The Big Drop ch-7

by Peter Corris

  ‘You think he could be the phone caller?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. See, he was all set to become the muscular hero of the 1980s before Kurt came along. Kurt got a couple of roles Josh thought he should’ve had. He’s taken it bad-this is the first time he’s agreed to work with Kurt.’

  ‘Missed out on you too did he?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Could Wild have been the voice on the phone?’

  She was heading along the railway to the intersection with the Crescent, too fast I thought, but she braked and made the turn neatly. ‘He’s an actor-who knows what actors can do… and can’t do.’

  I chewed on that for the rest of the drive down into east Balmain. Wild lived close to the wharf and the water but, he couldn’t have seen either from the small windows of the nondescript block of 1950s flats-he might as well have been in Haberfield. Jardie U-turned and rolled the car to the kerb just short of the drive with the practised ease of someone who’d done it before.

  We walked up the drive and she pointed to a Moke parked skew-whiff beside the flats.

  ‘He’s here-at the back.’

  The narrow concrete porch at the back would barely have kept the rain off the peeling door of flat three. For an almost star, Josh Wild didn’t appear to be doing too well. Jardie knocked and the door opened slowly. Wild’s face began to move into a smile at the sight of her until he saw me. Then it changed and blurred like a double exposed photograph. The flat door opened inwards but the screen door opened out and Wild used it to knock Jardie Butler out of his path. He growled like an animal, reached out for me and pulled on the front of my shirt. I went with the pull; he had a punch ready but he’d advertised it much too early. I went under the punch and bullocked him back into the hallway. He swung again but he was badly off-balance and I hooked his feet out, and down he went.

  Jardie’s breathing was harsh in my ear as I stood over her crumpled ex-lover. There was a trickle of blood from his mouth but he hadn’t hit the wall or floor very hard and had no reason to be as relaxed as he was. I looked from him to her and couldn’t decide which sight I disliked more.

  ‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Is that how it’s done?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be that easy, big bloke like him. Take a look-you know him-reckon he’s okay?’

  She brushed past me and leaned over Wild. All hunched up on the floor like that isn’t a man’s best posture, but with the thinning hair I could see now and the slack jaw muscles, it didn’t look as if he could have been a film idol for long. His gut looked a bit slack too, but even so he shouldn’t have been such a pushover.

  Jardie straightened up. ‘He’s coked,’ she said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Seen it a hundred times, him and others, He’d be calm and relaxed in a hurricane, that’s how it takes him. He couldn’t fight coked to defend his mother-Kurt’d be like a chainsaw.’

  I got Wild up in a sort of fireman’s lift, carried him the few feet it took and dumped him on a battered narrow couch in the small, dark living room. I went out to the kitchen, wet a dirty dish-towel and slopped it over his face. He started to clean himself carefully with his eyes closed, like a cat. We ignored him.

  ‘How come he lives so low on the pig? Don’t actors make a good living?’

  ‘I didn’t realise he’d slid this far. I hate to think how much this stuff costs.’ She was standing by a low coffee table which had a mirror on it and a plastic packet and a short straw with the end scoop-shaped.

  ‘So he rushed off to make his connection here.’ There was a dribble of saliva on the mirror, and some of the powder was smeared in it. ‘I thought half the people in the acting game were on this stuff, does it turn them all into maniacs?’

  ‘No, different people handle it different ways. Josh must’ve been really strung out. Maybe he’s on something else too.’

  ‘Would it make him screw up his part?’

  ‘Christ, yes, it could. With Bob Space on the set though, it’s a wonder he didn’t write it in-make Josh a smack head.’

  Wild’s eyes were open and he was finished washing his face. I took the cloth away and he smiled at me. ‘Everyone says that about Space, about him changing things. Isn’t that standard?’

  ‘Not quite. Look, Hardy, now I think about it I really don’t think Josh could be the caller. I mean, he’s a nut, and he probably still fancies me and maybe he hates Kurt. But he wouldn’t wreck the film-especially not needing money that bad.’

  ‘I suppose. Well, you talk to him and I’ll poke around-look for clues.’

  ‘To what?’

  I shrugged. ‘Who knows, I’m a snoop. You’re a smart girl, you talk to him; if you decide he wouldn’t threaten to throw acid in your face, I’ll believe you.’

  I could hear them murmuring as I searched Wild’s bedroom and the other small room he used to store things-mostly rubbish. He wasn’t a neat man or a clean one-he wasn’t very interesting either. Like alcoholics I’d known, his life seemed to be given over to drugs: he had smoking and sniffing and injecting devices, old containers marked with the residue of one dream-maker or another. The few books around had a drugs bias too. I could imagine him, like the dipsos, mapping out the geography of his days in terms of his hits-the only difference being that his hits were illegal and much more expensive. When I went back into the living room Wild was sitting up on the couch and Jardie was holding his hand.

  ‘You’d only be doing it for Kurt,’ Wild was saying.

  ‘What does it matter?’ she said. She looked across at me. ‘Not him-no chance.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You take the Moke back to the set, the keys’re over there. I’ll bring him along in a while. Tell them everything is okay.’

  I collected the keys and had all the fun of jarring my spine with my hair in my eyes as I drove the Moke back to Leichhardt.

  A kind of defeated calm had settled on the three houses. I strolled past the car control kid and tossed him the keys.

  ‘He’ll be along in a bit.’

  The kid’s jaw dropped and he looked at me as if I was Michael Jackson. Cheap trick, Hardy, I thought; but then, few jaws drop for me. I located Fuller and gave him the good news; he sent someone off to find someone to tell McLeish that he could go back to work

  ‘If he’s not too drunk,’ Fuller said. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I’m not making floppy discs or something-too many crazies in this business.’

  ‘We still haven’t found our chief crazy. How important is this picture to you? Financially, I mean.’

  ‘Bloody important. Why?’

  ‘That lets you out as a candidate for the phone caller; that is, if you’re not lying.’

  ‘Jesus, Hardy, don’t joke about it.’

  ‘There has to be someone who comes out better if the picture gets stopped, or delayed-who?’

  ‘No one.’ Fuller lit a cigarette to help him think. ‘I lose my shirt; Kurt misses out on a good role and they’re not so easy to come by; McLeish needs a commercial success for obvious reasons; Space wants the credit and he’s got points if we go into the black. Also I haven’t paid him for the property yet; if we don’t make the picture he’ll have to join the list of creditors and that’ll be long, believe me. The assistant cameraman wants to be cameraman, the wardrobe girl wants to be in casting-everybody wants to move up. Everybody needs Death Feast’

  McLeish stepped through the fence looking spruce, too spruce. ‘Hey ho,’ he sang. ‘I hear the errant son returns, let’s be having you all.’

  ‘He’s drunk,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a good director when he’s paralytic, he used to be a great director when he was just pissed. He’ll do.’

  ‘What about all these women around? Could one of them have the hots for Kurt and be cutting up rough?’

  Fuller smiled. ‘No way, Kurt’s not like that’

  ‘He’s not?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong.’ He leaned towards me with male conspiratoriality. ‘He’s n
ot gay or anything. He’s just not very… active. Knew a girl who knew him-she reckoned he had all the sex drive of an old sofa.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  People started emerging from all points around the houses like ants coming out of holes. A sharp squeal of brakes outside announced Jardie and Wild’s return, and within minutes they were all making up like mad and things started to hum. Fuller charged around for a while and then settled down to talk on the phone. I broke resolution again and had a beer from one of the fridges. The security man told me only two other people had left since Wild, and neither was a candidate for star billing. I watched them shoot a scene and saw the sweat dribbling off Butler after the eighth take. Wild was slow and had to be hurried through his lines; Space looked edgy, and spoiled one take by making a noise flapping the script. Jardie squatted just out of camera range and offered Butler massive support with her eyes and hands. He lapped it up. I decided I’d rather make the tea than act, write or direct.

  Fuller put down the phone and beckoned me over; he was smiling.

  ‘Good news from the distributors,’ he said.

  ‘Does that mean my cheque won’t bounce?’

  ‘You don’t know how true you speak. No, everything should be all right now.’

  ‘How many people are actually sleeping here, say tonight?’

  ‘Let’s see. McLeish, Kurt and Jardie; Roxie and Heathcliff

  ‘Heathcliff?’

  ‘Heathcliff Hathaway, one of the support actors.’

  ‘Will he ever get to be star with a name like

  Heathcliff?’

  ‘With his talent, any thing’s possible.’

  ‘He’s got talent?’

  ‘None. Bob Space tells me he’s moved his things in for a bit… if you’re planning something boring like gathering everyone together for a rap session it won’t work, not tonight anyway.’

  ‘I wasn’t, but why wouldn’t it work?’

  ‘There’s a dinner on tonight at EJs, everyone’s going. What are you planning?’

  ‘Something sneaky,’ I said.

  It’s my belief that when you find out someone’s secrets, you find out what they are. Someone with no secrets may be what they seem-few are. I went back to Glebe the way homeowners do, to make sure it hadn’t burned down or had the doors stolen; but, by 9 o’clock I was back in Leichhardt, wording up the security men to let me poke around for a while.

  I did McLeish’s caravan first; it bore all the signs of being occupied by a sort of filmic hit man. He was here to do a job and he’d brought enough clothes and enough money and the booze he could get on the spot. He might have a full life back in the old Dart, complete with photos of the wife and dog, but here he was just passing through. There were some uncomplimentary remarks scrawled on a copy of the script, a bit of correspondence with his agent about fees and a cupboard full of hangover remedies. His passport photograph was of a younger, more hopeful man.

  Jardie Butler had trouble sleeping; she kept her Mogadon close to hand; there was a pile of books by the bed of the kind that poor sleepers flip through-short stories, pop biographies and Woody Allen scripts. There was also an eye mask and a vibrator. The Butlers had a lot of casual clothes and a lot of casual money; two passbook accounts were healthy, as were a keycard account and a building society deposit. They’d also left carelessly lying around the kind of money I usually count, fold and put carefully in my wallet.

  Kurt Butler’s effects included weights, running gear, a chest expander, various liniments and more jockstraps than socks. His only reading matter was a carefully kept scrapbook about his very favourite film actor. He had a copy of Space’s script with his lines heavily underscored; there had been some editing done in Jardie’s hand-all to make the speeches shorter.

  Space’s part of the caravan he shared with one of the technicians was a crazy jumble of books, papers, credit cards and clothes. He seemed to have no ability to keep things in separate compartments: He had pipe tobacco in a cup, ball point pens in a shoe, and razor blades in with a packet of tea bags. Under his bunk though was a locked metal box. I eased it open with a piece of wire and found a book inside which had been carefully wrapped in tissue paper, like a Shakespeare first folio.

  The book was a paperback, published twelve years before by MacRobertson amp; MacRobertson. It was the first in a mystery and adventure series, and I vaguely remembered the fanfare of announcement at the time. Entitled Death Games it was written by Deryck Hyclef and told the story of a private detective who had three clients in succession murdered. It seemed like a faster way to go out of business than the slow grind of the recession. I had my souvenired copy of Bob Space’s script in my pocket and I sat down on his bunk and compared the two pieces of writing. Even with name changed (and he hadn’t bothered to change them that much-Dirk Balfour becoming Dick Balmain for example), it was easy to see that Death Feast was a direct pinch.

  There was no mention of Hyclef on the script, in fact it was called ‘an original screenplay’. Space had tried a few minor plot changes but, without knowing anything about film editing, it seemed to me that if the cutter of the film wanted a backbone he’d end up with a plot very like that of Hyclef’s book. In any case, the book was underlined and annotated in Space’s writing. I rummaged in the mess and found an earlier draft of the script which included passages virtually transcribed from Death Games. If the Scriptwriter’s Guild, of which he was a fully paid-up member, had any teeth, Mr Robert Space would have a very bloody neck.

  I telephoned EJs to ensure that Fuller would come to the set rather than slope off to his penthouse; then I got a bottle from McLeish’s caravan and the security boys and I had a few belts and swapped stories. I told them the one about the amusement park that had a ferris wheel stolen and they told me the one about the drunk who went to sleep on wet cement.

  Fuller and Space turned up around midnight; the writer was drunk and unsteady, and his face seemed to dissolve when I laid the book in front of him. We were in the kitchen of one of the houses, and I got him a glass of water. I put the script down beside the book and didn’t say anything. Space gulped the water and looked miserable.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Fuller said.

  ‘Bob pinched the story from this book. He pinched the characters, atmosphere, the lot.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Fuller breathed. ‘Anything to drink besides water?’

  We got McLeish’s bottle and I poured two drinks, leaving Space with more water.

  ‘Let’s hear it, Bob,’ I said.

  Space sipped water and a little dribbled down his chin; he’d been running his hands through his high-rise hair, flattening it and making him look more normal, younger and afraid. ‘I didn’t think the thing’d get to production. I was just after the development dough, thought I might get a first draft fee from some producer, you know.’

  Fuller nodded.

  ‘Well, it all took off. It moved too fast for me-suddenly it was final draft and then we were in pre-production. I didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t really have hurt Jardie, you know that.’

  I nodded this time.

  ‘I just wanted to stop the bloody thing. I tried to make a lot of changes but Jardie and McLeish blocked a lot of them. If we make it like this,’ he lapped the script, ‘someone’ll spot it for sure. It’ll be the finish of me.’ He mustered a little spirit and looked at Fuller. ‘You too, probably,’ he said.

  I drank some of McLeish’s good whisky and thought about it. Space was flicking through the book. There was a picture of the author on the back cover-he looked youngish, thin and thoughtful.

  ‘Why didn’t you get on to this Hyclef bloke? Do some sort of deal with him?’

  ‘I thought of that,’ Space said. ‘I gave it a try; but the firm went out of business. I asked around but no one’d ever heard of Hyclef. It could’ve been a pseudonym. I don’t know.’

  Fuller was sinking whisky and looking desperate; he could see his investment slipping away. I let it slip a little, and then clea
red my throat noisily.

  ‘Missing persons is one of my specialties.’

  Fuller took the biggest punt of his life, and they went on with the shoot while I looked for Hyclef. I found him teaching at a school out from Broken Hill. He’d never had another word published-the collapse of MacRobertsons had hit him for six. He was a nice, naive man, disappointed in his thirties. He was thrilled with the deal Fuller and Space worked out with him for the film ‘based on’ his novel. There was talk of a re-issue of the book by another house with Kurt Butler’s craggy features on the cover.

  The film finished on schedule, and just over budget. It did good business and they even found a small part for me-I’m the one who shouts ‘Look out!’ when Dick Balmain misses death by inches up in the Centrepoint tower.

  ‹‹Contents››

  Maltese Falcon

  It was warm for March in San Francisco they told me, and Dan Swan was sweating like a fat man on a bicycle, except he was a thin man, standing still. It wasn’t surprising though; the group of twenty or so people clustered around him had on T-shirts and jeans, shorts or light slacks. Swan was wearing a shirt and tie, trench coat and heavy rubber-soled shoes. He had to dress like that. He had to wear the fedora too, he was taking us on his famous ‘Sam Spade walking tour’ through the Tenderloin and adjacent parts of San Francisco.

  ‘We don’t know much about Spade,’ Swan said. ‘My guess is he was born in Oregon or Washington State. He served in the infantry in World War One and was an NCO. Not high-ranked, a corporal, maybe.’ He took off his hat and wiped his high brow which was getting higher as the widow’s peak was accentuated by retreating hair on both sides. Dark hair and dark eyes, a long face and body. He moved his shoulders uncomfortably in the coat and I wanted to tell him to take it off.

  ‘Where’s the dingus?’ A heavy guy in a floral shirt and floppy shorts spoke up at the front of the group. He held some money in his hand and he thrust it back into a pocket.