Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb by Robert Bloch Read Free Book Online

moved back.
    “Thank you for the hospitality and the advice,” I said. “You’ve been most gracious.” I gestured toward the pool. “Now I’ll leave you to your goldfish.”
    Trent made a suggestion which I didn’t care to follow, due to certain physical limitations that rendered it impossible.
    I walked away, and he stared after me. So did the face in the pool.
    Then I climbed into the car and drove back to town.
    The lights were coming on, twinkling in Glendale, flickering over Forest Lawn, sparkling along San Fernando Road. Los Angeles, that gaudy old whore of a city, was putting on her jewels for a big night.
    It was time for me to get to the hotel, to put on a few jewels of my own. I thought it over and settled for a shave, shower, soft shirt and striped tie. What the Well-Dressed Interviewer Should Wear.
    According to me, that is. Tom Trent would probably prefer to see me in a shroud, nothing fancy, of course, but he’d be willing to let me have my initials embroidered on it.
    I thought about Trent as I drove over to Chasen’s. A very aggressive gentleman, Mr. TT. What had his alibi been? Home with the butler, nursing his black eye; something like that. I wondered if the butler had been in the swimming pool. Somebody was calling signals. Maybe I’d better follow them, because it seemed as if the game was getting rough.
    My table was reserved and waiting at Chasen’s, but Polly Foster hadn’t arrived. I glanced at my watch. Just eight. Perhaps I had time for a before-dinner drink.
    I took it at the bar, and it tasted good. Felt good to be there again, after all this time. Used to spend a lot of evenings here, a long while ago. But of course, none of the crowd at the bar remembered me. Too much time had gone by. Almost a year.
    And a year, in Hollywood, is an eternity.
    I remembered the old legend about Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus went to Hades and got permission to take Eurydice away, on condition that he didn’t turn around and look at her during the return trip. But he looked back, and the bargain was cancelled.
    Nobody here in Hollywood would ever be guilty of making Orpheus’s mistake. Because in Hollywood, no one looks back. What you did, what you were yesterday, doesn’t count. Nobody cares if you won the Academy Award last year; the big question is, who’s going to win next year?
    I raised my glass and drank a silent toast to Mr. Orpheus, who’d never get in the Musician’s Local out here. I knew just how he felt.
    I spotted three or four familiar faces down the bar, including a man named Wilbur Dunton who was still working out at Culver City on the strength of a contract I’d landed for him when he was in my stable.
    Nobody looked at me. The freeze was on. Everybody was talking about tomorrow, and I belonged to yesterday. And so did Dick Ryan. Nobody wanted to look at him, either, or talk about what had happened. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, if you’ll pardon the expression.
    I ordered another drink and wondered about Dave Chasen. Did he ever look back, now? Did he remember the days when he played stooge for Joe Cook in all those wonderful shows— Rain or Shine, Fine and Dandy, Hold Your Horses? I hoped he did. Somebody should remember old Joe Cook. A great comic. And Chasen had been a great stooge, too.
    How long ago was that? Less than twenty years. And now Cook was ill and forgotten, while Chasen was a big man out here on the Coast.
    There was a moral somewhere in all this, and I was just looking for it at the bottom of my glass when I happened to see Polly Foster come in.
    I’d seen her on the screen several times, of course, and that had been enough to make me look forward to this evening with a certain mild anticipation. Recognizing her now, my anticipation changed immediately from mild to wild. Polly Foster in the flesh was quite something else again. Nor is that “in the flesh” merely a figure of speech. The figure she cut had nothing to do with speech.
    White-gold hair over