The Paul Cain Omnibus: Every Crime Story and the Novel Fast One as Originally Published (Black Mask)

by Paul Cain

  I was looking out the window. I saw Sarin come out of the downstairs door of the Administration Building and start across the lawn towards the dressing rooms. I said: “How about leaving the picture business flat and going back to cloaks and suits?”

  Bachmann looked like a thug and was one of the swellest all-around men I’ve ever known. He couldn’t help it about his pan. He wasn’t paying any attention to what I said. He yelled: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier!”

  I nodded.

  “Dreier likes you,” he went on. “You’ve got to make him understand that the release date of Death Song is set. It’s sold! It’s got to be finished in three weeks at the outside!”

  I nodded again. I was still looking out the window and I saw Sarin disappear into the Dressing Room Building. She looked like she was going somewhere. I said: “You can’t make pictures with a sponge for a star. We’re five days behind schedule. The call was for eleven-thirty this morning because we worked late last night with the mob. Sarin didn’t even get to the lot till four and she was paralyzed… .”

  I turned to Bachmann. “I think the best thing to do is scrap everything we’ve shot—it’s lousy anyway—and start over with another girl.”

  Bachmann lifted his shoulders in such a high shrug that his head almost disappeared like a scared turtle’s.

  “What other girl! You’re talking like an idiot! You know as well as I do that Maya’s name is sold with the picture… .”

  I went over and looked up at a big photograph of her on the wall, grunted: “Uh-huh.”

  Bachmann’s voice kept popping behind me: “You’ve got to talk to Dreier. Maya says he doesn’t like her—that he keeps on riding her and won’t give her a chance to straighten out. She says—”

  I heard the door open, Dreier’s soft voice:

  “What else does she say?”

  I turned around. Dreier came in and closed the door, sank into a big chair.

  Bachmann went behind his desk and sat down, too.

  Dreier said: “Will you please replace me, Jack? I guess I can’t take it.”

  He turned from Bachmann and smiled wearily at me.

  Bachmann looked like he was about to do a backflip. Then the old beaten-animal expression crept into his eyes. I knew that look; it’d take a giant of willpower to say no to him when he used it.

  He said tremulously: “Carl. You wouldn’t desert me, too?”

  Dreier laughed. He was silent a moment and then he said: “No, Jack—I guess I wouldn’t. Not if you’re going to cry about it.” He raised both hands resignedly and brought them down hard on his knees. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to Maya.” Bachmann was leaning forward, smiling eagerly. “Reason with her—”

  I grinned.

  Bachmann glared at me, went on to Dreier: “Make her understand you don’t dislike her—that it’s for the good of the picture—that we’ve all got to cooperate—”

  One of the phones on Bachmann’s desk buzzed. He picked it up said: “Yes—what is it? … Please don’t bother me, Miss Chase—I’m busy!” He slammed up the receiver.

  Dreier stood up. “All right, Jack,” he said. “I’ll try again.”

  “Fine!” Bachmann turned to me. “You go with him, Pat.”

  I looked at my watch. It was five-forty. I had to see a dog about a man at six-thirty; I said: “Maya’s off me—I haven’t been able to talk to her for three days. I think Carl can do better by himself.”

  Dreier was smiling. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to see the rushes first—last night’s stuff. Then I’ll see what I can do with her.”

  He went to the door, turned his tired smile to me. “Want to look at them with me?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t got time—I’ll look at ’em in the morning.”

  Dreier nodded and went out and closed the door.

  Bachmann was leaning back in his chair glaring at me with elaborate disgust. “A fine smoother-over you’re turning out to be!” he said.

  “That smoother-over business is your idea,” I reminded him, “not mine. Me—I like a good fight—I’m the kind of a guy that starts revolutions.”

  I gave him a trick grin and bowed out. The creamy angel was still sitting in the outer office. She smiled at me again and I took it and smiled back and almost smashed my kneecap against the door because I wasn’t looking where I was going.

  I was still thinking about her when I got into my car, and figuring that maybe the deal with the man and the dog wasn’t so important after all.

  Traffic was heavy on Melrose; I cut up Gower and got out of the worst of it but it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the hotel.

  I was getting into the bathtub when the phone rang. The switchboard girl said: “Theah’s a Mistah Hammah callin’, Mistah Nolan… .” She kind of crooned it, like: “Theah’s a cotton field a callin’, honey chile.” You could slice that Deep South accent with a dull cleaver.

  “On the phone, or is he downstairs?”

  “On the wiah, Mistah Nolan. He’s in the hotel but he wants to talk to you on the wiah… .”

  Hammer played occasional bits in pictures and was sort of all-around handyman for Joe Ciretti. Ciretti was the Big Bad Wolf of the Coast underworld. He was also Maya Sarin’s current suitor.

  I told the girl to put him on and sat down and waited for the click, said “Hello,” as disagreeably as I could.

  His nasal, high-pitched voice quavered over the wire: “H’are ya, Old Timer? What’s the good word? How’s everything?”

  “Everything’s been swell—up to now. I’m in a hurry—what’s on your mind?”

  Hammer said: “Me and a friend of mine want to have a little talk with you.”

  I said: “Not a chance—I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes and I’m just getting into the tub. Give me a ring later.”

  “Later won’t do. We want to talk to you now!” The tone of his voice had changed; all the amusement had gone out of it and it was almost plaintively serious.

  Another voice rapped over the wire suddenly. It was sharp, staccato, with a slight Latin accent:

  “Listen, you! Look out the window—the one on your right. Look at the window across the court!”

  I twisted around in the chair and looked through my wide open window at the one the voice was shouting about. It was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, open, dark.

  I started to say, “So what,” or something equally bright and then I stopped there was a thin blue rifle barrel sticking out a few inches over the lower sill and it was pointing, as nearly as I could measure the angle at that distance, at my right eye. I could see a man’s head and shoulder vaguely outlined against the darkness of the room.

  The voice went on: “Now put the phone down on the table and put your hands up—high; then get up and unlock the door and go back and sit down. And don’t forget—you’re covered all the way to the door.”

  I did exactly that. I wanted to see what the play was about. I unlocked the door and opened it a couple of inches and went back and sat down. I kept my hands up and watched the rifle barrel and waited.

  In a couple of minutes Hammer and a thick set, swarthy guy with bright beady eyes and blue-black hair came in and closed the door.

  I looked back at the window and the rifle barrel was gone. I said: “Do you gentleman mind if I put on my pants?”

  Hammer was a thin, medium-sized Swede with a thick butter-yellow mustache. He grinned a little, piped: “Never mind your pants—we like you this way.” He waved his hand at blue-black hair. “This is Joe Ciretti—he wants to talk to you.”

  I got up and grabbed a bathrobe off the bed, slid into it. “First,” I said, “you’d better let me in on what all this strong-arm stuff is about. I don’t like it and when I don’t like something I get in a bad mood, and when I’m in a bad mood I�
��m a bad talker—or listener.”

  Ciretti’s eyes widened innocently on Hammer; he lifted his hands in front of him as if he was holding a watermelon, said: “Strong-arm stuff! I don’t know what Mister Nolan is talking about—do you, Gus?” His was the sharp, staccato voice of the telephone.

  I went over to the door and opened it, said: “You boys have seen too many moving pictures. It’s a pleasure, Ciretti—sometime I’ll play Indian and cowboy with you but right now I’m in a hurry. Give me a call at the studio—”

  Ciretti waltzed over and very suddenly, magically, a big blue heater appeared in his hand; he jabbed it into my belly, rasped: “You go back and sit down—quick!”

  Something in his tone made me realize that he might be on the level. I felt like a sap who’d been caught trying to make a four-card straight stand up, sat down.

  Ciretti went on: “I’ve called you five, six times at the studio today.”

  “That’s dandy,” I said. “I didn’t go near my office all day.”

  Ciretti sat down near me, leaned forward and let the big automatic dangle loosely between his legs. “Just one thing I want understood,” he ground out. “Then you can go about business and we’ll go about ours.”

  “That’ll be swell.”

  “You, nor this guy Dreier,” he went on, “nor Bachmann, nor anybody else is going to freeze Maya out of this picture.”

  I opened my mouth like a black bass and gave him a stunned gasp.

  “Who,” I asked gently, “ever gave you the screwy idea that anyone was trying to freeze her out of anything?”

  “She told me.” His voice was like a couple of billiard balls rubbed together. “She says you’re all trying to railroad her out of pictures.”

  I said: “You know her better than I do. You know she’s been stiff for weeks, and yet you fall for an insane angle like that. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “She says she has to drink to keep going—with everyone against her.” Ciretti straightened up and eased the automatic back into its holster, slowly. He looked worried, as if he actually believed what he was saying and didn’t know what to say next. The poor chump was evidently in love with little Maya.

  Hammer was staring at the ceiling, whistling soundlessly, making a very bad job of trying to look unconcerned.

  “If that’s all you wanted to see me about,” I said, “and why you picked on me instead of Dreier or Bachmann or someone who really cuts ice at B.L.D. I can’t imagine—you can tell Maya that if she’ll pull herself together and lay off the jug everything’ll be simply elegant.”

  I turned to Hammer. “I still don’t savvy all the brandishing of guns and—”

  Ciretti interrupted, said swiftly: “I thought you were trying to duck me—and I wanted you to know how I felt about it. You’ve got to give her a break.”

  My watch was on the table. I looked at it and it was sixteen minutes after six. I started to stand up and the phone rang; I sat down again and picked up the receiver.

  The girl said: “Mistah Bachmann callin’, Mistuh Nolan.”

  I told her to put Bachmann on and said: “Hello, Jack,” and listened. After about a minute I stuttered something like “Okay, I’ll be right over,” and hung up and looked at Ciretti.

  I said: “Maya’s out of the picture.”

  He stood up slowly. “What do you mean? They can’t—”

  I took a deep breath, went on: “She’s been murdered. They just found her in her dressing room. Dreier’s been arrested.”

  I thought Ciretti was going to explode or fall flat on his face or something. He looked like he couldn’t breathe and his white face got a little purple and he tried to speak and couldn’t. I felt sorry as hell for him.

  He finally managed to gasp: “Where’s Dreir? Where have they taken him?”

  I said: “I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll lay six, two, and even he didn’t do it. I don’t know anything about it yet, but Dreier’s not a murderer.” And I was remembering his face when he’d turned on Sarin on the set.

  Ciretti went unsteadily to the door and went out without looking back. Hammer followed him and closed the door.

  I took a two-minute shower and hustled into some clothes. Then I cantered to the door and opened it and started out and ran smack into the angel. Her creamy skin was about five shades lighter and her dark brown eyes were liked saucers. Beautiful saucers.

  “The girl said your line was busy,” she stammered, “so I got the number of your room and came up. I—I had to see you right away… .”

  I was steering her towards the elevator. I said: “Sure. What about?”

  The elevator door slid open and we got in; she glanced at the elevator boy and didn’t answer. We were in the car, roaring down Vine Street by the time she managed to say: “Maya Sarin’s been murdered!”

  I looked at her sidewise and missed an oil truck by inches, grunted: “Uh-huh. How did you know?”

  “I saw her—I went to her dressing room and found her lying there, dead.” I felt the angel shudder beside me and heard her take in breath swiftly, sharply.

  “What did you go to her dressing room for?”

  She said: “I guess I’d better begin at the beginning.”

  I nodded, swung into Sunset Boulevard.

  She began at the beginning and talked nearly all the way to the studio. In a large nutshell it went something like this:

  She’d come to Hollywood from some place in Kansas to crash pictures, but pictures had crashed her. She’d worked extra a couple times at B.L.D. and Titanic and then there’d been a great open space without work and finally without coffee and doughnuts. She’d answered an ad that turned out to be the Nick Galbraith Detective Agency; they’d put her to work tailing some sucker for divorce evidence and then they’d sent her to Maya Sarin who it seems was one of their best undercover clients and Maya had given her a note to Bachmann asking him to give her some kind, any kind, of a job on the lot.

  The idea seemed to be that Maya’s dipsomania was aggravated by a supercharged persecution complex and she wanted the angel to keep her eyes and ears open and find out who was conniving against her at B.L.D. She said that Maya acted like she was scared to death of something and didn’t seem to be quite sure what it was.

  From then on the plot thickened. She’d been waiting to present her note to Bachmann when Maya had stormed in after the blow-off on the set. A couple minutes after Maya went into the private office a woman whom she recognized as Mrs Bachmann came in and talked about the weather with the secretary. And Maya was shouting her head off inside—they could hear practically every word she said.

  By the time the angel had reached that point in her story I was standing on the brakes for the stoplight at Melrose. I leaned back and listened with both ears.

  She was pretty excited. She said: “Finally Miss Sarin screamed: ‘You straighten this thing out and see that I get a square deal around this dump or I’ll tell that high and mighty wife of yours some things that’ll make her hair curl!’ Mrs Bachmann got as white as a sheet and marched out of the office.”

  I said: “Is it possible that anybody in the western hemisphere doesn’t know that Bachmann and Maya Sarin used to be—well—friendly?”

  The stoplight snapped green; I shifted and let the clutch in and glanced swiftly at the angel. She was smiling a little. “Probably not anybody,” she said—“except Mrs Bachmann.” She hesitated a moment, went on: “In a few minutes Miss Sarin came out and you came in. The secretary wanted to tell Bachmann about his wife being there but he was too excited to listen. I got up and looked out the window and saw Miss Sarin go across the lawn to the dressing rooms and after a minute Mrs Bachmann followed her.”

  “To the dressing rooms! I saw Sarin, too, but I left the window as soon as she disappeared.”

  She nodded. “Then, after you and Mister Dreier left, the secretary wen
t in and Bachmann came rushing out and apologized and said he’s be back in a few minutes. He looked terribly worried. I watched from the window and he went over to the dressing rooms, too. I waited about a quarter of an hour and he didn’t come back. The secretary went home and I thought maybe Bachmann had forgotten about me and wouldn’t come back to the office so I went to Miss Sarin’s room to ask her what I’d better do. I was curious about what’d happened, too. I knew where her room was from the time I’d worked there. She didn’t answer when I knocked and I opened the door and she was lying on the floor, dead.”

  “What time was it?”

  “It must have been about five minutes after six.” The angel was almost whispering. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any business there, or at least it would take a lot of explaining and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Then I remembered that Miss Sarin had told me about you and that you were the only person on the lot she thought she could trust. I hurried back to Bachmann’s office. He hadn’t come back. I called the agency and told them what had happened and asked the boy at the information desk where you lived and took a cab and came to your hotel… .”

  I said: “What’s your name?”

  “Laird—Dolores Laird.”

  I thought it was a nice name.

  The rest of the night was an odds-on favorite nightmare that began with reporters ganging us when we got out of the car. We finally made the Sarin dressing room and it was so jammed with assorted Law that the walls were bulging. Everyone had a different theory.

  Nick Galbraith, the angel’s boss, said it was a cinch for Sarin’s maid. Sarin had sent her off the lot to get something—probably a bottle—as soon as she’d returned to the dressing room and according to Galbraith the maid had sneaked back and beaned her with the “blunt instrument”; that was the only thing they all agreed on.

  The blunt instrument was an oversize vibrator that was still lying on the floor near the chalked-off space where the body had been found.

  A detective lieutenant named Lawson insisted that Creighton was the murderer. Creighton’s dressing room was across the hall and when the maid had come back from her errand and found Dreier bending over the body she’d screamed and Creighton had dashed in and he and the maid had pointed the finger at Dreier. Dreier, it seemed, wouldn’t talk and most of the coppers favored one or another variation of the Dreier theory. He was being held at the Hollywood Station.