by Parnell Hall
“You wanna run outside and get him for me, please? There’s a few details I’d like to tie up.”
Jake jerked his thumb at the cops. “They gonna let me go?”
“Good point,” MacAullif said. He waved one of the cops over. “Stanford,” he said. “Pass this man out. He’s gonna fetch a kid for me. When he gets back, park him with the others and bring me the kid.”
“Is that wise?” I said to MacAullif as they went off.
MacAullif frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Letting him fetch the production assistant. Gives them a chance to synchronize their stories.”
MacAullif looked at me. He blinked. “Stories?” he said. “Are you kidding me? Stories? You know, what this guy just said—about some bum broke in here and died—that’s what happened. All the rest of this stuff is bullshit. I do it ’cause it’s my job. But ninety-nine percent of the investigative work you do is bullshit. You know why I talk to the kid? So no one can say I didn’t. Odds are, no one ever gives a shit, but if someone does, it ain’t my ass. And the one percent of the time it does pan out, I’m a fucking hero.
“Now, this doesn’t happen to be one of those times. But you got your movie people here, you called me special, and I’m gonna do a real job. I’m sorry that don’t mean kissin’ their ass and lettin’ them all go right away.”
“Of course not,” I said. “On the other hand, you don’t have to bend over backwards the other way, keep them here when there’s no need, just to show the motion-picture industry don’t cut no ice with you.”
“Did I happen to mention you’re a real pain in the ass?”
“I believe the subject came up.”
Before we could pursue that topic at any length, Jake returned with the production assistant.
Dan had always seemed young, but intimidated by the police he looked about three.
“You wanted to see me?” he said.
“That’s right,” MacAullif said. “What’s your name?”
“Dan Mayfield.”
“Well, Dan,” MacAullif said. He jerked his thumb across the room to where the production manager was just joining the others. “Did Jake happen to tell you what I wanted to talk to you about?”
“Someone got killed.”
“That’s right. Someone did. Did he mention why I wanted to talk to you?”
“About the keys?” Dan said. I flashed a triumphant look at MacAullif.
He pretended not to see it. “That’s right, about the keys. Did Jake say I wanted to ask you about the keys?”
“No, he just asked me when I picked them up.”
“I see,” MacAullif said. “And when did you pick them up?”
“Right away. When he asked me.”
“And when was that?”
“Right after lunch.”
“What time of day was that?”
“Around one-thirty.”
“You picked up the keys then?”
“Sure.”
“Where was the real-estate office?”
“Madison Avenue. Around Forty-fifth Street.”
“You picked up the keys from there?”
“That’s right.”
“There’s no parking Midtown. How’d you park the car?”
“I didn’t take the car.”
“Oh?”
“I went on the subway.”
“Where’d you leave the car?”
“At the office.”
“So you picked up the keys, then went back to the office to get the car?”
“That’s right.”
“So you picked up the car, you dropped off the keys then?”
Dan hesitated. “Actually, no.”
“No?”
“I had another errand to run. So when I picked up the car, there was no reason to go up to the office. Except to drop off the keys. Frankly, I forgot. Anyway, it wasn’t like he needed the keys. I knew they weren’t going to use them till the next day. Still, I should have dropped off the keys. But the fact is, I just got in the car and took off. So, actually, I didn’t drop off the keys until a couple of hours later.”
“And when would that be?”
“I’m not sure. Say around four o’clock.”
I tuned out. Not that the bit about the keys wasn’t interesting as all hell. But with MacAullif admitting he was just going through the motions, it was hard to give a damn.
I’d actually wandered away from MacAullif and the production assistant and was surveying the stacks of crates and cartons and working out warehouse fight sequences in my head, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Sidney Garfellow, in the company of a rather exasperated-looking cop. I felt sorry for him—the cop, I mean. Sidney was obviously accustomed to riding roughshod over everyone.
“Stanley,” Sidney said. “I gotta ask you something.”
“I’m working on it now, Sidney,” I told him. “I don’t know why we need it, but I’ll fit it in somewhere.”
“What? Oh, that.” He waved it away. “No problem. I have confidence you’ll write a good scene. No, I want to ask you about the cop.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
He jerked his thumb. “Your buddy. The cop. You guys go back a bit, huh?”
“You could say that. Why?”
“I’m thinkin’ of hirin’ him.”
I blinked. “What?”
“For the movie. When we’re shooting. The mayor’s office supplies cops for traffic control and shit like that. But it’s new guys every day, and they’re not workin’ for you. Be nice to have our own man on board.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. You think he’d go for it?”
The answer, Not in a million years, sprang to mind. But I opted for diplomacy.
“Sidney, he’s a homicide cop. He’s here ’cause someone died.”
“Yeah, but that’s no big deal. And it’s got nothing to do with us. If he’s got the time, I’d like to sign him on.” Sidney shrugged. “Hell, he even looks like a cop. Maybe I’ll stick him in a scene.”
“As a cop?”
“Why not?”
I could think of a lot of answers, but what the hey, it had nothing to do with me.
“Well,” I said, “can’t hurt to ask.”
“That’s what I thought,” Sidney said. “Thanks for your input.”
With an imperious gesture to the cop, he strode back to the group. I turned my attention back to MacAullif and the production assistant. Only, now the production assistant had turned into the assistant director. That was, in my opinion, a bit of an improvement. But she could have been a bag of cement for all MacAullif cared. From where I stood I could see him grunting out questions and nodding his head gloomily at each response.
He was interrupted by the medical examiner, who’d apparently finished with the body. They stepped off to one side and conferred in low tones, after which the medical examiner headed back toward the freight elevator, and MacAullif sent the attractive assistant director back to her group.
He caught my eye and gestured me over.
“Find out the cause of death?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Natural causes, I hope?”
“Yeah,” MacAullif said. “Wouldn’t that be nice? The fact is, he died of a blow to the back of the head.”
“Son of a bitch. Any chance it was accidental?”
“Doc says no. Not where the body’s lyin’. Of course, you’re such a pain in the ass, I should have figured.” MacAullif shook his head. “Just had to be murder.”
6.
ALICE WAS ALL EARS. “MURDER?”
I flopped down at the kitchen table, rubbed my head with my hands.
“Yeah,” I said. “But it really has nothing to do with me.”
“With you?”
“With us. With the movies, I mean. It’s like they say, coincidental and not to be inferred.”
“Stanley.”
Alice was at the stove preparing a sauce. I had no idea what
it was, but Alice is a terrific cook, and I wouldn’t have disturbed her for the world.
Only it’s hard not to mention a murder.
I told Alice about scouting the warehouse and finding the body. “A bum?” Alice said.
“We don’t say bum anymore. It’s politically incorrect. We say homeless.”
“Say whatever you like. The man was murdered in the elevator?”
“Apparently. I suppose he could have been killed elsewhere and dragged there, but I doubt it.”
“What killed him?”
“A blow to the back of the head.”
“Any chance it was accidental?”
“Medical examiner said no.”
“They find the murder weapon?”
“Not when I left. Maybe they have by now.”
“Cops are still there?”
“Far as I know.”
“But you say it has nothing to do with the movie crew?”
“I don’t see how it could.”
“Why not?”
I was saved from having to answer by my son, Tommie, who came bouncing into the kitchen for help with his homework.
“I need a joke,” Tommie said.
“Hey, Dad, good to see you, how’s your day?” I said.
Tommie made a face. “Come on, Dad, this is serious.”
“A serious joke?”
“It’s for homework. We gotta write a joke.”
Good lord. I must say I like the East Side Day School in most respects. Except for the homework. I can’t recall getting homework in grade school. Not before junior high. But it seemed like Tommie got it every night. It was also often something like this—something the kids couldn’t possibly do and the parents had to do for them.
“I’m not sure I understand the assignment,” I told Tommie. “Is it Write a Joke, or Have Your Parents Write a Joke?”
“Dad,” Tommie said. He had already mastered the preadolescent trick of making it a two-syllable word. “Come on, I need a joke.”
“What about this?” Alice said. “What has eighteen legs and catches flies? ... A baseball team.”
“Mom,” Tommie said. Also a two-syllable word. “That’s an old joke.”
“What has twenty legs and catches flies?” I said.
Tommie frowned. Thought. “What?”
“Two and a half spiders.”
Tommie gave me such a look. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and bounced out the door.
“Everyone’s a critic,” I said.
“Go on,” Alice said. “Tell me about the murder.”
“What about it?”
“You were telling me why the movie crew couldn’t be involved.”
“Oh. Because it wasn’t our place. We just happened to be there. We went to scout it as a location and found the guy.”
“And no one could have killed him then?”
“No. We were all together. And he looked like he’d been dead for some time.”
“What did the medical examiner say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know he was hit on the head.”
“I heard the cause of death. I didn’t hear what he said about the time of death.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t stick around. We had work to do, and as soon as they let us go, we took off.”
“So who do the cops figure did it?”
“Another bum. Most likely a couple of homeless guys broke into the warehouse looking for a place to stay, one of them wound up killing the other.”
“Was there any sign of a break-in?”
“Yeah. There was. The basement window in the back was smashed. The cops figure they got in through there.”
Alice nodded. “So it’s really nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem to be.”
“So there’s no reason to call MacAullif.”
I blinked.
“What is it?”
“I called MacAullif.”
“Oh?”
“He was there. Took charge of the whole thing.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“No, I guess I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
I didn’t know until Alice asked me, but as soon as she said that, I knew why. I’d been avoiding mentioning MacAullif because I didn’t want to bring up the part about Sidney Garfellow offering him a job on the movie.
This was because Sergeant MacAullif had dumbfounded me by accepting it.
It’s hard to explain why that bothered me, but it did. It really did. So much so I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Had left MacAullif s name out of the discussion of the murder.
No, it wasn’t just that this was my motion picture,my chance for fame and glory, and I didn’t want anyone to share in it. At least, I didn’t think it was that. In fact, I think if MacAullif had been excited about working on my movie I probably would have been pleased.
But it wasn’t like that. Because Sidney Garfellow worked on him. And for all of Sidney Garfellow’s I-am-an-independent-producer-the-studios-don’t-cut-no-ice-with-me, he fed MacAullif the straight Hollywood line.
See, it happened that just today he’d locked up a star for the picture.
The guy’s name was Jason Clairemont. And he was a nobody, a twenty-two-year-old kid lucky to have a job. Only, last year Jason Clairemont had done an action picture with Clint Eastwood. Besides racking up an impressive body count, the picture had done a hundred and seventy-five million at the box office. And suddenly Jason Clairemont was a star.
You’ll pardon me, but I just couldn’t see it. From where I sat, Clint Eastwood was a star, and Jason Clairemont was just lucky enough to have been in his movie.
Only, a hundred and seventy-five million translates into a lot of theater tickets. A lot of people saw that movie.
One of them happened to be Sergeant MacAullif of the NYPD. MacAullif had actually gotten a silly look on his face when Sidney Garfellow mentioned Jason Clairemont.
“The kid?” MacAullif said. “Clint Eastwood’s sidekick? To Shoot the Tiger?”
And MacAullif was in.
Which shouldn’t bother me, but it did. Sergeant MacAullif hadn’t agreed to work on a Sidney Garfellow movie. Or a Stanley Hastings movie. He’d agreed to work on a Jason Clairemont movie.
So I had to backtrack and explain to Alice about MacAullif being there. Then I explained about Sidney Garfellow offering him a job.
“And he took it?” Alice said. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Turns out he had some vacation time coming. Shooting schedule’s only four weeks. Guess he figured he could spare the time.”
“Did Sidney offer him a lot of money?”
“There isn’t a lot of money. I think he offered something like five hundred a week.”
“Why would he do it for that?”
I sighed. “Actually, I think what sold him was when he found out Jason Clairemont was in it.”
Alice’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Yeah. Just happened this morning. Sidney locked up Jason Clairemont to play the lead in the movie.”
Alice had a silly look on her face. “You’re writing a Jason Clairemont movie?”
Jesus.
Even Alice.
7.
“THIS WON’T DO.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry. This simply won’t do.”
The person making that statement was Sidney Garfellow. The thing that wouldn’t do was the warehouse fight scene.
I didn’t want to hear it. I’d stayed up most of the night writing the damn scene, and what I wanted to hear was, “It’s perfect, it’s just what I wanted, thank you very much.”
“Sidney,” I protested. “It’s just what you asked for.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Sure, it is. A warehouse fight scene.”
“Yes, but not this one.”
“And what’s wrong with this one?”
“It’
s from out of left field. It comes from nowhere. It has no business in the script.”
I took a breath. That was just what I told him yesterday, and he told me to write it anyway. I paused, trying to think of a suitable rejoinder. One that wouldn’t get me bounced off the picture.
From below there came the sound of hammering, as there had been periodically during the conversation.
Sidney and I were standing in the second floor of the warehouse, staring at the stack of boxes, the ones that had failed to inspire me to write the definitive warehouse fight scene. The hammering came from carpenters on the first floor, throwing up temporary walls to create office space for the motion-picture production company. This had been facilitated by the fact that late last night the police had released the premises as a crime scene, and Sidney Garfellow had been able to rent the building.
It occurred to me to wonder if that was in any part due to the fact that Sidney Garfellow had given Sergeant MacAullif a job.
“Sidney,” I said. “If you want something else, you’ll have to be more specific. All I can say is, I tried to give you what you asked for.”
Sidney didn’t get angry. That wasn’t his style. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders as if we were the best of pals.
“Stanley, Stanley,” he said. “Let me explain you the facts of life. Now, to start off, why is that scene in the script?”
“What?”
“Come on, Stanley. This isn’t that hard. Tell me, why is that scene in the script?”
“Because you wanted it there.”
Sidney smiled. “Exactly,” he said. “That’s exactly why it’s there. It’s the only reason it’s there. You know it. I know it.” He smiled again. “But we don’t want them to know it. We don’t want Joe-fucking-Public sitting in the theater saying, ‘Gee, the director must have wanted to have a warehouse fight.’ We want him sittin’ there diggin’ it. So there’s got to be a logical excuse for the warehouse fight, to cover up the fact that there isn’t one.
“Now, if the warehouse fight doesn’t integrate with some of the other stuff in the script, obviously the other stuff has to go.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why should I kid about a thing like that?”
“Sidney. We’re two weeks away from shooting.”
“Stanley, grow up. You’ll be rewriting while we’re shooting. So take another crack at this.”
