Show Business is Murder

A few blocks farther west was a small white stucco building with beveled corners, round deco windows, and black wood trim. The words KING BROTHERS PRODUCTIONS were embossed on a gold placard on the shiny black door.

It hit me that this could be an important case for me. I’d been thinking of moving to L.A. A lot of my work involved show business companies and they’d been moving west in droves. Getting on the good side of the L.A. Times would be a great way to build up a clientele.

I parked on the street and walked up and down the block thinking about how to play this. I knew there were three King brothers: Frank, Hymie, and Maury, and that their nephew-named Robert Rich, but allegedly not the Robert Rich-worked there, too. What could I say that would elicit more information than they’d already given out?

As I stood in front of the door, contemplating any options I could think of, and finding none, the door opened right into my foot. “Ouch!” I said in response.

“Oh, sorry,” said the young man who had pushed it into my big toe. His looks kind of reminded me of Anthony Perkins, who’d been nominated for an Oscar the year before for Friendly Persuasion, only this guy seemed a little crazier. He wore an alligator shirt and cotton pegs, and held several stamped letters in his hand. “Were you on your way in?”

“Uh…” Well, there was only one answer that made much sense. “Yes.”

“Oh,” he replied. It was a scintillating conversation.

He looked me over. I felt naked. “Are you the girl from the agency?”

Before I could weigh the consequences I said, “Yes.”

“Good, good. Come in,” he bid, holding the door open for me. I had the feeling he smelled my hair as I passed.

“What’s your name?” he said, looking directly at my boobs.

I thought of answering, the left one’s Zelda and the right Rebecca. Instead, I said, “Naomi. Naomi Weinstein.” I’d learned when I first started out that staying as close to the truth as possible was usually best. That way I didn’t have to spend so much time remembering which lie I’d told.

“Oh,” he replied, letting the door close behind him. “They said the girl was named Carey something. McNally, I think.”

My heart stopped while I searched for a reply. “Oh, yeah. Carey couldn’t make it. She got called back to another job she was on last week. So they sent me.” I only prayed that the agency in question was a secretarial agency, not a talent agency or an out-call brothel. The good part about being a lady private eye was that everybody always assumed I was a secretary. Or bank teller. Or school teacher. Or nurse. It made it awfully easy to pass. In fact, the one thing no one ever believed I was, when I told them, was a private eye.

“Well, good,” he said. “Here.”

He motioned to the reception desk facing the door. It was beige, like all the other furniture in the room. Everything had rounded edges and moderne designs. They must have picked it up at a going-out-of-style sale.

“Just answer the phones and take messages and I’ll be back as soon as I mail these letters,” he said, licking his lips repeatedly. There was something reptilian about him, like William Buckley.

I wished I could get a look at the letters before he deposited them in a mailbox. “Would you like me to mail those for you?” I asked.

“Naw. I’m gonna get a cuppa at Ben Frank’s since you’re here. Want me to bring you back one?” Well, he might appear dangerously psychotic, but he was certainly polite.

I said, “No thanks.”

“By the way,” he added, “the rest room is right though that door, the one next to my office, if you need to use it at any time. But tell me first so I can cover the phones for you.”

I nodded, and shivered a little. I had a feeling he’d probably drilled a peephole in the wall between his office and the bathroom. Just then the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and pushed down the button that was flashing.

“Just say…” he was saying as I did.

“King Brothers Productions,” I said into the phone.

“Good,” he said with a cockeyed nod.

“Hello, this is Robert Rich,” said a voice at the other end of the phone. I want to give you my address to send my Oscar.”

“Hold on just a moment, Mr. Rich,” I said, and put the line on hold.

“Did they say they were Robert Rich?” said the young man. He twisted his mouth into a grimace.

I nodded.

“That’s funny, because I’m Robert Rich,” he snapped.

I felt like I’d walked into the TV show To Tell the Truth. But where was Bud Collyer?

He picked up the phone on the other desk and pressed the blinking button. “Listen, you lying bastard, you just go jump in a lake.” And he hung up.

“What was that all about?” I asked with the greatest of innocence. I may even have fluttered my eyelashes.

He snickered. “You know, our movie, The Brave One? It won the Oscar for Best Original Story. But no one knows who or where the writer is. My uncles, they used my name for the credit. They didn’t know it was going to win an Oscar,” he shrugged. “I tried to cover and tell the Academy I’d written it, but I sort of lost my nerve when they started questioning me. So my Uncle Frank told them it was actually another Robert Rich who he met in Germany some years ago.”

“Was it?” I asked, even though he’d more or less confessed it wasn’t.

“Oh, yeah. Of course,” he said much too quickly. “They’ve been trying to locate him to give him the award.”

“I see,” I said, although I didn’t see at all. “Any luck?”

“Naw.”

I took a chance. “Then why did you hang up on the man on the phone?”

Robert Rich was startled. Perhaps he realized he’d dug himself a hole. “It… it was the wrong guy,” he stuttered, and walked to his office as quickly as he could. He couldn’t have known it was the wrong guy since he hadn’t heard the guy’s voice when he hung up on him. It could only have been the wrong guy if there was no other Robert Rich to be found. So I guess I had the answer to question number one: The Brave One was written by someone not named Robert Rich.

His departure gave me a moment to look over the outgoing mail he’d left on the desk. Phone bill payment. Electric bill payment. One to the Producers Guild. One to somebody named King in Glendale. And a letter to Blue Chip Stamps. I’d noticed from the signs in gas stations and on grocery stores that that was a big premium company in L.A., like S & H Green Stamps back where I came from.

Robert Rich came back in with another envelope. I caught him looking at my boobs again as he gathered up the letters he’d left and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a few. My uncles are due to return this afternoon,” he said, and left.

As the door closed behind him, I whirled around and started thumbing through the Rolodex on the side table. There was a Robert Rich in it, probably the one I’d just met. But I jotted down the address and phone number anyway. Before I finished, I was startled by the ringing phone.

“King Brothers Productions,” I said into the receiver.

“Hello, is Frank there?”

“No, I’m sorry, he’s not. May I take a message?”

“How about Maury?” said the somewhat high-pitched male voice.

“Afraid not.”

“Hymie?”

“Sorry. They’re all due back this afternoon.”

“Okay, give me that little pipsqueak Rich.”

“Sir, I’m afraid he’s out as well. May I help you?”