to put it together, and it’ll take her a couple of years to do it again. She’s also worried about someone publishing it as a novel under their name. She can’t prove it’s hers.”
“And,” I said, “she wants someone to get it back for her.”
“It’s more than that,” Phil went on. “Some guy called her, offered to sell it back, even told her when he’d make the exchange for five grand. She agreed, but she thinks something’s funny about the whole thing. The guy stays on the phone too long, rambles. She thinks he’s a nut and a not straight-through-the-window-and-out-the- door gonif.”
“And you can’t do anything?”
“She wants it kept quiet if possible,” he sighed. “I owe her be … just leave it that way. I owe her. I’m not sure she has enough of a case for me to take it on if she wanted me to do it officially. It sounds too much like a publicity stunt. Well?”
“I said I’d do it,” I reminded him.
He got up and reached into his back pocket. Even with sagging pants his rear was large and the pull difficult. He finally extracted a worn wallet and handed me a card from Ruffillo’s Bail Bond with a phone number.
“The other side,” he said. I flipped it and saw a phone number in pencil and the name
Phil started to pull out some five-dollar bills, and I sighed. “Phil.” He stopped, jammed the wallet back in his pocket, and moved to the door. He had just finished paying for an operation on one of his kids and was in trouble with his North Hollywood mortgage. He didn’t wear the same suit week after week because he looked so good in it.
“Call me if you need any help on this,” he said from the door without looking back.
“I’ll call.”
He almost said thanks. I think he wanted to, but I didn’t. You get used to something when you live with it for more than forty years. Our relationship was already in trouble with this visit.
When I pulled in front of Mae West’s house, the door opened and two massive guys in their late twenties or early thirties wearing white turtleneck shirts hurried out and set up positions protecting the entrance. I got out and eyed them.
“Hi,” I said with my most friendly grin. “My name’s Peters, Toby Peters. Miss West is expecting me.”
I took a few steps closer and concluded that neither of the two was giving off the spark that signaled intelligence or even animal cleverness. Neither acted as if I had spoken. One was blond. The other had curly black hair. I’d never seen such exaggerated muscles. They looked strangely top-heavy, like Bluto in a Popeye cartoon. They were probably slow, and I could probably take both of them by staying out of their grasp and running a lot. But I had been fooled in the past by those probabilities and wound up more than once (maybe a dozen times if you want a more accurate count) in need of medical help.
“Are you two in there?” I asked, stepping in front of them. “I can come back when you’re home.”
One of them, the dark one, did something with his full lower lip that could have been a sneer or a smile, or maybe he still had breakfast toast stuck in his perfect white teeth. Since my teeth are neither perfect nor very white, and since I am almost as old as Mae West, I had the urge to push the pair. My world sometimes seems an endless series of encounters with huge men guarding secrets and doors. Each time I meet them I know I have to find out what is beyond that door or go down trying. Hell, the most they can give me is life.
“It’s been very nice chatting with you, Dizzy and Daffy,” I said, stepping between them, “but I’ve got some business inside with the lady of the house.”
The dark one put an arm out to block me, and I stuck my hand out to push it away. It didn’t push. In fact, I almost fell.
“Now all I need is to find the switch to turn you two off.” I grinned my most evil grin, but it didn’t seem to affect them.
“Your sister eats worms,” I tried. No response. “What does it take to get a rise out of you guys?”
“Something you have not got,” came a dark voice from the doorway, and out stepped Mae West, but it took me a blink to recognize her. Her voice was the surest touchstone. The woman before me wearing a frilly purple dress had neck-length brown hair, not blond, and was barely on the good side of plump. She gave off a heavy perfume that smelled like a flower I couldn’t place and looked at me with amused violet eyes and her hands on her hips.
“Welcome to Paradise,” she said, stepping back. “It’s a little gaudy and overstocked, but we call it home.”
I followed her in with Diz and Daf behind me. A monkey ran across the hallway in front of us, and Mae West nodded. The blond giant hurried after the monkey who had disappeared, heading toward the rear of the house.
“You cut out the tongues of all your servants?” I asked with a smile as she led me into a living room.
“They’ve got tongues,” she said, sitting elegantly in a white chair. “But they use them for better things than idle conversation.”
We looked at each other for a few seconds, and I glanced around, waiting for the next verbal game, which I was now convinced I was bound to lose. The room was white and gold. The carpet, drapes, and even the piano were white. The Louis-the-something furniture was gold. She had seated herself beneath an oil painting of a nude reclining. The nude was a somewhat thinner and younger Mae West. The much plumper version was now semi- reclining in the same position with a smile. Dizzy and Daffy had disappeared.
“I don’t think I can go on at this level,” I said. “I’m used to quiet things like bullets flying, beatings, murders. I came to help, not to lose a verbal match. I know when I’m outclassed.”
Her laugh was deep as she sat up and shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been playing Mae West for so long, I don’t know where the playing stops. You want a drink?”
“Sure, Pepsi if you have it.”
A few minutes later the blond giant brought in a tray with two drinks. I took the one that was surely Pepsi. She took the dark brown one without the bubbles.
“Steak juice,” she explained. “Energy, few calories. Bottoms up.”
She drank about half of the juice and then told me her tale. It was pretty much as Phil had set it up. The manuscript was missing. It had been taken not from the ranch but from her apartment at the Ravenswood Hotel near Paramount a few days before.
“He’s a real fruit cake,” she said, sipping her steak juice. “And I’ve known some fruits and cakes in my ample career, if you get my meaning.”
I got her meaning as she told me that the manuscript contained enough to cause a few scandals.
“It was just a draft,” she explained. “I was going to do some cutting, change some names to protect the guilty, though none of it is refragable, and try it out on a few publishers. Now I just want it back, but I think our friendly neighborhood thief is after more than money.”
“Like what?” I asked, finishing the Pepsi.
“Even under the circumstances I would like with impudicity to delude myself that I may be the object of his esteem,” she said. “But I’m afraid his intentions are strictly honorable. I can read men, and this guy had something destructive on what little is left of his mind.”
She had already set up the show for that night and told the thief to come and bring the manuscript. She, in turn, would have an envelope with five grand. The isolated nature of the place, she thought, would make it ideal for keeping him from getting away.
“He’s going to be here alone?”
“Not quite,” she laughed. “A few of my more intimate friends will be here. We’re having a Mae West party. You get in free if you’re dressed like me.” Her smile was broad, showing teeth that Shelly Minck would have marveled at.
“There’s one catch,” she added. “Only men are allowed.”
“So you’re going to have a houseful of men dressed like you, and I’m supposed to find the one who’s the thief and nail him?”
“You got it,” she said, plunking down her glass with just a brown residue of steak juice remaining.
“You have parties like this often?”
“Since I came out here,” she said. “I like men of all shapes, sizes, and persuasion. I even wrote a play back in
