“This lady was in her fifties,” I said.
“Then I don’t know. Helen sold Ju Ju Beans and Cokes to a lot of nice old ladies. Some of them were chatty. Best I can give you.”
“All right,” Lou said, “don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re just concerned friends, you understand?”
“I hope you find her and I hope she’s okay,” the kid said, “but that’s the end of what I know. She wasn’t here long, and then she wasn’t here at all. Like I told you, she didn’t even pick up her last check — or her street clothes, for that matter.”
“Come again?”
“She’d change into her uniform when she got here.” He tugged at his dorky red suspenders. “I don’t choose to wear this crap, you know.”
“And when she left the last time, she was still in uniform?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
Lou said, “Can we get a look at those clothes?”
The kid grimaced.
“Come on, man.”
I said, “It might help.”
“Sure, but I can’t just let you poke around the chick’s clothes, can I? That’s weird.”
Lou shrugged her shoulders. I reluctantly took a twenty from my wallet and laid it on the glass counter. The kid snorted.
“Are you kidding?” he said.
“Kids these days,” Lou snarked.
I dropped another Hamilton. The kid swiped them both and said, “Right this way, sir.”
So hard to find good help.
Helen came to work on what would be her last day in a small lime green T-shirt and ripped blue jeans. I presumed she kept on her underwear and socks, because that was all she’d left in a locker that didn’t lock outside the manager’s office behind the concession stand. With the kid looming nearby, I turned the shirt inside out while Lou went through the pants. A second later, she said, “Wallet.”
I dropped the shirt. Lou opened the wallet.
Inside was a Massachusetts driver’s license, a debit card, thirteen bucks, Ray Warren’s business card, and a folded-up piece of scrap paper. Lou handed me the wallet and unfolded the scrap. On it was written the name Tim in a childish scrawl, beneath which was a phone number. Lou didn’t miss a beat; she whipped out her mobile in a hurry and dialed the number.
“I’m looking for Tim?” she asked in a falsely meek voice when someone picked up. “No one there called Tim? All right, sorry to bother you.”
She clicked off and peered at the scrap.
“Maybe it’s supposed to say Tom,” I offered.
Lou smiled, said, “I think I got it. Come on.”
The kid pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “Wait, you’re just going to take her wallet?”
Lou said, “Yep.”
The kid shrugged.
Around the corner from Canter’s on Fairfax Avenue, Lou stopped in front of an ATM, where she stopped and shoved Helen’s debit card into the slot.
“Good plan,” I said. “Clean out her account and she’ll have to come back from wherever she is.”
“Not exactly,” Lou said, adding, “Fucko.”
The display prompted her and she opened up the scrap of paper. I chuckled softly, realizing right away what she was up to.
“I have a pretty terrible memory,” she said, plugging in the last four digits of “Tim’s” telephone number. “I keep a little list just like this for PIN numbers and shit like that, disguised as phone numbers in case anybody gets a hold of it. It’s not a new trick, and since Tim seems to be bullshit—abrafuckingcadabra, Blackstone.”
The PIN worked. Lou grinned at me with pride.
“Impressive,” I said. “Now what?”
“Let’s see what she’s got in there.”
She navigated a few options until the machine spat out a statement on a small receipt. Lou yanked it out and said, “Holy shitballs.”
I looked over her shoulder at the tally at the bottom and said, “You can say that again.”
Helen Bryan had three-quarters of a million dollars sitting in her savings account.
24
Looking upon herself in the washroom mirror, Grace beheld the perfect model of the “New Woman”: black bob, pixie face of alabaster, small bust and boyish figure. The new Colleen Moore. Tomorrow’s in-girl. Perhaps even the first new star of the forthcoming talking pictures revolution — why not? Her voice wasn’t bad. She had what it took and she had the scars to prove it, though none to show on camera. All of Grace’s scars were scored inside, raked deep by the circuit, by the blood she’d seen, by that relentless impulse to conquer the world she was never sure was her own. But she would survive Angel of the Abyss, just as she’d survived the vaudeville circuit, and her afternoon meeting with Famous Players people was going to be her first step into a bright new future.
She was to see Joseph March, the director, and Alan Rivers, the Famous Players representative, at March’s home on a sprawling, remote strip of Malibu beach. No script had been sent, not even a description of the picture at stake, but by telegram Grace read that March was shown footage from Angel by none other than the great Jack Parson himself and was, in his own words, “positively mesmerized.”
The trouble, of course, was Frank. He maintained his cloistered presence in her bungalow, forbidden to go out unless absolutely necessary and going stir-crazy day by day. He wanted to go back to work, to buy cigarettes and drink merrily with her at speakeasies as they’d done before. Grace wouldn’t have any of it.
“You might as well be a wanted man,” she tried to explain. “You’ll be killed the moment one of those awful men sees you or hears word you’re still in Los Angeles.”
“That’s all bluster,” he countered. “You have to understand it’s costly to kill a man for thugs like them. You can’t just go around gunning for whomever you please, or else half the town would be bleeding in the streets. It’s a calculated thing, and I’m just not worth it.”
“Are you willing to stake your life on that?”
“Beats being crammed in a cage,” Frank complained.
“Or mine?”
He sighed heavily. “Grace, darling — I wouldn’t dare pull you down into something like that, not even on a longshot. What’s the percentage in hurting you?”
“I’ve seen them. I know who they are.”
“Practically everybody does. These guys aren’t ghosts. They’re practically famous in their own right — like you’re going to be.”
“Oh, no,” said Grace, flitting about the bungalow in search of her pearls for the meeting. “I’ll be famous, all right — but not like them.”
“You know what I mean. And trust me, you’re safe as a babe in her crib. We both are.”
“Trust,” she parroted, rolling her tongue over the word and its meaning. “If that’s all I’ve got to go on, I might as well drop the rest of my vanishing fortune on the races.”
She regretted saying it immediately. Frank’s mouth tightened, wrinkled. He averted his eyes and rose to pour himself a brandy from Grace’s bar.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to go to this meeting now. I’ve lost all faith in Jack Parson and his ridiculous little film, but there’s still a chance for me in this business and it starts here. Please don’t go anywhere. Take a nap if you want, drink everything in the house, just stay put, will you?”
“I have a better idea,” Frank said after a belt of his drink. Grace scrunched up her face, waiting for it. “How about I drive you?”
“Are you crazy?” Grace boomed. “Listen, Frank — I’ve a condition letting you stay in my place and that means staying put.”