“I’ll be there.”
“The guy who got killed,” said Phil. “His name was Charles Deitch. He has a record. Two years in Joliet in Illinois. Peddling pornography, statutory rape, attempted blackmail. You know any of this?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t know any of it.
“You’re full of shit. Eight tonight. Be here.”
He hung up and I called Adelman. Esther answered, but Adelman cut in on her.
“Peters, where the hell have you been?”
“Working on getting your negative and the money. I still have $200 coming from you.”
“You remember what you told me this morning?” he said. He was not happy. “You told me that the fucking killer would destroy the photograph and negative and everything was fine? Well Philo Vance, you dumb sonofabitch, I got a call two hours ago. The price is up. Somebody wants $35,000 for the negative. You hear me?”
“I hear you. Was it a man or a woman?”
“A man, I think. He made his voice squeaky and high. He gave me one day to come up with the money. He’s calling back in the morning. I don’t care if he is a murderer. I’ve got to pay. We have full page ads in Variety this week for Sea Hawk. Newsweek ran a review with two pictures of Flynn. It’s doing great in New York. We can’t let anything happen.”
“How about another murder?” I asked.
“What the hell are you talking about? You’re fired.”
“I’ll work it on my own. The killer has my gun, and if I turn up that negative and your $5,000 you owe me $200. Besides, I’ve got a good lead. I know who the girl is in the picture.”
Sid was silent. I could imagine his collar wilting as he looked up at the photo on his wall of the former junk dealers.
“You got a chance of coming up with something by tomorrow?” he asked.
“A good chance,” I lied.
“You’ve got till tomorrow night,” he said hanging up the phone.
I called Brenda Stallings. She couldn’t see me tonight, but the next night would be fine, or the night after. I had a feeling I was being stalled, but I wasn’t sure she had anything else she could tell me, and that is all I was interested in. She did offer me fifteen thousand dollars for the photograph of her daughter, but I told her what I had told Sid. It would be a bad buy. Someone had the negative and could grind out more prints faster than MGM could turn out Andy Hardy pictures.
I hung up and looked at my father, Phil, me and Kaiser Wilhelm. My nose was already flat in the picture, and the big kid with his arm around me might smash it even further later that night. My father looked down at us proudly. He had thought we would be brain surgeons or crooked lawyers or, at least, dentists. He had owned a small, not very profitable grocery store in Glendale till the day he died.
My brother had a family, a lot of debts and a mortgage on a two-bit house in North Hollywood. My father was dead. Kaiser Wilhelm was dead. Trotsky was dead, and I owned the suit I was wearing. I didn’t even have a gun and I needed a shave. I decided to buy a gun, and a razor at Woolworth’s.
My window went dark. I could hear the distant rumble of thunder over the hills. In a few seconds the rain started. In less than an hour my bad back would start burning around my kidneys. It always did when it rained. It had started two years ago. A giant black guy gave me a bear hug when I tried to keep him from getting to an actor I was guarding. Some muscles around my kidneys never bounced back.
I didn’t feel very tough. I was tired and lonely and feeling damn sorry for myself.
Alfalfa was gone when I went through Sheldon’s office.
“What was going on in there?” he said from his dental chair, where he sat reading the newspaper.
“Why didn’t you come and take a look?” I said.
“I had a patient,” he said, returning to his paper.
I went downstairs past the sound of the snoring drunk and ran to the cafe on the corner. It was dirty and I had to sit on one of those round red stools at the counter, but it was close and the rain was coming down hard. I had a burger, some fries and a Coke. Then I bought a safety razor and a toy gun at Woolworth’s next door. I felt like an asshole and the girl who took my eighty cents looked at me as if she thought I was going to use the gun for a hold-up. She was about twenty, with a red mouth going over her lip line. Her dark hair was tight against her head.
“You remind me of Joan Crawford,” I said seriously.
She smiled proudly, and I went to the door and dashed for my car. A green Dodge pulled out across the street splashing a man with an umbrella.
In twenty minutes or so, I’d be back in Burbank and, with a little luck, I’d find Peter Lorre. I hadn’t put the pieces together, but I felt sure Harry Beaumont was important. Maybe Lorre could tell me something more about Beaumont’s reactions to the photograph of his daughter and Flynn. I stopped thinking.
My back started to ache. I popped a Life Saver in my mouth, turned on the car radio and sang along with Eddie Howard, “I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store.” My windshield wipers were doing a lousy job. I turned off the radio, said, “Shit,” and drove squinting through the rain. My back was in pain, and the green Dodge was fifty feet behind me. I was being followed.
6
The rain kept coming down hard. I drove with one hand while I shaved dry and managed to nick myself only two or three times. The Dodge stayed on my tail down Cahuenga, but it was far enough back and raining too hard to see who was in it.
It was after six when I pulled up to the Warner gate. Hatch came out with a red raincoat that made him look like a giant fireplug. Rain was dripping from his hat.
“How’s it going, Toby?”
“Fair, Hatch. You know Harry Beaumont?”
There was no car behind me, but I knew the green Dodge was waiting half a block down.
“Yes,” said Hatch, “I know Harry.”
“Seen him today?”
“No, he’s on location, somewhere above Santa Barbara on a Walsh picture, High Sierra. Should be back tomorrow for some shooting, I think.”
“Thanks,” I shouted into the rain. “I don’t want to be responsible for your death. Get out of the rain. Wait. You know where I can find Peter Lorre?”
“He’s in something shooting over on Seven, I think.” A bolt of lightning cracked toward Glendale and the Forest Lawn cemetery, a few miles behind the studio. Hatch hunched his shoulders and ran for the shelter of the shack, but he would be right out again. I could see a car pulling up as I moved in. I couldn’t tell if it was my Dodge.
Stage Seven was easy to find. I knew the studio even in the rain, with four years between us. I checked myself in the rear view mirror, decided I looked all right, patted the toy gun in my pocket, checked on the photographs and stepped into the downpour.
My back throbbed. I groaned slightly and moved as fast as I could.
The stage was silent when I entered. It was really a giant, barnlike building with sets built in odd places. Here a ship’s deck, there a court room. I passed through a soda shop heading toward the rumble of mens’ voices.
Working my way over sharp-edged electrical equipment, I found myself in front of a door. It wasn’t radically different from the one that led to my office and Sheldon’s, but this one said “Spade and Archer” in black letters on the glass. I walked around the door and the wall, past a reception area and into an office set. Standing near the desk deep in conversation were two men, both very short, both very animated.
They paused when I stepped into the room. Both were wearing dapper dark suits. The slightly taller of the two men advanced on me with a smile, a broad, familiar smile.
“I’m Edward G. Robinson,” he said in a gentle, cultured voice radically different from the dozens of gangsters and cops I had seen him play. “This is Peter Lorre.”
Lorre got down from the desk, gave me a slight smile and nodded while taking my hand.