“So we find him,” Benton said. “You find him.”
“What!?” Finn’s voice rose to a squeak. “I’m a med student.”
“You’re a joker.” Finn watched his mother flinch, and he felt the beef turn to bile in his gut. His parents had always been careful to call him a “wild card” not the pejorative “joker.” Now his father had said the word, and he felt an aching grief as if the love and acceptance which had been the foundation of his life had suddenly proved to be a fraud. “You know the world. I can’t involve studio security or the police, and you’ve already had some great ideas. I’m depending on you, Bradley.” His father’s eyes were pleading. “I’m close to retirement. I just wanted to go out on top, not fired off my last film.”
We all have our griefs, Finn thought.
After dinner Finn went to Stan’s house. He had the key that Kelly had thrust at him, and it was where all the detectives started in the TV shows. It was a tiny white bungalow on the south side of Los Feliz Boulevard. On the north side were the Hollywood Hills and the homes of the rich and very famous climbing the scrub-covered folds and canyons. On the south were modest houses and ethnic restaurants, groceries, laundromats, shoe repair shops-the kind of place where normal people lived.
The front door opened directly into a long living room with hard-wood floors underfoot and several throw rugs. Finn avoided them assiduously. He had learned the hard way that hooves and throws didn’t mix. There was a shabby green recliner in front of a television set, and a couch that hardly looked used. There were built-in book-cases on most of the walls, and they were crammed with books.
There was a double glass door that divided the living room from the dining room. It was a charming room with built-in buffets on either side of the west window, and an array of china displayed behind the glass mullions in the doors. There was a plate on the table with the remains of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. A salad on a salad plate. A glass of red wine. It was sad and very uninformative.
Feeling like a voyeur, Finn proceeded to the bedroom. There was a large four poster bed, meticulously made with a canopy and dust ruffles and throw pillows. There was a large window looking northwest toward the hills. Finn gave a glance out the window, then snapped his neck around for a longer look. From the window he could see the upper story of Kelly’s house. Finn trotted back to the main rooms of the house. All the drapes were tightly closed. He returned to the bedroom and those wide open drapes.
After another look at the lights in the movie star’s house Finn began riffling through the bookcases in the bedroom. Not surprisingly there were a lot of books about the movie business. There were also lot of books about Grace Kelly. Finn flipped through a few of them skimming a sentence here, a paragraph there.
On the dresser was a framed picture of Stan standing next to a marlin hanging by its tail from a wooden scaffold. This was a familiar picture to Finn. Every male in southern California had a picture of himself next to a big fish he’d caught in Mexico. In the photo Stan was a good deal younger, and he was smiling off to the side as if to someone out of camera range. That was odd. Most of the mighty hunters beamed directly into the camera. The frame was also anomalous. It was an elaborate silver affair.
“Must have been really proud of that fish,” Finn muttered as he turned over the photo and looked at the back. There was a hand-written notation. La Paz, June 1954.
The date hit some memory or association. Finn stood struggling with that sense of reaching for something just beyond reach. Then it hit. He lunged back across the bedroom, and pulled down one of the biographies of Kelly. He flipped quickly through the pages.
The start of principal photography was delayed on To Catch a Thief due to Kelly’s exhaustion. She recuperated for several weeks in Mexico before returning to begin work…
There was more, but Finn had what he needed. Kelly and Stan had both been in Mexico in June of ’54. Question was, were they together? Finn flipped forward a few more pages to the section about Prince Rainier of Monaco.
Odds makers in Vegas were offering two to one that Kelly would wed the dashing prince, but it was the cynics who didn’t believe in fairy tales who made the best choice-in 1955 Hollywood’s princess declined the offer to join European royalty.
Finn closed the book. He looked back at the framed photo. He looked out the window at the distant lights in Kelly’s home. The lights went out. Grace Kelly had gone to bed. “She didn’t marry Rainier because she couldn’t,” Finn said aloud. “She was already married to you. Wasn’t she, Stan?”
It was an idiotic thing to say, but it was the only thing that made any sense. The only explanation for why the make-up man had stayed so loyal for all those years.
“All those years while she was fucking every new leading man. You were a schmuck, Stan.” Finn shoved the book back into its place on the shelf. “And you need to go home and go to sleep. You’re talking to yourself, Bradley, my man.”
The next morning he put in a call to the Myth Patrol. He knew he needed help, and he didn’t know who else to ask. They met at Dupar’s, and Finn outlined the situation.
“So tell me again how all us wild cards are brothers under the skin, and how I ought to spend my free time rescuing an ace,” Goathead mumbled around his double bacon cheeseburger.
Finn hadn’t counted on ace envy entering into the equation. “He’s not an ace. He’s a deuce. This is not a major league power.”
“He’s a seventy year old man who can make woman look young,” Goathead argued. “If that’s not a sure means to unlimited sex I don’t know what is.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always put your head in the gutter,” Clops said. He rolled his eye at Cleo.
“She can’t understand a fucking thing I say.” Goathead leered at her. “Hey baby, want to fuck like frenzied ferrets?”
” Cleo dumped her chocolate malt in Goathead’s lap.
Clops grinned as Goathead cursed and mopped at the sticky mess. “Looks like she understands just fine.”
“Guys, could we focus here,” Finn said, waving his hands in the air. “Where do we start?”
“ Hollywood and Cahuenga,” Clops said confidently.
The Myths were standing beneath an old brownstone building on the corner. The dark upper windows threw back the sunlight in sharp jagged glints. Cleo was glaring at a drunk who stood swaying and leering at her from across the street. Goathead was leering at a couple of female hookers just down the block. Finn stared at Clops.
“Okay. We’re here. Why are we here?” Finn asked.
Clops pointed to a corner window. “That was Philip Marlowe’s office.”
Finn fought down the urge to rip off the cyclops’s head. Forcing a mild tone, he said, “I hate to break this to you, but Marlowe was a character in books. Then he was a character in the movies. He’s not real.”
Okay, Finn thought, as Clops looked like a kicked puppy, it wasn’t your most diplomatic moment.
Surprisingly it was Goathead who came to the big joker’s defense. “No, he’s right. We’ve got to get in the space. Think like a detective. Find the character.”
Wonderful, beneath Goathead’s hairy chest beats the heart of a method actor, Finn thought.
“I think a tough, no nonsense Bogart approach,” Clops began, only to be interrupted by Goathead.
“Well, that leaves you right out.” replied Goatboy. “Whoever plays our detective, you’re destined to be the loyal sidekick. You’re not leading man material.”
Cleo glared at Goathead, and all the snakes hissed at him. The joker jumped back. Cleo laid a hand on Clops’s arm, and gave him a blazing smile. Finn was dazzled. She really was beautiful, if you just ignored the snakes. There was a barrage of Turkish being directed at Clops, then one halting English word.