Читать книгу Some Die Young - James Duff - Страница 5

HE TOTTERED ON HIS SHORT LEGS, FALLING into the empty chair. His right hand grasped the half-empty bottle with a desperate fierceness. His eyes stared at me, unseeing, and his left hand made a half-hearted attempt at straightening the sparse grayness of his hair. Dribble moved out of the corner of his mouth and he laughed, a coarse, unhappy sound.

“Daddy!”

The voice came from the darkened hallway beyond the open door. I turned, trying to see her, catching only the long white nakedness of her legs.

“Daddy,” she said, “I told you not to come into this room. Please, Daddy.”

The old man somehow pushed himself erect. His chest pouted out for one brief moment, then returned to its original position above his protruding stomach. He looked at the bottle, at me, at the sound of the voice; he mumbled something unintelligible and moved across the room, stumbling, making the doorway, disappearing.

She came through the doorway then, and I got to my feet. She was a little older than she appeared to be on the screen, but, still and all, she was positively the most shockingly beautiful woman I had even seen. The sun-suit was much too brief for my comfort.

“You must excuse Daddy, Mr. Phelan,” she said. She paused. “You are Mr. Phelan?”

I nodded. The Filipino servant had let me in.

She sat down opposite me, crossing her legs. She seemed to fit in perfectly with the room, which was a strange mixture of period and modern. I noticed the beginnings of wrinkles of fat high on her thighs and felt embarrassed; I had found a flaw in what had been termed the perfect woman.

“I hope you don’t think too ill of me, Mr. Phelan. Daddy is a hopeless lush. I tried, for some years, to have him cured. Several institutions, a lot of money.” Her words came out in a sing-song manner, drifting over me. Her blue-gray eyes swept my face and she smiled. It was that famous smile. “Now,” she went on, “I just let him drink. It’s all he wants to do. It will kill him, eventually, but he’ll die happy. I can’t give him any more than that.”

I said, “I’m not a nurse-maid for drunks, Miss Harding.”

Someone laughed outside the house and I heard the distant splash of a body hitting water. Claire Harding gave me the benefit of a second smile.

“I hope that doesn’t disturb you,” she said. “Just some week-end guests. I don’t swim myself, but my guests always enjoy the pool.”

“That’s understandable.”

“You don’t look like a private detective, Mr. Phelan. Horn-rimmed glasses, a moustache. Definitely not the Bogart type.”

“I’m bigger than he is,” I said.

She rose to her feet. “A drink?”

I thought of the old man. “No,” I said.

“I didn’t call you about Daddy, Mr. Phelan. I gave up on him long ago. It’s—” she paused, for the first time losing some of her regal air—“it’s about another matter entirely. Quite an important matter.”

“Importance is a matter of relativity, Miss Harding. What’s important to you might not be so important to me.”

She gave me a studied stare. “Come with me,” she said. “I have something to show you. Or rather, someone.”

I followed her across the room, and it was quite a hike. She paused at the wide, heavily curtained windows, standing back just far enough not to be visible from the outside. Her hand touched my arm, holding me.

I looked out through a small pencil of sunshine. There was a group of some ten or twelve people about a heart-shaped swimming pool. Two men with a lot of muscles and a lot of hair were in the water, bouncing a rubber ball back and forth between them. A stunningly beautiful brunette, very young and very appealing in a too-brief swim suit, stood on the diving board, her pose purposeful. She did a slow pivot, turning to walk off the diving board; she paused beautifully by the pool-side, then walked slowly across to sit beside a short, fat, bald-headed man.

“If that’s what is troubling you,” I said, “I can see your problem.”

Claire Harding turned to look at me. Anger crossed her face and left it. She didn’t like to be compared with other women, especially young ones.

“That, as you so aptly put it, Mr. Phelan, is not my problem. She’s just a young slut. She has no talent.”

“I could argue that point with you.”

“Mr. Phelan—” her voice was caustic—“I don’t want to play word games with you. If you want this job, you’ll please pay attention.”

I felt properly reprimanded.

She turned back. “See that man?” she pointed with her hand and I sighted over the bright of her nails a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man sitting beside the pool, his feet dangling in the water. “That’s my problem.”

The man’s face was vaguely familiar to me. I tried to place it in my memory, but failed.

“That is my husband, Mr. Phelan. Harrison Woodward. You’ve undoubtedly heard of him?”

I placed him then. “Of course,” I said,

“I thought so.”

We made the long hike back across the room, resuming our sitting positions. She lit a cigarette, not offering me one. I would have enjoyed turning it down.

“Harrison is in some kind of trouble, Mr. Phelan,” she said. “I’m not sure just what kind it is. But he hasn’t been himself lately.”

“You want me to find out what that trouble is?”

“That’s right.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“You come very highly recommended, Mr. Phelan. I’ve been told you’re very discreet. I hope you can remain so.”

“For fifty dollars a day,” I said, “I can be the soul of discretion.”

“I see.” She laughed, suddenly, and with a good deal of force. “I once played in a private-eye movie, Mr. Phelan. It was years ago. I didn’t think, then, that I would evei be consulting one in real life.”

“Private eyes, as you call them, Miss Harding, are necessary evils.”

“I guess they are.”

I thought back to the last movie I had seen her in. She had been an Egyptian princess, or something like that; she was getting a little old for that type of role.

“Could it be woman trouble, Miss Harding?”

Again anger touched her face; this time it was replaced by an unnatural smile.

“Really, Mr. Phelan, let’s not be naive. This is Hollywood, the land of the divorce. Marriages here are not quite as important as they are in—let’s say, Sioux City. Harrison is my fourth husband. If he chooses to play around a little on the side, no harm is done.”

“And you?”

The question seemed to startle her. She tapped a long finger against a naked knee. She moved the finger away; but I kept my eyes on the knee.

“My morals are my own, Mr. Phelan.”

“I guess I am a little naive.”

“I guess you are, at that.”

“Then I’ll rule out women, Miss Harding. What else remains?”

“That’s why I’m going to pay you fifty dollars a day, Mr. Phelan.”

I rose to my feet. She remained seated.

“I guess we understand each other,” I said.

“I hope we do.”

I, apparently, had been dismissed.

The old man was slumped in a chair by the outside door. His snores had an alcoholic tinge about them; the bottle lay at his feet, empty now.

The Filipino servant who had ushered me in now slipped silently out of a side door. He smiled knowingly at me, handing me a check. I thanked him, looking at the check. It was for $500.

I guessed she could afford it.

I parked in a lot near the Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine. As I walked out of the lot, I noticed the theater marquee across the street—Claire Harding was starring in Forever You. Forever was a varying degree of time, depending on the woman—for Claire Harding, apparently, it was no time at all.

I had stopped at a gas station on the way in and called Jean MacNeece and she was waiting for me when I got out of the elevator on the third floor of the Vine Building. Jean was an old friend. Her face was too round and too freckled to be called pretty; she had the habit of looking at you with her head slightly cocked back, ready to throw her words at you. She worked for one of the trade papers. She did an occasional column on the happiness of various Hollywood marriages, but mostly she was an errand girl for the more widely known columnists.

“The poor woman’s Sam Spade,” she said by way of greeting.

I grunted at her. She was one of my favorite people, but why spoil your friends? I followed her through the clacking noise of the typewriters into the small cubicle that she called an office.

She sat down, propping her legs up on the corner of the desk before me, showing plenty of thigh. Her left stocking had a run in it an inch long.

“All right, Johnny boy,” she said, “What’ll it be? A little drink? A little sex?”

“Not today, honey. Business.”

“Don’t tell me you’re working again?”

“That’s right.”

“You disappoint me, Johnny boy.”

“I disappoint a lot of people. Mostly women.”

The telephone rang. She looked at it disgustedly. It continued to ring. Finally she picked it up. “She’s not here,” she said. She replaced the telephone, looking at me, laughing a little.

“What do you know about Claire Harding?” I asked.

She straightened the skirt over her knees. Her eyes were serious.

“For the suckers, or you?”

“For me.”

“She’s a bitch.”

I waited for her to continue.

“I mean that—you be careful. She’s a first-class bitch. She’s cut more throats in this business than I’d care to think about.”

“She gave me a ten-day advance.”

“That isn’t all she’ll give you if you stick around her. Believe me.”

“How about her husband?”

“Harrison Woodward? Strictly a nothing, really a nothing. He made a couple of A’s for MGM—or was it Warner’s—and then folded completely. He does an occasional TV thing now, just for face. As the saying goes, he ain’t got what it takes.”

“He’s in some kind of trouble. She wants me to bail him out.”

“That figures.”

“What kind of trouble, Jean? Any ideas?”

“With that guy it could be anything from booze to politics and picking the wrong horse or dame and back again. He’s run the whole course.”

The telephone rang again. She picked it up, said, “Yeah,” and listened for a moment, jotting down something on a piece of scratch paper. She replaced the telephone.

“This is one helluva business, Johnny boy,” she said. “Well, I’ve got to work. If I hear anything through the grapevine, I’ll let you know.”

I recognized the brush-off. I stood up, went to the door.

“Johnny boy,” Jean said, “she’s a bitch, believe me. Don’t fall into the snake pit.”

“I’m not her type.”

“You’re a man.”

With that I left Jean MacNeece.

It was one of those hot and humid days. Smog banked against the hills above Hollywood Boulevard; tourists trotted along the street, their cameras vainly searching for a well-known face; newsboys half-heartedly yelled the latest news from Formosa; a pretty girl in a tight pink sweater waited through two green lights on the corner of Vine, making the day even warmer.

I went across the street to Mike Lyman’s for a beer and a sandwich, then walked back to the parking lot.

I saw him sitting in my car and, as always, a bad taste came into my mouth. Jocko Quinn was not one of my favorite people. His fat little body was wedged into the front seat of my coupe. His mouth stretched into a wide grin, tightening the little red veins on his cheeks.

“My tried and true friend, John J. Phelan,” he said.

“What in hell do you want, Jocko?”

“Is that any way to talk to me?”

I didn’t answer him. I got in behind the wheel and filled a pipe. It was too hot to smoke it, so I put it aside. Jocko made a noise in the back of his throat. I held back my temper. Hitting him would be like sticking your fist into a bowl of raw liver.

“Let’s take a ride,” he said. “I got some talking to do.”

“Not with me, you haven’t.”

The smile disappeared from his face and he puffed quickly on the stub of his cigar. The smoke and the smell combined to raise my temper and bring back memories. Jocko and I had teamed up on a few cases; it was something I wanted to forget.

“I’m busy, Jocko. Beat it!”

“With Claire Harding?”

I looked at him for a long moment, wondering how he knew my client’s name.

“Don’t try to kid me, Johnny,” he said. “I got the straight dope and I got to talk to you. It’s worth the effort.”

Effort, with Jocko Quinn, was a valuable thing. He didn’t like to move his fat little body unless it was absolutely necessary.

“For pete’s sake,” I said. “Throw away that cigar! It stinks to high heaven.”

He assumed a hurt look, closed his eyes and opened them again. He took a last drag on the cigar, looked at it fondly, then dropped it out the window.

“What are you after, Jocko? What’s your angle?”

His laugh was short. “You’re a distrustful bastard, Johnny. I’ve got no angle, no angle at all. I just want to cut you in on something. Something big.”

“Come on, come on, my time’s valuable.”

“Sure it is. I know that.” The little fat hands moved across the big fat stomach. He took a deep sigh. “Let’s take a ride.”

“We can talk here.”

He seemed to think that over. His head moved forward, trying to look out. We couldn’t see the street from where we were parked. He was sweating and I was beginning to smell him; little rivers ran down his forehead, lining his face and features.

“Johnny,” he said, “this is big. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever tried. I wouldn’t cut you in, but—” his eyes searched my face for some sign of understanding—“but it’s too big for me alone. You’re the kind of guy that can handle it.” He paused. The little fat hands moved again. “I tailed you from the Harding place.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“Never mind that.”

“I want to know.”

“It’s not important, Johnny.”

I let that ride. The sun ricocheted off the windshield, stinging my eyes. I lit a cigarette. It was almost as bad as the pipe. Damn the heat.

“Believe me, Johnny, when I say this is big.”

“Okay, so I believe you.”

I didn’t though. You couldn’t believe Jocko Quinn, not and expect to know the truth.

He said, “A cool quarter-million bucks. Does that interest you, Johnny? Does it?”

I didn’t answer. I watched a blonde climb into a Mercury convertible. She had nice legs.

“I can’t handle it alone,” he said. “Dammit, I wish I could! But I can’t.”

“You said that before.”

“Yeah, so I did. Listen, Johnny, listen to me real close. I’m not bulling you. There’s two hundred and fifty grand bouncing around here. Two hundred and fifty.” The way he said the amount sent chills down my back. “That’s a lot of money. It’s all tax-free, if we play our cards right.”

“We?”

“Sure, Johnny. You and me. I’m going to cut you in. Just like old times, Johnny. We’ll be working together again. Just like old times.”

He was too nervous, The hands continued to move and he continued to sweat and the smell grew stronger.

“What’s the pitch?”

“There’s no pitch. This dough’s just lying around, just waiting to be picked up.”

It was a lot of money for a punk like Jocko Quinn to be worrying about; it was a lot of money for me, too. His eyes danced around in his face and I could see him forming the amount with his lips. I felt a little sick.

“You meet me tonight,” he said. “Ten o’clock sharp. At Fairfax and Wiltshire.”

“Why there? Why not my place?”

“I think I’m being tailed. I’m not sure.”

“What’s this got to do with Claire Harding?”

The little red veins tightened on his cheeks again.

“Not with her, Johnny, not with her.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“I told you it wasn’t important. Goddamn it, Johnny, do you want in on this or not?”

“All right,” I said.

“You’ll meet me tonight? Promise?”

I nodded.

I watched his little fat form waddle out of the parking lot. Jocko Quinn was getting in the big time. I still felt a little sick.