Noir(ish) (9781101610053) (3 page)

She nodded.

I picked up my pencil. “Tell me about Dan.”

“All right.” She clasped her hands demurely in front of her, and began.

“Well . . .”

There wasn't much to tell about Dan,
she began.

* * *

He'd been selling companies insurance for five or six years—which, I noted, meant he
hadn't
done any soldiering; he had a bad back, she said. He owned a house in Westwood, off Pico Boulevard. It wasn't Beverly Hills, but Westwood was one of the nicer upper-middle-class parts of L.A., and that meant he was selling a lot of it. He liked the high life, and he could afford it. Dan Scott seemed like a pretty normal guy, with one peculiarity: He was an amateur “cosmotologist,” too. They went planet-gazing together.

Lizabeth Duryea, on the other hand, was as strange a dame as I'd ever met:
She
looked like she'd just walked out of an Ivory Soap ad, but her
outfit
looked like she'd just stepped out of a movie whose costumer wrote mash notes to Busby Berkeley. Plus, there were those gloves. And the five hundred she'd given me—that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg.

She dabbed her eyes again, then opened the bag and reached to put the tissue into it.

“. . . and that's really all I—” She was interrupted by the bag tumbling to the floor, spilling its contents. Among them was cash. A lot of cash—loose bills and banded stacks of them and rolls of them. “Oh,” she said. “Excuse me.” She laughed apologetically. “I seem to have drop-it disease tonight.” She knelt and, one handful at a time, gathered the money and started stuffing it back into the bag. She looked like a mother duck who was in no great hurry to retrieve her wandering ducklings.

I watched her, and her cash, casually.
Uh-huh
. The dame had some money, all right. If all that counted as “some.” “Yeah, well,” I said, “it's probably just as well you have it in here. On the street there'd be all
kinds
of people looking to cure you.” Los Angeles is filled with helpful people, especially men who like to help single women who are out alone late at night. “Just how much dough are you carrying in there?”

She continued to stuff. “I'm not sure. Ten or twenty thousan' dollars, maybe?”

“Ten or . . .” I'd seen a lot of things in sixteen years as a private dick, but I'd never seen that much money in one place. In fact, I'd never imagined I
would
see that much money in one place. I did all right: I had a steady stream of clients, these days mostly men whose wives were being indiscreet and the occasional wife whose husband was. Now and then something came up that was a little more interesting and a little less distasteful: looking into a phony insurance claim, helping clear somebody who'd been falsely accused, finding a guy or a gal who wasn't particularly anxious to be found. Once, tracking down a stolen racehorse—a red-maned filly named Scarlet Street—a case I'd taken eight or nine years ago without realizing just who I was really working for. My client, I found out afterward, had been a mob guy: one of Bugsy Siegel's buddies. That hadn't made me happy, and for a long while after, I'd stuck to taking pictures of husbands' and wives' illicit rendezvous. It was boring, maybe, but I slept better at night, and I suffered no morning-after recriminations.

I wasn't famous, but I did good work and the word had gotten around: I could find things and people and answers,
and
take pictures through motel windows. I got enough cases to make my two or three hundred dollars a week, plus expenses. It paid the rent on my apartment and the office, and my secretary's salary, and kept Greenstreet and his leonine appetite off the street. Now and again I made a little more, but the only other times I'd had a five-hundred-dollar retainer were the racehorse case and the job for the benefactor of my crystal ashtray. I doubted I'd had many other clients who could afford one. Those folks went to the high-profile PIs: Marlowe and Mike Shayne here, Nero Wolfe and Philo Vance in New York, Spade in Frisco. They wore hundred-dollar Palm Beach suits and drove Chryslers or Cadillacs. My four suits cost about a hundred bucks between them. I had a car, a persnickety 1936 Buick with seventy thousand miles on it I'd bought second-hand during the war, but I didn't use it unless I had to—and I had to more than I liked: Los Angeles is a big city.

Lizabeth Duryea stuffed the last roll of bills into her purse. “Maybe twenty thousan',” she said. “Shoul' I try to count it?”

I shook my head. “I'll take your word.” Kitten-eyed again, she nodded and smiled. Her mouth had a natural pout. It looked edible as the pick-it-yourself strawberries I used to gorge on when I was a kid. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“I think that's all.”

“I need to know what he looks like. A photo would help,” I mentioned.

“I don't have one with me. He's—big.”

“Big?”

She nodded. “Big.” She spread her hands most of the length of my five-foot-long desktop, then stood up and stretched an arm all the way up—seven or eight feet from the floor up—and sat down again. She was as good a judge of size as she was of clothes: The Jolly Green Giant wasn't
that
big.

“Mm. Well, you can drop one off tomorrow. If I'm out, leave it with my secretary.”

“That's Loria?” she asked.

I corrected her. “Gloria.”

“Gloria. All right.” She reached for her coat, then stopped. “Oh, there is one other thing I nee' you to do.”

“Oh?”

She opened the purse again and, very carefully, withdrew a small package, about the size of a tiny round snuffbox and maybe twice as thick as the monocle my grandfather wore. It was wrapped in brown paper and covered, almost everywhere, with brown shipping tape. She did not drop it. “Keep this for me.”

I looked at it skeptically. Another “something else.” “What is it?”

She shrugged and smiled again, that lovely, full-lipped, strawberry-red smile that reminded me of a vampire movie I'd seen once. Vampire movies were
her
favorites. Something else she could sink her teeth into, she said, “besides you.” She'd grinned slyly when she said that.

“I don't know,” Lizabeth Duryea said. “Dan gave it to me. He tol' me to keep it for him, that it's very important. If anything shoul' . . . happen, he'll come here.”

I continued to look at the packet. Like most people, I was curious. Unlike most people, I knew pretty well the consequences of curiosity. It didn't kill just cats. That's the first thing they teach you in PI 101. If you don't learn it then, you will the first time you take a case and put your whiskers into something that smells too sweet. I was usually pretty careful not to let my curiosity trump my common sense. “What d' you think might . . . happen?”

“I don't know. I'm surprise' how things just . . . happen all the time in Los Angeles.”

“Yeah. They do.” Which is why I was careful: There were things you needed to be careful about. Lots of things. “You have no idea what this
is
.”

She giggled. “No. I
hope
it's a gift.”

“Why the big secret?”

“He wants me to be surprise', I think, but I think he wants to give it to me himself.” She leaned toward me and intimated: “I think it's very expensive.” Her breath was faintly scented, something curious and slightly metallic that clashed with the perfume. She giggled again. “Here.”

I didn't take it. “Generous guy, your brother. You said he sells insurance?”

“Yes.”

“I guess a very expensive gift could be important enough to an insurance
salesman
that his sister would pay a private eye five hundred bucks to watch over it for a few days.” I looked into her eyes; they were still smiling. “But buying an insurance
policy
would be cheaper.” I tapped the Bicycle box.

The smile vanished. “I . . . I'll pay you extra.”

Getting involved in something I shouldn't be involved in could cost me: my PI license, for one thing. And I still had misgivings about the Scarlet Street case. On the other hand, business
had
been slow, my bank account was dwindling, and five hundred bucks would cover a lot of what I had to pay for over the next month. Yeah, there probably
was
more to it than Lizabeth Duryea was telling me, but I'd keep my eyes and ears wide open. And if I could find Dan Scott fast, the package would be history, just like the case.

“We'll see how my expenses run. Right now, the five hundred is enough.” I started to reach for the package, then stopped just short. “If you're
sure
there's nothing illegal in here.”

This time, she laughed. “I can't imagine Dan woul' ever have anything against the law.”

I laughed, too, mirthlessly, and took it from her. “Yeah. Insurance salesmen are the law-abiding salt of the earth. All right. I'll keep it here.” I squeezed it. Whatever was inside was hard, but the packet itself had give. Cushioned. That meant it
could
be a ring or diamond stud earrings. Or it could be a tiny round snuffbox filled with cocaine. You could fit a lot of toot into a very small horn.

I had six file cabinets, all green, all Army surplus, all mostly empty. One of them had a built-in lock. That one was completely empty. I opened the top drawer and dropped the package into it, closed it, and pushed in the lock. “I have a key,” I told her. “Where the other one is is a secret.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Mm.” I went back to my desk and made a note. “How do I get in touch with you?”

“I am at the place on Cregar Street, the one on the envelope the letter came in. It's the Veronica Apartments. Number four-eleven. My telephonick is Lake-1114.”

This time the word just buzzed past. I jotted the number down, put my notes into a file folder, and laid that on my desk. “Okay. That's enough for tonight. Go home. I'll call a taxi.” I reached for the telephonick.

“That's all right. It's not far. I can walk.” Miss Duryea stood and pulled on the black coat. I shook my head. Watching her bundle into the wool was making more than my mind sweat. A mile in this heat, wearing a wool coat? I'd collapse, and I was in pretty good shape.

I pulled out my handkerchief; it was already too damp to do much good, but I wiped my face anyway. Well, maybe she had a physical condition. Some people just got cold easy. In this weather, I wished I were one of them.

I wondered for a moment what it was like now in Chicago. I hoped it was freezing.

She was still buttoning when I said, “Lady, this is Los Angeles. Like you said: Things . . . happen here, all the time. I don't know where you're from, but around here, girls take taxis at eleven at night. Especially girls who are carrying around ten or twenty thousand dollars. It's better for their health.”

“Thank you. I'll be fine. Walking is better for my health. Taxis have air-conditioning. Besides, I have this.” She reached into a coat pocket and took out a small, peculiar-looking gun. I couldn't see the whole thing; it pretty much disappeared between her gloves, but she cocked it like she'd been doing it all her life, pointed it toward the window, then uncocked it, smiled, and returned it to her pocket.

All that glitters is not gold
, I thought.
Some of it is ice
. “I see. It's everybody else's health that could be the problem.” I sat. “Okay, I'll call you as soon as I learn anything. Get me that photo of Dan. And let me know if he calls. Or shows up. Or you get another one of these.” I held up the letter. “There should be a ransom note, or something like one. This doesn't ask for anything. That
bothers me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grahame. It was nice meeting you.” She extended her right glove. I stood up, reached across my desk, and took it. She didn't shake my hand. She just held it, and my eyes, longer than a good-bye and with a gentle grip that grew tighter and firmer. She withdrew her hand slowly and smiled. I hadn't noticed her teeth before. They were small, pearly white, and slightly pointed. They looked razor sharp. There wasn't a filling or a cap in sight.

She took a business card from the holder on my desk and, slowly, slipped it into a small pocket over her breast. She stroked the flap. “I hope I'll see you again soon. Perhaps for something that . . . isn't business?”

“Likewise,” I said. I watched the satin glove tap the pocket very gently.

Her eyes narrowed again. “I hope you enjoy petting your cat. Goo' night, Mr. Grahame.”

“Uh-huh. Good night, Miss Duryea.”

She turned and left the office the same way she'd come in, a slow sway trailed by the scent of her Shalimar. I watched her. It was interesting to see, but it made me a little dizzy. I'd seen tidal waves that didn't move that much.

The door clicked open; the light framed her; the door clicked closed. The silhouette moved casually away until it was out of sight.

“Uh-
huh
,” I said, and looked at the cash-filled card box.

I put the money into an envelope, sealed that, and locked it in the desk, picked up the phone, and made a call. It was answered on the first ring. I asked for Lieutenant Stanwyck. I was told to please wait, I was being connected. “Yeah,” I said, “I'll wait.”

I tucked the phone between my chin and shoulder, picked up the cards, and tossed one toward my hat. The Queen of Hearts.

It hit the brim and landed on the floor.

Chapter 2

Tuesday, June 24th, 1947, 11:00 p.m.

Lauren Stanwyck was the only female homicide detective on the L.A. police force. We'd worked together a lot. Now and then, especially during the last year, we'd worked
close
together. And, sometimes, we'd worked apart. Far apart. She was one smart cookie. And one tough one. She'd been a cop as long as I'd been a private eye, and a detective for the last five years—one good consequence of the war was the shortage of men everywhere, including in the L.A. Detective Division. She made it her business to know every jake—detective and flatfoot alike—on every police force on the West Coast, from Vancouver to San Diego. And she knew what all of them were doing. That, and her exemplary record, was how she'd held onto her job after the war
despite
her high heels and pert button nose. Nonetheless, she'd risen a lot slower than most of her male counterparts
because
of them.

Even though it was five minutes before eleven, Stanwyck would be in her office. She was everything a cop was supposed to be—hardworking, thorough, perseverant—and her tolerance for BS was somewhere just south of mine. I admired her for it.

She said she spent way too much time at the office, though not too much time working. She was attractive and she knew it, but she didn't socialize much—
that
took time—and she swore she was going to stay single: A cop's husband had nothing but worry to look forward to. Solving crimes was her life, and the eighteen-hour workday was how she lived it. She just hated being stuck inside. Crimes, she maintained, got solved on the street. Stone walls, as far as she was concerned,
did
a prison make, never mind what that poet said.

The crime she was trying to solve at the moment had to do with the murder of my one-time client's good bud, one Benjami
n “Bugsy” Siegel, mob honcho, shot while sitting in the home of his absent girlfriend, one Virginia Hill, the previous Friday night. In fact, the forty-one-year-old Bugsy had been reading a newspaper in Hill's parlor when some still unknown assailant pulled the trigger of a high-powered weapon. The police—Stanwyck—found nine bullet holes there. Large bullet holes, the two largest in the head of the gangster himself. The girlfriend had been in Paris when the shooting occurred, having left the City of Angels for the City of Light ten days before. We were all terribly surprised. Just like we were all terribly upset at Bugsy's sudden and violent demise. Virginia Hill, it was widely known, had kept company with a number of notorious companions before (and, some said, during) her liaison with Siegel. Why Bugsy was in L.A. while Virginia wasn't, instead of in Las Vegas, where he lived at (and operated) the Flamingo Hotel (and casino—Vegas's premier gambling palace), was anybody's guess.

So far, they'd found nothing except Bugsy's body and his blood and the bullet holes.

Frankly, I didn't much care that Siegel had been shot—he was pretty high on my list of Lowlifes I Have Known. Stanwyck didn't really care either. She
did
care about finding the guy who shot him: It was her job, and her life was a constant battle to prove she could do her job as well as, or better than, any man could. It teed her off that those men—the Chief foremost among them—continually got in her way. Nobody really doubted her skill—she found almost every killer she set out to find, including more than a few the rest of the Homicide Division had given up on, and she had more commendations than any other two cops combined—but nobody in the department admitted it, either. Least of all the Chief: She'd saved his life once in front of a dozen other cops, back when they were both on the street, and he'd never forgiven her for it.

She answered the phone with a brusque “Homicide. This is Stanwyck.”

I said, “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Damn it, Grahame, I don't have time for it so don't give me any of that sweetheart bullcrap. Whattaya want?”

Stanwyck was famous for her patience. She'd give someone who had information she needed the count of three to answer her question before she sapped him. The “interviewee” was always surprised when that happened, but after it did once he usually answered her questions before she reached two on the next one. Stanwyck wielded a mean blackjack. I was glad she'd never had to interview me.

“I'm fine, too, thank you,” I said.

She sighed. “Robert, Robert, Robert,” she said. “I'm up to my neck in problems: The newspapers are screaming about the Bugsy Siegel killing—and so is the rest of the mob, Moe Sedway prominent among them.” I murmured a sympathetic “mm.” “The public is—still—screaming about the Black Dahlia, and the Chief is screaming about dog poop on the sidewalks of Beverly Hills.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that dog poop
is
a serious problem.”

“Tell me about it.” I heard her light a cigarette. “So what're you gonna scream about.”

“Nothin', Laur, I just—”

She almost yelled, “Don't call me Laur!”

Stanwyck hates being called “Laur,” especially when she is not having a good night, like now. I did it on purpose. Sometimes. And, sometimes, her full name sounded just a little too much like someone else's. I cleared my throat. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“So get on with it,” she snapped. “Whose Black Bird got stolen this time. Or did some little rich girl get her naughty pictures taken by a big bad wolf dressed up like an innocent rare-book seller.”

I was staring at the envelope that held Lizabeth Duryea's note. I
knew
that handwriting. I decided not to think about it; it would come to me. “The name,” I told Stanwyck, “is Grahame, Lieutenant, not Spade.
Or
Marlowe. I wish it was. Marlowe, anyway. He makes ten times what I do.” Personally, I thought I was a better investigator than Phil; every time he took a case somebody ended up dead, usually several somebodies. I'd come across a couple of dead bodies in my time—unexpectedly viewing the suddenly and violently deceased is one of the little-known special privileges of being a private eye—but I didn't like dealing with corpses, or taking cases that would probably end up contributing to some funeral director's standard of living. But Marlowe lived in Hollywood; my apartment was in downtown L.A. He carried hundred-dollar bills and, I'd been told, wore silk pajamas. I kept change in my pocket and twenty bucks in my wallet when I wanted to feel flush and slept in my cheap cotton PJs. He had a higher profile and the higher-profile clientele that went with it. It pays to get rich clients; they attract other rich clients. Even if some of them die along the way.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Stanwyck. “So?”

“I got a missing person. In Seattle.”

“Geography wasn't your best subject, was it, Grahame. That's in Washington.”

“Yeah? Well, gee, thanks, Laur. I'll check a map bef—”

“Don't call me—”

“
Laur!
” I said with her. “I know.” Stanwyck yawned. “You sound tired,” I said.

“I
am
tired, Grahame. And my back and feet ache. Hell, make a male detective wear heels all day and see how his back and feet feel. And I haven't had anything to eat since lunch.”

“Let me guess: a bologna sandwich with mayo and tomato.”

“Right on the bologna, wrong on the tomato. Wilted lettuce. Bacall forgot to ask when he ordered it.”

Other than that, Stanwyck was running on cigarettes and coffee. She was used to it. Some people had blood coursing through them; Stanwyck had nicotine and caffeine. The Chief disagreed. “Needles,” he'd opined sourly, “dipped in rattlesnake venom.” As far as
he
was concerned, Stanwyck wished it were true. She'd bite him at the first opportunity. So would a few other cops I knew.

“Sorry, Lauren.”

She sighed deeply. “Yeah, me too. It's been a hell of a day, Robert. You wouldn't believe the crap that's coming down about Siegel.”

“He was a bad guy.”

“Yeah. An important bad guy. Who had lots of blood in him, most of which spilled all over Virginia Hill's parlor Friday night sometime around ten thirty. I'd show you the photos, but they're enough to make
me
gag.”

“I've seen them,” I told her. “Today's
Times
has 'em on the front page in glorious black-and-white under a banner: ‘Bugsy Takes the Big Sleep.' The newsstands have 'em plastered all over.”

“Yeah, I know.” That
really
teed her off. “And
kids
look at that stuff! Sometimes I wonder about the ‘free press.'”

I put the hand-addressed envelope into my desk drawer with the one containing the five hundred and locked it again. “Sorry, Lauren. What're you doing?”

“Now? Looking at photos of guys who shoot other guys. Why?”

“Can I buy you a drink? I'll toss in a hamburg and fries.”

“Robert, it's past eleven. You think if I had time for a drink I'd still be
here
?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You're L.A.'s finest.”

Her voice softened. “Thanks,” she said. “So: What
can
I do for you.”

I opened Lizabeth Duryea's file. “I need some names in Seattle.”

“Cops?”

“For starters.”

“Okay. Hold on.” She covered the mouthpiece. I heard her anyway. “Hey, Bacall,” she hollered. “Get your skinny butt in here with my Seattle contacts file. Now!”

Humphrey Bacall, her scrawny, gawky, twenty-one-year-old secretary and gofer with a heart of overripe tomato, had a high-pitched voice that could carry from one end of the Rose Bowl to the other like a pennywhistle in the desert. He sat at a desk just outside her office and tried to reorder everything that Stanwyck disordered, which was most everything she touched. I'd been in her office; it was a hodgepodge of piles—photos, memos, reports, directives, files. They covered her desktop—literally—and a good part of her floor.

“Sure thing, Lieutenant Stanwyck,” I heard him holler back.

“It'll take a minute, Robert. Tell me what happened.”

“I don't know, Lauren.” I rocked back and put my feet up. New cases used to excite me. Now they reminded me I was getting old because they
didn't
excite me. Usually. Too many were too much alike; you've snapped one cavorting couple you've snapped them all. This one . . . ? Well, maybe.

I looked out the window. The neon flashed, and I saw some rain clouds. Some rain would be nice. It would clean the sidewalks and the air, for a couple of hours, anyway. “Girl came into my office an hour ago with a story: Her brother disappeared in Seattle. He's supposed to be up there selling insurance to Boeing. The girl paid me five hundred bucks up front to find out what happened to him.” Stanwyck whistled. “Yeah,” I said.

She dragged on her cigarette and blew the smoke into the phone. Ten miles away I could smell it. It smelled good. “Lotta dough to be carryin' around at ten o'clock at night,” she said, “'specially for a girl by herself in L.A. What were you doin' at your
office
at ten?”

“Correction: What
am
I doing here at eleven?” I emptied the fedora and stacked the cards neatly and picked up the ones on the floor. Then I proceeded to flip them into the hat again one by one. I made the first five, then missed two in a row. “Decorating. I've been trying to make the place pretty in case a rich vampire showed up. Instead I got a rich vamp.”

“Grahame,” Stanwyck said, “you're a smart-ass.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. I'll remember you're the one who pointed that out.”

“Yeah, yea—” she began. She was interrupted by Bacall's breathlessly thin voice blurting reedily “Here y' are, Lieutenant Stanwyck.”

She covered the phone. “Thanks, Humphrey.” She shuffled something together and handed it to him. Probably the stack of photos she'd been looking through. “Here. Find the felons who aren't already in the joint in this bunch.”

“Yes, ma'am!” he said smartly, the way buck privates used to say “Yes, sir” to second looies. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Coffee. Black. A whole pot.”

“Yes, ma'am!” Bacall said again. I heard him scurrying away. His long legs covered ground like a bowlegged track star's. Walking, he reminded me of Popeye. Without the muscles.

Stanwyck picked up the phone again. “Now.”

“Not planning on sleeping much tonight, I gather,” I said.

“The
city
never sleeps, neither do I. Okay, let's see.” The manila rustled as she opened the folder and riffled through it. “Ah—here's a couple. You got a pencil?”

“Uh-huh.” I put down the cards and picked one up.

“Detective Sergeant Edward Widmark,” she offered. “Fuller-0812.”

“0812. Widmark,” I repeated as I noted it in the Duryea file. “I read something about him: Isn't he the guy who caught that psycho, I forget his name . . . ?”

“Tommy Biddle.” Biddle, square-jawed, merciless, and absolutely nuts, had terrorized the good people of Seattle for months. Widmark had made the arrest; it had been stellar—and dangerous—police work. Stanwyck admired it. So did I. Some PIs had problems with them, but cops were jake in my book. The good ones—and most of them were good ones—worked hard and put their lives on the line, a lot. A cop was okay, so long as you didn't flat out lie to him—or her—or do something else that was stupid. “Yeah, that was Widmark,” Stanwyck said, and flipped a page. “And Detective Lieutenant Richard G. Robinson. Howard-0530.”

I wrote it down. “Got it. Thanks, Laur. En.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “That it?”

“That's it.”

“Mm.” I heard the folder crackle as she closed it. “I'll take a rain check on that drink, Grahame.”

“Anytime, Lieutenant. You know where to find me.”