I interrupted. “She said ‘Minnesota’ specifically, Mick?”
“Right. Moosebreath, Dogturd, some boonies town–but definitely Minnesota.”
Morris Hornbeck was sweating now; I had myself a hot lead. “Keep going, Mick.”
“Well, we hit it off; I convince Lavonne to see Israel before them dune coons take it back; Gretchen Rae and I get together; we va-va-va-voom; it’s terrific. She plays cagey with me, won’t tell me where she’s staying, and she keeps taking off–says she’s looking for a man–some friend of her father’s back in Antelope Ass or wherever the fuck she comes from. Once she’s gassed on vodka collinses and gets misty about some hideaway she says she’s got. That–”
I said, “Wrap it up.”
Mickey slammed his knees so hard that Mickey Cohen, Jr., asleep in the doorway twenty feet away, woke up and tried to stand on all fours–until the roller skate attached to his wang pulled him back down. “I’ll fucking wrap you up if you don’t find her for me! That’s it! I want her! Find her for me! _Do it now!_”
I got to my feet wondering how I was going to pull this one off–with the doorman gig at Sid Weinberg’s party thrown smack in the middle of it. I said, “Forty-seven, fifty-five and rolling,” and winked at Morris Hornbeck–who just happened to hail from Milwaukee, where Howard told me Gretchen Rae Shoftel told him a dirty old man had snapped her lung shots. Hornbeck tried to wink back; it looked like his eyeball was having a grand mal seizure. Mickey said, “Find her for me. And you gonna be at Sid’s tomorrow night?”
“Keeping autograph hounds at bay. You?”
“Yeah, I’ve got points in Sid’s new picture. I want hot dope by then, Buzzchik. _Hot_.”
I said, “Scalding,” and took off, almost tripping over Mickey Cohen, Jr.’s appendage as I went out the door.
* * *
A potential three grand in my kick; Morris Hornbeck’s hinkyness doing a slow simmer in my gourd; an instinct that Gretchen Rae Shoftel’s “Hideaway” was Howard Hughes’s fuck pad on South Lucerne–the place where he kept the stash of specially cantilevered bras he designed to spotlight his favorite starlet’s tits, cleavage gowns for his one night inamoratas, and the stag film collection he showed to visiting defense contractors–some of them rumored to co-star Mickey Cohen, Jr., and a bimbo made up to resemble Howard’s personal heroine: Amelia Earhart. But first there was Scrivner’s Drive-In and a routine questioning of Gretchen Rae’s recent co-workers. Fear adrenaline was scorching my soul as I drove there–maybe I’d played my shtick too tight to come out intact.
Scrivner’s was on Sunset three blocks east of Hollywood High School, an eat-in-your-car joint featuring a rocket ship motif– chromium scoops, dips, and portholes abounding–Jules Verne as seen by a fag set designer scraping the stars on marijuana. The carhops–all zoftig numbers–wore tight space-cadet outfits; the fry cooks wore plastic rocket helmets with clear face shields to protect them from spattering grease. Questioning a half dozen of them was like enjoying the DT’s without benefit of booze. After an hour of talk and chump-change handouts, I knew the following:
That Gretchen Rae Shoftel car hopped there for a month, was often tardy, and during mid-afternoon lulls tended to abandon her shift. This was tolerated because she was an atom-powered magnet that attracted men by the shitload. She could tote up tabs in her head, deftly computing sales tax–but had a marked tendency toward spilling milkshakes and french fries. When the banana-split loving Mickey Cohen started snouting around after her, the manager gave her the go by, no doubt leery of attracting the criminal elements who had made careers out of killing innocent bystanders while trying to kill the Mick. Aside from that I glommed one hard lead plus suppositions to hang it on: Gretchen Rae had persistently questioned the Scrivner’s crew about a recent regular customer–a man with a long German surname who’d been eating at the counter, doing arithmetic tricks with meal tabs and astounding the locals with five-minute killings of the _LA Times_ crossword. He was an old geez with a European accent–and he stopped chowing at Scrivner’s right before Gretchen Rae Shoftel hired on. Mickey told me the quail had spoken of looking for a friend of her father’s; Howard had said she was from Wisconsin; German accents pointed to the dairy state in a big way. And Morris Hornbeck, Mr. Shakes just a few hours before, had been a Milwaukee mob trigger and money man. And–the lovely Gretchen Rae had continued car hopping after becoming the consort of two of the richest, most powerful men in Los Angeles–an eye-opener if ever there was one.