Eureka

CHAPTER 22

I was high up on Beverly Drive when I found Boxwood. I could see why Millie asked me if I wanted directions. It wasn’t much of a street-barely two lanes wide and unpaved. The sign was lost among shrubs and trees. I made the sharp turn and followed the bumpy road around several curves. There was an occasional mailbox but the area was so heavily forested you could hardly see the houses from the road. Then the woods to the south began to thin out and I could catch fleeting glimpses of Beverly Hills and to its right, in the early evening haze, the sprawling Twentieth Century-Fox lot. I could see the big arc lights occasionally streaking into the evening sky from the sets where Tyrone Power or Gene Tierney or Don Ameche, the reigning monarchs of the studio, were probably shooting a scene in New York or Singapore, courtesy of the designers and carpenters who created movie magic.

I came on the property suddenly. The forest closed in on me again, I went around a shallow curve, and there it was. A stone wall about three feet high enclosed several acres of woods. The mailbox was imbedded in the wall. I could see the house flickering past through the trees, about two hundred or three hundred feet back in the woods. I turned in an open gate and drove down the dirt road that wound lazily around trees and wild bushes to the house.

It was a surprise. In my mind I had pictured one of those big Beverly Hills mansions, but this house was rustic, a high-peaked, one-story built of stone and wood. Cedar shingles surrounded an enormous chimney that was in the center of the structure. I drove past the carport, its door raised and the Pierce-Arrow Phaeton parked inside, up to a massive teakwood front door.

I was wearing my best suit, the blue linen double-breasted, with a pale blue French-cuffed shirt, a yellow tie with little blue dingbats, my best cordovan wing tips, and the small gold cuff links that, with $784, were my inheritance from my father. I had sixty-five bucks in my wallet including another ten Moriarity had given me for expenses. I was dressed to the nines and why not. I was going to take a Coldwater Canyon princess to the deli for dinner and to a free movie.

Chimes rang softly somewhere inside. The door opened immediately and she was standing there, her grin as wide as Sunset Boulevard and her eyes sparkling as they caught the rays of sun filtering through the trees.

“Hi,” she said. “Any trouble finding the place?”

“Came right to it.”

“I know, you’re a cop,” she said. “You can find any street in town and you remember phone numbers.”

She took my hand and led me into the house, stepping aside as she did. The dog sat behind her. A pure white German shepherd, larger than Rosie, his pointed ears straight up on alert, his eyes, coal black at the center ringed with flecks of yellow, looking straight at me.

“I keep running into dogs every time I go through a door,” I said.

“This is Montana,” she said. “He’s very well trained and very friendly, as long as you don’t do something stupid.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?”

“He’s a dear. You’ll grow to love him, just like Rosebud.”

“I’m calling him Rosie, after a prizefighter.”

“I know who Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom is,” she said with fake exasperation.

“How come you call him Montana?”

“Because that’s where he came from. Dad has a little spread out there, uses it for hunting. His caretaker’s dog had pups and I got the pick of the litter.”

A little spread. For hunting. With a caretaker. In Montana. What am I doing here?

I walked past her into a wide hallway that went all the way through the house. There was a staircase on the right side that curved around to the second floor, where what looked like two rooms were tucked into the eaves of the otherwise A-frame structure.

“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” she said, trotting up the steps. “Make yourself at home.” She stopped about halfway up, leaned over the banister, and pointed out directions to me. “The bar’s to your left at the end of the hall, sitting room to the right, terrace straight ahead. Montana will show you around.”

And she disappeared.

Montana stood up and walked slowly toward the rear of the house as if he understood every word. I followed him.

There were archways on both sides of the hall. To my left was the kitchen and to the right, a library, which smelled of leather, its shelves jammed with books. One chair, enormous with an equally enormous ottoman, held down a corner of the room, with a coffee table on one side of it, an unruly stack of magazines on the other side, a floor lamp behind it. The record player and her records filled almost an entire bookshelf behind the chair.

The main room was at the end of the hall and ran the full width of the place. It was huge. The fireplace, an island of brick and brass, served as a room divider, separating the barroom on the left from the sitting room on the right. The ceiling soared above, forming the back side of the A-frame. Skylights made both rooms bright and inviting.

The sitting room was furnished with white goose down sofas and chairs. It was a room decorated for comfort. On a table at one side of the living room were a dozen or so photographs: pictures of Millicent as a child in riding clothes on a black horse; family groups; Millicent on graduation day with her father standing proudly beside her. And one photograph of a roguish-looking young man in an RAF uniform with the insignia of the Eagle Squadron-a group of Americans who, in 1940, had formed their own flying squad within the British Air Force. Scrawled across the bottom was: “To my dear heart, Mill the Pill. Keep the faith. Hugh. 11/14/40.”

An enormous window faced the terrace, with French doors on either side.

And what a terrace.

I followed Montana onto a length of neatly mowed lawn, twenty feet I guessed, up to the swimming pool, which stretched the length of the terrace and looked at first like a reflecting pond. I walked around one end of it out to the edge of the terrace and watched a broad facade of water, almost as long as the pool itself, pouring like a solid sheet straight down on rocks a dozen feet below and, in turn, running into a small pond surrounded by wildflowers. Then there was a tennis court, and beyond it the forest sloped down to a natural stream that tumbled down the hillside. The stone wall ended five feet from the stream, with a gate at its center. On the other side of the creek, nothing but trees. A sudden breeze took the heat out of the air and brought with it a guarantee of rain.

I was in a place far, far away from the L.A. I knew.

“So this is where Adam bumped into Eve,” I said to Montana.

“I assume from that remark you like it,” Millicent said, behind me.

I turned and walked back to the doorway. She was dressed in a pastel blue, lightweight cashmere blazer, white blouse, a pleated yellow silk skirt, and a matching silk scarf around her long, aristocratic neck. She was so chic she embarrassed the word.

“If Eve looked as good as you, Adam wouldn’t have been interested in apples,” I said.

She blushed, her lips parted slightly, and she stared up at me for several seconds. Then she smiled and said, “Wasn’t it Eve who was interested in apples?”

We stood a foot apart, staring at each other, until she broke the spell. “Come on, we’ll be late,” she said. And to Montana, “Alert, Monty.” His attitude changed. He suddenly got serious. He pranced around one corner of the pool and off into the woods.

“He’s beautifully trained,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said brightly. “When he’s on alert, he gets very officious.”

“I can tell. Shall I close this door?” I said as we went back into the house.

“No, leave it open for him, he likes to patrol the place when I’m not here. Or take a swim. Or chase a rabbit. I lock the front door but it’s for show. No thief in his right mind would take him on.”

She turned on a couple of lights and we headed for the door.

“I’ve always had shepherds,” she said, leading me toward the door. “My first was Buck. I named him after the dog in Call of the Wild.”

“Buck was a malamute,” I said.

“Not in my head he wasn’t,” she said with an arrogant lift of her chin.

When we got outside, she turned toward the carport and tossed me her car keys.

“Let’s take the Phaeton,” she said. “You drive.”

“Aww,” I said, “and I’ve got the company’s best car.”

“How did you swing that?”

“I have to go up the coast early in the morning.”

“Is this about Verna?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow night late.” And dropped it at that.

We made small talk as I kept the car in third gear and wound our way down to Sunset Boulevard, where I turned left, heading up to Hollywood. A block or two from Grauman’s I pulled down a side street and parked in front of Harry’s Absolutely Genuine New York Delicatessen.

British sink Bismarck

And the subhead:

Nazi juggernaut blown from sea;

ENGLISH fleet avenges hood loss

I threw a dime in the cigar box on top of the papers and took two.

Harry’s was just what it claimed to be. Black and white tile floors, red leather booths, white linoleum tabletops, wooden chairs with heart-shaped backs. Lots of light. The smell of salami and pastrami mixed with the rich aroma of the bakery.

Harry, at the front counter slicing turkey, looked up and yowled, “Hey, Zee, where ya been? I thought you died.”

“I’ve been busy, Harry.”

“So, you don’t eat when you’re busy?” He shook his head in disapproval. “Better not let Mama hear.”

“Where is she?”

“Home with the grandkids. It’s Tuesday. Who goes to the deli on Tuesday? Sit anywhere, Zee. Menus on the tables tonight.”

We sat across from each other in one of the front booths and I gave Millie one of the two newspapers I’d picked up by the entrance. Her mouth was agape as she scanned the headline about the Bismarck.

I started reading the story. British dive-bombers had jammed the rudder of Germany’s proudest battleship and it had circled helplessly while the British closed in and blew it to bits. According to the account, the Bismarck lost 2,400 men in its final battle.

Harry came to the table and read the headline over my shoulder.

“Harry, this is my friend Millie,” I said. He stepped back, looked her over, and put his hand over his heart.

“Beautiful, exquisite,” he said, rolling his eyes. “My heart goes pitty-pat. What you think, Zee. You think we get into this war?”

“You want to live in a world with Hitler on one side of us and T?oj?o on the other?” I asked.

A two-column yarn in the lower left corner of the front page described a near riot caused by America Firsters, pacifists who were against America getting into the war, and a group of American Legionnaires. There was a photo of angry men in overseas caps yelling at a group of businessmen carrying signs that said lindbergh says stay out of europe, and an ugly cartoon of a leering Roosevelt with Death swinging a scythe behind him and a caption that read roosevelt the warmonger.

“Now there’s an irony. A bunch of business types on a picket line calling Roosevelt a warmonger, and the British and Nazis are blowing each other up in the North Sea.”

“Corned beef and cabbage is the special,” Harry said, to loosen up the tension. “I musta had a premonition you were coming, Zee.”

“Sounds good to me,” Millie said, and handed him her menu.

“On two, with draft beer,” I said.

“Splendid,” Harry said, and rushed off to the kitchen to get our dinner.

Millie shuddered. “Every day it’s something awful,” she said, turning her attention back to a war which couldn’t be too far away. “My heart stops every time I see that photograph of the Nazis marching past the Eiffel Tower.” She paused, and added, “You think we’ll get into it, don’t you?”

“Just a question of time.” I nodded.

“Will you have to go?” she asked me.

I shrugged, trying to brush it off.

“Do you remember the war?” she asked.

Did I remember it? Oh, yeah.

“I was nine years old when my father went off to France,” I told her. “I had a poster in my room. Uncle Sam without his top hat and coat. An angry Uncle Sam pointing straight at me and saying ‘I Want You.’ It scared me to look at it. Every day was a dread, every time the telegraph kid came down the street on his bicycle, we prayed it wouldn’t stop at our house. I’d lie in bed at night and cry. I cried every night because I didn’t think it was possible for my father to survive.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching across the table and taking my hand. “Did he?”

“What was left of him,” I said.

I didn’t tell her about the day my dad came home. My dad was a big guy with a crazy Irish sense of humor. The man who got off the train was like a shadow of that man. He had been gassed and it had reduced him to a wraith with sunken eyes who had seen a thousand horrors. His hands shook and he coughed a lot. He couldn’t hold a job. He wouldn’t talk about the war. I know now my dad had been dying. It took him twelve years, but each day he died a little more, until his lungs finally gave out. My mother died along with him. She lasted three years longer, the last two in such misery I still try to block it out of my mind.

This war, when it came, would be worse.

So I just said, “Sometimes I think it would be worse to wait at home than be in the middle of it.”

“I’ve already lost someone in Europe,” she said, staring blankly at the newspaper.

“When?”

“Nineteen forty. My cousin Hugh. Crazy cousin Hugh.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was always crazy about airplanes. Learned to fly when he was a kid. When they formed the Eagle Squadron he raced off to London and joined up. I got a card from him after his first flight. He had shot down a Messerschmitt his first time out and he was so proud. Two days later he went down over France.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounded pitifully inadequate. I decided to lighten things up.

“I saw his picture in the living room. ‘Mill the Pill’?”

It got a laugh out of her.

“That’s what he called me. Hugh was the hell-raiser in the family and I was Miss Proper. Growing up we fought like brother and sister, but when I was a teenager going to school back East he took me in hand.”

“So you turned into a hell-raiser, too?”

“I’m still trying.”

“And what’s the most audacious thing you ever did?”

She thought about it for a full minute.

“I sneaked over the wall at Miss Brownington’s School for Girls and went to see King Kong at the Radio City Music Hall.”

I faked surprise. “Wow!” I said.

“That was a major step for me, sir,” she said haughtily. “I could have been expelled.”

Not likely, I thought. Not when your father owns half of Montana.

The marquee said “Special Preview Tonight” and there was a long line at Grauman’s Theater when we got there, plus the usual crowd of tourists looking at the wide walkway leading to the ticket booth with all the hand- and footprints of the stars immortalized in concrete. Frank was standing in the entrance in his tuxedo, smiling as the paying customers streamed in. He waved us over and led us into an almost full house. There were three rows toward the back roped off in velvet for the special guests.

Most of those seated in the “velvet rows” were studio execs. Producers, flacks, and their friends. The stars, if they showed up, would come in when the house lights dimmed.

Hedy Lamarr came in as the lights lowered, tall, dressed in a white hooded dress, her jet-black hair framing porcelain features. The ice princess, aloof, unreachable, the epitome of a Hollywood glamour queen. Frank unhooked the velvet rope and she took the aisle seat. Her escort, whom nobody noticed, stepped past her and sat down.

Jackie Cooper came in next, accompanied by an older woman I assumed was his mother. I hadn’t seen Cooper in a movie since he was a kid. Now he looked to be about fifteen. Judy Garland came in last, and sat with a small, strange-looking man with bug eyes. The studio people nervously awaited the audience reaction to what was obviously one of their major pictures of the year. James Stewart, Lana Turner, Lamarr, and Garland were the stars. It was terrific. Three young singers and dancers make it big in the Ziegfeld Follies. There was a spectacular Busby Berkeley dance number, but Garland stole the show with a heartbreaking rendition of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” The picture got a big hand from the audience and the stars slipped out while the cast credits were still rolling.

We stopped to thank Frank and then ran through the first drops of rain to the Phaeton. Big drops began to fall, splattering against the windshield as we got in the car.

“How about a nightcap?” I asked.

She leaned over close to me and said, “That would be very nice.”

Maury’s C-Note was on Santa Monica near Moreland, on the edge of Beverly Hills. Maury Castellano had started the club with a one-hundred-dollar tip from Victor Mature, which he’d gotten when he was maitre d’ at Robie’s Nightclub on Vine, a popular hangout for the movie set. He had used the C-Note to option a large garage and raised money from friends to remodel it. It was a comfortable supper club with pretty good food and a piano bar. The walls were lined with photos of Hollywood’s greats and near-greats.

I let Millie out at the door, parked the car, and ran through the rain to join her.

Maury held down the corner of the main bar and got up to jiggle my elbow when we entered. He did not like to shake hands.

“Hey, Zee, long time no see.” He grinned.

“I’ve been fighting crime,” I said with as straight a face as I could muster, and introduced him to Millie.

He bowed low, made a pass at kissing her hand, and said to me, “The Bucket?” I nodded.

The attraction for aficionados was the back room, where a bass player named Chuck Graves held nightly jam sessions with musician friends. The room had become a spot for big-name musicians to stop by and sit in with Graves’s trio. Chuck’s daytime job was as a studio musician, playing in the orchestra at Columbia Pictures.

The room, located in the rear of the club behind closed doors, was small, a mecca for true jazz lovers who cared more about music than decor and comfort. It seated about fifty people, on bridge chairs. The tables were just big enough to hold a couple of drinks and an ashtray. The place didn’t really get jumping until around midnight but things were lively enough when we entered.

A cloud of cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling like fog. It was hot. The mismatched furniture looked like it had been picked up off street corners, the walls were painted black, and the stage was a platform supported on concrete blocks. A fan high on one wall over the rear door was doing a failed job of sucking out the smoke and heat.

I didn’t recognize anybody in the room, although some looked interesting: a big man with lazy eyes in a checked sports jacket, who Chuck said was an actor, making a name for himself in westerns, and who leaned forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, chain-smoking, listening to every note; a bald man doing a crossword, tapping his foot to the music but never looking up; a woman in a leopard coat, sitting with a little man in a tuxedo who was sweating like a sumo wrestler.

The group consisted of Graves; a tall, ebony-black piano player with a grin almost as wide as the hall; a horn player named Turk Ziegler, who used a mute most of the time; Bravo Jones, a balding alto sax man in the baggiest suit I ever saw-no tie; a skinny drummer in a striped shirt and a bow tie; and a diminutive colored man with a thin mustache, dressed in a Sunday suit and tie, playing electric guitar. They were wrapping up a lively version of “Airmail Special” as we entered. We sat at one of the dime-sized tables near the bandstand and ordered drinks from a waiter who looked like he was wilting.

Graves, a tall, rangy, good-looking blond with a musician’s pallor and sad brown eyes, walked over to the table with a kind of loose-limbed slouch. His soft, mellow voice drove the girls crazy, especially when he sang sad ballads.

“Hi, copper,” he said with a wry grin. But he didn’t look at me, he was staring at Millie. He kissed her hand and added, “Chuck Graves, at your service, ma’am.”

“I’m over here,” I said.

“Oh, I know, son, but I doubt anybody cares.”

She looked embarrassed until it dawned on her that we were joking around.

“We can’t stay long,” I said. “Millie’s a working lady and I got to go up the coast at dawn.”

“That’s cool.” And to Millie, “Next set’s for you.”

The band came back, Chuck said a few words to them, and they looked over at the table. The piano man and Chuck laid down a beat, and Chuck started to sing:

I’ve flown around the world in a plane,

Dined on caviar and champagne,

And the North Pole I have charted

Still I can’t get started

With you.

Chuck sang from the heart, soft as marshmallows, and finally wrapped it up:

I’ve been consulted by Franklin D,

Greta Garbo has had me to tea,

I got a house, a showplace,

Still I can’t get no place

With you.

We stayed an hour.

When they wrapped for a break, Millie blew a kiss to Graves and I waved to the rest of the crew. I dropped a fiver in the bucket. From the corner of my eye I saw Millie add a hundred-dollar bill.

Maury held an umbrella over Millie’s head as we raced out to the car. He helped her in.

“Hey, Zee,” he said, “don’t get lost so much. We miss ya.” And to Millie. “Make him bring ya back, okay?”

He ran back into the club.

“Do you know every body in town?” she asked.

“This was my beat when I started out,” I said. “It’s my old neighborhood.”

I started to put the key in the switch but she laid a hand on mine and stopped me.

“Was Chuck playing that song for me or you?” she asked.

“Which one?”

“ ‘I Can’t Get Started.’ ”

“Maybe he was telling me in his own way that…”

“Stop right there,” she said softly. “You can go anyplace with me, Zee. I’d fly around the world in a plane just to come home to you.”

She laid both hands on my cheeks. Her hands were as smooth as fine suede. She drew me to her and kissed me. Her lips were soft and full and giving, and she folded into my arms.

I shoved the gear stick into second to get it out of the way and slipped over to her side of the seat. She shifted, facing me, and her leg slid over mine. She reached over, her hand moved down my spine and pulled me to her. I could feel the heat of her as she crushed against me.

We never stopped kissing but I could hear her sigh deep in her throat and she began to tremble as my hands explored her.

I don’t know how long we were there.

Long after the rain stopped.