1 The Hollywood Detective Read Online Free Page B

insistent.”
    “Artie warned me about her.” He was smiling again. “So… I guess you better tell me what I’m supposed to have done wrong.”
    “I didn’t say that you had. I just want to talk to you about the party last night.”
    “What party?” He wasn’t going to make this easy for me.
    “The one you took Clara Lockhart to.”
    “Ok-ay.” The two syllables were drawn out and loaded with suspicion.
    “Clara didn’t make it home last night.” I paused to see whether his face would tell me something his words wouldn’t. His eyes widened ever so slightly: this was news to him.
    “So her husband has hired you to find out which bed she ended up in, is that it?”
    “She told you she was married?”
    “Hell no, if I’d known she was married I’d never have taken her there. I like an easy life.”
    I told him he could relax: there was no husband looking for his tail on a plate. “So you know where she might be?”
    “Wouldn’t be surprised if she was still there. She was having a whale of a time.”
    “Were you working last night?”
    “You mean like now?”
    I nodded.
    “No, last night was strictly for pleasure.”
    “Was Clara working?”
    He was perplexed. “Oh, no. She doesn’t work for Artie.”
    “Then how d’you know her?”
    “We made a picture together a couple months ago. Just background players. We spent an entire day on the lot while Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne tried to get their lines straight.”
    He wasn’t striking me as the type who’d do harm to a girl. Benny Bowers was the kind of guy who never says “no”. You ask him to clean your pool, he says sure, then asks for five bucks. You cast him as a friendly bartender, he asks what time you need him on set. You want him to sleep with your wife, he’ll ask how many times. He was more of a scamp than a scoundrel and I didn’t see any malice in him at all. I’d even been wrong about the boot polish in his hair: he was going a little thin on top and, unlike most men in Los Angeles, he wasn’t trying to hide it. Nevertheless, he was still my only lead.
    “You say she had a good time?” I asked him.
    “Last time I saw her she was down at the pool.”
    “Was she alone?”
    “There was a bunch of them.”
    “Men? Women?”
    “I don’t really know. I was kinda distracted.”
    “You got lucky?”
    “Luckiest guy in Hollywood, what can I say.”
    “Who with?”  
    He smiled. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
    That meant she was famous: there’s a very annoying code— especially annoying if you happen to be a P.I.—that’s essential to success in Hollywood: no one ever spills the beans about someone more famous than themselves. If you want to work in pictures, you just don’t break that code. It’s called the snitch and ditch: if you talk, you walk. It’s as simple as that.
    “Then you should know you’re the guy in the frame for whatever’s happened to Clara.”
    “You know, your threats might be a little scarier if you were wearing a tie. Or maybe even a shirt.”
    I couldn’t really argue with that.
    “Look, I don’t think you did anything to her,” I said, “but the fact remains she’s missing. You seem like a decent fella, so just tell me what you know. If you don’t, and something has happened to her, you’re going to feel real bad.” I paused to let that sink in. “Let’s start with the people at the pool. You said there was a group of them?”
    He nodded.
    “Can you tell me any names?”
    “I wasn’t close enough to make out faces.”
    “Describe what were they wearing.”
    “Wearing?” He looked at me as if I had asked him to explain why the sky is blue. “They weren’t wearing anything, pal.”
    “They were swimming naked?” I thought of the drained pool I had seen just a couple hours earlier.
    “There wasn’t a whole lot of swimming going on.”
    “You’re telling me it was an orgy?”
    “Looked like it was turning into one.”
    “Did Clara seem