The Storytellers Ch. 05

"Lot of girls may wear their hair that way, but none of them look as good as you, baby," I said and was rewarded with a deep kiss that had my toes curling. For a moment I thought we might not be going out.

Fortunately for my stomach, I was dead wrong. We wound up in Chinatown between Gallery Row and Hill Street, trudging through a foggy alley that looked like something out of the 19th century. We disturbed two cats eating food out of the garbage cans littering the vile, smelly alleyway. The sounds and smells of the Chinese delicacies awaiting us overrode the repellently foul odors of the alley itself. Belva, trying to divert my attention from our surroundings, chattered away about the opium dens scattered about Chinatown when we came to a restaurant at the foot of the alley, named the Golden Pagoda. We entered and found ourselves in a fairly small establishment. But the small size belied the fantastic food that they served there.

We feasted on won ton soup and egg rolls.

Actually I was stuffing myself while Belva talked about the dishes themselves. I hadn't an inkling that the strange looking, meat filled dumplings were meant to represent clouds (the word won ton translates roughly into "swallowing a cloud"). All I knew was that I couldn't get enough of them!

I followed that with an order of Ginger Beef; crisp, chewy morsels of beef that are coated in a tangy sauce. Belva satisfied me with a healthy portion of her dish, Kung Pao Chicken, which was a spicy Szechuan dish made with diced chicken, peanuts and chili peppers.

As customary with us, Belva talked while I ate. I learned that we were sitting in what was the 'New' Chinatown, several blocks removed from the "Old" Chinatown. The Chinatown of the '40's was thought to be a tourist attraction by the local politicians, but as Belva said, "It's nothing more than a Hollywoodized version of Shanghai, with new streets named Bamboo Lane, Gin Ling Way and Chung King Road filled with crooked alleys and such. I don't know about the tourists, but the locals love it."

After I paid the check, Belva insisted we go to Musso's for drinks. The real name of the place is Musso and Frank's Grill. I loved it. It had an unparalled history involving writers like Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Chandler, as well as a story behind almost every table and booth for movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne who still eat there. Belva gushed that the locals loved the place.

I told her that this place should be the first place the tourists came to on visiting Los Angeles because it is a genuine attraction and filled with Hollywood type history as well as great food. Okay, I didn't sample it, but I certainly took in the orders delivered to surrounding tables.

One last thing, as we were leaving, Van Heflin sauntered in with a gorgeous blonde on each arm. I wanted to go back to our table, but Belva pulled me out of the place. Fortunately for me, she was laughing all the way.

We went at it again after returning from Musso's and then, thoroughly sated, we began to talk, really talk, telling one another of our hopes and dreams. She had aspirations of rising up through the management of her company, but with all the GI's having returned from the War, her hopes had begun to wane. I encouraged her to keep trying, and drew a grimace when I said that at least she had a decent job and steady paycheck.

For her part, she listened to my hope of completing my novel about the recent Black Dahlia murder. Something told me not to mention meeting Arthur. Later I wondered if it was Arthur himself.

Belva was surprised to learn that the lead detective on the case had basically told me to take a walk. I grinned, and told her that so far they had drawn a complete blank on the case, and no new leads had surfaced.

"So," Belva said, "it's as if they expected you to develop a new lead, or something, and when you didn't..."

"They told me to take a walk," I widened my grin, but I was hurting inside. I really needed their cooperation if I was to get anywhere on the case.

Belva seemed upbeat about it all. She was impressed that I had gotten them to talk with me, and glibly assured me that I would uncover something they had not and that would change things.

I told her that I was probably just whistling Dixie and that I had better think about whether I was going back to Chicago or staying in Los Angeles. It was the first time I had spoken of that possibility, and I had to admit it sounded good to me.

Belva pushed on, saying, "But you're smart, and a reporter. You guys uncover all sorts of stuff; people open up to you, where they won't say anything to the law."

"Believe me, Belva; people are just as reluctant to talk with investigative reporters. I know. I've talked with hundreds of them."

"I still think you'll uncover something good. You should keep working on it."

"I'd love too, but my job won't let me, and I need the job."

"You're going back to Chicago?" The alarm was all over her face as well as her voice.

"The day after tomorrow; that is, unless something happens in the meantime."

"I don't understand, what could happen?"

"Err, the Dahlia case might get solved; if that happens, goodbye book. Or, my editor at the paper might assign me to another department at the paper, keeping me from covering the crime beat and essentially cutting off my sources in the police department in Chicago. It would also prevent my returning to LA on their ticket, and I wasn't making enough to go off on my own. Not yet anyway."

"So we have a today and tomorrow..." Belva left it there and I jumped in.

"You could come with me," I said, hoping she'd say she would.

"Roy, you know I want to...."

"I know, I know... you could get a job in Chicago, Belva."

"Do you know if you still have a job with the paper, Roy?"

"Well, yeah, sure I do. They said...." It occurred to me that 'they' hadn't said anything. I had told them I was going on vacation. My vacation had ended several days ago.

Deciding to change the subject, I said, "There must be plenty of joints around town we could pop in and out off."

Belva gave me a faint smile and nodded. Suddenly her smile widened and after winking at me, she pointed to her pussy and said, "That's so true, but why not pop back in here for starters."

I could hardly turn an invitation like that down, and so we spent the rest of the evening getting better acquainted while The Lux Radio Theater and Fibber McGee & Molly droned on around us.

****

The next morning after Belva left for work, I sat at the kitchen table and went over my notes for the hundredth time. If Short had sought a career in show business it didn't come up anywhere. The character testimony I glommed over only had her hanging around radio and movie studios. Well, so did most everybody else for that matter, they were free and for someone who was broke most of the time that must have been an attractive offer.

She spent more time in bars and nightclubs along the Sunset Strip. She sponged money off man pals and friends. She was too trusting of men she'd just met in dark dives. She was too willing to get into an auto with a strange man. She mingled with shady characters and had a date almost every night. Her norm was seven different hombres a week. Non-achievers ran rife; a part-owner of the Florentine Gardens nightclub said most of Short's dates were bums he wouldn't allow in his house.

But there was one person I found especially interesting. Short had met a guy named Ed Burns that October. He had attended USC Medical School for a time and was a rare bird amongst the flock she normally flew with. Short was the type that might have been his dream girl. She didn't jape him about his looks, (In the pictures I'd seen of him, he had a sort of goofy grin that I would never have taken as a serious stud, but that was me.) Short might have seen him differently, especially if he had the dough-ray-me to help her pass her evenings in her customary style.

Admittedly, the evidence was slim, but they had done the deed, or at least spent several nights together in places like Ocean Park and the Long Beach Pike, and in a cheap hotel on Washington Boulevard in LA.

But my own clock was ticking. My time in Tinseltown was coming to an end. I decided to spend most of it with Belva, and just a little in tracking down someone who might have known the ball player, Bill Harbridge years before.

I called a friend over at the L.A. Times and got a referral to Myer Copely, in the sports department. Myer had been covering baseball for thirty years and knew everyone worth knowing and then some.

Meyer invited me to sit down next to his desk while he thumbed through a thick pad of index cards, pulled one out and studied it for a moment. "Maybe this guy, if he's still kickin'," Meyer said as he reached for his telephone.

Five minutes later I was talking with Sadie McMahon, eighty-one years old and a former player with the Philadelphia Athletics. "Mr. McMahon, I'd like to test that memory of yours. I'm looking for a fellow played around the same time you did."

"Now who would that be?"

"Ever hear of Bill Harbridge? I think he was nicknamed, "Yaller" Bill."

"I played for the Athletics, Orioles and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, silly assed name, you ask me. I won 173 games for 'em."

"Yes sir," I said, as respectfully as possible, not wanting to offend him.

'"Ever see me pitch?"

"No sir, I'm afraid that was long before my time."

"Damn shame. I was a good one. I played on a couple lousy teams. No support -- defensively or with the bat. That son-of-a-bitch Billy Hamilton never scratched out a hit off me." He cackled, "Didn't steal a base either. Couldn't, I never let him on base!" He chortled obviously very happy with himself.

"Now, what was it you wanted from me?"

I repeated my question: "Have you ever heard of, or played against Bill Harbridge? I think he was nicknamed, "Yaller" Bill."

"Yaller Bill Harbridge?"

"Yes sir," I said and waited for his reply.

"He's dead."

"He's dead?"

"That's what I said."

"Mind if I ask how you know this?"

"Tom Carey told me. Me and Tom played together over in Brooklyn and then again in the minor leagues for at least one season. Tom wrote me a letter some six months before he passed, and in it he mentioned going to Harbridge's funeral back East. I think it was Philadelphia, but can't say for certain. That was 1922. I'm pretty sure of that, yeah, it was1922."

I thanked him for his time and help and hung up. It was a relatively easy matter to have Meyer call the New York Times and get his counterpart there to check out the obituaries in their morgue to verify McMahon's story. It checked out, although the year was wrong, Harbridge died on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1924. He was 68 years of age. Arthur had been right; I would have to let Harbridge find me.