The Hollywood Starlet Caper

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Book excerpt

Prologue

          A shot rang out. Years of experience as a private eye had taught me, Dick DeWitt, that this meant trouble, and trouble is my middle name. Well, not really. It’s Egbert, but that’s a long story—and trouble too.

          Hollywood. Home of the silver screen. Home of a thousand dreams and nine hundred and ninety-nine broken hearts. And for God’s sake, home of Rin Tin Tin! That awful guy Hitler is making a lot of noise and threats across the Atlantic, but who would have thought that Tinseltown,  right here in America, could be so rough on one’s health? But there you have it, and there I was, right where I should not have been. All those bullets that go whizzing by in the Westerns are blanks, they tell me. But the one that I heard was the real McCoy.

          I should have stayed at home. Should have, could have. Yeah, now I tell myself.

Chapter One 

I once heard about some poet whining that April was the cruelest month, or some such rot. Clearly the guy had never visited my city during the winter months, or he would have known better. He should be here when the white stuff makes it hard to see who you’re bumping into, and the wind slices through you like a knife cuts through butter, which not all of us can afford during these dark days of the depression. Yeah, he should be here and trudge to work when it’s colder than a witch’s you know what, and when you return to your flat you learn that the cheapskate landlord isn’t giving heat until all the tenants ante up their monthly rent. (I’ll never forgive the bastard for posting a note of late-paying tenants in our lobby, especially since the only name on the list was mine.) Yeah, winter is lots of fun in my city.

          But it wasn’t only the weather that was getting to me. Not even mostly the weather. I had been suffering from a bad case of the blues

ever since I solved the Black Llama caper in early December. Okay, I did get some help from my buddy, the retired cop Philip “Polish Phil” Mazurki, and the Llama did manage to escape and vow revenge. But I rescued my dodo secretary Dotty, although at times I’ve come close to regretting it. Why the blues, you ask? You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you anyway.                                     

I spent Christmas alone. Polish Phil and his lovely cousin Louise Prima had invited me for dinner, but both came down with the flu and had to cancel. I called Mom to wish her a merry Christmas and to ask how she liked the can opener I sent her. She told me that she’d like it best if I took it back and shoved it. Good old Mom. I didn’t have a date for New Year’s Eve, although Sadie Plotz suggested that I could join her and her latest squeeze, the Rabbi Gershom Gomorrah, for some dancing in her apartment. I asked her what kind of music she’d have. “Who needs music?” she replied.

A week later I went to my local neighborhood saloon, The Slippery Elbow, where I had spent many a jolly evening, and many a miserable one, too. My New Year’s Eve foray to the Elbow fell into the second category. Gus the bartender was in a foul mood, even for him. It seems his mother-in-law had returned home, and now Gus had to vacate the living room couch and go back to his bed with his missus. The venerable dispenser of bracing libations also informed me that poor Light Fingers

Louie,  my favorite snitch, was hiding from the coppers and a warrant for

his arrest. It didn’t do much for my mood either to see Southpaw Sammy Stickit still moaning that he could have gone to the major leagues if a lousy ump and equally lousy minor league commissioner hadn’t banned him from baseball for a minor episode. Worst of all was encountering woeful Gardenia Gertie, whose budding romance with that other loser, Hyman the Hebe, had gone on the rocks ever since Hyman’s wife said that she’d forgive him and take him back. Poor Gertie. Seems that she can never really catch a break, although quite a few men, I’ve heard, have managed to catch something from her. Just before I left the Elbow, she sauntered over to me and said that this would be a good time to see her apartment. I was so down in the dumps that I nearly accepted. Helped by the thought of later needing the treatment of Dr. Erlich’s “magic bullet” for you know what, I resisted temptation. I returned to my heatless place well before midnight, made a New Year’s resolution never to make a New Year’s resolution, had a quick snort of rotgut, and went to bed.

          The first two weeks of 1938 didn’t help my spirits, although I swilled more spirits than usual. The owner of my office building did correct the sign on my office door—and about time—but that hadn’t started a stampede of clients. I got a couple of nibbles for some work, but nothing panned out. Sitting there every day watching Dotty munching on her fingernails and cuticles and having to drink her lousy coffee was a downer; so was listening to her guffawing over one book or another, especially the one where some poor schmuck turns into an insect. Why Dotty found this so hilarious, I’ll never understand, but then there’s so much else that I’ll never fathom about my zany but zaftig Gal Friday.

          After one such dreary mid-January day at the office, I stopped at my familiar eating haunt, Ma’s Diner, and supped on what had to be a poor excuse for food for all except the most starved Armenians. Betty the waitress was there, of course, cracking her gum and cracking nasty remarks to yours truly. I felt like throwing the slop from my plate onto her apron, but the uniform already sported so many stains that it wouldn’t have made a difference. I tried to make nice by asking how the new year was treating her. She sneered and said that it would be treating her better if she had refined customers. I left a tip of a good-sized piece of lint that had been crowding the pocket of my brown, poorly creased trousers.

          Returning to my apartment, I found a telegram lodged under the door. I was glad that I had not been around for its delivery, for a tip would have been in order, and I had already depleted my stock of lint. Who could be telegraphing me I wondered. With the way things had been going, I thought it might be a threat from the Black Llama. Instead, it was from Marty “Mumbles” Hardy, a private eye with whom I had worked a few cases and who had left town in a hurry a couple of years ago. Word had it that he had taken a few compromising photos of a cheating husband and had then suggested that the man might wish to compensate him for his time and trouble, especially since his wife might be a wee bit pissed off upon seeing the snaps. Some people might have blamed Mumbles for his dubious ethics; more could have blamed him for failing to note that the husband in question was one of our city’s assistant district attorneys. Anyway, it was only a rumor, and knowing Mumbles…well, let’s leave it at that.    

              “Get off butt and get here,” the telegram read. “Great weather, good jobs, crop of luscious tomatoes.” That did it. Our lousy weather was getting to me, and my career as a dick needed a jump start. But most of all it was the thought of luscious tomatoes. I was drooling already. Let’s face it: you can’t find luscious tomatoes here in grocery stores this time of year.

          Mumbles had sent me pretty much the same message in a letter just before Christmas. But that was then and this was now. Time had helped to place things in perspective. On a cold, heartless January night in a year-round cold, heartless city I made a big decision, one that would change my life for better or for worse. I resolved to take Horace Greedy’s advice to go West. I downed a couple of shots of Jack Daniel’s to celebrate, went to bed, and fell asleep almost immediately. No need to count sheep…or llamas.

          The sun paid an unexpected but welcome visit to the city in the morning, and, for once, I was eager to greet the day with a smile. Breakfast, when I bothered, consisted of whatever was at hand. Now I took pains, fixed some tuna fish, garnished it with catsup and horseradish, and washed it down with a cup of freshly made Maxwell House. Figuring I’d need a clear head and full stomach to plot my move, I added two cupcakes, which had been hanging around the apartment for a while.

          Maybe I had added too much horseradish to the tuna or hadn’t scraped off all the green from the cupcakes, but it suddenly hit me that heading west was a big deal. I had never been west of Weehawken, New Jersey, and then it was only on a junior high school class trip to see where Aaron Burr had pumped some lead into Alexander Hamilton. Hell, I hadn’t the foggiest notion of how I was going to get to what Mumbles called the City of Angels. I knew it was near Los Angeles, but how near I wondered. And how would I get there? I sure as hell wasn’t going by airplane. I didn’t have the big bucks for that, and besides, I was afraid of heights. I had what I think is called  “pedophilia.” (Big words are my fort, ever since I took Vinnie the Vocabulary Man’s Thirty Days to a Bigger Mouth course a few years ago.) I knew how to drive a car but didn’t own and couldn’t afford one. I thought long and hard about the matter until my gumshoe’s training led me to a solution: I’d take a train. But which one? I vaguely had heard of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe, but which of them went to the City of Angels? And were they the only iron engines that paddled their canoes from here to there? I drank another cup of java before one of Mr. Edison’s light bulbs flashed and told me to contact a travel agent.  

          But before contacting a travel agent I had to figure out how to lay my paws on enough cash to get me to California and to let me figure out how long I wanted to stay. I had laid away some simoleons, thanks to the fee I had received from Uneeda Baker and the Black Llama caper, but most had gone with the wind, so to speak. The depression had been going on for nearly a decade now, and still no end in sight. What would it take to end this nightmare? A war? Meanwhile I figured that I needed enough green ones to keep me on the West Coast for at least two or three months. That meant I needed to cover the rent for my apartment, office, and alimony checks to the witch who had been my wife, in addition to what I would need to live on there.

          I reviewed the situation and concluded that I knew only two people who had the means and, I hoped, the willingness to tide me over. Figuring that blood is thicker than water, although I’ve never measured it, I first called Mom and asked for a loan. Before slamming the receiver down, she suggested that I take back the can openers I had given her last year for Mother’s Day and Christmas and try pawning them. I should get at least a quarter for each one, she suggested. Good old Mom. I’m afraid that age is playing games with her mind. I guess she didn’t know that I would need much more than two quarters for my trip.

          I hit the jackpot with my friend Polish Phil, however, who said that he could and would loan me the dough and could and would gladly wire me more if I needed it when on the Coast. I asked about the lovely Louise and learned that she would soon return to her miserable husband in Chicago to try to patch up their wreck of a marriage. “Why couldn’t she just be miserable with me instead of him?” I thought but said nothing.

          With my finances looking better than they had in months—make that years—I scanned the Yellow Pages for “travel agents” and settled on one several blocks away. It was nearly noon by the time I left my apartment. The sun was shining brighter than ever.

          The Get Away From It All Travel Agency had seen better days and probably better clients. Nobody that morning seemed to be trying to get away. In fact, although it was noon, I was the only one in the place, save for a dumpy, fiftyish broad wearing a big smile on her over-painted face and two pencils in her henna-dyed hair.

          “Can I help you to get away?” she asked, as she motioned for me to take a seat across from her. “How about a weekend in the Catskills? Saskatchewan? The Everglades? Buenos Aires? Peoria? Just name it and we’ll get you there.”

          When I told her that I wanted to go to the City of Angels, she put on a worried face and told me that I shouldn’t think such thoughts, that I was far too young to die. Then I explained to this travel professional that we were talking about a city that was near Los Angeles.

          “Oh,” she cooed, “why didn’t you say that it the first place? Los Angeles is a wonderful town. Say, are you going to make a picture in Hollywood? You know, people tell me that I’m a dead ringer for Mae West, and if you could put in a few good words for me, well I’d be…”         

          I cut her short and, to make a long story short, she suggested that I take the Twentieth Century Limited, a classy train for a classy gent like me. She asked if I would like a sleeper, but I said that I hardly knew her. This time she cut me short.

          When I left the agency the sun was shining brighter than before. I had no idea at the time that the City of Angels would be the City of Shadows…and Murder.