Beverly Hills Dead

by Stuart Woods

  “Sid, who would have access to membership records of the party in New York?”

  “The chapter officers, I imagine.”

  “Would they have kept your card, or was it issued to you?”

  “Actually, they showed it to me, then kept it. They apparently didn’t want members showing their cards around.”

  “So any officer of the branch could take the card, have it photo-stated, then replace it in the files?”

  “Any officer or, I suppose, any clerical employee. I would imagine, though, that the cards would be kept under lock and key, and lately I doubt if they would have been kept on the premises of the party offices, since they are liable to be served with a search warrant.”

  “One other thing: could a party member sign somebody else up for membership and pay his dues?”

  “I’ve never heard of that being done, but somebody with the right access might be able to do that.”

  “Without the person’s knowledge?”

  “Yes, I’d think so.”

  “That’s what I need to know, I guess. Thank you.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do, Rick.”

  The two men parted in front of the restaurant, Sid with the manila envelope under his arm.

  29

  Rick gathered the cast of Bitter Creek in his office, gave them coffee and addressed them. “Something’s come up,” he said. “Something good.”

  They all looked expectant.

  “Bitter Creek has been chosen to open at Christmas at Radio City Music Hall.”

  There were smiles and applause all around.

  “But that leaves us with only a very short time to complete the interiors, cut it and insert the opticals and titles and score it. We had scheduled three weeks to shoot the interiors, but in light of this good news, we’re going to have to shoot them in ten days, and that means working right through the weekend. I’m going to need the help of every one of you to get that done, and I know you’ll do your best. The sets are complete and are being assembled and dressed, and we’re ready to shoot the ranch house interiors, starting today, so let’s get over there, get costumed and made up, and we’ll start before lunch.”

  Everybody got up and shuffled out of Rick’s office, chattering excitedly.

  Eddie Harris came in. “How’d it go with Sid last night?”

  “He was happy to cooperate, Eddie.” He handed him the executed addendum to Sid’s contract. “And happy to have the cash, too.”

  “What pseudonym does he want to use?”

  “Jesus, I forgot to ask him. I’ll call him later today.”

  “Good.”

  “Eddie, I know you’re interested in keeping Vance Calder at the studio over the long term.”

  “I certainly am.”

  “Something came up last night: Sid and Alice are going to sell their house and split the proceeds. Vance, you know, is living in his bungalow, but he’s interested in buying a place. I think he might like Sid’s house, but he doesn’t have that kind of cash yet.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Sid’s having it appraised, but he thinks it’s worth eighty or ninety thousand.”

  “And we just gave Vance a ten-grand bonus, so he’s holding some cash. If he wants the place, tell him we’ll loan him ninety percent of the purchase price for, what, two years?”

  “Give him three; we want him to owe us for a while, don’t we?”

  “Sure. Three is good. We don’t need to do anything more for Susie right now, do we? I mean, we gave her the bonus and the new dressing room.”

  “My guess is Susie’s star is tied to Vance’s right now. If she wants a new place to live, it will probably be with him.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. You’re starting the interiors this morning, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I’m going over there in a few minutes; the cast is getting ready now. They’re pumped up about the Music Hall announcement.”

  “Great. I’ll look forward to the rushes.” Eddie took his leave.

  Rick buzzed his secretary. “Please get hold of Tom Terry and ask him to come see me. Now, if it’s convenient.” Tom Terry had worked on the Beverly Hills police force with Rick, and when Rick was promoted to producer, he hired Tom to replace him as head of studio security.

  Tom Terry came in and sat down. “Hi, Rick. I heard about the Music Hall thing; congratulations.”

  “Thanks, Tommy. Listen, there’s something I want you to do for me.”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Write this down. I want you to find out everything you can about a Harold Schmidt of Milwaukee, a.k.a. Hal.”

  “Lot of Schmidts in Milwaukee, Rick.”

  “Fewer Harolds, though. This one is probably a member of the CP and seems likely to be involved in left-wing activities in the city or state. That’s all I know about him.”

  “Okay, I’ll get on it. Best thing is to make some calls and get a name on the Milwaukee force.”

  “Go to Milwaukee, if you have to.”

  “You want me to talk to Schmidt about anything?”

  “Locate and research him first, then call me. I’ll decide then whether I want you to see him, or if I do it myself.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Tom said, then left.

  Rick asked his secretary to forward any calls from Sid Brooks to Stage One, then he got into his little electric cart with his shooting script and drove over there.

  Basil was finishing up lighting the ranch house set, and various members of the cast were standing around. He was headed for his canvas chair, next to the camera, when the script girl came to him.

  “There’s a call for you, Rick,” she said. “Your secretary’s on the line.”

  Rick walked over to where a phone stand stood against a wall and picked up the instrument. “Rick Barron.”

  “Sidney Brooks is on the line,” his secretary said. “I’ll put him through.”

  “Sid?”

  “Yeah, Rick. I’m sorry to disturb you on the set.”

  “Not at all. What’s up?”

  “David Sturmack got an appraiser over to the house first thing this morning, and he says the house will sell for ninety grand. He’ll work up a detailed report later, but that’s going to be the number. If your friend wants to see it, have him call me.”

  “Thanks, Sid. I’ll get back to you. Oh, by the way, what do you want to use for a pseudonym for your credit on Bitter Creek?”

  “How about Mark Twain?”

  “That would be rubbing their noses in it. Something more anonymous.”

  “Oh, you pick something, Rick. Whatever you like.”

  “Okay, Sid. Talk to you later.” Rick hung up, walked farther along the soundstage to Vance Calder’s stage dressing room and rapped on the door.

  “Coming!” Vance called back.

  Rick opened the door. “Not quite yet, Vance; it’ll be a few minutes. Got a moment?”

  “Sure, Rick. Come on in.”

  Rick took a chair. “Vance, you said something to me once about wanting to buy a house someday, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did. Maybe in a year or two, when I get some money saved up.”

  “You may have heard that Sid and Alice Brooks are getting a divorce.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “They want to sell their house. It’s a very nice place on a good street in Beverly Hills, lots of privacy. Not too big but very comfortable. They renovated it and did it up very nicely.”

  “Well, it sounds great, but I’m not in a position to buy something like that yet.”

  “Tell you what, Vance. Give Sid a call at this number”—he wrote it down—“go take a look at it, and if you like it, the studio will loan you ninety percent of the purchase price for three years. That’ll give you time to pay off the loan, or you could get a mortgage, if you want to.”

  “That’s a very nice offer, Rick. What does Sid want for the place?”

  “It was appraised this mor
ning for ninety thousand dollars, and, for what it’s worth, I think that’s a fair price.”

  “All right. I’ll call Sid and take a look at it. Is it furnished?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what they want to do about that. Alice seems to have moved back to New York, so they might want to sell some or all of it. My guess is, you could be in the place in a week, if you and Sid agree.”

  “But where would Sid go?”

  “He owns an apartment house in Santa Monica, and he can move in there.”

  “Okay. I’ll call him later today.”

  Somebody came and knocked on the door. “Five minutes, Mr. Calder.”

  “Be right there,” Vance said. “By the way, Rick, you said you would sell me the Ford convertible. How much?”

  “Don’t buy it; it’s yours for as long as you like. When you get tired of it, give it back to Hiram.”

  “Thank you, Rick.”

  Rick left him and headed for his chair. “Call ‘places,’” he said to the assistant director.

  “Places everyone!” the man yelled. “Places!”

  Rick reminded himself to ask Eddie who David Sturmack was; he kept hearing that name.

  30

  Rick got two scenes and five setups done that day, finishing at seven that evening. He called Glenna to let her know he was on his way home, then walked to his electric cart. As he reached it, Tom Terry pulled up in his own cart.

  “Hang on, Rick,” he called.

  Rick sat in his cart and waited for Tom to turn his around. “You got something on Schmidt?” he asked.

  “Turned out to be easy,” Tom replied. “I got connected to a source in the Milwaukee department, and as soon as I mentioned Schmidt’s name, the guy knew who I was talking about.”

  “Is he a criminal?”

  “Labor organizer. He put together a strike at a brewery in Milwaukee, and after a few weeks the whole thing blew up; big fight: scabs and hired cops against the strikers. Schmidt was convicted of inciting a riot, got two years in the Wisconsin State pen. He got out three days ago.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “I believe so. I could get a plane to Milwaukee in the morning.”

  “Do that, please, Tom. This is on me, not the studio.”

  “It’s personal?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to talk to him about?”

  “Back before the war—this would have been ’38, or so—Schmidt went out for a while with a girl named Louise Brecht. A few weeks ago, somebody at the studio sent me an interoffice envelope with a photostat of a CP card with that name on it. She acknowledges knowing Schmidt but denies ever joining the party or even attending a meeting, though she says she did go to a couple of cocktail parties with Schmidt during the time she was seeing him. A knowledgeable source has told me it would have been possible for Schmidt to enroll her in the party without her knowledge. I want to know if he did and, if so, exactly how and if it exists, I want the record of that card expunged. It’s possible the local party never issued the card to her but hung on to it in their files.”

  “You want me to get Schmidt to get the card and expunge the record?”

  “I’m going to leave that to your judgment, Tom. You can offer him a thousand dollars to do that, but you’re going to have to decide if you can trust him.”

  “And if I don’t think I can?”

  “Then I want somebody to go in there, wherever it is, and take care of it. You can do it, and I’ll give you the thousand, or you can hire somebody, and I’ll pay for it. I want it clean and quiet, Tom, and I don’t want you to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Got it?”

  “Got it. One other thing: do I need to know who Louise Brecht is?”

  “She’s Glenna, and you’re to keep that entirely to yourself.”

  “Of course.”

  “Come back to the office with me. There’s some cash in my safe.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  It was nearly nine before Vance was able to leave Susie and meet Sid Brooks at his house. He drove up the street, past the address, checking the neighborhood. It was beautiful. He turned around and pulled into the driveway, and Sid met him at the door.

  “Hi, Vance,” Sid said, offering his hand. “Come in.”

  “Hello, Sid. First of all I want to say how sorry I am for your problems, and I don’t want, in any way, to take advantage of your difficulties.”

  “Actually, Vance, if you buy the house you’ll be easing my difficulties considerably by hastening the day when I’ll have this behind me. I’m not offering the house at a knockdown price, and I’ll actually get more money by not having to pay a broker. Come on, let me show you around.”

  Vance followed along while Sid showed him the handsome living room, then the study with the walnut paneling and custom-made cabinets and bookcases. He led him upstairs and showed him two bedrooms, then the master, which included two baths and two dressing rooms. Then he took him down the back stairs to the dining room and kitchen, which was fitted with new, postwar appliances, including an electric Hotpoint dishwasher.

  “There’s a laundry room at the back and a three-car garage. The previous owners, who built the place, had three. There’s a three-room flat over the garage if you want a live-in couple. We’ve never used that; we have a housekeeper who comes daily, and I recommend her to you.”

  “How many square feet?” Vance asked.

  “About forty-two hundred, and the lot is an acre. The houses on either side have bigger lots and big gardens so this lot seems bigger.”

  “What about the furnishings?”

  “Alice wants some of the pictures but no furniture; I need a few pieces to furnish the apartment I’m moving into. You can have everything else for another five thousand.”

  “I’d like to buy it,” Vance said. “The furniture, too. When do you want to close?”

  “The sooner the better. Will it be all cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That will make things go faster. I’ll tell my lawyer to get a title search done and to draw up the sales documents. I should think we could close in a week or ten days.”

  Vance took out his new checkbook and wrote one for ten thousand dollars. “This and a handshake will secure the deal, as far as I’m concerned.” He handed the check to Sid, who put it into his pocket.

  The two men shook hands.

  When Rick got home there was a messenger-delivered envelope from Hyman Greenbaum waiting for him on the front hall table. He opened it and found a hardback copy of a slender novel, Greenwich Village Girl, and a neatly typed treatment by someone he’d never heard of, Wesley Hicks. He put it back in the envelope to read later.

  After putting the girls to bed and having dinner, he and Glenna lay in bed, propped up on many pillows, Glenna reading the novel, Rick reading the treatment and making notes in the margin. Rick finished first. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Yeah, but what do you think so far?”

  “I think I’m too old for the girl.”

  “Any other thoughts?”

  “Vance and Susie, of course. They’re perfect for it, and it’s perfect for them.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” he said. “I’ll call Hy in the morning.”

  31

  Tom Terry got out of Jack Barron’s Beech Staggerwing at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Field and grabbed his suitcase and briefcase. He and the pilot got a cab into the city and went to a medium-sized hotel recommended by the driver, one that specialized in traveling salesmen. They registered under false names, and Tom paid for both rooms in advance. Tom had a room-service dinner and got a good night’s sleep.

  The following morning Tom took a taxi to the address given him by his Milwaukee P.D. contact and told the cab to wait. The house was a duplex in a working-class neighborhood. No one answered the bell, and the mailbox was full; Tom went through everything, finally striking gold: among the
letters was a bill, in a plain brown envelope, for dues from the Milwaukee Communist Political Association. Tom wrote down the address in his notebook, stuffed the mail back in the box and rang the doorbell on the other side of the duplex. A small woman in a house dress and apron came to the door.

  “Good morning,” Tom said, “I’m Jim Fellows from the Central States Insurance Company. I just want to deliver a check to Mr. Harold Schmidt. Does he still live next door?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” the woman replied. “He got arrested for his union work and did some time for it. He got out a couple of days ago and came back here to get his stuff and moved out.”

  “I noticed he has a lot of mail piling up in his box. Do you have any idea of his forwarding address?”

  “He told my daughter he was moving to sunny California,” she said.

  “Did he say where?”

  “Hollywood.”

  Tom knew that a lot of people outside California thought of all of Los Angeles as Hollywood. “What’s he going to do out there, I wonder?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but all he knows about is unions and trouble, far as I can tell.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Tom said, tipping his hat. He went back to the cab and gave the driver the address of the Communist Political Association. The building was in a light industrial part of the city, and the CPA was a doorway next to a printing shop.

  Tom opened the door and went up a long staircase to the second floor, where he found another, fogged-glass door with the name lettered on it. He opened it and stepped into a small reception room, manned by a thin, primly dressed young woman at a desk.

  “May I help you?” she asked, looking at him suspiciously.

  “Yes, miss,” Tom said. “I’m Jim Mitchell, and I’m new in Milwaukee, looking for work. I went to some meetings back in Buffalo, New York, and I was kind of interested in the party. I wonder if you could give me a pamphlet about it, or something.”

  She brightened. “Why yes,” she said. “Please wait for a minute; we just had a new supply delivered from the printers this morning, and they’re in Mr. Warchovski’s office.” She got up from her desk and went into the next room.