The lights were off and the curtains drawn, giving the room the oppressive tone of sick days in bed. Mr. Merton’s desk stood by the windows, its footprint smaller than Al Knox’s office downstairs, but not by much. Beside the desk there was a small school chair with attached writing surface where the stenographer would sit when Mr. Merton wanted to write something down. There was a long boardroom table off to one side with high-backed leather chairs all around it. A clutch of cozy couches in burgundy upholstery with buttons on the cushions surrounded a glass coffee table on a zebra-skin rug.
Vera Merton had chosen the couch with its back to me so that I had to walk around to the other side if we were going to talk. When I did, the shadows cut her features sharper. It didn’t hurt her any. Her legs were crossed at the ankles and extended under the coffee table where I could see them through the glass. She was a lifetime of getting what she wanted when she wanted it and no realization that that wasn’t true for everybody. Chloë Rose made you want to protect her. This one made you hope someone would protect you.
“There’s a bar hidden away in the wall over there, if you’d like a drink.” She didn’t have one. In fact, it was unclear what she had been doing all alone in the dark. “I knew you were hired by my father,” she said as I sat on the edge of the opposite couch.
“Only I didn’t,” I said, leaning forward on my thighs, my hat in my hands. “Daddy can’t pay the electric bills?”
“Sometimes I like sitting in the dark. It helps me think,” she said.
“And what do you think about?”
She cocked her head. “If I’m not mistaken, that was a personal question. Did you just ask me a personal question?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes in my business I get personal when I’m not supposed to. Do you ask all the men that happen by to palaver in your father’s office?”
“Only ones that work for my father,” she said.
“So I guess around you that’s all of them,” I said.
“If you decide to be fresh with me, I might decide I don’t like you.”
“You liked me all right yesterday.”
“That was yesterday.”
“Well, take your time. I don’t need an answer today.”
She laughed at that, though it sounded as sincere as an acting class exercise. “Are you auditioning for a part? You’re like a man out of my father’s movies.”
I smiled along with her, but said nothing.
She turned the laughter off but left the smile on. It was a perfect smile, barely a crease showing around it on her face. And it was a perfect face, a young girl’s face, nineteen, maybe twenty.
“You have a knack for finding bodies, it seems,” she said.
“You were there when Stark asked me to find Mr. Taylor. I didn’t promise I’d find him alive.”
The smile went away.
“Do you remember the question I asked you, and you told me to go ask Daddy? That’s why I’m here. But Daddy’s not here and you are.”
“A coincidence. What was your question?”
“You’re getting personal again.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to cut it out. What was your question?”
“What did my father hire you for?”
“Maybe that’s personal,” I said.
“Maybe, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“I will?”
“You wouldn’t yesterday, but you will today. He hired you because of my brother, didn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure he told you to be cautious, he probably even had a cover story prepared for you. Was it that some crank was claiming that he had the exact same story idea as our most recent picture and that he sent it in two years ago, and now he was threatening Tommy over it?”
It was fascinating watching her guess as we sat there together in the dark. Even if she was young, she wasn’t stupid; even if she was wrong, I had the feeling she might be groping in the right direction. “No,” I said, “that wasn’t it.”
“It’s got to be my brother. That’s the only reason Daddy would handle something as menial as hiring a detective himself. It’s the only reason he would have hired somebody instead of using someone that already worked for him.”
“Sure, you’re too smart for me,” I said. “You knew all this days ago. You knew it before I was hired even.” I nodded my chin at her. “What’s with your brother that he needs a detective?”
Her confidence slipped as she realized that she might have spoken out of turn. She looked away from me, her eyes darting down and then across the distance to the blacked-out windows. “Nothing,” she said. “Gambling.” She looked back at me, proving that she could meet my look. “Gambling, women, too much room for blackmail.” She said this last as if she didn’t expect me to believe it.
I felt sorry, so I said, “I was hired on studio business. It was Al Knox, head of security who actually did the hiring. The word just came down from your father.”
She didn’t look relieved or placated.
“That’s all I can tell you,” I added.
“No, of course,” she said, lifting her head up and with it her shoulders. “I try not to know anything about my father’s business. When your father’s a magic maker it takes all the magic out of life, because you’ve seen all the tricks.”
“Unless he learns a new one.”
She smiled, and it was her award-winning smile again. “Old dogs, Mr. Foster. Or I forget, did you say to call you Dennis?”
“I didn’t say either.”
She waved that away, and let her arm fall limp beside her.
“You know why I was hired. All of that business about your brother, that’s just your protective side coming out.”
“Let’s forget about that,” she said quietly. “It’s in the past now.”
“That doesn’t always mean it goes away,” I said.
Our eyes met, and I held hers. We measured our stares. One of us had to be the first to look away, and in the end I did it. I didn’t want to stay any longer. “Enjoy the dark,” I said, standing.
“My father’s probably at the track.” She didn’t look up at me, but spoke straight ahead. “He’s been nearly every day since the law went through. He put up the initial money to build the place before it was even legal.”
“Santa Theresa or Hollywood Park?”
“Hollywood Park, of course.”
“Then who runs things around here?” I said.
“Younger men,” she said. Her eyes were gone.
I put on my hat and left before she had fully convinced herself that she had the right to feel sorry for herself.