Читать книгу Kill the Mother! - Michael Mallory - Страница 5

ONE

It was a little after ten by the time I dragged myself to the office. After unlocking the door, I groped for the light switch, flipped it, and watched as the fluorescent tubes built into the ceiling flickered to life. That was a good sign; it meant the electricity hadn’t been shut off yet.

Tossing the small stack of mail I’d pulled out of the box downstairs onto my desk, I went to the tiny sink in the office’s kitchen cubicle and turned on the faucet. A jet of water spurted out, hit the bottom of the sink and splashed back up onto my shirt. In another time and another place, I might have been annoyed, but today I was pleased. It meant the water was still on, too.

So far, so good, kid, a familiar voice said. There was nobody else in my office; the voice was strictly inside my head. It belonged to Humphrey Bogart. Bogie was among the Golden Age Hollywood stars who talk to me regularly. Some people, I’m sure, would find this a sign of mental instability, if not outright insanity, but I find it comforting. I know I’m never alone. Besides, even if some people were right and I really was as crazy as a bedbug, it’s okay. This is Los Angeles, and if you can’t walk around insane in Los Angeles, where can you?

I took advantage of the water’s presence to make a pot of coffee, after which I shuffled to my desk and took a closer look at the mail. There was yet another credit card solicitation; a begging letter from a charity to which I once gave twenty-five bucks, an amount they have far exceeded in postage by sending me junk mail; a bank statement, highlighting last month’s activity of too much money going out and too little coming in; and an official looking letter from Hot Ticket Home Entertainment Rentals.

Oh, sheez. Was this thing ever going to go away? It started when I innocently rented a DVD of The Big Clock, the great 1948 film noir thriller with Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, from my local Hot Ticket and it was proving to be the worst decision I’ve made recently. I’ve never had any kind of problem with Edendale Video and Poster, an independent store that was presently my entertainment supplier of choice, but Hot Ticket, a national chain that seemed to be perpetually in bankruptcy, was a nightmare. Reluctantly, I opened the envelope and read the letter.

Dear Mr. Beauchamp:

Our records show that our last several inquiries to you, regarding your failure to return the DVD of The Big Clock in a timely fashion, have gone unanswered.

That was absolutely untrue. I did answer their last letter and told them that I had returned the disk more than a month ago. Okay, so it was a year-and-a-half overdue because I had lost it, but once it turned up at the back of the refrigerator (oh, like no one else has ever opened the fridge with something in their hand, and then absentmindedly set it down when a milk carton starts to fall and forgotten about it), I got it right back to Hot Ticket. I had neither the intention nor the wherewithal to pay the two-hundred-dollar fine they were attempting to levy.

Because you have made no good faith effort to resolve this situation we have no choice but to turn the matter over to a collection agency, a representative from which will be contacting you at their earliest convenience.

Fine. Let them contact me. I used to be an attorney myself, so I had a pretty good idea of how far they could actually go in making a claim. Maybe if I was able to clear the matter up to everyone’s satisfaction, the collection agency would even throw some work my way. I put the letter in my less-than-crowded in box. The rest of the day’s mail, except for the bank statement, got dumped in the trash.

The morning progressed without a single phone call, and since I did not have a pending case—yes, I am a private investigator, at least according to a piece of paper that fell off of my wall some time back—I occupied myself watching old film clips on YouTube. After discovering that someone had actually obtained and posted a clip of Linda Crystal from Cry Tough in her legendary state of undress—nothing by today’s standards, but shocking for a movie made in 1959 (in fact, I was so shocked I had to watch it four times over)—I was about declare defeat for the morning and break for lunch. That was when she walked in.

She was a fox, all right, and she sashayed right through the door of my office. She was wrapped in fur and stunning, and my mouth dropped open at the sight of her. I wasn’t used to having foxes walk in on me like this.

“Um…hi,” I said, stupidly. I say stupidly because I knew there was no way I was going to get a response from her, because she was a fox. A real fox. Four paws, reddish fur, big ears, pointy snout, and two squinty black eyes, which stared straight at me. And no, I don’t know for a fact that it was a female, but it was small and lithe, it looked like a vixen, and I did not particularly feel like examining its rear quarters to find proof for my theory.

The fox was neither frightened nor frightening. She simply regarded me with dark-eyed curiosity, as though I was the out-of-place element in a slightly rundown office building on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California, the heart of the San Fernando Valley. Then again, said a voice inside my head, a deep, raspy voice that I recognized as belonging to John Huston, this is Los Angeles where, in the right time and the right place, you’re liable to see anything.

Ignoring John, I turned to the fox and asked, “You hungry?” I try to be a good host, even to forest animals. Never taking my eyes off the fox, just in case it suddenly turned feral, I got up and slowly went over to the kitchen corner, where I opened the tiny fridge and pulled out a carton of milk that I use for my coffee. Taking a plastic bowl down from a shelf, I poured a little into it and cautiously set it down on the floor, not far from the fox, who looked at it, then back at me, and then—I swear—appeared to shrug its shoulders and walk over to it. It stuck its tongue out and tried a bit, and apparently liked what it tasted, because it started lapping up the rest.

What a remarkable creature, Clifton Webb’s voice said in my head, and I had to agree. You remember Clifton Webb, don’t you? Laura? Sitting Pretty?

The fox had finished the bowl and I was contemplating giving it seconds when I heard footsteps coming down the hall. A man appeared in the doorway; he was middle-aged but dressed like Jungle Jim, as though he was on his way to a costume party…or wanted people to know he handled animals. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “this is kind of unusual, but by any chance have you seen—”

Then he spotted the fox. “There you are!” he cried, rushing to it, and picking it up like a small dog. Glancing at the empty bowl, he then looked up and glared up at me. “Did you give her something to eat?” he demanded.

“Just a little milk.”

“Oh, Christ! Don’t you know that milk gives foxes diarrhea?”

I had never really thought about it one way or the other. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“She’s on a restricted diet!”

Like every other vixen in town, a cynical voice said in my head. Thank you, Richard Burton.

“It was only two percent milk,” I told the guy.

“Doesn’t matter, milk is milk!”

“Okay, all right, I’m sorry,” I said. “But if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the thing doing here in the first place?”

“We’re doing a photo shoot downstairs,” Jungle Jim replied. “She’s in the shot. Dammit, if you made her sick, I’ll file suit!”

I doubted he had any legal ground on which to base a suit. Then again, this was L.A. “If you think she’s going to become diarrheic,” I said, “I’d appreciate your taking her out of my office first.”

“Up yours,” the man said. “I should sue you anyway.” On the way out he glanced at the sign on my door. “Beauchamp Investigations, huh?” he said, mispronouncing my name the way virtually everyone does: it’s not bow-CHAMP, it’s BEACH-um. I had actually thought about changing it altogether at one point, right after I cracked open a brand-new, just delivered edition of the Yellow Pages only to find that the expensive quarter page ad I had taken out read Be a Chump Investigations. “Some investigator you are, giving milk to a fox,” Jungle Jim sneered, then disappeared into the hallway, vixen in hand.

I must have been sick that day in criminal justice class that the teacher covered the gastrointestinal limitations of wild canines.

I sat back down and opened the middle drawer of my desk, where I keep my journal. It started as a record of cases, but cases have been in such short supply recently that I’ve been filling it instead with any observations, musings, and notes to self I might have. Opening it to the first clean page I wrote: Never give milk to a fox. It gives them the runs and really torques their owners.

You never knew when this information might come in useful.

Finding less in the fridge worth eating than had the fox, I decided to go out and drop some precious, declining dollars on the lunch special at Burger Heaven: a double-decker burger, fries and a drink for $4.99. I locked up the office, but only made it as far as the front door of the building before stopping. There, in the lobby, was a table filled with food: deli meats and cheese, bread, fresh fruit, chips, urns of coffee and an iced cooler filled with soft drinks. I knew enough about present-day Hollywood to know that it was a craft services table, an ever-present sight on a film set, offering a cornucopia of food for the crew. Apparently it applied to photo shoots as well.

As I was pondering whether a person taking pictures of a fox somewhere down the hall would miss a few slices of ham and cheese, a woman appeared in the hallway. She was, I guessed, late thirties to early forties, dark haired, and on the short side but dressed in a tight sweater-and-slacks outfit that did her quite a few favors. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded in a low, hard voice.

“Um, I’m Dave Beauchamp, I have an office upstairs,” I said. “I just came down to see what was going on.”

“And steal my food?”

Apparently I was wearing a hungry expression. “Actually, I.…”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

She studied me with an intensified expression, but one that was more of interest than annoyance. “A private investigator,” she repeated. “You mean like a detective?”

“Quite like, yes.”

“Are you a real detective?”

Using both hands, I felt around my body to see if I was real, instead of fabricated from mist, and then nodded.

She didn’t laugh. “Licensed?”

“Of course.”

“You look too young.”

I sighed. I’m the same age John Garfield was when he did The Postman Always Rings Twice, but I have frequently heard from people that (unlike Garfield at any age) I look like a college freshman. “I promise you I’m old enough to drive,” I said.

She smiled. “Upstairs, you say?”

“Office 218.”

She studied me some more, then said: “I may have something for you. Will you be in later?”

“Yes, I was just going out for lunch.”

Now the woman smiled. “Well, go ahead and help yourself here.” She waived expansively across the food table.

“That’s very generous of you,” I said. “This thing you may have for me, does it involve a fox, by any chance?”

“No, just a group of bitches,” she replied, leaning down to get a cold Diet Pepsi from the cooler, and intentionally or otherwise giving me an eyeful as the top of her sweater slung low. “I’ll come up to your office later.” She turned around and walked back down the hall.

I looked at the food on the table. Page one of the Detective’s Manual: Never turn down a free lunch. Grabbing a paper plate, I loaded up enough cold cuts and cheese for a real Dagwood special and grabbed a handful of baby carrots and an apple, and a couple cans of soda, then went back upstairs to wait. To occupy my time after polishing off the monster sandwich, I dug through my bottom drawer until I found my framed investigator’s license, the one that had taken a swan dive off the wall some time back. I had been meaning to hang it back up, but never quite got around to it. Now seemed like a good time. I rummaged through my top drawer until I came across the small metal hook that had been rattling around there for months, and pushed its nail into the hole in the wall. Then I hung the frame on it.

And waited.

It was sometime after four when the woman knocked on my open door. “Hi, I’m back,” she announced.

“Hello,” I said, rising from my chair. “Please take a seat, Ms.…”

“Frost. Nora Frost.”

Her face was now more relaxed than it had been during our first encounter. Nora Frost was really quite attractive. She had the kind of looks that almost made it to movie star or model level. But her dark, flashing eyes were just a little too large, her nose was just a little bit too big and her mouth just a little bit too wide for film, though her slightly exaggerated features would probably have served her well on the stage. She did not show any tell-tale signs of having work done to her face, which wore an expression of smooth determination, as though she was daring wrinkles to show up, and the wrinkles knew better. “So, Ms. Frost—”

“You can call me Nora.”

“All right, Nora, what is it you would like to see me about?”

“Like I said, I’ve got a problem with a group of bitches.”

“Do you mean you have a problem with other women, or in the literal sense, as in female dogs?”

“I don’t see much of a distinction,” she said. “And the problem isn’t so much with me as with my sons.”

“You’re sons are involved with these women?”

“They’re not involved—” she smacked the word like a tennis serve “—with any women. They’re only twelve.”

“I see. Well, perhaps you should tell me what the problem is.”

She leaned forward. “Have you ever heard of the Brothers Alpha?”

“No.”

“You will. Taylor and Burton are going to be the biggest draws in the industry. Bigger than the Olsons, bigger than the Jonas Brothers.”

Taylor and Burton. Why not? “And the Brothers Alpha are your sons?”

“My sons and my clients.”

“I see. And since they are both twelve, I assume they’re twins.”

“We don’t use the T word,” she said icily. “It’s demeaning to them as individuals. They are two different, unique, brilliantly gifted personalities who happened to have been born at the same time.”

“I take it that ‘Alpha’ is simply their stage name.”

“It signifies that they are on top in all respects.”

At least they’d always come first on a list. “Are they, by any chance, the subjects of the photo shoot that’s going on in the building?”

“Yes, it’s a public service announcement poster.”

“For?”

“Not for, against. The subject is blood sport and the poster is for use in Great Britain. The boys are very concerned about animal rights. They’re socially aware, so they’re doing a campaign against the barbarous sport of fox hunting.”

“I thought fox hunting had already been banned in Great Britain.”

She glared at me for a second, and then snapped: “What if it comes back, smart aleck?”

I had nothin.’ “Are your sons well known over there?” I asked, trying to rescue the conversation.

“They soon will be.”

“You know, the fox you’re using stopped by here earlier to say hello.”

“Harvey, the fox wrangler, told me. He said you gave the thing milk.”

“A mistake I will never make again, I promise.”

“I really don’t care,” Nora Frost shrugged. “The fox is Harvey’s problem, not mine. He’s the animal trainer, I hired him to provide and control the thing for the shoot, which clearly he wasn’t capable of doing, since it wandered away and came up here. But I’m not here to talk about the goddamned fox.” She leaned forward even further and started drilling holes into me with her eyes. “What you need to know is that my babies are going to big. They’ve got it. You know what it is? That mysterious appeal that you’re either born with or you’re not? Well, they were born with it, and that makes the others jealous.”

Some got it and some don’t, Mae West said in my head, adding: As for me, I’d rather get it.

“And these others are the bitches you were talking about?” I asked.

“The mothers of all those other little brats.” She sprung up from her chair in agitation and began pacing back and forth in my office. “I’m not going to lie to you and claim this is not a tough business, Mr. Beauchamp. There are a lot of sows out there who think their little darlings are God’s gift to the world, and they are so wrong. So fucking wrong, and so vicious.” She leaned across my desk, her cold dark eyes locking on me, and her face hardened into a look of determination that would have made a mama tiger abandon the cubs and run for the treetops. I struggled not to show any signs of intimidation, even as I shrank back in my chair. “One of those miserable bitches threatened my babies,” she said.

“Um, uh, how did she threaten them?”

Nora Frost sat back down. “She said she would kill them. Kill them, cut them up, and mail the pieces back to me.”

The sound of a whistle echoed in my head, and I knew instinctively it came from Bogart. If this revelation shocked him, how was I going to handle it?