Talbott reached for his plate. I pushed his hand away.
“You’re lying,” I said, eating a couple of his fries.
“Me?” Talbott said, putting his left hand to his chest and once again looking at Astaire for help.
“I think Mr. Peters means you’ve told us a lie of omission,” said Astaire. “What you’ve told us may be true, but it wasn’t enough to hold Luna Martin up for blackmail.”
I nodded my approval of Astaire’s reading of the situation.
Talbott ran his tongue over his lower lip and then nervously chewed at it. I assumed this was an indication of deep thought.
“If I can get back to Seattle, my uncle-his name’s Jeff-owns some buildings. He’ll take me on as an apprentice janitor, a hundred a week, which is more than I ever made dancing.”
“There’s something telling in that,” said Astaire. “What will it take to get you to Seattle?”
“It’s not that I’m not grateful you two came along, but. . five hundred. That’ll keep me going for a while.”
I looked at Astaire and thought I saw a go-ahead behind his glasses.
“Three hundred, if the information is good,” I said.
Talbott nodded and said, after an elaborate sigh, “She was still seeing someone she met at the studio. After she got together with Forbes. From what Luna said, I think she was still seeing whoever it was right up to now. She said Forbes would definger her if he found out, and she’d be lucky if that was all he did to her. So, I figured when things got a little difficult for me, Luna might come up with enough to get me to Seattle. Is that so bad?”
“It’s blackmail,” I said. “And I think you’re still lying.”
Talbott reached for the plate again. I pushed his hand away again.
“Have a heart, here. The food’s getting cold.”
“Who was she seeing?” I asked.
“Not sure. I’ve got a guess. But I’m not sure. Look, let’s make it five hundred and I give you a list of all of Luna’s clients since she came to On Your Toes. Don’t worry. It’s not a long list.”
“Four hundred,” Astaire said.
Talbott shrugged his agreement and reached for the plate warily. I let him take it.
“I keep the books in my apartment,” said Twinkle-Toes. “Nice and neat. All in a row. Every payment. Every lesson date with a comment by the teacher. Five hundred and the book is yours, plus my best guess on who Luna was still seeing.” Talbott stuffed the hot dog in his mouth and took a big bite. His cheek expanded as he chewed and looked at us.
“Five hundred,” Astaire said.
The two women had finished their lunch and were advancing cautiously on our table. Astaire turned his head away.
“And we go to your apartment right after you finish eating,” I said. “You give us the book and your best guess and we drive you to the bus station.”
Talbott nodded.
“Excuse me,” said one of the two women, a brunette with swept-up hair, a little hat, and a dark twill suit. Up close she looked more like forty than twenty, but still not bad.
Her younger, blond companion, in a tan dress, hovered behind her.
“Yes,” I said.
“Could we have an autograph?” the brunette said.
I looked at Astaire, who nodded.
The woman came up with a pad of paper from her purse and placed it in front of the startled Willie Talbott.
“If you’d just write, ‘To Gretchen from her friend Brian Aherne.’ ”
Talbott took the pad and the fountain pen Gretchen offered and signed.
“Thank you,” said the woman with a grin, looking at the autograph and inscription and showing it to her friend, who said, “I thought you spelled your name ‘Aherne.’ ”
“That’s my stage and movie spelling,” Talbott said. “The traditional family spelling is ‘Ahurn’ and I promised my mother before she died that I’d always use the family spelling, even in contracts.”
“You don’t have an English accent?” the blonde said.
“Lost it years ago. Now. .” Talbott said with a sigh, “I have to fake it. I could tell you about the family history if you’re really interested.”
The blonde looked at her friend, who encouraged her with a nod.
“Well, I can give you my. .”
“Remember you’re leaving town, Mr. Aherne,” I reminded Talbott.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry, ladies.”
The women nodded their good-byes and walked away, looking at the autograph.
“You don’t look anything like Brian Aherne,” I said.
“People think I look like Sonny Tufts,” said Talbott, finishing the last crumb on his plate and wiping his hands on a paper napkin. “Well, if you’ve got the five hundred, I’m ready to go home and pack and give you the list.”
“The man has hutzpah,” said Astaire.
“Chutzpah,” Talbott corrected. “With a ch at the beginning and you make the ch sound like you’re trying to bring something bad up that you ate for lunch.”
“Thanks for the Yiddish lesson,” Astaire said, looking at me.
“We can go now, Mr. Aherne,” I said.
Talbott searched around for something else to eat, didn’t find it, and stood reluctantly. “Two-fifty in advance and the rest in cash when I hand you Luna’s schedule and give you my ideas about who to look for?”
“We’ll have to stop at my bank,” said Astaire, also rising.
Talbott kept talking as Astaire drove and listened to the radio. “Songs by Morton Downey” came on and Raymond Paige’s Orchestra played a smooth introduction to “Old Man River” after the announcer told us of the joys of drinking Coca-Cola. I didn’t even bother to grunt at the pauses in Talbott’s patter. My behind was now a tender red welt that felt every pebble under the tires. Talbott’s apartment in Venice was in a three-story pink building about two miles from the Pacific Ocean.
Astaire cruised past the entrance and we scanned the street, looking for the bulldog and the Saint Bernard. There was no sign of them or any other creditors, at least none that Talbott recognized, though he thought the two sailors with a young, overly made-up girl between them looked suspicious.
“Pull in there,” Talbott said, pointing to a driveway between two apartment buildings that looked just like the one he lived in.
Astaire pulled in and we went down a narrow concrete path to an open space and three garage doors. “I’ll turn the car around,” Astaire said.
I nodded, and Talbott leaned forward from the back seat to say, “Look, I know you’re damn good, but anyone can learn. Right? So, I’ll throw in a couple of special steps I learned at the feet of the great one.”
“You’ll teach me some dance steps?” Astaire said, looking over his shoulder at Talbott, who nodded.
“Steps I learned from Harvey Burke himself.”
“Harvey Burke?”
“Himself,” said Talbott, opening the door. “Two-fifty up front. We’ll stop at your bank on the way to the bus station.”
Astaire pulled out his wallet and came up with, “Two hundred and four.”
Talbott took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “You know Harvey Burke’s pancake-and-picture method, right?” he said, looking at Astaire and then at me.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Astaire said.
Talbott got out of the car and so did I. A throbbing tuchus made it tough to keep up with Talbott, who went through a heavy white door and started up a flight of steel steps. We clanked upward in the early-afternoon light that beamed down through a dusty skylight. At the third-floor landing we went through another door and down a corridor past apartments on both sides.
After a right turn we went through a fire-exit door, across a gravel-covered roof, and stepped over the low wall where two buildings pressed against each other. Across this roof and then over another low wall.
“What the hell are we doing, Twinkle-Toes?”
“Making sure,” he said as we headed for a steel door on the third roof.
“You come this way a lot?” I asked.
“When skies are cloudy and gray,” he said with a confident grin.