by Bill Crider
.
.
WE’LL ALWAYS
HAVE MURDER
WE’LL ALWAYS
HAVE MURDER
A HUMPHREY BOGART MYSTERY
BILL CRIDER
new york
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CHAPTER
1
Jack Warner’s plan had been to make Buck Sterling (real name, Seymour Grape) the new Gary Cooper. Buck had the look of a westerner, even though he’d been born in Pittsburgh and lived there most of his life, but when he made his first oater, a little problem cropped up: Buck developed an unfortunate interest in horses, especially palominos. Maybe it was that golden color, or maybe it wasn’t.
Whatever it was, the attraction was real.
It’s dandy, of course, for a cowboy to love his horse, but he shouldn’t carry it to the lengths that Buck did. There was just something about a palomino he couldn’t resist, and it wouldn’t do for the public to find out the whole sordid tale.
“And God help us if the son of a bitch ever gets near a big star like Trigger,” Jack Warner told me. “Roy Rogers will gun him down.”
“I think Trigger’s a male,” I said.
“What difference does that make? You’ll have to do something about Sterling, Scott, and do it quick.”
Terry Scott, that’s me, and my job when I’m working for Warner is to make sure that the studio’s dirty little secrets, of which there are plenty, remain secret. Which explains why I went to Arizona and fetched Buck from the Cactus Valley Dude Ranch where he’d gone for what he told Mr. Warner was “a little vacation.” The ranch owner 1
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
had cabled Mr. Warner that Buck was making a nuisance of himself in the stables.
There was a little trouble when I got to the dude ranch, as there often is when I try to interfere with the course of true love, but it wasn’t too bad. I got out of it with nothing more than a set of scraped knuckles. Buck, on the other hand, got his nose rearranged in such a way that gave his face a bit of character that had been lacking before, not that he thanked me for it.
I managed to settle up with the owner of the Cactus Valley and with his foreman. They were the only two people who’d found out about Buck’s unsettling tendencies, and I got Buck back to the studio without a single reporter finding out. I left him to Mr. Warner, but I had a feeling that Buck had made his last western, though probably not his last picture. After all, Song of the Cimarron had made a couple million bucks, and that was the kind of thing that warmed the cockles of Mr. Warner’s heart. That’s assuming he had cockles. And assuming he had a heart. At any rate, the studio would find something for Buck to do. Maybe they’d put him in one of those gangster movies that Warner Brothers did so well. There wasn’t much danger of Buck falling for a Chevrolet. If they decided not to fix his nose, Buck could easily play a tough guy.
After I left the studio, I went to my office to make out the bill for services rendered, plus expenses. Mr. Warner pays me fairly well for the little jobs I do for him. At least he pays me more than the forty bucks a day I get from my other clients. That doesn’t mean I have an office in Beverly Hills, though. It’s in L.A., and not the best part of town at that.
The studio has its own security force to handle its ordinary problems with the law, naturally, but some problems require more finesse and intelligence than the ordinary studio cop can muster. That’s why Mr.
Warner keeps me on retainer. I’m no Einstein for brains or Cary Grant for suave, but I’m willing to go to Arizona at a moment’s notice, and I have a talent for keeping my mouth shut. Louella has never been able to claim me for a source. Hedda thinks I’m a granite statue. You’ll never hear about me on the Jimmy Fiddler show. The silents may be dead, but in some cases silence is still golden in Hollywoodland.
I brushed some of the dust off my desk, went through the mail that had accumulated in the floor beneath the door slot, and sat back to 2
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
wait for the phone to ring. I knew it would, sooner or later. There’s always work for a private investigator in California: a missing daughter, a cheating husband, a thieving employee. I take whatever comes along. A guy has to make a living, after all.
3
CHAPTER
2
Iwas dreaming about something that involved me, Rita Hayworth, and a tube of Burma-Shave when the ringing phone jarred me awake. I’d fallen asleep tipped back in the desk chair, and I nearly toppled over before I fumbled the phone off the hook. I have no idea exactly what was going on in the dream, which was too bad. You can never recapture a moment like that.
“Scott Detective Agency,” I said muzzily into the phone. “We never sleep.”
“Have you been drinking, Scott?” Mr. Warner asked.
My tongue felt as if it had been dipped in a hotel ashtray. I said,
“No, sir. I don’t drink.”
Which was more or less the truth.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Warner said. “I need you at the studio.”
I took a bleary look at my wristwatch. It was five-thirty, which meant that I’d been asleep for quite a while and that Mr. Warner was working very late. And that there was obviously some kind of emer-gency that needed my unique talents, such as they were.
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
I could hear Mr. Warner hang up as soon as the words were out of my mouth. He wasn’t one for wasting time, yours or his. I rubbed my 5
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
eyes, thinking that the trip to Arizona had taken more out of me than I thought. Or maybe Rita Hayworth had.
I left the chair, closed the office, and went down to my pre-War Chevrolet, the 1940 model, which was all I could afford when I got discharged. It was still running like a sewing machine, though not getting quite the mileage that a well tuned Singer would.
It was a warm day, and the late-afternoon sky was full of exhaust fumes and a smoke-colored haze. I turned the wing-vents in to let a little of the hot, hazy air blow into the car, sneezing a couple of times as it tickled my nose.
All around me were cars full of men going home to kick off their shoes, have a drink, and read the paper or listen to One Man’s Family.
The war was over, and life was good. They’d managed to find housing, and there was no more gas rationing. Their wives would have cooked them a nourishing meal with real butter, also no longer rationed.
Their kids would show them report cards with all A’s on them.
The burger joints weren’t busy yet, but before long the neon lights would come on, the jalopies would pull in, and the bobbysoxers would be there with their fellas, drinking malts and eating french fries.
Meanwhile I was on my way to hear some sordid story about the asinine antics of some moronic movie star and figure out how to keep everything on the q.t. Well, it was a living.
In any
other city in the world, the huge soundstages of the Warner Brothers Studio would make it look like part of the warehouse district.
Judging from the outside, it’s hard to believe that dreams are being captured on film in those buildings.
I drove up to the main gate and the man on duty waved me on through. I don’t have a pass stuck on the windshield, but all the gatekeepers know me on sight. Maybe it’s just the car they recognize.
At any rate, I never have any trouble getting in.
Security is a little tighter in the executive building, but I knew the studio cop on duty at the desk.
“Hey, Joe,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Warner.”
Joe had been a stuntman in the silent days, and he still had the limp to prove it. He gave me a tired smile and said, “He told me, Scotty. Go ahead.”
Mr. Warner’s secretary wasn’t in the outer office, so I went on past 6
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
her desk and tapped on the Big Guy’s door. A muffled voice told me to come in.
I opened the door and stepped inside. Far away on the opposite side of the room, Mr. Warner sat at his desk, on which a skilled pilot could probably have landed a P-38. Take-off might have been a little tricky, though.
Mr. Warner was a dapper guy, slim, trim, and tanned. Since he was around the studio so much, I don’t know when he got out in the sun.
He was always so well dressed that you wondered if he had a tailor stationed in the next room.
Sitting beside the desk in one of the big brown leather visitors’
chairs was a man smoking a cigarette. He looked vaguely familiar, but he was so far away that I needed to get closer to see who he was.
I stuck my hat on the rack by the door and trekked across a carpet so thick that it was almost like walking in deep sand. Rumor had it that one contract player who’d been called to a meeting with Mr.
Warner sank down into the carpet about halfway to the desk and was never seen again.
I arrived at one of the big chairs only slightly weak in the knees and saw that the man sitting in the other one was Humphrey Bogart.
That was odd, since of all the Warner Brothers crew, he was one actor I’d never been called about.
It wasn’t that he led an especially quiet life. In fact, when he was married to Mayo Methot, he was in more fights than Dempsey in his prime. Sluggy, as Bogart called Mayo—and with good reason—won her share of fights, according to all reports. Once she even stabbed him. All in good fun, of course.
Normally that kind of behavior was frowned on by the studios, but the Battling Bogarts could get away with it. For whatever reason, maybe because they never tried to cover things up or maybe because they just didn’t give a damn, they didn’t attract the disapproval of the gossip columnists or the public. That marriage hadn’t lasted, and now he was married to Betty Bacall, living the quiet life.
Warner didn’t bother to stand up when I reached his desk. He said,
“Have you met Humphrey Bogart?”
I said that I hadn’t. Bogart did stand. He stuck his cigarette in his mouth, squinting as the smoke curled up into his face, and offered me his hand. I shook it and said, “Terry Scott. Pleased to meet you.”
7
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Bogart said without removing the cigarette and with only a hint of the sarcasm for which he was famous. He had the almost-but-not-quite lisp that his fans loved, caused, I supposed by the fact that when he spoke his upper lip hardly moved. It had been frozen by the injury that caused the small scar visible on it.
He was about the same height I am, which is to say of noble stature, at least in Hollywood, where five-feet, seven inches passes for tall.
He was thin, almost frail-looking, but when he spoke, his voice was so commanding that he seemed bigger and tougher. He wasn’t wearing his hairpiece. That was a little surprising since most actors I’d become acquainted with never took theirs off. I think they even slept in them.
He had luggage under his eyes and looked as if he needed a shave, but there was nothing new in that. He appeared that way sometimes in the movies, too. He was wearing a dark suit and tie that looked like what he’d worn in The Big Sleep, right down to the white pocket hanky. Since actors (though not actresses) had to provide their own wardrobes, it might well have been the same clothing. On the third finger of his right hand he wore a gold ring set with a large ruby. He was about twenty years older than I am, forty-seven or -eight, and he looked it. I liked to think I wouldn’t show my age when I got that old, assuming that I would, but I knew I was only kidding myself.
We sat down and Bogart picked up an ashtray from the floor by his chair and tapped his cigarette on the edge.
I looked away from him to Mr. Warner and said, “What’s the problem?”
“It’s blackmail, Scott.”
Well, now I knew why I’d been called.
8
CHAPTER
3
Blackmail isn’t uncommon in Hollywood. If someone found out about Buck Sterling, for example, he’d be a prime target. That’s why the studios had guys like me.
“Who’s involved?” I asked.
Mr. Warner steepled his fingers. “Do you know Frank Burleson?”
“Sure, I know Frank.” I didn’t add that he was a louse, though that would have been true. “He works for Superior.”
Superior was an up-and-coming studio that had produced a number of moneymaking movies in the last couple of years. Their secret was to find a picture that was a hit and make one just like it. Not an outright steal, of course, but a picture with enough similarities to the original hit to rake in some box-office dough before people figured out that they were being conned. Nobody at the established studios liked Superior’s way of doing business. They didn’t like Thomas Wayne, its owner, either, but they had to admit he had a knack for making money. And if you made money, nobody in Hollywood really cared if the movies were good or original or either one.
Except maybe for the man sitting next to me. Bogart was well known for turning down scripts he thought stunk and then being suspended by Mr. Warner. Nearly everyone who worked for Mr.
Warner had been suspended at one time or another. Still, I suspected that Bogart might have held the record.
9
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
“Burleson has threatened Mr. Bogart with blackmail,” Mr. Warner said, which didn’t surprise me. That’s the kind of guy Frank was.
“You want me to put a stop to it?” I said.
“That’s right. Quietly. No publicity.”
“There’s never a guarantee that I can do that.”
Bogart snuffed out his cigarette, stuck his hand inside his jacket, and fished a pack of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket. He found a folder of matches in another pocket and lit the cigarette. He took a puff, waved the match out, and dropped it in the ashtray. He let some smoke trickle out of his mouth and coughed. When he’d finished coughing, he said, “If this gets out, it will hurt somebody I care about.
But I don’t believe in paying blackmail.”
“Neither do I,” I told him.
I’ve never understood why people pay blackmailers. It never works out. The blackmailer is never satisfied and keeps coming back, asking for more and more. The payments never end. The studio chiefs know that, but some of the actors don’t. And some of them aren’t smart enough to go to the studio chief and tell him what’s happening.
Bogart was smart.
“I’m turning it all over to you, Scott,” Mr. Warner said. “You and Bogart can sort it out between you. I don’t want any more to do with it.”
That was usually the way it went. I was on my own from here on in, and Mr. Warner would be kept strictly out of it. The studio was my client, but nobody would help me out if I got in trouble.
Mr. Warner stood up, a clear sign that we were dismissed. Bogart squashed his coffin nail in the ashtray and said, “Come on
, Scott.
Let’s go have a drink.”
We trudged through the carpet, our shoes sinking in so deep that we couldn’t see the tops, and retrieved out hats from the rack before leaving the office.
“We’ll go to the Formosa,” Bogart said, meaning the Formosa Café, which was on Formosa Avenue, right across from the studio.
“My car or yours?” I said.
“Which one is yours?”
I pointed to the black Chevy. “That one.”
“Looks sturdy enough,” Bogart said. “Let’s go.”
10
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER
He got in on the passenger side, lit up another Chesterfield, and offered me the pack.
“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink, either.”
“Jesus Christ, what are you? A Mormon?”
“No. I gave up all my bad habits a few years ago.”
Some people would have asked why. Bogart wasn’t one of those people. He said, “All of them?”
“Not really. I hung onto a couple for old time’s sake.”
“Good. I don’t trust a man with no bad habits. Let’s go.”
I cranked the Chevy and drove the short distance to the Formosa Café. It had once been a trolley car, and in its new incarnation was frequented by movie stars who wouldn’t have ridden on a trolley car at gunpoint. It wouldn’t have been frequented by movie stars, either, if it hadn’t had the advantage of proximity. Actors usually preferred the tonier places like Chasen’s and Romanoff’s.
I parked in front of the café. We walked under the striped awning that covered the sidewalk and went inside. I’d heard that the Formosa’s Chinese food wasn’t bad, and it also had a pretty good bar, which is where Bogart headed as soon as we were inside. He didn’t seem to have much interest in food.
The bar was dark, but there was enough light for me to see that there were no other movie people around, not at that time of evening.
They were probably somewhere in the high-rent district, getting ready for an evening out at someplace swanky.
Bogart got himself a martini, and I got a Coke. We found an unoccupied booth and scooted in across the red leather seats.
Bogart took a sip of his drink and said, “I needed that.” He lit another Chesterfield, which he held cupped in his left hand. He slid the pack across the table toward me. “You sure you don’t want one?”
