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Chapters (49)
  1. From Wikipedia
  2. Other Books by This Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. Chapter Thirty-two
  39. Chapter Thirty-three
  40. Chapter Thirty-four
  41. Chapter Thirty-five
  42. Chapter Thirty-six
  43. Chapter Thirty-seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-one
  48. About the Author
  49. Cover

Five

The Oscar Curtiss Talent Agency was two blocks below Sunset Boulevard in a small sky-blue clapboard house with a tiny lawn and a porch and a narrow sidewalk leading up to the porch. What looked like a Friedrich air conditioner stuck out of a window on the north side of the house and hummed loudly, water falling in a steady dribble from its underside. A couple of wine bottles were lying on the lawn. Midnight Rambler. The bottles were capless and empty.

I parked and went up the walk and through one of those frosty pebbled-glass office doors that no one has used since 1956. There was a large gold star on the door with Oscar Curtiss Talent Agency written in an arc above it and what were supposed to be little spotlights lighting up the sky.

Inside, there were three young women sitting on a hard L-shaped couch and a black woman in her sixties sitting at a scarred pecan desk that faced the room. Another frosted-glass door was behind her. This one said Mr. Curtiss. The three young women were spread around on the couches in a way that said they didn’t know each other. Two of them were reading Variety. The other one was chewing gum. There were a couple hundred framed black-and-white head shots on the walls, but I didn’t recognize any of them. The carpet was beige and worn and the hard couch was a kind of green and the walls were a sort of mustard and nothing went together, as if the office had been built over the years without regard to style or esthetic. The Friedrich made it very cold.

The black woman looked up and smiled nicely. “May I help you?”

“My name is Elvis Cole. I’d like to see Mr. Curtiss.” I gave her the card that said Elvis Cole, Confidential Investigations. The old cards had a picture of a guy listening at a keyhole. The new cards don’t. Without the picture is probably better.

She took the card and nodded pleasantly, still smiling. “Unh-hunh. And do you have an appointment?”

“No, ma’am. I was hoping Mr. Curtiss could squeeze me in.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. Confidential. “It involves a former client of his.”

More smiling and nodding. “Unh-hunh. Well, why don’t you just wait right there while I go see.” She got up, rapped once on the glass door, then let herself through.