Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice (2 page)

“Her maiden name. She used her maiden name for her career.”

Setting the pictures aside, Easy asked, “She have any relatives in the LA area?”

Benning shook his head. “No. She’s an only child and both her folks are dead. She’s got no close relatives anywhere,” he said. “She’s not at any of our friends’ either. I’ve called all the people we’re close to.”

“I’d like those names anyway.”

“Here’s a list I made, in case you did.” Benning pulled a folded sheet of yellow copy paper out of the envelope.

There were five names on the list. “Anything else in that envelope?”

Benning hesitated. “I guess maybe I have been playing detective.” He slid one hand back into the wrinkled envelope. “Jesus, the things you do you never think you’re going to do. I’ve been … I’ve been going through Joanna’s purse and her clothes lately. When she’s asleep or out. I found a few things. Maybe they’ll help you. I don’t know.” He handed Easy a small sheet of blue memo paper. “I found this in her carcoat a month ago.”

Written on the memo, in neat printing, was the name Ned and the numbers 203-0247. “Who’s Ned?” asked Easy.

“I have no idea. That’s a San Ignacio number, though.”

“Have you tried calling it?”

Benning shook his head. “I haven’t had the nerve.” He returned his hand to the envelope and came out with three canceled checks. “I haven’t called this one either.”

The checks had been written over the last four months, one every four weeks or so. Each was for one hundred dollars, drawn on the San Ignacio Mariner’s Bank and made out to a Dr. Gill Jacobs. They were signed with the name Joan St. John. “Do you know what kind of doctor Jacobs is?” Easy asked.

“A psychiatrist,” said Benning. “I found him in the yellow pages. He’s got an office in Santa Monica.”

“Any idea why your wife would use the name Joan St. John?”

“No, but that’s her handwriting,” said the young man. “Oh, and there’s no Joan St. John listed in San Ignacio or Santa Monica, or in any other town around here. I checked through a whole lot of phone books.”

“You think she might have a house or apartment of her own someplace?”

“Christ, I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s liable to do.”

“It’s not anything she’s talked about?”

“No. Most of our talks these days … arguments is the better word. No, we don’t go into any coherent details.” He reached one more time into the envelope. “This is the last thing.”

Easy took the matchbook from Benrang. It was black and on its front was the single word, in glittery gold ink,
Maybe?
“This is from that nightclub,” said Easy. “Place in San Ignacio.”

“Yes, the Maybe Club. Supposed to be, from what I hear, a swappers’ hangout, you know, swingers.”

Easy said, “Okay, I can look for your wife. I charge $100 a day, plus expenses.”

“I can afford that,” the young man assured him. “Jesus, I make $25,000 a year with the agency. Isn’t that ridiculous? Joanna thinks I’m worth a hell of a lot less. Will $300 in advance be enough?”

“Sure. See my secretary on the way out and she’ll fill out the necessary papers,” said Easy. He tapped his desktop with his pen. “I can find your wife, but I can’t make her come home. You understand that?”

“Yes,” said Benning. “I want to know if she’s alright. This, the way I feel right now, it’s like waiting for the guy upstairs to drop the other shoe. I want to know if she’s left me or what.” He stood. “Shall I leave all this stuff with you?”

“Yeah.” Easy stood too and shook hands with his client. “I’ll call you as soon as I find out anything.”

“Good luck.”

After Benning left Easy sat down and picked up one of the pictures of Joanna Benning. He sat watching it for a long minute. Then he dropped the photo and shook his head.

T
HE RAIN STARTED WHILE
Easy was walking down Cherokee, big warm drops splashing black on the dusty sidewalk.

A sixty-two-year-old newsboy in a brown leather jacket and brown cap came running by, clutching a fat brown-covered scrapbook under his arm. He shook his head, saying to Easy, “Shit, it’s going to rain all over my Ann Sheridan collection.”

Easy walked on. The hot rain slapped down all around him.

Two frail teenage girls with straightdown hair were ducked under an awning in front of a defunct shoe repair shop. The frailer girl was vomiting on the stone doorstep, trying to mask her mouth with one thin hand.

On the next corner a cowboy actor who’d had a series four years ago was standing with his arm around a second-rate agent and crying.

When Easy came to the single dwarfed palm tree growing out of the sidewalk he turned down an alley. At its end stood a big brownstone warehouse. Easy reached out and rapped on the warehouse’s oaken door with a knobby fist. Set in the middle of the door was a small nameplate reading:
Hagopian
.

The heavy door opened six inches and Hagopian’s hawk-nosed face looked out. “Hey, John Easy,” he said. “I don’t have my pants on.”

“I can come back when you’re alone.”

“I’m alone,” said Hagopian. “I was only explaining why I’m not bursting forth to greet you. Come on in.”

The enormous warehouse was cool inside, filled with long high rows of green metal file cabinets. In a clearing among the cabinets was a scatter of Victorian furniture and a small refrigerator.

Hagopian was a dark middle-sized man a few months from forty. His black hair was curly, his nose hooked, his dark eyes underscored with thin-fine circles. He was wearing a cotton paisley shirt and a pair of candy-stripe shorts. Slumped over the arm of the bentwood rocker he nodded Easy toward where a cable-stitch white sweater and a brand new pair of tennis shorts. “Like a beer?”

“I guess it’s close enough to noon.” Easy bundled the tennis clothes and threw them to the dark
TV Look
writer. “Taking up tennis?”

“Taking up with a girl who plays tennis,” said Hagopian. “Correction. She not only plays, she eats, breathes and shits tennis. This is the only way I can see her by day. Her name is Jem and she’s got the most terrific healthy tits you’ve ever seen. If they had an Olympic event just for nice-looking tits she’d take it.” He hopped, pulling on the tennis shorts.

“It’s raining,” said Easy.

Pointing a thumb toward the ceiling, Hagopian said, “So I heard, but it’s nice to have a private investigator friend who can confirm these things by astute first-hand observation.”

“Meaning you can’t play tennis in the rain.” Easy got up out of the rocker and walked to the little white refrigerator.

“Jem can play in rain, sleet, hail, falls of toads, meteor showers … she’s very keen on the sport,” said Hagopian. He pulled off his shirt, replacing it with the tennis sweater. “I don’t have to meet her until 1:30 so I can help you out until then.”

“At least,” said Easy as he fetched two bottles of dark ale out, “a girl who spends all her waking hours on the courts won’t be borrowing your Jaguar, the way some of your ladies have.”

Hagopian blinked, causing new wrinkles to ripple across his forehead. “My car. As a matter of fact, John, she loaned the Jag to the tennis pro at one of her clubs,” he said. “But that’s enough about my day-to-day struggles in the wacko capital of the world. What are you working on?”

“A missing girl again.” Easy frowned. He located a bottle opener on the floor behind the refrigerator and opened the two ales.

Hagopian dropped down onto a striped loveseat to tug on bulky white socks. “You don’t seem to be glowing with your usual zeal, John. After all, you met Jill during a missing girl case … how is she, by the way?”

“Splendid,” said Easy. “It’s a friend of Jill’s who hired me to find his wife, guy named Jim Benning.”

Hagopian dropped the tennis shoe he’d picked up. “Hey, John, you aren’t looking for Joanna?”

Easy walked over to hand his writer friend one of the dark ales. “Yes. You know where she is?”

The dark Hagopian shook his head. “No, and I’m not surprised her husband doesn’t.” He took a sip from the chill bottle, swished the ale once from cheek to cheek before swallowing it, then shook his head again. “A lovely girl, but wacky as a fruitbar.” He sipped once more. “Sooner or later they all come here, John. To the wackiness center of the universe, like pilgrims drawn to Mecca. And a goodly lot of them find their way to poor lovable Hagopian. I’m sort of a lodestone for wacky broads.”

Back in the rocker, rocking slightly, Easy said, “So you know Joanna Benning.”

Hagopian laughed. “Her name then, among others, was Joanna Feyer. I rarely fool around with them after they marry and pretend to settle down. A normal everyday wacky relationship is plenty enough of a strain, without adding a crazed husband.”

Easy stopped rocking. “What do you mean about her name? Was she using other names when you knew her?”

“This was four years ago.” Hagopian leaned back against the carved headrest. “I met her at a cocktail party up at the
TV Look
offices, around Christmas. She introduced herself as Judy … Judy Fain. Then when she found out I was a writer for the mag, she gave me her rightful name. Joanna was figuring to expand out of modeling into television acting. Would you care to guess how many girl models have that ambition?”

“102%,” said Easy. “Why’d she use a fake name with you?”

Hagopian set his bottle of ale down and clapped his hands on his bare knees. “She’s a very guarded girl, John. I got the feeling sometimes when she was over at my place that I was harboring a fugitive.”

“From what?”

“Life in general.” New rings danced under his eyes. “I don’t know exactly what they did to her when she was a kid, but it fucked her up pretty good. She’s, you know, a mixture of very open and very secret. Naturally I’m drawn to a broad like that. Armenians make good uncles to lost souls. Joanna could be mean as hell, but you always felt she was vulnerable. That somebody had to pay attention to her, take care of her … and you were that person. I only dated her for about three months and then she went off on a new tangent.”

“She ever use the name Joan St. John when you knew her?”

“No,” answered the writer. “The thing with names … she told me it was an added protection, so she wouldn’t get too involved with anybody. I remember her telling me she used to go to rotten rundown bars around LA—and you can find some exceptionally good rotten rundown bars in these parts—and get some schlunk to pick her up. The fun was in giving him a fake name and a fake bio.” He sighed. “So she’s still hiding?”

“Benning hasn’t seen her in six days,” said Easy. “Apparently she’s been wandering off during most of their marriage. Never for this long before.”

Hagopian nodded. “Guys put up with a lot from Joanna, because, she’s always pleasant when she comes back to you. She can be very loving and contrite. But, boy, to ride that merry-go-round full-time … Benning’s got more patience than I had.” He reached the ale off the floor and drank again. “You didn’t know I knew her. What did you want out of the famous Hagopian morgue?” He stood, walking in between two rows of green metal cabinets.

“You’ve already given me some of it. I want background on Joanna Benning, anything which might tell me where she’d be likely to go,” said Easy. “I’ll be checking out a lot of people, but I like to have as much extra background stuff as I can get first.”

“Maybe she’s in Mexico.”

“Why Mexico?”

The dark writer grinned. “A private joke, John. Joanna was always suggesting she and I go away, run away, and live a quiet and untroubled life in Mexico.”

“Did she name a specific place?”

“You can build a castle in the air without buying a lot first.” He stopped halfway down the aisle, reached up to pull out a chest-high drawer. “Actually I don’t have too much in my private information files on Joanna.” He drew out a manila folder. “Some composites from her modeling days, two or three clippings from when she opened a boat show or handed out oranges at a supermarket premiere.”

Easy took the thin folder and flipped through it. “Smaller breasts than most of your girls.” Finally he closed the folder and handed it back.

“Most vulnerable girls have small tits.” Hagopian refiled the material on the missing Joanna. “Anything else? You know I have the largest private clipping collection in greater Los Angeles.”

“Know anything about a psychiatrist named Gill Jacobs?”

Hagopian’s left eye narrowed as he thought. “Nope.” He walked to the end of the row, turned right. “I’ll check for you, but I think not. I’m sure he hasn’t written a book or been on any talk shows. He hasn’t invented a new therapy.” He turned down a new aisle of cabinets, stopping at a J drawer. “Is he someone Joanna may have run off with?”

“It’s possible,” said Easy. “Except I have an appointment to see him over in Santa Monica late this afternoon. I think Joanna may be further away than Santa Monica.”

“Not a good hideout town, no.” Hagopian gave his head a negative shake. “Nothing on Dr. Jacobs. What does her husband think, by the way?”

“He thinks he needs me to find her,” answered Easy. “He says he has no notion about where she is, or who she’s with. Though he did give me a few leads on people and places.”

Hagopian shut the J drawer. “I apologize for my morgue’s blankness on this Jacobs guy. Anything else?”

“There’s a possibility she’s been spending time over in San Ignacio, at a place called the Maybe Club.”

“Ah,” said Hagopian. “Joanna’s hitting a better-class rotten and rundown dive these days. The Maybe Club is a high-class sewer.” He trotted off, still in sweatsocks and no shoes, to a new row of files. “Here. A write-up from the
San Ignacio Pilot
weekend section a couple months back.” He unfolded a full tabloid page and gave it to Easy.

“ ‘Controversial Club’s Owner Defends Liberal Views,’ ” Easy read the headline. “Is he in politics, too?”

“He thinks it’s okay to screw other peoples’ mates,” explained Hagopian. “In San Ignacio that’s a pretty liberal view.”

Easy looked at the photo of the Maybe proprietor leaning against the bar in his club. “This is Sunny Boy Sadler. …”

“Right, onetime singing cowboy of the B movies,” said Hagopian. “I spent many happy afternoons in the Forties with his films. Little did I realize then that Sunny Boy was usually so juiced they had to practically glue him to his horse.”