Built for Trouble (9 page)

A couple of pool hall bums were drinking beer at the front counter. They’d caught my performance. They were grinning as I came back inside, and I laughed a little myself, then pulled out my fold of bills and slid a five off the top.

“Suppose there’s anyone in the house who needs a fin? I want to hire a man with a car for about ten minutes’ work.”

“Like what?” The nearest guy set his beer down and wiped his mouth on a sleeve of his blue-work shirt.

“I loaned my car to the frill,” I said, scratching my chin. “You know how it is, some of these dames are out to cross a guy every time. I’d like to have someone see if she’s at a certain address.” I scribbled the number Nola had given me on a piece of paper.

“Anyone interested?”

“Could be. You don’t want nothin’ but to know if she’s there?”

“That’s all,” I said, and added my license number to the paper. “It’s a last year’s Ford—soft top and it’s up, cream color. There’s the number. She’ll be parked in front of the joint or maybe in an alley. You know this address?” I turned the paper toward him and he put a stubby finger on it.

“I know the street. That number won’t be hard to find.”

“Good. Now she left here and drove to the fourth corner up, then turned left. How’s for starting that way, then going to the address from there?”

“Sure.”

Grinning, he raised an eyebrow toward the man he’d been drinking with. “I’ll take Bob here along. That okay?”

I assured him it was, then ordered a beer and sauntered back to watch some pool games. There was the usual scattering of pool hall customers, all the way from bums to a couple of dudes in loud sports jackets and bow ties. I hadn’t even finished with the beer when the guy I’d just hired came steaming in. I followed him back outside, and he jerked a thumb up the street.

“She didn’t go very far, Mac. Your car’s just two blocks from the corner where you saw her turn, and a few yards down a side street.”

“The hell it is!”

“The hell it ain’t. And I hope you got nothing in the car pocket you can’t afford to lose, because she’s running through it with a flashlight.”

“She’s what?”

“Ain’t that right, Bob?” the poorman’s private eye asked, and turned to his friend.

“Sure as hell is. We saw the damn car as soon as we got close and we drove on past the intersection and I got out to walk back past it. Had one of them little fountain-pen lights and was taking everything out of the glove compartment and sorting things out. Just parked right there at the curb, she is, going through your junk.”

“I see,” I said, and nodded toward the door. We went in and I bought them both a fresh beer and turned toward the back again.

“You want to take a run up there? Glad to take you.”

“No,” I said, “I’ll just watch a while here until she comes back and—wait a second.”

I turned back to the two boys at the counter. “Want to add a sawbuck to that fin? Hop into your car and run back there to keep an eye on her. If she pulls away, hang on and see what happens. Shouldn’t run into more than an hour at the most. When she comes back to pick me up, I’ll stall until you come in the back way with the word. A damn dame—you never can tell what the hell they’re going to do next.”

“Sure, Mac. You payin’ the sawbuck in advance?”

“Half now,” I said, handing over another five. “You get the rest later.”

“It’s a deal. C’mon, Bob.”

There were a couple of nibbles for some snooker pool at a buck a game and one guy wanted to run off a few games of scratch but I wasn’t interested. I sat on a high bench, my eyes hardly seeing the colored balls as they rolled toward the pockets. They were checking on me, all right. Joe Lamb was most certainly running through the apartment, probably with the loving help of the redheaded Carol Taylor. And just to make doubly sure, Nola was going over the car. But what did she hope to find in the glove compartment? I was still sure they didn’t think I would hide the snapshots and the Lucky Lager can there. What was the angle, why the big search?

It didn’t make sense. If they went through my place looking for the can and photographs, that added up fine.
If
they weren’t sold on my song about mailing out the package at post office substations, then a search of the premises made good sense. And I couldn’t be happier. They were going to turn up the string and the mailing stickers and the wrapping paper, plenty of evidence that Baker was mailing out the merchandise.

But it still didn’t answer the question at hand—Nola and my car. I slid off of the bench, picked a cue out of the rack, and nodded to the guy who had offered to shoot some pool. But I couldn’t get interested in the game. I kept thinking about my car and wondering what the hell she hoped to find and how she made out.

We played three games and then I heard the horn out front. I went through to the door, pool cue still in my hand, and held up three fingers to indicate I’d be out in three minutes. When I went back to the table, my henchmen were slipping in the back way.

“She was still there,” one of them said, “still running through your junk, and then she drove around the block and came back here. She’s out in front now.”

“Thanks,” I said, and tossed him the other five-dollar bill. I dropped a quarter on the table to cover the game, mumbled an apology to the guy I was playing with, and went out and slipped behind the wheel of my car.

“Get it?” I asked.

“Of course.” She handed me a white envelope. I glanced at the green bills inside, then slipped the envelope into my pocket. We balled along on the run north, Nola seeming in quite a cheerful mood. When we were just below Carlsbad she caught my arm and looked up at me.

“Eddie, I want to talk to you.”

“I’m right here. Fire away.”

“No, find a place to stop for a few minutes. This is important and I want your full attention.”

“Any spot in particular?” I tried to make it sound casual.

“No. Just any place at all.”

“I’ll turn one up somewhere,” I said. She smoothed her print dress and leaned back against the seat. I wondered what the pitch would be. In Oceanside I pulled off of the highway to the right, cruised slowly on to the corner, and saw no cars behind me. I swung right again, drove slowly to the intersection, crossed, and went on down to the water. No lights followed me, and when I swung right and headed north I found a deserted parking lot. I drove in and nosed the car out toward the sea.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Con me.”

“Con? Please, Eddie, try to look at this in a reasonable light. We’re in a spot. So are you—in a way I’ll bet you haven’t even considered.”

Get on your overshoes, Eddie boy, I thought. Here comes the snow. Aloud I said, “Clue me. I haven’t caught you yet.”

“For one thing, an under the table pay-off of seventy-five thousand dollars just can’t be made.”

“The hell it can’t.”

“No. You haven’t thought about tax, Eddie. Now hold still for a minute and let me show you where the money comes—or rather cannot possibly come from. I’m going to admit first of all that we bought
Island Love
dirt cheap. I had an option before the rescue we pulled on you.”

“An option ahead?”

“Ninety days. As soon as I read the book I knew I could do it, but who am I? Nola Norton, three years an extra and a couple of B credits. If a studio bought the property I wouldn’t have a chance. So I took fifteen hundred dollars of my own money and got an option on the thing, at full price of fifteen thousand. I didn’t have the other thirteen-five; if my agent couldn’t come up with a package before the ninety days were up, I lost my money.”

“Then Joe Lamb isn’t really the headpiece in this—”

“Joe is a good agent. But no agent could have sold me as an unknown for a picture that big.”

“So you’ve got a hook on the book for three months. Then what?”

“We weren’t having any luck. So I got together with Hank Sawyer and the deal was made. I—I wish we had done it another way, now, Eddie. But to get on with it, Joe is strictly an agent and entitled to ten per cent of my earnings and no more. You can see right away that I’m going to do pretty well on
Island Love.
I’m paying Alex a flat nine thousand to do the script, and so far the studio likes what he’s outlined. It comes to something like a hundred and fifty-six thousand, after expenses.”

“Then what’s the squawk on paying—”

“Before taxes, Eddie. Before taxes. It will all come in on this calendar year. Now all you have to do is trot over to an internal revenue office, or pick up the phone, and you’ll find that the cut for the government is well over a hundred thousand, even after all the personal deductions I can round up. If I gave every dime that’s left to you, if I worked for free on this one, which I can’t afford to do, you would get only forty thousand. You can see where that leaves me.”

“Now look, cookie,” I said grimly, “I don’t want a sad song about—”

“Please, Eddie. There’s more.
You
are going to have a tax problem too.”

“I won’t need any help,” I said, grinning at her. “Mine won’t show up on a pay-check stub.”

“A lot of pretty smart people thought that way. They’re doing time. Money’s no good unless you can spend it, and that’s all the tax people have to prove—that you spent the money. But I point this out merely as something you’ll want to weigh. The cold facts are simple—I can and will pay you. But part of it—most of it—has to be above the table. I have to be able to deduct it on my return.”

“That’ll be real cute,” I said. “Under which schedule on an income tax blank do they list a shakedown?”

“You,” Nola pointed out calmly, “have always insisted that it’s a business deal. Very well, we’ll make it into one. A publicity development which I will be entitled to deduct, and which you can openly enter as income.”

“Are you nuts? Have you forgotten about Hank Sawyer?”

“That—that need not come up. This is different, a separate publicity campaign built around you. Finding you, I mean, to reimburse you for the trouble and humiliation you suffered, however inadvertently, in an event that proved to be a lucky break for Nola Norton. It’s good, Eddie. Real good.”

She went on to outline the plan, and I had to admit that someone had done a lot of thinking. Instead of the twenty-five I had said I wanted when they started shooting, I would get only fifteen, but still under the table. In the meantime, Eddie Baker slips out of L.A., runs up to Frisco or over to Las Vegas, and gets a job in some out-of-the-way place. A restaurant, maybe, or racking balls in a pool parlor. They bring my fifteen down there and a few days after
Island Love
goes before the cameras, the studio launches a big spread to find Baker. Nola Norton is going to pay off. In these days of the gigantic quiz programs with thousands going to some big dome for naming the seven longest rivers of the world or the wife of each premier of France, it would be refreshing to see someone get a payoff he really had coming. Fifty thousand dollars for Eddie Baker; and all legit.

The details? They were clever too. First, an announcement in the paper that Nola Norton is going to share her good luck. She’ll pay the unlucky lifeguard fifty grand. Then would follow a few days in which she can’t locate him. Rumblings of a publicity offer and lack of sincerity. All this arranged by studio press agents, of course, and ending with an offer, by the studio, of five thousand dollars for the person who locates Eddie Baker. No amount of dough would buy
Island Love
the front-page space this hoopla would bring. Nola was sure, she said, that Joe would have no trouble getting the studio to offer the reward. She could deduct the fifty thousand from her earnings as a promotional expense on the picture; I’d be free to spend mine without worry. Of course I’d have to pony up the tax on it, but even that wouldn’t be too bitter; I would have to pay the tax in any case, or not spend it for years, and that didn’t appeal to me either. There was no getting around it, the dark-haired doll sitting next to me had more than a figure in her favor.

“So how do you come out on it?” I asked, when she finished explaining all the angles.

“I’ll net what I netted on the last picture I made, a horse opera that brought me just under eight thousand. So it means I’ll be working in
Island Love
for a relatively small gain in cash, but from there on I can go big. I know it will hit, that story. I want to be aboard; I think it’s a star-maker.”

“It’s something I’ll have to think about,” I said. “And how do we time this thing so you’re sure I’ll be found. Is that a frame job too?”

“No. Not unless it looks like a miss. Then we’ll figure out something you can do to give yourself away.”

“A small problem already occurs to me. How is it that I don’t see the papers and simply run in to L.A. to collect?”

“We’ll have to take care of that in the job you get. It might be on a ranch outside of town or in some backwoods set-up where you only come to town now and then. That’s a detail—it will have to be considered but it’s no great problem. You—you
will
do it this way, Eddie? Please?”

“I’ll put it on the scales.”

“Thank you. In some ways I like you, Eddie. I don’t think you’re nearly as hard as you try to make me believe you are.” She kicked off her shoes and bent over, her hand slipping up under her dress to release her garters and strip off her stockings. Then she hopped out of the car and closed the door.

“I’m going for a walk on the sand, Eddie. Please don’t come. Stay here and think it over, because it’s really the only way—for both of us, Eddie.” She crossed the pavement, stepped up on the low concrete wall, and jumped down on the other side. I watched her walk toward the water and when she got to the wet sand near the surf, she turned and went along the edge.

I lit a smoke and started to think, and the first thing I thought was that I had to remember that Nola Norton was an actress. But she’d made a pretty good case for this deal. Suppose I went for it, and when I had the dough, opened one of the swim schools that are so popular in Southern California these days. I could buy a hell of a nice one with that kind of cash, even after the tax people took their bite, and—