I was taking over as director until Dreier came back and we were starting with a corner of one of the big sets with about thirty extras and four-bit players. We were, according to the dope that I had everyone on the lot broadcasting, going to clean up all the big stuff first while we were trying to find a girl for the Sarin part.
At a little before nine-thirty I left the restaurant and dashed over to Stage Six. Everything was ready; Jacobsen had draped a collection of the toughest mugs in Hollywood along a wall that was supposed to be one end of a prison-yard. They wore San Quentin rompers and they included Hammer and Francis J. Hotaling. Jacobsen had called both of them for bits, at seventy-five slugs a day.
I chinned with the cameraman a minute and sat down under the camera, nodded at Jacobsen; he and his kickers yelled: “Quiet — everybody!”
Bachmann was standing a little way back of me with a couple of other B. L. D. executives; Dolores was sitting on the arm of my chair with her elbow on my shoulder, which was exactly where her elbow should be.
I snapped into the loud-speaker: “Gentlemen, as Mister Jacobsen has informed you, this is the scene where you look up and see the airplane that is signaling to someone in the prison. At first you are talking to each other, moving about, smoking. The sound of the airplane is your cue. When you hear it, look up — not all at once but a few at a time. Shall we rehearse it or do you all understand?”
They bobbed their heads in concert.
I put the loud-speaker down and said: “Turn ’em over.”
The sound-man called the number and the assistant cameraman clicked his sticks, scuttled out of the scene. I lifted my right hand and the whole stage was plunged into pitch darkness.
It was entirely silent, entirely black; I felt Dolores’ hand tighten on my shoulder.
There was thin slithering sound and, suddenly, a little light. The wall had split, slid back, and we were all looking into an exact replica of Maya Sarin’s dressing-room. The light grew in it as it grows when an electric-dimmer is reversed, on a small stage. Everything else was in darkness.
Maya was sitting at her dressing-table staring drunkenly into the mirror. It was Mary Fallon, of course, but in those circumstances she looked more like Maya than Maya ever thought of. She was wearing the double of the costume Maya had been murdered in.
I expected a big triple-action gasp but I guess everyone who wasn’t in on it was too surprised to gasp, or didn’t have the wind for it. You could have heard a pin-feather fall.
There was a knock at the dressing-room door and Maya — I mean Mary — called “Come in,” huskily — with Maya’s voice. Hammer and Francis J. Hotaling came in. The make-up man had accomplished a miracle with those two; they were a couple old-timers that came nearer doubling Hammer and Hotaling than anyone else I could find in the files and they were dressed exactly as Hammer had been dressed when he and Ciretti crashed in on me, and as Hotaling had been dressed when he reached the studio.
Maya swung around and said: “Wha’ d’ yuh want?” and Hotaling put his hand in his pocket and answered: “We got that stuff for you.” Maya stood up and Hammer edged around behind her and picked up the vibrator and slammed her over the head. Then they both scurried out of the room and the lights dimmed and it was pitch dark again. And still — so still I could hear Dolores’ heart pounding beside me.
That went on for about a minute and then Hammer — the real Hammer — screamed. The lights came on and there was a lot of Law milling around and Hammer was still screaming.
We all sat in Bachmann’s office; Bachmann and Jacobsen and Dreier, who had been released, and the angel and I.
There was a knock at the door and Bachmann said: “Yes.” The secretary opened the door and Lawson, the dick from the Hollywood Station, waltzed in.
He said: “Everything’s under control. Hammer thought we were going to hang the rap on him and squealed. We caught Ciretti in the bathtub. He’s been crazy mad at Maya four or five days — ever since he caught her playing post office with his chauffeur — and getting crazier all the time. And he’s been scared, too. She’s been so high with alky and heroin and what-not she’s been shooting off her mouth about where she got it...”
“Which was from Hotaling, huh? — and Hotaling was Ciretti’s man?” I wanted to be sure about that.
Lawson nodded. “Uh-huh. Both of them, with Hammer, had decided what to do about it. Ciretti had Hotaling move into the room across from yours because he figured he could jockey Maya into going to your room and bump her off there and make it look like you did it. But Maya was sore at you and wouldn’t go for it.”
I said: “Isn’t that dandy.”
Lawson went on: “Ciretti and Hammer were there last night when Hotaling came in from the studio and said Maya and Dreier had had a battle on the set. That looked like gravy to Ciretti — he hurried over to the studio and went in the extra gate with Hotaling’s pass — they look a lot alike, anyway. He wanted to put the chill on her himself on account of the jealous angle. He smacked her down and then rushed back to the hotel. He could see you were in your room — across the court — and he suddenly had the bright idea of putting on that act for you — figuring it would double as an alibi and make it look like he was broken-hearted over her death.”
And that was, in a manner of speaking, that.
Dreier and Dolores and I walked out towards the set together. Dreier kept looking at her in a very quaint way and finally he asked: “Have you ever worked in pictures, Miss Laird?”
She smiled sidewise at me, said: “Yes — a little.”
We all stopped and Dreier turned to me. “You know,” he you-knowed in a far-away voice — “We’ve got to replace Maya very quickly. What do you think of Miss Laird for the part?”
I said I thought she’d be swell, but I knew a better part that she’d fit even more perfectly. She and I grinned at each other like a couple of kids and Dreier looked at us wide-eyed for a minute and then turned quietly and walked away.
“G-Man” Chuck Thompson
by Dwight V. Babcock
Chuck Thompson follows the “G-Men” code.
They found young Jerry Mulholland in a ditch with his face buried in the mud. He’d been dead for hours, but he’d been a long time dying. It takes a long time when your guts are shot full of holes the way his were. And, while you slowly bleed to death, every second of remaining life is an agony of excruciating torment — pain clawing and ripping and burning inside of you.
They found him shortly after daylight, members of the county radio patrol did, alongside a lonely dirt road that rambled across the top of low hills. After a while, the divisional field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified — for young Jerry Mulholland had been a Department of Justice operative, working out of that office.
The news was a bitter blow to every man who happened to be at the office when it came in. Jerry Mulholland had been their friend and their brother agent. He had been young and enthusiastic and eager to learn. He had been a clear-eyed, intelligent, likable kid, irresistibly winning his way into their hearts.
They went to work swiftly, with grim purpose, while grief and bitterness and silent fury seethed within them. It was mid-morning when they started. In less than a half-hour they had established these facts — and these only:
Jerry Mulholland had not been on an assignment when he met his death. The day before, he had been doing routine work — checking used car lots with special agent Chuck Thompson in an effort to get on the track of a hot car syndicate that was rumored to be operating in the East, altering the appearance and numbers of stolen cars and shipping them to the Pacific Coast to be sold. Their work had met with no success that day and Mulholland had left Thompson at five-thirty, bound for home.