The Fatal Foursome

by Frank Kane

  Pop shrugged. “He’s off my beat, Johnny. Got a lot of stuff in the files, though, if you want to see it.”

  “I’m trying to prove to old Sherlock here that Randolph wore contact lenses, Pop.” Toni Belden grinned. “He’s not going to be satisfied until he sees it in black and white.”

  Johnny Liddell pushed his gray fedora back on his head. “She’s trying to destroy all my illusions, Pop. Next she’ll be telling me that Van Johnson wears a toupee.”

  The old man grinned, then shuffled away down the line of filing cabinets toward the rear. He was back in a moment with two bulging manila envelopes and handed them to the girl.

  Toni emptied the contents of the Randolph file on a long library table and she and the detective pored through it. Yellowing clippings, rotogravure prints, and news photos all detailed the rise of an obscure extra to stardom.

  It was Toni who found the ad. It showed Harvey Randolph in full face with the caption, You never knew he wore them. On the margin was written, Yanked after first edition.

  Johnny Liddell nodded gravely. “That’s another strike on the accident theory,” he conceded. “I think we’d better run through the rest of this junk and see what turns up.”

  A half hour later, he loosened his collar and tossed his sixth butt to the concrete floor. He held a two-column cut in his hand. The date was six weeks earlier.

  “Ever see this, Toni?” he asked.

  Toni Belden studied the picture for a moment. It showed Harvey Randolph, Julian Goodman, and a third man at a large cluttered desk that Johnny Liddell recognized as the fat man’s. The caption stated that Producer Goodman had just insured his star’s profile for a quarter of a million dollars as a guarantee that his latest epic would not be delayed.

  “Publicity malarkey,” Toni Belden sneered. “If they can’t get their snoots in the rags one way, they’ll do it another—upside down, if necessary.”

  Johnny Liddell tightened his collar again. “Maybe so, but suppose it isn’t just publicity. Suppose Goodman does get a quarter of a million if anything happens to Randolph. That could take him off the nut on this flopperoo he’s stuck with, wouldn’t it?”

  “And then some,” Toni Belden admitted. “Say, you don’t think Goodman’s mixed up in this in any way?”

  Johnny rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. You told me that Randolph could never finish that picture, or if he did it wouldn’t be allowed to play any of the decent houses. Why?”

  Toni Belden made a face as though she had a bitter taste in her mouth. “Randolph got to playing around with some pretty shabby characters during the last two months. A couple of weeks ago a reform outfit here in town goosed the police into doing something about a string of orgies supposedly being held in one of the flea-traps downtown. Randolph got caught flat-footed right in the middle of it. The reform boys served notice on the exhibitors’ association that if Randolph made any more pictures, they’d blast the whole story and him with it.”

  “So Goodman had no reason to want Randolph found, eh? Yet he hires Acme to find him. Then Randolph supposedly kills himself and drops a wad of coin into friend Goodman’s rapidly disappearing lap. Sounds faintly screwy, my sweet.”

  Toni Belden nodded. “Awful screwy, but it could make a swell story.”

  “Yeah, it could. Where’s the phone?”

  Toni Belden pointed to the end of the corridor. In a moment the detective was connected with Doc Morrissey.

  “What is it?” Morrissey’s voice was anxious.

  “It’s murder, all right, Doc. My guess is that Goodman knocked the kid off, faked an accident to collect on insurance. Anything on your end to substantiate that theory?”

  Doc Morrissey’s voice was muffled. “After you left, I went down and gave the stiff another going over.” He paused as though to take a breath. “I found a skull fracture that we’d passed up before as something that might have happened when he banged his head against the windshield. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, except that the dental chart checks out. It’s Randolph, all right.”

  Johnny nodded into the mouthpiece. “It all fits. He has a couple of drinks with Goodman or whoever Goodman’s hatchet man was, gets banged over the head. Goodman forgets the contact lenses, or maybe it’s some guy doing the job who didn’t know about them. They stick the body into the car, fix the face so it’ll burn plenty, then ram the jalopy into the tree.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Sit tight. Give me eight or ten hours before you break it. Maybe we can break the solution right along with the announcement. But this much is dead certain, Doc—it’s murder. Cold-blooded, deliberate murder.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AN HOUR LATER, Johnny Liddell was leaning comfortably on the highly polished bar of an exclusive little “bottle club” which did a roaring, if not entirely legal, all-night business. He scowled at the oily ring left round the inside of his glass by the Brooklyn varnish the bartender proudly announced as brandy. He was less annoyed by the fact that the man he had been hired to find was dead, than because he might have to stay in Hollywood long enough to name his own client as the killer!

  The bartender shuffled down to where he stood. “Your name Johnny Liddell, bud?”

  Johnny nodded.

  “Operator’s got that long-distance call you put through.” He jerked his head vaguely in the direction of a row of telephone booths in the outer hall.

  Downing the remains of his brandy unhurriedly, Johnny shouldered his way through the two-deep crowd at the bar to the phone booth.

  Steve Baron’s voice was half sleepy, half angry.

  “What the hell’s the idea of tagging me with a collect call at this hour of the morning, Liddell? What’ve you got outside of d.t.’s that couldn’t wait until morning?”

  Johnny Liddell laughed. “Just wanted to tell you that the guy we’re getting paid to find just ended up on a slab in the county morgue.”

  “Is that any reason to get me out of bed?” Steve Baron groused. “So he’s dead. We’ll send out a bill and it gets paid. So what?”

  “Yeah, but there’s something awful screwy going on out here.”

  The Acme home agency chief’s snort was plainly audible over the three thousand miles of wire. “Of course there’s something screwy. It’s Hollywood, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s Hollywood all right—with our client head and shoulders ahead in a murder suspect race. In my book, he’s leading contender for the Client Most Likely to End in the Gas Chamber. What’s etiquette in a case like that?”

  Steve Baron’s voice was a shade more thoughtful. “That ain’t good. Got any ideas?”

  “Yeah. I got an idea all hell is going to break loose. This guy Randolph was washed up in pictures, but Goodman had him insured for a quarter of a million. Looks like a squeeze on the insurance company.”

  “Good, good,” Steve Baron grunted. “I’ll get with the insurance boys and see if I can’t fix for a retainer. As long as we’ve got to suffer through this, we might as well get paid for it.”

  “That’s damn nice of you, Baron,” Johnny Liddell snorted. “You’re safe in New York while I’m likely to get snowed under in a hailstorm of lead when the wind-up to this thing comes.”

  “Look, Liddell”—the sharp note was creeping back into Baron’s voice—”that’s what you get paid for. Besides, if I want a weather report, I’ll buy a paper. This call is costing me important dough.”

  “Okay, okay. It’ll probably come off my expense account anyway. What do I do next?”

  “Seems to me the first thing you got to do is get to Goodman. After all, he is our client. Maybe you got him all wrong.”

  “Check. I’ll let you know what he has to say.”

  “Write it. I’m not that curious that you got to rout me out of bed in the middle of the night to answer collect calls.”

  The girl at Julian Goodman’s office was again stabbing haphazardly at the typewriter keybo
ard. She barely looked up as Johnny Liddell approached.

  “Goodman in yet, sugar?” He leaned over the railing.

  The blonde had substituted a white peasant blouse for the green sweater, but she still looked outstanding in most respects. She didn’t seem to mind a bit the undisguised inventory the detective was taking of her assets.

  “Go on in and see,” she suggested. There was something in her tone that puzzled Johnny, but he took the hint, walked through the gate and pushed open the door marked Private.

  A tall man, with a broad-brimmed, western sheriff type hat pushed back on his head, sat on the edge of the desk. His square jaw was champing rhythmically on a wad of gum and he didn’t miss a beat.

  “Well, well! Johnny Liddell. I might’ve known. As soon as you hit town things start to pop at Homicide.”

  Johnny stared past the bulky figure. Julian Goodman lay slumped back in the desk chair, his lower jaw sagged on his chest. From a blue-black hole just above the right ear, a dark red stream had cascaded down over his collar to gather in a pool on the floor.

  “Holy cow!” Johnny muttered. “Goodman dead!” He looked to the man sitting on the desk. “Who did it, Inspector?”

  Inspector Devlin brushed his mustache from the middle with his nail. “I was just going to ask you the same thing, Johnny. You’ve been closer to Goodman these past few days than we have.”

  Liddell walked over to the body, glanced at it briefly, walked to the other side of the desk and sank into an armchair. “Not on anything connected with this,” he said. “Matter of fact, the job he hired us for was washed up yesterday.”

  Devlin stared at him for a moment, his cold, gray-blue eyes expressionless. “What job was that?” he asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “I don’t suppose it makes much difference now,” he said. “Harvey Randolph has been missing for a week or so. Goodman wanted him found without any fuss or any publicity. Well, Randolph was found last night, as you know.” He shrugged again. “There was nothing more to do but collect the agency’s fee and blow.”

  Devlin took off his hat, dropped it on the desk. “Look, Johnny,” he said, after a long pause, “you and I’ve known each other a lot of years. We’ve usually worked together.” He looked the Acme man squarely in the eye. “I’ve never had any trouble with you, and I don’t expect to have.”

  “I’m listening,” Johnny said dryly.

  “This case is loaded with dynamite. The papers will really go to town on it. A movie killing is always good for circulation, God help me.” Devlin hadn’t missed a beat on his gum. “What I’m saying is this. I got an idea you’ll stay around to help find the guy who killed your client. I got nothing against that. On the other hand, catching killers is police business. Sure, we like your help—but we don’t want anybody trying to make the department look silly.”

  Liddell grinned. “We still understand each other, Inspector. It isn’t good for an agency to have one of its clients bumped off while a man is on the job, but we’re not looking for glory. I’m playing ball down to the last pitch.”

  The inspector nodded his satisfaction. “Good enough for me.”

  A door opened and a uniformed man came in and whispered to Devlin. The inspector nodded, and the uniformed man left.

  “Goodman’s wife’s here. I sent a squad car after her.” Devlin paused, watched two men come in silently, arrange the body on a stretcher, cover it with a blanket, and carry it out. “Now that’s over, we can have her in.” He reached over, snapped a lever on the intercommunication system on Goodman’s desk.

  “Yeah?” The bored voice of the blonde floated through.

  “Have Mrs. Goodman come in,” Devlin instructed.

  Goodman’s wife still bore unmistakable signs of good looks, but the gold in her hair was too apparent, the bloom in her cheeks and lips too pharmaceutical. She stalked into the room grandly, selected a chair where the light would not be too harsh on her face, crossed her legs and waited.

  “Have you met Mr. Liddell, Mrs. Goodman?” the inspector asked. She acknowledged the introduction, and looked back to Devlin.

  “You’ve heard that your husband has been murdered?” The woman nodded. “You don’t seem terribly surprised?”

  Mrs. Goodman permitted herself a brief smile. “You didn’t know my husband very well,” she said in a nasal voice, slightly higher than was pleasant. “It wasn’t a question of whether he’d be murdered or not. It was merely a question of when.”

  Johnny Liddell wandered over to the desk, helped himself to a cigar from the humidor. “Your husband had enemies, Mrs. Goodman?”

  The golden head swung in his direction. “Most producers have enemies. It’s a privilege of the profession to be a louse. My husband abused the privilege.”

  Inspector Devlin pulled a brown, paper-covered notebook from his pocket. “Could you think of a couple of people who’d hate him bad enough to want to kill him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Goodman answered promptly. “Anybody who spent more than an hour with him.”

  “For instance?”

  Mrs. Goodman wrinkled her brows as though thinking was a difficult chore. “Let me see now. Well, Cookie Russo who runs the Chateau Chance. I know Julian owed him a lot of money and had been stalling him off.” She tapped a small white tooth with an elaborately enameled nail. “Then there was that girl he was running around with, that Mona Varden.”

  Johnny’s ears perked up. “Where does she fit into the picture?”

  “He ruined her chances. Oh, not that she was ever any good as an actress. She wasn’t. The usual phony Latin-from-Manhattan sort of thing. But Julian saw to it that she never got a chance to find out if she was any good.”

  Devlin leaned forward. “How?”

  “He picked her up a year or so ago and offered her a contract. Naturally, she jumped at it. Had visions of being another Hedy Lamarr, I guess. But Julian just wanted a new plaything and was prepared to pay for it, that’s all. He had no intention of using her in pictures and never did.” She shrugged, asked for a cigarette, settled back. “She wasn’t getting any younger. If she ever had any chance of making a go of it, he’d have to be out of the way.”

  Johnny Liddell held a match for her and watched her draw in a lungful of smoke. “Not necessarily,” he argued. “Wasn’t Goodman just producing? Even if he were dead, wouldn’t the company still own the contract?”

  “Good try, Mr. Liddell.” The widow smiled. “Only, you see, Julian was what we laughingly call an independent out here. All contracts with him were personal contracts. Naturally, I, as his heir, could be expected to inherit the contracts. But, as Miss Varden knows only too well, I am not the least interested in further stymying her career. I shall release her from her contract immediately.”

  “You were talking about suspects, Mrs. Goodman,” Inspector Devlin prompted. “Certainly there must be others?”

  The widow tapped a thin film of ash off the end of her cigarette. “You mean me, of course. But I can assure you I did not kill my husband, Inspector. I did not consider him worthy of the effort.” She rose from the chair, crushed out the carmine tipped butt in a glass ash tray on the desk. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’d like to go home. Naturally, I shall be very happy to help in every way I can, but I would like to rest—and to talk to my attorney.” She smiled a rather brittle smile that fell just short of reaching her eyes. “You understand, of course.”

  Inspector Devlin ran his fingers through his hair, looked for a moment as though he was going to protest, then evidently thought better of it. “Certainly, Mrs. Goodman. We understand perfectly.”

  He took her to the door, opened it for her with a great display of chivalry, stamped back to the desk. He grabbed his hat, stuck it irritably on the back of his head. “A fourteen-carat bitch,” he growled. “But smart.”

  Johnny Liddell sat staring at the ceiling. Two and two kept making six. It didn’t make too much sense now; not as much as it had when he strolled blithely into Goodman’s o
ffice less than an hour ago to tell him that he had killed Randolph for the insurance that would pull his production out of the red.

  “How’s the Cookie Russo angle suit you, Johnny?” Inspector Devlin dragged him back from his daydreaming. “Cookie could get awfully mad if somebody owed him money and welshed.”

  Johnny shrugged. “The whole thing sounds screwed up to me. Anybody could have killed him. He’s been a louse for years.” He resumed his scrutiny of the ceiling. “What time did the coroner fix?”

  Devlin consulted his pad. “About six this morning. The blonde floozie outside found him when she came in about nine-thirty.”

  “About six, eh?” Johnny Liddell transferred his gaze to the inspector. “I saw him this morning about three-thirty down at the morgue. He must have come right up here.” He grunted. “Why? It might pay to find out who he had a date with up here after he left the morgue, Inspector.”

  “Nobody. We already thought of that, Johnny. Night operator who went off about seven says he didn’t see anybody come up except Goodman and that so-called bodyguard of his. They came in at four, the bodyguard left about four-thirty.” He looked up from his notes. “We checked on the bodyguard, too. He arrived at Goodman’s house at five-fifteen, and it takes roughly a half hour to get out there.”

  Johnny Liddell grunted. “God, I wish I’d known that Goodman was bumped off this morning.”

  “Why?” Devlin demanded.

  Johnny Liddell grinned. “I would have stayed in bed. I didn’t get there until about seven.”

  Toni Belden was waiting for Johnny Liddell as he left Goodman’s office. She fell into step beside him. “Well, Sherlock, how about that fancy theory now?”

  Johnny growled under his breath. “There’s a hell of a lot more to this than meets the eye,” he told her. “Goodman didn’t just happen to get knocked off. I got a feeling that’s just one hunk of a big over-all pattern.” He stopped, turned to the girl. “You been able to dig up anything?”

  “Not a thing.” She looked undecided, then opened the oversized handbag that hung from her arm. “I’ve some bad news for you, Johnny,” she said, and pulled out a still-damp page proof of the Dispatch. A headline announced that evidence pointed to the fact that movie star Harvey Randolph had been murdered. With a sinking stomach, Johnny Liddell read the details under Toni Belden’s by-line.