Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Read online

  “Yes.”

  He gazed at his girls as they bounced to the piano. “I’m considering leaving the Gardens.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m not entirely . . . in tune with my employer.”

  “And why is that?”

  Granny’s thin lips formed a faint sneer. “Let’s return to the subject of Elizabeth Short, shall we? She’s rather a case in point. You see, Mark hires these girls as waitresses, implying that this is the next step to their being discovered by yours truly.”

  “And placed in the chorus line.”

  “Yes, or for the aspiring actresses, that I’ll put them in the movies.”

  None of this was far-fetched. As a starmaker over the years, Granny numbered among his discoveries Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, and Alice Faye; and more recently, here at the Florentine Gardens, N.T.G. had hired and showcased Betty Hutton, Yvonne DeCarlo (another of his underage finds), and Marie “the Body” McDonald.

  “Granny, no offense, but you’ve been known to . . . work closely with your ‘discoveries.’ ”

  The choreographer was chewing the girls out again.

  Granny said, “You’re not an angel, Nathan, nor am I. Mark generously provides me with an apartment, over his garage, where I can . . . provide guidance to my discoveries.”

  Away from his wife, with whom he lived in a near-mansion near the Greek Theater.

  “Granny, I’m not seeing the problem, here. Lansom’s hiring pretty girls and giving you a home-away-from-home to check out the merchandise.”

  He frowned at me, and his voice had a sudden cross edge. “Nathan, I do not make false promises to these young women. Nor do I take advantage of their friendship . . . and it is friendship. I’m a big brother to them.”

  Frequently committing incest, but a big brother.

  “Granny, you’re making some fine distinction I’m just not grasping.”

  He grimaced in irritation. “I don’t use who I am to fool young girls into giving themselves to me—that’s not who N. T.G. is. I am a judge of feminine beauty, a connoisseur, if you will . . . and I don’t use my position to deceive the fairer sex into rewarding me for something I am not prepared to give.”

  I managed not to laugh, finally getting it. Banging Granny wasn’t the audition to get into the chorus line: the girls had to pass the audition, first—then Granny banged them. Funny, the different ways people learn to live with themselves.

  “I simply don’t like being used to put girls in another man’s bed,” he said, quietly self-righteous. “Owner or not, Mark damn well knows my contract specifically grants me full casting—these were empty promises on his part. He’d screw them, and they would audition, miserably, and they would wind up in one of his dime-a-dance halls, downtown.”

  “Did Beth Short audition, miserably or otherwise?”

  “That girl was a case in point—Mark promised her a part in my revue—a featured role, of the sort I’m currently giving Lily St. Cyr.”

  “And only you do the casting.”

  “Precisely. Oh, the Short girl was a pretty thing, even glamorous . . . and perhaps, in a g-string, and high heels and ankle straps, she would have dressed up the stage.”

  Undressed up the stage.

  “I understand Elizabeth Short was fairly talented,” I said. “I’ve heard she was a decent singer and dancer.”

  Granny was leaning on his hand again, watching the girls dance, the piano relentlessly grinding through the Cole Porter “cowboy” tune. Almost absently, he said, “I wouldn’t know—I never did audition her. Mark simply cast her, without approval, or permission. Foisted her upon me.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I fired her.”

  “That’s a little harsh.”

  “Mark’s misconduct wasn’t the only factor. She contributed to her own dismissal.”

  “How so?”

  He gazed at me; the avuncular mask was gone—there was a lumpy, unforgiving quality to those previously pleasant features, now. “The Short girl did not have what it took to make it in this town. Oh, she had the beauty, the sex appeal; and she had the ambition, or said she did. But she . . . wasn’t discriminating in the friends she made, the companions she chose.”

  “Like Mark Lansom?”

  “That’s not who I’m referring to.”

  “Who are you referring to?”

  “She had a hoodlum boy friend.”

  I frowned. “An Italian, by any chance?”

  “I believe so, yes. At any rate, I think you may recall, from Chicago days, my attitude toward my girls cohabiting with gangsters.”

  Granny—like anybody in show business, particularly in the nightclub game—had worked for his share of underworld figures. But ever since one of his Ziegfeld girls got notoriously involved with Legs Diamond, Granlund had let his chorines know that if they got in bed with a hoodlum, they would be asked to leave the show.

  “Who was this boy friend?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know his name. But I received the information from a source I trust, a source close to Mark.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “One of the actresses living in Mark’s house. Don’t ask for her name. Why don’t you walk over there, and ask around? You should find Mark on the premises.”

  “All right—I’ll do that.” I shifted gears. “Word is you and Lansom encourage your girls to entertain celebrity guests, and special customers.”

  Granlund gave me a sharp look. “I won’t deny that’s done . . . but it’s not prostitution!”

  “I didn’t say it was . . . exactly. Who did Beth Short ‘entertain’?”

  “If by ‘entertain’ you mean a euphemism for sexual intercourse, I don’t know that she ‘entertained’ anybody. But she was friendly with Mark Hellinger, the producer.”

  Hellinger had passed away a few months ago, heart attack.

  “Who else?”

  “Franchot Tone, the actor—I believe he went out with her a time or two. Also, Arthur Lake.”

  “Who, the guy that plays Dagwood in the movies?”

  “The same.” He pressed his cigarette out in a powder-blue tray. “And, of course, she was particularly friendly with Orson.”

  I blinked again; he was pitching fast, and they were all landing like beanballs. “Welles?”

  “Oh yes. Apparently they’d met before—several times. Orson was generous with performing his magic act on army bases—she was working at one, I understand. I believe they knew each other from the Hollywood Canteen. She was a waitress there; it was one of her references.”

  Welles certainly fit the bill for that “famous director” who’d been promising Beth Short a screen test. I asked, “Did they date?”

  “I don’t know. They were friendly.”

  I was trying to make this work in my mind. “Jesus, Granny, Welles is married to Rita Hayworth.”

  “Married men have been known to stray, Nathan.”

  “Married men married to Rita Hayworth?”

  He was lighting up another cigarette. The girls were moving on to their next number, stretching, getting limber. “Orson and Rita have been on-again and off-again, over the last year or so. Of course, you know . . . no, that’s probably nothing.”

  “What?”

  The choreographer counted off, and the piano player started up “Ac-cent-tchuate the Positive,” to which the girls bounced delightfully.

  “Well,” Granny was saying, “it just occurred to me—in his magic act, the one Welles would perform for servicemen, Rita was often part of it. Magician’s assistant sort of thing, usual corny routine.”

  I took my eyes off the girls and looked at Granlund. “Yeah?”

  “Yes—he sawed her in half.”

  12

  Round windows glared through exotic foliage and grillwork grimaced as I approached the off-white two-story Spanish Colonial behind the Florentine Gardens. The big house on San Carlos, a residential street betwe
en Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset, was a sprawl of towers and intersecting wings and tile-roofed verandahs, protected by palms and column evergreens and pepper trees. Richardson hadn’t been kidding when he described Mark Lansom’s digs as a castle.

  I could also see how the near-mansion could serve as a sort of apartment house, and—I discovered when I made my way through an archway back to a walled-in pool—those wiseguy reporter remarks about Lansom’s harem turned out to be the real stuff, as well.

  On rattan beach chairs and loungers, on spread-out towels on the brick patio that the shimmering blue of the pool interrupted, half a dozen young women in bathing suits sunned themselves. Three blondes, two brunettes, and one redhead—their straps undone, in pursuit of a more perfect tan—lay stretched out, as perfectly arranged as Elizabeth Short in that vacant lot, and almost as nude.

  The Black Dahlia had been one of these girls, not so long ago, alive and lounging here . . . and in one piece.

  My shadow fell across the brown-as-a-berry back of the nearest brunette, and I was just admiring the way tiny beads of sweat were pearling along the tiny wispy hairs of her neck, when she turned to look up at me, her breasts spilling out of the white-with-red-polka-dots bikini top, the whiteness of the pink-tipped flesh against the brown rest of her almost as startling as their swollen perfection.

  And me on my honeymoon.

  Her eyes were hidden behind white-framed, orange-lensed sunglasses, her hair pinned up in a bun, her lipsticked mouth making a scarlet O. “You’re not Mark,” she said.

  “No, I’m not,” I said, taking off my hat.

  She was just a little prettier than Susan Hayward.

  Casually, with neither indignation nor shame, she returned her breasts to their polka-dot sheath, like a western gunfighter his sixguns to their holsters. She tried to tie the strap behind her, but had trouble.

  “Do me,” she said.

  That was the best offer I’d had all day.

  I did her—that is, I got down and fastened the bikini and then she rolled over and looked up at me, kneeling over her. She was a shapely five foot five (lying down) with just enough plumpness to give her a ripe lush look.

  “You have a nice face,” she said.

  “Yours wouldn’t stop a clock.”

  “You’re not an actor, though.”

  “No?”

  “You’re not in show business.”

  “Not a flashy enough dresser?”

  She took off her sunglasses and showed me her mahogany eyes and her well-tweezed ironically arching eyebrows and chewed the earpiece with tiny perfect teeth. “You dress all right. That’s a nice enough sportcoat.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  “You’re not an actor because you don’t look stupid.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “And you’re not an agent or a studio exec or anything, because that smile of yours?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It isn’t aimed at anybody. You’re just smiling ’cause you feel like it.”

  I looked at her, then glanced around at the other sunning beauties, none of whom were paying us any heed. “It’s easy to smile here.”

  “Easy for you. I’m Ann Thomson.”

  “I’ve seen you in something.”

  She tugged her bikini top into place, smirked a little. “You saw me in nothing, a minute ago. I’ve been in half a dozen movies . . . with about as many lines.”

  “My name is Nate Heller.” It was warm, the sun really beating down, though not unpleasantly. “Does anybody ever go in for a swim, around here?”

  “On rare occasions. Are you a cop?”

  “Sort of. Does it show?”

  “I thought I was starting to hear it. Why, ‘sort of’?”

  “Private. Work with a fella named Fred Rubinski.”

  “Ah! Sherry’s restaurant guy, who used to be a cop.”

  “That’s right.” I glanced toward the other sunning beauties. “How many girls live here, Ann?”

  “Varies. Sometimes as many as a dozen.”

  “Do you pay rent?”

  “Me in particular, or us girls in general?”

  “Let’s start with you.”

  “No. But I’m . . . close to Mark. Some of these girls pay Mark a minimal rent check.”

  “Did Elizabeth Short?”

  Her only reaction to that bombshell was to tilt her head. “I’ve been wondering when somebody would come around. Why do you want to know, if you’re a private dick?”

  I liked the way she said “dick”—the simple pleasures. “I’m working for the Examiner. I was with the reporter who found the body.”

  “Shit, sure! I saw your name in the paper. Give me a hand.”

  I helped her up and I followed her over to a rattan liquor cart. She was a pleasure to follow, having a lovely well-rounded rear end, with deep dimples that peeked over the bikini bottoms, and legs like Betty Grable.

  “What’s your pleasure?” she asked, pouring herself a martini from a pitcher.

  “Rum and Coke,” I said, leaving the double entendres to her. She was testing me—not so much flirting, or being seductive, as to see if I was easily distracted . . . and to see how seriously I was taking her.

  We sat on rattan chairs at a round rattan table under a yellow canvas beach umbrella and she sipped her martini and I sipped my rum and Coke.

  “I’d rather not be quoted,” she said.

  “I’m just doing background research.” I took off my hat, set it on the table. “I’m not a reporter.”

  “Can you leave me out of it? By name I mean?”

  “Sure. What can you tell me?”

  “Not much, even though Beth roomed with me.”

  “Roomed with you here, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” She pointed to the second floor. “Beth dated a lot of guys, talked a lot about getting in the movies, maybe singing on the radio. I mean, Mark has all the right contacts, and she wanted to be in the floor show at the Gardens, of course . . . but other than that, I don’t think she tried that hard.”

  “To make it in show business, you mean?”

  “That’s right. Beth was . . . she was a loafer . . . lounging around the house, writing letters, reading movie magazines, painting her nails, futzing with her hair.”

  “She didn’t lounge out here?”

  “No—she came out for a dip, now and then, but she didn’t sunbathe. She liked to keep that skin of hers nice and pale and creamy.”

  “When did she stay here? For how long?”

  “A month or two . . . some time in August, till early October, when she took off for Chicago.”

  I didn’t want to explore that any further.

  “Who did she date, Ann?”

  “Guys—any good-looking guy. A few famous ones.”

  “Granny says she and Orson Welles were an item.”

  She frowned over the rim of her martini glass. “You talked to Granny already?”

  “Yeah, we’re old friends. He sent me up here.”

  “Oh! All right, then.”

  “So what about her and Welles?”

  “Were they an item, you mean? Don’t know if I’d go that far. They were friendly, went out a few times. Did Granny tell you any of the names of the other actors she dated?”

  “Yeah—Franchot Tone. Dagwood.” Suddenly I flashed on Elvera French mentioning an actress friend sending Beth Short some money. “You sent her money, didn’t you, Ann, around Christmas? Twenty-five bucks, wasn’t it? When she was staying in San Diego?”

  Eyes expanding with surprise, she said, “What crystal ball are you looking in? How’d you know that?”

  “Why was she borrowing money?”

  “She just needed cash, that’s all.”

  “It was for an operation, wasn’t it?”

  The girl nodded, not looking at me.

  “For an abortion?”

  “She didn’t say . . . but that’s what I gathered.”

  Going down this road was dangerous, but I
had no choice. “Do you know what doctor she was using?”

  “No—she said something about an old family friend, some doctor from where she was from, you know, New England.”

  “How desperate was she for money? Was she turning tricks, Ann?”

  “No! You’re getting the wrong idea—Beth may have been a little lazy, but she was a good girl—didn’t smoke, and barely drank . . . and you know, for all the dating she did, I don’t think she put out. I think that’s why Mark allowed Granny to fire her.”

  “Granny fired her over her Italian boy friend, right?”

  “Yeah. Good-lookin’ hood she had the hots for.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Excuse me,” a mellow yet knife-edged male voice interrupted.

  The actress turned quickly toward the sound, alarmed, and I wheeled in my chair, to look at the source of the syrup-thick voice, myself.

  He was perhaps five nine, a pear-shaped hundred and eighty pounds tied into a knee-length terrycloth robe with a gold ML monogram. Despite his access to the sun, Mark Lansom had that pasty look endemic to the perennial nightclub denizen, white hair slicked back, half-lidded blue eyes circled dark, a beaky nose, a weak chin and puffy, jowly face. He positioned himself beside Ann and looked witheringly down at her.

  “Mark, this is Mr. Heller,” she said, a bit nervously, knowing she’d overstepped playing hostess.

  “Nathan Heller,” I said, offering my hand. “I’m Fred Rubinski’s new partner.”

  He turned his half-lidded gaze my way, and did not shake my hand. “I know who you are—you’re helping the Examiner.”

  “On the Short girl’s murder, yes. I understand she lived with you.”

  “Not with me—she rented a room here. I try to help out aspiring actresses. . . . Ann, get me a screwdriver, would you?”

  “The orange juice is in the house.”

  “Yes—go after it, and Ann . . . no rush.”

  She nodded and went inside.

  “This is not the kind of publicity the Gardens needs right now,” Lansom said, taking the chair Ann had vacated.

  “Actually, Granny suggested I speak with you. I cut a deal with him—you boys feed me a few leads, and we don’t run anything about the Black Dahlia’s stay at the Florentine Gardens, or at la casa Lansom, for that matter—unless the cops tip to it, of course.”