Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

My Kind of Beautiful by Robert S. Levinson

Copyright © 2006 Robert S. Levinson

Winner of third place in our 2005 Readers Award competition, Robert S. Levinson is also a rising star on the mystery book scene. His last published thriller, Ask a Dead Man (Five Star) received a starred review from PW. It will be followed up by this month’s release of Where the Lies Begin. The California author tells us that he is currently at work on a book set in the underbelly of the music industry.

On days I was starving, I took the edge off feeling sorry for myself by crashing a funeral service. This was most days after my job fell out from under me and I had run through my so-called unemployment benefits, when I was using what bucks I had set aside for a rainy day to keep a cruddy roof over my head and cheap Premium in the gas tank.

Not just anybody’s funeral service, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Mostly a funeral service for somebody like Noel Webster, the flamboyant playboy-entrepreneur who created a multibillion-dollar empire through shrewd investments, which is how I came to make the acquaintance of people who appeared anxious to give me a funeral service of my own.

Attending a service was the price I paid for the belly-filling meal I aimed to collect afterward, when the deceased’s family members and friends gathered somewhere to reflect on their loss over steamer trays full of meatballs and shrimp; platters of cold cuts, salads, and vegetables; cookies and cakes; an array of beverages, usually including ice-cold brews — my preference whenever the options didn’t include a nice chilled Cabernet Sauvignon or a class-act champagne like Cristal or Dom Perignon.

The odds of an upscale meal were always with me after I learned the funeral trick from my actor friend down the hall, Ty Sheridan, who said it was de rigueur in his circle, a way to survive in Hollywood between casting calls or the more steady gigs waiting tables.

He used obit pages from the Los Angeles Daily in showing me which were the best memorial parks, where I could count on an upscale crowd and, after memories were shared and tears shed, an upscale gathering in some upscale part of town.

“Familiar names are the best, whenever you run across one, some civic leader or a big-shot millionaire,” Ty said. “Usually means you can count on a bigger crowd, easier to get lost in, but steer clear of the star types or the old legends, like the Milton Berles or the Gregory Pecks, where you usually run into the need for an invitation or security you won’t get past without a famous face of your own.”

He went with me the first few times, until he landed a regular afternoon shift at the Casa de Sushi, so it took me awhile to get into the rhythm of the routine. What helped was making pals with the shift guards at the entrance kiosk to Eternal Palms, the memorial park of choice among the ultra-elite. They knew the game. Their price was the occasional bottle I could pocket out of a reception, their preference being anything that would not taint their breath on duty.

That’s how the trouble began for me the afternoon I strutted like I belonged into the gathering for Mr. Webster.

The Webster mansion, located behind the guarded gates of Hancock Park, was one of those ominous-looking English manors found in horror flicks, only air-conditioned and better lit, with modern plumbing in more overdecorated bathrooms than the three-decker home had bedrooms. There were maybe two hundred people milling through the place as if they were on an unguided tour, scooping up canapés from sterling-silver trays being toted around by servers in starched white shirts, black plastic bow ties, and perky smiles. Jumbo clouds of undecipherable conversation floated over the rooms. The good-natured giggling and laughter that erupted frequently was common to every funeral gathering I had been to so far, as if it were ultimate proof of a life well-lived; more likely, in my mind, to celebrate the reality and relief of Him, Not Me.

I had just swiped a sealed pint of Stoli from a self-service bar and was eyeing a pint of Smirnoff for my other jacket pocket when a hand fastened onto my arm, surprising me. I had checked around as carefully as ever and would have sworn nobody could see me make the swift grab.

She hadn’t.

Her hand flew off me and fed into a tight embrace that led to a hard kiss on the lips as I turned to face her, her tongue chasing after mine, her eyes closed in chorus with a sigh of satisfaction that lasted until she broke the clinch and stepped back to study my reaction. At once, the sexy glint illuminating her exotic emerald eyes vanished. A lopsided grin fell into a tight-mouthed stretch of embarrassment. She turned her palms to the ceiling, shook her head while sputtering words of apology.

“You’re not who I thought you were,” she said, brushing her hands on my shoulders and down my arms, dislodging invisible lint, as if that would erase her mistake.

“It’s the story of my life,” I said, wanting to stroke her in more ways than she was working on me. She was my age, late twenties, and my kind of beautiful — a face with the bone structure of an angel and, inside a clinging black silk dress meant more for partying than mourning, a body that could bring out the devil in any man. She was the type of woman who wouldn’t give me the time of day if she owned a clock shop, even if I had the nerve to ask her the time. “Who’d you think I was?”

She shook her head. “Nobody you’d know.” Her voice the texture of cotton candy as she held out her hand and gave me the glad eye again. “Faye Allyson.”

“Ellis Hyland.”

“Like the island?”

“The island?”

“Ellis Island. Where the immigrants used to come into the country; in New York. Nobody ever ask you that before?”

“Nobody. It’s Hyland. With an H.”

“With an E.”

“Huh?”

“Faye with an E. Sometimes it’s spelled without... What do your friends call you?”

I didn’t understand the question at first. “Oh, a nickname, you mean. No nickname. Usually Ellis or, if they know me real well, Hyland.”

“With an H.” Her smile was glowing again and inspiring mine. “Me, neither. Just Faye, except for some relationships that ended with me being called Bitch or, you know, worse?”

“You’ll always be Faye to me,” I said.

“The sweetest thing anyone has said to me in ages,” Faye said. She pried her hand free of my fingers and threw herself into a clinch that climaxed with a harder and deeper kiss than before. She borrowed a pencil from the bartender and scribbled something on a cocktail napkin. “I have to leave now, but call me sometime,” she said, folding the napkin and pushing it into my jacket pocket.

She poked a hole in my chin and melted into the crowd, pausing once to turn and blow me an air kiss. I thought about tracking after her, but almost immediately was stalled at the bar by a distinguished-looking silver-haired six-footer filling out an expensive black cashmere suit garnished with a black armband and lapel carnation — his face the kind you’d expect to see on the cover of Forbes magazine; his voice as suave as his pencil-thin silver moustache.

He signaled a greeting with his wineglass and said, “Shame about our friend, Noel, wouldn’t you say?”

“We all have to go sometime.”

“Nothing Noel ever believed,” he said. “You knew him well?”

“Well enough to be here today,” I said.

He nodded as if he didn’t notice my tongue on fire. “And Doreen, I saw.”

“Who?”

“Doreen,” he said again, and leaned over, closer to my ear, as if I might be hard of hearing. “Doreen Kyle, that old devil’s mistress.” He rumbled out a salacious laugh. “We’ll never know if she’s what brought on the fatal heart attack, but as good a guess as any, since she was there when it happened.” He raised his crystal goblet and toasted her: “To Doreen, who proved the old bugger had a heart after all.”

Doreen, not Faye with an E?

Kyle with an E?

A heart-stopper by any name.

“To Doreen,” I agreed, raising my glass.

We clanked. We sipped. He showed off his perfect teeth, gave me a few good-boy pats on the shoulder, wheeled around, and weaved across the room to whisper into the ear of an overweight gent dressed in dollar signs who looked up from his stockpile of goodies and aimed his heavy-lidded eyes at me, nodding affirmatively to whatever he was hearing.

About fifteen minutes later, I slipped some cocktail napkins I had packed with hors d’oeuvres into my pockets and waved adieu to invisible friends. Outside, Doreen Kyle was waiting for her car, heavy into conversation with the gent with the pencil-thin moustache. I waved off an eager parking attendant and headed for my Benz, a dusty relic of the ’eighties that I had discreetly curbed outside the Hancock Park gates, down three blocks and around the corner. Wondering if I’d be able to muster the courage to phone Doreen, even if only to ask why she had played a name game with me, somebody she didn’t know, had never met; a stranger off the street, crashing a memorial service to scarf a free meal. Well, maybe not the last part.

Doreen. Doreen Kyle—

It didn’t sound as right as Faye Allyson had sounded.

Didn’t fit her as well, either.

She looked more like a Faye Allyson than a Doreen Kyle.

I tried putting her out of mind, but she refused to budge and was still consuming my thoughts when I got back to my apartment, a one-bedroom on the second floor of one of the ’thirties-style buildings lining both sides of Detroit Street, south of Melrose Avenue. Mine was the last one feeding off a narrow central hallway perfumed by years of dust and an undecipherable stew of cooking odors.

I stored the Stoli and Smirnoff I’d kited on the kitchen counter, then pulled a dinner plate from the cabinet and began transferring my captured hors d’oeuvres from the napkins in my pocket, unfolding one napkin at a time. Faye’s napkin was the last one out and came with a surprise. I discovered she’d used some sleight of hand to give me more than a phone number.

Wrapped in her napkin was a flash drive, one of those tiny portable gizmos you plug into a computer and transfer data onto. This one was about the size and shape of a cigarette tube lighter. An immediate overdose of curiosity propelled me back to the living room and my desktop computer. I fiddled after an open slot that would take the drive, and clicked into its contents.

Only, I couldn’t get past the opening screen.

It called for a password.

I didn’t have a password.

So I called Doreen Kyle, instead.

And, when I heard that sultry satin voice that became unforgettable the moment I first heard it at Noel Webster’s mansion, I called her “Faye.”

“Who is this?” she said.

“Ellis Hyland,” I said, my voice clearly less memorable than hers. “It’s Ellis Hyland, Faye.”

“Ellis Island.” A question mark running under the surface.

“Earlier today? The gathering for Mr. Webster? Hyland with an H?”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, so goodbye with a G,” she said.

And clicked off.

I punched in her number again.

She picked up on the first ring, a warning the first words through her memorable lips: “No more. Quit or I’m calling the cops.”

And clicked off again.

Before I could swat away my rankle or fall into some serious sulking, my phone rang.

Her.

Saying, “I was just playing with your mind, Hyland with an H.”

“Faye?”

“I want to see you again.” Her voice was husky with anticipation. She sounded as anxious as my beating heart. “Are you free for dinner?”

Her address took me to the electronically controlled main entrance gate of “High-Rise Heaven,” what everyone called the condominium buildings south of Century City, where prices start at a million five for one-bedrooms on the lowest floors, with balcony views limited to neighbors’ useless picture windows across grounds as lush as a tropical paradise.

Faye’s condo was on the twenty-second floor, which promised an unrestricted view of the city in every direction, eastward clear to the Pacific. In fact, it turned out to be all the twenty-second floor, accessible by invitation only on a private elevator that took a security key to operate. Only, it didn’t turn out to be Faye greeting me as the door slid open.

Nobody I recognized, that’s who it was.

She was tinier than Faye by a few inches, with one of those compact athletic bodies she was displaying in a well-stocked halter top and tennis shorts that ended in a tie with her muscular thighs. Her fire-engine-red hair pulled back from her handsome freckled face into a tight ponytail. Her brown eyes digesting me while her tongue lubricated lips frozen into a seductive smile.

“Hyland with an H?” she said.

“And you’re?”

“Faye with an E,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I scanned past her and around, pausing a second or two to take in the Picasso oil on the embossed white silk wall covering. Large. Not cheap. Cubist period. The lady in the portrait looking like she’d been constructed by some cockeyed Dr. Frankenstein.

“Oh, damn. Somebody else I couldn’t fool.” She hooted and, grabbing me by the wrist, tugged me from the elevator and pointed toward a living room the size of Nevada. “I’m Faye’s roomie. She had to run out for a few. Said to entertain you until she gets back. Then, I’ll be gone — like the wind.”

On another wall, a Degas, a Chagall, and, not as out of place as you might think, a Warhol canvas, four images of a grim-faced Noel Webster in clashing colors. Webster also the star of most of the photographs in crystal or sterling-silver frames on top of the baby grand piano parked by the floor-to-ceiling window looking northwest to the Hollywood hills, the HOLLYWOOD sign rising above the rooftops, the dome of the Griffith Park Observatory still higher.

She parked me on an oversized, overstuffed leather sofa and duck-walked across the room to the bar. She called, “Name your poison. I’m having a nice glass of Beaujolais myself. The genuine item. Imported. Every year a good year or it wouldn’t be here. That’s how Mr. Webster was about everything he touched.”

I indicated the Beaujolais was fine for me and said, “Including Faye?”

“Including Faye. And she had a special touch for him. Believe it.”

“And you?”

“Someone has to keep this oasis tidy, you follow? Beats me trying to make the rent all by my lonesome on the dump we’d been sharing in the valley. North Hollywood, where drive-by shootings are treated like a neighborhood sport.” She padded over with our wines and settled on one of the matching leather chairs across the coffee table from me. “Cheers,” she said. “Name’s Tiffany, by the way. From the breakfast of the same name.”

I acknowledged the toast and swirled the wine around in my glass like I knew what I was doing, then sipped and rinsed. Gave the Beaujolais a thumbs-up and swallowed. Took a bigger taste and settled the glass on the table. Checked my watch. Gave her an inquiring look.

She shrugged. “Any minute, I’m guessing.” We fell into a brief, awkward silence before she looked up from the invisible finger scribbles she was making on the table and asked, “You remember to bring it?”

“Remember to bring what?”

“The gizmo? The flash thingie Faye gave you when you guys hooked up today at Mr. Webster’s send-off? She said she gave it to you for safekeeping until dinner tonight.” She raised an eyebrow, but my suspicions were already higher that something was wrong here. I’d been thinking how a Noel Webster would be too shrewd, too discreet, to have a third party, a “roomie” by any name, around twenty-four/seven. It was too awkward for a man who certainly hadn’t made his name, reputation, and fortune without wiser calculation than that.

I planned to ask Faye later, but nothing Tiffany had just said made sense to me.

I said, “Gizmo? Flash thingie? All I got from Faye was her phone number.”

“That’s not what she told me, Hyland with an H.”

I killed a minute over a couple swallows of Beaujolais.

I said, “Maybe you misunderstood? What’s the big deal anyway?”

She dropped her smile, closed her eyes, and grunted, then announced to the room, “He’s going to make a game of this,” prompting a door to open behind me.

We were joined by the sleek silver-haired six-footer who’d approached me at the reception. The one who told me Faye’s name was Doreen Kyle, said she was Webster’s mistress, and was with her outside when I left.

He said, “Is that so, Mr. Hyland? If so, I would have to say that’s not the smartest decision you’ve ever made in your lifetime, which may be coming to a conclusion earlier than you’d ever have supposed.”

The three of us could have drowned in my sweat before he answered my Just what the hell is going on here? First, he squeezed his face into one of those looks people use to say a question is unnecessary or stupid or silly and dismissed it with a flick of the hand as he padded to the bar. He encouraged me to make note of the blue-barreled .22-caliber pistol Tiffany had pulled from somewhere and was pointing at my gut while he helped himself to a double pour of sixty-year-old Macallan, praising it as deservedly the world’s most expensive scotch en route to a spot beside her chair, where he proceeded to make a game of Tiffany’s ponytail.

“What’s going on here?” he said. “What does it sound like? You possess something that Doreen should not have given you, Mr. Hyland. We want it for ourselves.”

“Faye — Doreen, she said I had it? Where is she? She okay?”

“She played as ignorant as you, only with more flair, insisting yours was a casual conversation, no more, and she had no idea who you were or where or how to find you, unless you availed yourself of the phone number she provided.”

“All true.”

“You’re saying you’re not her partner in crime.”

“I’m saying I crashed the party, that’s all.”

“Then how fortuitous of you to phone when you did, but she was too quick to get rid of you, confirming our belief you now have the flash drive. We were equally quick in phoning back. Our Tiffany is an exceptional mimic, wouldn’t you say? Cheers!” He gave Tiffany’s ponytail a playful tug. “Hand the drive over, we’ll be gone from here, and you can live happily ever after.”

“And Faye?”

“What about Doreen? The name she was using when she worked her way into Mr. Webster’s company, then his bed, then this elaborate love nest he keeps for his mistresses of the moment — stealing his heart so she could steal the contents of the flash drive. Doreen Kyle.”

“You get the flash drive, she also gets to live happily ever after?”

“So you do have it.”

“Just asking. Does she?”

He didn’t have to think about his answer. “Doreen has been a naughty, naughty girl and will have to be punished. Isn’t that so, Tiffany?” Another tug at her ponytail.

“Knock it off, Barron.” She swatted away his hand. “We still don’t know if the doofus has it on him. What say, Doofus? A yes, a no, or a body search that’ll have you singing boy soprano in no time flat?”

I believed her, but as much as I wanted to get rid of the damned drive, I have this insatiable curiosity jones — it made me the highest-paid game-show researcher on network TV for eleven years before a ratings nosedive knocked Million-Dollar Money Machine into swift oblivion.

“How about a maybe?” I said.

This Barron guy frowned. “I don’t believe that Tiffany invited a negotiation, Mr. Hyland.”

Tiffany uncorked a laugh and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Doofus thinks he’s Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis. Tom Cruise. Matt Damon. It don’t work like that in real life, Doofus.”

“Maybe first you explain what’s so important about the flash drive and then I tell you where it is?”

“Ah, progress of a kind,” Barron said. “But surely you already know the answer?”

“Humor me. Pretend it’s the real-estate round of Million-Dollar Money Machine.”

“I prefer Jeopardy myself.” He looked off, as though he was enjoying his own humor, but he was all business seconds later. “For all his outwardly sunny disposition, Noel Webster was a shady character on the international landscape. The information he accumulated through devious means, which was then covertly copied onto the flash drive by his wily mistress, is designed to bring down governments.”

“Jeopardy sucks. Whose government? Which?”

His head shifted left and right. “That makes it worth millions to certain parties — like the people she agreed to sell it to. Only, she got greedy.”

“The people. Would that be you and the man-eater?”

Tiffany showed me the length of her middle finger.

Barron said, “Didn’t Doreen tell you who when she brought you into her scheme?”

“Nice try.”

“We contacted her after she put the drive up for bid. The exchange was scheduled for the reception. Only, Doreen had a change of mind. I suspect she continued shopping and found a buyer willing to go higher. Yes, Mr. Hyland? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Nice try.”

“All right, then. Doreen in trade for the flash drive, unless you’d rather have a cash reward.”

“Doreen will do.”

Barron held out his palm.

I said, “First Doreen.”

At once I had the feeling he’d run out of patience with me.

Barron shut his eyes and seemed to be counting to ten, then drew a .45 automatic from inside his suit jacket.

A hundred years later, he shrugged and said, “Why not?”

He marched from the room, returning a minute later with Faye. Even handcuffed, her face lacking makeup and flushed with distress, she was my kind of beautiful. Her robe was open, confirming a body built for centerfolds. I averted my eyes.

Barron held out his hand again. I dug into a pocket for the flash drive and pitched it to him. He made a one-handed catch, flipped it to Tiffany, led Faye to the sofa, and settled her next to me.

Tiffany rested the .22 on the coffee table while she examined the drive. “How do we know this is legit? This legit, Doofus?”

“Was your birth?”

She settled a sneer on me. “You’re not out of the woods yet, big mouth, so don’t press what’s left of your luck.”

“It’s the flash drive Doreen slipped me.”

Barron said, “Did you monitor it?”

“I tried. Curiosity. Only got as far as the command for a password.”

“The right answer... Make any copies?”

“What for? I was hoping Faye — Doreen — would explain it. Why I called her. Why I brought it with me.”

Barron said, “One last piece of business before I free Doreen and we leave you to your future. Your driver’s license, please, so we’ll know where to come visit you, should we discover the flash drive is other than represented.”

I fished the license from my wallet and tossed it onto the coffee table.

Tiffany leaned forward to retrieve it, putting the .22 momentarily out of her reach.

Faye dove onto the table and captured the gun. She rolled onto her side and got off a two-handed shot that smashed into Barron’s left eye. He went down as Faye hit the mile-high white pile carpeting on her back, Tiffany immediately on top of her.

A gunshot ended their battle before it began.

Tiffany gripped the edge of the table and struggled to her feet. She threw me a look of triumph and bowed like she was taking a curtain call; only, she kept going. Her face struck the table nose first, accompanied by a loud cracking sound, while blood splashed onto the glass surface from the modest bullet hole between her breasts.

Faye was on her knees beside Barron. She found the key to the handcuffs and freed herself, then hurried over and threw her arms around me, pressing her body tightly against mine while her lips played thank-yous over my face and neck.

She released me, saying, “I’m sorry about putting your life at risk tonight. They’d have killed us — me, for certain — if you hadn’t stepped up to the plate the way you did. I owe you my life, Hyland with an H, and I always repay my debts.”

Her lips found mine again, briefly, before she went after the flash drive, clutching it like a winning lottery ticket before she stashed it and the .22 in a pocket of her robe, which she didn’t bother closing. She was in the process of handing over my driver’s license when I said, “Is it true what they told me about you?”

The question caught her off guard. She reared to attention and crossed her arms over her breasts. “If they said I was a federal agent setting them up for a bust, yes,” she said. I shook my head.

“Look, later I’ll show you my ID and my gratitude, but right now the phone is over there. Call nine-one-one while I throw on some clothes.” She wheeled around and fled the room, and—

That was the last I saw of Faye Allyson.

Or Doreen Kyle.

The cops sent me home after I told them enough about what I knew to satisfy them that I’d innocently wandered into some kind of lovers’ quarrel that would not be untangled until Doreen Kyle turned up. Two federal agents arrived at my door the next day, flashing badges and phony smiles. They got the same story. I didn’t mention the flash drive either time. I played dumb when the agent chewing a lump of gum surreptitiously asked about “Faye Allyson” and answered their questions about Million-Dollar Money Machine, most dealing with Honeychile Lane, the cover girl who operated the money-machine lever.

It took a few weeks before the story a columnist for the Los Angeles Daily tagged “The Mystery of the Missing Mistress” faded into a few paragraphs on the back pages of the news section, then disappeared entirely. By then, I’d received enough media attention to get work doing research for Jeopardy and Who Dies Next? a reality pilot for Fox.

The jobs lasted a couple of months and I was able to catch up on outstanding debts before the money ran out and I went back to feeding myself after funeral services.

Every so often, I slugged the flash drive into my computer and wondered what I’d learn were I able to bust the password.

Wondered who the customers were and the small fortune the drive would bring if I knew where to sell it.

Wondered if I’d still be alive had Barron and Tiffany learned that what I’d handed them was blank, a last-second substitution I made before leaving home, planning to use my “Oops!” as an excuse to see Faye Allyson again.

Most of all, I wondered about Faye, who had skipped out of Noel Webster’s love nest leaving behind ambiguity and unanswered questions.

And me.

I was trying to decide between another Beluga on blini or the Kobe beef on toast points at the gathering for Martin Gardener, the real-estate tycoon who’d made his billions turning Indian desert wasteland into gambling spas, when some sixth sense made me turn around.

The woman sauntering toward me from halfway across the tented courtyard was my kind of beautiful, tall, lean, and lanky, her body as sublime as a building designed by Frank Gehry, sending temptation inside a black mourning dress that quit mid-thigh and contained swaying breasts that cried for attention. Her platinum-blond hair piled high to give fuller display to an angelic face promising heaven on earth. Her green eyes flashing lustful signals to go with equally dangerous lips that I recognized even before they connected with mine.

“Hello, Faye,” I said, when I could breathe again.

“Not Faye,” she said. “Helena.”

“Elena?”

She shook her head and brightened the tent with her smile. “Helena. With an H. Same as Hyland with an H.”

“You’ll always be Faye to me,” I said, reaching into my pocket for the flash drive I always carried with me against this moment.