by Steve Fisher
7
I RETURNED to the studio on Monday. I arrived at a quarter of ten and there was nobody in the writers’ building except the stenographers and the switchboard girl. The writers would dribble in anywhere between ten o’clock and noon. I went into the reception room. The switchboard girl turned around and shook my hand and exdaimed over me. She was effusive and she seemed actuany glad that I was back. She was good to all the writers and they loved her. She kept out cans from collectors and salesmen. When you wanted a night off, she phoned your wife and said you had been called to a conference and that some old films were going to be shown and it might be all hours. She stalled your girl or lied to your mistress. She listened to the woe and the wrath of grief-stricken creditors and jilted women. Every insurance salesman was a natural blood enemy. Once she bodily threw a tie girl out of the building. She was lovely. She was a sweetheart. We bought her flowers. We kept her supplied with the daily trade journals and the afternoon papers. On Christmas we gave her presents.
“I thought you were taking your lay-off,” she said.
“I decided not to.”
“It’s good to have you back!”
“Thanks.”
“Have you heard about your script?”
“No, who’d they give it to?”
“No one,” she said. She was elated. “Your producer just wants a few changes and a polish job. He said he’d wait for you. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“It’s unbelievable!”
“You’ll get a solo writing credit!”
“That’s swell.”
“Credit on a good picture is worth more than money out here.”
“I know,” I said. “How’s the gang?”
She told me about some of them, and then she said: “But Mr. Craig’s been very upset.”
“Lanny? Why?”
“His wife is in Reno.”
“No! How come?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
She would tell you the news; not the secrets.
“Well, that’s too bad,” I said.
“Yes, he’s been very upset.”
She called my producer’s office and his secretary said that he would see me at eleven-thirty.
Lanny Craig came in about twenty minutes later. He didn’t stop to say good morning and I just saw his hulking figure as he limped past the switchboard. I lit a cigarette and sat very quietly, thinking; then I got up and walked down to his office. I went in without knocking. His back was turned and when he heard me, he slammed shut a drawer very quickly, and looked around. His face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot and there were heavy black bags under them. He had aged twenty years. There was nothing friendly about him but when he saw me he opened the drawer again and resumed what he had been doing. He had a bottle of cheap brandy and now he reached for a glass. He paused for a moment and then took a second glass. It was a tumbler. He poured brandy into both of them, his back still turned. He drank his own and poured some more. At last he walked around the desk and sat down. He looked at me and nodded toward the tumbler. I went over and took it and threw myself onto his divan. I didn’t say anything. The man was shaking as though he had palsy. I had always considered him boyish but now he was ugly. He seemed to have layers of skin, all of it fat. His face was broad and his shoulders were broad. His hair seemed whiter. He wore a white leather shirt and a neat blue scarf. It was new and not yet wrinkled.
“Where’ve you been?” he said. “Around.” I sipped at the brandy. “Seen the papers?”
“No.”
“It’s been all over the papers,” he said. I knew he wasn’t even thinking of Vicky and I hated his guts. “The old girl left me,” he said.
“That’s too bad.”
He sat down. He smelled the brandy he had poured for himself. “All she needed was an excuse.” he went on. “For two years she’s been waiting for an excuse. Of course she had plenty but she could never prove them. She was afraid of divorce as long as she couldn’t get anything on me. She was afraid I’d get some of her dough.” He drank the brandy and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
I didn’t say anything. The brandy was rank. I put it on the little table beside his portable radio.
“She’s had detectives follow me all over town,” he said. “I’ve seen the reports. But there was nothing in them. Even when I was chiseling there was nothing in the reports that would hold up in court. She was so damned afraid I’d sue. And I would have. For a million dollars I’d sue my mother. For even ten percent.”
“What was it she finally got on you?”
“Vicky Lynn.” he said. I sat up.
“I’d signed papers making me one of her managers,” he went on. “According to the law I’m not a manager. A manager has a license or a decree or some damn thing. It’s very technical how signing this paper could get my wife a dean divorce but it did. Her lawyers proved that to my lawyer. My lawyer said there wasn’t anything I could do. He said he wouldn’t handle a suit unless I paid him in advance because there wasn’t a ghost of a chance of collecting.”
“This is silly,” I said. “I don’t follow at all.”
“I didn’t, either. But there were clauses in the contract we made with Vicky that could be legally interpreted to parallel with adoption papers. That’s all right. But Vicky was twenty-two. Try going into court and telling a judge you adopted a pretty twenty-two year old girl, whether three other guys were with you or not.”
“They cooked you,” I said.
“You’re damn right. They crucified me. They said get a jury of plain and simple men and women, and before the lawyers were through our pact with Vicky would sound like she’d been running a cooperative house of prostitution.”
“But we would have testified—”
“Sure. And it’d be the scoop of the year for every tabloid in the country. They’d frame our testimony to sound ridiculous. They can do that. Just hint something scummy about Hollywood and everybody in the world will believe it. It would have busted us all right out of the business.”
I took a drink of the brandy after all.
“We agreed to so damn many things.” he said. “To pay her rent until she got working. To buy and rent clothes for her. To buy groceries if she needed them. To—oh, hell! You notice this studio wouldn’t touch her? They got wind of what was up and they were afraid of the whole thing. But the rest of the companies didn’t know anything about us. All they knew was that here was a swell kid coming up.”
“But wasn’t there any way out for you?”
“Just one,” he said. He was trying to load his pipe with tobacco but his hand shook so much that he gave it up. “My lawyer gave me that. He said Vicky should declare in front of witnesses that I hadn’t kept up my part of the contract. To say that she was going to cut me out of it. Then if my wife tried anything I could have said I thought I was buying stock in a promotion scheme. I would have had witnesses to say that Vicky herself had thrown me out of the set-up.”
“Why didn’t you do that?”
He looked at me. “You haven’t talked to the cops?”
“No.”
“They asked me the same question. They said I’d begged her to do it and she’d refused and I got sore and hit her just under the ear there.”
I felt my heart pounding.
“They said I went to her apartment to get her to do this and that was when it happened. You see, I have no alibi for that hour she was murdered.”
He said these things very smoothly, as though he feared nothing, but he was already a physical wreck, and now! sat up and watched him. I was tense.
“What did happen?” I said.
He had gotten up and now he walked to the other end of the office. His limp irritated me. He pulled a book out of the bookshelf and then shoved it back.
“What happened was this,” he said. “I phoned her at Max Epstein’s office and explained the whole thing. I said I would be in a bar on Vine Street during the afternoon with my wife and my law
yer and a couple of witnesses. I asked her if she’d come down and go through this act for me. I’d said it’d be her first dramatic role and to do it good.”
“What’d she say?”
“She was frightened. She said she was very grateful to me and she’d do anything I asked. She said she’d be at the bar by three-thirty.”
“She didn’t show up?”
“No. My wife kept wanting to go. I had a hell of a time. I kept watching the clock. I talked and talked. I talked and drank until I was sick. Everybody was unnerved. My lawyer was in on what was supposed to happen and he was sweating. It was the most wretched hour I’ve ever spent. At four-thirty my wife left. I couldn’t keep her there any longer. At a quarter of five the witnesses went, and so did my lawyer.”
He was walking up and down the office. He talked into his chest. I said:
“What did you do then?”
“I left the bar. It was five of five. The car was in my wife’s name and she had taken it. I took a cab to Vicky’s apartment. Harry Williams was on the switchboard and he said she wasn’t home. I was upset. My nerves were jumping. I ached everywhere. I said he was a liar and I jerked him out from behind the switchboard and made him take me upstairs. But he was right. She wasn’t home. I went back downstairs with him and the switchboard was jammed with calls. I kept trying to say something to him. I wanted to leave a message for Vicky. But he was so busy I got disgusted and walked out.”
“So there was no message to prove that you had been there at that time,” I said, quickly.
“No.”
“Did the cops check up to see whether the switchboard was jammed at the time you said?”
“Yes, but the tenants in the building were half nuts and all anxious to exaggerate their own importance. They said the board was dogged from five right on through. They told different stories. The cops didn’t get much out of them.”
He sat down on the edge of his desk and out of habit picked up the phone. He gave the girl the number of his bookie and then hung up to wait for the can.
I said: “Did anybody say for sure that he heard Williams’ voice on the switchboard after five o’clock?”
“No. His voice is like the one of the guy that relieves him and—But what is this? Do you—”
His phone rang and he picked it up. He asked about the horses and the odds. I waited. He placed two bets and hung up.
“The odds might change before the race,” I said.
“So what?”
I looked at my finger nails. My hand shook.
“Did the cops get rough?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing,” I said, “only they could have worked it out like this: that you went to Vicky’s apartment at the time you said. That Vicky didn’t want to see you and said she wasn’t home. That you pulled this stunt with Williams and went up anyway. You and Williams with the pass key. That Vicky was there and there was a big scene.”
“Listen—”
“That would account for Williams’ disappearing.” I said. “He would have been a witness and after you hit Vicky the cops could say that you had to get him to hell out of the way. The cops would have said it was a motive. A damn good one, too. But sometimes cops don’t think of those things. And, of course, there was no clue that put you in the apartment. It wouldn’t have held up in court.”
He sat there on the desk staring at me. His eyes were terrible. He was breathing hard. He picked up the brandy bottle and emptied it into his glass.
“Anything else,” he said. “Have you thought of anything else you can add to it? Go on. You might as well cook me. Everybody else has taken a piece out of my hide. Build up a case, honey.”
“There’s nothing else,” I said, “except—”
“Except what?” he yelled.
I got up. “Except that you say it was five or after that you went to her apartment.”
“That’s right.”
Our eyes met. “The autopsy showed that she was killed at approximately five o’clock,” I said.
I didn’t know what he was going to do. He looked down at the glass in his hand and swished the brandy around. He looked up at the wall.
“I know it,” he said, “I’ve been worried. The trouble is the bartender on Vine Street testified I left his place at five of five. I’d been watching the dock all afternoon, and made him conscious of time. They found the cab driver that took me to Vicky’s place. He said about five. But it still isn’t strong enough for them to arrest me. They’d never get a conviction.”
I didn’t see why they wouldn’t.
“Anyway,” he went on, “there’s a detective named Ed Cornell. He’s in charge of the case and he doesn’t suspect me.” He lifted the brandy. “To Ed Cornell of the cops. To my dear wife who cut me off without a cent. To pals that’d like to hang mel” He drank down the brandy and threw the glass at the wall. It broke and the wood partition of the wall shook.
I saw my producer. He told me the same thing about the script the girl had told me but without frills. He said he was glad I was back in the saddle. The studio would probably pick up my option, he said. I went down the stairs and out through the front entrance and walked along the sidewalk in the sunshine. I went over across the street and had a drink. I drank to Ed Cornell.
8
FOR TWO DAYS there were douds in the sky, and then one morning there were no clouds, but the sky was solid black, and the air was dark and wet. It was muggy hot and it made you sweat. It stayed this way until about noon and then suddenly the sky split open and lightning licked down through, jagged and white, and shuddering with thunder. The windows shook with the thunder. There was a whiff of breeze. Then the rain started. It came down in thick, solid drops, and then it came harder and harder; it came in furious brass sheets and wrapped up the sound stages and clattered in the studio streets. You could see the far off palms swaying in their agony. But the rain was sweet and cool and it was a relief more than anything else. I took my hands off the typewriter and watched it.
I had lunch brought to my office and then I turned on all the lights, closed the windows and went on working. I stopped about four and checked out for the day. My car was parked in a filling station lot about a block from the studio, and I got soaked on the way. I didn’t have any top coat. I put papers on the seat of the car and drove to the hotel. As soon as I got in my room I took off all my clothes and took a hot shower, then put on a pair of shorts, my robe and slippers, and sat down on the bed. I sat there for almost an hour reading magazines and then there was a knock at the door. I got up and opened it.
Jill came in. She closed the door. She was wearing a green rain slicker, and a little beret that was wet through. Her hair was bronze and she looked pretty. Her blue eyes seemed very dear. She was breathing heavily and for a moment she said nothing.
“Forgive me for not announcing myself from downstairs,” she said now.
“Forget it. Take off your coat.”
She took off the slicker and I hung it up in the bathroom where it dripped on the tile. I heard her talking.
“You never answer when I call from downstairs.” I came back into the room. “I haven’t been here very much.”
“You’ve never been here when I called?”
“No,” I lied.
“It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. But you might have phoned me.” She was wearing white linen. The skirt was tight across her hips.
“I never thought of phoning.” I said. “I guess I should have. Cigarette?”
“No. You might have come over to see me.” She was watching me intently. “You’ve got the key. You know the way.”
“I guess I should have.” I lit up. I shook out the match and put it in the tray on the dresser.
“Why do you keep saying that? You haven’t come because you didn’t want to.”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
“I’ve been very lonely,” she said. She paused. “I use the word. Lonely.”
“I know what it’
s been, Jill.”
“You might have at least telephoned.”
“I know. Look, I’ll can and get drinks.” The rain was coming down very hard, and you could hear the traffic on Vine Street. Jill leaned back up against the door.
“Never mind drinks. Have you seen Ed Cornell?” I said I had.
“He doesn’t believe Harry Williams is guilty.”
“That’s what he said.”
“He thinks it’s you.”
“He said that, too.”
”Is it you?”
I called down and ordered two gin slings. I sat on the bed. I pulled my feet up and smoked my cigarette. She came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t timid.
”Is it you?” she said again.
“Do you think it is?”
She looked at me. “No.” She dropped her eyes. “Oh, Peg, I’ve been so confused!”
“Of course you have.”
“I think of it at night. Sometimes I lie in the dark and think of it. Once I dreamed about you. You were running down a long, long corridor. You—you were screaming. I thought then that you had killed her. But all I wanted to do was help you. I kept remembering the way you’d been. So real and—” She looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. She brushed them away. “You see how silly it is? I had to see you. I’ll be all right now.”
There was a knock on the door and I said come in. The boy brought in the drinks and put them on the dresser. I paid him and he went out. Jill got up and took one of the glasses. She sipped at it. She didn’t look at me any more. I got off the bed and went over behind her and took her by the elbow.
“Hello, kid,” I said.
“Hello, Peg.” She turned around and looked up at me. “You’re pretty swell,” I said.
“But you didn’t want to see me.”
“I do now. It’s just—you’d been so close to Vicky. I didn’t want to talk to you. I’ve been a terrible fool. It’s going to be different now.”
She looked at me and didn’t speak. The rain was thick and solid past the window and the room was damp but hot. “Let’s drink on it,” I said. We touched our glasses, and both of us drank.
