The Devil Met a Lady (4 page)

“You’re telling me,” I said, lifting half the American Reuben in two hands and taking a bite.

“The man on the phone told me to call you,” he said.

“Me?”

“The man on the phone said you were the person to act as a go-between to arrange delivery of the papers they want. He said you would know he was telling the truth about the record.” Farnsworth looked decidedly nervous and fingered his coffee cup. “Peters, I don’t know if you’re involved in this or not and I don’t care, but you’ve got to protect my wife and you’ve got to convince this person that I cannot give him those plans.”

“Why believe this guy on the phone?” I asked, nibbling at a few crumbs I had missed.

“He … he played part of a record of Bette’s voice. She was saying … saying …”

“Forget it,” I stopped him. “I don’t have to know.” I was beginning to get the eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head feeling that I was being set up.

“If I tell the people I work for about this,” Farnsworth said, “they’ll want to pull Bette from Los Angeles, hide her someplace. She won’t do it. She has to work. And even if they go to the government and they do assign some people to watch her, we’ll have the publicity problem again.”

I grunted and kept eating.

“And there’s one more problem,” he went on. “I’m not sure the people I work for or the police would believe me. They might think it was a publicity stunt. This is Hollywood. People do things like that all the time.”

“I know,” I said, finishing a mouthful, “but that’s not the reason they wouldn’t believe you.”

Farnsworth took a deep breath and shook his head.

“Cops and G-men might think the phone call and kidnapping threat came out of a bottle,” I concluded.

“Yes, I have a drinking problem,” he said. “I’ve been trying to deal with it. I don’t think Bette knows how bad it is, but the people I work for do, and you’re right. I doubt if it would take the police long to find out. I’m good at what I do, but … I got that call, Mr. Peters. I’ve been honest with you. I’ve told you more than I’ve even told my wife. I’m desperate. He told me they’d contact you, that I had to persuade you to do this for me. He was so sure you’d do it.”

I drank some Pepsi and tried to ignore Carmen’s broad smile and ample breasts, which were now somehow suggestively visible in the curve of her white blouse.

“Twenty-five a day plus expenses,” I said. “To protect your wife, possibly to find out who this person is. If it’s some crackpot, fine, but … Can you pick that up for a week or two?”

“I think so,” he said. “Then you accept?”

“I want to think about it a while.”

“There isn’t time to think about it,” Farnsworth said nervously. “The man who called said I had no more than a day to find you and be ready to give him an answer.”

“Can I finish my sandwich and drink?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“You don’t think this guy is just a nut,” I said.

Farnsworth shook his head.

“Why?”

Arthur Farnsworth looked toward the window of Levy’s, just beyond Carmen. She caught the look, thought it was thrown at her, and grinned.

“He sounded sane and I told you he played me part of the record on the phone,” he said, looking at me again. “Maybe it was a fake, but … it would ruin Bette’s career.”

I forked up stray bits of corned beef and coleslaw and we didn’t do any more talking for about three minutes. When I was finished, I reached out my right hand and he took it.

“Deal,” I said. “I keep good records and bill you as soon as the job is done, or monthly, if it goes that long. I need two hundred in advance.”

Farnsworth happily dug into his pocket for his wallet and came up with the right number of twenty-dollar bills.

“You want a receipt?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You’ll start today?”

“I’ll start today,” I agreed. “Let’s go talk to your wife.”

I reached for the check Rusty had dropped on the table. Farnsworth’s mind was somewhere else; he didn’t stop me. Fine. He’d get a bill for it. I got up, check in hand.

“That’s a problem,” said Farnsworth, getting up. “I mean, talking to Bette.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather she not know about this,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten her.”’

“I’m supposed to protect her without her knowing it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Won’t work, Arthur,” I said, getting familiar. “She’ll spot me within a few days. If I’m supposed to keep people from grabbing her in your house or on the street, I’ve got to be close. And with this face, I can’t just melt into a crowd of fans.”

Actually, there was almost no way Bette Davis would fail to spot me. My face was not unfamiliar to her. We’d both spent a good part of our life sentence at Warner Brothers, she as a well-paid slave, me as a badly paid guard.

“Try,” he said earnestly, moving inches from my face and taking a firm grip on my right arm. “Please.”

“Three conditions,” I said. “One, if I have to, I can tell her what’s going on. I’d rather have you do it and I’ll try to reach you if I can, but I want your okay.”

“You’ve got it,” he said. “Here’s my card with two numbers where you can reach me. I’ve written our home number on the back.”

“Second condition,” I went on. “If this guy does contact me, I want your okay to tell him whatever I want.”

“Lie, promise, do whatever you have to,” he said. “Just stop him and take care of Bette. The last condition?”

I liked Arthur Farnsworth. He was an easy client. “I may need to use some associates. I’ll pay them out of my fee. If you have some reason to meet them, I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“You’re the professional,” he said. “I have no intention of questioning your choice of associates.”

“One is a bald giant. Another is a little person, about three feet tall. The last, who I use only in emergencies, is a short, fat guy with thick glasses and a built-in cigar.”

“You’re joking,” Farnsworth said as Rusty squeezed past us to pick up his tip. I’d been generous. Rusty looked as close to happy as he could get.

“They’re invaluable,” I said. “The bad guys always underestimate them.”

Farnsworth now looked a bit less sure of himself and his choice, but it was a done deal.

“Bette’s doing a radio show tonight,” Farnsworth said. “Screen Guild play,
Dodsworth
, with Walter Huston. She just finished shooting a new movie,
Old Acquaintance
, with Miriam Hopkins. I warn you, Bette’s a little frazzled. Miriam is not one of her favorite people and she’s still having trouble with her Warners contract.”

“Used to work for Warners,” I said as we moved toward the grinning Carmen.

“You did?”

“Security,” I said. “Got fired by Jack Warner in person for punching a cowboy star who was pawing a wardrobe girl.”

“You and Bette have something in common,” Farnsworth said with a sad smile as I handed the check and a five-dollar bill to Carmen.

More than you’d think, I said, but only to myself.

“Your wife is my favorite actress, Mr. Davis,” Carmen blurted at Farnsworth. “Ask Toby.”

“It’s true,” I said, waiting for my change. Carmen’s favorite actor or actress changed every three to six weeks. Buck Jones held the six-week record.

“Thank you,” said Farnsworth uncomfortably.

“My change, Carmen,” I reminded her, my hand still out. Carmen rang it up and handed the coins to Farnsworth with a smile. He dropped them into my open palm.

“I’ve got some work to do for Mr. Davis,” I said, leaning over to whisper to Carmen. “But when I finish, maybe you and I could take a much-needed vacation.”

Carmen looked at me, her large dark eyes alert for a trap, her wide red mouth ready for an ambush. Farnsworth had discreetly taken a step away from the counter to give us privacy.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Tahoe,” I said.

“I’ll think on it,” she said, her eyes back on Farnsworth.

Farnsworth and I headed for the door. I held it open for him. “I’ll start tonight,” I said. “If that guy calls you back, let me know. If we need it, I’ve got some connections in the Los Angeles Police Department. My brother’s a captain. Need a ride?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” he said, looking up and down the street. “I’m parked nearby and I have a few things to do before I head home.”

I uncharitably suspected that one of the things was to go to a bar and drink his lunch. We shook again and I said, “Call me if you hear and I’ll let you know if I have anything to report.”

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

M
rs. Plaut’s boarding house, which I had called home for more than two years, was in Hollywood on Heliotrope in a reasonably quiet residential neighborhood of small homes, three-floor apartment buildings, and boarding houses.

I arrived, a brown paper bag of groceries in each arm, around two in the afternoon. Mrs. Plaut sat waiting on the porch in her white wicker chair, a bowl of something in her lap which she was mashing with a vengeful wooden spoon. Her radio was plugged in behind her and entertaining the neighborhood with what I think was a soap opera, probably “Rosemary.”

Mrs. Plaut was a gray wisp of a woman, tiny, determined, hard of hearing, resolute of purpose, and of no known age. Her white hair was a mass of tight curls and her eyes a pale blue. Mrs. Plaut believed, alternatively, that I was either an exterminator with unsavory friends or a book editor. With the latter forever in her hopes, I was in the process of editing Mrs. Plaut’s family history, a tome which was now to be measured not by pages but by pounds. I had considered trying to convince her to stop writing simply to keep from wasting paper that might contribute substantially to the war effort.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Peelers,” she said, looking at the packages.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Plaut,” I answered.

“I have been waiting for you for several hours,” she said, reaching back to turn off the radio, “and I am browned off.”

“Browned off?” I repeated, stepping across the white wooden porch to the front door.

“Bored,” she explained. “I heard it on the Arthur Godfrey radio show in the morning. Army bomber lingo. Like laying the eggs.”

“Dropping bombs?” I guessed.

She nodded in confirmation. I hadn’t gone to UCLA for two years for nothing.

“Can I put these in your kitchen?” I asked.

“Just put those in the kitchen,” she said. “I’m making gumbatz. I can’t stop or it’ll close up.”

“I wouldn’t want that to happen,” I said, and managed to get a hand loose to open the door.

“Don’t let Dexter see the box of b-i-r-d-s-e-e-d,” she spelled in a whisper.

Mrs. Plaut was a firm believer in the secrecy of spelling. It kept not only children and birds from understanding you, but also adults who seemed to turn into children or birds in the presence of Mrs. Plaut. She had been known to engage in secret spelling in the presence of my friend and fellow boarder, Gunther Wherthman. Now, Gunther may be less than a yard high, but he is over forty and speaks six languages fluently.

“I won’t,” I whispered, and headed through the open door to Mrs. Plaut’s downstairs rooms.

Mrs. Plaut’s living room, which she called her sitting room, was overstuffed and doilied. A bird cage holding Dexter stood near the window. Dexter hopped around a little, looked in my direction with his head cocked—probably to be sure I didn’t have Dash with me—and began chirping to himself.

In Mrs. Plaut’s kitchen I placed the bags on the table, fished out my milk, coffee, bananas, Rice Krispies, Wheaties, and Hydrox cream-filled cookies. I cradled them awkwardly in my arms and set back out for the hallway in the hope that I could make it up the stairs and to my room before Mrs. Plaut completed mashing her gumbatz and came up with another chore for me.

I didn’t make it. I almost never make it. She stood blocking her doorway, bowl in one hand, wooden spoon in the other. The spoon pointed at me, accusingly.

“You have not returned my last chapter,” she said. “The one about Grandma Teller and the peddler.”

“I’ll have it back soon,” I said. “I’m on a very important job, government, top secret.”

“Tomorrow will be fine,” she said. “I have removed your rent from the shoe in your closet.”

“You are a considerate woman,” I said, feeling the bottle of milk starting to slide through my fingers. “Now, if—”

“And I’ve taken the milk bottles you were hoarding.”

“Thanks.”

“But not your pennies.”

“Thank you.”

“I suggest you stop chatting and get up to your room before you drop that milk.”

She stepped out of the way and let me pass. I made my way up the stairs, moving slowly, fearing the shattering loss of milk. No milk, no cereal, nothing to dip my Hydrox cookies in.

I made it to my room and pushed open the door. It wasn’t locked. There was no point in locking it against Mrs. Plaut, who had a passkey and to whom privacy was a sin. I trusted the other tenants. At the moment, there were just three of us: me, Mr. Hill the mailman who got drunk every New Year’s and sang at Mrs. Plaut’s party, and Gunther. Gunther had the room next to mine where he worked translating technical documents, reports, and occasionally fiction into English from the languages he spoke and read.

Gunther was the best-dressed man of any size I have ever met. Gunther was the essence of dignity. Gunther was now also in love and seldom in the room next to mine, where he should have been working.

The object of Gunther’s affection was a toothpick of a graduate student in art history from San Francisco. Her name was Gwen. Gwen was serious, scholarly, and almost two feet taller than Gunther. They were inseparable. Since it made Gunther happy, I hoped they stayed that way.

I dropped my groceries on the bed in the corner. Each night, when I slept at home, I pulled the mattress to the floor to keep it firm under my tender back. The first time my back had gone out had been at a movie premiere when a large Negro gentleman had given me an unfriendly hug. I was moonlighting for M.G.M., trying to protect Mickey Rooney from his fans. This fan had been more determined than the rest.