Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (27 page)

~ * ~

“Fixxer, I didn't want to stay here, Roee made me,” was the greeting we got from Mike as we entered. He moved stiffly and his arm was in a sling. “I could have done fine at my apartment. I didn't want to impose.”

“Mike, Roee has a proclivity for charity, among other dangerous traits. By allowing him to indulge in it you are simply extending him a kindness, for which I thank you. How much of my booze have you drunk?”

“Uh—well, Roee said—”

“You were welcome to it, Mike. A dislocated shoulder and a cracked rib calls for a few drinks,” I said.

“Oh, thanks, Fixx. You have a really well-stocked bar.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Roee tells me our wine cellar—if one can have a wine cellar on the fifteenth floor—is quite a marvel as well, but I wouldn't know about that. I am not a refined drinker. Now, Mike, just a note: If you ever reveal to anyone the location of my home, I will gut you like a fish. Is that clear?”

Such a slippery slope I had put Mike on. There's a small pleasure in it.

“Yeah, Fixx, of course. You know me.”

“Yes, Mike, yes I do. Now I would like you to meet Lydia Corfu.”

The recognition in Mike's eyes was immediate. “Oh, Lydia Corfu!
Sired to Kill
, right?”

“That's right. You have seen it?” Lydia inquired, a small smile crossing her lips.

“Of course.”

“When?”

“It was during the early days of cable before they could get really good movies. I mean, well, actually, it was okay.”

“Thank you. I thought so.” Lydia became somewhat chilly.

“In fact, I've seen all your movies. I've always thought, that with just a little bit better stories—”

“I wrote the stories,” Lydia said with her words now encased in ice.

“Doesn't change my criticism,” Mike said. “If you can show me the reviews and the box office to change my mind, I'll consider it.”

“He's an insulting little man,” Lydia complained to me.

“Well, Mike loves movies,” was the only explanation I could offer.

“And what about my acting?” I admired Lydia's courage.

“Well, you know, I mean, you don't have to study with Stella Adler to convincingly kick men in the groin.”

“Something I still know how to do,” Lydia made clear.

“Ah.” Mike looked up at her with soulful eyes. “You wouldn't reach that low, would you?”

“Americans!” Lydia said, explaining it all to herself.

“The wonders of chemistry,” I said to Roee. “You never know when the bringing together of two seemingly harmless substances will lead to something volatile.”

“I am not harmless!” Lydia declared.

“Does that mean you're harmful?” I asked, following the logic.

 
“Well, no, I meant....” Lydia had obviously not fully considered the antithesis.

“Shall we go into the library?” I said, coming to the rescue. “I believe Mike has a report for me.”

~ * ~

We walked into the library, which Mike took little notice of, but Lydia seemed impressed with, especially the fact that the books were in categorical and alphabetical order. She also noticed what few do. For many titles, I have two copies. She wanted to know why.

“One would be a first edition or a collectable for one reason or another. The other a good reading copy,” I said.

“How clever,” she said.

“More practical than clever. Now, if you will all sit.” They all did. “Mike, what happened?”

“Well, I went up there like you said—it's a great drive, by the way, I hadn't realized—uh, anyway, I took the tour which was, uh, fascinating, you know, amazing. Talk about overweening pride! Hearst built this thing over, like, years and years. Did you know it was designed by a girl architect?”

“Uh, Mike....” Roee darted his eyes to Lydia.

“Oh, sorry, woman architect.”

“Bet you she was still a girl,” Lydia said.

“Uh, yeah, well....”

Poor Mike.

“Go on, Mike, but please tell me things that are relevant to your assignment. I can take the tour myself later for the color. Tell me your feelings while on the tour.”

“You mean, besides envy of the super rich?”

“Yes, besides that.”

“Well, you know, it was like going through a museum, a look-but-don't-touch sort of a thing. The tour guide was good—too good, in fact, when I tried to break away a little bit to take some interesting pictures, she called me right back. It's very controlled, but then, you know, I guess you would expect that.”

“Anything else?”

“Well—this is where I got that hair at the back of the neck thing you wanted me to pay attention to, turned out to be a damn good indicator,” he said indicating his arm in the sling.

“And what exactly elevated the filaments?”

“Well, you know the State Park and Recreation Service runs the place.”

“Is it big government that frightens you?”

“No, but those State Park Rangers weren't really what I would have expected.”

“Rangers?” Roee questioned. “At a place like Hearst Castle? They couldn't have been Rangers. Usually in this kind of attraction the State just has tour guides, not Rangers, who are really a police force.”

“Oh, they had tour guides all right, and ticket sellers and all that, but I'm talking about Rangers. You know, the guys in the Smokey the Bear hats who wear guns and mace and night sticks.”

“Sounds like Rangers,” Roee said.

“How many were there?” I asked.

“Enough. They were sort of peppered all over the place.”

 
“What bothered you about them?”

“Well, I mean, Park Rangers, you'd expect them to be like Boy Scouts grown up, guns or no guns, but these guys seemed more like your neighborhood bullies grown up.”

“How so?”

“Well, and this was just a feeling, you see, but it was not just that they were unfriendly. They just were not friendly. You know what I mean? Which was a real contrast with the tour guides without the guns who were friendly, but why should there be a difference? I mean, there's this State Park I go up to in the Tujunga area, no tour guides, just Rangers, and the Rangers there are, like, real friendly and real helpful. They really seem to care, even if they do wear guns, but these guys, they had a whole different attitude. I mean, that became really clear when I took that other tour to the air museum.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, I was taking the tour, snapping a lot of pictures like you asked me. Made myself out to be a real airplane buff. Then I saw this hanger. Not the one with the planes on display but, you know, a working one, I assumed, but it was all closed up, and without there even being any signs up or anything, it just had a feeling of ‘Keep Out' about it. Well, I figured, that's exactly what you would really be interested in. So I left the group when the guide was pointing out some boring stuff on the bottom of a plane, and slipped into the hangar, and it was, you know, just an airplane hangar. You saw airplanes in there. Some of them under repair; some of them were being rebuilt, but then I saw this big pile covered by a bunch of canvases and, you know, I got the hair thing again, Fixx, so I went over to it and lifted a corner of the canvas. Now I was never in the service or anything, but we got plenty of magazines about this at the newsstand, and I'm pretty sure it was a huge pile of ammo. Boxes and boxes of it.”

“What kind of ammo?'

“I don't know. Except it wasn't for no handguns or rifles or stuff like that, these we big, serious metal boxes.”

“Any markings on the box?”

“The only thing I remember is Browning 303, because, you know, I recognized the name Browning and, well, 303 is an easy number to remember.”

Roee looked at me. I shot him an eyebrow acknowledging that I shared his thoughts. Then Roee turned to Mike. “Did you look inside these boxes? Did you see rounds of ammo?” He asked.

“Didn't get a chance. I was about to when this Ranger came up behind me, grabbed my arm, and twisted it up around my back asking me what the fuck I was doing there. Oh, excuse the language, Lydia.”

“Don't give it another fucking thought,” she said.

“Oh, okay. So he asked me what the fuck I was doing there, and I said well I was just curious so I thought I would look, and that's when he pushed me into the ammo and my rib cracked against the edge of one of the boxes. Then he threw that old saying at me about the cat, curiosity and killing, then told me to get the fuck out. So I, um, so I did. So I got back to the tour, back to the parking lot and into my car, and I drove home—non-stop. I got to tell you, that ain't easy with a cracked rib and a dislocated shoulder, but I think fear sort of took my mind off the pain.”

“It will do that,” I said.

“When Mike got home,” Roee said, “he called Norton, Norton connected with me, I went out to see him, saw that he was in pain. I brought him here and Norton sent Dr. Stone over. Mike's been here ever since.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Now what about the photographs?”

“Oh, I got ‘em. I think the Ranger would like to have taken the camera away but I pretty much convinced him I was just a dumb tourist airplane nut who got off the track.”

“I've got the photos over here.” Roee got up and led us to my desk. A series of photos were laid out of both the castle and the air museum. Those of the castle revealed very little outside of the mock Italian grandeur of it all. Although one shot that featured one of the Rangers gave credence to Mike's impression. The pointed Campaign hat that he wore, the kind not only worn by Smokey the Bear, but Canadian Mounties on parade, put his face into shadow, but you could still tell it was a hard face. Normal human beings shouldn't hold that against him, of course—but we took the license.

Mike had done a good job on the photos of the planes. There was a P-38 Lightning, an A-26, a B-29, a Japanese Zero, a Mustang P-51, even an old Northrop prototype of the Flying Wing, and, in a interesting display, two Messerschmitt Bf 109's stood on the tarmac facing off two Supermarine Spitfires, the main mechanical combatants of the Battle of Britain.

“They're beautiful!” Lydia said, genuinely impressed.

“Yes, they are,” I said. “Despite being powerful engines of destruction.”

“That was just their function, at a time when that function was necessary,” Roee said, “but that is not their essence.”

“They are so much more elegant than modern planes,” Lydia said.

As we scanned the photos, admiring an elegance of a past era, my eye was suddenly taken by someone in the background of one of the pictures. It was one of the Rangers, hat off, just having finished wiping his brow. He was a bulky individual of possibly medium height, although it was hard to tell as he stood away from the tourists, alone on the tarmac with nothing close by for reference, but there was something about him. Something that nagged at the back of my neck. I grabbed my magnifying glass and took a closer look. The nag had been right. “Roee,” I said, “take a look at this Ranger.”

“That's the one that got me in the hangar!” Mike said, “Ugly bastard, ain't he?”

Roee took the glass and, bending down, gave the man the scrutiny he deserved. When he rose back up he seemed quite sure. “George,” he said.

“George,” I confirmed.

~ * ~

After dinner we gave Mike the painkiller prescribed by Dr. Stone and sent him off to bed. Then we took Lydia, not to mention Henderson and Pinsker, back to the Hotel Bel-Air. We made much noise in the lobby when we arrived (Pinsker really can't hold his liquor) just in case Sara Hutton had a “friend” hanging out. Once in our suite, Roee and I changed out of our East Coast formality into casual, although I assure you, quite stylish clothes, and quietly exited by our private garden entrances and left the hotel by a back way.

On the drive home in the Porsche we considered the matter.

Roee said, “So, things may not be so simple,”

“I suppose you're right. I'm always hoping they are and I'm always disappointed.”

“George in London. A thug for banker Pye. George in California. A not very friendly State Park Ranger who dislocates shoulders at Hearst Castle.”

“Specifically, the air museum.”

“Which is run by Maxwellton James.”

“An ex-gun runner and drug dealer who seems to have a, at least, philosophical relationship with film executive Sara Hutton.”

“Who had secretly employed London banker Pye to secure financing for a management takeover of Olympic Pictures.” Roee turned to me. “I don't suppose we can chalk any of this up to coincidence?”

“No, I don't suppose we can.”