Steve nodded. “Dave introduced us. She’s too young for us, Harry.”
Bergdahl said heavily, “She’s two years younger than my wife. Speak for yourself, sissy.” He laughed, and said to the girl, “I leave you in safe hands.” He swaggered away.
Jean exhaled audibly. “What do I say? Not what I’m thinking, or I go back to typing for a living.”
“Smile and look tolerant,” Steve advised her. “Self-discipline, that’s the virtue. Control, control, control …”
“Isn’t there,” she asked, “some vertical way to get ahead in this business?”
“There are a number of ways,” Steve said. “Some of them vertical. I think the best way is to be stubborn and disciplined.” He asked the bartender for a Scotch and water.
“Wouldn’t talent help?” Jean asked, as he turned back to her.
“Always. But there’s damned little of it around. You stick with that Morton boy. He’s going up.”
“I don’t want to ride anybody,” she said firmly, “and I want to decide who rides me. If you’ll pardon the vulgarism, which I’m sure you will. In New York, talent was very important. I should have stayed there.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“Because everything is moving out here.”
“Including Mitchell Morton?”
She shook her head. “Mitch is about the best friend I have. But we don’t ring any bells in each other. I wish we did. He’s a damned saint.”
Then Dave was coming over with his tigress, and Steve was introduced. And as the girl moved closer, to face the bar, Steve smelled the fragrance he couldn’t forget, the perfume he had first smelled in Hart Jameson’s apartment.
He said a little shakily, “I watched you dance with Dave. You’re very good.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him and pushed her hair back. “I was watching you, too. You’re very good yourself.”
Jean said coolly, “Dance with me, Dave. Your friend is occupied.”
Dave grinned and took the black-haired girl away.
“She hates me,” Pat Cullum said wonderingly. “I hardly know her and she hates me.”
Steve said lightly, “I imagine a lot of women do. And I don’t suppose it bothers you much, does it?”
She laughed. “Not at all. What are you drinking?”
“Scotch and water. Why?”
“I always drink what the man I’m with drinks. It’s a whim of mine.”
“You’re only with me momentarily,” Steve pointed out. “You can get mighty sick mixing drinks, you know.”
“I know,” she said amiably. “But how do you know I’m only with you momentarily? You’re not here with anyone else. I noticed.”
He grinned at her. “Now, we don’t want to annoy Dave. Not while he and I are working together.”
She reached for her drink. “Don’t you worry about Dave. He’s dancing with his sad and secret love this second, and he’s had enough whiskey to tell her about it.”
Steve danced with her and they danced well, and the challenge of her body almost made him forget the significance of her perfume.
The crowd noise grew and the alcohol poured and someone fell into the pool. A fight started but was quickly broken up. A little after one o’clock Dotty asked Steve if he would help to encourage the guests to eat.
“Harry’s disappeared somewhere,” she explained. “We’ve just got to get some food and coffee into these drunks.”
By two o’clock they had managed to inveigle some coffee into the drunker of the drunken and food into all the others. Steve’s own fine edge had worn off by this time. He sat quietly with the script girl near the pool, nursing a big mug of coffee and scanning the crowd for Pat Cullum.
She was not in sight. Nor was Dave Sidney. Harry and a number of other men had come from the garage crap game. Practically all the people Steve knew were visible except for Dave and Pat. Perhaps it was just as well. Adultery had never been one of his comfortable vices.
He said good night to the Bergdahls and Dotty thanked him for helping to subdue the revelers, explaining loudly enough for most of the guests to hear that “Harry is never any good at parties.”
He went around to the parking area, and it looked as though there was someone in his car.
There was. Pat Cullum looked up, rubbed her eyes, yawned and said, “It’s about time!”
“Where’s Dave?” Steve asked.
“He passed out. He’s sleeping here tonight.”
Steve got behind the wheel. “And with a yardful of handsome young men to choose from, you picked me. Why?”
“Call it a simple case of lust,” she said. “Let’s go.”
NINE
She was active and demanding. She was artful and violent; her teeth brought blood from the lobe of his ear. Finally she was quiescent.
Her apartment was on the second floor of a fairly new building on a slope north of Hollywood. She had quite a view from her southern windows. It was not a cheap apartment.
On the broad, low bed, Steve stretched, spent and faintly uncomfortable. She was a girl who might soon demand more, and he was sure he could not supply the demand.
He said, “That’s an unusual perfume you use.”
“It ought to be, at fifty dollars a dram.”
“Fifty dollars a dram …! That’s four hundred dollars an ounce.”
“I guess. A man named Dostel makes it. He claims that each fragrance is tailored for only one person. But I’ll bet he sells the same odor to women in other towns. This particular number is Dostel Number 263 if you’re thinking of buying me some.”
“At four hundred dollars an ounce? I’d have to give up smoking. Tell me, do you buy it for yourself?”
Her laugh was low and mocking. She asked, “Do you like peanut butter sandwiches?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“I want one,” she answered. “And a big glass of milk. Shall I bring you a drink?”
“No. But maybe the milk … Wait, I’ll go with you.”
They went to the kitchen, naked as sparrows, and she turned on the bright overhead light and pointed to a chair in the breakfast area. “You sit, I’ll serve.”
In her full, bronzed body there was no hint of sag. In her friendly, natural behavior there was no hint of shame.
She was reaching to open one of the cupboard doors when Steve said, “You were with Hart Jameson Wednesday night, weren’t you? Why didn’t you go to the police?”
She paused, her body tense, and turned to stare at him. “Are you crazy? I had a date Wednesday night. Why did you say that?”
“I smelled your perfume in his apartment when I went to see him. I know it was yours.”
She continued to stare. “Is that why you came here, why you came up, to question me about Hart Jameson?”
Steve shook his head.
“You lie,” she said hoarsely. “You’ve — spoiled everything.”
He raised a hand. “Be sensible, listen to …”
“Listen, hell! Get out! Do you think I brought you here because you were a director or because you had money or because I was drunk? I wanted you, just as you are, just for tonight. Now, get out!”
Steve said quietly, “Please, will you listen to …”
She reached up and got a pitcher and she lifted it high. “I swear I’ll kill you if you’re not out of here in two minutes.”
Her voice was loud enough to arouse the neighbors. It was that threat as much as the pitcher that sent Steve to the bedroom without further argument.
He dressed hurriedly. He was out in the cold night three minutes later.
There were only two cars in sight. One was his Bentley, in front of the apartment. The other, a green Pontiac half a block away on the other side of the street, was either Tomkevic’s car or a duplicate.
Steve got into his car and started the engine. He drove almost to the Pontiac before switching on his headlights. And then he put them on the high beam.
Behind the win
dshield of the Pontiac the blank face of Tomkevic blinked in the sudden glare.
Had he followed Steve here or the girl? The car hadn’t been there when they’d arrived. The detective had another item for his dossier. And a lever? A bit of blackmail he could use to pry some honest answers out of Steve?
No. He hadn’t been up there very long. If he had stayed all night, Tomkevic would have had his lever.
It seemed to Steve the smell of perfume still lingered in the car. He drove slowly, watching to see if the green Pontiac would follow. There was a pressure in his chest again and a bad taste in his mouth.
Casual, he told himself, think of it as that. A half-drunken romp in the hay with a girl who was begging for it. Casual … Would he consider it casual if Marcia had been the guilty one?
The car swerved and the driver of the car flanking him sounded his horn angrily. Perspiration broke out on Steve’s neck and forehead, and nausea expanded in his stomach.
That miserable, ubiquitous, tenacious Tomkevic. He might not be building a case solid enough to stand up in court, but he was probably building a case that would delay the payment of the insurance money to Harry.
Steve sucked deeply of the cold night air. He thought of Pat Cullum, naked in her bright kitchen, angrily eating a peanut butter sandwich, and he laughed to himself. But the nausea remained.
An incident, a casual nothing, a meaningless moment; how could any evil be read into that? He had been a tame domestic animal for a number of years. Tonight he had been a willing victim of circumstance. It had been a frustrating six months just past, and he had desperately needed the cathartic effect of this ridiculous night.
Adjusted now? he asked himself. A small lie, a trivial succumbing to blackmail, a momentary infidelity. Nothing to fret about, really. Nothing but the nausea.
He was in Beverly Hills, where the lots are wide and the houses set well back. He pulled to the curb and left the car and found some bushes and was sick.
He drove home carefully after that, alert for prowl cars and the green Pontiac. The clock on his instrument board showed exactly four o’clock when he left the car on the drive in front of the garage.
• • •
He slept without dreams and woke to a hot Sunday afternoon and a hangover. When he came into the living room, Mrs. Burke told him that Dave Sidney had phoned and left a number.
The number was Harry’s and Steve dialed it.
Dave answered the phone. “I’ve been thinking of that bit with the torch singer, Steve. Don’t you think Jean D’Arcy could handle that well?”
Steve smiled to himself. “Do you? Is this a form of non-family nepotism? Sweet on her, aren’t you?”
“So, maybe. But you know I wouldn’t risk spoiling the picture for anybody or anything. She’s very good and she’ll work at minimum.”
“She can read for it,” Steve said. “I’ve been thinking of that girl in the diving-board scene at the lake. And who would I be thinking of for that?”
“Pat Cullum. She’s got the figure.”
Steve asked, “But can she swim?”
“Swim?” Dave chuckled. “Like a mink.” A pause. “I hope she got home all right last night.”
“I’m sure she did. How are you and your drunken uncle feeling today?”
“Fit and happy. Look, why don’t you come over for dinner, as long as Marcia is out of town?”
“I’d be bad company. At the moment I’m only looking for a hole to crawl into.” He sighed. “We’re taking care of our friends, aren’t we?”
“The mark of a Harry Bergdahl picture,” Dave said lightly. “Would it be all right if I came over later in the day? I’d like to talk with you.”
“I guess. I should be human in a few hours. I’ll be here.”
He drank some tomato juice and ate some heavily buttered toast. He took the percolator of coffee and the Sunday papers out to the sundeck.
The death of Hart Jameson as news had retreated to one of the inner pages in the local news section. But as a feature story in the drama-arts section of the Times, it received the full lachrymose treatment.
There was a picture of Hart at the age of seven, riding a rented pony and staring belligerently into the camera. There were some stills from Sunburst Alley and a bleak shot of an Oklahoma orphanage where he had spent a few of the formative years.
There were quotes by personalities always ready with extravagant quotes. All in all, Hart Jameson had achieved an eminence in death he could very easily have missed by living.
Finally, on one of the inner pages where the text had carried over, there was one more picture of Hart. He was standing with his arm around the jet-haired Jean D’Arcy. The caption asked: Romance?
The text informed the reader that the lovely television star, Jean D’Arcy, had been a frequent companion of Hart’s in the East. It was rumored that she had followed him out here after a quarrel had sent him west.
Steve poured himself another cup of coffee. Maybe they wouldn’t get Miss D’Arcy at minimum after today’s publicity. Or maybe the inclusion of her name in the piece was the work of Harry’s cunning hand?
No. Finding a spot for Jean had been Dave’s idea, not Harry’s. And it hadn’t even been suggested until today.
The sun soaked him, baking out the alcohol. He ate two cold-beef sandwiches and drank some milk and spent an hour in the pool. He felt almost human when Dave Sidney arrived.
Dave didn’t come alone. Jean D’Arcy was with him, and they had brought their swimming clothes.
“So it shouldn’t be a total loss,” Dave explained. “Jean wanted to read for that two-bit side, but I thought you might not be in a mood for that.”
“I’m not,” Steve answered. “Has Harry okayed it?”
Dave smiled. “He told me to tell you he has complete faith in your casting judgment.”
“That was generous of him,” Steve said dryly. He looked at Dave steadily. “Yesterday, you told him Marcia was out of town. How did you know that?”
Dave frowned. “Laura told me when I phoned her to see if she had a ride to the party. Why did you ask that, Steve?”
Steve shrugged.
Dave colored. “I guess we — caught you in a bad mood, didn’t we?”
Steve sighed. “You did, and I apologize.” He put a hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get into that pool.”
Jean D’Arcy’s swim suit was an unrelieved white, trim and scanty. And though she lacked the extraordinary mammary and posterior development of Pat Cullum, Jean wore the suit to advantage.
Steve sat with a cigarette on the sunny side of the pool and watched Dave and the girl dive and swim. They were a well-matched couple, intelligent, personable and young. And innocent? The girl had been a companion of Hart Jameson’s, and Dave was a much more complicated person than Steve had first assumed.
Jean came out of the water near where Steve sat and asked, “Would you light me a cigarette? My hands are wet.”
Steve lighted her one and handed her a towel before giving her the cigarette. He said casually, “I see you had some publicity in today’s Times.”
She nodded. “Though it was all hogwash about my romance with Hart Jameson.” She puffed deeply and looked candidly at Steve. “What happened to your ear?”
He reached a hand up in sudden remembrance. “I must have scraped it, diving. Is it bleeding?”
“The lobe is discolored. It looks as though somebody bit it.”
Steve stared at her unblinkingly, and she met his gaze. Finally, he said with a smile, “I guess you heard Dave tell me Harry had complete faith in my casting judgment?”
She smiled in return. “I heard. Believe me, I had no idea my remark had any significance.”
“It didn’t,” he said. “Was that story about you and Jameson in the paper a complete lie?”
“Almost. I didn’t follow him out here; that’s absurd. I did go to a few places with him in New York, but that was because we were both studying at the Studio. We rarely w
ent anywhere alone and we always went Dutch.”
“Did you meet Mitchell Morton through him?”
“No. Mitch was at the Studio, too. I met him there.” She smiled doubtfully. “Am I being interviewed or investigated?”
“Only making conversation,” Steve answered. “One more question while Dave’s out of earshot — do you like him?”
She made a face. “I like him, Uncle Steve. Do you like him?”
Steve nodded, and said with false gravity, “I was thinking of Pat Cullum for that bit you want to read for.”
“It’s your picture,” she said, “yours to ruin with bad minor casting.” She put her cigarette out in an ash tray, turned abruptly and dived into the pool.
The young ones, he thought, the good young ones. They were coming out here in swarms from New York, and what was there for them to do? Eastern television, which had started with such invigorating promise for the early hour-long dramas, was retrogressing to the 1912 cinema level. There was always a place for the bad actors, but what could the good ones do?
Dave came out of the water and padded over to pick up a towel. As he wiped the back of his neck, he asked, “Isn’t she nice? Jean, I mean?”
“Very nice. What do you know about Mitchell Morton, Dave?”
Dave shrugged. “He’s a good actor. He’s hungry. But he’s young enough so that doesn’t matter.”
“He’s ambitious, too, isn’t he? He’d go to some extremes, I would bet, to get his face in front of the public.”
Dave frowned. “I guess. Steve, how far would you go to protect a picture you thought a lot of?” Steve smiled and didn’t answer. Dave asked, “How about that — bit?”
“She can have it.”
Dave sat down. “Thanks. What happened to your ear?”
“The housekeeper bit it last night,” Steve explained carefully, “repelling my advances.”
For seconds, they said nothing as they watched Jean swim the length of the pool and back. The young ones, Steve thought again, the good young ones, the firm young ones, the ear-biters and the blackmailers. At thirty-seven, he decided, the firm young ones looked so damned interesting….
At seven it turned too cool to swim, and they went into the house to raid the refrigerator. After that they sat in the playroom, watching the image on the monster, this particular image being an hour-long comedy from New York.
Death Out of Focus Page 7
