Wake Up and Dream (32 page)

“Where do you send it? It doesn’t involve someone called Losovic by any chance, does it?”

Peters thought for a second, then shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Pat. All I know is we send it to some office down in Compton and it gets processed there and it costs us a packet.”

“
Compton
, not Willowbrook?”

“Isn’t that just where the museum is?”

“You might be right. Now, about the break in… ?”

“Just happened one night. Of course, everything was locked up and secured, although we don’t employ a nightwatchman—didn’t then, anyway. We’d already edited and made Mr Lamotte’s recording. I guess you know it’s been delivered, so there’s no issue there? The weird thing was, that those reels were the only things that got took in this whole facility, where we’ve got machinery worth tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention valuable reels of feelie wirestock.”

“So the reels that Daniel Lamotte had brought to have transcribed were taken, and nothing else?”

“Exactly.”

“Any other signs? Anything left, changed, disturbed?”

“Absolutely nothing at all. Like I keep saying, that was the weird thing.”

“A neat, professional job?”

“You could say. Not that I’m any expert.”

“And how easy would our client’s stuff be to find, once you were in here?”

He shrugged. “Not that hard. I mean we keep things labeled. We’re not Fort Knox. Weren’t anyway…”

“You told the police?”

“Yeah. But…” Peters gave the sort of shrug which most Angelinos who’d dealt in recent years with the LAPD would have recognized.

“And how did Mr Lamotte seem about this when you told him?”

“He was… Well, he just about as puzzled as I was. His wife, though… Jesus…” Peters whistled and shook his head. “She was mad as hell when she rang up a few days later. Asking all sorts of stuff just the way you are even though it was supposed to be her surprise present…I mean, there was nothing
bad
on that reel. Nothing that any of us noticed, anyway. Are you
sure
you’re not some kind of police? Or some kind of lawyers?”

Barbara managed to look gravely offended. “Mr Peters, we simply act for our client, but we also have a duty to his insurance company.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Peters’ enthusiasm for an interview with a private dick was fading, the way most people’s did. “I’m just not used to—”

“So that was it? Mr Lamotte’s reels got stolen, and nothing else? And you’ve seen or heard nothing since? Not from the police, not from the Lamottes, not from anyone?”

“Yeah.” Peters began to stand up. “Maybe I could show you where the break-in took place. It’s on the way out, anyway… Are you any closer to finding out who actually did this?”

Barbara smiled reassuringly. “It’s something we’re working on, Mr Peters, believe me.”

They followed him back through the main processing area. Steel threads blurred on spinning tops. Reels unrolled into new reels. White flares thinned between copper stretchers. As well as the smell of machine oil, and despite the absence of air conditioning and the heat of the day, the place had the chilly air of a meatsafe.

“Here we are. It’s the only way in and out. Course, we’ve reviewed security since. We now have a regular nightwatchman, and we’ve gotten ourselves a much stronger padlock. That’s to replace the one that got drilled out.”

Pete Peters slid the door back on a rumble of wheels. The sunlight outside was dizzying.

“S
O, CLARK, HOW ABOUT THIS?
Back at the turn of the thirties April Lamotte did something kind of hush-hush which was involved with developing the feelies. It saw her into a whole lot of money, but she keeps this old reel as a kind of insurance when she’s finished. And what better place to hide it than where she did? It’s like hiding books in a library—well, it
is
a kind of library… Then Dan comes along years later in all innocence with this idea of trapping his muse in this expensive wraith, which he wraps up as a surprise present for her even though it’s really for himself, the way men do with lots of things. And he grabs all the obvious reels of his own, and then this weird old one as well which she’s tucked at the back. Takes it all down to our friends at Feel-o-Reel to get the job done, and from there it vanishes. Which, when April Lamotte finally realizes what’s happening, spooks her no end. It all adds up, doesn’t it?”

No
, he thought.

They were parked on 5th outside the County Library, and the tall figures representing water, light and power atop the Edison Building opposite seemed to be looking down at them.

“Best thing, Barbara, is you see if you can find any reference at all to that word…”
Thrasis
. He still didn’t much like saying it. “And then there’s this Doctor Losovic—the one who’s supposed to be Charitable Director of the Bechmeir Trust and no one’s seen for a while. If we can work out where
she
is…”

“If she’s anywhere, that is. We should have looked up her home address in the phone book back on Blixden. You never know. It might be that simple.”

“Yeah, but you can find that out in there as well.” He nodded toward the County Library, which looked to him to be about as safe a place for Barbara to be as he could imagine at the moment. “Give me another look at that list.”

“Just what are you—”

“Shush. Give me some quiet.”

It was still strange to see all those names on the yellowed sheet of paper. Half the hugely rich in this city—and seemingly half the dead. That bishop he’d seen at Kisberg’s party. The lawyer politician whom the papers called Judge Death. Not to mention Kisberg himself. Peg Entwistle’s old agent Hilly Feinstein was there as well.

Peg, he supposed, had been what you might call a Bohemian back then. She’d taken the boat over from Wales with her Dad when she so young she could barely remember, was showbiz through and through, and smart in the way you didn’t get from going to school. She’d read more poetry than he had, and knew about classical music. And she also had some weird friends, which was saying something in this city. There was that little guy with the hook nose and no prospects, for instance, who Clark remembered lived in the room next to hers, and used to bang his broom on what passed for the walls when she played her gramophone. Otto Frings, his name was. He’d liked to peek in on her as well. Clark had come up to Otto once, standing outside in the deep night and looking right up at her lit window. Clapped his hands and said
boo
. Little guy had jumped like a sandlouse.

Quite a lot of Peg’s crowd, little Otto included, had worked or often didn’t work for Hilly Feinstein. Hilly was a piece of work like most agents, and Clark recalled meeting him just the once, and that was with Peg on board a gambling boat. Gambling didn’t much appeal to him, but he loved the theatricality and the booze and the cheap new paintwork which turned some old hulk out in the bay into something which glittered on the water for a few weeks until the cops raided it or it got sunk.

There was roulette, and craps, and blackjack, and slots. Clark enjoyed the spectacle for a while until Peg drew him down to where the more serious games were going on. Hilly Feinstein had been sitting at the poker table, big as a toad and just about as greenish. He beckoned Clark over, bid him sit down, shooed Peg off; this was the kind of game men played alone. The other players were vague shapes across the green baize table in the dense fog of smoke, and the boat now seemed to be rocking as a swell rose up. Looking at Hilly, the long slope of his enormous underchin, his near-invisible eyes and the gritty, milky stuff he was drinking instead of whisky, Clark felt almost as greasy and queasy as the guy looked.

Cards were dealt. Clark played. He bet low. He lost. Then the game seemed to draw back, and Hilly was like some freakish conjurer, shuffling a new pack so hard it wouldn’t stop blurring, not even when he held it out to Clark and told him to take a card. Instead of clubs or aces or kings, Clark saw a sequence of weird pictures of skeletons and hanged men which ended with this picture of a naked woman pouring water into a pool beneath a glittering night sky. Hilly was telling him in his asthmatic wheeze that this was something called
The Star
—which proved to be a real joke, the way things ultimately worked out—but Hilly had taken the whole pack back and the next game was on before Clark could get a proper handle on what he’d been shown. He had to excuse himself, stagger back up the gangways and throw up. He hadn’t liked the sound of Hilly Feinstein before, and he sure as hell didn’t like him now.

That sour, displaced feeling he was left with after meeting Hilly Feinstein was one of the reasons he let things between Peg and him drift apart. Of so he told himself. That, and the fact that you could never expect these things to last. And when word got through that Peg had pulled that bizarre stunt and ended up in the Met, he never visited her and let things drift even more. And so it went. And then, a fair few years later, long after his career had vanished, he saw Peg’s face again. It was on a billboard. Suddenly she’d become
PEG ENTWISTLE
. And he’d ceased to be
CLARK GABLE
—if that was who he’d ever really been. But that’s how it goes in this city. You never look down or back. At least, not if you can help it. That’s how you pretend to keep sane.

“Jesus!” Barbara flumped back in her seat. “How much quiet is this going to need?”

“Not much more. But…” He gave it another moment. The idea wouldn’t go away. “There’s someone I’d like to go look up.”

“Who?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Why, then?”

“Probably for no better reason other than they’re still alive. Last time I heard of, anyway.”

She frowned. “Will it take long?”

“Depends. I shouldn’t think so.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid?”

“You sound like my stepmom.”

“And you’ll come right back here?”

“Give it a couple of hours.”

“Right.” She nodded. “I really want to try to get an edition of
LA Truth
out tomorrow, and someone has to do the proper research. Maybe we should try the Trust’s administrative offices in Compton. Just walk in there and say we think something odd’s happening. Or, if I can’t find out more that way, we could always try going back through all that toilet paper in a bit more detail…” She blew at her fringe. “Now
there’s
a statement I wasn’t expecting to make a few days ago.”

He looked at her. She looked at him.

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

He noticed as she tucked the list back inside her handbag and climbed out the car that she was carrying the snubnose Colt along with her Graflex.

I
T ONLY TOOK TWO PHONE CALLS
from a public booth. He’d imagined he would probably need a drive to Sunset Pier or Hermosa along the coast, and be gone for far longer than he’d told Barbara. But he only had to go a few blocks. Even in a place like LA, he barely needed to get in the Delahaye.

There was so much activity going on outside the Biltmore that he had to turn off from the main frontage and park along Hill Street on the far side of Pershing Square, then cross over past the statues and the sleeping winos in the little park; no flustering studio flunkies or concierges or car valets to greet him now, but when he looked up at the giant hotel’s three big towers he felt like he was tripping back into a world he’d briefly savored in his nearly-made-it days. But the world had moved on—California had anyway. Construction workers and lighting electricians were busy preparing the scene for tonight’s big bash at the Biltmore Bowl when Herbert Kisberg would declare himself as a man fit to become the nation’s first Liberty League president. Even as Clark watched, they were unrolling Stars and Stripes and Liberty League banners down the building’s sides. A number of NBC radio trucks were also parked outside, readying everything for the live feed on
Star Talk
. There was absolutely no fucking way, Clark decided once again, that he was going to succumb to Barbara’s suggestions that he reprise his performance as Daniel Lamotte with Wallis Beekins tonight.

The Clipper Bar was a basement affair, set around the side and down some steps. Although basement was hardly the word. The first thing which struck him was the place’s smooth chill. That, and the odd taste he was getting in the back of his mouth. Just air conditioning, but to him it felt like stepping into a feelie theater when the Bechmeir field generators were turned full on. The place had the look of a feelie as well. All gloss mahogany and deep pile rugs and recessed lights. Some black guy was playing tasteful piano music in the background, and the theme of the Clipper Bar, now his skin had stopped crawling and his eyes had grown more used to the dimness, was supposedly maritime. There were fishnets which had never seen a trawler hooked across the ceiling. There was a whole chandlery store of unused shipping brasswork screwed gleaming to the walls. And there was barely anyone here.

The sole figure who sat at the bar turned to look at him with sad brown eyes. He returned his attention to his drink as Clark drew up a stool.

“How they biting, skipper?”

The man shook his head. “They ain’t biting at all.” There was a near-full ashtray before him and he spoke without shifting his cigarette from the corner of his mouth.

“Another?”

“Yeah. Why not? You paying?”

As Clark opened out his billfold, he saw his old friend’s gaze focus through the smoke haze towards it. He wasn’t sure whether there was enough light in here for anyone to make out that he was using another man’s driver’s license and State ID.

The barman did them two fresh mint bourbons in the quick, efficient way that barmen in swish places like this always had. The taste of the cool, exquisite drink in the heavy shot glass hit Clark like another lost memory. The piano played on. “How long’s it been?” he asked.

The guy shrugged. “A couple of years. More… What made you find me now? I’m guessing from the way you’re dressed you ain’t looking for a pleasure cruise.”

“Not exactly, no. And I’m guessing from the way you’re dressed that you are?”