“He’s beautifully trained,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said brightly. “When he’s on alert, he gets very officious.”
“I can tell. Shall I close this door?” I said as we went back into the house.
“No, leave it open for him, he likes to patrol the place when I’m not here. Or take a swim. Or chase a rabbit. I lock the front door but it’s for show. No thief in his right mind would take him on.”
She turned on a couple of lights and we headed for the door.
“I’ve always had shepherds,” she said, leading me toward the door. “My first was Buck. I named him after the dog in Call of the Wild.”
“Buck was a malamute,” I said.
“Not in my head he wasn’t,” she said with an arrogant lift of her chin.
When we got outside, she turned toward the carport and tossed me her car keys.
“Let’s take the Phaeton,” she said. “You drive.”
“Aww,” I said, “and I’ve got the company’s best car.”
“How did you swing that?”
“I have to go up the coast early in the morning.”
“Is this about Verna?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow night late.” And dropped it at that.
We made small talk as I kept the car in third gear and wound our way down to Sunset Boulevard, where I turned left, heading up to Hollywood. A block or two from Grauman’s I pulled down a side street and parked in front of Harry’s Absolutely Genuine New York Delicatessen.
British sink Bismarck
And the subhead:
Nazi juggernaut blown from sea;
ENGLISH fleet avenges hood loss
I threw a dime in the cigar box on top of the papers and took two.
Harry’s was just what it claimed to be. Black and white tile floors, red leather booths, white linoleum tabletops, wooden chairs with heart-shaped backs. Lots of light. The smell of salami and pastrami mixed with the rich aroma of the bakery.
Harry, at the front counter slicing turkey, looked up and yowled, “Hey, Zee, where ya been? I thought you died.”
“I’ve been busy, Harry.”
“So, you don’t eat when you’re busy?” He shook his head in disapproval. “Better not let Mama hear.”
“Where is she?”
“Home with the grandkids. It’s Tuesday. Who goes to the deli on Tuesday? Sit anywhere, Zee. Menus on the tables tonight.”
We sat across from each other in one of the front booths and I gave Millie one of the two newspapers I’d picked up by the entrance. Her mouth was agape as she scanned the headline about the Bismarck.
I started reading the story. British dive-bombers had jammed the rudder of Germany’s proudest battleship and it had circled helplessly while the British closed in and blew it to bits. According to the account, the Bismarck lost 2,400 men in its final battle.
Harry came to the table and read the headline over my shoulder.
“Harry, this is my friend Millie,” I said. He stepped back, looked her over, and put his hand over his heart.
“Beautiful, exquisite,” he said, rolling his eyes. “My heart goes pitty-pat. What you think, Zee. You think we get into this war?”
“You want to live in a world with Hitler on one side of us and T¯oj¯o on the other?” I asked.
A two-column yarn in the lower left corner of the front page described a near riot caused by America Firsters, pacifists who were against America getting into the war, and a group of American Legionnaires. There was a photo of angry men in overseas caps yelling at a group of businessmen carrying signs that said lindbergh says stay out of europe, and an ugly cartoon of a leering Roosevelt with Death swinging a scythe behind him and a caption that read roosevelt the warmonger.
“Now there’s an irony. A bunch of business types on a picket line calling Roosevelt a warmonger, and the British and Nazis are blowing each other up in the North Sea.”
“Corned beef and cabbage is the special,” Harry said, to loosen up the tension. “I musta had a premonition you were coming, Zee.”
“Sounds good to me,” Millie said, and handed him her menu.
“On two, with draft beer,” I said.
“Splendid,” Harry said, and rushed off to the kitchen to get our dinner.
Millie shuddered. “Every day it’s something awful,” she said, turning her attention back to a war which couldn’t be too far away. “My heart stops every time I see that photograph of the Nazis marching past the Eiffel Tower.” She paused, and added, “You think we’ll get into it, don’t you?”
“Just a question of time.” I nodded.
“Will you have to go?” she asked me.
I shrugged, trying to brush it off.
“Do you remember the war?” she asked.
Did I remember it? Oh, yeah.
“I was nine years old when my father went off to France,” I told her. “I had a poster in my room. Uncle Sam without his top hat and coat. An angry Uncle Sam pointing straight at me and saying ‘I Want You.’ It scared me to look at it. Every day was a dread, every time the telegraph kid came down the street on his bicycle, we prayed it wouldn’t stop at our house. I’d lie in bed at night and cry. I cried every night because I didn’t think it was possible for my father to survive.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. “Did he?”
“What was left of him,” I said.
I didn’t tell her about the day my dad came home. My dad was a big guy with a crazy Irish sense of humor. The man who got off the train was like a shadow of that man. He had been gassed and it had reduced him to a wraith with sunken eyes who had seen a thousand horrors. His hands shook and he coughed a lot. He couldn’t hold a job. He wouldn’t talk about the war. I know now my dad had been dying. It took him twelve years, but each day he died a little more, until his lungs finally gave out. My mother died along with him. She lasted three years longer, the last two in such misery I still try to block it out of my mind.
This war, when it came, would be worse.
So I just said, “Sometimes I think it would be worse to wait at home than be in the middle of it.”
“I’ve already lost someone in Europe,” she said, staring blankly at the newspaper.
“When?”
“Nineteen forty. My cousin Hugh. Crazy cousin Hugh.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was always crazy about airplanes. Learned to fly when he was a kid. When they formed the Eagle Squadron he raced off to London and joined up. I got a card from him after his first flight. He had shot down a Messerschmitt his first time out and he was so proud. Two days later he went down over France.”
“I’m sorry.” It sounded pitifully inadequate. I decided to lighten things up.
“I saw his picture in the living room. ‘Mill the Pill’?”
It got a laugh out of her.
“That’s what he called me. Hugh was the hell-raiser in the family and I was Miss Proper. Growing up we fought like brother and sister, but when I was a teenager going to school back East he took me in hand.”
“So you turned into a hell-raiser, too?”
“I’m still trying.”
“And what’s the most audacious thing you ever did?”
She thought about it for a full minute.
“I sneaked over the wall at Miss Brownington’s School for Girls and went to see King Kong at the Radio City Music Hall.”
I faked surprise. “Wow!” I said.
“That was a major step for me, sir,” she said haughtily. “I could have been expelled.”
Not likely, I thought. Not when your father owns half of Montana.
The marquee said “Special Preview Tonight” and there was a long line at Grauman’s Theater when we got there, plus the usual crowd of tourists looking at the wide walkway leading to the ticket booth with all the hand- and footprints of the stars immortalized in concrete. Frank was standing in the entrance in h
is tuxedo, smiling as the paying customers streamed in. He waved us over and led us into an almost full house. There were three rows toward the back roped off in velvet for the special guests.
Most of those seated in the “velvet rows” were studio execs. Producers, flacks, and their friends. The stars, if they showed up, would come in when the house lights dimmed.
Hedy Lamarr came in as the lights lowered, tall, dressed in a white hooded dress, her jet-black hair framing porcelain features. The ice princess, aloof, unreachable, the epitome of a Hollywood glamour queen. Frank unhooked the velvet rope and she took the aisle seat. Her escort, whom nobody noticed, stepped past her and sat down.
Jackie Cooper came in next, accompanied by an older woman I assumed was his mother. I hadn’t seen Cooper in a movie since he was a kid. Now he looked to be about fifteen. Judy Garland came in last, and sat with a small, strange-looking man with bug eyes. The studio people nervously awaited the audience reaction to what was obviously one of their major pictures of the year. James Stewart, Lana Turner, Lamarr, and Garland were the stars. It was terrific. Three young singers and dancers make it big in the Ziegfeld Follies. There was a spectacular Busby Berkeley dance number, but Garland stole the show with a heartbreaking rendition of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” The picture got a big hand from the audience and the stars slipped out while the cast credits were still rolling.
We stopped to thank Frank and then ran through the first drops of rain to the Phaeton. Big drops began to fall, splattering against the windshield as we got in the car.
“How about a nightcap?” I asked.
She leaned over close to me and said, “That would be very nice.”
Maury’s C-Note was on Santa Monica near Moreland, on the edge of Beverly Hills. Maury Castellano had started the club with a one-hundred-dollar tip from Victor Mature, which he’d gotten when he was maître d’ at Robie’s Nightclub on Vine, a popular hangout for the movie set. He had used the C-Note to option a large garage and raised money from friends to remodel it. It was a comfortable supper club with pretty good food and a piano bar. The walls were lined with photos of Hollywood’s greats and near-greats.
I let Millie out at the door, parked the car, and ran through the rain to join her.
Maury held down the corner of the main bar and got up to jiggle my elbow when we entered. He did not like to shake hands.
“Hey, Zee, long time no see.” He grinned.
“I’ve been fighting crime,” I said with as straight a face as I could muster, and introduced him to Millie.
He bowed low, made a pass at kissing her hand, and said to me, “The Bucket?” I nodded.
The attraction for aficionados was the back room, where a bass player named Chuck Graves held nightly jam sessions with musician friends. The room had become a spot for big-name musicians to stop by and sit in with Graves’s trio. Chuck’s daytime job was as a studio musician, playing in the orchestra at Columbia Pictures.
The room, located in the rear of the club behind closed doors, was small, a mecca for true jazz lovers who cared more about music than decor and comfort. It seated about fifty people, on bridge chairs. The tables were just big enough to hold a couple of drinks and an ashtray. The place didn’t really get jumping until around midnight but things were lively enough when we entered.
A cloud of cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling like fog. It was hot. The mismatched furniture looked like it had been picked up off street corners, the walls were painted black, and the stage was a platform supported on concrete blocks. A fan high on one wall over the rear door was doing a failed job of sucking out the smoke and heat.
I didn’t recognize anybody in the room, although some looked interesting: a big man with lazy eyes in a checked sports jacket, who Chuck said was an actor, making a name for himself in westerns, and who leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, chain-smoking, listening to every note; a bald man doing a crossword, tapping his foot to the music but never looking up; a woman in a leopard coat, sitting with a little man in a tuxedo who was sweating like a sumo wrestler.
The group consisted of Graves; a tall, ebony-black piano player with a grin almost as wide as the hall; a horn player named Turk Ziegler, who used a mute most of the time; Bravo Jones, a balding alto sax man in the baggiest suit I ever saw—no tie; a skinny drummer in a striped shirt and a bow tie; and a diminutive colored man with a thin mustache, dressed in a Sunday suit and tie, playing electric guitar. They were wrapping up a lively version of “Airmail Special” as we entered. We sat at one of the dime-sized tables near the bandstand and ordered drinks from a waiter who looked like he was wilting.
Graves, a tall, rangy, good-looking blond with a musician’s pallor and sad brown eyes, walked over to the table with a kind of loose-limbed slouch. His soft, mellow voice drove the girls crazy, especially when he sang sad ballads.
“Hi, copper,” he said with a wry grin. But he didn’t look at me, he was staring at Millie. He kissed her hand and added, “Chuck Graves, at your service, ma’am.”
“I’m over here,” I said.
“Oh, I know, son, but I doubt anybody cares.”
She looked embarrassed until it dawned on her that we were joking around.
“We can’t stay long,” I said. “Millie’s a working lady and I got to go up the coast at dawn.”
“That’s cool.” And to Millie, “Next set’s for you.”
The band came back, Chuck said a few words to them, and they looked over at the table. The piano man and Chuck laid down a beat, and Chuck started to sing:
I’ve flown around the world in a plane,
Dined on caviar and champagne,
And the North Pole I have charted
Still I can’t get started
With you.
Chuck sang from the heart, soft as marshmallows, and finally wrapped it up:
I’ve been consulted by Franklin D,
Greta Garbo has had me to tea,
I got a house, a showplace,
Still I can’t get no place
With you.
We stayed an hour.
When they wrapped for a break, Millie blew a kiss to Graves and I waved to the rest of the crew. I dropped a fiver in the bucket. From the corner of my eye I saw Millie add a hundred-dollar bill.
Maury held an umbrella over Millie’s head as we raced out to the car. He helped her in.
“Hey, Zee,” he said, “don’t get lost so much. We miss ya.” And to Millie. “Make him bring ya back, okay?”
He ran back into the club.
“Do you know everybody in town?” she asked.
“This was my beat when I started out,” I said. “It’s my old neighborhood.”
I started to put the key in the switch but she laid a hand on mine and stopped me.
“Was Chuck playing that song for me or you?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“ ‘I Can’t Get Started.’ ”
“Maybe he was telling me in his own way that . . .”
“Stop right there,” she said softly. “You can go anyplace with me, Zee. I’d fly around the world in a plane just to come home to you.”
She laid both hands on my cheeks. Her hands were as smooth as fine suede. She drew me to her and kissed me. Her lips were soft and full and giving, and she folded into my arms.
I shoved the gear stick into second to get it out of the way and slipped over to her side of the seat. She shifted, facing me, and her leg slid over mine. She reached over, her hand moved down my spine and pulled me to her. I could feel the heat of her as she crushed against me.
We never stopped kissing but I could hear her sigh deep in her throat and she began to tremble as my hands explored her.
I don’t know how long we were there.
Long after the rain stopped.
CHAPTER 23
I picked up Ski a little after seven in the morning and took the same route I had taken going up to San Pietro the first time. Ski spent most of the tr
ip dead asleep, sitting straight up with his arms folded. He didn’t like long drives.
When we passed the fruit stand on 101, I looked up on the hill but the beautiful young girl on the pinto pony wasn’t there. Maybe it had been a vision. Maybe there wasn’t any girl on a pony dashing across the hilltop. Maybe it was subconscious. Maybe Millicent was the young girl and the pony was her baby-blue Phaeton. Maybe I was thinking too much.
At the turnoff I nudged my partner.
“Almost there,” I said. “Any time now a black Pontiac will probably drop in behind us.”
But it didn’t. I stopped at the overlook and gave Ski a quick visual tour of San Pietro, the Hill, and Grand View House. I looked out on the bay but the Grebe yacht was gone. We drove down into town.
I parked in front of the city hall. The maroon Packard was parked haphazardly a few yards farther on.
“That’s Culhane’s prowler,” I told Ski as we got out.
“Does very well for the sheriff of a county the size of a saltine,” Ski said.
“The county owns it,” I said. “I guess that makes it legal.”
Ski just snorted derisively. I left him to stroll around the park.
There was no sign of Culhane or Rusty, but I couldn’t imagine them being very far from his rolling office. I went in to the police station. Rosie was behind the counter. She recognized me when I walked through the door.
“Hi,” I said. “Remember me?”
She graced me with what might have passed for a smile and said, “He’s fishing. It’s Friday.”
“Ah. Wednesday everybody plays golf at noon, Friday morning they go fishing. When do they take their ballet lessons?”
“The captain wouldn’t know one end of a golf club from the other.” She looked at the Seth Thomas on the wall. “He should be in any time now.”
“I’ll just go down and wait by the pier.”
“It’s a free world,” she said, looking for something else to do. As I was headed for the door she mumbled, “He said you’d be back.”
I went back to the car, drove to the foot of the street, and parked next to a silver Duesenberg Murphy convertible, which was sitting in a diagonal parking strip between the park and the pier area. Ski wandered over munching on a snow cone.
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