Kill All the Young Girls

by Brett Halliday

  “Are you sure you’re not imagining some of this?”

  “Oh, I’m crazy,” she said seriously. “I admit it. You have to be slightly nuts to make it in this business. I grabbed the head cutter and gave him some of the best sex he’d ever enjoyed; and at the end of the weekend, he admitted that some of the really bad cuts had been made by Larry himself. You know—where there were four possible takes, he picked the one that put the wrong shadow in the wrong place or the one in which the way I spoke a line would make me sound slightly unpleasant. Damn it, Mike! You’re still looking skeptical. I know I can’t prove it. But I’m convinced it’s true; and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? And Larry knows I’m convinced because I told him so in Chasen’s and accidentally tipped a bottle of burgundy over on his new suit. That picture did terrible business, and I haven’t been working since. I did a little television at first, and then that closed down. There’s a rumor around that I drink Old Grand-dad for breakfast instead of coffee and orange juice. I think that rumor started in the New York Consolidated-Famous office, but there’s no way to fight it. All right, Mike, what would you do? Use your imagination. Somebody ruined your reputation so you couldn’t go on being a private detective. Would you give up and go to work as a short-order cook?”

  She added, “Which doesn’t mean I wanted to murder the son-of-a-bitch. I’ll say that again. I was just trying to get a point across.”

  “Did you know about his heart attack last year?”

  Her eyebrows went behind the screen of her bangs. She asked for more bourbon.

  “I keep forgetting I’m talking to a detective. I thought I might get away with suppressing that in the interest of a warmer relationship. Of course I knew about it. It happened in my house. He was trying to come twice in one night, and he’s too old for that sort of thing. Stop looking at me like that. I was not, I repeat not, trying to black him out so he’d lose control of the car. He’s completely recovered as far as that goes. But heart people are the world’s worst hypochondriacs. They think about it all the time. Larry’s carrying this big, vulnerable thing around inside his chest. I was trying to bluff him, that’s all; and the person you’re bluffing has to believe you mean it. Why aren’t you drinking?” she said nervously. “Let’s kill the bottle and open the other one and get stinking. Then maybe I can explain it to you.”

  “I may be a little slow tonight,” Shayne said. “I don’t get these distinctions you’re making.”

  “The main distinction,” Kate said, “is between Girl A, who tries to kill somebody and doesn’t succeed and is therefore automatically a loser, and Girl B, who’s merely trying to make her position clear. Now which of these two would you rather have sex with?”

  “One at a time.”

  She gave him a steady look. “Do you mean it? You aren’t going to get lofty and moral with me?”

  He shrugged.

  “Then will you help me, Mike? I don’t mean just help me stay alive. Help me make him give me the part. No, it’s too soon to ask you that. First I want to show you something weird.”

  While she was on her feet, she poured them more bourbon. “Isn’t it lovely to know there’s an unopened bottle? Like money in the bank—not that I’ve ever had money in the bank.”

  She pulled open a bureau drawer, empty except for a magazine which she handed to Shayne.

  “This was left at the desk sometime this afternoon.”

  It was a back issue, eleven years old, of a hugely successful magazine whose publisher, Oscar Olson, had made his reputation and fortune by creating a vast readership for a peculiar editorial mixture: blue cartoons, passable fiction, strong editorials on behalf of sexual freedom, and photographs of female nudes. This copy was smudged and dog-eared, as though it had passed through many hands. As Shayne took it, it broke automatically to the gatefold, a double page that opened out of the magazine so it could be unstapled and tacked on the walls of country stores and gas stations. It showed a naked girl lying on one hip on a bed under a canopy. The picture had been doctored. Her face had been replaced with Kate’s; and a comic-strip balloon came out of the lips: “How I wish I’d known when to stop.” A drooping white lily sprouted from between her buttocks.

  “This happens to be a famous picture,” Kate said quietly. “Keko Brannon before she made her first movie.”

  “Keko Brannon,” Shayne said. “According to Marcus again, Larry thought that was who was shooting at him.”

  “I wanted to get that effect. There’s a famous story about how they met, and I was trying to confuse the bastard and upset him. Now as an expert witness, Mr. Shayne, what do you make of that goddamn lily?”

  “It’s a threat. You’re being told to stop whatever you’re doing unless you want to end up dead.”

  Kate shivered lightly. Shayne went on, “Somebody went to a lot of trouble. You can buy the current issue of this magazine for a buck, and it’s full of naked broads. Why go back eleven years for this particular one?” He closed the gatefold and checked the caption material. “Pussycat of the Month, Suzy Flynn.”

  “Larry changed her name when he hired her. But millions of people would recognize the picture even with a different face. If you look hard, you can see a wisp of her pubic hair. We all have it; but in those days if it showed in the photographs, the magazine couldn’t be mailed. There was a big civil-liberties case that went on for years. When Keko turned into such a box-office smash, the picture got to be a collector’s item. Mike, I don’t know how much you know about this proxy fight. Has anybody told you that Oscar Olson is bankrolling the opposition?”

  “I thought he was a magazine man. What does he know about movies?”

  “Just that you can make money with them if you’re lucky. He’s been trying to finagle his way in for years. This is his big effort.”

  Shayne tossed the magazine back on the bureau. “Now we start making connections. How well do you know Olson?”

  “Nobody really knows Olson. I’ve been to his parties. When you’re in San Francisco, that’s one of the things you do. They run around the clock, and they get very dreary. Now the inevitable next question. I haven’t seen him undressed, and I don’t know if he has three balls instead of the usual number. He stops appreciating girls after they pass their twenty-first birthday, and I met him too late. I’m not fooling. Twenty-one is the age of compulsory retirement.”

  “How old was Brannon when the picture was taken?”

  “Seventeen, I think, a very young seventeen. She was part of the entourage for a while after that, but she never talked about it.”

  “‘Entourage’?”

  “Haven’t you read the articles? He likes to have chicks around. Secretaries and so on—some of them can actually type.”

  “Keko Brannon and you. Were you friends?”

  “Something else first. I talked to Oscar yesterday. I thought twice about it because even before I got that magazine I knew this whole thing was heavily booby-trapped. But I have a beau in New York who’s trust officer in a bank, and he has the voting of twelve thousand shares of Consolidated-Famous. I can influence which way he votes. I asked Oscar, if his people win control of the board, will I get the Buccaneer lead? He checked with the director and a few other people. The answer was yes.”

  “Twelve thousand shares out of how many?”

  “It’s a tiny percentage, but some people think this is going to be close. I wanted to try it both ways, via Larry and via Oscar. The reason I’m bringing it up is I guess it’s possible that Larry found out I’d gone to see Oscar. But—‘How I wish I’d known when to stop.’ It doesn’t fit. Stop what? It almost sounds as though I know something and I’m trying to blackmail somebody. I don’t, Mike; and I’m not.”

  “Let’s get the dates straight. When did she die?”

  “Seven years ago. You wanted to know if we were friends. I was her stand-in in one of her pictures, not one of her good ones. She was already starting to flake. The marriages were over; and there was a steady flow o
f men, terrible men. She was in a daze much of the time. What a stand-in does is wear the star’s costumes and move through her scenes so the crews can block out the breaks and angles. Keko was always nice to the stand-in, even when she was being awful to everybody else. She kept asking me to trade places with her. I would have been delighted! When the picture was over, she asked me to move in and take charge of her phone calls. It didn’t turn out to be too bad. Afterward, after she killed herself in the middle of a picture, some PR genius thought of reshooting her scenes with me in the role. The old show biz story—the stand-in takes over for the star on opening night and gets an ovation. It was strictly a salvage job to capitalize on the publicity. And a little grisly—the picture was supposed to be a light-hearted sex comedy. But for some reason it worked. I’ve always thought the fact that I was the leading lady had something to do with it.”

  She finished her drink and said briskly, “Now come to bed.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m tired as hell. Fighting the bourbon. I don’t feel like talking any more.”

  “You go to bed. I’ll join you later.”

  “Hmm.” She set down her glass and slid off the bed. She pushed back an imaginary pair of sleeves and spat on her hands. “You’re going to make me work for it, are you?”

  “You can’t be in the mood for making love. I want to start through this again. There’s still a lot missing. I’ll have some more questions for you, but I have to get it in some kind of sequence first.”

  “So I can’t be in the mood, can I? I’ve been in the mood ever since you crowded Doc Black up against the bar. When two males battle over a female, she’s supposed to mate with the winner. I call your attention to the moose.”

  “Kate, were there ever any rumors that Keko Brannon’s death wasn’t a suicide?”

  “None that I heard. Mike, baby. Stop thinking.”

  “Did Oscar Olson go on seeing her after she made it in Hollywood?”

  “Probably, but not after she got to be twenty-one. He wasn’t part of the scene while I was around. Those guys were on a different level, very sleazy. Mike, to continue what I was saying: I take it that your assignment calls for spending all day tomorrow with me. So we have time. I have a very vague, very foggy hunch about that Pussycat of the Month picture. I want to lay it on you and see how it sounds. There might be money in it for both of us; and don’t give me that two-client crap, because this would be perfectly moral and ethical and in the nature of a public service. But right now…”

  She turned away slightly, and her tone was suddenly less assured. “I feel so jammed up and jangly. I’ve been in a vise all day. I kept telling myself that the world would be a prettier place without Larry Zion in it, but I didn’t really want it to happen. The hospital wouldn’t tell me a thing. I couldn’t go there in person. It was nervewracking.”

  “I see that. You were hoping he’d pull through.”

  “Sarcasm, Mike—watch it. No, I wasn’t exactly hoping that, because if he still wouldn’t give me the part I couldn’t back down, could I? I’d have to raise the bet and try something else. Mike, I’ve been faking a little. You’re sexy, yes; but I can resist you if I have to. It’s funny about sex. I’m beginning to feel the way Keko did at the end. Yes, no, who cares.”

  “What did that job of yours consist of—hiding the bottles and getting her to work on time?”

  “How could I do that? I didn’t have any authority. Mainly I listened and tried to keep her looking halfway presentable. Now that’s really all about Keko for now. I had her full-time when she was alive, and people still think of me as that kooky funny-face who took her place in On Fire.”

  She touched his neck. “You’re the male. In our society, the male decides. But can I tell you what I’d like?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ll shower and get ready. If you decide you want to get in with me, I’ll make you welcome. Just don’t delay too long. My doctor tells me I use sex for reassurance, and tonight a little uncomplicated reassurance is what I need. I’d make it nice for you, Mike. Sincerely. Then we’ll sleep for a time; and when we wake up, I’ll bore you with various guesses and theories. And you can advise me.”

  Before he could answer, she turned quickly and went into the bathroom. Presently the shower started.

  Shayne picked up the eleven-year-old magazine and turned to the mutilated gatefold again. Kate’s head was askew, a trifle out of scale. Her expression was wrong for the pose. She was smiling, her eyes alive with humor and intelligence. Shayne wished he had seen her on the screen. What was there about that kind of success that made them so greedy for it?

  She finished in the shower, and he heard her moving around. She came out in a dressing gown, her face scrubbed of makeup and seeming to be lightly oiled. She shrugged off the dressing gown as he watched, meeting his eyes unself-consciously.

  “Any time at all, Mike.”

  She opened the bed and got in. Before settling herself, she turned off the light between the beds. Shayne watched her settle herself.

  “In a moment,” he said.

  The Miami papers, in their original folds, were arranged on a low table. Starting with the Herald, Shayne found a lengthy account of the Consolidated-Famous proxy fight on the financial page. Larry Zion was predicting victory for his slate by a two-to-one margin. He had some harsh things to say about the pressure tactics being used by the professional solicitation firm retained by the opposition. Oscar Olson’s name wasn’t mentioned.

  Both groups had taken half-page ads. The main points made against Zion were his advanced years and his insistence on absolute, one-man rule. He was pictured as a crotchety relic of another era, out of touch with the realities of the entertainment business. No one denied that he had once been superb, but recent balance sheets told a more somber story. Nepotism (his son) and favoritism (his mistresses) were alluded to obliquely. He paid himself an extravagant salary while he was producing pictures that lost oceans of money at the box office. He had committed two and a half million dollars to a pirate movie, exactly the kind of escapist nonsense that had emptied moving picture theaters all over the world. Only someone in the grip of senile nostalgia would have made such an astounding decision.

  On the amusement page, Zion was interviewed about his plans for this picture. Audiences, he declared, were hungry for romantic entertainment. They were fed up to the teeth with ugliness, misery, and smut. The enthralling, real-life story of Florida’s own José Gaspar, known as Gasparilla, a pulse-quickening account of one man’s battle against injustice and oppression… It was press agent prose, and Shayne stopped reading after a few sentences and picked up the Daily News.

  The News, too, carried both ads and a rewrite of the opposing press releases as well as a small boxed announcement that the stockholders’ meeting the following day would be covered by a team of reporters headed by Shayne’s friend, Timothy Rourke.

  Putting the papers aside, Shayne reviewed what he had been told by Kate and Marcus Zion. There were discrepancies and holes. Any number of blinking neon arrows pointed toward the short, tragic career of Keko Brannon. But that had been long in the past, on the opposite edge of the continent. Shayne’s assignment was simple and clear-cut. If he could control his impulse to rake over old scandals, it could also be easy and pleasant. He was here to stand between Kate and trouble. With Shayne on the scene, she must know that she wouldn’t be given a second chance to get to Larry Zion. The best she could hope for now was to stay out of the way until he retired from the business or another heart attack carried him off. Would she agree to leave town? Probably not. That could wait until morning.

  But there was an undercurrent of menace somewhere that wouldn’t let him relax. He smoked three cigarettes, lighting each from the stub of the last.

  He got up quietly. Kate seemed to be asleep. She lay on her side with one bare arm flung up over her eyes.

  Leaving only one lamp burning, Shayne began to undress, piling his clothes on a chair. Sudd
enly Kate exclaimed and sat up.

  “Who is it?”

  “A friend,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She stared at him. She was sitting bolt upright, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms. He waited without moving until she recognized him. Her hand came up to brush back her hair.

  “Mike. Is it going to be all right?”

  “Why not?”

  She looked at her watch. “I conked out. My God, I was tired. I nearly went to sleep in the shower.”

  He pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the back of the chair. She slid down in bed, pulling the sheet back over her breasts.

  “You know, you’re beautiful, Mike? What’s that scar on your shoulder?”

  “Knife wound. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “Baby, people have really worked you over, haven’t they? Can I apologize now? I must have sounded like a madwoman. Make love to me; and I’ll give you a reward, a couple of morsels of information… Hey, will you scratch what I just said?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s the way I automatically think, that lovemaking is something you bargain with. I never used to be that way.”

  “Do you understand now that there’s nothing more you can do? You’re going to let Larry Zion alone?”

  “I’ve made myself an enemy there.” She sighed. “Nothing like a refreshing half hour’s sleep. The awful thing is that I would have been good in that part! Adios, Doña Isabella. Now we concentrate on survival. And as for you and me, would you be willing to start over? You sleep in that bed; and I’ll sleep in this one, the way we used to do in pictures in the days of family entertainment. And tomorrow let’s not say a word about the movie business for the entire day.”

  “We don’t have to stay in Miami.”

  “No, we don’t, do we? Let’s go to the Bahamas and gamble. Mike, get the ice. We’ll have one last, innocent drink, in separate beds; and then we’ll sleep.”