But Rhoda Darrow’s apartment building had been affected by none of this.
At the impressive front entrance, I buzzed 307. I could hear the door unlatch almost instantly and I went on up.
At the door to the apartment, I steeled myself before I knocked. I hadn’t anticipated she’d be home and now here I was and here she was. What on earth was I going to say?
I didn’t get much time to think about it. The door opened and a man stood in front of me—a nice looking man about my own age. He was newly shaven and the scent of soap clung to him as though he’d just stepped out of the bath. This impression was increased by his bare chest and the towel wrapped around his waist.
I was so shocked at his appearance—and lack of covering—that I nearly fainted, right there in the hall. Perhaps I only did not because such a move would have been extremely ill-advised—naked man, towel, strange apartment and hall and all.
He looked at least as surprised as I did, and perhaps even more mortified, if that were possible. “I was expecting someone else,” he said. His hand clutched at the towel helplessly, as though he would cover more of himself with it, though that would have just made matters worse.
“So was I,” I said, smiling despite myself as I turned my eyes away. “I’m looking for Rhoda Darrow. Is that who you were expecting, too?”
He shook his head. I caught the motion of it out of the corner of my eye. It was obvious that it wasn’t a name he knew. “No. I was expecting my brother.”
“Ah. And I’m sure your brother isn’t named Rhoda. But is this Rhoda Darrow’s apartment?”
Another shake of the head. “No,” he said. “It’s mine. I’ve only lived here for about six months though,” he offered helpfully. “Maybe she lived here before me? If you like, you could ask the manager. She’s at 101.”
I did as he suggested. The manager was a sallow-skinned woman of middle years. She might have been blond once, but now her hair was a dull, yellowish pewter. The small child that gripped the edge of her housedress looked like a permanent fixture. She told me she had only been in the building a year herself and had never met Rhoda Darrow. “But I do got a forwarding address,” she said, meeting my eyes and not volunteering anything.
“Wait: are you saying you do have a current address for her?”
The woman ducked her head slightly, nodding in the affirmative.
“But you won’t give it to me, is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, I never did say that.”
“Yes, but… oh wait,” I said, remembering Dex’s folding money at Number 11. “Are you saying you’d give me the new address for a price?”
“Could be I’m saying that,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t say no.”
I opened my purse and drew out a half-dollar, wondering as I did so how I’d manage to get Dex to reimburse me for it. It was fairly obvious I would not be getting a receipt.
The woman just snorted at the sight of the coin and the child rocked on its heels, as though agreeing with its mother’s dry mirth.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a sawbuck.”
“A sawbuck?” I said, shocked. “I’m not giving you ten whole dollars for an address. That’s crazy!”
The woman shrugged. Clearly she’d had to try. “All right,” she said agreeably, “a fin then. I’ll give you the address for afin.”
“That’s better, but we’re not quite there yet. I don’t even have five dollars on me.”
“What do you got then?” the woman asked, looking at my handbag as though she might see right inside it if she stared hard enough.
“Let me … let me check. Let’s see here,” I said. “I’ll give you a two-spot and four bits, all right? That’s all I’ve got. I have to leave myself enough to take the streetcar.”
The woman grunted her acknowledgment and held out her hand.
“When I get the address,” I told her. I may not have been a big fancy detective, but that much I knew. I’d hold onto my money until I at least got a load of what I was buying.
The woman made a face and disappeared back into her apartment, closing the door without another word. I stood there for a full minute wondering what I was supposed to do. Had I insulted her? Had I breached some arcane informant etiquette? But no, soon I could hear the scratch of the door again and she was back, this time without the child.
The exchange took thirty seconds. Less. And then I stood there, two dollars and fifty cents lighter, looking down at a Santa Monica address written in a scrawled but legible hand. I felt a small surge of pride. It wasn’t full success, but it was definite progress. It was too late in the day to head out to Santa Monica but I’d gotten what I’d left the office for. I’d detected and was coming home with the meat in my fist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DEX WAS WAITING for me when I got back to the office.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said when I showed up around five. But he interrupted me before I could answer, “Never mind. Sterling called. While you was out gallivanting.”
“I wasn’t gallivanting, Dex. If you would just hold the phone for a minute, I’d tell you.”
But Dex had been waiting long enough. He wasn’t about to wait for me to finish talking now.
“You know,” he said as though I’d asked, “Steward Sterling. Laird Wyndham’s shyster?”
“Sure.”
“Well, he called. He said Wyndham wants us to go and see him. Today. The sooner the better.”
“Us?”
“Yeah: us. He’s got some idea you’re at every meeting I ever have, I guess. Taking notes so what we’re talking about doesn’t fall out of my poor, simple head. Anyway, I figured if I didn’t ask if you wanted to come along, there’d be hell to pay.”
“You got that right,” I said, smiling. So even though it was late in the day and that day had been a long one, we prepared to head out to Number 11. Dex had already gotten hold of Mustard and picked up a car so getting out to Number 11 was less painful than it had been on our previous visit. Since Dex already knew the drill—a bit of folding incentive when he showed his P.I. ticket—we got to do pretty much what we wanted. This time the elevator was working so instead of trudging up and down hallways and new stairwells still soiled with construction dust, we were delivered speedily almost to our exact destination.
My optimism that things were going our way was dashed when Wyndham was brought into the big visiting room to meet with us. He looked haggard and worn, as though he’d been spread on the road and had a truck drive over him. Several times. Both Dex and I tried not to show how shocked we were by his appearance. But it was hard. And though Sterling had made the call, he didn’t join us. The table seemed bigger without him and Wyndham seemed much reduced.
“Glad you two could come,” Wyndham rose when he saw us. He pumped Dex’s hand and smiled broadly at me and, in both of those small things, you could sense his relief at a visit from the outside. “Dex and the lovely Miss Pangborn,” he said, his voice lacking none of its courtly grace, even if it was raw on the rest of him.
“Sterling said it was kind of urgent,” Dex said, dropping into a chair and getting straight to business.
“It’s just that, I did as you asked and really started thinking—hard, you understand?—about people who might be able to either clear my name or who will lead us to … to whoever actually did this thing.”
“Great, Wyndham. That’s just jake,” Dex enthused. “I take it you dreamed something up?”
“Well, yeah. Now that you mention it. Dreamed up is a good way to put it. See, I got to thinking about what you’d said: about wanting to talk to people about me so you could prove I was innocent. That got me thinking some more—and I’ve got nothing right now but time to think—it got me thinking that if I could get you behind the scenes at the studio, that would maybe do some good.”
“The studio?” Dex said. “You mean a movie studio?”
“Laird is on contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,” I expla
ined. “In Culver City.”
“Right. And I got to thinking it would be a pretty easy matter to get you behind the scenes there.” He spoke to Dex, but then seemed to include me almost as an afterthought. “Or both of you, if you wanted. Actually, figuring out what to do with her is even easier than you.”
“How so?” Dex wanted to know.
“Well, they’re always using extras, for one thing. Fact, Journey of the Long Night, the film I’m supposed be working on right now, is shooting and I know for a fact that they’ll have a need for a lot of young attractive female extras for that movie.”
I felt myself blushing—quick and hot. Young and attractive is what Laird Wyndham had said. And he’d said it about me. My head swam.
“What about me?” Dex asked.
“I figured it might be better for you to pose as someone whose role is behind the scenes,” Wyndham said. “I told you I have a lot of time to think, right?”
We nodded.
“So, Dex, I was figuring you could pose as a financier. Someone with money to spend on the business. People like that get an open door to just about anyplace they want to go.”
“You really have given this some thought,” Dex said.
Wyndham nodded and grinned. The cadaverous look he’d worn when we got there seemed to fall away a bit under this new animation. “Like I said … what else do I have to do?”
“That all sounds good. I mean, it sounds like we could get in there all right. Under the radar, like. What I need to work out is why.”
“Why?”
“Yeah. Like I said, it all sounds perfectly reasonable. That is, it sounds like something we could do. But I’m just not seeing how you figure it will help you.”
“Well, you said you wanted to talk to people. People who knew me, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m well known at the studio. I spend a lot of my time there. You could talk to people about me. Get the straight dope, as they say. And more, too, I’m thinking. One of the things you asked me first time we met was did I know anyone who had it in for me. Now I’ve been sitting here wracking my brain on that one, let me tell you. I can’t think of anyone. That’s the other reason I thought that you, a professional investigator, might be able to get more out of people than someone else could. And maybe you’d get a feel for it if, say, that someone had an axe to grind with me. Maybe even an axe I don’t so much as know about.”
“Actually, that does kind of make sense, Dex,” I said.
“I can see what you’re getting at, Wyndham. It’s just, this isn’t the sort of investigation I generally do. You understand that? I’ve already had to wear a mask. Now I’m going to have to play dress up? Play pretend? It all sounds a bit silly to me.”
“Well, maybe if I take you through it, tell you what I’ve dreamed up, you’ll see it’s not silly at all. See, for Miss Pangborn, she doesn’t really have to pretend anything, other than wanting to make some dough. It’s really just a matter of Steward telling her where to go and who to ask for. They hire extras by the busload at MGM. For you though, Dex, it’ll take a specific invitation. Steward will take care of that as well, of course. He’s done it before.”
“Helped people pose as something in the movie business?” Dex asked.
“No, no: introduced money people to studio people. On the up and up. So, you see, it won’t be much of a reach for him to do it in this case.”
“So, in a way,” Dex reasoned, “I wouldn’t have to really pretend to be something I’m not. I could just be me but rich.”
I couldn’t resist commenting on this.
“And that’s not pretending?”
“So you’ll do it?” Wyndham asked.
“Look, I’ll be honest. This kind of deep cover operation might look pretty in the movies, but in real life? It tends not to get you very far,” Dex said.
“So you won’* do it?”
“Well, I didn’t say that either. I’m just suggesting you not get your hopes too far up. I fully expect that the whole thing will be a big waste of time.”
Wyndham blinked first at me, then at Dex. He looked a little confused. Truth be told, I felt that way myself. But the disappointment had fallen away.
“So you will do it?” Wyndham said.
“Put it this way: you paying?”
Wyndham nodded.
“And,” Dex went on, “you’re prepared for us to turn up nothing at all. What I mean is: you’ll pay whether or not we find anything, right?”
Another nod.
“Well then, what the hell, right? If you’re buying, I’m selling. I guess we’re going to be in the pictures.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DESPITE THE MATINEE idol looks he came by honestly, it was never in the cards that Dex should be a movie star. It’s even possible that the things about his features that women found compelling weren’t really the sort that the camera can pick up, that the things that burn in Dex, burn from within. How could a camera see that anyway?
No, if we were going to play this game, setting Dex up to be someone away from the lens was a good idea. He’s comfortable in all those roles: the watcher, the drinker, the guy who pulls the strings. He’d be less successful pretending to be the guy who dances to the music, the guy with the dangerous looks who does what he’s told.
We worked all of these things out at the office: me and Dex, Steward Sterling and Mustard, who Dex had asked to come along as extra eyes and ears.
We sat around Dex’s battered desk and tossed ideas around until deep into the night. I was tired and, truth be told, did less of the tossing than the others. It wasn’t expected of me, in any case. It was easy for me to lapse into the kind of silence I’d learned when I was a child and was often overlooked by adults deeply involved in their own conversations. So it was on this night.
Wyndham’s connections would, it seem, get us in just about any place we could ever want to go. Just as we’d roughed out in Wyndham’s company back at Number 11, the plan was for me to turn up at the studio the following day like any other extra, coming to the big front gates on Washington Boulevard with the others who were working on Journey of the Long Night. I would be one of a huge crowd and thus the chance for detection was unlikely. It also seemed unlikely I’d ever be in a position to discover anything of note, but that was the chance I’d have to take. To me it seemed worth the chance, in any case: I’d get to see behind the scenes at the most important movie studio in Hollywood. And I’d get paid.
Dex’s part would require more finesse, which was fine by me. Sterling’s office was giving Dex a letter of introduction to the business office. He was going to roll up to the studio in a limo, posing as an investor—from Canada, of all places. So Dex would spend the day talking to bigwigs and getting the ten-dollar tour which would put him in a position to see all sorts of things and talk to all kinds of people. They decided that Mustard would ride along as Dex’s assistant—also from Canada, thus able to get to people and initiate conversations on a different social level than the ones Dex would be playing at. I was only sorry it was unlikely I’d ever be within earshot of the two of them to hear them overpronouncing words and showing off their legal whiskey, but there wasn’t much chance I’d even see them during the day, let alone get the chance to laugh at their antics.
Steward Sterling dropped me off on his way home to Hancock Park, the long Packard he drove reflecting the night.
“They seem quite filled with hilarity,” he said to me at one point on the short ride.
“Mustard and Dex? Yeah. And that’s not all they’re full of,” I said, thinking of the large quantities of bootleg bourbon they had made disappear over the evening.
“I just hope they take it seriously enough,” Steward said, sounding concerned.
“You can bet they will never take it seriously,” I assured him. “But that shouldn’t stop them from getting the job done.”
Steward laughed at this, but I thought he had a nervous sound. Hoping for the best a
nd expecting the worst, I would have said that summed up the lawyer’s mien on this night.
“You and Laird are pretty good friends, huh?” I asked, mostly just making conversation.
“Pretty good, yeah. We’ve known each other a long time.”
“He seems like a nice guy.”
“The best,” Steward said without hesitation.
“That’s how it seems to me, too. Which is why it’s been so odd, sometimes in this investigation, hearing stuff about him that doesn’t line up with how he seems.”
“How so?”
“A couple of people, I won’t mention any names, but a few of them have said, well, they’ve said Laird can have a bit of a temper.”
Steward didn’t answer right away. In fact, for a few moments, it seemed as though the road demanded all his attention, though from what I could see all was quiet and handling the car didn’t seem to be challenging his driving talents.
“That’s true of all of us, I guess,” he said after a while. But to me his voice sounded deliberately casual, as though he was working hard to inject just the right note. “Under the right circumstances, can’t we all be pushed to that?”
“That’s true. You’re right,” I replied. “That’s how it seems to me. This … this was a bit more than that, though. More than everyday aggravation, anyway.”
Another silence. Then, “Perhaps you’d best just tell me.”
“I can’t, really. I would but, as you well know, I’m nothing on this case. Dex’s secretary. Hardly in a position to tell you anything at all.”
“Yet you brought it up.”
We’d reached my house by now, though neither of us acknowledged that. Sterling pulled the car to the curb and we sat there, engine idling. Now Steward reached across me to the glove compartment and pulled out a pack of smokes. He pulled one out and lit it in the mad glow of the car’s cigarette lighter. The light did odd things to his features. It seemed, for a moment, to pull them askew.
Death Was in the Picture Page 17
