The Fame Thief (A Junior Bender Mystery) - Hardcover

Timothy Hallinan is the Edgar-, Shamus- and Macavity-nominated author of thirteen widely praised books, including The Fear Artist, Crashed, Little Elvises, and The Fame Thief. After years of working in Hollywood, television, and the music industry, he now writes fulltime. He divides his time between California and Thailand.

1
My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity
 
Irwin Dressler crossed one eye-agonizing plaid leg over the
other, leaned back on a white leather couch half the width of the
Queen Mary, and said, “Junior, I’m disappointed in you.”
   If Dressler had said that to me the first time I’d been hauled
up to his Bel Air estate for a command appearance, I’d have
dropped to my knees and begged for a painless death. He was,
after all, the Dark Lord in the flesh. But now I’d survived him
once, so I said, “Well, Mr. Dressler—“
   A row of yellow teeth, bared in what was supposed to be
a smile but looked like the last thing many small animals see.
“Call me Irwin.”
   “Well, Mr. Dressler, at the risk of being rowed into the center
of the Hollywood Reservoir wired to half a dozen cinder blocks
and being offered the chance to swim home, what have I done
to disappoint you?”
   “Nothing. That’s the problem.” Despite the golf slacks and
the polo shirt, Dressler was old without being grandfatherly, old
without going all dumpling, old without getting quaint. He’d
been a dangerous young man in 1943, when he assumed control
of mob activity in Los Angeles, and he’d gone on being dangerous
until he was a dangerous old man. Forty minutes ago, I’d
been snatched off a Hollywood sidewalk by two walking biceps
and thrown into the back seat of a big old Lincoln Town Car,
and when I’d said, “Where’s your weapon?” the guy in the front
said, “Irwin Dressler,” and I’d shut up.
   Dressler gave me a glance I could have searched for hours
without finding any friendliness in it. “You got yourself a franchise,
Junior, a monopoly, and you’re not working it.”
   I said, “My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity.”
   “That’s not how this country was built, Junior.” Like many
great crooks, even the very few at his stratospheric level, Dressler
was a political conservative. “What made America great? I’ll tell
you: backbone, elbow grease, noses to the grindstone.”
   “Sounds uncomfortable.”
   Dressler had lowered his head while he was speaking, perhaps
to demonstrate the approved nose-to-the-grindstone position.
Only his eyes moved. Beneath heavy white eyebrows, they
came up to meet mine, as smooth, dry, and friendly as a couple
of river stones. He kept them on me until the back of my neck
began to prickle and I shifted in my chair.
   “This is amusing?” he said. “I’m amusing you?”
   “No, sir.” I picked up the platter of bread and brie and said,
“Cheese?”
   “In my own house he’s offering me cheese.” Dressler
addressed this line to some household spirit hovering invisibly
over the table. “It’s true, it’s true. I’ve grown old.”
   “No, sir,” I said again. “It’s, uh, it’s . . .”
  “The loss of American verbal skills,” he said, nodding, “is
a terrible thing. Even in someone like you. I remember a time,
this will be hard for you to believe, when almost everyone could
speak in complete sentences. In English, no less. What have I
done, Junior, that you should laugh at me? Get so old that I
don’t frighten you any more?”
  “I wasn’t—”
  “I bring you here, I give you cheese, good cheese—is the
cheese good, Junior?”
  “Fabulous,” I said, seriously rattled. This had the earmarks
of one of Irwin’s legendary rants, rants that frequently ended
with one less person alive in the room.
  “Fabulous, he says, it’s fabulous. What are you, a hat maker?
Of course, it’s fabulous. The Jews, you know, we’re a desert
people. The two gods everybody’s killing each other over now,
Jehovah and the other one, Allah, they’re both desert gods, did
you know that, Junior?”
  “Um, yes, sir.”
  “Desert gods are short on forgiveness, you know? And we Jews,
we’re the chosen people of a desert god and hospitality is part of
our tradition, and now I’m going to get badmouthed for my cheese
by some pisher, some vonce—you know what a vonce is, Junior?”
  “No, sir.”
  “It’s a bedbug, in Yiddish, great language for invective. I’ll
tell you, Junior, I could flay the skin off you using Yiddish alone,
I wouldn’t even need Babe and Tuffy in the next room there,
listening to everything we’re saying so they can come in and kill
you if I get too excited. My heart, you know? A man my age, I
can’t be too careful. Someone gets me upset, better for Babe and
Tuffy just to kill them first, before my heart attacks me.”
  “I’m sorry, Mr. Dressler. I wasn’t thinking.”
  “But thinking, Junior, that’s what you’re supposed to be
good at.” He reached out and took some bread off the platter,
which I was apparently still holding, and said, “Down, put it
down. Did I offer you wine?”
  “Yes, sir.” He hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to bring it up. I put
the tray in front of him on the table. Inched it toward him so he
wouldn’t have to lean forward.
  “I still got arms,” he said, tearing some bread. “What were
we talking about before you got so upset?”
  “My franchise.”
  “Right, right. You may not know this, Junior, but you’re the
only one there is. You’re like Lew Winterman when he—did you
know Lew?”
  “Not personally.” Lew Winterman had been the head of
Universe Pictures and long considered the most powerful man
in Hollywood, at least by those who didn’t know that the first
thing he did every morning and the last thing he did every night
was to phone Irwin Dressler.
  “When he and I thought of packaging, we had to get horses
to carry it to the bank, that’s how much the money weighed,”
Dressler said. “You know packaging? You can have Jimmy Stewart
for your movie, but you also gotta take some whozis, I don’t
know, John Gavin. And every other actor in your picture and
also the cameraman and the writers, and he represented them
all, Lew did. For about a year after we figured it out, he was the
only guy in Hollywood who knew how to do it, and he did it ten
hours a day, seven days a week. You know how much he made?”
  “No, sir. How much?”
  “Don’t ask. You can’t think that high. So you’re like that
now, like Lew, but on your own level, and what are you doing?
Sitting around on your tuchis, that’s what you’re doing. That
whole thing you got going? Solving crimes for crooks? And
living through it? You got Vinnie DiGaudio out of the picture
for me with every cop in L.A. trying to pin him. You helped
Trey Annunziato with her dirty movie, although she didn’t
like it much, the way you did it. When four hundred and
eighty flatscreens got bagged out of Arnie Muffins’ garage in
Panorama City, you brought them back, and without a crowd
of people getting killed, which is something, the way Arnie is.
You’re it, Junior, you’re the only one. And you’re not working
it.”
  “Every time I do it,” I said, “I almost get killed.”
  “Ehhh,” Dressler said. “You’re a young man, in the prime of
life. What’re you, thirty-eight?”
  “Thirty-seven.”
  “Prime of life. Got your reflexes, got all your IQ, at least
as much as you were born with. You’re piddling along with a
franchise that, I’m telling you, could be worth millions. Where’s
the wine?”
  I said, “I’ll get it.”
  “You’ll get it? You think I’m going to let you in my cellar?”
He picked up a silver bell and rang it. A moment later, one of
the bruisers who’d abducted me and dragged me up here came
into the room. He was roughly nine feet tall and his belt had to
be five feet long, and none of it was fat.
  “Yes, Mr. Dressler?”
  “Tuffy,” Dressler said. “You I don’t want. Where’s Juana?”
  “She’s got a headache.” Despite being the size of a genie in
The Thousand and One Nights, Tuffy had the high, hoarse voice
of someone who gargled thumbtacks.
  “So mix her my special cocktail, half a glass of water, half a
teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda and cream of Tartar. Stir it
up real good, till it foams, and take it to her with two aspirins.
And get us a bottle of—what do you think, Junior? Burgundy
or Bordeaux?”
  “Ummm—”
  “You’re right, it’s not a Bordeaux day. Too drizzly. We need
something with some sunshine in it. Tuffy. Get us a nice Hermitage,
the 1990. Wide-mouthed goblets so it can breathe fast. Got it?”
  Tuffy said, “Yes, Mr. Dressler.”
  I said, “And put on an apron.”
  Tuffy took an involuntary step toward me, but Dressler
raised one parchment-yellow hand and said, “He just needs to
pick on somebody. Don’t take it personal.”
  Tuffy gave me a little bonus eye-action for a moment but
then ducked his head in Dressler’s direction and exited stage left.
Dressler said, “So. People try to kill you.”
  “Occupational hazard. I’m working for crooks, but I’m also
catching crooks. If I solve the crime, the perp wants to kill me. If
I don’t solve it, my client wants to kill me.”
  “Nobody’s really tough any more,” Dressler said, shaking his
head at the Decline of the West. “You know how we took care
of the Italians?”
  I did. “Not really.”
  “Kind of a long way to say no, isn’t it? Three syllables instead
of one. So, okay, the Italians came out to California first, and
when we got here from Chicago it was like Naples, just Guidos
everywhere, running all the obvious stuff: girls, betting, alcohol,
unions, pawnshops, dope. Well, we were nice Jewish boys who
didn’t want to make widows and orphans everywhere so you
know what we used? Never mind answering, we used baseball
bats. Didn’t kill anybody except a few who were extra-stubborn,
but we wrapped things up pretty quick. See, that’s tough, walking
into a room full of guns with a baseball bat. Ask a guy to do
that these days, he’d have to be wearing Depends.”
  I said, “Huh.”
  Dressler nodded a couple of times, in total agreement with
himself. “But let’s say the people who want to kill you, give them
the benefit of the doubt, let’s say they could manage it. And all that
nonsense with a different motel every month isn’t really going to
cut it, is it? What’s the motel this month? Valentine something?”
  “Valentine Shmalentine,” I said, feeling like I was drowning.
  “In Canoga Park.”
  “Valentine Shmalentine? Kind of name is that?”
  “Supposed to be the world’s only kosher love motel.”
  “What’s kosher mean for a love motel? No missionary position?”
  “Heh heh heh,” I said. He wasn’t supposed to know about
the motel of the month. Nobody was, beyond my immediate
circle: my girlfriend, Ronnie; my daughter, Rina; and a couple
of close friends and accomplices, such as Louie the Lost. But, I
comforted myself, even if word about the motels had leaked, I
still had the ultra-secret apartment in Koreatown. Nobody in
the world knew about that except for Winnie Park, the Korean
con woman who had sublet it to me, and Winnie was in jail in
Singapore and had been for seven years.
  “So the motels don’t work,” Dressler said, “not even taking
the room next door like you do, with the connecting door and
all, to give you a backup exit. It’s a cute trick though, I’ll give
you that. So I’ll tell you what you need. Since you can’t hide,
I mean. You need a patron, so people know you’re under his
protection. Somebody who wouldn’t kill you even if they caught
you playing kneesie with their teenage daughter, and you know
how crooks are about their daughters.”
  “What I need,” I said, “is to quit. Just do the occasional burglary,
like a regular crook.”
  “Not an option,” Dressler said. “You agree that everyone,
even a schmuck like Bernie Madoff, has the right to a good
defense attorney?”
  I examined the question and saw the booby trap, but what
could I do? “I suppose.”
  “Then why don’t they deserve a detective when some ganef
steals something from them? Or tries to frame them, like Vinnie
De Gaudio? You remember helping Vinnie Di Gaudio?”
  “Sure. That was how I met you.”
  “See? You lived through it. You got told to keep Vinnie out
of the cops’ eyes for a murder even though it looked like he
did it, and you kept me out of the picture so my little line to
Vinnie shouldn’t attract attention. This was a job that required
tact and finesse, and you showed me both of those things, didn’t
you? And now you’re eating this nice cheese and you’re about to
drink a wine, a wine that’ll put a choir in your ear. So quitting
is not an option.”
  “What is an option?” I held up the platter, feeling like I
was making an Old-Testament sacrifice. “Cheese? It’s terrific
cheese.”
  “You can lighten up on the cheese. I know it’s good. You
thought this dodge up all by yourself, Junior, and I respect that.
Something new. Gives me hope for your generation. Like I said,
a patron, patronage, that’s what you need. And an A-list client,
somebody nobody’s going to mess with.”
  “A client and a patron,” I said. “Two different people?”
  “That’s funny,” Dressler said gravely. “You gotta work with
me here, Junior. I’ve got your best interests in mind.”
  “And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But I—”
  “I do think you don’t appreciate it,” Dressler said, “and I
don’t give a shit.”
  I said, “Right.”’
  “And also, I gotta tell you, this is a job I wouldn’t give to just
anybody. The client, for example—”
  “I thought you were the client.”
  “Literal, you’re too literal. I’m the client in the sense that I’m
the one who chose you for the job and the one who’ll foot the
bill. But think about it, Junior. Am I somebody some crook’s
going to hit?”
  “No.”
  “How stupid would anybody have to be to hit me?”
  “Someone would have to be insane to take your newspaper
off your lawn.”
  “Not bad. Sometimes I get glimpses of something that makes
me think maybe you’re smart after all. No, the client, in the
sense that she’s the one who got ripped off, the client is—are you
ready, Junior?” He sat back as though to measure my reaction
better.
  I put both hands on the arms of my chair to demonstrate
readiness. “Ready.”
  “Your client is . . . Dolores La Marr.”
  There was a little ta-daaa in his voice and something expectant
in his expression, something that tipped me off that this was
a test I didn’t want to fail. So I said, “You’re kidding.”
  “Dolores,” he said, nodding three times, “La Marr.”
  I said, “Wow. Dolores La Marr.”
  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” Dressler said,
and there was a hush of reverence in his voice. “Life magazine
said so. On the cover, no l...