Date:         Sat, 4 Jul 1998 19:03:17 -0700
From: "J. Hall" <jhall@LEMOORENET.COM>
Subject:      [WRITERS] INT:GP (Goldman Pictures Part Two): Miss Otis regrets..

>       "I left him enough to buy five more."
>       The plane ascended and turned north.


-Part Two-
>
>       "Mr Atkinson?"
  My landlady stepped back, a fresh unlit Chesterfield in one hand and a
pee-wee sized Pie Traynor fungo bat that Norell, her popeyed layabout
brother had drilled and lathed into a cute little legbreaker.  I stepped
back into the yellow porchlight.
  "Oh it's you," she said.
        "More or less," I wheezed, hoping I wasn't about to hear Part 46 of the
Kenny Atkinson, Heartbreaking Pipefitter story but knowing full well I was.
 It was 8:30, and I was two steps and a flight of stairs away from
collapsing on my bed after a two-day train ride up from Tijuana.  Half the
Baja desert was ingrained in my eyelids and my shirt still smelled vaguely
of Reinie Hinton's perfume.  Home is the hunter disconsolate, himself game
for another.  I put on a happy face for Mrs. Feldschaum's sake, but it went
unnoticed.
        "Did you see Ke - I mean Mr. Atkinson on your way up?"  Her eyes were
bright with worry or vodka and they swept over me like indifferent
starlings.  I put my suitcase down and waited.  It was a nice enough night,
middle sixties maybe, a glorious clear carpet of stars hanging over the
suffused streetlamps of Studio City, but there was a tinny chiming hum in
my ears and since the crash I'd been fighting the feeling I could see fuzzy
neon clouds around people's heads.  In the toss up between rude and
exhausted, exhaustion won, and I picked up the script once again.
        "No, Mrs Feldschaum, I didn't." I thought about asking her for one of he
r
Chesters but changed my mind.  It would only prolong the agony.
        "He was supposed to be here at seven," she began, "and now what is it?
nine? I honestly think sometimes that man doesn't own a wristwatch, he's
always late never calls and he thinks I'll be here just waiting around like
some goshdanged hair-yum girl just because he's got another two things
coming don't you think so?"
        I thought so.
        "And don't you think a man of his age ought to at least drive a Buick
instead of a Chevrolet?  Mr Feldschaum, God rest him, drove a DeSoto now
there was a real man's car, dont you think so?"
        I didn't think so but said otherwise.  From somewhere deep in the
two-toned wainscotted depths of the Feldschaum Arms I could smell pumpkin
pie baking, the grandmotherly aroma of Thanksgiving flowing out into the
night.  Overhead, frantic pepper moths threw themselves against the faux
coachlight overhead in frustration.  I knew the feeling. Time had taken a
taxi to the Great Used Car Lot of Love in her mind and I inched closer to
the space between her heavy arms and the doorjamb.
        "Mrs. Feldschaum," I started, then stopped.  A cream on black coupe
rumbled around the corner from DeQuincy and nosed into a downhill space a
few yards from us.  I picked up my suitcase and shuffled aside, slipping
past the onrushing Frau Feldschaum and said a small but fervent prayer that
someday I would not be anyone's gentleman caller.
        Especially one who tempted fate as many times as Kenny Atkinson.

        Someone had painted the door to my apartment cherry pink while I was gon
e,
but had kindly re-tacked my number up with a couple of furniture brads. I
put my bag down and peered down the hall.  All of the doors had been
painted different colors, apparently at random.  Norell must have picked up
some part-time hours over in the scenery shop at Fox, liberating a few
gallons of leftover enamel.  I wondered if pink was his way of telling me I
was on his enemies list.
        Churchill's plaintive mrowls of starvation went off like the La Brea CD
siren the moment I turned the key.  At least someone was glad to see me.

        "You've been eating bugs again," I whispered, ruffling his fur.  His
breath smelled like the backside of a tannery but I held him tight.  A few
empty tins of Norweigan herring lay discarded in the kitchenette sink,
halfheartedly rinsed clean. Or licked clean.  I guessed my secretary had
been feeding him though he could easily clamber down the fire escape
through the little swinging hatchway I'd had fitted into the bathroom
window.  He felt warm and alive and for the first time since I'd left
Mexico, I didn't think of Lariene Hinton.  "Thanks, Church," I said, and he
dug his claws into my arm in a purr-fit of anticipation, then lept off me
to wait in front of the sink.

        I slept in my clothes on the couch.  In the morning I fixed two bowls of
Ralston cereal and gave one to the cat, who sniffed at it and made a face.
"Sorry, the milk's canned," I said, and watched him try to bury it in the
old braided rug under the table.  I was out of everything:  food, liquor,
bullets, clean shirts, Reinie.
        What I wasn't out of was cash.  There was still over a quarter of a
million dollars in assorted denominations bundled inside what was left of
my wardrobe and I made a mental list of what to do with it.  Spending most
of it on a motor sailer and cruising the Marquesas seemed reasonable until
I remembered I was even less competent with boats than I was with airplanes.
        Lansky and Costello wouldn't, or couldn't pin the heist on me.  That had
been argued back and forth between myself, Huston, Bruno the Fed and Ramon.
 The MGB officer, Tlachssky, who was about as believable as Ralph Edwards'
pitch for Mi-Tee-Good Coffee ("Get some, Groucho does!") offered to return
the money via one of his people in Canada but was met with such stony
silence from the rest of us that he'd excused himself and gone off to sit
in the corner and thumb through a stack of last year's Variety.
        Why, exactly, I was free to keep the skim seemed to rest mostly on the
slim shoulders of one Lareine Hinton, which bothered no one except me.
        "DeLauro played it both ways," Bruno conjectured.  "Red, black, odd and
even, you were supposed to take care of the boys upstairs, or they were
supposed to take care of you.  No one counted on Mrs. Hinton taking his
marker, probably not even her." I had to wonder about that, but Bruno,
who's real name was Oscar Ramajian dismissed any thought of the Miami
faction looking at me as a culprit in the death of Costello's bodyguard.
        "They know it was Tony.  Razors aren't your style," he rumbled.
        "Not lately," I said, and Ramon fiddled with a cigar cutter crafted to
resemble a guillotine.  Ramajian took it away from him with a look of
disgust.  Kids.
        Huston thought the whole mess was a hoot.  "Come see me when you get bac
k
to Los Angeles.  I know three or four screenwriters who'd murder for a
story like this."
        "And I know three or four Assitant Attorneys General who'd do the same,"
Ramajian laughed.
        Huston shrugged eloquently. "Go home, son.  If half of what you told me
is
true, the lady will be the one they're looking for."


        I wasn't so sure of that, but after a week of Albacore steaks and claret
,
the sun had leavened my concussion into a distant, dull ache and I felt
well enough to accept a ride to the mainland on one of Huston's fishing
cruisers.
        There was a roll of wrapping paper in the closet, a reminder that I'd on
ce
had a reasonably normal life sending birthday presents to my nephews in
Ojai and I took most of Costello's swag and bundled it into a fat pastel
brick, then tied it up with kitchen twine.  A few hundred went into the
base of the massive Japanese shoji floorlamp Caroline had given me for my
birthday one year for emergencies and I folded up enough to deposit into my
checking account, if it hadn't expired from neglect.
        Mrs Feldschaum got two months rent in advance, one in arrears and fifty
for feeding the cat.
   Fiscally, at least, life was good.  I loaded my bundle, some filthy
socks and a couple of old Pepsi bottles into a paper sack and caught a bus
to my office downtown.

        The office was still there.  I'd expected to find it gutted, despoiled a
nd
my secretary quivering in a corner, her hair blanched grey, a rivulet of
drool spattering her car coat.  She gave me the 'when are you going to
learn' lecture after I'd done a Lowell Thomas.  I told her Mexico was nice
this time of year.
        "Nice is for people who can afford it," she groused.  I gave her the
money-bundle and told her to lock it up in the office safe.
        "Do I want to know what this is?"
        "Probably," I said, "but remember, loose lips sink secretaries."  She sl
id
her chair over and we made small talk about cases pending, most of which
seemed to involve the lost. Lost wives, husbands, dogs, bracelets, kids,
and a missing ocelot named Buchanan.  I took notes and when she paused for
a breath she told me she wanted a raise.
        I said I'd think about it.
        And that there were 76 messages on my desk, some of them from my ex-wife
.
She and Caroline had been coven sisters in the Church of the Beehive down
on Venice Blvd, devotees of Rilly Zarbidi's salon.  I shut the door on the
inner office and caught her peeking at me through the blinds.  Probably
wondering if I was going to ask for the office bottle.
        I wasn't.  My desk had been cleaned, straightened and cleaned again.  Ev
en
the phone had been wiped clean.  Brenda had been busy, and I waved a few
times at her.  She lit up and went back to studying business law.  The
Great Detective was home.
        A stack of mail six inches high, with far too many long white envelopes
with little cellulose windows demanded my attention, as did a pile of pink
"While you were away" notes filled with Brenda' distinctively loopy
annotation on time, date and possibility of collecting a fee.
        Caroline had called four times, I saw, twice on a Saturday.
        "Needs someone to move couch", Brenda had noted on the first call.
        "Back's out", the second one said.
        I flipped through the rest of the messages and dialed my ex-wife's offic
e
in Long Beach.  When no one answered, I hung up and called Phil's number
then slammed the phone down when I realized he was in Palm Springs.  I got
up and cracked the door open, then stuck my head out.  Brenda looked up
from her PhotoPlay expectantly.
        "Can you get a-hold of Mark Lavoie and see if he has anything for sale?"
 I
said.

        Brenda said she could but she doubted he had any Crosleys, then burst ou
t
laughing.
        Lavoie specialized in hitting police auctions, loading up on the
confiscated transportation of the jailed, or about to be jailed.  The
Crosley had come from a dealer in Ingleside as payment for finding his
daughter, a would-be sculptor waiting tables in Bakersfield too embarassed
to call home and though it was a crackerbox it had never let me down, bald
tires and all.  I would miss it.
        The office door swung open in the middle of her giggling and a thin,
elderly woman in a two-piece pinstriped men's suit walked in as if she
owned the place.
        "Can I help you?" Brenda asked, then slapped a hand over her mouth to ke
ep
from another laughing jag.
        "You may," came the reply, her voice trained, soft and low with a hint o
f
Europe in it.  No arguing with that kind of voice unless you were one of
Warner Brother's stock Nazi's in a Lloyd Nolan movie.  Since I wasn't I
stepped up to the plate.
        "Can we help you?" I said, taking in her black pearl stickpin, royal blu
e
scarf tied in a windsor and deep violet eyes.  At second glance she was
younger than I thought, maybe sixty, but the sun had known her well,
burning her skin a faded beige.  Or maybe it was the powder. I hadn't seen
white face powder on a woman since the war.
        "Which of you is the detective?" she smiled, and Brenda pointed a
lacquered nail at me.

        The inner office had a desk, two chairs and a psychiatrist's chaise loun
ge
that I'd scrounged from a failed hypnotist on the third floor.  A framed
print of Picasso's blue period self portrait hung over some half-hearted
grape ivy I'd been trying to get results out of for the last year atop a
surplus steel filing cabinet. The only carpeting in the place was dust, of
which there seemed to be a steady supply.

        "Sorry, it's been hell getting maid service since the Democrats took
office," I said, watching her eyes.  She shook her head, grey bangs swaying
and reached behind her to push the door shut, the wooden blinds clicking
against the frosted panes.
        "How much do you charge for protection?" she husked.  No preamble, pure
business.  I leaned against the desk and crossed my arms in what I hoped
was a businesslike way.
        "Depends on from what, doesn't it?"
        "I suppose it does." She licked the corner of her unlipsticked mouth the
n
realized I was watching her and stopped.
        I offered her a chair.  She took it and sat primly, her surprisingly whi
te
hands folded perfectly on a dark flannel lap.  "Let's find out what the
trouble is, first, before we discuss rates, shall we?"  Raffles, the polite
Detective before Tea.  I slid around the desk and clicked the GE fan on the
windowsill and hoped it wouldn't fry the wiring in the building again with
a short circuit.  Warm air blew out and I cracked the window, filling the
joint with the smell of yeast-rolls and garlic.
        "Basque place downstairs," I explained, and she extracted a little leath
er
card-case from an inner pocket.
        "Great pickled eggs, those Basques.  Must be a lot of vinegar in Spain
floating around."  She didn't smile, and I canned the corn for a while.
        "My name is Leona Otis," she announced, then handed me a buff-white
embossed card that said:



 The Remington Agency

        Leona Vertimeyer Otis

        I turned the card over but there was nothing else, not even an OBE or
phone number.  The Remington Agency meant nothing to me and I put it on the
pile of messages, but gently.  She seemed to generate waves of lethargy,
and the bakery aroma wasn't helping.

        "I heard you were reliable, and not terribly expensive," she offered, he
r
pencilled eyebrows perfect Roman arches of honesty.
        "I don't know where you heard that," I laughed.  She looked back at me
with disdain.  I had the feeling Leona Otis wasn't comfortable with men
laughing at her, and bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from offending her
further.  I didn't really need a new client but I was intrigued.
        "From one of your customers," she said.  "Who wishes to remain anonymous
."
 I rolled my eyes.  The mysterious type.  My stomach growled, not softly,
and I leaned back, hoping the chair wouldnt tip over causing her to crack
her face powder with a guffaw.  Though it might be worth it to see if she
had teeth.
        "I don't really do bodyguard work, Mrs. Otis."
        "Miss."  I rubbed my chin and picked up the card.  Expensive.
        "Miss.  But I know several people who would be glad to get the job.
Ex-cops mostly. Discreet.  A few of them even know how to keep their feet
off the furniture."
        Violet eyes.  I hadn't seen violet eyes in a very long time and hers wer
e
bright, the color of fresh irises.  She must have been a head-turner in the
Twenties.
        "Bodyguards I have, sir."
        "Ok, well what is-"  I stopped.  The violet had turned dark, as if someo
ne
had poured blood into a glass of thin wine.  A glistening droplet had
formed at the corner of one eye and I realized she was going to cry, and
could not have been more astonished if Picasso on the wall had coughed.
        "My problem is personal and unique," she said quietly.  I opened the des
k
and pulled out a clean linen hanky, one Caroline had bought when she
thought I would be wearing better suits.  She took it and dabbed at her face.

        "Most people who come through that door say the same thing, Miss Otis.
And you know, they're right," I said.
Something told me that was not exactly the right thing to say, but she gave
me back a tiny, framed smile.
        "You must forgive me, Mr, umm, I've forgotten what your last name was
again?"  I told her.  "But it has been a difficult year for me, for all of
at Remington."
        I had to ask.  "Bad year for shotguns?"
        Finally, she laughed.  And loudly, with little sniffling gasps.  Yes, sh
e
had teeth.  Most of them were white, straight and even, which was more than
I could say for myself.
        "No, no, not that Remington.  This Remington, my Remington, is a
consultant house.  I helped found it.  Well, at least I think I helped
found it.  Adam Ridgely might not say that, but I did."  Her chin lifted
and I saw the tears had dried.  "I did."
        "May I ask what you consult on?"  My imagination sat back in the balcony
seats and waited while a reel of quick cuts ran the gamut of models, actors
and movie backers, then spilled popcorn on itself when she answered.
        "Currently, the nature of pleasure," she said, and looked down at her
nails.  "Sexual pleasure, to be precise."
        I gave in and dragged out a crumpled pack of Luckies from the desk drawe
r.
 I'd been holding off, since she didn't seem the tolerant sort but I held
up a nail in an offering way and she told me to go ahead.
        "I see," I said, blowing out smoke.  "I didn't know there was money in
that outside of what you can find on a Friday night at the Mocambo."
        "We're an academic house," she said.  "Adam and I do research on many
things.  Things UCLA isn't interested in."

        I couldn't imagine the coeds at Westwood not being interested in sex and
said so.  She shook her bangs at me again, this time not so hard.
        "To be accurate, I should say aren't allowed to be interested in."
        "And who do you do this consulting for?" I asked, wonderingly.  An image
of Lareine framed against the azure sea in the window of Huston's mansion
came back to me and I shook it off.
        "I'm not sure that's germane," she said quietly.  "Besides, this really
doesn't have anything to do with Remington."
        "Then?"
        "I want to hire you to find out if my daughter is trying to kill me," sh
e
said, and another tear made it's way onstage.  I stubbed out my Lucky and
took out a legal pad and wrote "Miss L. Otis, August 27, 1952" at the top
with the onyx desk pen Caroline's father had given me for our wedding.  He
thought I'd be wearing better suits someday, too.
        She fumbled in the side pocket of her suitcoat and came out with a littl
e
cardboard specimen box, the kind a biologist would keep slides or dead
hummingbirds in and handed it to me.
        "This came in the mail two days ago to my home address."  I opened it, a
nd
buried inside a cushion of cotton balls was a shrivelled brown garden snail
about three inches long wrapped in clear plastic.
        "What is it?" I asked, holding it up to the light.
        "A human tongue," she said.
        I put it down.
        "Do you know a man named DeLauro?" she asked.  "Anthony DeLauro?"
        I looked at the tongue and nodded.
        "He's under indictment for tax fraud and racketeering, I believe.  How
well do you know him?" she continued.

        "Too well," I replied.  "He send you the tongue?"  I poked at it with th
e
end of the pen and shivered.  Then wondered who's it was and what had been
done to get it.
        "No, of course not.  He's one of our clients.  Racketeering?  I can
believe it.  He has a certain glassine quality, doesn't he?"  I used the
pen to lever the tongue back into the box.  Glassine.  That was Tony alright.
        "Clients?" It was hard to imagine Tony DeLauro hiring an agency to find
out what pleasure meant.  He'd made a good living exploiting nearly every
brand of sin known to mankind, and had probably invented a few new ones
when the usual kinks hadn't been profitable enough.
        "I said a client.  Former client really.  In any case," she watched me p
ut
the box back together and push it across the desktop, "your name came up in
a recent conversation with him.  He gave you high marks for ingenuity and I
need that right now."  Ingenuity.  Now I was getting referrals from the
slammer.  Things were looking up.
        "Yes, I'm terribly ingenious," I murmurred.  "You spoke to Tony in jail?
"
        She looked annoyed, which I was to learn meant she was confused.  Leona
Otis hated confusion.
        "Of course not.  Jail?  I wouldn't even know where it was.  No, he phone
d
me from New York as a matter of fact.  Said he was catching the Normandie
for the continent.  Racketeering, you say.."
        My head was swimming and I shook it to clear the feeling I had awakened
in
one of Fred Browne's short stories where everyone had three eyes and spoke
backward.
        "He's supposed to be in jail," I said.  A moment of awkward silence pass
ed
and she shrugged.
        "Unless it's the Bastille, I rather doubt if he is," she said.  "In any
case, this..thing..didn't come from him.  I think my daughter sent it."
        I wrote: "tongue from daughter--why?" on the pad.
        "Why?"
        "Because she said she did," Miss Otis said regretfully, and began to tel
l
me her story.

        When she left I put her retainer check in the desk drawer, took my notes
and put them in a brown file folder and told Brenda she could have her
raise.
        "Finally!" she snickered, then looked at me over her glasses and asked i
f
I was all right.  When I said I was, she handed me a waxy little envelope.
        "This came for you while you were with Theda there," she said.  Brenda w
as
almost my mother's age and tougher than a San Diego porkchop but she'd been
with me for a few years and I knew she was wondering about what Lareine
Hinton had done to me.  I'd taken on her case so fast and disappeared, with
some pretty skimpy explanations but Brenda could read me like a racing
sheet.  Detective to show in the fourth, never got out of the gate.
        I took the telegram and read it.
        "Well?"
        "I didn't win the Irish Sweepstakes," I said and gave it to her.

        Dear Jeff:
        Dublin is beautiful.  Lexie sends her love.  Will write soon.  Don't be
mad.
        LH

        "So?"
        I tossed it in the trash.  "So what?" I said.
        "Are you?"  She picked it back up and stuck it on her message spike.
        "What?"
        "Mad," she said.
        "I must be," I sighed.  "Get me Milton Thatt on the phone will ya, and
stop looking at me like I'm five years old and just fell off my first bike."
        "Is he still at Creative International?" she asked, giving me the 'mom
knows best' gaze.  But with Reinie she didn't know.  No one did.
        "I think.  Gotta find an actress," I explained.
        Brenda shrugged.  "Why not. This town's full of 'em. Any particular flav
or?"
        "The kind who send their mothers pieces of themselves," I said, and went
back to my desk.


to be continued..








=======================

I was either standing in your shadow or blocking your light
Though I kept on trying I could not make it right...

D. Henley


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