A half-dollar disposed of the bellhop, and I casually looked over my quarters. It was a small room with a walk-in closet and a tiny bathroom attached. It was arranged more as a sitting room than a bedroom. There was a couch on the same wall as the door to the outside hallway. It had been made up as a bed with sheets and a pillow. Opposite the couch was a sliding glass door. This was a ground-floor room, and this door opened out onto a postage-stamp lanai. This lanai, or small courtyard, was fenced in and featured a low-hanging palm tree, the fronds of which shut off moonlight, starlight and air. The only exception was an area at the far end of the lanai where a lamppost had managed to hack through the palm leaves to establish a tiny luminescent beachhead. In this oasis of light there was a rickety-seeming gate which I guessed led to the street beyond.
I checked the fence gate. It was unlocked. I rechecked. There was no way of locking it. I wedged it shut as best I could and shrugged off the circumstance. It didn't seem important at the time.
Later it did. Later, after I’d gone to bed, sleep turned into sudden wakefulness to make that lanai gate the focal point of a confused vision that seemed more fantasy than reality. It was a vision that seemed a combination of dreams and the day's events and an improbable apparition of the moment.
I blinked my eyes. The vision was still there. The fence gate of the lanai was ajar. Pausing in front of it, pin-pointed in the patch of light, stood a girl in a white nightgown. The nightgown was very sheer. The rise and fall of her hard-panting breasts was quite distinct. Also visible was the sculpted red of her nipples straining against the transparent material. The rest of her body was lost in the shadows. But not so her face. I looked at it and blinked again. I knew that face.
It was the face of Misty Milo!
Now she moved into the shadows of the lanai, toward the sliding glass door. It was a hot night and I'd left it ajar. Just as she reached it and started to push it farther open, my attention was once again drawn to the wooden gate of the lanai. There was another figure standing there now. Most of it, including its face, was in shadows. The only part caught by the light was a hand. It was a hairy hand, large and masculine.
The hand was holding a revolver, cocked, pointing past Misty as she fumbled with the glass door, pointing directly at me! Don’t get me wrong, I thought to myself irrelevantly, but this is Hollywood . . .
CHAPTER TWO
OF course, to be strictly accurate, it wasn’t Hollywood at all; it was Beverly Hills. But, like they bray, Hollywood isn’t a place; it's a state of mind. And Beverly Hills is well within the confines of that state of mind.
My own state of mind, at the moment, was something else again. There was Misty Milo in that transparent nightie at the sliding glass door. And there was that gun pointing at my ventricles from behind her. Having just arrived from Snoozeland, this wasn’t the sort of scene that was calculated to make my wakening euphoric. Bluntly, it made me feel insecure.
I had no time, however, to dwell on the feeling. For, as the figure near the lanai gate shifted position, my troubles doubled. The light striking the other hand of the intruder revealed that it too clutched a pistol. Quick addition told me that I faced a two-gun terror.
Misty was in the room now. The double-barreled stranger following her was lost in the shadows of the lanai, but I guessed he was approaching the glass door. Misty stepped through the open doorway leading to the darkened bath- room and my guess was confirmed. The over-armed shadow was entering the room. I shrank down in the bed, trying to make as small a target of myself as» possible.
It might have worked had it not been for the new-fangled floor lamp standing against one of the walls. The lamp had one of those step-on switches which are set into the wire and-rest on the floor. It was a high-intensity lamp designed for reading. Now the stranger inadvertently stepped on the switch.
The lamp flicked on, glaring like a spotlight. The narrow beam caught me right in the eyes, blinding me. All I could see was the blur of the two guns as they were raised and pointed at me.
“You!” The voice behind the guns sounded savage. “Steve Victor!” My name came out sounding like a death sentence. “So you’re the one Misty’s been double-crossing me with! You louse! And you’re supposed to be a friend of mine! You, of all people!”
He advanced a step. Now I could see his face; now I recognized him. “Happy!” I exclaimed. “Happy Daze!”
“That's right, you double-crossing fink! Me. Happy Daze. Your old pal. Your old pal whose girl you stole!”
Behind him, Misty cowered in the doorway to the bathroom. Her face was chalk-white. Tenor was stamped all over her.
“Wait a minute!” The words came tumbling out. “What are you talking about, Happy? I didn’t steal your girl! I didn’t even know Misty was your girl! I haven’t seen her in four years. I haven’t been in Hollywood all that time. Honest! Don’t do anything foolish now. I'm telling the truth.”
“Yeah! Sure!” His clown’s face was contorted with viciousness. “That’s why she's in your room in her nightie, I suppose. Man! You must really think I’m a fool, Steve."
“But it’s true. Tell him, Misty,” I pleaded.
She just looked at me helplessly, her eyes still filled with fear, guilt seemingly stilling her voice.
“She can’t tell me anything!” Happy snarled. “I’ve caught you red-handed and now you’re going to pay!”
“No! Wait!”
It was too late. The snouts of both guns zeroed in on me. His fingers tightened on both triggers. He fired.
“BANG!”
That's what the flag said that popped out of the first gun. “BANG!” It was a vaudeville prop. But I was having trouble reading it. The water that spurted from the second gun had hit me in the eyes and I couldn’t focus too well.
By the time my eyes cleared, Happy and Misty were rolling around the floor hugging each other and whooping it up with laughter. Misty was giggling so hard the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Happy was hugging his round, little burlesque belly and snapping the waistband of his baggy pants with glee.
“I should have guessed!” I said. “Once a runway banana, always a runway banana!”
“Oh, brother! Your face!” Happy gasped. “You should have seen your face!”
“ ‘Don’t do anything foolish now’,” Misty quoted me. “My hero! Oh, Steve! I’ve never seen anyone so scared! It was hilarious!”
“Very funny.” I couldn’t quite muster up the enthusiasm the words should have commanded.
“Va-va-va-voom!” Happy kept whooping it up.
“Ring-a-ding-ding!” Misty’s breasts juggled appealingly as she bounced.
“Great performance," I told them flatly. “You should both get Oscars.’
“Ooh, he sounds petulant,” Misty observed correctly. “It was just a joke, Stevey. Just old friends welcoming you back to Hollywood.” She kissed me soundly on the lips. “Welcome back to Hollywood, Stevey.”
“Yeah. Welcome back, old beanbag." Happy pumped my hand up and down.
“Thanks.” I was mollified. “It’s good to be back.” I pumped Happy’ s hand back.
It was a mistake. He released the pressure and I found myself holding a plastic hand which detached from his sleeve. Knowing Happy, I should have expected it.
Happy Daze was a standup comic from way back. In his fifties now, his route up the show-biz ladder (and part way down again) had been traditional. As a youngster he’d started on the Catskill Mountain borscht circuit and then gone into vaudeville, which was by that time on its last legs. When the legs collapsed, he’d followed along with many another comic and sought refuge in burlesque. There followed a long period as a second banana—on the receiving end of the seltzer squirt, the pie in the face, and the ants in the baggy pants. Finally Happy earned his chance at being top banana and he was a hit.