High Midnight

Cooper takes the High Midnight job. My assistant talked to four people about the project. All four want the film made with Cooper. After he talked to them, the unpleasant character I mentioned showed up and told me to mind my own business. He even tried to put a bullet or two through me less than an hour ago to make his meaning clear.”

“You know, Daisy Mae is missing,” Lola said, chewing at her upper lip and examining her drink. “You’re a detective. Maybe you can help Li’l Abner find her.”

“Put it back in the bottle, Lola,” I said softly. “You’re not that shellacked.”

The anger started to come to her eyes again, but she controlled it and looked at me.

“There’s you,” I said. “There’s Max Gelhorn, Tall Mickey Fargo and Curtis Bowie, the writer. You want Cooper in on this project. How badly?”

Lola laughed, a nice deep laugh. “Badly,” she said, losing about fifty percent of her drunkenness. “Max is in debt to whoever he got to back the film. He promised to deliver Cooper, and if he can’t deliver on the promise, he has big trouble. The man with the money will be very angry. Max got me in on this for two reasons. A, I gave him my few dollars in savings, and B, he had heard that I knew Cooper. I went to Cooper and offered myself and a memory of old times, but he said no. He turned me down. Lola has lost it.”

“Not quite,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re pretty cute too in a grotesque sort of way.”

“And …”

“And,” she continued after taking another drink, “Gelhorn is in trouble, and I am out my money and a last chance to make it in the movies. Tall Mickey is a loser who goes way back with Gelhorn. He had no money to lose. He’s living on dreams and the hope of a comeback, but-between us-Tall Mickey had nothing to come back to or from. He was never more than a face in the barroom crowd.”

“Bowie?” I said, draining my Pepsi and examining the bubbles on the bottom.

“Kicking around for years,” she said. “Wrote a few dime Westerns. Did a Wheeler and Woolsey script. High Midnight is his big project. Been working years at it. It’s not bad, but what the hell do I know. I think Bowie is screwy enough to kill to get the picture made with Cooper. I guess we’re all screwy enough. That what you wanted?”

The last question had a touch of something in it. Maybe it was an invitation. It might even have been sarcasm. I have discovered through the many hard years that I am a rotten judge of the motives of women.

“Did you hire the muscle?” I asked.

She shook her head no and said, almost to herself, “I used my ammunition on Cooper. I haven’t got much, but I’ve got some pride. It’s barely holding me together.”

“It’s doing better than that,” I said honestly. She smiled with a nice set of teeth and reached over the bar to touch my cheek. The other hand held tightly to her amber tumbler.

“That’s sweet,” she said.

“Lombardi,” I said, and her hand moved away slowly. “Why does he want you to make the picture?”

“My suggestion to you is to stay away from Mr. Lombardi if you want to hold onto what remains of your appeal,” she said. “He can be an unkind man.”

I stood up. “He’s not giving me a choice.”

“Mr. Lombardi thinks he owes me something, and he wants to be a West Coast big shot,” she explained. “He wants to make movies and sell cheese.”

“Hot dogs,” I corrected. “He has a hot-dog factory.”

She laughed. “His old man had a hot-dog stand on Coney Island,” she said.

“Funny,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll see you around.”

Before I hit the door, her voice caught me.

“I’m through here at eleven,” she said. “If you want to come back, I’ll buy you a Pepsi.”

“Eleven,” I said, without looking back, and I went out into the light. If it had been a sunny day, I would have been as helpless as a Universal Studio vampire. As it was, I had to stand still for a few seconds. The piano tinkled an off-beat version of Blues in the Night, and I hurried away before Lola started to sing.

I drove through the hills and out of the valley with the down-and-out image of Lola Farmer. I wasn’t sure what there was about her that got to me. It was something distant and sad, something I wanted to find and examine. I didn’t quite feel sorry for her, but there was something about her that was comforting, like sinking into a hot bath and losing yourself.

The area of Los Angeles I drove to brought me back to reality. Clapboard houses and dark brick churches looked pretty good on a clear day, but a day like this showed the neighborhood for what it was, a ghetto of out-of- work losers even at a time when jobs were easy to get and men were scarce. The kids in the street and little parks wore someone else’s coat. Weary wives with handkerchiefs on their heads carried packages and clinging kids.

Curtis Bowie’s house was easy to find. It was just off Sixty-fifth, a very small wooden house painted white but showing rotting wood underneath. There was no room for the house to breathe. It was almost flush with twin houses on both sides.

I parked, locked the Buick and went up to the screen door. My knock rattled the screen, which looked ready to fall out and had so many holes it couldn’t have discouraged an eagle, let alone a fly.

“Anyone home?” I asked, peering through the screen and seeing a living room of gray furniture. I knocked again and opened the door. One of the hinges was completely off. I caught the door in time and carefully replaced it behind me as I walked in. The living room was small and decorated in fake Victorian decay. The sofa had a spot so worn the round outline of the springs was clear. A newspaper was on the floor, as if someone had been reading it when he was called away by the phone, bodily needs or food boiling over.

“Mister Bowie?” I called. “Are you here?”

No answer. I walked through the living room and found myself in the kitchen, where a man was seated at a small wooden table, his head down and his hands at his side.

“Mister Bowie?” I said, and the body stirred.

“Who?” said Bowie, lifting his head to look at his dish-filled sink instead of at me.

“I’m over here,” I said, and his eyes turned in the right direction and tried to focus on me. He was a lean man, a leathery lean man with a slightly silly smile and a head of curly gray hair. He wore a pair of work pants, a flannel shirt and suspenders. His sleeves were rolled up as if he were about to work on something electrical or mechanical. Beneath him on the table I could see sheets of notebook paper with scribbles and crossed-out words.

“Tomorrow for sure,” he said, standing with a yawn. “I’m picking up a check this morning and I’ll pay you tomorrow after I cash it at the bank.”

“It’s afternoon now, Mr. Bowie,” I said.

He was waking up now and looked over at me to be sure which debtor I was. He didn’t recognize me. To help his memory he walked to the sink, pushed over a pile of fly-attracting dishes and turned on the cold water. He cupped his hands, filled them with water, plunged his face into his palms and said, “Buggggle, plluble.”

He stood up and stretched.

“Now,” he said amiably in an accent that touched of the Southwest, “how can I help you?”

“My name is Toby Peters,” I said, holding out my hand to shake.

He took it and said, “No it’s not.”

“Yes it is,” I insisted with a false little laugh. “The fellow who told you he was me was a dentist who wanted to play detective while I was busy on another case.”

“You mind if I use that?” he said, reaching for his pencil on the table and pulling a sheet of paper in front of him. “A dentist pretending to be a detective. I thought there was something funny about him. Now that I think of it he did say something about my jaw protruding, said I should see an oral surgeon.”

“Can I ask you a few questions, Bowie?”

“Sure,” said Bowie, “have a seat. Like some coffee?”

I tried not to look around at the sink and the fly convention on the nearby cabinets as I declined.

“I do not get a lot of visitors,” Bowie explained as we both sat. “A writer often leads a solitary life.”

“High Midnight,” I said, taking off my hat and unbuttoning my coat.