Murray chuckled for both of them and fell into a reprise of the call he’d made yesterday to Coopersmith, dropping his voice an octave and assuming an accent from a country existing solely in his imagination:
“Stars on Stage, my company, is ready to spare no expense to bring a show about our beloved Diana Demarest to the stage, sir. Fifty thousand is all we ever offer to secure the rights, not a penny more, or we have problems with favored nations. But at least you know you will be paid, unlike promises you get from our piddling competition, Mr. Mickey Barnum, who is so broke not even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could ever put him together...”
Turning serious again, Murray said, “You think her heirs, Diana Demarest’s, will ever see any of that hundred thou?”
“Pop, that’s between Coopersmith and his ethics. Lets hope we’re on a flight path to landing Diana Demarest alive. The headlines. The box office. The whole shooting match.” Mickey shook his head in disbelief.
“You get any sense of it from him?”
“Every reference was in the past tense, Pop. The starting point will have to be with her sister after I get back to L.A. He’s arranging for me to meet with her.”
“She has a sister living here?”
“An address over in the Atwater district.”
“Atwater, huh?” Murray Barnum grunted. “If I’d’ve known a neighborhood like that, I’d have urged you to cap the game at twenty-five. Maybe even the original five.”
Mickey said, “If it turns out Diana’s been alive all these years, we’ll make back our hundred on the sale of her story to one of the tabloids. The how and why of her disappearance. Not quite the same as discovering a living, breathing Elvis, but—”
“It turns out Diana Demarest is still dead?” Murray said, overriding his son, his voice begging the question.
“Then, Pop, we’ll still have the question of how she came to sign an autograph from the grave. Unless you want to change your mind and decide what you saw was a forgery.”
“Whatever else it was, Mickey, it was no forgery.”
If anyone knew, Murray Barnum knew.
That, Mickey Barnum knew.
Murray owned the M. Berman Gallery of Greatness, a modest shop on Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, within walking distance of the Friars Club, where he specialized in the purchase and sale of celebrity autographs. His business grew out of the hobby he’d pursued since boyhood and over the years he’d come to be acknowledged as the matchless dean of authentication.
He was a grand master of the Collectors Society of America, having won the CSA’s highest honor, the “Siggy” (for Signature) more times than any other ranking authority, and of course, he was the first member to be voted into the CSA Hall of Fame.
He’d recognized the Diana Demarest signature for what it was — authentic — the instant he laid eyes on it, about half an hour after he’d bought the old autograph book from a guy who’d waltzed in off the street with a story Murray had heard almost word-for-word thousands of times over the years: He was the relative delegated by the family to unload the mementos of a life recently abandoned by a dearly beloved. In this case, a favorite aunt. The book was the kind school kids have used forever come graduation time, only the couple dozen pages inside the maroon pages here were covered front and back with the signatures of movie and TV stars from the late seventies and early eighties, most of them recognizable, but only a few major names sprinkled among them — a Peck here, a Nicholson there; Stanwyck; the Fondas, father and daughter; Jack Lemmon; Bob Hope.
“Worth a few bucks?” the man asked, in a voice that said he had been through the process a lot with other of Favorite Aunt’s keepsakes and was anxious for it to be over. Murray figured him for mid-to-late forties, a handsome, silver-haired gent with a perfect nose; expensive tailored suit cut to his six, six-one; sleepy eyes half-hidden behind lemon yellow shades. Bouncing nervously from one tasseled loafer to the other while waiting out an answer.
When it came to autographs, Murray never played games with the truth.
“Hard to say,” he said.
“For you? I heard you were the best. Why I came here. What makes it hard to say, or is that a trade secret?” A belligerent edge to the question.
Murray never minded the chance to show off, so he answered with a few of the basics.
“For one, a signature page is always worth more when it’s signed on one side only,” he said. “Look here where I’m showing you, you’ll see why. Where some of the ink bleeds through?”
“Yeah, yeah. Yes. How much then?”
“For another, from my fast check, all of these were what we in the business call ‘easy gets,’ stars who’d sign whenever they got asked. That sends the value way down, given there’s nothing rare about their signatures.”
“Down puts it where? Do you have a number?”
“I did spot an exception to the rule, sir. The Duke. John Wayne. You get into his rarified air, a genuine icon that one, and serious collectors never seem to care how many Duke Waynes are out there or their condition.”
“Okay, I was steered right. You know your stuff. How much for the book?”
“Maybe your aunt also got a Brando in there, or maybe a Cary Grant? Both of them hard gets, so that would push the total value up quite handsomely. You have a little time, I’m glad to make a careful study and offer an appraisal you could take to the bank on my signature.”
The gent pushed back his right jacket sleeve and checked the time, the watch a bold tribute to eighteen karat gold. His head jiggled left and right.
Murray said, “Let me keep your autograph book overnight and come back tomorrow. I’ll make out a receipt for it.”
“I’ll be gone tomorrow. What are you hoping? That I pay you to take the book off my hands? Look, give me a ballpark figure I can live with or the name of your nearest competitor.”
Murray looked at him like he was crazy. “Competitor? Tell me you’re kidding. You must be kidding. You heard about me, then you know I’m head and shoulders—” He picked up the book, toyed with it for about thirty seconds. “Eight hundred tops, based on what I saw so far, and mostly because of the Duke.”
“Fine. Done.”
“I might have gone higher, except the Duke’s in pencil and that weighs down the value to a serious collector. Ink’s always what most serious collectors prefer, except where it’s obviously not possible, because—”
“I said done. Deal. The eight hundred is fine.”
Murray closed the autograph book and gave the cover a few love pats. “Swell, then. I’ll make you out a check.”
“I’d rather have cash.”
Murray turned a palm to the chipped and peeling ceiling paint and made a Why Not? face.
Between the cash drawer and his billfold, all he could come up with was six hundred fifty. He said as much to the gent and offered to give him a voucher for the difference, suggesting, “You leave me your address, I’ll go to the bank first thing later and put it in the mail to you.”
“Six hundred fifty will do fine, Mr. Berman.”
He snatched the bills away from Murray and hurried out like he was one step ahead of the hounds from hell. Too late, Murray realized he had no bill of sale, no way to prove he’d purchased the lot, were the gent ever to come back demanding return of the autograph book, claiming it was stolen property; not a scenario unknown to the trade. Not the first time Murray had erred on the side of enthusiasm.
He brewed himself a fresh cup of tea and settled down into a careful page-by-page study of the book, armed with the trusty magnifying glass he used to help spot any flaws invisible to the naked eye that might impact the value of a signature for better or for worse.