Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Royal Flagg woke up thinking he was back in Smokey Valley. He thought he heard somebody tuning his mother’s piano. Eyes closed, he waited to hear her voice calling from the foot of the stairs: “Roy? You’ll be late for school!”

The garbage truck in the laneway off Hollywood Boulevard stopped backing up so the repetitive note he had mistaken for a piano came to an end. Connie Seltzer rolled over beside him and made wet noises with her mouth. He was not going to miss school, he was going to be late for the early shift at the restaurant.

“I am your waiter, Royal,” he rumbled close to her ear, speaking through a filter of her ash-blond hair. “The special this morning is a nibble on the neck.”

Connie squeaked as she stretched and turned to intrude her tiny self into the cage of his lanky arms and legs. “I don’t believe you!” she murmured.

Nobody did. They all thought he was just another southern boy lost in L.A.; one more aspiring actor/writer waiting tables while dreaming of discovery, fame, and fortune. Few people realized that Royal Flagg had friends in high places. He was not a rose born to blush unseen. Soon, very soon, he was going to light up the sky.

“Don’t do it, Roy.” Connie was driving the car in dressing gown and bare feet. This habit was so Californian, Roy could only tolerate it by writing it into his script. The routine was for her to drop him at the restaurant on Melrose and head back to the apartment. There, she would take her time getting ready for her ten o’clock start at the radio station.

“Why not do it?” he said. “It’s a golden opportunity.”

“You’ll be setting your mother up for a big rejection.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You stopped sending her money. You don’t even answer her letters.”

“She’ll come if I ask her.”

Roy did not feel guilty about stopping the money. His mother was not the only one chasing him to pay. Anyway, all she did was use it for cat food and vet bills. It was crazy to have ten cats. Last time he flew to New Orleans and did the long drive in the rental car to Smokey Valley, the animals really spooked him. A few of them were normal. But others were ghost cats — old, sick strays that looked like cats made out of pipe cleaners. One orange character teetered on the lawn near the porch and stared at Roy as if he had materialized out of thin air.

Clara Hunter Flagg was a bleeding heart. Roy classified her this way even though he knew it was only a small part of the truth. He could not afford, not right now, to see her any other way. He needed all his concentration, and what little money he was earning, to push his career. His film script was ready. The fact that two agents had read An Air That Kills and declined to handle it meant nothing.

“Are you getting out of the car?” Connie said. “Or do you intend to sit here all morning?”

There was the restaurant door propped open. There was the ditzy sequined sign, Scrump. Behind the big window sat menacing silhouettes, customers who would want their toast taken back because it was not supposed to be buttered. And the ketchup bottle was empty. And always, always, more coffee. When he first arrived in L.A. and was a customer himself, Roy had enjoyed coming to Scrump. In those bragging, swaggering days, he met Connie Seltzer here. He got himself a fine place to live, rent-free.

“Will you talk to Chatterton?” Roy was balanced on the Melrose Avenue pavement now, high-top training shoes rocking just a trifle, bending his frame to show Connie his worried expression.

“Can’t you put your mother up in a Best Western?”

“She won’t come if it’s a hotel. We have no room. Hal has that giant condo.”

“All right, I’ll ask him.” Connie let the car creep forward. “But you know Hal Chatterton. Don’t be surprised if he says no.”

The headphones mashed Chatterton’s fuzzy brown hair on both sides. Connie had said once that he looked like a Brillo sandwich. L.A.’s popular talk-show host liked that one. He used it a few times on the air.

“In the next half-hour,” he said into the microphone, “we have Dirty Berty on the line from London to dish the dirt about the royals. And my aggressive co-host, Connie Seltzer, will review the movie Acid Heart . Did you actually see this one, Connie?”

“Start to finish. Paid my money and hung in to the end.”

“Not a rave, I take it?”

“Not unless you like women in cages.”

“Save it till after the break. This is Hal ‘Chatty’ Chatterton on 109, KLDD.”

As the commercial sequence began, Chatterton lowered the volume on the studio speaker. “Give it to me again,” he said to Connie. “His mother?”

“I met her once in New Orleans when Roy and I first started going together. He drove alone to Smokey Valley and got her and brought her to the hotel. He didn’t want me to see where he used to live.”

“Smokey Valley.” Chatterton shook his head slowly and half closed his eyes, as if he had just heard of the existence of a lost city.

“She’s a cheerful old biddy. Taught school all her life. The residents of the town worship her, they all sat in her class. Including you know who.”

“He really knows Mike Linford?”

“I don’t think they ever exchanged words. Linford is somewhat older. But Roy saw him around, he used to come to his house.” It was exciting, talking with such familiarity about the new president of the United States. “Mike Linford used to come over to the Flagg residence for piano lessons.”

“I have to admit it, I’m impressed. All this time I’ve considered your friend to be a Louisiana con artist. Sammy Glick with Spanish moss,” Chatterton said, referring to Schulberg’s famous antihero. “Now I have to concede he’s a con artist who knows the president.”

“Royal Flagg is just a name to Linford.” Connie hurried as the commercials rolled through. “But Clara Hunter Flagg would be an important person from the president’s past. We’ve all seen what an approachable character Linford is. If his old piano teacher were to show up, he’d see her.”

“And I’m to house the widow Flagg for how long? A weekend?” The producer in the control room had her finger raised, one eye on the clock. “What does she take on her bran flakes?” Chatterton said, preparing his mind for Dirty Berty from London.

Royal Flagg was hovering by the cashier’s end of the counter, doing what he liked best. He was counting his tips. He pressed a sheaf of ones on Frederico and waited for big bills in exchange. Frederico was from Guatemala. When Roy came aboard, Freddy was a busboy. Now he wore a burgundy cummerbund and a black moustache.

“You must be about ready to buy your house,” he said as he handed the waiter his money.

“Got to fly my mother in from New Orleans. She’s coming next weekend.”

“That’s nice.” Frederico’s mother would never come to L.A. She was in a common grave near their village along with a dozen other women and children.

Roy emptied his eyes and showed the cashier a limpid smile. For his own amusement, because he was certain Freddy had never seen the movie Psycho, he used a Norman Bates voice as he said, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

Frederico tapped the wall calendar. “Linford will be in town. Your mother can see the president.”

“I’m working on it,” Roy said. He stuffed his wallet down into a front pocket of his jeans and left the restaurant. Connie was waiting in the car three meters along the street. Roy fought off an urge to kick in one of the doors. She had finished the show and then had driven all the way from the studio on Cahuenga. She would chauffeur him to the apartment and then head back to the studio to prepare tomorrow’s program. Roy felt like a school kid. Once in a while she missed and he took a cab. And then only after a delicious wander, looking at people and at himself in windows.