“What happens thirty-six hours from now?”
“The meeting will be over, and the Honest Ballot Association will announce the count. But that’s not all. Larry rushed Buccaneer into production and moved the meeting to Miami so the stockholders could visit the set and see the old dazzler in action. The proxy thing has been getting national coverage, and we want to spin some of that off on the picture. We’re on a thirty-day schedule. Right now — through tomorrow — we could switch Kate into the part. Then we start shooting scenes with the new girl, and it would cost too much. And Kate knows it. At that point, unless she’s completely out of her head, she’ll give up.”
“Have you put bodyguards on your father?”
“Three. But he’s not going to stay in the hospital a minute longer than he has to. They’ve put on a walking cast. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s already out. The important thing is tomorrow’s New York papers, the Times and the Wall Street Journal. They’ll carry a wire-service story, and it has to say that the dynamic Consolidated-Famous executive, lucky as always, came out of the crash with nothing more serious than a broken leg and a few minor cuts. We aren’t mentioning the concussion.”
“Where’s he staying, here on the Beach?”
“No, he has a location trailer in Homestead. The idea is, he’s giving the picture his personal supervision. That doesn’t mean he’ll actually sleep there. The most sensible thing for him to do would be to check in somewhere inconspicuously under another name, with two or three armed men; and then we could stop worrying. But if I suggest that he do it, he’ll do the opposite. That’s why we have to work on it from the other end.”
“What was the thing you were going to tell me?”
Marcus faced the mirror again and began laying out his shaving equipment.
“That Larry had a heart attack last year, and this is really confidential. I know it happens all the time, and people accept the message and slow down. But we’re talking about Larry Zion. He’s a cliché, but don’t forget he’s one of the three or four people who originated the cliché — Louis B. Mayer, Harry Warner, Larry Zion, Harry Cohn. In Larry’s position, you can’t slow down. You keep going at the same speed, or you get the hell out of the movie business. All the way out. For this reason: if you have a bankable star and a property, there’s no problem getting financing. But you need financing before you can tie up the star and the property. It gets more complicated, but that’s basically it. Some of our big deals have been pretty bizarre lately. You plot and connive and blackmail; you beg some people and put the arm on others; you trade and cut corners and promise the moon; but to close that circle finally, you need somebody as hard as steel. Somebody like Larry, who’ll cut throats if he has to to get the deal. He’s the guy who drove the gangsters out of the studio unions, and he didn’t do it by being nice. A heart attack makes people soft. But that’s not the way pictures get made. All Larry did after the attack was transfer from tennis to table tennis; and my God, he’s turned into a demon at the game.”
“So the lady in the red convertible wasn’t trying to shoot him; she was trying to scare him to death?”
“That’s the way it looks. She wouldn’t have to shoot real bullets. The bang and the flash would be enough. He knew she had a good reason for wanting him to die. By that I mean a good reason in terms he himself has always accepted. He had half a second to recognize her and react. One twitch at that speed would do it. And then Kate would go into Buccaneer, the critics would love her, and she could get off unemployment insurance. That’s my theory; and whether it’s true or not, I’m betting that Larry believes it.”
Shayne looked down into his glass and studied the shifting patterns on the surface of the cognac.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this. He regretted telling you about the gun. He’s a tough man who doesn’t believe in falling back on his son or anybody else when he’s threatened or in trouble. He believes in taking care of his own problems. That was a close miss today. She was taking a big chance herself, and he knows she’s serious. So you aren’t hiring me because you’re worried about what she’ll do to him. You want me to keep him from doing anything to her.”
Marcus rinsed his razor. “Shayne, I don’t want either one of them killed or hurt. I can’t put company guards on her because Larry outranks me. He formed his attitudes in the days when movie companies could pretty much do what they pleased. But this is Miami, not Los Angeles. Nobody knows us here. I don’t want any trouble right now. I happen not to give a goddamn about the girl personally, but I want her immobilized, and I want her protected. I assume we have a deal?”
Shayne finished his drink and nodded. “Where can I find her?”
“The last time I had a report, she was drinking downstairs in the Seminole Room. She’s a great bourbon drinker; and this would be a good time of night to make the connection, while she’s still fairly sober.”
Shayne stood up. “How do I recognize her?”
“Kate Thackera?” Marcus said, sounding really surprised for the first time. “She’s made some big-budget pictures for us.”
“We don’t go to the movies as much here as you do in Los Angeles.”
Marcus shook his head. “I’ll send somebody down with you to point her out. Do you have a gun with you? I’m sure we can scare one up if you haven’t.”
Chapter 3
In this light, at least, Kate Thackera seemed perfectly sane. She was strikingly well built, and the red dress she was wearing had been designed to call attention to that fact. She wore her black hair in bangs, long enough to hide her eyebrows when she raised them. Her eyes were wide-set, slightly slanting. Just then she tilted her head, her eyes closed down almost to slits, and her face broke up into happy laughter. But she looked less happy as Shayne got closer to her. Some of the laughlines had been put there by something else.
She was at the extreme end of the bar, sitting on a stool with her legs crossed, her skirt well up along her thigh. She had two men with her. Shayne squeezed into an opening beside a slightly built youth in glasses.
“Hey, Mike,” the bartender said in greeting. “Months and months. I’ve been keeping Hennessy in stock, and the bottle’s still three-quarters full.”
“I’d better start working on that,” Shayne said.
A cool black piano player in a tuxedo, the only member of his race and the only tuxedo in sight, was playing show tunes in an alcove between the bar and the large room beyond. Most of the drinkers on either side of Shayne had their elbows out, as though to discourage conversation. They looked straight ahead in silence at the dim mirror and the pyramids of bottles.
“Isn’t that Kate Thackera down there?” Shayne said.
The youth beside him tucked in his elbows and half turned, eager for contact. “In the flesh! And in the flesh she looks even better than in the movies.”
“Quite a bit of flesh showing.”
The youth laughed. “Man! A picture of hers came out when I was in college. On Fire: Did you ever see it? And she was so marvelous in it. I saw it eight times. Funny and sexy both; and in my book, that’s an unbeatable combination.”
“Who are the guys, do you know?”
The youth studied the group. “The small one, don’t you think he has something to do with show business? He has that sort of sneaky look. Somebody said the big guy is linebacker for the Dolphins, Doc something. I don’t follow the game.”
“Doc Black,” another drinker said.