by Bill Crider
Taste aside, however, he hadn’t seen the car. He hadn’t seen anything.
“I was reading,” he said. “Besides, my job is to check the cars coming in, not the ones going out.”
I didn’t bother to remind him that he hadn’t really checked me when I came in. I said, “How many cars have been in tonight?”
“I don’t keep a count. If they got a pass, they get in.”
He was probably supposed to keep a record, but if he was, he wasn’t letting on. I thanked him for his help, or lack of it, and left the studio.
By the time I’d driven ten feet, he was immersed in his pulp again, one with Lamont Cranston, reveling in the power to cloud men’s minds.
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Icalled the cops from a phone booth near Chasen’s. I didn’t ask for Congreve because I wasn’t sure that Dawson’s death had anything to do with Burleson’s and also because by simply calling the station I could do it anonymously. There was no chance anyone was going to recognize my voice. If the guard at Superior tried to tell the cops about me when they showed up, he wouldn’t be able to tell them much. He didn’t know who I was, and he had no record of my car. Bogart had been over on one side in the shadows, so the guard hadn’t had a good look at him. If the cops asked about The Shadow, however, the guard could probably tell them quite a bit.
Chasen’s was on Beverly Boulevard, and it wasn’t a place where the stars went to be seen by the public or the press. The owner, Dave Chasen, had a strict “no cameras” policy, and the stars went there to be seen mostly by other stars. And, of course, to eat. Chasen’s had started out as Chasen's Southern Pit, so named because of a barbecue pit in the back, and while its barbecue hadn’t become famous, its chili had. You might not think movie stars would go for chili, but they did, and in a big way.
You could get plenty of other things, too. If you wanted to go kosher, you could have whitefish or lox. Borscht, too. If you preferred something fancier, you could get pheasant under glass. And if you wanted to gain ten pounds in one sitting, you could get the Hobo 123
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Steak, which consisted mainly of strips of beef deep-fried in a pound of melted butter. The waiter would prepare it for you right beside your table on a wheeled cart.
The interior was considerably more tasteful than that at Romanoff’s, unless your taste ran to exploding parrots. Chasen’s went in for heavy paneling and plush red leather booths.
It was quiet, and the big-name stars could go there without being bothered. I spotted James Stewart and Jack Benny as we walked in, and I thought I saw Alan Ladd in one of the booths.
I hadn’t expected any of the Jan of the Jungle cast to be in Chasen’s, but Slappy Coville was there. He wasn’t a big star, but he liked to hang around with them when he could and pretend that he belonged.
He was a short, scrawny guy who wore loud ties and had a big mouth.
His tie this particular evening looked as if someone had painted a picture of scrambled eggs and ketchup on it. When he saw us headed toward him, he launched into one of the worst Bogart impersonations I’d ever heard.
“Look who’s here,” he said. “‘Play it Sam. If she can stand it, I can.
Play it.’”
There was a busty blonde in the circular booth beside him, and she laughed loudly. Either she thought he was wonderful or she’d had far too much to drink.
“Hello, Slappy,” Bogart said. “No need to get up.”
Slappy hadn’t been getting up. He hadn’t moved other than to raise his glass to us.
“By gad, sir,” he said, not sounding at all like Sidney Greenstreet,
“you are a character.”
Bogart slid into the both beside him and I slid in beside the blonde.
She smelled like Chanel No. 5, and I wondered if Slappy had given her the perfume.
“I didn’t know you’d memorized all my movies, Slappy,” Bogart said.
“He thinks you’re the best,” the blonde said. “Isn’t that right, Slappy?”
Slappy said it was right, and he introduced the blonde, whose name was Suzie. She was pretty, maybe even pretty enough to make it in the movies. It would all depend on how the camera liked her. Some 124
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beautiful women didn’t photograph well, and some not so beautiful ones looked great on the screen.
Bogart introduced me to both of them, though Slappy and I had met before. He didn’t seem to remember it, and I didn’t say anything.
“Lemme tell you a good one,” Slappy said.
I doubted that it would be a good one. Every joke I’d ever heard Slappy tell in a movie or on the radio had been around the world at least twice and sometimes more. His jokes were usually so bad that even Milton Berle wouldn’t steal them.
“This horse walks into a bar,” Slappy said, and Suzie started to laugh.
“I haven’t gotten to the funny part yet,” Slappy said.
Suzie stopped laughing. She was never going to make it in the movies, not if she was already so desperate that she was with Slappy and, worse, trying to please him.
“I thought it was funny that a horse would walk into a bar,” she said.
“That’s not it. Wait for the punch line. So, OK, this horse walks into a bar. The bartender looks up at him and says, ‘Why the long face?’”
Nobody laughed. Not at first. Then Suzie realized she’d missed her cue and started to cackle. It was too late, but Slappy didn’t seem to care. He took a drink from the glass in front of him and set it back on the table.
“Where’s everybody else?” Bogart asked.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“I thought the cast of your movie stuck together, but here you are, all by yourself.”
I could tell that Slappy liked Bogart’s reference to his movie. He had been slumped in the booth, and now he sat up a little straighter.
“He’s not by himself,” Suzie said. “He’s with me.”
“Yeah,” Slappy said. “I’m with her. Who cares where those other lice are.”
He and Suzie had obviously been in Chasen’s for a while. The drink he was having now wasn’t his first, or even his second. So he couldn’t have been driving the car we’d chased. But any of the others could have.
“When the cast came to my place the other night,” Bogart said,
“whose idea was that?”
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Suzie turned and hit Slappy on the upper arm.
“You went to Humphrey Bogart’s house, and you didn’t ask me to go?” she said.
Slappy didn’t like it that she’d hit him. I got the impression that if we hadn’t been there, or if he hadn’t been in a public place, he might have hit her back. I hoped I was wrong about that.
“It wasn’t anybody’s idea,” Slappy said. “We just wound up there.”
I saw what Bogart was going for. It was something I should have thought of myself. Whoever suggested going to his place might have known about the pistol in advance.
I hadn’t wanted Bogart tagging along with me when all this had started, and now here he was doing my job for me.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked. “Sometimes it seems that way, but if you think it over, you can remember some suggestion that someone made.”
“I can’t remember today, much less last night,” Slappy said. “And that’s the way I prefer it.”
He drained his glass, banged it on the table, and called for another.
When the waiter came over, Bogart ordered a martini. I asked for a Shirley Temple, which seemed appropriate, since the bartender at Chasen’s had invented the drink for the little curly-head.
“If you want club soda, why not just get lemonade?” Slappy said.
Just came out jusht. Slappy was slurring his words more, and I thought he might soon be in Mayo’s condition if he didn’t watch himself. And I knew he wouldn’t watch himself.
I hadn’t. I didn’t know anyone who ever did, except maybe Bogart. Whether it was because he paced himself, as he’d told me, or because he could control it better than most people, I didn’t know.
“I like the cherry,” I said.
“It’s a sissy drink,” Slappy said.
He started shaking his head, and he didn’t stop until Suzie put her hand on his face and held it steady.
“We need to go home, Slappy,” she said. “You have to be on the set early tomorrow.”
I suppose Slappy needed a keeper. Suzie was probably a good choice, as long as she didn’t laugh in the wrong places too much.
Surprisingly enough, Slappy didn’t argue with her. He called for the check with a certain amount of dignity, and as he was leaving he 126
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said to Bogart, in his best Peter Lorre voice, which was none too good,
“‘You despise me, don’t you.’”
“Oh, if I gave you any thought I probably would,” Bogart said.
Slappy laughed and allowed Suzie to lead him away.
When they were gone, Bogart ordered another martini, and we both ordered the chili. When the waiter left, Bogart lit a cigarette. Then he asked me what kind of car had nearly killed us. I told him that I didn’t know.
“I was too busy getting out of the way to notice.”
“I don’t suppose you got the license number, either.”
“No,” I said. “Did you?”
“I was otherwise occupied. And when we were chasing it, we never got close enough for me to see.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“It was a big car,” he said. “And it was black.”
“There are a lot of big black cars in Hollywood.”
“Not that have been following us around.”
“Are you talking about that Packard?”
“Yes. Didn’t you think of that?”
Well, no. I hadn’t thought of it because I didn’t believe the Packard had been following us. But I could have been wrong about that. It hadn’t followed us to the studio, however. The car we’d seen had already been there. Which probably meant that whoever owned it worked there.
“That’s what I thought,” Bogart said, when I told him. “Now we have to find out who the owner is.”
“We don’t know it was a Packard.”
“We don’t know that it wasn’t.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t ready to believe in the phantom Packard. The car could have been a Buick or any other big car for all I knew.
The chili came. I’ve heard that there are purists who don’t like chili with beans. If that’s true, they’d better stay away from Chasen’s.
I ordered another Shirley Temple to wash down the chili, and Bogart said, “Slappy had a point. It’s embarrassing as hell to sit here and eat with a grown man who’s drinking Shirley Temples.”
“I’m not the one crumbling crackers in his chili,” I pointed out.
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Bogart looked at his chili bowl. There were soggy cracker parts among the meat and beans.
“Guilty,” he said, and took a bite. He didn’t look as if he felt very guilty.
“Did we learn anything from Slappy?” he asked when he’d swallowed his chili. And crackers.
“We know he wasn’t driving the car that hit Dawson,” I said.
“Nobody could have gotten as drunk as he is without getting an early start.”
“Maybe Suzie was driving.”
“She could have been. I didn’t see the driver, and I couldn’t tell if there was a passenger. I know my passenger had been drinking, though.”
Bogart lifted his glass. A martini with chili. And he had the nerve to make fun of my Shirley Temple.
“I’m as sober as Judge Hardy.”
He was, too. Or at least he appeared to be. The hand holding the glass was steady as a stone.
“Fine,” I said, and wiped chili off my lips with a napkin. “Now what are we going to do about your friend Dawson?”
“Find out who killed him,” Bogart said. “When someone kills your friend, you’re supposed to do something about it.”
It sounded like a good idea to me, but maybe I’d had too many Shirley Temples.
“All right,” I said. “Where do we start?”
“Ever meet any Lesbians?”
I thought about some of the things I’d done for Mr. Warner and his stars.
“One or two,” I said.
“Good,” Bogart said. “Then you might even know where we can go to meet a few more.”
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Club Sappho didn’t have its name above the door, or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, Club Sappho might not even have been its name, though I’d heard it called that once or twice. It looked pretty much like any other building on that particular block of Vine Street, and it might have been full of the offices of lawyers, dentists, and doctors for all you could tell from the outside. In fact there was a building directory that indicated that offices for people in those professions were indeed to be found inside.
That wasn’t the case, however. The directory was just a beard, put there to disguise the building’s real use, which was as a meeting place for those of what the scandal rags like to refer to as “the twilight sex.”
The inside was quite a bit different from the outer facade. At least it was above the first floor. On the first floor there was a large semi-circular reception desk behind which sat a guard named Harry.
Harry had a coarse complexion, slicked-back hair, a nose that looked as if it had been broken in a street fight (it had), and a little white scar under one eye.
At first glance you’d take Harry for one of the toughest men you were ever likely to encounter. If you took time to look more closely—much more closely—you’d discover that Harry, whose full name was Harriet Rose O’Connell, was one of the toughest women you were ever likely to encounter.
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“Hello, Mr. Scott,” Harry said in a low, husky voice. “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
I laughed at the old Mae West line. I’d forgotten about the pistol I’d taken from Charlie O. I took it out of my jacket pocket and put on Harry’s desk.
“You’d better keep it for me,” I told her. “I know guns are against the rules here.”
“That’s right,” Harry said. “Are you just visiting, or are you looking for someone special?”
“You’re special enough for me, Harry,” I said.
“You’re always full of the blarney, Mr. Scott. And who’s the fella you have with you? He looks familiar.”
“Humphrey Bogart,” I said, “meet Harry.”
They shook hands, and I thought I noticed Bogart wincing just a bit at Harry’s grip, though he tried not to show it.
“I’m a big fan,” Harry told Bogart. “I really loved Key Largo. Your wife, Miss Bacall, she’s really something.”
I couldn’t tell whether Bogart appreciated the compliment or not, but at least he didn’t wipe his hand on his pants leg when he got it back. And he was polite enough to say thanks.
“We haven’t had any trouble here tonight, Mr. Scott,” Harry said.
“Not with anyone from Warner Brothers or anywhere else. But I’m sure this isn’t a social call. Not unless you’ve changed a lot since I saw you last.”
“It’s a business matter,” I told her. “We were wondering if you were acquainted with a friend of ours.”
“You know I don’t talk about our clients, Mr. Scott.”
“I know that. And I wouldn’t ask you to under ordinary circum-stances. You’ll have to admit that I’ve done this place a few favors by keeping its name out of the papers.”
Harry nodded. “Yes, you have, but only when it helped out Warner Brothers at the same time.”
“OK, that’s true. Bu
t this is important.” I decided to level. After all, Harry was very good at keeping secrets. “Someone’s trying to frame Mr. Bogart for murder.”
If Harry was surprised, I couldn’t tell.
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Mr. Scott. We have a very choice clientele. They don’t make trouble for us, and we don’t make trouble for them.”
“But they might make trouble for someone else,” I said.
Harry considered that possibility and admitted that it wasn’t out of the question. As for me, I wasn’t so sure. We were there because of another of Bogart’s hunches. He’d explained it to me as we drove to the Club Sappho.
“I’ve been thinking about those tarantulas,” he said. “You remember the tarantulas, don’t you?”
I remembered the tarantulas all to well, and I wished he hadn’t mentioned them. I would have preferred not to think about them at all.
“Can’t we talk about something else?” I said.
“No. If what I’m thinking is true, then Bob Carroll just might be our guy.”
I couldn’t see any connection between the spiders and Bob Carroll.
Not even the Detective’s Handbook had anything about spiders in it.
Come to think of it, Bogart had made some joking remark about the Detective’s Handbook at the time, but I still couldn’t see how the spiders tied into anything that concerned us.
“I’m surprised at you, Junior,” Bogart said. “Weren’t you wondering why Wendy dumped those spiders on herself?”
“She must be insane,” I said. “Or, since most actors are insane, maybe she was trying to catch the director’s attention. That’s all I could think of.”
“You don’t really mean that about actors,” Bogart said. “Do you?”
“I said most, not all. I wouldn’t include you.”
“Thanks. Now think about this. Maybe it wasn’t the director’s attention that Wendy wanted. Maybe it was Stella Gordon was paying too much attention to someone else. After all, who took little Wendy off into the trees to comfort her in private?”
“Stella Gordon,” I said. “But I still don’t see what that has…” And then the reason Bogart wanted to go somewhere like the Club Sappho came to me.
