I’d got myself absorbed in the picture and I hadn’t seen her sitting there. About four rows from the back, in the middle of the row, all by herself. She was watching the picture intently.
I moved down the aisle and sat a couple of seats away from her.
From then on, till the end of the picture, I alternated between watching her face and watching the screen.
The FBI man was tied up and lying on a cot in an old empty warehouse that the gangsters were using. The head gangster had a gun and was threatening Janis.
It was a wonderful scene. The words they were saying were foolish. The situation was idiotic. But Janis and the head gangster were having a wonderful time.
They weren’t playing in a third-rate movie somewhere. They were acting for their own enjoyment-for personal kicks. I was pretty sure they weren’t even sticking very close to the script. There was no fancy cutting or camera work. The camera was just holding on them in a medium shot and they were standing up there acting.
It was the damnedest thing you ever saw-and Janis herself was great.
In spite of the lighting, which was very badly done, she looked wonderful and vital and physically exciting. For a minute or so, you almost believed the two of them were fighting for their lives in the deserted warehouse. Except that once in a while the camera would cut to the FBI man twisting in his bonds. You could see that if he could work himself just a little looser he was going to be able to reach the gun that the head gangster had carelessly left on the table. The FBI man was such a bad actor that he couldn’t even writhe very well. And the cutting to him took some of the edge off the Janis/head gangster scene.
I could see Janis’ face as she watched the scene.
She was tense and her eyes were shining. Her lips weren’t moving but I could tell that she was playing every line to herself.
Then the scene was over. The FBI man worked himself loose, got the gun, the police arrived and after a short chase, rounded up the vicious love racketeers. Then the lights came up.
Janis, looking a little dazed, started out past me. I stood up in my seat as she went by and caught her arm.
“Hey, lady,” I said. “Didn’t I just see you in a picture at the Music Hall?”
Chapter Twelve
She jerked her arm free, turned, then for the first time saw me and smiled. It was a funny, half-embarrased smile.
“Dick.”
“Hello, Janis.”
I took her arm and piloted her up the aisle. “I’m on a movie spree,” I said. “This is my second picture this afternoon. I thought maybe I’d run into you at the Music Hall.”
She grinned a little. “zTwo a Day’?” she said. “How did you like it?”
“It’s a fine picture,” I said. “And they keep our little secret beautifully.”
“Secret?”
“That you’re an actress.”
“Oh,” she said.
We began walking slowly up Sixth Avenue.
“Every once in a while,” she said, “oh, about twice a year, I see it. Just to remind myself what it’s like to act.”
I didn’t say anything.
She mentioned the name of the actor who had played the head gangster. “What a wonderful guy he is. We really knocked ourselves out on those last scenes in the warehouse. The director never knew what hit him.”
At Forty-eighth Street we turned west automatically. I didn’t notice it myself till we were in the middle of the block. Then I started to laugh. Janis looked at me and then she caught on too.
There was a bar on Forty-eighth that we had always gone to. Automatically. We were there almost every night the winter before Janis went to Hollywood.
I hadn’t been in it since then.
They had changed it all around. It was a little on the leatherette and chrome side now. And the faces in the autographed pictures hanging on the walls had changed too.
We sat down at a booth in the back.
“Do you suppose Martin and Lewis come in here a lot?” I said, indicating one of the pictures.
“Sure,” Janis said. “With Farley Grainger and Liz Taylor and Piper Laurie. You should see this place on a Saturday night.”
“Is there really someone named Piper Laurie?”
“Sure,” Janis said.
We ordered scotch and water.
“I wonder what ever became of Toni Seven,” I said. “They used to have a picture of Toni Seven in here. Janis,” I said, “I have something important to discuss with you. Walter thinks Max killed Charles Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And he thinks you were there when he did it.”
“Walter is fabulous,” Janis said.
“I know.”
“Well, cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“You weren’t there, of course?”
“No,” Janis said. “I wasn’t. Walter will be so disappointed.”
“What about Max?” I said.
“What about him?”
“I really owe you an explanation. That little scene this afternoon in front of the Voisin. Max’s chauffeur was one of the two men who wrecked my apartment.”
Janis looked at me, saying nothing.
“I still don’t know what they were after.”
“The money, of course,” Janis said. “Jean Dahl had been blackmailing Max. He paid her money. I don’t know how much. Then he sent his boys to get it back. And probably to get rid of her at the same time.”
“Nice Max,” I said.
“He used to be a gangster. I knew that. What I didn’t know was that he still is one.”
“I thought you were in love with him.”
“I was.”
“But you’re not.”
“Not any more.”
We stopped talking while I ordered another drink.
“Darling,” I said softly when the waiter had gone, “what are you doing mixed up with these people? Walter. Max. Jean Dahl. What the hell are you trying to do?”
Janis lifted her glass, took a long drink, then put down the glass. “Hollywood,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
Janis lifted the glass again. In a moment she said, “You know how much I got for ‘Lure of the City’?”
I shook my head.
“One thousand dollars. Five weeks at two hundred dollars a week. Not to mention spending those five week ends with the director.”
“God!”
“He wasn’t bad, really. He was a lousy director, though. Do you know what I got for ‘Two a Day’? I made a one-picture deal for sixty-five thousand dollars.”
“It was a lousy picture too.”
“I know. Someday I’m going to make a good picture again. You start doing musicals and then they won’t put you in anything else.”
I ordered a third drink.
It was getting dark outside. The neon lights outside were going on.
The waiter came over to the table carrying our drinks.
“On the house,” he said.
Then he produced a photograph of Janis Whitney.
“Would you sign this for us, please?” he said.
Janis grinned. I handed her my pen and she wrote: “Good luck and many thanks for the memories, Janis Whitney.”
“Thanks, Miss Whitney.”
“Thank you,” Janis said.
When the waiter had gone Janis said, “Well, I finally made it. Do you think they’ll really hang it up?”
“Sure,” I said.
We were quiet for a long time. Thinking. Then I said, “Now I’ve got it figured.” And I had, too. It was suddenly all there for me.
“What’s your next picture going to be?” I said.
“I’ve already got one made. It won’t be released till around Christmas. Another musical.”
“And after that?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“It’s going to be pretty good.”
“What is?”
“Janis Whitney,” I said. “In Charles Anstruther’s The Winding Road to the Hills. That’s the deal, isn’t it? That’s what you got for your money, isn’t it? That’s how Walter talked you into this in the first place. Anyone who buys the film rights to the book has to agree that you play the lead. Isn’t that it?”
Janis finished her third drink. “You’re damn right, darling,” she said. “You’re damn right.”