“Incredible!” Bixby chimed in like a regular William Morris.
“Wasn’t Lillian Russell a blonde?” Dannelle/Betty asked quietly.
“Who cares?” gurgled the gone Bingham. “Who remembers?”
“And — heavier?” Dannelle’s hands were on the slim hips aimed squarely at Bingham.
“So now she’s skinnier.” Gustave sprang back to life. “What’re ya trying to do? Talk me out of ya? The part’s yours. I made up my mind. Now don’t unmake me. Who’s your agent? Call him and tell him we got us a new star if he makes me the right deal. What I ain’t got is all the money in the world, like Bank Americard.”
“I don’t have an agent, Mr. Bingham. I make my own deals.”
Moses watched for a tiny look in his direction from her. It didn’t come.
“Bixby—” Bingham picked up the dead cigar and poked it at him “—where’d you find her? How long have—? Why didn’t you—? Have you been holding out on me?”
“G.B.,” David beamed, “I brought her here to you, didn’t I? I’m a company man, you know that. Dannelle’s an old friend. You needed a new Russell, I brought her to you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, company man, clear out now. You, too, Lightcastle.”
“Should I arrange the test?” Moses asked.
“Test, shmest! Waste of film stock! I’m made up. Now clear out. This lady and me’s got a deal to digress!”
Moses followed Bixby to the door. Before pulling the door shut behind him, he looked quickly back to the desk.
Betty’s back was solidly to him. There had been no gesture. No look. Nothing.
“Hey, Mr. Johnson! That’s fantastic! You merge with a bigger agency or something?” Bucky could almost taste his big break exploding at last.
“Even better,” Johnson said. “I’ve quit the agency business.”
Serving up the overgenerous Chivas Regal, Bucky’s smile slid sideways but quickly recovered.
“Flesh-peddling’s no job for a gentleman,” Johnson explained, sipping deeply. “Who needs that crap?”
“Right,” said Bucky, desperately trying to hold onto his grin.
“A lot of hard creative work for a bunch of hard unappreciative no-talents. What’s the percentage?”
Ten off the top, Bucky told himself. “Right, Mr. J.,” he said.
“As of today,” Johnson was saying, “I’m a studio man.”
“Fantastic!” Bucky’s eternal hope-spring nearly busted.
“Nothing big,” Johnson said.
“Fantastic!” Bucky repeated. He leaned across the bar. “The Chevas is on me, babe. Congratulations!”
The following morning at eleven — practically the middle of the night for him — Ricky Rhinestone whooshed, unannounced, through Bingham’s oak door, planting his long thin legs firmly into the deep carpet. “How dare you!” he screamed.
Gustave looked up wearily from the contract on the desk in front of him. “Rickela baby.” He spread open hands at the apparition across from him. “What have I done now?” Fatherly, like Flanagan.
“That’s my part!” Ricky shrieked.
“What part?” Bingham asked calmly.
“Lillian Russell, that’s what part! I thought you bought that property from Fox for me. It would be the sensation of the century. Rhinestone as Russell! We’d all clean up. You, the studio, the banks, me. Those old numbers of hers are perfect for me. It could turn my image completely around. From punk rock to purest crystal camp. Platinum album! Can’t you see it, for crissakes? Can’t you for once see farther than the end of that filthy cigar?” Rhinestone quivered with absolute fury.
“What are you on?” Bingham asked, blinking.
“I’ll tell you what you’re on, Buster. Borrowed time!”
Bingham let a loose smile curl up the lambchop lips. “You gotta be high as Wilt Chamberlain’s armpits to stand there yelling at me because I don’t picture you as Lillian Russell. Alice Faye you ain’t!”
With that, Ricky Rhinestone burst forth with a full-throated chorus of “After the Ball Is Over.”
Gus Bingham sat there at his desk, staring stonily at the rock star, mesmerized as a cobra frozen by a flute. Honestly entranced. Jeezus, he thought, the kid’s terrific. Have I goofed again? Was I too hasty signing whatsername yesterday? He really is sensational! If the public would accept — godamighty, what an incredible idea! I can see it now. Put him in a skirt with a big bustle, stick a big stick in his hand—
Cleo Osprey, lounging on the nine-foot down-pillowed sofa in the den of her hideaway high above the Sunset Strip and sipping a virgin mary, read the announcement in Hollywood Reporter. She gagged on the drink, hurled the glass into the fireplace — smashing it against the cast-iron logs with the gas jets — threw the Reporter toward the opposite side of the room, and scooped up the princess telephone.
The phone trembled as she furiously push-buttoned the private number, stabbing a fake fingernail clear off. The oath that followed was loud, inventive, and sailorworthy.
As soon as the number stopped ringing and the receiver was lifted, before a “hello” even, Cleo spoke. Her naturally low-pitched voice assumed basso profundo proportions. “Okay, Gussie,” she said, “you undersized overtrussed turkey, what’s all this about some floozie named Dannelle Driscoll!”
The following evening, a little before six, the body was discovered by one of the new studio guards just prior to shift change. He left it undisturbed where it lay, on the bare floor of the empty sound stage, and walked the short distance to the front gate to report the crime.
The L.A.P.D. called and crews dispatched, the guard quickly returned and posted himself just outside Stage Two. He had happily volunteered to stay on duty at double time. If he had to stay, with a little luck, beyond midnight, he would earn triple. He smiled in spite of himself. Everyone was entitled to his cut, right?
He shivered in the late-day heat.
Shortly before midnight, Inspector Seward, that quizzical little bald-headed gnome of the Los Angeles Police, had gathered together quite a group. They had arranged themselves in a loose semicircle in front of Gustave Bingham’s immense desk, at which the Inspector now sat. He looked from one face to the next, referring to the scraps of paper he held with names and notations he had made during individual and private questioning.
Moses Lightcastle, Bingham’s right-hand man. David Bixby, his press agent. Cleo Osprey, his — as Seward had delicately scribbled — lady friend. Ricky Rhinestone, his star moneymaker. Katherine Primscott, his personal secretary. And Gustave Bingham himself, who had insisted — uncharacteristically, Seward guessed — that Seward use his chair.
Dannelle Driscoll, nee Betty Dysart, the right-on lady, was missing from the group. At this moment she was in a drawer at the city morgue. No longer dead-ahead — just dead, with a tag hanging from a pretty toe.
Seward scanned his notes again, scrubbing his thumb and index finger on the slight whisker-stubble of his chin. They presented a formidable picture — full, juicy, but incomplete. Something, some one ingredient, was missing. Each of them, in his or her own way, had managed to incriminate another. Like a round sung at summer camp, once started it was hard to conclude. There were motives galore — all hinging, one way or another, on the remake of Lillian Russell.
Cleo Osprey and Rhinestone both wanted the role that the deceased had been signed to portray. Cleo, tall as the victim and probably stronger, could easily have struck the lethal blows delivered with the murder instrument — a heavy brace, normally used to secure the set backing to the stage floor, found beside the body and wiped clean of prints and probably blood and skin tissue. Miss Primscott, who looked too frail to hold a full cup of tea, could have wielded the weapon, considering the way she managed heavy oak doors. Bingham and she obviously had some special rapport. And it was fairly well established that some kind of dalliance — Inspector Seward’s translation — had occurred in this office just prior to the contract-signing on Monday between Dannelle and Bingham. Bingham had admitted to Seward that his secretary had been in love with him for years. Even setting Bingham’s giant ego aside, there was probably some truth in it.