“Hiya,” Dixie said, just barely looking at me, but she was the kind of girl who could load an hour of promise into a split second of glance.
Browne was drinking his latest beer. A barmaid in black and white with her legs showing came over and brought him three more bottles with three other labels and piled the empties on her tray while Browne handed her a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Let me know when that’s gone. Keep the last five for yourself, honey.”
She thanked him, and was gone, and he looked over at me. “I know you,” he said, bloodshot eyes narrowing on either side of a bloodshot nose. “You’re that dick.”
The two girls looked at me.
“That’s right,” I said. “I have my own little agency on Van Buren.”
The girls looked away.
Dean blew a smoke ring and said, “What brings you to Tinseltown?”
“Business. What brings you boys here?”
Dean smiled at Browne, but Browne wasn’t looking; he was pouring his next beer.
Dean said, “We work out here. For the Stagehands Union.”
“Really? Is that a good racket?”
Browne belched into his hand. “It’s not a racket,” he said, having to reach for the indignation. “We serve the working man. Without us, they’d be out on a limb. You can trust an employer just so long as you’re shaking hands with him. When he relaxes his grip, you’re had, unless
Browne had chosen the outside seat for a reason; he was up and gone.
“Little boy’s room,” the redhead explained to me. “He does that every half hour.”
“You could set your watch by it,” the blonde said.
“Girls,” Dean said, and that meant they were to be quiet. “What kind of business you out here on, Heller?”
“Wandering daughter job. A Gold Coast swell hired me to find his little girl. She’s out here trying to make it in the movies.”
“I’m an actress,” the blonde said.
The redhead chose not to declare herself.
“You’ll find there’s lots of actresses out here,” Dean said. “Any luck?”
“Yeah. The father had an old address on her, which I checked out. Found she’d been doing a little work as an extra. Tracked her through SAG.”
Mention of the Screen Actors Guild didn’t raise a ripple out of Dean. He merely said, “The girl going back home?”
I shook my head no. “I didn’t expect her to. They had me give her some dough, which’ll underwrite another six months out here.”
This story was more or less true, by the way, should Dean go checking-only the job dated back a couple months and had been handled by me over the phone from Chicago. This afternoon I’d called the moneybags papa long distance and asked if he wanted me to look in on his daughter, while I was out here, and see how she was doing; he’d said yes, and to write her a check up to five C’s if she needed money, for which he’d reimburse me and then some. The bit about finding her through SAG was baloney, though-she’d left her new address with her old landlady-but Montgomery had checked for me and she did carry a card. The story would hold.
“If she’s a good-looking kid,” Dean said, “she won’t need their money.”
The blonde sipped her drink; the redhead lowered her eyes-I thought I saw contempt there. Whether for Dean or herself or the world in general, I couldn’t say.
“You may be right,” I said, “but she took the dough.”
Dean shrugged. The orchestra was starting up, across the room. They were playing “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Browne returned, sidled his heft back in the booth. “Where’s that waitress? I’m down to one beer.”
Nobody answered him.
Dean said to the little blonde, “Do you want to dance, Dix?”
“Oh, sure, Nicky.”
He turned his dark gaze on me. “Dance with her, Heller, would you.” It wasn’t a question.
“My pleasure.”
I threaded Dixie through tables to the crowded dance floor and held her close. She smelled good, like new hay. I hated the thought of the kid being in Dean’s arms.
However, the first thing she said was, “Isn’t Nicky sweet?”
“He’s a peach.”
“Inn’t he, though? Ooh, look. There’s Sidney Skolsky.”
“Who?”
“You know, Sidney Skolsky, the columnist! I wish you were somebody. I could get in his column.”
“I was somebody last time I looked.”
She looked at me, with melting embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like that.”
“It’s okay, Dixie. Is it okay if I call you Dixie?”
“Sure. How should I call you?”
“Any time you want.”
She giggled and snuggled to me and we moved around the small packed floor awhile; we danced three or four numbers. It turned out Dixie was her stage name-the last half of which was “Flyer”-but she didn’t want to say what her real name was.
“Oooh, look! There’s Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor!”
I looked over and there they were, at a little table together. They looked small.
“Inn’t it nice,” she said, “that people leave them alone here? I hope when I’m famous people aren’t all the time bothering me for autographs.”
“There’s worse problems in the world,” I said, looking at Dean looking at us from the booth. Browne wasn’t; he was just drinking his current beer.
“There sure is! Hey, you’re kind of cute. What’s your name again?”
I told her, and the orchestra let up, and we made our way back. I waited for Dixie to slide in next to Dean, then slid in next to her.
“You two make a cute couple,” Dean said.
“Thanks,” Dixie said.
I didn’t say anything.
“We must have similar taste in dames,” he said, with a cold little smile. “Where you staying?”
“Pardon?”
“While you’re in town. What hotel you staying?”
“Roosevelt,” I said.
Dean’s faint smile now seemed honestly amused. “Ha. Joe Schenck’s joint.”
“What do you mean?’’
“Guy at Twentieth we know,” he said, glancing at Browne, who didn’t glance back. “He owns that hotel, him and some other guys.”
Montgomery had a wry sense of humor, I’d give him that much.
“Mr. Dean?” somebody said.
I looked over and a mustached, dapper little man in evening dress was standing, almost bowing, before the booth; he seemed nervous, even frightened.
“Hello, Billy,” Dean said. The words were like two ice cubes dropping in an empty glass.
“I’m relieved to see you back at the old stand tonight,” he said. “I was afraid we’d seen the last of you for a while.”
“We’re funny people, in this day and age,” Dean said. “We believe in staying loyal to our friends.”
The man stepped closer. “Allow me to explain.”
Dean said nothing.
“For whatever mistake I have made, I stand willing to do anything you dictate, to make it up,” the man said, his voice barely audible, trying, it would seem, to keep the humiliation of this scene from being broadcast. “There was an unfortunate circumstance, caused by a new man on the desk covering union news.”
