Black Is the Fashion for Dying

by Jonathan Latimer

  Walling off the laughter around her, she went over what had happened after Herbie left. Somewhere there had to be a clue. Unless Josh was playing a macabre joke. She’d sat beside Dick on the couch and made him tell her everything from the start. About the naked blonde and poor Ashton Graves and Edgar Allan Pixley. And about Caresse’s house and the magic ledgers. She went over it all, intermittently conscious of other nominated songs being sung, of awards being made for short subjects, special effects, sound recording, set design, cinematography. She thought longest about the blonde. She, at least, made a certain kind of sense, provided the murderer had wanted to see what Dick was writing. And he must have. Otherwise he wouldn’t have killed her later. She shuddered, visualizing the small body lying among the bones of the prehistoric creatures trapped in the tar pits a million years ago. She felt a twinge of fear. It could just as easily have been her if the shadowy killer had wanted it that way. And next it would be Dick unless—

  “… and the winner …” Tab Hunter tore open the long envelope, drew out the slip of paper inside. “… Edith Head!”

  A small, purposeful woman wearing enormous dark glasses went past Dick down the aisle, climbed the stairs to the stage and accepted the award for best costume design in black and white photography. She smiled at the applauding audience but didn’t say anything. Red Skelton, emerging from the wing, tried to embrace her. She side-stepped him deftly, marched off with her Oscar. Red doubled up, pretending that she had elbowed him in the stomach, and staggered up to the stand.

  She shut off the laughter. The puzzle pieces had to fit together somehow. But they didn’t. They were still as unrelated as when she and Dick had talked in the apartment. They had gone over everything again and again. Until finally Dick pave up.

  “I’m cooked.”

  “No, you’re not, darling.”

  “I am. I’m the fall guy. No other way out.”

  “Josh thinks ho has a way.”

  “They’ve been giving him too much codeine.”

  “Maybe that’s just the thing.”

  “The thing is to find Captain Walsh.”

  “What about the Awards?”

  “That’s one way of finding him.”

  “Then you’ll go?”

  He managed a wry grin. “Why not?” he said. “I haven’t even got a life to lose now.”

  She’d left then for her clothes and the dress suit she rented at Western Costume because she didn’t dare go to his apartment. When she came back he was asleep, his body twisted into an uncomfortable S, half on and half off the couch. It was only five o’clock so she found clean sheets in the bedroom and put them on the double bed and led him to it, still half asleep. She helped him undress and got him into bed and then, somehow, she was undressed and in the bed with him and he was no longer half asleep. Breasts and loins tingled at the memory. This was one puzzle, at least, they had solved and for a time all the other puzzles had faded into nothingness. The remembered climax of solution tightened her hand. Dick returned the pressure. More than returned it. He was hurting her hand. She looked at him, saw that his eyes were fixed on the stage.

  Back of the award stand stood Kim Novak, ivory shoulders and chest bare above the swelling bodice of a cerise evening gown. “… nominations for the best screenplay,” she said huskily, and read from the sheet of paper she was holding. “Lester Beals, Broken Image, Grant-Wild Productions. Karl Fabro, Fox in the Vineyard, Major Pictures. Abraham Igoe and Kurt Jacks, The Face of …”

  She turned to look at Karl Fabro. He was hunched down in his seat, puffy eyes half closed, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. Over the loudspeaker Kim Novak’s throaty voice was saying, “… Alfred Penn Weston, Night Thunder, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And the winner is …

  “… Karl Fabro,” Kim Novak read from the sheet she had taken from the torn envelope. She put down the sheet, peered out, smiling, at the audience. There was a dull rumble of applause and heads turned as Karl Fabro heaved himself up out of his seat and started down the far aisle, walking as a bear might walk with an unhurried shambling gait. He was smiling, though, and nodding to people he was passing.

  A murmur of voices close by drew Lisa’s attention from the heavy shoulders that rolled with each deliberate step. Coming down the near aisle, approaching Dick’s seat, was an apparition that might have sprung from a graveyard. A chalky ghost of a man in a mildewed dress suit, dank black hair plastered down on his skull, wild black eyes peering out of his gaunt face. For a terrifying second she thought it was the dead poet. Edgar Allan Pixley. Then, as the figure passed Dick, carefully matching Fabro’s progress down the far aisle, she remembered. It wasn’t Pixley. It was the English actor Herbie had brought to the apartment. But what was he doing? She looked at Dick, saw he was watching Fabro.

  Murmuring voices were rising from half the theater now, but if Fabro heard them he must have considered them part of his ovation. Smiling broadly, he began to climb the far steps to the stage. And at the same time his grotesque shadow began to climb the near steps. Kim Novak swung her blond head from one to the other, blue eyes alarmed above the smile fixed on her face. The two figures reached the stage, turned simultaneously towards the stand, began to walk towards it. On his second step Fabro caught sight of the figure coming towards him. He took another step and then half a step, on his face a curious expression of puzzled recognition. Pixley, as Lisa kept thinking of him, continued to walk, apparently not seeing Fabro at all. Halted in the half-step, Fabro stared at him, frozen in the wary attitude of a wild animal sensing danger. Pixley kept on walking. “No,” Fabro said quietly. “No …” but as Pixley came still closer panic shattered his face. Lips writhing, eyes closed tight, he cried, “No … oh, no …” and lowering his head he swung around and tumbled blindly towards the wing. Danny Kaye, standing there, tried to catch his arm, but he flung off the grasping hand and vanished from sight.

  The thirty-six hundred in the theater sat in bewildered silence, as no doubt did seventy-five million others. Lisa touched Dick’s shoulder. “But why did he—” she began. “Quiet,” he said. Kim Novak was staring wide-eyed at the gaunt man beside her. Mechanically, she picked up the golden Oscar.

  “You are accepting this in the name of Karl Fabro?” she asked uncertainly.

  “I am not,” the man said in a firm English voice. “I am accepting it in the name of Edgar Allan Pixley.”

  Richard Blake

  At least they didn’t have him in leg irons. That was something. Not that they needed leg irons. The handcuff was enough. His right arm was already numb from the pressure maintained on the metal bracelet by Sergeant Grimsby, attached to the other end of the short chain. His left arm, throbbing from the impact with the marble floor in the theater lobby, felt as though it had been dislocated at the shoulder. And he was pretty damned sure his kneecap was broken.

  Actually, after that crazy fracas in the lobby, detectives converging on him and Lisa from every direction, fists flying and flash bulbs flaring, he was a dead jelly fish. They could have taken him to the International Airport, dumped him there with a one-way ticket to Bali and he still wouldn’t have run.

  Where they’d taken him, though, was to the studio’s executive projection room. Why he didn’t know. The normal thing, when Grimsby and his platoon of house wreckers had collared him, would have been to rush him off to headquarters and work him over with a rubber hose. But they hadn’t.

  He narrowed his eyes against the neon glare overhead and peered past Sergeant Grimsby at Captain Walsh, seated back of the long table with the projection controls. His jaws were moving over a cud of chewing gum and his wrinkled leathery face was noncommittal. By him was Lisa. She must have felt him looking at her because she turned. Her smile, when it came, was wan. She was scared. Well, so was he. He glanced at the others in the room. In two of the seats in the next-to-last row were Selig and Mr. Orthman. Both carefully avoided his eyes. By the rear door was one of the detectives who had caught him, a bulky man in a rumpled suit wh
o didn’t avoid his eyes.

  It was a part of whatever Josh Gordon had in mind, of course. Captain Walsh, already in the projection room when they arrived, had said, “You better hope your pal has something, son, like he claims.” But the strange thing was why the police were going along. He was wondering about this when Herbie and Chuck Eastman came through the door past the bulky detective. They sat down at the control table.

  “All set?” Captain Walsh asked.

  Herbie said, “Better ask Mr. Gordon.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Chuck Eastman indicated the small speaker built into the table. “Use the intercom, Captain,” he said. “It’s hooked up to a hospital telephone.” He fingered down a lever by the speaker. “Mr. Gordon …?”

  A faint buzzing sound emerged from the speaker. Then Gordon’s scratchy voice, sounding as though it was coming from a nineteen-fourteen phonograph, said angrily, “Leave that God-damn leg alone!” A woman’s voice replied, “I’m only doing what the doctor told me to do, Mr. Gordon.”

  Captain Walsh said sharply, “Are you there, Gordon?”

  “Excuse me while I kill me a nurse” Gordon’s voice said. A shrill cry of pain came from the woman. “Got her with my good leg,” Gordon said triumphantly. The woman muttered something inaudible. “Tell anybody you want,” Gordon said. Then his voice, much louder, said, “Go ahead, Captain.”

  Walsh leaned closer to the speaker. “You heard about Fabro?”

  “Saw it on TV. Told you the bastard would run.”

  “And now what?”

  “Did you arrest him?”

  “I can’t arrest somebody for leaving a theater.”

  “You can for murder.”

  Walsh looked somberly across the table at Blake. “We already got the murderer.”

  “Nonsense. We made a bargain. You said you’d listen to me if Fabro ran.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, he ran. Probably still running.” There was a pause. Gordon was drinking something. Finally his voice came from the speaker again. “Dick?”

  “Yeah, Josh.”

  “You able to talk?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then tell ’em about the naked blonde.”

  That wasn’t hard, Blake discovered. He’d gone over it so many times in his head he knew the story by heart. He described how she’d come to his apartment and how he’d found out later she was dead. And then, prompted by Lisa, he went into his theory about her. When he finished, Walsh turned to Sergeant Grimsby.

  “You see the report on her?”

  Grimsby nodded. “Strangled. Persons unknown.”

  “Identified?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Must be the same one, mink coat and all.” Captain Walsh’s dubious brown eyes swung back to Blake. “Kinda roundabout way, though, to pull you off that typewriter.”

  “Why else would she be there?”

  Lisa said, “And why was she killed, if she didn’t know something about Caresse’s murder?”

  “Could be a lot of reasons,” Captain Walsh said. “But I’ll buy yours for a minute.” Blue-veined skin cloaked his eyes. “Killer hires blonde, gets a look at the script. Finds out what’s going to happen on the set.” His eyes appeared again. “So what does he do next?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Gordon’s voice asked: “Is Selig there?”

  “Yes, sir.” Awkwardly hoisting his angular frame out of his chair, Selig came towards the control table, walking like a man on stilts. “Head carpenter at the studio,” Herbie said. “I know,” Contain Walsh said. From his coat pocket Selig took out what Blake saw was some kind of antique derringer, laid it on the table.

  “What’s this?” Captain Walsh demanded.

  Sergeant Grimsby said, “Dueling pistol.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Got two of ’em,” Selig said, producing a duplicate weapon from another pocket. “Supposed to go up on the wall in—”

  Gordon’s voice cut in. “Tell the captain where you got it, Selig.”

  “Fabro.”

  “And where’d he get it?”

  “Orthman’s.”

  “When?”

  “Morning Miss Garnet got shot.”

  “Thanks.”

  Selig mumbled, “Sure,” and went back to his seat. “This is absurd,” Sergeant Grimsby said. “I examined both pistols and—”

  Gordon cut in again. “Mr. Orthman?”

  “Yes?”

  “You bring those bullets?”

  “All five boxes.” Yellow face and too-big eyes solemn, Mr. Orthman brought a paper bag to the table, took out the five white cardboard boxes. “Webley-Fosbery, .325 caliber.”

  “Somebody open ’em.”

  With thumb and forefinger Captain Walsh pulled the already loosened staples from the boxes, took off all five cardboard tops. Blake could see the copper sheen of the closely packed cartridges from where he was sitting.

  “Any missing?”

  Walsh bent over the boxes. “One.”

  “Naturally,” Sergeant Grimsby said. “The cartridge that was found on Blake.”

  “And that’s all that are missing?”

  Captain Walsh ran his forefinger over each box. “Yep. Just one.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “Is.” Walsh peered reflectively at the boxes. “But I see what you’re drivin’ at. Or were. You figured the killer got his bullets from one of the boxes here.”

  “Fabro,” Gordon said. “While he was buying the dueling pistols.”

  Walsh glanced up at Mr. Orthman’s politely attentive face. “Fabro have a chance to fool with these boxes?”

  “He did if you mean the fat man with the bad teeth,” Mr. Orthman said. “While I was cleaning the pistols for him.”

  “Only it seems he didn’t fool with them,” Captain Walsh said, looking down at the boxes.

  “I could have told you that, Captain,” Sergeant Grimsby said. “I examined each one personally.”

  “Each bullet?” Gordon demanded.

  “Well, no—”

  “Dump ’em out, Captain.”

  One by one Walsh emptied the boxes on the table, keeping each copper pile separate. “I don’t see—” he began, and then he said, “Well, what d’you know.” He plucked two cartridges from the third copper pile, dropped them on a bare section of the table. Sergeant Grimsby, rising, pulled Blake to his feet, led him over to the table.

  “Well, what gives?” Gordon demanded.

  Peering over Grimsby’s shoulder, Blake saw that the two cartridges, instead of having steel noses like the others, were stuffed with paper that had been rounded out to simulate noses. Mr. Orthman examined one cartridge and then the other. “Why, those are two of the blanks I made for Mr. Romero,” he said. “Only they’ve been fired.”

  Gordon again demanded to know what gave. Captain Walsh told him. “Smarter than I thought,” Gordon said. “Substituted the blanks for the bullets he stole. Figured with the paper noses holding them in place nobody’d notice.”

  “You got hold of something, all right,” Walsh said. “But these aren’t the blanks we been looking for. These have been fired.”

  “Lisa fired them.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Walsh turned, squinted at Lisa. “When did she do that?’

  “In the scene with Caresse.”

  “Ridiculous,” Sergeant Grimsby said. “We found the expended shells in the tent.”

  “Just the same she fired blanks.”

  Lisa said, “You mean I didn’t kill her, Josh?”

  “Fabro did.”

  “You keep saying that,” Captain Walsh said. “But it still don’t make it so.” He picked up the two shells, cradled them in his palm. “Far as I can see, all you’ve proved is that the shells killed Miss Garnet came from this box here.”

  “And that Fabro had a chance to steal them,” Blake said.

  “So?”

  “So let me put it all together,
” Gordon said.

  “Go right ahead,” Captain Walsh grinned derisively at the built-in speaker. “You show how blanks and real shells can be fired from a pistol at the same time, and how a guy can be in his office and killing a woman on a set, still at the same time, and I’ll fix your next murder rap.”

  Profoundly shocked, Sergeant Grimsby exclaimed, “Captain.”

  “Shut up. And sit down.”

  The metal cuff twisted the skin on Blake’s wrist as Grimsby pulled him back to their chairs. “Go ahead, Mr. Gordon,” Captain Walsh said.

  “You want to take over, Dick?”

  “Me?” The cuff tightened again as Blake swiveled around. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Begin with the victim.” A crackle of static came from the speaker as Gordon paused. “Caresse Garnet. Finished as a leading lady. Five flops in a row. Yet Fabro kept her under contract. Anybody know why?”

  “We all wondered about that,” Lisa said.

  “Blackmail. Had the goods on him. Contracts kept her quiet until he had to drop her. Orders, probably, from New York. Only she wouldn’t be dropped … so he had to kill her.”

  Suddenly Blake began to see daylight. Or at least a patch of it. “The ledgers!” he exclaimed.

  “Right. Three ledgers Ashton Graves told us about, Captain. Which she kept in her bedroom. And which I broke my God-damn leg trying to get.”

  “You know what was in those ledgers?”

  “The collected works of Caresse’s great and true friend. The late Edgar Allan Pixley, poet and genius.”

  “The guy that actor was made up to look like?”

  “Exactly. And whose plays Fabro cribbed. Sky Without Stars. Merchant of Hate. Fox in the Vineyard. Changed poetry into prose and won two Academy Awards.”

  “Along with Major Studio,” Blake said.

  Captain Walsh squinted at the speaker, his face puzzled. “Even if Miss Garnet was going to blow the whistle on him for stealing the plays, doesn’t hardly seem a reason for murder.”

  “You aren’t in the movie business, Captain. Cribbing in our circles is worse than taking bribes in yours.”