Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Goodnight, Heller,” she said.

And she slipped inside, but left the door slightly ajar.

“What the hell,” I said, and I slipped inside, too.

An hour later, I drove her Packard to the garage that was attached to the bungalow above the restaurant complex; to do that I had to take Montemar Vista Road to Seretto Way, turning right. The Mediterranean-style stucco bungalow, on Cabrillo, like so many houses in Montemar Vista, climbed the side of the hill like a clinging vine. It was owned by Thelma Todd’s partner in the Cafe, movie director/producer Warren Eastman. Eastman had an apartment next to Thelma’s above the restaurant, as well as the bungalow, and seemed to live back and forth between the two.

I wondered what the deal was, with Eastman and my client, but I never asked, not directly. Eastman was a thin, dapper man in his late forties, with a pointed chin and a small mustache and a window’s peak that his slick black hair was receding around, making his face look diamond shaped. He often sat in the cocktail lounge with a bloody Mary in one hand and a cigarette in a holder in the other. He was always talking deals with movie people.

“Heller,” he said, one night, motioning me over to the bar. He was seated on the very stool that Thelma had been, that first morning. “This is Nick DeCiro, the talent agent. Nick, this is the gumshoe Thelma hired to protect her from the big bad gambling syndicate.”

DeCiro was another darkly handsome man, a bit older than Eastman, though he lacked both the mustache and receding hairline of the director. DeCiro wore a white suit with a dark sportshirt, open at the neck to reveal a wealth of black chest hair.

I shook DeCiro’s hand. His grip was firm, moist, like a fistful of topsoil.

“Nicky here is your client’s ex-husband,” Eastman said, with a wag of his cigarette-in-holder, trying for an air of that effortless deence that Hollywood works so hard at.

“Thelma and me are still pals,” DeCiro said, lighting up a foreign cig with a shiny silver lighter that he then clicked shut with a meaningless flourish. “We broke up amicably.”

“I heard it was over extreme cruelty,” I said.

DeCiro frowned, and Eastman cut in glibly, “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Heller. Besides, you have to get a divorce over something.”

“But then you’d know that in your line of work,” DeCiro said, an edge in his thin voice.

“Don’t knock it,” I said with my own edge. “Where would your crowd be without divorce dicks? Now, if you gents will excuse me…”

“Heller, Heller,” Eastman said, touching my arm, “don’t be so touchy.”

I waited for him to remove his hand from my arm, then said, “Did you want something, Mr. Eastman? I’m not much for this Hollywood shit-chat.”

“I don’t like your manner,” DeCiro said.

“Nobody does,” I said. “But I don’t get paid well enough for it to matter.”

“Heller,” Eastman said, “I was just trying to convince Nicky here that my new film is perfect for a certain client of his. I’m doing a mystery. About the perfect crime. The perfect murder.”

“No such animal,” I said.

“Oh, really?” DeCiro said, lifting an eyebrow.

“Murder and crime are inexact sciences. All the planning in the world doesn’t account for the human element.”

“Then how do you explain,” Eastman said archly, “the hundreds of murders that go unsolved in this country?”

“Policework is a more exact science than crime or murder,” I admitted, “but we have a lot of bent cops in this world-and a lot of dumb ones.”

“Then there are perfect crimes.”

“No. Just unsolved ones. And imperfect detectives. Good evening, gentlemen.”

That was the most extensive conversation I had with either Eastman or DeCiro during the time I was employed by Miss Todd, though I said hello and they did the same, now and then, at the Cafe.

But Eastman was married to an actress named Miranda Diamond, a fiery Latin whose parents were from Mexico City, even if she’d been raised in the Bronx. She fancied herself as the next Lupe Velez, and she was a similarly voluptuous dame, though her handsome features were as hard as a gravestone.

She cornered me at the Cafe one night, in the cocktail lounge, where I was drinking on the job.

“You’re a dick,” she said.

We’d never spoken before.

“I hope you mean that in the nicest way,” I said.

“You’re bodyguarding that bitch,” she said, sitting next to me on a leather and chrome couch. Her nostrils flared; if I’d been holding a red cape, I’d have dropped it and run for the stands.

“Miss Todd is my client, yes, Miss Diamond.”

She smiled. “You recognize me.”

“Oh yes. And I also know enough to call you Mrs. Eastman, in certain company.”

“My husband and I are separated.”

“Ah.”

“But I could use a little help in the divorce court.”

“What kind of help?”

“Photographs of him and that bitch in the sack.” She said “the” like “thee.”

“That would help you.”

“Yes. You see…my husband has similar pictures of me, with a gentleman, in a compromising position.”

“Even missionaries get caught in that position, I understand.” I offered her a cigarette, she took it, and I lit hers and mine. “And if you had similar photos, you could negotiate yourself a better settlement.”

“Exactly. Interested?”

“I do divorce work-that’s no problem. But I try not to sell clients out. Bad for business.”

She smiled; she put her hand on my leg. “I could make it worth your while. Financially and…otherwise.”

It wasn’t even Christmas and already here was a second screen goddess who wanted to hop in the sack with me. I must have really been something.

“Listen, if you like me, just say so. But we’re not making a business arrangement-I got a client, already.”

Then she suggested I do to myself what she’d just offered to do for me. She was full of ideas.

So was I. I was pretty sure Thelma and Eastman were indeed having an affair, but it was of the on-again-off-again variety. One night they’d be affectionate, in that sickening Hollywood sweetie-baby way; the next night he would be cool to her; the next she would be cool to him. It was love, I recognized it, but the kind that sooner or later blows up like an overheated engine.

Ten days before Christmas, Thelma was honored by Lupino Lane-the famous British comedian, so famous I’d never the hell heard of him-with a dinner at the Troc. At a table for twelve upstairs, in the swanky cream-and-gold dining room, Thelma was being feted by her show-biz friends, while I sat downstairs in the oak-paneled Cellar Lounge with other people not famous enough to sit upstairs, nursing a rum and Coke at the polished copper bar. I didn’t feel like a polished copper, that was for sure. I was just a chauffeur with a gun, and a beautiful client who didn’t need me.

That much was clear to me: in the two months I’d worked for Thelma, I hadn’t spotted anybody following her except a few fans, and I couldn’t blame them. I think I was just a little bit in love with the ice-cream blonde myself. We’d only had that one slightly inebriated night togeth#8212;and neither of us had mentioned it since, or even referred to it. Maybe we were both embarrassed; I didn’t figure either of us were exactly the type to be ashamed.

Anyway, she was a client, and she slept around, and neither of those things appealed to me in a girl-though everything else about her, including her money, did.

About half an hour into the evening, I heard a scream upstairs. A woman’s scream, a scream that might have belonged to Thelma.