“How did Swanson feel after they took Nelson away?”
“Mad as a hornet. Herb hit Swanson
with a flood lamp and really floored him.”
“Who do you think killed Nelson?”
Aces said, “Who do you think I think? Herb was a nice guy. Only a maniac would do something like that.”
“Have you ever had any maniacal moments, Mr. Aces?”
“What are you getting at?”
“You were present when the fireworks started. Are you sure Herb Nelson didn't say anything derogatory about you?”
“Of course not!” His deep eyes rolled angrily. “Say, what is this? I came here to hire someone to help me, not to be accused of harming one of my oldest friends.”
Sam Aces appeared to be about fifty. He was tall and gangly with an ambling body that seemed plucked out of some animated cartoon about comical dizzy-eyed giraffes. Despite his poor features, he had a look of warmth and sincerity. He was the kind of person you somehow wanted to like.
“You're perfect,” he said after a moment “B.S. is crazy about beautiful damesâespecially blondes. Will you work for me?”
“That all depends on what kind of work you want done,” I said.
“This afternoon I want you to go see Swanson at Tele vision Riviera. We still haven't picked a winner in our beauty contest. Ten to one he'll go for you. All I have to do is second the motion and you'll be in. You've got to be around when we go on location. He's going to get me, I know he isâunlessâ”
“But, wait a minute, Mr. Acesâ”
“Call me Sam, baby.”
“Look, Sam,” I protested, “this six-week contractâyou know I'm not an actress.”
“Who cares? With your face and figureâ”
“But I can't learn linesâ”
“Lines?” Aces said. “Who learns lines in television? This is the modern
age, Honey. We've got little men who do nothing all day but type scripts into big letters on machines. Acting's a cinch. Ask Swanson. He spends two days on the golf course, two days drunk and two days in bed. On the seventh day, he condescends to stand in front of a camera, read from the carding device and look at women with shapely navels.” He shrugged his lanky frame. “What do you say? If I go to the police, the publicity will kill me dead. You're the only one who can really help me now. I don't want to windup like Herb Nelson in an adjoining grave.”
I scanned his face for a hint of phony melodramatics, but it revealed nothing but despair. His jaw sagged slightly.
“All right,” I said. “I'll see what I can do.”
We shook hands. Mentally, I considered the possibility of Sam Aces having killed Herb Nelson, then quickly discarded the idea. He seemed honestly afraid. It was the same kind of fear I'd seen in Herb Nelson's eyes the week before his death. As Aces filled out information forms, I kept wanting to tell him I couldn't guarantee his staying out of a six-foot hole. But I never got the words out, because that's exactly where I pictured him. I don't know why, except at that moment Sam Aces' slouched, dejected shoulders and
unhappy drawn face gave him the look of a man who was about to die.
A
T FOUR O'CLOCK THAT AFTERNOON I STOOD IN THE
center of one
of Television Riviera's mammoth sound stages wear ing a skin-tight bathing suit. Max Decker, a ponderous bear of a man, sat on two wooden chairs, chewing on a black cigar and squinting under thick brows at my torso. Bob Swanson stood a few feet away, flexing his muscles and undressing me with his eyes.
Sam Aces was in a glass-faced monitor booth above the stage floor. His voice suddenly boomed out over a speaker, “Well, what do you think of her?”
Decker grunted, got a new grip on his cigar and continued to peer at me. Bob Swanson glanced at the booth. “You may be a lousy producer, Sam, but you can sure pick the girls. I vote yes. Can she act?”
“Of course,” Aces lied.
“Okay,” Swanson said. “What do you say, Max?”
Apparently Decker liked looking at females wearing bathing suits, but couldn't cope with the emotional problem that went with it. “Damn you, Sam!” he barked. “You had to go think up this crazy contest
idea, then you went and filled up my office with a lot of fat female fannies, now you come up with a dame who's got more dangerous curves than Indianapolis Speedway and who makes me feel like an H-Bomb about to be triggered. Get her out of here!”
“But, Max!” Swanson protested. “I want this girl.”
“Well, have her!” Decker blared back. “Just get her out of my sight. And keep her out of bathing suits!”
I changed my clothes, signed a six-week contract at four hundred a week, then left with Sam Aces.
“What's wrong with Decker?” I asked.
Aces grinned. “High blood pressure. I don't blame him for getting mad. You must have raised his reading at least twenty degrees.”
“What about Swanson? I thought he was going to hang around for the contract-signing business?”
“Honey,” Aces said patiently, “there's one thing you'll learn about Swanson. The minute the sun goes down he heads for the nearest bar.”
“And where would that be?”
“Just around the corner. You know, the place I told you about. The Golden Slipper.”
I said good night to Sam, warned him to stay away from orange juice and then walked to the Golden Slipper. It was a ritzy little place with an ornate front and a bar that was as dark as the bottom of the River Styx. I signalled the bartender and ordered a martini. Two seconds later I was joined by the Golden Boy himself, flexing and snorting.
“Hello, baby,” Swanson laughed
drunkenly. “I hardly recognized you in clothes.”
I smiled half-heartedly. “Thanks for the contract, Mr. Swanson.”
“Don't thank me. Thank Sam Aces, the miserable bastard. He brought you in.”
“You don't like Mr. Aces?”
“That's exactly right, sweetie. In fact, I hate his guts.” He took a big gulp of his drink and leaned against the bar for support.
“I don't see how you could feel like that,” I said. “He seems like such a nice guy.”
Swanson bit hard on his teeth, scowling angrily. “Why that dirty son-of-aâ” He stopped, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What's it to you?” He banged for another drink. “You make a lot of observations for a blonde walk-on with no talent but plenty of chest muscle. What's your name?”
“Honey West.”
“Where'd you get that handle, in burlesque?”
“It's on my birth certificate, Mr. Swanson. No middle name. I was never in burlesque.”
He gave me a knowing look. “Baby, you really missed you're calling.”
“Now you're making the observations, Mr. Swanson. Why don't you like Sam Aces?”
“You writing a book?”
“Maybe.”
Television star, Bob Swanson, winner of last year's award for best male performer, slugged down his fresh drink, wiped off his mouth with the
back of his hand and grinned drunkenly. “Okay, put this in your first chapter, baby. You ever hear of an actor named Herb Nelson?”
“Sureâ”
“He's dead,” Swanson interrupted. “Murdered. You must have read about it in the papers. You want to know who did it? Sam Aces, that's who. And he's going to kill me next. You understand? That is, if I don't get him first!”
“Those are pretty strong words, Mr. Swanson,” I said. “Why would Sam Aces want to kill Herb Nelson?”
“I don't know.” He answered quickly as if he knew but didn't want to put it into words.
“Second chapter,” I said, staring at my martini. “Why do you think he wants to kill you?”
“Power. I got too much power and Aces doesn't like it. There'd be no show without me. Aces can't stand it. He'd like to blow my brains out.”
Bob Swanson talked exactly like the frustrated guy he was supposed to be. Prior to Herb Nelson's death I'd spent several hours digging into the muscle man's notoriously unspectacular past. He had migrated to TV from motion pictures after a sporadic career as a temperamental child star and an even more-impossible-to-work with postwar jungle hero. From that point it had been a series of breaks which had sprung him into the choice situation comedy series about a bachelor-writer who mixed verbs, consonants and beautiful women.
These criss-cross accusations were puzzling. Sam Aces and Golden Boy suspected each other of murdering Herb Nelson and of plotting
the same end for each other. I was more inclined to believe my client's story. A phone call earlier to Daws, Inc., a pharmaceutical lab in Beverly Hills, had verified the presence of arsenic in Aces' drink. L.A. police had backed this up with an official re port listing the incident as “closed due to insufficient cooperation.”
“Third chapter,” I said.
“Third chapter,” Swanson said, grinning slyly, “is where beautiful blonde with gorgeous blue eyes throws her book out and agrees to accompany handsome young television star on a tour of the night spots. Come on!”
He whisked me into his Cadillac convertible before I could argue. A quick thought struck me. If Bob Swanson had slipped arsenic into Aces' drink, it was just possible he still might have some of the poison lying around. I wanted to have a look at his personal stationery too. Herb Nelson had said the threat note had been typed on bright orange bond with a giant letter “S” embossed in the corner.
“Why waste time in a bunch of dingy bars?” I leaned against his shoulder. “Why not your place? I bet you even have a swimming pool!”
His eyes lit up like a neon sign. “Have I got a swimming pool?” he roared. “This pool was designed especially for you, baby doll. Wait until you see it!”
We zipped out to Beverly Hills in eleven minutes flat. Bob Swanson's home was fantastically modern. It was so low-slung you had to duck to get through the front door. The house was a gigantic flat-roofed square with a swim ming pool in the center. There
were no inside walls, only a few moveable partitions, and at each corner of the house there were elevated platforms. These were built much like television sound stages with arc lights in the ceiling and steps leading up. There was only one major difference. They were entirely carpeted with thick foam rubber. From each of them, things happening on any of the other stages could obviously been seen merely by looking over the low-slung, unwalled kitchen, the tremendous indoor swimming pool or the equally un walled bathrooms. Bob Swanson's home was the most spectacular, and at the same time vulgar looking, place I'd ever seen.
He pointed at the four raised stages. “The bedrooms,” he said casually. “This is a four bedroom home.”
“But, no beds,” I observed. “Where do you sleep?”
“What do you mean, no beds?” Swanson demanded. “Four of the biggest king-size hammocks in captivity. Twelve by twelve. A foot depth of the softest foam rubber you ever snuggled your lily-white rear into, I'll bet!”
“You sleep on the floor?”
Golden Boy grinned. “Natch. Best place to sleep. No falling out of bed. Plenty of room to roam. No pillows. Just pull a blanket over you if it gets a little cold.”
I looked at this guy and shook my head. “Did you design the place?”
“Every last inch.”
“You don't like privacy, I take it?”
“The hell with privacy,” Swanson said. “Notice! No permanent walls. A few partitions for those futile numbskulls who have to hide something that
nobody gives a damn about seeing in the first place. You ever think about that? Nothing's worth seeing if it's ugly. The partitions are for the ugly ones. I get a few of those now and then.”
He led me to the swimming pool. It was immense and shaped like the body of a very large-bosomed woman.
“What are you, a nudist?” I asked.
Golden Boy raised his eyebrows as if he smelled some thing foul. “Hell, no. Nobody is ever allowed in this pool in the nude. It contaminates the water. We have bathtubs for that sort of thing. Anyone who swims in this pool wears one of my special suits.”
“What?”
“Plastic,” he said, pulling one of the suits out of a poolside cabinet “The men wear plastic trunks and the women have plastic pants and bras.”
I examined the two-piecer he handed to me. It was fantastic. And transparent. So transparent not even a mole could go undetected underneath. I wondered what kind of queer psychosis affected this man, but undoubtedly it had no conventional name. It was a perfect blend of nature and sanitation. Bob Swanson was what could have been called a natursanicotic. He was crazy about living in the raw, but wanted to keep the microbes caged while he was doing it.
He asked me to go for a swim.
“Let's have a drink first,” I suggested quickly. “I'd like to look around the rest of the house.”
“Sure, baby.” Then he laughed. He was still
pretty drunk. “But don't get lost”
My return laugh didn't feel right in my throat. I won dered who'd get the last laugh. If I couldn't find some of that deadly white powder quick, Golden Boy was certain to have me in one of his peek-a-boo bathing suits. There was only one thing on my mindâarsenic. And only one thing on his mindâmy chassis. I had to locate what I was after before his plans began to jell.
Swanson switched on his hi-fi and the throbbing rhythm of
Taboo
filled the house. As casually as pos sible, I mamboed into the modern kitchen area. The all-electric stove, oven, roaster and charcoal broiler were housed in a long, low-slung orange-colored case. The sink faced a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out into a green landscape. Glancing over at Golden Boy, who was bent over a bar built low enough to serve kids in grammar school, I silently cursed his idea of no walls. You couldn't do a thing around this place unnoticed. I reached quickly down and tried to pull open a cabinet drawer. It wouldn't budge. A try for another drawer yielded the same results. The next instant, he was breath ing down my back.