Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Temple hoped the director was not being coerced into seeing her. Reluctant witnesses were the worst kind.

She ordered the Lady in Red Clamato juice, it being a bit too early for lunch, and recalled coming here with Matt. That, naturally (or not so naturally) got her wondering why she hadn't heard from Max lately. He was probably burrowed away in the Welles/Kinsella/Randolph house burning the literary lamp as he toiled to complete The Great Gandolph's nonfiction expose of the seance game. Max an author! Really! She supposed he might need some organizational help, but wasn't about to volunteer. After all, she was apparently in high demand lately, so let Max wait and wonder and stew. Except she didn't think he was doing any of those things, drat.

Aldo returned in ten minutes, tenderly escorting a sixtyish man whose gray hair was cut close, in a Roman-emperor style, to hide a receding hairline. Nothing he could do would hide his receding chin. His bony features didn't profit from the severe haircut, nor did his chin benefit from a Benetton cashmere turtleneck in a shade of green that too closely made one think of a ...

well, a turtle.

Temple braced herself. She'd seen this theatrical type before and knew that he compensated for behind-the-curtain looks with high-theatah mannerisms and energy, energy, energy.

He descended like a pine-green tornado, that being the color he had chosen to set off what was left of his silver locks. He came shaking a finger at her.

"You can't keep your shabby little secrets from me anymore. I wondered what you were doing coming in and out of the theater, and now I know."

Temple swallowed a gulp of Lady in Red.

"But, Miss Barr, you look so young to be a producer!"

He pumped her hand and sat opposite her at the table for two.

Temple gave Aldo a poisonous look, but he merely rocked back and forth on his slick Italian heels and soles, like a boa constrictor that had swallowed a whole flock of canaries.

"Miss Barr, this is Manny Kurtz, the stage, screen and television director who is mounting the Gangster's revue."

What kind of producer was she supposed to be? Temple asked herself--and Aldo--

internally. She smiled, pumping up her energy to match Manny Kurtz. Wilt before all those kilowatts, and you were lost before you started.

"Oh, Mr. Kurtz. You know what they say: kids are running everything these days. Even the studios."

He raised a dramatic eyebrow, a gesture the Mystifying Max put to much better effect.

"Even the TV studios, they tell me. I think it's wonderful that 60 Minutes is doing a retrospective on poor Darren! Feel free to tromp all over my set to find your interview subjects--I myself have several theories on poor Darren's... er, death. Who will do the actual on-camera stuff? Morey?

Ed?"

"Umm, maybe ... even Ted."

Kurtz frowned.

Temple rushed on. Aldo was apparently taking lessons from her Aunt Kit Carlson in the telling of Really Big Lies. The last time Temple had been introduced as a 60 Minutes field producer, she'd had to carry out the impersonation for a massively egotistical over muscled cover hunk, the male equivalent of a blond bimbo. Kurtz was full of himself, but he was several million brain cells ahead of Fabrizio.

"It'll be as much a surprise to me as to you who will front the story," she replied quite truthfully. "This is just a background expedition, to see if there's story enough here. I'm looking for people who knew Mr. Cooke for a long time, and some who just knew him recently. We hope to get a three-dimensional take on his life and times that way."

"Three dimensional." He nodded, enraptured. "Very good idea! You know, of course, that nobody really knew Darren well, over a long period of time. He was a comic. He required a fresh audience for his same old jokes. He moved on."

"Especially with women." Temple hoped she had managed a confidential leer. "Darren Cooke was the last of the great Hollywood lovers, after all. I've seen his widow, Michelle, of course," she reported with haughty honesty, "who was well aware of his . . . special relationship with the opposite sex. She accepted his inclinations and even gave me permission to explore the real Darren Cooke."

"What a remarkable woman! French, I believe. Trust Frenchwomen to be broad-minded."

"Apparently her late husband was also."

"Broad-minded, you mean?" Kurtz withdrew an antique silver cigarette case from the inner pocket of his cream linen blazer and tapped out a nasty little cylinder that Temple seriously suspected of being a Gauloise, a French brand.

"Darren made no bones about it," he went on after lighting the st unted little thing with a sterling-silver Zippo. He flashed Temple a sharp look from behind his screen of serpentine smoke. She doubted he inhaled, which ought to do his lungs some good.

He was already tapping nonexistent ash from the cigarette end. The entire ritual was a prop with him, providing enough stagy business to keep him in the spotlight anywhere he went.

"Darren and dames." An uproarious laugh. "We're so soaked in the gangster atmosphere for the revue that sometimes we talk like them. He liked his women young, so I was surprised when he actually married and she was over thirty."

"Michelle is an international beauty, of course."

"Quite a catch for Darren, if he were going to be caught. And I know he adored his daughter.

Cutest little kid! Don't care for rug rats much myself, or anything that crawls on four legs." His thin frame shuddered.

Temple was glad Midnight Louie was no longer on the stage set, or present to hear this.

"Of course, it's easy enough to get in touch with his official associates. Yourself, for example. His wife and daughter. The less public liaisons are no less integral to the man's life and work, but far harder to ferret out."

"Oh, indeed!" Kurtz turned his unfortunate profile to her while he blew out a huff of smoke in an ostentatiously sideways direction.

Temple waited.

Kurtz leaned in, confidential. His raucous baritone voice lowered to Crawford Buchanan-level. "Actually, my dear, poor Darren had one of his exes on the set last week. Slinky number with the IQ of an onion but a plastic surgeon from heaven. Although she is over his age limit now, I was betting on them reviving the embers. So you might want to talk to Savannah Ashleigh."

Temple dutifully wrote the name on a notepad she had extracted from her tote bag immediately upon being informed that she was a producer for a national news show.

"I've heard of her," she murmured.

"Amazing! I'm impressed. Savannah hasn't done anything to hear about since her last face-lift."

"Was there anyone else in his life this past week, or month?"

"Well, we haven't been rehearsing a whole month, dearie!" He was half-talking and half-inhaling on a new cigarette, his lighter flame ebbing and flaring like a candle in the wind. "Oh, the chorus cuties were always around Darren. He radiated charm. Girls seemed to jump into his bed like lemmings into the sea."

"An interesting analogy. Are you implying that getting involved with Darren Cooke was self -

destructive?"

"No! No, no, no. I meant that they had very little concern for their reputations. I suppose he was a fairly major star, and these starry-eyed young things like to say thirty years later when they're knitting booties for the grand brats that they once had an affair with a star. One-night stand usually, with Darren. But nobody ever complained, as far as I knew."

"Really! What a remarkable man." Temple cupped her face in her hand and placed her elbow on the table to lean in closer. "What about women who were strangely . . . unsusceptible to Darren Cooke? Any of them around?"

"Well, nobody really notices the losers . . . but we have a new costumer who seemed quite inoculated against his charm. And Darren's personal assistant is quite a striking creature, yet she broadcasts such an icy air of pure business that I doubt even Darren tried the Romeo act on her."