He snapped his fingers. `I bet I could sell your story for twenty-five G's, make it part of a package with Steve McQueen. Give some thought to it, Lew boy. I could open up a lovely jar of olives for you.'
`I just opened a can of peas, Joey, and I wonder if you can help me with it. How is your tolerance for pictures of dead people?'
`I've seen a lot of them die.'
His free hand fluttered toward the wall above his desk. It was prepared with inscribed photographs of vanished players. His other hand raised his tumbler. `I drink to them.'
I cluttered his desk top with the angry pictures. He looked them over mournfully. 'Ach!' he said. `What the human animal does to itself? Am I supposed to know her?'
`She's supposed to have worked in pictures. You know more actors than anybody.'
`I did at one time. No more.'
`I doubt that she's done any acting recently. She was on the skids.'
`It can happen overnight.'
In a sense, it had happened to him. He put on his glasses, turned on a desk lamp, and studied the pictures intensively. After a while he said: `Carol?'
`You know her.'
He looked at me over his glasses. `I couldn't swear to it in court. I once knew a little blonde girl, natural blonde, with ears like that. Notice that they're small and close to the head and rather pointed. Unusual ears for a girl.'
`Carol who?'
`I can't remember. It was a long time ago, back in the forties. I don't think she was using her own name, anyway.'
`Why not?'
`She had a very stuffy family back in Podunk. They disapproved of the acting bit. I seem to remember she told me she ran away from home.'
`In Podunk?'
`I didn't mean that literally. Matter of fact, I think she came from some place in Idaho.'
`Say that again.'
`Idaho. Is your dead lady from Idaho?'
`Her husband drives a car with an Idaho license. Tell me more about Carol. When and where did you know her?'
`Right here in Hollywood. A friend of mine took an interest in the girl and brought her to me. She was a lovely child. Untouched.'
His hands flew apart in the air, un-touching her. `All she had was high-school acting experience, but I got her a little work. It wasn't hard in those days, with the war still going on. And I had a personal in with all the casting directors on all the lots.'
`What year was it, Joey?'
He took off his glasses and squinted into the past. `She came to me in the spring of '45, the last year of the war.'
Mrs. Brown, if she was Carol, had been around longer than I'd thought. `How old was she then?'
`Very young. Just a child, like I said. Maybe sixteen.'
`And who was the friend who took an interest in her?'
`It isn't like you think. It was a woman, one of the girls in the story department at Warner's. She's producing a series now at Television City. But she was just a script girl back in the days I'm talking about.'
`You wouldn't be talking about Susanna Drew?'
`Yeah. Do you know Susanna?'
`Thanks to you. I met her at a party at your house, when you were living in Beverly Hills.'
Joey looked startled, as though the shift from one level of the past to another had caught him unawares. `I remember. That must have been ten years ago.'
He sat and thought about ten years ago, and so did I. I had taken Susanna home from Joey's party, and we met at other parties, by agreement. We had things to talk about. She picked my brains for what I knew about people, and I picked hers for what she knew about books. I was crazy about her insane sense of humor.
The physical thing came more slowly, as it often does when it promises to be real. I think we tried to force it. We'd both been drinking, and a lot of stuff boiled up from Susanna's childhood. Her father had been a professor at UCLA, who lost his wife young, and he had supervised Susanna's studies. Her father was dead, but she could still feel his breath on the back of her neck.
We had a bad passage, and Susanna stopped going to parties, at least the ones I went to. I heard she had a marriage which didn't take. Then she had a career, which took.
`How did she happen to know Carol?' I said to Joey.
`You'll have to ask her yourself. She told me at the time, but I don't remember. My memory isn't what it was.'
