“I got the idea for getting rid of Shatzkin right out of my files,” he said proudly. “Thayer Newcomb was an old acquaintance who, like me, had never had a break. He was a good actor, but he had a reputation for doing wild things, violence. He called Shatzkin, said he was Faulkner, and made a lunch appointment for 1:30 on Wednesday. Then he called Faulkner, said he was Shatzkin, and made an appointment for noon on Wednesday. When Faulkner showed up in front of Shatzkin’s office, Thayer was on the stairway, waiting. He came down and bumped into Faulkner as if he were on the way out of his office. He got Faulkner in a cab and over to Bernstein’s restaurant. He did a good job.” “More B-picture stuff,” I couldn’t resist saying. “Newcomb didn’t study his part. He played Shatzkin as a loud, fast-talking agent right out of Ned Sparks. That was one of the first things that made me suspicious. Shatzkin’s secretary, a solid type, said her boss was anything but what Newcomb played for Faulkner.”
“Well…” Vernoff said, off-balance.
“Let me go on,” I said, inching, or quarter-inching, toward the door as I pretended to shift my weight. “He dumped Faulkner, promised to get back to him, and then went to the restaurant where he had made a reservation and date to meet Shatzkin. He put on a false mustache and played Faulkner, obviously doing a better job than he did as Shatzkin because he got a dinner invitation. Right?”
“Right,” Vernoff beamed, remembering his triumph as author-director of the crime.
“Then,” I continued, “Newcomb showed up at the Shatzkins’ and shot innocent victim Jacques. Luckily for your plot, Shatzkin lived long enough to actually identify his assailant as Faulkner, the man he had invited to dinner and had lunch with. Camile was happy to support his identification. You forgot to account for how Camile could identify Faulkner, whom she never met. She positively identified a photo of Harry James as Faulkner.”
“A slight error,” Vernoff agreed, “but I took care of that.”
“Sure you did,” I said, doing some more inching. “She panicked and ran to meet you at your Culver City love nest, and when I found out about the place, she tried to protect you by saying Newcomb was her lover. More complications.”
“I didn’t panic,” said Vernoff with self-approval.
“Not right away,” I went on. “Instead you decided to try to buy some time. I had told you about my Bela Lugosi case, and you decided with Newcomb to try to get me to work on that, to throw a few scares into me to head me in the wrong direction. Newcomb’s best acting jobs in this whole thing were his attacks on me.”
“He wasn’t just acting,” Vernoff said, “I told you he was a violent man.”
I said, “Why did you involve Faulkner in all this?”
“He was handy,” Vernoff said defensively.
“And you didn’t like him having the reputation you wanted,” I pushed. “He was the big man, the famous writer.”
“Maybe a little of that,” Vernoff agreed. The candle sputtered from a breeze somewhere, and I tensed, ready to go for the door, but it stayed on, and I let my weight fall back against the wall. “Faulkner is a self-satisfied, superior… he didn’t like me, made it clear that he thought I was a hack. I’ll tell you, he needed me. He stinks with plots.”
“So,” I went on, “on Friday night when you were working with him, you played into his feelings, made yourself…”
“Obnoxious,” Vernoff finished.
“Easy acting job,” I said. Vernoff shook his head in mock pity at my lack of understanding. “You suggested the break just before nine, and Faulkner jumped at it and ran for a drink. That way you couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But what if someone else did remember him?”
“I followed him, made sure. He came back to his room when he was sure I was gone. It was perfect.”
The rain eased slightly, went to calm, and then exploded in anger with the biggest torrent of all.
“Okay, we jump back ahead,” I said. “Newcomb is attacking me in parking lots and libraries. He calls Lugosi with a big threat-by the way, did he actually have to read that one line of telephone dialogue? He couldn’t even remember it? I found it in his wallet.”
“I wanted to be sure he delivered the exact line,” Vernoff explained.
“Mistakes, mistakes, Jerry,” I sighed. “Finding that card in his pocket, just like all the other cards in your apartment, gave me ideas. Why did you kill Newcomb?”
“It doesn’t take much to figure it out,” he said, shifting the gun in his hand to get a better grip. “Thayer and I followed you to that nightclub in Glendale and agreed simply to run you down and make it look like an accident. The police weren’t after us. You were. With you gone, we’d be in the clear.”
“Wrong,” I said. “The police would have started going over the same steps, especially if I coincidentally got hit by a car.”
“That’s your opinion,” he said testily. It was, but my opinion was based on experience, not daydreams.
“So you didn’t kill me, and I came chasing you.”
“Yes,” said Vernoff, “and while I drove I started to think. Camile had suggested that Thayer was her lover. If Thayer died, you might be at a dead end, especially if his death looked like it was tied in to the Lugosi case. Besides, who knows when or whether Thayer might someday start thinking of blackmail or might get caught and say things I wouldn’t like? I headed for the Culver City apartment. I parked near the apartment and shot him. Then I pushed the wooden stake into him to cover the bullet.”
“Got rid of a lot with one blow,” I said. “No need to give him a kickback and no need to worry about blackmail in the future.”
“I knew what I was doing,” he said proudly.
I shook my head and could see by the dancing candlelight in his eyes that he didn’t appreciate my lack of appreciation.
“What was wrong?”
“Everything you did linked my two cases,” I explained. “All I had to do was to go back over the list of people who knew I was on both cases. I had told you because of our discussion over beer about plot. And the whole thing just kept getting more and more plot-complicated. I tell you, Jerry, you would have been better off just blasting your victims, tossing the gun in the ocean, and going to work as usual. What about Haliburton?”
At some point before dawn, Vernoff’s tale would be over, and he would decide to leave another corpse. I would have liked the door closer and my odds better, but I’d have to take what I could get.
“You got him going,” Vernoff said. “You planted the idea in his mind that Camile might have been responsible for her husband’s death and might have been friendly with Thayer.”
“Which wasn’t true?”
“Not about Thayer,” said Vernoff. “I’m going to have to wrap this up, Peters. I don’t know who owns this place, but they might be coming back and I don’t want to be here.”
“You followed me here?”
“Yes,” he said. “You wanted to know about Haliburton. He heard Camile talking to me on the phone yesterday and confronted her, said he knew what had happened and was leaving. Camile called me and stalled him. She reached me a few minutes after I got back home from the Culver City apartment. I managed to get to Bel Air in time to follow Haliburton to the Hotel Belvedere.”
“Where you checked in and played Mr. Mann, complete with a shaving cream mask. Where did you get the shotgun?”
“My father’s. He hunts. I never could see the point in killing innocent animals you didn’t plan to eat,” he said.
“What about people?” I said. “Innocent ones like Haliburton?” And me for that matter, but I didn’t say it.
“That was different,” Vernoff said with emotion. “That was survival. Him or me.”
“And Shatzkin? Was that survival, too? Your father will be proud of you when he hears about your hunting trip. Bagged three big ones, dad, all human.”
“Four,” Vernoff grinned. “You forgot yourself.”
“Why stop there?” I said “Why not kill Faulkner? He might start coming up with more details about his meeting with the fake Shatzkin. Or Camile? She hasn’t been a model of discretion. Why not Lugosi? There’s no end to the possible victims an enterprising writer with a distorted imagination can come up with.”