After giving her one of the most insincere smiles Palm Springs had seen since Tammy Faye Bakker sold her house, Lynn Cutter did what she figured he'd do: He drove straight to The Furnace Room.
By the time Lynn entered the saloon it looked like someone had tossed a smoke grenade. Everybody was always bitching about the lousy air conditioning, but this night was the worst. Lynn took a few gulps of outside oxygen and practiced shallow breathing.
Wilfred Plimsoll, wearing a peacock-blue Ascot, spotted Lynn when he bellied up to the bar. The old actor poured him a double Scotch, then went back to a thespian argument with a pair of drunks who had "conventioneer" written all over them.
Wilfred bellowed, "De Niro! Pacino! Only the serious artists work on the boards!"
One of the locals, a retired dentist with a mouse-gray hairpiece going green around the sideburns, said, "Like Magic Johnson, Wilfred?"
Wilfred moaned painfully. "Not those boards! I'm not talking slam dunks! The boards! The stage! Where the bard speaks!"
"Movies're where it's at today," one of the conventioneers insisted.
"You oughtta simmer down, Wilfred," the dentist advised. "I've seen blood clots with better color."
"The age of enlightenment this isn't!" Wilfred cried. "Don't you people understand? The first cousin of today's cinema is the comic book!"
Lynn noticed that Wilfred had done some work on lawyers that day. A new sign over the cash register was headed, "Nature Guide to the Desert."
And below that, "Endangered species: Fringe-toed Lizard, Bighorn Sheep, Honest Lawyer (If the latter is ever spotted, do not attempt to feed ordinary lawyer bait: i. E., greenbacks, cocaine, hookers, deep-pocket defendants, adolescent boys.)"
Wilfred Plimsoll had assumed his stubborn Franklin Roosevelt pose. The cigarette holder danced as his jaw jutted presidentially.
The booziest conventioneer turned to Lynn Cutter. "Did he really have a part in Mildred Pierce? I just loved Joan Crawford."
"Yeah, but he's a real Shakespearean," Lynn said. "Only guy west a Buckingham Palace that can blow out a candle saying why or when or whoopee cushion."
The dentist, who had sonar like a bat when a free drink was in the offing, sidled up and said, "Wilfred's been in lots of movies. I saw him standing behind Cyd Charisse in that picture with Fred Astaire. Cyd and Tony Martin come to town a lot. I did a root canal on her maid's sister. Wanna hear about it?"
Another drunken tourist turned to Lynn and said, "Hey, buddy, where's the action in this town? And I don't mean these old actresses. Best-looking actress I seen so far coulda played the lizard in Night of the Iguana. Any broads around here young enough their vaginal walls ain't collapsed?"
"Hey, don't sell The Furnace Room short," Lynn said. "It's a hotbed of intrigue. Only reason it's so tame tonight is the temperature dropped five degrees; When it's cool outside these pensioners get sorta quiet. When it heats up this whole joint goes on a rampage. Sorta like a yeast infection."
Wilfred Plimsoll, who'd won fifty bucks betting on the L. A. Kings that evening, aimed his cigarette holder at the wall clock, and with a sidelong glance at Lynn's glass poured half a refill saying, "On the house, my boy."
"Armageddon comes to Palm Springs!" Lynn said. "Must be the end a the world!"
"Not so loud!" Wilfred said in a stage whisper.
"Are you Detective Lynn Cutter," asked a boyish tenor behind him. The speaker was obscured by cigar smoke and by two pensioners, one of them so loaded his hearing aid was in backwards. The deaf guy kept saying, "Speak up! Speak up!" to everybody.
"Who wants to know?" Lynn asked the boy tenor, trying to nudge the deaf pensioner aside.
The old guy yelled, "Can't ya say excuse me?"
"Excuse me," Lynn said.
"Speak up, goddamnit!" the pensioner hollered at him.
Lynn leaned toward the old guy's ear and said, "Either turn your hearing aid around or lemme hang on to it and you do the lindy hop or the hokey pokey. One spin'll set it right, okay?"
"What? Can't you speak up?" the old geezer yelled.
Lynn finally got a good look at the owner of the tenor voice. He was a short kid with red hair, big blue eyes and a Bugs Bunny grin. He wore jeans, red lizard cowboy boots and an L. A. Raiders sweatshirt. "Are you Detective Lynn Cutter?" the young man repeated.
"Yeah, who're you?"
"My name's Nelson Hareem," he said, showing Lynn his police I. D. card "I work at . . ."
"You the one they call Dirty Hareem?"
Nelson sighed, hung his head a bit and nodded. "Uh huh."
"AKA Half-Nelson?"