“Oh!” I glanced at my wife, who glanced back at me, pausing as she leafed through the latest Silver Screen magazine, in that chilling “Who is that, dear?” manner known by all men who’ve received a phone call from a woman while their wife is in the room.
“I take it you remember me,” said the sultry voice on the phone.
“Yes. Of course.”
And here is why looking at my wife reminded me of who the girl on the phone was: they looked alike.
The girl on the phone had lustrous brown hair so dark it almost appeared black; so did Peggy. The girl on the phone was not quite as petite as Peggy, but they had similarly creamy pale skin, slender shapely figures, and big beautiful eyes (Beth’s were blue-green, Peggy’s were Elizabeth Taylor violet). Both of them had fabulous smiles, slightly chubby chipmunk cheeks, with movie-star features reminiscent of screen songbird Deanna Durbin. And both liked to wear white flowers in their dark hair.
I had known the former Peggy Hogan-my bride of almost a month-since 1938; but we had gotten serious in the summer of ’45, and soon were more or less engaged; then by the end of the next summer, we had broken it off. Rather, Peggy had broken it off, and gone gallivanting to Las Vegas to work for a friend of mine. Soon she and that “friend” were romantically inclined, which is to say reclined, so for about three and a half months-roughly the fall of ’46-I had been a spurned, rather bitter lover.
And like so many a man enraged with the woman who cast him aside, I had promptly gotten myself involved with another woman whose striking physical resemblance to my lost love would allow me to bask in equal parts joy and misery.
But my affair with Beth-and you will get the details of that, in time… patience-had been brief, and I had not given the little waitress with the movie-star looks a single thought since our final night together, back in Chicago, last November.
Because in December, when Peggy’s affair came to an abrupt and rather unpleasant end, she ran back into my arms and I gratefully accepted the gesture. We were married a day later, in one of those shabby little Las Vegas wedding chapels, and spent several days thereafter frantically fucking, desperately reassuring each other that we were desperately in love with each other (as opposed to just plain desperate), never discussing, never mentioning the fact that she was mine on the colossal rebound.
“You’re surprised to hear from me,” the girl on the phone said.
“Yes,” I said, master of understatement that I am. “I didn’t think it was widely known I was in L.A., and the last time I saw you-”
“Was in Chicago. But, Nathan-you knew I was a California girl. Remember, we talked about you opening an office here? You were going out in December. Remember?”
I remembered. I only wished she hadn’t.
“Listen,” the girl on the phone said, “I’m… I’m in trouble.”
“What kind?” I asked, sitting up. “Kind you need a private detective for?”
“No… you know. I’m in trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked numbly, knowing.
“Nathan, I’m two months late.”
Not private detective trouble, then; private dick trouble.
“I see… and it’s, uh, it’s…” I glanced at my wife, who was still paging through the movie magazine, pausing intermittently to frown curiously at me.
“It’s yours, Nathan,” the girl on the phone said. Beth said. Her low-pitched voice managed to seem worldly and youthful at the same time.
I swallowed, smiling and shrugging at my wife, saying into the phone, “Forgive me, but… there’s no doubt of that?”
“I haven’t been with anybody but you.” Dreadful certainty in the voice. “Not for over a month before we were together, and not at all since.”
Fighting dizziness, I said, “Frankly, I don’t, uh, remember even… being with you.”
Other than those incredible blow jobs. Yes, I am a classy guy.
“Oh, Nathan, please, please don’t tell me…” The husky voice caught, a sob trapped in her throat. “… don’t tell me you were too drunk… too drunk to remember…”
What I did remember was that I had indeed been drunk that last night with her. Yes, sir, class act all the way.
“This is a bad time,” I said.
Now Peggy was looking at me, really frowning.
“We have to talk,” Beth’s voice said.
“Can’t this wait till business hours? I can be in my office at the Bradbury Building tomorrow morning.”
“I know about your office,” Beth said. “How do you think I found you? Your friend Mr. Rubinski gave me your number.”
My friend Mr. Rubinski and I would have to have a little talk.
“I just need your help,” she said, “you know, to… get rid of it.”
So she wanted money. What a shock.
“It must be something, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” Beth’s voice was saying, the sob gone now, replaced with a sort of purr. “I always dreamed of staying there.”
“Yeah, it’s a swell place,” I said. Swell place to be staying when somebody was sizing you up for a shakedown.
Peggy said, “Who is that?”
I covered the mouthpiece, whispered, “A client.”
Peggy smirked irritably and returned to her movie magazine.
Into the phone, I said, “Where can I reach you?”
The response had an edge in it: “I want to talk now.”
“How about in an hour?
“… All right. I’m at the Biltmore-Fifth and-”
“I know where the Biltmore is.”
“Why don’t you come down here, Nathan, and meet me in the lobby?”
“That’s impossible. I’ll call you back.”
“I’m in a pay phone.”
“Well give me the number.”
She did; I scribbled it down on a pad by the phone on the end table.
“I’ll be waiting, Nathan,” Beth said. “Let it ring a long time-I’ll be sitting in the lobby, listening for your call. Don’t disappoint me.”
The click in my ear was a relief-a momentary one. I felt sick to my stomach, head whirling. Pretty much the symptoms of morning sickness, but then this was evening, and I was a man. Sort of.
“Do these people have to bother you at home?” Peggy asked.
She looked lovely tonight-as she had on every day of our marriage, thus far-her dark hair up, a fetching pile of raven curls, her cute nose trailed with freckles, her wide full lips lushly lipsticked. No flower in her hair tonight; we’d have to settle for the cut flowers in crystal vases spotted about our cozy honeymoon shack.
“I mean,” Peggy continued, movie magazine in her lap now, “you’re not even really working any cases in this town, are you? Isn’t that Fred’s job?”
“I thought you liked it out here.”
“I do. You know how I feel about that.”
I knew well. We’d been here over three weeks, and Peggy had made it clear she liked Los Angeles, specifically Hollywood. I had made it clear I did not: to me Hollywood was one big movie set, a world of cheap fancy facades, especially the people.
I should have known I was in trouble the moment Peggy got a load of the Beverly Hills Hotel, with its pink- and-green stucco Mission-style-meets-Art-Moderne buildings strewn about grounds swarming with flowering shrubbery and colorful gardens. Staying at that hotel-a pastel, palm-flung make-believe land whose airy lobby was garnished with stunning floral arrangements and luxurious plants and overstuffed furniture for patrons with overstuffed wallets-was like living inside a movie, a sensation reinforced by having the likes of Cary Grant, Hedy
