Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “You’re old enough to be smart, Mr. Thomas,” the girl said.

  Ken said “Yes” but he wasn’t agreeing to her last statement. He was answering her question.

  THE END

  THE CORPSE THAT PLAYED DEAD

  A. Boyd Correll

  Murder Closes Down on a Hollywood Lot When a Pompous Actor Gives Up the Ghost in the Midst of a Machine-Gun Melodrama!

  WHEN Emil Friml, who had jumped from burlesque to become a big-time Hollywood movie producer in the short course of two years, phoned and said somebody was trying to murder Ronald Edwards, I thought he had a touch of the sun. I nestled the receiver closer to my ear and said: “Listen, Mr. Friml. I’m a detective, supposed to think the worst. But why should anybody hold anything against Edwards? His fans, yes! His pictures smell to high heaven. But fans don’t get into studios—not in wartime, anyhow.”

  I heard Friml sputtering. “Listen, Jimmy Lee.” Everybody calls me Jimmy Lee. “Yesterday he climbed a wall and somebody dropped sandbags at his head. Today we shot a scene of flame-throwers and they threw real flames at him! I tell you, you’ve got to come out here and look into it. And remember, no publicity!”

  I said I would be out. Panamint Studios, who paid Friml a salary that was so big it was difficult to write it all on one check, had me on their call list to take care of disagreeable things like blackmail, inside petty thefts, and other unpleasantries that by rights should go to the police, but would be bad publicity for Panamint.

  The studio was near Santa Monica, off Wilshire Boulevard.

  As I cruised the coupe toward the setting sun, I thought about Ronald Edwards.

  Edwards had appeared from nowhere into star roles in a new series of war pictures Panamint was producing. Friml was head of the unit shooting them.

  However, the films had been so corny and full of hokum that they never made the first-run houses except as added attractions.

  Yet Edwards, who wrote his own scripts, continued to be publicized as though he were a million-dollar draw. I wondered what he had done to the brass hats in the front office to get such a gravy train. Probably hypnotized them, or knew where the body was buried.

  At the studio gates the cop was expecting me. He hopped on the running board and directed me to a parking space, then said Friml had left word I was to meet him on Sound Stage Four.

  I cut across the parking lot to the huge building that housed the sound stages. I expected to find a couple of hundred extras, dressed as Commandos, snaking across scenery made to look like enemy territory. Instead of that, I found a small camera crew setting up in a boarded-off portion of the otherwise deserted stage. Friml was not around.

  ART MABRY, the director and right-hand man to Friml, was bouncing around, supervising the lighting effects and the background scenery. He was a huge man with a sharp face and prematurely gray hair that stood up in a short, startled pompadour. He stopped his bouncing long enough to tell me that Friml was in Edwards’ dressing room.

  I glanced toward that room, a portable affair about fifty feet away in the shadows of the stage. Then I settled down on a stack of scenery flats. Jane Mathis, a script girl whom I had met on a previous job for Panamint, waved. I motioned her over.

  “Hi, beautiful!” I said. “What’s Mabry shooting?”

  Jane sat down beside me. She pushed back her wavy brown hair.

  “Just tying in some scenes and sound effects. Mostly retakes.”

  She peeled a piece of gum and stuck it into her rosebud mouth. I studied her. Her chin had a tilt that suggested she could take care of herself, yet her lips made a man unconsciously lean toward her when she faced him. There was nothing wrong with her figure either, which was draped with a pair of tailored slacks and a tightly-knitted sweater. She flipped the gum wrapper at a passing workman.

  “Friml, as usual, is not satisfied,” she continued. “This story’s edited and in the can, but he took part of it back to the cutting room and demands retakes. Edwards is the hero who plays dead after a burst of machinegun fire and lets the dirty Nazis advance over his beautiful body. Then he ups and blows the blazes out of them from the rear.

  “The same old corn he’s been doing for the past year. However, Friml wasn’t satisfied with the shots of him playing dead while the shooting goes on, so here we are, still doing retakes. Lou says they’ve already spent more on raw film than the picture will gross.”

  I grinned. Lou Mathis was her brother. A handsome kid, whom I had spotted back of the camera when I came in. He had been something of a prodigy in the movie world and had had chances to go East and direct big-time shows on the legitimate stage. However, he liked photography, and had never left his native California. At twenty-one, he was one of Hollywood’s top-rank cameramen.

  “It’s all dough in Lou’s pocket,” I said. “I could do with his salary.”

  “Yeah,” said Jane. “But he told me if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s going into the Army next month and will need the money, he’d tell ’em where they could send the Ronald Edwards pictures. He said his name on the credit titles did him more harm than good.” She yawned and glanced over her shoulder. “Here comes Romeo now.”

  I looked toward the dressing room. Ronald Edwards, in a dusty uniform, was talking with Mabry.

  Edwards was a good-looking guy in a sleek sort of way. His hair was black and full of tight waves. His uniform looked good on him, what with the padded shoulders Wardrobe had furnished and the snazzy Sam Browne belt around his middle.

  Mabry said something to him, and he walked toward a bridge which had been placed by the property men in a set made to look like a blasted waterfront village. The bridge was about seventy-five feet from camera.

  Edwards stretched out on the ground, arranged his hair in careful disorder, and got his profile just right. Mabry stood over him.

  “Okay, Ronny,” I heard Mabry say. “You’re dead, see? We’re shooting around the mob scene. Thank the gods Friml okayed that and it’s in the can. What you’ve got to do all over again is get up while the guns are firing—register hate and determination, and start snaking toward camera, see? Friml said you looked scared in the one I wrapped up.” He glanced over his shoulder, and added, “Personally, I think Friml’s a dope.”

  I AGREED with Mabry that he was a dope. A dope for continuing to splurge money on pictures featuring Ronald Edwards. What kept him doing it was a mystery. My guess was that he held a forlorn hope that one of these Commando stories would be a smash hit and make up for the others which were losses.

  Mabry stepped back of the camera in the shadows.

  “Lights!” he shouted.

  The overhead floodlights blinked out and the stage came to life. It was a bomb-wrecked hamlet. A low rumbling started, grew in intensity, and broke into staccato blasts. A red glow rose from the background scenery. Thin smoke crept over the scene as a machine-gun chattered. A searchlight stabbed the hazy air. I watched the prone figure of Ronny Edwards.

  The tempo of gunfire increased to crescendo, then slackened, sputtered, and faded away. Silence. From out of the darkness and smoke Mabry shouted “Cut!” and I saw him dart before the camera.

  “Hey, Ronny,” he cried. “You missed your cue. You’re supposed to get up during the shooting.”

  The director had reached the star’s side. He bent down—and jerked away. I felt a tightening around the nape of my neck. Edwards had not moved.

  I jumped up from the pile of scenery and started for the prop bridge, with Jane and her brother close behind. I leaned over the actor. A dark red worm of blood was jerking and twisting from his temple, and his throat moved convulsively. He sighed and gurgled. Then the blood stopped jumping, and merely seeped as though no more was left in his body.

  Mabry’s face turned as gray as his short, clipped hair. He backed further away, pushing at the air with his hands.

  Next to me I could see Jane’s fingers biting into the arm of her brother. “They’ve killed him!” she cried shrilly. “Yesterday we
thought the sandbag was an accident, and this morning that flamethrower—”

  Lou Mathis slapped her grasping hand-hard. I heard him whisper “Hush!”

  Emil Friml had suddenly loomed up from nowhere. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next he was. In the ghostly light of the background flares, he looked like Scrooge and the devil rolled into one. His withered leg swung like a pendulum between his good one and the mahogany crutch which supported him. His head, a tremendous load for such a scrawny neck, was covered with a fuzz of colorless hair. His ears were pointed, and belonged on a character from a child’s fairy story book. I had seen him often, but I was always startled when I faced him.

  He balanced himself by holding to the bridge rail, and leaned far over to gaze at the dead actor. At last he looked up.

  “Murderers!” he whispered softly. Then his voice rose to a shrill, hysterical screech. “Murderers!”

  I felt my face flush in sudden anger. The man was acting insanely. Mathis’ arm tightened around his sister’s waist. Mabry jerked his gaze from the corpse to the frenzied producer.

  “Emil!” he said. “You’re talking crazy!”

  The producer turned on him. His voice again was low.

  “Crazy, am I? We’ll see. Three times someone in this unit tried to kill Ronny. The third time they succeeded.” Friml pointed a finger at me. “Jimmy Lee, get over to the main door and don’t let anyone leave. I’m calling the police.”

  He hobbled to a phone attached to a partition near the dressing-room and jiggled the hook viciously.

  AS I STARTED for the door, the background lights, casting their eerie glow of red, suddenly blinked out. The stage was in total darkness. I let out a yelp of surprise, and was smacked flat as someone rushed past me. Jane screamed—a long, piercing cry that echoed and reechoed through the building.

  I heard a thumping as I pushed to my feet and held my hands out to avoid another collision. There was a swishing, grating noise as though a body were being dragged across the floor, then a bump—and silence.

  “Throw the main switch!” That was Mabry, his voice almost hysterical.

  The overhead floods blossomed out like a flash of lightning and I squinted my eyes.

  One of the workmen stood at the light control panel, his hand still on the switch. His eyes were wide with fright. Jane lay on the floor, her hand pressed hard against her mouth. Mabry stood near me. Mathis was diving for his sister on the floor. I glanced toward the telephone and saw Friml, apparently still trying to get his number. He was jiggling the hook.

  “What in thunder’s going on—” I started, when I glanced at the spot where the corpse had been. The body was gone.

  Under the bridge a head appeared, raised further from the ditch underneath, and a man climbed onto the stage proper. He was a sallow-complexioned fellow of about thirty, with a slightly bulging forehead, a head almost bald, and a body so thin it looked emaciated. He stared at the faces around him and swept an arm across his sweating face. “Who—who dropped the corpse of Ronny Edwards on me?” he demanded, in a quavering voice.

  I recognized him then. He was Lyle Bradford, Mabry’s assistant. I darted past him and looked into the ditch below the bridge. Crumpled in a heap was Edwards’ body, the mouth gaping, the eyes open and glazed. Around him was the electrical equipment Bradford had been operating. But why had Bradford stayed there when the death was discovered? Friml had certainly shouted “Murderers!” loud enough to bring him out.

  I told everyone to keep away from the bridge, then went to the stage entrance. Friml, at last, had the police on the wire. . .

  When Detective-Lieutenant Tom Callahan arrived with a couple of plainclothesmen and the medical examiner, he found two groups of silent people. The five stage hands, who had been working on the set, were huddled together near the camera. Jane and her brother, Bradford and Mabry were sitting on the stacked scenery I had vacated when Edwards was shot. Friml stood slightly away from them, swaying on his crutch and staring at the property bridge. After letting Callahan in, I followed him.

  The detective was a debonair cop if there ever was one. He fitted his district, which was Hollywood, as perfectly as the scores of celebrities who make up its glamour. His tailored tweed suit must have cost him half a month’s salary, and the expensive Homburg hat pulled over his short, smartly-clipped graying hair suggested a well-to-do sportsman rather than a cop.

  His eyes, though, were as official as the gold badge pinned to his wallet. They were slate-colored and as cold as a death sentence. He gave me a curt nod of recognition, and went straight to Friml.

  The producer looked at him with smoldering eyes.

  “Someone here murdered my star,” he said flatly. “I want that person found, and”—he pounded the floor with his crutch—“I don’t want any publicity!”

  Callahan pushed back his hat. I could see a faint smirk creasing one side of his face.

  “Mr. Friml, murder news isn’t censored in Hollywood. Not even at the request of a great producer.” He ignored an angry glance. “Where is the body?”

  “Over here,” I said, motioning to the bridge. “He was shot at this spot, but the lights went out and someone dumped him into this ditch.”

  CALLAHAN leaned over the bridge, gazed at the body a moment, then walked toward the group of stage hands. He spoke to them briefly. I couldn’t hear his words. He nodded to one of the cops.

  “Take ’em outside somewhere and frisk ’em. I’ll talk with them later.”

  After the workmen had left, Callahan climbed down into the ditch and ran deft hands through Edwards’s pockets. He transferred papers and trinkets to a large envelope which he slipped into his own pocket. Back on the stage, he motioned to the medical examiner.

  “It’s yours,” he said. He walked to the group of movie people, pulled up a folding chair which had “Art Mabry” stenciled on it, and sat down.

  “All right, let’s have it,” he said briskly. “Everything that happened before Edwards was shot.” He settled back and lit a cigarette.

  Mabry started to bounce forward, but Friml pushed him aside.

  “It started yesterday. Ronny had to scale a fourteen-foot wall, on the top of which were sandbags. When he reached the base of the wall, two sandbags toppled down and missed him by inches. If either one of them had landed on Ronny it could easily have broken his neck.”

  Callahan flipped ashes from his cigarette. “Who placed the sandbags on the wall?”

  Friml shrugged. Bradford ran a nervous hand through his remaining hair.

  “I did.”

  The detective turned his cold eyes on the assistant director, raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  Bradford squirmed. “At least, I directed the placing of them. I was behind the wall when the scene was shot.”

  Callahan leaned forward smiling. He ground out his cigarette with his heel.

  “Interesting,” he said. “And you pushed the sandbags on Ronny’s head?”

  Bradford’s loose-lipped mouth gaped open.

  “No! No! I was busy watching the lighting effects.”

  Callahan nodded complacently and settled back in his chair. “Okay. You didn’t push the sandbags. Where were you when Edwards was shot?”

  “I was in that ditch,” Bradford said.

  “And of course you came out immediately he was found dead?”

  The assistant director turned pale.

  “No, I—I fainted! Honest, I fainted! Friml shouted ‘Murderers!’ and I just fainted.” He flipped his hands around helplessly. “I’ve got a weak heart, so help me. I’m listed Four-F with my Draft Board on account of it. I woke up to find Ronny’s body on top of me.”

  Callahan grinned broadly in Bradford’s face.

  “Well, well!” he said. “You fainted!” He rolled a cigarette in his hand. “Let’s go back. What else happened before the murder?”

  Friml stumped forward on his crutch.

  “This morning we were doing some retakes of a flame-throwing
scene. The flames were supposed to shoot behind Ronny, but they shot at him. If his clothes had not been soaking wet from him having supposedly swum a river, he would have been badly burned.”

  Callahan turned to Bradford again.

  “And were you ‘directing’ the flamethrowers?”

  Bradford yanked at his collar. “Well, yes, I was. But, curse it, man, that’s my job!” The assistant suddenly flew into a rage. “As far as that’s concerned,” he yelled, “I was behind the scenes, directing the machine-gun fire and the lighting effects when Edwards was killed, but you can’t pin this killing on me!”

  Callahan hooked a fresh cigarette into his mouth.

  “And why can’t we pin this on you?”

  BRADFORD rubbed his temples and stared at the detective.

  “Because all the sound effects on this set are canned. There’s not a gun on the stage!”

  “What do you mean,” Callahan said, “there’s no gun on the stage?”

  “I mean the firing came off the sound track. You can’t buy blanks during war time, and we use prop sound. I was running a projector and amplifier in sync with the action. You’ll find the equipment under the bridge.”

  Callahan rubbed his close-shaven jaw. “Then you turned out the lights?” Bradford was lighting a cigarette shakily.

  “I must have fallen against the switch when I fainted and—”

  He was interrupted by a shout. The remaining plainclothesman, who had been probing over the set, came running toward his superior.

  “Hey, Chief!” he said, holding out an object wrapped in a handkerchief. “Here’s a thirty-eight I found under the camera.”

  Callahan reached for the gun. He waved it under his nose, then flipped the chamber open. He cocked an eyebrow at Bradford.

  “No gun on the set, eh? Who was behind the camera when Edwards was shot?”

  I saw Jane move closer to her brother. He started to push forward, but Mabry was ahead of him.

  “I was,” said the director. “I was about ten or fifteen feet behind it. But,” he added, “there were two stage hands alongside me. They’ll tell you I didn’t shoot Ronny, and I’m sure they didn’t.”