Sally's in the Alley - Norbert Davis (reading tree .txt) 📗
- Author: Norbert Davis
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“Hello,” he said hopelessly.
Doan nodded and sat down in the chair at the end of the divan.
“I came as fast as I could,” MacAdoo said.
Doan nodded again.
“They wouldn’t let me go upstairs,” MacAdoo said. “They told me to stay down here and keep my mouth shut. They told me that Susan Sally’s death wasn’t to be released to the press. They said I had to stall the studio.”
“Who said all this?”
“G-men,” MacAdoo said. “FBI”
“They’re hopping around this joint like fleas in a prison camp,” Doan commented.
“I don’t understand it,” MacAdoo said. “I don’t understand what Sally has to do with G-men. She has always paid her income tax right on the dot in full. I know, because I always have made it out for her.”
Doan didn’t say anything.
MacAdoo glanced at him. “Is she—is she—”
“She’s gone. They took her away—to the morgue.”
MacAdoo took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. “I don’t like that.”
“Me, either,” Doan said.
“It’s not that I’m sentimental,” MacAdoo declared. “No, sir. Between me and Sally, it was always strictly business and no nonsense… Oh, hell.”
“Yeah,” said Doan.
“I liked her.”
“Me, too.”
“She shouldn’t ought to have been killed.”
“That’s right.”
“She was too damned beautiful.”
“You’re on the beam,” Doan agreed.
“A man would have to be cracked to kill anything as beautiful as that. Am I right?”
“Sure.”
“That’s going to make it tough to find out who did it, because Hollywood is practically packed with people who are cracked.”
“That’s no lie.”
“You know who did it?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I’d like to have a short interview with that party.”
“After me,” said Doan.
MacAdoo sighed. “Thirty-five hundred dollars a week. And no picture to picture contract, either. Forty straight weeks every year, whether she worked or not.”
“How much did you get of that?” Doan asked.
MacAdoo sighed again, more deeply. “Ten per cent for being her agent, five per cent for being her business manager. That amounted to five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. Oh, it was fair enough. I could have held her up for more. She was green as grass when I found her. And then, I had to spend all my time on her. I mean, she wasn’t so easy to handle.
“She got notions. Like I had to save all my gas coupons so she could go to Heliotrope every once in awhile and give the rubes the ritz on account they used to shove her around when she was a kid. And then she was always associating with low characters. No offense.”
Doan nodded. “Five and a quarter a week is a nice piece of change. Have you got any more clients like that lying around?”
“I haven’t got any more clients, period. I’m flatter than a flounder at this point. I told you she took all my time. As an agent, I’m really not so hot, but you could hardly go wrong with something like Susan Sally, could you?”
“No.”
“They come like that only once in a lifetime. I’ve had my quota.”
“How’d you happen to get hold of her?”
MacAdoo began to untwist the brim of his hat. “I’ve always been interested in the theater. I thought I was an actor once, but nobody else did. I used to be a stagehand, and paint scenery and like that. Then I heard Hollywood was a soft touch, so I came out here. I never even got one job.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I thought I’d better be an agent. That doesn’t take any brains to speak of, and look at the dough they make. Look at the offices they sport on the Strip.”
“Yeah.”
“So I set up in business. It didn’t work.”
“No clients?” Doan asked.
“Anybody can get clients. I couldn’t get the clients any jobs. Ten per cent of nothing won’t keep you in beans for long.”
“No,” Doan agreed.
“So I was down to my carfare back to New York. I didn’t even have anything to eat on going there. So I was down to the station, waiting for my train. And Susan Sally came up to me and asked me how to get to Hollywood, and the movie studios. She’d just come in on the train.”
“What did you do?” Doan inquired.
“I took one look at her, and then went and cashed my ticket in. I got her to sign a contract in the taxi on the way back to Hollywood. I spent most of my ticket money renting an outfit for her, and I took her to the jazziest nightclub in town that night. Half an hour after we sat down in it there were three producers sitting with us, and three more trying to bribe the head waiter to throw out the first three. I mean, you couldn’t miss with Susan Sally. I got her a contract that night, written on the front of a producer’s dress shirt. It just happens once to one guy, Doan. It won’t again for me. I’m all done now.”
“Maybe not,” said Doan.
MacAdoo nodded gloomily. “I know. Everybody in town has been drooling because I had her. Now they’ll give me the brush-off, but quick. I’m back playing with peanuts again. You wouldn’t want to let me handle that dog of yours, would you?”
“What?” said Doan.
“He’s good. I saw some of the rushes of those defense films he made. Get him released from the government, and I could maybe make you a dime or two or three.”
“I’ll think it over. It would make him madder than hell though if he thought he was supporting me in luxury. He’s old-fashioned. He thinks I ought to feed him instead of vice versa.”
MacAdoo got up slowly and wearily. “I guess I’ll go home again. It doesn’t do me any good to sit here. Will you call me up if you hear anything new?”
“Sure.”
“Good-by, Doan.”
“Good-by,” Doan said.
MacAdoo went out the door, dragging his heels a little. Doan sat still, his face relaxed and bland and peaceful, until the switchboard buzzed softly. He got up, then, and went over to the desk and plugged in one of the outside lines.
“Yes?”
“Lemme speak to Doan.”
“You are.”
“I’m sure scared good and plenty now, Doanwashi. I sure am.”
“That’s too bad.”
“You ain’t gonna go back on your sworn word, are you?”
“Nope. Are you?”
“I guess not. Can you meet me at Hollywood and Cahuenga right away? In your car?”
“I’m on my way.”
“Did you see the fella that shot at us?”
“No. Did you?”
“Man, I don’t want to see him! Hurry up.”
The line clicked, but it didn’t hum. Doan waited for a moment, and then said:
“Well?”
Arne’s voice said, “Go ahead and meet him. You still have about twenty-two hours.”
“Keep out of my tracks,” Doan warned. “I’m going to start huffing and puffing now.”
THE DIM-OUT HAS DONE A LOT FOR HOLLYWOOD Boulevard. It used to look just as cheap and cheesy as you’d think it would, and the types that clutter it up have been known to turn a strong man’s stomach, but now it and they are shadowed discreetly, and it’s not so bad. Of course, some very weird things come swimming out of the darkness now and then, but if you have steady nerves and a well balanced personality it is often possible to walk two or three blocks without having hysterics.
Doan rolled the Cadillac across on the signal and pulled in against the curb in the red zone on the far side and opened the door. Dust-Mouth popped out of the shadows and bounced on the front seat.
“Drive on!” he said breathlessly, slamming the door.
Doan pulled out into the traffic. “Somebody following you?”
“If they are, they sure must be dizzy by now. I been runnin’ in circles for an hour.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Back to the desert. I wanta show you that there location. I wanta get this here deal all set. I don’t like bein’ shot at. That ain’t good for a person.”
“Not too much of it,” Doan agreed.
Carstairs snorted twice imperiously from the back seat. Doan reached back and turned one of the windows down. Carstairs put his head outside.
“What’s the matter with him?” Dust-Mouth demanded.
“He’s a fresh air fiend.” Doan said, turning the wing of his own window around so that the wind blew directly in his face. “So am I. You’ve got a new brand now, haven’t you?”
“Of what?”
“Wine.”
“Oh, yeah.” Dust-Mouth took a round pint bottle out of his coat pocket. “This here is muscatel. It ain’t as good as sherry, but it’s better than nothin’. You want a drink?”
“No, thanks. Why don’t you buy sherry?”
Dust-Mouth looked at him in surprise. “Winos drink sherry. They’re nothin’ but bums. If I was to go around buyin’ it all the time, people would think I was one.”
“Oh,” said Doan.
“You got any dough on you, Doanwashi?”
“Some. Why?”
“Well, I was thinkin’. I’m still hot on that Ioway deal, but I got to have somethin’ to live on until you Japs get there and take it over for me.”
“I can spare you some eating money.”
“Swell. Say, another thing.”
“What?”
“How does the Jap government feel about puttin’ people in insane asylums and such like?”
“They never do that. There’s only one guy over there they keep a very close watch on.”
“Who’s he?”
“The Emperor.”
“The head gazump, you mean? What’s the matter with him?”
“He claims he’s God.”
“Wow!” said Dust-Mouth, awed. “I’ve met guys who thought they were Pontius Pilate and Judas and even the Pope, but I never hear of anybody who actually claimed he was God. This boy must be really nuts. Any chance of him recoverin’?”
“Yes,” said Doan. “I think that someone will convince him he’s wrong one day soon.”
“That’s good. He ain’t runnin’ the works in the meantime, is he?”
“No. They keep him under cover.”
“I should think so. Even the Japs—no offense—ain’t so dumb they’d believe a fandango like that.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Doan. “How’d you happen to run across this ore deposit?”
“Carbotetroberylthalium.”
“What?” said Doan.
“That’s it. I mean, that’s pretty close to it, anyway. I looked it up again in the library. I can never remember that name.”
“What’s it good for?”
“I dunno. You put it in steel and it makes it harder or quicker or something. I guess.”
“Maybe you’d better stop guessing,” said Doan.
“Oh, it’s the goods, all right. It’s like this. I ran across it one time when I was goin’ here and there. It had been washed out of a gully, and it was just layin’ around there in the open. Just like them samples I showed you. So I picked up some of it just for hell and took it to this assayer I got credit with. I say, ‘What the hell is this junk, Joe? I never see nothin’ like it before.’ So he foxes around and tests it and looks it up and all that, and then he tells me.”
“What?”
“That it’s what I tell you a minute ago. So I ask him what it’s worth. And he says it ain’t worth nothin’, because they got mountains of the stuff stuck around here and there in foreign parts. So I forget it.”
“What then?”
“So the dirty government cheats me, and we got a war. I still don’t think nothin’ about the junk until this assayer
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