Killed in the Act

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Yes, Matt,” she said promptly.

  “Jazz, put a call through to the Coast and get me Shorty Stack, okay?”

  She hesitated. “You mean it?”

  “Desperate times,” I told her, “call for desperate measures.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll place the call right away.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Strange visitor from another planet...”

  —WILLARD KENNEDY, “THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN,” ABC

  ANY CONVERSATION WITH SHORTY Stack was an experience. Shorty, on the Network organization chart, was listed as Assistant Vice-president-Special Projects, West Coast, but he’d been at this sort of thing a lot longer than I had. By rights, he should have gotten my job when the position opened up, but he turned it down because he didn’t want to come to New York. Shorty once told me he found no difference between New York and downtown purgatory. He said he wouldn’t fit in.

  I’d never met the man—all our conversations were over the phone-but from what I heard, even present—day Los Angeles wasn’t his natural habitat. He’d been intended for Hollywood circa 1932, but had been misplaced in time.

  Jazz buzzed me back. “He’s not at Network Village, Matt,” she said, naming our West Coast headquarters.

  Jazz suggested that she try his home, and I told her to go ahead.

  “Oh,” she said, “Shirley’s in her office. She wants to see you when you have a minute.”

  “Okay, send her in.”

  Shirley had a big grin on her face when she came into my office, but I couldn’t ask her what it was about right away, because Jazz had put the call through.

  “This’ll only take a couple of minutes,” I told Shirley. “Sit down.” I picked up the phone to talk to Shorty.

  “Matt, baby,” he said in a jolly, piping voice. “Good to hear from you. What’s doing?”

  I promised myself that someday I would go take a look at this guy and find out if he was for real. Meanwhile, it was fun to picture him the way I imagined him, sitting in a director’s chair at poolside, wearing dark glasses and a beret, with an ascot around his neck, and smoking a cigarette in a long holder.

  “Shorty,” I said, “you know everything, right?”

  “Hey, that’s what the job is, right, sweetheart? What do you want to know?”

  “I suppose you heard about the bowling ball fiasco?” I asked.

  “Natch,” he said.

  This was too much. Natch. “Come on, Shorty, you’re putting me on, right?”

  “Matt, baby, the bowling ball bit was in all the papers, of course, I heard about it. Like I said, it’s the job. Now, how can I help you?”

  “I want to know about Melanie Marliss’s boyfriend.”

  “Heh, heh. Now you’re putting old Shorty on, am I right?”

  “Not a bit.”

  He sounded disappointed in me. “Sweetheart!” he said. “You’re talking about the female that gets more ink than anyone in the world, outside of maybe Jackie. Melanie and the taco tycoon have been all over every rag and scandal sheet in the country.”

  “I know. I’m looking for something they didn’t get.”

  “Hell, they don’t get anything; they make it up. It’s common knowledge out here Melanie Marliss is Miss Squeaky Clean. No booze for her, and as for dope, forget it. No pot puffer, pill popper, or coke snorter ever works on one of Her Majesty’s pictures. She takes her men one at a time, three-four years each. Besides, sex is no sin in this business, it’s a spectator sport, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like soccer. Look, Shorty, what I’m really interested in is something about Lorenzo Baker.”

  “Something about him, sweetheart, or something on him?”

  “On him,” I admitted. “He may be a pest.” I told him about the prospective lawsuit.

  “There must be something in the air in New York makes people paranoid,” Shorty said. “That phony bastard doesn’t care the sweat off his balls for Melanie’s maroon marble, he just wants his name in the papers.”

  “That’s what I figured, but it doesn’t make any difference. The Network is going to look pretty stupid if this gets to court.”

  “Can’t let that happen, can we? Okay, I’ll look into it personally, and if I can’t find anything, I’ll get something rigged up, then find it.”

  “No, Shorty,” I said flatly.

  “What was that I heard, sweetheart, a scruple? You’ve been working Special Projects over three years and you still got scruples? How the hell can you stand it?”

  I would have told him, if I’d known myself.

  Meanwhile, Shirley, the workaholic, unable to bear just sitting and not doing anything for five minutes, came over and started to straighten out the things on my desk. I didn’t mind; that was probably the only way it ever would have gotten straightened.

  On the phone, Shorty said, “Okay, Boy Scout, I’ll get you the whole truth and nothing but. Anything else?”

  “Well, yeah. There’s a chance—a small one, but still a chance—that the Jim Bevic murder is tied in with this. I’m pretty well up on the mechanics of the case, and I’ve talked with Wilma Bascombe, but maybe you can give me some background on Shelby, and his wife, and Lenny Green.”

  “Hey, file a report on your talk with Bascombe, all right?” I said I would, and there was silence for a few seconds.

  “Shorty?”

  “I’m thinking, sweetheart. I have to sort things out, you know. I’m carrying thirteen generations of Hollywood gossip in my noodle.”

  “Your noodle?” I couldn’t stand it any more. “Shorty, you don’t really talk like this all the time, do you?”

  “Nah,” he said in disgust. “In the office, I wear the suit, and when the corporation robots come out from New York, I have to talk perfect English to them—the whole bullshit treatment. I’ll tell you, sweetheart, it’s a pleasure to talk to a guy like you, a friend. Then I can relax, and be my real self. It’s a pleasure. I mean that sincerely.”

  I looked at the phone. Give it up, Cobb, I told myself. Real or fake, Shorty Stack was beyond my comprehension.

  So, for that matter, was Shirley Arnstein. After she’d finished my desk, she straightened all my pictures. Now she was wiping the smudges from my window.

  Shorty thought things over for a few more seconds. Finally, he said, “Well, I’ll tell you. There’s not much to say about Alice Brockway. She’s got a temper, but what the hell, she was a child star, and they all get spoiled rotten. She used to be part of Lenny Green’s harem—”

  “Green’s? When?”

  “Oh, years ago, when the team of Shelby and Green first made it big, they both had to comb women out of their hair. Green, especially. The girls called him the Wand, and not because of magic he did in the act, either. Still do, as far as I know. Only thing back then was, he had a sick wife, so all the women knew it was a temporary thing. Of course, the wife is dead now.”

  “You mean Alice Brockway met Shelby because of Green?”

  “Yeah, apparently Green fixed them up. Very adult, you know? Green was best man at the wedding and all that.”

  “What about when they broke up the act?”

  “Well, that was the Uranium thing. Green cost them this money he and Shelby had set aside to invest—something like a million bucks—and Shelby was understandably miffed. Brockway, by the way, was against the split-up.”

  I pulled my lip. That provoked some interesting speculation. That scene yesterday in Studio J made it obvious that my boyhood dream girl was still fond of Lenny Green, maybe platonically, maybe not. Could it be that Green and Brockway had a little tryst planned last Sunday, and Bevic stumbled in on them? But even if that were true, what the hell difference did it make? That wasn’t something to kill a person over, certainly. Hollywood adulteries were as far off his journalistic beat as it was possible to get.

  “This sounds like old news, Shorty,” I said. “Anything more recent?”

  “Well, Matt, baby, th
ey haven’t exactly been in the public eye the way they used to, you know? The only thing that’s happened was there were rumors about Shelby’s land deal in Arizona—a bunch of enterprising Italian-American boys was supposed to have a black hand in it. It looked like something solid for a while. Arizona real estate’s been known for that kind of thing, lately. But nothing ever came of it. You know rumors. We Network Bigs should know them if anybody does, am I right?”

  “You are right,” I said. “Get back to me on Baker, okay?”

  “You got it, sweetheart.”

  “Then everything’s copacetic.” If you can’t beat them, I decided, join them.

  “Bye, now,” Shorty said. “Give my sympathy to all your fellow inmates of the Big Apple.”

  “And you pass mine along to the smog-breathers of Tinseltown,” I told him, and hung up.

  I asked Shirley what was on her mind.

  “I finally heard from Harris,” she said, taking a seat. “He offered that bribe.”

  It took me a moment to remember the possibly crooked independent testing laboratory. “What happened?” I asked eventually. Life would be a lot simpler if we only had to worry about one thing at a time.

  Shirley was fighting a smile. “Well,” she said, “not only did they turn out to be honest, they were downright militant about it. He’s in jail.”

  The smile was in full blossom now. I smiled too. Usually, things seemed to go much too smoothly for Harris Brophy.

  “He sounded very indignant on the phone,” Shirley said. “Just as he handed over the money, the person he thought was the crooked employee pulled out a badge and arrested him. Come to find out, they had spotted the crooked employee on their own, months ago, and planted a cop in his place to weed out their crooked clients. Harris walked right into the trap.”

  “He may never get over it,” I said. “Still, kind of restores your faith in human nature, doesn’t it?”

  “Why?”

  “To investigate somebody who actually turns out to be honest?”

  “I never thought of it that way, but I suppose so.” I should have realized it would be a new idea for her—I’m sure nothing like that had ever happened when she was working for the Congress.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I suppose I ought to get started, and go out there and rescue him.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Come on, Matt, fun is fun, but we can’t leave him out there to rot!” Her concern was real. Shirley was carrying a very bright torch for Harris; a fact he only noticed when it was convenient. One day, it was going to make trouble in the department.

  I asked Shirley if she didn’t think “rot” was a little too strong a word. “I doubt the State of Indiana has him chained to a dungeon wall,” I told her. “Besides, I didn’t mean, ‘No, we won’t get him out of there,’ I meant, ‘No, you’re not the one who’s going to do it.’ ”

  “Why not?” she protested. “I want to see his face.”

  I grinned. “That would be something to see, all right. Knowing Harris, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s spending all his time slumped in a corner, playing the harmonica.” For a second, I was tempted to let her go, but I hardened my heart and said, “No, we’ll send St. John. He’s a rookie, and it’ll be good experience for him.

  “You,” I told her, “I need here, especially with Harris out of action for a while. I’ve got something important for you to do.”

  That perked her up right away. “What is it?” she asked eagerly.

  “I want to know everything about Jerry de Loon. I don’t think the cops are checking too deeply into his background, but if you run across them, efface yourself, you know what I mean?”

  “They’ll never know I’m there,” she said.

  “Good.” If it turned out Jerry was involved in the kinescope caper, and Shirley turned something up, I’d have to tell the police. But if he wasn’t, I wasn’t about to go spreading my theory around. I didn’t want Jerry’s memory to suffer just because I have a soiled mind.

  Shirley said she’d get right to it, and left. The intercom buzzed. I gave Shorty mental congratulations for fast work.

  “Yes, Jazz,” I said.

  “Llona Hall on the phone, Matt.”

  I took the congratulations back. “Okay, Jazz.”

  Llona wasted no time on hellos. “Give me three reasons I shouldn’t be furious with you,” she said. Her voice said she was half-mad already, and she was giving me a chance to cajole her out of it.

  I was willing to try, “Because of my innocent charm and youthful good looks?”

  “Ha!”

  “Mmm,” I said, thinking. “Because we both have double letters in both our first and last names?”

  “What kind of a reason is that?”

  “Mystical,” I said. “What’s your sign?”

  “Never mind. You’ve got one more chance.”

  “The Network needs you. Special Projects needs you. I need you.”

  “You would mention that. Okay, Matt. I was going to take a few days off and get away to the country after tomorrow night, but okay.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I promised.

  “How?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Buy you a pretzel?”

  She laughed. “Trying to impress me with your wealth, ay?”

  “You said it, kid. What the hell, I’ll even spring for an Italian ice.”

  “Wow,” she breathed, “you don’t even give a girl a chance! Okay, but I have to be at the Brant at quarter after five.”

  I looked at my watch. “Plenty of time. Meet you by the fountain in two minutes.”

  I told Jazz to arrange for someone to take a message if Shorty called, and left the office to go meet Llona.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Ahh, there’s good news tonight!”

  —GABRIEL HEATTER, MBS

  “HOW DO YOU LIKE your pretzel?” I asked Llona.

  “Not bad,” she said around a mouthful. “It could use some mustard.”

  “Philadelphians adulterate innocent hot pretzels that way. We just don’t do that in New York.”

  “I went to college in Philadelphia.” We were sitting on the broad edge of the Plaza fountain, watching the rush hour develop. Llona said, “Wish I were going home.”

  “Don’t stay late on my account,” I told her. “I was just going to drop by your office for a couple of minutes tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow will probably be even worse. I have a nightmare that some bus boy at the Brant will put the cards in the wrong places, and two women wearing the same dress will wind up at the same table, and the press will all be there to take pictures of a hair-pulling match.”

  “Is that why you’re going there now?” I pointed across the street. “Are you planning to give the help an IQ test?”

  “No, it’s too late for that. Actually, I’m going over because Alice Brockway called up and asked especially for me. And like a good little PR girl, I promised I’d be there.” She made a face.

  “Mind if I tag along?” I asked.

  Llona grinned at me. “Still looking for a chance to talk to your boyhood crush?”

  “Yup.” It was true. I did want to talk to Alice. I wanted to talk to all three of the late arrivals from California, and this looked like a heaven-sent opportunity.

  “Okay,” Llona said. “You might as well tag along. You can carry me when my feet give out.” She had slipped her shoes off, and was rubbing her feet. “I’d like to scream whenever I hear somebody describe Public Relations as a desk job.”

  Llona stretched her very nice legs, pointed her toes, and scissored them up and down. “Damn pantyhose, anyway,” she said.

  “You lost me,” I told her.

  “What I’d like to do most in the world at this moment is soak my feet in this fountain, but you can’t take pantyhose off in public the way you can stockings. Where can you buy garter belts these days, I wonder.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t bought one in years. Do you always
discuss underwear with strange men?”

  The dark brown eyes widened. “Are you strange? Really?”

  “Positively eerie,” I said. I checked my watch. “Only fifteen minutes until you’ve got to see Alice Brockway, so if I’m going to fill you in, I’d better get started.”

  Llona was all business while I brought her up to date. I didn’t give her every thought and fraction of thought I’d entertained, but I gave her a pretty good idea of the areas Special Projects would be looking into. She had to know, because each possibility presented a different PR problem, and she had to be ready. If, I reminded her, any of them was really the truth.

  “So that’s why you want to come along with me,” Llona said. “You want to talk to them about Jim.” She shook her head. She said she doubted her high school friend’s death could have anything to do with the Great Bowling Ball Caper.

  “I still want to talk to Alice Brockway, bowling ball or not.”

  She put her shoes on, stood up, and turned a mock frown on me. “Well, all right. Just don’t go around accusing anyone of murder.”

  Llona was very versatile. She could jay-walk and outline PR tactics at the same time. I lost a few words of the plan when she scooted ahead of me and let a smelly city bus get between us, but from what I heard of it, it was a good plan. The idea was to make Melanie happy, so Llona would stress the Network’s opinion that everything had happened and was continuing to happen because people loved Melanie, from a souvenir-hunting bowling ball thief to a dedicated Network investigator.

  “We’ll get her where she lives,” Llona said, as we landed on the far curb, “right in that big, fat ego.”

  The Brant Hotel is a huge cube of a place, fairly new. Outside, it’s hard to tell any difference between the Brant or any of the other steel and glass office buildings along Sixth Avenue. They try to make up for it on the inside, with lush carpets, crystal chandeliers, and shiny green draperies. The elegance carries over to the staff, too. I knew from previous visits that the men’s room attendants here wore uniforms that looked as though they’d been designed for the palace guard of some country out of Victor Herbert. The bellboys looked like space cadets.