Eats to Die For! (15 page)

“Still here, though I'm toying with the idea of changing the name of the place to ‘Download Be Damned'. What'll you have tonight?”

“I need to check out Palmer Hanley.”

“Palmer Hanley? Boy, you really are slumming.”

“How can you know what's good if you don't experience the bad?”

“I should have a poster made up with that. Let's see, Palmer Hanley…”

He typed the name into his computer.

“We've got
Zombie Castle
on disc”

I was already familiar with
Zombie Castle
, an old Monogram epic from 1949 featuring Mantan Moreland, a moonfaced, bug-eyed, African American comedian who was so naturally funny he could have gotten laughs laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown, but whose career was effectively over by 1950 because society had become less tolerant of his specialty, frightened black servant roles.

I just hadn't realized Hanley was in it.

Mac was also able to produce a videocassette of an old
Kraft Television Theatre
episode which contained Hanley's last appearance as an actor. Since the show was cribbed from a broadcast and not commercial available, Edendale couldn't charge for the tape, but offered it as a “loaner.”

“That's all we've got listed under his name,” he said, “'cause you know he'd usually just pop up somewhere in a film, a lot of times uncredited. Have you looked him up on IMDb?”

“Oh, my computer's broken,” I said.

“Want me to?”

“No, these two are fine.”

After paying for the disc and tape, I stayed to talk movie shop for a little while and then headed out.

Once home, I made some microwave popcorn, grabbed a can of A&W, and put
Zombie Castle
in first. The print of the film etched into the disc was pretty bad, but I doubted if a pristine copy would have made much difference.

The film's story was Poverty Row Plot horror movie plot number five: a group of people find themselves stranded on a strange island inhabited by a mysterious doctor living in an old, creepy cast. The doctor was played by Henry Victor, a sort of road company Bela Lugosi, and the captain of the boat who shipwrecks there was played by an obscure B-movie actor named Dennis Moore.

The real star, though, was Mantan Moreland, who was cast as an incompetent deckhand, years before
Gilligan's Island
. While Moreland mostly did his standard shtick, his repartee with a young, black female cook on the island featured enough grindhouse double entendres to make me wonder how it got past the Breen Office.

Maybe they didn't bother looking at Monogram films.

Palmer Hanley played Victor's assistant, giving a performance that was lifeless even for a Poverty Row picture. In one scene, Hanley appeared so comatose that Moreland waved his hand in front of his face and then looked into the camera and said, “Welcome to the remake of
White Zombie
, folks,” right before the shot faded out.

I had to assume it was an ad-lib left in the picture for kicks. At least it was funny.

Watching the
Kraft Television Theatre
episode proved even more revealing. Hanley had a fairly decent role in it, playing a shady talent agent whose primary client, a beautiful young blonde (played by an actress so obscure even I had never heard of her), turns up murdered.

Jack Warden played a movie studio head and Walter Matthau a detective. Both of them were terrific, as usual, but it was easy to see why a career change was inevitable for Hanley.

While his line readings were adequate, it was like watching a mannequin over which dialogue had been dubbed. His face was expressionless and his body made of oak. He moved from one place to another on the set so stiffly that it appeared he was being pulled around by invisible ropes.

Perhaps radio was the best medium for him as an actor, but by the time he decided to become a mystic, radio drama was in its last days.

I went to bed almost feeling sorry for Palmer Hanley…and faintly craving a Burger Heaven Halo combo.

The next morning I slept in a little later than usual, but it was not like anyone was waiting for me at the office.

Oh yeah; Ricky Sandoval.

After finishing my daily routine I gathered up the DVDs and the videocassette and carried them out to the car; I'd drop them off again on the way home tonight. Only then did I realize that I had left Jack's makeup kit on the seat all night, which was no biggie, but I had also left my corrupted laptop in plain sight next to it, which was.

What if someone had spotted it, broken in to the car, taken it and then had seen what was on it? Grabbing the computer, I ran it back into the apartment and stuck it under my mattress.

If I was playing with the dangerous crowd now, I was going to have to be more careful.

Welcome to the mean streets, kid
, Bogart said.

On my way to the office I wondered exactly what I would find there. I assumed that Ricky Sandoval would be sprawled out somewhere, perhaps not quite ready to great the day in such an unusual setting, or maybe he would have gone out again and left a note.

As I pulled into my parking spot I wondered if I wasn't going to look like an idiot presenting him with Jack's Johnny Disguise kit, which in the light of day looked ridiculous.

Then again, maybe it didn't matter, since I might have been a total idiot to simply hand over the keys to my office to someone I still only barely knew.

All those in favor, fart,
Mitchum said in my head.

Inside, I was about to shove the key in the lock, like always, when I thought maybe I'd better give a little warning. I knocked loudly a couple times, and heard nothing coming from inside, so I opened up. The place was exactly as I had left it the night before.

If Ricky had indeed stayed here, he had done an excellent job of cleaning up after himself.

The message light on my phone was blinking twice, so I went over and hit the playback.

The first message was from Zareh Zarian, and it had come in at nearly midnight.
Yeah, Beauchamp, I just wanted to tell you that I put a rush on that burger patty you purloined from Burger Heaven, but it came back from the lab clean
, his voice said.
Test revealed nothing in it but beef, pepper and MSG
.
I guess that kinda kills that story
,
but not Louie's situation. Have you heard from her
?
I haven't. Call me if you've got something. And send me your damn invoice.

The message clicked off. The next one had come in at 7:19 this morning.

Dave
, Ricky Sandoval's voice said,
I'm in deep shit
!
I went out early for a run and they found me
!
They're coming for me now
!
I can't get away
!
Oh, shit…it's not the police
!
Not the police
!
But they're armed
!
Oh, mother…what do you want? Let go of me—

There was the sound of a struggle and then the call ended abruptly.

I sat down on my chair, shaking. What do I do now? Obviously, the sensible thing would be to call the police. Maybe starting with Detective Colfax would be the best idea. I had the number half dialed when I suddenly hung up, having realized something.

Ricky had been carrying the keys to my office. Whoever it was that had gotten to him would now be able to come in here any time they wanted.

How would they know where the keys go
? Edward G. Robinson asked inside my head, but that was an easy question to counter.

Assuming that Ricky's assailants did not simply walk up on the street and kill him and leave the body there, which was a reasonable assumption even for L.A., they had taken him someplace.

And having heard the fear in his voice in that telephone message, I doubt it would have taken much in the way of threats or torture for him to reveal the lock that those keys belonged to.

I had to get out of here. I just wondered if I should put Jack's false beard on to do it.

Oh, that's ridiculous
! Vincent Price commented in my head, and I'm afraid he was right.

Leaving the kit on my desk, I rushed out and locked the office back up, then dashed down to my car again.

I had only gotten the driver's door open when it felt like the back of my head had suddenly exploded and my Technicolor reality suddenly went monochrome. I dropped down to the pavement, trying to get my bearings, but to no avail. Then I felt a sharp jab in my butt, like someone had stuck me with a pin.

Or a hypodermic needle.

I felt what little consciousness I had left slipping away.

Why wasch jusht tryna get to my carrrr susch a prrroblem theesch daysh.…

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Come on, kid, snap out of it,” a voice said from somewhere above me. I felt my cheeks being slapped, and not too gently, either.

Opening my eyes, I found myself staring into the face of Humphrey Bogart. He was wearing a fedora and a trenchcoat, collar turned up at the back, a tightly cinched tie, and he smelled like cigarettes.

In person he looked older that I remembered seeing him on the screen. Why was he here?

He helped me get to my feet, which probably wasn't easy since he was very slightly built and a good four inches shorter than I was. I mean, I'd always heard he was small, but I expected more than this.

I was in my office, only it was different. It took me a second to figure out why: just like Bogie, the office was in black-and-white.

“What happened to me?” I moaned as I slumped into my chair behind the desk.

“You got sapped, kid,” Bogie told me.

The funny thing was, my head didn't hurt like it should have, particularly since it was the second time I'd been brained in the last couple days. I remembered getting hit, but there was no pain.

“Then somebody stuck a needle in your ass.”

“I didn't think the Production Code let you talk like that.”

“I could say any goddamned thing I wanted to in the outtakes.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

As much sense as conversing with Humphrey Bogart, who had died a quarter century before I was born. “You didn't happen to see who attacked me, did you?”

Bogie shook his head. “I didn't see a thing. How about you, Angel?”

Now Lauren Bacall slunk out from my kitchenette. “I saw a shadow, but I couldn't make it out,” she said.

“Oh, man, I'm dreaming, right?” I asked.

“Who knows?” a new voice asked, and I looked over to see Orson Welles, the Orson Welles of the 1940s, before he had grown the enormous beard and put on a couple hundred pounds. “Maybe this is reality, or maybe what you're used to is really the dream,” he intoned, in the suspicious Irish brogue he used in
The Lady from Shanghai
.

“None of you are being very comforting,” I told them. “Oh, god, I'm not
dead
am I?”

“You're not dead,” Bogie said. That was at least something. “Let's go, kid, we need to talk.”

“Go where?” I asked, but before I could say anything else, my office literally dissolved into the inside of a 1939 Plymouth De Luxe, gray, of course, since it was still black-and-white. Bogie was driving, and the coastline of the Pacific Ocean was visible through his window.

“That was…interesting,” I said. “Where are we?”

“Stage 7, Warner Bros.,” Bogie answered. “Now shut up and listen. You remember the scene they cut out of
The Big Sleep
to make room for Angel Face?”

I remembered the scene. In the original cut of
The Big Sleep
, which was seen only by servicemen overseas in 1945, there was a long sequence of Philip Marlowe being hauled into the D.A.'s office to explain what he knew about the Sternwood case, which also allowed the confused audience to get up-to-speed regarding the plot.

And if that scene did not conclusively reveal who had killed Owen Taylor, the Sternwood chauffeur, at least it offered a convincing speculation.

But that scene was cut out when retakes and re-editing were ordered so as to beef up “Angel Face” Lauren Bacall's role, and give her more provocative sequences with Bogart, including the infamous “A-lot-depends-on-who's-in-the-saddle” scene.

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked Bogie.

“Recreate it, kid, only with this case you're on. Tell me everything you know about it.”

“Well…a young woman came to me dressed as a tomato, because she had been playing an ingredient outside a Burger Heaven restaurant…you don't know what Burger Heaven is, do you, Bogie?”

“I know what it is, but it can't hold a candle to Chasen's.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, she was really a newspaper reporter working undercover. She suspected they were putting something in the burger patties that wasn't right, some kind of bad food additive, and she came to me because she began to suspect they suspected her.”

“That's a lot of suspicion.”

“It gets worse. The tomato disappeared and there was an ominous message on her phone machine. Oh, you probably don't know what a phone machine is, do you?”

“I'm dead, kid, not ignorant. I know what a phone machine is. Go on.”

“I get it,” I said. “Since I've conjured you up out of my imagination, you know everything I know.”

“Next time you conjure me up, make me taller. Now keep talking.”

“All right. Louie…Luisa…the tomato vanishes, and her editor at the newspaper hires me to try and find her notes of the case. I try and end up running into the nerd who lives in the apartment next door to her, who's got a crush on her bordering on obsession.”

“Now he sounds like a suspect,” Bogie said.

“Yeah, except for the fact that he turned up murdered a couple days later. I found the body, and I managed to drop my cell phone in his apartment, where it was found by the police.”