Dream Town Read online

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, noticing this.

  She glanced at him, and in that look he saw something in the woman Archer had thought he’d never see: resignation.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just…hard sometimes. You work your guts out and get rejected a hundred times to land one lousy part. It…gets to you after a while. But I guess there’s always tomorrow.”

  He nipped a piece of tobacco off his tongue as he felt the Hollywood bug inserting itself between them like a border wall. “Fingers crossed,” he said encouragingly. He didn’t think Hollywood was a good place for her, but he also knew how much she wanted to be a star here.

  “But I’ve been working steadily. I’m not a star under contract, so I got three pictures going at two different studios, including this gladiator pic for Universal. I’m at Warner Brothers next in a spy flick involving atomic secrets. Then I go on location in Arizona in a romantic comedy, again for Warners. And my name is getting around and the money is really good, and I’m not even a midlevel actress yet. They can pull in three grand a week. I only make half that.” She paused and glanced at him, excitement once more dancing in her eyes. “And Archer, I just bought a nice two-bedroom bungalow off Melrose near the country club, and I have my own car.”

  Archer perked up at this. “What kind of car?”

  “A Volkswagen. It’s green with a split-screen rear window. You ever seen one?”

  “Not since I was fighting my way through to Berlin.”

  Her features turned somber and he didn’t think it was his comment about battling Nazis.

  “But I turned thirty last month and the clock is ticking. I’m not Kate Hepburn. My face won’t look good playing spinster aunts or being a mom with grown kids. I’ll just look old. And I don’t want to end up a small-lot dust-off with a baby spotlight on me for my one line in a lousy picture that’ll probably never make it out of the editing room. Or spend my remaining pennies on studio coaches and no-class agents to get me back in the door, while people talk crap about me right in front of my face.” She looked at him. “If you see that happening, shoot me, Archer.”

  He took all this in and said, “Well, if it makes you feel better, I pull in a fraction of what you make when crime is really good, but I do get most Sundays and Christmas off.”

  “I know I should appreciate what I have, but I worked my rear end off for it. And the story of the casting couch is no myth, let me tell you.”

  He looked at her sharply. “You didn’t—”

  “What I did, Archer, is between me, myself, and I.” She looked wistful, which she almost never did. “But I hear TV is really taking off,” she said. “Maybe I should think about trying that.”

  “I saw an episode of Dragnet the other night at Willie’s place. It wasn’t bad.”

  “I heard they work with the police department to make it authentic.” She glanced sharply at him. “Hey, Archer, you’re a real gumshoe. You could be Joe Friday’s new sidekick. You’d make a lot more money. And we’d both be actors.”

  The way she said it was a bit sad, thought Archer. It was as though she just wanted a friend to be out there fighting for a career right alongside her.

  “But I wouldn’t have nearly as much fun. So, what’s the plan for tonight?”

  “Dinner at Chasen’s, then drinks at the Cocoanut Grove, then we head upstairs to the penthouse suite and ring in 1953 with the bubbly and some VIPs.”

  “How’d you score the penthouse at the Ambassador Hotel?”

  “The director on this garbage movie, Danny Mars, that’s how, Archer. It’s his wife, Gloria’s, pad. His third wife’s. Gloria has her own money, inherited from back east. And, in case you’re wondering, no, I am not going to be wife number four.”

  “Glad to hear it because four is definitely not your lucky number.”

  The thought of her marrying another man had made Archer’s heart skip a beat.

  They walked along arm in arm. They passed what Archer thought looked like Rin Tin Tin taking a piss on a poor bum trapped in a cheap suit of studio armor.

  He and Callahan kept right on marching to 1953.

  Chapter 3

  ARCHER DROVE THEM OVER to West Hollywood and valeted the Delahaye. The slender uniformed man who took the key and gave him a ticket in return scratched his head when he saw the positioning of the steering wheel.

  “I can park it myself,” Archer said off this look. “Only questions are, how much do I charge, and are you a good tipper?”

  “Ain’t a problem, sir. Mr. Cary Grant’s got him a right-hand-drive Rolls. Jimmy over there knows how to handle the thing.”

  “Good for ‘Over There Jimmy.’ Now, except for the bullet hole on the windscreen post, there’s not a scratch on her now, and you’ll make sure there won’t be another scratch when I get her back, right?”

  “Bullet hole?” the man said, his jaw going slack.

  “Just a misunderstanding. But not another scratch. Capiche?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Archer passed him a buck to seal the deal.

  They walked in under the long awning to find the place in full swing. A lot of the big stars had their own booths here, and many of them had turned out in the tuxedoed-and-gowned flesh to welcome in 1953 with steak and asparagus dripping with hollandaise sauce, coconut cream pie, and the best cocktails on Beverly Boulevard.

  When they got inside he watched as Callahan looked around at all the legendary stars partying there. Her manner at first became subdued, as though she was as overwhelmed by this as any out-of-towner would have been. But then her expression changed to one of sheer excitement to be in their company.

  “Don’t look now, but omigosh there’s Frank Sinatra, and Groucho Marx,” whispered Callahan.

  Archer eyed those two gents and their substantial entourages along with Bob Hope, Milton Berle, and James Cagney, all in various states of sobriety. In a back booth surrounded by male admirers was the woman who was just beginning to take the town by storm. Archer thought if there was a lady to give Callahan a run for her money in the come-hither department it was Marilyn Monroe. An old-looking Clark Gable outfitted in a tailored sharkskin suit and loosened burgundy tie was downing shots at the bar like a man who had been thirsty his whole life. Word was he’d never recovered from his wife Carole Lombard’s going down in that plane a decade before.

  They were escorted to a table by a guy in a striped linen suit that was far nicer than Archer’s, with a fresh gardenia in his buttonhole, expensive shoes on his wide feet, and a quarter-size rock on his finger. Archer had always heard the tips at Chasen’s were the best in town. He was very happy that Callahan had insisted on paying.

  They sat and had their menus delivered by a gal in a tight blue skirt, with a yellow rose pinned to her white blouse. They ordered drinks from her, a whiskey highball for Archer and a sidecar for Callahan.

  While they waited for their cocktails, Callahan looked around. “I still can’t believe I’m part of this world, Archer.”

  “Don’t you come here for dinner all the time?” he said, smiling.

  “I’m just a working girl. In fact, I’ve only been to Chasen’s with you, mister!”

  A few moments after their drinks came and they tapped glasses, a voice called out, “LC? Is that you? Is that really you?”

  Archer looked up to see a slip of a woman around forty, all sharp angles and energetic intensity and with straight black hair, approach their table. Through tortoise-shell specs, her green eyes looked like round frog’s eggs. Her skin seemed like it had never finished forming, leaving bare the bony emotional edges underneath. Archer figured if she was an actress, that would be one nifty element for the camera to capture.

  “Ellie?” said Callahan, looking as surprised as the other woman. “Is that you?”

  She fingered her dark, slack hair. “Got tired of being a bottle blonde who slept on curler rolls. Too many blondes in this town. I don’t mean you, LC.”

  “Sure, I
know. It’s a swell look on you. Pull up a seat and have a drink. This is my friend, Archer. Archer, Ellie, well, Eleanor Lamb.”

  They shook hands. As she gave the waitress her drink order he ran his eye over her again. She was barely five-two, and the scales would never get to three figures with her. Everything about her, from the cheekbones to the chin to the elbows to the knees, was knifelike. It appeared you could cut yourself in innumerable ways on this lady.

  Her dress was a fluffy crimson number with a line of ruffles at odd places; the sleeves ended before the elbows and the hemline before the bony knees. The stockings were black silk that made her skinny legs look more robust. It somehow all sort of worked.

  For her part, Callahan was housed in a simple, form-fitting red dress that plugged every curve she had like a four-inch headline in the LA Times. Around her shoulders was a fringy black wrap, and down below long, stockinged legs that constantly drew men’s attention.

  “LC?” Archer said.

  “Some people refer to me by my initials,” explained Callahan. “Ellie is a screenwriter. The first movie I worked on here was one of her scripts. It was a United Artists film. Where are you now?”

  “Same independent production company as before. We were hired to do the UA screenplay.” She took a moment to light up a Chesterfield from a silver cigarette case she slid from her handbag. Archer noticed her hand shook a bit as she took a drag on the Chesterfield, propelling out the smoke from both barrels of her nose. She shot him a glance before looking away. “I’m working on a script for Columbia as a comeback vehicle for Bette Davis.” She tapped her smoke into the glass ashtray at their table.

  Archer gave her a puzzled look. “Wait, Bette Davis needs a comeback film?”

  Callahan said, “You stay in this town long enough, everybody needs a comeback film.”

  “And All About Eve was two years ago,” interjected Lamb. “Which is twenty years in Hollywood time, at least for women.”

  Archer glanced at Callahan, who appeared to take this comment hard. The rest of her sidecar disappeared down her throat.

  “I’m actually working on the project with Danny Mars.”

  Callahan looked startled. “The director of the B-movie I’m on is doing Bette Davis’s comeback film?”

  “Well, he’s attached, for now. Davis will have final approval on the director, of course.”

  “Who are you here with, Ellie?”

  “Some guy who failed to show up. I don’t think you have that problem.”

  The waitress presented Lamb with her glass of sherry and bitters with a curlicue orange peel apparently for window dressing. Archer didn’t know anyone who really drank sherry unless they had to, but he thought he might just be hanging out with the wrong crowd.

  “Archer is an old friend from Bay Town, just up the coast. He put his detective work aside for one night to ring in the new year with me.”

  Lamb swiveled around and laid a look on Archer that he had seen plenty of times before, just not in that particular shade of jarring green wrapped with framed portholes.

  “You’re a detective? A real one?” This almost came out as one word.

  “A private one.”

  “Private is what I need.”

  Callahan said, “Ellie, why in the world do you need a private eye?”

  The frog eyes turned on her with steadfast urgency. “Because I think someone might be trying to kill me.”

  Chapter 4

  OVER THE YEARS ARCHER had learned that when someone said they thought another human being was trying to off them, they were either: hating their life and vying for attention; paranoid and beyond the help of someone like a private detective; or someone, indeed, was trying to kill them. With Eleanor Lamb he didn’t know yet if it was one of the three or whether he would learn a new reason.

  “What makes you say that?” Archer asked as he nibbled on a handful of peanuts that Chasen’s put on every table. “Have you received any direct threats? And if so, from whom? And why haven’t you gone to the cops with them?”

  “Geez, Archer, why don’t you give the lady the third degree or something?” exclaimed Callahan.

  “It’s okay,” said Lamb. “Those are all pertinent questions. To answer them, no, I have received no direct threats. So I don’t know who might be behind it. And I don’t want to go to the cops, because it might cost me my job.”

  “Why would your boss get mad about that?” asked Archer.

  “If someone is trying to kill me, it might put the people I work with in danger.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  “Green and Ransome Productions.”

  “Is there a Green and a Ransome?”

  “Bart Green is a prominent producer who’s worked with everybody in town. The firm provides an array of services to the studios. Talent, writers, whatever is needed.”

  “But I thought the studios did all that in-house.”

  “Mr. Green was a big-time producer with Warners and then at MGM, so he has major connections. He’s got film projects going with pretty much every studio in town.”

  “How did Danny Mars get in the loop to direct Davis?” interjected Callahan.

  “He and Mr. Green are longtime friends. The old boys’ network, you know.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m waiting for the old girls’ network to kick in,” quipped Callahan.

  “And Mr. Ransome?” asked Archer.

  “Miss Cecily Ransome is an up-and-coming writer and director.”

  “A woman director?” said Archer, glancing at Callahan.

  “Girls do direct films, Archer,” said Callahan in a brusque tone.

  Archer tacked back to Lamb. “Why exactly do you think someone is after you?”

  Lamb took a nervous sip of her sherry and Archer watched an errant drop of it spoil Chasen’s fine table linen. “The first was a weird phone call I got about a week ago, at home. It was someone breathing heavy—a man, I think. It said that I was in danger.”

  Archer hiked his eyebrows and lowered his expectations. “You didn’t recognize the voice?” She shook her head. “What else has happened that was weird?” he continued.

  “I’ve gotten two hang-ups in the middle of the night. The phone rings and scares the hell out of me, but when I answer it, all I hear is breathing and then…click.”

  Archer sat back, his interest waning. “Come on, that just sounds like some drunk or doped-up kids playing around. Next, they’ll be tee-peeing your house.”

  “Really? Well, I woke up one morning to find my front door wide open.”

  “Any signs that anyone had been in your house?” asked Archer. “Was anything taken, or moved around, or was anything left behind?”

  She shuddered. “There was a bloody knife in the kitchen sink.” She paused. “Does that sound like drunk or doped-up boys?”

  Archer leaned forward, engaged once more. “Was it one of your knives?”

  She nodded. “A paring knife.”

  “Where did the blood come from?”

  “I have no idea. How could I?” She blinked her green eyes at Archer. “Wait a minute, are you implying that I put the knife there, covered in, what, my own blood! How dare you?”

  Her voice had risen as she spoke and people at several tables looked over.

  Archer leaned across the table and said in a muted voice, “I’m not implying anything, Miss Lamb. I just wanted to know if you had any ideas. And we don’t have to share your private business with the rest of the town, do we?”

  She glanced around and lowered her gaze, and when she next spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. “Well, I don’t have any ideas. And there was a strange car on my street the past few nights. I think there was a man sitting in it.”

  “You recognize him or the car?”

  She shook her head. “It was a four-door Ford, dark blue I think. It’s hard to tell at night.”

  “Okay, look, I think you should go to the cops. It might be nothing, some stupid guy just messing around with
you. But it could also be more than that, especially with the knife and the blood. And the police know how to deal with that sort of thing. They can send a radio patrol car around. But tell me, have you broken up with anyone lately? Got any ex-boyfriends with a beef against you? How about the guy who was supposed to show up tonight?”

  She shook her head dismissively. “We haven’t known each other long enough for him to get all creepy.”

  Callahan added, “Most guys take a little while to work up to pure nasty. It’s Mother Nature’s built-in escape hatch for women. Darn nice of her.”

  Archer had to smile at that one. “Anyone else with a problem?” he asked Lamb.

  She shook her head but wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  Archer studied her closely and came away certain that she was holding something back. “So are you going to go to the cops?”

  “Can’t you help me?” she said in a pleading tone.

  “I’m fifty a day plus expenses.”

  “That’s not cheap.”

  “Well, I don’t get all of it. I work for another guy. And it’s not like I work and get paid that much every day. I probably make less in a year than you spend on clothes. And most jobs don’t come with the possibility of getting shot or your neck broken.”

  “Okay, I guess I can see that.”

  “And I don’t live in LA. I usually rent a room at the Y to keep costs down. And there’ll be a contract for you to sign. I have some in my car.”

  “Heck, Archer, you can stay with me for free,” said Callahan. “I have a spare bedroom now.” She gave him a friendly look that did not raise any possibilities other than sleep.

  “I do like to get a $200 retainer up front. If I don’t work through it all, you’ll get the balance back.”

  “I don’t have my checkbook with me. We’d have to go to my house.”