Browning PI Read online

  'Tune her myself,' McVey said. 'Don't smoke in the car if you don't mind. Stinks up the interior. Where to?'

  I let the cigarette stick there in my mouth unlit while I considered. (Maybe it was at that moment I fell into the habit of playing with cigarettes more than smoking them. I've gone through a pack and a half a day for forty years but I doubt if I've smoked half of them.) It was a hot August afternoon. If Sallust was out on the toot, where would he be? It depended on his mood, which was a very changeable thing. Sometimes he liked to drink in the bars of Greek restaurants, sometimes it was Chinese. He also liked fake Irish pubs, Mexican cantinas and Polish places. He even went into some of the less dangerous coloured joints. When I say less dangerous I don't mean I'd go into them myself, except maybe with someone McVey's size to back me up. It was a comforting thought, until it occurred to me that Silkstein might have had it first.

  All that's not to say Sallust wouldn't drink in an ordinary neighbourhood bar or a cocktail lounge. It was all a matter of mood and the stage of the binge he was on. 'When did Bobby last see Sallust?'

  McVey pulled a notepad out of his pocket and flipped over the pages. 'Four days ago. He was supposed to be delivering the script. He didn't and Silkstein roasted him. Sallust used some dirty words and walked out. Silkstein called him, even went round to his place. No dice.'

  'Was Hart drunk at the time?'

  'Silkstein didn't say so. Matters, does it?'

  I nodded. 'If he's only three, four days into a bender he'll still be wearing a tie. We'll start at the Players'.'

  McVey may have had cornstalks in his hair and axle grease under his fingernails (he didn't, but you know what I mean), but he knew a bit about Hollywood. He headed west towards Sunset. On the way we talked about Lupe Velez, who'd been found dead by her maid. Louella Parsons' black-bordered piece in the paper had described Lupe as 'never lovelier' as she lay on a satin sheet in a lamé gown with the Seconal and brandy bottles beside her.

  'I heard different,' McVey said. 'I heard she sicked up all over the bedroom and drowned in the john.'

  I'd had a one-nighter with Lupe, the 'Mexican Spitfire', some years before. It was hard not to if you wore trousers and could move around a little. I'd liked her and preferred Louella's version. Still, that was no way for a tough detective to feel. 'Nah,' I said, 'if Lupe was going to drown she'd have the class to do it in a silver ice bucket.'

  That got me another grin from McVey and then we were outside the Players' Club. Preston Sturgess4 had opened the place a few years before and made it a hangout for writers and literary types. The Garden of Allah was just over the street and I guess Dottie Parker5 and Benchley could carry their drinks across. Drinks were what the club was famous for—strong ones—which was why Hart Sallust liked it.

  We parked further down the strip and walked back. I had on my best suit, a grey lightweight, and my cleanest shoes and hat. I thought I'd be able to get into the place, at least long enough to ask about Sallust. McVey wouldn't get in on looks or clothes but he had his height, weight and wallet to back him up. We went through the doors just far enough to get a look at the New York, or maybe Chicago atmosphere—lots of leather and potted plants—before being braced. I forget the name of the traffic director, but business was slow and he appeared to be looking around for a table. McVey shook his head and passed me a five. I pressed it into the guy's hand.

  'Could you ask in the bar if Hart Sallust has been in lately?'

  He took the money but didn't bother to reply. McVey and I kicked our heels in the tiled lobby. Edward G. Robinson brushed past us in a cloud of cigar smoke. He'd probably gone in to look at the club's art collection. I'd heard it was pretty good, but I couldn't tell a Picasso from a Disney. The man who'd taken the money came back and gave us a word for each dollar.

  'He was here on Monday.'

  Only two days ago. We were hot on his trail. We went back to the car but I didn't get in.

  'What?' McVey said.

  'I'm thinking, and to do that I need a cigarette.'

  We wandered along until we found a palm tree to take shade under. On Sunset in those days that wasn't hard. We stood in a patch of shade and smoked and looked at the people who hurried along the street. They made me feel hot and reminded me that at least as a private detective I didn't have to hurry anywhere most of the time. I also didn't have to wear a jacket. I peeled mine off and draped it over my shoulder. McVey kept his on, no doubt because the holster he wore might have attracted attention.

  He dropped his butt and stood on it. 'Well?'

  'The Brown Derby,' I said.

  He looked up the street towards Vine but I shook my head. 'Not that one. The place on Wiltshire.'

  We drove to the original Derby, which was just a lunch counter before it got famous and started to have children. Sallust wasn't there but he had been two days back. That information also cost five bucks. At the other Brown Derby, on Los Filez Boulevard, we were only a day and a half behind him. McVey was making notes of his expenses in a little ledger book he kept in another of his deep pockets.

  'I think I'm getting his drift,' I said. 'He follows a kind of pattern. It's called a pub crawl in England.'

  'I'd call it a lush trail. Where next?'

  From watching private eye pictures and talking to a few of the breed, I'd decided that these fellows ran themselves too hard, never took a break between taking beatings and taking drinks. That wasn't my style even though it looked to be McVey's. Time to stall. 'Nothing to be done now. He'll be flopping somewhere, could be anyplace. Tonight we should be able to find him with a bit of luck. I'll make out a list of places and look at the map. We can be real efficient about it.'

  I thought McVey might go for that. He drove me back to the Wilcox and the grip he put on my arm as I was getting out of the car was supposed to remind me who was the boss and it did. 'So, where do we meet and when, Browning?'

  'Call me Richard. I'd say Dick but that's the wrong kind of moniker for this business.'

  He gave a snort that was half a laugh and half a snarl. 'I reckon I'd run out of breath saying Richard all the time. How's about Rich?'

  It sounds strange nowadays, but we exchanged cards. Mine was plain and cheap. It said 'Richard K. Browning, Private Enquiries', with my address and phone number. His had a red border around it and read: 'Peter McVey Agency, Confidential Enquiries'. After his name and before the location details were the letters 'M.A.P.D.A.' I asked him what they stood for.

  'Member of the American Private Detectives' Association.'

  'I didn't know there was one.'

  'There ain't, so far as I know. Where and when, Rich?'

  'The Trocadero, Pete,' I said. 'At nine.'

  I did some drinking at the Trocadero once in a while. I used to go there a lot when I was working for Hughes on Hell's Angels and lounge around in a leather jacket with dress trousers and shirt and be quite the young flyboy hero. Flirted with Swanson, yarned with Coop—that sort of thing. Those days were pretty much behind me now it seemed and, although I didn't know it then, the Troc was on the way out. It closed a year or so after the time I'm talking about. Anyway, as long as I was shaved, wearing a jacket and wasn't too drunk, I was more or less welcome in the place. I turned up in that condition at around nine and found McVey pacing the sidewalk outside the joint.

  'You're late,' he said.

  I looked at my watch. 'Ten minutes. We're not meeting Sam Goldwyn. I'm not saying Hart'll be here, you know. This is just the first port of call.'

  McVey grunted and snapped his cigarette into the gutter. I learned as we went along that he only smoked when he was nervous. 'Time is money. Let's get on it.'

  'Talking of money,' I said. 'That wallet of yours hasn't breathed any air in a while. I figure it's time to give it some oxygen.'

  He looked at me suspiciously. 'Meaning?'

  I took off my hat and smoothed down my hair. I had on a dark suit, cream shirt and a silk tie—all pretty well pressed. McVey had changed his shirt bu
t he still looked like a rumpled rube. Still, so did Gable at times. 'This isn't the kind of place you walk into and buy everything you want with a fin. You have to sit, drink a little, shoot the breeze. Come at it sideways, know what I mean?'

  He was nervous. He removed his hat and straightened the brim. No use trying to pat down that spiky hair; it'd spring straight back up again. 'I don't like it. But I'll let you call it for a while. I'm not used to this kind of place.'

  'That'll give us something to talk about. C'mon.' We checked our hats and my smile and a buck got us a reasonable table. I ordered a steak and a whiskey sour and McVey ordered a club sandwich and beer. The place was only half full and I didn't see anyone I knew. McVey's eyes bored into every face until I told him to take it easy.

  'He ain't here,' he said.

  'It's too early. Anyway, how do you know? You've never met him.'

  He pulled a photograph from his pocket and put it on the table. It looked like a touched-up studio publicity shot of about twenty years before and resembled Sallust the way a Siamese kitten resembles an alley cat. This Sallust looked soft and vulnerable, ever-so sensitive, with big brown eyes, thick glossy hair and gleaming white teeth. The Sallust I knew had walnut-sized pouches under his eyes, facial grooves you could put cigarettes in and his hair was almost white. His teeth were stained brown from smoking and the two front ones had got chipped in a fight. Fifteen years in Hollywood and every day of it was written on his face.

  'Put it away,' I said, 'or someone'll think we're either talent scouts or faggots. Anyway, it doesn't look anything like him.'

  The food and drinks arrived and we got started on them. I asked McVey to tell me about himself and how come he had an office in Santa Monica and was doing a job in Hollywood with a technique that belonged in Detroit. The three beers he drank got him talking and the club sandwich didn't stop him. He told me that he'd operated in Philadelphia for twelve years before some spots on his lungs sent him west. That gave us something in common. I'd been a lunger some years back and occasionally spat in a hankie and took a look. He'd been in Santa Barbara for six years, mostly doing what he called 'industrial work'. I knew what that meant—keeping oil-workers in line, repossessing autos and freelancing for insurance companies on false identities, fraudulent claims and torch jobs. Tough work.

  The steak was good and so was the whiskey. I kept an eye on the door and ordered another drink. McVey didn't object. He seemed to like drinking beer and talking about himself so I kept him at it.

  'How did you get the job from Bobby? No offence, Pete, but there's plenty of detectives in LA.'

  He chewed that over with the last bite of his sandwich. When he'd finished swallowing he took a long pull at his beer and wiped his big, red hand across his face. 'I ain't exactly proud of it. I met this girl in a cat house in Santa Barbara. Kinda stumbled over her. Turned out she was this Robert Silkstein's daughter. A runaway.'

  I reflected on that. Bobby was in his early forties at the most. He didn't strike me as the type to have married early so the daughter was probably very young. I nodded understandingly.

  'Anyway,' McVey said, 'I brought her home. She wanted to come. Just didn't have a good story to tell her folks. She 'n' me cooked up a good one and her Dad and Mom were happy. Silkstein had this problem on his hands and he gave me the job.'

  'Fine,' I said. 'We'll make a good team. I know the town and you're big enough to handle anything that gets too much for one man.'

  'How tough can it be? He's a writer. Those guys don't exactly chew bricks from what I've heard. Why should they? They've got a good racket. The tough stuff's all in their heads the way it should be. I'm a great reader. Love a good book. You?'

  I shook my head and thought about another drink. The beer had made McVey mellow and he'd probably spring for it, but we might have a big night ahead. I started to fill him in on Hart's habit of throwing insults and fists around in low taverns, then I stopped in mid-sentence and stared through the smoke at the door.

  McVey was mellow but that's all. His head swivelled. 'What?' he rasped. 'You see him?'

  'No,' I said. 'I see a ghost.'

  3

  Lupe Velez was walking through the smoke haze towards a table to our right. She was wearing a silver lamé dress and a tiara, strutting on four-inch heels that would've lifted her to about five-foot-five. She had a long cigarette holder in a glittering glove and her face was lit up by mischief and martinis. Scarlet lips parted, snowy teeth flashed and she shouted 'Caramba!' in a high-pitched squeal that sounded more like Annapolis than Acapulco.

  The shout brought the table of four men behind us to its feet. They started clapping and exclaiming and saying 'darling' a lot. As the lamé and tiara swept past our table I could see the padded chest and too-glossy wig. McVey got it a second later, before the guy was enveloped by his laughing, twittering chums.

  'Jesus,' McVey said. 'This town.'

  I signalled for another drink. 'David Niven summed it up for me once. He said, "In Hollywood, bad taste is good fun." I think it was Niven. Might've been Laughton.'

  'You know those guys?'

  Something in McVey's voice made me pay attention to him rather than wonder where the waitress was with my drink. He was bent towards me as if no sound I uttered was to be missed. I remembered then the quick intake of breath I'd heard in the lobby of the Players' club when Robinson had breezed through. It had been Pete, gasping in awe. The guy was screenstruck as well as a bookworm. Strange ways for a private detective. I decided that it was something to exploit. I lit a cigarette and plucked the drink off the tray before the waiter could set it down. 'Sure,' I said. 'Worked with a lot of 'em—Fairbanks, Cooper, Bogart. Still do, from time to time.'

  'Bogart,' Pete breathed. 'Enrol Flynn too, I bet. You being an Aussie.'

  It stuck in my craw to do it, but I nodded and flashed my version of the famous Flynn smile. 'That's right, mate.'

  'Jesus,' Pete said. 'I go to the movies all the time. What would I have seen you in, Rich? I have to say I don't remember the name and I read all the credits.'

  That was a bit difficult. I had a few small credits but under other names mostly, because of troubles with the immigration and tax people. Truth was, I couldn't remember who I'd been in what. I rattled off the names of a few pictures—The Frontiersman, Kid Galahad, Sante Fe Trail. I told him I had a bit in Lost Weekend which hadn't been released yet but everyone was talking about already as an Oscar winner6.

  McVey lapped it up. 'You get to talk with Milland?'

  I hadn't but what was the point in spoiling his fun? 'I got to drink with him,' I said. 'In the movie.'

  McVey shook his head in admiration and ordered another beer. The evening was turning out pretty good and I was beginning to think that if we didn't find Hart Sallust tonight what the hell? We could look for him again tomorrow. I couldn't have been more wrong. McVey gulped down his beer and the steely look came into his eyes rather than the glassy one I suppose was in mine. 'Right,' he said, 'enough of the fun talk. We've had our eats and drinks, time to learn something. Who you going to ask about our boy? The faggots?'

  I pulled my mind back onto the job with an effort. 'No. Sallust isn't that way at all. He's girl-crazy.' I corrected myself quickly in case he got the wrong impression. 'Woman-crazy. Wait here, I'll ask around. And keep your coat done up. The butt of that cannon's sticking out halfway across the table.'

  I said that just to keep him in his place. I worked the room for fifteen minutes, getting the brush-off here and the half-welcoming grin there. It was a mixed crowd, a lot of movie people, some cattlemen and their girlfriends for twenty-four hours, and honest citizens who'd saved up for a big night out. Ben Hogan was sitting at a table in the corner surrounded by men with stomachs and women with suntans. I drew a blank with the patrons and moved on to question the help in descending order of importance.

  Nothing from the barmen or the waitresses. Nothing from the doorman. It was the negro carhop's lucky night. 'Sure, I know Mr Sallust,
' he said. 'And I saw him tonight, sir. 'Bout an hour ago.'

  I gave him a dollar. 'That's worth a buck. See if you can make it two.'

  'He pulled up in a convertible. Looked like he was going to come in but he changed his mind and they drove away.'

  Another dollar. 'What kind of car and who was with him?'

  'Red Buick two-seater. Had a woman with him who was doing the driving which was just as well.'

  'Was Sallust drunk?'

  The negro made a see-sawing motion with his hand. I put another note in it.

  'Describe the lady.'

  He hesitated. I was about to peel off another buck when I heard McVey's voice at my shoulder. 'Describe her,' he growled.

  'Chink,' the negro said. 'Or part-Chink. Green silk dress, high collar and cut up the side the way they do. You know?'

  I could smell the beer on McVey's breath when he spoke. There was no threat in his attitude and no money in his hand, but he had the negro's attention. 'Sure. They call it a cheong sam or something.'

  'I wouldn't know, boss.'

  'What kind of a woman was she?' I asked.

  He knew what I meant. In 1944 you couldn't ask a negro a question like that about a white woman. He'd clam up for sure. Even a part-Chinese made it a bit dangerous. He reached out and took another dollar from the few I still held. 'Not exactly a lady,' he said. 'Thank you, gentlemen. I got to get back to work.'

  McVey handed me my hat and the cigarettes and lighter I'd left on the table. I'd been hoping to go back inside and think about what to do next over a tall, cool one, but that obviously wasn't on. I brushed imaginary dust off the hat and lit one of the cigarettes. Pete looked at me with amusement. 'Yeah, I can see you in the movies,' he said. 'You do things like that real nice. Can't be that many places in this town you can take a Chinese whore. Where to, Rich?'