CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

 

When I’d told Torrance Beaumont that I’d be babysitting that evening, I hadn’t been handing him a line. Long about seven, I was sitting with a sleepy Billy on my knee, watching Ella’s face in the lighted mirror of her dressing table. I’d just told her about Max Froy’s interest in her latest script. The working title of that was Private Hopes, but I was expecting it to change, since Ella was spending an unusual amount of time fussing over what I considered a polished product. In a similar fashion, she was now obsessively arranging and rearranging her long, almost blond hair, though it had looked perfect to me at the end of every round.

We were seated in the master bedroom of our home in Doyle Heights, a 1920s imitation of some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s less distinguished work. Ella was preparing to go out, stag, to a retirement dinner for Chester Edson, the man who’d been her boss when she’d worked as a studio publicist. That is, she’d be going out if she could get her hair arranged. At the moment, she was frowning into her mirror. It finally occurred to me that it might be not be over her reflection.

“Was it something I said? You’re not bothered by Froy nosing in, are you? I thought you be flattered. And by the way, I didn’t bring the subject up with Froy, he brought it up with me.”

“I’m not blaming you for that, Scotty. I know who to blame. It’s that so-called agent of mine, Mona. She thinks if she starts enough rumors about Private Hopes she can touch off a bidding war.”

“What’s wrong with a little bidding?”

Ella’s pale blue eyes narrowed even more, and again I wondered what I’d said. Then she relaxed with an effort.

“Nothing’s wrong with it, if the script lives up to the hype. If it doesn’t, it will be my reputation that suffers, not Mona’s.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. And then, when she reached again for her brush, “And leave your hair alone. It’s been pinned more often than the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”

Ella swiveled on her seat to face the two men in her life. She was radiant in a red dress. I decided I should have verified Chester Edson’s marital status and maybe his blood pressure.

She said, “I love it when you talk like a B-picture detective. I’ll miss that when you outgrow it. That’s scheduled to happen when?”

“Not for years and years.”

 

Not many days later, I was summoned from the bullpen where the Hollywood Security operatives rested, when we were given a chance to rest. I found Paddy and Peggy at her desk, both standing.

“The curtain’s going up on the next act,” Paddy informed me. “Ted Mariutto’s due here any minute. He may or may not be accompanied by his shadow—”

“Henchman, you mean,” Peggy cut in.

“By his shadow, Al Alsip. Little Al, to his friends. Know either man by sight?”

“No,” I said.

“I want you to. Stand behind the bullpen door and open it a crack. You’ll be able to observe their entrance. But first go and move that circus wagon you’re driving these days. I don’t want Mariutto to remember he saw it at our curb.”

“Wait a minute. I’m not going to be in the meeting with you?”

“No. If you don’t know them, they probably don’t know you. That will make your job easier when we get to the tailing part of the operation.”

“Operation,” Peggy repeated with disdain. “Flea circus is more like it.”

“However,” Paddy continued with great dignity, “I’d hate for you to miss out on an educational opportunity. So after Mariutto alone or Mariutto and Alsip are safely inside, come back here to Peggy’s desk and listen in on the intercom. I’ll leave the key down.”

“Want us to record it?” Peggy asked. “The Smithsonian might like a copy. For posterity.”

“They might at that,” Paddy said.

I hurried out to move my car and then reentered the bullpen through its back door. I didn’t have a long wait behind the lobby door. I heard Peggy cough, and then two men entered. I’d been picturing Mariutto as a big man, given that his old nickname had been Moose, but the first to stride in, though tall enough, was no bigger around than Jimmy Stewart. He wore his graying brown hair combed straight back like Stewart and a little long, like Stewart had since he’d started making Westerns. At that point, the comparison ran out of gas. The actor had an open, almost boyish face, while Mariutto’s was as friendly as the business end of a locomotive, the resemblance to one accentuated by his large, slightly bulbous nose. That cowcatcher accounted for his nickname, I decided.

The second visitor was boyish—not in his face, which was grim, but in his overall dimensions, which were in the Guy De Felice class. Little Al Alsip wore his blond hair in a flattop, adding to the impression that he was the paperboy, here to collect. Or maybe to pick up his date for the prom, as he was wearing an unlikely bow tie and a blue suit that might have been rented, the fit was so bad. Mariutto’s sleek gray suit had never been worn by anyone else, if you didn’t count his tailor’s dummy.

Peggy told them to go right in. Alsip held the right-hand door for his boss and then followed him inside, relieving my mind. There’d always been a chance that he’d have guarded the double doors from the outside, depriving me of my “educational opportunity.” As it was, I was seated on the corner of Peggy’s desk before the handshaking was out of the way. We leaned into her intercom like it was Sunday night and Jack Benny and Rochester were coming over the Philco.

Mariutto’s cultured appearance had led me to expect a voice like Robert Montgomery’s, if not Ray Milland’s. What I got was more like Howard Keel imitating Bugs Bunny. That is, the voice was as deep as Paddy’s, but the accent came from one of New York’s less pricey boroughs, I couldn’t tell which. Alsip could have sounded like Daffy Duck from all I learned that day; he never spoke.

“Long time no see, Maguire,” Mariutto said. “You used to be a regular on the nightclub circuit. Your old ball-and-chain take you in a few links?”

Peggy emitted a sound that might have been a growl. I could plainly hear the smile in Paddy’s answer.

“She does feel the loneliness more and more as the years slip by. Of course, we’re none of us getting younger. I can’t take the nightlife like I used to.”

“Right,” Mariutto said. “Don’t let him fool you, Al. If Maguire starts buying the drinks, hold on to your gold teeth. I remember a night during the war when Morrie Bender tried to squeeze some information out of Maguire concerning a certain union deal Paramount was negotiating. Morrie, who has a hollow leg himself, tried to match him drink for drink and ended up singing ‘Sweet Adeline’ with some vacationing barbers from Des Moines. Maguire was conducting.”

“A happy night,” Paddy said.

“A dangerous night,” Mariutto said. “It was a lucky thing for you Morrie decided to laugh it off. He’s made other citizens very uncomfortable over a lot less trouble than a killer hangover.”

At my elbow, Peggy stiffened. I wondered if Mariutto had really been reminiscing or if he’d wanted to remind Paddy of who he had backing him up.

“Speaking of trouble,” Paddy said, “what problem can we help you with?”

“A big one,” Mariutto said.

I heard Paddy grunt slightly and decided he was reaching across his desk for something. A moment later, he was reading aloud for my benefit and Peggy’s.

“Ah, from Washington DC. The Internal Revenue Service. ‘Dear Mr. Mariutto.’ Da dah, da dah, da dah. ‘We have received information regarding undeclared income for the years 1942 through 1945.’ Da dah, da dah. ‘You will be contacted shortly regarding a possible audit.’ Sincerely and so on.

“Dear me. A big problem for certain, but a little out of our line.”

“That’s not what I hear,” Mariutto said. “I hear you saved Tory Beaumont from a tax collector who already had his hand in Beaumont’s pocket.”

“Someone’s been telling tales out of school,” Paddy murmured.

“That mean it isn’t true?”

“Well, no. We were able to help Tory, but it was a special case. And he’s a regular customer of the firm. He uses us for all of his art authentication.”

“I’d like you to consider me a regular customer, Maguire. In fact, I insist that you do.”

“You may change your mind when you hear what the service set Beaumont back.”

“He told me it was plenty, but I couldn’t get a round number out of him. Not that it matters. I’ll pay a lot to stay out of prison. But how do you bribe a government department?”

“Not the whole department,” Paddy said. “Just a local functionary. And don’t call it a bribe. Call it a consideration. A certain party approached me a little while back after Hollywood Security played a small part in catching Sidney Shaw’s killer. Shaw was a producer, like you, only at RKO. You remember him?”

“No, I don’t. What’s this party’s name?”

“That’s for me to know and you not to find out, no matter how curious you get. Not everyone can accept that condition, I know, so if you’d rather call it a day—”

“Go on,” Mariutto said.

“For convenience, we can call him the Scarlet Pimpernel, after that guy who rescued people from the guillotine. That’s the name we use around here.”

“Fine,” Mariutto said. “Back to our story.”

“As I said, we got a little publicity over the Shaw business. One of the newspaper pieces implied that we weren’t above stretching a law or two in the service of a client. A slight exaggeration, but it interested this IRS fellow. He contacted me on the sly and said he could make tax problems go away for a price. He’d been doing it in a small way for years. His technique was to write to Washington to say the matter in question had been resolved. Then he destroyed all local record of it. Bureaucratic inertia did the rest. As far as I know, he still works the same way.”

“Why did he need you? You’d just be overhead.”

“Because the big risk from the Pimpernel’s point of view has been approaching a prospective client. There’s always a chance some honest taxpayer will report him or a tax cheat will rat on him in exchange for immunity. With us fronting for him and weeding out the questionable characters, that risk is reduced.

“As for Hollywood Security being overhead, we’re not, not for the Pimpernel. We charge a client a referral fee—ten percent of the Pimpernel’s own fee—but we never handle the money the client pays him. After we’ve vetted a client, the Pimpernel collects his fee himself, either in person or through a representative, I’ve never known which. I’m inclined to think he’s farmed the job out, since the collector goes by the name of Smith.”

“And how much does this Smith collect?”

“A cool ten thousand.”

That was almost three times what the average guy made in a year. I thought Paddy had set the figure too high, but I was forgetting that Mariutto wasn’t an average guy.

“I’ll pay it,” the producer said.

“Hold on a minute,” Paddy said. “The money’s not the only issue. There’s also the pending caseload. The Pimpernel will only take on so many clients a year. He can’t risk dozens of files disappearing.”

“He’s got to risk one more this year, Maguire. Mine. I just got in at Warners. I’m going to make the best movies anybody ever saw, if I have half a chance. I won’t be tripped up now.”

There was a silence that went on so long Peggy started to reach for the intercom’s volume knob. Her bony hand froze in the air when Paddy spoke again.

“All right then. Go get the money ready. And I mean today. Things will happen fast now if they happen at all. This business won’t work once a real investigation gets started.”

“Thanks, Maguire. I won’t forget this.”

“I know you won’t,” Paddy said.