie Wood and her two young admirers out by the courtyard pool. He could imagine Frank the Boxer stuffing all the cash in the envelope and running after him to hand it off. But why? Keegan hadn’t done anything to earn it. The old lady didn’t owe him a thing.
Keegan looked down at the stacks of bills. The total was $3,455 this time. Another small fortune for doing nothing. He sighed, feeling even more uneasy with the situation than he had before. He jotted the total on the outside of the envelope with one of Mrs. Dodd’s ballpoints and stuffed the money back inside. He was just straightening up when the phone on Mrs. Dodd’s desk rang.
Who would be calling the office on a Saturday? He picked up the phone.
“James?” the voice on the other end said. “Is this James?”
Keegan sighed. He recognized the chipper voice, the oily, polished tones. It was old lady’s nephew. Of all the people to call him today. Holding the phone to his ear, he went around the desk and sat down in Mrs. Dodd’s chair.
Ida Fletcher’s orders had been clear: Have nothing to do with him. But it was Keegan’s own fault. He shouldn’t have given the kid his business card.
“Look, Mr. Church,” Keegan said into the phone, “I can’t really—”
“Oh, please, James,” the voice interrupted. “Call me Danny. I like to think we’re friends.”
The very idea made Keegan wince. “Danny,” he said, not liking the taste of the word as he spoke it, “I can’t really talk to you right now. I’ve got—”
“But you spoke to my auntie, right?” the nephew plowed on. “You said you’d be seeing the old dear this morning. How did she seem? Did she say anything about me?” The kid’s words cascaded out in a worried rush. Keegan thought of the empty spot above the Bel Air mansion’s fireplace where the family portrait had once hung. You don’t suppose I’ve fallen out of favor, do you?
“I don’t want to be rude,” Keegan said. “But I have strict—”
“I called the Newport house, but nobody picked up,” Church pushed on, his voice insistent. “Maybe she’s got a new number. Have you seen the beach house, James? It’s like something on the Cape.”
Keegan rubbed his temples with his free hand. He could feel a headache coming on. “Yeah, I was just there—”
“So that’s where she’s hiding!” the kid crowed. “I’ll head over in the morning. You have never steered me wrong, James. You’ve been a good soldier.”
“No, Danny, she won’t be there—”
“She’s going somewhere else?” the kid said. “Well, where else is there, James? Where could she be headed?” There was a thudding on the line, like he was tapping the mouthpiece with a finger while he thought. “So, not Bel Air and not Newport,” the nephew prattled on. “I’m a bit at sea, here, James. Where else is there?” The kid seemed to think they were playing some sort of telegraph game. Warm. Warmer. Hot. If he guessed enough places, Keegan would eventually give away the answer.
“There isn’t anything I can do for you,” Keegan told him. “I’m not going to tell you whe
re she’ll be.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” the nephew went on, ignoring the actual, literal meaning of Keegan’s words.
“That’s because I’m not getting at anything, I’m—”
“Avalon!” Church burst out, triumphantly. His voice was so loud, Keegan held the phone away from his ear. It was as if he’d come up with the right quiz-show answer, just as the buzzer was about to sound. “Of course!” he prattled on. “She’s heading out to Catalina! I don’t suppose you could give me the number out there. I’m sure I’ve got it written down somewhere, but if she changed the Newport number, maybe the one on Avalon is—”
“Danny, I never said anything about—”
“Right!” Church said, in a tone that was the verbal equivalent of a wink and a nod. “Of course you didn’t. Your lips were sealed. I didn’t hear it from you, James. Hell, I bet I’ve still got a key to the place somewhere.”
Keegan shook his head. It was all too much. The kid was impossible, so glib and clueless, so infuriatingly selfassured—and now he seemed to think he’d won Keegan over as an ally. But fine. Keegan hadn’t told him a thing. The kid could call out to Catalina Island all he wanted, and Keegan would be in the clear.
“Okay,” Keegan said. “I guess we’re done here.”
“Yes, thank you, James,” the nephew was saying. “I owe you. Good talking to you, old boy. It’s been—”
Keegan hung up the phone before the kid could finish.
THE AFTERNOON TRAFFIC was a nightmare, but that was no surprise—not with fifty-six thousand fans converging on Dodger Stadium from all over Southern California. It took Keegan almost an hour just to get from the freeway to Chavez Ravine, and, once he was there, a good twenty minutes of idling in a smoggy line just to get to a parking space.
But it was all right. He’d expected as much, and he’d allotted himself ample time to get there. He was determined to enjoy himself, the old lady and her nephew notwithstanding. He’d listened to the pregame show on the car radio on the drive over, so he was primed and ready for the game. He locked his car and joined the stream of people creeping along the walkway to the stadium’s front gate.
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