by Terence Faherty

Terence Faherty’s Scott Elliott series has been nominated for two mystery awards, the Dilys, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association and the PWA’s Shamus Award. Both nominations were for a novella in which Elliott features, In a Teapot, and in both cases the book was up against full-length novels written by some of the top names in the field. Here is Elliott with a mundane case that suddenly turns deadly.

t’s a night of danger, intrigue, and infinite possibilities.”

I was inclined to doubt that claim, as the man who’d made it was a little mouse of a guy who looked like he wouldn’t know danger and intrigue if they took turns tickling his ears. And the only possibilities he could spot, I was sure, were the ones quickly receding in the rearview mirror of his life.

His name was Claude Dabney, and he was a humorist, formerly in print and now on the silver screen. He’d come to Hollywood in the late thirties in the wake of another humor writer, Robert Benchley. Benchley had had a mild success both in supporting roles in features and as the star of a series of shorts in which he basically played himself: a slightly befuddled Babbitt, eager to share his confusion with everyone else, often in the form of a comic lecture.

Dabney, who was vaguely English and, as I said, underproportioned, added an additional dimension to the same basic act. In the two-reelers he made for Columbia, he got pushed around by everyone and everything from shoe salesmen to shoelaces, but somehow managed to triumph in the end. In appearance, he resembled Roland Young more than Benchley. That is, he had thinning hair precisely parted, a beak of a nose, and tiny eyes inclined to blink. But there was one area in which he and Benchley might have passed for twins: They both drank like lovesick fish.

Drinking had rushed Benchley’s death, which might have been why Dabney was so cautious. He insisted on company whenever he went on one of what he called his “toots.” And that’s where I came in. On that dangerous and intriguing night in 1946 I was working for Hollywood Security, a firm which swept up after the studios and the stars. I was their current probationer, and as such, I’d been assigned to babysit Dabney, a job any real babysitter in real bobby socks could have handled, in my opinion. My boss, Patrick J. Maguire, had tried to build the part up by telling me that Dabney could be a Jekyll and Hyde when he drank, but I’d dismissed that as Paddy’s standard blarney.

Sure enough, except for a desire to move around more than seemed necessary, Dabney had proven to be quite the lamb. We’d started with an early dinner at the Brown Derby, me, as ordered, in my somewhat seedy tux and Dabney in his very seedy one. Our waiter there had called me “slugger,” as he was an old-timer and remembered the evening before the war when I’d decked a certain star in the Derby. I’d been an actor myself then, in a small way. Dabney had insisted on hearing the story, and it had gotten him blinking and then some.

“But this is wonderful, old boy.” He repeated my name, Scott Elliott, a time or two like he was suddenly remembering it. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you as a former member of the fraternity. But I must say I’m pleased. I wanted us to look like a couple of old friends, out for an evening of reminiscence and perambulation, and now we shall.”

We were a mismatched couple, with me being tall and a little heavier than my acting days and considerably the Englishman’s junior. But I went along with the gag happily. It would be one last chance to make the rounds as my old self.

Our perambulating eventually took us to Ciro’s, a sophisticated nightspot on Sunset. The club reminded me of Paddy’s Jekyll and Hyde comment; it was sleek and modern on the outside—its entryway roof with its curves and many slender supports looked like a harp designed by Harley Earl—but very baroque on the inside. It had been remodeled by its new owners and toned down a little, but it still resembled a Versailles boudoir that happened to seat three hundred.

Our seats were at the bar, at Dabney’s insistence. His drink of choice was a Bronx, an antique cocktail made from gin, sweet and dry vermouth, and orange juice. I’d watched so many being made by then that I had the formula down by heart. I was consuming orange juice, on the rocks. Orange juice and a steady stream of Dabney’s patter.

“Have you ever noticed, old boy, how many movies are set in one of two places, a newspaper or a nightclub? I’ve often thought those locales come up so often because a writer will always fall back on what he knows best. Most screenwriters worked for a newspaper early in their careers, what one might call their honest period. The nightclub experience comes from a writer’s Hollywood period, when these upholstered confines come to seem more real than the unupholstered world outside.”

I thought of kicking in that nightclub settings popped up so often because they gave the studios a chance to insert their musical performers in nonmusical pictures, thereby keeping them off the streets and out of trouble. I didn’t make the observation, because Dabney had segued into a story about his lost days on the London Times. And because the man seated to my left said something just then that divided my attention.

It was: “There she is, the dame in the green dress. Memorize her.”

Dabney was peering into his cocktail, so I was free to glance over my shoulder at the dance floor, where the customers were swaying to “They Didn’t Believe Me.” I spotted the woman in the green dress right away. She was tall and slender, with dark hair worn up everywhere but in front. There, sharply cut bangs reached down almost to her widely spaced eyes. She was wearing a necklace of green beads a shade brighter than her dress. The necklace also caught the attention of the guy beside me.

“She’s wearing the jade,” I heard him say. “That’s handy.”

The mirror behind Ciro’s bar had a finish of crackled gold, but I could still make out that the speaker was a light heavyweight, dark of features and suit. His companion, also in a dark suit, had a bluejacket’s haircut over a baby face.

“That’s worth eighty thousand bucks?” the kid asked.

“Every nickel of it,” the dark man replied.

Dabney, meanwhile, had reached the payoff of his story. “The actual cause of my firing was a piece I wrote about astronomy. At one point, I had to give the distance to the moon in miles. I might have looked it up, but I thought the figure I gave, ‘rather more than ten,’ to be both true and adequate. My editor, the fossil, disagreed.”

He stretched his short arms. “I feel like a change in ambiance, old boy. Let us reclaim our hats.”

* * * *

I would like to have stayed and overheard more about that jade necklace, but Dabney was insistent. The next place on his list was the Cafe Trocadero, or the Troc, as it was known locally. The club was what had drawn the stars to Sunset Boulevard in the first place and so had drawn the tourists who liked to bask in starlight. I’d been there often in my studio days, parading some starlet in front of the photographers for the benefit—we hoped—of our respective careers. Those nights were usually as awkward as a blind date for the prom, but every now and then I’d broken through the glamour and met a genuine human being, maybe even a Midwesterner like me.

Paddy had told me that the Troc was closing after a decade’s run, and the rumors he passed on were generally reliable. But I didn’t really believe that one until Dabney and I were installed in the grill room. The place was half empty, and the occupied tables contained only tourists, mildly disappointed. The carpeting was as worn as Dabney’s tux. The whole interior was. What once had seemed to me a chic Parisian cafe now looked like a bad parody of one. I told myself it was because I’d seen the real Paris—courtesy of Uncle Sam—since my last visit. But then Dabney took up the same theme.

“The grandeur that was Rome, eh, old boy? What a shame. The nights this place has seen. I’m told Ted Healy died in a brawl in this very bar. Did you know him?”

Leave it to Dabney to be up on movie comics who drank too much. “Before my time,” I said.

“Before time itself, perhaps,” Dabney replied. He pursed his lips a little at his first taste of the Troc’s idea of a Bronx, but sipped on manfully.

“Growing old is an odd thing, Scotty. It seems mild enough, incremental, as it were. You notice a gray hair in the mirror and then another, but the head they’re sprouting from remains the same. More or less the same. Then you visit a place like this that you remember from a lost time, or you see a person you haven’t seen in years, and whammo. I mean to say, look at what happened to Gladys Cooper. She was once the most enchanting creature on the London stage, johnnies at her door every night, staggering under their loads of flowers. And now she’s playing severe old ladies with Gorgon’s eyes. How did that happen, old boy? When did it happen?”

Sometime after Dabney had first set sail on the Bronx Sea, I guessed. I noticed that his speech was becoming a little slurred and took it as a good sign. I thought he’d have his fill soon and I could drive him home, maybe in time to squeeze in some drinking of my own. Then he dashed my hopes.

“We must fight against it, Scotty. We must nail our colors to the mast! Requisition another round, old boy. I’ll be right back.”

I ordered his drink and a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes for myself. I was lighting the first one when someone screamed directly behind me.

A woman built along the lines of Margaret Dumont was rubbing her backside and turning as red as the local streetcars. Her gaze would have made Gladys Cooper’s best imitation of a Gorgon look like a come-hither wink. She was directing it at Claude Dabney, who was standing before her with an empty tray in hand and a napkin over one arm. He looked like any of the waiters, except that their seedy jackets were white.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” he said. “Didn’t you order the goose?”

That got a laugh from everyone within earshot except me, the lady in question, and a guy who was either her husband or a stevedore she’d adopted after her last ocean voyage.

“Why you...” the man sputtered, using the time-tested formula. He followed that up in a conventional way, too, pushing back his coat sleeves and balling his big hands into fists.

Dabney closed his not-big eyes, and I wondered if he’d decided to try Ted Healy’s cure for old age. Wondered, but didn’t wait to find out.

I’d witnessed a few brawls in barracks and bars during my time in the service and I knew that guys planning to throw a punch fell into two broad categories: those focused on a specific target and those mad enough to hit anything that moved. I’d learned from hard experience not to play peacemaker with the latter group, of which this stevedore appeared to be president. But Dabney had paid for his babysitting in advance, so I stepped between them. “Excuse him, please,” I said. “He’s had a little to drink.” A little more than a gallon.

As I’d expected, the husband’s idea of a counterproposal was a looping left aimed at my head. I stepped inside its arc, grabbed one corner of his black tie, and gave it a quick yank, undoing what had been a beautiful bow.

That act of vandalism puzzled a little of the steam out of him. Before the pressure could build again, he had a waiter—a real one—on each arm.

I turned to give Dabney a choice word or two. The borrowed tray and napkin occupied his previous spot on the balding carpet. Of the man himself, there was no sign.

* * * *

When I started to look around for Dabney, everyone who noticed me at it pointed the same way: toward the club’s front door. The man in charge of that door confirmed the bad news. Dabney had grabbed another party’s cab and sped away. For a crisp new five, the doorman remembered the destination Dabney had given the cabbie. It was another nightclub, Don the Beachcomber’s, on McFadden.

I dallied long enough to collect our hats and then set out in my LaSalle, a sleek prewar coupe that was the brainchild of that genius designer I mentioned earlier, Harley Earl. The drive to McFadden took less than no time, but even that was too long. At Don’s, a club that looked like it had been flown in complete from Key West, I learned that Dabney had been turned away due to the damage he’d caused on a prior visit. He’d sawed partially through the seats of several of the club’s rattan chairs with his trusty penknife. The weight of their next occupants had completed the gag.

The guy who had bounced Dabney on that occasion took pity on me and recommended I try Nick’s Hideaway, another place from which Dabney had been banned. The bouncer’s theory was that the little humorist—whom he called a “bedbug”—would naturally go where he wasn’t wanted. I decided to trust his judgment, since the alternative was confessing all to Paddy.

After the big nightclubs had established themselves on Sunset, smaller ones had popped up on the hills behind the boulevard. These had both fed off the overflow and taken advantage of a wartime tendency among the stars to seek out quieter watering holes. I hadn’t been around to follow that trend, so I’d never been to Nick’s Hideaway. It turned out to be a Spanish-looking stucco building with an authentic red tile roof and inauthentic striped awnings, all of it spotlit in a way that belied the hideaway part of its name.

The inside was much darker and quiet, so quiet that I despaired of finding Dabney. The first guy I asked was a thin citizen in a suit whose jacket was overly wide in the shoulders and so long it came down almost to his knees. His trousers were as tight at the cuffs as jodhpurs. He was standing at a window next to the front door, peering through a gap in its gauzy curtains.

“Don’t work here,” he said in a south-of-the-border accent. Then he undercut his claim by exiting through a door marked Private.

I left my hat on the counter of an unmanned coat check and entered the main room, where a decent combo was playing to a smallish crowd. Their current effort was “Sophisticated Lady,” a Duke Ellington song I’d loved ever since I’d heard Lillian Roth warble it in a Vitaphone short. My visit to the Trocadero had made me sensitive to signs of decay, and I saw them all around me at Nick’s, which had last been painted around the time I’d landed on Utah Beach. I decided that the place was yet another Hollywood hopeful who would soon be looking for a fresh start, which made us soul mates.

I asked after Dabney at the bar and was told he hadn’t been there and wouldn’t get in if they saw him coming. The bartender didn’t describe Dabney’s past offense in detail, except to say it may have involved Jeanette MacDonald and a seltzer bottle.

I sat there smoking a Lucky and trying to think of my next move. I could wear out my very valuable tires trying to hit every gin joint in greater Los Angeles. Or I could call the cops to see if anyone had reported a riot. Or I could call Paddy and make a clean breast of things. I was looking toward the phone booth near Nick’s entrance when a lady I knew came in. It was the woman of the jade necklace from Ciro’s. She was accompanied by the guy she’d been dancing with there, who was peering around now through gold-rimmed specs like he was appraising the joint.

I wasn’t surprised to see them. If you went nightclubbing in as small a town as Hollywood, you could expect to bump into the same nomads once or twice in the course of your evening. That reflection made me think that my best plan might be to stay where I was and let Dabney come to me. I was still mulling it over when a guy sat down next to me and asked to share my ashtray.

“I’m Nick Sebastian, the owner,” he said. “I understand you’re looking for Claude Dabney. You his keeper?”

I gave him my name and Hollywood Security’s. I would have shown him a card, too, only Paddy hadn’t issued mine yet.

Sebastian nodded through that and said, “I came by to offer to hold on to Dabney for you, if he should stumble in. I’m guessing the object is to keep him out of the jug.”

“And the hospital,” I said, thinking of the punch the little man had courted at the Troc.

Sebastian, a sad-eyed, slightly overweight guy, gave his jowls a shake. “If you ask me, a hospital is where he belongs, one with bars on the windows. That liver of his isn’t going to last forever.”

I’d been keeping one eye on the front door in case that endangered liver sauntered through. So I caught the entrance of another Ciro’s alumnus. It was the kid in the dark suit who’d shared the bar with Dabney and me. The one who’d been told to memorize the woman in the green dress.

* * * *

The kid scanned the main room, spotted the jade woman and her escort at their ringside table, and sat down at the bar a few stools from the club owner and me.

“Friends of yours?” Sebastian asked.

“Nope,” I said. And then, “Excuse me.”

The combo was taking a break, and the audience was stirring itself, looking around for the powder room or the coat room or just doing a little table hopping. It was the natural moment for me to say hello to old friends, even ones I didn’t actually know.

These friends were laughing as I walked up to their table, though I thought the woman’s titter was less than sincere. That judgment might have been colored by one I’d arrived at when they’d entered, which was that she was far too pretty for her companion.

“I beg your pardon,” I said when they realized I wasn’t the waiter. “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

I’d addressed the lady, but the wearer of the gold eyeglasses answered me. He had wavy hair and a shade less jaw than he needed to support his attitude. “What’s this regarding, Mr...?”

“Elliott,” I said. “Scott Elliott.” I waited for them to recognize the name and told myself I had to stop doing that. “I guess it’s regarding a warning.”

“A warning?” the woman repeated. “Friendly or unfriendly?”

“Extra friendly.”

“Please sit down,” she said, with a warmth in her voice that convinced me the laughter I’d heard earlier had been pure tin. I didn’t often notice a lady’s ears, not for the first date or two, but I noticed hers. Her dark hair being up put those ears on display, and it had been worth the effort, as they were delicate, perfectly shaped, and—backlit by the glow of the stage—as translucent as fine china. In contrast, her full lips had been designed for heavy service and rouged for it, too. Her brown eyes, under long, natural lashes, were green around the irises, the color brought out by her gown. And the jade, of course.

“We should introduce ourselves,” my hostess said. “My name is Evelyn Lantrip. This is my brother, David Beeler.”

She explained the difference in their last names by uncovering her left hand—formerly under her right—and displaying a wedding ring I should have noticed a lot sooner.

“I’m visiting from Kansas City,” she added. “David is showing me the town.”

A Midwesterner, I thought, suppressing a sigh. “Mr. Lantrip doesn’t dance?”

“Doesn’t even travel,” his wife said.

Her brother was less patient with personal questions. “About this warning.”

“Right. I happened to be in Ciro’s earlier this evening while you were there. I overheard two men discussing your necklace. Specifically, how much it was worth. One of them followed you here. The crewcut at the bar.”

Brother and sister exchanged a glance and maybe a ghost of a smile, though I convinced myself that I’d been wrong about that when Mrs. Lantrip’s tone became serious. “You’re concerned about a robbery? That’s sweet of you, Mr. Elliott. I guess it was foolish of me to wear this, but it’s the nicest thing I own. A girl from Kansas City needs all the help she can get out here.”

“Not every girl from Kansas City,” I observed.

Beeler took his absent brother-in-law’s part. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll keep our eyes open. Please don’t let us detain you.”

I wished them a good evening and returned to my seat at the bar. Nick Sebastian was still occupying the one beside it. He took up our conversation where we’d left off. “No kidding, I’ll be happy to sit on Dabney for you. Just give me a number I can call.”

Between Sebastian handing me my hat and Beeler’s bum’s rush, I was beginning to feel unwelcome. “You’re not afraid he’ll wreck the joint?”

The club owner shook his jowls again. “We’re closing to remodel in a week. I’ve picked up a silent partner with a pocketful. Dabney’s welcome to tear down anything but the bearing walls.”

We were seated with our backs to the padded bar, so when Beeler whistled up a waiter and paid their check I noticed. I looked down the row of stools in time to see the kid with the crewcut toss some bills on the bar.

I started to get up, and Sebastian put a hand on my arm. “Then again,” he said, “if you’re here when Dabney shows, it’ll be easier on me.”

Evelyn and her brother were at the exit by then. They used it without a backward glance at me. The kid followed them out.

I removed Sebastian’s hand from my sleeve. “When you make up your mind,” I said, “wire me collect.”

* * * *

I didn’t waste any time at the hat check; my best black snap-brim was on the counter exactly where I’d left it. Still, I barely made it outside in time to see the brother and sister team pulling away in a cab. Before I reached my LaSalle, a dark blue Plymouth coupe left the curb in the wake of the taxi.

I joined the parade, which wound through the hills without climbing much or descending to the boulevard. Eventually, I spotted the red neon sign of another nightspot, one I knew, the Arbor Supper Club. Either by design or accident, Lantrip and Beeler were moving to increasingly discreet establishments. The Arbor was so discreet it couldn’t be seen from the street. It was reached by a path that climbed through a long archway of trained bougainvillea. The cab stopped at the foot of this chute, and the lady and her escort got out. The Plymouth had pulled to the curb well before the club’s shield-shaped sign. I parked even further back.

The man who got out of the blue coupe wasn’t the one I’d been expecting, the kid I’d followed out of Nick’s. It was his shorter, broader friend from Ciro’s. He’d been using his junior partner to keep tabs on Lantrip and the jade, I decided. Now he was moving in himself. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he yanked his hat brim down almost to his nose. If he’d covered half his face with a black bandanna, I wouldn’t have been any more sure that the feature was about to start.

To keep up with him, I had to pass within plain sight of the Plymouth and its driver. I weaved a little as I walked and whistled a few bars of “Sophisticated Lady” so I’d pass for a Dabney-in-the-making. I hadn’t forgotten about the real Dabney or my real job, though I was trying my best. But nothing, not even Paddy’s certain disapproval, could get me to put a pint-sized practical joker ahead of a damsel in distress.

The bougainvillea tunnel was inadequately lit by a series of paper lanterns. Though the ground rose steadily, there were no steps, just some flags set here and there in the grass. Muted Gershwin came down from above, sounding no louder than a neighbor’s gramophone. I started up at a trot, trying my best to step on the grass and not the stones. I hadn’t gone very far before I saw my man. He was standing still and—it seemed to me—listening. I listened too, hearing a voice only a little louder than the distant music. I had a second’s impression that the voice was familiar. Then I swung into action.

Due to the wetness behind my ears, Paddy hadn’t issued me a gun, which suited me, as I’d had my fill of them. But a gun would have been a comfort just then. I made do with my right hand stuck in my jacket pocket, supplemented by a fountain pen I’d gotten in the habit of carrying back when I was hoping to be asked for my autograph.

“Don’t move,” I growled. “You’re covered.”

The light heavyweight froze, hands at his sides.

“Forget about the jade,” I said. “The lady’s taking it back to Kansas City.”

I had more to add, maybe something about how crime didn’t pay. But just then somebody grabbed my pen arm and whirled me around.

It was the kid I’d left behind the wheel of the coupe. If he’d clouted me from behind, we would have been done. Luckily, he’d chosen to do the sporting thing and brace me face-to-face. He’d even spotted me a slight advantage, since I was above him on the hill. I counterpunched his left jab aside and landed most of a right cross.

Then something that wasn’t a fountain pen poked me in the spine. “Reach, Gentleman Jim,” the older man said.

The kid was getting up from the grass, looking a lot less sporting. His partner stopped him with a single word: “Relax.”

He patted me down, found the Waterman, and swore. “Who the hell are you?”

“Scott Elliott, Hollywood Security,” I said, thinking it might be my last chance to make that claim.

He shoved me under the nearest paper lantern. “One of Paddy Maguire’s crew? Let’s see some identification.”

“Haven’t got any yet.”

He swore again. “Another rookie.”

The kid I’d sat on the grass rubbed his jaw and looked embarrassed. I was starting to feel the same way.

“Who are you guys?” I asked.

“Truax,” the man with the gun said, tapping himself on the necktie. “He’s Riggs.” As he returned the snub-nosed revolver to his shoulder holster, he added, “We’re Hollywood Security’s competition. Only we’re legitimate.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’ll find out, if Maguire keeps you around long enough. In the meantime—”

Somewhere off in the shrubbery, a woman screamed.

* * * *

It was my second scream of the evening. This one was cut short before it really got going, which somehow made it worse. My two new friends took off up the path, with me a step behind them. At the head of that path was a jumpy guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He took one look at us and exited stage right. The scream had come from stage left, from somewhere down a gravel path that skirted the Arbor’s big bay windows. Just beyond the light they cast, we found Evelyn and Beeler.

She was seated on the gravel, nursing a bleeding lip. Beeler was staggering around, his wavy hair standing up like the back hairs of an angry cat. He was looking for something—his golden glasses, I realized. As I helped Evelyn to her feet, I noticed a second missing item. A whole lot of jade.

“He took it,” she said. “A guy with a gun.”

“Describe him,” Truax ordered.

“A black-haired zoot-suiter, the creep. He hit me. Then he ran off that way.”

She pointed away from the building. At a nod from his partner, Riggs took off in pursuit. I started to follow him, but Truax blocked my way.

“They’ll be coming from the club,” he said. “Buy us some time.”

“Yes, please,” Evelyn added.

I handed her my handkerchief and trotted back toward the lights. Three men had come out of the Arbor, none of whom looked thrilled about this call from danger and intrigue. I told them some guy had gotten fresh with his date, and they went back inside happy. When I rejoined the trio on the path, Beeler was in his glasses again and demanding names, ranks, and serial numbers.

Truax introduced himself as an operative of the Transcontinental Detective Agency.

“You too, Elliott?” Beeler asked me.

“Hell no,” Truax said. “How do you know Elliott?”

“He warned us about a robbery,” Evelyn told him. “Back at Nick’s Hideaway. He’d noticed your friend watching us.”

“Then he hurried along after you to make sure the real robber would have a clear field,” Truax said.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“Wait nothing. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have seen the whole thing. I would have nailed the guy.” He turned from me to Evelyn. “My firm was hired by your husband, Mrs. Lantrip, to keep an eye on you.”

Things were getting darker fast. I said, “Lantrip knew someone would try for the necklace?”

Truax looked pained by something. My naivete, as it turned out.

Evelyn said, “He wasn’t worried about theft, Mr. Elliott. He was worried about infidelity. With good reason.”

“Shut up,” Beeler said in a tone that made me sorry he’d found his glasses.

“Go to hell, David. I’m sick of this masquerade. And I’m not getting stuck for the price of that tramp’s jewelry.”

Truax, who was faster than me on the uptake, said, “You’re not Evelyn Lantrip?”

“No. My name is Marion Hale. I’m Guy Alexiou’s assistant.”

Finally, a name I could place. Alexiou was maybe the hottest director in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s current stable.

The woman with my pocket linen to her lip said, “Mrs. Lantrip met Alexiou when she was catting around out here last year. They’ve been trading love notes ever since. She knew her husband had hired Transcontinental to chaperone this year’s fling, but she also knew you only had her description to work with. I happen to fit that description, too. So she and Guy worked out a switch.”

That explained the secret smile she and Beeler had exchanged after my warning. I’d let them know the plan was working.

“While you’ve been traipsing around behind us,” Hale concluded, “Lantrip and Guy have been over in Malibu, going at it like rabbits.”

“Shut up,” Beeler said again.

He made up for being late with the line by shaking her arm roughly. That was all the opening I needed, glasses or no glasses. Only Truax beat me to the punch, literally. He hit Beeler in the breadbasket with a movement I admired both for its efficiency and effect.

“Why did the brother here go along?” he then asked as though nothing had happened.

Hale said, “He thinks Alexiou is going to get him in at Metro. He’s been out here for years, trying to worm his way in somewhere. Guy’s playing him the way Lantrip’s playing her husband.”

Riggs trotted out of the darkness. “No sign of him, Sam. He must have had a car waiting.”

“He’s halfway to Mexico by now,” Hale said. We all looked at her, even the stooping Beeler, so she explained. “He had an accent.”

That rang a bell. And Hale’s earlier reference to a zoot-suiter finally registered. But Truax still had the floor.

“How did he lure you away from the lights?”

Beeler wasn’t up to speaking, so Hale answered. “He met us on the club’s front steps. Gave us a song and dance about how there’d been a big fight and a newspaper photographer was inside snapping away. I couldn’t afford to have my picture taken as Evelyn Lantrip. The guy told us this path was a shortcut to a taxi stand. He followed us and pulled a gun.”

The Transcontinental man worked through it aloud. “He can’t have known the next party coming up that path would have a small fortune around her neck, any more than he knew that Elliott would come along to cover his back. He must be having the luckiest night of his life.”

I was good and sick by then of playing the fall guy. “His luck’s run out,” I said. “If we move fast, we’ve got him.”

“We?” Truax said.

“Sure. It’ll make a great ending for your report to Kansas City.”

* * * *

I took off for the bougainvillea tunnel, ignoring the group’s questions until we were passing the Arbor’s front door. Then I said to Hale, “You can wait inside. Or they’ll call you a cab.”

“What about Beeler?” Truax asked.

“He goes with us,” I said.

“The hell I will,” Beeler said.

Riggs, who was supporting Beeler at the elbow, stole his boss’s line: “Relax.”

Hale said, “I’m going, too. I want to see how this ends.”

I liked her for that and said okay. Truax wasn’t liking much about the setup, but he didn’t voice his objections until we were all squeezed into their coupe, Beeler and his nurse in the backseat and Hale between Truax and me in the front.

“Why Beeler?” he demanded then.

“Who picked the Arbor as your next port of call?” I asked Hale.

“David did. He said it was part of the circuit his sister liked to make.”

“It is,” Beeler said.

“And how did the gunman know you couldn’t afford to be photographed as Lantrip? That fairy story was especially designed to scare a woman in disguise. Nothing happened tonight by chance; everything’s been planned out. That’s why Beeler.”

“You’re forgetting your part,” Truax said. “They couldn’t know you’d blunder in. But if you’re right about Beeler being involved, then the robber had to have known his mark was being tailed. No gunman would waylay the lady if he knew she had a private cop in tow.”

It was a great objection. Either Beeler was an innocent party and the robbery was a lucky fluke or Beeler was a mastermind who’d set up a robbery that couldn’t work unless I happened along. Luckily, I’d seen a third way.

“Remember the guy with the unlit cigarette we scared when we charged out of the jungle? He was part of the scheme. All he had to do was ask you for a light and you’d be off camera long enough for the thing to work. Only I slowed you up instead. By the time you finally showed, Miss Hale had screamed and the jig was up. So the accomplice took off.”

I’d been giving Truax driving directions in small chunks, the same way I’d been passing on my brilliant solution. I knew that once I told all, it would be back to the chorus for me. Eventually, though, we arrived at Nick’s Hideaway.

“Why here?” Truax asked.

I told them then about seeing the watchful youngster in the dated suit and got the demotion I’d expected. Truax told Hale to stay in the car, she told him to tell it to the Marines, and we all five went in. Though the music was still playing, no one greeted us. I showed them the door marked Private. Truax tried its knob very quietly, then drew his gun and kicked the door in with the same economy of motion he’d earlier used on Beeler.

If Guy Alexiou had been directing the scene, the little tableau that greeted us couldn’t have been any more perfect. The gunman with the accent and the dated wardrobe was standing next to the room’s center of light: a big desk trimmed out in brass studs. Seated behind the desk was Nick Sebastian. Between his fat hands stretched a long strand of green beads.

We trooped in, Riggs shutting the damaged door behind us. A movie script would have provided some snappy dialogue at that point, but we did without. Truax patted down the Mexican and took his gun. Only then did Sebastian ask what we wanted.

“That,” Truax said, aiming his snub-nose at the necklace. “And you two.”

“The gentleman told me he found this outside,” Sebastian said. “If that isn’t what happened, it’s news to me.”

I said, “Your silent partner here says different. He says that jade was going to remodel this dump.”

Sebastian picked Beeler out of the crowd. “You four-eyed sponge. I should have known better than to trust you.”

It was a great spot for one of Beeler’s retroactive shut-ups. Instead, he took us all by surprise. Riggs still held him by the arm, but only loosely. Beeler pulled the kid into a headlock and, reaching around him, drew the gun from Riggs’s holster.

“Drop yours,” he told Truax. “Both of them.”

The detective couldn’t hope to shoot without hitting his partner, so he dropped his revolver and the Mexican’s glittering automatic. When its previous owner stepped to retrieve it, Beeler waved his gun at him.

“No you don’t, Pedro. I’m flying solo from here on.”

He pushed Riggs aside, crossed to the desk, and took the jade from Sebastian. “Enjoy prison food, Nick.”

As he backed toward the door, he noticed Hale. The look he gave her made me step between them.

Then the door behind Beeler flew open, hitting him a whack that sent his glasses flying and shoved him my way.

I grabbed his gun arm and raised it to the ceiling just as the revolver went off. Then I landed a right cross, a solid one this time.

Beeler sank to the floor, revealing the figure in the doorway. It was a little guy with a beak of a nose and a nonstop blink. Claude Dabney. He was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf.

“I want my hat, you chaps,” he announced. “And I want it now.”

* * * *

Just shy of last call, Marion Hale and I found ourselves in the tiny, book-lined bar of the Arbor Supper Club. We’d gone back there—after a preliminary interview with the cops—to collect my LaSalle. The club had let us in despite the early hour and even though I no longer had a tie. I’d used mine to bind the hands of Claude Dabney, king of the jungle. He was now asleep in the backseat of my car, wearing his beloved hat, which I’d been carrying around for him since the Troc. But not wearing his shoes. I’d locked those in the trunk as an added precaution. Marion had tossed in her phony wedding ring for good measure.

We’d earned our nightcaps, and they sat on the hardwood before us, a Gibson for me and a Gimlet for Marion. She was ignoring hers to gaze into my steely blue eyes, which gave me a dilemma. Not concerning what her gaze meant or where we were heading. I wasn’t that wet behind the ears. I was wondering how I’d break the news to Paddy that I’d won an in at MGM and would be returning to my old profession.

I’d already turned down one job offer since they’d put the cuffs on Beeler and Sebastian. That had come from Sam Truax on behalf of the Transcontinental Detective Agency, and it had been easy to refuse. If I had to be a babysitter for the Dabneys and Lantrips of this world, I preferred to work for a firm with Hollywood in its title, not one whose name threatened a transfer to Tacoma or Topeka or Trenton.

A chance to crash MGM was another matter entirely. So I was wording my resignation and feeling a little regret over it, now that I’d glimpsed my job’s more exciting possibilities. Then Marion rendered the question moot in the extreme.

Her exact words were: “Want to help me say goodbye to Hollywood, Scotty?”

“Goodbye?”

“Yes. I’m heading east, maybe after I have a farewell toot, like that little friend of yours.”

“What about your job?”

“Gone. Guy fired me, the goat. I called Malibu from the ladies’ room back at Nick’s. I wanted to let Evelyn know she needed a good divorce lawyer. Guy canned me before my first nickel ran out. Said I’d never work in this town again, the plagiarist.”

“He’ll apologize,” I said.

“He’ll have to do it long distance. I’ve got a standing offer from a typewriter company in Ohio. My old man runs it. Someday I will. You’re looking at the first female president of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce.”

I controlled an impulse to down my Gibson and raised it to her instead. “Good luck with that,” I said.

“You should think about getting out, too, Scotty. Guy and all the other vest-pocket Napoleons in this burg are living on borrowed time. They think things are going to go back to the way they were before the war, but those days are gone forever. The future’s waiting to do to Hollywood what the flood did to Johnstown.”

She was just blowing off steam, but her prediction still gave me a chill. Not that I let on. I knew that much about playing a gumshoe.

In my best offhand delivery, I said, “Sounds like I’d better hang around and make sure everything turns out okay.”

Marion raised her drink to me. “Good luck with that,” she said, and we clinked our glasses on it.