Browning PI

by Peter Corris

  Browning P.I.

  By Peter Corris

  Copyright © 2014, Peter Corris

  First published by Angus & Robertson, 1992

  For Stuart Coupe

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  NOTES

  1

  Not many men have had the misfortune to count among their enemies the FBI and Errol Flynn. I did and it caused me a lot of trouble in the early 1940s. The FBI reneged on the deal we'd struck after I helped them expose the Ku Klux Klanners in Hollywood and, like other foreigners, I had to go to Canada to clear myself with the immigration people. I could register there as an Australian, apply for entry to the US where I had a guarantee of employment (I was working on Gentleman Jim for Warners with Raoul Walsh directing and Flynn playing James J. Corbett), and sail along in the Californian sun for another few years.

  'How old are you, Dick?' Flynn said as we were having a drink during a break in the filming.

  'Err, thirty-four, Errol,' I said. Which was putting it back a bit, but I always looked younger than my age when I was in shape. At that time I was because I'd been boxing in the gym for the previous few months, mostly taking punishment from Flynn and others. 'Why?'

  'Nothing. Think I might come up to Canada with you. Be good to hear the King's English spoken again.'

  I don't know where he got that idea. Canadians talked pretty much like Americans to my ear, the ones who didn't talk like Frenchmen, but Flynn never was the brightest. Anyway, we got to Toronto and I filled in the forms and waited outside the offices and did all the other things you have to do to get bureaucrats to earn their pay. The day it was all wrapped up I got drunk with Flynn in a bar on Queen Street West.

  'Canada's in the war, y'know,' Flynn said. 'Like Australia. Do you miss it, Dick?'

  'What?' I said.

  Flynn tossed back his drink and signalled for another. He drank as if every drop might be his last. 'Australia,' he said, when he had a full one in front of him. 'The wide brown land. How's it go again? "I love the sunburnt country, the land of endless plains1. . ." '

  'Sunburnt is right,' I said. 'Did you ever spend any time in the bush? Bloody godforsaken . . . No fear, I don't miss it. California'll do me.'

  'Still,' Flynn mused, 'the empire's under threat. We should be doing our bit.'

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I'd done my bit in the piece of lunacy they called the Great War, but that would've given away my age. I drank and said nothing. We went on drinking and Flynn kept nagging away about Australia and patriotism and the British race. I tried to tell him I was mostly Irish, like himself, but somehow he got under my skin. That was one of his talents, egging people on into doing things they normally wouldn't have dreamed of doing. Of course the alcohol helped. The upshot was that we both staggered into a recruiting depot and presented ourselves as members of the jolly old British Empire, ready to die for King and country.

  Flynn was about thirty at this time and the booze hadn't yet turned him into a rotting hulk. The medical wouldn't be a problem for him. Nor, as it turned out, for me. Although I was over forty and had lived a hard life I had the constitution of a man fifteen years younger. My papers were in order; I passed the medical with flying colours (the doctors must have been instructed to ignore alcohol levels) and was inducted into the Canadian army.

  It's not quite as mad as it sounds. The war hadn't got fully under way, Canada wasn't sending men overseas2, and I was pretty sure I'd be able to complete the picture before I had to get into khaki. Besides, I was confused. I suppose I had visions of strutting about—Captains Flynn and Browning, an entertainment unit maybe, giving speeches, raising money, screwing women in and out of uniform. Flynn would be pulling every string in sight, I was sure of that.

  I came down with a thump when I saw Flynn leaning against a wall in the recruitment office, hands in pockets, smoking and talking to a Canadian major. A sergeant marched up behind me, crashed his boots down and ordered me to stand to attention. I did it and all my old fear and hatred of the army came back to me in a rush. Very sobering.

  'Errol, old boy,' I stammered, 'well, we've done it, eh?'

  Then I realised that Flynn wasn't nearly as drunk as he'd made out. He looked at me with those hard, grey eyes. 'You've done it, Dick. Afraid I struck a snag.'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'Quite forgot that I became an American citizen a while back. Slipped my mind. It's the US army for me, worse luck. God knows when we'll get into the stoush.'

  The sergeant marched me away and they had to practically lift me into the truck that took us to boot camp. Errol Flynn. Jesus, how I hated that man. I spent almost two years in the Canadian army, mostly in the tank corps. I still can't look at a tank without feeling sick—horrible machines, tanks, either freezing cold or sizzling hot. I was an acting sergeant for a time which was bearable, but after I got busted for drunkenness when on duty it was endless parades and days of peeling potatoes. Eventually I convinced a halfway human doctor that I was unfit for service and I was invalided out. No pension though.

  I went back to Hollywood and it was working on Murder, My Sweet with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor that gave me the idea of setting up as a private detective. Mind you, I'd met a few men who practised the trade around LA. They were nothing like the guys on the screen. They were ex-cops, ex- and not so ex-drunks, seedy types to a man. I don't mean the big agency boys—the Pinkertons and such. They were professionals and pretty dull. I mean the shamuses.

  I'd seen a lot of private eye movies, enough, anyway, to know that they were malarkey. You only had to take a look at Hammett and Chandler themselves to know that they weren't tough guys and wouldn't know what tough was. Bogart and Alan Ladd were tough in their way but neither of them was over five-foot-six. It was all make-believe. My idea was this: try to bring the make-believe and the reality closer together. I had in mind the blondes and the drinks and the rich clients, not the gunplay. How hard could it be? I thought. Follow wandering husbands and wives, snap a few pictures, drape the six-foot-two-inch frame in a well-cut suit and cultivate a hard look.

  I had my discharge papers from the Canadian army which were like a personal reference from the King of England just then. I looked like a soldier, always had, and I carried enough scars to make the role convincing. I could walk with a half-genuine limp when I remembered. Character references from Jack Warner himself, N. Robert Silkstein my agent, who was a great war bonds salesman, my army papers and the payment of my liability fee were enough to get me a ticket to operate as a private enquiry agent in the state of California. To get a gun licence I had to convince the cops I could shoot. I convinced them.

  I figured that Los Angeles, with half the able-bodied men away and the other half scared of going, with most of the women working and everyone with more money than they ever had before in their lives, would be a honey pot. I should have stayed at Warners as a bit player or got on the first boat out of San Pedro for Argentina. . .

  I've never read any of Raymond Chandler's novels, but people who have tell me they're pretty good. Plenty of jokes, they say, good plots, descriptions of LA the way it was in the forties and lots of good-l
ooking women. That sounds all right and maybe I'll get around to reading some of them one of these days. God knows there aren't many of those things around in the movies any more, and still less on TV. So maybe I'll break the habit of a lifetime and settle down some night with a book instead of a bottle.

  Chandler himself liked a joke as I recall, and could even take one against himself, which is rare. It had to be the right kind of crack though, preferably with Latin in it. Jokes about how short he was or the age of his wife or any kind of story with a homosexual in it didn't go down well with him at all. I remember one time when Pete McVey said to him, 'Ray, what do you get when you cross a faggot with an ostrich?'

  You think that kind of joke is new? You're wrong. They were telling them in Hollywood in 1944. I can't remember what Chandler said. Maybe he didn't say anything. He probably just puffed on his pipe and looked wise. He was good at that. I can't remember the punchline either, so it can't have been very good. Maybe it'll come to me as I get on with the story. We had Raymond Chandler as a client for a while. When I say 'we' I mean me and Pete who ran this detective agency in LA for a short time. We were partners . . . I'd better start at the beginning.

  I'd opened a small-time detective agency in May 1944, working out of my apartment in the Wilcox Hotel on the corner of Wilcox Avenue and Selma, a block from Hollywood Boulevard. I had one room with a Murphy bed and a small desk. With the bed folded up there was just enough room for me to position the desk so that I could sit on one side with the client on the other. I also had a kitchenette so I didn't have to make coffee on the desk or keep the bottles inside the bed. I was in the book and ran a cheap ad in a couple of papers from time to time, but the set-up was from hunger which anyone could see. Consequently, I didn't get many clients.

  But I hadn't given up on the movie business either. I got a small part once in a while. I was in a barroom scene in The Lost Weekend and I had a line in Dillinger, before I got hit with a hail of machine-gun bullets. It was hard to combine the two jobs and I missed a few clients on account of being in a movie and lost out on some movie work because I was driving around looking for a lost wife or a writer of rubber cheques. When I say that the rent at the Wilcox was only ninety bucks a month and I sometimes had trouble making it, you'll get some idea of the state of business.

  To tell the truth, I was a lousy detective. I was bad in a number of ways but you could sum it up by saying I gave up too easily. Flaw in my character, that. I can still hear the sports master at Dudleigh bellowing, 'Go in, Browning. You have to want the ball!' Well, I didn't want it, not if it meant getting my fingers broken and my brains beaten out. Same thing with detecting. I'd drive around those hot LA streets, tracking people down from one deadbeat address to another. Sometimes I got lucky and found the guy or the woman and they were happy to be found. I'd get paid and feel good. But more often the trail would go cold or, worse, get closer and closer to East LA where the blacks and Mexicans lived and a white detective in a suit and driving a 1940 Olds was about as welcome as a blowfly on a pavlova3.

  I was sitting with my feet on the desk and a Camel in my mouth reading about Lupe Velez in the Examiner when Pete McVey knocked and came straight in. Did I say there was room for me and a client in the room? That was only true if the client was on the small side. Pete wasn't. He must've stood two or three inches taller than me and weighed another fifty pounds. That made a lot of beef in one small room. I took my feet off the desk. My first thought was that he'd come to take money off me or do me harm. Much the same thing. He wore a crumpled brown suit and a hat with a wide brim. When he took the hat off I could see black spiky hair and a face that looked as if his mother and father were very ill-matched. He had a soft, baby-faced look about him until you saw that his eyes were iron grey and as hard as rivets.

  He dropped the hat on the desk, giving me so much less room for my feet. He sat down, which he managed by tucking his knees up under his chin. 'Too bad about Lupe,' he said.

  Conversation was better than assault and battery. I felt I had to keep my end up. 'Did you know her?'

  'Not as well as some guys. You?'

  I grinned. 'Better than some guys, not as well as others.'

  That drew a smile. The smile was softer than the eyes, just. He stuck his hand out and his arm easily stretched across the desk. He had about a half yard of forearm; you'd need a telephone book to build yourself up to Indian wrestle with him. His grip was nothing Johnny Weismuller wouldn't have been able to handle. 'Pete McVey,' he said. 'In the same racket as you but doing a little better.'

  'That wouldn't be hard,' I said. It was an Australian sort of remark, reflecting more on me than him, but Americans never seem to know how to take that and he scowled as he took a cigarette from my pack on the desk.

  I slid my lighter across to him as a peace offering and he lit up and looked at me through the smoke. 'I'm doing a little job for Robert Silkstein. Believe you know him?'

  I was hurt. He was my agent. What was he doing hiring some other private detective? 'I know him,' I said.

  McVey fanned smoke away politely. 'Yeah. Well, Silkstein's got this writer client, Hart Sallust. Hell of a name.'

  'He's a hell of a writer,' I said, 'and a hell of a drinker.'

  McVey stubbed out his butt in the old Senior Service cigarette tin I used for an ashtray. 'That's where you come in. Sallust is missing and he's coming up very close to the deadline to deliver a script.'

  I stubbed out my cigarette too; the only difference was I lit another one straight off. 'He'll make it. He always does. He drinks like his throat might be going to close up on him any minute, but he gets the writing done. Christ knows how. I've spent a fair bit of time with him and I've never actually seen him do any typing, but the scripts hit the desks.'

  'I like the "actually",' McVey said. 'You British?'

  'Australian. They talk English there some of the time. What's got Bobby so riled up?'

  'It appears he hasn't seen diddly squat of this script. Usually Sallust shows him how it's coming along. This time, nothing.'

  I shrugged. 'Sallust is one of the best. The studio'll wait.'

  'Uh-uh, it's a thing for Garfield, and he's going into the army in a couple of months.'

  'He's Silkstein's client too,' I said. 'Bobby's looking at a major loss here.'

  'That's right. Now Silkstein allows you know Sallust, know where he boozes, the kinds of broads he favours, where he's likely to flop.'

  'Mmm.'

  McVey looked around the room, taking in the thin carpet, the foldup bed and the closet with the silver flaking off the mirror on its door. I could tell he wasn't impressed by the tin ashtray either. 'If I had something to drink on me, would you have something for us to drink out of?'

  It was getting on for noon and the talk about drinking had made me thirsty. Hart Sallust's name had added to the effect. When you thought of Sallust you just naturally thought of beer and whiskey and wine and about any damn thing with alcohol in it. I moved pretty fast out to the kitchenette and came back with two fairly clean glasses. McVey took a flat pint out of the pocket of his suit jacket, ripped off the seal and poured.

  He said, 'Here's mud in your eye,' and sipped.

  I said, 'Cheers,' and took a solid drink. It was rye, not good rye, but good enough. I took another solid drink which left my glass empty, the way they will get.

  McVey passed the bottle across the desk. I poured another shot. 'Your whiskey's okay,' I said. 'But maybe I should see some identification and your ticket before I do any more talking.'

  He nodded with what looked like approval and fished out his wallet. He showed me his licence, carrying a serial number a good deal lower than mine, indicating that he'd been in the business longer. I handed it back and he put it away. You'd feel that wallet on your hip; there was a comfortable-looking amount of money in it. I felt encouraged and wondered if I should try another sentence using actually.

  McVey took another small sip of his drink. 'Silkstein said you weren't going
to set the world on fire as a detective but that you were reasonably honest.'

  'Big of him,' I said, which was funny if you knew Bobby. He was barely five-foot-four in his lifts. McVey got the joke and smiled. We were getting along fine. Well enough to have another drink maybe.

  'He also said that he'd be damned if he was going to put you on expenses to go looking for Sallust. He said it'd be like . . . I can't remember his expression, but he meant something like putting a hog in a cornfield.'

  I was offended of course, but I was still thinking of that money and couldn't afford to show it. 'I gather you're a country boy, McVey.'

  'Idaho.'

  'You're a long way from home, like me.'

  'Glad of it, too. You ever been to Idaho?'

  'I don't think so. I've travelled a lot, but I don't think so.'

  'No reason to remember it. Nothing happens there worth noticing. I prefer it here, even if half the people you meet are slime.'

  That wasn't quite so hopeful a note, but I had the drink anyway. 'So how can I help you, as one professional to another?'

  'We can team up to find Sallust. You know the places to look. I'll keep you off the sauce and we'll split the fee. What do you say?'

  2

  My yellow Olds was parked on Wilcox and I went towards it automatically. McVey shook his head and steered me in the direction of a grey Packard parked near the post office.

  'Why don't you have a two-tone convertible with a whip aerial and a coon tail?' he said.

  I explained that I'd bought the car a few years back with some movie earnings and that it was appropriate at the time.

  He grunted. 'A man in this line of work needs a quiet-looking car. Unobtrusive. Driving that you couldn't follow a blind man in a wheelchair.'

  I could have said that around Beverly Hills and some other places, where they go in for personalised paint jobs on their cars, his Packard would have looked out of place. I could have said that. But for one thing I didn't do much work in those places and for another I like to be easy to get on with. Especially when a man's bought me three pretty good drinks and has some money in his pocket that's almost mine. I didn't say anything, just settled into the passenger seat and let McVey squeeze himself in behind the wheel. He pressed the starter and the engine caught as if it wanted to make the car airborne.