Golden Lies: Al Travers Mystery, #1

By Linda Maye Adams

Hollywood, 1947: A film star missing…a movie studio executive in trouble…

Private Investigator Al Travers feels the pressure.  Trapped between a politician and a movie executive, he must find the film star and the deadly secret she hides.

But time is running out and his search for the truth may cost him his life.

An exciting and twisted tale of Hollywood and the lies of Tinsel Town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Maye Adams
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393451549

Linda Maye Adams

Linda Maye Adams is published in Kevin J. Anderson’s anthology Monsters, Movies, & Mayhem.  She is the author of the military-based GALCOM Universe series, including the novel Crying Planet, featured in the 2018 Military Science Fiction StoryBundle, and is working on a superhero novel. 

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Istarted my morning parting with precious pennies to fill my Nash’s gas tank, and I ended it making a deal with the devil.

At least the devil paid.

For the record, my name is Al Travers. I try not to tell anyone what my actual first name is. Let them think it’s Albert. I’m a private eye in Laurel Hills, California, which is just a hop, skip, and jump from Hollywood, land of the movie stars. Mostly I look for missing persons, because everyone has someone they want to find.

The early morning sun was already baking the asphalt by the time I arrived at Poverty Row. I spotted a group of men down on the corner, hoping for a gig on a new film. There were always new B movies being made on Poverty Row. Production companies came in, cranked out films, and died without anyone noticing.

I found the building where my father, Hank Travers, was working by spotting his rust bucket out front. I parked behind it and cut the engine. Silence. For the last month, it had felt like the world was screaming at me and still wasn’t done screaming.

I would have sat there and enjoyed the silence for a few minutes, but I figured I might as well see what bad news Hank had for me. He hadn’t said he had a gig. I’d have taken anything; my rent was due next week.

The building had been a warehouse before the Depression. I doubted if it had ever seen better days. The latest studio just changed the name on the building and moved in, leaving ghosts of the old lettering under the paint. No one bothered with the dandelions sprouting up from the cracked sidewalk.

Today the building housed a new film company with an acronym-soup name. I didn’t pay much attention to it. It might not be here in a month.

I left my window rolled down so the car wouldn’t turn into an oven and walked up to the side door. Among the weeds in the cracked sidewalk, red ants gathered around a small pile of dirt. I steered clear of the nasty things. Didn’t need to add a red ant bite to my problems.

The hinges on the door squealed as I opened it and stepped into darkness. The first thing that hit me was the cigarette smoke, layers and layers of it embedded into the very walls. Panic swelled up from my belly. The squirrels that had invaded my thoughts after the War started to screech.  I closed my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. The pain helped.

The panic receded after a moment. We were used to each other now.

I still gave myself a few more minutes. I took off my Panama hat and attempted to smooth my hair. It didn’t help much. I drenched my hair in pomade every day and it seemed to take that as a challenge.

The entrance opened into a hall. Right side: offices. Left side: doors to Stages One and Two. In front of Stage One was a traffic dunce cap with a paper sign taped to it: Quiet!!! Filming.

Hank’s handwriting. I touched it, smiling. I liked Hank’s three exclamation marks. Sometimes folks needed the extra ones.

I eased the door open and slipped inside.

It was a jungle film. The set was unbearably hot. Artificial trees were arranged around the set and sand was scattered on the floor. The camera was trained on three people, their makeup harsh in the bright lights. One was a man with an unremarkable face. He wore a safari shirt and pants. The butter-blonde woman was dressed in a fur dress that brushed her knees. Her lips were painted bright red. She wore high heels. Never without the important stuff, even in the jungle. Nice gams. The third person was a tow-headed boy of ten, wearing cheetah-spotted bathing trunks.

A clapper snapped.

Cut! Hank yelled.

Hank was in his director’s chair, taking in every bit of the scene and mapping the movie out in his head. Hank looked like an older version of me, except he’d given up on his hair long ago. He was in a short-sleeved dress shirt and black trousers. The jacket would be somewhere nearby—Hank hated wearing jackets and managed to lose them all the time.

He made a note on a clipboard, then passed it to a beefy fellow with a widow’s peak. He spotted me and grinned. Good timing, Al. Let’s talk in my office while they set up the next shot.  To the beefy fellow, he said, Be ready in eight minutes.

The beefy fellow checked his watch.  Hank didn’t need to know what time it was.  He knew it in his head, down to the minute. It was the first task on the set every day: set watches to Hank-Time.

Hank walked out the door like he had propellers in his back pockets. He led me to a production office that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. A swimming pool–shaped ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts. The desk was covered with papers going yellow, and the chairs were piled high with abandoned scripts. Layers of B-movie sediment.

Hank poured himself a mug of coffee from a coffee pot. The coffee looked old from where I stood, and given how Hank was, the coffee mug was properly flavored with coffee stains. It was how he managed with cheap coffee. I waved off his offer of a cup. I wasn’t that brave.

No luck? he asked, plopping into the chair behind the desk. He tugged a crushed box out of his pocket and extracted a cigarette.

I shifted slightly to look above him at a poster of a long-forgotten movie. The match scratched, the flame flared, and I was hit with that wonderful and terrible smell. I squeezed my fingers into my palms until they hurt.

No. Word’s gotten around that I’m bad news.

That’s your own damn fault. Hank’s tone was matter-of-fact.

True enough. Should’ve never taken the last case. It stank going in, but I’d needed the money. I hadn’t known I was going to have a run-in with a local assemblyman who was still unhappy. Given the state of my bank account, I might have to drive cabs or wait tables.

Hank exhaled a cloud of smoke. The thing is, no one wants to touch what you got. I can’t even give you work on the set.

I didn’t need to be reminded. Annoyance flared in my voice. You couldn’t have told me this when you called?

Hank tapped the cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. Orange embers dropped off the cigarette. I called because someone did request your help. Pays well, too.

Cold washed through me. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.

Missing person. Hank switched the cigarette to his right hand and shuffled through the pile on his desk for a notepad. He tore off the top sheet and handed it across the desk.

I saw the name: Dov Ackerman. My hand trembled.

Dov was the head of Ackerman Pictures. One of the biggest movie studios in Hollywood.

The paper was burning a hole in my hand. I needed to pay my rent. But Dov Ackerman? If I turned it down, I was toast. If I messed it up, I was toast.

Definitely a deal with the devil.

Actually, the devil might be kinder than a movie executive.

I STOPPED OFF AT A payphone outside a liquor store to call the number Hank had given me. I folded myself inside the glass booth and closed the door, cutting down the sound of traffic. Dov’s secretary came on and told me in a sweet voice that he was free tomorrow at ten o’clock.

Butterflies banged around in my belly. Cases that came from movie executives were bound to be messy. Movies stars often arrived in Hollywood with problems, like drinking too much or out of wedlock pregnancies.  To keep audiences coming back to movies, the studio had a carefully curated image.  The studio’s fixer kept the star out of the headlines and sometimes just out of trouble. Bribes, accusing the innocent of crimes, you name it.

Dov Ackerman had a powerful fixer in Mike Reeves. What couldn’t Mike fix?

Suddenly I really needed to sit down. My legs felt full of water.

Across the street was friendly territory: Early’s Diner. Early Barrett and his wife were friends of mine. I probably spent too much time at the diner.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn’t fed it lunch. Somehow I’d lost the whole morning.

I checked my wallet and counted the loose change in my pocket. I even checked the change slot in the phone, but no one had left any coins behind. A meal would make a dent in my money. But I needed to talk to Early. He still practiced what he’d done during the First World War and might already know