Noir(ish) (9781101610053) (12 page)

“Yeah. Me too. She was a good kid.” I refilled my glass. “Just don't sign your name if you send flowers. I don't need the police askin' me any
more
questions.”

Sedway put his empty on the coffee table. “I won't.” He stood up and put on his jacket. “Well—thanks for the drink.”

“Yeah.” I stood, too, and walked to the door. I opened it. Sedway picked up his hat and walked into the hall. “And Moe?” He stopped. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

I watched him all the way to the elevator. He pressed the call button, and the rickety cage began to creak its tired way up the shaft.

I shut the door. I needed to think about what Sedway had just told me, but not right now. I picked up my drink and drank it, debated over the next one and decided why not. My belly was beginning to get persnickety about my choice of libations, and I didn't care. All I wanted was a nice, soft haze; the bourbon was being very obliging. This time, I added ice.

Greenstreet had finished with his meal, for the moment, anyway. He wandered into the living room, where I was listening to Schubert again, climbed onto the sofa, draped himself across my lap, and started to purr. Well, at least one of us was pleased with the events of the day. I closed my eyes and leaned back. I scratched Greenstreet behind his ears; he purred louder.

We'd been sitting that way ten or fifteen minutes, the record clicking on the turntable, when the phone rang. I let it ring. Last night's late-night caller had been about as welcome as a case of measles. Besides, the last time I'd answered it at
this
hour—a year ago, next Thursday—it had been a “Dear John” call from Chicago. I wasn't in the mood for a reminder just now—or for anything else, even another invitation to drop the Scott case. Or Lizabeth Duryea, for that matter. I'd sort
that
out tomorrow. Later today, anyway, after I'd had some sleep. When the ringing stopped, I got up—Greenstreet protested briefly—turned off the record player, took the phone off the hook, and poured another drink.

By the time I decided to go to bed, it was already light. I looked out a window. I think I saw the Morning Star.

Chapter 9

Thursday, June 26th, 1947, 2:00 p.m.

The sky was dark when I woke up. It was only the middle of the afternoon, but there were storm clouds settling in and it looked like Los Angeles was going to get one of its rare summer thunderstorms. It was about darn time: The humidity had been teasing the city for the better part of three days.

I turned on the radio and half-dozed, letting the news and weather ramble through the bedroom. My brain was thrilled to be less foggy than it probably should have been, but my belly was
much
less thrilled. It was still dealing with my night-before indulgences. I needed coffee and aspirin. The Doc said aspirin wasn't good for my stomach, but when it was in one of its moods, aspirin made it feel better.

Greenstreet curled up next to my face and swished his massive tail in it: He wanted his litter changed. I grunted at him; he mewed back: a demand. He swished the tail again and, when I didn't immediately move, whacked me with it. I opened my eyes. The cat was staring at me. I growled. He growled back. I got up and changed the litter.

The radio switched to music; I cut it off at the first sweeping chord. Then I put the phone back on the hook. It rang immediately. I waited till it stopped and took it off again, swallowed three Bayers dry, and while the coffee perked I shaved, got dressed, fed Greenstreet, and turned the radio back on. It looked like the cat was gonna have another lonely day: I had places to go and people to see.

And one place and person in particular.

* * *

The Hotel Niagara, like a lot of older Los Angeles, had seen better days. In its heyday it was a showpiece of the Jazz Age, its deco facade the same bright platinum as the hair of its most famous regular, Jean Harlow—the godmother of Bugsy Siegel's daughter Millicent—who, at sixteen and still known as Harlean Carpenter, had spent her first wedding night there in what was now called the Harlow Suite. (Still the hotel's nicest room, the suite was often occupied by curiosity seekers whose taste for the morbid rivaled the recent newspaper-buying public's: Stoker Thompson told me his sales had almost doubled since Bugsy hit the front page.) Harlow spent her nights at the Niagara speakeasy (when she wasn't at home at the Chateau Marmont) in the company of other stars and would-be stars who called the hotel their home-away-from-home. The end of Prohibition had dimmed its dazzle, and the rest of the Depression had all but darkened its doors.

Now the hotel was just another half-empty middle-class residence that catered to more or less permanent guests—mostly has-beens and never-weres, and a few starlets who wanted to board their bodies in a place almost shouting distance from the studios where they boarded their dreams, but couldn't afford the posher buildings that had sprung up, especially after the war. Occasionally it drew visitors from everywhere who sought accommodations based on its reputation and didn't ask in advance about its current condition. Most of
them
stayed there once.

Fritz Lorre had been at the Niagara for twenty years and had managed it for the last fourteen. In that time he'd rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous when they were crowding around the hotel's pool (which had been emptied years ago) and the tables of its posh restaurant (long closed—now most of the residents ate their meals at Clifton's Cafeteria, a few blocks away on South Broadway). Now he mingled with the aging, once-almost-famous (but never rich) who comprised the bulk of its resident population. Like so many of them, he'd come to L.A. with Aspirations. And, also like so many of them, they had been squashed: He was deemed too short and too squat for the silents and too “German” for the early talkies. Besides his thick accent (which, despite his efforts to rid himself of it, especially during the war, had remained pronounced and unmistakable), it didn't help that he'd been arrested for embezzlement. That was how he'd met me. I was a then-fledgling private eye. I uncovered the truth that exonerated him: It was Lorre's boss, one Peter Lang, who'd skimmed the funds. Lorre had gotten his job back (and, a few months later, Lang's job as manager) but never his reputation. It was, he said, like he was “valking arount vit' a big ‘E' paintet on my beck.”

Fritz lived in a suite on the second floor, and when I'd called the night before, he'd been only too glad to accommodate. “Enytime,” he said. “I vill be glat to help.” He would personally prepare the Harlow Suite: place a bucket of ice, a bottle of bourbon (in my honor, and in lieu of the usual champagne), and two crystal tumblers on a silver tray on the cedar chest at the foot of the canopied four-poster, and foil-wrapped pieces of Belgian chocolate on both pillows. They were still considered a luxury, though they'd been available again since the end of the war in Europe. I told him to forget the bourbon—I wouldn't be staying there—but he insisted: Perhaps I'd stop by and want a drink. “Robert Grahame,” he told me, “ent eny frient of Robert Grahame's, vit'out kvestion, is going to get the royal treatment.”

Lorre rarely worked the desk himself anymore, but he'd promised to be at it when Lizabeth checked in. “No rekvest,” he said, “vill be too larch or too small.”

I walked to the hotel, carrying my raincoat and an umbrella. It was a long walk but it helped my stomach, and it cleared whatever cobwebs were lingering in my head. It also gave me the usual chance to think, although the things I thought about on the way weren't the usual ones: Nine spent bullets were on my mind. So was Lizabeth Duryea, and the thoughts I was having about her weren't very pleasant ones. I was mad, and I was working on trying not to show it: Sure, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but at the moment I was low on sweetness and loaded with acid. She had a lot of explaining to do; I planned to be all ears.

* * *

The rain still hadn't hit when I got there around four, but the sky looked more pit than picturesque and now and then thunder was rumbling. The desk clerk was a French guy named Jacques. Fritz had a soft spot for foreigners, being one himself. Jacques looked like he'd spent too many years in the Resistance; his skin was zombie-pale, and he was thinner than your average gruel. He called Lorre, who came down right away, wiping crumbs off his mouth. “Robert,” he said, and gave me a big hug. “I vas just hafing tea. Come, join me. There are freshly baked
pflaumenkuchen
,
” he said seductively. I said no, thanks. Plum cakes are too sweet, even as breakfast, and I wanted to do what I needed to do.

He said he'd asked Lizabeth whether she wanted her coat cleaned and, seeing as she had no luggage, offered to send out for fresh clothing first thing in the morning. She'd declined both offers but thanked him, asked about the heating system (he assured her: The cooling system was working very well), and, in his company, went upstairs, where—to his amazement but per her insistence—he shut the air-conditioning off.

No one had heard from her since. The “Do Not Disturb” sign still hung from her doorknob, the maid had complained—again—an hour ago, and it was the middle of the afternoon! She hadn't asked for food, either, or more ice or anything else—“Not'ing vatsoeffer, except to make some phone calls,” he said. There'd been about a dozen of them, all to my home or my office, except one. She'd made that a few minutes before I arrived and was still talking. Jacques wrote down the number; I didn't recognize it—it wasn't the number Lizabeth had given me for Dan Scott—and put the slip of paper in my jacket pocket.

* * *

The boy took me up on the elevator, unannounced since Lizabeth was still on the phone. He was tall and blond and apple-cheeked and well-built, and he couldn't have been a day over seventeen. His name tag read “Tab.” I wondered if he was one of the starstruck dreamers, kids who came to L.A. daily in droves and would end up running elevators, or serving hamburgs and Cokes on roller skates, until they got tired of dreaming and went home to Topeka or Trenton or Tallahassee. He whistled something tuneless on the way up and announced “Seven” with professional good cheer when we stopped.

I walked down the gold-and-black-stripe-wallpapered hallway to 711: the lucky-numbered Harlow Suite. I saw the “Do Not Disturb” sign and was about to ignore it. Then I heard a voice inside: Lizabeth Duryea's. I put my ear to the door and listened.

“. . . been trying to telephonick him all—” she was saying. She sounded like it was urgent. “I'm
so
rry! I for
get
.
I've
only been here a few days, you know I'm not use' to— . . . Yes. . . .
Yes. . . .
I
do
know. . . . I
keep
trying. But I don't want to leave here in case he— . . . For the tenneth time,
they
haven't call' me. . . . He hasn't tol' them, I sup—”

I knocked. She muttered something else I didn't hear, then called, “Who, who is it?”—suddenly tentative.

“It's me,” I said.

She said something else, quickly and quietly. It sounded like “
Rion mlif
.” I put my ear back to the door. I was glad the Niagara wasn't the Desmond or one of the other big hotels on Sunset Boulevard. Their doors were a lot thicker. She added “All right, I
will
! But hurry” in the same hushed voice. There was a brief silence. I heard the receiver clatter into its cradle; then she cleared her throat. “Ro— Robert?” she asked, fearfully.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I— I'll be right there.”

I couldn't hear footsteps. I'd never stayed at the Niagara, but I'd been inside its rooms a few times. New carpet had been installed a couple years ago, and that was one of its best features. Thick dark-brown wool, the kind your bare feet bounced on, that muffled sound and wouldn't show stains. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Lizabeth had stopped moving. I let the breath out and coughed.

“Hurry up,” I called, and knocked again.

“All right.” I barely heard her coming toward the door. Then it opened. I walked in. I looked around the room. It was empty. All the doors—both closets, the bathroom, the one to the small sitting room—were open. The bed looked like it hadn't been slept in. The entire suite, which was the size of my apartment, seemed unoccupied and unused. She closed the front door, walked past me, and sat on the bed. She was wearing her gloves and her coat, and it was buttoned. All the way to the top.

* * *

My apartment had been hot.
This
was like an oven in Death Valley an hour before Thanksgiving dinner. I wished I'd called: I could have met her someplace cooler. Not that she would have liked that. Despite the coat, she looked not only comfortable but beautiful: Her eyes sparkled; her face and hair glowed. There wasn't a drop of perspiration on her. Anywhere that was visible, anyway.

“Hello, Miss Duryea,” I said, and loosened my tie. I thought about dispensing with it altogether: Fifteen minutes in here and I'd be wet head to toe. It might take twenty minutes without the tie.

She laughed a little nervously. “I—thought you were going to call me Lizabeth.”

I dropped my hat, coat, and umbrella on the bed. “And
I
thought you were going to tell me the truth,” I said, and decided the tie had to go, too. I pulled it off and added it to the pile. I left the suit jacket on; the Colt was in its holster underneath.

“I—have.” She half-smiled.

I didn't. “Oh yeah? When?” I helped myself to a chair, some sort of slick gold-and-black-striped fabric with cut-out oak arms. It was large and comfortable. “When you told me you'd never been to New York? Or that Venus was—
how
far away?”

“One hundre' seventy-two thousan', five hundre' thirty-eight million miles,” she said.

“That's right. Give or take.”

She looked wary. I could understand why. Stanwyck says I look angry when I don't smile. She's probably right. But sometimes I look that way because I feel that way. Like when my secretary gets killed. “Woul' you like . . . a drink?” she asked. “Mr. Lorre left this.” She pointed at the still-sealed bottle of bourbon on the silver tray.

I shook my head. “Thanks,” I said, “but I haven't had my breakfast yet.”

“Or perhaps you'd like . . . something else?” She unbuttoned the coat, slowly, shivering a little as she did. It reminded me of the time I'd seen Gypsy Rose Lee: all tease, no strip. The spangled dress beneath shimmered and clung to her like fresh gold paint to a pair of silk pajamas.

“Just the truth.”

“I've told you the truth, Rob—”

I don't lose my temper easily, but that flicked the switch. “
You told me a load of horse manure!
”

“No, I—”

“No, you
what
!” I got up and grabbed her arms and held her tightly, a foot from my face, and looked at her. Hot as it was, I felt like ice. Lizabeth looked back, her blue-gold eyes open and frightened but still hypnotic. Inch by inch, she brought her face toward mine, lips first. She closed her eyes.

That was her mistake. I'd started to lean my face in as well. I froze and kept her at arm's length. She opened her eyes again and looked at my hands, one, then the other. I eased my grip and she slid out of it.

I looked around the room again, more so I didn't have to look at her than because I expected to see anything or anyone. Nothing had changed. I walked over to the closets, the bathroom, the sitting room and peeked into each one. Empty. I opened all the drawers of the bedroom dresser and the desk in the sitting room. I opened the drawer of each bedside table. They were empty, too, except for a Gideon Bible and a telephone directory. I walked back to Lizabeth. She had rebuttoned her coat but was still standing in the middle of the bedroom. “Who were you talkin' to?” I asked casually.

“Talking to?”

“When I got here. It doesn't look like there's anybody else here, so it must have been somebody on the ‘telephonick.'”