High Midnight

CHAPTER FOUR

There weren’t any boys whooping it up at the old Big Bear Saloon when I got there a little after one. I turned off Fourth and parked on Noyes in front of a building that shouldn’t have been there. The street was full of residential, one-story homes with front lawns big enough for one medium-sized human to stretch out for a sunbath. But it was too cold for sunbathing.

The Big Bear had either predated or fought the residential zoning. It was a two-story dark brick building with a drawing of a big bear in gold on the picture window. Venetian blinds, probably permanently closed, kept the passersby from looking inside. There were no beer signs on the outside to give away the identity of the place; nothing but a Ballan-tine Ale thermometer next to the entrance.

I tried the door. It opened, and I was into darkness and the sound of a slightly off piano. I stood for a while listening and waiting for my eyes to adjust. Then the piano was joined by the equally off voice of a woman singing “White Cliffs of Dover.” She sang on with determination, challenging the tune, getting it down for a while and then having it slip from her control. By the time she got to the end, I was ready to call it a victory for her and a loss for the song. By that time, too, I could see something of the room. It was small, with six tables and a bar running the width of the place. At the end of the room was a grand piano which took up space that could have been used for another couple of tables. At the piano was a woman, or the shadow of a woman whose head was thrown back.

“What do you think?” she asked, in a throaty voice that might have been a good imitation of Betty Field or Jean Arthur or a bad one of Tallulah Bankhead.

“I liked it,” I lied, sitting at a red leather stool at the bar.

“Bartender won’t be here for a few hours,” she said. I still couldn’t see her face, but the slowness of her words suggested that she had started her day’s sustenance before the barkeep’s arrival.

“No hurry,” I said, taking off my hat and putting it on the bar.

“You selling something?” she said.

“Nope,” I said. “Just looking.”

“For what?”

“You, if you’re Lola Farmer,” said I.

“I’m Lola Farmer,” she said suspiciously, stepping down the bar with a hand on each stool as she moved. She meant it to look elegant. It looked like someone with a few too many trying to keep from falling over. In ten steps she was close enough to see me and to be seen.

Lola Farmer was a blonde. Cooper had told me that, but Lola Farmer, like Tall Mickey Fargo, had gone through some changes. Lola had weathered them better. At least that was my guess. She was no longer thin, but she wasn’t fat either. Lola was a few thousand calories on the good side of pleasingly plump. Her face was pale and there was darkness beneath her eyes that wouldn’t go away with sunlight, but she was a good-looking woman. She had probably started with a lot, and though she looked like she was working to wear it away, she had too much going for her from nature to make the job easy.

“You look like a mug,” she said.

“I am a mug,” I agreed.

“Did he send you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, looking into her eyes, which I guessed were blue.

“What does he want now?” she said, sinking onto the bar stool next to me.

“The same as before,” I answered.

“Tell him the answer’s the same,” she said with a great sigh.

“Suit yourself,” I said, playing with my hat.

We sat in silence for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what we had said and what to say next.

“He tell you I sing here?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She got up and moved back to the piano to collect the drink she had left there. “What’s your name?” she asked, after taking a healthy belt.

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters.”

My eyes were pretty used to the lack of light now and I could see that the name was familiar. She was also confused. Now some confused people retreat. Others break down. Lola attacked.

“Who the hell are you? What do you want? He didn’t send you. Get the hell out of here.” She took a few angry steps in my direction and threatened me with a near-empty tumbler.

“Who did you think sent me, Lombardi?”

She took the next four steps in front of me without falling and took a swing with the tumbler, missing by a good foot. I slid off the stool and grabbed her before she went down. She smelled of bourbon and perfume, and she felt properly soft. My face was in her hair and I helped her up slowly.

“Thanks,” she said, forgetting her anger for a second. I held her hand to steady her. There was a lot left to Lola of whatever it was that had attracted Cooper and Lombardi. “Now get out.”

“A few questions first,” I said, letting go of her hand. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

She shrugged and went around the bar looking for a fresh tumbler. “You want a drink?” she offered.

“A Pepsi if you have one,” I grinned.

“You a boxer?” she said, looking at me with a little interest.

“No,” I said, “but I’ve been a punching bag.”

“Me too,” she said, handing me a bottle of Pepsi with a puffing out of her cheeks. “Cheers.”

“You got a bottle opener back there or should I bite off the top with my teeth?”

She took the bottle back and opened it. I accepted and took a drink. The Pepsi was warm.

“You talk first,” she said.

“My name is Toby Peters. The man who talked to you was my assistant, who took on a little too much when I was away on a big assignment. I’m on the case now, and I need some answers.”

She shrugged, so I went on after another gulp of warm Pepsi.

“Someone is putting pressure on Gary Cooper to be in High Midnight, using threats and blackmail involving you. Someone hired an unpleasant character with fists like steam radiators to see to it that Cooper takes the High Midnight job. My assistant talked to four people about the project. All four want the film made with Cooper. After he talked to them, the unpleasant character I mentioned showed up and told me to mind my own business. He even tried to put a bullet or two through me less than an hour ago to make his meaning clear.”

“You know, Daisy Mae is missing,” Lola said, chewing at her upper lip and examining her drink. “You’re a detective. Maybe you can help Li’l Abner find her.”

“Put it back in the bottle, Lola,” I said softly. “You’re not that shellacked.”

The anger started to come to her eyes again, but she controlled it and looked at me.

“There’s you,” I said. “There’s Max Gelhorn, Tall Mickey Fargo and Curtis Bowie, the writer. You want Cooper in on this project. How badly?”

Lola laughed, a nice deep laugh. “Badly,” she said, losing about fifty percent of her drunkenness. “Max is in debt to whoever he got to back the film. He promised to deliver Cooper, and if he can’t deliver on the promise, he has big trouble. The man with the money will be very angry. Max got me in on this for two reasons. A, I gave him my few dollars in savings, and B, he had heard that I knew Cooper. I went to Cooper and offered myself and a memory of old times, but he said no. He turned me down. Lola has lost it.”

“Not quite,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re pretty cute too in a grotesque sort of way.”

“And …”

“And,” she continued after taking another drink, “Gelhorn is in trouble, and I am out my money and a last chance to make it in the movies. Tall Mickey is a loser who goes way back with Gelhorn. He had no money to lose. He’s living on dreams and the hope of a comeback, but-between us-Tall Mickey had nothing to come back to or from. He was never more than a face in the barroom crowd.”

“Bowie?” I said, draining my Pepsi and examining the bubbles on the bottom.

“Kicking around for years,” she said. “Wrote a few dime Westerns. Did a Wheeler and Woolsey script. High Midnight is his big project. Been working years at it. It’s not bad, but what the hell do I know. I think Bowie is screwy enough to kill to get the picture made with Cooper. I guess we’re all screwy enough. That what you wanted?”

The last question had a touch of something in it. Maybe it was an invitation. It might even have been sarcasm. I have discovered through the many hard years that I am a rotten judge of the motives of women.

“Did you hire the muscle?” I asked.

She shook her head no and said, almost to herself, “I used my ammunition on Cooper. I haven’t got much, but I’ve got some pride. It’s barely holding me together.”

“It’s doing better than that,” I said honestly. She smiled with a nice set of teeth and reached over the bar to touch my cheek. The other hand held tightly to her amber tumbler.

“That’s sweet,” she said.

“Lombardi,” I said, and her hand moved away slowly. “Why does he want you to make the picture?”

“My suggestion to you is to stay away from Mr. Lombardi if you want to hold onto what remains of your appeal,” she said. “He can be an unkind man.”

I stood up. “He’s not giving me a choice.”

“Mr. Lombardi thinks he owes me something, and he wants to be a West Coast big shot,” she explained. “He wants to make movies and sell cheese.”

“Hot dogs,” I corrected. “He has a hot-dog factory.”

She laughed. “His old man had a hot-dog stand on Coney Island,” she said.

“Funny,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll see you around.”

Before I hit the door, her voice caught me.

“I’m through here at eleven,” she said. “If you want to come back, I’ll buy you a Pepsi.”

“Eleven,” I said, without looking back, and I went out into the light. If it had been a sunny day, I would have been as helpless as a Universal Studio vampire. As it was, I had to stand still for a few seconds. The piano tinkled an off-beat version of Blues in the Night, and I hurried away before Lola started to sing.

I drove through the hills and out of the valley with the down-and-out image of Lola Farmer. I wasn’t sure what there was about her that got to me. It was something distant and sad, something I wanted to find and examine. I didn’t quite feel sorry for her, but there was something about her that was comforting, like sinking into a hot bath and losing yourself.

The area of Los Angeles I drove to brought me back to reality. Clapboard houses and dark brick churches looked pretty good on a clear day, but a day like this showed the neighborhood for what it was, a ghetto of out-of-work losers even at a time when jobs were easy to get and men were scarce. The kids in the street and little parks wore someone else’s coat. Weary wives with handkerchiefs on their heads carried packages and clinging kids.

Curtis Bowie’s house was easy to find. It was just off Sixty-fifth, a very small wooden house painted white but showing rotting wood underneath. There was no room for the house to breathe. It was almost flush with twin houses on both sides.

I parked, locked the Buick and went up to the screen door. My knock rattled the screen, which looked ready to fall out and had so many holes it couldn’t have discouraged an eagle, let alone a fly.

“Anyone home?” I asked, peering through the screen and seeing a living room of gray furniture. I knocked again and opened the door. One of the hinges was completely off. I caught the door in time and carefully replaced it behind me as I walked in. The living room was small and decorated in fake Victorian decay. The sofa had a spot so worn the round outline of the springs was clear. A newspaper was on the floor, as if someone had been reading it when he was called away by the phone, bodily needs or food boiling over.

“Mister Bowie?” I called. “Are you here?”

No answer. I walked through the living room and found myself in the kitchen, where a man was seated at a small wooden table, his head down and his hands at his side.

“Mister Bowie?” I said, and the body stirred.

“Who?” said Bowie, lifting his head to look at his dish-filled sink instead of at me.

“I’m over here,” I said, and his eyes turned in the right direction and tried to focus on me. He was a lean man, a leathery lean man with a slightly silly smile and a head of curly gray hair. He wore a pair of work pants, a flannel shirt and suspenders. His sleeves were rolled up as if he were about to work on something electrical or mechanical. Beneath him on the table I could see sheets of notebook paper with scribbles and crossed-out words.

“Tomorrow for sure,” he said, standing with a yawn. “I’m picking up a check this morning and I’ll pay you tomorrow after I cash it at the bank.”

“It’s afternoon now, Mr. Bowie,” I said.

He was waking up now and looked over at me to be sure which debtor I was. He didn’t recognize me. To help his memory he walked to the sink, pushed over a pile of fly-attracting dishes and turned on the cold water. He cupped his hands, filled them with water, plunged his face into his palms and said, “Buggggle, plluble.”

He stood up and stretched.

“Now,” he said amiably in an accent that touched of the Southwest, “how can I help you?”

“My name is Toby Peters,” I said, holding out my hand to shake.

He took it and said, “No it’s not.”

“Yes it is,” I insisted with a false little laugh. “The fellow who told you he was me was a dentist who wanted to play detective while I was busy on another case.”

“You mind if I use that?” he said, reaching for his pencil on the table and pulling a sheet of paper in front of him. “A dentist pretending to be a detective. I thought there was something funny about him. Now that I think of it he did say something about my jaw protruding, said I should see an oral surgeon.”

“Can I ask you a few questions, Bowie?”

“Sure,” said Bowie, “have a seat. Like some coffee?”

I tried not to look around at the sink and the fly convention on the nearby cabinets as I declined.

“I do not get a lot of visitors,” Bowie explained as we both sat. “A writer often leads a solitary life.”

“High Midnight,” I said, taking off my hat and unbuttoning my coat.

“High Midnight,” Bowie sighed, playing with his suspenders. “Best thing I’ve ever done. Took me three, four years on and off. Wrote it with Gary Cooper in mind. Little fat fella who said he was you told me he was working for Cooper.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m working for Cooper, trying to find out who’s putting some ugly pressure on him to make High Midnight.”

“I’d like him to make it,” said Bowie through his smile. “That’s a fact. Max Gelhorn told me he had Cooper all lined up. I’ve got no advance on this project, Peters, not a wooden dime. I’m just sitting here and waiting.”

“Any idea who might be willing to buy some muscle and dirt to put pressure on Cooper?” I asked, watching Bowie snap his suspenders.

“I might,” said Bowie, “but I couldn’t buy the services of a blind pickpocket. I am down to my last two bucks.”

“That could make a man desperate,” I said, looking into his eyes.

“It can make a man hungry,” replied Bowie. “You think there’s any chance of Cooper making the movie?”

I got up and said I didn’t know. Bowie got up too.

“I do have coffee,” he said. “I mean if you had said you wanted a cup. I even have sugar.”

“I never doubted it,” I said, returning his grin. “What do you think of Lola Farmer and Mickey Fargo?”

“Never met them,” said Bowie, running his hand through his hair. “I know they’re supposed to be in the picture, but nothing’s gone far enough for us to meet.”

“You have a copy of High Midnight around I could read?” I asked, making a step toward the living room.

“Sure,” he said, moving ahead of me into the room. “Read it and tell me what you think. Maybe you can put in a good word for it with Mr. Cooper if you like it.”

Bowie ambled to a bookcase in the corner and found the script at the top of a pile of what looked like typed scripts.

“I’ve only got two left,” he explained, handing it to me and nearly getting his feet tangled in the newspaper on the floor.

“Hey,” I said, pulling out my wallet “I’m not asking for a free copy.”

“No,” he said, rubbing his hands on the back of his pants.

“I’m on an expense account,” I explained. “Will five bucks cover it?”

“Cover it fine,” Bowie said.

He ushered me to the door and gently opened it so it wouldn’t fall.

“I’ve been meaning to fix that,” he said.

We shook hands, and I went into the street with a wave back at Bowie, who returned the wave. I hoped he didn’t turn out to be the one I was looking for.

There was no traffic on the small street, so I had no trouble spotting Marco and Costello in the Packard behind me. I drove back to my old neighborhood in Hollywood, where Costello and Marco waited outside while I went into Ralph’s and bought two pounds of Washington Delicious apples for 14 cents. There was a phone at the exit of the grocery, and I had a dime in my change. I put down my small package, found a number in my phone book and called Ann Peters, to whom I had been married for five painful years.

“TWA, Miss Peters, can I help you?”

“Mitzenmacher,” I corrected. “Your name is Mitzenmacher. I got my name back when we were divorced.”

“Toby, are you drunk?”

“No, and you can keep on using my name. It’s the only worthwhile thing I gave you.”

“Toby,” she said, whispering so someone on her end couldn’t hear. “I’m busy.” I imagined her long dark hair and full figure in a well-tailored suit.

“I’m at Ralph’s buying groceries, and I thought about your boyfriend Ralph, and then I thought about you,” I said.

“Very romantic,” she said. “I’m hanging up and going home. Don’t call again.”

“Wait,” I shouted and a lady going past me gave me a dirty look. “I’m sorry. How about dinner tonight? Ozzie Nelson’s at the Florentine Gardens.”

“I thought you weren’t going to bother me anymore.”

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” I said. “Tonight, just to talk over good times?”

“There were no good times,” she whispered. “Now I’m hanging up.”

“I’ll just call back. I’ve got a lot of dimes.”

“Toby, please …”

“If you don’t see me, you’ll drive me into the arms of a boozy singer.”

“I’m going to marry Ralph,” she said. “In March.”

I said nothing.

“Toby? Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m going to hang up. Don’t call back.”

“I won’t,” I said, and she hung up while I gagged on something gracious to say.

I went out into the parking lot and took my package to Costello and Marco’s car. “You guys want an apple?”

Marco took one. Costello declined.

“Women,” I said, taking an apple for myself. “Never marry them.”

“My old man never took nuptials,” said Marco sympathetically.

“I’m going home for dinner,” I said. “If you guys want to take a break, I’ll be there for a few hours at least, maybe for the night.”

I was feeling sorry for myself and conjuring disaster and death for Ann’s Ralph. I had seen Ralph once in the hall of her apartment in Culver City. He was everything I wasn’t: prosperous, tall, handsome, a great head of distinguished gray hair, tan. Maybe a TWA plane would run over him before March. He was too old to be drafted.

The hell with it. I told the car not to do it, but it was possessed. I gave it its own head like Tony in a Tom Mix picture from when I was a kid. My faithful Buick took me to Culver City.

The game had turned more serious with each assault on the stronghold of Ann Mitzenmacher Peters. Weeping, lies, tears, pain, reminders of the bad old days and rolls in the bed which she had rudely forgotten or pretended to forget, had all failed. Threats had made her laugh. The worst part about it, I thought as I went into the small, clean lobby of the long, recently built white building was that Ann seemed to be beyond the point of even getting angry with me. What is the worth of a man when he can’t even draw blood or anger, let alone passion or sympathy?

I rang the bell and dashed up to the second floor when she responded with a ring. Ann stood in the hall, one hand on a hip, her hair long and dark, her figure full at forty. In the last few years I had seen her nowhere but in this hall or apartment, and I didn’t much care for the apartment.

“I can’t stay. I’m going,” I said before she could speak. I hurried up to her, looking at my watch.

“That watch doesn’t work, Toby,” she said, “and generally, neither do you. Out.”

“What have I done to deserve insults?” I said. “Goodbye.” I kissed her on the cheek and stood back. “I was in the neighborhood and wanted to show I had no hard feelings, that I really wish you and Rollo well.”

“Ralph,” she corrected emotionlessly.

“Ralph,” I said. “I’d like to come to the wedding. I would …”

Her head nodding no. She had no right to stand there in a yellow suit looking as good as she looked.

“I have about ten minutes,” I said. “Want to invite me in?”

Her head said no, and she folded her arms patiently.

“I’m working for Gary Cooper,” I said with a shake of my head. “He …”

She shook her head no again.

“Was I really such a bad guy, Ann?” I said.

“No,” she said. “And you don’t give up easily. That was one of the things I liked about you, at least for a while. Now it’s starting to be one of the things I like least. Toby, I don’t hate you. You went out of my life five years ago.”

“Four years,” I corrected.

“I don’t care if it’s only ten minutes,” she said. “It seems like five years. Just turn around and go away. Don’t cry, lie or ask for a drink of water. Don’t threaten, beg or tell me about the afternoon we fell in the pond in MacArthur Park. Just go.”

“Isn’t your life just a little boring?” I said, stepping toward her and glancing into her room enough to see that it was still decorated in unwelcoming browns and whites.

“No,” she said. “It is peaceful, and you are not part of it.”

“Are you going to stop calling yourself Peters when you marry Waldo?”

“Toby, you know damn well his name is Ralph,” she said wearily. “Now leave. I’ll stop calling myself Peters when I marry Ralph.”

“What’s Ralph’s last name?” I asked, clinging to the conversation.

“No, you might just decide to make a pest of yourself.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Ann. I just want to know. Besides, I’m a detective. I can find Ralph’s last name without any trouble. I won’t feel right if you wind up with some name like Reed or Brown. Ann Brown sounds like a character in Brenda Starr, for God’s sake.”

She didn’t even bother to answer. Instead she looked at her watch, which was working. Then she looked at me as if to say, “Is there anything more to this act?”

I shrugged, defeated again.

“I’m going in now,” she said, reaching out to touch my shoulder. “Don’t knock. Don’t ring and please don’t return. Just go play with your guns and dentists and midgets. Go play cops and robbers, and once and for all get out of my life.”

There was a touch of hope in her blast-at least it was a blast with emotion. But the door slammed in my face, and I was standing there alone.

“Don’t knock,” she said through the door as I raised my hand. “I’m going to turn on the water and take a long bath. Don’t be here when I get out or I’ll call the police again.”