1956 - There's Always a Price Tag (3 page)

I walked into a room that was coated with dust and smelt the same way as the apartment over the garage had smelt before I had cleaned it.

'I'm not kidding myself,' I said, putting my cap on the cleanest part of the table. 'I know I haven't got myself anything to shout about, but it suits me as a temporary job. My name's Glyn Nash.'

Simmonds waved me to a chair and went into the far room. He returned with two cups and a pot of coffee.

'It'll be temporary okay,' he said, taking the cigarette I offered him. 'I bet you'll be out by the end of the week. No one has stuck longer except me. I lasted two weeks.'

'What's wrong with the job?' I asked, accepting the cup of coffee he shoved at me.

'Plenty: a combination of rats and a sinking ship and Mrs. Dester. Have you run into her yet?'

'Sure; she's already told me I'm not wanted.'

'Then take the hint, pal: quit before you hit trouble. That dame can make plenty of trouble. I was mug enough to stick after she had told me to get out. She nearly had me on a stealing rap.'

That jolted me. 'What was that again?'

He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth.

'That's right. She gave me a hundred-dollar bill to settle the gasoline account. I thought it was funny because Dester pays the accounts when he does pay them. I've got a suspicious mind, and I'm glad of it. I trusted her the way I'd trust a rattlesnake. I went over the bill very, very carefully. She had pricked a cross in it with a pin. It didn't take me a couple of seconds to figure out what the next move was to be. I had just time to shove the bill into the fire when two dicks walked in. They went over me and the rooms with a tooth comb, but they didn't find the bill. They told me she had complained that she had been missing money for some time, and she thought I was the guy who was helping himself. It was a close thing, and when they left, I packed and got out fast.'

I stared at him, remembering how she had offered me a hundred-dollar bill the previous night.

'What's the idea? Why doesn't she want her husband to have a chauffeur?'

He shrugged.

'Three months ago, they had a cook, a houseboy, and two maids,' he told me, 'as well as a gardener and a chauffeur. Then all of a sudden she got rid of them all, closed up most of the rooms in the house and ran the place herself. Dester tried to keep a chauffeur, but sooner or later she fixed it that the guy couldn't take any more of it and quit. Don't ask me why. I wouldn't know.'

'She says Dester hasn't any money.'

'I wouldn't know about that. Maybe she's right. Maybe that's the answer, but she doesn't strike me as the type to run a house on her own just because he hasn't any money.'

She didn't strike me as the type either.

'Who is Dester anyway?'

'You mean who was he,' Simmonds said, finishing his coffee and pouring himself another cup. 'One time he was chief executive producer for Pacific Studios, one of the biggest shots in the movie business. He's washed up now. They haven't renewed his contract. It runs out in a month or so; then he'll be nobody. He goes there every day and sits in his office, doing nothing. No one takes any notice of him. He's just sweating out his time.'

'Why doesn't he look for some other job?'

Simmonds laughed. 'Haven't you cottoned on to him yet? He's a lush. No one wants him. The only time he's sober is when he wakes up in the morning. He starts boozing at breakfast and goes right on until he falls into bed. I guess if I had married that redheaded bitch, I'd be a lush too. He's crazy about her. From what I hear she has her own room, and he hasn't been inside it since a few days after they married.'

'Who is she and where does she come from?'

'I don't know. They've been married about a year. Since then he's been going downhill fast. The movie business doesn't want him anymore. When his contract runs out, he'll be broke. So don't kid yourself you've got yourself a permanent job. You'll be lucky if you hold it a week.'

'He can't be broke. He's got three cars and that house. The Rolls would fetch twelve thousand in the open market.'

'I hear he's up to his eyes in debts, but I could be wrong,' Simmonds said. 'But it's my bet as soon as he leaves the Studios, the wolves will move in, and when they do, there won't be anything left. I'd like to see that redhead earn her living. She'll find it tough after the way he's poured money into her lap.'

'Did you get paid?' I asked.

'Sure, but I had to ask for it. Dester never remembers trifles like paying his servants.' Simmonds looked at a cheap alarm clock on the bedside table. 'I've got to be moving. I'm going after a job this morning: driving two old ladies. I guess it'll be a nice change after driving a drunk. You have a sweet time ahead of you. If he gets home by one o'clock he calls it an early night.' He stood up. 'But don't think I dislike the guy. I'm sorry for him. When you can catch him sober, you couldn't wish for a nicer guy to work for. The trouble is you don't often catch him sober. It's a knock out that a woman could ruin a man as fast as this redhead has ruined him. She must be crazy. By fixing him, she's fixed herself out of a big, juicy income, and that doesn't make sense to me. From what I've heard it is due to her he started to hit the bottle. I can't figure out what her game is.'

As I drove over to my apartment house to collect my few belongings before returning to the Dester residence, I couldn't figure out what her game was either, but I was now determined to find out.

chapter two

A
s I pulled into the three-car garage, I saw the Cadillac convertible was missing. It wasn't hard to guess that the beautiful Mrs. Dester had taken herself out to lunch. The time was a quarter after twelve, and I thought it might be an idea, now that the house was empty, and if I could get in, to take a look around.

A window above the porch was open. It was an easy climb up on to the top of the porch, and simple to push up the window and step into a long passage that went past the head of the stairs.

There were seven bedrooms, three bathrooms and two dressing rooms on the landing; five of the bedrooms were under dust sheets. Dester's bedroom was facing the stairs, and Helen's was at the other end of the passage.

I didn't go into any of the rooms. I opened the doors and looked at the rooms from the doorway.

Helen's room was large. A lot of money had been spent on it to make it luxurious. There was one of those huge beds you see so often on the movies, raised on a dais, with an oyster coloured quilted headpiece and a blood red bedspread. There were comfortable lounging chairs, a desk, a radiogram, an elaborate dressing-table, fitted closets and diffused lighting. It was a pretty nice retreat for a wife who wanted to sleep alone. It was easy to see by its immaculate luxury that no man found his way in there.

Dester's room was smaller and as comfortable as Helen's but it looked neglected; even without going into the room I could see a film of dust on the flat surfaces of the furniture. It was easy to see Helen didn't spend much time looking after it.

It took me less than five minutes to see what I wanted to see, and then I went downstairs. I skipped the lounge and explored the other five rooms; all of them were under dust sheets which is one way of solving the domestic help problem.

Here was evidence to prove that Simmonds had been speaking the truth. It certainly looked as if Dester was on his way out. He was still putting up a show: the outside of the house looked prosperous enough, but this closing down of the rooms showed which way the wind was blowing.

I returned to the apartment over the garage, changed out of my uniform, checked over my money that now amounted to ten bucks, and then walked down to the corner of the road where I picked up a bus that took me into the centre of the town.

I had a cheap lunch at a place I usually went to, then I walked over to Jack Solly's office on Brewer Street.

I had worked for Solly now for the past year. He called himself an advertising consultant and contractor. At one time he had been the sales manager of Herring & Inch, the big advertising contractors in New York. He had owned a Cadillac, a six-room apartment, a five-figure income and a closet full of clothes. But he had always been an opportunist, specializing on making a fast buck, and he had tried to make himself a little extra on the side by offering some of Herring & Inch's accounts to a rival firm for a substantial rake-off. Someone ratted, and Solly lost his job, his income and his Cadillac in that order: worse, he was black listed and he soon discovered he had no hope of ever working for another firm of advertising contractors. So he came to Hollywood with what he had saved from the wreck and opened an office and started in to work for himself.

He now handled the business of small shopkeepers, one-man offices and the like and just managed to scrape up a living.

Solly was a tall, thin bird with a face like a hatchet, deep-set stony black eyes and a mouth like a gin— trap. He was a tough character, and as the years passed, and his lack of success sank in, and his need for money increased, he lost what ethics he might have had, and twice already he had had a brush with the police on a shady deal, the details of which I hadn't been told.

He was sitting at his desk, his beaky nose in a pulp magazine when I pushed open the door and walked into his shabby, down-at-the-heel office.

Patsy, his blonde secretary, a twenty-three-year-old, overripe dish with a baby face and worldly wise eyes, looked up as I came in and gave me a cheerful smile. She had a hard time of it with Solly: she not only had to run the office, but she was expected to stay late when Solly's glands were making life a burden to him without having an addition in her pay packet. She was eating her lunch out of a paper bag.

Solly laid down his magazine and looked at me, his black eyes hostile.

'What do you imagine this is?' he asked. 'Look at the time. You're supposed to clock in here at nine o'clock.'

'Relax, brother,' I said, sitting on the edge of his desk. 'I'm not working for you anymore.'

Patsy put her half-eaten sandwich down on the desk, swung her chair around so she could take a good look at me. Her big blue eyes popped wide open.

Solly regarded me sourly.

'I've quit,' I said. 'You'll have to find another sucker to work for you, Jack. I've got me a new career.'

Solly's face lengthened.

'Who are you working for then?' he asked, leaning back in his chair. 'Maybe I can give you a raise. You don't want to be hasty about this. You wouldn't try to steal any of my accounts, would you?'

'If I happened to be nuts enough to take another job like this one and for another shark like you, of course I'd steal as many of your accounts that are worth stealing, and they aren't many,' I said. 'But relax. I've quit the racket. I've got myself a nice easy job that pays fifty a week and all found: including a uniform.'

Solly's eyes bulged, while Patsy, who had picked up her sandwich, held it before her open mouth as she gaped at me.

'What do you mean - a uniform?' Solly demanded.

'I'm a chauffeur,' I said, giving Patsy a wink. 'A chauffeur to one of the big shots at the Pacific Studios. How do you like that?'

'Why, you're crazy!' Solly said. 'Do you call that a job? Who but a crazy man wants to be a chauffeur? You don't know when you're well off. Don't you know how they treat chauffeurs in this town? You might just as well have a ball and chain on your leg. You must be stark raving nuts to take a job like that.'

'I very nearly didn't, but I happened to catch sight of the boss's wife,' I said.

'His wife?' Solly's expression changed. He looked the way a gundog looks when his master takes aim.

The most important thing in Solly's life after money was women.

'You men make me sick to my stomach,' Patsy said, getting up. 'I'm going to the John. Get the gruesome details over before I get back, will you please?'

Solly aimed a slap at her as she passed him, but he had done this so often, she had no trouble in whipping her tail out of reach.

When she had shut the door, Solly took out two cigarettes, rolled one across the desk to me and offered me a light.

'What's this about his wife?' he asked.

'She's nice,' I said, and drew a shape in the air with my hands. 'Very, very lush: redheaded, green eyes and a figure like a bra. I didn't see why I shouldn't give myself a job right next to her when it was offered to me. And apart from the sex interest, I drive a cream-and-blue Rolls convertible that's as big and as expensive as a battleship. Isn't that an improvement on this lousy job?'

'Sounds like it,' Solly said reflectively. 'They don't want a butler, do they? I could talk to the redhead while you're driving the husband to work.'

'They don't want anyone but me,' I said grinning.

'But seriously, Glyn, where will it get you? A chauffeur's job is no kind of life for an up and coming guy like you.'

'Where's your job going to get me, come to that?'

'If you'd only work at it and get some business, I might make you a partner one of these days,' Solly said and smirked. 'You're not a bad guy if you weren't so damned lazy.'

I laughed. 'That's good coming from you.'

Solly flicked ash on to the carpet, swung his feet up on to his desk and waved his hand.

'Who's this big shot anyway?'

'His name's Erle Dester.'

The only reason why I was giving Solly all this dope was because there were very few big names in Hollywood that he didn't know. I was still fishing for information, but you don't ask a guy like Solly outright for information unless you want to pay for it.

Solly's grin slipped and he stared at me.

'Dester? You don't mean Erle Dester at the Pacific, do you?'

'Of course I do; who else should I mean?'

'Well, for sweet Pete's sake!'

'Do you know him then?'

'Know him? That lush? I'll have you know I'm careful with whom I associate. Why, Glyn, you're out of your mind. Listen, that guy is washed-up. In a couple of months he'll either be bankrupt or he'll have a hole in his head. Erle Dester! For the love of mike!'