One Deadly Dawn

by Harry Whittington

  She opened the gym door and we went through it. The six young gods were gone. Lorna said, “Ceil sent them to the Hollywood Y.M.C.A. With all this other trouble, he thought it might be better.”

  “Very smart.”

  Ceil glanced up from the stationary bike. Did he resemble a man on a treadmill running from something, or was my imagination overactive since I’d read Pawley’s unpublished exposé of the great Ceil Bowne as a young man?

  Ceil wore a sweat shirt and wool trousers that laced about his ankles. He stopped pedaling, pulled the towel from around his neck and mopped at his face.

  “Nothing like keeping in shape,” Ceil said. “You ought to keep in shape, Sam.”

  “Sure. Could you park that thing a minute, Ceil?”

  He leaped from the bike, leaned against it, wiping his hands on the towel. It was suddenly very quiet in the gym.

  Ceil’s gaze moved to Lorna. She looked as if she were on her way to the guillotine.

  “I’ve been down to San Rafael,” I said into the silence.

  Ceil cut me short. “I told you, I’m not interested in Jack Roland, Sam. Can I be clearer? I’m not using him in this picture or any other.”

  I stood there, thinking that if I really wanted to get out of the movie racket, this was my opportunity. Ceil Bowne was top level in Hollywood; one short sentence from him could fix me, black list me permanently. It’d been years since any employee talked back to C.B. How long had it been since anyone accused him of a crime?

  “It’s not about Jack.” My voice was level, and its chilled steadiness surprised me. “I found out, Ceil. About you. I found out Pawley has been blackmailing you for almost a year.”

  Ceil did not speak, but slowly mopped his forehead. Lorna caught her breath.

  “Who else knows, Sam?” she said.

  I glanced at her, shook my head. “Nobody. But that’s not the point.” I stared at Ceil again. He had not moved. “This gives you a motive for murder, Ceil.”

  His face turned red, then went white; his lips tightened. I’d seen whole production units replaced when he appeared less angry.

  “Sam, have you gone nuts, coming here with this?”

  I shrugged. “Where would you want me to go, Ceil? God knows, it’s not easy for me. But it’s the truth. You have a motive. Jack Roland has none. At worst, your motive would have been more potent than Jack Roland’s. But as a matter of fact, Jack had no motive at all for killing Pawley.”

  “Pawley had a scandal story on him.”

  I shook my head. “For what Roland wanted, he had to have Pawley alive, friendly, and in business.”

  Bowne’s deep-set eyes studied me. At last he said, “I don’t know what you think you’ve come up with, Sam … but forget it. The police are satisfied with Roland as a suspect. That was the latest report. Roland is a nobody. It doesn’t matter what happens to him.”

  There was no supplication or whining in Ceil Bowne’s tone. It was business-like, matter of fact. He wasn’t making me a proposition, or trying to pay me off. He was showing me an alternative that would serve the greater good.

  “Ceil, this doesn’t sound like you. Wasn’t it you who said yesterday that when a man makes a mistake, he should be ready to pay? Or doesn’t that apply to Ceil Bowne?”

  His smile was bitter. He shook his head. “I’ve paid.”

  His voice was dead. “Nobody will ever know how I’ve paid.”

  “I know,” Lorna said softly.

  He glanced at her impatiently. “Go away somewhere, Lorna. I don’t need you feeling sorry for me. You make me nervous.”

  She didn’t move. “I only want to help you, Ceil. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  I touched the carbon in my pocket. I remembered Lorna had come to my apartment the night Pawley was killed. She would want to be Ceil’s alibi, but too many people at my’ place had seen her.

  I hoped Ceil wouldn’t say she’d been with him, because she’d go through hell trying to prove it. There was another reason I didn’t want Ceil to lie. There were sordid and vicious things about him in this story by Pawley.’ Ceil had been a great man in Hollywood. I couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t lie to me now.

  “Where were you when Pawley was killed, Ceil?”

  Bowne shrugged.

  “It’s important, Ceil. This story is no little thing, like your interest in muscle boys — nothing like that. It’s bad, and it undermines all the good you’ve done in thirty years in Hollywood.”

  He winced. Maybe he was thinking of thirty years of dedicated service to the industry, or maybe he was thinking of the years before that. Or maybe the hurt was so deep he couldn’t think at all.

  “I know what I was,” he said at last.

  “I’m not trying to railroad you, Ceil. I haven’t told anybody. But I do know Pawley was blackmailing you and had been for a long time.”

  He stared at the floor, shrugged.

  “There’s dynamite in this story, Ceil. Do I have to say it? Extortion, that was part of it. Running young dames who were trying to be movie extras into a more lucrative racket for another young hoodlum named Leo Ross.” I shook my head. “That really hit me, Ceil. You in the same world with Leo Ross. The same slimy world. Procuring for a guy like Leo Ross.”

  “We were kids together. We never went to Groton and Harvard.”

  “I’m not pointing my finger, Ceil. Hell, I’m not even inquiring into your motives.” I shook my head. “It’s just that you did white slave the extra girls for Ross, and Pawley dug it up.”

  Ceil’s voice was tired. “I know all that. You don’t have to keep going over it … Pawley was blackmailing me, just as you say. But I didn’t kill Pawley. I can prove it.”

  Here it comes, I “thought. He’s going to use Lorna for his alibi, and she’s going to ruin herself to make it stick.

  The doorbell chimed and I jumped. Ceil tensed too, and Lorna knotted her trembling hands.

  “Answer the door, Lorna,” Ceil said. “Whoever it is, I don’t want to see them.”

  Lorna nodded, left the room, closed the door behind her. The walls seemed to be moving in on me.

  I said, “You’ve got the motive, Ceil.”

  “Why should I deny that? So have many others.”

  “Not too many others have millions invested in an un-released movie, Ceil. Not too many others have TV as a competitor so that they need every break to fill movie houses. You have the motive, and more than anybody else, you stand to be ruined by this kind of exposé.”

  He let his gaze move about the room.

  I said, “You need more than filled movie houses. You need the confidence of bankers and investors. You know all this, Ceil. Hell, why do we have to go through it? They’d never back a multimillion dollar Ceil Bowne epic if this stuff were printed.”

  He strode across to the glass windows, stared out at the swimming pool, the stables, the corral. He turned slowly.

  “Sam, I respect you. I know you’ve the best interests of the studio at heart. Maybe more than any other man except possibly Yol Myerene and myself. I know you never wanted to come here with a thing like this. And I know how bad it looks for me. But I didn’t kill Pawley.”

  “Do I have to tell you I hope to God you didn’t? All I’m asking from you is an alibi that can’t be shaken, Ceil. You must see that.”

  “Yes.”

  I waited. He moved about the gym, touching bars, weights, pulleys. He returned to the bike.

  “I should have killed Pawley. I should have hired someone to do it.”

  No.

  “Yes.” He spread his hands, stared at them. “Want the truth, Sam? I tried to hire someone. The one man I knew who could arrange it was Leo Ross. Sure, my boyhood chum. He was in reformatory while I was in high school; he was in prison while I was in college. But we came from the same gutter. Only Leo couldn’t help me — he was afraid of it. And then I knew I couldn’t hire anyone to do it.”

  I sighed. “All right.”

  “But I
didn’t kill him, Sam. There was one good reason. I knew somebody had tipped Pawley off to that story. Kill Pawley, and then the other slime would turn up — the guy Pawley got it from. I couldn’t add murder to those old crimes.” He looked around, face stark white. “I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to live them down.”

  “If you were down there at Pawley’s the other night — ”

  “Damn it. I told you, I was not.”

  “If you were, Ceil — I better cover all the angles for you — Pawley wasn’t alone down there that night.”

  Ceil scowled. “What are you talking about?”

  “A woman was with him. She was in the house when he was killed. I got that bit from the delivery boy who took a telegram out there. A telegram that told Pawley to do what he wanted — and regret it.”

  “I never sent such a telegram.”

  “Somebody sent it. Somebody who knows me. Somebody who thinks I’m something to be used any way at all.”

  Ceil shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I admit one more thing — I did write a telegram like that. I even meant to send it, but I never had the guts. This guy had me where he wanted me. I didn’t send it.”

  The gym door opened and Lorna Carone returned, followed by Yol Myerene. He walked slowly, shoulders sagging. His kind of weariness was in his bones. His lined face seemed to say that making movies would have been easy, except for the troubles caused by the people he must hire to make them.

  Yol was breathing heavily, tiredly. “I got your message. I called and Skinner said you were here. I came right over.”

  “Yes, sir. Thanks. There’s some bad trouble. I thought the three of us could talk it over.”

  “You want to wait outside, Lorna my dear?” Yol said.

  Lorna’s stark face showed her misery. She hesitated, glancing at Ceil.

  “Wait a minute.” Ceil leaned against the bike. “There may not be any trouble at all. None that concerns us anyhow.” He stared at me. “You asked me a question, Sam. If I can answer that one question, there’s not much sense in going into all the rest of it — is there?”

  “All right.” I looked at Ceil in his sweat shirt, wool exercise trousers, sneakers. I thought of all the spectacular movies he had made, the stars he’d created, the good will he had brought to the entire industry. In my mind, if anybody deserved every break, it was a man who had spent thirty years trying to live down a bad past.

  “All right,” I said. I asked the question again, where had he been the night Fred Pawley was killed. I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t involve Lorna as his alibi.

  Ceil looked at Lorna, at me, at the head of Twenty Grand Pictures. “I was with Yol. Right here in Hollywood.” His voice was level.

  For a moment I was far off balance. I had expected him to claim that Lorna had been with him. I knew differently, and the people at my party would know better, but I was afraid that in desperation, he would attempt to use her But he had thrown a hard, low-breaking curve and I stood there waiting for the called strike.

  I looked at Yol. The old man’s face was gray. The silence was thicker than ever in the gym. Through my mind raced a thought of how fine a chicken ranch would be, just east of the Iowa River. I waited.

  Yol nodded.

  “That’s true, of course. Ceil was with me all evening. There was some trouble he had been in — many years ago, before you were even born, Sam. He spent all night and part of the next morning at my place. In fact, he was there until just a short while before I started calling you. We were talking about that old trouble and the best way to meet it.”

  I nodded, turned away. I’d never know for sure if they were lying. How could I? In these terrible times, Ceil Bowne was Yol’s biggest single asset at the studio. Twenty Grand Pictures was Yol’s whole life. I knew the old man seldom lied, and I was sure he had never lied to me, but the fact was, he would lie to God Himself to protect Ceil Bowne. It no longer mattered what was in this carbon, or what were Ceil’s motives for murder — Ceil was safer than he had ever been in his life. Ceil had an alibi that would stand up before the Supreme Court. If ever I was in bad trouble, I’d trade everything else to have Yol Meyrene as my character witness.

  I walked slowly through the house. They didn’t follow me and I didn’t hear their voices as I left them. It looked as if one thing were sure: Jack Roland was set to take a rap for murder, and everybody was willing to see him take it.

  Skinner hurried to open the front door for me, but I waved him away. I could find my way out of that house all by myself.

  The book end was gone from the glass-topped table.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I WALKED OUT the front door.

  If nobody else cared what happened to Jack Roland, why should I let it bother me? I’d done all I could for him. I remembered the envelope addressed to the D.A. in San Rafael, made a mental note to mail it on the way home.

  I felt numb and defeated. Sure, I had copies of two other Pawley exposé articles in my coat pockets. But they were just so many sheets of paper now. Hadn’t Ross said it? When a man’s motive for murder is too good, he usually keeps away from it.

  At the front steps I heard somebody behind me. I didn’t turn around.

  “Sam.”

  Old Yol hurried after me. “Sam. Would you do old Yol a favor?”

  I glanced at him. Another favor? Sure. Why not? What did I have to lose now? I nodded.

  His chauffeur waited in his huge Fleetwood. Yol signaled to him in a code the hireling evidently understood. He started the car, drove around my rain-pocked Buick and went out the drive.

  “You won’t mind dropping old Yol by his house, Sam?”

  “Oh, no.”

  I held the door open for him and he got in. I went around the car, got under the wheel. Yol looked the Buick over.

  “You should have a later model, boy.” He nodded. “A present for you from old Yol.”

  “This car is fine.” My voice was so sharp I was instantly ashamed of myself.

  He laid his hand on my arm. “I know you’re full of doubt and anger. But I have not lied to you, Sam I’ve always respected you too much for that.”

  “Sorry. Edgy nerves, you know?”

  “Yes. I know how edgy mine are. It’s not easy, Sam, not for either of us. We’re too sensitive. Both of us, we get hurt too easily. We get involved with other people too deeply. We let them depend on us. We let them use us.”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled. “You think I lied for Ceil back there, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does matter. Sure, I could release you and let you go away to your chicken ranch somewhere. If I had lied to you, that would be safest.”

  “I’ll go. Any time you release me.”

  He stared through the windshield. “I know what you think, Sam. Old Yol would lie to protect his greatest property.” He spread his hands. “I would, too. No sense deceiving you about that. But if I did lie to you, Sam, then there would be this wide gulf between us. Isn’t that true?”

  When I didn’t say anything, he sighed. “I’m an old man, Sam. I can’t go on much longer, no matter what happens to the industry, or to my studio. Most of the boys who fought along with me are already gone — too many of them dead. Seems I’m always on my way to or from the cemetery these days.

  “Sam, there’s always been a great deal of money in this business. But it has never been easy. Big rewards — big obstacles. When I started, we were just out of the arcades, the penny peep-shows. We made short-reelers for the nickelodeons, we ground out the serials that brought them back every Saturday. Oh, it was a wonderful time. I’ve read all the books on the old days of the movies, boy, but none of them have really caught the flavor. They don’t tell how we were forever in trouble — with the censors, with the exhibitors, with the banks. Fabulous money coming in, but not coming in quickly enough. We had fortunes tied up in film cans, and we had to go to the banks for loans until t
he returns came in.

  “It was so easy, Sam, to lose everything to the banks. Big companies got bigger, and competition was always a monster you lived with. Then radio came in and people wouldn’t leave their houses for the best pictures we could make. By the time they tired of radio and started seeing pictures again, sound came in, with a million new problems. On top of this came the depression, closing theaters, studios, banks. We survived, but by that time the labor unions were so strong that the cost of making movies multiplied by the hundreds. I tell you this, hoping that if I make you see how it’s never been easy, then perhaps you’ll understand that there are more important things than trying to lie your way out of any new misfortune.”

  “I do see that.”

  He nodded. “Then look further, Sam. Ceil Bowne did not kill Pawley. He was with me all that night. He told me the whole truth about himself. We talked until dawn … a bad miserable morning for both of us. He wanted me to tell him what to do. Pawley was blackmailing him, bleeding him. Ceil told me all that had been happening to him, all he had considered doing about it. That’s when I advised him to tell Pawley he wouldn’t pay any longer, that Pawley should do his worst, and we would vow to do our worst to Pawley in return. We discussed spending half a million to fight him. We’ve had our troubles before with slime, Sam, and we’ve managed to survive. I told Ceil the studio would back him to the limit, that we would come up with an answer for him. But neither one of us considered murder.”

  I pulled my car into Yol Myerene’s drive, parked before his front door. The chauffeur hurried over, opened my car door for the old man.

  Yol went on sitting there a moment. “Do you see, Sam? Do you understand?”

  I nodded. Now I believed. Bowne was innocent and I should have felt better. But now the rest had to be clear to me, and I was ill at the thought.

  I said good night to old Yol. He smiled and said he hoped I would understand the gift of a new car was a whim of his, and he wanted me to indulge him just enough to accept it. “You’re worth a great deal more to me, Sam. A great deal more.”

  • • •

  There was a new woman at the desk in the hospital emergency ward. This one would never win any awards for friendliness, either.