The Devil Met a Lady

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Pick him up at the celebration,” said Jeremy. “Our apartment. Nine o’clock.”

  “Nine o’clock,” I repeated, and headed for the door.

  The lights were on and bright in Shelly’s chamber of horrors, but he wasn’t in sight. The patient chair was occupied only by the oversized plaster model of a set of teeth which Shelly used to demonstrate how to brush properly. The plaster teeth were yellow, dirty, and beyond cleaning with anything less than a blowtorch.

  The sink in the corner was, as always, filled with dishes. The trash container was, as always, flowing over with unsavory, used cloth pads and cotton swabs.

  I pleaded with my back not to go out on me as I hurried six flights down the stairway of the Farraday. I had no time for the elevator.

  My footsteps echoed, and wordless voices sang, argued, screamed, and guffawed behind each door. The tenants of the Farraday included bookies, alcoholic physicians, baby photographers with astigmatism, a fortune-teller named Juanita, at least three talent agents, and a long list of con artists who were long on con and short on artistry. In the lobby, I was greeted by the satisfying smell of Lysol, which Jeremy and Alice used in bulk vats to hold off the alternative.

  About twenty minutes later I entered Levy’s on Spring at the crack of noon. The tables were full of people on their lunch break, taking advantage of the sixty-five-cent special, eating fast and talking loud.

  Carmen looked up from giving change to a pale man in a three-piece suit whose shoulders swayed as if he were listening to some internal tune. The man looked a little like Donald Meek, the whiskey drummer in Stagecoach.

  “Toby,” she said. “He’s here. Back table near the kitchen.”

  “Farnsworth?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said with more enthusiasm than I’d heard from her since I took her to see Man Mountain Dean and Ruffy Silverstein wrestle two years before at the Olympic.

  She handed the dancer his change and he bopped out, giving way to a corn-blond couple in their thirties who could have been twins or married. I squinted toward the table near the kitchen. A guy about forty with a round handsome face and straight brown hair was playing with his coffee and looking back at me.

  “Should I know him?” I asked Carmen, nodding at Farnsworth.

  “He’s married to Bette Davis,” she whispered.

  The blond couple adjusted their glasses in unison and turned to look at Arthur Farnsworth, who nervously adjusted his tie.

  “Client,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  I moved around the tables, enjoying the smells of Levy’s, and made my way to Farnsworth, who stood up to greet me. He was wearing a leather jacket and blue denim pants, all new. He was also wearing a worried look and the faint smell of Sen-Sen. Standing up, he was shorter than I had expected, and heavier, an ex–college lineman.

  “Peters?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  I took the hand. Grip firm. Face serious. Breath 80 proof beyond the Sen-Sen.

  “Farnsworth,” I said.

  We sat and I motioned for Rusty the waiter. Rusty, so named because he was born ancient and arthritic, creaked his way toward us.

  “Thanks for coming,” Farnsworth said, lighting a cigarette. “I know you’re not really interested, but someone—”

  “Someone?” I asked as Rusty made it to our table. He was short, thin, corroded, and raspy.

  “What’ll it be?” he demanded.

  “American Reuben and a Pepsi for me,” I said, raising an eyebrow at Farnsworth, who glanced at his coffee.

  “Just coffee,” he said.

  Rusty grunted. The trip had hardly been worth the pain. He turned and left us.

  “Someone told you to come to me,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, yes. Let me explain. My wife is—”

  “Bette Davis,” I said casually above a roar of laughter from one of the four men at the table behind us.

  “You do your research,” said Farnsworth.

  “My job,” I said with a shrug.

  “I’ll come to the point,” he said, leaning over the table toward me and lowering his voice, though no one was listening to us and only Carmen across the room at the cash register was glancing our way. “Someone is threatening me, suggesting that he’ll create a scandal, hinting that he’ll kidnap my wife, claiming they have something that will ruin her career.”

  “Go to the police,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “Then pay him.”

  “No, it’s not like that. And they don’t want money. If I go to the police the newspapers will find out, the radio, the fan magazines. And the police can’t watch her all the time. They’ll assign someone for a week or two. We’ll get a lot of publicity and, besides, I’d have to tell the police why someone threatened Bette or wanted her kidnapped. I can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he went on, “I’m involved in some very private aeronautical research. I’m a pilot and … I can’t say much more. My work is done very quietly in Minnesota for a nongovernment research company. If we’re successful, the war could end sooner than we hoped. Obviously, there are people who know a little about what we’re doing who don’t want us to succeed.”

  “Spies.”

  He shrugged. “Spies, Nazi sympathizers.”

  “What makes you think?…”

  “I told you. I got a phone call,” said Farnsworth, putting out his cigarette and lighting another as Rusty returned with my sandwich and Pepsi. He gave Farnsworth a disgusted look and dropped the check between us.

  Farnsworth waited till Rusty was moving to another table before he went on. “The man said he had something that my wife and I would not want to get into the hands of the wrong people. Some nonsense about a record of my wife and her first husband. He indicated that I might want to trade some information on the work I was doing for the recording. He said that if I didn’t see him to discuss it, my wife might disappear and the record might be sent to the newspapers. He also said I shouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said, lifting half the American Reuben in two hands and taking a bite.

  “The man on the phone told me to call you,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “The man on the phone said you were the person to act as a go-between to arrange delivery of the papers they want. He said you would know he was telling the truth about the record.” Farnsworth looked decidedly nervous and fingered his coffee cup. “Peters, I don’t know if you’re involved in this or not and I don’t care, but you’ve got to protect my wife and you’ve got to convince this person that I cannot give him those plans.”

  “Why believe this guy on the phone?” I asked, nibbling at a few crumbs I had missed.

  “He … he played part of a record of Bette’s voice. She was saying … saying …”

  “Forget it,” I stopped him. “I don’t have to know.” I was beginning to get the eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head feeling that I was being set up.

  “If I tell the people I work for about this,” Farnsworth said, “they’ll want to pull Bette from Los Angeles, hide her someplace. She won’t do it. She has to work. And even if they go to the government and they do assign some people to watch her, we’ll have the publicity problem again.”

  I grunted and kept eating.

  “And there’s one more problem,” he went on. “I’m not sure the people I work for or the police would believe me. They might think it was a publicity stunt. This is Hollywood. People do things like that all the time.”

  “I know,” I said, finishing a mouthful, “but that’s not the reason they wouldn’t believe you.”

  Farnsworth took a deep breath and shook his head.

  “Cops and G-men might think the phone call and kidnapping threat came out of a bottle,” I concluded.

  “Yes, I have a drinking problem,” he said. “I’ve been trying to deal with it. I don’t think Bette knows how bad it is, but the people I work for do, and you’re r
ight. I doubt if it would take the police long to find out. I’m good at what I do, but … I got that call, Mr. Peters. I’ve been honest with you. I’ve told you more than I’ve even told my wife. I’m desperate. He told me they’d contact you, that I had to persuade you to do this for me. He was so sure you’d do it.”

  I drank some Pepsi and tried to ignore Carmen’s broad smile and ample breasts, which were now somehow suggestively visible in the curve of her white blouse.

  “Twenty-five a day plus expenses,” I said. “To protect your wife, possibly to find out who this person is. If it’s some crackpot, fine, but … Can you pick that up for a week or two?”

  “I think so,” he said. “Then you accept?”

  “I want to think about it a while.”

  “There isn’t time to think about it,” Farnsworth said nervously. “The man who called said I had no more than a day to find you and be ready to give him an answer.”

  “Can I finish my sandwich and drink?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t think this guy is just a nut,” I said.

  Farnsworth shook his head.

  “Why?”

  Arthur Farnsworth looked toward the window of Levy’s, just beyond Carmen. She caught the look, thought it was thrown at her, and grinned.

  “He sounded sane and I told you he played me part of the record on the phone,” he said, looking at me again. “Maybe it was a fake, but … it would ruin Bette’s career.”

  I forked up stray bits of corned beef and coleslaw and we didn’t do any more talking for about three minutes. When I was finished, I reached out my right hand and he took it.

  “Deal,” I said. “I keep good records and bill you as soon as the job is done, or monthly, if it goes that long. I need two hundred in advance.”

  Farnsworth happily dug into his pocket for his wallet and came up with the right number of twenty-dollar bills.

  “You want a receipt?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “You’ll start today?”

  “I’ll start today,” I agreed. “Let’s go talk to your wife.”

  I reached for the check Rusty had dropped on the table. Farnsworth’s mind was somewhere else; he didn’t stop me. Fine. He’d get a bill for it. I got up, check in hand.

  “That’s a problem,” said Farnsworth, getting up. “I mean, talking to Bette.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather she not know about this,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten her.”’

  “I’m supposed to protect her without her knowing it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Won’t work, Arthur,” I said, getting familiar. “She’ll spot me within a few days. If I’m supposed to keep people from grabbing her in your house or on the street, I’ve got to be close. And with this face, I can’t just melt into a crowd of fans.”

  Actually, there was almost no way Bette Davis would fail to spot me. My face was not unfamiliar to her. We’d both spent a good part of our life sentence at Warner Brothers, she as a well-paid slave, me as a badly paid guard.

  “Try,” he said earnestly, moving inches from my face and taking a firm grip on my right arm. “Please.”

  “Three conditions,” I said. “One, if I have to, I can tell her what’s going on. I’d rather have you do it and I’ll try to reach you if I can, but I want your okay.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said. “Here’s my card with two numbers where you can reach me. I’ve written our home number on the back.”

  “Second condition,” I went on. “If this guy does contact me, I want your okay to tell him whatever I want.”

  “Lie, promise, do whatever you have to,” he said. “Just stop him and take care of Bette. The last condition?”

  I liked Arthur Farnsworth. He was an easy client. “I may need to use some associates. I’ll pay them out of my fee. If you have some reason to meet them, I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

  “You’re the professional,” he said. “I have no intention of questioning your choice of associates.”

  “One is a bald giant. Another is a little person, about three feet tall. The last, who I use only in emergencies, is a short, fat guy with thick glasses and a built-in cigar.”

  “You’re joking,” Farnsworth said as Rusty squeezed past us to pick up his tip. I’d been generous. Rusty looked as close to happy as he could get.

  “They’re invaluable,” I said. “The bad guys always underestimate them.”

  Farnsworth now looked a bit less sure of himself and his choice, but it was a done deal.

  “Bette’s doing a radio show tonight,” Farnsworth said. “Screen Guild play, Dodsworth, with Walter Huston. She just finished shooting a new movie, Old Acquaintance, with Miriam Hopkins. I warn you, Bette’s a little frazzled. Miriam is not one of her favorite people and she’s still having trouble with her Warners contract.”

  “Used to work for Warners,” I said as we moved toward the grinning Carmen.

  “You did?”

  “Security,” I said. “Got fired by Jack Warner in person for punching a cowboy star who was pawing a wardrobe girl.”

  “You and Bette have something in common,” Farnsworth said with a sad smile as I handed the check and a five-dollar bill to Carmen.

  More than you’d think, I said, but only to myself.

  “Your wife is my favorite actress, Mr. Davis,” Carmen blurted at Farnsworth. “Ask Toby.”

  “It’s true,” I said, waiting for my change. Carmen’s favorite actor or actress changed every three to six weeks. Buck Jones held the six-week record.

  “Thank you,” said Farnsworth uncomfortably.

  “My change, Carmen,” I reminded her, my hand still out. Carmen rang it up and handed the coins to Farnsworth with a smile. He dropped them into my open palm.

  “I’ve got some work to do for Mr. Davis,” I said, leaning over to whisper to Carmen. “But when I finish, maybe you and I could take a much-needed vacation.”

  Carmen looked at me, her large dark eyes alert for a trap, her wide red mouth ready for an ambush. Farnsworth had discreetly taken a step away from the counter to give us privacy.

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  “Tahoe,” I said.

  “I’ll think on it,” she said, her eyes back on Farnsworth.

  Farnsworth and I headed for the door. I held it open for him. “I’ll start tonight,” I said. “If that guy calls you back, let me know. If we need it, I’ve got some connections in the Los Angeles Police Department. My brother’s a captain. Need a ride?” I asked.

  “No, thanks,” he said, looking up and down the street. “I’m parked nearby and I have a few things to do before I head home.”

  I uncharitably suspected that one of the things was to go to a bar and drink his lunch. We shook again and I said, “Call me if you hear and I’ll let you know if I have anything to report.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house, which I had called home for more than two years, was in Hollywood on Heliotrope in a reasonably quiet residential neighborhood of small homes, three-floor apartment buildings, and boarding houses.

  I arrived, a brown paper bag of groceries in each arm, around two in the afternoon. Mrs. Plaut sat waiting on the porch in her white wicker chair, a bowl of something in her lap which she was mashing with a vengeful wooden spoon. Her radio was plugged in behind her and entertaining the neighborhood with what I think was a soap opera, probably “Rosemary.”

  Mrs. Plaut was a gray wisp of a woman, tiny, determined, hard of hearing, resolute of purpose, and of no known age. Her white hair was a mass of tight curls and her eyes a pale blue. Mrs. Plaut believed, alternatively, that I was either an exterminator with unsavory friends or a book editor. With the latter forever in her hopes, I was in the process of editing Mrs. Plaut’s family history, a tome which was now to be measured not by pages but by pounds. I had considered trying to convince her to stop writing simply to keep from wasting paper that might cont
ribute substantially to the war effort.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Peelers,” she said, looking at the packages.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Plaut,” I answered.

  “I have been waiting for you for several hours,” she said, reaching back to turn off the radio, “and I am browned off.”

  “Browned off?” I repeated, stepping across the white wooden porch to the front door.

  “Bored,” she explained. “I heard it on the Arthur Godfrey radio show in the morning. Army bomber lingo. Like laying the eggs.”

  “Dropping bombs?” I guessed.

  She nodded in confirmation. I hadn’t gone to UCLA for two years for nothing.

  “Can I put these in your kitchen?” I asked.

  “Just put those in the kitchen,” she said. “I’m making gumbatz. I can’t stop or it’ll close up.”

  “I wouldn’t want that to happen,” I said, and managed to get a hand loose to open the door.

  “Don’t let Dexter see the box of b-i-r-d-s-e-e-d,” she spelled in a whisper.

  Mrs. Plaut was a firm believer in the secrecy of spelling. It kept not only children and birds from understanding you, but also adults who seemed to turn into children or birds in the presence of Mrs. Plaut. She had been known to engage in secret spelling in the presence of my friend and fellow boarder, Gunther Wherthman. Now, Gunther may be less than a yard high, but he is over forty and speaks six languages fluently.

  “I won’t,” I whispered, and headed through the open door to Mrs. Plaut’s downstairs rooms.

  Mrs. Plaut’s living room, which she called her sitting room, was overstuffed and doilied. A bird cage holding Dexter stood near the window. Dexter hopped around a little, looked in my direction with his head cocked—probably to be sure I didn’t have Dash with me—and began chirping to himself.

  In Mrs. Plaut’s kitchen I placed the bags on the table, fished out my milk, coffee, bananas, Rice Krispies, Wheaties, and Hydrox cream-filled cookies. I cradled them awkwardly in my arms and set back out for the hallway in the hope that I could make it up the stairs and to my room before Mrs. Plaut completed mashing her gumbatz and came up with another chore for me.

  I didn’t make it. I almost never make it. She stood blocking her doorway, bowl in one hand, wooden spoon in the other. The spoon pointed at me, accusingly.