“No. I didn’t tell him I was going anywhere. Heck, I wasn’t even answering his silly letters. And I gave my mother strict orders not to tell Paul where I’d gone.”
“But she must’ve spilled the beans, Miss Palmer. Or maybe a friend of yours told Paul where—”
She shook her head and the brown hair bounced. “No. He found out when he was home on leave, and saw my picture in the paper.”
“Why was your picture in the paper?”
Her smile was a lush explosion; her whole face went sunny. “Why, don’t you think I’m pretty enough to have my picture in the paper?”
Her shoulders were back, her chin up, the submarine hull threatened worse than ever.
“I think you’re a lovely young woman…but papers need a reason, or anyway an excuse, to run a picture, even of a pretty girl like you—so why’s a Los Angeles picture of Vera Palmer running in a Dallas paper?”
“I’m in a beauty contest. I’m one of the twenty finalists.”
Seemed Miss Palmer had registered at the Daily News to enter the Miss California contest. Naive, she hadn’t brought along an 8 by 10, and a news photographer, overhearing this, had volunteered to shoot her picture—he even fronted five bucks for her to go buy a bikini.
“He was so nice,” she purred. “So generous.”
“Yeah, sounds like a real philanthropist.”
The News had run a story about the guileless girl who had wandered in to enter the Miss California contest, and how the News had helped her out by buying her a swimsuit and taking a photo…which the paper ran. And the wire service picked up.
She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s so special about a picture of me in a bikini.”
Despite her wide eyes, I was starting to understand that she knew very well what was special about her, in or out of a bikini.
“Paul,” I said, getting her back on track.
“Paul,” she said, with a nod. “Last week Paul caught up with me…. He follows me around campus, shows up at the rehearsals for my play, calls my room.”
“Are you in a dorm?”
“Yes, at the MAC.”
“The MAC?”
“That’s short for Masonic Affiliates Club or Clubhouse or something. It’s a student activities center. They have several dorms there. It’s also where we’re rehearsing the play. I’m in a play. I’m a drama major.”
I should’ve known—scratch a college girl out here, find a starlet. Still, she seemed so fresh, so sincere….
“You can ask my two roommates,” she was saying, “ask the girls if Paul hasn’t been a pest.”
“Has he gotten physical?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t have sex with him again for a million dollars.”
“I mean, has he hit you?”
“He’s grabbed me.” She turned her palms up and I could see small bruises on her inner forearms.
“We can get a court order,” I said.
“What?”
“A restraining order, where he can’t come within a hundred feet of you.”
“No! No, I don’t want to involve the authorities. That’s why I came to you, Mr. Heller.”
“I understand you requested me, specifically?”
“Yes, I read about you in the newspapers.”
I’d had coverage, locally, when I’d been involved on the fringes of the notorious Elizabeth Short murder, the so called Black Dahlia slaying. Other cases of mine over the years had hit the national wire services, too; I was a minor celebrity myself, even if I didn’t look good in a bikini.
“Well,” I said, “you’re lucky to find me. Usually I’m in the Chicago office.”
“Will you take my case?”
“First you better tell me what it is you want me to do. Scare him, hurt him, what?”
She shook her head, eyes tightening in a frown. “I don’t really want him hurt. I was…fond of him, once.”
“Okay. What, then?”
“Just protect me. Talk to Paul…. He’s pretty tough, though. He’s a soldier.”
I smiled. “That’s okay. I used to be a Marine.”
“Ooooo, really?” The “ooooo” had been a sort of squeal. “I love men in uniform.”
“Except for Paul.”
Her smile disappeared, and she nodded, like a school kid realizing she’d gotten a little too wild in the classroom. “Except for Paul…. What do you charge? I don’t have a lot of money.”
“We’ll work something out,” I said.
And all I meant by that was I’d take into consideration that she was just a college kid, a sweet girl from Texas trying to get an education. Really. Honest. No kidding.
“I’m sure we will,” she said, her expression and tone mingled with lasciviousness in a unique way that somehow scared me a little. I felt like the Wolf discovering Little Red Riding Hood was packing heat.
I agreed to meet her in the assembly hall of the MAC at UCLA around seven; she was rehearsing Death of a Salesman, of all things.
“I’m afraid I play a sort of floozy,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were playing Willie Loman.”
“You know the play?”
“Saw Lee J. Cobb in it in the Chicago run, early this year. Good show—won’t make much of a musical.”
She blinked. “Are they making a musical out of it?”
“That was just a joke.”
Her smile looked like a wax kiss. “You’re quite a kidder, aren’t you, Mr. Heller?”
“I’m hilarious.”
Now she was studying me. “Are you depressed?”
“Depressed? No. Hell no.”
“Did…somebody die in your family?”
Just my marriage.
“No. But you’re a funny kid yourself, Miss Palmer.”
Now her smile shifted, dimpling one cheek. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? From that musical remark. Well, I have a high IQ, I’ll have you know…and I’m going to make something of myself. That’s why I’m enrolled in college…and that’s why you have to make sure Paul doesn’t spoil things.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You have a photo?”
“Now I do! I had scads taken, after that business at the Daily News—”
“No, I mean of Paul.”
“Oh! Yes. Of course.” She dug into her purse and handed me a photo of herself and Paul, dressed up for the prom, apparently; Vera was smiling at the camera—and why not, it loved her—and he was a dark-haired handsome kid with thick dark eyebrows, a weakish chin, and a glazed expression.
“Can I have the photo back when you’re done?”
“Sure,” I said, not getting why she wanted a keepsake of her and this harasser.
She beamed at me, stood, slung her purse strap over a shoulder, and reminded me where I was to meet her; we exchanged goodbyes and I watched her walk away. It was a hell of a thing, her walk, a twitchy affair that seemed to propel her as far to the sides as it did forward.
About two minutes later I was still contemplating that walk when my phone rang. It was my Chicago partner, Lou Sapperstein—bald, sixty, a lean hard op who looked like an accountant, thanks to the tortoise-shell glasses—and his Crosbyish baritone over the long-distance wire was edged with irritation.
“You gotta get your ass back here and do something about your pal,” Sapperstein said.
“My pal? I got lots of pals, Lou. You’re my pal.”
“Screw you. You know who I’m talkin’ about—Drury!”
I sighed. “What’s he up to now?”
“Well, for one thing, he hasn’t followed up on half a dozen assignments I’ve given him. And for another, he’s spending his time playing footsie with Robinson.”
George S. Robinson was Kefauver’s stalking horse, the Senate Crime Investigating Committee’s associate counsel, who’d been working in concert with the Chicago Crime Commission, a citizens’ watchdog group dating back to Prohibition.
“Christ,” I said. “He’s going to get me shot.”
“No, Nate—he’s going to get me shot…you’re on the lam in sunny Southern Cal, remember?”