all right, I’m sorry,” I said. “But if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the thing doing here in the first place?”
“We’re doing a photo shoot downstairs,” Jungle Jim replied. “She’s in the shot. Dammit, if you made her sick, I’ll file suit!”
I doubted he had any legal ground on which to base a suit. Then again, this was L.A. “If you think she’s going to become diarrheic,” I said, “I’d appreciate your taking her out of my office first.”
“Up yours,” the man said. “I should sue you anyway.” On the way out he glanced at the sign on my door. “Beauchamp Investigations, huh?” he said, mispronouncing my name the way virtually everyone does: it’s not bow-CHAMP, it’s BEACH-um. I had actually thought about changing it altogether at one point, right after I cracked open a brand-new, just delivered edition of the Yellow Pages only to find that the expensive quarter page ad I had taken out read Be a Chump Investigations. “Some investigator you are, giving milk to a fox,” Jungle Jim sneered, then disappeared into the hallway, vixen in hand.
I must have been sick that day in criminal justice class that the teacher covered the gastrointestinal limitations of wild canines.
I sat back down and opened the middle drawer of my desk, where I keep my journal. It started as a record of cases, but cases have been in such short supply recently that I’ve been filling it instead with any observations, musings, and notes to self I might have. Opening it to the first clean page I wrote: Never give milk to a fox. It gives them the runs and really torques their owners.
You never knew when this information might come in useful.
Finding less in the fridge worth eating than had the fox, I decided to go out and drop some precious, declining dollars on the lunch special at Burger Heaven: a double-decker burger, fries and a drink for $4.99. I locked up the office, but only made it as far as the front door of the building before stopping. There, in the lobby, was a table filled with food: deli meats and cheese, bread, fresh fruit, chips, urns of coffee and an iced cooler filled with soft drinks. I knew enough about present-day Hollywood to know that it was a craft services table, an ever-present sight on a film set, offering a cornucopia of food for the crew. Apparently it applied to photo shoots as well.
As I was pondering whether a person taking pictures of a fox somewhere down the hall would miss a few slices of ham and cheese, a woman appeared in the hallway. She was, I guessed, late thirties to early forties, dark haired, and on the short side but dressed in a tight sweater-and-slacks outfit that did her quite a few favors. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded in a low, hard voice.
“Um, I’m Dave Beauchamp, I have an office upstairs,” I said. “I just came down to see what was going on.”
“And steal my food?”
Apparently I was wearing a hungry expression. “Actually, I.…”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
She studied me with an intensified expression, but one that was more of interest than annoyance. “A private investigator,” she repeated. “You mean like a detective?”
“Quite like, yes.”
“Are you a real detective?”
Using both hands, I felt around my body to see if I was real, instead of fabricated from mist, and then nodded.
She didn’t laugh. “Licensed?”
“Of course.”
“You look too young.”
I sighed. I’m the same age John Garfield was when he did The Postman Always Rings Twice, but I have frequently heard from people that (unlike Garfield at any age) I look like a college freshman. “I promise you I’m old enough to drive,” I said.
She smiled. “Upstairs, you say?”
“Office 218.”
She studied me some more, then said: “I may have something for you. Will you be in later?”
“Yes, I was just going out for lunch.”
Now the woman smiled. “Well, go ahead and help yourself here.” She waived expansively across the food table.
“That’s very generous of you,” I said. “This thing you may have for me, does it involve a fox, by any chance?”
“No, just a group of bitches,” she replied, leaning down to get a cold Diet Pepsi from the cooler, and intentionally or otherwise giving me an eyeful as the top of her sweater slung low. “I’ll come up to your office later.” She turned around and walked back down the hall.
I looked at the food on the table. Page one of the Detective’s Manual: Never turn down a free lunch. Grabbing a paper plate, I loaded up enough cold cuts and cheese for a real Dagwood special and grabbed a handful of baby carrots and an apple, and a couple cans of soda, then went back upstairs to wait. To occupy my time after polishing off the monster sandwich, I dug through my bottom drawer until I found my framed investigator’s license, the one that had taken a swan dive off the wall some time back. I had been meaning to hang it back up, but never quite got around to it. Now seemed like a good time. I rummaged through my top drawer until I came across the small metal hook that had been rattling around there for months, and pushed its nail into the hole in the wall. Then I hung the frame on it.
And waited.
It was sometime after four when the woman knocked on my open door. “Hi, I’m back,” she announced.
“Hello,” I said, rising from my chair. “Please take a seat, Ms.…”
“Frost. Nora Frost.”
Her face was now more relaxed than it had been during our first encounter. Nora Frost was really quite attractive. She had the kind of looks that almost made it to movie star or model level. But her dark, flashing eyes were just a little too large, her nose was just a little bit too big and her mouth just a little bit too wide for film, though her slightly exaggerated features would probably have served her well on the stage. She did not show any tell-tale signs of having work done to her face, which wore an expression of smooth determination, as though she was daring wrinkles to show up, and the wrinkles knew better. “So, Ms. Frost—”
“You can call me Nora.”
“All right, Nora, what is it you would like to see me about?”
“Like I said, I’ve got a problem with a group of bitches.”
“Do you mean you have a problem with other women, or in the literal sense, as in female dogs?”
“I don’t see much of a distinction,” she said. “And the problem isn’t so much with me as with my sons.”
“You’re sons are involved with these women?”
“They’re not involved—” she smacked the word like a tennis serve “—with any women. They’re only twelve.”
“I see. Well, perhaps you should tell me what the
