Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7) Read online

  “Of course I remember. I just wanted to know how things were going up there with the Six-million-dollar Man. And stop that ho, ho, ho.”

  I had to think for a moment. If I told Marks everything was sweetness and light, he might pull me off the case and there went five hundred dollars a day. But if I told him that somebody was trying to kill Tony McCue, he might send up a team of bodyguards, and again, I’d be off the case. It was a quandary, so I decided to do what I do best: I lied.

  “It’s real tough,” I said. “McCue’s a madman. I had to pull him off the roof last night. Today he wanted to go waterskiing in this frozen lake. I’m not getting a moment’s rest, nursemaiding this idiot. Walter, I want to come home. Have somebody else do this.”

  “Not a chance, Trace,” Marks said, as I knew he would.

  “Come on, Walter. I’d rather go visit my ex-wife and her kids than be with this maniac. He’s going to get me killed if I’m not careful.”

  “That’s the trouble with you, Trace. You’re always too cautious. Take some chances with your life. Die.”

  “I don’t think my life and death is a subject for levity, Walter,” I said.

  “This isn’t levity. All I want is for you to keep that McCue alive. No jerking around, Trace. Is he a terrible boozehound?”

  “Worse than me.”

  “The man obviously ought to be committed,” Marks said.

  “Really, Walter, it’s dangerous here for me. I really want to come home. Find somebody else to do this. I’m pleading with you.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I’m sorry that McCue is causing you trouble, but that’s why we’re paying you five hundred dollars a day to deal with that kind of trouble. It’s your job, and that’s final.”

  “Got to go now, Walter,” I said hurriedly.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m looking out the window and that freaking McCue is climbing an electric pole.”

  “What’s he doing that for?”

  “I don’t know. At lunch I heard him tell somebody that you can hang from electric wires and not get electrocuted as long as your feet aren’t touching the ground. He’s probably trying to prove it.”

  “Go get him. Go get him. Go get him,” Marks screamed.

  “See you, Groucho. Got to go. Ho, ho, ho.”

  I pressed down the receiver button. While I waited for another dial tone, I heard a tapping sound. It was coming from next door and I realized, after a moment, that it was probably Arden Harden typing. I dialed another number.

  “Hello, Chico.”

  “Bastard.”

  “How do you do? And I am Cyrano de Bergerac at your service.”

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Chico said.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to guess?” I asked.

  “I was talking to Sarge. He told me your gun permit arrived.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I don’t know why that upsets you. I’m not going to shoot you!”

  “Where’s mine?”

  “Damned if I know,” I lied. “Probably someplace in the bureaucracy or the post office. You know how things are.”

  “This is how I know how things are. It probably came and you probably hid it and you are probably lying to me about it, because you don’t want me to have a gun.”

  This was indisputably, absolutely correct, I realized. I was astonished, as usual, at how accurate Chico always was in guessing my behavior. “That is a total unmitigated cruel lie,” I said. “I want you to have a gun. I live for the day when you’ll have a gun.”

  “You may live just until the day when I have a gun.” she said.

  “Threats will not deter me from doing what I know is right,” I said. “I will defend to the death your right to bear arms. The Constitution of the United States says that. It doesn’t talk about Japanese-Sicilians specifically, but I’m sure you’re covered. I bet you could even join a militia if you wanted. You want to join a militia?”

  “Trace, you’d better not be jerking me around with my gun permit. Are you carrying a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sarge gave me his old gun, but it was so heavy I needed a wheelbarrow to carry it around. I didn’t think I’d be able to carry out secret surveillances pushing a wheelbarrow.”

  “You’re not messing around with my gun permit?” she said.

  “No. Honestly I am not.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll let it slide for now. What’s going on?”

  “I think somebody might, be trying to kill Tony McCue.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” I told her about the hit-and-run accident, the pills being shifted around in his room, and then about the falling rock out behind the hotel.

  “It could just be coincidences,” she said.

  “Could be. Anyway, I’m here for the duration, so I’ve got to deal with it.”

  “Save his life, you’ll be a big hero,” she said. “It’ll make our firm famous. Especially if you catch the would-be killer. Have you told Walter Marks?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Maybe he’d send you help.”

  “You don’t understand him as well as I do. We need this work, so I just told him McCue was a pain in the ass and needed a nursemaid and I didn’t want to be a nursemaid, so naturally Groucho ordered me to stay on the job. We have to protect our fee.”

  “You have such a duplicitous turn of mind,” Chico said, “that again I suspect you’re jerking around with my gun permit.”

  “I am not. I’m sure it’ll be there waiting for you when you get to New York. Are you ever getting to New York?”

  “Soon now. I’m packing and I’ve leased this place for a year with an option if both parties agree.”

  “Who’d you rent to?”

  “Some guy from New Jersey who owns a restaurant. He’s kind of retiring.”

  “Don’t give him a key until you’re sure his check clears the bank. I know something about restaurant owners from New Jersey.”

  “The check was certified,” she said.

  “All right. I still don’t trust him, though. I want you to finish my inventory, just in case he tries to steal something.”

  “That’s a laugh,” Chico said. “Finish your inventory.”

  “What do you mean, a laugh? I started one and left it on the kitchen table,” I said.

  “Yes. I have it right here. It has two words on it. ‘Furniture’ and ‘dishes.’ Was this what you consider an inventory of household property?”

  “It was a start, wasn’t it?”

  “Forget it. I’ll do one. Any women coming on to you?”

  “No. They all hate me.”

  “Amazing. And they haven’t even had the benefit of speaking with me.”

  “Get to New York rapidly, will you please? I miss you.”

  “Same here, although I never understand why.”

  “Because you know that someday I’m going to be rich and powerful and you want to be on my good side when I start to crush the little people,” I said.

  “Yes. You can club them over the head with your household inventory,” she said.

  “Did you give notice at the casino?”

  “Yes. I’m done ’cause my vacation time covers my notice. The other blackjack dealers are giving me a party.”

  “When? Where?”

  “Tonight. Here,” she said.

  “I don’t trust dealers. Make them sign the inventory too,” I said.

  When I finished with Chico, I called my father. H-was in the office late.

  “Tracy Investigations.”

  “Sarge, this is your wandering son.”

  “Hi, champ. How goes it in Lotusland East? You bang any movie stars yet?”

  “You know I’ve given that stuff up,” I said.

  “Yeah. I talked to Chico today.”

  “I know you did,” I said. “Listen, Sarge, something slipped my mind.”

  “Wh
at was that?”

  “Remember the other day when Chico’s gun permit arrived.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t tell her about it,” he said.

  “I know. Well, somehow the permit wound up under the left cushion on the couch.”

  “Somehow it wound up there.”

  “Yes. It’s a long story. Anyway, somehow it wound up there. So what I want you to do is take it out, and then, whenever you talk to Chico, tell her it just arrived in the mail. You got it? It just arrived in the mail.”

  “I’ve got it. Hold on,” Sarge said.

  He set the phone down. A moment later, he said, “It’s there. The gun I gave you is there too.”

  “Yeah. Somehow that got stuck under the cushion too,” I said.

  “You’re up there, among all those ferocious Hollywood types, without a gun?”

  “Of course. I always try charm first before I shoot anybody,” I said.

  “I’ll tell Chico it just arrived when she calls. And I’ll hold the gun. You’ll change your mind. How’s it going, by the way?”

  I told him about the latest episode with the falling rock.

  “Starting to sound like a pattern, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah. But it could still just be coincidences,” I said.

  “Yeah. And it could snow in July, but don’t bet on it.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Listen. If you talk to Groucho, don’t mention any of this to him.”

  “Okay. Mother wants to know when you’re coming for dinner again.”

  “When Halley’s comet returns,” I said.

  “I’ll tell her,” he said dryly. “She likes having specific dates.”

  22

  Harden was still tapping away when I walked downstairs to the dining room. The lightning wasn’t a threat anymore; it was cracking around us, flashes of jagged light coming out of a sky that had already turned midnight black.

  As I walked down the final flight of stairs to the main floor, Dahlia Codwell came out of her room, saw me, and fell in beside me. “I’m ticked at you, Tracy,” she said.

  “What’d I do?”

  “You abandoned me last night when I was under the weather.”

  “You looked okay to me. Actually, you looked a lot better than I did.”

  “So much for appearances,” she said, giving me a warm smile. “I tried to get up after you left, and I couldn’t. I staggered out to the stairs and found out I’d forgotten how to climb stairs. The only thing I remembered how to do was to sit down, so I sat down on the stairs. I was paralyzed. I sat there until after one o’clock. If it hadn’t been for Jack Scott coming to get me, I’d be sitting there still. He helped me to my room, thank God. Don’t ever abandon me that way again. You, sir, are no gentleman.”

  “That, madam, is a given,” I said, and we both laughed and then a crack of lightning blasted close enough that we could smell the ozone it created.

  The hall lights flickered, then came back on.

  Inside the dining room, she peeled off to get some food from the serving table and I went with her. I was hungry, which was, in itself, an event at least as important as a thunderstorm, because I only really eat every couple of days. This, and good genes, is how I keep my weight down to 220.

  We sat together at an empty table, next to Birnbaum’s table, and the producer leaned over to me and said, “Well…Trace, isn’t it? How’s it going?”

  He was still wearing his Mets jacket. What a dork.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Birnbaum’s eyes were glittering, almost as if he had just put drops into them. They were a peculiar shade of grayish brown and I figured, for the first time, that he was older than he looked.

  He grinned at me with perfect teeth and said, “Did you find that one of us is a homicidal maniac and tried to brain Roddy with that rock?” He smirked around the table at Sheila and Tami, who were sitting with him. Sheila looked pained.

  “No,” I said. “But I’ve taken rock scrapings and sent them off to the FBI for carbon-fourteen tests. If there’s anything there, I’ll find it out.”

  Birnbaum nodded sagely. “I’ve heard of carbon fourteen,” he allowed.

  He looked toward Sheila Hallowitz as if expecting her to nod sagely too, but Sheila did not look happy. She was staring down at her food, kind of wringing her hands together. Tami looked at me and winked. Well, at least somebody knew that carbon fourteen was a test usually done to determine the age of million-year-old bones, not fingerprints.

  The lights flickered again as another bolt of lightning hit nearby. I was hungry and wanted to eat but Birnbaum wanted to talk.

  “I guess you’re pretty excited with Monday coming.” he said.

  “I’m always happy to see the next Monday,” I said.

  “Cast and crew arrives. It’ll be real exciting around here, especially for someone who’s not in cinema.”

  “I’ll try not to get underfoot.”

  “Hey, Birnbaum,” McCue called from the next table over, where he sat with the Scotts and Ramona Dedley. “Shut up for a while. Can’t you see the guy is trying to eat?”

  I nodded my thanks to him and turned to my meal. Birnbaum excused himself and left the room, and I decided he must have the weakest kidneys in the world because it seemed he was constantly on his way to the men’s room.

  When I finished eating, McCue came over to the table. I could feel Dahlia Codwell frosting up as Tony came into our gravitational field.

  “Trace, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

  I got up and followed him about twenty feet away from the table.

  “I’m going out with Doctor Death,” he said. “We want to get some new prescriptions.”

  “Am I going to have to go with you? Are you going to act like a damn fool and get yourself killed?” I asked.

  “No, not with Ramona along. And she drives anyway, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Tell her to be careful. This weather doesn’t look promising. I don’t want anything to happen to you, ’cause I need the fee.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be on my best behavior too.” He whispered. “Ramona’s pissed at me. She found out I banged Tami the other night. That’s who she was talking to in her room today, warning her to stay away from me.”

  “Tami? You remember now?”

  “Yes, you pain in the ass. I told Dahlia I loved it and she nearly hit me in the head with her martini pitcher. Then I saw Tami making googoo eyes at me and winking and licking her lips and shit like that, and I said, That Trace is a no-good liar. I’ll never trust you again.”

  He turned around as Roddy Quine limped into the dining room and posed dramatically in the entrance doors. He was using a cane he’d gotten from God knows where. Maybe British directors always pack canes with them when they travel, I thought.

  McCue left me and ran forward, spread his arms, and shouted to the room, “Let’s hear it, ladies and gentlemen, for the Conqueror of Everest.”

  Quine huffed and puffed and grinned.

  McCue left him standing there and went back to his own table to collect Ramona Dedley, and Quine hobbled over and sat in McCue’s vacated seat. Jack Scott was smiling at him, but Pamela Scott had the sour kind of look on her face that my ex-wife always got when we were arguing. Which meant it was as constant as the solar wind.

  I heard Quine say to Scott, “Humph, humph. Not hurting too badly now, but a close call, what?”

  Scott nodded. So did his wife. She was wearing so much makeup I was surprised her face didn’t crack from the movement.

  “Be difficult for the picture, losing a director now, don’t you know?” Quine said. “Close call and all that. Thanked Tony for saving me, you know.”

  “Directors come and directors go,” Scott said. The grin was frozen on his face and for the first time I realized what an artificial mirthless thing it was. “I’m just glad it wasn’t McCue. We lose him…Well, no star, no movie. We can always get somebody else to point the camera.”
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br />   “Yes, yes, humph, humph,” Quine said, looking abashed. I thought if he had been looking for sympathy for his terrible leg wound, he certainly wasn’t finding any of it at Scott’s table.

  The lightning cracked again. I could hear the heavy wind whistling against the large windows that surrounded the dining room. Without warning, a sheet of water hit against the glass as the rain started.

  Tami Fluff excused herself from the next table. “Powder room,” she said.

  I got up to make myself a drink and Dahlia said. “Me too. Weak please. One glass. No pitcher. Very dry.”

  “Yes, Commandant,” I mumbled. I saw Arden Harden come into the doorway. He looked around, as if counting heads, then turned and ran toward the stairway.

  I was bringing the drinks to the table when he came back into the room and sat at our table.

  “I see you put a lock on the hambone’s door,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? He doesn’t have anything to steal,” Harden said.

  I ignored him and he said, “I want a lock too. If he gets a lock, I get one. My screenplay revisions are in that room.”

  “You want a lock, buy a lock,” I said. “I’ll tell you how to find the hardware store. Five ninety eight plus tax.”

  Birnbaum leaned over again from the other table. “What’s that about a lock, Tracy?”

  “I put a lock on McCue’s door. Just a precaution.”

  “Why do you have to take precautions?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m the cautious type.”

  “Can’t be too cautious,” Birnbaum said. “That’s what I always say.” He looked around for agreement, but Sheila was still just looking down, pushing food around her plate.

  Scott came over to our table, smiling, naturally. I always wondered how people are able to smile and talk at the same time, and the ability of singers to smile while warbling absolutely flabbergasted me. I tried it once in front of a bathroom mirror and I had to concentrate so hard on smiling that I forgot the words to the song. And the song was “Happy Birthday.” Scott did everything with a smile. Maybe it was what you learned to do when you made your living on television.

  “Just wanted to tell all of you that Pamela and I will be going back in the morning. Some personal business.” He looked toward the windows and said, “Wow, that’s some storm, isn’t it?” It wasn’t big enough, though, to put a frown on his face.