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  Callahan hooked him by the arm. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  Chapter 7

  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, ARCHER?” scolded Callahan after they walked away from Gloria Mars. “Ellie didn’t want anyone she works with to know she hired a PI. I bet Gloria is going to phone Bart Green right now and tell him.”

  “Why isn’t Bart Green here for the party if he and Mars are best buddies?”

  “He likes Danny, sure, but he’s going to be boozing and celebrating with folks a few steps above this crowd. The only reason Danny got this kind of turnout is because it’s in the penthouse at the Ambassador. But my point is, now Green is sure to find out.”

  “It’s a calculated risk, Liberty. And if someone is trying to kill Lamb and succeeds, everyone’s going to know about it anyway. But if the threat is coming from close by, having them on notice that a PI is digging around might give them pause.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Gloria Mars doesn’t like her husband very much.”

  “And that surprised you? I thought you handled divorce cases.”

  “Maybe I was just hoping there was one happily married couple in this damn town.”

  “Not in this price range. But you keep right on hoping.”

  “Do you see Danny Mars?” asked Archer.

  “I do. He’s about six-six and bald as a cue ball, so he’s hard to miss. And Gloria was spot-on. There he is next to Miss D-cup of 1952.”

  “Is that her official name or did her mother give her another?”

  “I just call ’em like I see ’em, and I see two really big ones right now.”

  “You want to see if you can pry him away from her?”

  She bumped him with her hip. “You think there’s any doubt I can?”

  Archer held up both hands in surrender. “You could seduce the collar off a bishop.”

  “You should’ve heard me in confession. The priests enjoyed it way more than I did.”

  She sauntered away, and in about thirty seconds Danny Mars was shaking Archer’s hand while leering at Callahan. Mars was at least fifteen years older than his wife, had the neck of a water buffalo and the face to match. His brow furrows were so deep Archer could have hidden paper clips in between them. He had on a suit of creamy white gabardine with a yellow-and-blue-checked ascot at his throat, and his shirt was a bright orange silk. His pocket square matched the ascot. His white shirt cuffs had gold-plated links. His shoes were brown calfskin. A man who took care with his appearance, Archer concluded. He ordinarily didn’t trust such men. They were too calculating and usually had a lot to hide.

  She explained Archer’s interest in Ellie Lamb.

  “You know, she has been acting a little strange lately,” said Mars.

  “How so?”

  “She’s been writing from her house, not the office.”

  “Why’d she move to Malibu?”

  “Maybe it was for the sea air and lying on the beach.”

  “She’s in one of the canyons,” said Archer.

  “Well, you’d have to ask her,” said Mars as his gaze worked the room.

  “When did she move out there?” asked Archer.

  “Couple years ago or so, something like that. Hold on there, boy.” Mars stopped one of the waiters and nabbed a glass of champagne off his tray, and at the same time neatly slipped an arm around Callahan’s waist. “Now, this gal is going places. After my new film comes out everybody’s going to be talking about her.”

  When his hand dipped to her buttocks and stayed there, Callahan said, “Time to powder my nose again. Archer, I’ll leave you boys to it.”

  Archer knew young actresses had to powder their noses all the time.

  Mars quickly turned to Archer. “How is she in the sack? Amazing, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” lied Archer. “We’re just friends.”

  Mars eyed him closely. “You’re not one of them pansy boys, are you?”

  “Not that I know of. Lamb ever mention any problems? You ever meet any guy she was dating?”

  “I wasn’t aware she was dating anyone. For all I know she likes women.”

  He finished his champagne and grabbed another one off a passing tray. He eyed the waiter carrying it as he walked off.

  “I don’t know why they don’t just stick with the colored waiters. They’re reliable, and they don’t look at you all funny, like the Japs do. These Mexies I just don’t trust. They put too much grease in their hair. Sticky fingers. I’ll have to get Gloria to count the silverware.”

  “I really don’t trust anybody, regardless of skin color.”

  Mars gave him a puzzled look. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Tell me why we’re fighting and I’ll pick a side.”

  Mars seemed to think he was joking. “You always this funny?”

  “It’s the booze. So no idea on anybody Lamb might be seeing?”

  “No. And why does she need a PI?” he added with a growl.

  “She never talked to you about it?”

  “I’m the director. A king doesn’t get personal with the chambermaid.”

  “You really need to read more history. I understand you and Bart Green are good friends,” Archer said, deftly moving the conversation where he wanted it to go next.

  Mars set his champagne flute down and lit up a Pall Mall. “I’ve been in Hollywood for thirty years and I’ve known Bart for twenty-nine of them. He’s not all that much older than me, but he was well up the food chain by the time I hit town. But he’s been great to me, always throwing stuff my way. It’s why I’m working with Ellie Lamb.” He paused and looked at his cigarette. “We’re kind of like brothers. Although he rose a lot higher than I have. C’est la vie.”

  “But it beats Oregon and cow shit?”

  Mars grinned at him, but the motion didn’t light up his features because there was nothing genuine behind it. “Gloria likes to throw that in my face. Yeah, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and worked my ass off to get out. She grew up on Fifth Avenue with truckloads of money, none of which she earned, went to an elite women’s college, and has never had to work a day in her life. So who has the right to talk cow shit?”

  “I’m a workingman just like you.”

  Mars genuinely smiled this time and raised his glass. “To workingmen everywhere.”

  “I understand you’re in line to direct the Bette Davis picture that Lamb is scripting?”

  Mars’s genial look faded a few watts. “Well, Miss Davis has the final say on that. But we had a good first meeting, and Ellie’s script is coming along.”

  “What’s the story line?”

  “Officially under wraps.”

  “When is Lamb supposed to have it finished?”

  “Soon. I hope whatever she has going on won’t mess that up,” he added with a glare aimed at Archer. “I’ve got a lot riding on this. It could lead to bigger and better things.”

  “I understand you’ve been to her place in Malibu.”

  “Nice house, high up in the canyon, like you said.” He tapped his chest. “Almost had trouble breathing at that altitude. I’m more of a sea-level guy.”

  “So she never told you why she chose Malibu to dig in?”

  Mars started to shake his head, but then said, “Wait a minute. Okay, yeah, I recall it was because of a friend who lived there. Ellie wanted to be closer to that person.”

  “That person have a name?”

  Mars shook his head. “I meet so many people and I’m lousy with names.” He glanced at Miss D-cup, who had a line of men just waiting to tell the lady how they could make her a star.

  “Now, I do remember faces really well.”

  “Just faces?” said Archer, who had followed his gaze to the woman.

  The man barely tried, and thus failed, to look shocked. “I’m a married man, Archer.”

  Archer drained his White Russian dry. “To married men everywhere.”

  Chapter 8

  ARCHER
SAT ON THE BED IN CALLAHAN’S spare room staring at his shoes. The house was decorated with a Bohemian flair that he knew was all Callahan. This was not the land of tea cozies, patchwork quilts, and dusty knickknacks. The woman had hit the 1950s in full stride with colorful walls, minimalist chrome and wood furnishings, and large ceramic dishes like the kind they made in Laguna Beach hanging on the walls. The kitchen had every convenience GE and others could offer, like a dishwasher, a garbage disposal in the sink, an electric range, and even a deep freezer that was large enough to hold an elk. The coffee table was topped by recent copies of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. He had brought along a map of the stars and pretended to have found her new house on it. Her laugh had been worth the fifty cents.

  There were also paintings that would never have seen the light of day in any grandma’s house. On the wall of his room was a painting of a naked woman. She was grotesquely large, with bloated breasts and swollen thighs and belly, and was holding what Archer would delicately describe as a cucumber broken in half. Callahan said it was done in the avant-garde style. He’d asked her what she saw in it, and got, at first, a coy look in return. “Life, Archer, only from a woman’s perspective.”

  He and Callahan had kissed on the stroke of midnight in the Ambassador’s penthouse. Then they, and apparently everyone else, had gotten the hell out of Dodge, including at least one of the hosts. As Archer was waiting in the valet line, he had seen Danny Mars driving off with Miss D-cup in a silver Rolls. He didn’t know where Gloria had gotten to. Maybe she was still in the penthouse with one of the Mexican waiters, shorn of slitted gown and gilt slippers, and white jacket and pants, respectively. They could be lying on their backs on the dining room table looking up at the ceiling mirror and contemplating the prospects of a heady 1953.

  He continued to sit there until he saw Callahan’s light go out in her bedroom. He waited ten minutes more and then went into the next room, found the phone book, and looked at his watch. It was five past two. He looked up Eleanor Lamb’s number in Malibu and made the call. If she was there, he’d hang up. She might be more than just the worker-bee writer with nothing more complicated in her life than reams of heavy bond paper and a mountain of Corona ribbon and dreams of crafting comeback stories for aging stars. If so, he wanted to understand her and maybe help the woman.

  The phone rang three times and then a voice said, “Hello?”

  It was a man. Okay, this was not starting off like he wanted it to.

  Archer made his voice high-pitched and echoey. “Can I speak to Eleanor Lamb?”

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “Yeah, I do. What are you doing up?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Can I speak to her?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Her brother. I wanted to wish her Happy New Year.”

  “She doesn’t have a brother.” The line went dead.

  Archer slowly put down the phone. He could call in the LA County cops. But when the dispatcher asked him what was wrong, what was he supposed to say? That a guy had answered an unmarried woman’s phone at two a.m. and hung up on him? They would just tell him that Eleanor Lamb had gotten lucky on New Year’s Eve. If Archer pushed it, that would get him a quick trip to the can for wasting police time.

  He left a note for Callahan just in case he didn’t get back before she woke up. She had told him she wasn’t due on set today. That meant the lady would be sleeping until well past noon.

  He pulled his street map from the Delahaye’s glove box, found Las Flores Canyon Road on it, and set off.

  Chapter 9

  THE WEATHER WAS CHILLY and it looked like it was going to rain again, so he had put up the top. He had also pulled his Smith & Wesson .38 from the glove box and inserted it in his shoulder holster. He didn’t like carrying a gun after WWII, but he liked dying even less.

  He passed through neighborhoods where the old palm trees were losing their luster and the older homes their integrity. Many of these places were now renting out as tourist traps. If the water wouldn’t turn on or the heat didn’t work, you’d get a sob story about stolen pensions and unpaid hospital bills from the owners who lived in the basement or over the garage. He next passed various renditions of Skid Row, which backstopped the industrial hide of LA, like a long-ignored malady now out of control.

  As he left LA proper and headed west, the Pacific was etched in the darkness as a long black stripe until the breakers ruptured white and sharp onto the golden sand. He drove through monied Santa Monica and then past Pacific Palisades, where folks who didn’t have the bank account to get into Malibu could put down semigilded roots. Far out in the water he saw a single light. Probably a cargo ship heading in or out. He watched the light until it vanished in a marine fog that sprouted up around here like mushrooms after rain.

  Soon, Archer got within a pistol shot of the ocean, and the drum of the waves seemed to unspool like a movie in his head. The breakers were moodily fascinating to watch, though the ending was always the same. He turned off the road near the Sea Lion Restaurant. Back in the day the place had been built as a destination for travelers, because it was at the end of the public road in Malibu. It was only fairly recently that the beaches of Malibu had been opened for public consumption.

  Across from there the single bright light of the Albatross Hotel blazed away. Archer thought he could hear some late-night New Year’s Eve partygoers splashing around in the pool. That place was a cash cow for any PI with even a modicum of talent. He had personally handled a half dozen divorce cases where the photos and recordings and other details he’d amassed at the Albatross had given his female clients the wherewithal to take their adulterous husbands to the proverbial cleaners. He had always been amazed by the fact that many of these men hadn’t realized that the distance between LA and Malibu wasn’t enough to overcome their wives’ ingenuity and anger.

  “It’s thirty miles, pal,” one dazed husband had told Archer, as they sat out in the hall of the LA County Superior Court. His Albatross honey was sitting outside in his Bentley, waiting for her newly freed man. But maybe not as eager as before since the little wife had taken him for half. “Thirty damn miles!”

  “Ever heard the phrase ‘a woman scorned’?” Archer had told him.

  The man wiped the sweat off his brow. “I don’t have to hear it, buddy. I lived it.”

  “If you’re going to walk the aisle with the pretty gal out in your car, and then pull the same on her, do it in another country. Tijuana’s not that far. But it’s more than thirty miles.”

  “Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time.”

  “Then you’re finally growing up, pal,” Archer had replied before walking off.

  He turned right and made his way up Las Flores Canyon Road. A house light in the canyon above the fog line winked down on him. One of seventeen canyons in Malibu, Las Flores grew very steep very fast. The darkness, which was pretty complete already, was thrown into pitch blackness by the canyon walls.

  He drove slowly, both so he wouldn’t hit anything, but also because he was afraid of missing Lamb’s house. He actually did miss it and had to backtrack, finally pointing his headlight at a drab brown mailbox with the right numbers on it. There was also a four-door dark blue Ford parked across the street from her house. So she had been telling the truth about that.

  Archer drove around a bend in the road, killed his lights, and then his engine. He got out and made his way back up the canyon road with a turned-off flashlight in hand.

  He squatted on his haunches and eyed the Ford. He saw no movement inside, not even a shadow trying not to move and pretend it wasn’t there. He pulled his gun and crept up to the back of the vehicle, doing his best to keep out of the sight lines of the car’s mirrors.

  He reached the car and edged over to the rear window. The back seat was empty. So was the front. He tried the trunk hatch and found it unlocked. Nothing. He checked the car’s registration. In the beam of his l
ight he saw it was owned by one Cedric Bender with an address in Anaheim. He pulled out a pencil and his notebook and wrote this down along with the license plate number.

  He closed the car door and headed up the path to Lamb’s house. He shone his light down to see the flagstones with grass growing between as they zigzagged up to a large Spanish-style home. The place had white stucco walls, a red tile roof, and small, Moorish-style windows with honeycombed windowpanes set in silver trim and window surrounds painted green. He could smell wood smoke coming from somewhere, even as the breakers down below hurled their sound tentacles up here. Fire and water all tied up in a neat sensory bow.

  He saw the sleek two-door silver coupe in a carport next to the house. He touched the engine. It was cold. He tried the doors, but they were locked. He took a moment to write down the coupe’s plate number. If this was Lamb’s ride, he could confirm that later. He’d rather the lady confirmed it right now, even if she got mad at him for waking up her and her sleepmate.

  He decided to bypass the front door and headed to the rear. A set of colorful Mexican tile steps led him up to the rear yard. The smell of eucalyptus was so prominent it was like someone had injected a liter of it directly into his nostrils. The sharp, dry chaparral grabbed at his trousers. The clay that made up the canyons was geologically unstable, resulting in the area’s being acutely susceptible to mudslides when the hard rains came, which they always did. On top of that, the thick brush and Santa Ana dry winds made for frequent wildfires, with the chaparral being one of the prime ignitors. In spite of all the flooding and burning, the folks just kept coming. Maybe a swarm of locusts might do the trick and get the builders and home buyers to knock it off. But he doubted it.

  In the distance Archer heard a fox scream and then another one answered right back. Maybe they were celebrating the new year, too. Then a coyote chimed in. Now they just needed a bear and they’d have a quartet.

  He came around to a concrete patio, on which sat a couple of thick-boned teak chairs around a table with a decorative tile top in blues and gold, and a beige umbrella with a frilly edge set in the down position. A small corner fountain in the shape of an urn and raised up on some rough stone slabs gurgled away like a dying man with a slit throat. A hedge of cypress shielded the rear yard from the scrub oaks clinging precariously to the canyon’s edifice. Trailing lobelia rising out of the dirt had tacked itself to the home’s stucco, adding a dash of color. And there was a pool, oval in shape. He could smell the chlorine as it rose off the surface. He put his hand in the water and was surprised. It was heated. That wasn’t cheap.