He visibly relaxed took another swig of beer. “You take your work real serious.” He pointed to my bare chest.
“Couldn’t be helped. The lady was very insistent.”
“Artie warned me about her.” He was smiling again. “So… I guess you better tell me what I’m supposed to have done wrong.”
“I didn’t say that you had. I just want to talk to you about the party last night.”
“What party?” He wasn’t going to make this easy for me.
“The one you took Clara Lockhart to.”
“Ok-ay.” The two syllables were drawn out and loaded with suspicion.
“Clara didn’t make it home last night.” I paused to see whether his face would tell me something his words wouldn’t. His eyes widened ever so slightly: this was news to him.
“So her husband has hired you to find out which bed she ended up in, is that it?”
“She told you she was married?”
“Hell no, if I’d known she was married I’d never have taken her there. I like an easy life.”
I told him he could relax: there was no husband looking for his tail on a plate. “So you know where she might be?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if she was still there. She was having a whale of a time.”
“Were you working last night?”
“You mean like now?”
I nodded.
“No, last night was strictly for pleasure.”
“Was Clara working?”
He was perplexed. “Oh, no. She doesn’t work for Artie.”
“Then how d’you know her?”
“We made a picture together a couple months ago. Just background players. We spent an entire day on the lot while Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne tried to get their lines straight.”
He wasn’t striking me as the type who’d do harm to a girl. Benny Bowers was the kind of guy who never says “no”. You ask him to clean your pool, he says sure, then asks for five bucks. You cast him as a friendly bartender, he asks what time you need him on set. You want him to sleep with your wife, he’ll ask how many times. He was more of a scamp than a scoundrel and I didn’t see any malice in him at all. I’d even been wrong about the boot polish in his hair: he was going a little thin on top and, unlike most men in Los Angeles, he wasn’t trying to hide it. Nevertheless, he was still my only lead.
“You say she had a good time?” I asked him.
“Last time I saw her she was down at the pool.”
“Was she alone?”
“There was a bunch of them.”
“Men? Women?”
“I don’t really know. I was kinda distracted.”
“You got lucky?”
“Luckiest guy in Hollywood, what can I say.”
“Who with?”
He smiled. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
That meant she was famous: there’s a very annoying code— especially annoying if you happen to be a P.I.—that’s essential to success in Hollywood: no one ever spills the beans about someone more famous than themselves. If you want to work in pictures, you just don’t break that code. It’s called the snitch and ditch: if you talk, you walk. It’s as simple as that.
“Then you should know you’re the guy in the frame for whatever’s happened to Clara.”
“You know, your threats might be a little scarier if you were wearing a tie. Or maybe even a shirt.”
I couldn’t really argue with that.
“Look, I don’t think you did anything to her,” I said, “but the fact remains she’s missing. You seem like a decent fella, so just tell me what you know. If you don’t, and something has happened to her, you’re going to feel real bad.” I paused to let that sink in. “Let’s start with the people at the pool. You said there was a group of them?”
He nodded.
“Can you tell me any names?”
“I wasn’t close enough to make out faces.”
“Describe what were they wearing.”
“Wearing?” He looked at me as if I had asked him to explain why the sky is blue. “They weren’t wearing anything, pal.”
“They were swimming naked?” I thought of the drained pool I had seen just a couple hours earlier.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of swimming going on.”
“You’re telling me it was an orgy?”
“Looked like it was turning into one.”
“Did Clara seem distressed?”
“Hell, no! She was having a fine old time.”
“And when was this?”
“Not that late, maybe eleven, eleven-thirty.”
“And you didn’t see her again?”
He shook his head.
“So when did you leave?”
“The sun was up, I remember that.”
“And you drove yourself home?”
He nodded.
“Didn’t you think that maybe you should check for Clara before you left?”
“I figured she’d be long gone. I was one of the last schmucks there.”
There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest he was lying. He wasn’t stroking his chin, or rubbing his ear, he wasn’t pulling the label off his beer.
“Until I find out who else was at the party, you’re my only lead.”
“I get that, but I like my life. I’m not gonna snitch.”
“Okay then. How about I say some names, and if they were there, you can nod. How would that be?”
“We can try it.”
I’d been reading about the Oz picture in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter for months. I reeled off some names. “Frank Morgan?”
Benny didn’t move a muscle.
“Ray Bolger?”
Nothing.
“I guess that Garland kid was there?”
“Why would she be?”
“It was the wrap party and she’s the star.”
He gave me another smile. “Your information ain’t so hot. Powell wouldn’t throw a wrap party for The Wizard of Oz. He hated that movie. It’s all the studio’s been interested in for the past year and they haven’t been giving him the attention he’s used to.” He took another swig of beer. “Last night was the thank-the-lord-that-Oz-is-over party. Everyone who was there was hoping maybe MGM can go back to being more than a one-picture studio. Let me tell you: the people who didn’t work on that picture hate it just as much as Powell. And, Judas Priest, by the time they finished filming probably everyone who did work on it hated it too.”
“But they weren’t even invited?”
“Nope, strictly no munchkins, no witches, no tin men and no lions.”
“So who was there?”
“Pretty much every MGM actor who’s in town.”
“But you won’t name names?”
He shook his head. “Hey, what do you know. My beer’s empty, and if you don’t mind I came here for what you’ve already had. It’s time to introduce myself.” He stood up.
“I’ll come in with you, my jacket’s in the bedroom.” I got to my feet and turned to go inside. “What about the set designers, the scene painters? Were they there?”
“You go to Culver City in the morning and stand at the MGM gates, nine out of ten people you see will have been there.”
“But no names?”
“Okay. I’ll give you one name.”
There was that happy-go-lucky smile again.
“Well?” I asked.
“Cheeta.”
“Tarzan’s monkey?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s a chimpanzee.”
6
I woke early. I knew a swell was heading up from Mexico, and when I felt the wind coming from the North, I felt sure I’d find some breakers up at Oxnard. I threw my old long board into the Plymouth and headed for the coast. The sun had barely cleared the Sierra Madre by the time I was in the ocean.
It was a beautiful morning and I had the waves—and a pod of bottle-nose dolphins—to myself. The beach was deserted and it took me back to being a kid when there
were only fifteen, certainly no more than twenty, guys in the whole of California who rode the waves. Nowadays, on the weekend, you might have fifty surfers in the water just at Santa Monica or Long Beach.
I could have stayed there all day, but I wanted to get to my office and start making some calls. I always tried the hospitals ahead of calling the morgue, and I needed to eliminate the obvious lines of inquiry before I used up any more gas or shoe leather. Reluctantly, I toweled down and headed back toward the city.
On the freeway above Malibu the early morning traffic was sluggish, but I figured I had time to get home, spruce myself up and get to the office by eight. I planned to head out to Culver City late afternoon and talk to people as they left the MGM lot. I was working through my schedule in my mind as the intersections and road signs started to blur and the horns and engines turned to a distant hum in my ears.
Then, without even meaning to, I pulled off the freeway and onto the underpass, taking the route back out toward the coast. What was I doing? A moment later my brain caught up with my actions and I realized what I had seen about a mile back on the freeway. There was a large advertisement on a hoarding at the side of the road: Goebel’s Lion Farm—Proud Suppliers of Animal Actors To The Motion Picture Industry. Five minutes later I turned onto a narrow lane that quickly became a dirt track. The Plymouth popped and coughed with each divot under her wheels. I eased up on the gas. After another minute or so an old ranch house came into view.
People always think being an investigator is an exciting line of work, but the truth is most of the important stuff happens when your gun’s in its holster and your feet are under your desk. If I hadn’t spent those hours reading all those copies of Variety and the Reporter, I might not have known that Goebel’s farm is home to the animals used in the Tarzan movies. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything out of the chimp, but I figured where Cheeta goes, his handler goes too. Maybe the guy could tell me a thing or two about Powell’s party.
The place seemed deserted, as if no one had been there since the railroad reached the west coast. Goebel’s looked like a frontier outpost, abandoned after a successful Indian ambush. I got out of the car on the passenger side and grabbed my clothes from the back seat. My shorts were still wet, but I couldn’t very well start snooping around without putting on my pants.
I headed to the main house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Maybe it was still too early. I pushed gently on the door and it gave a little. I pushed harder and it swung open onto a dilapidated kitchen that was overrun with animals. Macaque monkeys were squabbling over bowls of food, and the air flickered red, yellow and green, with exotic birds, squawking and flapping like there was a war on.
“Hello?” I shut the door behind me: I didn’t want to cause a prison break. For a fleeting moment, the cute monkeys stopped their rumpus, and looked at me expectantly. But a human without food didn’t hold their attention for long and they soon started fighting again. “Hello?” I said a little louder this time, but still no response.
I went back out into the yard and headed for the nearest stable block. In the distance I heard a low roar like a rockfall tumbling down from the nearby woods. A lion? An elephant? I had no idea, so I figured I shouldn’t stand around outside waiting to find out. But the sign on the door of the stables made me think twice about going inside: Warning. Wild Animals. The door was ajar and I could see a long line of pens down one side of the block. The original wooden doors had been replaced with metal grilles. I went in.
In the first pen was a panther, sleek, black as oil and—mercifully—asleep. I took a couple steps forward. In an instant the beast had my scent and before it had even got onto all fours it was right next to the grille. A paw swiped at me through the bars. My heart jumped into my throat and my breath stalled. If the grille hadn’t held firm I’d have been breakfast. I shouted a “hello”, but the only reply I got was an angry yelp from a beast in the furthest pen. Who was looking after these animals?
Back out in the yard, the sun was getting high enough to make me squint but at least that meant the damp patch seeping through from my shorts might start to dry. I saw a flicker of movement from one of the outhouses. “Hello!” I rushed over and just got my toe in the door before it closed.
“Hello?” I said again.
A dark face peered out at me from an open pen. A dark furry face.
“Hello, fella.” I felt myself smile as I spoke to the chimp. “Anyone here taking care of you?”
The chimp shrieked but didn’t move. Was that a greeting? Or a warning? I started to hear the noises of other chimps I couldn’t see.
“Easy fella, I ain’t here to hurt you.” I took a step toward him—or her?—and he shrieked again showing more teeth than I knew you could fit in one mouth.
“Okay, okay. Easy now, I—”
“Hello?”
I turned round. A young boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, stood in front of me holding a bucket of food.
“Hi—”
“Who you?” He had a thick Mexican accent and looked as scared as if I’d pulled a gun on him.
“I knocked at the main house,” I tried to explain. “I, ah… I wanted to talk to someone about a party.” The kid’s face was blank. I wasn’t sure how much he was understanding me. “You know the party Cheeta was at the night before last?”
“You not police?”
“No, I’m…” I would’ve given him a card, but I hadn’t taken my jacket to the beach. “I’m an investigator.”
He walked past me toward the chimp, who leapt up onto his back. The boy handed him some fruit and made some soothing noises.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare him.”
“He okay.”
I took a step closer to them. “Is this Cheeta?”
The kid shook his head.
“Cheeta with Denny.”
“And where’s Denny?” As soon as I said the name I realized I’d heard it the day before at Powell’s place.
“Up top.”
“Up top?” I asked.
He nodded in the direction of the woods. “Top of farm. Feeding.”
“So it’s just you and Denny here?”
Another nod.
“Where’s everybody else?”
“Cleaning up big mess.”
I got the feeling he wasn’t talking about elephant dung.
“What kind of mess?”
The kid looked at me with wide brown eyes. He wanted to tell me something but seemed to know he shouldn’t. I sensed a divided loyalty. “Big mess,” he repeated.
“From the party?” I remembered the three rifles Denny and his pals had aimed at me at Powell’s pool house.
“They sent wrong animals.”
“Wrong?”
“They sent bad ones.”
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to the chimp on his back. “From Africa. Nice. Chimps born here, in America, not so nice.”
“So the animals at the party, they were bred in captivity? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yeah, yeah. Bad animals. Make big problem.”
7
I got home and took a shower. A picture of the party at the Powell place was forming in my mind. Orgies and wild animals mixed with money and liquor. It would have been the kind of party where anything could happen to a beautiful young actress, especially if she wanted it to. A little part of me wondered if maybe Clara Lockhart had gotten a better offer than Paramount’s $500 a week contract, and she had just disappeared with whoever had made the offer. She could be on a yacht to Mexico just as easily as she could be in trouble. I thought about the photo of her that Mary had given me: there was something of the ice maiden about Clara; she had a steely look in her eye, a firmness set into her jaw. I was beginning to wonder if maybe she wasn’t as frail as Mary had made out. It was possible Mary was jealous of her new roommate: maybe she not only played the part of the overlooked friend in pictures, but it was like that for her in real life too.<
br />
For the time being, though, Mary Treen was paying my bills. She’d asked me to find Clara and that’s exactly what I was going to do.
Fifteen minutes after making it home, I was back out the door. Five minutes after that I was parking opposite the office. For the second day in a row, a young woman was standing outside my building. This was a state of affairs I could get used to. Unlike Mary, this girl was tall and thin, and her face was covered with a wide brimmed hat dipped low over the paper she was reading.
“Good morning.” I reached into my pocket for the keys.
“Hey.” She spoke without moving her head.
“You waiting for someone?”
“Why yes.” She was a little more interested in her paper than our conversation.
“Would you mind stepping aside?”
“No, not at all.”
Yet she didn’t move.
I looked at her for a while, waiting for her to finish the line she was reading. Okay, then, maybe the whole paragraph. “Do you have to finish the whole goddamn story before you regain the use of your legs?”
“Now, Mr McCoy, that’s not very nice.”
Her voice was starting to sound familiar. She finally folded her paper, tucked it under her arm together with some other paperwork she was holding, and lifted her head so I could see from the tip of her nose down to her chin. “Say,” she said, “you’re a lot shorter standing up.” She raised her gaze to the top of my head, allowing me to see all her face.
It was the waitress from the Cocoanut Grove.
“I may not be real tall, but I’ll soon cut you down to size if I have to.”
“Well good morning to you too.”
“Must be at least three inches of you that come courtesy of the shoe store.”
“Now play nice, Mr McCoy or I might not be as helpful as I’d planned to be.”
We stared at each other for a moment. Then I said, “Do you want to step aside now?”
“Well…” Clearly she didn’t want to concede anything to me.
“Do I need to pick you up and move you myself?”
“Certainly not.” Reluctantly she sashayed one step to the left.
I opened the door. “Second floor.”
I watched her climb the stairs. Aside from her high heels, she was wearing a smart red skirt with a tight fitting white blouse. She might have been a fine looking woman, but she sure could spar like a man.
1 The Hollywood Detective Page 3
