~ CHAPTER FOUR DECLAN

Swinging from chandeliers, throwing myself off trains, stepping in to take punches meant for more famous jaws—Pep had me everywhere. The phone hadn’t quit ringing since I’d stepped off the Kress building’s roof. Productions only had to say, “D’you think he could—” before Pep would jump in with YES, HE CAN. If I ever complained he’d respond, “You’re the one who only wants to stay in Hollywood a year. Gotta make the most of it, Duke!”

“Making the most of it” turned out to mean booking jobs at Silver Wing Studios, the biggest outfit in the city, with the highest pay, the best opportunities, and the greatest commissary I’d ever had the pleasure of tucking in at. Set far to the west end of the city, a quiet neighborhood of empty lots and dumpy stores, the studio itself wasn’t much to look at: acres of concrete roads, boxy soundstages like looming warehouses, squat offices with stenciled signs. Sunbaked and sterile, the lot felt as lifeless as the surface of the moon, the occasional halfhearted bush gasping in the heat and wondering where all the orange trees went.

Pep exploded with excitement anytime we made it through Silver Wing’s famous colonnade. He couldn’t stop pointing out the stars, the producers—I had to tackle him when he spotted Irving Reynolds, Silver

Wing’s legendary president, strolling the lot with three secretaries trailing behind like devoted dogs. I barely noticed any of them.

My eyes kept catching on the faces of the women on the lot. Not the starlets, not the dancers with their long legs, but the script supervisors, the seamstresses, the assistants: women pushing their thirties, cloche hats pulled over short hair, worry lines at the edges of their mouths.

“Distracted?”

Sitting in the commissary, my hair still wet from that night’s pirate ship brawl, I pulled my attention from a group of chatting women at the bar across the room and looked back at Pep.

“What’s that?” I asked, taking a sip of water. “You said . . . there’s a war movie?”

Pep gave me a flat look and then turned back to glance at the women, his mouth pulling into a sly smile. “Lookin’ for company?”

“Wh-What?” Coughing, I set my glass down, and then I realized he wasn’t looking across the room but at the table next to us, a trio of giggling mermaids with metallic paint dusted over shoulders and cheeks, making them glow purple and pink.

Pep’s smile spread into a grin. “Let’s see what kind of Champagne mermaids like.”

I knew what Pep had in mind, and I didn’t want to spend my evening at the Embassy Club, trying to convince the bartender I was old enough to drink. Even though we hadn’t eaten yet, I stood up and patted Pep on the shoulder.

“Don’t spend too much of our money.”

The sun had set, the temperature outside finally low enough that I could slip on my jacket as I walked from the commissary to the Main Gate, but the air . . . A cinematographer on one of my jobs had explained to me that Los Angeles sat in a bowl created by the mountains, and it trapped all manner of heat, fumes, smoke. The air tasted wrong. Choking. Sour. It was the opposite of the Mission, high on a hill, the green of Mission Park warmed by a perfect circle of blue sky while the rest of the city hid behind murky fog. Whenever I pointed this out to Pep, he accused me of dramatics, but I couldn’t help feeling like we’d left paradise for a city that wanted to poison us.

“Declan Collins?”

As I passed through the Main Gate, a middle-aged man stepped in front of me, a gray felt fedora obscuring his face.

“If you want to book me,” I said, “you need to go through my manager.”

The man smiled and set his fists on his hips, pulling his coat open. My eyes went right to his side, to the gun holstered at his belt.

“Actually, Declan, I wanted to talk to you.” In spite of his smile, I felt wariness prickle at the back of my neck.

Was he a cop? A thug? A man waiting outside the studio gates with a gun wasn’t someone I cared to meet. Pep would’ve been able to talk us out of this situation, but Pep wasn’t here.

“Yeah, I don’t think—” I started, and when the man took a step closer to me, I turned and hurried down the sidewalk.

“Hey! Hold on—”

The Silver Wing studio sat in a triangle between broad streets—not many places to lose a man with a gun. I made the first turn I could and spotted a small parking lot with about a dozen cars. Crouching, I ducked behind a forest-green Ford and was listening for the sound of footsteps when I felt a hand grab me from behind and push me up against the car.

“Gotcha!”

I kicked and struggled, shouting at him to let me go while he shook me like a puppy.

“Kid—kid! Damn it, kid, quit fighting!” He pulled back, tilting my face into the beam of a streetlamp. “Declan Collins, right? Stunt man?”

“No, whatever you heard—”

“Quiet. I’m not police, and I’m not gonna hurt you. I want to hire you. Not for a stunt.”

His words made me go still, and carefully, he took a step back, hands raised like I was a wild animal.

“Let’s just talk. You wanna eat something? Lemme get you dinner, I’ll explain the whole thing.” He cocked his head at me and pointed down the street. “There’s a diner, end of the block. You gotta eat, right? Dinner, for ten minutes of your time. Deal?”

Without waiting for a response, he looped his arm around my shoulders and led me along beside him while my mind spun.

Hire me? For what? Who was he? I wasn’t sure what to say, what to do—Pep had spoken for me for so long, I felt a little lost, and before I could figure out how to get away, the man said with a smile, “Here we are.”

The “diner” didn’t look like much: a cramped kitchen set back from the street in shadows, hardly big enough to hold customers. But the windows glowed with warm light, and the smell of food made my stomach growl. The man started up the front stairs, which groaned in protest, and as he pushed through the door, the waiter sang out a hello to him.

“How you do, Sam? Usual?”

“Yeah. And a burger for the kid.” He looked at me. “You drink cola? Pop? Get the kid a soda, Johnny, would you?” The place didn’t have any tables or booths— or other customers—just a line of stools set along a counter. The man eased his large frame onto one, tucking his arms in like wings. “Come on. Sit.”

I could run, but curiosity and hunger won out, so I slumped down to a stool. In the grimy light of the diner, I could get a better look at his face. He seemed to be in his thirties, with a stiff brush of gray shadow covering his cheeks. He’d set his hat on the stool next to him, and his dark-blond hair, longish but slicked back, still showed the crease of his hatband. He wore a faint smile, his skin sallow and slack like he didn’t get much sleep, shadows under his eyes, which were trained on my hands, shaking on the narrow counter.

Quick, I jerked them away.

“Take a picture,” I said, and he laughed.

“Just admiring them. Good hands. Strong, you know. Anyway.” He leaned forward. “I saw you, jumping from the Kress Five and Ten last month. Wanted to say hello but you slipped away too quick. Sam Cranston.” He shifted on the stool, stuck out his hand, but I didn’t move. “You know, that was a helluva thing. Couldn’t get it out of my mind. How’d you do it, kid?”

My throat felt dry. “Practice.”

“Bullshit. There’s years of experience, and there’s whatever the hell you are. It’s the kinda thing that sticks in a person’s head, you know? Hey, let me tell you a story.” He smiled, laced his hands together on the counter. “My pop, God rest, loved boxing. A few years back he tells me I gotta come out and see this kid. Unbelievable. I expected Dad to say he had smooth feet, quick hands, but no. The kid’s skills were weak, couldn’t hardly throw a punch. But take a punch? The way Dad went on about it, it was like watching a speed bag up there, like he couldn’t even feel the hits.”

As he spoke, a damp cold worked up the back of my neck, every nerve in my body screaming at me to get up and go.

“So Dad dragged me out there. It was incredible. The kid just stood and took it. Knock him down and he’d pop right up again. A regular jack-in-the-box, till the other guy plumb wore himself out. Craziest thing.

But then he disappeared from the circuit, never did hear about him again. You know what they called him?” He smiled at me while I stared back at him. “Kid Duke.”

His words brought back the day of the sixty-foot jump. Pep shouting for me, calling out the boxing name he’d picked years before.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice quiet.

“Just answer a question, all right? I saw you take punches strong enough to split a full-grown man in half. A few weeks ago, you jumped off a building and landed on a piece of wood that would’ve skewered a pig. And don’t start about padding or lucky breaks,” he said when I opened my mouth. “I’m looking at you, and I don’t see a scar, scrape, or scab on you. Kid.” His voice dropped and he leaned in close.

“I’ve got my thirty-eight on my hip. What I want to know is: If I put a bullet right between your eyes, would it even break the skin? Hey, Johnny, that looks great! Just set ’em both there, thanks much.”

He leaned back as two plates slid onto the counter. The colors of the food looked too bright, the shapes swirling together, the smell of grease turning my stomach. I looked up at Sam, busy tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt.

“You . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He reached for one of his French fries and dragged it through a puddle of ketchup. “Let me tell you something, and I hope it sets you at ease.” With the fry raised in the air, he paused. “You’re not in any trouble, all right? I don’t understand it, I don’t want to. I mean, you stick a knife in my gut, I’m done, but if I try it out on you? What happens? The knife breaks? Hey, eat something. Don’t let that bun get soggy.”

He nudged my plate before turning to his own meal, a sandwich sliced into neat triangles.

“Go on. You look like you’re about to slide onto the floor.”

I picked up the burger and took a bite.

“See? It’s good. My cousin’s brother-in-law owns the place. That means I get the family discount.”

While I chewed, the food like sand in my mouth, Sam leaned forward again. “It’s okay to smile, kid.”

“You haven’t told me what you want.” I set the burger down, and he sat up straight again.

“All right,” he said. “I’m a P.I. Private investigator. Before that, it was fi fteen years at the L.A.P.D., and you know what my days looked like? Phone calls. Phone calls from parents in Missouri and Michigan. Little towns from sea to shining sea. They tell me their girls got on trains or hopped into cars with slick-haired strangers and came here, Hollywood, to chase their dreams. Maybe they called home once or twice, maybe they wrote letters. Some found work. Most—nothing. And their families never heard from them again.”

As he spoke, I felt my nerves go tight as piano wire. I knew all this.

“Girls go missing in Hollywood for the same reasons girls go missing anywhere else. Usually, if you do a little digging, you can fi nd them. Some of these girls, though, it’s like they disappear.” Shift ing awkwardly on the stool, he reached into his jacket pocket and placed on the counter—

A magazine? A glassy-eyed actress smiled from the cover. Sam raised his sandwich again and in between bites said, “Page twenty-three.”

When I fl ipped through I found a photo of a row of smiling young women. Someone had drawn a red circle in pencil around the one all the way on the left , a pretty girl with a dimple in her right cheek.

“What am I looking at?”

“Irma Van Pelt. Arrived in Hollywood a year ago. Couple background parts, bit roles, had a contract with Silver Wing. Whispers around the studio were that she was a little too friendly with some of the fellas on the lot. More interested in socializing than making it to set on time, and her contract didn’t get renewed. People thought she left the city in a huff, but then last fall, her parents rang up the precinct where I worked. They hadn’t heard from her in weeks, and they said the last time she called, she’d sounded scared. Kept repeating that the movie business wasn’t what she thought it’d be.” Sam tapped a fi nger right on Irma Van Pelt’s dimpled cheek. “I looked into it, and you know what I found? More Irmas. Some going back years. Girls knock on doors, sign contracts, maybe make a few pictures, and then disappear. Not home to Idaho or Poughkeepsie. Just . . . gone.”

Irma Van Pelt stared up at me from the page, her eyes sparkling, her mouth pulled into a smile so pure it practically shot sunbeams into this dingy diner . . .

Quickly, I closed the magazine.

“Silver Wing runs this city,” Sam continued, “including the police. When I started sniffi ng around, my C.O. told me to knock it off. When I didn’t quit, I got canned.” He shrugged. “I gave the Van Pelts the bad news the case would get buried, and they decided to hire me themselves. They’ve got money. What they needed was someone on the ground in California to fi nd out what happened to their daughter. Now they have me.”

“Then why do you need me?”

Sam paused. “Th is doesn’t leave the room, all right, kid?” He gave me a level look and reached into his jacket again, pulling out a press clipping, a shot of two men. Right away, I recognized the round glasses and mild expression of Irving Reynolds, president of Silver Wing Studios, but I had no clue about the other man, brick-faced with a haircut so even you could use it to draft architectural plans.

“Irving Reynolds is the most powerful man in Los Angeles,” Sam said, his voice hushed, and he tapped a fi nger on the mystery man’s face, “and that’s how he does it. Richard Mulvey. On paper, he’s Silver Wing’s general manager. He gets the electricity bills paid and the grass cut, but the real reason Reynolds hired him is to make all Silver Wing’s problems disappear.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Oh, you know. The kind clean-cut studios don’t want the public to know about. Like maybe one of their wholesome leading ladies has some photos floating around that only her husband should see. Or a cowboy’s got a reputation for taking young fellas home with him. With committees of concerned citizens harping on about the Sodom and Gomorrah of Hollywood, Reynolds knows he’s gotta run a clean studio, on-screen and off, so he sends Mulvey out to hide, bribe, or disappear the mess. If there are bodies buried—figurative or . . . y’ know—Mulvey would know. But he’s a tough character, kid. Reynolds imported him straight from Jersey. He’s got mob connections and he’s not afraid to use them, or even get his hands dirty himself.” Sam tucked the photo back into his jacket. “I hired a couple men to get close to him. The fi rst died in a movie stunt gone wrong.”

“What about the second?”

Sam set down his sandwich. “Suicide, according to the studio, but pretty unusual for someone to kill himself with five bullets.” He shrugged.

“I can’t prove what happened, but I’m guessing Mulvey had a hand in it. I quit hiring people after that—too risky. Then I remembered the kid who had no fear.”

I blinked, not understanding what he was saying until it hit me in a rush: he wanted me to be a spy inside Silver Wing Studios. The biggest studio—the biggest anything—in the city, and he wanted me to go against them.

“No, I don’t— That’s not—” I shook my head. “I’m a stunt man. Barely. I’m a nobody. I don’t have a contract with Silver Wing. I don’t even have a studio pass!”

“You don’t—” Sam put a hand on my arm, but I pulled away quick, knocking into the counter and sending the plates rattling.

“You’re asking me to go up against Irving Reynolds. You said it yourself—he owns everything in this city. The police, the politicians, the hospitals. Sure, he can’t send this Mulvey guy to break my kneecaps, but there are other ways to ruin somebody. I have a friend counting on me, a good person. He believes in me, he got me this work, I owe him, and I’m only here to make us money. That’s it! I’m leaving soon, all right? I can’t chase down missing girls, that’s not— Did you ever think maybe those girls aren’t missing? Maybe they just didn’t want to go back to their families.”

Sam stared at me like I’d started speaking in German.

“You think someone would do that? Cut their family off without a word?”

I had my chin raised. “Th is city changes people. Maybe the Van Pelts don’t know their daughter as well as they think.”

“Hey—” Sam started, but I was gone. Out the door, onto the street, the winter air cool on my flushed cheeks, my heart beating so fast my head spun. I’d only just reached the end of the corner when I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.

“Kid, come on . . .” Sam held out a card before pushing it into my