‘Well, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘How about fifty bucks? It depends on what you can tell me.’
‘I could tell you a lot for fifty bucks. I don’t want to appear inquisitive, but is she in trouble?’
‘Not exactly in trouble,’ I said, thinking of the way she had looked the last time I saw her. ‘Anyway, not now. She has been in trouble. My client wants an accurate picture of her background if I can get it without causing too much commotion.’
He pushed back his chair, crossed one fat leg over the other and hooked a thick thumb in the buttonhole of his vest.
‘And the fifty bucks?’
I took out my wallet and laid five tens on the desk. He reached out a fat hand, scooped them up and stowed them away in his trousers pocket.
‘I’m always telling Julius you never know what’s coming into this office,’ he said, and chuckled again. ‘Always see everyone, I tell him. You never know what you’ve missed if you turn people away. Time and again I’ve proved myself right.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, flicking ash on the floor. ‘When was Anita Gay with you?’
‘She was with us for two years. I can give you the exact date if it interests you.’ He raked around in a drawer full of papers and odd junk, and finally produced a leather-bound memo book. He flicked through the pages until he came to the entry he was looking for and laid the book on the desk. ‘That’s another thing I’m always telling Julius. Always make a note of everything that happens in the office. Make it so you can find it again quickly. You never know when you may need it. Now here,’ his hand slapped the open page of the book. ‘It’s all here. She came to the office on 3rd June, two years ago. She said her name was Anita Broda. She wanted a job. She had been a stripper, working the nightclubs in Hollywood, but she’d got herself in bad with the Vice Squad, and her agent had turned sour on her. Roy Fletcher had advised her to come to see me. Fletcher handles legitimate stars. He hadn’t anything for her, and didn’t want her anyway. So he sent her to me.’ He looked at me and grinned. ‘You’ve seen her, Mr. Malloy’
I said, yes, I had seen her.
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘She stood over there,’ he pointed to the window, ‘and did her act. Even Julius was impressed, and he’s a very hard man to impress: the hardest man in this racket. After the first week she moved from the middle to the top of the bill. After the second week we had her name in lights across the front of the house.’
‘Why isn’t she here now?’
His face darkened.
‘She got married. It’s always the same, Mr. Malloy. Get a good girl who draws in the money, and she gets married. Marriage is the biggest menace there is to this racket.’
I was beginning to wonder if I hadn’t squandered my fifty bucks a little recklessly.
‘You haven’t seen her since her marriage?’
He shook his head.
‘I heard she and Thayler didn’t get on, and she left him. Anyway, she got a job with Simeon, the swank dress designer on 19th Avenue. I sent Julius down to see her, to try to persuade her to come back, but she wouldn’t. I guess being a mannequin sort of raised her social status. She was a girl to get on. Anyway, nothing I could offer her interested her. She left Simeon’s about a couple of months ago. I don’t know where she is now.’
I let him run on, but I was stiff with attention.
‘She and Thayler,’ I said. ‘Who’s Thayler?’
‘Her husband.’
‘You wouldn’t know when she married him?’
“Sure,’ he said complacently, and patted the book again. ‘I’m not likely to forget. Marrying him lost me a lot of money. They were married on 8th November last year.’
‘What happened to him? Did he die?’
‘Die?’ Nedick blinked. ‘No, he didn’t die. He’s right here in town. He and a guy named Louis run a photographer’s shop on Army Street.’
My head began to ache suddenly. Maybe I was thinking too hard. I pressed my fingertips to my temples and scowled at him.
‘Let’s talk about Thayler,’ I said. ‘Tell me about him. Tell me all about him.’
Nedick opened a cupboard in his desk and hoisted up a black bottle without a label and two glasses.
‘Would a drink be any good to you?’ he asked. ‘You look sort of pinched.’
“That’s the right word,’ I said. ‘Set them up and tell me about Thayler.’
He poured two shots of whisky into the glasses. We nodded to each other and drank.
While I was getting out the aspirin bottle, he said, ‘Lee Thayler was here when Anita came. He did a Buffalo Bill act. It wasn’t bad, and he kept changing his routine so we kept him on. The trouble with most of the hams we get here is they can’t vary their routine. After a week they’re through. But Thayler was different. He was smart, and kept working out new tricks.’
I swallowed a couple of aspirins and chased them down with whisky.
‘What kind of tricks?’ I asked.
‘Anything with a rifle. You know the kind of thing: shooting at pennies tossed in the air; firing at targets by sighting in a mirror; trick stuff. He had a very good trick with a Colt .45. He would throw the gun in the air, catch it and fire at the same time. He had a girl to help him in this trick. He shot cigarettes out of her mouth. It was a dangerous act, but he had plenty of confidence.’
‘And he married Anita?’
‘He did.’ Nedick scowled. ‘Both of them quit when they married. Thayler bought himself a piece in this photographer’s shop. He reckoned he was ready to settle down to a steady job when he married. It was hard to believe because Thayler wasn’t the type to settle down. But as far as I know he did settle down. Anyway, he seems to be doing all right. He knew a lot of people in the show business, and they all went to him to be photographed. Louis does the actual work. Thayler’s job is to drum up new business.’
‘And Anita left him?’
‘So I heard. I don’t know the details. Perhaps she got sick of sitting around doing nothing. Thayler was a mean sort of guy. I guess when the first bloom wore off they started fighting. He’d fight with anyone.’
‘Were they divorced?’
‘I never heard they were.’
He poured two more whiskies. We touched glasses before we drank. The whisky was good. It was only when it was down you realized what a kick it had.
‘Would you have a photograph of this guy?’
‘Sure.’ He pointed to one of the filing cabinets. ‘You’re younger than me. Open the top drawer of that file. Yeah, that one. There should be a folder of photographs... you got it? Bring it over here.’
I laid the folder on the desk and be began to paw over a collection of glossy prints. Finally he found one he was looking for and handed it to me.
‘That’s him.’
I looked at the tall lean cowboy who stood against a painted backcloth of cactus and open prairie land. He had on sheepskin chaps, a ten-gallon hat and a check shirt. His face was long and narrow, his lips were thin, and his eyes steady and dangerous. He looked as if he seldom smiled, and when he did the smile wouldn’t reach his eyes. It was the face of a man who would take risks; a gambler’s face; a man who would hold life cheap.
I said, ‘Can I keep this?’
Nedick nodded.
‘If you want it. I have a photograph of Anita somewhere. That fur glove routine of hers was a natural. It had the boys sitting on the edge of their chairs.’ His big hands pawed over more photographs and he found one similar to the one I had taken from George Barclay’s drawer. ‘That’s her. If you ever run into her tell her I’d like to do business with her again. I can’t let you have it; it’s the only one I have left.’ He fished out another photograph, tossed it over. ‘That’s Thayler doing his cigarette trick act. I didn’t like it. I was scared there’d be an accident. It was too dangerous. But the girl didn’t mind. She had nerves like steel.’