I didn’t get the significance of that until a baby-faced blonde girl showed up at three-thirty towing the Navy, which was obviously in distress. He was just drunk enough to be belligerent, a beardless, peach-skinned kid with unhappy blue eyes and nice teeth. He was all of nineteen. “Your name Carmody?” he demanded. “I’m Bill Phipps — Seaman First Class. My buddy says you wanted to see me.”
“That’s right, Bill. I—”
“Look,” he interrupted with a serviceman’s resentment of any civilian authority, real or fancied, “I got nothing to talk about. I never heard of you before.”
I said: “It’s about Laurie Bressette, Bill.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s different.” He straightened up abruptly, not nearly as drunk as he’d pretended. He turned to the baby-faced blonde. “Look, sugar, take a walk around the block. I’ll pick you up later.”
She didn’t like the idea so well, but apparently she didn’t want to get involved with a detective of any kind. When she’d slammed the door behind her, Bill gave me a nod. “O.K. now. What’s with Laurie?”
I told him about Doctor Bressette’s letter and our phone conversation. He interrupted once to clear up one point. He’d never heard of Felix DeCoudre. All he knew was that Laurie was working for some wrong people and he’d tipped off the family.
“She’s a nice girl,” he explained. “I never knew her very well, but I knew she oughtn’t be doing what she was doing.”
“That’s why I called you, Bill. How did you find out about her — and what?”
His fresh, clean face got red. “That’s kind of a story,” he said. “Maybe I’d better tell it to you from the start... Y’see, during the war I was on the Saratoga and one of our petty officers was a guy who’s in the movies. He never had such big parts, but I guess he did pretty good just the same. Well, me and my buddy got to know him pretty well before he got his discharge a year ago. He invited us to visit him in Hollywood some time, said he’d show us a good time. So about three months ago we did.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
He looked embarrassed. “I guess I’d rather not tell you that. He doesn’t have anything to do with Laurie. Not directly... Y’see when we went to his house one day, he threw a pretty good stag party for us. There were a half dozen other friends of his there. Well,” he got red in the face again, “we all got pretty high and then — this actor — he had a movie for us. One of these home-sized jobs.”
I thought I could fill in the rest, but I let him tell it.
“Maybe you’ve seen one of those films.” He couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “It was worse than any peep show or burlesque I ever saw and I’ve seen some hot ones! It was...”
“I know the kind,” I said. “And you recognized Laurie in the particular picture.”
He nodded. “She was the only one. A strip tease....” He left that hanging. “It got me, seeing a nice girl from your own home town doing something like that. I couldn’t go for that stuff.” He must have remembered the baby-faced tramp he’d brought in with him then, for he burned like an electric heater. “You know how it is with sailors,” he said defensively. “People expect that sort of stuff. But cripes, the Bressettes are damn nice people!”
He hadn’t wanted to squeal on Laurie, he explained, but he felt he had to do something. So he wrote to Doctor Bressette and mentioned, casually, that he’d heard bad things about the outfit she worked for. That was how he phrased it, not knowing about the Anselmo Film Library — or DeCoudre either for that matter. But the doctor immediately assumed the reference was to DeCoudre, because Laurie was presumably still under contract to him.
Well, that completed the circle eliminating DeCoudre, and pointing the finger at Anselmo. I thought I knew practically everything now — except where Laurie was.
I took a chance on Bill and told him about her disappearance. He couldn’t give me the slightest bit of help.
“That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?” he asked. “What can we do?”
I told him what we could do. “You’ve got to call your actor friend. He’s the only lead we have on this Anselmo film place. We’ve got to locate the people who run it. Unless I’ve guessed wrong, your friend rented the film from Anselmo, so he might know where they moved to after they left the place on Selma. It’s all we have.” I pointed to the phone. “I’ll take a walk around the block while you find out all you can about Anselmo. We’ll leave your friend out of it.”
“O.K.,” he said, and I took a walk. I debated, briefly, going to the police. Then I voted against it. I had an idea Doctor Bressette would rather I handled the matter. Once the cops came into it, the story of that dirty film would come out. The doctor wanted his daughter back — but not with all the lurid details in every newspaper from Los Angeles dailies to the East Peoria Weekly Gazette.
Chapter Four
Black Line or White?
When I walked back into the office, Bill had Anselmo’s number written down on the desk pad. His full name was John R. Anselmo, and the number was unlisted, so I couldn’t have found it in the phone book. I dialed and a man’s voice — just a voice — said: “Yes?”
“Mr. Anselmo?”
“Speaking.”
“My name is Carmody. There’s something I want to talk over with you. Where can we meet?”
“Talk about it now,” he suggested.
“It’s very confidential. You name the time and place.”
“In the Rose Bowl some New Year’s.” He hung up without waiting for the laugh. It was all right; he didn’t get one. I dialed him right back.
“I’m not going to waste time with you, Carmody.”.He sounded sore. “I don’t know how you got this number.”
I said: “Laurie Bressette told me.”
This time he didn’t hang up. After a time-out, he said: “Just what did you want?”
“Not a home movie,” I assured him. “Where do you want to meet me?”
“Will my shop on Selma be satisfactory?”
“Yeah. In an hour?”
He said: “I’ll try to make it in an hour,” and hung up.
Bill Phipps watched me with worried eyes. “What do you think?”
“He’s scared. I don’t know why.”
He fidgetted, then blurted it out. “Mr. Carmody, do you think Laurie is — well, could this be a white slavery thing?”
I gave him a cigarette before answering. I thought I knew what bothered him so. Laurie didn’t mean a thing to him, as a girl, and Doctor Bressette was probably just somebody he knew in his home town. But he was young enough to draw a broad white line between right and wrong, good and bad. The Bressettes, including Laurie, were good, decent people. He could console his own conscience that a sailor was supposed to act like the popular conception of a sailor. But having Laurie involved in something sordid was to have dirt seeping over that white line into the right and good. He wasn’t a very complicated person; but he was a darn good kid.
“I don’t know. Bill,” I said. “But believe me, I’m going to find out. In any case it might be a good idea if Doc Bressette never does know all the details. I talked to him on the phone today and I know he’s a nice guy. So if I can get Laurie on a train for East Peoria, that ought to be enough. Right?”
He nodded but he was still worried. “How about the film?”
“I think I’ll be able to get that, too.” I didn’t know how, but it seemed as though it was the crux of the affair. It might cost some money — unless I acted fast and smart.
I looked at my watch. “I guess I’d better get moving, Bill, I have a date, you know.”
“Want me to come?”
“I don’t think so. Call me tomorrow and I’ll let you know what happened.”