`We're trying that, too, but a lot of women have never been fingerprinted. Meantime, will you try and get an identification? You're a Hollywood man, and the woman claimed that she was in pictures at one time.'
`That doesn't mean a thing.'
`It might.'
`But I was planning to try and pick up Brown's trail in Nevada. If the boy's alive, Brown knows where to find him.'
`The Nevada police already have our APB on Brown. And you have a private operative on the spot. Frankly, I'd appreciate it if you'll take this picture to Hollywood with you. I don't have a man I can spare. By the way, I had your car brought into the county garage.'
Cooperation breeds cooperation. Besides, the woman's identity was important, if only because the killer had tried to hide it. I accepted the picture, along with several others taken from various angles, and put them in the same pocket as my picture of Tom.
`You can reverse any telephone charges,' Bastian said in farewell.
Halfway down the stairs I ran into Ralph Hillman. At first glance he looked fresher than he had the previous evening. But it was an illusory freshness. The color in his cheeks was hectic, and the sparkle in his eyes was the glint of desperation. He sort of reared back when he saw me, like a spooked horse.
`Can you give me a minute, Mr. Hillman?'
`Sorry. I have an appointment.'
`The lieutenant can wait. I want to say this. I admit I made a mistake last night. But you made a mistake in getting Sponti to drop me.'
He looked at me down his patrician nose. 'You'd naturally think so. It's costing you money.'
`Look, I'm sorry about last night. I was overeager. That's the defect of a virtue. I want to carry on with the search for your son.'
`What's the use? He's probably dead. Thanks to you.'
`That's a fairly massive accusation, Mr. Hillman.'
`Take it. It's yours. And please get out of my way.'
He looked compulsively at his wristwatch. `I'm already late.'
He brushed past me and ran upstairs as if I might pursue him. It wasn't a pleasant interview. The unpleasantness stuck in my crop all the way to Los Angeles.
11
I BOUGHT A hat a size too large, to accommodate my bandages, and paid a brief visit to the Hollywood division of the LAPD. None of the detective-sergeants in the upstairs offices recognized Mrs. Brown in her deathly disguise. I went from the station to the newsroom of the Hollywood Reporter. Most of the people at work there resented being shown such pictures. The ones who gave them an honest examination failed to identify Mrs. Brown.
I tried a number of flesh peddlers long the Strip, with the same lack of success and the same effect. The photographs made me unpopular. These guys and dolls pursuing the rapid buck hated to be reminded of what was waiting on the far side of the last dollar. The violence of the woman's death only made it worse. It could happen to anybody, any time.
I started back to my office. I intended to call Bastian and ask him to rush me a Xerox copy of the composite sketch as soon as his artist had completed it. Then I thought of Joey Sylvester.
Joey was an old agent who maintained an office of sorts two blocks off Sunset and two flights up. He hadn't been able to adapt to the shift of economic power from the major studios to the independent producers. He lived mainly on his share of residuals from old television movies, and on his memories.
I knocked on the door of his cubbyhole and heard him hiding his bottle, as if I might be the ghost of Louis B. Mayer or an emissary from J. Arthur Rank. Joey looked a little disappointed when he opened the door and it was only me. But he resurrected the bottle and offered me a drink in a paper cup. He had a glass tumbler for his own use, and I happened to know that nearly every day he sat at his desk and absorbed a quart of bourbon and sometimes a quart and a half.
He was a baby-faced old man with innocent white hair and crafty eyes. His mind was like an old-fashioned lamp with its wick in alcohol, focused so as to light up the past and its chauffeur-driven Packard, and cast the third- floor-walkup present into cool shadow.
It wasn't long past noon, and Joey was still in fair shape. `It's good to see you, Lew boy. I drink to your health.'
He did so, with one fatherly hand on my shoulder.
`I drink to yours.'
The hand on my shoulder reached up and took my hat off. `What did you do to your head?'
`I was slightly shot last night.'
`You mean you got drunk and fell down?'
`Shot with a gun,' I said.
He clucked. `You shouldn't expose yourself the way you do. Know what you ought to do, Lew boy? Retire and write your memoirs. The unvarnished sensational truth about Hollywood.'
`It's been done a thousand times, Joey. Now they're even doing it in the fan mags.'
`Not the way you could do it. Give'em the worm's-eye view. There's a title!'
