Our perambulating eventually took us to Ciro’s, a sophisticated nightspot on Sunset. The club reminded me of Paddy’s Jekyll and Hyde comment; it was sleek and modern on the outside — its entryway roof with its curves and many slender supports looked like a harp designed by Harley Earl — but very baroque on the inside. It had been remodeled by its new owners and toned down a little, but it still resembled a Versailles boudoir that happened to seat three hundred.
Our seats were at the bar, at Dabney’s insistence. His drink of choice was a Bronx, an antique cocktail made from gin, sweet and dry vermouth, and orange juice. I’d watched so many being made by then that I had the formula down by heart. I was consuming orange juice, on the rocks. Orange juice and a steady stream of Dabney’s patter.
“Have you ever noticed, old boy, how many movies are set in one of two places, a newspaper or a nightclub? I’ve often thought those locales come up so often because a writer will always fall back on what he knows best. Most screenwriters worked for a newspaper early in their careers, what one might call their honest period. The nightclub experience comes from a writer’s Hollywood period, when these upholstered confines come to seem more real than the unupholstered world outside.”
I thought of kicking in that nightclub settings popped up so often because they gave the studios a chance to insert their musical performers in nonmusical pictures, thereby keeping them off the streets and out of trouble. I didn’t make the observation, because Dabney had segued into a story about his lost days on the London Times. And because the man seated to my left said something just then that divided my attention.
It was: “There she is, the dame in the green dress. Memorize her.”
Dabney was peering into his cocktail, so I was free to glance over my shoulder at the dance floor, where the customers were swaying to “They Didn’t Believe Me.” I spotted the woman in the green dress right away. She was tall and slender, with dark hair worn up everywhere but in front. There, sharply cut bangs reached down almost to her widely spaced eyes. She was wearing a necklace of green beads a shade brighter than her dress. The necklace also caught the attention of the guy beside me.
“She’s wearing the jade,” I heard him say. “That’s handy.”
The mirror behind Ciro’s bar had a finish of crackled gold, but I could still make out that the speaker was a light heavyweight, dark of features and suit. His companion, also in a dark suit, had a bluejacket’s haircut over a baby face.
“That’s worth eighty thousand bucks?” the kid asked.
“Every nickel of it,” the dark man replied.
Dabney, meanwhile, had reached the payoff of his story. “The actual cause of my firing was a piece I wrote about astronomy. At one point, I had to give the distance to the moon in miles. I might have looked it up, but I thought the figure I gave, ‘rather more than ten,’ to be both true and adequate. My editor, the fossil, disagreed.”
He stretched his short arms. “I feel like a change in ambiance, old boy. Let us reclaim our hats.”
2.
I would like to have stayed and overheard more about that jade necklace, but Dabney was insistent. The next place on his list was the Cafe Trocadero, or the Troc, as it was known locally. The club was what had drawn the stars to Sunset Boulevard in the first place and so had drawn the tourists who liked to bask in starlight. I’d been there often in my studio days, parading some starlet in front of the photographers for the benefit — we hoped — of our respective careers. Those nights were usually as awkward as a blind date for the prom, but every now and then I’d broken through the glamour and met a genuine human being, maybe even a Midwesterner like me.
Paddy had told me that the Troc was closing after a decade’s run, and the rumors he passed on were generally reliable. But I didn’t really believe that one until Dabney and I were installed in the grill room. The place was half empty, and the occupied tables contained only tourists, mildly disappointed. The carpeting was as worn as Dabney’s tux. The whole interior was. What once had seemed to me a chic Parisian cafe now looked like a bad parody of one. I told myself it was because I’d seen the real Paris — courtesy of Uncle Sam — since my last visit. But then Dabney took up the same theme.
“The grandeur that was Rome, eh, old boy? What a shame. The nights this place has seen. I’m told Ted Healy died in a brawl in this very bar. Did you know him?”
Leave it to Dabney to be up on movie comics who drank too much. “Before my time,” I said.
“Before time itself, perhaps,” Dabney replied. He pursed his lips a little at his first taste of the Troc’s idea of a Bronx, but sipped on manfully.
“Growing old is an odd thing, Scotty. It seems mild enough, incremental, as it were. You notice a gray hair in the mirror and then another, but the head they’re sprouting from remains the same. More or less the same. Then you visit a place like this that you remember from a lost time, or you see a person you haven’t seen in years, and whammo. I mean to say, look at what happened to Gladys Cooper. She was once the most enchanting creature on the London stage, johnnies at her door every night, staggering under their loads of flowers. And now she’s playing severe old ladies with Gorgon’s eyes. How did that happen, old boy? When did it happen?”
Sometime after Dabney had first set sail on the Bronx Sea, I guessed. I noticed that his speech was becoming a little slurred and took it as a good sign. I thought he’d have his fill soon and I could drive him home, maybe in time to squeeze in some drinking of my own. Then he dashed my hopes.
“We must fight against it, Scotty. We must nail our colors to the mast! Requisition another round, old boy. I’ll be right back.”
I ordered his drink and a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes for myself. I was lighting the first one when someone screamed directly behind me.
A woman built along the lines of Margaret Dumont was rubbing her backside and turning as red as the local streetcars. Her gaze would have made Gladys Cooper’s best imitation of a Gorgon look like a come-hither wink. She was directing it at Claude Dabney, who was standing before her with an empty tray in hand and a napkin over one arm. He looked like any of the waiters, except that their seedy jackets were white.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” he said. “Didn’t you order the goose?”
That got a laugh from everyone within earshot except me, the lady in question, and a guy who was either her husband or a stevedore she’d adopted after her last ocean voyage.
“Why you...” the man sputtered, using the time-tested formula. He followed that up in a conventional way, too, pushing back his coat sleeves and balling his big hands into fists.
Dabney closed his not-big eyes, and I wondered if he’d decided to try Ted Healy’s cure for old age. Wondered, but didn’t wait to find out.
I’d witnessed a few brawls in barracks and bars during my time in the service and I knew that guys planning to throw a punch fell into two broad categories: those focused on a specific target and those mad enough to hit anything that moved. I’d learned from hard experience not to play peacemaker with the latter group, of which this stevedore appeared to be president. But Dabney had paid for his babysitting in advance, so I stepped between them. “Excuse him, please,” I said. “He’s had a little to drink.” A little more than a gallon.
As I’d expected, the husband’s idea of a counterproposal was a looping left aimed at my head. I stepped inside its arc, grabbed one corner of his black tie, and gave it a quick yank, undoing what had been a beautiful bow.