Violent Ward. Len Deighton

if I’d been a little more diplomatic, Ratface wouldn’t have turned nasty and sent two of his men to search out violations of the Fire Department Code. ‘You should have been doing that before your own block burned down,’ I said. But these guys were young kids; they hadn’t been with the department long enough to remember that scandal. Finally Ratface came up with a clipboard reading aloud what he said were twenty-two infringements. ‘The fire escape is rusty,’ he said, jabbing at the clipboard with his finger.

      ‘We just ran out of Brillo,’ I said. I looked over his shoulder and read the sheet. Most of the faults were minor ones, but it looked like someone was going to have to renew the sprinkler system, put up new smoke detectors, and install some kind of fire doors. If I knew anything about the small print in the lease, it wasn’t going to be my rapacious landlord, but no matter. It wasn’t my pigeon. Two months earlier, the bottom line on that kind of work might have been enough to bankrupt me, but now it was just something to pass on to the new owner: the mighty Petrovitch. ‘These old firetraps should be torn down,’ said the guy who didn’t like Bear Claws to his buddy. ‘The whole block should be flattened. It’s just a shantytown.’

      ‘We can’t all live in Bel Air, buddy.’

      After they all trooped out, I examined the carpet and the dirty marks that their boots had left. The carpet needed cleaning anyway, but the extra stains were not going to help me when Zachary Petrovitch came to see what kind of premises he was getting for his money.

      When at last I was free to sit down behind my desk and leaf through all the work outstanding, I found there was plenty to do. A new client, hooray. A one-time soap star, drunk and resisting arrest. It took me a minute to recognize her name; there is no limbo more bleak than the oblivion to which the soapers go. Then there were two movie scripts, one dog-eared and the other pristine. This client was a writer – a nice intelligent guy until now – who had worked himself up into a roaring frenzy about a movie that was being made by a producer he used to work with. He wanted me to read the two scripts and sue the production company for plagiarism. Plagiarism! He must be living on another planet. Start seeking injunctions for that kind of larceny and Hollywood would slither to a complete standstill. Did he think those guys with the Armani suits could write connecting the letters just because they had Montblanc fountain pens? Original ideas?

      None of it was more urgent than the red box file marked Sir Jeremy Westbridge. A lawyer gets used to the idea that most of his clients are on a course of self-destruction, but this Brit was something else. Every mail delivery brought word of some new and more terrible misdeed. I could see no way of keeping him out of prison, it was just a matter of whether he got ten or twenty years. The only consolation was that he had me on retainer and paid up like a sweetheart. How did I ever get into this crock? When I left high school I had everything set for a career as a car thief.

      Dumping the whole stack of work back into the tray, I found myself looking at that damned window ledge, so finally I decided to go see Danny. I picked up the phone and told Miss Huth, ‘I have to see my son.’

      ‘No. You have an appointment at eleven-thirty.’

      ‘Cancel it.’

      ‘It’s far too late to do that, Mr Murphy. It is already eleven-twenty-two.’

      ‘Who is it?’

      ‘Mr Byron.’ She purred: she recognized his name. Women always knew his name. Budd Byron was now old enough for his early shows to be on daytime runs.

      ‘Oh,’ I said. I guess his old shows were on TV in Germany too.

      ‘I think he’s here,’ she said, and I heard the outer door buzz. ‘Shall I show him in?’ I could hear the emotion in her voice. No woman could catch sight of Budd Byron without losing her emotional equilibrium.

      ‘Yes, do that, Miss Huth … Budd! It’s good to see you.’ Budd was slim and tanned. He came into my office with the kind of cool, calm confidence of General MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines, Newton demonstrating the force of gravity, or Al Capone denying that he owed income tax.

      Budd had been a college classmate; you maybe would not have guessed that from the hellos. Budd has a certain sort of Hollywood formality. He fixed me with a sincere look and gripped my hand tight while giving my upper arm a slap: a California salutation.

      ‘You’re looking great,’ I said. ‘Great.’ He was wearing Oxford brogues, custom-made gray-flannel slacks, and a jacket of Harris tweed, the heavy sort of garment worn in the winter months by Southern California’s native male population. His shirt was tapered and his collar gold-pinned to secure the tight knot of a blue-and-red-striped Brooks Brothers silk tie. The effect was of a prosperous young banker. It was the look many Hollywood actors were adopting now that so many of the bankers were going around in bleached denim and cowboy boots.

      ‘Coffee? A drink?’

      ‘Perrier water,’ said Budd. To complete the costume, he was wearing a beautiful gray fedora, which he took off and carefully placed on a shelf.

      I went to the refrigerator hidden in the bookcase and brought him a club soda. ‘Cigarette?’ I picked up the silver box on my desk and waved it at him.

      He shook his head. I can’t remember the last time someone said yes. One day someone was going to puff at one of those ancient sticks and spew their guts out all over my white carpet.

      ‘I read the other day the UCLA School of Medicine calculated that one joint has the carbon monoxide content of five regular cigarettes and the tar of three,’ Budd said.

      ‘These are not joints,’ I said, shaking the silver box some more.

      Budd laughed. ‘I know. I just wanted to impress you with my learning.’

      ‘You did.’

      Budd didn’t have to work hard at being a charmer: it just came natural to him. We’d stayed in touch since he abandoned Social Sciences in favor of Actors’ Equity. He’d made a modest rep and his face was known to those who spent a lot of time in the dark, but he expended every last cent he earned keeping up a standard of living way beyond his means because he had to pretend to himself and everyone else that he was a big big star. I suppose only someone permanently out of touch with reality tried for the movie big time in Hollywood. The soup kitchens and retirement homes echo with the chatter of people still talking about the big chance that’s coming any day. But Budd was not permanently out of touch with reality, just now and again. As the smart-ass student editor of our college yearbook wrote of him, his head was in the clouds but his feet were planted firmly on the ground. He really enjoyed what he did for a living, whether it was first class acting or not. Back in the forties, when movie stars were youthful and wholesome and gentlemanly, Budd might have made it big – or even in that brief period in the sixties when the collegiate look was in style – but nowadays it was stubble-chinned mumbling degenerates who got their names above the title. Budd was out of style.

      ‘You are coming to my little champagne-and-burger birthday bash?’ said Budd.

      ‘You couldn’t keep me away,’ I said. I’d received an elaborate printed invitation to a luncheon party at Manderley, his old house perched up in the Hollywood Hills, near the Laurel Canyon intersection. Budd was one of those people who keeps in touch. He always knew what all his old classmates were doing, and when reunion time came round he was there addressing the envelopes.

      ‘Lunch, a week from Sunday. We’ll keep going until the champagne runs out.’

      ‘Sounds like a challenge.’

      He shifted in his chair, ran a fingernail down his cheek, and spoke in a different sort of voice. ‘Mickey, I need advice. You’re my attorney, right?’

      ‘You don’t need an attorney,’ I told him. ‘You’re too smart. If all my clients kept their noses clean the way you do, I’d be out of business.’ It was true. I sent hurry-up letters and sorted out the occasional misunderstanding, but most of what I did for Budd could have been done by a part-time secretary. Maybe I didn’t charge him enough.

      He nodded