Two for One Read online

  Before we could get any closer, she turned on her heel and disappeared into a nearby room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  And good morning to you, Ms. Kane, I thought. For I was in little doubt that the Disappearing Frightened Lady was Nana Kane.

  By the time we reached Perlman, he had recovered much of his composure and I had a good idea that he would die rather than lose it in front of the imperturbable Chinese.

  It took only moments for him to scribble Mallory’s address on a discreet business card with the assurance that his private number would find him at any time of the day or night. A firm manly handshake—a little too manly?—and we were at the front door where—will miracles never cease?—Mike was still sitting and staying. This dog, whose hind quarters never touch the floor long enough to warm it when he hears my command, had been sitting like Patience on a monument for the past hour. Now, on a word from a Chinese he had never laid eyes on in his life, he snaps out of it like a patient out of hypnosis and trots amiably to the car without even giving him the soulful eye that expects a treat. When I have more time Mike and I need a man-to-dog conversation about loyalty and priorities

  “Well, Holmes, what did you make of that?” We were driving back to the office and the architecture of Hollywood, which so often strikes me as being transplanted straight from a comic book, looked quaintly suburban after what we had just seen.

  “As I’m sure you were well aware, the loquacious Mr. Kane told you precisely what he wanted you to hear—not a word more and not a word less. In fact, he told you so much with such apparent candor that you felt he had told you all. But the man is an actor, Watson. I would venture that he has been acting most of his life—perhaps even acting for his life on occasion. He is no more Osgood Kane than I am—Charlie Peace or Benjamin Disraeli …”

  Then who is he?”

  “That, I expect, will emerge in due course and may well be the key to much else. At this moment anno domini has restricted his range but it would be rash in the extreme to accept him as the foolish fond old man he presented to you just now. He may sit in a veritable aviary but, in reality, a closer analogy would be the spider in the middle of his web. His physical movements may be limited but his reach is unimpaired and, like the spider, he feels every tiny vibration when someone touches his web.

  “The key to the future invariably lies in the past, old fellow. Something about the portrait is important but I am not sure what. What was it Hamlet said to Gertrude when he made the comparison between the portraits of his father and uncle? ‘Look now upon this picture and on this—the counterfeit presentment of two brothers.’ We have just observed the counterfeit presentment of two Kanes. And there may be more. Oh, Watson, if only this were Baker Street, I would have my Day Books, my files. The answer would lie there …”

  It was that remark that prompted me to say—a trifle defensively, I fear— “I may not have Day Books, as you call them, but I have something just as encyclopaedic.”

  “And that is?”

  “Morrie Saks.”

  I’d known Morrie for donkey’s years. Christ, everybody had known Morrie for donkey’s years. Morrie was a Hollywood institution just as much as Grauman’s Chinese Theater used to be or the MGM lion—though Morrie’s bite was considered a lot more lethal than the lion’s bark.

  Morrie was a gossip columnist who’d started when Winchell was in his prime and outlasted those two poisonous old biddies, Hedda and Louella. He turned his stuff into the Los Angeles Sentinel and it was syndicated just about everywhere. The acres of tropical rain forest that had been sacrificed to Morrie’s morbid revelations didn’t bear thinking about.

  We met in a dingy bar round the corner from the Sentinel offices—not from any reason of confidentiality but simply because the office, like just about everywhere in the free world these days, had a strict No Smoking policy and Morrie on a good day could compete with a Detroit chimney stack. Today was a good day.

  When he’d coughed himself quiet, he paused to fire up one unlighted cigarette from its predecessor and then peered at me through the haze.

  “So?” It was a typical Morrie cut-the-crap greeting.

  I guess when he was young—somewhere back in pre-history—Maurice Saks must have been a fine upstanding specimen of a man but age had worked its sorcery and laid waste to what had once been. Now he was a gnome, liverspotted and bald-pated except for a silvery fringe around the ears that looked as though it had been stuck on with a hung-over hand. Only the sharp black eyes gave the clue that anyone was home and, as many knew to their cost, they missed nothing. He and Kane had a lot in common and age had a lot to do with it.

  I’d like to have suggested to Holmes that Morrie owed me one but it wouldn’t have been strictly true. We all owed Morrie several and that was the way he liked it. That way he could always lean on us for favors. Morrie traded in information the way folks on Wall Street trade in pork belly futures or whatever.

  “Osgood Kane,” I said.

  From the extra second he took to make sure his cigarette was alight, I could tell I had his serious attention.

  “That’s a pretty big rock you’ve just turned over, Jack. Lots of nasty, slithery things under a rock that size.”

  “Such as?”

  “Over the years just about everything. Quite apart from the movies, Kane had a finger in just about every pie anybody baked. Usually through some intermediary or another, so that he could never be connected directly with anything shady. Investments, real estate, new ventures, you name it. If it went wrong, someone else carried the can. If it went really wrong, people tended to disappear. Mr. Kane is only interested in win-win situations.

  “I got pretty close to some of that stuff over the years and it was pointed out to me more than once that it would be smart of me to butt out …”

  “Which I doubt you did?” I suggested.

  “No, I’m a stubborn old fart but, since I could never quite pin anything down, I guess they figured I was harmless. Then the years went by, as the darned things have a habit of doing—both for me and for Kane—and now we’re both barely living legends in our different ways. Well, who gives a shit what two old relics did and when?”

  “Except you do.”

  “Except I do. Darn right, I do—or I’ve spent my life doing diddley-squat. No, I’d like to see that old bastard get his comeuppance before they send him down below where he belongs.”

  “What can you tell me about his background, other than what I’ll find in the clippings files?”

  I’d almost forgotten about Holmes, who had lit up his pipe, presumably to keep Morrie company. Then he suddenly said—

  “Ask him about Kane’s wife.”

  “Kane’s wife!” I said, just about managing to turn an exclamation into a question. Presumably Kane had been married, since he had a daughter, but I had no idea he was at the moment.

  “Happened quite recently. Private ceremony at the house. No guests. No announcement. Linda Grace, née Karen Dorakis, sometime movie actress …”

  Linda Grace! I could picture her now. Dark pageboy hair, pouty lips. A latterday B-picture Linda Darnell, which is probably where some studio publicist got the name they stuck on her. Got all the Bette Davis and Joan Crawford bitch parts when those two grandes dames finally hung up their false eyelashes. Unfortunately for her, she got them just when the genre was going out of fashion. After that, some television series that petered out without benefit of syndication. And after that—Osgood Kane, Meal Ticket, or so it appeared. Well, well, well. Now, why hadn’t Kane thought fit to mention her?

  Morrie Saks was now under full sail. Kane was clearly mother lode to him, if I may be allowed a mixed metaphor. The personal computer he had for a brain was spitting out bits and bytes or whatever computers spit out.

  “Linda’s been after him or someone like him for years. She’s done the Mendelssohn mazurka more times
than you’ve had hot dinners but none of them paid out worth a bent nickel. Even this one don’t look so hot. I hear Kane’s got her tied up with a pre-nup hand, foot, finger and fanny. He can dump her any time at a discount but, if she leaves him—zip, zilch …”

  “So she’s the n-th Mrs. Kane?”

  “Surprisingly, she’s not. Despite all the rumors—only the second, in fact.”

  “What happened to the first Mrs. K? I suppose she took him to the cleaners?”

  “No, because he sent her to the funny farm—and then he divorced her. Turned even my stomach. Kane married her in the late 1960s. He must have been around fifty at the time. She was in her early twenties, a society girl, quite a looker. Eloise Something-or-other …”

  He was off on a mental trip down the years now, so I just let him roll.

  “What he wanted was an instant dynasty and when she couldn’t oblige right away, the Robber Bridegroom was gone and the Wicked Baron appeared. When she finally did give birth a few years later, it was twins—a girl and a boy. The boy was never seen in public. The word was that Kane found the child below his expectations for a son and heir and had him adopted. The girl, Nana, he kept …”

  “And the wife?”

  “The birth was troublesome, the woman had lived under stress for years. She had a breakdown, became almost catatonic. Kane had her committed and, since she was of no further use to him as a Mother of Dynasties, he eventually divorced her. That kind of money buys any kind of freedom. She’s still in the asylum for which he pays all the bills, on condition they never release her. Since it’s Osgood Kane—who’s Chairman of the Board, would you believe who’s asking nicely, chances are they won’t.”

  Something Kane had said bobbed to the surface of my mind.

  “Kane said something about living in Europe?”

  “He also referred to ‘you Americans’” Holmes added.

  Morrie paused to light another coffin nail from the last.

  “Ah, now this is where things get really interesting.”

  He seemed surprised that I seemed surprised.

  “Oh, that other stuff is standard soap. Hollywood-Babylon 101. Happens all the time on a smaller, cut price scale. No, the real skinny on Kane is something I pieced together about twenty years ago but could never prove. One day I had a visit from a guy called Arie Weintraub.”

  “The Nazi hunter?”

  “The very same. While he was looking for evidence on some top boys who’d got out while the going was good, he came across some references to one Otto Kreizer, who was bidding to be in their league, if the game had gone to the ninth inning. Pull the threads together and for Otto Kreizer read …”

  “Osgood Kane.”

  “Give the man a cigar! I trawled it around for a while but even in a town where folks of my particular persuasion tend to litter the ground like the leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa …”

  He gave a sly grin at my expression.

  “I’ve always had a soft spot for Milton. It kind of counterbalances some of the shit that I have to write to read somebody who can really use words. Anyway, as I was saying, even the Jewish population was tired of all this holocaust-schmolocaust. If you live in a town of fiction, fact can be awfully boring. So I got no takers on the story but I’m prepared to bet your bottom dollar it’s kosher. Kane the Kraut. Fade to black.”

  “Weren’t you afraid he might make you disappear, since he obviously had a soft spot for the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t routine?”

  “To begin with I was shit scared. Then I figured, if I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me, then Kane knew nobody wanted to listen, so he was perfectly safe. Right? Why bother taking me out, when these things …”—and he held up his death stick as an exhibit— “would do it for him any day? His tough luck that I’m a walking statistic, the exception that proves the rule. And now it’s water under the bridgework. But I’d still like to see the little fucker nailed.”

  We sat in silence for a moment while I digested all I’d just heard. Then Morrie glanced at the battered Timex that had clung to his wrist like a barnacle ever since I’d known him and never told the right time, as far as I was aware.

  “Tempus fugit. Virgil, you ignorant asshole. Gypsy Rose must put away her crystal ball and return to the Augean stables, there to vilify and slander those who have dared to raise their heads from the slime. Now you owe me two. A father’s blessing on your head, my boy …”

  And with that he disentangled himself from the booth in which we were sitting, coughed loudly enough to silence the bar momentarily, and picked his way towards the door and the world outside.

  Holmes and I stayed where we were. It was Holmes who spoke first.

  “‘Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.’ A mad first wife out of Jane Eyre, a disinherited and disappeared son and heir … and one thought Victorian fiction was sensational enough.”

  “And don’t forget the present Mrs. Kane,” I chipped in. “Why on earth didn’t Kane mention her? Surely she has to go on the list of suspects in the light of that prenuptial agreement?”

  “I suspect he refrained from mentioning her because he considers her irrelevant to his overall plan. But I presume you were aware of her existence during our visit?”

  “Come along, Holmes,” I said testily in a voice I scarcely recognized as my own, “are you telling me you were?”

  “I saw no more than you did, old fellow. The difference is that I also observed, which you clearly did not. There were two ladies’ wraps and two purses on the hall table as we left. Apart from the fact that their styles were markedly different, suggesting the divergent tastes of two separate women, it has been my observation that a woman will put away her outer clothing when she changes it for another set. Conversely, a servant will put it away for her. Ergo, two women had recently entered the house, one of whom we briefly saw.

  “And where to now, Watson?”

  Where to now was back to the car to collect Mike and drive back to the office for a quiet think.

  So what did we have?

  I put my feet up on the desk. I find I do most of my best thinking that way. I’m pretty sure it’s approved in the Gumshoe Guide. They also recommend tilting the fedora forward over the eyes but, since that would mean actually buying a fedora, I’ve persuaded myself that’s not de rigeur. It is, after all, a very old edition that came with the office.

  From this semi-recumbent posture I reviewed the situation with piercing analytical logic. We had …

  … an ex-Nazi war criminal who got rid of people, including his own infant son, and who wanted me to retrieve a valuable antique bird that he had almost certainly obtained as war loot … an understandably neurotic daughter who seemed frightened of something, if only of her own shadow … a sexually ambiguous bodyguard or whatever … and an Invisible Wife. An everyday story of Hollywood folk. Well, it was a start.

  A couple more crazies and we could play Happy Dysfunctional Families.

  I had come to this earth-shattering assessment and was reaching for the scotch-and-water drawer when there was a knock at the office door.

  “Come,” I said. Nero Wolfe would have said ‘Come’.

  And in came a small Chinese gentleman with one of those white jackets and paper caps they wear to deliver Chinese takeaway. Which was perfectly appropriate, since he happened to be delivering Chinese takeaway. The only problem was—I hadn’t ordered any.

  Muttering a guttural Chinese something or other, he dumped a brown paper bag on my desk and was gone.

  There was a moment’s silence while we all reacted in our individual ways. Holmes inspected the bag from all sides without actually touching it. Not that he could have, in all probability. Mike stood at the desk on his hind legs and gave it a good sniff, decided it wasn’t worth the effort to be vertical and went back to his chair. I brought my mouth back to the Closed position
.

  My mother had a saying she quoted often. She claimed she got it from her mother which, I suppose, makes it something of a Watson family tradition. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” Frankly, it’s a thesis I’ve never subscribed to. I’ve frequently been hurt by people I’ve never laid eyes on before. I’d rather say— “What you don’t open probably won’t hurt you, all things being equal.”

  Holmes broke the deadlock.

  “I think the odds are in favor of the package being harmless, Watson. I suggest you open it and find what someone is clearly anxious for you to find.”

  The man’s logic defied argument, so I did just that.

  Inside, carefully wrapped in several layers of paper was a single fortune cookie. Now, I have always had a strong aversion to fortune cookies, on account of the fact that I don’t like the taste of stale cardboard, so I had no intention of eating it but I was most definitely intrigued to see what it said, if you see what I mean.

  To smash it into smithereens was with me the work of a moment, nor was I laggardly when it came to picking up the piece of rice paper that lay coyly among the crumbs. I smoothed it out and took it over to the window to read what was on it.

  A movement in the street below caught my eye.

  “That’s strange, Holmes,” I said. “How the hell can they make any money if they deliver a single fortune cookie by limo?” For I had just seen the delivery man, now jacketless, hop into a black stretch limo with tinted windows that took off like a batmobile out of hell.

  “Ah well,” I said, “Elvis has left the building.”

  “I very much doubt that was his name, Watson. The man was clearly of Asian origin.”

  I decided not to pursue that matter.

  “In any case, first things first, old fellow. What does the message say?”

  “It says something in Chinese letters … Oh, yes, and on the back it says …