Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

Jeremy calls it deja vu. He even wrote a poem with that title. I couldn’t see why it didn’t have a straight American name like, “Haven’t I Been This Way Before?” or “(Seems to Me) I’ve Heard That Song Before.”

The woman in a light blue dress stood in front of me with her arms folded. She was a beautiful blond named Brenda Stallings, who hadn’t aged in the four years since I last saw her. She had been wearing a blue dress the first time she had greeted me just before she seduced me and later shot me in the back. I can’t say it was good to see her.

“I came to return your bullet,” I said.

Brenda Stallings had been a wealthy society deb about fifteen years earlier. She had doubled for Harlow, and then had a short, successful film career before marrying a blackmailing twerp actor named Harry Beaumont, who was now lying somewhere near Rin Tin Tin in Roseland cemetery. But Brenda was an actress. She didn’t blink as she took a step back to let me in and said, “You may keep it if you like.”

I stepped in and she closed the door. A few feet from her now I could see the changes. She was still beautiful, still had the body and the carriage, but shadows around the corner of the mouth and eyes hinted at what she had been through if someone looked close enough, which was what I was doing.

“How did you find me?” she said, walking ahead of me without looking back. Her legs were great and her yellow hair still bounced softly on her neck. I’d been through it before. Yes, I had.

We stopped in a living room that looked like the set of a Fred Astaire movie, blacks and whites and keep your hands off. It was Brenda’s style. I looked around for the Oscar. There were two of them on the white piano. She caught my look.

“The one on the left is Richard’s for Captain Daring ,” she said. “The other,” she went on walking over to it and touching something on the back, “you may recall.” Flames spurted out of the Oscar’s gold head. She picked up a cigarette from a gold box on the piano, lit it, and put the Oscar back.

“I recall.”

Her cold blue eyes looked at the burning end of her cigarette and then at me.

“Please.” She pointed at the various pieces of furniture, and I tried to figure out which one I’d be least likely to leave a stain on. I could have gone to the piano bench, which was also white, but I can’t play the piano and I’d feel silly. I sat on the white arm of an overstuffed chair.

“I’m looking for Richard Talbott,” I explained. “He does live here, doesn’t he?”

She nodded and smoked staring at me. She wasn’t going to make it easy. As I recalled, I had done her a reasonably good turn when last we met, but she wasn’t the kind to show gratitude, or weakness, or much of anything if she could help it.

“He lives here and so do I,” she said, reaching for a gold ashtray.

“I live in Hollywood in Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse,” I said, looking around and finding two huge painted portraits on the wall over the doorway we had entered. One was of Brenda Stallings, bronzed and queenly in white. It had been in her old house, not too far from here. The other portrait was Richard Talbott wearing a blue pea coat with a robust, healthy tooth-filled smile. Brenda had done her best to make the house and Talbott her own. In the old house the portrait had been of Harry Beaumont. If my memory served me right, there was a superficial similarity between Beaumont and Talbott.

“How’s Lynn?” I tried, looking at Brenda with my best party smile. Lynn was her daughter who now must be, hell about nineteen or twenty.

Brenda put out her cigarette and dropped lazily into the armchair across from me. She had done that too when I first met her. It was, I decided, a scene she played well and did over and over.

“Lynn is fine,” she said. “We don’t see much of each other. She’s in New York going to school and seriously interested in a not-too-young producer. What do you want with Richard?”

“I thought I’d save his life,” I said.

“Would you like a drink?” she came back.

“Water with ice would be fine.”

“Will lemonade do?”

“Sure.”

Brenda eased herself out of the chair and took a leisurely trip across the black-and-white checkerboard rug and out of the room. I heard her off somewhere giving orders in something that might have been Spanish. She was back in a few seconds.

“Carlotta will bring your drink in a few moments,” she said, going to the piano, picking up another cigarette, and putting it back down again. She was nervous. Maybe it was me, seeing me again and remembering some bad times. Maybe it was something else.

“Has Talbott had any threats?” I asked. “Any problems?”

“Richard’s primary threats are to his liver, and his primary problem is his capacity to serve as a receptacle for the entire importation of scotch into California.” She smiled prettily as she spoke and searched for something to fiddle with.

“Lady, you are a real expert in picking your men,” I said.

“I do seem to have a certain talent for it, don’t I?”

“Talbott,” I said.

“Yes, Richard.” Her sigh lifted her breasts under her dress and demanded my attention. It was her scene, and I let her play it. “He and a producer are out for a late-morning business session at one of Richard’s favorite bars, of which there are several within vomiting distance.” She looked out the window and then up at her portrait and touched her hair before going on. “It’s some sort of big foreign deal, and I doubt if they will be back for some time. Do you plan to tell me what it’s all about? This scene could stand cutting …”

At which point Carlotta, wearing a black dress and being very tiny, came in and handed me a tall lemonade with ice and a little smile. Brenda drank nothing. Carlotta walked out. The whole thing was very elegant, and I wasn’t.

“There’s a nut who’s got it in for Talbott and a few other movie people,” I said. She looked at me seriously.

“Richard is used to that,” she said. “So are most stars.”

“This one has probably killed someone.”

Something hit her in the gut, and she didn’t have time to be pretty about it.

“So, I’d like to find Talbott, talk to him, warn him, and maybe set up some protection for him while he stays off the streets till I catch the guy,” I went on.

Brenda moved toward me. I gurgled some lemonade, which was too sweet, and looked for some place to put it without leaving a ring. There was no place. I held it.

“There was a call yesterday,” she said. “Richard said it was just a stupid fan, but he was shaken by it. It might …”

“It might,” I agreed, handing her the glass. She took it, stared at it without seeing it, and placed it on a shiny black table. “I think I’ll just wait here till he gets back, if it’s all right with you.”

“Of course,” she said. The act was dropping fast now. We had gone beyond her usual lines, and the scene wasn’t going to end in a seduction or a burst of anger. Maybe I’d get a glimpse of the Brenda Stallings buried under a decade and a half of Brenda Stallings. Her pink mouth opened slightly. I remembered that pink mouth. She started to say, “Toby, Mr. Peters I-”

“Hold it,” I jumped in. “This producer Talbott is with. Did he know him? I mean before.”

“No,” she said. “He called this morning and … you don’t think?”

“Sometimes I do, like right now. What did the guy look like?”

I got up and walked over to her. The front was dropping fast. Her hand went to her forehead and brushed away her hair.

“I didn’t see him. I was upstairs. Richard-”

“Did he have a name? The producer?”