The Fame Thief (29 page)

“Gosh, that’s terrible. How was Kathy about it?”

“Well, you know, she’d kind of gotten herself all revved up. She got past the thing about moving and leaving this place, and she was drawing floor plans everywhere and showing me how much cooler my room there would be and talking about how we didn’t really need a pool—”

“Wait,” I said. “Eight eighty and no pool?”

“The back yard was a cactus garden. He was going on about how she could qualify for some federal program for saving water. And there were some dinky little solar panels on the roof, and that was a pipeline to the treasury, too.
Money on the table
, he kept saying. So anyway, he’d gotten her all psyched, and when he called to say it was off, she jumped on him a little on the phone. She was chewing on him about how it was his job to make sure the title was good before he got her daughter—that’s me—so excited about moving.”

“You poor baby.”

“So he was going to have dinner with us tonight, but now he’s not.”

I said, “Awwww.”

“Isn’t it awful?
Money on the table
.”

“Does he really have different-color eyes?”

“Different enough to be a stoplight.”

“How’s Tyrone?”

“The best,” she said.

“Well,” I said. “Take care of him.”

“He takes care of me,” she said, and hung up, having successfully driven a nail of pure guilt straight through my heart.

I lay there for a few minutes, feeling like the guy at the bottom of the avalanche. I was drowning in questions and the cold water of my own shortcomings. The murders of Dolores La Marr, Pinky Pinkerton, and Doug Trent; the attempt on my own life; the apparent nonexistence of the daughter Debbie Halstead asked me to find; Debbie Halstead herself, and whatever the hell she was up to; where Edna had disappeared to; my abandonment, at least for the moment, of Ronnie; Kathy’s disastrous taste in men—including, I had to admit, me; my failures as a father; and the possibility of Rina being forced to move out of the house she loved.

Which reminded me.

Just as I started to dial Louie, the phone vibrated, and there he was.

“Like a charm,” he said.

“According to Handkerchief?”

“According to the accepted offer, signed by your sleazeball realtor. Ninety thousand above asking price.”

“He told Kathy there was a problem with the title.”

“Well, there was,” Louie said. “He’d sold it to someone else.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, good. Did you get the papers back from Handkerchief?”

“Why do you even ask me these things?”

“And you’ve got the last five hundred for him.”

“I give it to him tomorrow, when he calls your buddy Dick and pulls out of the deal.”

“And then disappears.”

“Handkerchief’s good at that.”

“Well, I owe you.”

Louie said, “Do you ever.”

“Who’s next?”

“One you never met. Elton Cho, Korean guy. The female half
is his real wife. You didn’t even notice that one of the sets of stuff is in an Asian name.”

“That’s why I have you. Anyway, that’s fine, that’s fine. Asians inspire confidence. Is he good?”

“Slick as a wet road. Made a fortune buying old buildings in K-town in limited partnership and turning them into churches, tripling the asking price, and selling his part of the partnership to the pastors as the whole thing, without cutting his partners in. Churches are big business in K-town.”

“Churches are big business everywhere. Tax-free, too. Is he hungry?”

“Well, sure. That’s a limited club, people you can sell a Korean Church to.”

“I’ll let you know when we need him.”

“Kathy ever finds you’re behind all this, she’ll kill you.”

“She’ll have to get in line,” I said. “Probably behind Debbie. Not the kind of client to ignore.”

“And, since you brought her up,” Louie said, “I still can’t find nothing about Debbie ever having a kid.”

“Well,” I said, “life is certainly interesting.”

Senator Wheeler: And isn’t it also true that Mr. Dressler represents the union to which you belong, the Screen Actors Guild?

Miss La Marr: He represents all of them.

Senator Wheeler: He also represents many of the studios, doesn’t he?

Miss La Marr: You are so far above my level it’s enough to make me laugh. Here’s Dolores La Marr’s Hollywood, okay? Here’s any actress’s Hollywood—

Senator Wheeler: Miss La Marr—

Miss La Marr: You try to get an extra part, then you try to get a character with a line to speak, then you try to get a character with a name, then you try—

Senator Wheeler: This is interesting, but—

Miss La Marr: —to get a contract somewhere, and once you’ve got a contract you try to get a good part without stabbing too many other actresses in the back or having to get into the sack with too many guys in suits. And when you finally get a good part—

Senator Kefauver: Miss La Marr!

Miss La Marr: Then you show up and try to make something work, with a hundred people staring at you and other actresses hoping you fall on your ass, and you go home and cry because you know you can’t do it but you can’t cry too much because you’ve got close-ups the next day, and—

Senator Kefauver: Miss La Marr, you will confine yourself to answering the questions we—

Miss La Marr: And you’re asking me about who represents who at the top? I don’t even see the guys at the top except when I’m trying to stay out of their way on Wednesdays, when they take girls to the Elgin. Or on weekends when they want you to go out to the beach. Like any of them has ever been swimming.

Senator Wheeler: So someone as powerful as Mr. Dressler would be a desirable ally, wouldn’t he?

Miss La Marr: We were friends.

Senator Wheeler: You are a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, aren’t you?

Miss La Marr: Didn’t we just talk about this?

Senator Wheeler: As a member of a union, what is your understanding of what a union does?

Miss La Marr: It soaks you for dues.

Senator Wheeler: Please, Miss La Marr.

Miss La Marr: It’s supposed to get you paid better, keep people from cheating you. My father was in the union, in Scranton.

Senator Wheeler: And how would your father have felt if he learned his union’s lawyer also represented the mine owner?

Miss La Marr: It would have bugged him. You know, upset him.

Senator Wheeler: Do you know the term conflict of interest?

Miss La Marr: Sure, what do you think, I’m dumb?

Senator Wheeler: I think you’re a very intelligent young woman. I think you know exactly how much of a boost it can give a young woman’s career to have a—what shall I call it—an advocate like Irwin Dressler in her corner.

Miss La Marr: You got a point there somewhere?

Senator Wheeler: I also think you know how much might be done by a body such as this one, with the influence
we wield, to repair the damage that’s been done to your career.

Miss La Marr: You don’t say. You mean, a bunch of Congressmen are going to say it wasn’t really me in those pictures?

Senator Wheeler: There are many ways people like the members of this committee could help you to get past the repercussions of your evening in Las Vegas. Of course, the best way for you to demonstrate that what happened there was all a misunderstanding would be for you to cooperate with this committee. Actions speak more loudly than words.

Miss La Marr: Yeah? Then what am I saying now?

(Miss La Marr walks out of the committee room.)

Girl had guts
.

I looked at my watch. It was still early enough that I had two choices about whom to call. I didn’t think that either of them would lie to me, but I decided to call the one whom I
knew
wouldn’t.

Rina said, “This better be good.”

“Why?”

“Mom and him are having a real flamer on the phone.”

“Mom and
he
,” I said, and then I said, “you mean an argument?”

“
Oh
, yeah. He told her the truth.”

“Always a decision that should be given some thought where a woman is concerned. What’s the truth?”

“Well, she kind of chewed him into a corner about the title mistake, and he told her that actually he’d had a much better offer, and he was legally required to report it to the seller.”

“If you hear a choking sound on my end, it’ll be laughter.”

“So she said, why didn’t he give her a chance to match it, and he apparently said because it was way more than the house would be worth, and she said, well how did he ever think he could represent both of them anyway and wasn’t that conflict of interest and he said that he could save her money by kicking back part of his double commission to her, and she said, and I quote, ‘There is no fucking way in God’s world that’s honest, Richard,’ and then you called.”

“Synchronicity,” I said. “The concept of conflict of interest has come up a lot in the last ten minutes. Listen, I need you to check something for me. You said Dolly’s mother married some assistant director or something and he got big during a union power squabble and something something.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, try to find out more. Find out about the union fight. Who were the two sides? How did it get resolved? Anything you can get. I think maybe the most important thing is who were the two sides, who were the leaders of the two sides.”

“Unions. A little boring. The grimy proletariat.”

“Might be a murder story.”

“You mean the guy Dolly’s mother married was involved?”

“And maybe a lot of other people, too.”

There was a silence, and I figured I’d impressed her, so I let it stretch out, but then she said, “
Boy
is she ripping him a new one.”

The bed was fine, but I wasn’t. It took me hours to get to sleep, and then I kept waking up, and the eightieth or ninetieth time I opened my eyes, the sky through the window was that horrifying steel gray that tells you the night is over and the sun will be running things again almost immediately.

So I called down for coffee and took a quick shower before it arrived, and I was sitting there, damp-haired, when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to Tuffy.

“Mr. Frank is swell,” Tuffy said. “I got relieved by another guy at three
A
.
M
. and got some sleep. Nobody even drove past the place.”

“Good.” I stepped aside to let him in. “Have you had coffee?”

“Don’t drink it. My nervous system is too delicate.”

“Juice? Anything? I’ve got a guy on the way up.”

“Nope. Just wanted you to know that Abe Frank is okay and that the man who’s been sitting in front of what’s-her-name, Ella Cowan, says he hasn’t seen nothing either. At least, nothing that got his attention.”

“What does that mean?” The door, which I’d left ajar, opened, and a young man, East Indian or Pakistani from the look of him, came in with a big tray. He put it down and removed the linen
covering it to show me a vacuum-pump of coffee, a cup and saucer, and two pieces of toast, cut the frilly way, which is to say on the diagonal. He hovered there, waiting for approval. I gave it to him in the form of a few ones, and he left.

“Means she lives in a condo development,” Tuffy said. He surveyed the contents of the tray without interest. “White bread,” he said. “Refined flour will kill you. Anyways, you gotta get through the gate, which he didn’t, and on the other side there’s like a dozen big units. Oasis Tower, something like that. So he sat there all night and no one went through the gate until about twenty minutes ago, and that was a limo that a guy came out of and got into and then it left again. She’s in Unit Seven, and as near as he can figure, nothing is happening in Unit Seven.”

“Good. How’s Irwin?”

“Popping out of his skin. Wants to kill everybody. I haven’t seen him like this in years, since before he took everything legal.”

I picked up the toast and looked at the individually wrapped squares of melting butter that had been plopped on top of it. “Tell me,” I said between my teeth, “what’s so contagious about the hotel idiocy that says you send the toast up, getting cold, with two foil-wrapped bits of butter, getting warm, so that by the time you get it, you’ve got butter that runs all over the place when you open the foil and four pieces of dry, cold toast? Why do you suppose every goddamned hotel in the world does it?”

“Jeez,” Tuffy said. “And I thought
I
had a bad night’s sleep.”

After Tuffy left
and I flushed the toast down the toilet, I still had a couple of hours before I could even think about heading over to Oasis Towers; Ella Cowan had made it very clear that she didn’t see anyone earlier than eleven and that I’d be pushing it even then.

I blew a few hours going over things, making notes on my
laptop and checking the notes I’d already made. Abe Frank had been right when he said everybody was dead; more right, anyway, than he would have been if he’d made the statement a couple of days earlier, before Murder Night. The editor who took the call for the photographer was dead, the cop who’d made the morning call for the second photographer was dead. Raft was dead, Giancana, Roselli, Eddie Israel, Bugsy—the list went on and on.