The Fixer of Dreamland

• Chapter 1: Midnight at the Majestic
• Chapter 2: A Body on the Persian Rug
• Chapter 3: Bleaching the Bloodstains
• Chapter 4: The Studio's Dirty Linen
• Chapter 5: Coffee and Dead Ends at Sunrise
• Chapter 6: The Director's Alibi
• Chapter 7: Bourbon and Blackmail
• Chapter 8: Shadow Over Sunset Boulevard
• Chapter 9: The Producer's Ledger
• Chapter 10: Smoke in the Soundstage
• Chapter 11: Whispers from the Cutting Room
• Chapter 12: Neon and Rain
• Chapter 13: The Gossip Columnist's Price
• Chapter 14: A Secret in Chavez Ravine
• Chapter 15: Bad Blood at the Brown Derby
• Chapter 16: The Jazz Club Confession
• Chapter 17: Stolen Negatives
• Chapter 18: The LAPD Payoff
• Chapter 19: A Bullet for the Fixer
• Chapter 20: The Starlet's Secret Life
• Chapter 21: Night Freight to San Pedro
• Chapter 22: The Mogul's ultimatum
• Chapter 23: Shadows in the Backlot
• Chapter 24: The Final Edit
• Chapter 25: A Cold Day in City Hall
• Chapter 26: The Price of Silence

The Santa Ana winds had been blowing hot and mean across the Los Angeles basin for three straight days, baking the smog into a thick brown crust that stung your eyes and rusted the chrome on a Buick. It was the kind of heat that made wives stab their husbands with ice picks and made studio executives double their scotch intake before noon.

I was sitting in my second-floor office on Sunset Boulevard, watching the neon sign of a twenty-four-hour diner buzz and flicker like a dying firefly across the asphalt. The clock on my desk—a heavy brass souvenir from the set of The Bandit of Durango—read five minutes past midnight. The air in the room tasted like stale Chesterfield smoke and warm rye whiskey. I was about to pack it in, head back to my bungalow in Silver Lake, and try to sleep through the heat, when the telephone on my desk barked like a cranky terrier.

In my line of work, a phone call after midnight is never a invitation to a dinner party. It means someone bled on the set, got caught with the wrong gender in a motel in Glendale, or blew through a red light on Santa Monica Boulevard with three ounces of uncut Bolivian nose powder in the glove box. My name is Frank Mason. On the payroll at Apex Pictures, my official title was Special Consultant to Public Relations. On the streets, and in the dark corners where the studio moguls kept their ledgers, I was called the Fixer.

I picked up the heavy black receiver on the fourth ring. "Mason."

"Frank? Thank God you're still there." The voice belonged to Arthur Vance, the head of publicity at Apex. He sounded like he was drowning in a vat of cold gravy. His breath was raspy, cutting through the static on the wire with the sharp edge of pure panic.

"I was just leaving, Arthur," I said, leaning back in my leather swivel chair. The springs groaned in sympathy. "If it’s about Jimmy Drake getting caught in a floating craps game in Chinatown again, tell the desk sergeant at Central I’ll drop off the envelope at eight in the morning."

"It’s not Jimmy," Vance hissed. He paused, blowing his nose loudly into what sounded like a linen handkerchief. "It’s Evelyn Mercer. And it’s not a craps game."

That made me sit up straight. Evelyn Mercer was Apex’s newest golden girl. Six months ago, she was a midwestern farm girl named Evelyn Potts who slapped hash at a bus station in Des Moines. Tonight, her face was sixty feet high on the marquee of the Carthay Circle Theatre, starring opposite Clark Gable in Desert Romance. Old man Goldwyn himself had offered two hundred grand to buy out her contract last Tuesday, but Apex chief Lou Berman wouldn't budge. She was scheduled to start shooting her next picture, The Crimson Orchid, at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.

"Where is she?" I asked quietly.

"The Majestic Hotel. Suite 804. Frank... you gotta get over there right now. Don't call the cops. Don't call anyone. Just get your ass across town."

"What did she do, Arthur? Smash up a room? Hit a pedestrian?"

There was a long, dry silence on the line. I could hear the faint strain of a big band playing radio jazz somewhere in the background on Vance's end.

"She isn't breathing, Frank," Vance whispered. "And there’s enough blood in there to repaint the lobby."

The line went dead with a dry click.

I sat there for five seconds, listening to the dial tone hum in my ear. Then I set the receiver back in its cradle, grabbed my light tan Fedora from the brass hook on the door, and reached into the bottom drawer of my desk. I pulled out a leather satchel containing two bottles of industrial bleach, three pairs of thick rubber gloves, a fresh roll of canvas tape, a pair of chrome pliers, and a small snub-nosed .38 Police Special in a shoulder holster. I didn't plan on shooting anyone tonight, but in 1947 Los Angeles, carrying steel was like carrying an umbrella—it didn't mean you wanted it to rain, but you’d look pretty foolish if you got caught in a downpour without it.

I locked the office door behind me and took the stairs down to the street level. The night air hit my face like an open oven door. Sunset Boulevard was mostly dead, save for a few yellow cabs gliding past the palms and the yellow glow from the neon signs of the drugstores and late-night joints. My dark blue '41 Packard Clipper was parked in the alley behind the building. The engine coughed twice when I turned the key, then settled into a low, purring growl.

I kicked the clutch, jammed the stick into gear, and pulled out onto Wilshire Boulevard heading west toward the Majestic.

The Majestic Hotel was one of those sprawling, neo-Gothic residential towers built back in the late twenties before the crash hit. It stood twelve stories tall near the corner of Wilshire and Western, wrapped in dark terracotta trim with gargoyles peering down from the roofline like gargantuan vultures waiting for the city to die. It catered to the high-end crowd—fading silent stars, wealthy East Coast divorcees, and young contract players whose studio bosses preferred to keep them in one place where the house dicks could keep an eye on them.

I pulled the Packard into the side alley behind the hotel, right beside the service entrance where the laundry trucks pulled up in the morning. I cut the headlights and the motor. The silence of the alley settled over me like a wet blanket, broken only by the distant hum of a streetcar on Vermont Avenue and the hot wind rattling the fire escapes above my head.

I got out, carrying the satchel in my right hand, and slipped through the heavy brass service door. I’d bribed the night manager at the Majestic three years ago when a bit-part actress had taken an overdose of sleeping pills in room 412, and the arrangement had remained solid ever since. Money buys a lot of things in Hollywood, but in the middle of the night, it mostly buys silence.

The service elevator was an old cage job that creaked and groaned as it hauled its iron body up the shaft. I hit the button for the eighth floor and watched the concrete walls crawl past the mesh door. My shadow stretched long and thin against the wood paneling, swaying with the mechanical rhythm of the cable.

When the elevator shuddered to a stop at the eighth floor, the brass accordion gate slid open with a soft metallic screech. The corridor was long, carpeted in a deep burgundy velvet that swallowed the sound of my rubber-soled shoes. The air smelled of expensive perfume, ozone, and the faint, bitter tang of burning tobacco. High-end sconces shaped like shell casings cast dim yellow light along the wallpapered walls.

I walked down the hall until I found Suite 804. The brass numbers on the dark mahogany door were polished to a mirror shine. I didn't knock. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the passkey I’d taken off the studio desk two months ago, slid it into the lock, and turned it until the bolt clicked home.

I pushed the door open just enough to slip through, then shut it silently behind me, dropping the brass latch into place.

The suite was silent. The heavy brocade draperies over the floor-to-ceiling windows were drawn tight against the lights of the city below, keeping out everything except the hot red glow of a neon drug store sign three blocks away that bled through the fabric like a fever stain. The air inside the room was heavy and thick, smelling of expensive French lilies, spilled gin, and something hot and metallic that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

"Arthur?" I called out softly into the darkness.

No answer. Just the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner of the foyer and the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water coming from the adjacent bathroom.

I took three slow steps across the hardwood floor of the entryway, moving past a brass coat rack and a silver tray littered with unopened mail addressed to Miss Evelyn Mercer. My hand rested naturally on the butt of the .38 under my arm.

As I stepped into the main living room, the pale red neon light filtered across the room, illuminating the high plush sofa, the polished coffee table with an overturned glass of scotch, and a dark, wide stain spreading rapidly across the center of a costly white Persian rug.

There was a woman lying motionless in the middle of that rug, her blonde hair haloed in the shadows, her eyes wide open and staring directly at the ceiling.

I took a deep breath, pulled my fedora down slightly over my eyes, and set my satchel down on the parquet floor. Midnight was over. The real work was just beginning, and the morning editions were going to hit the street in less than six hours.

I didn’t move for five long seconds. In this business, those first five seconds are where you make the mistakes that put you in San Quentin or six feet under the weeds at Forest Lawn. You stand still, you let your eyes adjust to the red night-glow, and you take inventory of the dead.

I took three slow, deliberate steps toward the center of the rug, my rubber-soled shoes making no sound against the polished floorboards. The copper-and-iron smell of fresh blood was heavy enough to scrape off the back of my tongue. I knelt beside her, keeping my knees clear of the wet dark circle that had already ruined about eight hundred dollars’ worth of imported silk pile.

It was Evelyn Mercer, all right. The lighting from the neon sign across Wilshire gave her pale skin a sickly, crimson hue, like a color print off a cheap press. She was wearing a sky-blue satin dressing gown with white ostrich feathers around the cuffs, the kind of frock the wardrobe department handed out to girls who were supposed to look expensive while sipping sherry in a penthouse scene. The front of the gown was torn open at the silk lapel, and right below her collarbone sat a jagged, ugly hole no bigger than a quarter.

It hadn't bled much on the outside—just a dark, sluggish trickling that had run down her ribcage and pooled beneath her left shoulder. The heavy lifting had been done internally. One shot, close range, likely a small-caliber piece like a .25 or a pocket .32. The kind of gun a lady keeps in her evening bag or a jealous husband slides into his vest pocket before he goes out to check on his wife's late-night rehearsal.

I reached out with two fingers and touched the side of her neck, right along the carotid. Cold. Not ice-box cold, but the heat was already draining out of her, pulled away by the tile and wood below. Rigor hadn't set in yet; her jaw was loose, and her hands lay limp against the