Mars eyed him closely. “You’re not one of them pansy boys, are you?”
“Not that I know of. Lamb ever mention any problems? You ever meet any guy she was dating?”
“I wasn’t aware she was dating anyone. For all I know she likes women.”
He finished his champagne and grabbed another one off a passing tray. He eyed the waiter carrying it as he walked off.
“I don’t know why they don’t just stick with the colored waiters. They’re reliable, and they don’t look at you all funny, like the Japs do. These Mexies I just don’t trust. They put too much grease in their hair. Sticky fingers. I’ll have to get Gloria to count the silverware.”
“I really don’t trust anybody, regardless of skin color.”
Mars gave him a puzzled look. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Tell me why we’re fighting and I’ll pick a side.”
Mars seemed to think he was joking. “You always this funny?”
“It’s the booze. So no idea on anybody Lamb might be seeing?”
“No. And why does she need a PI?” he added with a growl.
“She never talked to you about it?”
“I’m the director. A king doesn’t get personal with the chambermaid.”
“You really need to read more history. I understand you and Bart Green are good friends,” Archer said, deftly moving the conversation where he wanted it to go next.
Mars set his champagne flute down and lit up a Pall Mall. “I’ve been in Hollywood for thirty years and I’ve known Bart for twenty-nine of them. He’s not all that much older than me, but he was well up the food chain by the time I hit town. But he’s been great to me, always throwing stuff my way. It’s why I’m working with Ellie Lamb.” He paused and looked at his cigarette. “We’re kind of like brothers. Although he rose a lot higher than I have. C’est la vie.”
“But it beats Oregon and cow shit?”
Mars grinned at him, but the motion didn’t light up his features because there was nothing genuine behind it. “Gloria likes to throw that in my face. Yeah, I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and worked my ass off to get out. She grew up on Fifth Avenue with truckloads of money, none of which she earned, went to an elite women’s college, and has never had to work a day in her life. So who has the right to talk cow shit?”
“I’m a workingman just like you.”
Mars genuinely smiled this time and raised his glass. “To workingmen everywhere.”
“I understand you’re in line to direct the Bette Davis picture that Lamb is scripting?”
Mars’s genial look faded a few watts. “Well, Miss Davis has the final say on that. But we had a good first meeting, and Ellie’s script is coming along.”
“What’s the story line?”
“Officially under wraps.”
“When is Lamb supposed to have it finished?”
“Soon. I hope whatever she has going on won’t mess that up,” he added with a glare aimed at Archer. “I’ve got a lot riding on this. It could lead to bigger and better things.”
“I understand you’ve been to her place in Malibu.”
“Nice house, high up in the canyon, like you said.” He tapped his chest. “Almost had trouble breathing at that altitude. I’m more of a sea-level guy.”
“So she never told you why she chose Malibu to dig in?”
Mars started to shake his head, but then said, “Wait a minute. Okay, yeah, I recall it was because of a friend who lived there. Ellie wanted to be closer to that person.”
“That person have a name?”
Mars shook his head. “I meet so many people and I’m lousy with names.” He glanced at Miss D-cup, who had a line of men just waiting to tell the lady how they could make her a star.
“Now, I do remember faces really well.”
“Just faces?” said Archer, who had followed his gaze to the woman.
The man barely tried, and thus failed, to look shocked. “I’m a married man, Archer.”
Archer drained his White Russian dry. “To married men everywhere.”
Chapter 8
Archer sat on the bed in Callahan’s spare room staring at his shoes. The house was decorated with a Bohemian flair that he knew was all Callahan. This was not the land of tea cozies, patchwork quilts, and dusty knickknacks. The woman had hit the 1950s in full stride with colorful walls, minimalist chrome and wood furnishings, and large ceramic dishes like the kind they made in Laguna Beach hanging on the walls. The kitchen had every convenience GE and others could offer, like a dishwasher, a garbage disposal in the sink, an electric range, and even a deep freezer that was large enough to hold an elk. The coffee table was topped by recent copies of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. He had brought along a map of the stars and pretended to have found her new house on it. Her laugh had been worth the fifty cents.
There were also paintings that would never have seen the light of day in any grandma’s house. On the wall of his room was a painting of a naked woman. She was grotesquely large, with bloated breasts and swollen thighs and belly, and was holding what Archer would delicately describe as a cucumber broken in half. Callahan said it was done in the avant-garde style. He’d asked her what she saw in it, and got, at first, a coy look in return. “Life, Archer, only from a woman’s perspective.”
He and Callahan had kissed on the stroke of midnight in the Ambassador’s penthouse. Then they, and apparently everyone else, had gotten the hell out of Dodge, including at least one of the hosts. As Archer was waiting in the valet line, he had seen Danny Mars driving off with Miss D-cup in a silver Rolls. He didn’t know where Gloria had gotten to. Maybe she was still in the penthouse with one of the Mexican waiters, shorn of slitted gown and gilt slippers, and white jacket and pants, respectively. They could be lying on their backs on the dining room table looking up at the ceiling mirror and contemplating the prospects of a heady 1953.
He continued to sit there until he saw Callahan’s light go out in her bedroom. He waited ten minutes more and then went into the next room, found the phone book, and looked at his watch. It was five past two. He looked up Eleanor Lamb’s number in Malibu and made the call. If she was there, he’d hang up. She might be more than just the worker-bee writer with nothing more complicated in her life than reams of heavy bond paper and a mountain of Corona ribbon and dreams of crafting comeback stories for aging stars. If so, he wanted to understand her and maybe help the woman.
The phone rang three times and then a voice said, “Hello?”
It was a man. Okay, this was not starting off like he wanted it to.
Archer made his voice high-pitched and echoey. “Can I speak to Eleanor Lamb?”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Yeah, I do. What are you doing up?”
The man didn’t answer.
“Can I speak to her?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Her brother. I wanted to wish her Happy New Year.”
“She doesn’t have a brother.” The line went dead.
Archer slowly put down the phone. He could call in the LA County cops. But when the dispatcher asked him what was wrong, what was he supposed to say? That a guy had answered an unmarried woman’s phone at two a.m. and hung up on him? They would just tell him that Eleanor Lamb had gotten lucky on New Year’s Eve. If Archer pushed it, that would get him a quick trip to the can for wasting police time.
He left a note for Callahan just in case he didn’t get back before she woke up. She had told him she wasn’t due on set today. That meant the lady would be sleeping until well past noon.
He pulled his street map from the Delahaye’s glove box, found Las Flores Canyon Road on it, and set off.