Two for One Page 7

  “One would think Mr. Nick had quite enough without being so stubborn about one more but our little feathered friend—not you, Petit—has such winning ways. Nicky likes to give these to his favored customers and they make a nice little sideline for us, do they not, little one? Keeps my diminutive friend out of the saloons and bowling alleys. Which is as well—just in case someone decided to use him for a bowling ball.”

  He ruffled the little man’s hair again and the patronizing gesture seemed to trigger his temper.

  “And if you were on a croquet court, they’d use you as a mallet!”

  “And you could be a bowling pin …”

  “Stick insect!”

  “Termite!”

  I felt this was where I’d come in and I noticed that Holmes and Mike had already left.

  “Well, goodbye, boys. I make it thirty-all.” I said over my shoulder and heard Mallory interrupt his tirade long enough to call out—

  “Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Jack … and remember—surface impressions can be deceptive.”

  As I joined my compadres in the street outside, I could still hear in the distance …

  “What’s the weather like up there?”

  “Must be cold down in the primordial slime …”

  Holmes was looking thoughtful. “Our friend Mallory hides a sharp mind behind that frivolous façade, though I fear it may prove double-edged, if he is not careful. He believes himself to be in possession of the facts and, indeed, he knows more than Kane—but still not enough.”

  “In what way, Holmes?”

  “For example, he has deduced—quite rightly—that the so-called Borgia Bird is, in fact, Chinese in origin and very ancient Chinese at that. This may well explain the current interest of our Chinese visitors. What he has failed to decipher is the meaning of the inscription. I have, as you will doubtless remember, made some small study of Chinese dialects and characters. I am open to correction but I am prepared to assert that the letters on the breast of the phoenix read—

  ‘MY KISS IS DEATH’

  Don’t forget, the phoenix is a symbol of rebirth. But before rebirth comes death. The latter is a certainty. The former? Something of a gamble, I would have thought. Take my word, the Bird bodes no good to anyone who owns it, Watson.”

  “And right now his name is Nicky Parmentieri?”

  “So it would appear. Oh, and one other thing, old fellow. Am I to infer that you have become a member of the Masons or some other secret order that insists on your wearing their insignia on the inside of your coat lapel?”

  I fumbled under the collar of my jacket and found myself holding a small metal button-like object backed with velcro. I recognized it immediately for what it was.

  “My God, Holmes,” I exclaimed. “A bug!”

  “Surely not, old fellow. It appears to be metallic in origin.”

  I explained as best I could the nature of the device and I saw his eyes light up.

  “Ingenious, my dear Watson. What a boon such a thing would have been to us during our glory days.” Then another thought struck him. “But then, what would have happened to the excitement of making deductions from fragments of fact and inference, from piecing together the mosaic of behavior and event when one could simply have sat back in Baker Street and listened to a miscreant hang himself from his own lips? No, old friend, I would not exchange the theatre of the questing mind for all your modern technology.”

  As he spoke, my mind was racing back over the past few hours and then it came to me.

  “Kai-Ling! Do you remember, Holmes, when we entered Kane’s house he insisted on brushing my coat. I thought he was simply being orientally overattentive. When he smoothed down my jacket, that must have been when he placed the bug.”

  “So he and his friends have presumably heard every word you have said and every word said to you since we left Kane? Hm. But that does not explain one thing.”

  “Which is?” I asked, as I dropped the infernal device in a nearby trash bin. Let the Chinese interpret the mumbles and grunts of the first street person to rummage through it.

  “How they could see what you were doing in your office.

  “And incidentally, old fellow, I think we should be making tracks, if we are to keep our quarry in sight. When Miss Nana left in such a hurry, faithful friend Perlman was once again waiting for her with the Porsche. They had something of an altercation, he checked the boot—I believe you call it the ‘trunk’ for some strange reason—and they are even now turning on to the highway over there.”

  A few moments later the Corvette was making the identical turn.

  Six

  Dusk was falling as we headed back up into the hills. Inky fingers were beginning to infiltrate the sunshine like an un-natural blonde whose roots are starting to show. Ah, Marlowe, eat your heart out!

  A clapped-out Corvette is no match for a Porsche but I wasn’t worried. I knew where Nana Kane and Brent Perlman were going.

  Sure enough, we made one more turn in the road and up ahead of us a huge neon bird was poised for flight.

  This one was a Bird of Paradise—all plumes and attitude. You’ve never seen a bird more pleased with itself. It was sitting on the word BIRDLAND as if it fully expected to hatch it.

  As I pulled into the parking lot, I could see the Porsche. It was parked askew in the Owner’s slot, which was likely to piss him off a lot when he saw it. There was no sign of Nana Kane, though the passenger door was left pointedly open, as though she was in too much of a hurry to shut it.

  White Suit—I still couldn’t think of him as anything else—was unloading cardboard boxes from the trunk. If you can unload boxes morosely, then that’s what he was doing.

  I parked the Corvette in a remote corner of the lot. It was also memorable—though, alas, not for the same reason as the Porsche—and I didn’t want to be remembered.

  The neon bird now began to show off outrageously. A myriad little lights in its ‘feathers’ began to wink on and off and its beak to open and close. I saw Holmes’s mouth open in emulation before he realized what he was doing and turned in my direction. His “Oh, Watson! That it should come to this!” did not strike me as being unqualified approval.

  I found that more and more I was beginning to see my world through his eyes and, frankly, it took some explaining. Heigh-ho.

  I turned my attention to Mike.

  “This place isn’t fit for man or dog, old buddy, so we’re going to have to divide our forces.” I find it always helps to explain one’s reasoning. “I’ll take on the dangers of the cocktail bar and you guard the jalopy. Guard! OK? I may be some time.”

  The word ‘Guard’ always makes his ears prick up and his teeth unsheath, ready to be sunk into the nearest enemy object. I’ve saved a fortune on car alarms since I met Mike. And now that I’ve trained him to understand that he doesn’t have to guard against me, we’re doing fine.

  Holmes and I sauntered up to the doors of the gilded bird cage as to the manner born.

  “Watson, let us divide our forces, too. I suggest that I—in your curious new parlance—‘case the joint’, while you take up a strategic position so that you can see who comes and goes.”

  Right. Starsky & Hutch, Cagney & Lacey, Watson & Holmes. Correction—Holmes & Watson.

  Inside the club, to be fair, a certain degree of taste did prevail. There was a deal of red plush and subdued lighting and the bird motif was restricted to a series of subtly-illuminated paintings by famous artists—Audubon, Henri Rousseau, Matisse and so on—that were clearly copies but good ones.

  Holmes found it difficult to understand why one of them should be of a black gentleman holding a saxophone called Charlie Parker and captioned ‘Bird’ but we surmounted that hurdle and moved on. In fact, before I knew it Holmes had vanished entirely.

  There were tables and banquettes in a loose semi
-circle around a small stage at one end of the room. On it a group of chorines dressed in—you’ve guessed it—feathers—were prancing around, while one of their number, dressed as a baby chick, sang something on the lines of—

  Come on, honey, muss my feathers,

  Come on, honey, peck my cheek—

  Doesn’t matter what the weather’s,

  I’m the chick to tweak your beak …

  Should any of the more inebriated customers have felt inclined to take her up on her offer, there were several gorilla-related gentlemen posted around the periphery of the room to persuade them otherwise.

  The whole of the left hand side of the room was taken up with a long bar behind which a mirror reflected the rest of the room. I decide that this was my strategic command post and took a seat there.

  Chickie gave up her plea for companionship and the girls took over in a sort of avian can-can, at the end of which they threw cotton-wool eggs into the audience and exited to scattered applause.

  It was only in the comparative silence that ensued that I realized there was a competing entertainment at the far end of the room.

  An ornately-decorated set of wooden doors gave on to what was presumably an office. Suddenly they were wrenched open and Nana Kane stormed out. On the threshold she paused and turned to address someone in the room behind her.

  It was the first clear view of the woman that I had had and I can vouch for the fact that an angry woman can be beautiful. There was a flush on the patrician cheekbones and the shoulder length black hair was charmingly disheveled—or at least not noticeably sheveled. But then she could have been dragged through a hedge backwards, forwards and sideways and still have been worth looking at. At the same time the eyes projected the heat of several microwaves working in sync.

  I would not have cared to be on the receiving end of what she was microwaves saying—the most remarkably articulate set of obscenities and epithets I think I have ever heard and these shell-like ears have been affronted more often than I care to recall. I wish I’d made notes. They would have come in handy in years to come.

  She finished by recommending to her target that he commit a sexual act of impossible proportions and then blazed a trail to the front door, passing me en route.

  The likeness to her sister Anna was remarkable, uncanny … two peas in a pod doesn’t begin to describe it. And yet … these were two distinct personas—personae? Who cares? Like positive and negative film images. The one distinct, the other a blurred shadow.

  I felt a sudden twinge in a part of my metabolism I’d thought long since calcified. When the light caught her a certain way Nana Kane reminded me of a lovely lady I was once briefly married to. But that was in another country and, besides, the wench is dead.

  As she passed me, she looked at me fleetingly and what was that expression I read in her eyes? Despair? A child’s fear?

  Then the door banged shut behind her and the familiar sound of a Porsche shredding its tires was the next sound to be heard.

  I contemplated following her but instinct told me that what I needed to know next was here in this room. I turned back to the bar and exchanged looks with the bar tender. It’s remarkable how two sets of eyebrow movements can convey—

  “That’s women for ya!”

  and—

  “What can ya do?”

  He read me like a used book and brought me a Jack Daniels on the rocks.

  We private eyes have to be proficient in Mirror Work 101. This involves sitting in bars and surveying the room in the mirror opposite, always remembering that what you’re seeing is backwards. This is grueling work and gets harder the more Jack D. insists on keeping Jack W. company.

  But the face that appeared over my shoulder was no hardship at all backwards or forwards.

  Long auburn hair in a Veronica Lake peek-a-boo page-boy bob, a touch of the sultry Yvonne de Carlo about the full scarlet mouth and eyes that looked up from lowered lids that were meant to make you recall the way Bacall looked at Bogie in To Have and Have Not. And if you are too young to pick up the references—tough.

  “You look like the kind of guy a girl could bum a cigarette from.”

  Now, what can you say to that? They don’t write lines like that any more. I fumbled my pack of Camels out of my pocket. I rarely smoke but you have to be ready for moments like this.

  She leaned over me and I caught a blast of something exotic rising to meet me. Fleurs du mal, I shouldn’t wonder. She took two cigarettes and put both of them between lips the color of a rogue fire engine.

  “Match me!”

  And then it all fell into place.

  She was doing the Paul Henreid/Bette Davis schtick from Now, Voyager. Warner Brothers 1942—except with the roles reversed, as befits an age of enlightened feminism. Bette Davis reconstructed in Forever Tomorrow, a 1978 TV movie starring … Linda Grace.

  And here was I being fed a lipstick-stained cigarette by a legend of the silver screen. Should I ask her to autograph my coaster? Or would a simple grovel on one knee suffice? Linda Grace distracted me at this point by leaning over still further to reach the ash tray on the bar, revealing a cleavage that was generous to the point of being spendthrift. The ignoble sexist though—“You don’t get many of those to the kilo”—raced through my pubescent brain and, luckily, out the other side. I vowed to say an infinite number of Hail Marys to Mrs. Pankhurst at some future date.

  I wrenched my mind back to listen to what the goddess was saying.

  I must apologize for that little scene back there, Mr.—?”

  “Watson. Jack Watson.”

  “I’m afraid my step-daughter is a rather troubled person at present but that is no excuse for interrupting the social life of others. She is a young lady of strong, if misguided, convictions. Personally, I like my convictions diluted—same as I do my bourbon.”

  I can take a hint. I used the dumb show hand signals drinkers and bartenders recognize the world over.

  “I have a confession to make.” She leaned even closer—no mean feat. Was it Groucho Marx or Bob Hope who said—‘If I stood any closer, I’d be behind you”?

  “That isn’t my line. Bette Davis said it in Jezebel. I use it all the time. Never fails.”

  And to underline that she was joking, she nudged me playfully with something warm, soft and considerable. By the way, my name is Linda—Linda Grace Kane.”

  “I don’t care about your name. Keep the name! It’s your soul I want …” I heard myself say.

  The sculpted chin dropped. A little ‘work’ there but let’s not be picky. For a lady who must be well into her fifties she looked amazing. A few fine lines around the eyes but, hey, all the best people have laughter lines. Mine are practically hysterical.

  Then she ‘got’ it.

  “My God, Devil Queen! My first starring role. Opposite dear old Seymour Blunt. An absolute darling but his sibilants gave him hell. So you know who I am? Or was? Just as I’ve just realized who you are. I thought the name rang a bell. You’re going to get Osgood’s bloody bird back for him …”

  She offered me a porcelain hand to shake and, after a little juggling with cigarettes and shot glasses, I managed to do so. Her grip was firm and lasted rather longer than it strictly needed to and the eye contact that went with it was practiced and unblinking.

  “It isn’t too often that I meet a dyed-in-the-wool fan these days, Mr. Watson. Oh, I can’t call you Mr. Watson, not when you’re practically family, can I—Jack?”

  And she raised the glass she’d been nursing in a toast to the mirror. From the color of it the bartender knew when not to say ‘when’.

  “You know, you private eyes—what do you call yourselves? Peepers? Gumshoes? Yuck, sounds like you stepped in something!—you interest me strangely.”

  And the lady was beginning to interest me rather more predictably, for I could again fee
l the pressure of something soft and distinctly female against my arm. As far as I could tell it was warm and contained no bones. It might have been a canteloupe she was taking home for later—but somehow I doubted it.

  “Jack—I don’t normally tell this to people but I’m quite physic—I mean psychic …”—the Jack D was beginning to kick in—“and I think you are going to be my lucky mascot. ‘Cos you know about Cinema. Not plain old movies—but Cinema …” She tried to mime quotation marks with the hand that held the glass. Enough of it slopped over me so that I wouldn’t be thirsty for days. I could just lick my wrist.

  “Tomorrow’s a big day for me, Jack. B.I.G. Day! You want to know why?”

  Any gentleman would want to know why. “Why?”

  “Going back to work. Haven’t worked since I married Mr. K. but the studio called and what’s a girl to do? Had to be Linda Grace. I said, ‘What about Glenn Close? Get Meryl Streep.’ They said, ‘No, got to have Linda Grace to play Linda Grace.’ Well, that figures. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Want you to come along, Jack. Lucky mascot. Superior Studios. Little indie outfit over in Santa Monica. Tomorrow. Promise?”

  One more move on her part and we’d be sharing the same bar stool. I knew when I was beaten. Anyway, it would be a good learning experience for Holmes and Mike. You never knew, they might need a slightly-trained dog.

  “Promise.”

  “Now then, Linda, you really mustn’t bully Mr. Watson. From what I hear he has his hands full bird-watching. I doubt that he has time to go star watching, too. Good evening, Mr. Watson and welcome to Birdland, my little fantasy world. May I introduce myself—Nicky Parmentieri. In simple language, I own the joint.”

  I found myself looking at the reflection of a young man of about thirty. He cut a slim figure and his tailor had cut the cloth of his expensive suit accordingly. The face was handsome to the point of being almost pretty but without looking in any way effeminate.

  The hair was dark, almost black, and shiny. He had it brushed flat to his head and I wondered if this was a conscious imitation of the late George Raft.