The Ferguson Affair

chapter 18

THE BUILDING WAS long and low, almost hidden from the street by discreet plantings. It had pastel pink walls and lavender doors which opened directly onto a kind of veranda. Michael Speare’s name was tastefully printed on one of the doors in lower-case letters, like a line from a modern poem.

It was one of those so-called studio offices, meant to suggest that doing business with the occupants was an aesthetic experience. The girl at the front desk underlined the suggestion. She had Matisse lines, and a voice like violins at a nuptial feast. She used it to tell me that Mr. Speare wasn’t back from his afternoon calls. Did I have an appointment?

I said I had, at three. She glanced at the clock imbedded in the blonde mahogany wall. It had no numbers on its face, but it seemed to indicate that it was ten minutes after three.

“Mr. Speare must have been delayed. I expect him at any moment. Will you sit down, sir? And what was your name?”

“William Gunnarson. It still is.”

She looked at me like a startled doe, but “Thank you, sir,” was all she said. I sat down on an arrangement of molded plywood and glass tubing which turned out to be comfortable enough. The girl returned to her electric typewriter, and began to play kitten on the keys.

I sat and watched her. She had reddish-brown hair, but in other respects her resemblance to Holly May was striking. It was a phenomenon I’d noticed before: whole generations of girls looked like the movie actresses of their period. Perhaps they made themselves over to resemble the actresses. Perhaps the actresses made themselves up to embody some common ideal. Or perhaps they became actresses by virtue of the fact that they already resembled the common ideal.

My eyes were still on the girl, without quite taking her in. She became restless under my stare. Everything about her, varnished hair, shadowed lids, gleaming red lips, breasts that thrust themselves on the attention, was meant to attract stares and hold them. But the girl behind the attractions was uneasy when they worked.

The advertisements didn’t tell you what to do next.

She looked up at me, her green eyes defensively hard. A different voice, her own, said: “Well?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be obnoxious. I was struck by your resemblance to someone.”

“I know. Holly May. People keep telling me that. A lot of good it does me.”

“Are you interested in acting?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I’d be home in Indiana, to coin a phrase. Raising brats.” The nuptial violins in her voice had gone badly out of tune. “Would you be in pictures?”

“I played a starring role in the family album. That was as far as it went.”

“The Family Album? I never heard of it. Has it been released?”

“I keep it at home in a trunk,” I said. “The family album. Photographs.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“It was one of my feebler efforts. Forgive me.”

“That’s all right,” she said magnanimously. “Mr. Speare says I got-I have no sense of humor, anyway.” She frowned at the clock. “I wonder what’s keeping him.”

“I can wait. Do you know Holly May?”

“I wouldn’t say I knew her. She left town a few months after I got this job. But I used to see her come in and out.”

“What sort of person was she?”

“It’s hard for me to tell. Some of the girls in the studios thought she was real cool-real down-to-earth, no airs about her and all. At least that was what they said. With me she was always standoffish. I don’t think she liked me.” After a pause, she said: “Maybe she didn’t like me because I look like her. She did a double take the first time she ever saw me.”

And after another pause: “Some people think I’m better-looking than her, even. But a fat lot of good it does me. I tried to get Mr. Speare to get me a job standing in for her. He said I didn’t know how to handle myself. So I took this course in standing, walking and standing. It cost me a hundred and sixty dollars, and just when I was getting real good at it, she had to go and give up the movie business.”

“That was a tough break for you,” I said. “I wonder why she left.”

“She wanted to get married. But it’s still a good question if you ever saw him. Why a girl would give up a career to marry him. Of course they say he owns half the oil in Canada, but he’s just an ugly old man. I wouldn’t marry him for all the money in the world.”

Her voice and her look were faintly doubtful. She sat with her green gaze resting unconsciously on me, balancing Ferguson’s money against his personal charms.

“You know Colonel Ferguson, do you?”

“I saw him once. He marched in here one day last summer. Mr. Speare was in conference with some very important clients, but that made no difference to him. He walked into Mr. Speare’s private office and started an argument, right in front of a producing star.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Her studio didn’t want her to get married. Neither did Mr. Speare. You can hardly blame him. She had a chance to be a real big name. But that wasn’t good enough for her.” She went into meditation again. “Imagine getting the breaks she got, and not even wanting them.”

A man in a blue Italian suit and a confidential tie came in breathing dramatically. When I stood up, I was tall enough to look down at the bald spot on top of his sleek dark head.

“Mr. Speare?”

“Yeah. You must be Gunnarson. I’m twenty minutes late. They were taping a new show and a lady who shall be nameless got hysterical when they wouldn’t let her use her idiot cards. So I had to hold her hand, in case you wonder where I got the talon wounds. Come in, will you?”

I followed him along a skylit corridor to a room which contained, in addition to office equipment, a couch and a portable bar. He went to the latter like a homing pigeon. “I need a drink. Will you join me?”

“A short bourbon will be fine.”

He poured me a long one, and himself another. “Sit down. How do you like the furniture? The drapes? I chose everything myself, I wanted a place where a man can relax as he creates.”

“You’re an artist, are you?”

“More than that,” he said between gulps of bourbon. “I create artists. I make names and reputations.”

He flung his empty hand toward the wall beside his desk. It was covered with photographs of faces, the bold, shy, wistful, arrogant, hungry faces of actors. I recognized some of the faces, but didn’t see Holly May’s among them. Most of them were actors who hadn’t been heard of for years.

“How is Holly?” he said, reading my mind. “I took her picture down, in a moment of childish pique. But I still keep it in my desk drawer. Tell her that.”

“I will if I see her.”

“I thought you were her lawyer.”

“I’m her husband’s lawyer.”

A kind of gray sickness touched his face for an instant. He covered his bald spot with his left hand, as if he feared scalping or had already been scalped; and gulped the remainder of his drink. This gave him strength to clown it. “What does he want? The rest of my blood? Tell him I’m all out of blood, he can go to a blood bank.”

“Did he treat you so badly?”

“Did he? He fixed me good. Three years of work, building her up, talking her into parts, keeping her out of trouble, all gone to bloody hell. Just when she was really getting hot, she had to marry him. He’s a rough man. As you doubtless know if you work for him.”

“I don’t work for him. I give him legal advice.”

“I see.” He poured himself another drink. “Does he take it?”

“I’m hoping he will.”

“Then advise him to take a running jump in the Pacific Ocean. I know a nice deep place, complete with sharks.” He fortified himself with half of his second drink, and said: “Well, let’s have it. What does he want from me, and what is it going to cost me?”

“Nothing. I’ll be frank with you.” But not so very frank. “I came to you more or less on my own, for information.”

“What about?”

“Mrs. Ferguson.”

He considered this, and drew the conclusion I wanted him to. “How is the marriage working out?”

“It isn’t. You’ll keep this to yourself, of course.”

“Of course,” he said, struggling to suppress his glee. “I knew it couldn’t last. A doll like Holly, a girl with her future, tying herself to a dodo. Who’s divorcing who?”

“It’s too early to talk in those terms. Put it this way. Colonel Ferguson married a woman he knew nothing about. Six or seven months later he’s decided that perhaps he ought to look into her background. I thought perhaps you could help.”

“Let down her back hair, eh? I wouldn’t want to do that to a client, not even an ex-client. Besides,” he said with a lopsided smile and a pass at the top of his head, “what do I get out of it?”

He had a fishy look. I felt no compunction in playing him like a fish. “She’s under contract to you, isn’t she? If she works?”

“Why should she go back to work, with the kind of settlement he can make on her?”

“There won’t be any settlement, if he divorces her. Or gets an annulment.”

His secret glee flared up again. He thought that we were having a meeting of minds. “I see. What did you say your name was? Bill?”

“Bill.”

“Call me Mike, Bill.” He went around his desk and slumped in the swivel chair behind it. “What kind of dope do you need?”

“Everything you have. Her background, her conversations, character, personal habits, men in her life.”

“Hell,” he said. “I can’t do that to her. I’m loyal to my clients. On the other hand, she’d be better off working. It isn’t healthy for a kid like her to retire. Hell, I’d be doing her a favor, doing the industry a favor. Only what if she finds out?”

“She won’t. Not even Ferguson will hear what you tell me. It’s strictly for background use.”

“I hope so, Bill. I like the little doll. I wouldn’t want anything to come between us. You understand that?”

“Very well. Very well, Mike.”

“Okay. We understand each other. Anything I say, you quote me, I’ll deny it.” But the things he wanted to say were bubbling on his lips. “For divorce purposes, I guess you’re mainly interested in how much she slept around.”

“It isn’t the only consideration. It does enter the picture. How much did she?”

“Not a sensational amount. She did like men. Most of her friends were older men.”

“Can you mention any names?”

“For filling in the background, that hardly seems necessary.”

“You said you had to keep her out of trouble.”

“Yeah, sure, it’s one of my services to my clients. I try to be like a father to them, Bill. Holly had no father to advise her.”

“What kind of trouble did you keep her out of?”

“She wasn’t good at handling money. And she only drew four-oh-oh per week. Big ideas on a small salary can play hell with your credit. She had a lot of credit trouble.”

“You mean debts?”

He nodded.

“What did she spend her money on?”

“Clothes and gewgaws, mostly.”

“How about narcotics?”

He peered at me through narrowed eyelids. “You don’t fool around, do you, Bill?”

“I try not to, Mike. Was she on any form of drugs?”

“That I doubt. I couldn’t say for sure she wasn’t. Some of the damnedest people are. Have you got reason to suspect narcotics?”

“Nothing definite. The idea did occur to me.”

“Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It’s grounds for annulment, for one thing. I don’t mean we’d ever take it into court. All we want is something to use for leverage.”

“Yeah, sure.” We were having another meeting of minds. “I don’t think there’s anything in the narcotics angle, though. It’s something I watch for, too. I won’t represent a hophead, that’s my professional ethics. Unless he or she is-” He searched for the right word.

“Successful?”

“Yeah, already established. Then it’s not my responsibility.”

“Was Holly established when you took her on?”

“Hell, no. She was nowhere, from nothing. That’s what grinds me. She’d never had a decent part. She owned the clothes on her back, and that was all. But I saw something there. I got an X-ray eye for talent. I recognized something unique there, I nurtured it like a flower.” His voice took on a lilting lyricism. “I got her fixed up with a wardrobe, I taught her to talk. Christ, I Pygmalionized her.”

“You what?”

“Pygmalionized her. It’s a literary allusion, from a play. Like playing God, you know? I even gave her a name and a biography.”

“Didn’t she have one of her own?”

“We all do, but about hers she wasn’t talking. She wouldn’t say a word about her family, or where she was from. If she had a family, she was ashamed of them. Or maybe she thought they’d get in her way. When I tried to press her on the point, she flipped her little lid.” He paused, idly fingering a copy of Hollywood Variety on his desk. “It could be she was scared of her family. She acted scared.”

“Do you know anything about them at all?”

“Not a thing, Bill. Far as I know, she never heard from a relative, and didn’t want to. She used the Holly May name for all transactions.”

“What was her original name?”

“Let me think.” He screwed up his face in a chimpanzee expression. “It was an unusual name, completely impossible for any serious purposes. I dreamed up the Holly May name to suit the personality I tailored for her. Holly May-Holly Day-Holiday. Get the connection? Holiday. A girl you could have fun with.” He fell silent.

“Dotty,” he said then. “Dotery. Dee-oh-tee-ee-are-wy.” He saw the change in my face. “Is there something there?”

“Could be,” I said suavely. “Dotery” was one of the names on Mrs. Weinstein’s list. “You said that most of Holly’s friends, her male friends, were older men?”

“That’s right. She liked to be fatherized. A lot of actresses are like that, I don’t know why.”

“Didn’t she have any young men in her life?”

“Oh, sure, she wasn’t strictly from Electra. I’d see her with younger escorts on the Strip from time to time. One boy she was very much interested in, for a while. She didn’t confide in me, but I notice things.”

“When was this?”

“I used to see them last year, last spring and summer, in the clubs. Rubbing knees under the table, stuff like that. I don’t know how long it went on.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t remember. She introduced us once, when I ran into them in Vegas. But I didn’t pay him much attention. To me he was just another bum-the parking-lot attendant with a pan.”

“Does the name Larry Gaines mean anything? Or Harry Haines?”

“Maybe. I can’t say for sure.” He was being careful.

I brought out my picture of Larry Gaines, got up, and laid it on top of the Variety. “Do you recognize this man?”

Speare studied the picture. “It’s him.”

“What were they doing in Las Vegas?”

“Making music.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“It stands to reason. I was having a drink with Holly in her hotel room. Dreamface walked in on us-he had his own key. He was going to throw a punch in my direction, till Holly explained who I was.” He grinned. “Her personal eunuch.”

“All this is very interesting.”

“Why? Is it still going on? Are they still making music?”

“I’d better not answer that.”

“It’s perfectly all right, Bill. I admire a man of discretion. I’m depending on you to be discreet. If anything comes out of this, you never talked to me. We don’t even know each other.”

That suited me.