Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 Read online

  “Lou—I’ll talk to Drury.”

  “Are you coming back? Should I put a light in the window?”

  “I’ll talk to Bill, Lou. Goodbye.”

  And I hung up.

  I got myself a Dixie cup of water and sat and sipped and thought about Bill Drury and what a schmuck I’d been to hire him onto the A-l. I shook my head. This was one of the rare times when I’d fucked myself over by being too nice a guy….

  My friend Bill Drury, former lieutenant on the Chicago P.D.—who’d been unadvisedly taking on the Chicago mobsters since he first came on the job, back when Capone was still in power—had been railroaded off the force (not for the first time) two years ago. He had been fighting for reinstatement in the courts, while writing antimob columns for the Chicago Herald-American and the Miami Daily News. Last year, when the Illinois Supreme Court refused to hear his case, Drury found his services as a crime reporter were no longer in demand, and he came to me, looking for a job as a private investigator. I had given it to him, on the condition he lay off the mob busting.

  I knew I had to talk to him, but I didn’t feel ready to head back to Chicago. I enjoyed the Sunday afternoons with my sweet lovely son and my sweet lovely goddamn faithless bitch of an ex-wife. I’d gotten attached to the sunshine and the work was easy, and Kefauver’s people—some of whom were investigating out here, also, but looking for California crooks, not Chicago ones—hadn’t bothered me.

  Both Bill Drury and his poor common sense were no longer in my thoughts as I parked on Le Conte Avenue, not far from the front gate of UCLA. I wandered through West wood Village—a collection of attractive boutiques and intimate restaurants in handsome Mediterranean-style buildings—enjoying the cool evening under a clear sky flung with more stars than Hollywood. The night was almost cold, a breeze biting through the slacks of my blue glen plaid tropical worsted, as I approached the building called the MAC.

  An example of Southern California architecture at its best, the MAC was a mission-style castle with stone-tile masonry walls, a square tower, and a red clay tile roof. I strolled through a charming stone-and-landscape courtyard, across glazed ornamental tile, into a sprawling building rife with hardwood interiors, wooden beams, and decorative ironwork.

  I soon found myself in a lounge, where pretty coeds and lucky college boys were laughing and talking, sipping Cokes, having smokes, a few gathered around a wood burning fireplace with a crackling fire going; some card playing and Ping-Pong was going on, too, and a couple couples were doing the hokey pokey to some music on the radio. I asked a coed for directions, then headed past a library, various conference rooms, a dining room, and the kitchen, into the large assembly hall where, on stage, the rehearsal was under way.

  I sat with my hat in my lap, amid a scattering of students involved in the production. Vera did indeed play a floozy, and she did a bang-up job of it; but her part was small, and after about an hour, during which her scene was run through half a dozen times, she’d been dismissed, and joined me in the sparse audience.

  “Any sign of Paul?” she asked. She was in the same fetching powder blue outfit she’d worn to my office, plus spike heels that may have been part of her Salesman characterization.

  “Nope,” I said.

  She craned around to look. “I’m surprised. He’s been haunting rehearsal all week.”

  “How long do you have to stay?”

  “I’m done, now. Would you walk me to my dorm? The entrance is around back of the building….”

  We headed out through the courtyard, where we paused to admire a colorful tiled fountain in the shape of an eight-pointed star; lighting within the fountain painted the dancing spray with a rainbow effect. Her arm was in mine, and she was leaning against me; the smell of Camay soap in the fresh crisp air was bewitching. She was a young, shapely, pretty girl and I was a lonely divorcé in his forties, and I was distracted.

  Which is why he was on us before I even knew it.

  The guy grabbed Vera by the arm linked with mine, and yanked her away.

  “Paul!” she squealed.

  Paul was tall, knife-blade thin, wearing his army uniform, which was rumpled and wouldn’t pass inspection. Despite his weak chin, he was handsome enough, or would have been if his eyes hadn’t been so wild, and his nostrils flaring.

  “What are you doing with this old fart?” he demanded of her. His fists were clenched. He looked like he might hit her at any moment.

  But the real reason I sucker punched him was the “old fart” remark. I caught him in the side of the face with a hard left hand and he collapsed like a card table.

  Vera stepped back and covered her mouth; college-kid faces began popping up in the arched windows along the ersatz stone facade of the building edging the courtyard. Smiles and wide eyes and pointing fingers….

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said, but it wasn’t clear who she meant.

  “Leave her alone,” I told him.

  He was a pile of long limbs in khaki down there on the ornamental tile. His eyes were crazed, his lower lip trembling.

  “She doesn’t want you bothering her,” I said, patting the air with my palms. “Just keep your distance—”

  But something was coming up from deep within him, a scream of agony that took the form of words: “Bothering her!”

  And suddenly he was reassembling himself, like a played-backward newsreel of a building demolition, and he was on his feet and hurling himself at me before I could say another word.

  I did have time to throw a punch, which caught his jaw and should have sent him down again, but he was fueled by rage, and shook it off and came windmilling at me, fists flailing, one catching my chin and stinging. I backed away, but had forgotten the fountain, and tripped over a star point and tumbled back into the water in a spattering spray. Then I was the one who was flailing, floundering on my back in the shallow water, lucky not to have cracked my skull or broken a damn rib or something.

  He was laughing at me, pointing, hysterical, out of control, he had never seen anything so fucking funny, and he was still laughing when I rose like a human wave and leapt out of the fountain at him, dripping wet, hopping mad, doubling him over with a right to the belly, straightening him with a left under the chin, putting him down with a right to the side of his face.

  Then he was on one knee, as if proposing. He was not about to get up, not soon, not now. I was dripping water, but he was dripping blood, one side of his mouth a pulpy mess.

  Vera stood with a hand to her dark red lips, looking at him with pity, but making no move to go to him.

  I just stood there, drenched, waiting to see if a reconciliation was going to take place. Wouldn’t be the first time an old boyfriend got beat up by a girl’s new savior, only to renew her sympathy and interest in the old beau.

  Not this time. Vera took my wet arm and said, “We need to get out of here, before the campus police come.”

  I nodded, and we left him there, on his hands and knees, his breath heaving, mouth dripping; maybe he was crying.

  I was a little out of it, from the scuffle, and I don’t remember exactly how we wound up at my car—a ’50 Packard, a dark green number that belonged to the A-l. But we were sitting in it—me behind the wheel, getting the upholstery wet—and Vera in the rider’s seat, looking at me with concern.

  “I don’t want to go back,” she said.

  “Back where?” I was still a little groggy.

  “To the MAC…to the dorm. Paul’s still back there. He might cause more trouble.”

  “You want to bunk on my couch?”

  She nodded. “You want me to drive?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Is it far to your place? You need to get out of those wet things.”

  “No, it’s close. Hop, skip, and a jump.”

  When I pulled in at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Vera’s hazel eyes grew huge. “You live here?”

  “Sort of. I have use of a bungalow. We handle their security. Management likes having m
e around…. They have a clientele that needs discreet assistance, sometimes.”

  “But those bungalows are expensive!”

  “Well, I’m in one of the Howard Hughes bungalows. He rents four of ’em, at all times, but only shows up occasionally. And one is for security, so even when he’s around, I can stay put.”

  “Howard Hughes? You know Howard Hughes? What is he like?”

  “Nuttier than a fruitcake. But he’d go for you.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh yeah….” He would take one look at this doll and start designing a cantilevered bra.

  Soon I was walking Vera down a sidewalk bordered by palms and flowering shrubs, and she was commenting on how Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had supposedly started their romance in one of these bungalows. I had no reply—I was busy shivering in my wet worsted on this cool night.

  Then I ushered Vera inside and she ooohed and aaahed at the marble fireplace, the French doors leading to the private patio, the French provincial furnishings, and the pale pink decor with the pale green touches. The console television, which was neither pink nor green, amazed her; she stared at it like a savage contemplating a crashed airplane. I told her the sofa—a comfy overstuffed pink-and-green floral number—was all hers.

  I wasn’t planning anything. I was sore from the punch I’d caught and the fall I’d taken; maybe I was an old fart at that, because the lovely coed in the other room interested me less than a hot shower.

  After which, soothed, and sleepy—though it was only around nine-thirty—I went to the bathroom closet and put on one of two Beverly Hills Hotel white terrycloth bathrobes hanging there, and draped the other over my sleeve, like a waiter serving a meal.

  When I returned to the living room, the lights were off and the fireplace was on. Still in that powder blue ensemble, she was sitting in front of the flames, legs tucked under her, the spike heels off, staring at the dancing orange and blue, which reflected on her pretty features.

  “Would you like to sleep in this?” I asked, holding out the robe.

  She rose, took the robe, and asked, “Do you mind if I take a shower, too?”

  “No. Go right ahead.”

  I sat in my bathrobe on the sofa with nothing on but the robe. Still not planning anything, listening to the muffled dance of water needles seep through the bathroom door, I wondered if maybe Vera had something in mind.

  She did.

  Her brunette hair damp, bangs turned into gypsy curls, she returned smelling like Lifebuoy (no Camay in my soap dish, unfortunately) with all the makeup washed away, looking fresh and innocent. Or anyway she looked fresh and innocent until she dropped the terrycloth robe to her feet, a puddle of white she stepped out of, letting the flickering flames dance all over her.

  But even in the glow of firelight, her skin was creamy, and her figure was astonishing—tiny waist, wide hips, perfectly shaped, pink-tipped breasts displayed like awards on a wide rib cage.

  She slipped her arms around me and said, “Thank you for saving me,” and presented her pretty face for a kiss.

  Who was I to argue? The full lips were warm and moist and her tongue flicked at mine; then she was tugging that bathrobe off me, and we fell onto the couch and necked in the nude like we were both teenagers. A few minutes later her damp hair was tickling my thighs as she suckled me, making giggling, gurgling sounds, like she couldn’t have been having a better time with a lollipop; and when she crawled around on top of me, so she could continue her oral indulgence while I returned the favor, nose deep in curls, I realized this Texas teen was not as wholesome as first I had thought. We took a quick time out for me to find a Trojan, and I sat on the couch and she sat on me, and rode me like a kid on a carousel, making delicious little sounds, squeals and coos, my hands on her rounded bottom as I nuzzled first one ripe breast, then another, inducing further girlish glee. She was so fun-lovingly feminine, she was almost a cartoon—but a cartoon in Esquire.

  Later she came back from the bathroom wrapped in the robe, saying, “That was a ball!”

  Sitting on the couch in my own robe, I managed a nod. I felt like a truck had hit me—a 115-pound, well-stacked one.

  “What do you want to do now?” she asked, plopping next to me, cuddling against me.

  “Sleep?”

  “No! It’s early. What about that place you own part of?”

  “I don’t own part of anything.”

  “Didn’t I read you own some restaurant on the Strip?”

  “Sherry’s? No, the papers got that wrong…. It’s my partner, Fred Rubinski’s place. You want to go there?”

  She wanted to go there.

  Sherry’s was a study in glass and chrome, ornate in a modern manner, and often was jumping, even on a Thursday night like this. Tonight was no exception at the Sunset Strip cafe, customer chatter colliding with clanking plates and the tinkle of Cole Porter on the piano, though the brightly illuminated restaurant seemed short on famous faces. Of course my gangster acquaintance Mickey Cohen had stopped hanging around here, after he and his entourage got shot up out on the sidewalk, last year.

  Though it was open for dinner, Sherry’s was known as an after-hours joint, the likes of which had been suffering due to a postwar decline of nightclubs and theater; Ciro’s and the Mocambo were still doing good business, but many other clubs had shuttered, and big-name nitery talent had migrated to Las Vegas where top dollar awaited. Also, the Big Bands weren’t drawing like they used to—dancehalls had tumbleweed blowing through them, now that the kids were listening to Frankie Laine and Patti Page. Hadn’t been the same in this town since ’48, when Earl Carroll’s closed down after the boss died in a plane crash.

  We were shown to seats by a waitress I didn’t make eye contact with (we had history); nonetheless, I was the owner’s partner, and got treated right by way of a cozy booth. Even in a starlet-laden burg like Hollywood, Vera’s striking figure caught many an eye; her simple powder blue college-girl attire was at odds with the after-theater finery around us. But a body like Vera’s in a town like this made up for a lot of sins. So to speak.

  We ordered coffee and pastry—I had a Napoleon and Vera a cream puff, which we were in the middle of when Fred Rubinski came over to say hello (and to be introduced to the gorgeous brunette).

  “Sit down, Fred,” I said, and Fred slid in next to Vera. “This is a client of ours—Vera Palmer. She has an ex-boyfriend who hasn’t come to terms with the ‘ex’ part. Vera, this is my partner at the A-l, Fred Rubinski.”

  “I’ve read about you, Mr. Rubinski,” she said with a grin, then shook hands with him as she licked custard from one corner of her mouth.

  This action froze Fred for a moment, but he managed to smile and say something or other. Fred—a compact, balding character who resembled a somewhat better-looking Edward G. Robinson—was as usual nattily attired. He had opened a one-man P.I. agency in the Bradbury Building before the war, gradually garnering an enviable movie industry clientele; my national reputation had been growing at the same time, and in 1946, we had thrown in together, in what was now the L.A. branch of the A-l.

  “You must want to be an actress,” Fred said.

  Vera said, “That’s what I’m studying at UCLA.”

  “She’s a finalist in the Miss California contest,” I said.

  Fred was patting Vera’s hand. “Well, when you’re ready to talk to the studios, don’t forget us.”

  “Oh, I won’t!” And she giggled and cooed—sounds I’d last heard when she was on my lap.

  Then Fred turned his sharp, dark eyes my way; his rumpled face tightened, as much as it could, anyway. “Sapperstein called me today.”

  “Yeah. Me too. He thinks I’m needed in Chicago.”

  “I agree with him. You gotta get back there and deal with your friend Drury.”

  “Not you, too, Fred! I’ll call him….”

  Fred waggled a scolding finger. “Nate, this is bad for business. Neither one of us—in either of our towns—can af
ford to have the kind of enemies Drury is making for us.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Fred shrugged, but his eyes were unrelenting. Then he asked Vera if she minded if he smoked, and she said no, she was finished with her dessert and was going to have a smoke, herself.

  So Fred lit up a Havana and Vera had a Chesterfield. I just had my coffee. I was not a smoker—I had only smoked during the war, when I was overseas, on Guadalcanal. The only times I craved a cigarette now were certain kinds of stress reminiscent of combat.

  “Listen, Nate,” Fred said, “Frank’s here.”

  “Which Frank? I know a lot of Franks.”

  “Frankie.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That Frank.”

  Vera was trying to follow this. “You don’t mean Frank Sinatra?”

  I nodded and her eyes glittered.

  “He’s been wanting to talk to you for a couple weeks,” Fred told me. “Remember, I said he called?…Why don’t you go back and say hello, get this out of the way. He’s with Ava.”

  Vera’s hazel eyes popped. “Ava Gardner?”

  I shook my head. “Poor kid’s on the way down.”

  Fred shrugged. “He just had a hit record.”

  “Yeah, well his tank’s on empty and he’s running on fumes. He’s had his run, Fred.”

  “Boy’s got talent.”

  “The public’s gonna have his ass, leaving Nancy.”

  “Maybe. Say hello to him. Maybe you can see what this job he has for us is all about—he won’t tell me.”

  I nodded again, and got out of the booth. Vera looked at me like a greedy child who wanted a pony.

  “Come along,” I sighed.

  Frank and Ava were at a booth near the kitchen—not really such a good seat, but out of the way. I didn’t know Ava very well—only that, beautiful as she was, she was a hard-nosed broad with a vicious streak.

  “Nate!” Frank said, bolting to his feet; he stuck out his hand, which I took.

  He looked skinnier than ever, sporting a Clark Gable mustache that was wrong for him. He swam in a tan gabardine sportcoat and a yellow shirt with an open collar; he wasn’t wearing a rug and his thinning hair made him look old for his thirty-five years. Next to him, in a foul mood that rose from her like heat off asphalt, sat Ava; she was smoking a cigarette and her makeup seemed heavy to me, though she was unquestionably lovely, her attire simple but striking: an orange blouse with a mandarin collar.