Case #6: Just Like Old Times
Date: April 28, 2002
Location: Los Angeles, CA


Five days after renewing my P.I. license and working four days, two people died, one a friend, but I solved the case. Sad consolation. But even after spending nearly a week alone in a small motel in the desert, I still felt lousy.

I headed back to my place in the mountains outside L.A. early Sunday evening and got my usual table at Rusty's Diner. A local band was onstage. Somebody said they played backup in a recording studio down in Hollywood for a couple of Country Western singers, but I didn't recognize their names. Where I came from in New Jersey, "country" meant Canada and "western" meant Pennsylvania.

After ordering a beer and bratwurst, I sat back and listened to the music. It was starting to grow on me. At least you could understand the words. How bad could a guy be who loved his dog, his truck, and his girl?

My cell phone rang. I was lucky to get service that far back in the woods. Logjam was just about as far off the beaten track as you could get without ending up in Barstow.

"Hello?"

"Johnny, is that you?" I recognized Iris Sherwood's voice and shook my head.

Iris might have rented my other house down in Los Angeles, but I had spent quality time there over the past three years. The place was a bit of a relic, just like she was. Iris was Old Hollywood. Very Old Hollywood. She knew every actor who was anybody from the 30's through the 60's. Hedda Hopper would have hocked her hats for the scoops she could have gotten from the venerable star. But Iris, in her mid-eighties, knew how to keep secrets. And bless her heart, the old gal was a character herself, and that had nothing to do with the ones she played on the silver screen.

"You called me, Iris. What is it?"

"Oh, good, he's there," she said to someone with her on the other end of the phone. "Johnny, I need you."

"Is something wrong?" Two weeks earlier she really had a problem, so I couldn't say she always cried wolf.

"Nothing's wrong, silly. I want you to come for dinner tomorrow. Please say yes, Johnny, dear. It's time I did something nice for you."

"Dinner. Uh… I'm kinda tired, Iris."

"Tired! How can a young man like you be tired? I'm twice your age and never had a tired day in my life. Now, what do you say? Eight o'clock tomorrow. Okay?"

What the hell, I thought. Another change of scenery might be just what the doctor ordered. "Sure, Iris. Eight o'clock."

"We will be dressing for dinner, Johnny. Black tie," she added before hanging up.

I put down my cell phone and said out loud, "What did she expect me to do, come in my bathrobe?"

"Going someplace, Johnny?" said a voice to my right.

I turned to see Logjam's resident mortician. He wasn't the tall, gaunt, gray man from the Boris Karloff movies. Harold Kane was shorter, plumper, and pinker.

"I've been invited to dinner. The lady told me 'black tie.' Please tell me, in laid-back California terms, that doesn't mean tuxedo."

"Sorry, Johnny. I'd loan you one of ours, but they all button up the back. The Bridal Boutique next to Abigail's Flowers rents them."

"I thought I could get through my entire life without having to wear one of those get-ups. I wonder if I still have a tie."

"A bow tie," he clarified.

"Bow tie?"

"And opera slippers," he added.

"I'm not wearing slippers. I'll starve first."

"You're going to a formal dinner?" he questioned.

"Yeah. I guess. Can't I wear plain shoes to a fancy dinner?"

"They'll have to be patent leather."

"I'll be a customer of yours before I wear patent leather shoes, Harold."

"It's traditional."

"Are you telling me the guys wearing tuxedoes in the movies are wearing ballet shoes?"

"Opera slippers. And yes, probably."

"Oh, for crying out loud. James Bond? Bogart wore 'em?" He nodded. "No wonder they were tough guys. You'd have to be if you were wearing ballet slippers."

I spent my youth holed up in cheap hotel rooms watching old movies hour after hour on a 13-inch black and white TV set fitted with a pair of rabbit ears, waiting for sleazy little guys to bring me the take from the numbers operation I ran in Jersey for Big Louie "Fingers" D'Abruzzo, and then later when I busted heads down in Miami for Big Eddie "Mambo" Fontaine. And here I thought George Raft was tough. Ballet slippers. Ha!

The next day I bought myself a tuxedo and dress shoes. Not patent leather and not slippers, just plain black shoes. I had the clerk show me how to tie the frigging bow tie and how to strap on the cummerbund. All I kept thinking was, this better be a damn good dinner, Iris.

….Continued.


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