“Y.M.C.A.,” I said. “I run a little and play handball.”
I didn’t add that my total miles per week had dropped to five and my handball partner was a sixty-year-old doctor who was well ahead of me in games, but a damn good player.
Grundy led me into a coffee shop on La Brea, and we sat in a booth. The waitress recognized him, and he flashed her a smile. She was an overworked, washedout creature with frizzy hair. The smile from Grundy made her day.
We ordered, and I asked, “Why do you do it?”
“Body build?” he said, “Compensation in a way, Mr. Peters. It started when I realized that I wasn’t going to make it as a camera operator or cinematographer with a studio. That was what I wanted. I was born a few miles from here. I’ve passed those studios all my life. I wanted to be behind a camera, even prepared by becoming a still photographer, taking movie courses. But it never happened. I never got the break. I guess I started the weights when I knew it wasn’t going to happen. No one has said I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m just the right guy in the wrong place.”
“So,” I continued, “you make up for it by doing stills for studios when you can get the work and building your body.”
“That’s about it,” he agreed, welcoming his plate of four fried eggs and half pound of bacon from the waitress who smiled at him while she served. She had forgotten my coffee, but went back for it quickly.
“Most of my work is baby pictures and some industrial stuff,” he explained between bites. “Once in a while I get to do spillover work for a studio or a small industrial movie, nothing much; but I live cheap and do all right.”
He was telling me more about himself than I needed to know, but I’ve run into a lot of people like that. They’ll give you their life stories and a cup of Hill’s Brothers if you’ll just sit and listen. I’m a good listener. It may be the thing I’m best at.
“About yesterday, the morning?” I asked.
“Right,” he said, finishing a glass of milk in a long gulp. “I was in the studio to deliver some pictures I’d taken and walked past these two midgets arguing.”
“How close were you?” I asked. The coffee was bitter, but I kept drinking.
“About ten feet,” he said. “Walked right past them. I told the cops. I heard them arguing, and one of them had an accent, a German accent. The other one, the one in the soldier suit, called him ‘Gunther.’ That’s all I heard.”
“Could you identify either of the midgets again?” I tried.
“No,” he said, finishing his toast and looking around for something else to eat. I thought he’d give the plate a try, but instead he motioned to the waitress who knew what he wanted and brought more milk, toast and jam. “Both the little guys were wearing makeup and costumes, and I didn’t really look at them. I was tempted to break them up, but they weren’t actually fighting and it was none of my business.”
“Weren’t you surprised to see them in Oz costumes?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I know they still do occasional publicity shots with the midgets. I’ve even taken a few myself for Mr. Hoff. The midgets get a day’s fee for posing and so do I for a few quick prints.”
“Did you see anyone else when you passed the arguing midgets?” I’d finished my coffee and had a refill before I could stop the waitress, who was happy for any excuse to come back to our booth and gawk at Grundy.
“No, no one else was in sight,” he said. His fresh order of toast was gone and he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“Last question,” I said reaching in my pocket for money. “What time did this happen?”
“A little after eight, maybe a quarter after at the latest. Hey, I’ll take the check.”
He reached for the check but I pulled it out of his reach. He had reached fast. He may have had muscles like blocks of wood, but they didn’t slow him down.
‘I’m on an expense account,” I explained. “Breakfast is on Louis B. Mayer.”
He knew how to accept a free breakfast graciously. I paid the moonstruck waitress and walked back down Melrose with Grundy.
“My car’s down here,” I said. We shook hands. “If there’s anything else I can do, let me know,” he said. “And if you ever need any photo work in your business, here’s my card. I’ll work cheap.”
The card read exactly like his door: B. NIMBLEGRUNDY, PICTURES STILL AND MOVING. It also had his address. I thanked him and watched him jog toward his office-home.
It was Saturday and Grundy looked like a man who owned Saturdays. The day wasn’t quite mine, though. Either Grundy was lying, which wasn’t likely, or the midget who killed Cash had faked a German accent. In which case, why had Cash called him “Gunter”? The other possibility was that Gunther was guilty. Or maybe Gunther had fought with Cash but not killed him. In which case he had simply lied to me, for which I couldn’t much blame him.
My leads had almost run out. All I had left was Gable and the hope that Wherthman would remember the name of the other midget who had worked and fought with Cash. Both were slim. Something had to make sense, and I was heading in the right direction or there wouldn’t be two bullet holes in my Buick.
Judy Garland had told me production was starting on Ziegfield Girl today so I headed for the studio. It wasn’t far from Grundy’s place. I took another look at his card and put it away, reminding myself to ask if Nimble was his real middle name if I should ever see him again.
It was a little after ten when I arrived at the studio. Buck McCarthy was on the gate and he sauntered over to me, chewing a wad of gum and pretending it was a plug. He leaned into the window.
“Miss Garland said to hurry you in if you showed up,” he said. “You know the way?”
“Yep, you want to drive?”
He declined this time, and I drove slowly to her dressing room. I didn’t see any stars, but a group of carpenters working on the fake front of what looked like the Taj Mahal. The fake front was leaning against a real building.
Judy Garland wasn’t in her dressing room, but Cassie James was, which suited me fine. Today she was dressed entirely in pink with a red patent leather belt. She smelled like July in the mountains. When I knocked and came in she was pouring herself a cup of coffee from the pot brewing in the corner.
She gave me a small smile and handed me the cup. Something was wrong. She sat in a straightbacked chair and crossed her legs.
“Someone tried to kill Judy,” she said.
For a second or two I didn’t absorb the words. Maybe I even thought I imagined them, but I hadn’t.
“Tried to poison her,” Cassie continued.
“How? When?” I sat with my coffee on a chair a few feet from Cassie.
“When we came in the morning, there was a pitcher of ice water on the table. Judy was a little nervous about starting the picture today and her throat was dry. I poured her a drink and started to hand it to her, but it looked a little discolored. I smelled it, and it smelled strange. So she didn’t drink it.”
“Then how do you know it was poisoned?” I asked.
“We called the doctor. There’s one on hand whenever shooting is going on. He said it was filled with arsenic. A mouthful would very likely have killed Judy.”
Cassie was certainly nervous, but not in panic.
“It’s lucky you noticed,” I said reassuringly. “Where’s Judy now?”
“She’s shooting. I told her to take the day off and wait till we talked to you, but she wouldn’t do it. She got sick once during the shooting of Oz and held up shooting for a while. She doesn’t want to do it again.”
Cassie gave me more information. The dressing room door hadn’t been locked so anyone on the lot could have come in with the water. The poison water had been dumped out after the doctor confirmed the presence of poison. It wasn’t clear whose idea the dumping was, but no one had questioned it. The pitcher was glass, but with everyone handling it there probably wouldn’t have been worthwhile prints anyway.