The Glitter Dome (32 page)

“I really hadn't thought it would help us with the case, but …”

“Screw the case. Let's go and do whatever they do there!”

“Might not hurt to meet some of Nigel St. Claire's associates,” Martin Welborn said.

“Thank God,” Al Mackey sighed. “I thought your mind had snapped.”

“My mind hasn't snapped,” Martin Welborn smiled.

There were nine female parking attendants in black satin jackets and jogging shoes careening around the narrow streets of Holmby Hills when Al Mackey and Martin Welborn arrived at nine
P.M.
(fashionably late, Al Mackey insisted). It looked like the parking lot of an OPEC conference in Caracas. There were nothing but Rolls-Royces, Clenets, Mercedes, several little Volantes at one hundred thou per pop, and yes, three Bentleys (none black), lining the street on both sides, clear to the horizon. Martin Welborn was already thinking about searching the side streets for a
black
Bentley when a perky valette took one look at the detective car and said, “You guys part a the security, pull in the service entrance.”

Although Al Mackey was miffed at not being treated like a guest, Martin Welborn grinned and said it was a good idea to keep their car available. This was show biz, after all. Maybe somebody would jump up and confess like in all the movie murder mysteries. The valettes kept several crates of red roses handy to give to each departing female guest, and the detectives parked behind the rose mountain.

There was half an acre under tent, in addition to the entire house that was available to roaming guests. The detectives guessed there were several security officers there, probably off-duty policemen. At the moment, a twelve-piece mariachi band blared away while two hundred guests mingled.

Herman III wasn't hard to find. He stood near the front of the fifty-foot single row of tables heaped with crystal and candle, canapé and caviar. With the trained eyes of investigators the cops spotted the nearest bar in a hurry. A Mexican barman in a white jacket and bow tie was pouring Dom Perignon as though it was plain old Ripple, sloshing it all over the bar as he tried to keep up with the crush of drinkers pressing in on him. There was another bar at the far end of the dance floor and yet another at the back of the tent, and they all seemed to be just as busy, so the detectives lined up at the first one to get their whiskey and vodka. There were none of the bare-chested waiters in bowlers, white gloves and suspenders at
this
party. This was
Old
Hollywood.

Then they paid their respects to the host, who had forsaken his on-the-job Brooks Brothers three-piece and was resplendent in cream-on-cream with a thin antique-fabric nutmeg necktie for contrast. He looked like an eggnog.

Herman III was talking to a Famous Singing Star who had just arrived in a green sweat suit to match her Rolls-Royce. On the sweat shirt was crudely stenciled front and back the name of the movie which had just wrapped that very day. Everyone said the sweat suit was a darling idea and the
paparazzi
on the street took more pictures of her than of anyone else.

At first, Herman St. Claire III stared at Al Mackey blankly when he held out his hand. “Mackey and Welborn, L.A.P.D.? Remember?”

“Oh sure!” he cried. “Sure. Al and …”

“Marty.”

“Of course! So glad you could come! I'd like you to meet …”

But the Famous Singer had boogied as soon as she heard who they were. They weren't like the cops at home in Queens. These L.A. cops would bust their mother if she snorted one spoon. And the Famous Singer had a Bull Durham tobacco bag around her neck under her sweat shirt clearly stenciled: “Nose Candy!” The bag was full of cocaine that cost $150 a gram and was guaranteed to be quality stuff that wouldn't embarrass her at a nice party. Everyone who saw it said it was a darling idea too. No way was she going to let some cop confiscate it.

“Listen, I'll introduce you around if there's anyone you wanna meet. Meanwhile you boys help yourself and mingle.” Then, as an afterthought, Herman III said, “Oh, by the way, you getting anywhere on my uncle's case?”

“Not much happening yet,” Al Mackey said.

“No? Too bad. Listen, you fellas mingle.”

And so they mingled, drifting from one group to another, mostly admiring the splendid women who had blithely regressed three hundred years. There were miles of ruffles. Tiers of them. Ruffles on hip-belted silk crepe. Twice-ruffled silk jackets over twice-ruffled silk blouses. There were even ruffles on the tailored coatdresses.

And the exotica: jodhpurs, knickers, and gold gold
gold
. Twenty-four-karat dresses glittered like mother lode. Headdresses reflected most of the subcontinent of Asia and the entire continent of Africa, twenty-four karats from the top of the head to the tip of the toe. There were enchanting girls in gold brocade culottes and gold-encrusted jerseys. All in all, it made Al Mackey think of munchkins and monkeys and rainbows. Fabulous!

He saw a bizarre art deco costume of graphic zigzag, red line on white, done in folds and wraps and ending up with a puffy mini over leggings. It was topped off by a hat-helmet with simulated strands of gold brocade hair. And then he recognized the girl: Tiffany Charles!

Martin Welborn began nibbling at one of the ordinary items on the mile-long table, baby shrimp in guacamole sauce, when he turned to see Al Mackey trotting across the dance floor, his second tumbler of whiskey giving him the courage to burrow right through a crowd and say, “You're Tiffany, Mister St. Claire's secretary. It's
me
, Al Mackey. Sergeant Al Mackey? Remember?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I really don't know anything more tonight than I did the other …”

“This is a
social
occasion!” Al Mackey cried. “I
love
your outfit. I've never seen gold hair. Is it real?”

“Uh huh,” she said, seeking rescue. Already her friends were drifting away.

“Fourteen karat?”

“Twenty-four,” she muttered.

“Wow! They pay secretaries pretty well where you work.”

Somebody save her from the scrawny cop! A dress like this he thinks you earn taking dictation? Help!

“Listen, I gotta go talk to some of Mister St. Claire's stars,” she said. “You just
mingle
, huh? Have a good time.”

“I'm
trying
to mingle,” he cried, as she slipped away across the dance floor, which was starting to empty of the clutches of drinkers now that the nondanceable mariachis were leaving and an orchestra was setting up.

While Al Mackey was wandering in the general direction of the bar, Martin Welborn was drifting from group to group, categorizing the people from investigative habit. The screenwriters interested him because they talked so much about grand theft. In fact, it was just about
all
they talked about.

“Don't deal with that shmuck,” a fat writer said. “The picture did twenty-five million in rentals. I mean U.S. and Canada, baby. I had ten points after break even. Ten! You tell me how I never saw a dime. You tell me.”

“Charlie, it wasn't
him
,” a tall writer advised. “He's only the executive producer. It's that studio.”

“I don't go with a major if I can help it,” a young writer warned.

“That's dumb,” the fat writer said. “I always go with a major. They know how to fuck you better but they do it in style. You want to be raped by a nice clean cock lubed with K-Y jelly, or you wanna get gang-banged by the L.A. Rams with sandpaper rubbers?”

“Can I think about that awhile?” a slender writer cried.

“Be glad you write for television. There's no prestige in features anymore. It's
all
shit.”

“Shit?”

“Shit?”

“Shit.”

“You think they can't steal in television? We made our shows at half a million per. Seven years on the air and they show a deficit of ten million? That's a lot of red ink.
Tell
the S.E.C. that network bookkeepers don't steal.”

And then an ancient screenwriter with a glass of champagne in each hand jumped up and said, “Maybe you shmucks think you'd have liked working for Cohn, or Goldwyn, or Louis B. Mayer, God forbid?”

“Don't
tell
me the fucking idea!” a woman suddenly screamed to another writer. “I'll end up in a lawsuit! Somebody says a row-boat sank in the marina, you write
Poseidon Adventure
, they
sue
you for stealing an idea! The Enemy is all around!” She was a severe woman with a voice like Tallulah Bankhead. She looked around fearfully. Looking for The
Enemy
. Shit.

Martin Welborn couldn't wait to tell Al Mackey: They talk more about grand larceny than a convention of burglary detectives.

Meanwhile, Al Mackey had found himself a cluster of directors sitting around the fireplace inside the house. Directors didn't seem to drink much. A little champagne or white wine. Although at least six of them were cruising at five thousand feet on something else, he was sure of that. They had all graduated from the UCLA film school, or were from New York, or were foreigners. For sure, the foreigners talked the most, particularly a Famous French Director who looked like Soupy Sales. He held the other directors spellbound, telling them what Los Angeles was all about.

“It's all about space.” His command of English was excellent but his words were spidery, and they crept from heavy lips. “The shape is difficult.”

“There is
no
shape!” a bearded young director dissented, and the others murmured.

“Ah,” the Frenchman corrected, “space and light can create an
illusion
of shape. I love
that
phenomenon about Los Angeles. It's a …”

“… a movie set,” another young director said. He too had a beard.

“There is value to that,” the Frenchman warned. “A feeling of not
being
in time or space. It can be creative. The loneliness of a city of space and light. And the smells! I love the smells of the lost lonely children on the vast, lonely, heartbreaking streets of Beverly Hills.”

“It's the light! It's the light!” a voice interrupted, and a woman hopped into their midst, and up on the hearth. She was tiny and needed the height. She had the huge mouth and sapphire eyes of a flesh-eating bird. Even Al Mackey recognized her. She was a Famous Novelist. The directors might not respect screenwriters, but a Famous Novelist even got the attention of the French Director.

“It's the light!” the novelist cried. “It's not like New York. The light here is fuchsia and filtered through the pastel gauze of anonymity. There's nothing like it anywhere. The French Impressionists would have perished in delight!” She held her hand up as though to shield herself, but the only light came from an off-lit Picasso drawing over the fireplace.

Al Mackey had read one of her books. She wrote of angst and despair. But he didn't know the light bothered her so much. He was too shy to suggest that maybe she should wear sunglasses all the time?

“Absolutely,” the French director said. “There is the smell of the anonymous machine. And colors? My God, in this city I could
eat
colors!”

“No, it's the light! It's the light!” the tiny novelist cried, and the Frenchman did not correct her.

Al Mackey finished up his sixth double whiskey and vowed to check out the light tomorrow.

“And
why
did
she
withdraw from your film? And will you finish it?” Yet a third bearded young director, with a Bronx accent, suddenly changed the subject. They all apparently knew who
she
was.

“Artistic differences,” the French director said, smiling. They all nodded knowingly.

“I think she has a certain metaphysical quality,” another director said. He sounded a little different to Al Mackey. Brooklyn?

“Of
course
she has a metaphysical quality,” the testy Frenchman said. “This role calls for an artist with an
earth
quality!”

“There are times in our medium when the color of earth transcends metaphysics,” a fifth director announced, and Al Mackey was surprised. No beard? What
is
this shit?

“It's
not
the earth tones,” the novelist screamed. “It's the light! It's the
light!
”

Al Mackey wasn't the only one to spot someone familiar. Martin Welborn noticed a woman in a cluster of perhaps a dozen moguls around the bar at the far end of the tented garden. Occasionally someone with a more famous face would approach the moguls but would quickly disappear after only desultory conversation. It was a matter of paying respects, Martin Welborn decided. A few of these men were no doubt tremendously powerful in The Business, but the older ones, the moguls of yore, were the ones he recognized. Producers and directors with famous names and faces did
not
mingle with the actors and writers when they got involved in serious conversation.

At first the ash blonde who was chatting with a silver-maned mogul struck Martin Welborn's eye because of her dress. It was a very simple India cotton gauze with a mauve and blue pleated front skirt and long sleeves. It looked as though it cost less than one hundred dollars and wasn't really suitable for evening wear. But she didn't seem the least bit self-conscious and unflinchingly stood eye to eye with her mogul, until he seemed to dismiss her when a legendary producer came in and kissed him on the cheek. The woman in the India cotton waited a discreet moment after being ignored, and drifted toward the bar, where she got a champagne refill.

He wondered if she had capped teeth. He wouldn't have thought such things if it hadn't been called to his attention by Al Mackey, who was frantically jumping from group to group noting that there were enough face-lifts, dental caps, transplants, and tummy tucks in this place to convince him that the plastic surgeons and dermatologists and dentists constituted the power behind the throne.