Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 19:36:55 -0400 From: "J. Hall" Subject: [WRITERS] INT:GP (AKA Goldman Pictures Pt.2): "Speak to me only with thine eyes.." Short recap: Reinie Hinton is off in Europe and has just skipped Ireland to parts unknown after stealing a plane from John Huston in Mexico. Perhaps stealing is the wrong word. Appropriated, perhaps..one step ahead of Meyer Lansky, the FBI, the IRS, the MGB, and General Mills for all anyone knows. Flush with dough, holding the marker to her father's rackets in Hollywood, Reinie is una bella mafiana, a heartache in high heels.. Meanwhile the detective has returned home to LA, tired and still a little woozy from smashing up a perfectly good Bellanca GullWing full of loot into the sands of a tropical beach, loaded with money he can't really spend but does anyway, to an agency he thinks he runs.. A new case, involving a certain Miss Leona Otis..has walked through that half-paned office door..something about a tongue in a box, a think-tank that studies pleasure with a capital P, and a daughter who might be Electra's understudy.. And now, Mercury Theatre of the Air brings you 'Goldman Pictures', definitely NOT a Desilu Production. This week's episode: "Speak to me only with thine eyes.." [since this part is so long, I'm going to break it up..] And Robyn Harris wroteth thus when last we saw her: "She wrote a quick note and left a large amount of the money, for Lex's safekeeping. She promised, in the note, to return. When the cab came, she had her one suitcase ready to go and she began the next leg of her journey." --- "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. "Creative International Agency, can you hold?" It wasn't a question. "Hold what?" I said, but the line was already silent. Taunting receptionists before lunch was probably a venial sin but I'd risk it. This one sounded happy just to have a job that didn't require emptying ashtrays. Milton Thatt had a reputation for hiring only mushmouths for his office, something about the natural compliance of southern women down on their luck. Or so he'd said. I hadn't spoken to him in a couple of years and wasn't thrilled about doing so now. Believability wasn't his strong suit but he was the only talent agent I knew that dealt with what was euphemistically referred to as 'niche-casting'. In other words, the oddballs, the deformed, the cranks. Leona Otis had given me just enough of a lead on her daughter, whom she hadn't seen since the '30's, to suspect she was scraping by doing occasional parts in backroom stag films, B-pictures and industrial stuff. That is, if she hadn't lied to me about the tongue. "Be nice! She's probably somebody's baby sister from Boise." Brenda hollered from the outer office. "I'm always nice," I said, cupping the mouthpiece. I hummed a bit of 'Street of Dreams' and doodled, waiting. Somebody's nooner was more like it, with a voice like that. Leona Otis' coffee cup was still where she'd left it, a perfect lip-print in pink smiling at me from a cardboard canvas. "Creative International Agency, this is Marilyn, how may I direct your call?" I asked for Thatt and she made a 'tcha' sound with her lips. "'S'ee expecting a call from you?" I put my Chesterfield out in the coffee. So now he had a watchdog. "Tell Milt that it's Sammy and the girl he sent over can't balance a beachball on her nose," I said. I looked up to see Brenda shaking her head at me. Bad detective procedure, impersonating bigshots. If producers were bigshots. "How unfortunate," Marilyn sighed, a palpable grin in her voice. I'd judged wrong, as usual. There was a little Boston in there somewhere. Unfah-tunate. Maybe Milton was upgrading. "You're telling me! I've got three more scenes to shoot in Circus Girls Confidential and now I find out Mimi the Human Harbor Seal has an inner ear that would cripple Constantinople!" Brenda dropped a stack of old Times-Heralds on the couch and left, rolling her eyes. "I can see where that might be a problem," she said, trying not to laugh and succeeding. For the most part. "So can I," I said. "Is Milton around or has he been fed into a sausage grinder for his sins yet?" "Oh he's here," she laughed. Nice ordinary laughter. "Unground. I'll pu t you through." The line got cottony with interference then a flabbergasted, elderly-sounding man came on. "This is Milton Thatt." A little phlegm there. Maybe Thatt had pneumoni a. One could only hope. "Miltie! Baby!" I underlined a notation on the legal pad about the Otis girl and tried to sound harmless. Thatt's voice dropped an octave, suspicious. "Yes?" Harmless fizzled. I'd have to settle for charming. "Is this Milton Thatt?" "Yes. I just said so. Who the hell is this?" "THE Milton Thatt of the Thatt's Fine Furniture and Lamps?" I made another squiggle next to 'daughter may be using stage name of Mary-Elaine Harriet and waited for the little brass wheels to turn far enough over in his head to trigger the recognition buzzer. I could hear him breathing, little gummy rattles. Maybe I'd pushed him too far. "You. Why didn't I know it was you?" he groaned. "Whistle a happy tune, Milt. It's not that bad," I said. "At least you didn't have to see Chino from the cheap seats, buddy." Five years ago, just after the war, I'd trailed a truckload of pilfered Louis Quatorze couches, armoires and writing desks to a warehouse in San Pedro. Elegant stuff, liberated from a certain Bavarian Feld-Marschall's home in advance of 3rd Armor's push toward Prague by some singularly inelegant people. Chief among them was Staff Sergeant Milton Thatt, scrounger extraordinare. Short and stout, like your Aunt Helen's proverbial teapot, Thatt was easy to follow as he toodled around Los Angeles in a vintage Packard, arranging for a buyer's auction on the docks. Sometimes I wondered if Marlowe was having me tail him as a test, to see if I'd crash the Crosley into a hydrant. Thatt chewed on the thought of prison for a moment then swallowed audibl y. "You need something?" he asked. "Now that's the spirit, Milt. Cooperation is the key to better public relations, and brother if there's one thing a man in your position needs, it's good press." When the feds and the SO had come to round up Thatt's goodies, he'd been nowhere in sight. Our client, a curator for a small but influential auction house in Amsterdam just wanted the furniture back as War Reparations. Eventually I heard it had all been sold to one of the Hunt brothers for two million bucks. Thatt's name somehow never came up in the official inquiries, which made the Army, the State Department and Milton Thatt very happy. But I knew. And so did Thatt. And from time to time when I'd needed information, he'd coughed up. Begrudgingly, but that was a given with Thatt. He bought out Julian Dew's contract with Creative after Dew managed to get himself blacklisted. "You got a point or is this just to let me know you're still living over in Studio City with no heirs?" Thatt said. "That was dumb, Miltie." Threats before lunch with Thatt were rare. Usually he'd have to have a gutfull of the panoply of mummers, contortionists, stock ghouls, armless strippers and gibberty-flibbets along with three or four boilermakers before he'd be so emboldened. Dew had been simpatico with his clientele and fatherly, despite his tendency to bed anything with a mucous membrane. Thatt thought himself a logistician, able to leap tall sanitariums in a single bound, above it all and willing to live off the longterm contracts Dew had engineered. That he'd been overwhelmed with an influx of the New Peculiar after Bell had come up with an affordable 16mm studio-quality camera system was both ironic and fitting. At least six european production companies specializing in the exploitation of the bizarre had offices in the Los Angeles area since Dew had scrammed to Berlin, and for Thatt, work had suddenly become Work and not a chance to leech off the exploits of another. Or so he'd said. Thatt's clients rarely made the Trades and like everything else about him, it was sometimes difficult to separate I had the feeling that secretly Thatt enjoyed earning an honest dollar after a decade of skimming PX liquor distribution kitties in overseas service clubs. "Just get to the table with this, will ya?" he said quietly, his defianc e evaporating. "The biscuits are getting cold. Seals. I shoulda known it was you." "I'm looking for someone, Milt." "Man or woman? Or something on four legs?" Thatt snickered. "Actress type, probably mid-thirties." I read through the notes I'd tak en with Leona Otis. "Whaffor?" More snickering. I wondered if Marilyn was doing something to him I couldn't see, then shook my head to clear it of the picture. "Her mother's worried about her." Thatt sighed and I could hear him shifting on a creaking chair. "Ok, gi ve me what you got," he said. "Maiden name Cynthia Otis, may be using a SAG name of Mary-Something Harriet. Mother says she was a real blonde the last time they checked." "And when was that?" Thatt sniffed. "1938." I found another Chesterfield, a little chewed up with age and stuck it in my mouth. "Aw c'mon. You know I don't have records that go back that far," he whined. "You gotta have more than this." I did. A lot more, but I wasn't sure how much to tell him, nor how exactly to explain it if I did. "She's missing, Milt." I lit up and blew smoke out the cracked window a t the Basque joint across the street. "Mother says she did some extra work here and there for years, but had an exhibitionist streak wider than than Hedy Lamarr. Apparently she showed up in a blue movie the mother ran across." I waited. "Mom's watching stuff like that, tsk. What is the world coming to?" Tha tt clucked. He wasn't shocked, not even amused. I went on. "I've no idea, Milt. It wasn't your usual black socks and mask kind of thing." "Well, what kind of 'thing' was it? Or should I maybe ask who's 'thing' was she making nice with? Anyone I'd know?" Brenda walked back in and sat down on the couch, pushing aside the paper s. I pointed at my coffee cup and made refill gestures. She shrugged and made this-is-getting-interesting gestures back at me. I squinted back a go-away look. She stuck her tongue out. Office politics. "Let's just say making nice wasn't on the menu for that one, Milt," I said, then blundered on. "But the mother says it was definitely her. There's something else, though." Thatt blew his nose into what I sincerely hoped was a handkerchief. Brenda giggled and made moose antlers out of her hands. "Sorry," he sniffled. "I think I got allergies. What else?" I debated this one and decided I wasn't going to get any further with it if I didn't spill a few more details. "Listen, this daughter, this kid, she's got a kink. Self-destructive. Not in a nice way, Milt. She's missing some fingers." "Well shit. How do you know she-" "Look," I said, suddenly weary of spinning Milton Thatt a fairy tale, "this kid cuts herself up, Milt. Always has. The mother says she's been in and out of loony bins for years and," Brenda was shaking her head in an oh-my-god sort of awareness that this wasn't going to be an ordinary missing persons case, "the kid hasn't been seen in person for a while. Years. On film, yes. But not in person. The mother is a client, Milt. She's got a stack of movies with her daughter in them, and the kid is slowly taking herself apart." "Ok, ok, calm down. Jesus, you're worse than my first wife." I didn't realize I was shouting. Brenda lit one of her Kent's and held it out to me, but I waved it away. "Just take a look in your rolodex, Milt. Mid thirties, maybe blonde, missing fingers, goes by the -" "Yeah I know, Cynthia Otis, Mary dash Harriet. You got any idea how lon g this will take me?" About fifteen minutes, as it turned out. Thatt had hung up with a grunt and a sneeze, pledging a return call as soon as he'd come up with something. "You figure he knows this one?" Brenda mused, stubbing out her Kent in t he big Cal-Neva ashtray she'd lifted off the filing cabinet. Normally I tossed what little pocket change remained after hitting the Pup Tent for lunch in it but since Reinie I hadn't been clocking in much. "Does Krupa know drumsticks? Yeah, if she's worked the kind of movies h er mother said she did, he knows her." Something about Leona Otis' story bothered me, though. Even if half of it was bunk, which would put it somewhere on the crest of the bell curve for the Average of Lies Told To A Private Investigator, the idea that DeLauro's name had popped up in the first ten minutes of her story was too much of a coincidence for me. Maybe it was the concussion, but I was getting the feeling someone was watching me, feeding me little bon-bons of information to steer me around like a cheap wheelbarrow. Even though Otis had given me explicit instructions not to contact her a t work, I decided to pay a visit to The Remington Agency. "See if you can find a listing for these guys," I said, handing Brenda t he calling card Otis had offered up. I realized, sheepishly, that it was the only piece of ID she'd shown me. I was getting sloppy with the business. "Sure think, comrat," she vamped, and wandered off to plow through the collection of Los Angeles County phone books we'd acquired over the years. The phone rang as soon as she'd gone. Thatt. "Ok," he began without preamble, "got a pen?" I said I did. "Ya got three choices. I'll list 'em alphabetic like," Thatt chuckled. "There ain't much on any of them, but it's all I got." Brenda appeared in the doorway with a forlorn look and a slip of memo paper and watched me take down names and addresses. When Thatt was done, he told me I owed him. He always said that, but w e both knew better. In Thatt's world, obligation had the half life of a popsicle in the Mojave. It was the same in mine. "Well boss, there's no Remington Agency in this county listed." Brenda tossed the yellow While You Were Gone form on my desk. "But I talked to my sister. Shirlene? The one that works over at UCLA?" "She the redhead with the bunion attacks?" I picked up the slip and rea d it. "No, that's Arlene. Shirlene's got neuralgia." "How could I have forgotten," I grinned. Brenda had a large and colorfu l nation of afflicted kin scattered across Southern California in what often proved to be (at least for my line of work) strategic locations. Well, most of them were colorful. "So what's this number?" Brenda dumped the Cal-Neva ashtray and set it down with a thunk. "She thinks your Miss Otis is on staff there. But.." I held up a finger. "Let me guess. She's really Professor Olga Balaika Leonashevnika Otis and she teaches modern interpretive dance therapy to shellshocked policemen." "Not exactly," she smiled. "You are such a smartass. How in the hell d id Caroline ever put up with you?" "She didn't," I said, and her smile faded into the wallpaper. "I'm sorry, hon. I didn't mean anything, you know that." "I know." Brenda chewed on the insides of her mouth. At 48, she'd outlived two husbands and a son, and had given up on turning me into a replacement for either catagory. Tall, rawboned and possessed of the kind of hair Warners engineered for Ingrid Bergman's farewell scenes in Casablanca, Brenda could make striking seem like an understatement when she felt like digging into her makeup kit and wearing something other than her Our Miss Brooks costume. She was crafty, connected and literate and didn't mind the odd hours I kept and I wondered how Marlowe got by without a secretary like this. With two widow's pensions from the Navy and the LAPD she also didn't need the crummy salary I'd been paying her. Sometimes I wondered why she worked at all. Boredom maybe. "Otis?" I wanted to get past Caroline. Fortunately she hadn't met Rein ie Hinton. Yet. "Oh," she picked up the memo slip and looked at it like she'd never seen it before, "try the physics department. Shirlene thinks this Otis person might be one of the eggheads. Only she's not an Otis. There's nobody named Otis on the faculty. An Oscar, an Olemeyer, an Othcart, but no Otis." "An Othcart. You're making that up," I smiled. "I never make anything up!" she deadpanned, then turned on a heel and fled, dodging the matchbook I'd tossed at her retreating backside. This episode will be continued shortly.. Jeff