“What can I tell you?”
“I was hoping more than you have. So, Green never came to you for money?”
“If she did, why should I tell you?”
“Maybe you just did. How about Alice? Did she put the ask on you for bailout money?”
“As I told you before, Archer, I never touch the principal.”
“But what about a little interest? You probably have a bit to share for an old friend.”
She dropped her gaze. “If you must know, yes, I did help a little. But that was all.”
“Did you find some spare change for your husband, too?”
“Can you find your own way out, or do I have to call one of the servants to show you?”
He slowly walked over to the door.
“Oh, Archer?”
He turned to see her standing there all confidence and swagger, her hands on her hips.
“Just take a good long look at my bedroom, tall, dark, and stupid. Because you’ll never see it again.”
Yep, Archer thought, the warrior just got me with her sword right in the gut.
Chapter 54
In the hotel lobby Archer phoned Mallory Green’s house after getting the number from the directory. Green’s personal assistant, Sally, answered and told him that Green had flown to Lake Tahoe.
“That’s right, I remember now.” It was actually the pilot Steve Everett who had told him that. “Do you have the phone number and address up there? She wanted me to fill her in on developments.”
She gave this information to him and Archer wrote it down in his notebook.
Later, he drove to the Formosa, where he walked into the red train car that the owner, Jimmy Bernstein, a former prizefighter from New York, had attached to the building to give him more space for customers to spend money and have a good time. Being across the street from the Goldwyn Studio, the Formosa saw its share of stars. Archer wasn’t guessing about this. There were hundreds of autographed pictures on the walls, with everyone from William Powell to Joan Crawford represented.
He waited until seven on the dot and ordered a Gibson with the trio of onions. It was delivered to his table at just the moment a back-door entrance opened. Sidling into the train car was a woman wearing a long black coat, a broad-brimmed black hat, and sunglasses big enough to hide most of her face. She spotted Archer and headed over, depositing herself in the chair across from him with her back to the entrance.
She took her hat off, revealing the platinum-blond hair, but kept the glasses on. She smiled at Archer and set her plastic purse on the table, then took a sip of her Gibson and slowly put it back down. “God, that tastes so damn good.”
“Must be the extra onions. They do it every time.”
She smiled. “I don’t even know your name. You signed the note, ‘Sincerely, I’m cute.’ Nice touch.”
“Name’s Archer, Miss Lourdes.”
“Please, just call me Sam. And Samantha’s not my real name. Pretty much every star out here has changed theirs. Many of them because they’re Jewish. Heaven forbid. Right?”
“Right. What film are you working on?”
“Does it really matter? The next one before the next one. They’re paying me so much money I could never spend it all.”
“But other people could, so be careful. Lots of stars end up with nothing. Don’t be one of them, Sam.”
She took another drink, while he sipped on his scotch on the rocks. “How’s your hand?”
He flexed it. “I’m a fast healer.”
“I didn’t think I’d hear from you.”
“To confess, I didn’t know your name until I saw it on a movie poster. No knock against you. I’m a nobody and you’re a star, but I’m just not much of a movie guy.”
“It’s actually refreshing. I almost didn’t answer your note, but you seemed like, well, like a nice guy, not a swooner or a grifter, and I can usually spot them.” She set the drink down. “So, it seems you had a close call at the Jade.”
“I also had a close call in Vegas with the guy who runs the Jade, Darren Paley. Almost ended up residing forever in the desert.”
She reacted to the name in a way that surprised Archer. “I think he has lots of close calls like that with people. Only most of them don’t get away like you did.”
“So you know who he is?” asked Archer curiously.
She made a face that Archer couldn’t quite read. “I know what he is. You got a cigarette?”
He shook out a Lucky and lit it for her. She blew the smoke to the wall and lifted the Gibson with her free hand. It was a pretty hand, Archer observed. But there were indications of old calluses on the palm and fingers, along with a certain strength. The lady had known hard manual work, he concluded.
She noted him looking, eyed her hand, and said, “I grew up in Minnesota, like I told you. On a farm. Lot of hard work and heavy lifting. Riding mules and horses. I still like riding horses. Only now I do it for pleasure; back then it was just so we could eat or get from one place to another.”
“I can see that.”
She tapped her ash into the ashtray. “Can you, Archer? Then you’re in rare company in this town.”
“I didn’t grow up on a farm. I grew up poor in a city where every day you could see all the things you would never have.”
“I think that might be as bad as living on a farm with nothing to see except how little you have.”
“They’re both tough.”
“As soon as I turned fifteen I got out of there. Saved money, got on a bus, and left. And that trip? Let me tell you, I could write a book on it.”
“I bet.”
She blew smoke out and rested her chin on her knuckles. “But MGM doesn’t want me to ever mention where I came from. It’s apparently too common. And people don’t like to lay down dough for movie tickets to watch common. So the studio invented a past for me, and I can tell you for a fact it’s simply marvelous.”
She took off her glasses, dipping her gaze for a moment before swinging it up to him and giving him a look that froze him to his bones with its sultry, honest frankness. He didn’t know if this was a perfected signature movie move of hers or not, but she did it with a lot of class, exhibiting both a fragility and a longing that made one ache, or at least it did him.
She smiled at his reaction, and the look vanished instantly. “You should see me do that shtick with the right lighting. They say the difference between being a film star and a run-of-the-mill actress is how good your lighting guy is.”
“Okay.”
“You see, Archer, this is a fantasy town, and I’m now part of that fantasy.”
“You can choose not to be. Go back to Minnesota.”
“I think about that. A lot. Some days I almost work up the courage to do it.”
“Why can’t you go all the way?”
Her wide eyes became sad and distant. “Because working your fingers to the bone on a farm in the middle of nowhere for peanuts is not all that great, either. I busted my butt to escape it, in fact. That makes it hard to rush back to. At least here I can mostly call my own shots. And the money? I make more in one day than I’d make in a lifetime working that farm.”
“Money’s not everything.”
“It is if you never had much of it.”
“You still have any family left?”
“My parents are dead. I have two sisters. They think I’m an evil hussy who has blackened the family name.”
“What was your real name?”
“I’ll take that to the grave, thank you very much. So, why did Paley want to kill you?”
“Maybe I know more than I should know, at least about what he’s doing.”
“And what do you know?”