Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army by Steven Paul Leiva Page B

it big in America.
    I paid her a visit. I paid her a substantial fee. The next day she warned Waugh that if he were to travel any time in the next three months, doom would be his name. The film was ready to go. A huge investment had already been made. A crew was waiting in the middle of a Brazilian rain forest. He couldn’t publicly delay the film giving his psychic’s warning as the reason. Baker got to direct.
    Roee was just congratulating me on a good job swiftly and lucratively done, when the call came in informing us that Bea Cherbourg’s body had been found in a snowdrift on the frozen Bering Sea just off the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.

Chapter Six

There’s No Place Like Nome

    The call came from Norton Macbeth.
    â€œDo you remember a while back, Fixxer, when you did a favor for Newsstand Mike?”
    â€œTalking sense to his unrequited love.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œObviously I do. Bea Cherbourg. Oddly enough, I saw her—”
    â€œShe’s dead.”
    Dead is a word analogous, for many reasons, with an inalterable period, or, as the British like to say, a full stop—which I did for half a beat. Then I asked if it was murder, although I knew the answer.
    â€œLooks that way, he-he-he.” Norton’s laughter was not gleeful; it was nervous tittering. “How did you know?”
    â€œWhy else would you be calling me? If she died of natural causes, or a simple accident, as unfortunate as that would be, it is not something you would take up my time with.”
    â€œHer body was found in Alaska. Nome, Alaska of all places. In a snow drift.”
    â€œThat’s a little bit more than strange.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought.”
    â€œI assume Mike is devastated.”
    â€œVery. That’s what prompted him to call me, he-he-he. He was reluctant, but he wants your help.”
    â€œI assume it’s in police hands?”
    â€œYes, but they won't communicate with him. He’s not a family member, after all. Also, he’s convinced they really won't investigate—and he’s got information he won't give them.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou’ll have to ask him that. He says he’ll only give it to you. Now, I know this isn’t really any of your business, and there is certainly no fee involved, but—”
    â€œIs Mike available now?”
    â€œUh, yes. He’s at the newsstand.”
    â€œTell him I’ll meet him there in half an hour.”
    â€œOkay, but are you—”
    I hung up. “Roee, I’m going out.”
    Roee had gotten the gist of things from my end of the conversation. “Do you want company?”
    â€œNo, but you can call the Captain and alert him that we may require information on the case.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll do that.”
    ~ * ~
    I made the quick trip to Sherman Oaks wondering about Bea Cherbourg. What had gotten her killed? In Nome, Alaska, “of all places.” Nome, a small berg at the end of America whose city motto was, of course, “There’s no place like Nome,” was not the sort of place one would expect a Bea Cherbourg to vacation. Even to run away to—and I had just seen her with Sara Hutton, happy, it seemed, problem solved, what was there to run away from? Was it research for her film, then, or location scouting? I didn’t know what her script was about, but it was a good assumption that a woman who would describe herself as being somewhat Dorothy Parker-like was not going to tell a story that takes place in Alaska, rural Alaska at that.
    Mike was waiting for me at the curb, reserving by his presence, the parking spot.
    â€œI got a table set aside at Blues+Jazz,” was his greeting.
    â€œFine, “I said and followed him to the restaurant. We entered just as a Jazz trio was finishing up a set with a not half bad rendition of Carmichael’s Stardust. (Ah, Hoagy, not completely forgotten, The Best Years of