Show Business is Murder

Fred Menace, Commie for Hire by STEVE HOCKENSMITH

IT WAS JULY in Los Angeles, and my little one-room office was hotter than the glowing steel foundries of Minsk that were busy pouring out the molten foundation of a worldwide workers’ state. A woman walked through the door, and things got even hotter.

She was dressed plainly in a brown shirt and matching slacks, with a mannish jacket wrapped around her broad shoulders. Steel-toed boots covered the sturdy feet at the end of her stout legs. Her dark hair was cut severely, barely reaching her thick neck. But most enticing of all were her hands. They were big and calloused, the hands of a woman who wasn’t afraid she was going to break a nail when she wrestled the controls of production from the withered claws of the bourgeoisie.

I was in love.

“Are you Fred Menace?” she said, and she didn’t purr like those soft, dime-a-dozen starlets who pop up in a P.I.’s office every ten minutes. Her voice was hard and strong, yet still unmistakably feminine. She was all business, so to speak, but all woman, too.

“I ain’t Joe McCarthy,” I drawled back at her.

I instantly regretted it. Cynicism is a decadent pose, a facade of apathetic ennui that’s antithetical to the committed idealism of the true internationalist. But when you’re a private eye, it sort of gets to be a habit.

“Yes, I’m Fred Menace,” I said, dropping the hard-boiled routine. “Please have a seat, Miss…?”

She sat in one of my rickety old office chairs and locked eyes with me across my desk. She regarded me coolly for a moment before speaking.

“Smith. Mary Smith,” she said. “My brother is missing, and I want you to find him. His name is John Smith. He’s a screenwriter. He’s been gone for four days.”

No flirting, no innuendo, just the facts. I liked that. I like that a lot. I knew immediately that I was going to take the case, whether she could pay or not.

“My fee is thirty dollars a day, plus expenses,” I said anyway, just as a formality.

She nodded brusquely. “Fine. That seems reasonable.”

It was reasonable. Maybe too reasonable, but what could be done about it? I’d tried to organize the other private investigators in Los Angeles into a collective so that we could create a sliding scale tied to the means of our clients and the needs of each individual dick. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten very far with the idea. The other P.I.s in L.A. don’t talk to me anymore.

“Do you have some reason to suspect foul play?”

“Foul play?” Mary raised a thick black eyebrow. “I don’t know. I just know that my brother has disappeared.”

“Did he have any reason to skip town in a hurry?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said, still icy cool. “But that’s not John’s way. He’s a very brave, committed man. He wouldn’t just run away.”

“He wouldn’t just run away from what, Miss Smith?”

That finally warmed her up a degree or two. “The House Committee on Un-American Activities,” she said, spitting the words out as if they were a mouthful of rotten borscht. “John’s been subpoenaed. He was supposed to testify yesterday. He never appeared.”

I leaned back in my chair, my mind spinning back to the years before the war. John Smith. Screenwriter. Pinko. Sure, I remembered him now. I’d met him through the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. He was a squirrelly little knobby-kneed guy with all the sheer animal magnetism of a paper cup. His sister had fifteen pounds on him, easy.

I hadn’t seen him since 1945-six years ago. Like so many Tinseltown Communists, his passion for revolution cooled once Hitler was out and Red-baiting was in.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Menace,” Mary said, and her voice was softer now, almost pleading. “Everybody in town knows about you. You’re a proud Marxist through and through. When it comes to the fight against bourgeois capitalism, you won’t back down an inch.”

I knew she was stroking my ego, but what the hey, I liked it. The way her lips caressed the words “Marxist” and “bourgeois” was enough to get Lenin up out of his tomb.

“You got that right, sister,” I said.

“My brother… he was a true believer, really he was. But he couldn’t just throw away his career. He had to make a living.”

“I thought you said he was a brave, committed man.”

Her expression turned cagey. “Keep waving the flag of the proletariat from the mountaintops, Mr. Menace,” she said, the vulnerability gone from her voice. “But don’t think that it’s the only way to serve the cause.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother planned on confronting the Committee. He wasn’t going to name names. He was going to throw their fascist grandstanding back in their fat faces.”

“That’s what a lot of these weekend revolutionaries say. Fifteen minutes under the spotlights and they’re coughing up names like a talking telephone directory.”

Mary reached into the pocket of her slacks-she didn’t carry a purse-and pulled out a small wad of bills. “Believe what you like, Mr. Menace,” she said as she counted out three tens. She held them out across my desk. “Just find my brother.”

I looked at the money. Sometimes it really eats me up that I run a business. But until the day an American workers’ state nationalizes private investigation services, what can I do? Like the lady said, a guy’s gotta make a living.

I took the money.

THESE DAYS, YOU’RE not a real American-which is to say amember in good standing of the dominant consumer culture-unless you own a car. So I don’t. That can be a little tough on a guy in my racket. Tailing somebody without being seen is rough enough. Tailing them when you’re relying on the Los Angeles public transit system is next to impossible. But I manage.

After picking up a bus from Wilshire to Culver City, I hitched a ride with a fruit truck and a moving van before hoofing it the last twelve blocks or so to 545 Venice Boulevard-the home of John Smith, screenwriter. It only took me three hours to get there.

Some Hollywood types go in for shabby chic-homes where a little peeling paint and crumbling stucco add a touch of faux bohemian ambiance. But the rotting wood and weed-choked yard of Smith’s little bungalow weren’t there for show. His place was just plain shabby.

I let myself in with the key Mary had given me-her stubby, muscular fingers brushing my tingling palm all too briefly-and headed straight for the refrigerator. I didn’t hope to find any clues there. I was drenched with sweat and I needed a cold beer. And I found one. Property being theft and all, I felt free to help myself.

Beer in hand, I gave the place the once-over. It wasn’t exactly neat-dirty plates were piled up in the sink, clothes were scattered across the floor, the sheets on the pull-down bed looked like they hadn’t been made since the Battle of Stalingrad. But I didn’t see any signs of a struggle. A plain, wooden dining table was wedged into one of the bungalow’s dark corners. A typewriter sat on it next to a stack of white paper and a dictionary. I sat down at the desk and tried to put myself in the mind of John Smith, hack. I stared at the typewriter, searching for inspiration. I didn’t have to search long.

The typewriter wasn’t empty. A small wedge of white was still wrapped around the cylinder. I pulled it out. It was about a third of a sheet of typing paper, ripped. Somebody had been in a hurry to pull the page out of the typewriter-too much of a hurry. I read what was on the paper.

D’ARTAGNAN

Thou hast erred, fiend! At this moment, Athos nears!

CARDINAL RICHELIEU

Ahhh, ridiculous rubbish, I vow!

Zontak strikes Richelieu with the butt of his ray gun, sending him to the floor.

ZONTAK

Earth scum!

CARDINAL RICHELIEU

(cowering)

A terrible mistake, I declare!

ZONTAK

No, I g

That was it. For a second there, I considered dropping the case. A writer this bad needed to stay lost for the good of mankind. Then I remembered his sister. And her thirty bucks. And my rent. I slipped the scrap of paper into my jacket pocket and got back to work.

Somebody had nabbed Smith’s screenplay, but they hadn’t done a very thorough job. Maybe they’d left even more behind. I leaned over Smith’s typewriter and pushed down the shift key.

Bingo. The typewriter ribbon was still there. I carefully removed it and put it in my other pocket. Then I turned, ready to nose around some more.

I didn’t get far. Before I’d taken two steps, I heard voices outside. Someone was walking up to the front door.

“So this guy was some kinda pinko?” voice number one said.

“Not a pinko-a Red to the core,” voice number two replied gruffly.

Voice number one I didn’t recognize. Voice number two I did. I started looking for a place to hide.

I threw myself on the floor and slid under the bed just as the front door opened.

“Not locked,” said voice number one.

Voice number two-a.k.a. FBI special agent Mike Sickles-just grunted.

The two men stepped inside.

I began sweating worse than Henry Ford at a union rally. Sickles and I have a little arrangement: If he doesn’t see me, he doesn’t shoot me.

I was anxious to keep my end of the bargain. But if Sickles or his flunky looked under the bed, this comrade would be headed to the big workers’ paradise in the sky.

“Pretty lousy dive, ain’t it?” said the first FBI agent.

“I dunno,” Sickles replied absently. I could see his big feet moving slowly toward the sink, then to Smith’s desk. He needed new shoes. “Makes my place look like the Ritz.”

The other agent moved over to the desk next to Sickles. “Say, what’s that?”

They stood side by side for a moment, silent.

“Nothing,” Sickles finally pronounced. His feet moved in my direction, then suddenly swiveled.

I braced myself. His weight came down on the flimsy bed frame like the Battleship Potemkin. The mattress sagged under him, pinning me to the floor. A bed spring poked my back. Somehow I stayed quiet.

“You think he skipped town? Maybe the country?” Sickles’ partner asked.

“Could be,” Sickles mumbled. “Dirty Reds. Turn on the lights and they scatter like roaches.”

“So what’s our next move?”

“Well, there’s that producer he was working for-Dominic Van Dine. We should lean on him a little, see if he knows anything.” Sickles leaned back and sighed. The spring gouged my back like a shiv. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”

Suddenly the crushing weight on my back was gone. I could breathe again. Sickles’ scuffed shoes shuffled away from the bed toward the door.

“Because I’ve got an itch to play the ponies today, knucklehead,” Sickles said. “And Dominic Van Dine’s not going anywhere.”

The other agent followed Sickles out the door like the loyal lapdog he was. I waited a minute, just in case Sickles was toying with me. There’s not much to do when you’re stretched out underneath a bed, so naturally my eyes started to wander. Having a rat’s-eye-view of the place gave me a whole new perspective.

I caught sight of a bright yellow ball on the floor under Smith’s desk. I slid out from my hiding place and groped under the desk for it.

It was another piece of paper, balled up tight. I flattened it out.

It was notebook paper from an oversized steno pad. Covering it top to bottom, back and front, was a list of scribbled words. It started with “t” words: tacky, tantalizing, tardy, tedious, tempting, tender, terrible, tiresome, etc. Then the list switched to “m” words, then “i” words, “d” words, “n” words and finally a few “g” words.

I folded the list and stuck it in my pocket. There would be plenty of time to puzzle over it later. Right now, I had to get moving.

So Sickles was going to visit Smith’s producer tomorrow. Good. That meant I could drop in for a chat today. But first I wanted to pay a call on an old acquaintance of mine-a safecracker known as Barney the Bat. He had good fingers and tight lips and bad habits. He owed me a favor.

I left Smith’s bungalow and started looking for a ride.

ABOUT FOUR HOURS later, I was standing in front of Dominic Van Dine’s house in West Hollywood. I’m using the term “house” a little loosely here. It was actually something halfway between a house and a mansion. It was big alright, but it had the wide, flat roof and squat, squashed look of those ultra-modern boxes they’ve been throwing up all over Southern California since the war. I figured at least three families could live in there comfortably. And after the Revolution, they would.

I rang the doorbell. It played the first five notes of “We’re in the Money.” That would have to change, too. Maybe it could be set up to play the Internationale.

The door opened just enough for a head to poke out. It was a good head, if you go in for long, golden locks of purest sunshine and big, blue eyes like two bottomless lagoons and soft, sensuous lips just waiting to be kissed and kissed hard. Me, I don’t cotton to blonde bombshells. The only bombshells that strike my fancy are the ones that will free the proletariat from the shackles of wage slavery.

Her baby blues devoured me. “Yes?” she said, caressing the word, making it sound more like an invitation than a question.

“I’d like to speak with Mr. Van Dine,” I replied flatly.

“He’s not home today. But I’ll tell him you dropped by, Mr…?”

“Menace,” I said. “Fred Menace, P.I. I have a feeling Mr. Van Dine is home today. And I have a feeling he will speak with me once you scoot your pampered caboose inside and tell him a private dick’s nosing around asking questions about John Smith and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.”

She didn’t bat an eyelash-which was a good thing, since her eyelashes were so long and heavy batting one around would probably hurt somebody. “Wait here, Mr. Menace,” she said.

Her head disappeared. The door closed. I waited.

A minute later, the door opened again. “Come inside,” Blonde and Beautiful said, holding the door just wide enough for me to slip into the house. I had to brush against her lightly as I stepped inside. B and B smiled. “Follow me.” She turned and walked across the foyer toward what looked like a study.

I followed. I had an unobstructed view of B and B as she moved. I could have charged admission for a view like that. She had curves, lots of them, just the way a pencil doesn’t.

But such decadent sensuality couldn’t hold my eye. I was more interested in the dimestore opulence of Van Dine’s home. Glass chandelier and scuffed tile in the foyer, a faded Diego Rivera print on the wall, imitation mahogany desk and shelves in the study, row after row of dust-covered books that had never been read and never would. Van Dine was making a stab at class that wouldn’t fool a poodle. Everything was fake. I took another look at Miss B and B, wondering how much of her was real.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” she purred. “Mr. Van Dine will be with you shortly.”

She left the study, closing the door behind her. It’s every working man’s right to do a little freelance redistribution of wealth, so I took her advice, pouring myself a cognac and lighting up a cigar I found in a box on the desk. I was just leaning back in one of the room’s ridiculously overstuffed chairs when the door opened and a middle-aged man greeted me with the kind of welcoming smile hungry spiders flash at fat flies.

“Ahhhh, I’m glad to see you’re making yourself at home,” he said. He closed the door behind him and walked over and offered his hand. “I’m Dominic Van Dine.”

I shook his hand without bothering to rise. “Fred Menace.”

“Yes, yes. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Menace,” he said as he slipped behind his desk and took a seat. The chair he sat in was about four inches taller than any of the other chairs in the room, making him seem a bit like a kid in a high chair. Except this kid was fifty-something years old, had a Vandyke, and was wearing a red silk smoking jacket. He looked like Leon Trotsky pretending to be a debauched playboy. “People call you ‘the Red detective,’ correct?”

“Some do.”

“You know, I’ve always thought there was a movie in that. The Red Detective. It would make a good title, don’t you think? Communist sympathizer, private eye. Explosive. Ripped from today’s headlines. It would be perfect for Brian Dunleavy.”

He was a producer all right. Nobody in Hollywood would put a plug nickel in a picture like that. But he thought he could snow me with visions of movie stars and royalty checks. I blew a big cloud of cigar smoke up over my head. “Sounds boffo, Mr. Van Dine,” I said. “But I’m only interested if you get Paul Robeson to play me. And I want a Russian director. Is Sergei Eisenstein still alive?”

Rigor mortis set in on Van Dine’s smile. “So you’re looking for John Smith,” he said, his tone suddenly brittle.

“Why, yes, I am. How did you know he’s missing?”

“Because I’ve been trying to find him myself. He’s working on a script for me. Production’s set to begin in three weeks. If he’s left the country because of this witch-hunt in Congress, I need to know.”

“This script Smith’s working on-it wouldn’t be a Three Musketeers picture, would it?”

Van Dine’s eyes bulged out so far I thought they were going to hop out of his face and slap me. “Yes. The Three Musketeers Versus the Moon Men.” He blinked, and a curtain of false calm dropped over his features. “Have you seen it?”

“I haven’t just seen it, I’ve read it,” I replied nonchalantly. “Well, not all of it. It’s not done yet. But enough to know that it stinks.”

I was trying to shake things up a bit, and it worked. I shook up a bona fide earthquake.

“I don’t care if it stinks,” Van Dine said. “A man in my position can’t afford to care. I’ve got actors signed, costumes and sets being made, a studio that wants this picture in theaters by Thanksgiving. ‘Stinks’ or ‘doesn’t stink’ doesn’t enter into it.” He smiled his spider smile at me again. “I would be very interested in knowing how you got your hands on a copy of that screenplay, Mr. Menace.”

The fly smiled back at the spider. “It was handed to me wrapped up in a ribbon.”

A moment of silence passed before Van Dine realized that was all he was going to get. He chuckled and reached toward the cigar box. “Despite your reputation as a revolutionary, I see you’re really just a businessman like the rest of us,” he said. He stuck a cigar between his curled lips and lit it with a gaudy, faux crystal lighter. “You expect to be compensated for your efforts. Of course. I can make it worth your while to bring me the script.”

I took a big puff on my own cigar and tried to blow a smoke ring toward Van Dine. All I got was a misshapen cloud that fanned out over his desk. It turns out I’m not as good at blowing smoke as I thought.

“You’ve got the basic idea,” I said. “Except I don’t want money. I want your help. You use your industry connections to open some doors for me, help me find Smith, and you’ll get your script.”

Van Dine nodded. “I understand.” He pushed a button on an intercom set on his desk. “Miss Shapely, send Mr. Grey in, please. I’d like him to have a word with our guest.” Van Dine leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring of his own. It was a perfect circle that floated up toward my head like a dirty halo. “My assistant Mr. Grey will get you started. He’s the last one of us to have seen John Smith.”

As he was talking, the door opened behind me. Before I could turn to see who’d entered, a sudden, crunching bolt of pain shot through my skull. I came to my feet clutching my head and spun around to see a hulking man in a dark suit that could barely stretch itself around his massive body. He was standing behind my chair with a blackjack in his hand and a look of surprise on his broad face.

“I’m not your usual soft-headed gumshoe,” I spat at him. “I’ve got a head harder than Siberian granite. It’s going to take a lot more than a love tap from a blackjack to-”

Another explosion of pain echoed through my head. I looked over my shoulder. Van Dine stood behind me, the crystal lighter in his hand. It was smeared with blood. My blood. I laughed bitterly.

“Careful there, Van Dine. You’re going to break your pretty bauble trying to use it as a nutcracker. Next time, try a-”

A heavy weight crashed into my back, sending me spinning to the ground. Mr. Grey had smacked me with a chair.

This time I shut up and stayed down.

I passed out, too.

LAUGHTER ECHOED THROUGH my mind. It was John Smith, giggling maniacally.

“Smart boy, aintcha?” he said. “A real smart boy.”

His head tilted back as he let out another roar of laughter, and suddenly his face was frozen, the mouth open wide. Lightbulbs twinkled in his hair, and a neon sign flashed on and off on his forehead. FUNHOUSE, the sign said. The wind began to howl, and I was pulled screaming into Smith’s huge, oval mouth. The wind stopped, replaced by the clanking of chains and gears. I found myself strapped in a cart, jerking through the darkness one tug at a time. A spotlight stabbed through the gloom to my right, pinning Dominic Van Dine and his apelike lackey Mr. Grey in a harsh cone of light. They stared at me with huge, multifaceted eyes that sparkled in the light like diamonds. Poison glistened on their fangs. Another spotlight snapped on to my left, revealing Mary Smith dancing the tango with a black bear. A third light broke the dark directly in front of me. In its glare, I could see Sigmund Freud juggling monkeys. He was dressed up like Carmen Miranda, with a tight skirt and fruit piled high on his eggy head. “Talk, smart boy,” Freud sang to me. “Wake up and talk.”

“Wake up,” I sang back dumbly. “Talk.”

“That’s right. Wake up and talk, Mr. Menace.”

Something about hearing my name caressed so obscenely swept the visions out of my mind. I blinked hard and shook my head. A wave of nausea washed over me, but when it passed I could see where I was.

I didn’t like it. I was in the center of a small, dank, dungeon-like room, sitting in a chair, my feet strapped to the legs, my hands tied behind me. A single lightbulb hung a few feet above my head, blinding me with its bright, unfiltered light.

Dominic Van Dine and Mr. Grey stood a few feet away, watching me. Van Dine leaned in close and smiled. “So you’re back among the living at last. Let’s see how long that lasts. Mr. Grey.”

Van Dine moved back, and his gorilla stepped forward. I heard a sharp cracking sound, and my head jerked to the side. Pain knocked on the door of my addled brain. It forced its way inside and made itself at home.

I’d been slugged on the jaw. Hard.

“I hope ya’ like them apples, smart boy,” Grey said in a wheezy, high-pitched voice. “Cuz I got me a bushelful.”

There was another crack, and my head jerked again. The pain in my brain had company.

“Alright, alright! Enough with the rough stuff,” I barked with as much force as I could muster-which wasn’t much considering the blood in my mouth and the ringing in my ears. “Why don’t you ask me some questions already?”

Grey glanced over his shoulder at Van Dine, who looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding his head. Grey moved away, rubbing his knuckles.

“Very well, Mr. Menace. Let’s see if any more ‘rough stuff ’ is necessary,” Van Dine said. “Tell me where your copy of the script is.”

A new sensation joined the party in my skull. It was hope. If there’s one thing a guy needs when he’s been tied to a chair by people of less-than-sterling virtues, it’s leverage. Or a free hand and a.45. I was happy to have the leverage.

“Why are you so desperate to get your hands on that script?”

“Mr. Grey,” Van Dine said blandly.

Grey stepped toward me, a smirk on his heavy, simian face.

“Hold on there, King Kong. You don’t have to bother,” I said to Grey before he could belt me. I looked past him at Van Dine. “You were going to remind me that you’re the one asking the questions here.”

“Exactly. How did you know what I was going to say?”

I tried to shrug. “I’ve been to the movies.”

At this point, Monkey Man got tired of all the talk and slugged me anyway.

“Buddy,” I said to Grey after my head stopped spinning on my neck like a top, “I realize that you’re just a humble working man trying to survive in this dehumanizing Darwinian jungle we call the capitalist system. But one day you’re going to find those knuckles of yours jammed down your thick throat.”

Grey turned to Van Dine. “He just threatened me, right?”

Van Dine nodded. “That’s right.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Grey raised his fist. It was time to use that leverage, but fast.

“I’ll give you the script.”

“Wait!” Van Dine snapped.

Grey unclenched his fist and backed off. He looked disappointed.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to be reasonable, Mr. Menace,” Van Dine said. “Now tell me-where is it?”

I licked my lips. I was about to see how much leverage I had. “I’ll do better than tell you. I’ll show you. If you untie me and let me out of this rat-hole.”

That got a good chuckle out of Van Dine. “What kind of fool do you take me for? I don’t even know for certain that you really have a copy of the script and I’m supposed to let you walk out of here and stir up who knows what kind of trouble? I think not.”

“I think so. I’m guessing you sent your primate playmate here over to Smith’s bungalow to grab the script. But Mighty Joe Young didn’t get the job done. He left a copy of Smith’s script behind.”

“Awww, applesauce!” Grey broke in. “There wasn’t no other copy. I looked all over.”

I graced Grey with a pitying smile. “But you didn’t look in the right place, Cheetah. This copy wasn’t sitting around, nice and neat, double-spaced on white paper. It was inside the typewriter.”

“Phooey!” Grey spat. “This is a buncha bunk.”

“Shut up, you oaf,” Van Dine snapped. His oily confidence was dripping away before my eyes. “You’re talking about the ribbon,” he said to me.

I nodded. “That’s right. Everything John Smith has typed for the last week or two or even three, who knows? It all hit that ribbon. And it’s still there, just waiting for someone with the time and the patience to get it. In fact, I’ve got a friend-a friend with very bad eyes and very, very sensitive fingers-who’s going over that ribbon right now. I gave it to him just before I came here. I’ll bet he’s half-way through the script by now.”

Van Dine stared at me. Or, more accurately, he stared through me. I could practically see the wheels in his mind turning, spinning faster and faster like pinwheels. And then they stopped.

“You have failed me, Mr. Grey.”

“What? Don’t tell me you believe this two-bit gumshoe,” Grey protested, crooking a thumb at me.

“You know the penalty for failure,” Van Dine replied coldly. His left hand slipped down toward one of the big silk pockets of his smoking jacket.

Fear twisted the thick flesh of Grey’s face. “No! Don’t!” he cried. “Please!”

“I’m afraid you leave me no choice.”

Van Dine pulled out his hand slowly. In it was a slip of thick paper.

“No screening pass for you this weekend,” he said. “If you want to see-” He glanced at the paper, then began tearing it up. “-Bedtime for Bonzo, you’ll just have to wait a month and pay your fifty cents like the rest of the little people.”

Grey’s whimper turned to a snarl as he whipped around to face me. “This is your fault, shamus! I’m gonna-”

“Untie him,” Van Dine broke in.

“But-”

“I said untie him!”

Grey glared at Van Dine for a moment before moving his bulky body behind me and fumbling with the ropes. My hands came free first. Within seconds, they were stinging with the pain of a thousand needlepricks as the bloodflow returned. A moment later, my feet felt the same way.

“Smart move, Van Dine,” I said, buying time while my hands and feet recovered. “You’re playing this the right way.”

“If he double-crosses us, kill him,” Van Dine said to Grey.

Grey leaned in close to my ear. “With pleasure,” he said.

But the pleasure was all mine. Grey was a sloppy man. He’d done a sloppy job searching Smith’s bungalow, and now he’d done a sloppy job untying me. He’d merely loosened the rope around my hands without bothering to take it away. And when he stuck his big ape head next to mine, it was simplicity itself to take that rope and wrap it around his neck.

It took all my strength to stand and take three steps forward, dragging Grey behind me. He toppled over the back of the chair. The chair pitched forward, and Grey came with it. The chair came down with a crash. Grey came down with a snap. His body went limp.

I turned my attention to Van Dine-but he was gone. For the first time, I got a good look at the room around me. Several black monoliths loomed in the darkness. At first, I thought they were bookshelves. But as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that they were loaded with bottles, not books. I was in Van Dine’s wine cellar.

I heard a quick shuffle-step behind me. I whirled around just in time to see Van Dine rushing me, a champagne bottle clutched in his hand.

I wanted to meet him on equal terms, but there was no time to go looking for a bottle of vodka. So I ducked. The champagne bottle cut through the air just above my head. Van Dine’s momentum carried him forward, and I gave him a good shove as he moved past. He stumbled, off balance, and slammed into the nearest wine rack. He hit the ground amid a shower of mid-range cabernets.

“Defeated by the trappings of your own decadence,” I said, shaking my head. “Clifford Odets would pay me twenty bucks for a metaphor like this.”

Van Dine groaned from beneath the pile of bottles. I gave him a moment to reflect on his predicament before I grabbed a foot and gave it a twist. Van Dine’s groans turned into a yowl. I pulled the foot-and the rest of the body it was attached to-out to the center of the tiny room.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Van Dine. You’ve given me the perfect set-up.”

I twisted the foot again. Van Dine howled again and kicked at me feebly. I twisted harder, then let go.

“I’ve been tied up. Beaten. Tortured. I’ve got the wounds to prove it.” I walked around Van Dine’s cowering form until I was just a step from his head. I placed the heel of one shoe on his face and gave it just a little bit of pressure. “So anything that happens now is purely self-defense. Because I’ll be the only one left to tell the story. Get me?”

Van Dine was panting so hard I could barely make out his words.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘I get you,’ ” he rasped.

“Good. Now I want you to tell me what happened to John Smith.” I put just a little more pressure on Van Dine’s face. I could feel the cartilage of his nose bending almost to the snapping point. “And I don’t want any fibs.”

Van Dine talked. When he was through, I slipped the rope from around Son of Kong’s throat. I left Van Dine lying face down, his hands tied behind him, in a puddle of cabernet and champagne. That wasn’t very nice, I know. But if he got depressed waiting for the police to arrive, he could always slurp his cares away. Anyway, I could’ve left him in a puddle of blood.

Upstairs, I ran into Miss Shapely. She gaped at me, stunned, from a sofa. A copy of Film World Exposé slipped through her suddenly slack fingers. I didn’t have to be Criswell the Mind-Reader to know what thoughts were flying through her platinum-plated skull.

“Yeah, that’s right, honey. All that screaming and yelling was your boss, not me.”

“I…I…I didn’t…”

“Save the smooth talk for the cops, glamour-puss.” I went to the nearest phone-one of those old-fashioned gold-leaf and pearl jobs you always see Bette Davis gabbing on in the pictures-and asked the operator to give me police headquarters. Some lucky desk jockey was about to get the anonymous tip of a lifetime.

While I was waiting for the connection to go through, Miss Shapely jumped off the couch and made a beeline for the front door. I took mercy on a poor working girl and let her go.

IT WAS DARK by the time I got back to my office. That was fine. It fit my mood.

I’d been settled behind my desk all of five minutes when my client came through the door. My heart went pitter-pat. My head told my heart to get lost.

She sat down across from me.

“Have you found my brother?”

Oh, that voice. It didn’t purr like a kitten. It didn’t caress me like a silk glove. It chipped away at me like a jackhammer. It was a husky, no-nonsense, “¡Viva la revolucion!” kind of voice. I loved her even more.

But… There’s always a but when you’re a private dick. And my but was as big as they come.

“I’ve found John Smith,” I said. “Up until this evening, he was in a flower bed at the home of a movie producer named Dominic Van Dine.” I glanced at my watch. “By now, I’d bet he’s on his way to the Los Angeles County morgue.”

I watched her for a reaction. She didn’t disappointment me. She didn’t have one. No false hysterics. No crocodile tears. Just a cocked eyebrow and a single word.

“Explain.”

I obliged.

“Van Dine knew about Smith’s ties to the Communist Party. That’s why he hired him to work on a script. Not because Van Dine’s some kind of sympathizer. He’s just greedy. Smith’s past made him vulnerable: It meant he’d work cheap. But when the House Committee on Un-American Activities started tossing around subpoenas, Van Dine got nervous. If it came out that he’d knowingly hired a Red, he’d be finished in this town. So he sent a musclebound messenger boy out to collect Smith and his script. Smith told Van Dine he wanted to appear before the committee. He wanted to… how did you put it this morning? ‘Throw their fascist grandstanding back in their fat faces’? But Van Dine couldn’t have that. He’s not one of those studio producers. He’s an independent. He has to finance his projects himself. He already had a small bundle tied up in his next picture, and a small bundle’s more than a guy like that can afford to lose. So he convinced Smith not to testify-convinced him with a piece of rope wrapped around his neck.”

My client’s grey eyes didn’t fill with tears. Sobs didn’t erupt from her thin, colorless lips. Such displays would be beneath her-beneath us. Because we were both players on the same team. Maybe you’ve heard of us. The Los Angeles Reds.

“And the script?” she said.

I nodded. “Yes. The script. That’s what you’re really interested in, isn’t it, comrade? Smith wasn’t your brother. He was your stooge. And you need to get that script back to cover your tracks.”

I finally saw her smile. It broke up the marble smoothness of her face, revealing the animal cunning beneath. “Yes, comrade. You recovered the copy from Van Dine’s residence?”

I nodded again. “I had time to do a little nosing around before the cops showed up. I found it.”

“Good. Give it to me and our work will be done.”

No more nodding for me. I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Not until I get an explanation.”

Her face turned to stone again. “If you are a true revolutionary, you will give the script to me.”

“Why don’t you let me decide that? Now tell me-what’s in that script that’s so important?”

She shrugged with a nonchalance so transparent you’d have to call it outright chalance. “Nothing. As you said, I’m just trying to tie up loose ends.”

I grunted unhappily. I don’t like being lied to, even by women I’d like to run off and make little proles with. “Then why is it written in code?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A deep, sad sigh rose and fell in my chest. “Nobody in this town writes dialogue that bad on purpose-not unless they’ve got a hidden agenda. Or maybe a contract with Universal. I spent quite a few hours on buses today, so I had plenty of time to work out Smith’s system. Take the first letter of each word of dialogue, add them together and voila, it’s Western Union time. But I still don’t know what it all means. ‘Rosenberg says no.’ ‘The fluoridation is working.’ ‘The Roswell prisoners are ill.’ It’s all Greek to me.”

As Spymaster Mary listened to my little speech, the smile I’d seen earlier started to return. I was hoping it would be a warmer smile, a more human smile, a throw-herself-into-my-arms-and-declare-her-undying-love kind of smile. But it was none of the above. It was a smug smile.

“And it will stay Greek, for the good of the cause,” she told me. “All I can tell you is this: That screenplay is the key to America’s greatest secrets. It represents the accumulated work of our entire spy network here. How fitting it would have been to deliver it to our comrades overseas in the form of a Hollywood film-the ultimate symbol of Western foolishness. That can’t happen now. But the script can still be smuggled abroad. With the information it holds, the Soviet Union will finally crush the United States like an insect.”

Under different circumstances, I would have swooned. Mary Smith-real name Maria Smithostovovich or some such thing-really knew how to get a red-blooded Red worked into a lather. But I’m not just Red. I hate to admit it, but under the surface I’m white and blue, too.

“Since you put it like that, it’s no dice, sister.” I wanted to bite my tongue off with every word. Somehow I managed to keep going. “I’m a traitor to my class, but not my country. I’m not giving you that script.”

I didn’t even get a raised eyebrow out of her, let alone a wistful tear. She simply pulled a revolver from her jacket and leveled it at me. My heart was broken. And in a second, it was going to be filled with hot lead.

“Now hold on. We can still talk this out, comrade.”

“You are no comrade of mine,” she hissed back at me. “You call yourself a Communist, yet you let nationalist loyalties come between you and your duty to the revolution. I should shoot you down like a dog.”

“But then you wouldn’t get the other copy of the script.”

“Other copy?” The barrel of the gun wavered just a bit-from my heart to my gut. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but I wasn’t in a position to be choosy.

“When a typewriter key hits the ribbon, it leaves an impression. And I’ve got the ribbon from John Smith’s typewriter. Or, to be more exact, a friend of mine has the ribbon. A blind friend. I gave it to him this afternoon after I left Smith’s bungalow. He’s had plenty of time to go over it. I’m sure he’s got the whole script transcribed by now.”

It looked like my little visit to Barney the Bat was going to pay off for the second time today. Looked like that for about two seconds, that is.

“But as you pointed out, it’s written in code. He won’t know what it means or who to take it to-if you’re dead.”

What could I say? “Good point”?

She cocked her revolver. “Now give me Van Dine’s copy of the script.”

“Like I said, no dice. And if you shoot me, you’ll never find it. Looks like we’ve got us a stalemate.”

She waved the gun at a corner of my desk. “But isn’t that the script sitting right there?” She sounded amused. At last, I’d gotten a little warmth out of her. It didn’t help me feel any better.

“Well, I guess that was the dumbest bluff I ever tried to put over.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that, Mr. Menace.” The barrel moved again. Now it was pointed squarely at my forehead. “Das vedanya.”

I sighed again. “Yeah, O.K. So long, sister. Tell the boys in the Kremlin I said-”

A shot rang out before I could finish. I thought that was pretty rude. Not only does she kill me, but she’s got to interrupt me, too. Some people ain’t got no manners.

Then an amazing thing happened: The woman who just killed me toppled off her chair. The back of her head looked like a lasagna. Even more shocking-I was alive.

“Boy, am I gonna regret that in the mornin’,” a familiar voice said.

FBI special agent Mike Sickles was standing in the doorway of my office, his gun in his hand. He was shaking his big, bald head.

“If I’d just waited two more seconds-bang. You’d have been out of my hair forever, Menace.”

I wanted to say something like “What hair, cueball?” But I wasn’t about to push my luck. He could still change his mind and let her shoot me retroactively. It was just a matter of how he wanted to write it up in his report.

Sickles stepped into the room and bent down over Mary Smith. He was followed quickly by the lackey I’d seen him with earlier in the day. At least it looked like the same guy from the shins down.

“She dead, Mike?” Sickles’ partner asked.

“Nah, she’s just hibernatin’. Now call the meatwagon, knucklehead.”

Knucklehead scooped up the phone off my desk and asked the operator for the coroner’s office.

Sickles waved his meaty hand back and forth before my eyes. “Hey, anybody home? Snap out of it, Menace. She scare you to death or somethin’?”

I blinked, maybe for the first time in a good minute. “Thanks,” I said.

Sickles grimaced. “Don’t thank me. I handed you a break because you wouldn’t give the broad the script. Next time I might not feel so merciful.”

“How long were you there in the doorway?”

“Not long. I only moseyed over when things started to heat up.”

“Moseyed over?”

“Sure. Knucklehead and me, we were next door listening to the whole conversation. It was mighty entertainin’, too. Like The Bickersons and Suspense rolled into one.”

“You’ve got my place bugged?”

Sickles cocked his head and gave me a don’t-ask-stupid-questions frown. “Course not. We had tin cans pressed up against the wall.”

I didn’t push it. Besides, I had other questions on my mind. I nodded at Mary Smith’s body without letting my eyes move that way.

“So what’s her real name, anyway?”

Sickles ran his hands over his smooth, sweaty skull. He was obviously trying to decide whether or not to tell me the truth. The truth won out. What a day for sworn enemies. Around the world, cats and dogs stopped fighting and kissed each other on both cheeks.

“Beats me, Menace,” Sickles said. “I didn’t even know she existed until she walked in here and started gabbin’ with you.”

He saw my confusion and went on. “You were the one we were following. Ever since we walked in on you at John Smith’s place.” He cracked a cock-eyed smile. “You were hidden O.K., but that beer you were guzzling wasn’t. It was still cold when we came in. All the windows were closed and bolted, so I knew somebody was still in there somewhere. I dropped a little hint about Dominic Van Dine-the next stop on my hunt for Smith-then stepped back to see what happened.”

I grunted with grudging admiration. “You amaze me, Sickles. You played this one better than Machiavelli himself.”

Sickles glared at me. “He some kinda Commie?”

I shook my head.

He allowed himself a half-smile. “Yeah, well, maybe. Only if I’m so smart, how come I’ve got boils on my butt the size of grapefruit from all the hours I spent sittin’ in the car today? I tell ya’, Menace, tailin’ you is like getting in a high-speed chase with a three-legged turtle.”

What a charming development. Sickles and I were so thoroughly bonded now he felt free to tell me about his carbuncles. I stifled a sigh.

My eyes drifted back to the body of Miss X, the Unknown Communist. I hadn’t killed her, but I hadn’t helped her, either.

What kind of revolutionary was I? What kind of detective was I? What kind of man was I?

“All that is solid melts into air,” Marx wrote. That was me alright. Fred Menace, the Red Detective, had melted. I’m just vapor now, part of the smog that chokes L.A.

I still charge thirty dollars a day plus expenses, though. Even vapor’s gotta make a living.