by Bill Crider
I was sure he would, but I wasn’t really interested. What I wanted was a ride home.
Bogart said he’d give me one, though I really didn’t want him to know what kind of dump I lived in, but first he wanted to talk about what we’d learned.
I didn’t think it was a good idea to talk until I’d had some sleep. I wasn’t sure I could remember half of what had happened to us, much less half of we’d heard.
“You’re a trained detective,” Bogart said. “You’ll surprise yourself.”
I wasn’t really trained. I’d become a detective because I wanted to work for myself, and I thought maybe my military experience would give me a little edge on the competition. It hadn’t helped much, but it had been enough to persuade Mr. Warner to put me on a retainer.
Now I wasn’t so sure even that had been such a good idea.
I told Bogart that I needed sleep, but somehow he persuaded me to go with him to his bungalow. My acquiescence had something to do with the fact that he refused to take me anywhere until we’d talked things over. So I found myself sitting in the chair again while Bogart relaxed on the couch with his bottle of Scotch and a Chesterfield.
He looked a lot more comfortable than I felt, and I was sure that if he’d hit the windshield with his head, it was only a glancing blow.
“Here’s what we know for sure,” he said. “Babson and Carroll couldn’t have been driving the car at Superior Studios or out in the hills because they were otherwise occupied.”
“Are you surprised about Babson?” I asked.
“Kid, the last time I was surprised by anything that happened in Hollywood was sometime back in the late thirties. I didn’t know about 182
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Babson, but then I didn’t know about Bob, either. That doesn’t mean I’m surprised.”
I wasn’t surprised, either. After Buck Sterling, it would take a lot more than a couple of homosexuals to surprise me.
“You know what the problem is, don’t you,” Bogart said.
I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I had no idea what the problem was.
He looked at me the way my high school math teacher had on those occasions when I had once again proved my inability to comprehend the binomial theorem.
“If Babson and Carroll were both somewhere else, they weren’t driving the car,” Bogart said. “And if they weren’t driving the car, that means…”
He let his voice trail off, and I sat there looking at him. He was obviously waiting for me to finish the sentence, but I couldn’t do it.
“Look,” he said, waving the hand holding the cigarette. “What’s our one big clue?”
I was glad to be able to answer him. I said, “What Dawson wrote in the dirt as he was dying.” “Right. Bab or Bob. We thought he was trying to tell us who’d killed him. But since neither Babson nor Bob was driving that car, where does that leave us?”
“Sleepy?” I said. “Tired? Banged up?”
“All of those, maybe, but it also leaves us without a clue.”
That was fine with me. I was used to being without a clue. I’d spent most of my life that way.
“Wake me when it’s over,” I said.
I leaned back in the chair and went to sleep.
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CHAPTER
30
Rita Hayworth was sitting at the mirror, brushing that long, lovely hair. She was wearing only a white slip, and it did little to cover the part of her I was most interested in. She smiled at me in the mirror, and I walked over to tell her how beautiful she was. But I never got there because Bogart was shaking my shoulder again.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said. “Very slowly, an inch at a time.”
“Mr. Warner would fire you,” Bogart said. “You’d never work in this town again.”
He was right, but then I wasn’t really going to kill him. Though I would have liked to.
“How long did I sleep?” I asked, hoping that I’d slept at least a couple of hours.
“About ten minutes. Long enough for me to go to the bathroom and wash my face.”
“Ten whole minutes. No wonder I feel so refreshed.”
“Come on back in the kitchen. We’ll drink some coffee, and you’ll feel a lot better.”
It was going to take more than coffee to make me feel better. I didn’t see how Bogart could be so alert, considering that he’d been through as much as I had. Even at the best of times he looked a little fatigued, as if he hadn’t slept well for a while, but that was all part 185
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of a pose. Most of the time I’d been around him, he’d been positively perky, in action if not in appearance.
He made lousy coffee, though. I’ll have to give him that. He dumped it in the Silex without measuring it, and put it on to boil. When it was ready, it tasted as if it had been filtered through about a quarter mile of Mississippi mud.
“It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud,” Bogart said when I described the quality of the coffee to him. He lifted his cup at me in a mock toast.
“It tastes like somebody’s had his feet in it, all right,” I said. I drank some of it anyway, in the hopes that it would make me feel better. It didn’t.
The kitchen was a good bit cleaner than the living room, which I attributed to the fact that the party Bogart told me about had never reached the kitchen. I had the feeling that the people who attended weren’t interested in drinking Bogart’s coffee. I didn’t blame them.
“What we have to figure out,” Bogart said, “is where we went wrong in our thinking.”
I could have pointed out any number of ways. First we’d thought of Orsini. Then we’d thought about everybody else. And so far we’d gotten nowhere. Even worse, we seemed to have gotten Dawson killed.
“We’ve been wrong from the start,” I said. “I’m not even sure now that Burleson was killed because of his blackmailing. Maybe there was some other reason, something entirely unrelated that we don’t even know about. We should have left all this to the cops.”
“Sure,” Bogart said. “Leave it to the cops. That would be swell, since they think I did it. Or maybe that you did it.”
“They don’t have any reason to think that.”
“You’re forgetting my pistol,” Bogart said. “The one somebody left by Burleson’s body. I’m connected to this somehow, and if I am, then the people who were here the other night are, too. One of them must have lifted that pistol.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t sure it helped us any. I drank a little more of the coffee. It hadn’t improved a bit.
“All right,” I said, after choking down a swallow of coffee. “Maybe we were on the right track, but somehow we got off it. I don’t see how anything we’ve found out fits in with anything else we know.”
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“What about the process of elimination? We know who didn’t kill Dawson, don’t we?”
“Nobody did. Gallindo, Randall, and Malone were at the Derby, and they’d been there all evening. Babson and Carroll were at the Michelangelo. Stella and Wendy were at the Club Sappho. So who does that leave?”
“Slappy Coville.”
“And we know where he was, too. So there’s only one answer.
Dawson killed himself, and someone in a big car tried to run over us because we might implicate him in the murder if he hung around. He missed us that time, so later he pushed us over a cliff to make sure we wouldn’t get him in trouble.”
“He didn’t get us that time, either,” Bogart said. “And it wasn’t a cliff. Just a hill.”
“A very high, steep hill.”
“It was high, but it wasn’t really steep.”
It had seemed steep enough to me when we were climbing it, but I wasn’t going to argue with him.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “By using the process of elimination, we’ve just proved that nobody on our list of suspects killed Dawson.
So much for that process.”
“Thomas Wayne,” Bogart said. “We didn’t eliminate him.”
“Somehow I don’t think a studio head would be out at night killing one of his stuntmen.”
“Not even if he screwed up the take?”
“Very funny. But, no. The director might kill him for that, maybe, but not the studio head. And from what I’ve heard about Elledge, he wouldn’t do it, either. He’s not exactly a perfectionist. So you can forget that.”
“There has to be an answer somewhere,” Bogart said. “And we’re going to find it.”
“Not tonight,” I told him. “Even this awful coffee isn’t going to keep me awake much longer, and my brain’s addled. I’m throwing in the towel.”
“You’re not as durable as Phil Marlowe.”
“True. But he hangs out with a better class of people. The Sternwoods, for example. You take that Vivian Sternwood. Now there’s a woman I wouldn’t mind hanging around with.”
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“You have good taste,” Bogart said. “I’m not so sure about your manners.”
“They’re pretty bad,” I said. “I grieve over them long winter even-ings.”
“Your memory is good, though. I’d forgotten that line.”
“It’s a pretty good line, but my memory is in terrible shape. If I don’t get some sleep, it will be gone completely. I don’t even think I can make it home.”
“Can you make it to the couch?”
I thought I might manage that, and I did. But it was close.
I don’t remember whether I dreamed about Rita Hayworth, but when I woke up I felt much better. That is, I felt better until I moved. After that, things became a bit more problematic. There might have been an inch or two of my body that didn’t hurt, but if there was, I couldn’t identify it.
I sat up, very carefully, and looked around. Bogart wasn’t in sight, but I could hear him moving around somewhere in the house.
I didn’t try to get off the couch. I sat there with my head in my hands for a few minutes, and eventually Bogart showed up. He was wearing his ratty robe and leather slippers, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept for a month. The circles under his eyes were so dark they might have been drawn there in charcoal.
But he was chipper. Disgustingly chipper.
“I’m glad to see you survived,” he said. He handed me a mug of coffee. “Try a drink of this.”
I was almost afraid to, but I took a sip. It was just as bad as I’d feared. Maybe worse.
“Better, huh?” Bogart said. “I remembered to add a pinch of salt this time. That gives it a better flavor.”
“Urk,” I said, or some sound like that.
“I knew you’d like it. Did anything come to you while you were sleeping?”
“Urk,” I said, and drank a little more coffee. The second sip was even worse than the first.
“Good. I knew something would occur to you. Finish the coffee and we’ll talk it over.”
I didn’t finish the coffee. Nobody could have finished that coffee.
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But I did drink more than half of it. I don’t think anyone could have done more.
Then I used the shower. I stood under the hot water for a long time, letting it draw out some of the soreness.
There was a vivid bruise the size of a dinner plate on my chest, along with other cuts and contusions, but nothing seemed to be broken.
I dried off and shaved with a razor Bogart let me use. Then I knocked the wrinkles out of my suit as well as I could and dressed in my slightly gamy clothing. I still had Orsini’s pistol, so I stuck it in my belt at the back again.
I didn’t look exactly ready to take a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, but I was as presentable as I could make myself, and I didn’t ache quite as much. I winked at my mug in the mirror and then went into the kitchen, where Bogart was scrambling eggs in a big black iron skillet.
“I’ll have my own laying hens one of these days,” he said. “Nothing like fresh eggs.”
I sat at the table in front of a plate that had been set for me.
“I thought you always had breakfast at Romanoff’s,” I said.
“If I could get fresh eggs at home, I wouldn’t. Before long, Baby will be trying to get us into a bigger place, and I’ll have some hens there. Hell, maybe I should just get some here.”
He came over and scraped eggs out of the skillet and onto my plate.
He went away and returned with a couple of strips of bacon on a saucer, which he set by my plate.
“The toast is almost ready,” he said.
“If only Bernie could see us now.”
“He’d just be jealous,” Bogart said. “Now eat your eggs and bacon.”
I ate my too hard eggs and undercooked bacon, along with the toast, which was only slightly burned. When I was finished, Bogart took up the plate, silverware, and saucer. He put them in the sink and ran water in them.
“That should hold them,” he said with satisfaction. “Baby doesn’t realize how domestic I am.”
Something that he’d said started a buzzing in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. I said, “What time is it?”
“Afternoon. Around two o’clock. Did you get enough sleep?”
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“No, but I’ll live.”
“Want another cup of coffee?”
“God, no.”
“Well, if you feel that way about it, I won’t offer it again. Now tell me what new ideas you’ve come up with.”
“Did I say I’d come up with anything?”
“No, but I can tell by the keen detective’s look in your eye that something did occur to you.”
“I haven’t got it pinned down yet. Did you think of anything?”
“A new angle. That’s what we needed all along. A new angle.”
“And what new angle have you discovered?”
“We’re back to blackmail. Who’d kill Burleson because of something he knew? The one with the most to lose. So who has the most to lose?”
I thought everyone we’d talked to had plenty to lose, but they were all eliminated as suspects. So I didn’t see that the new angle was much help.
“Maybe not,” Bogart admitted when I told him what I thought, “but it puts a whole new light on things. Let’s say, for argument’s sake that people found out that Stella Gordon was a lesbian or that her husband liked other men. How bad would that be?”
“They’d be finished in Hollywood,” I said, and it was the truth.
“But they’ve had their time in the sun. Some people never have, people like Stoney Randall and Barbara Malone. Think about what they were saying last night.”
I didn’t have to think about it. I remembered it all, because their conversation was one of the things that had been bumping around in the back of my head. They’d talked about mistakes and how they weren’t going to make any, not now that Barbara had finally gotten her big break. They’d had nothing to lose for a long time. Now they had everything.
And I remembered something else. I remembered that Randall had said he didn’t really know Burleson all that well.
That wasn’t what Dawson had told us. He’d said that Randall was one of the few people who liked Burleson and that Burleson had once let him borrow a hundred dollars. So somebody had lied to us.
I’d also wondered why Barbara had been so animated. It hadn’t seemed natural, and I’d attributed it to alcohol. But what if it had 190
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been something more? She might have been covering up her nervousness at knowing the truth about Dawson.
Randall and Malone. They finally had clout, or Malone did. But maybe not for long if she had some terrible secret that Burleson had uncovered. What kind of secret could it be?
“Oh, hell,” I said.
“What does that mean?”
/>
“What was it that you were calling your wife a few seconds ago?”
“Baby. I always call her that. Nearly always. Sometimes I call her Betty. Why?”
“What if Dawson was trying to write baby in the dirt last night?”
“You’re saying Betty killed Dawson? You must be completely nuts.”
“I’m saying what if Barbara Malone was pregnant. That’s what Dawson was trying to tell us.”
“Nothing wrong with being pregnant, except that she’s not married.
That would be easy enough to cover up. She and Randall are going to get married any day now.”
“But they’re not married yet. What if she had an abortion? You told Dawson that she and Randall took a vacation. What if they left town so Barbara could have an abortion, and the money Randall borrowed was to pay a doctor?”
Bogart thought it over for a few seconds.
“It fits,” he said.
And it did. Randall and Malone wouldn’t have gone to Thomas Wayne about the problem. They’d have been afraid of what he might say. If either of them had been a big star already, it might not have been such a problem, but they didn’t have any clout, as they’d pointed out. Barbara hadn’t won that Oscar yet, and Wayne didn’t have anything to gain by helping them. If they were found out, he’d be in as much trouble as they would. With his only legitimate star under a dark cloud, he’d be laughed at by the other studio heads.
Malone and Randall could have gone to Burleson, however, since he was supposed to be discreet. Little did they know.
“All right, maybe I’m right this time,” I said. “Maybe they killed Burleson. But they couldn’t have killed Dawson.”
“I want to get whoever did that. Dawson was my friend, and I don’t forget friends. But shouldn’t we take this one murder at a time?”
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“I suppose you’re right. I’ve never been involved with murder before.
Now that we know who did it, we should call Congreve.”
“Why? We don’t owe him a thing. He’ll just mess it up, or his lackey will kill somebody. You, if he gets his way. Besides, we don’t even know if you’re right about all this.”
“How do you propose that we find out?”
“We could just go to the studio and ask them,” Bogart said.
