Spyfall Page 6

  The older man patted the kid’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. And it’s essential to the plot of the picture.”

  Corcorin shrugged and moved off, saying quietly, “At least it’s not rabbits again.”

  I watched the young actor walk away and asked Walt, “Rabbits?”

  “We had him run around with rabbits in Spin and Marty,” Walt answered, lighting another cigarette. “Turns out they give him a rash. Listen, Stan. I have an important call to make inside. Do you want to come along or wait here?” He gestured at a rough-honed bench under one of the oak trees, but my attention was drawn to another man who was walking slowly toward us.

  “You go ahead,” I said. “I think I see someone I know.” Like Fleming, this guy could have passed as Walt’s brother, except he wore a higher forehead and a ragged goatee.

  Walt followed the direction of my gaze. “Oh, yes. Talk to John and I’ll be right back.”

  As Walt left, I realized the guy approaching was the same person who’d given me directions at the Esso station. He continued in my direction, extending his hand palm up, which meant he wanted to help me. If it had been palm down, it would have meant he wanted me to help him. And if it had been sideways, we would have just shaken hands. One of those little things you learn while observing people.

  I let him help me sit on the bench, before he settled beside me. He spoke in a soft, resonant voice, and I learned he’d been born and raised in Salinas Valley. He was back home again after decades on the east coast to attend the funeral of an old friend. I looked off as he continued his rambling tale of youth and travels. A couple of red squirrels chased each other around and up the trunk of a broad shade tree.

  I saw Walt start back in our direction, and so did the guy next to me. He got to his feet, ran a hand over his thinning hair, and went off without another word.

  “Tell me,” Walt said, arriving at the bench, “I hear you plan to marry that girl, Suzi. Are you sure that’s the right thing to do?”

  I only half heard him. The guy got into the Woodie and put the engine into gear.

  “Okay. I’ll bite,” I said. “Who the heck was that?”

  Walt and I watched the car drive off. “Oh, John? He’s the quietest loudmouth I know. Told me he planned to write a series of stories, perhaps a novel, of his travels across the country.”

  “John, who?”

  “You didn’t recognize Steinbeck? I’ve known him a couple of years now. Staunch American.”

  “So, does that mean that he too is an FBI special agent?”

  Walt grimaced. “Not everyone I know is in the employ of the federal government.”

  “Sometimes it seems that way to me. What about Guy Williams?”

  Walt increased his grimace. “Please--he’s an alien.”

  “Just asking.” Something else he’d said suddenly clicked. “Wait. What do you mean, is marrying Suzi the right thing to do?”

  His eyes seemed flinty gray. “I’ve always thought of you as a sort of lone wolf, Stan. On call, day or night. Your lifestyle isn’t conductive to long-term relationships--if you don’t mind my saying so.” He patted a shirt pocket for his Chesterfields.

  I reached over and pulled the pack out for him. “Yes,” I said, crushing it in my hand and letting it drop. “I do mind if you say so.”

  But during the drive back to LA, the Noir Man kept wondering if Walt knew something about Suzi that I didn’t.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was evening when I pulled into the parking lot outside the Blue Phrog. The sun was a golden beach-ball floating on the iron-colored surface of the ocean. The last gulls were wheeling around the bar-and-grill’s trash bin and other discordant music came from inside the tilted tug here on the shore of Santa Monica.

  As I got out of the T-bird, a voice said, “Jeez, Squirrel, that your car? It’s two blocks long, not countin’ the curb-feelers.”

  I rotated slightly to show that I hadn’t been startled and caught the familiar, loopy grin of Alexia Iglesia. The tough old gal was just climbing off the seat of a cherry-red Indian cycle.

  Her hair was short and gray, her eyes encircled by black plastic goggles.

  “Howdy, Lex,” I greeted her, nodding at the cycle. “Where’d you get the big noise maker?”

  She had on a tight pair of Levi’s and a jacket with too many zippers. She ambled her weighty frame over in a bow-legged stride that I suspected was exaggerated for effect. Next, she would be spitting tobacco juice at me. Most women her age and recovering from throat cancer would be as soft as a one-minute egg. Lex was the closest thing I knew to hard-boiled. She glared at the trunk of my car. “Are those bullet holes?”

  “Tell you all about it--” I said, draping an arm over her low shoulders. “--inside.”

  We threaded our way past several other cars parked wapper-jawed in the weedy lot.

  “Where’d you get the motor-cycle?” I asked, as we started up the wooden ramp to the slanted bar and grill.

  “Sonny gave it to me,” she said in her gruffest voice.

  I held open the door and saw Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne, come out and go past, nodding thanks. A wave of music washed over us as we entered. “He gave it to you? Who’d you have to kill?”

  “Tell ya all about it--” She smiled. “--inside.”

  I’d known that smile since our days in the early ’50s working together for old Mr. P. It was a smile that would have made Mona Lisa laugh.

  “I’d have been here sooner,” I said, “but I ran into heavy traffic outside the premier of that FBI Story movie over on Melrose.”

  “That’s what ya get for livin’ in movieland,” she said in her gruffest voice.

  Inside, behind the bar, Sonny Goh stood talking with a clutch of customers and freshening their drinks. He was heavily corded more than heavily muscled, with broad plates of pecs visible within his open shirt. A couple of guys in burr haircuts and dark suits and ties were playing darts in the corner. A ceiling fan churned a light breeze of cigarette smoke.

  I watched the two guys at the dart board, carefully, and asked Sonny, “How long they been here?”

  His puffy eyes narrowed and his petulant mouth said, “Ever since Bennett started his set.”

  “FBI?”

  He shrugged a set of shoulders you could have stacked books on. “IBM. Those finks love lounge acts.”

  He was probably right, but the Noir Man didn’t like it. Sonny Goh had operated the Blue Phrog for over two years, and I’d been coming since it opened. He claimed restaurant and laundry work were still the only two jobs a Japanese could get in America. The Phrog was a forty-year-old tugboat that ran around during a storm back in ’56. It rested just above the shoreline, half-tipped, with a solid foundation and fixtures canted at an angle to compensate for the boat’s listing to starboard. Tables, chairs, stools, and the long zinc bar that runs fore and aft, all slanted in a way that kept the beer mugs and shot glasses from rolling into your lap. I was sure that a zoning commissioner and a liquor license agent had gotten rich payments from the place.

  The hefty barkeep slung a soggy towel over his shoulder and pointed to two empty seats at the far end, near the juke. “Hi, lady.” He smiled, looking at Lex, who quickly glanced away.

  But I caught it. “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You two seeing each other?”

  Sonny grunted.

  “What of it?” Lex asked.

  In a way, it made perfect sense. Same age. Same disposition. “Since when?”

  “Since none of your beeswax.” Sonny crossed his arms and became all chest, forearms, and biceps.

  I quickly became interested in the dollar bills that decorated the wall behind him. There was row after row of them, each taped to the wall and signed in black grease pencil by the patrons who’d donated them. One read Sandy & Doug 25th Anniv. Another, Dirty Red Ranch, Texas, next to I like Ike, Jesus Ate Here, and Go Bucks!!, whatever that meant. There was even a Confederate hundred that read Georgia Peaches Golf Tour.


  I’d been coming to the Phrog ever since it opened, originally because it was near my boat, but eventually because the sandwiches and live entertainment were generous and inexpensive. Sonny had an in-law in the music industry and a lot of talented singers performed here on the QT when they were in town, as a sort of warm up for their recording sessions. The cramped stage at the stern of the tug had hosted Peggy Lee, Buddy Holly, and, one fabled night, Francis Albert Sinatra. This evening, the crowd got to hear Tony Bennett’s mellow tones, live.

  I smelled Suzi’s spicy French perfume before I saw her. “I can’t stand him,” she said, coming over to join Lex and me.

  “I think he’s gorgeous,” Lex said.

  I gave Suzi’s hips a squeeze and whispered in her ear, “Got something important to tell you.”

  She nudged Lex. “You think anything in trousers is gorgeous. Bennett always sounds off key to me. And look at that nose. You could hang a gallon bucket of paint on it.”

  We all peered through the accumulating cloud of tobacco smoke, trying to imagine such a scene.

  “Ya know,” Lex said, “I had a friend who saved three thousand Raleigh coupons.”

  I had to ask, “What’d he get for them?”

  “Three cartons of Chesterfields,” Lex answered with a straight face. “And a cough ya could use as a duck call.”

  I stifled a laugh, and a cough. “Someday they’ll outlaw cigarettes.”

  “Then butt-leggers will smuggle them across the border,” Suzi said, accepting my seat at the bar as Bennett’s song ended and he took five to moderate applause. “What’s the important news?”

  I was feeling good, so I shouted, “Drinks on the boat!”

  Both women gave me the fish eye. Everyone else cheered thanks.

  “Just because I don’t imbibe any longer,” I explained, “doesn’t mean I couldn’t buy someone a beer or whisky.”

  “Someone?” Suzi asked as the crowd roared around us. “How about everyone? And who’s going to pay?”

  “You’re in my church now.” I smiled. “I’m passing the offering plate to you.”

  Lex gurgled a” “Shit fire!” while Sonny called out to me, “What are you drinking, Stan?”

  “Something young and fair and debonair.”

  “Gotcha,” he answered and slid an iced Pepsi down the bar.

  From the edge of my eye, I caught sight of Norman coming out of the Buoys room. On a whim, I asked the two women, “What’s your favorite movie?”

  “Roman Holiday,” Suzi quickly replied, which caused my eyebrows to climb.

  “Kate Hepburn?” Lex asked. “Now there’s something in trousers for ya.”

  Suzi corrected, “It was Audrey Hepburn.” She sipped smugly from a glass of white wine. “Not Kate.”

  Lex ignored her. “My favorite’s Mr. Roberts with Fonda, Powell, and that new guy, Jack Lemmon.”

  My eyebrows almost crawled off my head.

  “Yeah, I know,” Suzi said a little cattily. “They’re all gorgeous. How do you feel about the Marx Brothers?”

  Norman finally arrived through the crowd at an angle. “Hi, all.” A ballpoint pen had leaked into his shirt pocket. “Did someone offer free drinks?”

  The five of us partied together for another hour or so. Sonny served me a hot dog as tough as a stale tootsie-roll. Bennett sang two more sets. The guy just wouldn’t quit. I finally got a chance to tell Suzi about our trip to Jamaica. Unfortunately, I failed to anticipate her reaction.

  She looked stonily into my eyes and said, “In the morning? Are you out of your mind?”

  I slipped the flats of my hands into my back pockets. “Why not? We won’t be gone that long.”

  She cast around for intelligent sympathy. “I can’t just drop everything and go off to the Caribbean.”

  “I can,” Norman said.

  “Surely, your dog-napping case can wait a few days,” I reasoned. “It’ll be good to get away.”

  “I--I don’t have an up-to-date passport,” she said, looking down.

  “I do,” Norman said.

  I decided to screen-test her hesitance. “Tell me. What’s the real reason?”

  Something in his face slipped for an instant and then she said, “No particular reason. I just don’t want to go.”

  “I do,” Norman said.

  “Yes,” Suzi said. “You should take Norman. He needs the experience.”

  The music was starting up again and the crowd noise rose from the tilted tables. I studied Suzi, who smiled up at me and clinked her wine glass against my pop bottle. “Deal?” she asked.

  I saw Norman nodding. Lex and Sonny waited for my reaction. What had I done now? “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath and then a swig of Pepsi. “If that’s what you want.” The Noir Man remembered Walt’s words about Suzi.

  “I need to get home and pack,” Norm said.

  “I’ll take you,” Suzi offered, setting her glass down on the bar.

  Something was definitely off here, but this was not the time and place to get it on.

  “You probably need to pack, too,” Suzi said, giving the corner of my mouth a peck and my shoulder a small pat. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  They left together in her Renault under the high moon. I went back to the Cervantes II alone, trying not to ponder why I was being avoided.

  But I kept boomeranging back to the thought I’d had days earlier. Sometimes people tell you the damnedest things, hoping you’ll believe them.

  PART II

  GOLDENEYE

  CHAPTER 9

  Betty Boop walked into my dream, carrying a little white puppy. The black-and-white baggy clown did a backward summersault and landed next to a cricket wearing a top hat and reading glasses. The cricket pointed at me with a lit cigarette. Suzi dashed in behind Betty. The two of them looked directly at me and started playing a rapid game of patty cake. Then the clown stepped forward, gave me the finger, and I woke up.

  I hadn’t had dreams like that for several months. Usually, I could sort of control them, but this time all the characters seemed determined and hostile. Maybe I should have analyzed it more, but I put it behind me and got up from my berth to pack for the trip.

  I stuffed extra clothes and toiletries into a scuffed, brown suitcase I’d used for years since I was a kid. Under the circumstances, I thought hard about packing my .38 as well. The Noir Man was for it, but I finally decided against it, since I’d be traveling through customs. With the current favorable rate of exchange for the US dollar, I could probably buy another handgun cheap in a foreign country.

  A foreign country. That sounded...well, almost as strange as my dream. I’d never gone beyond the borders before, unless you counted a few brief trips to northern Mexico. But it seemed like everybody had done it by the time they were old enough to drink anything stronger than 3.2 beer. Going to Jamaica was kind of exciting--but no big deal, right? How foreign could it be? Wouldn’t it just be like Tijuana, only floating free in the blue Caribbean? Guess I’d find out soon enough.

  Before hitting the airport, I had a couple of stops to make. I picked up a sleepy-eyed Norman, who totted a fat gym bag by its worn straps and a multi-pocketed work vest. His hair was every-which-way, still, with sleep, but he too started to show the unsuppressed anticipation of world travel. He’d made coffee and handed me a paper cup full of the worst brew I’d ever swallowed. Fortunately, our next stop was at the Brown Derby, so I got something that tasted like real java while I left word that I’d be unavailable for the next week or so.

  Cindy was already in her office, cranking an adding machine. She gave me a “Hi, Stan” and a few accumulated phone messages, which included nothing that couldn’t wait. I’d call Darren McGavin’s assistant when I got back and find out what the excitable actor wanted this time.

  “Oh, and Mr. Cobb still needs to see you post haste,” Cindy said, shaking out a couple of Chiclets and popping then into her lovely mouth. “He’s fit to be tied.”

  I tried
to imagine that and told her I couldn’t wait, since my plane was scheduled to take off in an hour.

  “All right.” She chewed. “But he’s threatening to toss your office stuff into the street, if you don’t shape up. His words, honest.”

  “I’ll have to chance it,” I said, transferring a wad of folding money from my cashbox to my coat pocket. “Can you cover for me?”

  “I’ll try, Stan, but--”

  “You’re a doll, doll.” I bent to plant a kiss on her forehead and that’s when I heard Cobb holler my name. “Gotta go.”

  I left my classy chariot locked in the parking lot and Norm and I caught a cab to the LA International Airport. Inside the busy and oddly echoing building, we showed our passports and picked up tickets for Flight 75 to Miami, with connections to Kingston, Jamaica. I checked my bag, but Norm kept his as carryon luggage.

  At a newsstand, I bought a morning paper and a copy of Time Magazine. Norm bought a Payday candy bar and the latest issue of Galaxy Digest. He asked if they gave Green Stamps, but I was pretty sure he was kidding.

  We finally met up with Fleming out on the tarmac, waiting with the other passengers as the gleaming Boeing 707 taxied to the boarding ramp. Our plane was a four-engine jet job, as long as two railroad cars and twice as high. After I quickly introduced Norm to Fleming, we climbed the metal stairs and were greeted by a dark-eyed, brunette stewardess in heels and a snug blue uniform and cap.

  There was some slight confusion with our seats when it appeared that I was sitting next to Ward Bond, instead of Fleming. After we got it sorted out, I finally buckled in across the aisle from Norman.

  “Pretty ironic, isn’t it?” Norm asked the writer, who sat to my left. “We’re flying with Ward Bond and you write about James Bond.”

  “Yes, ironic,” Fleming sniffed. I could see that his heart wasn’t in it.

  Undaunted, Norm went on. “I just finished reading Moonraker, Mr. Fleming. Can I have your autograph?” He plucked the vomit bag from the back of the seat in front of him and handed it across, smiling.