Crime on My Hands (2 page)

“And so?” she prompted.

“And so the character I portray becomes a rather stereotyped person who is slightly bored with it all. I'm not acting any more; I'm just walking through the part.”

“That boredom,” she pointed out, “is what got you a two hundred and fifty dollar raise in
Die by Night
.”

“Two hundred and twenty-five,” I corrected, “after you take your cut.”

She shrugged. “You don't think I'm going to give it back to you? I got you the raise.”

“And that dress. I keep you well. What will you do when I quit acting? I have enough money to go along my own merry way. But I'm your only important client. Is this streamlined furniture paid for?”

“You paid for it,” she said. “But you're not going to quit acting.”

“No?”

“No. You can't. It's part of you. I propose to see that you get paid for doing something you'd do anyway.”

‘I'm not playing detectives any more, and I'm so typed I doubt if anyone wants me to play anything else.”

“I do, George,” she said. “I want you to play Hilary Weston.”

“Fat chance,” I scoffed.

“Fat contract,” she substituted. “You'll put the government back in the black with your new salary.”

She was serious. My mouth didn't exactly drop open, but it felt open. I'd have given my right profile to play Hilary Weston, and here she was dropping it in my lap. I had no idea I had even been considered for the star part in
Seven Dreams
. It was a part for which any actor would give his press clippings. That gentleman pirate who took frontiers in his stride, who left behind him a peopled wilderness and tax collectors, whose philosophy contributed so much to our present civilization, whose loves were as torrid as they were numberless, and who coffined his enemies while stealing their wives and fortunes – he had the color and variety of greatness. And I, George Sanders, was to play him.

“Are you kidding?” I asked Melva.

“It's all over but the signing,” she assured me. “I didn't mention it to you before because I wanted to surprise you. Did I?”

“More than if you'd stuck a knife in my throat. Baby, you're wonderful. I am going to kiss you.”

“Only in front of Fred, George. You leave Monday on location. Riegleman wants to get the desert shots out of the way while we have good weather. If you want the part.”

“I'll do it for nothing, if necessary.”

She was horrified. “Shut your big mouth!” She took up her telephone. “Get me Riegleman,” she said. Presently she repeated, “Mr. Riegleman, please. This is Melva Lonigan... Mr. Riegleman?... Fine, how are you?... That's good. Look, I talked to George before he left. He's taking a vacation, you know... Left an hour ago. He's been working hard and he needs that vacation. He wants me to thank you for the thought, and he realizes that it's a good part.. All right, a great part.”

‘I'm working on an invention,” I muttered.

“Besides, he's working on an invention that should make him a fortune. So I'm afraid he'd have to have a thousand dollars a week more than you offer.” (Inventions are my other hobby – G. Sanders.)

I came out of my chair to throttle her. She waved me back and listened for a moment.

“Well,” she said into the phone. “He was definite. And there's no question, of course, that he's worth even more than that. But I know you've got to stay inside your budget, and it's an expensive picture. Still–… that's fine, then. I can still catch him at Las Vegas and he'll fly back on the six o'clock plane... Yes, he'll be ready to leave Monday morning.”

She hung up and grinned at me. “That's a hundred bucks more for baby each week.”

“That was idiotic,” I said. “He might have told you to go peddle your flesh elsewhere.”

“He didn't, though. He came through. I should have asked for two thousand.”

“I'll buy you a drink,” I said.

“Not in public. At least, not until after the six o'clock plane comes in.” She frowned. “Now why did I tell him you were leaving on a vacation? Suppose you couldn't get a seat on the plane?”

“Then tell him I crawled back on my hands and knees over broken glass. I'd do it. I'm that tired of bending over corpses and looking deductive.”

I should have kept my mouth shut. If there are Fates watching us, whiplashing us at the end of their strings, I must have given my particular Fate an inspiration. For it was less than a week later that I was bending over a corpse again, in the blazing light of a malignant sun, searching for clues. But when I nudged that sprawled and bloody figure, it didn't get up.

It was dead.

 

By referring to the shooting script, I can recreate the scene almost exactly. It was the sequence in the picture where the wagon train was attacked by white thugs in Indian costume. The wagons had filed past the cameras as the sun rose over giant sand dunes. I, as Hilary Weston on a cream-colored Arabian gelding, had carried on my flirtation with Betsy Collins, screen wife of huge Hank Collins, my wagon boss, under his eyes, which narrowed with sullen speculation.

She, Carla Folsom, could wear her Mother Hubbard as if it were a black-net nightgown, and she was adequate in the part. Frank Lane, cast as her husband, could mutter in his beard with the best, and the morning had gone well. Riegleman was happy.

“It has life,” he told me, as we sat under umbrellas while the technical crew set up for the battle scene.

Carla gave me a dark-eyed look over the rim of her glass of Coca-Cola. “We played that scene,” she drawled, “like boy scouts rubbing sticks together, knowing that a flame would break out any moment.”

An extra came over to our exclusive little group, a tall, slightly stooped man of middle years. He sort of pinned Riegleman with flashing black eyes. “Mr. Riegleman,” he said, “I have not yet been told why I am here.”

Riegleman's gloomy blue eyes scanned him as if he were a sand flea. “See Sammy,” he said, in his clipped voice. “He'll explain it.” As the man hesitated, Riegleman said sharply, “Well? We're busy here.”

The man went back to the lounging group of bearded men and pioneer women.

Riegleman turned his long face to me. “I want you to keep one point in mind, George. During this battle, you will not quite forget the romance which is brewing between you and Carla. Hilary Weston was that kind of a guy. Even in the most critical situation, he never forgot what he had on the fire. So you will direct Frank to his post of danger, not only because he is your best man, but also because you hope he'll get an arrow through his heart and save you the trouble of killing him later. I don't want you to forget that, even when the lead wagon is set afire.” Riegleman paused, caught his breath, and said, “You understand, George.”

I nodded. “Something comparable to the situation in the Bible when David sent Bathsheba's spouse into battle hoping he'd be killed.”

“Now we're stealing scenes from the Bible,” Curtis, the boss cameraman grunted.

“Not a bad source,” Riegleman said coldly. He added, “Besides, it's in the public domain.”

Sammy came over, mopping sweat from his face.

“We're ready, chief. I hope to God,” Sammy said fervently, “we don't have to do retakes on this. I've lost ten pounds already this morning.”

Riegleman grinned at Sammy's tubbiness. “If you lose fifty more, Sammy, I'll make a matinee idol of you.”

Sammy patted his paunch. “I wouldn't play such a dirty trick on my best friend.”

After a final check, we went into action. I rode back and forth before a camera, shouting orders, placing my men, forming the wagons into a circle. I gave Carla a long, calculating look, and sent Frank into the front line.

The marauders poured over a sand dune on calico ponies, and the air was scrambled with shots and shouts. They shot several hundred feet of film, with pseudo-redskins galloping idiotically around the circle of wagons, the grim pioneers potting away, with me firing my two Colts at random, but with uncanny accuracy.

Then, signal whistles broke through the din, and the battle was over. Cameras were moved, to record the retreat of the thwarted thugs, while we shot gay, blank charges into their dust cloud. I registered mild disappointment, in a close-up, that Frank was still among the living, flicked Carla another significant glance, and we knocked off for lunch.

Prop men gathered up the guns. Sammy himself took mine, as they were museum pieces. Corpses, scattered inside and out of the wagon circle, got to their feet and ambled over to the commissary. I washed my hands under a pressure tap and started for my chair, where somebody would bring me some lunch.

That was when I saw the body, sprawled realistically behind a wagon wheel, carbine beside it. Some overly-conscientious extra, I thought, who supposed that he had to play dead until he was carried off on a stretcher.

“Chow!” I called to him. “Comb the sand out of your beard, fella, and come after it.”

The figure didn't move, and I knew that he was dead. The body had a look of death about it. It isn't exactly describable, but my sensation was definite. I walked over for close examination.

I knelt over the body, thinking that some poor devil had suffered a heart attack. I tried to rouse him, even then not fully believing that my conviction was justified. I nudged him. He didn't move, and the reason was there in plain sight: a small, blackened hole in his right temple.

I thought of the many times I had knelt so, before cameras, and of my scripted reactions. Here was death. Analysis was necessary, and sufficient, to determine the cause of death and to map an unerring path to the killer. But I didn't react in that fashion. I felt helpless. This keen and flashing glance did not seek out the tell-tale token dropped in haste. There was no clue, and if there had been, this incisive brain would not have weighed its significance.

My thoughts were completely on the sad side. This man had hired out for fifteen dollars a day, so that he could pay his back rent, perhaps. It was a sad thing that he had met death here, accidentally.

It had to be accidental homicide. The carbines which had been fired with such eff usion had been loaded with blank cartridges. Responsibility for this devolved finally on Sammy, but it was quite conceivable that, somehow, one of the cartridges had not been blank.

That it had found its way so exactly to a vital spot in one of the actors, rather than having been shot harmlessly over the head of balked bandits, was a long coincidence, but possible. I've collected on some of the four-legged ones.

I kept in mind, however, the possibility of murder, as I went for Riegleman. It would have been a good stage setting for murder, with the cavorting, the shooting, the hubbub of make-believe. Yes, an enemy could have drawn a bead on his victim and let him have it, with a good chance to escape later reckoning with the law.

But if that was the way it had happened, it was possible that the murderer had been photographed in the act. A battery of cameras had recorded the scene from various angles. I filed that thought away for future reference, too.

“I say,” I said to Riegleman, “come for a short stroll with me. We have a corpse to contend with.”

He put down his paper plate and fell into step. “I was afraid of something like this,” he muttered. “Too much sun, I suppose, for some guy with a hangover.”

“A bad combination, “ I agreed, steering him toward the fatal spot. “But it seldom shoots a man through the right temple.”

Riegleman halted. “My God!” he said, in stunned tones. “You're kidding.”

‘I'm sorry. I wish I were.”

“But it's impossible! All the guns were supposed to be loaded with blanks!”

“Apparently somebody improved on the script.”

“How in the hell,” he demanded, “will we ever find who fired the shot?”

“Someone in that moil of beards probably fired it,” I suggested. “But I'm not sure that determining who will be necessary, provided that we can prove it was accidental.”

“Prove it? Of course it was accidental. By the Gods,” he went on grimly, “if I can find out who was responsible for a loaded shell getting into a gun, I'll have his hide.”

“First of all,” I said, “we'll have to get the local authorities out here. It's a matter for the sheriff and the coroner.”

“There goes my shooting schedule,” Riegleman groaned. “Well, let's have a look at the poor guy.”

Riegleman scowled down in accusation at the corpse. This was a monkey wrench in the machinery. This meant delay, which in turn meant loss of money, which in turn was painful to him.

“Just a young fellow,” he said. “Too damned bad.”

“Do you know him?”

“Never saw him before. Maybe Sammy knows him.” He took a whistle from his pocket, blew it, and beckoned to Sammy, who was carrying two plates from the commissary.

Sammy gave the plates to a man near him. His gestures indicated that the plates were to be guarded to the death, if necessary. Then he approached us unhappily, sinking deep into the sand at each step. He said, “George, about your pistols–”, but fell quiet as the director waved a hand.

Riegleman indicated the body. “Do you know him?”

“Oh, God!” Sammy moaned. “He's dead!”

“Don't go psychic on us,” Riegleman snapped. “Who is he?”

“I don't know. Maybe Paul will.”

“Get him!”

Sammy turned a white, round face upward at Riegleman. “Please, chief. I don't feel so good. I've got to sit down somewhere.”

“I'll go,” I said. “Who is Paul?”

“He's the casting director.”

Paul looked as if he had just run three blocks to catch a Brooklyn bus in July. “My God,” he said. “What does that slave driver want now? I'm busier'n a tick at a horse show. Oh, well!” He came out of his trailer-office. “What gives?” he asked me.