She said, “What brings you around to see me, Mr. Hammer?”
“Maybe we should start,” I replied, “with why you were thinking of coming to see me?”
Hands on her bare knees, she rocked back and forth a little on her crossed legs. As the original Billy Batson said, Holy moly.
“Okay, I’ll start,” she said. The big eyes grew bigger. “I’ve been following this crazy thing in the papers and on TV. Do you know, when your name first turned up, I’d never heard of you? I’m from Ohio, which is my excuse. But from snippets in the newspaper stories, I got the picture — you’re a real character.”
“I get that sometimes,” I admitted.
She smiled and rocked. “So I did some research on you. Mostly at the library, but also some old magazines at a bookstore I frequent.”
“The Paper Book Galley,” I said.
Her eyes got wide again, like I’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Or somewhere. “You are a detective!”
“That’s the rumor. So you researched me. What did that tell you?”
“That some of what the papers have been saying is b.s. — like the supposed robbery attempt at your office, and how the police were looking into that cabbie’s life to see why someone would want to take it, and how that high-society bridal shower got interrupted by an armed robber. And, of course, how you just happened to be there for all three. Killing the first two bad guys, and your secretary taking down the third.”
“You left out the newsstand shooting.”
She nodded, out of rhythm with her rocking. “I was saving that for last, because that was what made me start really, seriously thinking about approaching you directly. Did you know I spoke to Billy, that little person who runs the newsstand, several times?”
I nodded back. “I did know. He told me you had, which is why and how I tracked you down.”
“So then you know I was Richard Blazen’s legman?”
“Yeah.” I gave all that exposed skin an unabashed look. “Coincidentally, I’m a leg man myself.”
That only made her laugh. I’d thought maybe it would embarrass her into covering up a little. I’ve always been big on decorum.
“When I was running through that list of fatalities,” she said, “I left the most recent one out. The most significant one.”
“Leif Borensen,” I said.
She nodded. “Was that really suicide, like the papers say?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. But it confuses me. I figured he was the party responsible for all this mayhem. He ran down Mr. Blazen in a car, and tried to have you killed several times before going after the little newsstand fella. Am I right?”
I answered with my own question: “Why do you figure Borensen was responsible for the attempts on my life?”
She shrugged. “I told you I researched you. I’m a ferocious researcher, Mike. I’ll call you ‘Mike’ and you call me ‘Marcy.’ Kind of a nice ring to it, Mike and Marcy. Anyway, you’re known to go on the hunt for anybody who hurts or... or especially kills... your friends. You’re famous for it.”
“That’s ‘infamous,’” I said.
Her smile was barely there. “That would depend on whether someone thought you were a bad person. I mean by that, someone who thinks it’s wrong of you to go out and, well, try to get even.”
“I don’t just try, Marcy.”
Her eyebrows went up and down. “I know. And I may live in Greenwich Village and write articles for the Voice, but I am an old-fashioned Midwestern girl at heart. I like to see scores settled. So, me? I think you’re a good person.”
She seemed at once ten years old and forty-five.
“Nice to know, Marcy.” I leaned forward and said, “You say you were Blazen’s ‘legman,’ but really you were a lot more than that... right? I figure you were the one doing the writing. An old PR guy may know how to put together a press release, but not a whole book.”
She was nodding, rocking a little while I talked, stopping when she talked.
“You’re right, Mike. Richard Blazen knew everybody in local theater, going back to the 1930s, and in TV production back to the late ’40s. He had stories like you couldn’t imagine — the backstabbing by much admired stars, who was gay and who wasn’t, producers screwing over their backers, producers screwing over their stars, the sleeping around by just about everybody, the gangsters who backed productions to give their mistresses roles in shows, and drugs, drugs, drugs. Some of the show biz types who are so critical of my pot-smoking generation were outrageous hypocrites, snorting coke and shooting up H. Mr. Blazen knew it all.” She grinned and rocked again. “It’s going to be a fabulous book.”
That stopped me for a moment. “You’re going on with the project?”
“Oh yes. I have all the material here. It’s still a big job. I have to fact-check, when the people he talks about are still alive. It’s a legal thing.”
“You say ‘talks’ like he’s still around.”
“That’s how it feels sometimes. See, here’s how we went about it — I’d interview him on a tape recorder, and then we’d have the tapes transcribed. I have pages and pages of the stuff.”
“So it really is a big job.”
“Enormous! But it’ll make me. Put me on the map, as the cliché goes.” Gently, she pointed a finger at me. “The reason I wanted to see you, Mike, was to find out what you knew about this awful Borensen person. To see if you’d go on the record that he was the one who ran down Mr. Blazen.”
“I can do that.” I sat forward, springs in the couch cushion whining under my tail. “But first I want to know what you know, Marcy... about your Mr. Blazen and Leif Borensen.”
“You bet.” She bounded up and sat next to me on the couch, with a leg tucked under her, giving me a new angle on how artistically black silk panties could contrast with white creamy thighs.
Hammer, a voice said, she’s young enough to be your daughter.
Another voice said, But she isn’t your daughter.
“Mr. Blazen knew Martin Foster for a very long time,” Marcy said. “Did PR work for him in the early days, and off-and-on in later years, too... and always respected and admired the man. Mr. Blazen said Martin Foster was a rare class act in an often no-class business.”
“I knew Foster a little,” I said. “I’d agree.”
She continued: “So when it became known that Martin Foster was planning to bring this Leif Borensen in as his co-producer, Mr. Blazen went to see his old friend, and warned him that this Hollywood pretender was no one to get involved with. That the man had been in league with mobsters since his unsuccessful stint as an actor.”
“Borensen was still mobbed up,” I said. “Right to the end. He’s been a major West Coast money laundry for the boys for decades.”
“Yes, Mr. Blazen knew that, too, or at least had come to that conclusion. And he was appalled to find out that Borensen was dating Foster’s daughter, Gwen.”
“Worming his way in,” I said.
She leaned forward, the cute face painfully earnest. “But, Mr. Hammer, isn’t this sorry, sordid affair now at an end? After the suicide of Leif Borensen? Only you say it was not suicide. Which makes it murder.”