Chapter Seven
Photo Finish
I guess I looked to the headwaiter in Ricardo’s as if I’d just climbed out of a muddy grave. The shine on my thirty-dollar shoes was gone forever this time, I thought. But I wasn’t worrying much about appearances. I didn’t even gape at Lida Randolph the way I usually do at a beautiful movie star. Felix DeCoudre seemed to be smelling something bad. O’Leary looked at me once and let me alone.
I said: “Miss Randolph, will you pay five thousand dollars for the return of your stolen property?”
“Why... no... No, I couldn’t—”
“You said you lost ten thousand dollar’s worth. What will you pay? One thousand? Five hundred?”
“Let’s talk about it some other time.”
“How much?” I snapped. “Ten dollars or ten cents? Or did you not lose anything at all?”
“My house was definitely broken into,” she said, with mighty indignation. “The police know that. Even if they don’t know who did it.”
“I know who did it,” I said. “A little, clumsy, frustrated second-story man named Marty Wensel.”
Felix DeCoudre shifted nervously. His broad, ravaged face showed everything except his thoughts. “Then have him arrested,” he said impatiently.
“It’s a little late for that. He’s lying on the side of a hill with his face in the mud. He couldn’t lift it because a bullet broke his back. But he doesn’t mind. Little things like rain and mud and cold don’t bother him now. The dead don’t care about things like that.”
O’Leary moved up beside me and whispered: “Easy, Willie. Easy, darling.”
I didn’t look at her. “Anselmo did better, though. He’s sitting up. He’s just as dead but his face isn’t in the mud. Not that it makes any difference to him, but I thought you might like to know.”
“Who in the world is Anselmo?” Randolph asked, looking prettily puzzled. “Sounds like an Italian chef.”
“You didn’t lose anything when your house was broken into,” I told Randolph. “Wensel bungled it. He didn’t have the talent for the job. So why did you want me to take the case?”
Randolph didn’t say a word.
“If I tell you that DeCoudre will never make his picture, does that answer my question?”
She looked me in the eye: “Yes, Mr. Carmody. That was the reason.”
“Just what do you mean by that statement?” DeCoudre demanded. “Just why will I not make that picture?”
“Because if you attempt to, Mr. DeCoudre, I’ll see that these facts are made public: first, you made a pornographic film, using Laurie Bressette, and rented it out to stag parties. You got Laurie to play along with you on the promise of starring her in your comeback picture, which you had no intention of doing even if you had hopes of making a picture. And that I doubt because you didn’t have the money. That dirty film was the only way you had of making a living.”
DeCoudre’s glassy, bloodshot eyes were filled with hate and the first signs of fear but he didn’t speak.
“Second, this John Anselmo, a second-story man pure and simple, made you a proposition. He was to be your film projectionist when the film was rented so that — with Wensel’s help — he could make plans to burglarize the homes. You agreed to the scheme — on the provision that all proceeds were to be invested in a comeback picture for you. All you needed was about a hundred thousand dollars because you had a commitment from Miss Randolph for a picture. On the strength of her name the banks would lend you as much as you needed.”
“You said Anselmo and Wensel are dead,” DeCoudre was perspiring. “So how are you going to prove anything?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not even going to try. I’m just telling you the facts that I can and will make public unless you tear up Miss Randolph’s contract.”
“But Willie,” O’Leary put in, “what caused all the shooting?”
I said wearily: “Anselmo made the mistake of not letting Wensel in on all the facts. Wensel didn’t know he wasn’t going to get his split of the loot. When he heard about the investment he refused to go along. He had fifty thousand dollars coming — more money than he probably ever dreamed of having. He wasn’t interested in gambling for millions. He wanted his fifty thousand. When he didn’t get it, he went into the burglary racket on his own.”
“If you are insinuating,” Lida Randolph said coldly, “that those men were ever in my house with a dirty film, you’re a liar.”
I shrugged. “DeCoudre’s been in your house, hasn’t he? He could have scouted the place personally. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it, Miss Randolph? Planning to rob you to help finance your own picture!”
“You louse!” Randolph spat at DeCoudre. She didn’t stop with that.
“Fact number three: Wensel tried it on his own,” I said, “and made a mess of it — he admitted as much to me before he died. It made him a liability to Anselmo and DeCoudre. If he tried again he might get picked up and it was a good bet he’d sing. So Anselmo threatened him with the loss of his share of any profits from DeCoudre’s film. Wensel, being a single-tracked person, laid for his partner and shot him — near the shop on Selma Avenue. He broke into the rental library and stole the dirty film, hoping to sell it for five thousand dollars. You made that film, DeCoudre.”
DeCoudre tried one last bluff. “These facts,” he said, “seem to me pure supposition. You can’t prove a thing and if you make anything public, I will sue you for a million.”
“You probably don’t know just how funny that it!” I said. “I can prove you made that dirty film. Do you think Laurie won’t testify against you?”
“Is she alive?” O’Leary demanded.
“She is. And that’s the fourth fact.” I looked again at DeCoudre. “Her blonde roommate had a letter from her. Laurie got rumors of your new picture — the one she thought she was going to star in. She knew then that she wasn’t going to be on hand for it, so she wrote to Eva Vaughn and told her enough to insure Eva a role in the picture. You had no choice but to sign Eva up. Anselmo immediately put her to work following me for the second time because I knew too much — even if I was smart enough to understand it.
“It was through Eva that Anselmo was able to know where Wensel and I were meeting. He suspected that Wensel would contact me when he got that film.”
I didn’t explain any more to him. Maybe DeCoudre already knew that Anselmo had killed Pop Kurbee. I imagine that Wensel had been living with Pop at the Hotel Junipero at the time of his murder, and Pop was wearing some of Wensel’s clothes. At least that would account for my picture being in the pocket of Pop’s coat and also for Anselmo mistaking Pop for Wensel.
O’Leary was shaking my arm impatiently. “But where is Laurie?”
“In jail on a vice charge, a frame-up probably. When it came time to plan the new picture, Laurie had to be disposed of. Her acting was strictly from Stanislavsky and DeCoudre wouldn’t have her in his picture. The safe way out seemed to be in getting her arrested. Laurie hid her real identity so her family wouldn’t know of her disgrace.”
“You louse!” O’Leary said, and then she called DeCoudre a name I didn’t know she even knew. She should have had her mouth washed out.
Then Lida Randolph stood up and said venomously and profanely: “You’re really done this time, Felix. You know that, don’t you?”
DeCoudre just dumbly nodded.
“Send me your bill, Mr. Carmody,” she said. “You were right — nothing was stolen. That was my agent’s idea of publicity. I wanted to hire you the moment Margaret told me you were investigating this rat. I wanted something to break this contract. This does it.” She left.