Archer was about to reply with something pithy and mildly scolding, but then he thought about Callahan and the casting couch. If a person like Liberty...
“I see what you mean.”
She looked back at him, her full lips parted in pleasant surprise. “Do you really?”
“I got friends in the business. It’s got this public side with the pictures of good-looking people doing wonderful things, all the glam, the money, the homes, the yachts. Then you got the other side, which is about ninety percent of the pie, like the part of the iceberg no one sees until it’s too late. That part isn’t pretty at all. But you know that better than I ever will. It’s a high price to pay, but people pay it. Lots of them.”
She was nodding before he stopped. “You’re cute. And smarter than you look.”
“Cute men often are.”
“Did you happen to see me back there?”
His grin faded. “Back where?”
“You know where. And why else would you be advising me to quit that joint unless you saw something?”
“I saw more than maybe I needed to see. But it goes no farther. I promise.”
“Hell, people make promises in this town every minute of every day with no intention of ever keeping them.” She turned away. “I came here from a little place in Minnesota. I don’t want anyone to know about... the Jade.”
“I’m not telling anybody. And what studio owns you, by the way?”
“MGM. Why?”
“They have a pretty decent fixer group. I know one of them. You shouldn’t have to go this alone. Where are they on all this?”
“Nowhere, because they don’t know.”
“And you think that’s smart?”
“I’m actually happy about it. If they knew, the studio would make me sign a new deal, and I’d have to go to bed with the asshole who runs it, again. I don’t want to. I’m sick and tired of it. And he’s old and married.”
“Who is the clown?”
“Never mind. There’re a million just like him, so what does it matter?”
“You want me to talk to him for you? Lay down the law?”
She laughed. “What are you, a Boy Scout or a choirboy, or both?”
“I have my moments. But while I have you here...” He pulled out the photo of Lamb. “You ever seen her at the Jade?”
The woman looked at the photo. “Sure, a few times.”
Archer looked surprised, because he was. He tapped Lamb’s image. “You’re sure? Take a closer look.”
“No, not her, the other one.”
Archer gazed down at the beaming Alice Jacoby. “Her? You’re certain?”
“Didn’t I just say I was?”
The car slowed and Alan said, “Right here, sir?”
Archer looked out the window and saw the Delahaye parked across the street. “That’ll do, thanks, pal.” He opened the door, but then looked back at her. “For what it’s worth, if you never go back to that place, it’ll be the best thing you could ever do.”
“For my career?” she said with lovely, hiked dark eyebrows. The feeble illumination in the car seemed to make her platinum hair shimmer like descending sunlight on rippling water.
“No, for your life.”
She leaned over, nuzzled his neck, and then kissed him on the lips, running her soft hand down his jaw. “I’ve never had a man jump into my car before. I kind of like it.”
“I have to do it more often then.”
“Maybe our paths will cross again.”
She sounded like she was delivering a line from a bad script, but was believing every word. Not wanting to pop her drugged-up bubble, Archer finished the lousy scene by kissing her cheek and saying, “You can cross my path anytime, lady.”
He got out, and the Rolls drove on.
Archer knew if the woman were lucky her career would last until this time next year. If she were unlucky, she’d be dead by the end of the month. And they’d find a hundred just as lovely and breathless to take her place, no problem. The Midwest alone was turning them out like GM did cars.
Archer left Chinatown behind with a lot to think about and make sense of. He needed some more peroxide and a bandage and, most critically, a drink, a real one. And Archer knew exactly the lady he wanted to have that drink with.
Chapter 25
I’ll have to play a nurse in one of my next pictures, Archer. I mean, look at all the practice I’m getting with you.”
Callahan had washed the slash on his hand, dabbed enough peroxide on it to make the hairs on Archer’s neck stand up and salute, and then applied ointment and a bandage, winding it around his wrist and tying it off.
He had told her some of his adventures from the night, and she kept shaking her head and warning him that the next time might not be so easy for him. Yet her look was far more worried than her words.
“I didn’t think this one was easy,” he said.
“Who was the actress? I’m just wondering if that’s her lipstick on your collar.”
“She was a little loose with her affections. Comes with the drugs. I don’t remember her name. She was platinum blond and curvy and appropriately breathless.”
“Well, that narrows it down to just about everybody. You sure you can’t remember a picture she was in or something?”
“I don’t go to the movies all that often. Sort of a waste of time for me.”
“Thanks, Archer, a lot.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Anyway, she said she was with MGM. The fixer there doesn’t know about the Jade, at least that’s what she said. She also said if they did know, they’d use it to blackmail her into a new deal, and she’d have to sleep with the studio head again.”
“And what, you’re surprised by that?”
“But if she keeps going back there, her career is going to be over because she’s going to croak.”
“Maybe she wants that.”
“She had a fur coat and a Rolls with a chauffeur and she was maybe our age.”
“At first it’s the money and fame and it’s great. But then all that takes a back seat, because they’ve all got the damn furs and a Rolls with a driver. It’s a lot of pressure, Archer. Some folks get to the top and suddenly realize they don’t want to be there. They don’t want to have to keep doing what it takes to stay there. She just might be looking for a way out. I just hope she’s breathing when she finds it.”
He flexed his injured hand and then mixed himself a whiskey and soda, and a gin and tonic for Callahan. He handed hers over and said, “But her only way out might be a grave.”
Callahan sat in a chair with one long leg elegantly crossed over the other, and sipped her drink. “She wouldn’t be the first and she won’t be the last.”
“That’s pretty tough,” he finally said.
“I know it. But I’m not a star, Archer. No one’s trying to hook me on drugs and that bondage stuff. I’m not valuable enough.”
“And if you ever get that valuable?”
“Then I’ll have to deal with it. But that’s a long road, at least for me.”
“And somebody’s taking pictures of her. I saw the camera.”
Callahan thought for a moment and said, “Maybe that’s why she keeps going back.”
“So the Jade is blackmailing her?”
“This is LA, Archer. Somebody is always blackmailing someone else.”
He looked at his drink and shook his head. “This place stinks right down to the core.”
“And still you keep coming back. And it’s not just to see me.”
“There is a certain intoxication with the place, I’ll admit that. Plus, the cases here are... more original.”