William Bankier: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

“I had the week off.”

“Yeah. What do you do for a whole week in La Jolla?”

“I body-surf.”

“Oh.” Bingham never understood the prissy bum. But the sonofabee had taste. He needed the bum’s brain. Sometimes you just gotta put up with.

His hand slid toward the front tail of his raucously printed sport-shirt and tapped the truss beneath it. Sometimes you just gotta put up with.

Why doesn’t he have that hunk of herniated gut tucked back in and sewn up? Moses thought. And why did Moses let it bother him? Everybody had weird quirks and unconscious personal habits. The ring twisters, the nose tweakers, the truss patters, the leg crossers.

Lightcastle uncrossed his legs.

Better than other mannerisms he could think of. Like specialties. David was head of the public-relations staff at the studio. Moses didn’t dislike Bixby, but it was difficult, at best, conversing with someone whose hand was either patting the sparse blond hair on his rapidly balding head or patting the parts below, presumably to make certain they weren’t receding as well. “Couldn’t we get someone to dub for Miss Osprey?” Moses suggested.

Gustave replugged and turned the Havana’s light back on. “Cleo wouldn’t lie still for it. Class she ain’t. Stubborn she is. No, we gotta sign ourselves another Jenny Wren.”

“Lind.”

“Whatever. Damned shame, too. Cleo’s a good little actress.”

Moses cleared his throat. Little? Good lord, Cleo Osprey was nearly as tall as he was and had shoulders above her ample chest any Rams linebacker would be proud to put pads on. Classy she wasn’t. Little she wasn’t. “Couldn’t you try to convince her the part—?”

“Son, you don’t understand.” (Lightcastle really hated it when Bingham called him “son.”) “It ain’t like the old days when you had a whole stableful all under contract. They did what they were told, no back talk. They reported to the set and took their orders like good soldiers. Today it’s a whole new war. And I got no troops. Today they’ve all gone independent. Every damn one of ’em’s a corpafrigginration! The lawyers is running the world and screwing everything up — the picture business and me likewise. I got that one rock star under contract and that’s it. Skinny little shrieker. Nothing to him but a ton of makeup and a carload of curls.” Bingham sighed his corporate-sized sigh. “But the freak sells tickets and records by the trillion. Sometimes you just gotta put up with.”

Moses added a tad to his half smile. “Maybe we could have Ricky Rhinestone play Lillian Russell.”

“The way things is going today, that ain’t so far out as you think. Jeezus, I wish Alice Faye was thirty years younger. She could do the remake. Where the hell are the Alice Fayes? They don’t make Alice Fayes no more. They make Ricky Rhinestones and all the rest of them dopers. Hash, horse, ludes, coke — this whole town’s nothing but a giant pharmacy. It used to be an orange grove!” Lightcastle watched Bingham’s massive face purple up in fine fashion. His boss was warming to a familiar diatribe.

A rude buzz cut the sermon midmount.

Gustave grabbed the phone receiver and barked something only Miss Kathy, his secretary, could interpret as hello.

After a moment, during which his facial hue slowly returned to its normal murk, he said: “Then please send them in, Miss Kathy.” As far as Moses knew, the only person in the world Bingham was polite to was the wraithlike relic in his outer office.

The towering oak door eased open, pushed by the fragile hand of Miss Kathy. A mysterious feat unto itself. Bingham’s ancient aide couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds wearing deep-sea diving boots. A regular road-company Estelle Winwood.

“Please go right in,” she chirped. Her British voice tinkled clearly across the miles of high-pile carpeting before the heavy door closed silently behind David Bixby, Bingham’s public-relations chief, and a stunningly beautiful brunette.

Bingham, near-sighted — 20/40 at least — sprang to his feet. Moses Lightcastle unfolded from his chair — and as the couple drew within the range of his limited vision, his permanent half smile faded. The luscious brunette was the same young lady whose warm bed he had left less than fourteen hours earlier.

If the scene were being filmed, the camera would zoom in to an extreme closeup of Lightcastle’s face and reveal, beneath the forced calm tightly stretched across his features, the war raging within the man.

Tiny bits of the battle showed through the pale eyes, but they were diffused and hidden from the others by the thick lenses of the glasses he wore.

Introductions were being made. Moses fought to focus on the moment at hand, but his mind kept dissolving back to the night before.

Now the beautiful brunette was smiling at him — as if he were a complete stranger. And offering her hand, for godsake! He was losing the fight — the dissolve was taking over. A voice — was it Bixby’s? — sounded hollow and distant as it said, “I want you to meet Dannelle Driscoll.”

Dannelle? What happened to Betty?

And the dissolve to flashback was complete.

“Hello.” The brunette was smiling as she swiveled the bar stool around to face him. “I’m Betty. Not overly liberated or anything — I simply feel it’s foolish to waste time being reticent and coy when one could be happily conversing.”

“I agree.” Moses returned the smile and self-consciously adjusted the steel-rims. “My name’s Moses.”

“I know. I heard the bartender before.” She crossed fantasy-length legs. “You come here a lot?”

“When I can. Not as often as I’d like.”

Her eyes were friendly — dark and direct. “Afraid of sharks?”

“Are you a shark?” His half smile slid into place.

“I hope not.” Her laugh was full and dead-ahead. “I mean all the hoopla about the shark scare this afternoon.”

“Happens once in a while here at Emerald Bay. For the most part, I don’t believe them.”

“Cleared the cove,” she said. “Cut your body-surfing session short.”

“You saw me?”

“Umm.” She grinned and lifted her Dewars-on-the-rocks.

“I didn’t see you.”

“You weren’t wearing your glasses.”

“I am now. Would you like another Scotch?”

“I wouldn’t say no.” Their eyes locked, stocked, and barreled. “Nor would I,” said Moses. He knew the pickup had been completed but wasn’t exactly sure how much of a hand he had had in it.

Now her hand was in his — firm and friendly but totally a stranger’s. This lady was good. The complete actress.

“You’re meeting the new Lillian Russell,” David Bixby was telling them as he sneaked a minor adjustment and then smoothed the already smooth blond sparseness.

Moses watched the woman with renewed fascination.

No thirty ways about it, Gustave Bingham was bowled over. Dannelle Driscoll had scored three strikes in a row with him. His cigar sat forgotten in the Steuben as his hard-poached eyes watched her, agoggle. “How’s the singing?” he asked, husky, hoarse, and subtle as a bus wreck.

“Incredible!” Bixby chimed in like a regular William Morris.

“Wasn’t Lillian Russell a blonde?” Dannelle/Betty asked quietly.

“Who cares?” gurgled the gone Bingham. “Who remembers?”

“And — heavier?” Dannelle’s hands were on the slim hips aimed squarely at Bingham.

“So now she’s skinnier.” Gustave sprang back to life. “What’re ya trying to do? Talk me out of ya? The part’s yours. I made up my mind. Now don’t unmake me. Who’s your agent? Call him and tell him we got us a new star if he makes me the right deal. What I ain’t got is all the money in the world, like Bank Americard.”