Come Back Dead

by Terence Faherty

  “Ralph Lockard.”

  “The developer?” Shepard asked.

  “And Mr. Drury’s secret benefactor. Lockard owns the Alora Land Conservancy, as my associate here discovered. Lockard set it up to put some farmland on ice, but his scheme produced an unforeseen bonus. He was offered a choice parcel of ground called Eden as collateral for a loan, a parcel he’s been lusting after since Truman beat Dewey. He figures to get it, too, when the borrower defaults. My guess is he’s been trying to improve his chances.”

  Not having lines in that part of the scene, I’d spent my time watching Drury’s reaction and Shepard’s. Like Paddy, I’d expected the Lockard revelation to give Drury yet another knock on the head, perhaps the one that finished him. It hadn’t happened. After some initial unease, Drury had actually begun to smile. Hank Shepard wasn’t bearing up so well. He was staring at Drury as though nothing in their long association had prepared him for this latest foul-up.

  Drury must have felt the daggers. Without taking his eyes off Paddy, he said, “Relax, Hank. Everything’s under control.”

  “You knew all along, didn’t you?” Shepard said.

  “It wasn’t all that hard to work out. Was it, Scotty?” He winked at me. “Ralph Lockard. His very name gives him away. Sounds just like the villain in a melodrama, the evil banker about to foreclose on the widow’s mortgage. I guess that makes me the widow.”

  Paddy had been upstaged again, and he knew it. “You figured the Alora scam out and borrowed the money anyway?”

  “Of course. I needed to raise as much money as I could. A committee of bankers wouldn’t have given me a nickel more than Eden is worth. In fact, they would have insisted on giving me a nickel or two less. Mr. Lockard was much more generous. Most people are willing to be generous if you can convince them they’re cheating you.”

  “He won’t begrudge you the extra he paid,” I said, “as long as he ends up with Eden.”

  “Then we’ll just have to see that he doesn’t end up with it–the four of us, working together. Maguire, you can keep an eye on the evil Ralph Lockard. Meanwhile, Scotty, you and Hank and I will slip clean away.”

  “Away where?” Paddy asked.

  “Indiana. Traynorville, to be exact. Last night I happened to tell Gilbert Traynor about a little idea I’d had in the bath. As you gentlemen know, we’ve been having trouble with sets and locations. That’s a delicate way of saying we’re likely to go broke trying to duplicate what the RKO set department whipped up for us in 1942. It occurred to me that we could move the production to Indiana–where Albertsons happens to be set–to some little town that time forgot. We’d have all the sets and locations we need then and have them for the asking. Gilbert liked the idea. You might even say he loved it. He told me he’d contribute to the production financially if we’d make the move. That was the offer he repeated just now.”

  “What’s in it for him?” Shepard asked.

  “He’s starstruck and homesick in about equal parts. This way he gets to have the best of both worlds. He can go back to Indiana with a trainload of walking, talking Hollywood celebrities. He’ll be the Hoosier Frank Buck.”

  Shepard wasn’t jumping on any bandwagons. “The Imperial Albertsons was shot in a studio and on a back lot. You’ll never match the old footage if you go out on location.”

  “I had the same reservation, Hank. But we’ve no choice now. Our camera’s gone. We can waste our time hunting around for a replacement, or we can make a virtue of a necessity. We’ll save the old footage of the Albertsons’ glory days and reshoot their whole decline and fall. Think of what we’ll gain: a sharp visual break that will make the first half of the film seem like a long dream sequence. It will be followed by a shock of harsh reality that will give the audience a taste of what the Albertsons are feeling as they awake from their dream. The critics will eat it up, Hank. They’ll absolutely eat it up. When I get the Academy Award for best director, I may thank Ralph Lockard from the podium.”

  He patted the pockets of his dressing gown. “I seem to have lost my cigar case in all the confusion. Can I try one of yours, Maguire? It’ll get me in the mood. They’re rolled in Indiana, aren’t they? Or is it Kentucky?”

  Paddy handed one over and lit a kitchen match with his thumbnail. As his concession speech, he said, “West Virginia. Wheeling, West Virginia.”

  13

  “The kids and I can stay with your father in Indianapolis. We wouldn’t be in any conceivable danger.”

  It was Ella’s third trip around that rhetorical barn, and she was no longer treating her argument very seriously. So I gave her an unserious reply: “You’re underestimating my father.”

  “I’ve only met the man once, Scotty. It would be hard for me to recognize him, never mind estimate him.”

  I said, “Touché,” in the hope of moving to a new subject. I didn’t want my parting conversation with Ella to be about my father, especially since we were naked just then and enjoying a rare evening of unselfconscious intimacy. The children were spending the night with their ersatz grandparents, the Maguires.

  The ploy worked for the moment at least. “How many shirts should I pack?” Ella asked.

  “How many do I own?”

  “Right. You should be taking a trunk, not a bag. You don’t even know how long you’ll be gone.”

  “Drury’s calling this a scouting expedition. He won’t commit the crew and the cast until he’s sure of his ground. If I can, I’ll sneak back before the actual filming starts.”

  “If it ever does start,” Ella said. “You could spend the rest of your life driving Carson Drury around while he trades in his last brilliant idea for a new one.”

  “That’s Hank Shepard’s job, not mine.”

  I regretted mentioning Shepard as soon as his name was out of my mouth. Ella sat up, drawing a sheet around her raised knees. I sat up, too, thought about a cigarette, but decided it wasn’t worth spoiling what remained of our earlier, happy mood. There was still a chance that we’d merely interrupted our lovemaking and not called it a night. A chance that Drury and Shepard and Indiana were all still part of another world.

  By way of sustaining the note, I scratched Ella’s back lightly, working my way downward from her shoulders. She waited until I’d reached my standard finish, a trip up her spine from the small of her back. Then she bent her head forward until her almost-blond hair hung down toward the sheet that covered her toes. “You missed my neck,” she said.

  As I corrected the oversight, I told her that I’d stopped by to see Torrance Beaumont. Ella said, “Poor Tory,” with so much feeling that I figured she didn’t need updating on his chances. I did pass along his message, though.

  “He told me to tell you you’d married a cream puff.”

  “If he’d seen you at work just now, he’d have had to eat his words.”

  “Thanks, coach,” I said.

  “What did you do to get under his skin?”

  I’d told him I was feeling trapped by my life. That line would have played even less well now, so I said, “I wasn’t smoking fast enough for him, I guess.”

  “That reminds me. I got you a going-away present.”

  She kicked off the sheet and left the bed and then the room. It was a warm night, but the place felt cool without her.

  She came back carrying a wooden box. “I didn’t have time to wrap it.”

  “You didn’t have time to buy it,” I said. “You didn’t know I was going away until tonight.”

  “So you’re getting your Christmas present early. Open it.”

  The box didn’t contain my Christmas present. It held the latest gambit in Ella’s campaign to come between me and my Lucky Strikes. The complete inventory was one briar pipe with a straight stem, a leather pouch of tobacco, a shock of pipe cleaners, and something that looked like a cross between a tenpenny nail and a paring kni
fe.

  “That’s a combination tamper and reamer,” Ella said.

  “Of course it is. But what am I supposed to be? Are you trying to turn me into a banker?”

  “I’m trying to keep you from ending up like Tory Beaumont. You have two children. It would be nice if they got to know you. I happen to think you’re worth knowing.”

  She was close enough to kiss, so I kissed her. I had big plans for that kiss, but they didn’t work out. Ella broke it off and said, “It would also be nice if the kids got to know their grandfather.”

  “They’re doing fine with Paddy. Tonight he’s teaching them to play blackjack–or how to use a blackjack. I forget which.”

  “Why don’t you want us along, Scotty? Is it because of your father?”

  “No. He’s why I don’t want to go myself. Drury’s why I don’t want you three along. Drury and the black cloud that’s following him around. The next time he falls off something, he could land on one of you.”

  Ella wouldn’t let me change the subject a second time. “Why don’t you and your father get along?”

  “He’s never forgiven me for not becoming a doctor, like he is.”

  “Your father’s a lawyer, not a doctor.”

  “He’s not? What am I thinking of?”

  “A movie, you goofball. The Thin Man Goes Home.” She threw a pipe cleaner at me. “And before you laugh yourself sick over your little joke, let me remind you that William Powell takes Myrna Loy home with him in that picture.”

  “Where she ends up knee-deep in dead bodies. I’d never do that to Myrna’s knees–or yours, either.”

  “What came between you and your father, Scotty?”

  “Hollywood did.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t me?”

  Shepard came to mind again. Specifically, the satisfying picture of him slamming into a wall of can goods. “Indiana’s quite a ways away,” I said. “How bad do you think your reputation was?”

  “Not was, Scotty. Is. Some things don’t change. Maybe nothing does.”

  “That would suit me fine,” I said, thinking of Beaumont’s opposing philosophy, the idea that the world was a rug that unraveled behind you as you walked.

  Ella interpreted my comment personally and kissed me for it. It was my lucky break and I ran with it, so to speak.

  Not all that many hours later I was standing beneath the Olympic-size clock in the waiting room of the Union Station, getting my final pep talk from Paddy Maguire.

  “Need anything?” he asked, looking first at the drugstore and then at the newsstand.

  “A mental examination. Or one for you. Why are we going along with this stunt?”

  Paddy tapped the breast pocket of his suit, causing the cigar ash on his lapel to avalanche silently. “Because of a very generous payment in advance for two weeks of your time.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t because Drury has you down two sets to none in your battle of wits, and this is your only hope of a rematch?”

  “I’d settle for the last word,” Paddy said. “I might get it, too, if I can tie up Mr. Lockard or whoever’s behind this business while you three are off screen-testing the wheat.”

  “The corn, you mean,” I said.

  “All right, the corn. I must say, Scotty, I expected you to be in a better mood today–after the romantic evening I arranged for you.”

  “Ella will be sending you a nice note.”

  “Only one?”

  “As I was saying: Doesn’t this Indiana trip seem awfully quick to you? The guy falls off a crane one afternoon, and the next day he lands on the Super Chief.”

  “Only the best for Drury,” Paddy said, deliberately missing my point. “He could have saved Gilbert Traynor some money by taking the plain old Chief.”

  “Nobody in Hollywood takes the Chief anymore except agents and kept women.”

  Paddy’s ear for a pirated movie line was almost as good as my own. “Would that be from Union Station?”

  “No,” I said, “The Hucksters, Clark Gable and Deborah Kerr, 1947.”

  “A good year, that.”

  “What’s with this Dr. Petry?”

  “I just spoke with him. He came by to tuck Drury into his compartment. You’ll have your hands full just getting the wonderboy about. Petry says it will be weeks until Drury is even up to using crutches.”

  “So why is he letting Drury go? You’d think Petry would want to keep him under observation for a day or two at least.”

  “Society quacks like Petry follow orders; they don’t give them. Mostly the orders involve prescriptions the patients shouldn’t have. They were the bane of this town before the war. High-class pill pushers, half of them, and I’m not talking about Bayer aspirin. I shut one or two of the rotten ones down myself, when I first hung out my shingle. This Petry must be clean, though, or smarter than he looks, to still be in business.

  “As for Drury’s timing, that suits me down to the ground. I want him off somewhere safe and remote. If our saboteur follows his pattern, getting a little bolder each time he strikes, his next move could be very serious.”

  “What’s more serious than attempted murder?”

  “Murder, of course. And I don’t mean murder by way of the hocus-pocus somebody pulled on that camera crane. Mr. Joe Nolan’s fears to the contrary notwithstanding, that isn’t how you actually go about killing a fellow. You put a gun to his head and wish him a nice trip.

  “And speaking of guns, you have yours, I assume.”

  “It’s in my case, which is on the train by now, I hope.”

  “What’s this bulge, then?” Paddy reached into the inside pocket of my suit coat and extracted my new pipe.

  “A present from Ella.”

  He stuck it into my mouth and stepped backward to get the full effect. “Very becoming. The Arrow Shirt people should be paying you a retainer.”

  I started to say that I’d take a return trip ticket, but the man on the public address system cut me off. He announced the last call for the Super Chief, eastbound for Chicago.

  14

  The Super Chief made the trip to Chicago in forty hours or so, as advertised. Drury could have given me the exact time if I’d thought to ask him. He was remarkably well informed for a man who never left his compartment and who sat with his back to the passing scenery. He asked me if I’d seen the Grand Canyon when I checked on him once and, later, whether I knew that we’d averaged eighty-two miles an hour between Garden City and Lamar. Maybe he’d made the trip so often he had the rails memorized.

  Shepard kept Drury company most of the time. The two played game after game of chess using a beautiful little traveling set whose pieces had tiny pegs on their bases that corresponded to holes in the squares. I never saw more than a few moves of any one game, there being no room in the compartment for me to sit down. From what I did see, though, Shepard was more than holding his own. He played a rapid, aggressive game, leaning over the little board like an arm wrestler. Drury leaned well back; his propped-up leg would permit no other arrangement, but it seemed to me to be his natural stance. He played slowly, examining both the board and Shepard as he worked out his moves.

  For the most part I kept myself company, reading or haunting the club car where I worked at breaking in my pipe. The project brought Ella to mind, but then, almost everything did. It got so bad that I left the train during the twelve-minute stop in Flagstaff and sent her a telegram: “Start packing. I’ll call when coast is clear.”

  The girl who took it down for me smiled to herself, perhaps imagining some complicated, interstate tryst between this Mrs. Elliott and the stranger before her with the gurgling pipe. I let her imagine.

  Our train had a two-story, domed observation car, called a “Pleasure Dome Lounge Car” by the railroad, apparently with a straight face. Hank Shepard found me sitting beneath the p
leasure dome late on the second night of our trip.

  “Having trouble?” he asked, pointing to my pipe. It was sitting in an ashtray, surrounded by the dead remains of a pack of matches.

  “Can’t keep it lit,” I said.

  “It’s like sex, I’m told. The less you think about it, the better you do.”

  We both regretted the analogy as soon as it was spoken, Shepard more than I.

  “Try one of these,” he said, shaking a cigarette out of his pack. “They stay lit all by themselves.”

  I accepted the cigarette gratefully, which relaxed Shepard. He lit one for himself and settled back in his chair. “I want to apologize for the other evening,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to since I sobered up the next morning, but too much started happening. Thanks for letting me off with a poke on the chin.”

  He ran his hand back and forth beneath his pug nose a few times. It was the kind of manly expression of emotion Wallace Beery had done so well.

  “You’d been drinking,” I said to give him an out.

  “I drink all the time,” Shepard said. “It doesn’t usually make me a heel. That night, though, I was high on more than booze. I had the feeling that things were finally coming together for Drury and me, that we’d finally found our way out of the fun house.”

  He looked up through the glass ceiling of the dome. I looked up, too, amazed again at how many stars you could see when you got away from the lights and smog of Los Angeles.

  “I felt like I owned the place that night,” Shepard said, a little in awe. “Like I was in command of things for once.” He looked down from the sky, and his voice lost its hushed quality. “Sort of like the flea deciding he owns the dog.

  “Anyway, I wanted to say I’m sorry. One lesson I learned in the infantry is that you have to get along with the guys in your squad. They’re the ones watching your back, after all.”

  “We felt the same way in the field artillery.”

  “Then you know that the last thing you want is for the guy next to you to develop an ambivalent attitude toward your health and well-being. I’m afraid your attitude toward me has sunk way below ambivalent.”