I threw myself on the floor and slid under the bed just as the front door opened.
“Not locked,” said voice number one.
Voice number two-a.k.a. FBI special agent Mike Sickles-just grunted.
The two men stepped inside.
I began sweating worse than Henry Ford at a union rally. Sickles and I have a little arrangement: If he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t shoot me.
I was anxious to keep my end of the bargain. But if Sickles or his flunky looked under the bed, this comrade would be headed to the big workers’ paradise in the sky.
“Pretty lousy dive, ain’t it?” said the first FBI agent.
“I dunno,” Sickles replied absently. I could see his big feet moving slowly toward the sink, then to Smith’s desk. He needed new shoes. “Makes my place look like the Ritz.”
The other agent moved over to the desk next to Sickles. “Say, what’s that?”
They stood side by side for a moment, silent.
“Nothing,” Sickles finally pronounced. His feet moved in my direction, then suddenly swiveled.
I braced myself. His weight came down on the flimsy bed frame like the Battleship Potemkin. The mattress sagged under him, pinning me to the floor. A bed spring poked my back. Somehow I stayed quiet.
“You think he skipped town? Maybe the country?” Sickles’ partner asked.
“Could be,” Sickles mumbled. “Dirty Reds. Turn on the lights and they scatter like roaches.”
“So what’s our next move?”
“Well, there’s that producer he was working for-Dominic Van Dine. We should lean on him a little, see if he knows anything.” Sickles leaned back and sighed. The spring gouged my back like a shiv. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”
Suddenly the crushing weight on my back was gone. I could breathe again. Sickles’ scuffed shoes shuffled away from the bed toward the door.
“Because I’ve got an itch to play the ponies today, knucklehead,” Sickles said. “And Dominic Van Dine’s not going anywhere.”
The other agent followed Sickles out the door like the loyal lapdog he was. I waited a minute, just in case Sickles was toying with me. There’s not much to do when you’re stretched out underneath a bed, so naturally my eyes started to wander. Having a rat’s-eye-view of the place gave me a whole new perspective.
I caught sight of a bright yellow ball on the floor under Smith’s desk. I slid out from my hiding place and groped under the desk for it.
It was another piece of paper, balled up tight. I flattened it out.
It was notebook paper from an oversized steno pad. Covering it top to bottom, back and front, was a list of scribbled words. It started with “t” words: tacky, tantalizing, tardy, tedious, tempting, tender, terrible, tiresome, etc. Then the list switched to “m” words, then “i” words, “d” words, “n” words and finally a few “g” words.
I folded the list and stuck it in my pocket. There would be plenty of time to puzzle over it later. Right now, I had to get moving.
So Sickles was going to visit Smith’s producer tomorrow. Good. That meant I could drop in for a chat today. But first I wanted to pay a call on an old acquaintance of mine-a safecracker known as Barney the Bat. He had good fingers and tight lips and bad habits. He owed me a favor.
I left Smith’s bungalow and started looking for a ride.
ABOUT FOUR HOURS later, I was standing in front of Dominic Van Dine’s house in West Hollywood. I’m using the term “house” a little loosely here. It was actually something halfway between a house and a mansion. It was big alright, but it had the wide, flat roof and squat, squashed look of those ultra-modern boxes they’ve been throwing up all over Southern California since the war. I figured at least three families could live in there comfortably. And after the Revolution, they would.
I rang the doorbell. It played the first five notes of “We’re in the Money.” That would have to change, too. Maybe it could be set up to play the Internationale.
The door opened just enough for a head to poke out. It was a good head, if you go in for long, golden locks of purest sunshine and big, blue eyes like two bottomless lagoons and soft, sensuous lips just waiting to be kissed and kissed hard. Me, I don’t cotton to blonde bombshells. The only bombshells that strike my fancy are the ones that will free the proletariat from the shackles of wage slavery.
Her baby blues devoured me. “Yes?” she said, caressing the word, making it sound more like an invitation than a question.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Van Dine,” I replied flatly.
“He’s not home today. But I’ll tell him you dropped by, Mr…?”
“Menace,” I said. “Fred Menace, P.I. I have a feeling Mr. Van Dine is home today. And I have a feeling he will speak with me once you scoot your pampered caboose inside and tell him a private dick’s nosing around asking questions about John Smith and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.”
She didn’t bat an eyelash-which was a good thing, since her eyelashes were so long and heavy batting one around would probably hurt somebody. “Wait here, Mr. Menace,” she said.
Her head disappeared. The door closed. I waited.
A minute later, the door opened again. “Come inside,” Blonde and Beautiful said, holding the door just wide enough for me to slip into the house. I had to brush against her lightly as I stepped inside. B and B smiled. “Follow me.” She turned and walked across the foyer toward what looked like a study.
I followed. I had an unobstructed view of B and B as she moved. I could have charged admission for a view like that. She had curves, lots of them, just the way a pencil doesn’t.
But such decadent sensuality couldn’t hold my eye. I was more interested in the dimestore opulence of Van Dine’s home. Glass chandelier and scuffed tile in the foyer, a faded Diego Rivera print on the wall, imitation mahogany desk and shelves in the study, row after row of dust-covered books that had never been read and never would. Van Dine was making a stab at class that wouldn’t fool a poodle. Everything was fake. I took another look at Miss B and B, wondering how much of her was real.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” she purred. “Mr. Van Dine will be with you shortly.”
She left the study, closing the door behind her. It’s every working man’s right to do a little freelance redistribution of wealth, so I took her advice, pouring myself a cognac and lighting up a cigar I found in a box on the desk. I was just leaning back in one of the room’s ridiculously overstuffed chairs when the door opened and a middle-aged man greeted me with the kind of welcoming smile hungry spiders flash at fat flies.
“Ahhhh, I’m glad to see you’re making yourself at home,” he said. He closed the door behind him and walked over and offered his hand. “I’m Dominic Van Dine.”
I shook his hand without bothering to rise. “Fred Menace.”
“Yes, yes. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Menace,” he said as he slipped behind his desk and took a seat. The chair he sat in was about four inches taller than any of the other chairs in the room, making him seem a bit like a kid in a high chair. Except this kid was fifty-something years old, had a Vandyke, and was wearing a red silk smoking jacket. He looked like Leon Trotsky pretending to be a debauched playboy. “People call you ‘the Red detective,’ correct?”
“Some do.”
“You know, I’ve always thought there was a movie in that. The Red Detective. It would make a good title, don’t you think? Communist sympathizer, private eye. Explosive. Ripped from today’s headlines. It would be perfect for Brian Dunleavy.”
He was a producer all right. Nobody in Hollywood would put a plug nickel in a picture like that. But he thought he could snow me with visions of movie stars and royalty checks. I blew a big cloud of cigar smoke up over my head. “Sounds boffo, Mr. Van Dine,” I said. “But I’m only interested if you get Paul Robeson to play me. And I want a Russian director. Is Sergei Eisenstein still alive?”