The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  I went to the bar first. As I did, a heavyweight champion in an ill-fitting suit followed after me. I leaned against the bar and he leaned against it right next to me. It was an empty space. No reason he shouldn’t lean against it.

  I caught the bartender’s eye and ordered a Scotch. I scanned the room while he poured my drink. There was no sign of Rosenkrantz or Gilplaine. I tasted my Scotch. It was too good for me, but the studio was picking up my expenses. I paid and started for the nearest blackjack table. My oversized shadow followed with all of the subtlety of a white suit at a funeral. I watched several hands and for all I know so did he. The house went over once, hit blackjack twice, and paid out to a dealt blackjack once. I thought I’d check on the other tables just to make sure that my new friend got his exercise. At the craps table, he stood so close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. I turned and looked at him, but he just smiled a closed-mouth smile. I showed him all of my teeth, then turned back to the game.

  When I had had enough of that, I went around to the other side of the table, crossed behind the croupier at the roulette wheel, squeezed past a couple leaning against the wall, and hurried over to the stairs. I was only halfway up when the heavyweight’s tread sounded behind me. I turned and was able to look him in the eye from two steps up. “Did somebody stick a candy on my back?”

  He grinned again. “I’d’ve thought your mother’d have taught you the golden rule.”

  “I know a few golden rules. Which one do you mean?”

  “Treat others the way you’d want ’em to treat you back.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one,” I said. “I don’t remember following you though.”

  This time he showed me that he was missing a few of his teeth.

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “then it’s time to switch places. You take the lead and I’ll follow you to Gilplaine’s office.”

  The heavyweight raised his chin. “You’ll find it. It’s the second door on the left. I’ll be right behind you in case you get scared.”

  I thought of something smart to say to that, but then I remembered I wasn’t smart, so I just turned up the stairs.

  EIGHT

  Gilplaine’s office looked like a storage room with a desk stranded in the center. Three of the walls were lined with brown cardboard boxes that had been labeled in a scrawl with the titles of erotic pulp novels: Leslie’s Love, I Married a Man’s Man, Never Enough, that kind of thing. The musty smell of old cheap paper filled the room, somewhere between a library and a locker room. There was a couch along the fourth wall, itself half covered in boxes, and three tall green filing cabinets taking up valuable real estate. Rosenkrantz, still dressed as informally as he had been at the house, occupied the free spot on the couch.

  Gilplaine sat at his desk, leaning back in a swivel chair, its spring audibly protesting his weight. He was a sharp-faced man, with a head twice as high as it was wide. This had the effect of making his nose seem longer than it was, which didn’t inspire any confidence in his honesty. He had piercing dark eyes that he focused with all of his attention on only one thing at a time. He wore an army-green three-piece suit with a gold chain coming out of the watch pocket and running to the gold watch in his hand. He looked at it, making note of the time, before placing it open on the desk blotter in front of him where he could consult it with a minimum sacrifice of attention. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Hold on, I know him,” Rosenkrantz said. The drive must have sobered him, since his speech no longer showed any sign of alcohol.

  “You do?” Gilplaine said without taking his eyes off of mine.

  “He was at the house before.”

  “Yes, he followed us when we left.”

  “No, inside the house. He’s the detective they hired for Clotilde.”

  “Well, Mister...?”

  I handed over a card, and he glanced at it.

  “Well, Mr. Foster, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job of protecting Miss Rose.”

  “How do you figure that?” I said.

  “Right now, for instance, you’re here with us.”

  “Maybe you’re the ones she needs protecting from.”

  His eyes darted to the watch and then back to me.

  “Just throw him out, Hub,” Rosenkrantz said.

  Gilplaine moved his mouth like he had just tasted something sour. “My men tell me you tried to bring a gun into my club.”

  I shrugged. “I thought I might need it.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “I was right.”

  “Are you certain you want to make an enemy of me, Mr. Foster?”

  “No. But I am certain there isn’t much that’s honest about you. I’m certain you’re a dirty little man who makes his money in dirty things for dirty people. I’m certain that a man like you anywhere near Miss Rose is something to protect her from.”

  Gilplaine’s eyes narrowed. The champ shifted behind me and the floor creaked.

  “Hah,” Rosenkrantz said. “I should be writing this stuff down.” He patted his pockets for something to write on.

  Gilplaine continued to consider me with the scrutiny a mother gives her child before the first day of school. Then his face loosened and he spoke quickly. “Mr. Rosenkrantz and I are business acquaintances. Mr. Rosenkrantz is a writer, I am a publisher. We are discussing a forthcoming book. None of it has anything to do with his wife. Is that satisfactory?”

  I shrugged.

  “Not that it’s any of your business. But if we get this straight now, I hope you won’t go on annoying me in the future.” Gilplaine looked once more at his watch and then clicked it shut. “Listen, Mr. Foster. I don’t like cops who think they’re smart when they’re not. I don’t like cops who think they’re clean when they’re not. I don’t like cops who talk out of turn, and I don’t like cops who talk in turn.”

  “Since we’re all being so honest here,” I said, “you have any ideas about who’s been following Miss Rose?”

  Rosenkrantz had found a notepad and was jotting notes with a golf pencil.

  “Why would I have any idea about that?” Gilplaine said. “I’m not involved with the movies, even if my business sometimes involves people who are. I don’t know who’d be following her around.”

  “No one’s following her, Hub. Clotilde is imagining it,” Rosenkrantz said. And to me he said, “You’re busting yourself up for nothing. Just sit in your car and watch her and collect your money.”

  “That’s what people keep telling me,” I said.

  “I have no information about this,” Gilplaine said. He picked up his watch and tucked it away in his pocket. “And you’ve taken up all the time I care to give you.”

  The chair squealed as he turned to face Rosenkrantz. “Where were we, Shem?”

  The creaking floor warned me to step out of the way before Hub’s man could get a grip on my shoulder. “I’ll walk myself out,” I told him. “That’s one thing my mother did teach me.”

  He grinned that same closed-mouth grin that could have meant that he found me amusing or might just have meant that he had gotten hit in the head one too many times. He opened the door, and I stepped past him and hurried down the hall. I’d been wasting time, like the man said. Gilplaine was a publisher and Rosenkrantz a writer. It made sense that they would be working together, even though the critics would be surprised to find out that Rosenkrantz, the great golden boy, not only had sunk to writing for the pictures but even a step lower, writing for the under-the-counter trade.

  Outside I went back to my car and sat behind the wheel without turning the ignition. I had been hired to sit in my car, as Rosenkrantz had reminded me, and Hub Gilplaine’s parking lot was as good a place as any to sit. At the end of the night, Rosenkrantz and I were going back to the same place after all. The Carrot-Top Club wasn’t too particular about what time it closed, but it was late and it couldn’t stay open forever. I lit a cigarette and listened to the crickets buzz in waves, the sound rising an
d receding. There was a light breeze, offering some relief from the heat in the valley. The smell of the trees was cloying. It made me miss the city.

  Laughing groups and couples came out the front door and I watched the valet flitting around the lot. Headlights cut across the trees two by two as people made their way out. After an hour, about half of the cars were left. I could see the Buick several cars over. A breeze swept through the clearing and I shivered. I began to wonder if there was something back at the house that I shouldn’t be missing. Just as I was about to start my engine, Rosenkrantz appeared in the doorway and handed the valet his ticket. He was alone. The valet ran off, and Rosenkrantz talked to the doorman while he waited. It was ten minutes to three.

  I started my engine and backed out of the spot, pointing the nose of my car away from the club. I pulled onto the private back road just ahead of the Buick. Maybe if I was in front of him, he wouldn’t notice he was being tailed. We retraced our route through the endless wall of trees, past the town, up into the mountains and Route 6, and then eventually into the city and Woodsheer. I thought it would be better for me not to go directly to the house, so I drove past Montgomery and turned in the next block. But as I did, I saw the Buick continue west on Woodsheer in my rearview mirror. I hurried around the block, but had to wait for passing traffic before I could follow.

  I caught up with the Buick at a traffic signal. If Rosenkrantz was worried about being followed, he showed no sign, and took no measures to shake me. He pulled off the highway in Harbor City, a neighborhood of small one-family homes that had once been prosperous but was now mainly inhabited by people just off the bus who didn’t know any better or people who couldn’t afford to move out. All the windows were dark except for an occasional night owl up clipping coupons or crocheting a doily that couldn’t wait for morning. He pulled into the driveway of the kind of bungalow that you could buy out of the Sears catalog. It had a small front porch, four small rooms on the first floor, and one small room upstairs. I knew that without going in. I’d been in houses like it. There was a Ford that had to be at least ten years old parked in front of him. No lights were on inside. I continued past, pulling along the curb almost at the end of the block.

  I watched in my mirror as Rosenkrantz got out of the car, walked around the backside of it and went up the path to the door. He opened the screen and then let himself in with his own key. Maybe it was a bungalow he kept to do his writing in. Maybe he was an insomniac and could only write at three in the morning, with a pitcherful of liquor inside him. Maybe. I figured I’d give him a few minutes, and then I would go back over to Soso to finish the job I had been hired for. I could always come back and investigate the house during the day.

  Less than a minute later Rosenkrantz burst out the front door and bolted to his car. The screen banged shut behind him. I heard the engine catch and then he backed out of the driveway fast enough to make the wheels scream. I waited a minute to see if anyone would take notice of the noise. The neighborhood was silent.

  I got out of my car and walked to the house. On the way, I shined the small pen flash I kept in my pocket into the Ford, looking for the license holder, but I couldn’t see it. I went up the walk, and pressed the doorbell. I could hear it buzz inside. Rosenkrantz had left the door wide open, and through the screen I had a dim view of the stairs to the second floor and a small entryway. No one answered the buzzer. I opened the screen door and went in.

  I listened, but heard nothing. I swung the door closed and found a switch that turned on an overhead light. It lit the rooms to either side of the entrance enough for me to see old furniture in both, respectable but worn, and none of the pieces matching. I crossed into the living room and turned on one of the lamps on an end table. It was painted gold, but the gold had flecked in places revealing white ceramic beneath. There was a couch upholstered in tan, two chairs upholstered in different shades of blue. The floor was hardwood but a cord rug took up some of the space between the couch and the chairs. It had no doubt been advertised as a furnished house, and maybe it even commanded a few extra dollars for that.

  I continued through the living room towards the back of the house where an open door let into a bedroom. The smell hit me before I turned on the light. I felt for a light switch beside the door, but didn’t find any, so I got my pen flash again and waved it back and forth, painting the room with light. She was on the bed. The blood was from her neck and thighs. I forced myself to cross the room to the lamp on the bedside table. I turned it on, and recognized the face from that afternoon: Mandy Ehrhardt. A thin wool blanket had been pulled down to the foot of the bed and hung over onto the floor. She had bled out, and the sheets were sodden. This hadn’t happened in the last five minutes. Which left Rosenkrantz in the clear. The rest of the room was a mess, clothing on the floor trailing out of the closet, a pile of shoes beside the bed, drawers left slightly open in the dresser, but it was the mess of a careless woman living in a room. There hadn’t been any struggle. The room hadn’t been searched.

  I opened the drawer of the bedside table. It contained a comb and a brush, both with hair clinging to them, a small green jewelry box with a few inexpensive pieces of jewelry, a compact, and a makeup kit. I checked the dresser and the closet, but there was nothing but clothes. Miss Ehrhardt might have been in pictures, but she wasn’t living the life of a star. I set everything as it had been before. When it looked right, I turned off the light. I went through the living room, past the front entrance into the dining room. The table was littered with movie magazines, some movie ticket stubs, used dishes, a glass with dark lipstick on the rim, bills, flyers. Her purse was there as well, but it contained nothing more interesting than her bedside table. Same with the kitchen.

  I went upstairs. This room smelled dusty. There was a bed with a dropcloth over it. There was a stack of boxes, the lower ones caving in from the weight of the ones above. There was a roll-top desk and a swivel chair. There weren’t any lights that worked. I went back downstairs, and turned off the lights there. Back in the vestibule, I thought about what reason I could give for being here. There wasn’t any, except if you counted the truth. If I told it straight then I was Rosenkrantz’s alibi, and maybe this could all stay away from his wife. On the other hand, if I called it in anonymously, my name would probably come into it anyway and then the cops would want to know why I had called it in anonymously in the first place. They didn’t like an outside operator operating outside the role they gave to him. Knox wouldn’t like it either. I cursed myself for being curious. I could have been sleeping in my car ten minutes away. I picked up the phone and dialed the police.

  NINE

  The cop who got it was a Harbor City homicide detective named Samuels. I didn’t know him, but he took my story at face value and I liked him for it. He was a redheaded Irishman with piercing blue eyes and a spate of freckles from his hairline all the way down into his collar. His coat hung limp, like there wasn’t much for it to hang on, but from watching him move it was clear that there was a lot of wiry strength there. He smoked cheap cigars that came in cellophane which he cut open with a pocketknife, putting the cellophane back in his pocket. I liked him for that too. We stood in the dining room while the medical examiner and the photography boys took care of the body. He spoke quietly but forcefully.

  “These Hollywood investigations are a farce. The studio will shut it down when they get wind of it tomorrow. Today, I guess.”

  “There are still a few hours before they have to hear of it,” I said. “And it is murder. There’s only so much that can be kept under wraps in a murder.”

  “Yeah, just who was murdered, and who did the murdering.”

  “The studio really has that much on you boys? I thought the law was untouchable in this town.”

  “Go on and laugh. Of course the studios can’t order us to stop our investigation, but it seems that the bosses have a way of making it so that it should be a low priority with even a lower profile.”

  “The bosses,”
I said.

  “The bosses.” He smoked his cigar as the medical examiner, a young man with an expression of sobriety twice his age, went towards the front door with his bag. “You got anything for me, Doc?” Samuels said.

  “She’s dead,” the ME said with his hand on the screen door’s latch.

  “That your professional opinion?”

  The doc made a straight line of his mouth. “It was within the last six to eight hours. The cuts are all deep and inelegant.”

  “So this guy didn’t know how to use a knife?” Samuels said.

  “No, it looks more like he didn’t know his own strength. The cuts are deliberate, no hesitation.”

  Samuels nodded and blew a plume of smoke.

  “I’ll have the rest once I get her on the table.” And with that he went outside.

  The sky might have been brighter out there or maybe I just hoped it was. “She have any family?” I said.

  “An aunt and a grandma out in Wichita,” Samuels said, flat.

  “Isn’t it always Wichita?”

  “It always is.” He paused. “You got any ideas you might be thinking of looking into on your own?”

  “I was thinking of looking into a shower and then into my bed, but maybe into a liquor store first if I can find one that’s open this early.”

  “Cut that and tell it to me straight, like you’ve been doing up until now.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “I’ve barely been on this thing longer than you have. This is just on the side of my job.”

  “The job that is why you were following Rosenkrantz.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it must have been a divorce job?”

  I smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “You sure you can’t tell me?”

  “Not unless you can make me understand what it has to do with this murder.”

  “How can I do that unless I know what the job was?”

  “I guess you can’t.”