Death Was in the Picture (2 page)

I was happy for Dex, happier than I would have thought possible at the idea of him trying to turn over a new leaf. I had a bunch of questions, and maybe a couple of comments, but at that moment the door opened and I jumped guiltily at the sight of Xander Dean.

“Oh!” I said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dean. It turns out Mr. Theroux
is
available to see you. We just had some … some paperwork to get through.” I noticed with relief that Dex had made the racing form disappear, as was his habit, drunk or sober, when someone came in. The racing form wasn’t the kind of paperwork a client needed to see.

“Kitty …?” Dex said.

“Sorry, Dex. This is Xander Dean,” I said, as I ushered the big man to the seat I’d been occupying moments before. “Mr. Dean, Dexter J. Theroux. Mr. Dean is a friend of Mustard’s,” I said, knowing that would give Dex the only introduction he’d need.

I shut the door tight behind me on my way out.

I WAS BACK at my desk and rolling a piece of paper into my typewriter when the phone rang. I knew who it was before I picked up the receiver. Even so, I was surprised when I was right.

“How’s my favorite Kitty-cat?”

“No, Mustard. Not at all. You already know I’m not so crazy about you calling me ‘Kitty.’ But Kitty-cat? Absolutely not. Where’s your head?”

“You don’t like Kitty?” Mustard sounded astonished. “How can you not like Kitty? It’s your name.”

“My name is not Kitty. It’s Katherine. Kate, if you must. Miss Pangborn, if you dare. But no Kitty. Got it?”

“Sure, sure,” Mustard said like he meant it. I knew him well enough, though. I knew that he did not. “Dean show up?”

“He did,” I said. “He’s in with Dex right now.”

“Good, good. Listen, if you get a chance before they work things out, tell Dex not to go easy on him.”

“Pardon?” I said.

“Yeah. Did you notice his suit? And his pocket hanky: real silk.”

I hadn’t noticed the fabric, but the hanky I’d noticed. It was fuchsia, patterned in an even darker purple; a bright splotch on the man’s otherwise conservative dark gray suit. When I thought about it, I realized that Mustard was right. The whole effect was pretty swank.

“What’s his story?” I asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Mustard said. “And I don’t know that I’d tell you if I did.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“Don’t mention it. But this is real jack, Kitty; this is folding money. I can tell. He came recommended. Like I said, get Dex to charge all he can. The guy said he was looking for the best. He’ll be expecting to pay for it.”

I told Mustard I’d do what I could, but I figured I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity before Dex made the deal, if a deal were to be made. I considered intruding, perhaps offering a glass of water or some coffee, but this move would have been so uncharacteristic of me, it would have left Dex open-mouthed. Anyway, once in there, I couldn’t see past the tray with the cups or glasses. Would I pass Dex a note? Whisper something in his ear? Either scenario seemed out of character and beyond my job description, so I opted for another plan: I’d do nothing and hope for the best.

Dex and Dean were in the office for a long time. At least, it seemed that way to me. To fill in the time, and because Dex likes me to do it, I typed away merrily for a while.

The quick brown fox.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and falls off a log.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and falls off a log and into a deep and extremely frightening and totally unexpected bog.

Things like that. All in an effort to supply the busy, successful sounds that Dex liked clients to hear coming from the outer office when he was in a first meeting.

The quick brown fox fell off a log and onto a brown dog and met a lavender hog in a deep, dark fog while trying to avoid falling into a bog.

But it was a long meeting. After a while, I started running out of possible scenarios for quick brown foxes and I moved on
to hitting random keys at sensible intervals. Just when I was about to give even that up and start preparing to pack it up for the night, Dex’s office door opened and the fat man came out. I waited, but Dex didn’t pop out behind him.

“Good day, then,” he said as he passed my desk. I returned his polite greeting, noticing as I did that he didn’t look the least upset or perturbed. Curious.

As soon as I heard the elevator leave our floor and head down with its larger than usual cargo, I slipped back into Dex’s office. He was sitting at his desk, his head turned toward daylight. He grunted in my direction when I came in, but he didn’t turn away from the window. He seemed deep in thought.

“It didn’t go so good, huh?” In our office, I could tell when a meeting had gone well when Dex walked a new client to the door. Then, after the client was gone, he’d stop by my desk and fill me in. But a bad meeting usually resulted in the lost potential client leaving the office in some sort of visual huff. Dex wasn’t a halfways kinda guy: he usually dotted his i’s and made sure people knew exactly how he felt.

Dean had seemed happy enough when he left. Dex wasn’t, though. He wasn’t happy at all.

“It went all right,” Dex said, rolling a cigarette thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger before lighting it. When the cigarette was lit, he flicked the match off the end of his finger—a neat trick. It did a lazy sort of triple somersault and landed in his jade green ashtray tidy as you please. “It went just fine.”

Without being invited, I sat down opposite the desk in the still warm chair and looked at my boss. Dean’s scent lingered, but Dex had a wrinkle in his nose like he was smelling something bad. It wasn’t true that I missed the glass in front of him but I had a hunch that whatever had made him this gloomy wouldn’t have had quite the same effect had it been cushioned by a bourbon haze.

“It doesn’t look like it went fine,” I said.

“You’re not going to let up until I tell you, are you?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, it’s not what you’d figure, a guy like that. Not some cheating wife. Least,” Dex smiled for the first time since I’d entered, “that’s not what he was here for this time.”

“So spill it already, gumshoe. I’ve got some important typing to do and you’re cuttin’ into it.” I was trying to lighten the mood. It didn’t work.

“Pipe down, Kitty,” Dex said. “I’m gettin’ to it. It’s a hard thing to explain. Complicated. You ever heard of Laird Wyndham?”

I didn’t answer. Just crossed my arms over my chest and looked Dex straight in the face. I was modern, I was in touch. I read the newspapers, went to the pictures. Of
course
I knew who Laird Wyndham was. You’d have to have been living on the moon and surviving on its green cheese for the last half dozen years not to know the name and face of the biggest motion picture star there had ever been and probably ever would be.

Laird Wyndham was tall, dark and handsome, with pale eyes that flashed charm and wit and a chin strong enough to crack nuts. Then there was his voice. One magazine article had described it as molten lava over iced cream. It was rich and deep and powerful and it was the voice that had brought stardom, in the end, edging out other actors who hadn’t the vocal timbre to make the transition to talking pictures. Laird had. Laird did. And a million women, just like me, couldn’t get enough of watching and hearing him.

I’d been to see one of his pictures just the week before. I couldn’t really afford the nickel but, as Dex had said, things had been a bit better lately and my paychecks had been coming to me regular for the last few months.

After work, I hadn’t gone straight home to Bunker Hill. Instead I’d walked over to Broadway to the Million Dollar where I’d felt like a princess in the opulently ornamented theater.
But even the pleasure in my surroundings faded away when the curtain opened on Laird Wyndham in
The Cardboard Heart.
It hadn’t been possible for me to think about anything but what was on that screen.

I’d wept at the end of the film, when Laird had taken Catherine Calderón, his beautiful smoky-eyed co-star, into his arms and said, “None of that means anything, sweetheart. This fire I feel couldn’t burn me, even if all I had was a cardboard heart.” Then he’d clenched her even more tightly and kissed her hard on the mouth. As the music swelled and the camera pulled back, you could see that, as they kissed, the empty place between their chins and their chests together outlined the form of a heart. I’d rummaged in my handbag until I felt my hankie, then I dabbed at my eyes and nose, trying to repair any damage before it really got hold.

As the house lights came up, I’d sat alone and snuffled and sighed and wondered what it would mean to have a man want you the way Laird’s character had wanted Catherine’s. To feel all of what they’d felt.

Dex read my face and my body language. “So you’ve heard of him? OK, the guy that was here, Dean? He wants me to follow Wyndham. And report on what’s what.”

“What’s what with what?” I asked, not understanding.

Dex sighed heavily before answering. “That’s the thing, Kitty. The part where this gets sticky. Dean says the people he works for feel that Wyndham’s morals are in question.” He could see me get ready to interject, and he held up a steadying hand. “They want me to tail him, then report back on what he does.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I needed to think things through. It felt as though there was a part missing. Then I realized: generally, someone wants someone followed, there’s a deep personal interest. A spouse, as I said before. Or a business partner. A father. Or a son. A husband. Maybe a wife. I didn’t see the personal connection here and I said as much to Dex.

“So Dean wants you to keep an eye on Wyndham? Who are they to each other?”

“That’s the thing, Kitty. The thing with this business that doesn’t sit right with me. See, Dean is doing the hiring, but he’s working for someone else. He wouldn’t say who. Just ‘a group of concerned citizens’ was all he’d tell me.”

“That doesn’t mean much, does it?”

Dex shrugged. “Maybe yes. Maybe no. I mean, a ‘group of concerned citizens’ and they’re concerned about what Wyndham does in private, that’s why they want me to get a slant on him. They think a big, fat star like him hasta be above reproach, morally.”

“That’s what he said, Dean? ‘Above reproach morally’?” I could see Dex was quoting.

He nodded. “Yeah. They figure—I dunno—maybe he’s a wrong number, you know? Maybe gonna get in dutch for something and, if that happened, it would turn everyone who’d ever watched his movies into trouble boys and roundheels, I guess, ‘cause he said something about ‘the morals of our youth,’ and how decent people shouldn’t oughta hafta put up with such shenanigans, but I wasn’t listening to him much by then.”

I considered the things I knew about the private life of Laird Wyndham. The papers and the radio went on about him constantly, so I knew a fair amount.

For starters, he had a contract with his studio that landed him exactly one million dollars per year. And I knew that, if I had five hundred dollars, I’d be able to buy a new car. Five thousand would put me into a fairly swank house; I’d own it, free and clear. For twenty-eight bucks I could buy the coat I’d seen at Bullock’s last week. The prettiest coat that had ever been. But I didn’t have twenty-eight bucks for a coat, not just now. I didn’t even always have a nickel for a cup of coffee. And there were plenty of men out there couldn’t get enough scratch together to buy their babies bread and milk. So a million dollars.
Every year? I couldn’t afford all the zeros just to write it out. It made my head swim just thinking about it.

So, OK: with a million dollars a year, Wyndham made headlines just for doing some shopping. He’d built an unimaginably expensive house in the Hollywood Hills and he owned a ranch in Ventura County, near Oxnard. He was married, too. When he was a very young actor, he’d married his first co-star, some twenty years his senior. As far as I knew, the wife had retired from acting not long after—had closed the door, as the saying went—and now spent her time out on that ranch. No one ever saw very much of her, but they saw Wyndham all right. His name had been linked to every starlet imaginable and I couldn’t begin to count the photos I’d seen of him in the newspaper, at this nightclub or that one, some dazzling young girl on his arm.

I didn’t know anything about aviation, but I knew he had some sort of plane that had cost a lot of money, something he flew himself and kept in a hangar at an airport out in Glendale. He had a whole stable full of cars, each more expensive than the last. He owned a yacht. Of course. He kept the boat moored out at Long Beach and quite often there were stories in the press about him roughing it at sea on
Woebegone Dream,
named for a picture he’d done a couple of years before. I’d seen a photo in the paper once: Wyndham, beaming, standing on the dock in front of what looked like a small ocean liner. He stood there wearing a captain’s hat turned to a jaunty angle. Behind him ranged the white-clad crew: a half-score of handsome young men in crisp uniforms. The story said the crew had piloted the boat halfway around the world from Italy, where the craft had been built to the specifications of its new owner.

“So did you take the job?” I asked, half knowing the answer. It was written all over Dex’s concerned mug.

He nodded. “I did, Kitty. So help me, I did.”

I nodded approvingly. As I’m always saying, a girl’s gotta eat. “I forgot to tell you: Mustard called when you were in with
Mr. Dean. He told me to tell you to charge him big. ‘He wanted the best,’ Mustard said. ‘He’ll be expecting to pay for it.’”

Dex grinned. The smile went all the way to his eyes. “Oh, I soaked him good, Kitty. The pile he gave me, I can barely fold it in half.”

“So what’s the problem?” Personally, I couldn’t see it. A swell with a fat wallet showed up, offered Dex what sounded like a fairly cushy case and he took the job. What was there to be glum about?

“Ah, Kitty: I figured you’d see it on your own. It’s the client.”

“Dean?”