The Prince of Beverly Hills Read Free Page A

bookkeeper.
    “He’s in the hangar,” she said, barely looking up from her ledgers.
    Rick strolled into the hangar to find his father changing the oil in the smaller of his two airplanes. He was dressed in his suit trousers, a white shirt and a tie. Rick grabbed two sets of coveralls from a shelf, got into one and handed the other to his father. “Put these on, Dad. You’ll ruin your clothes.”
    “You sound just like your mother,” Jack Barron said, struggling into the coveralls. “What brings you out here?”
    Rick walked around the airplane and peered at the other side of the engine. “It’s my day off. I thought I’d see how you’re doing.” He picked up a wrench and tightened a fuel line fitting, then began looking for other anomalies.
    “I’m doing fine,” Jack said. “You want to fly a party down to San Diego for me this afternoon?”
    “Sorry, Dad, I’ve got an appointment at Centurion Studios at four.”
    “They making you a movie star?”
    “I don’t think that’s what they’ve got in mind,” Rick said, laughing, “but a guy named Eddie Harris seems to have something in mind.”
    “I’ve heard of him,” Jack said. “I could use some business from those people, if you get a chance to mention it.”
    “I’ll do that at the first opportunity.”
    Rick noticed an airplane he hadn’t seen before—a Lockheed Vega—parked in a corner of the hangar. “Who belongs to the bush plane?” he asked.
    “New customer. I’m leasing it from him.”
    The two men worked on quietly for a while.
    “I heard you’re back in uniform,” Jack said.
    “Afraid so,” Rick replied.
    “Heard it was something to do with a girl.”
    “It was.”
    “Figures.”
    “You want to hear about it?”
    “Only if you want to tell it.”
    “I was seeing this girl, and she turned out to be Captain O’Connell’s niece.”
    “Wouldn’t think that would upset anybody all that much, unless you got her in trouble.”
    Rick blushed, in spite of himself. “Well, yeah.”
    “She still in trouble?”
    “Don’t worry, you’re not going to be a grandfather.”
    “Not ever?”
    “Never say never.”
    “Well, I guess you can handle it. You always land on your feet, you do.”
    “I try.”
    “You ever want to fly for me, come into the business, it’s here.”
    “Thanks, Dad, I appreciate that.”
    “So how long’s it going to take for you to get the gold badge back?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want it back.” That was a lie.
    “What do you want? I’ve always wondered.”
    “Me, too,” Rick replied.
    The two men continued working on the airplane.

3

    THE GUARD AT THE CENTURION main gate wrote down Rick’s name and issued him a visitor’s pass, then gave him directions to the administration building. Rick put the pass on the dashboard of his ’32 Chevy coupe and drove onto the studio lot. The night before had been his first visit to a movie studio, and he was interested to see it in daylight. He drove down a street that looked like New York, with neat brownstones lined up, curtains in their windows. When he turned a corner, he saw that they were only facades, propped up by scaffolding.
    He found the administration building and parked in a visitor’s spot. There was an array of expensive cars in the lot—sedans, convertibles and roadsters—with people’s names lettered in gilt on little signs. In Eddie Harris’s spot was parked a black Lincoln Continental convertible, very new. Rick entered the building and came to a desk where a uniformed studio guard took his name and directed him to an elevator to the third floor.
    A receptionist greeted him and asked him to take a seat. The waiting room was lushly furnished, with movie posters on the walls and an array of trade publications arranged on a coffee table. He had been seated for only a moment when a handsome woman in her forties appeared.
    “Mr. Barron? I’m Celia Warren, Mr. Harris’s assistant. Would you come with me,