“Well, he might not want pics of his first wife around for his second wife to see. You also told me they drove their car to the airport and left it there. Turns out they didn’t do that, either.”
“But I saw them drive off when they left. I waved to them. So where was the car?”
“Could have been kept any number of places. Look, I know you said you go to bed early, but late at night, do you ever hear noises?”
“What sort of noises?”
“Like a car or a truck coming up or down the road.”
“I don’t believe so. My room is at the back of the house.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s funny you asked that. I had a young friend of my granddaughter’s stay here with me during the summer last year. She was trying to break into pictures, like so many of them do and none of them succeed.”
“Right, so what about her?”
“She complained a couple of nights about hearing someone driving on the road, oh, around three or four in the morning. Her hearing is better than mine, and her room was nearer the front of the house.”
“Did she ever go out and see what it was?”
“She looked out the window. She said it was a truck of some sort.”
“Did she see where it went?”
“No, at least she didn’t tell me if she did.”
“Where is this girl now?”
“Back in Connecticut. She decided to become a secretary instead.”
“In the long run the money will be better and she’ll live longer.” Archer took his leave and drove toward the ocean. He hit the coast road and turned left to head back to town.
Less than an hour later he was on Santa Monica Boulevard after having just passed Cahuenga. He drove by Hollywood Memorial Park, where the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino were interred. Backing up to the cemetery on its southern edge was Paramount Studios.
And that was when Archer saw it. A movie theater where a film called On the Run was playing. The marquee said it was an MGM production and it starred a man Archer had never heard of. But he wasn’t interested in the man. He pulled to the curb and got out. He hustled over to the movie poster for On the Run, which was on the wall next to the ticket window.
The female star was Samantha Lourdes. On the poster, she was wrapped around the male star and they were looking deeply into each other’s eyes. Archer also didn’t care about that. What he cared about was that Samantha Lourdes had been the movie actress he had seen and spoken to at the Jade Lion.
Chapter 52
Archer headed west to Culver City, where the MGM studios were located.
He had learned from Callahan and his own work in Hollywood that MGM had been late to the game on talking films, but had quickly come to dominate the movie business in the 1930s with films such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. They had also pretty much invented the studio system whereby stars were basically owned by their studios but could be loaned out to other studios by mutual agreement with cash or other benefits exchanged.
It was ironic, he had thought, that arguably the greatest studio in Hollywood had never been in Hollywood, but seven miles to the southwest in Culver City, closer to Marina Del Rey than Tinseltown. Archer also didn’t really care about that right now. He was interested only in Samantha Lourdes, MGM’s big star.
He pulled in front of the enormous edifice that occupied a chunk of Washington Boulevard’s frontage. The classical colonnade setup was barely a few feet deep, which was the most perfect representation of the town Archer had ever seen. There was literally nothing behind it except back lots with more facades and no depth, other than the actors acting, and even that was all over the place.
He wrote a note on a slip of paper and handed it and a five spot to the guard at the gate. The guard was tall and thin and old and looked beaten down, barely able to carry the weight of his cap and uniform or his holstered Colt .45. He looked at Archer warily when he told the man whom he wanted the note delivered to and that he was a friend of hers.
“You know how many of these I get a day for that gal?” he barked. “You know her like I know Dwight D. Eisenhower, fella. And for the record, I’ve never met the man.”
“Lourdes owns a silver Rolls-Royce and her driver is an old guy named Alan. She knows me, pal. Bet on it. And that note will bring a smile to her face. Who knows, you might even get a little kiss out of it.”
This new information seemed to clinch the deal. “Okay, buddy, she is here today. But they’re filming.”
“They have to turn off the cameras sometime. And what do you have to lose?”
The man called another guard over to work the gate and stalked off while Archer waited.
And waited. An hour, two smoked cigarettes, and vigorous fedora twirling later, the man came back. He seemed amazed beyond all reckoning.
“Damn, you were telling the truth, fella.”
“I try to at least once a day, Pops.”
The man gummed his lips in his astonishment. “Miss Lourdes said she’ll meet you at the Formosa at seven o’clock tonight. You know it?”
“Yeah, it’s on Santa Monica across from Sam Goldwyn Studio.”
“She said to wait for her in the trolley car and order her a Gibson with three pearl onions. Trolley car? Do you know what that means, because I sure as heck don’t.”
“I do. Thanks.”
Archer checked his watch and contemplated what to do until then.
He dipped into a drugstore and called Dash’s room at the motel where they were staying. There was no answer, so he called Connie Morrison long-distance and told her everything he had learned both in town and out in Malibu from Peter Bonham and Sylvia Danforth.
“Fill him in when you can. If I see him, I’ll do the same. He mentioned going to see Jake.”
“This case is getting curiouser and curiouser,” commented Morrison.
“Just what I needed today, a little Alice in Wonderland,” replied Archer, which made him think of Alice Jacoby and all her lies.
He drove to West Hollywood and then north to Sunset. He had a late lunch at Greenblatt’s Deli and took his time over a sandwich, fries, and coffee.
He knew F. Scott Fitzgerald had walked into Greenblatt’s in 1940, bought a Hershey bar, carried it back around the corner to the apartment where he was staying, and dropped dead of a coronary next to the fireplace mantel. He wondered if the man had any inkling his end was coming.
Archer took a bite of a fry and contemplated his own sense of doom.
I almost died in the lousy desert. Maybe I’m not good enough to make it in this racket. Maybe my end is coming faster than I would like it to.
He paid his bill and made a call to the Ambassador Hotel from a phone booth. The maid answered and relayed Archer’s request to Gloria Mars. The maid came back on the phone and told Archer that Mars would see him now.
He cut a diagonal across midtown to Wilshire, wondering what sort of reception he’d get from the woman.
Maybe the warrior will run me through with her lance.
Chapter 53
He took the automatic elevator up and walked down to the penthouse suite. One of the double doors was open, and there stood Gloria Mars. Her dress was red and tight and slitted, the heels were high and the fishnet stockings midnight black, lending a remarkable contrast with the sunset burn of the dress. Her auburn hair was piled on top of her head except for a few curlicue dangles around her cheeks. She looked him up and down like he was an object of purchase at the Farmer’s Market.
Archer was afraid that something had gotten seriously lost in translation with the maid.