Shamus In The Green Room by Susan Kandel Read Free Book Online Page B

was slow between Fairfax and La Brea. This was
    prime shopping turf for suburban Goths and punks who
    wouldn’t dream of parking their cars far from the stud, spike,
    and shroud shops. After three, when school let out, it was even
    worse.
    We stopped to let a kid wearing enormous black shorts
    with silver chains hanging down to his ankles cross the street.
    His clothes were no big deal. The impressive part was his
    head, which was shaved except for two clumps he’d dyed red
    and sculpted into devil’s horns. Rafe took one look at him and
    said, “Cool”—again—which was really starting to irk me.
    Why did he keep saying that? The way I saw it, things were
    the opposite of cool. Why were we chatting about nothing?
    Why had he not said a word about our visit to the coroner’s? It
    was strange. Not a single word about his dead former girl-
    friend. Of course, it wasn’t my place to bring her up. If he
    wanted to forget about her, that was fine with me.
    “You haven’t said a word about Maren.” It slipped out.
    Rafe turned off the music. “Oh. I’m glad you brought that
    up. I’m going to need to take tomorrow off, too. Maren’s body
    was released to Will this morning, and her ashes are going to
    be scattered off the cliffs in Palos Verdes at around eleven. Will
    said that’s what she would’ve wanted. They ruled her death a
    suicide, by the way.”
    56
    “I’m sorry,” I said, chastened.
    He reached over to turn on my mike. “Paramount Studios,
    Cece.”
    We parked the car at a meter opposite the ornate, historic
    archway at the north end of Bronson Avenue. According to Hol-
    lywood lore, the wrought-iron filigree at the top was added af-
    ter crazed female fans of Rudolph Valentino overwhelmed
    security and streamed in over the original gate.
    Rafe got out of the car and stuck his cap on his head. “Did
    you know Charles Bronson took his new name from this gate?”
    “Alfred A. Knopf wanted Hammett to change his name.
    He thought it was too hard for people to pronounce.”
    “They wanted me to change my name, too. Robert Simon
    was their idea of a good name.”
    “Sounds like a lawyer.”
    “Lee Majors, the star of The Six Million Dollar Man, was
    born Harvey Lee Yeary. I met him a long time ago in the green
    room, waiting to go on with Jay Leno. Man, I’d have changed
    that name, too.”
    “Jay Leno?”
    “Harvey Lee Yeary.”
    We sat on the hood of his car, looking north. There were
    billboards as far as the eye could see. Spearmint Rhino, an up-
    scale gentlemen’s club. Citibank. A horror movie featuring a
    girl in a towel wielding a knife. California avocados. In the dis-
    tance were the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains. I won-
    dered how different it’d looked here in 1930. That was the year
    Hammett had arrived in Hollywood, fresh from writing four
    best-selling novels. David O. Selznick decided Hammett would
    class up the joint—write screenplays, doctor scripts, finesse
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    dialogue. What neither of them knew, of course, was that
    Hammett’s best work was already behind him.
    “While he was at Paramount,” I said out loud, “Hammett
    finished The Thin Man. That was the last book he’d ever
    write.”
    It was the part of his life most people couldn’t fathom.
    Hammett lived for almost thirty years after The Thin Man
    without ever finishing another book. Just before he died, he
    was visited by a reporter who asked him why he kept three Un-
    derwood typewriters. Still in his pajamas at noon, the tall,
    gaunt, by then toothless man answered by saying he wanted to
    remind himself that he used to be a writer.
    “What went wrong?” asked Rafe.
    “I don’t know,” I answered. “He lived fast. He spent money
    like it was water. He liked women and alcohol, and he went
    through a lot of both.”
    “Did Hollywood ruin him?” Interesting question coming
    from an actor.
    “He was sick. He was a drunk. He felt like a hack and
    wanted to be taken seriously.” I paused. “Maybe he was