David Alexander: Masters of Noir: Volume 4

“Hi, Betty. Your bikini has slipped.”

“Has not. That’s the way I wear it.”

She was a gorgeous babe, but obviously no great shakes for brains. I had another drag of my cigarette, then got to my feet, went up the steps and rang the bell. Nothing happened. I banged on the door and the babe standing down there in the driveway said, “Why’nt you turn the doorknob?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. Talk about stupid babes. I turned the doorknob. The door opened. I laughed sourly and went inside.

There was a hall, rooms opening off it, a couple of which I examined without getting a glimpse of that daredevil who had clipped me. A long hall led toward the rear of the house and out in back there I could hear the whooping and yelling.

I headed that way. Mainly I wanted to find the guy who had socked me, but I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit there was hope that I’d see the blonde babe again. And after the way she’d trotted to the front door, maybe there’d be a whole flock of wonderful and beautiful people gadding about out there in back. I quickened my pace, found a door and went through it.

There weren’t any beautiful people, but there were about a dozen guys and gals standing around drinking and yakking. Most of them had highballs and one had a bottle. This seemed to be only a fragment of the crowd apparently here, because I could hear a lot of noise and music coming from somewhere closer to the ocean. A path led through the trees and shrubbery toward the sounds, but I couldn’t see very far because the grounds were so lushly planted and overgrown.

In this small group here, however, one of the guys was the short, bad-tempered egg who had made the mistake of clobbering me. His back was to me. I walked up close to him, tapped him on the shoulder with my index finger, and when he turned I tapped him on the chin with my right fist. He got all loose and his eyes rolled a bit and he fell down.

Everybody stared at me. Several of the people seemed shocked, a few merely interested, but the only rise out of anybody was one guy’s remark, to nobody in particular: “Some party, huh?” They were all horribly drunk. Another guy, a tall, gangling fellow with sandy hair and a wire-stiff mustache stepped toward me. “Oh, I say,” he said mushily. “That was a rotten thing to do!”

He was British, and sounded as if he were gargling Schweppes Quinine Water. “That’s not quite the way to treat our host, what?” he said cheerfully.

“What?”

“Yes, what. What indeed.”

“Oh, shut up. I mean, what? He’s the host?”

“Yes, host, old man. Well, toodleoo.” He wandered off, down the shrub-lined pathway toward all the noise and commotion.

I looked at the guy on the ground. This might ruin the party for me, but I wasn’t sorry I’d clobbered him. A big ruby ring on his finger had left a lump on my chin larger than the ruby. Somebody behind me said, “Well, well.”

I turned. A gal had just stepped out of the same door I’d come through a few seconds ago. I recognized her. It was the blonde who’d been looking for Johnny. Saying she wore clothes would be, perhaps, an overstatement, since she was bare-foot and wore a red and black and green sarong that hugged her waist and hips the way I’d have liked to. The blonde hair was shoulder-length, her eyes were huge and brown, and she looked very good to me. Again.

She walked toward me smiling. She took hold of my arm, nodded at the guy on the ground and said, “Did you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“He had it coming to him.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“ You don’t know the half of it.”

This had gone far enough. I turned her around, held both her arms gently and marched her back into the house. “Lady,” I said, “since I rang the bell here things have occurred with revolting rapidity. What’s going on here?”

It took her only about a minute to bring sanity into what had seemed madness. This was just one of the rather wild parties that L. Franklin Brevoort — now unconscious — held every weekend here at his Malibu home. He’d been tossing the parties for about a year, and this was a big one — authentic Hawaiian luau, complete with whole roast pig, poi, dancing girls, Hawaiian music.

She interrupted me, “I can’t stand him, though. Who can? Oh, you can’t blame L. Franklin — everybody calls him L. Franklin — considering that old mace he’s got for a wife.”

“That old what?”

“Mace. A kind of battle-ax. That’s what everybody calls her. She’s pretty gruesome. Anyway, L. Franklin’s about the loneliest man in Malibu—”

“Ha. You forget, I am in Malibu. And you forget, too, that I saw you in that doorway—”

“Anyway, when the bell rang I figured that was a good excuse to get away from L. Franklin. And I did think it was Johnny. My, I was surprised. Wonder where Johnny is?”

She went on to tell me that you had to be very careful not to let L. Franklin get you alone, because he was a regular old rip. “I’m surprised somebody hasn’t shot him,” she said, “the way he’s always going around reaching for everybody’s women. He’s sure a rip. Boy, was he mad when the bell rang and I took off.”

“I know. He came outside and knocked me down.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m going back to the party. You coming?”

I thought about it while she walked to the door. This seemed like a dandy party, and I hadn’t even seen Dolly yet, but I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome here after what had happened. Then Elaine turned and said, “You’re kind of nice, you know? I like you a lot already. Guess I surprised you when I opened the door.”

“Frankly, you hit me harder than L. Franklin did.”

She laughed. “I looked pretty good, huh?”

“Well... why, yes.”

Elaine grinned. “I’ll save you a dance,” she said, turned and left the house.

Well, if everybody here was crazy, this was no time for me to be sane. I was staying at this here party. If L. Franklin didn’t like it, I’d sock him again. I started after Elaine. Outside, somebody was pouring water on L. Franklin. Among other things Elaine had told me that the crux of the party was closer to the beach, about twenty or thirty yards back of the house. She was out of sight, so I headed toward the ocean, following the path. All you had to do was follow the noise. Mixed in with the whooping was music, Hawaiian music. In a minute I came out into a big clearing filled with plenty of movement.

About fifty people were flitting in and out among the trees and shrubs, many of them dancing. Four brown-skinned guys in sarongs were playing on stringed things and drums, and the place was a mass of color. A fifth brown-skinned guy was swinging a wicked-looking sword around and jumping over it while the other men played pulsating Hawaiian music that sounded as if it had a little mambo in it.

This place of Brevoort’s was practically a jungle, with all kinds of trees, including palms and eucalyptus, a dozen different kinds of shrubs and tropical plants surrounding the clearing. There were bananas, philodendron, elephant ears, more hibiscus and lilies and orchids, and plenty of ferns. There were a lot of potted plants standing around, and practically all of the guests were potted, too. Almost everybody here was wearing trunks or swimsuits, most of the gals in bikinis or similarly abbreviated jobs, and a man simply couldn’t have asked for a more interesting get-together.

On my right was a zoo-pound block of ice, its middle hollowed out and filled with a red punch, two white gardenias and a purple orchid floated on the liquor’s surface. Several halves of coconut shells rested on the ice and as I watched a redheaded tomato filled one of the coconut cups, drank the punch, and then let out a yip, shaking her head. It was Betty, the redheaded tomato I’d met in front of the house.