Shamus In The Green Room (22 page)

disbelief. “Yeah, right.” He walked over to the sink and washed

his hands, which didn’t look dirty. In fact, they were beauti-

fully manicured.

“It’s true,” I said, following him.

“Well,” he said, stretching the word out as long as he could.

“I really don’t like to gossip.” His face started to light up, like

the Hollywood sign after dark.

“Of course not.”

“Anyway, it’s public knowledge.” He turned off the water

and reached for a towel.

“What is?” I asked.

He leaned in close, speaking in a delirious whisper. “Rafe’s

crazy. You ever see him go nuts?”

“Not exactly,” I said hesitantly.

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“Why do you think he does yoga?” Steve Terrell waited a

beat, grinning from ear to ear. “Mandated by the court. Anger

management. After the ten weeks in county lockup.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It was a while ago. Right after the filming

of his first movie. He punched out a photographer, really

messed the guy up. He was getting in Rafe’s face, that part was

true, literally, even did a little damage, but come on. Did Tom

Hanks ever serve time? Tom Cruise? I don’t think so. The poor

guy wound up needing surgery. I think it was his spleen.

Whatever it was, it was bad. He was near death or something.

The family sued. They settled out of court. Will fixed it so it

wouldn’t wind up in the tabs, but everybody knows. Still, you

didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

I thought of that first day on the canals. I’d been frightened

to go into Rafe’s house with him alone. “Is this why you want

me to talk to him? Are you scared of Rafe?”

Steve Terrell shook his head passionately. “That’s not who I

am. No fucking way.” He puffed up his chest like a pigeon. A

pigeon wearing diamond-stud earrings. “It’s just that you have

a pleasant way about you. I thought you could be more effec-

tive getting the message across. I get upset, I start schvitzing, it

gets ugly, you know what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying you want me to do your dirty work.”

“I’m awesome in the sack,” he murmured.

“Excuse me?”

He made a sort of kissy face. “Just thought I’d sweeten the

deal.”

Steve Terrell was not the stuff dreams are made of.

“Kidding! I’m kidding, Cece!”

Once he dispensed with the kissy face, I agreed to talk to

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Rafe. It was, of course, the perfect excuse for keeping this

thing going. I needed an excuse now that my services had been

terminated.

“And all I want from you in return,” I said, heading for the

door, where Elsa was just coming in with lunch, “are some

Kaffir limes.” I had a recipe I’d ripped out of the paper for an

aromatic tom yum kai soup.

Steve Terrell took the bags from Elsa, emptied them onto

the counter, grabbed the one most liberally stained with secret

sauce, and headed outside with his scissors.

“This is a big sacrifice, Cece.” He started snipping limes off

the tree and dropping them into the greasy bag. “Do you know

why I planted these? The Thais believe the juice prevents your

hair from falling out. Not that I have that problem at this

point in time, but it’s good to plan ahead. This is Hollywood.

Don’t forget that. They’ll kill you for less.”

No doubt.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

There was one place I wanted to stop on my way home.

Then I’d save Rafe’s film, Rafe’s soul, maybe the world.

17575 Pacific Coast Highway. The former site of Thelma

Todd’s Sidewalk Café.

Thelma Todd was a wisecracking bombshell best known

for acting opposite the Marx Brothers in films like Horse Feath-

ers and Monkey Business. But she also starred in the first film

adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, which was why I was inter-

ested in her.

It was Thelma Todd—as the faithless Iva Archer, lover of

Sam Spade and wife of Spade’s murdered partner—who’d ut-

tered the line that had so incensed the Hays Office they’d de-

nied the film a second release (which, ironically, paved the way

for John Huston to later remake the film).

Upon seeing Spade’s new lover in his bedroom, she’d

whined, “Who’s that dame in my kimono?”

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It sounds so innocuous now.

Poor woman.

On the morning of December 16, 1935, Thelma Todd was

found slumped over in the front seat of her car, dead of carbon

monoxide poisoning.

That was the other reason I was interested in her.

The car was a chocolate-colored Lincoln Phaeton convert-

ible, brand new; the garage belonged to the swank apartment the

dead woman shared with her married lover, Roland West, just

above the café; she was wearing a silver evening gown and

mink wrap, having spent the earlier part of the evening at a

party in her honor at the Trocadero nightclub on Sunset

Boulevard.

Aside from that, nobody knew anything about anything.

For years, I’d noticed the place, a sprawling three-tiered

Spanish-style ruin with Moorish arches, smashed up against

the hillside opposite the ocean. But I’d never known its signifi-

cance, not until it was put up for sale, and the write-ups all re-

counted the lurid history of its former proprietress.

She’d been a small-town beauty queen from Lawrence,

Massachusetts, who’d come out to Hollywood to be a star. She

ate men for sport, drank like a fish, and specialized in drunken

car crashes.

“Hot Toddy” was the nickname she’d picked for herself.

I turned onto Porto Marina. This was the Castellamare

section of Pacific Palisades: ocean views and permit parking

only. The street was narrow and windy, with houses climbing

along the north side, and to the south, a vertiginous drop to

PCH and the ocean beyond. A man in a New York Mets cap

polishing a blue Lexus pulled off his headphones long enough

to tell me I could find a legal space farther up the road.

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I squeezed my car in between a pool man and a roofer, then

headed down the hill, hugging the side so as not to get run

over. The yuccas fanned out over my head. The hibiscus

glowed hot pink. The cattails brushed against my legs. Some-

times I forgot how beautiful it was here in Southern California.

Today it struck me anew. Even the lines extending from tele-

phone pole to telephone phone looked as perfect as if they’d

been drawn with a compass.

It must have been beautiful like this on the day Thelma

Todd’s maid found her lifeless body.

The building looked less decrepit up close. It had been

bought by a movie-production company. I buzzed a couple of

times without getting an answer, then peered through the

stained-glass window and saw a grand staircase with a tiled

fountain, framed by a pair of potted palms. I knocked on the

glass, hoping someone could let me in, maybe show me an old

menu or something, with gin fizzes and milk punch and lime

rickeys for forty-five cents a pop. I was certain Hammett had

frequented the place. He was in Hollywood in 1934, living off

and on in the forty-four-room Harold Lloyd mansion, which

was in Beverly Hills, not far when your chauffeur’s behind the

wheel. And Hammett wasn’t a person who ever said no to a gin

fizz or some milk punch or a lime rickey.

Nobody answered, though.

The garage was next.

There was a steep flight of outdoor stairs that led up behind

the building. It was dark and shady back there, with low con-

crete walls on either side. I started up the steps, shivering ever

so slightly. The ground was littered with dead leaves and

bougainvillea, like confetti from a long-ago party. Halfway to

the top, I turned around and looked back. I could see all the

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way across the pedestrian bridge that led to the ocean on the

other side of the highway. The shadows of the rails fell on the

concrete, like zebra stripes. They reminded me of a beautiful,

geometric-patterned swimsuit Thelma Todd had on in an old

picture I’d seen of her somewhere. I wondered if she’d liked

swimming. The water was so cold this time of the year,

though. People never realized just how cold it was.

When I got to the top, I turned left. This had to be the

garage. It had a huge padlock, and as if that weren’t disincen-

tive enough, twisty, spiky vines growing across the door.

Keep out. Haunted house. Death trap.

The grand jury made a ruling of suicide, but that didn’t

hold water with those who knew Todd well. They insisted she

must have turned on the motor to keep warm, and then fallen

asleep. Or they pointed a finger at Lucky Luciano, who’d tried

unsuccessfully to coerce her into allowing gambling at her café,

which she’d said would happen over her dead body. Or they

suspected her lover, frustrated with her drunken carousing, of

locking her in the garage to keep her from slipping out yet

again. That latter theory, however, failed to account for the key

found in her handbag. It would’ve allowed her to escape. But

she hadn’t escaped. And her body had been cremated.

Case closed. Suicide. Pity. End of story.

Of course, stories are arbitrary. As a biographer, I knew this

better than most.

I looked down at my watch. And that was when I felt a

hand grasp the back of my neck.

Jesus Christ. What was this?

Then, the hand jerked me around.

I was face-to-face with a hulking man in a blue uniform.

“Private property,” he said in a dull monotone. “Keep it moving.”

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“How dare you touch me?” I asked, more unnerved than

outraged, but determined not to show it.

“You should calm down now,” he said.

“What kind of psycho security guard are you?” I asked,

readjusting my blouse.

He didn’t smile. “It’s my job to make sure people don’t go

where they aren’t supposed to.”

“I could report you.” I scanned his uniform for the name of

his company, but there didn’t seem to be any name.

“Sorry, miss,” he said, pulling his walkie-talkie from his belt.

Sorry, miss, my ass. I started down the stairs. Overzealous

nutcase. Speaking of, it was time to go home and call Rafe.

In the car, I tried to shake off the feeling of doom hanging

over me. One phone call. That was all. A way back in. I pulled

away from the curb and drove farther up the hill, looking for a

space wide enough to make a U-turn. I suppose I could have

gone straight, and eventually found my way out onto Sunset

Boulevard, but I was suddenly in a hurry to get this whole

thing over with.

At Lecco Lane, I swung my wheel to the left.

The rest, even now, is a blur.

My phone started to ring; the radio news went to a traffic

report ( jackknifed truck on the Grapevine); something green

flashed in my rearview mirror; my neck snapped back; my

hands flew off the wheel; and flesh hit metal as my Camry

crashed through a retaining wall, plunging down the embank-

ment toward the thousands of drivers speeding along Pacific

Coast Highway, totally oblivious to what had or had not just

happened to me.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

It’ll take a miracle,” I heard someone say.

It was a man’s voice.

Twangy. Kentucky, maybe. Or Texas. Tennessee? I had no

idea. My eyelids fluttered open. He was wearing a blue-and-red-

striped shirt with a patch over his heart that said, “Hi, I’m Nate.”

“Nate?” My tongue felt thick.

“Yes, ma’am.” He walked over and took my hand. “Like I

was saying before, it don’t look good.” His eyebrows were knit-

ted together in concern.

“Please do everything you can. That Camry means a lot

to me.”

“Good to see you up again,” said someone else. It was the

man in the baseball cap who’d been polishing the Lexus earlier.

I looked around, confused. I seemed to be lying on a piece

of expensive pool furniture that had been wheeled out into the

middle of the street. I needed water. My mouth felt dry.

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“The paramedics left half an hour ago. They said you were

fine. No concussion, nothing. Just a nasty cut. Clean bill of

health. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Then you just sort of keeled over. I thought maybe you

needed to lie on the chaise longue another minute. Take it easy.

Nate here, from D.J.’s, concurred.”

I saw the D.J.’s Garage tow truck. It looked like a monster

with something silvery clenched between its jaws. That would

be the remains of my car.

“I’m fine now,” I said, trying to sit up. My head felt like it

was being pummeled with a meat tenderizer. I reached up and

felt a huge bandage on my forehead. I couldn’t afford a new

car. I didn’t want a new car.

“Anybody you need to call?”

“My purse.” I needed to call Gambino.

Nate said, “We got it out of the front seat. That, and a

bunch of papers. Right here when you’re ready.”

“Do you know how lucky you are?” The man in the base-

ball cap shook his head. “If it weren’t for those yuccas—”