by Nero Blanc
Then the attorney turned abruptly and accompanied his visitor back to the front stoop. “Max is redoing the walkway to the street, all in old brick,” he said as if the previous conversation had already been stored in an internal file folder. “That’s what buyers want nowadays … What you see when you approach a property is what counts. Nobody in L.A. cares what’s inside. That’s what the realtors tell me, anyway.”
Max Chugorro walked toward them. “Pauley and Salvadore are going to frame out the job, Mr. Mawbry, while I run over to Garden Depot and pick up some extra mortar. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
Mawbry sighed in frustration. “I’ll be gone by then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look … Max … try to make it only twenty minutes this time, okay? I don’t want your assistants making any mistakes, here.”
“You can count on me, sir.” The word sir seemed to lack the aura of respect normally attached to it.
While the landscaper returned to his pickup and his employer released another irritable sigh, Rosco asked, “I was wondering about the older woman sitting in Max’s truck.”
“You mean Harriet Tammalong?” was the attorney’s distracted reply. “She’s some relative of Chugorro’s. I haven’t seen her in a blue moon, but whenever she’s around, you can write off the Marquis’ day because you’ll never get a lick of work out of him. She runs Max around like a puppet.” Mawbry looked at the truck where Harriet still sat in frozen silence. “Maybe she’s losing her hearing. Old folks get weird when their faculties start failing.”
“That’s not the impression I—” Rosco started to respond, but was interrupted by the buzzing of his cell phone. “Sorry,” he said, “but I should take this.”
“Keep me posted, Polycrates … And remember, reasonable doubt is all I need.”
Mawbry hurried back to his house, Max and Harriet drove off, and Rosco answered his phone as he continued to walk toward the Mustang. It was Belle.
“Dan Millray’s on his way to the hotel,” she said. Rosco detected a surprising amount of nervousness in her voice.
“What does he want?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“But he asked to see me?”
“You or me. He doesn’t care … Rosco, he seemed highly agitated.”
“Okay, I’m on my way. But I want you—and Sara—to go down to the lobby and wait for him there. Don’t take him up to our suite or any other private spot. I’ll be there in a half an hour.”
“What’s this about, Rosco?”
“I don’t know, but stay in a public place until I get there.”
CHAPTER 37
Rosco stepped off the wood-paneled elevator that had carried him upstairs from the hotel’s subterranean parking garage and immediately spotted Sara and Belle sitting close together on the far side of the marble-floored lobby. They were perched on a long couch upholstered in blue and yellow and facing a matching highbacked chair. Neither of the women seemed to be talking, which was an oddity in itself. As Rosco approached them, he realized that Dan Millray had already arrived and was ensconced in the chair. He stood when he noticed Rosco, but the posture was neither casual nor relaxed.
“Sorry to drag you all the way back from the Valley, but there are a few issues I’d like to clear up … and then I’d like some answers.”
The actor’s gaze was more intense than Rosco remembered. Belle had been correct. Millray was agitated, all right.
Rosco nodded while he continued to regard the actor. “Have I missed anything?”
“No,” Belle answered in a noncommittal tone, “Dan wanted to wait for you before he said anything—”
“I don’t like having to repeat myself,” the actor interrupted with some asperity, then forged ahead with a stern: “Here’s the situation. Andy Hofren told me about the problem with the live ammunition. The issue came up this morning during one of our regular coffee and gab sessions. Andy assumed I knew. I didn’t have a clue what he was referring to—”
“I would have imagined Dean Ivald or Lew Groslir would have informed you,” Rosco said as a half question, half statement. “Sit down, why don’t you?”
Dan returned to the chair, and let out a cynical chuckle. “Dean? Lew? I’ve been wrapped. Outta there, history, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I’m the last person they’d call. Especially with bad news.”
“I assume Andy also told you that the actors and crew confronted Lew and Dean?” Rosco asked as he sat beside his wife.
Dan nodded. “Indeed, he did … And the fact that everyone was given a day to ‘cool off.’”
“If it weren’t for Don Schruko checking that pistol—” Rosco began.
“Do I look like an idiot?” Dan snapped. “Do I look like an idiot to everyone on the Anatomy set? What do you people take me for?”
It was Belle who answered; her brow was furrowed in unhappy confusion. “What do you mean?”
Dan shot an irritable glance at Rosco. “Do you carry a gun, Polycrates?”
“For work sometimes. Not often, though. And not here. I’m not licensed in California.”
The actor’s voice became more severe. “I have a gun. It’s a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. I keep it in a drawer in the nightstand beside my bed. The drawer is locked at all times, and the key is hidden in a secure spot … The ammunition clip is locked in another drawer on my wife’s side of the bed. If someone broke into our house, we’d probably be dead long before I could get the damn weapon loaded and ready to fire, but I’ve arranged things in that fashion because I don’t want my kids getting their hands on it. They don’t even know I own a gun.” Millray took a deep breath. “Where do you keep your weapon?”
Rosco wasn’t certain what the actor’s intentions were, so he answered with the truth, albeit hesitatingly. “We don’t have any kids, so I’m somewhat less discriminating than you. It’s in the closet out of sight hanging behind some old overcoats. When I travel, I put it in a gun vault.”
“And if someone pointed a gun at you in jest,” Dan continued in the same provoked tone, “what would you do?”
“I’d step out of the way, and ask the person to point it elsewhere. You never know when they’re loaded.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere … And when you were in training to be a police officer, and an armed fellow officer approached you during an exercise, did you take his or her word that their weapon wasn’t loaded?”
Finally recognizing Millray’s argument, Rosco responded with a measured. “No … I always checked it out myself. That was policy at NPD.”
“So, do I look like an idiot to you and everyone else connected with Anatomy?”
“You mean you had already examined the pistol?” Sara asked. “Prior to Mr. Hofren firing it during your death scene?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Briephs. I took it from the prop table, and checked out all six chambers, and then personally handed the gun to Andy. And from that point on, I kept the weapon in my sight.”
“Except for the moment when Don Schruko walked away with it to give it his safety check.” Belle interjected.
Dan Millray shook his head. “In retrospect, I should have reexamined the pistol after Don returned with it, but I thought, Why? What could be wrong with him making a second safety check?”
“I don’t mind admitting this,” Belle said with a sigh, “but I’m very, very confused. How did live ammunition get into the gun between the time you gave it to Andy and when Schruko checked it? Unless Andy put it there?”
“Not Andy,” Dan countered swiftly. “First of all, I’ve known Andy Hofren since we were at UCLA. We’re good friends, and we work together on a regular basis. Second, he would have had to load the pistol right in front of the entire cast and crew. He never left the set.”
“So …” Rosco said, thinking out loud, “… the bullets Schruko handed to Dean Ivald were never in the pistol, at all?”
“I know,” Dan admitted, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”
The
four sat quietly for several long minutes. Finally, Millray said, “I, for one, would like to have some answers.”
“I think it’s time I spoke with our key grip,” Rosco suggested. “Have you mentioned this to him?”
“No,” Millray answered. “Andy explained the scenario, and my first reaction was to come to you.”
“Schruko told me that the reason he checked the pistol was because he noticed the seal on the box of blanks hadn’t been broken, and he was concerned that the gun hadn’t been loaded. Is that information consistent with what you saw on the prop table?”
Millray gave this question some thought, then shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing a box of blanks. That’s not to say it wasn’t there, either sealed or unsealed … I just didn’t pay any attention to that detail. I was focused on the pistol, removing all six blanks from the cylinder, double-checking them, and then reloading them.”
Rosco leaned against the couch’s back. “So the pistol was already loaded with blanks. Do you think it arrived that way from the rental company in Inglewood?”
“I doubt it. Even the paper wad in a blank can be dangerous if pointed at close range. I would guess they’d deliver an empty gun and a box of blanks with the seal intact, as Schruko said.”
“Then logic would indicate that if the weapon had been loaded with the blanks, the seal on the box must have been broken.”
Dan Millray reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to Rosco. “Here’s Don Schruko’s home phone number. I’d like to hear his side of this story, and something tells me that you might be better at getting answers than I am.”
CHAPTER 38
“So, what’s up?” Don Schruko called out as he approached Rosco. The two men were at the far end of the Redondo Beach Sportfishing Pier where Rosco been been waiting for the key grip for a little over ten minutes. At Schruko’s back, a number of fishermen had lines dangling in the water, parents and kids were out enjoying the warm afternoon air, and there was even a beat cop ambling slowly along the weather-worn wooden planks. It was an inviting, picture-perfect scene, full of comfort and homey tranquility, and Rosco was grateful Schruko had chosen it for their meeting. Or, he would have been, if his mind weren’t so overwhelmingly distracted by his conversation with Dan Millray. In Rosco’s opinion the key grip had some serious explaining to do.
It had taken almost an hour for Rosco to navigate the drive south to Redondo. He’d passed through communities he’d only read about or seen on postcards, and had repeatedly found himself wishing that he and Belle were vacationing rather than working. Venice Beach, Marina del Rey, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and finally, Redondo. It would have been fun to visit each one, stroll the boardwalk, sip iced cappuccinos, watch the antics of inline skaters, open-air weight lifters, sleight-of-hand artists, the guy who supposedly juggled activated chainsaws.
Instead, he’d dutifully arrived in Redondo, parked the Mustang on Catalina Avenue, and walked to the International Boardwalk, determinedly bypassing its carnival-bright restaurants and anything-goes beach-gear shops, as well as the heady array of expensive watercraft bobbing peaceably in their slips.
“You wanted to see me?” Schruko asked again. He smiled, although it seemed to Rosco that the expression was less than amicable. The flip-side to the seemingly helpful and affable Angelino had bubbled to the surface.
“I’m going to level with you, Don. I’ve been pulling double duty on the Anatomy set … Debra Marcollo’s attorney had asked me to do a little snooping around while I was ostensibly watching out for Mrs. Briephs.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So … I’ve just had an interesting conversation with Dan Millray. He swears up and down that the pistol used in his death scene was filled with blanks from the very beginning. He told me he would never have allowed another actor to point a weapon at him without making certain it was clean.”
Schruko shrugged. “Performers don’t handle props until rehearsal starts or film is rolling. That’s why we have unions.”
“Maybe they’re not supposed to, but Millray insisted he checked that pistol over and over again, and personally handed it to Andy Hofren, and then continued to monitor it until the moment you handled it, which is the only time he lost sight of it.”
The key grip regarded Rosco. Gone completely was the genial, almost toadying, demeanor he habitually wore when working in the studio. “What can I say, buddy? All I know are the union rules. If Millray says different, that’s his la-de-da.” Schruko frowned. “Besides, what’s this got to do with Debra Marcollo?”
“I was hoping maybe you could help me on that situation, too.”
“What makes you think that?”
Rosco studied Schruko while his peripheral vision maintained a steady observance of the other inhabitants of the pier. The key grip was a big man, as Rosco was newly assessing; and his posture and stance appeared to be undergoing a metamorphosis. Aggression now seemed to mingle with latent rage.
“Well, one of the facts I picked up from Marcollo’s attorney who got the information directly from LAPD, is that six .38 caliber bullets went missing from the house where she purportedly murdered Chick Darlessen … Next, we have six .38 slugs mysteriously appearing on the Anatomy set, which just as oddly disappear—”
Schruko shrugged his broad shoulders again. “All I can tell you about is what I pulled out of the prop pistol.”
“Which Dan Millray refutes,” Rosco stated. The key grip’s ain’t-got-nuthin-to-do-with-me attitude was beginning to wear thin. “Come on, Schruko. Let’s quit playing games, here. You didn’t discover live ammunition. You planted it. Which leads me to assume you had a motive for calling attention to the shells … Because, if they are the same bullets involved in Darlessen’s death … if they came from the box of shells left in the Malibu house—and I’m going under the assumption that they are—then my guess is that you’re into some type of extortion racket. Or worse yet, you personally took them from Darlessen’s home, which clearly places you at the scene of the crime.”
Schruko didn’t respond, but he stared hard at Rosco. What he was thinking was impossible to determine. Reflexively, Rosco took a step or two farther away from the pier’s iron railing. When dealing with suspected criminals it didn’t make a lot of sense to put yourself in harm’s way.
“Is that the deal, here?” Rosco continued. “You’re sending a message to the killer indicating that you’re aware of his or her identity?”
Again, Schruko didn’t reply.
“That’s a dangerous position to put yourself in, my friend: blackmailing a murderer … if, in fact, you didn’t kill Darlessen yourself.”
Rosco watched Schruko’s mouth move, and his face tangle into a line of panicky knots. “I don’t know anything about six .38 slugs missing from the crime scene,” he said.
For a long moment, Rosco didn’t respond; then he finally asked, “You’re telling me that the live ammunition you planted on the Anatomy set wasn’t removed from Chick’s beach house?”
“I don’t know anything about bullets missing from the murder site,” Schruko reiterated. “Nothing. Nada.”
Rosco thought. “But you admit you introduced six live shells onto the Anatomy set?”
The key grip’s response to this query was to abruptly shift his focus toward the water and the distant greenish-blue line of the horizon.
“Which you then proceeded to ‘find’ and present to Dean Ivald?” Throughout this line of questioning, Rosco had noted the changing emotions racing across Schruko’s face. “Is Ivald involved in Darlessen’s death?”
“The bullets have nothing to do with Chick!” The words exploded from Schruko’s mouth; his eyes swiveled back to glare at Rosco. “I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about Darlessen or his murder!”
“If you and Ivald aren’t involved,” Rosco continued calmly, “what about Lew Groslir or someone else working on Anatomy?”
“Aren’t you listening t
o me, Polycrates? The damn bullets have no connection to Chick!”
Rosco didn’t reply. Instead, he continued staring at Schruko. He had a hunch the man had information he wanted to share, and he was right.
“Look … it’s just a situation that got out of control, that’s all.” Schruko’s words died off, but Rosco made no move to speak. “I mean, how was I to know what kind of weapon killed Darlessen? Don’t you see, when it came time for Millray’s death scene … and Andy Hofren got so fired up about his expertise with weapons … Look, Polycrates, all I wanted was a little respect around the set. Is that so hard to understand? No one was going to get hurt. How could they? The real bullets never went anywhere near the pistol … They never even got close to it.”
“Respect?” Rosco asked cynically.
“Why not?” Schruko all but shouted. “Actors, producers, directors—they treat the grips like furniture. Like nothing. I wanted those self-centered prima donnas to realize that I was important. I was the man—a piece of glue that held the entire production together, and that if any of the grips weren’t on the ball, if I let my guys slip up just a little, then the entire cast would be up a creek. I wanted some respect for me, and my guys … And we weren’t getting it. Not from the actors. Not from Ivald or Groslir. Not from anyone.”
“But Groslir and Ivald kept the incident under wraps, so you had to leak the story yourself. Is that how it played out?”
“Yeah … Well, I only had to tell Miso Lane; that’s sorta like placing an ad in the Los Angeles Times.” Schruko turned and squared off against Rosco. “Look, no one got hurt. Where’s the harm? Stuff like this happens on sets all the time. It’s casual but under control, like the stunt Millray pulled when Hofren shot him. I don’t see anyone giving him the third degree. Look, Polycrates, it gives them all something to talk about next time they go to some trendy dive and ‘do lunch.’”
“And Don Schruko comes off as the hero who saved the day?”
