Chicago Confidential

1

In Chicago the price is up front, at least, if nonnegotiable. In Hollywood, you don’t even know what you’re buying — just that somewhere beneath the tinsel, down under the layers of phoniness, there’s going to be a price tag.

Maybe that was why this girl Vera Palmer was so refreshing. She still had a wholesome, smalltown, peaches-and-cream glow, for one thing; and for another, she wasn’t even a starlet, just a college girl, out at UCLA. The shimmering brunette pageboy, the heart-shaped face, the full dark red-rouged lips, the wide, wide-set hazel eyes, the impossible wasp waist, the startling flaring hips and the amazing full breasts riding her rib cage like twin torpedoes, had nothing to do with it.

“Mr. Heller, I’m afraid of Paul,” she said. Her voice was breathy yet musical — something of Betty Boop, quite a bit of the young Shirley Temple. A hint of Southern accent was stirred in there, too, despite her best efforts.

She was sitting across from my desk in a cubicle of the A-1 Detective Agency in a suite of offices on the fifth floor of the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles, California. It was mid-September 1950 — the air conditioners were shut off, and the breeze through the half-open windows was crisp as an icy Coke. The girls were wearing their skirts long, but the way this one’s shapely legs were crossed under pleated light blue rayon, plenty of calf and even some knee was exposed. Her blouse was the same powder blue with navy trimmings: gaucho collar, edged short sleeves and slot pocket; her elaborately brassiered breasts punched at the light fabric like shells almost breaching a submarine’s hull.

Before this mammarian rhapsody continues, I should point out a few facts. Though I was stuck back among the lowly operatives in this partitioned-off bullpen, I — Nathan Heller — was in fact the president of the A-1 agency. My partner Fred Rubinski — vice president of the A-1 — had the spacious main office next door, here in our L.A. branch. My real office was back in Chicago, in the heart of the Loop (the Monadnock Building), and twice the size of Fred’s. I had taken this humble space, in my back corner near a gurgling water cooler, because I was making a temporary home of Los Angeles.

I had recently divorced Peggy — on grounds of adultery, which considering most of my income came from working divorce cases is the first of numerous cheap ironies you’ll encounter in these pages — but was staying close to her to be near my toddler son. My ex-wife and I had taken to spending Sunday afternoons in Echo Park together, enjoying our kid, thanks to the understanding nature of her movie director fiancé. Some of my friends suspected I was hoping to reconcile with that faithless bitch, and maybe I was.

In addition, I was laying low because Chicago had been crawling of late with investigators looking to enlist witnesses to sing in Senator Estes Kefauver’s choir. The Tennessee senator had, starting back in May, launched a major congressional inquiry into organized crime — with Chicago a prime target — and I was not anxious to participate. While not a mob guy myself, I had done jobs for various Outfit types, and had certain underworld associations, and hence did know where a good share of the bodies were buried. Hell, I’d buried some of them.

So my associates in Chicago were instructed not to forward my calls, and — just to occupy myself — I was taking on occasional jobs for the agency, routine matters I handled only when my interest was piqued. And the bosomy, long-stemmed college girl named Vera Palmer had certainly piqued it.

She was only nineteen years old, whereas I was not a teenager. I could barely remember having been a teenager. I was a well-preserved forty-five years old — ruggedly handsome, I’ve been told, with reddish brown hair going gray at the temples, six feet carrying two hundred pounds, chiefly scar tissue and gristle — with precious few bad habits, although my major weakness was sitting across from me with its legs crossed and its breasts staring right at me.

“We broke up at the start of the summer,” she said breathlessly, leaning forward; she smelled good — not perfume, but soap... I made it as Camay. “Paul went off to ROTC — he’s in the reserves — and he kept writing me letters. I never answered them.”

“This was in Dallas?”

Her hands were folded in her lap; lucky hands. “Yes. We were both at the university there. Freshmen. We’d dated in high school. Paul wanted to get married, but I wasn’t ready. Anyway, a month or so after he went off for training, I headed out here.”

The muffled voices of ops making phone calls — credit checks mostly — and others working typewriters — detailed reports made billing clients easier — provided an office-music backdrop for our conversation.

I asked, “You didn’t tell your ex-boyfriend where you were going?”

“No. I didn’t tell him I was going anywhere. Heck, I wasn’t even answering his silly letters. And I gave my mother strict orders not to tell Paul where I’d gone.”

“But she must’ve spilled the beans, Miss Palmer. Or maybe a friend of yours told Paul where—”

She shook her head and the brown hair bounced. “No. He found out when he was home on leave, and saw my picture in the paper.”

“Why was your picture in the paper?”

Her smile was a lush explosion; her whole face went sunny. “Why, don’t you think I’m pretty enough to have my picture in the paper?”

Her shoulders were back, her chin up, the submarine hull threatened worse than ever.

“I think you’re a lovely young woman... but papers need a reason, or anyway an excuse, to run a picture, even of a pretty girl like you — so why’s a Los Angeles picture of Vera Palmer running in a Dallas paper?”

“I’m in a beauty contest. I’m one of the twenty finalists.”

Seemed Miss Palmer had registered at the Daily News to enter the Miss California contest. Naive, she hadn’t brought along an 8" by 10", and a news photographer, overhearing this, had volunteered to shoot her picture — he even fronted five bucks for her to go buy a bikini.

“He was so nice,” she purred. “So generous.”

“Yeah, sounds like a real philanthropist.”

The News had run a story about the guileless girl who had wandered in to enter the Miss California contest, and how the News had helped her out by buying her a swimsuit and taking a photo... which the paper ran. And the wire service picked up.

She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s so special about a picture of me in a bikini.”

Despite her wide eyes, I was starting to understand that she knew very well what was special about her, in or out of a bikini.

“Paul,” I said, getting her back on track.

“Paul,” she said, with a nod. “Last week Paul caught up with me... He follows me around campus, shows up at the rehearsals for my play, calls my room.”

“Are you in a dorm?”

“Yes, at the MAC.”

“The MAC?”

“That’s short for Masonic Affiliates Club or Clubhouse or something. It’s a student activities center. They have several dorms there. It’s also where we’re rehearsing the play. I’m in a play. I’m a drama major.”

I should’ve known — scratch a college girl out here, find a starlet. Still, she seemed so fresh, so sincere...

“You can ask my two roommates,” she was saying, “ask the girls if Paul hasn’t been a pest.”

“Has he gotten physical?”

She frowned. “I wouldn’t have sex with him again for a million dollars.”

“I mean, has he hit you?”

“He’s grabbed me.” She turned her palms up and I could see small bruises on her inner forearms.

“We can get a court order,” I said.

“What?”

“A restraining order, where he can’t come within a hundred feet of you.”

“No! No, I don’t want to involve the authorities. That’s why I came to you, Mr. Heller.”

“I understand you requested me, specifically?”

“Yes, I read about you in the newspapers.”

I’d had coverage, locally, when I’d been involved on the fringes of the notorious Elizabeth Short murder, the so called Black Dahlia slaying. Other cases of mine over the years had hit the national wire services, too; I was a minor celebrity myself, even if I didn’t look good in a bikini.

“Well,” I said, “you’re lucky to find me. Usually I’m in the Chicago office.”

“Will you take my case?”

“First you better tell me what it is you want me to do. Scare him, hurt him, what?”

She shook her head, eyes tightening in a frown. “I don’t really want him hurt. I was... fond of him, once.”

“Okay. What, then?”

“Just protect me. Talk to Paul... He’s pretty tough, though. He’s a soldier.”

I smiled. “That’s okay. I used to be a Marine.”

“Ooooo, really?” The “ooooo” had been a sort of squeal. “I love men in uniform.”

“Except for Paul.”

Her smile disappeared, and she nodded, like a school kid realizing she’d gotten a little too wild in the classroom. “Except for Paul... What do you charge? I don’t have a lot of money.”

“We’ll work something out,” I said.

And all I meant by that was I’d take into consideration that she was just a college kid, a sweet girl from Texas trying to get an education. Really. Honest. No kidding.

“I’m sure we will,” she said, her expression and tone mingled with lasciviousness in a unique way that somehow scared me a little. I felt like the Wolf discovering Little Red Riding Hood was packing heat.

I agreed to meet her in the assembly hall of the MAC at UCLA around seven; she was rehearsing Death of a Salesman, of all things.

“I’m afraid I play a sort of floozy,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were playing Willie Loman.”

“You know the play?”

“Saw Lee J. Cobb in it in the Chicago run, early this year. Good show — won’t make much of a musical.”

She blinked. “Are they making a musical out of it?”

“That was just a joke.”

Her smile looked like a wax kiss. “You’re quite a kidder, aren’t you, Mr. Heller?”

“I’m hilarious.”

Now she was studying me. “Are you depressed?”

“Depressed? No. Hell no.”

“Did... somebody die in your family?”

Just my marriage.

“No. But you’re a funny kid yourself, Miss Palmer.”

Now her smile shifted, dimpling one cheek. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? From that musical remark. Well, I have a high IQ, I’ll have you know... and I’m going to make something of myself. That’s why I’m enrolled in college... and that’s why you have to make sure Paul doesn’t spoil things.”

“I’ll see what I can do. You have a photo?”

“Now I do! I had scads taken, after that business at the Daily News—”

“No, I mean of Paul.”

“Oh! Yes. Of course.” She dug into her purse and handed me a photo of herself and Paul, dressed up for the prom, apparently; Vera was smiling at the camera — and why not, it loved her — and he was a dark-haired handsome kid with thick dark eyebrows, a weakish chin, and a glazed expression.

“Can I have the photo back when you’re done?”

“Sure,” I said, not getting why she wanted a keepsake of her and this harasser.

She beamed at me, stood, slung her purse strap over a shoulder, and reminded me where I was to meet her; we exchanged goodbyes and I watched her walk away. It was a hell of a thing, her walk, a twitchy affair that seemed to propel her as far to the sides as it did forward.

About two minutes later I was still contemplating that walk when my phone rang. It was my Chicago partner, Lou Sapperstein — bald, sixty, a lean hard op who looked like an accountant, thanks to the tortoise-shell glasses — and his Crosbyish baritone over the long-distance wire was edged with irritation.

“You gotta get your ass back here and do something about your pal,” Sapperstein said.

“My pal? I got lots of pals, Lou. You’re my pal.”

“Screw you. You know who I’m talkin’ about — Drury!”

I sighed. “What’s he up to now?”

“Well, for one thing, he hasn’t followed up on half a dozen assignments I’ve given him. And for another, he’s spending his time playing footsie with Robinson.”

George S. Robinson was Kefauver’s stalking horse, the Senate Crime Investigating Committee’s associate counsel, who’d been working in concert with the Chicago Crime Commission, a citizens’ watchdog group dating back to Prohibition.

“Christ,” I said. “He’s going to get me shot.”

“No, Nate — he’s going to get me shot... you’re on the lam in sunny Southern Cal, remember?”

“Yeah, and Bugsy Siegel didn’t get nailed out here in his goddamn living room, I suppose? Fuck — can’t you handle him, Lou?”

“He’s your friend.”

“He’s your friend, too!”

We all dated back to the Chicago P.D. pickpocket detail, in the early thirties, Sapperstein, Bill Drury, and me. After that, Lou and I and Bill’s partner Tim O’Conner played poker together, for years.

“Bill promised he’d lay off,” I said, “while he was on salary with us.”

“Drury is a lunatic on a crusade. Nice guy, great guy, but he’s supposed to be working for the A-1 and instead he’s out gathering evidence for that hick senator in the coonskin cap.”

Kefauver had worn a coonskin cap as a gimmick in his Tennessee campaign to win a Senate seat despite the best corrupt efforts of Boss Crump’s Dixiecrat machine.

“I’ll call Bill,” I said into the phone. “I’ll talk to him.”

“You need to fire him.”

“He’s my friend, Lou — one of my best friends.”

“Then come back and talk some sense into him.”

“I’m in the middle of a job out here.”

“Right — blonde or brunette?”

From the photo on my desk, Vera’s boyfriend Paul was looking up at me accusingly. “I won’t dignify that with a response.”

“Look, you can’t duck this Kefauver thing. You need to get back here, meet with those sons of bitches, tell them you don’t know anything, that they’re wasting their damn subpoenas, and—”

“And go to jail for contempt, and smear our agency’s good name.”

Lou blew me a long-distance raspberry. “Our agency’s ‘good’ name is built on your unsavory reputation, Nate. don’t kid a kidder.”

“Lou — I’ll talk to Drury.”

“Are you coming back? Should I put a light in the window?”

“I’ll talk to Bill, Lou. Goodbye.”

And I hung up.

I got myself a Dixie cup of water and sat and sipped and thought about Bill Drury and what a schmuck I’d been to hire him onto the A-l. I shook my head. This was one of the rare times when I’d fucked myself over by being too nice a guy...

My friend Bill Drury, former lieutenant on the Chicago P.D. — who’d been unadvisedly taking on the Chicago mobsters since he first came on the job, back when Capone was still in power — had been railroaded off the force (not for the first time) two years ago. He had been fighting for reinstatement in the courts, while writing antimob columns for the Chicago Herald-American and the Miami Daily News. Last year, when the Illinois Supreme Court refused to hear his case, Drury found his services as a crime reporter were no longer in demand, and he came to me, looking for a job as a private investigator. I had given it to him, on the condition he lay off the mob busting.

I knew I had to talk to him, but I didn’t feel ready to head back to Chicago. I enjoyed the Sunday afternoons with my sweet lovely son and my sweet lovely goddamn faithless bitch of an ex-wife. I’d gotten attached to the sunshine and the work was easy, and Kefauver’s people — some of whom were investigating out here, also, but looking for California crooks, not Chicago ones — hadn’t bothered me.

Both Bill Drury and his poor common sense were no longer in my thoughts as I parked on Le Conte Avenue, not far from the front gate of UCLA. I wandered through West wood Village — a collection of attractive boutiques and intimate restaurants in handsome Mediterranean-style buildings — enjoying the cool evening under a clear sky flung with more stars than Hollywood. The night was almost cold, a breeze biting through the slacks of my blue glen plaid tropical worsted, as I approached the building called the MAC.

An example of Southern California architecture at its best, the MAC was a mission-style castle with stone-tile masonry walls, a square tower, and a red clay tile roof. I strolled through a charming stone-and-landscape courtyard, across glazed ornamental tile, into a sprawling building rife with hardwood interiors, wooden beams, and decorative ironwork.

I soon found myself in a lounge, where pretty coeds and lucky college boys were laughing and talking, sipping Cokes, having smokes, a few gathered around a wood burning fireplace with a crackling fire going; some card playing and Ping-Pong was going on, too, and a couple couples were doing the hokey pokey to some music on the radio. I asked a coed for directions, then headed past a library, various conference rooms, a dining room, and the kitchen, into the large assembly hall where, on stage, the rehearsal was under way.

I sat with my hat in my lap, amid a scattering of students involved in the production. Vera did indeed play a floozy, and she did a bang-up job of it; but her part was small, and after about an hour, during which her scene was run through half a dozen times, she’d been dismissed, and joined me in the sparse audience.

“Any sign of Paul?” she asked. She was in the same fetching powder blue outfit she’d worn to my office, plus spike heels that may have been part of her Salesman characterization.

“Nope,” I said.

She craned around to look. “I’m surprised. He’s been haunting rehearsal all week.”

“How long do you have to stay?”

“I’m done, now. Would you walk me to my dorm? The entrance is around back of the building...”

We headed out through the courtyard, where we paused to admire a colorful tiled fountain in the shape of an eight-pointed star; lighting within the fountain painted the dancing spray with a rainbow effect. Her arm was in mine, and she was leaning against me; the smell of Camay soap in the fresh crisp air was bewitching. She was a young, shapely, pretty girl and I was a lonely divorcé in his forties, and I was distracted.

Which is why he was on us before I even knew it.

The guy grabbed Vera by the arm linked with mine, and yanked her away.

“Paul!” she squealed.

Paul was tall, knife-blade thin, wearing his army uniform, which was rumpled and wouldn’t pass inspection. Despite his weak chin, he was handsome enough, or would have been if his eyes hadn’t been so wild, and his nostrils flaring.

“What are you doing with this old fart?” he demanded of her. His fists were clenched. He looked like he might hit her at any moment.

But the real reason I sucker punched him was the “old fart” remark. I caught him in the side of the face with a hard left hand and he collapsed like a card table.

Vera stepped back and covered her mouth; college-kid faces began popping up in the arched windows along the ersatz stone facade of the building edging the courtyard. Smiles and wide eyes and pointing fingers...

“Don’t hurt him,” she said, but it wasn’t clear who she meant.

“Leave her alone,” I told him.

He was a pile of long limbs in khaki down there on the ornamental tile. His eyes were crazed, his lower lip trembling.

“She doesn’t want you bothering her,” I said, patting the air with my palms. “Just keep your distance—”

But something was coming up from deep within him, a scream of agony that took the form of words: “Bothering her!”

And suddenly he was reassembling himself, like a played-backward newsreel of a building demolition, and he was on his feet and hurling himself at me before I could say another word.

I did have time to throw a punch, which caught his jaw and should have sent him down again, but he was fueled by rage, and shook it off and came windmilling at me, fists flailing, one catching my chin and stinging. I backed away, but had forgotten the fountain, and tripped over a star point and tumbled back into the water in a spattering spray. Then I was the one who was flailing, floundering on my back in the shallow water, lucky not to have cracked my skull or broken a damn rib or something.

He was laughing at me, pointing, hysterical, out of control, he had never seen anything so fucking funny, and he was still laughing when I rose like a human wave and leapt out of the fountain at him, dripping wet, hopping mad, doubling him over with a right to the belly, straightening him with a left under the chin, putting him down with a right to the side of his face.

Then he was on one knee, as if proposing. He was not about to get up, not soon, not now. I was dripping water, but he was dripping blood, one side of his mouth a pulpy mess.

Vera stood with a hand to her dark red lips, looking at him with pity, but making no move to go to him.

I just stood there, drenched, waiting to see if a reconciliation was going to take place. Wouldn’t be the first time an old boyfriend got beat up by a girl’s new savior, only to renew her sympathy and interest in the old beau.

Not this time. Vera took my wet arm and said, “We need to get out of here, before the campus police come.”

I nodded, and we left him there, on his hands and knees, his breath heaving, mouth dripping; maybe he was crying.

I was a little out of it, from the scuffle, and I don’t remember exactly how we wound up at my car — a ’50 Packard, a dark green number that belonged to the A-l. But we were sitting in it — me behind the wheel, getting the upholstery wet — and Vera in the rider’s seat, looking at me with concern.

“I don’t want to go back,” she said.

“Back where?” I was still a little groggy.

“To the MAC... to the dorm. Paul’s still back there. He might cause more trouble.”

“You want to bunk on my couch?”

She nodded. “You want me to drive?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Is it far to your place? You need to get out of those wet things.”

“No, it’s close. Hop, skip, and a jump.”

When I pulled in at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Vera’s hazel eyes grew huge. “You live here?”

“Sort of. I have use of a bungalow. We handle their security. Management likes having me around... They have a clientele that needs discreet assistance, sometimes.”

“But those bungalows are expensive!”

“Well, I’m in one of the Howard Hughes bungalows. He rents four of ’em, at all times, but only shows up occasionally. And one is for security, so even when he’s around, I can stay put.”

“Howard Hughes? You know Howard Hughes? What is he like?”

“Nuttier than a fruitcake. But he’d go for you.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yeah...” He would take one look at this doll and start designing a cantilevered bra.

Soon I was walking Vera down a sidewalk bordered by palms and flowering shrubs, and she was commenting on how Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had supposedly started their romance in one of these bungalows. I had no reply — I was busy shivering in my wet worsted on this cool night.

Then I ushered Vera inside and she ooohed and aaahed at the marble fireplace, the French doors leading to the private patio, the French provincial furnishings, and the pale pink decor with the pale green touches. The console television, which was neither pink nor green, amazed her; she stared at it like a savage contemplating a crashed airplane. I told her the sofa — a comfy overstuffed pink-and-green floral number — was all hers.

I wasn’t planning anything. I was sore from the punch I’d caught and the fall I’d taken; maybe I was an old fart at that, because the lovely coed in the other room interested me less than a hot shower.

After which, soothed, and sleepy — though it was only around nine-thirty — I went to the bathroom closet and put on one of two Beverly Hills Hotel white terrycloth bathrobes hanging there, and draped the other over my sleeve, like a waiter serving a meal.

When I returned to the living room, the lights were off and the fireplace was on. Still in that powder blue ensemble, she was sitting in front of the flames, legs tucked under her, the spike heels off, staring at the dancing orange and blue, which reflected on her pretty features.

“Would you like to sleep in this?” I asked, holding out the robe.

She rose, took the robe, and asked, “Do you mind if I take a shower, too?”

“No. Go right ahead.”

I sat in my bathrobe on the sofa with nothing on but the robe. Still not planning anything, listening to the muffled dance of water needles seep through the bathroom door, I wondered if maybe Vera had something in mind.

She did.

Her brunette hair damp, bangs turned into gypsy curls, she returned smelling like Lifebuoy (no Camay in my soap dish, unfortunately) with all the makeup washed away, looking fresh and innocent. Or anyway she looked fresh and innocent until she dropped the terrycloth robe to her feet, a puddle of white she stepped out of, letting the flickering flames dance all over her.

But even in the glow of firelight, her skin was creamy, and her figure was astonishing — tiny waist, wide hips, perfectly shaped, pink-tipped breasts displayed like awards on a wide rib cage.

She slipped her arms around me and said, “Thank you for saving me,” and presented her pretty face for a kiss.

Who was I to argue? The full lips were warm and moist and her tongue flicked at mine; then she was tugging that bathrobe off me, and we fell onto the couch and necked in the nude like we were both teenagers. A few minutes later her damp hair was tickling my thighs as she suckled me, making giggling, gurgling sounds, like she couldn’t have been having a better time with a lollipop; and when she crawled around on top of me, so she could continue her oral indulgence while I returned the favor, nose deep in curls, I realized this Texas teen was not as wholesome as first I had thought. We took a quick time out for me to find a Trojan, and I sat on the couch and she sat on me, and rode me like a kid on a carousel, making delicious little sounds, squeals and coos, my hands on her rounded bottom as I nuzzled first one ripe breast, then another, inducing further girlish glee. She was so fun-lovingly feminine, she was almost a cartoon — but a cartoon in Esquire.

Later she came back from the bathroom wrapped in the robe, saying, “That was a ball!”

Sitting on the couch in my own robe, I managed a nod. I felt like a truck had hit me — a 115-pound, well-stacked one.

“What do you want to do now?” she asked, plopping next to me, cuddling against me.

“Sleep?”

“No! It’s early. What about that place you own part of?”

“I don’t own part of anything.”

“Didn’t I read you own some restaurant on the Strip?”

“Sherry’s? No, the papers got that wrong... It’s my partner, Fred Rubinski’s place. You want to go there?”

She wanted to go there.

Sherry’s was a study in glass and chrome, ornate in a modern manner, and often was jumping, even on a Thursday night like this. Tonight was no exception at the Sunset Strip café, customer chatter colliding with clanking plates and the tinkle of Cole Porter on the piano, though the brightly illuminated restaurant seemed short on famous faces. Of course my gangster acquaintance Mickey Cohen had stopped hanging around here, after he and his entourage got shot up out on the sidewalk, last year.

Though it was open for dinner, Sherry’s was known as an after-hours joint, the likes of which had been suffering due to a postwar decline of nightclubs and theater; Ciro’s and the Mocambo were still doing good business, but many other clubs had shuttered, and big-name nitery talent had migrated to Las Vegas where top dollar awaited. Also, the Big Bands weren’t drawing like they used to — dancehalls had tumbleweed blowing through them, now that the kids were listening to Frankie Laine and Patti Page. Hadn’t been the same in this town since ’48, when Earl Carroll’s closed down after the boss died in a plane crash.

We were shown to seats by a waitress I didn’t make eye contact with (we had history); nonetheless, I was the owner’s partner, and got treated right by way of a cozy booth. Even in a starlet-laden burg like Hollywood, Vera’s striking figure caught many an eye; her simple powder blue college-girl attire was at odds with the after-theater finery around us. But a body like Vera’s in a town like this made up for a lot of sins. So to speak.

We ordered coffee and pastry — I had a Napoleon and Vera a cream puff, which we were in the middle of when Fred Rubinski came over to say hello (and to be introduced to the gorgeous brunette).

“Sit down, Fred,” I said, and Fred slid in next to Vera. “This is a client of ours — Vera Palmer. She has an ex-boyfriend who hasn’t come to terms with the ‘ex’ part. Vera, this is my partner at the A-l, Fred Rubinski.”

“I’ve read about you, Mr. Rubinski,” she said with a grin, then shook hands with him as she licked custard from one corner of her mouth.

This action froze Fred for a moment, but he managed to smile and say something or other. Fred — a compact, balding character who resembled a somewhat better-looking Edward G. Robinson — was as usual nattily attired. He had opened a one-man P.I. agency in the Bradbury Building before the war, gradually garnering an enviable movie industry clientele; my national reputation had been growing at the same time, and in 1946, we had thrown in together, in what was now the L.A. branch of the A-l.

“You must want to be an actress,” Fred said.

Vera said, “That’s what I’m studying at UCLA.”

“She’s a finalist in the Miss California contest,” I said.

Fred was patting Vera’s hand. “Well, when you’re ready to talk to the studios, don’t forget us.”

“Oh, I won’t!” And she giggled and cooed — sounds I’d last heard when she was on my lap.

Then Fred turned his sharp, dark eyes my way; his rumpled face tightened, as much as it could, anyway. “Sapperstein called me today.”

“Yeah. Me too. He thinks I’m needed in Chicago.”

“I agree with him. You gotta get back there and deal with your friend Drury.”

“Not you, too, Fred! I’ll call him...”

Fred waggled a scolding finger. “Nate, this is bad for business. Neither one of us — in either of our towns — can afford to have the kind of enemies Drury is making for us.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Fred shrugged, but his eyes were unrelenting. Then he asked Vera if she minded if he smoked, and she said no, she was finished with her dessert and was going to have a smoke, herself.

So Fred lit up a Havana and Vera had a Chesterfield. I just had my coffee. I was not a smoker — I had only smoked during the war, when I was overseas, on Guadalcanal. The only times I craved a cigarette now were certain kinds of stress reminiscent of combat.

“Listen, Nate,” Fred said, “Frank’s here.”

“Which Frank? I know a lot of Franks.”

“Frankie.”

“Oh,” I said. “That Frank.”

Vera was trying to follow this. “You don’t mean Frank Sinatra?”

I nodded and her eyes glittered.

“He’s been wanting to talk to you for a couple weeks,” Fred told me. “Remember, I said he called?... Why don’t you go back and say hello, get this out of the way. He’s with Ava.”

Vera’s hazel eyes popped. “Ava Gardner?”

I shook my head. “Poor kid’s on the way down.”

Fred shrugged. “He just had a hit record.”

“Yeah, well his tank’s on empty and he’s running on fumes. He’s had his run, Fred.”

“Boy’s got talent.”

“The public’s gonna have his ass, leaving Nancy.”

“Maybe. Say hello to him. Maybe you can see what this job he has for us is all about — he won’t tell me.”

I nodded again, and got out of the booth. Vera looked at me like a greedy child who wanted a pony.

“Come along,” I sighed.

Frank and Ava were at a booth near the kitchen — not really such a good seat, but out of the way. I didn’t know Ava very well — only that, beautiful as she was, she was a hard-nosed broad with a vicious streak.

“Nate!” Frank said, bolting to his feet; he stuck out his hand, which I took.

He looked skinnier than ever, sporting a Clark Gable mustache that was wrong for him. He swam in a tan gabardine sportcoat and a yellow shirt with an open collar; he wasn’t wearing a rug and his thinning hair made him look old for his thirty-five years. Next to him, in a foul mood that rose from her like heat off asphalt, sat Ava; she was smoking a cigarette and her makeup seemed heavy to me, though she was unquestionably lovely, her attire simple but striking: an orange blouse with a mandarin collar.

I said, “Hiya, Frank. Ava.”

The actress looked away.

Frank said, “Have you been ducking me, Melvin?”

He was calling everybody Melvin that year.

“No. Uh, this is Vera Palmer. She’s a client.”

Frank beamed at the girl and extended his hand. “Pleasure, Miss Palmer.”

Ava stamped out her cigarette on the tablecloth and said in her husky alto, “I suppose you’re sleeping with this broad!”

Frank looked at her, aghast. “What? I just met her! Are you crazy?”

“I must be,” Ava said, and scooted out of the booth, grabbing her wrap, and then stormed out through the restaurant, brushing Vera roughly aside.

“Excuse me,” Frank said, and followed her.

Vera looked at me as though she’d been poleaxed.

I shrugged. “That’s pretty much par for the course with those two. Let’s go back to our booth.”

Which we did, and we were on our second cup of coffee (Fred was off schmoozing with other customers) when Frank — looking like a whipped puppy — came back in, spotted us, and joined us, sitting next to me.

“Jesus,” he said. “All I have to do is look at a pretty girl, and bam, Ava and me, we’re off to the races.”

I didn’t say anything. I was irritated with him; we’d known each other a long time, and I knew he was a tomcat, but I didn’t think he’d ever leave Nancy and the kids. And after what I’d been through myself, I wasn’t too keen on cheaters.

“I can’t stay,” Frank said, “but I’ll be in Chicago next week, at the Chez Paree. Are you heading back, by any chance?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Well, either way, we need to talk. Listen, Melvin, I’m in a world of shit. This guy Miller at Columbia has me making novelty records, trying to compete with Frankie the fuck Laine, for Christ’s sake. Then I managed to piss Mayer off and lost my movie contract. I do have a TV series coming up — CBS. That’s a good thing.”

“That’s a very good thing, Frank. TV’s the hot deal, these days.”

“Yeah, and those lousy Senate hearings are all over it! That’s what’s really got me in a vise. The feds... these fucking feds... Excuse me, Miss Palmer.”

Vera was gaping at him like she was a tourist and he was the Grand Canyon. “That’s all right, Mr. Sinatra.”

“Fucking feds,” he continued, “they’re squeezing me like a goddamn pimple.”

“How so?”

“That hick from Tennessee wants me to talk about Charley and Joey and the boys.”

The “boys” he referred to were mobsters, mostly from Chicago — like Charley, Joey, and Rocco Fischetti, Capone cousins who were high in the Outfit.

“I’ve been ducking that bastard Kefauver myself,” I admitted.

Frank was lighting up a cigarette. “Yeah, but at least you don’t have that cheese-eating Red-baiter on your butt.”

“What, McCarthy?”

He smirked. “Yeah, I’m not just a gangster, you know — I’m a Red!”

“McCarthy thinks all Democrats are communists.”

Sinatra’s fabled blue eyes locked onto me. “You know him, don’t you?”

“Some. I did a job for Drew Pearson involving McCarthy, and got to know the guy.”

Pearson was a nationally known muckraking syndicated columnist I’d handled occasional investigations for over the years: Senator McCarthy had been a source of his I’d checked.

Sinatra’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “So you’re friendly with McCarthy?”

“Friendly enough to drink with.”

“Great! Perfect, Melvin.” And the skinny singer stood, patting me on the arm, flashing me his charismatic if shopworn smile. “We’ll talk soon... I gotta try to catch up with that crazy broad.”

And he was gone.

“He seemed nice,” Vera said.

“He can be. You ready?”

“It’s too late for me to go back to the dorm. Can I stay at your place?”

We went out the glass doors and walked arm in arm under the Sherry’s canopy, with Vera leaning against my shoulder.

“You know a lot of famous people, don’t you?” she asked. Her spike heels clicked on the sidewalk.

“That’s part of my business, Vera. You want to be famous?”

“Oh, yes. My parents brought me to Hollywood on vacation, when I was a little girl — about ten. I stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and I just knew this town would belong to me someday.”

We walked around and up the incline into the parking lot.

“And here I thought you were just a college girl,” I said.

“I’m a college girl studying to be a movie star.”

“Careful what you wish for, Vera...”

We were approaching the Packard when he stepped out from between two cars: Paul, his army uniform looking stained and rumpled. His fists were clenched, but he did not charge at us or anything — just stood with his weak chin high. The wild look was out of his eyes: despair had taken its place.

“Keep your distance, mister,” he said to me.

Poor bastard had been following us all night — first saw me take his girl to the hotel, then to Sherry’s...

I said, “Paul, that’s good advice — keep your distance, or I’m turning you over to the cops for harassing this girl.”

His voice quavered, but there was strength in it, even some bruised dignity. “I just want to talk to my wife.”

I glanced sharply at Vera. “Wife?”

She swallowed and avoided my eyes, though still hugging my arm.

To the solider, who was maybe ten feet away, I said, “You’re her husband, Paul?”

Traffic sounds from the Strip provided dissonant background music for this second sad confrontation.

“That’s right,” he said. “And Jaynie’s afraid I’ll tell the Miss California people she’s married, and a mom, and they’ll toss her out on her sweet behind.”

I winced at Vera. “Jaynie?”

Paul answered for her: “Her name is Vera Jayne, mister. And Palmer’s just her maiden name. Our little baby girl, just a few months old, is home with Jayne’s mother.”

Mildly pissed and vaguely ashamed of myself, I turned to the coed. “This boy is your husband? And you have a baby back in Texas?”

She still wasn’t looking at me; but she nodded.

“Go talk to him,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “I’ll wait — I’ll still drive you back to your dorm, if you want. But first talk to him.”

I leaned against the Packard while they talked. I didn’t eavesdrop, and anyway they kept their voices down. Finally they hugged. Kissed, tentatively.

Vera came over and said, “Paul’s been called up to active duty — he’s going to Korea. He wants me to be with our little girl, back home in Dallas, and be with him as much as possible... When his hitch is up, he says he’ll bring me back out here, and let me take my shot at stardom. That’s two years. You think I’ll still be pretty enough, in two years, to try again?”

“Sure, Vera.”

Her eyes shimmered with desperation. “Can I call you, then? For a reference to the studios?”

“Sure — me or Fred, either one of us will help you, Vera.”

“Really, it’s Jayne. And my married name’s Mansfield.”

She kissed my cheek and trotted over to rejoin her soldier-boy husband. That motion in her caboose — side-to-side as she moved forward — was worth watching.

They were still standing there talking when I pulled the Packard out of Sherry’s parking lot, heading for the Beverly Hills Hotel.

But let’s face it: I was on my way to Chicago. Far as Hollywood was concerned, my roll in the hay with Vera Jayne Mansfield had been the last straw.