by Gary K. Wolf
“Where are we?” yawned Little Jo. She threw her arms up and stretched. The sheer fabric of her halter top and sarong left no doubt she packed the right parts in the right places.
“Selznick’s party.”
“You took me along?” She climbed onto my shoulder and planted a peck on my cheek. “How sweet. Our first date.”
“Cut the sap, Lilliput. I brought you with me because you can spy into places I can’t.”
“Right now, I’d like to investigate the ladies’ room.”
She asked her sister to take her. I told Jessica to keep a close watch on the squib to make sure she didn’t fall in.
Aside from me, Vivien Leigh was the only nonentity present. She looked sensational in the dress I’d sort of helped her pick out. Her countryman Larry Olivier thought so, too. He had her backed against the wall, his stiff arms trapping her on either side. Not that she minded. She swizzled her drink with her finger and placed it to his lips. After he sucked her pinkie dry, he started on her ear.
Olivier, in his three-piece navy blue suit, had the look of a dandy who beams when his personal tailor runs the tape around him and remarks that his measurements haven’t varied by an inch in the past twenty years. I waved to Vivien over Olivier’s shoulder. She gave me the longer half of Winnie Churchill’s V for Victory gesture.
Little Jo came back to me, safe and sound. She whispered in my ear. “Let’s case the dance floor.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You think that’s forward?”
“I think it’s ridiculous.”
“I know. You never dance with anybody but yourself because you’re the only one who’s never stepped on your toes.”
I hate being hoisted by a woman half the size of my petard. I took her on my hand and joined the other couples. We waltzed face to cheek.
“You know everybody here?”
She scrutinized the crowd. Her balloon hit my skin with the softness of a cotton ball. “Most of them.”
“Keep an eye peeled for anybody likely to be found on a wanted poster.”
“In Hollywood?” Her smile widened to the size and shape of a fingernail clipping. “Accountants in this town conduct seminars on ways to avoid paying dues on the seven deadly sins.”
“You ever attend one of those seminars?”
“No need to. I pay as I go.”
“Run up much of a bill?”
“A dollar seventy-five last time I checked. I’m a piker compared to most.”
“You date much?” I asked her, mainly to fill the dead space between quarter notes.
“Not a lot. Most of the men who invite me out are movie stars. I find them generally a notch too handsome. I prefer my men with a few imperfections.”
“We’d get along great. I’m loaded with them.”
“How come you’re not married?” she asked.
“Never found the right woman. Anybody who’ll go out with me twice.”
Her eyes spoke volumes, none of it printable in a family newspaper. “You have now.”
Dead actors, wounded rabbits, cheating wives, missing boxes, suddenly nothing mattered except for the very light fantastic nuzzled into the tender spot under my chin.
I had myself halfway convinced a slight difference in stature didn’t matter when I caught a nose full of her perfume, a fruity aroma, not oranges or apples or grapes, but rather the exotic varietals, pitangas, cherimoyas, jaboticabas, feijoas, durians, guanabanas, and sweetsops. It conjured up a vision, but not the one of passionate nights and reckless abandon promised by ads in Vogue. What I saw had a more heinous aroma. Little Jo smelled like the scented balloon that had tipped Delancey Duck to Jessica and Gable’s romper-room antics. With a sister like this, Jessica didn’t need enemies.
The music played itself out right along with my budding infatuation.
I flipped out a smoke. She lit it for me with her tiny gold Dunhill. I nearly developed a hernia sucking in her baby flame.
I spotted Pepper Potts at the buffet table.
I shrugged my shoulder, sending Shorty sledding into my breast pocket. I joined Potts at the food.
“Pepper,” I said, employing the proven premise that everybody likes to hear the sound of his name. “Pepper, Pepper, Pepper.” He ignored me. Maybe the heather growing out of his ears deflected sound waves. Or maybe, two million copies of How to Win Friends and Influence People notwithstanding, Dale Carnegie got it wrong.
Potts used Selznick’s sterling silver ice pick to hack slivers off a swan sculpted out of frozen Cherry Heering. “You’re treading a mighty fine line, Valiant.”
“I come from a long heritage of tightrope walkers.”
“Then you know how badly a fall can mess up your vitals.”
He rammed the ice pick through his trousers at kneecap level. It stuck into his wooden leg. He scooped up the ice shavings, popped them into his mouth, and crunched them like candy. “I ain’t seeing a whole lot of progress from you in retrieving Davey’s box.”
“The going’s slower than expected.”
He stomped his gam. The pick popped loose and somersaulted into his outstretched hand. He poked it into the swan’s eye. “I ain’t a patient man.” He twisted the pick. The swan’s head snapped at the neck. He sucked on it like a Popsicle. “Produce, and quick, or you’re liable to die trying.”
“That what happened to your partner in crime? You slabbed him for being a slacker?”
With uncanny accuracy, he stuck the pick through the exact same hole in his trousers. “What partner?” He slapped two slices of pumpernickel on a plate and slathered them with horseradish.
“Tom Tom LeTuit.”
“Never heard of him.” He layered his sandwich with jalapeño peppers, hot mustard, and chili powder. He spiced it with ground pepper and a splash of Tabasco.
“LeTuit was setting up to manufacture a concoction called Toon Tonic.”
He bit into his culinary creation. “News to me.” An acid stream of juice squirted through the gap in his teeth. It seared a hole in the Irish linen tablecloth, the oak buffet table, the hardwood floor, the cement basement, and three quarters of the Earth.
“Funny stuff, Toon Tonic. In the wrong hands, it could make half the world furious except for the few it made rich. It turns Toons into humans.”
“You casting aspersions on my pedigree again? When you gonna learn?” In a swift, efficient motion worthy of a Marseilles assassin, he yanked the ice pick out of his leg and flipped it to the floor. It imbedded between my big toes and rocked side to side like the pendulum overhanging Poe’s pit. “Don’t bog your brain with where I came from, how I got here, or where I’m going. You got one goal in life, and that’s finding me Davey’s box. Don’t muff it.”
Rodan shambled by and challenged Potts to an ugly contest. Potts won in a walk.
Little Jo stuck her head out of my pocket. “Is that true about Toon Tonic?”
“Every word.”
“What frightening ramifications! Toon Tonic would turn civilization topsy-turvy.”
“To put it mildly.”
“We wouldn’t know who was whom.”
Or what was where, when, or whyfore.”
Her ruby-red lips puckered to the ripe fullness of a dwarf cherry tomato. Are you making fun of me?”
“More or less.”
She crossed her arms the way nannies do when chastising wayward shavers. “You’re not supposed to pick on people smaller than you are.”
“Who does that leave to keep you honest? Jiminy Cricket?” I thumbed her back into my pocket.
Selznick loomed on the party’s horizon, circulating amongst the celebs. His poise, charm, and bearing, the cuts of his jib and his tuxedo, would have landed him a starring role in any of his own drawing-room comedies.
When he spied me watching him, he took abr
upt leave of Constance Bennett and threaded his way toward me through the crowd. Lewis Stone extended a hand. Selznick squeezed it quickly on his way past. When he shook with me, he didn’t let go. “I’m surprised to see you here, Mr. Valiant. I wasn’t aware you received an invitation.”
“I dug one up.”
“Might I ask where?”
“A gent named Tom Tom LeTuit lent me his.”
“Really.” He reinforced his shake by grabbing my elbow. A few large, loutish gentlemen with bulgy armpits moved in our direction. “Might I inquire why Mr. LeTuit chose not to come himself?”
“He got another invitation. One he couldn’t refuse. He’s dead as the oft-mentioned doornail, murdered by person or persons unknown.”
“You’re not insinuating that I’m implicated in his demise?”
“Only if you’re in any way, shape, or form involved with a demon brew called Toon Tonic. Seems LeTuit underwrote the mad scientist who invented it.”
Selznick tilted his head slightly. His goons veered off and went back to watching the silverware. He spirited me into his den and shut the door behind us.
The walls boasted framed posters for Selznick’s movies. To make room for his next film he’d have to build an addition or move to a bigger house. He braced his outstretched arms against a fake mantelpiece installed exclusively to provide display place for his six Academy Awards. A high flush crept into his face. Light beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “I am going to confide in you, Mr. Valiant.” To cool himself, he removed a slim, leather-bound volume of Shakespearean sonnets from his bookshelf and fanned the pages. When that failed to baffle his heat, he switched to the first volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. “A deep, dark secret I have never told to another living soul.” Moist half circles appeared under his arms as his Five-Day Deodorant Pads reached the weekend. “Contrary to appearances, I am not a wealthy man.”
“Next you’ll tell me there’s no Santy Claus.”
Selznick slipped out of his tux jacket and hung it on a mahogany valet. “I have reached the absolute end of my monetary resources. In order to finance Gone With the Wind, I desperately need a large influx of cash.” He stared out his leaded glass window. There was nothing to see but blackness. “A sum easily raised by bottling and selling Toon Tonic.”
“You don’t feel a slight twinge of guilt about peddling a potion which turns Toons into humans?”
“Of course I do.” He reached into his pants pocket and extracted an antacid tablet sufficient in size to throttle ulcers in a rhinoceros. He swallowed it dry. “I consider my course of action morally reprehensible.” He brushed against a windup Flash Gordon rocket ship he kept on his desk. It tipped over and laid there Earthbound, whirring, spinning its wheels, and sparking green. “I take comfort in the knowledge that the money earned from this abominable enterprise will give me the financial independence to produce my films with the utmost levels of artistic integrity.” Selznick’s toy rocket ship toppled to the floor. Its slim chance of ever becoming airborne vanished when its wings buckled on impact.
“What’s a few murders more or less and a total upheaval of society compared to a few hours of quality entertainment?” Selznick kept a dozen cigars soaking in brandy inside a large glass bell jar. I decanted three fingers of their pickling solution into a snifter and drank in their essence. “How did you get the formula?”
“I bought it from a Toon.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“A woman, but only in the most generous application of the term. Brusque, hard-bitten, and horribly unattractive.” He touched his thumbs together, raised his index fingers, and framed me in the three-sided square. “Odd. She bore a remarkable resemblance to you.”
My Heddy gets around. “What’s the nature of your business with LeTuit?”
“I have none. I don’t know the man. I never heard his name mentioned until this evening.”
“How’d he get a slot on your invitation list?”
“Perhaps Pepper invited him. Pepper has my full and complete permission to ask whomever he chooses.”
“What part does Vivien Leigh play in this production?”
Selznick mopped his face with a delicate white silk hankie. It didn’t have near the absorbency. He needed a bowling towel or maybe a beach blanket. “Vivien’s involvement is of no concern to the matter at hand.”
“Let me judge.”
“She’s a promising, attractive young actress. I’m a producer. Let that suffice.”
“And I thought you were different.” I stepped in close to him. His cologne smelled like a tropical drink. I punched him once, a short, hard jab to the gut. First he lost his balance, then his lunch.
“Why did you hit me?” he gasped.
“Payment in kind for the telegram your messenger boy Potts delivered.”
He crawled on hands and knees into his private washroom. I grabbed him by his starched wing collar, pulled him up, and sat him on the toilet. “Pepper roughed you up?”
“On your orders, according to him.” I wetted a monogrammed washcloth and placed it on his forehead.
“Ridiculous. I’m a man of pacificst principles. I would never condone the use of physical violence, not for any reason.”
I opened his medicine cabinet. His stock of pills would supply a small pharmacy. The ones to wake him up outnumbered sleeping potions by a considerable margin. I handed him my standard cure for his condition: three aspirin tablets and a slug of Listerine.
For myself, I prescribed an unopened bottle of his best bourbon and a hasty exit.
21
Me and the smidge pulled into Dyke’s. I found a note thumb-tacked to our cabin door. The Gold Dust Twins had moved their headquarters to a nearby all-night Laundromat.
We found Gable alone, sitting on a slatted wooden bench piled high with lady’s magazines. The one he was reading featured an article about detailing a hundred and one new ways to make meat loaf. The washer next to him alternately gurgled, wheezed, and thunked. “Where have you been?” Gable asked. “We thought you’d deserted us.”
The washer spun to a halt. Gable opened it and hauled out Roger, fully clothed, dizzy as a dodo and soaking wet. Gable shook him free of residual bubbles and wrung him dry.
“Thanks, Clark, old bean,” said Roger in a balloon sloshed with rinse water and civility.
“My pleasure, sport,” Gable answered cordially.
They stood so close you couldn’t slip a cold shoulder between them. “You two have mended fences,” said Little Jo.
“You betcha,” Roger proclaimed. “Turns out we go together like Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Mutt and Jeff.” He scratched his pate. “Who else?”
Gable suggested, “Caesar and Mark Antony.”
“I’m forum,” said Roger. “They’ve got Gaul.”
Gable nearly choked laughing. “You send me to the moon.”
“Remember to remove your space helmet before you spit,” quipped the rabbit.
“What a stitch.” Gable slapped his knee.
“I laugh any harder, I’ll bust an adenoid,” I said.
Roger extracted a harmonica from his pants, crammed it lengthways into his mouth, and blew a fanfare. Soap bubbles and notes emerged in a fifty-fifty ratio. “Lady and gentlemen,” he announced, “a ditty appropriate to the occasion.” He pointed his pinkie at Gable. “Pick it up where we left off.”
Roger pecked on the harp like a rooster eating an ear of sweet corn. Gable sang along. “Twenty-four boxes of soap on the wall, twenty-four boxes of soap, if one of those boxes should happen to fall, twenty-three boxes of soap on the wall.”
Little Jo slipped back into my pocket. I wanted to join her except that would leave nobody to wear the coat.
We returned to Cabin Six. I discovered the sunshine boys had founded their mutual admiration society
on the remaining schooners of rum. I cracked into Selznick’s bourbon and poured a round.
“Tell me what you know about Pepper Potts,” I said to Gable.
“David Selznick’s right-hand goon?” Gable stretched out on the bed and balanced his glass on his slab-muscled chest. “I’d hate to be on the receiving end of his bad intentions.”
“How is Potts involved in our caper?” asked Roger. He flopped onto his bed. He tried to imitate Gable, but his glass kept skiing off his prow-shaped sternum.
“He wants the box bad.”
“What makes you think that?” Roger eliminated his booze-balancing problem by draining his tumbler and storing it upside down on the end of his nose.
“He told me so.”
“Oh.” Roger stuffed a whole pack of Fleers into his mouth. His first bubble contained four baseball cards.
Little Jo decided to take a bath so I filled the ceramic washbasin. Gable rummaged through his Dopp kit and produced a bar of fine English soap. He shaved off a sliver with a silver pocketknife.
The Gideon Society provided a dressing screen. Little Jo stripped off between Luke and John, then she slipped into the water. I caught her reflection in the dressing table’s mirror. She had the porcelain-smooth skin of a Dresden doll. She backstroked the length of the bowl. Her suntan extended without interruption from hairline to toe tips.
I poured myself a hefty dose of reality. “Potts has committed at least two murders I know of, maybe more.”
“Grounds for a citizen’s arrest,” proclaimed Gable.
“I’d love to. Except Potts has got a certain piece of merchandise I have to relieve him of first.”
“Let’s storm his bulwarks and take it by force,” said Roger, buoyed by the false bravado that coats the bottom of a bottle.
“He has it hidden. I don’t know where.”
Little Jo stepped out of her makeshift tub. “Ask Potts’s wife.” She dried herself with the end of the Good Book’s satin marker. “I suspect she’d like nothing better than to do him a bad turn.”
“How come?”
With a nip and tuck, Little Jo transformed one of Gable’s silk socks into a dress. It looked better on her than it did on his foot. “Potts killed her, or so she asserts.”
