Black Is the Fashion for Dying

by Jonathan Latimer

  “You seen those ledgers?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know he cribbed them?”

  “Christ!” Gordon said. “Would he have whizzed out of that theater like a fart in a windstorm if he hadn’t?”

  Lisa Carson

  She couldn’t help laughing. Somehow even the most hideous vulgarities seemed funny when Josh said them. But most of her laughter came from relief. It almost looked as though Dick had a chance now. She could see, from the smile on his face, that he thought so, too. He undoubtedly understood everything Josh was saying, and in what she could understand there was at least the start of a case against Fabro.

  Now if Josh could only show how Caresse was killed.

  Captain Walsh, waiting for laughter from the others to die down, was evidently thinking the same thing. Quiet restored, he said, “So far you’re strong on theory, Mr. Gordon. But weak on facts. Especially on the murder itself.”

  “I’m coming to that. I’ve just been …” Josh paused and then his voice demanded, “What in hell do you want?”

  A woman’s tart voice said, “I’m the night supervisor of nurses here, Mr. Gordon.”

  “You look more like the head matron at Buchenwald.”

  “I have a complaint from Miss Whitley.”

  “She the fat nurse I kicked?”

  “Yes, And let me tell you, Mr. Gordon, I will not tolerate—” An anguished sound, half grunt, half cry, came from the loudspeaker. Then there was the sound of a door being slammed. “Old battle-axe,” Josh said. “Kicked her, too.” There was a sound of metal striking glass, a sound of swallowing. “Just finishing brandy,” Josh explained. “Before they come and get it.”

  Captain Walsh said, “You better hurry and finish up here, too.”

  “Yeah. Had, at that. Suppose, for speed, I read you the notes I pot written down, you ask questions later?”

  “That’s okay by me.”

  There was a rustling sound of paper and Josh began, “Send Yeonne five hundred bucks and tell her—” More paper rustled. “Wrong notes,” Josh said. There was a moment of silence and then he began again.

  “Steps by Fatso after decide murder Caresse. Naked blonde to Blake so can make sure Lisa still shoots Caresse in scene, Webley mentioned in script so next morning swipes bullets at Orthman’s. Goes on set, swipes Webley from wardrobe cabinet, loads in bullets. Caresse in scene where bearers put down stretcher, drink at pool. Fatso knows action continuous to Lisa shooting Caresse. Catches Caresse waiting for bearers at pool, shoots her twice. Pulls blanket over—”

  “Look,” Captain Walsh broke in. “We said no questions, but how could he plug her with fifty, sixty people around?”

  “Everybody was watching the bearers drink out of the pool.”

  “Somebody’d hear the shots.”

  “He had the pistol wrapped up in something.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “And he’d read the script. He knew Gus Romero was supposed to fire some shots off scene.”

  “Three shots,” Dick said excitedly. “And Fabro fired at the same time.”

  “I don’t like it,” Captain Walsh said. “But go on.”

  “—shoots her twice. Pulls blanket over her, she pretending to be unconscious anyway. Pockets expended shells, puts Webley back in wardrobe cabinet, goes back to office. Call comes. Caresse dead in tent. Hurries to set, goes in tent to look at body. Picks up expended blanks Lisa fired, drops expended murder shells in place. Orders nobody leave set but goes out to greet arriving cops, at same time getting rid of blanks. Later takes blanks back to Orthman’s, puts them in box he stole bullets out of. Also steals ledgers and gets rid of them. Sits back. No evidence. Not even on set when cops think Caresse killed. Perfect crime.”

  The loudspeaker fell silent. Lisa glanced at the faces around her. Captain Walsh, hunched with half-closed eyes over the table, looked like a chess player contemplating a move. Herbie was grinning, and so was Dick. Sergeant Grimsby looked as though someone had stolen a lollipop from him. The others looked bewildered.

  “Hell of a theory,” Captain Walsh said finally. “Real fancy.”

  “Then you buy it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s the only way everything fits,” Dick said. “The blonde. The ledgers. Fabro buying the dueling pistols.”

  “A theory is one thing,” Sergeant Grimsby said. “But proving it is another.”

  “Yeah.” Captain Walsh nodded slowly. “That’ll take some doing.”

  “I can do it now,” Josh said.

  “How?”

  “Show ’em the film, Chuck.”

  Everyone turned to look at Chuck Eastman. He leaned forward, pushed one of the buttons on the control table. The neon lights dimmed, went out, and at the same time the screen lit up. It was, Lisa saw, the scene they had started with when Dick had run from the projection room. Caresse being carried along the jungle trail by the litter bearers. It went on just as before. The bearers reached the clearing by the pool, put down the litter and went off to drink. Caresse, all but her face hidden by the blanket, opened her eyes and smiled her evil smile as two shots sounded off scene. The camera panned down to the pool. While the bearers were drinking there three more shots sounded.

  Josh’s voice said, “That’s when she got it.”

  Now the bearers were scrambling up the embankment. Caresse was still under the blanket on the litter, her face turned towards the camera, her eyes closed. The bearers bent to pick her up and the screen abruptly went blank.

  “What’s wrong?” Captain Walsh demanded.

  “Switching to the slow motion reel,” Chuck Eastman said. “Just take a second.”

  The new film was different. It was not only in slow motion, but it had been blown up so that Caresse filled the whole screen and only the hands of the bearers could be seen. Also a black line had been ruled across the film about eighteen inches above the base of the litter. It just touched the blanket above Caresse’s chest. As the litter was being lifted, Josh’s voice came through the loudspeaker again.

  “Watch that line.”

  The film was scratchy and the scarlet of Caresse’s lips and the brown of the blanket had a washed-out look. That was, Lisa supposed, because of being blown up. She concentrated on the black line. The litter was being carried by the bearers now and Caresse’s arm, sliding out from under the blanket, dangled below it. She saw the black line was still just barely touching the blanket and suddenly she saw what it meant The line wasn’t moving and neither was the blanket under it. Caresse wasn’t breathing!

  For perhaps thirty seconds more, adobe blanket and black line remained in view and then jungle leaves, five times their normal size, intervened. From the sound track came Josh’s voice: “Cut! And thank you.” The projection beam went off and the room lights came on. Everyone sat motionless, eyes fixed on the empty screen.

  Finally, half to himself, Captain Walsh said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary!”

  “You buy it now, Captain?”

  “Looks like I got to.”

  “Better saddle up then.”

  “Yeah.” The captain rose, turned towards Dick and Sergeant Grimsby. “Let’s go.”

  “The prisoner, too?” Sergeant Grimsby asked.

  “What prisoner?”

  “Oh.” Sergeant Grimsby reluctantly took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cuff on Dick’s wrist. “Still some charges against him, though.”

  The captain, facing the loudspeaker again, ignored this.

  “Talk to you later, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “And thanks.”

  Josh said, “Just catch the bastard.”

  Walsh went up the aisle and out of the room, followed by Sergeant Grimsby and the detective who had been standing by the door. Herbie spoke into the loudspeaker. “Anything more?” “What do you think this is?” Josh asked. “A double feature?” Herbie and the others filed out. Dick came over, rubbing his wrist. “You okay, Lisa?”

  “Just a little numb,
darling.”

  “Me too.” Dick’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Seems like a dream, to coin a phrase.” He took hold of her hand. “Except for a moment or two this afternoon.”

  “More than a moment.”

  “And to think it took a murder to do it.”

  “Dick!” She glanced warningly at the loudspeaker. “I don’t think …”

  Dick asked, “You still on tap, Josh?”

  “Don’t mind me,” said the speaker.

  “We’re thinking of shoving off.”

  “And I’m thinking of Lorrance.”

  “What about him?”

  “That’s just it.” Josh’s voice was troubled. “I don’t know.”

  T. J. Lorrance

  In one of the Nembutal dreams, peopled by nightmare creatures with grotesque faces, a bell janglod. The bell was at the base of a teeter-totter that see-sawted-him and a harlequin clown up and down between sawdust and a canvas tent top. Each time he neared the sawdust the bell jangled and the clown giggled hysterically. The clown’s skin was chalk-white and he had only one eye, long-lashed and high on his forehead. With the giggling clown he went up and down, faster and faster until sawdust and canvas tent top seemed to merge in a blurry half-circle and with a crash the teeter-totter broke, cutting off the jangling bell in mid-ring.

  He was trying to find something on the night table beside the bed. His hand searched the surface, encountered water glass and pill box. On the floor was where the telephone was, the handpiece under the bed. Wondering dazedly how it had gotten there, he pulled the handpiece out by the cord, heard a tiny voice crying, “T. J.… T. J.…” The clown, he thought, and then he realized he was no longer dreaming.

  The tiny voice was Karl’s!

  He raised the handpiece, felt cold plastic touch his cheek. “Yes …?”

  “What the hell’s wrong?”

  “The phone … knocked over.”

  “Are you drunk?” Karl asked and quickly added, “Never mind. Don’t answer. Just come downstairs.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “I’m in the den.”

  “Den?” He felt confused, as though he were back in the dream. Karl in the house and using the telephone, too? “How … call me?”

  “Your unlisted phone, you fool.”

  “But why?”

  “Come down and I’ll explain.”

  The crack of Karl’s handpiece being slammed down hurt his eardrum. He sat motionless in the somehow comforting darkness, not wanting to move. Something had happened. Karl wouldn’t be downstairs if it hadn’t. But he felt neither apprehension nor curiosity. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to pull up the covers, set the electric blanket at womb temperature, curl up in the fetal position and sleep. Forever, if possible.

  But it wasn’t possible. He had commitments this side of forever. And besides the phone would soon be ringing again. Or Karl would be appearing in person. He sighed, turned on the lamp beside him and slid off the bed. On a chair he found his silk robe and below it the fleece-lined slippers. He put these on and tiptoed out of the bedroom. He was nearing the stairs on the far side of the landing when Pamela’s door opened and Miss Mclntyre, her nurse’s uniform ghostly in the dim light, peered out.

  “Mr. Lorrance?” she asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  There was an uneasy note under the Scotch burr. “I heard the telephone.”

  “Just a business call.”

  Back of her, in the chintz room lit by the rose-colored night bulb Pam loved, he could hear the whir of the respirator and the whisper of mechanically driven air.

  “She’s … not awake?” he asked.

  “No,” Miss Mclntyre said. “The lamb hasn’t moved for three hours.”

  “Good.”

  “Will you be having breakfast with us?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Don’t I always?”

  He sensed rather than saw her smile, and then she was gone and the door was closed. He went slowly down the stairs, thinking-about Pam. She had come far since that awful time of almost complete paralysis. The respirator was needed only at night, and now in the warm water of the backyard pool she had begun to find life in those fragile pipestem legs that made him want to weep. Five years, the doctors guessed, before respirator and braces and crutches would be gone. But she would only be thirteen then. Still time to make up for the years she—

  “What the devil kent you?”

  Startled. Lorrance looked up, found he had somehow entered the den. Across the room, on the Danish teak desk, the copper bull’s-eye lamp was lit. He saw centered in the harsh circle of light the Smith-Corona portable, a legal-size sheet of paper drooping from the carriage. Then, moving forward, he dimly made out Karl’s face back of the light, beady eyes glowing malevolently.

  “Well?”

  He saw Karl was still wearing the dress clothes he had put on for the Academy show. “I … I stopped to speak to Miss McIntyre.”

  “She knows I’m here?”

  “No. Nobody does”

  “Good.” Some of the rasp left Karl’s voice. “That’s why I didn’t go up to your room. So nobody’d know.”

  “But what difference …?”

  “Didn’t you see the Academy broadcast?”

  Lorrance shook his head.

  “Too bad, because I made a fool of myself.” Karl leaned forward. “Worse than a fool.” Reflected light from the table illuminated his face, glistened on tallow skin, wet with sweat.

  “Are you sick, Karl?”

  “Sick?”

  “You’re pale. And perspiring so.”

  “I’m not sick,” Karl snarled. “And if you’ll for Christ’s sake listen I’ll tell you why I’m sweating.”

  He jerked a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, began to wipe his face. Below the den’s French windows Lorrance could hear the tree toad that lived in the ivy bed, each croak like a piece of heavy linen being torn. Further off he could hear crickets and rustling leaves. Presently Karl spoke around the handkerchief.

  “I lost my head, T. J. For the second time in three days. Once with Caresse when I thought she was crazy. And now with this gaunt popinjay, this skid-row actor!”

  “Actor?”

  “He walked up onto the platform with me. When the writing award was announced.” A terrible look came over Karl’s face, as though he had suffered a seizure of some kind. “I thought I’d gone crazy myself.” His thick lips writhed. “Or that the dead had risen.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I thought he was Pixley!” Karl pushed sweat out of his eyes with the handkerchief. “He was made up to look like Pixley. He accepted the Oscar in Pixley’s name.”

  “But why …” Lorrance began, and then it came clear in one lightning-stroke flash. “The ledgers!” he exclaimed. “The screenplays! They were Pixley’s?”

  Behind the handkerchief Karl nodded.

  “And after he died, you and Caresse …?”

  “It was her idea.” Karl’s voice was calmer now. “The plays were in blank verse. I had to take the poetry out, make a series of major revisions. It wasn’t easy. In the end they were as much mine as Pixley’s.” Deep in his throat he made a choking sound that might have been meant for laughter. “But that didn’t prevent me from running.” The handkerchief came down, disclosing a twisted smile. “I don’t even remember leaving the theater. I came to in a taxi just entering my driveway. And by then it was too late to go back.”

  “Was it the … police?”

  “Josh Gordon.”

  “He hired this actor?”

  “Yes. And now he’ll go to the police.” Sweat had already begun to bead his face again. “Give them the motive. And it may be they will eventually figure out how Caresse was killed.” His voice faded to a phlegmy rumble in his chest. “They’ll never convict me. Not an iota of proof anywhere. But that’s unimportant.” He paused, spoke slowl
y for emphasis. “It’s my being arrested that’s important,”

  “I don’t see …”

  “Scandal. I’ll never survive it. Not in this business.” His eyes sought Lorrancc’s face. “And neither will you, T. J. Guilt by association, even if you’re not found guilty of being an accessory.”

  “You’d tell them?”

  “And cut my own throat?” Fabro snorted. “I’m not that stupid. But don’t you think that Gordon knows by now you stole the ledgers?”

  A small current of fear ran along Lorrance’s spine. He wished he hadn’t taken the sleeping pills. He needed to think clearly, but his mind was confused, as though he were still in the clown dream.

  “What can we do?”

  “Go under. Both of us. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  Karl bent over the Smith-Corona, drew out the legal-size sheet, laid it on the table. “Read this.”

  Lorrance came forward cautiously. “What is it?”

  “A confession.”

  “Confession?”

  “How the murders were committed.”

  “No, Karl,” Lorrance protested. “I already know too much …” He felt his heart leap in its rib cage. “Murders?”

  “Yes. Caresse and some girl. I don’t even know her name.”

  “You’re confessing to two murders?”

  Karl’s rubbery lips stretched into a smile. “No,” he said. “You are, T. J.”

  Karl Fabro

  Even with the terror still gnawing at his belly, it was all he could do to keep from laughing. The impact on T. J. was as violent as if he had suddenly undergone shock treatment for acute paranoia. Arms, legs, body twitching uncontrollably, he looked like a frog on a hook through which voltage was passing.

  It had really unbalanced him, and now the thing to do was to keep him off balance.

  Hurrying around the desk, he took hold of a thin arm, dug his fingers into the stringy flesh. He yanked on the arm, dragged T. J. back of the desk, shoved him into the chair, turned his head towards the paper.

  “I told you to read that.”

  “No no no no.…”

  “Stop it!” Fabro raised his hand. “Or do I have to slap you again?”