and that Ira Glick had run away but had not joined his tribe. Some, not Uncle Tucker and that is for sure, say Ira Glick went into the political business and became governor of Arizona just before it achieved statehood. I do not think Indians can be governor but they may have thought him to be Jewish with such a name.
When I woke up the next morning, the sun was shining, the pages were scattered all around the floor. Since they weren’t numbered, I didn’t worry about the order. I picked them up, tapped them straight, and placed them on the sofa.
I brushed my teeth and tongue, shaved, breakfasted on Shreddies mixed with Wheaties, dressed, and told myself that I had a killer to find and maybe a murder to prevent. But first I had a car to buy.
I took a Monday morning bus with the people going to work late and got to Arnie’s by ten. He was in his oil- smelling office screwing something into a glob of metal.
“How much for the ’38 Ford without a trade? My Buick died in the desert.”
A customer pulled in with a big black car and honked his horn. It was loud. Arnie lifted his eyes to the customer, waved, and kept on fiddling.
“Two twenty,” he said. “That’s a favor, since you’ve got no trade-in.”
“I’ve got eighty, a fee coming in from a client back East, and a job I’m working on,” I said.
Arnie put down his screwdriver, rubbed a little more grease on his nose, and looked indecisive.
“I can sell that baby just like that,” he said. “She’s no carroodi.”
The customer, a well-dressed guy with a briefcase, looked at his watch and did his best to spread exasperation through the neighborhood.
“Arnie, have we got a deal or not?”
Arnie gave a massive groan that I took as a false sign of defeat. He was, out of the goodness of his stone heart, going to sell me sight unseen the ’38 Ford. He held out his hand. I fished out my wallet, handed him the eighty, and hoped that the twenty-five I had left would last till more came in.
“She’s in back, next to the busted pump,” he said, counting the money. “I’ll make a receipt and stuff when I finish with flash pants over there.”
The car was where he said it would be, and it didn’t look too bad. The rear bumper sagged and one of the headlights looked bloodshot. In addition it was a small two-seater coupe, which Arnie had neglected to mention. There wasn’t much room for baggage or passengers. The keys were under the sunshade, where mechanics always hide them. It took a little to start the Ford, but start it did and the engine sounded reasonable. The gas gauge read empty.
I pulled out slowly and drove to the front pump. Arnie was talking to Mr. Flash Pants.
“Needs gas,” I yelled through the open window.
“Nah,” said Arnie adjusting his baseball cap. “Gauge is broken. I filled her up.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Just fill it every few days,” he said. “Cost you a bundle to fix it.”
At least the radio worked. I turned it on and discovered that the Japanese had shelled Corregidor for five hours, but General Wainright was holding on. I also learned that the Nazis had executed seventy-two Dutchmen for aiding the Allies and that if you want steady nerves to fly Uncle Sam’s bombers across the ocean, you should smoke Camels.
By eleven I was parked in the driveway outside the home of Richard Talbott, Academy Award winner, shoo-in nominee for another in 1942 and, from what I had heard, a man who could hold his booze, but not very well.
CHAPTER 7
The chimes echoed deeply inside of Talbott’s house. I looked around the grounds, which were on a slight rolling hill on Alpine just off Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The grass was well trimmed, the bushes neatly clipped, and the birds chirping happily in front of the big white house that dated back to the bad old days and had probably belonged to some silent film star who passed this way but once. I hit the chimes again and listened to them carom their three notes beyond the door. Then it opened.
Jeremy calls it deja vu. He even wrote a poem with that title. I couldn’t see why it didn’t have a straight American name like, “Haven’t I Been This Way Before?” or “(Seems to Me) I’ve Heard That Song Before.”
The woman in a light blue dress stood in front of me with her arms folded. She was a beautiful blond named Brenda Stallings, who hadn’t aged in the four years since I last saw her. She had been wearing a blue dress the first time she had greeted me just before she seduced me and later shot me in the back. I can’t say it was good to see her.
“I came to return your bullet,” I said.
Brenda Stallings had been a wealthy society deb about fifteen years earlier. She had doubled for Harlow, and then had a short, successful film career before marrying a blackmailing twerp actor named Harry Beaumont, who was now lying somewhere near Rin Tin Tin in Roseland cemetery. But Brenda was an actress. She didn’t blink as she took a step back to let me in and said, “You may keep it if you like.”
I stepped in and she closed the door. A few feet from her now I could see the changes. She was still beautiful, still had the body and the carriage, but shadows around the corner of the mouth and eyes hinted at what she had been through if someone looked close enough, which was what I was doing.
“How did you find me?” she said, walking ahead of me without looking back. Her legs were great and her yellow hair still bounced softly on her neck. I’d been through it before. Yes, I had.
We stopped in a living room that looked like the set of a Fred Astaire movie, blacks and whites and keep your hands off. It was Brenda’s style. I looked around for the Oscar. There were two of them on the white piano. She caught my look.
“The one on the left is Richard’s for
“I recall.”
Her cold blue eyes looked at the burning end of her cigarette and then at me.
“Please.” She pointed at the various pieces of furniture, and I tried to figure out which one I’d be least likely to leave a stain on. I could have gone to the piano bench, which was also white, but I can’t play the piano and I’d feel silly. I sat on the white arm of an overstuffed chair.
“I’m looking for Richard Talbott,” I explained. “He does live here, doesn’t he?”
She nodded and smoked staring at me. She wasn’t going to make it easy. As I recalled, I had done her a reasonably good turn when last we met, but she wasn’t the kind to show gratitude, or weakness, or much of anything if she could help it.
“He lives here and so do I,” she said, reaching for a gold ashtray.
“I live in Hollywood in Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse,” I said, looking around and finding two huge painted portraits on the wall over the doorway we had entered. One was of Brenda Stallings, bronzed and queenly in white. It had been in her old house, not too far from here. The other portrait was Richard Talbott wearing a blue pea coat with a robust, healthy tooth-filled smile. Brenda had done her best to make the house and Talbott her own. In the old house the portrait had been of Harry Beaumont. If my memory served me right, there was a superficial similarity between Beaumont and Talbott.
“How’s Lynn?” I tried, looking at Brenda with my best party smile. Lynn was her daughter who now must be, hell about nineteen or twenty.
Brenda put out her cigarette and dropped lazily into the armchair across from me. She had done that too when I first met her. It was, I decided, a scene she played well and did over and over.
“Lynn is fine,” she said. “We don’t see much of each other. She’s in New York going to school and seriously interested in a not-too-young producer. What do you want with Richard?”
“I thought I’d save his life,” I said.
“Would you like a drink?” she came back.
“Water with ice would be fine.”
“Will lemonade do?”
