Two for One Read online

  Jonty pulled the shreds of his tattered dignity about him and threw down the script he had been holding with as much defiance as he could muster.

  “If that’s the way you want it, Nicky. Cut me my check and I’m out of here.”

  “No check, Jonty. But if you want to discuss it, there are other ways we can pay you off.”

  Jonty apparently didn’t want to discuss them. A moment later there was the boom of the studio door closing.

  The ensuing silence was broken by Linda, giving her best performance of the day.

  “What a schmuck! De Mille never spoke to me like that, nor Wilder, nor Cukor …”

  Probably because you never worked with any of them, I thought.

  “OK, everybody, it’s a wrap,” Nicky called. Since everything and everybody in the place was clearly bought and paid for by him, nobody was about to argue. The arc lights snapped off and in the comparative gloom I saw Edie give her nails a final buff and Agnes put away her crochet. They’d both been here a time or two before and would be again, the Good Lord willing. Another day, another dollar—minus ten per cent agent’s fee, of course.

  “You OK, baby doll?”

  Nicky had his arm around Linda’s shoulders and was now leading her towards the door.

  “I was big, Nicky. You know that. Angels Don’t Cry grossed bigger than anything its first week in Trenton, New Jersey. And Cincinnati …”

  “Don’t let them get to you, baby. They’re assholes.” That seemed to placate her.

  “Right, Nicky. They’re all assholes.” She snuggled up to him. “And anyway, we’ve got plans. Right, Nicky?”

  He disengaged himself slightly, as he pushed open the heavy door. As they passed through it, I heard him say—

  “Right, baby doll. We got plans. We got plans but they ain’t nobody’s business but ours. OK?”

  “OK, Nicky.”

  The door boomed behind them.

  “Well, I came to see Linda Grace and didn’t exchange a word with her.”

  “And yet you still learned something, did you not, old fellow?”

  “I learned that she was an even worse actress than I’d remembered and that she and Nicky had ‘plans’. Yet she’s supposedly married to Kane. Where does he fit into all this, Holmes?”

  “I don’t think they intend that he should and I doubt very much that he cares either way—as long as he ends up with the Bird.”

  “Trophy Bird outranks trophy bride? But who’s got the goddam Bird?”

  This whole business was giving me the feeling that I was chasing my tail every bit as much as Mike does in the dog days of summer.

  Then I fixed Holmes with my best beady stare.

  “I’ve got a feeling you’ve known from the beginning and you’re just not saying. Am I right?”

  “Watson, I am, as you will have observed, in a rather peculiar position. Certain of my natural abilities are enhanced, others strangely absent. I am not permitted to tell you anything you cannot discover for yourself. I may prompt your line of thought and, I imagine, in extremis, protect your safety. Don’t ask me how I know this, because I am at a loss to know the reason myself, but the lines of demarcation are quite clear to me. It is useless to press me further. Let us, therefore, review what we know …”

  “Very well,” I said, a little huffily. Nonetheless, somehow I knew that what he said was true. “We have one benighted Bird. Kane says it was stolen and Anna Kane confirms that her sister Nana was the one who stole it and gave it away.

  “Supposition One. Nana lied to her sister for some reason about stealing the Bird. Kane, for some reason, is pretending it’s missing and has it all the time. Now, why would he do that? He can’t have it insured since he’s not supposed to have it in the first place, so we’re not looking at an insurance scam here. Is he using the ‘theft’ as a way of getting back at Parmentieri for upsetting his drug business?

  “Supposition Two. Nana did steal the Bird and gave it to her boyfriend, Nicky. Since she can’t prove it either way and the only possible witness, old White Suit, has gone to that Great Dry Cleaner in the Sky, Nicky can deny having received it. Maybe he has a customer in mind—another Kane who’ll come across with the readies, so that he can gloat in private. Lots of people would like to stick it to Kane. And Nicky keeps a nice piece of change he doesn’t have to divvy up with the Pomonas. Possible.

  “Supposition Three. Kane never did get the original Bird back after he had it copied. He got another and better copy and that’s the copy Nicky has nestling among his underwear in his bottom drawer. Mallory still has the real thing. If so, he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place and shouldn’t start reading any serial stories.”

  “Excellent, Watson. You have, however, omitted one other possibility. Mallory has already sold the Bird to that someone else and none of them has it. Perhaps the Bird has already flown the nest?

  “Perhaps we shall learn more at our next port of call. What did you say the address was—Flamingo Street?”

  Nine

  Flamingo Street was precisely as you would expect a thoroughfare with a name like that to be. Built in the 1920s when movies made up for not being able to talk by beguiling the innocent eye with lavish sets that had all the solidity of plasterboard, this was a mean street in more ways than one.

  Pink stucco as far as the eye could see, it must have once beamed hopefully in the California sun. Now time and industrialized weather had caused its makeup to run and several generations of transient tenants on the way up, down and, all too often, but had not bothered to cover the acne in its complexion. As if to symbolize all this, the plaster flamingo set in bas-relief on the wall of the corner house had a broken beak.

  No.75 was a wooden three-storied structure now divided up as a rooming house. Seven tenants had their names next to a series of buzzers and the most recent looking name by far—indicated by her distinctive business card—was ‘Anna K. Adam’. I pressed her bell and an angry hornet noise released the front door. Holmes, Mike and I walked in and the door swung to behind us with a great deal more alacrity than it had shown in opening. The mouse was in the trap.

  As it did, the door of one of the ground floor apartments opened a crack and an eagle female eye appeared behind the security chain. No home is complete, it would appear, without a Guardian Gryppe.

  “Don’t know why she bothers. Never here. Waste of money, you ask me.”

  The door closed again. Perhaps the whole thing was a hologram triggered by the lock. This was Hollywood after all.

  “Up here, Jack.”

  Anna Kane/Adam lived at the very top of the house in what I suppose a real estate agent would call a ‘cozy studio’. All I know is that, if it had been any smaller, she could have put it in her purse and taken it with her.

  It wasn’t a nest—it was a perch. There was no sign that she had made any attempt to settle in. Her few possessions seemed to lie there rather than seek a home of their own. I could see precisely what her Cyclops neighbor meant. More to the point, Anna could see me seeing.

  As she closed the door behind us—Mike and me, as far as she was concerned—she handed me the shot glass she was holding in her other hand.

  “Jack Daniels. Right? All private detectives drink Jack Daniels.” She picked up its twin from the kitchen table, which also happened to be the sitting room table and the bedside table.

  Since I like people to keep their illusions—and because it had been a thirsty sort of day—I took it and raised it in a toast.

  “May your bluebird of happiness never spit in your eye!” It was something I’d learned at my mother’s knee and I’d changed it only slightly for present company.

  My attempt at levity was entirely lost on the girl. She downed the drink in one—a course of action not to be recommended in the normal run of events. In the first place it’s an insult to good bourbon and i
n the second, it makes the neophyte cough. She held on to me until the fit passed and I reflected that women seemed to be making a habit of using me as a hitching post since this case began. It was a comment more than a complaint. I’ve known worse experiences.

  “It’s Nana.” The baby browns were turned on me full wattage. “She called me last night in a terrible state. It’s that bird, I swear it is. She says it’s evil and corrupts everyone it touches. And then started rambling about someone needing to destroy those who have possessed it before it possesses us all.

  “Jack, I’m deathly afraid she has convinced herself she is that person. The Avenging Angel. I think losing the Bird has turned her mind. She has to divert the guilt she feels in some other direction. You must help me, Jack. There is no one else …”

  Now why was there something in her tone that reminded me of Linda Grace an hour or so before? Or was it just that everyone in Tinsel Town talked like a character in a cheap melodrama?

  This slight hiatus gave me time to check out what my companions were up to. Not that they could wander far in this matchbox. There wasn’t room to swing a medium sized cat, let alone a chunky mongrel. In fact, by the time Anna had fetched her drink she had walked through Holmes twice. He, I noticed, was examining the few clothes hanging on a single rack in the corner of the room, while Mike was truffle hunting under the single divan bed.

  “Think, Jack, think. Who could have it? It has to be Nicky, doesn’t it?”

  “What about Mallory?” I said before I had time to edit my thoughts.

  I saw Holmes turn and look in our direction but he was looking at her and not me.

  The merest shadow seemed to cross her eyes and then she shook her head decisively. “That obscene man? Never. He’d be too scared to cross my father. No, it has to be Nicky. He’s the only one left.”

  “I want you to go and see him, Jack. See him and warn him that if he doesn’t give the Bird back, it will kill him, just as it killed Brent Perlman and …”

  “And?”

  “The dozens of others over the centuries.”

  Somehow I didn’t think that was what she had started out to say. And somehow I wanted to get out of that claustrophobic little room.

  “Let me sleep on it,” I said and patted her hand. Honest to God, I found myself patting her hand! Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley in Going My Way. If my friends could see me now—always supposing I had any friends.

  “You have to understand Nana …” If she noticed my Freudian slip, she showed no sign of it. What Freudian slip?— “… that your father is my client. Whatever you think of him and whatever I may have come to think of him,” I added generously, “I am professionally committed to fulfill my responsibilities to him first and foremost. But you may be sure that I will do everything in my power to protect your sister’s interests at the same time.”

  Where did I get this stuff? I was making my ‘professional commitment’ sound like the Hippocratic Oath, though to my ears it came out sounding more like the Hypocritic Oath.

  “I understand about being a professional, I really do. And I know you’ll do all you can. You’re a good man, Jack. And I haven’t met too many.”

  Then, to my surprise and slight concern, she quickly kissed my cheek. Where was this interview going? I looked around for moral support but both of my good buddies were looking pointedly the other way.

  “I’m glad we had this chance to get to know each other a little better—just the three of us.”

  “The three of us?” I knew she couldn’t see Holmes. I didn’t want to even contemplate that she’d meant Mike … and I couldn’t detect a crevice even Petit could have curled up in. We were alone.

  “You, me—and Jack Daniels.” She moved carefully in the direction of the bottle. she and good old Jack had been reminiscing over old times well before I arrived I decided to leave them to it. I had enough problems for one day. Besides, entering into a relationship of a personal nature in the presences of a ghost and an adopted, unlicensed dog would probably mean my badge. I was also helped by recalling Dorothy Parker’s deathless line about one more drink and she’d be under the host. In this case—the hostess. Literature has its uses.

  I raised an apparently reluctant hand in an ‘I’m-doing-this-more-for-your-own-good-than mine’ gesture. It must have looked pathetic. At least, it would have done to a lady who was half way sober, which this one was not. Whatever happened to the Little Miss Muffet who had sat on her tuffet in my office not too long ago? Ou sont les demoiselles d’antan? Well might you ask.

  As I walked down the stairs with Mike at my heels, I heard her call after me— “Sleep on it, Jack—but don’t sleep too late! Tempus fugit.” Now, could someone drunk have quoted Virgil?

  I couldn’t quote him when sober.

  Holmes put it into words when were once more back in the office.

  “As I have had cause to observe more than once, Watson, the motives of women are inscrutable.”

  “Which woman in particular did you have in mind on this occasion?”

  Instead of answering, he continued, seeming to speak as to himself rather than to me—

  “One should always look for a possible alternative and provide against it. It is the first rule of criminal investigation.”

  Then, shaking himself our of his reverie—

  “Her apartment reminded me of nothing so much as the ‘safe houses’ I used to keep in London. I had five of them at one time. I would enter as one person and leave as another. Did you notice the clothes, old fellow? No, of course, you could not. She gave you no opportunity, did she? All of them still had the shop labels attached. None of them had been worn.

  “A bad mistake, old fellow. Disguises should always be well worn. But then, perhaps she does not intend them to be worn. Perhaps today was their first and last performance.

  “You observed, of course, that all the dresses had long sleeves—a point to which I have called your attention on several occasions?”

  “So both sisters suffer from hypothermia? Probably runs in the family. The old man sits and stews himself in a casserole.”

  Holmes raised a disgusted eyebrow.

  “Needle marks, Watson—needle marks! The long sleeves are to cover those all-too-evident puncture marks that give away the habitual drug taker. The lady was not only intoxicated but also under some narcotic influence, almost certainly cocaine. A dangerous combination and one I have personally always avoided. That, I surmise, is the cause of her otherwise inexplicable mood swings.

  “That you should have noticed but there was one other item which you were most decidedly not intended to see …”

  “Which was?”

  Without answering, he continued …

  “Tucked away behind the clothes rack with its face to the wall—but which my present unorthodox condition allowed me to see, nonetheless, was a rather unusual portrait …”

  “Whose?”

  “The portrait was of Osgood Kane, painted by a competent studio hack—about thirty years ago, I would judge. However, someone had defaced it in a most obscene manner, until it resembled nothing so much as the one Dorian Gray kept locked away in his attic in our friend Oscar Wilde’s notorious story. Oh yes, and I believe Mike also has something to offer us …”

  I realized that Mike had been suspiciously quiet on the return journey and looked over to the basket I kept for him in the corner. Needless to say, he only occupies it when he is up to no good or wishes to remain out of the public eye of this private eye until some misdemeanor is discovered. He lay there contentedly chewing the comer of a piece of paper. I retrieved it and smoothed it out on my desk, avoiding the soggy end as far as possible. It was an account from a well known firm of Hollywood wig makers and it read—

  1 LADIES’ BLONDE (MID)—CHIGNON STYLE

  I found myself blurting out the thought that had been edging its way fu
rther and further forward in my mind.

  “Holmes—is this woman really Nana Kane pretending to be her sister, Anna? She was certainly behaving differently from yesterday. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was starting to come on to me.”

  “I assume you mean she found you sexually attractive? Naturally, old fellow, I defer to your experience of women in three separate continents—although strictly speaking, India is only a sub-continent—but that is a technicality.

  “No, Watson, Anna Kane and Nana Kane are two quite distinct personae. They have nothing in common but a coincidence of birth. In attempting to anticipate their actions, it would be as well not to ignore that fact.

  “Women are never to be entirely trusted—not even the best of them. The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money.”

  But how do we get to the bottom of this?” I asked. “I feel we may be standing on the edge of a precipice here. If Anna is right, her sister may be about to embark on a killing spree. We must do something!”

  “And, indeed, we shall, my dear fellow. But first I suggest we should pay the call we should have made at the very beginning of this bizarre affair. We should mine the mother lode.”

  “The mother lode?”

  “Watson, I venture to suggest that a visit to the first Mrs. Osgood Kane is indicated.”

  “But I haven’t the faintest idea how to find her, Holmes. I hardly think a call to Kane and ‘Oh, by the way, which loony bin did you lock your wife up in?’ is going to do the trick.”

  And then I thought—no, but I know what will. I reached for the phone.

  “Morrie. Is that you?”

  Ten

  SUNNYVALE

  A Heaven of a Haven

  Who writes this stuff! Nonetheless, the etched marble sign communicated serious money. The kind of money that said you can leave your loved one here and forget about them—as long as you don’t forget about the check. All major cards credit honored. Standing orders preferred.