“What have you been up to?” he asked.
“Today I got an alcoholic drunk so he’d spill the story of his life. After that I tried to threaten a gorilla with social pretensions over at Riviera.”
Beaumont repeated the name a little dreamily as the next wave of my smoke passed over him. “Riviera. I was there for the last round of the ’48 Open, sitting on the clubhouse verandah, drinking rusty nails.”
“Who won?”
“As I recall, it was the rusty nails. Who won today?”
“The gorilla. He called me a shady character.”
“Your job didn’t end up being about rescuing fair maidens from dragons or helping little old ladies across the street, did it, soldier?”
“No,” I said.
Moody returned, carrying a little tray with legs. It held Beaumont’s drink and a sweating shaker of Gibsons. Moody poured one into a stemmed glass and added a single onion, transferring it from a bowl of next of kin using tiny silver tongs.
“To old times,” Beaumont said. He took a sip of his drink and then set it down carefully. I did my bit with the Old Gold again.
“Is it your job that’s bothering you?” Beaumont asked when the last of the smoke had moved east.
“What makes you think anything’s bothering me?”
“You’re not the usual cheery visitor I’ve been getting lately. Seems like everyone who stops by to see me is so pumped full of sunshine they make Ed Wynn look like a wooden Indian. You’re a refreshing change of pace.”
“Thanks.” I ground the cigarette out in the ashtray the thoughtful Moody had provided.
“Light up another,” Beaumont said. “They don’t bother me.”
“Why the hell don’t you just smoke one yourself?”
“The doc says no. As long as I’m doing good, I’m going to let him call the shots.”
I wondered who was pumping who full of sunshine now. I took a drink and lit another cigarette.
“Is it your job in general that’s getting to you,” Beaumont asked, “or just working for Carson Drury?”
“How did you know I was working for him?”
My reaction brought out Beaumont’s old, wolfish grin. “I recommended you. Drury came by to see me. Smoked the same lousy cigar the whole time, the bum. He’d heard about the fracas we got into in ’47. Wanted to know all about it. All about you.”
That solved the mystery of Drury asking for me by name. “It’s not him,” I said. “In fact, I kind of like the guy. He’s one of the few people I’ve met lately who thinks that Hollywood has a future.”
My host chuckled. “The bad news being that Drury hasn’t been right about anything since he started shaving.”
“You think he’s wrong about Hollywood?”
“Dunno. I know that what you mean when you say Hollywood–namely, the town you left behind when you went off to play Sergeant York–that town is dying. A fellow with time on his hands could ride around on a white charger trying to save it, but he’d just be wasting his energy. Nobody can stop things from changing, usually for the worse. ‘Things fall apart,’ as Yeats said.” He hastened to add, “He was a poet, I think, or a bartender.
“The only thing certain is, when the studio system finally croaks, something else will come along to take its place. Whether it’ll be a Renaissance or the Dark Ages is anybody’s guess.”
We drank in silence for a while to give Beaumont a chance to catch his breath. Then I asked him if he remembered a guy named Vincent Mediate.
“I remember the gun he waved in my face,” Beaumont said.
“I’ve been thinking of him on and off today.”
“Because of Drury?” There was a similarity. Mediate had been a boy wonder in his own right, although he’d never enjoyed Drury’s level of success.
“No,” I said, “because of something Mediate told me once. He said the ex-serviceman’s dream of a wife and a little house in the sticks was going to seem like a trap someday. Funny how he could spot my end coming but couldn’t see his own.”
“That’s the way it usually works,” Beaumont said. “So you’re feeling trapped?”
“Not exactly. I’m feeling like a guy who spends his days rolling drunks. I meant to do more than that. I think I did do more than that, once.”
Beaumont drew himself up in his chair, the effort making us both wince. “You’re a prize sap, Elliott. You always have been. You told me once that every man’s life should fade to black after he’d done his one heroic thing. It was crap then and it’s crap now. If that’s all there was to heroism, who couldn’t win a medal? It’s living through the empty days that takes sand. And carrying your weight and a little extra.”
He left off there, pale and out of breath. Before he built up steam again, Moody rejoined us. “Telephone for Mr. Elliott,” he said.
I stood up. “I should be going anyway,” I said.
“Yeah,” Beaumont said. “You should. Go home and tell your wife she married a cream puff. And take those damn things with you.”
I picked up the pack of Old Golds I’d carelessly left on the silver tray. When Moody and I reached the house, I handed him the cigarettes for his reserve supply.
“What’s the latest word?” I asked.
“No hope,” he said.
He led me to the phone and then went back outside.
I said, “Elliott,” into the mouthpiece when I’d gotten my fill of the quiet.
“Scotty, this is Peg. Get out to the RKO lot in Culver City as fast as you can. Paddy’s on his way there now. There’s been some kind of accident. Carson Drury’s been hurt.”
12
I was the last to arrive at RKO Culver City. I learned at the antebellum front office that an ambulance had already called for Carson Drury and carried him away. I found Paddy Maguire at the scene of the accident, the soundstage where the Albertsons had been shooting. He was patting the hand of Drury’s beautiful secretary, Sue, and doing it in a genuinely disinterested way. She appeared close to shock, and Paddy looked a little stunned himself. His homburg was pushed well back on his head, exposing the tuft of gray hair he liked to tug when he was puzzled. He’d already worked the tuft into something resembling a startled paint brush.
Behind them was the set Hank Shepard had described to me: a three-story staircase spiraling up into the rafters of the stage. It was built of dark, heavy wood and backed, on each landing, by stained-glass windows. It had to be a small piece of the Albertsons’ mansion, after their fall from grace. Some of the windows had broken panes, and the stairway carpet was in tatters. If that wasn’t giveaway enough, the whole set was covered by the dust of ages.
When he spotted me, Paddy passed Sue to a willing set hand and crossed the stage to meet me. His greeting was milder than the one I’d been imagining. “This is a damned odd business, Scotty.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here,” I said.
“So am I, but not because I think you could have spotted this coming. If you’d been here, though, you could tell me what happened, and that would be a blessing. There had to have been a dozen witnesses on the set, no one of whom saw anything useful.
“What’s certain is the camera crane tipped over. Drury was on the camera platform, alone, trying to work out the shot he wanted. The cameraman, Joe Nolan, should have been along for the ride, but he was working on some problem with the lighting. There was just the crane operator, a guy named Smith, who was seated on the controls down on the chassis.
“Smith raised Drury and the camera up and started to swing it to the right, away from the stairway set, for the start of the shot. The crane tipped over and landed in the empty center of the stage. No one ended up underneath it, thank God, or we’d be dealing with a death.”
“What happened to Smith?”
“He stayed at the controls as long as he could and then stepped off. B
eing down on the base of the thing, he was never in any danger.”
We walked across to where the crane lay on its side. It looked so much like a fallen animal that I had to fight the temptation to pat its battered side.
“How’s Drury?” I asked.
“From what I’m told, he was conscious when they carried him out and dictating orders to everyone in sight. I guess he was thrown clear just before the crash. The camera wasn’t so lucky.”
A man was examining the remains of the camera, a short man with broad shoulders and heavy forearms that were dark with hair. “Joe Nolan,” he said as he shook my hand.
“It’s a total loss,” he said to Paddy. “Just like I guessed.”
“How about your other guess?”
“I was right there, too. This was no accident. Part of the crane’s counterweight has been removed.” He led us to the base of the crane where racks of metal plates had been fitted to balance the weight of the camera.
“This is an old crane,” Nolan said. “Weights have been added over the years to accommodate a bigger platform and different cameras. There’s a whole rack of weights missing that was here yesterday. I know. Jack Smith and I tested this rig just before quitting time.”
I could see sweat on his scalp through his thin, black hair. “My chair ended up under the camera,” he said. “If I’d gone up with Carson today, you’d be burying the camera and me in the same hole.”
“I’ve heard that this camera was the original one from Albertsons,” I said.
“And First Citizen,” Nolan said. “It was already a veteran in ’41. But you couldn’t beat it for the kind of shots Carson loves, those mile-deep shots where the middle ground and the background are as important as the foreground. I don’t know how we’re going to replace it.”
I turned to Paddy. “The camera may have been the real target. Not Drury or anyone else. Without that camera, he may not be able to match his new footage to his old film.”
“The target was never just the camera, buddy,” Nolan said. “Nobody sends a camera up on a crane by itself. Whoever did this was counting on hurting someone or didn’t give a damn whether he did or not. We should be talking to the cops right now.”
“We’ll let Mr. Drury make that call, if he’s able,” Paddy said. “My associate and I are on our way over to see how he’s doing.”
I waited until we were in the DeSoto and Paddy had completed his cigar-lighting ceremony before I seconded Nolan. “It’s time for the police.”
“Past time for them,” Paddy said, “which is one of the things that makes calling them in so awkward. Another is that we don’t have the first idea what’s really going on. I don’t mind helping the police now and again, as you know, but they’re damned unpleasant people to have along when you’re feeling your way through a mine field. Heavy-footed, if you get my meaning.”
As usual he ignored the dashboard ashtray and held his cigar arm outside the car, as though helping me signal for a right. This time he actually was.
“Turn east at the next corner and stay on Slauson. According to Drury’s secretary, he was taken to a ritzy private hospital in Huntington Park. On our way there you can tell me what you’ve accomplished. You can skip the part about pasting Mr. Shepard. Drury filled me in on that this morning.”
“Sorry to get you involved,” I said.
“Don’t give it another thought. If this Shepard had slighted Ella in front of me, he’d be sharing Drury’s hospital room right now.”
I told Paddy of my breakfast with Whitehead and the long shot that had come in for me at Riviera.
“That’s more like it,” Paddy said. “What’s had me flummoxed from the start is the idea that anyone gives a damn whether Drury makes his comeback or no. That and the odd way this business has escalated. A script stolen, tires slashed. That’s nuisance stuff. Then there’s a fire that could easily have burned down an entire studio. Talk about upping the ante. Now we have an arranged accident that has double homicide written all over it. What happened to turn our vandal into an arsonist and would-be murderer?”
“Maybe we’re dealing with two threats,” I said. “That penny-ante stuff could have been John Piers Whitehead’s way of getting attention. But I can’t see him destroying the negative or hurting anyone.”
“And I can’t see two saboteurs working the same side of the street. It’s too big a coincidence. We’ll concentrate on this Lockard fellow. He can explain to us later why he started with half measures. Maybe he was testing the water, seeing how much security the lot really had.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Lockard’s surely the answer to my first puzzler: Who on earth would take Drury and his movie so seriously? It sounds like Mr. Lockard has more invested in Drury’s ranch than money. And he just may be the type to use strong-arm tactics.”
“But he doesn’t know anything about the movies,” I said. “He wouldn’t know how important that camera was to Drury’s plans.”
“Forget the blooming camera. The target was Drury. The camera was an innocent bystander. I can’t wait to tell the quiz kid that he borrowed money from the guy who’d most like to see his precious movie floating belly up. Don’t spare the horses.”
Drury’s ritzy hospital was called the Petry Clinic. It occupied an old mansion that must have been too heavy to truck east when downtown Los Angeles engulfed the neighborhood in the twenties. The place was built of roughly finished red sandstone and had an octagonal tower that ended in toy battlements. There was a lighted window at the top of the tower, standing out like a beacon against the evening sky.
“God appears to be in,” Paddy said as we climbed the front walk, Paddy climbing in a flat-footed, deliberate way.
“Joan Crawford wear you out?” I asked.
“That’ll be the day.”
While I asked a nurse at the reception desk for Drury, Paddy collared a doctor. Dr. Petry himself, it turned out. He had Paddy’s waistline, but not his height. His skin was so flat and perfect that I suspected powder.
“You’ll be relieved to hear that Carson is in no danger,” he told Paddy as I joined them. He paused to let us express our relief and then hurried to fill the dead air. “He fractured his left fibula just below the knee. I’m preparing to set it now.”
Paddy seemed more interested in the interior decorating than Drury’s fibula. The crystal chandelier that graced the entryway fascinated him in particular. “Aren’t broken bones a trifle beneath your notice here?” he asked.
“Our specialty is a certain class of patient,” Dr. Petry said, “not a class of injury or illness.”
“What class of patient would that be?” I asked.
“They’re gentlemen and ladies who require a high level of personal attention. And an even higher level of discretion.”
“Sounds as if we’re laboring in the same vineyard, Doctor,” Paddy said. “That being the case, would you extend us a professional courtesy? I’d appreciate a word with our client while you’re mixing your plaster.”
The doctor bowed ever so slightly and showed us to Drury’s room. It wasn’t, as Paddy had guessed, in the tower. It was on the first floor, overlooking a stone verandah and a formal garden lit by floodlights.
Carson Drury was sitting up in bed. Even so, his uninjured leg, stretched out in front of him, came close to touching the ironwork of the footboard. The broken leg was suspended above the mattress, being tugged back into alignment by weights and pulleys.
Hank Shepard was there, as I’d expected, standing at the head of Drury’s bed. I hadn’t expected the other visitor, Gilbert Traynor. He was standing by the windows, admiring the floodlit landscaping. The lighting made the ornamental trees and plants look like a garden at the bottom of the ocean.
“‘Enter old Polonius, with his man,’” Drury said. There was a bruise on his forehead–already purple–and he was pale, but
he could still project from the diaphragm. “If you’ve come to offer me a refund, I’ll take it.” He sounded serious enough, but he ended the crack with a friendly laugh.
Paddy didn’t join in. “You might want to hear our report first.”
“You’ve found out who did this?” Shepard asked. He looked from Paddy to me, remembered our parting exchange at the Club Satyr, and looked away, embarrassed.
“We’ve a candidate in mind,” Paddy said.
Drury turned his head in Traynor’s direction, and Shepard, Paddy, and I followed his gaze. Traynor, who was dressed for another evening on the town, reached up to finger his black bow tie–a floppy tie, I noted, like the one Drury had worn the evening before.
“You’ve not met Mr. Maguire, have you, Gilbert?” Drury asked.
Traynor crossed the room to shake Paddy’s hand. Afterward, he kept crossing, sidestepping in the general direction of the door.
“Guess I’ll be going, Carson,” he said. “Just came by to see how you were doing and to repeat my offer. I think under the circumstances you should really consider it. Not right this minute, I mean, but when you’re feeling better. In the meantime, I’ll just toddle off. Unless, of course,” he said to Paddy from the doorway, “I’m your man.”
“We’d have shot you long since,” Paddy said affably. “Enjoy your evening.”
“Now we can speak freely,” Drury said. “Give me the bad news, Maguire.”
“The accident was deliberately staged. Someone removed a portion of the crane’s counterweight. In the wee small hours, most likely. I checked with the guards. Even if they kept to their schedule, they wouldn’t have stopped by that soundstage more than a couple of times between midnight and dawn.”
“How about my camera?”
“It was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Drury nodded. “You said you had a suspect in mind. Do you also have a name?”
Come Back Dead Page 8
