One for Our Baby

by John Sandrolini

  His head went back and didn’t come forward, then his knees buckled and his tent just folded up. He dropped straight down, bouncing off the car door and crumpling onto the street.

  I pivoted on my right heel and launched a roundhouse kick in the direction of the hard breathing behind me. It wasn’t quite a clean blow, but it put him down on his ass. I had him then.

  I just hauled Number Two up and tossed him onto the sidewalk, then into the chain-link fence that ran alongside.

  Before I could reach him again, he scrambled up from the weeds and broken glass and lit out down the alley. I turned and stormed back toward the driver’s side.

  Number One was parked on the pavement, leaning up against the front tire with his hand jammed up against his nose, trying to stanch the red river flowing out.

  I leaned into the car, plucked the burning cigarette off the seat, and knelt down next to him. With a grunt, I ripped the hand from his face and then buried the butt in his palm. It made a tzzzzzzz sound as it sizzled out in his blood.

  “Next time use the ashtray.”

  I climbed into the car, cranked it over, and yanked the shifter into first. Rubber shrieked against asphalt as I mashed the pedal down, a whimpering Chinaman tumbling down in the street as I sped away from the land of paper dragons.

  * * *

  I went back to the Nighthawk hangar. Police lights flashed away over at McBride, but it was quiet at my end of the field. I went inside, searched the whole place twice, then took a long drink from the bottle of Old Overholt and yanked back the covers on the cot I had in the back. There was work to be done, lots of it, but none tonight so I decided to steal a few hours of sleep.

  Darkness enveloped the cavernous space when I pulled the light chain down. This time I was all alone—except for the .45 under my pillow.

  29

  Morning broke hard. I rolled over a few times, but I was up by eight. My neck was a little stiff from my workout with the Peking Circus, my hand hurt from decking the punk outside Sam’s, and my head was throbbing from the acute lack of caffeine in my bloodstream. Other than that, I was serviceable.

  I climbed out of the rack, put a pot of coffee on the hot plate, and cleaned myself up. The java was oil black and nearly as heavy. I downed it in a few slurps, then realized I was hungry as hell, so I jumped into the Buick and headed over to Curley’s. Near as I could tell, no one followed me.

  I hammered down a plate of biscuits and gravy, some eggs, and two more cups of coffee. Over my second cigarette, I started to feel like a human being again.

  I thought about the last crazy couple of days while I sat at the bar. This affair was beginning to have more players than a Sousa march—but those weren’t piccolos in their hands. Now there was some film in the mix, which Betty may have died over. And, of course, there was Frank—and his girlfriend.

  I called him up in Bel Air and told him we needed to talk face-to-face. He agreed. Five minutes later I was northbound on the 15 again. Frank’s place was my destination, but I had another stop to make on the way first, a hunch I wanted to play.

  It took me a good forty-five minutes to get up there, but I scored a great parking spot just off Vine, which helped.

  The Brown Derby in Hollywood lacked the ridiculous hat shape of the one on Wilshire, but more than made up for it with its wild cast of characters inside, one of whom I’d come to see.

  They were in a slack period between breakfast and lunch and no one came to greet me at the podium. I stood around awhile, scanning the waiting area, taking note of the large photo of Betty on the wall along with the newspaper article about her murder, taped right on top of the many caricature drawings of celebrities. I guess they meant well, but it played like another one of the cheap exploitations the movie industry makes of its own, even beyond the grave. They still lined up by the thousands for a shot.

  From the corner of my eye I saw the woman I’d come to speak with, so I just seated myself at a booth in her section and waited for her to walk over. She didn’t make me until I looked up at her.

  “Hello, Ida.”

  Her face fell upon recognizing me, which was an accomplishment considering how much it had already fallen over the years.

  “Try another section,” she said, acid eating the words.

  Ida Brügger had harbored Hollywood ambitions twenty years earlier, but her looks had been just south of attractive and she couldn’t act well enough to get the hard-luck girl parts. Eventually, she settled into the role of mother and mentor to dozens of young actresses, most of whom still came in to see her regularly.

  Helen had been one of her favorites, and Ida blamed me for derailing her career after our breakup. She told me so in no uncertain terms when I made the mistake of bringing another date to the Derby a couple of years later.

  “Ida, it’s about Helen. It’s important.”

  “Well, you’re five years too late for that,” she snapped. She stared me down for several seconds through steel-gray eyes, then demanded, “What is it? Out with it, Hamlet.”

  I looked around the room. “She’s missing, Ida, and she’s very likely in trouble with the people who murdered Betty Benker.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, dear God.”

  “Have you seen her in the last few days? Please tell me if you have.”

  She shook her head slowly, said, “No,” her face ashen in the sunlight streaming through the window.

  “Well, if you do—”

  “I might have known you’d be responsible for getting her into something else like this. You’re the worst thing that ever happened to her.”

  She’d found her footing and was back to throwing spears. Ida was overprotective of all her “girls,” and I could respect that, but I was in no mood to be taken down a notch by the Crone of Hollywood. I got a little tough.

  “I’m not responsible for getting Helen into anything. I’m trying to find her before something bad happens to her. Can you help me, yes or no?” I demanded, pounding the heel of my palm on the table so hard that the silverware rang out in a two-note clash symphony.

  She looked me over, stone-faced. “I’m sorry, she hasn’t been in. I’ll make some calls to the girls when I go on break to see if she’s staying with any of them.”

  “Thanks. Call me at any hour if you have any information. There’s an answering service when I’m out.” I wrote my number down on a napkin and handed it up to her. “I don’t know what you think I ever did to Helen, by the way, but I loved her very much. She left me, you know, not the other way around.”

  “Yes, but you broke that girl’s heart when you went away. She needed you then, and you disappeared on her. She wound up in some very dire straits after that, Joe—all thanks to you.” She began aiming a chubby finger at me as she drove home her point. “Helen idolized you, Mr. War Hero—and you let her down flat.”

  “Listen, Ida—”

  “You shuddup, I’m not finished yet. You may be a big deal to some so-called glamorous people who keep you around as some kind of a curio, Buonomo, but I see right through you. You’re a crash-out bum, just like me. What have you ever been good for anyway—besides killing people?”

  The speech was high Hollywood, but it bit deep just the same because it was true. Our eyes met for several seconds, cold fury brimming in hers. I thought about responding, but she’d already won the round. I let her keep it.

  “I’ll call you if I hear anything, okay?” she said icily. “Now get the hell out of my booth.”

  She turned and stormed off, a Valkyrie triumphant.

  30

  I brooded as I drove. Nothing much had gone right these last three days, and now I was even getting told off by the waitresses.

  What have you ever been good for anyway—besides killing people?

  The words burned in my ears. Involuntarily, I conjured images of men dying at my hands. I recalled something an overeager navy PR officer had said to me once.

  You’re a born killer, Buonomo, like Achilles o
r something. It’s like they created you for this war!

  I was still feeling sorry for myself when I noticed the car following me—a brown Chevrolet, three cars back, with me light for light. I made a few lane changes and varied my speed to confirm it, but someone was definitely on me.

  I continued west on Sunset for several blocks, marking him in my side mirror. At Laurel Canyon, I spun a hard right and punched the pedal down, picking up speed as I soared up the steady incline toward the hills where the moguls looked down upon the world.

  The guy in the Chevy was game though, and, sure enough, he came flying out of the turn behind me, now a good quarter mile back. I overtook a Deville doing seventy, scaring the matching white hair off some dowager and her poodle as I swung past them just inches away.

  The Chevy came on but was losing ground rapidly to the big eight I had under the hood. I almost had to slow down to let him catch up again.

  At Wonderland, I whipped a left, then made a series of turns until I lost myself amid the half-million-dollar homes nestled in the cool, green hills, following the meandering curves past castle-massive Tudors worthy of Henry and French Provincials so large that you half expected to see Marie Antoinette sunning herself by the pool.

  Finally, I rolled back onto Laurel Canyon, stopping a hundred feet from the corner. I waited several minutes for the Chevy driver to pass by, but he was nowhere in sight. He might have been arrested for simply having the audacity to drive that car in those lofty Olympian heights of the beautiful and the ascotted.

  With a shrug, I put the car in gear, made a right at the corner and rolled back down the hill toward the hoi polloi.

  * * *

  Frank’s L.A. place was in Coldwater Canyon, another hike up into the hills, but only a few minutes away. It was Japanese but also contemporary, and just cool as all get-out, with push-button panels hiding every modern convenience imaginable. It was every man’s dream of a bachelor pad, right down to the starlets who hung out there.

  The problem today was the one who wasn’t there.

  I honked when I arrived and Frank waved me in. He led me through the house to the patio area out back.

  Some untouched breakfast sat on a tray drying in the sun. Scattered song sheets lay on a table. Several pages had fallen to the cement flooring, where they sat in arrhythmic flux. A cool puff of wind spun across the patio, rustling Carmichael and Kern against the chair legs.

  Frank took no notice, looking up at me instead, a hint of desperation on his face. He wanted me to tell him something encouraging, but I had only bad news.

  I surveyed the expansive downhill view of Bel Air, and below that, Los Angeles, befouled in smog but still striking in the late-morning light.

  “Frank, things are really going south here.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that’s not a leg of prozhutt’ you’re carrying under your arm there, Joseph,” he said while nodding at my weapon. “What’s going on now?”

  “It got worse last night. Much worse.”

  He pulled his lips in tight, sucked in a breath.

  “This isn’t just about Lilah or Betty,” I continued. “Those B-team hoodlums want something. So do a bunch of scheming Chinese mobsters, and I think Lilah is somehow connected to what they want.”

  Frank drilled holes through me with his stare, slowly assessing what I’d told him.

  “Oh, yeah, the owner of the jewelry store in Vegas is dead, too. Took a stray one when Ratello tried to clip me. I’m a suspect, of course.”

  “Any reason I shouldn’t bring the police into this right now?”

  “None. I’ve been at it three days, and all I know is that our girl is missing and Ratello probably doesn’t have her, the Chinese don’t have her—and we don’t have her.”

  “Our girl? We? You’re a wonderful pal, Joe, but please don’t forget that she’s my girl. There’ll be a finder’s fee, brother—but she ain’t it.”

  He forced a smile to soften the words, but his world-famous jealous streak was showing itself, even in a crisis.

  I thought about spilling the whole kettle of fish concerning Helen and me right then but decided it had to wait. It was all going come out soon enough anyhow, but I’d had it up to here with the whole stupid charade. It was going to have to wait until we found her—but not one day more.

  “Sure, Frank, sure,” I said. “I just feel responsible because I flew her down and left her with the limo driver. I should have taken her home myself.”

  It was a crummy little lie, but it was all I had in me at the moment. I stomached it, then refocused on the issue at hand.

  “Did Lilah ever say anything to you about a film of any kind?”

  “She’s an actress, I’m an actor. We talk about movies all the time.”

  “No, not a movie, a film of some kind. I don’t know exactly what, but the kind of thing underworld goons would want.”

  He looked straight ahead, massaging his chin, while he thought it over. Then those cornflower blue eyes widened visibly for a second and his face tightened a notch.

  After a lengthy pause, he shook his head and said, “Nothing outside of studio work. What could she have that some mobsters would want?”

  “Dunno. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  He didn’t respond. He seemed to have thought of something, something that concerned him greatly, although he appeared to be covering it up.

  “Frank?”

  “Uh … yeah?”

  “Anything? You had a look on your face there, buddy.”

  He stared at me. “I thought I had something there for a second, but it was nothing.”

  I arched an eyebrow.

  “I tell ya, it’s nothing.”

  “Okay, Frank.”

  I had to accept that, but I wasn’t crazy about possibly being kept in the dark. I scratched my head, took out a smoke.

  Frank pulled out a gold lighter, waved it under my cigarette, then leaned back against a railing.

  “Joe, do you think it’s possible she just ducked out somewhere with a guy and doesn’t know anything about any of this? I mean, I’d much rather deal with that than the other scenario.”

  I blew out a funnel of white smoke, fixed him with a look.

  “No, I don’t. This is all related, I’m afraid. I’ve been around this stuff too long to see it any other way. I didn’t have any connection until a Ching Hwa mentioned a film to me.”

  “A Ching-who?”

  “Ching Hwa. A bad bunch of operators from Taiwan. They made landfall here about five years back, been spreading like the Asian flu—only deadlier—ever since.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask your buddy the Chinaman what in the name of Confucius this film is, and how it involves Lilah?”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because he’s dead.”

  He threw up his hands. “Sure are a lot of people dying around you.”

  I flicked some ash over the patio into the crevasse below and looked out. “Yep.”

  “Well, please, don’t let Lilah be one of them—or me.”

  I just eyed him for that one.

  “So what do we do now, Joe?”

  “I think I smoked Ratello out of Las Vegas, and I’m willing to bet he’s down here somewhere. Can you call some of your guys up and see if they have any idea where he hides out in L.A.?”

  “Right away.”

  A moment later, the doorbell rang. There was some conversation inside, then Sanjee, the houseboy, walked out and said that Mr. Sinatra’s lawyer had arrived. Frank said to show him on back.

  I took this as my cue to exit. I wanted to make some calls, but not from Frank’s house—I wasn’t going to connect the dots from Frank to Sam Woo if the feds were tapping his line, which was a fairly good bet given some of his friendships.

  I said hello to the lawyer. He said we should discuss my turning myself in over the Benker snuff. I told him he was going to have to cover for me for a few more days. Frank said he�
��d explain it all to him. I nodded and made for the front door.

  Before I left, I turned to Frank and said, “Have you discussed this matter over the phone with anyone other than me?”

  “Only in the vaguest of terms. Why?”

  “Because it just occurred to me that you might have a party line here with the feds already. You can probably just pick it up and get J. Edgar Hoover anytime you want them in on this thing.”

  He didn’t find anything inherently funny in that.

  Neither did I.

  31

  There’s a small store where Coldwater Canyon forks into Mulholland Drive. Outside of that small store, near the road, there’s a phone booth—at least there used to be. It was only a few minutes away from Frank’s house the short way.

  But I went the long way out Bowmont and snaked around until I reached Mulholland. Then I made a left and rolled on a half mile until I reached the store on my right. It was as good as any place to phone Sam, and the view of the canyon was nice. I figured I owed myself that much.

  I parked the car, gave the lot a good once-over, and walked over to the booth. I pulled the door shut behind me and put some coins into the slot. My first call was to the hangar. I caught a lucky break—I was due.

  “Good morning, Mister Bwoh-noe-moe,” the girl from the answering service cooed. “You have three messages. Shall I read them to you, sir?”

  It was Simone—English for sure, knew diction like nobody’s business. If she wasn’t bucking for a part in the next remake of Wuthering Heights, nobody was. Everybody’s after something in L.A.

  She read the messages. The first was from Mr. Rising in Florida about an engine invoice. The second was from Sean Parker, a young pilot still looking for work in night freight, poor bastard. The third was from Ida. She said I should call Millie at MAdison 6-3747 regarding our conversation. The old battleaxe had come through—and quick. There are many ways to send information in this modern world, but I’ve never seen one yet that could match the speed of the old lipstick wireless.

  I pulled the rack down and released it, fed in a pair of nickels, and dialed MAdison 6-3747 before my short-term memory could betray me. After four rings, I could feel my heart sinking a bit, but she picked up a moment later.