Sergeant Thoms put his head in the door and said Walsh was here. "Fine," said Mendoza, "bring him in and go get some coffee for all of us.!
SEVEN
"No you're not lucky to catch me exactly," said Mr. Stanley Horwitz. "I keep legit show business schedule-dark on Mondays-fancy of mine. Usually get a lot done on Sundays too, but it's been slow lately
… So you want to know something about Mona Ferne? I could write a book. Homicide-has she killed somebody?"
Hackett said he shouldn't think so but you never knew.
"Pity," said Mr. Horwitz. "Offer you a drink?… You boys don't have to be so damn moral about rules, you just do it to annoy. No pleasure drinking alone-but I will." He got out a bottle of Scotch, flicked down the lever on his intercom, said, "Milly, I'm busy for the next half hour or so, if that nance who thinks he's America's answer to Sir Laurence Olivier comes in, he can wait. And wait." Mr. Horwitz, who was edging sixty, five-feet-four in his elevator shoes, and possessed a shock of curly gray hair, poured himself a drink and slid down comfortably in his upholstered desk-chair. "I wish you'd have a drink, Sergeant. Nice to see somebody approximately normal in here, for a change."
“Don't you usually?"
"Dear God, these people," said Horwitz. "These people. Nobody, Sergeant, nobody at all is mixed up in show business to start with-or wants to be-unless he, she, or it has an exhibitionist complex. Just in the nature of things they're all egotistic as hell, and that's right where you can get into the hell of a lot of trouble with them, because they're so very damn smooth in covering that up, you know? You got to keep it in mind every minute, that they're just front. It gets tiresome." He swallowed half of the drink. "And maybe you better keep it in mind about me, because God knows I don't suppose I'd be in this rat race of a business if I wasn't a little bit like them. Just a little bit. Right now, of course, they're all busy overcompensating for the granddaddy of all inferiority complexes, and that makes 'em a little quieter than usual."
"How's that?" asked Hackett.
Horwitz eyed him in faint surprise over the glass. "You grow up in this town?"
"Pasadena," said Hackett.
"Don't you notice what's going on? Time was they were this town-this was the capital of honky-tonk, the Mecca for all faithful pilgrims who never missed the change of show at the Bijou. Time was, all the money in this town, the real money, was theirs-show-business money. Everything important that happened here was show-business kind of important. Sure, the legit folk back on Broadway kept their noses in the air, but, brother, when one of 'em got the nod from Goldwyn or De Mille, he came a-runnin'-and for why? The folding stuff, the long green. Oh, this was quite a town in those days, Sergeant. And them days is gone forever. The real money behind this town now, why, all the studios together never used or made money like that-they're just a drop in the bucket of capital now, since the aircraft and missile plants moved in, all kinds of business, and since all this irrigation made us, what is it, second highest in agricultural production of the nation? They're just peanuts now, and tell the truth, I figure the people in this town've got fed up with 'em too. It's time. Not surprising. You don't have to know one of 'em personally very long before you find out what they're like-personally-and I guess it just took a little longer for the public to learn, living in proximity as you might say. The gimmick doesn't work any more, not the way it did. The old glamour's dead. They don't get in the headlines-even local-any more, for losing a diamond necklace or marrying a European aristocrat. The gossip columns about the stars are shoved into the second section and a back page at that-there's too much interesting news about Cape Canaveral and the new government contracts at Lockheed and Douglas and what big companies are moving out here with all their personnel, building ten-million-dollar offices and so on. Too many vice-presidents and union officials riding around in Rolls Royces, too many of their wives in sable coats leading French poodles-and losing diamond necklaces at the opera-nothing to exclaim about any more, nothing to mark them as royalty, way they used to be. See? Notice how quiet they act these days, trying to pretend they're just like other people, plain down-to-earth folks. That's one of the symptoms. And, brother, how they hate the whole business! How scared and indignant they are, and how loud they deny it's happened!" Mr. Horwitz retired into his glass.
"They do, hm? I can see how that'd be. Never thought much about it before."
"You're not in the business-and for that you can thank God. Oh, yes, they're wearing a chip on the shoulder all right-can't do this to us, you know?-and at the same time trying to pretend nothing's happened at all, that it's still their town… But you were asking about Mona. Case in point. One of the worst ones. I don't mind gossiping about Mona Ferne, if you're got time to listen-"
"I've got time."
"-And I got the feeling," said Horwitz dreamily, "I might do just that even if you were somebody from TV thinking of hiring her-because she annoyed the hell out of me just before you came in, and that was just once too often she did. To start with, in case you're curious, her real name was Minnie Lundgren, and she came from some place in South Dakota. Won some sort of piddling beauty contest back there, and right away made tracks for Hollywood-read ‘Mecca'-to join the royal family… You remember any of her pictures?"
"Hardly. I think I was about three when she was in her heyday as a star. I wasn't noticing females much yet. But I've seen her in bit parts, later on, when I was just a kid. Just vaguely remember the name."
"You didn't miss an awful lot," said Horwitz. "She never could act, she took direction, that's all. They built her up, like they built up a lot of others who didn't really have much on the ball. And you've got to remember that comparatively speaking it's a new medium-anyway it still was thirty-five years back-and fashions in these things, they change like other fashions. She was a star, sure, they made her one. And don't you forget either, Sergeant, that's just the end of one long road, and she nor nobody else gets there, usually, without the cold guts to kick anybody in the teeth who gets in their way. You married?… Well, when you come to get married, take my advice and don't pick a beautiful woman or an actress. The two don't always coincide. Point is, anybody naturally good-looking, they're awful apt to be-what's the head doctors' word?-narcissistic. Me, me, me, twenty-four hours a day. And some of it's other people's fault, building 'em up all the time, you what am I doing for her, when can she expect a new contract?-good God in heaven, I've given it to her straight enough times, but it just doesn't penetrate. Hear her talk, you'd think she'd had a couple of pictures gross a million in the last six months, and it's just a little legal fuss with the studio leaves her without a contract. Every once in a while she threatens to get another agent, and I wish to God she'd try, but she never will-she knows damn well, if she'd admit it, nobody else would ever put her on the books."
"I suppose she's living on what she used to make-investments?"
"Mostly, I think, on Carstairs' money-she spent most of hers as it came in. Maybe he'd begun to see through her at that, he'd tied it up in trust-in two trusts actually, one for the girl. They'd only been married a couple of years, the kid was just a baby, when he crashed. Sure, Mona's got plenty to get along on, but that's not enough for her."
"She is," said Hackett, "a member of a funny cult called the Temple of Mystic Truth. Know anything about that?"
Horwitz shook his head and shrugged. "Can't say I want to. This town used to have a reputation for that kind of thing too, and when you come to think of it, it's natural. You take these people-they're people without roots, you know?-and most of 'em are suckers for that kind of thing. Especially, you might say, as they get older. They feel a lack somewhere, they look around for something solid, for an answer, and because they're the kind of people they are, the orthodox doesn't attract them."