Death Was in the Picture (16 page)

“Of course he did. I’m sorry. It would have been a very hurtful thing,” I said.

“No, no,” she said. “You don’t understand.” She moved closer still. Spoke more quietly. “He lost his temper. The day we were breaking up. His wife was coming. Or his lawyer. I can’t remember which: they’re almost indistinguishable anyway. We were in his apartment at the Knickerbocker. I’d spent the night.” She looked as though she might blush if I showed the smallest sign of disapproval. I held all expressions and she went on. “We’d had a wonderful evening, and a beautiful morning—room service in bed—and then the phone rang. It was either the lawyer or the wife and, as soon as Laird was off the phone, that was the end of it: I needed to get out
now
because the real people were coming.”

“He used those words? Real people?”

“No, actually, he didn’t,” Rosalyn admitted, her chin low. “But that was how it felt. Anyway, I told him he couldn’t just give me the bum’s rush like that. I was somebody. He couldn’t just treat me like a hoor. And you know … you know what he said?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘If you act like a hoor, you’d better plan on getting treated like one,’ and he grabs my stuff and throws it into the hallway and he picks me up and carries me and throws
me
out into the hallway after my stuff. And I… well, I was
mad,
I tell you. I stood in that hallway and—nekkid as the day I was born—I stood there and pounded on that door. ‘Let me in!’ I sez. ‘Let me in or I’ll be standing right here when your wife shows up.’ And what do you figure he does?”

“Calls the concierge?” I guessed. “Has you thrown out?”

She laughed. A mirthless sound. “Well, yeah: that’s what you’d figure. That’s what a normal person would have done. I mean, I was just mad, right? I didn’t actually want any trouble. But my heart, you understand. It was
breaking.
So I’m pounding. And I’m hollering. And he comes to the door and opens it and, too late, I see he’s got the ice bucket in his hands. And he throws it at me, half melted ice, half frozen water. And he says, ‘You going to act like a bitch in heat? I’ll treat you like one,’ and he pulls me back into the room and he pops me.”

“Pops you?”

“Yeah, you know,” she pantomimed a boxer. Her meaning was all too clear.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It wasn’t hard, you know. It wasn’t so’s I fell down or anything. But still…”

“Still…”

“Yeah, that’s just how it was. And then he made a phone call and someone came and got me—and my stuff—and drove me home in a limo. And I never saw him again.” This last was
said with such sadness, that I looked at her more closely. The story made me realize that she was still in love with him. And, it was possible that, despite all his special detecting skills, Dex didn’t know quite what he was dealing with. Yet.

I could see Rosalyn regretted telling me her story as soon as it was out in the air. Without even bothering to say good-bye, she nodded to me archly, collected herself and stalked toward the nearest exit. I watched her go until a voice—low and masculine—reverberated in my ear, so close it made me jump. “You ain’t too good at makin’ friends, are you kiddo?”

“Dex! Do you hafta sneak up on me?”

He laughed. “Gotta keep my stealthy moves in tip-top condition.” Dex just stood there and stared at me.

“What’s with givin’ me the up and down, gumshoe?”

“You know, Miss Pangborn, all dolled up like that you make me look almost respectable.”

“Jeepers, Mr. Theroux,” I said, momentarily flummoxed by his words, “take it easy heaving around the compliments. You wouldn’t want to pull a muscle you never use.”

“You’re right,” Dex said, “let’s get out of here before I sprain something.”

HOW CAN ANYONE not love Philippe’s? I’ve heard tell of a few people who didn’t, and I just don’t understand it. Or them. I mean, really, what’s not to love? The wonderful warm fatty smells. The jostle for a place to sit. And then the food itself. Abundant, delicious and cheap. I’ve never varied my order at Philippe’s, not since I was a little girl. Marjorie and I would go when we were downtown. In the middle of our day, when we were tired from shopping and nearly transparent with hunger, we would tramp into Philippe’s. I’d get one of their famous French-dipped sandwiches, with hand-cut coleslaw on the side. You can say what you like, but nothing settles a hunger like Philippe’s French dip.

I’ve always liked the story that goes with the sandwich, though I suspect it may be one of those apocryphal things. The original Philippe—a Frenchman, hence the fancy name—was making a sandwich one day in 1918. I’m not sure why, but the year is always given with this story. Does the inclusion of the year make it sound more true?

In any case, this Philippe was making a perfectly normal sandwich in his respectable but normal Los Angeles eatery when—lo!—he dropped a French roll into a roasting pan that happened to be sitting around with roast drippings inside. Being, I guess, a thrifty sort of Frenchman, rather than the spendy kind who are rather more famous, Philippe offered it to his customer, and the customer, a policeman, took it anyway. Likely at a discount if I know L.A. cops.

The next day, the cop came back, with a couple of his cop buddies in tow, and asked if they could get some more of those
French-dipped sandwiches and a new taste sensation was born. Either that or it was something else entirely. I like this story, though, and I certainly love the dipped sandwiches. Philippe sold the place in the late twenties and has gone off to be thrifty someplace else, but the name and the sandwiches remain, and I’m glad.

On this evening, Dex and I got lucky and ended up with one of the trestle tables all to ourselves. This was practically unheard of at Philippe’s, where sharing the table with strangers is the norm. But it was late—nearly closing time—and the crowd had thinned somewhat. Philippe’s is an eatery, pure and simple. Not at all the sort of place you go for a festive evening out on the town. In case we were in doubt about that, a few of the people still in the restaurant looked me and Dex over pretty carefully when we came in. One man seemed especially taken with the sight of a woman in a beaded dress being escorted by a gentleman in an evening suit. “What’s a matter?” Dex said to the gawker. “Ya never saw a penguin on a date before?”

When the time came to order, I, of course, asked for a beef French-dipped sandwich with a slice of American cheese and a side order of macaroni salad. It just seemed too late at night for cabbage. Dex’s sandwich was either pork or lamb—I didn’t ask which—with a side order of coleslaw
and
a pickled egg. He was, I guess, undaunted by the thought of late night cabbage.

Once we’d secured our food, Dex didn’t waste any time.

“You learn anything useful?” he asked around his sandwich. I quelled the feeling of annoyance that rose when he dipped a mouthful of coleslaw into the little pot of au jus. Beef-dipped
cabbage?
But I let it go.

I nodded. And then I shrugged. And then I nodded again.

“I
think
so,” I said. “But it’s a little hard to tell.”

“How so?”

I told him what Baron had said about his relationship with
Wyndham: how the older actor had been the bigger star until Wyndham supplanted him as Hollywood’s most significant leading man.

“So you think Baron Sutherland set this whole thing up?” Dex asked, clearly incredulous. “You think he made it look as though Wyndham killed someone because he was—what?— jealous of his old rival’s success?”

“When you put it that way, it
does
sound pretty lame. On the other hand… I don’t know, it seemed like it might be a theory worth exploring, is all. A jealous older actor, displaced by a young hotshot. It
could
spark things.”

“Say, I saw Baron leaving with that blonde.”

“Beatrice,” I supplied. Somewhat sourly, I’ll admit.

“She was gorgeous, kiddo. Legs on her all the way to
here,”
he made a chopping motion just under his chin.

“Stop it,” I didn’t raise my voice.

“I’m only saying.”

“I
know
what you’re saying. But it’s not like that, Dex. I’m not suggesting Baron did it because—what?—because he left the party with his girlfriend. I’m not even saying he did it at all. Just, I don’t know. When he was telling me about Wyndham—about what they’d been to each other—I thought I could hear something in his voice.”

“This was before whazzername, Beatrice, showed up?”

“It had
nothing
to do with any of that, Dex. Just stop it. It’s not even a feeling, really. Not even a hunch. Just a thought.”

“Well Kitty, all due respect? I don’t think it’s a thought that holds water. If jealousy were the motive—and I mean professional jealousy here, not just the kind with a broad—why, we’d be having to look at every actor in Hollywood. It seems to me that they’re all real willing to step on each other’s heads just to get to the top.”

“Even so,” I said.

“Even so,” Dex said back to me with a smirk.

“Is that what that redhead with the serpenty legs was doing with you in the garden? Trying to get ahead?”

“Ha! If so, she was barking up the wrong tree. But that Mildred,” he said with a low whistle. “She’s something, ain’t she?”

“Listen, Dex: I know sometimes it
seems
like I am one of the guys. But I am not one of the guys.” I let the thought go unfinished.

Dex continued as though I hadn’t interrupted. “Yeah, she’s something all right. I’ll be seeing her again.”

“Is it the quality of the sound in here?” I said. “Can you hear me? At all?”

“And I had a drink with this guy, Samuel Marcus. Do you know the name?”

I shook my head.

“He was pretty interesting. He was like us—kind of in disguise? But he’s a reporter with the
Los Angeles Courier.”

“No kiddin’? Was he there because of Wyndham?”

“Naw. Near as I can figure, he just managed to wangle an invitation, like we did more or less. And he figured maybe there’d be a story to do: and then he found the free booze. And then I found him. Anyway, we got to talkin’. And I asked him about my theory. You know.”

I shook my head. “What theory?”

Dex polished off his pickled egg before he answered, carefully wiping his fingers on the cloth napkin while he spoke. “You remember, when the papers all seemed to get so nasty, so fast? I wondered if someone might have it out for Wyndham.”

I remembered. I also recalled that I’d felt Dex had sounded vaguely paranoid when he’d broached it, but I didn’t bring that up. “What did he think?”

“Well, like I said, he wasn’t working on a story about Wyndham, so he couldn’t say, per se—that was the way he put it. But he said he’d look into it even though he figured there was
nothing to it. He’s gonna call and let me know if he finds anything.”

“That sounds promising. I guess,” I said.

“Well, it’s something and, other than that, I don’t figure I had as much luck as you.”

“Oh.”

“I did talk to this one guy. But that didn’t go so well.”

I sighed over the last of my beef dip. It had been that good. “How so?”

“Well, after Sam left the bar, I got to talking to this guy was in there said he was a friend of Wyndham’s.”

“That sounds like a good lead,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well, he said they’d worked on the clubhouse together.”

“Baron told me the same thing. I gather a bunch of those movie star types built the place with their own hands.”

“Yeah. Except I guess this one day it didn’t go so good. This guy said Wyndham near threw him off the roof. Said he managed to get down to the garden, but Wyndham followed him and laid into him pretty good: broke a couple of the guy’s ribs and blackened an eye.” Dex told me all of this without expression. I couldn’t tell if he believed the story or not.

“I heard something like that too,” I said. I told him about Rosalyn Steele and how Wyndham had encouraged her to go home. I figured there were elements in the story Dex had told me that Rosalyn would have recognized. “What was the fight about? Did the guy say?”

Dex shook his head. “Not really. That was the funny part. Or a bit of it, anyway. The guy sort of clammed up when I asked him. But I gather it was about a girl.”

“Geez. OK,” I said. “Well, that’s not good. It seems our gentle movie star has a bit of a temper.”

“Still,” Dex said loyally, “that doesn’t prove
anything.”

“No, no, of course. You’re right. It doesn’t prove a damn thing. But it does kind of make you think.”

I could see he bought my point.

I told Dex about my talk with Joe, the guy I’d met on the second floor of the Masquers’ clubhouse. Dex listened closely while I spoke, then was quiet for a minute, considering all I’d said.

“All interesting enough,” he said finally, “but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with any of this. Do you?”

“I don’t know, Dex. I just don’t know at all anymore. Sometimes I hear something—like the thing Baron was saying?— and I feel a glimmer of something. Then that feeling passes, too. So, is it connected? I don’t know. Everything’s connected I guess.”

Dex looked at me. Grinned. “Now who’s gettin’ philosophical?” he asked. But I knew the question was rhetorical and I didn’t reply.

“So what have we got?” Dex asked after a while.

“Got?”

“You know: we did all of this and we did all of that. Where are we now?”

“Well, we’re getting nowhere fast,” I said. There was a smile in my voice, but I knew I was only half kidding.

“You figure? I don’t know that’s so.” He held up one elegant index finger. “We got a good friend for a long time, says Wynd-ham’s got a streak in him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A darkness.”

“That too. Then we’ve got two old friends say he’s got a violent nature.”

“Rosalyn and your roof guy.”

“Right. We got an overworked ‘zecutive says the world is ending.”

“That’s not quite what he said.”

“And we got a newspaperman don’t know nothing, but will get back to us when he does.”

I grinned despite myself. “OK.”