He went on down Las Palmas to Sunset, east to Vine and up Vine to the Brown Derby.
Granquist was in a booth, far back, on the left.
She said: “I ordered oysters.”
Kells sat down. “That’s fine.” He nodded to an acquaintance at a nearby table.
“A couple minutes after you left me,” she said, “a guy came into my place and asked the girl at the desk who I was. She said ‘Who wants to know?’ and he said he had seen me come in and thought I was an old friend of his...”
“And...”
“And I haven’t got any old friends.”
“What’d he look like?” Kells was reading the menu.
“The girl isn’t very bright. All she could remember was that he had on a gray suit and a gray cap.”
Kells said: “That’s a pipe — it was one of the Barrymores.”
“No.” Granquist shook her head very seriously. “It might’ve been a copper who tailed us from your hotel, or it might’ve been one of—”
Kells interrupted her suddenly: “Did you leave the stuff in your apartment?”
“Certainly not.”
Kells said: “Anyway — we’ve got to do whatever’s to be done with it tonight. I’m getting the noon train tomorrow.”
“We’re getting the noon train.”
Kells smiled, looked at her a little while. He said: “When you can watch a lady eat oysters and still think she’s swell — that’s love.”
He ordered the rest of the dinner.
Granquist carried a smart black bag. She opened it and took out a big silver flask, poured drinks under the table.
The dinner was very good.
After a while, Granquist said with sudden and exaggerated seriousness: “I haven’t told you the story of my life!”
Kells was drinking his coffee, watching the door. He turned to her slowly, said slowly: “No — but I’ve heard one.”
“All right. You tell me.”
“I was born of rich but honest parents...”
“You can skip that.”
He grinned at her. “I came back from France,” he said, — “with a set of medals, a beautiful case of shell shock and a morphine habit you could hang your hat on.”
He gestured with his hands. “All gone.”
“Even the medals?”
He nodded. “The State kept them as souvenirs of my first trial.”
Granquist poured two drinks.
“I happened to be too close to a couple of front-page kills,” Kells went on. “There was a lot of dumb sleuthing and a lot of dumb talk. It got so, finally, when the New York police couldn’t figure a shooting any other way, I was it.”
Granquist was silent, smiling.
“They got tired trying to hang them on me after the first three but the whisper went on. It got to be known as the Kells Inside...”
“And at heart you’re just a big, sympathetic boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Uh, huh.” He nodded his head slowly, emphatically. His face was expressionless.
“Me — I’m Napoleon.” Granquist took a powder puff out of the bag and rubbed it over her nose.
Kells beckoned a waiter, paid the check. “And beyond the Alps lies Italy. Let’s go.” It was raining a little.
Kells held Granquist close to him. “The Knickerbocker is just around the corner on Ivar,” he said — “but I’m going to put you in a cab and I want you to go down to Western Avenue and get out and walk until you’re sure you’re not being followed. Then get another cab and come to the Knickerbocker — I’ll be in ten-sixteen.”
The doorman held a big umbrella for them and they walked across the wet sidewalk and Granquist got into a cab. Kells stood in the thin rain until the cab had turned the corner down Hollywood Boulevard, then he went back into the restaurant.
Ruth Perry was sitting in the corner booth behind the cashier’s desk. She didn’t say anything. Kells sat down. There was a newspaper on the table and he turned it around, glanced at the headlines, said: “What do you think about the European situation?”
“Who was that?” Ruth Perry inclined her head slightly toward the door.
Kells put his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “None of your business, darling.” He looked up at her and smiled. “Now keep your pants on. I stand to make a ten-or fifteen-thousand-dollar lick tonight, and that one” — he gestured with his head toward the door — “is a very important part of the play.”
Ruth Perry leaned back and looked at the ceiling and laughed a little bit. Presently she said: “What are you going to do about Dave?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not going to go on the stand and lay myself open to a perjury rap.”
Kells shook his head. “You won’t have to, baby. The trial won’t come up for a month or so and we can spring Dave before that” — he smiled with his mouth — “if you want to.”
They were silent for a little while.
Then Kells said: “I’ve got to go now — call you around twelve.”
He got up and went out into the rain. He walked up to the corner of Vine and Hollywood Boulevard and went into the drugstore and bought some aspirin, took two five-grain tablets and then went out and crossed the Boulevard and walked up Vine Street about a hundred yards. Then he crossed the street and walked back down to the parking station next to the Post Office. He stood on the sidewalk watching people across the street for a little while, then went swiftly back through the parking station and down the ramp to the garage under the Knickerbocker Hotel.
He got out of the elevator on the tenth floor and knocked at the door of ten-sixteen. Fenner opened the door.
Fenner said: “Well, Mister Kells — you didn’t catch your train.” He smiled and bowed Kells in.
They sat in the big living room and Fenner poured drinks. He poured three drinks and leaned back and asked: “Where’s the little lady?”
“She’ll be up in a few minutes.”
Someone came out of the bathroom and through the bedroom. Fenner got up and introduced the dark medium-sized man that came in. “This is Bob Jeffers — God’s gift to Womanhood... Mister Kells.”
Kells stood up and shook hands with Jeffers. He was a motion-picture star who had had a brief and spectacular career; had been on the way out for nearly a year. He was drunk. He said: “It is a great pleasure to meet a real gunman, Mister Kells.”
Kells glanced at Fenner and Fenner shook his head slightly, smiled apologetically. Kells sat down and sipped his whiskey.
Jeffers said: “I’m going up and get Lola.” He took up his glass and went unsteadily out of the room, through the hallway, out the outer door.
“You mustn’t mind Jeffers.”
Kells said: “Sure.” Then he leaned back in his chair and stared vacantly at Fenner. “Have you got twenty-five grand in cash?”
Fenner looked at him very intently. Then he smiled slowly and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why?”
“Can you get it — tonight?”
“Well — possibly. I—”
Kells interrupted, spoke rapidly. “I’ve talked to the lady. She’s got enough on Bellmann to run him out of politics — out of the state, by God! You’re getting first crack at it because I have a hunch he isn’t sitting so pretty financially. It’s the keys to the city for you — it’s in black and white— an’ it’s a bargain.”
“You seem to have a more than casual interest in this...”
Kells nodded. “Uh, huh,” he said, smiled. “I’m the fiscal agent.”
Fenner stood up and walked up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, a lecture-platform expression on his face.
“You forget, Kells, that the Common People — the voters — are not fully informed of Mister Bellmann’s connections, his power in the present administration.”