Fade to Blonde

“That’s it.”

“And you’re working for Severin.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“What if I called him up?”

I nodded. “That’s a good idea. It’s so easy to get through to him, and he just loves phone calls.” I glared at her from under my eyebrows and croaked, “Explain to me again, young lady, why somebody gave you your job.”

She laughed. “I guess you do know Morrie. I don’t know why I’m not trusting you. Mostly they have us send the shots over. We don’t get many walk-ins.”

“Well, I’m new at this. Probably I’m doing it all wrong. Maybe you could give me a little coaching.”

“Easy, cuz,” she said. “Stick to the menu, and don’t order what you can’t afford.” She got up, smoothed down her dress — it was already smooth — and turned to open the inner door. I followed her into Gellar’s office. It was empty. “Mr. Gellar is in conference,” she said. “Deep, deep in conference.”

One wall of the room was file cabinets from floor to ceiling. She fetched out a file, perched on the corner of Gellar’s desk, and crossed her legs. They were worth crossing. “What does the L. R. stand for?” I asked.

“Why don’t we stick with Miss Bellinger for now? All righty. Mr. Halliday is not what you’d call an active file. He hasn’t done any adventure, really. He hasn’t really done much of anything. Except screen tests. Mr. Halliday has tested for every studio in town. He was a swim coach in Million Dollar Mermaid. I guess you could say that was his career high. He stood around in a swimming suit, which he does very well, and said ‘Hello Annette’ to Esther Williams. I wish I could say we got him that one. We did get him a toothpaste commercial. That old boy has teeth you simply would not credit.”

“I suppose teeth won’t hurt us. Can he fence, dance, anything like that?”

“Mr. Corson, do you really not know what Lance Halliday does these days?”

“No. What?”

“He’s, ah. He’s moved over into production. Sort of like yourself, Mr. Corson.”

“He can’t be making much of a success of it, or I’d have heard. Anyway, maybe he’d like another crack at the limelight. If you don’t represent him now, how would I go about getting in touch?”

“Mr. Corson. What do you really want?”

“It would be my life’s dream if you cared what I really want.”

“And here you promised me you wouldn’t make a pass.”

“No, I just promised you I wasn’t that bright.”

“I’ve figured it out,” said Miss Bellinger. “You’re a detective on the case. One of these super-sleuths. You’re hot on the trail. Well, Mr. Corson, I’m going to teach you a little trick you can show all your gumshoe friends,” She pulled a phone book from the shelf, flipped through it, and turned it to face me. She tapped the page with a slim forefinger. I saw a listing for Halliday Productions, with an address on Cahuenga, out on the other side of the hills.

“Thanks,” I said, getting out my steno pad.

“Show you another trick,” she said. She flipped through the book and turned it to me again. This time she pointed to a listing for L. R. Bellinger.

I wrote down the number and address. “What does the L. R. stand for?” I said.

“Lisa Rae,” she said.

“Pretty name,” I said.

10

Office

Halliday’s office was in one of those modernistic buildings that look old six months after they’re built. It had a two-story lobby with a streaked glass wall in front and a steel and terrazzo staircase in back. Everything was covered in dusty green bathroom tile. It was trying hard not to seem cheap. It looked like Rebecca’s boarding house in a ten-dollar suit. As I climbed the stairs, I was getting my story straight. I’d be an out-of-work actor too stupid to know what Halliday Productions did. If Halliday was there, I’d come round to say we’d got off on the wrong foot last night. As it happened, nobody was there. I knocked, rattled the knob, and went down the back stairs, pulling some surgical gloves from my pocket. I had a carton of them from an OR nurse I knew with more freckles more places than you’d think was possible.

I got the gloves on, came back up quietly, and took a strip of celluloid from my wallet. It was a four-inch length of 35-millimeter film snipped from a Republic quickie called Aloha Samoa. It used to show a sleepy lagoon jeweled with sunlight, but I’d worn most of the emulsion off. I had three of these strips. A single thickness was too limp for the lock, but two did the trick, and I leaned my shoulder into the door and cuddled it open almost silently. I locked it behind me and looked around. It was a single room with a single desk. I didn’t like it. I walked to the window and opened it. A ten-foot drop to the asphalt parking lot in front, in full view of the road. I liked it less. I drew a finger across the seat of the chair, hoping for a film of dust. There wasn’t much. That chair was getting sat in, though not every day. I decided, the hell, if Halliday showed, I’d shoot him and collect my money.

In the kneehole drawer I found two big checkbooks, the sort with three checks per page. One book was for Halliday Productions, the other for something called Prestige Enterprises. According to the stubs, the Halliday checkbook wasn’t used for much but paying the office rent and phone. The Prestige book was working harder: film stock, processing and duplicating, some equipment rentals, editing-room time, lights, and the occasional projector. Both showed regular cash deposits and irregular cash withdrawals, probably to pay the talent. I suppose that sort of thing’s a cash business. I was aware of the tiny noises any building makes, of the swish of cars passing on Cahuenga, of the big window at my back. I kept having the idea that if I turned around, I’d see someone outside the window making faces at me. But the nice thing about nerves is, all you have to do is ignore them. There was an address book on the desk by the phone, which seemed to be full of the same suppliers from the checkbook. In the back were a few pages with first names and phone numbers, no last names or addresses, in no special order, and most of the names crossed out. That would be the talent, and I copied down ten at random, half of them crossed- out, half current. There was nothing else in the top drawer except a roll of stamps in the pencil trough. I was out of stamps and I took a few.

In the top right-hand drawer were two boxes of letterhead, one for Halliday, one for Prestige. The addresses were the same. I took a half-dozen sheets of each, folded them carefully, and tucked them in my pocket with some matching envelopes. There was a little packet of business cards held together with a rubber band. The cards bore no name or phone number, just an address out in the valley somewhere. I heard footsteps coming up the front stairs, put the cards down, and got out my gun. The footsteps came closer and then got fainter, and I heard a key going into a lock down the hall. I waited until I heard the door shut. I put my gun away, slipped out one of the cards, and tucked it in my wallet.

I opened the bottom right-hand drawer and found a carton of flashbulbs and a carton of .38 bullets. I closed it. There weren’t any left-hand drawers, so I went over the filing cabinets. The first was all receipted bills to Prestige. I went back, got out the Prestige checkbook, and compared a few bills with the check stubs. The amounts matched up. I put the checkbook away. The next three cabinets you could have entertained yourself with a while. They contained packaged sets of photographs of the sort that are called either Artistic or Specialized. The Artistic ones were all bathing beauties who’d forgotten their suits. None of them appeared to have noticed it yet, and you’d have felt like a heel for telling them. They wore big smiles that seemed to say Isn’t this fun? except for a few who were on the phone and seemed to say Be with you in a minute. The Specialized ones were all of people I didn’t know, doing things to each other that I was roughly familiar with. The Specialized people all seemed to be very tan or very pale. They had a stunned look, like trophies on a rec room wall.

The last cabinet was locked, and I got out my picks and muttered bad words at myself for ten minutes. I left scratches, too, for anybody looking close. I stink at that stuff. Inside was nothing but two books. One of them seemed like a list of steady customers, with addresses and phones. None of them would know anything useful and I put it away. The other was a scrapbook. There were a few different head shots of Halliday, and then a production still from a picture called Dusk on the Danube, showing a ballroom full of dancing couples.