Fade to Black (21 page)

“Sorry, pal, but that’s not good enough for—”

“David . . .” Marilyn interrupted, “The man’s only trying to help. Come in, mister . . . I mean, Doctor.”

“You can just call me Jerry,” Moriarty said. “I’m not too keen on titles.”

He stepped into the living room. They had apparently been watching television.
The Mummy
was on. Boris Karloff in bandages, lusting after Zita Johann.

“I realize you’ve already talked with the men at homicide, Ms. O’Connor, but I hope you won’t mind if I go over the ground again with you. I’m sure you’re aware there’s been another murder probably committed by the same man who assaulted you.”

“He didn’t assault me,” Marilyn corrected. “He just scared me half to death.”

“That’s assault as surely as a physical attack, Marilyn. Now, have you thought of anything you might have forgotten when you first explained it to the police?”

Marilyn thought, then shook her head.

“No, I—”

“How about that one guy you were telling me about?” David interjected.

“Oh, no, David. He might have been angry, but murder’s a whole other thing.”

“Who was it?” Moriarty asked. “You have to realize that any lead will be helpful.”

Marilyn shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, there was this guy . . . Joey. Joey Madonna . . .”

CHAPTER •
25

Approaching midnight, Berger was still at work, armed with a ledger and adding machine against the swarm of paperwork huddled on the desk before him. He labored under the dim glow cast by an old gooseneck lamp. He had pulled down the shade in front of the desk, shutting out the world. No phones were ringing. The scowl on his face had softened some, having no one to use it on. He seemed almost content. Retirement might not be all that bad after all, he thought.

Finishing a series of figures, he cranked the vintage adding machine and ripped off the tape, setting it down on the desk next to the ledger.

The shade before him snapped open abruptly.

Berger jumped back in his chair.

Sam stood before the counter, smiling at Berger dimwittedly beneath his frayed service cap.

“Mr. Berger, sir,” he said sheepishly.

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Berger said, recovering. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Could I go out for some coffee, sir?” he mumbled, like a kindergartener telling his teacher he has to go number two. “I’ll only be a minute.”

“Yeah, all right,” Berger said, still feeling edgy. “Go ahead. You better get me a cup, too. I’ll be here half the night correcting these invoices Binford loused up!”

“Yessir,” Sam sputtered, backing away from the window and starting back across the aisles of the storage room.

“And, Sam,” Berger advised. “For God’s sake, wear a bell!”

Berger drew the shade and went back to the invoices, cursing to himself when the figures didn’t match up.

Outside, the spotlight illuminating the loading dock snapped off. The lamp continued to glow orange a moment, then was engulfed by the darkness that filled the lot.

Several minutes later, Berger heard a scuffling of feet out in the storage room. He frowned and leaned forward, pulling the shade aside.

“Sam, are you still here?” he called out to the darkness.

There was no answer.

Berger moved away from the desk and stood-up to investigate. Leaving the office, he turned on the switch for the hall lights, but they didn’t come on. He stood in the doorway; annoyed.

“Is anything working right around here?”

There was another noise.

Berger was flustered.

“Is anybody there?”

He’d spent enough of his life in this building to know the floorplan, and he made his way blindly in the darkened hallway.

Control yourself, Berger, he chastised himself. Goddamnit, get a hold of yourself.

In the storage room, Berger made his way down the rows of shelves stocked with film cannisters. There was enough of a moon outside to throw light through the uppermost windows, giving Berger a dim view of the separate aisles.

He was halfway down one row when three cans suddenly tumbled off the shelf directly in front of him. He flinched with an audible gasp.

“Shit!”

No sound followed the dying echo of the fallen cans.

“Is anybody there?” Berger called out anxiously, unnerved.

The room remained silent aside from the drone of the air conditioner. He stared at the cannisters, trying to let anger replace his fear.

“Goddamn stock boys!” he swore.

Making his way back to the office, he found that the blackness had claimed that room as well.

“Where are the lights now? What the hell is going on here?” he swore aloud, crossing the room and pressing the button of the gooseneck lamp. Something popped and the lamp spat sparks and a quick puff of smoke. An electrical shock launched Berger’s hand away from the lamp with a force that carried him backward several steps.

Groaning with pain, his nerves on end, Berger regained his balance and slumped over his desk. Breathing heavily, he went through the drawers, coming up with a bottle of bourbon down to its last few shots.

“Sam,” Berger deduced weakly, staring at the bottle.

He stood up and unscrewed the bottle, tilting it back to drain the last of the amber fluid.

An arm wrapped in tattered strips of yellowed gauze exploded through one of the movie posters covering another of the windows directly behind him. Bandaged fingers clutched at Berger’s throat, dragging him back against the wall with a strength that almost wrenched him off his feet.

The arm vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Freed, Berger staggered back into the center of the room, trying to mouth words his fright held balled up in his throat.

A fist-sized hole in the poster was the only sign of his attacker.

Still reeling in shock, Berger turned slowly toward the scuffling sound that came down the hallway toward the office.

“W . . . wait . . . no, don’t come in!”

He stared at the doorway, through which a mummy-clad figure limped toward him, one arm extended stiffly outwards, the other held bent in a gauze sling. A gurgling sound rumbled in the back of its throat.

Berger leaned back onto his desk, pulling himself up onto it in fear. The mummy continued in slow pursuit. Berger threw aside the shade and clawed his way out the window into the storage room.

“Sam!” he shouted, receiving no answer.

Back among the aisles of film cans, Berger moved quietly. If he didn’t betray his position, he was certain he could elude the attacker long enough for the night watchman to return.

From around the corner just ahead of him, the mummy pulled himself into the aisle and came at Berger with its slow, stiff-limbed gait, beaming a flashlight in his eyes.

The chase went on, with Berger unable to put enough distance between himself and his pursuer to do anything but run. Several times he pulled down neatly stacked pillars of film cans to block the mummy’s progress, but the wrapped aberration merely dragged its feet through the obstruction.

Berger finally found himself cornered near the locked rear entrance. He threw himself on the door desperately, tugging futilely at the locks and handles.

There was a fire axe bracketed to a nearby wall. Berger clutched at it and brought it over to the door. His frenzied swings punctured slits in the metal, but did nothing to better his chances of escaping. All the while he could hear the mummy coming up behind him.

He finally turned to face his attacker and raised the axe high, ready to assume a last-ditch offensive.

His features suddenly twisted themselves in a visage of pain. He slowly lowered the axe, then let it drop to the floor. He fell, reaching at his failing heart. Unsteady fingers clawed at his pockets. He withdrew his pills, but lost his hold on the vial. It rolled away from him on the floor, toward the mummy. Before he could regain his hold on the pills, the mummy gently kicked the vial aside.

As Berger’s heart beat its last, the mummy began to laugh, an eerie cackle of self-amusement.

CHAPTER •
26

Three burly men in white uniforms like hospital orderlies walked up the steps to Eric’s front door. One of them knocked.

Eric opened the door momentarily.

“Mr. Jarrett?”

Eric nodded. “Come in,” he said, holding the door open for them.

The men walked into the kitchen, cluttered with unwashed dishes and take-out food containers.

“Over this way,” Eric said, walking over to the doorway leading into Aunt Stella’s bedroom. They followed him and looked in.

“Everything?” one of them asked.

“Everything but the vanity,” Eric said.

The three men stepped into the room and surveyed it.

“May as well start with the hardest and be done with it,” their leader said, walking over to the bed and methodically pulling off the sheets and covers. While he folded them, the other two hefted up the mattress and carried it out through the living room and kitchen to the door. Eric held it open for them and watched as they carefully brought the bed down the steps and into the back of a white truck parked in front of the house. The lettering on the truck’s side panels read
Venice Community Thrift Shops.

Eric propped open the door with one of the terracotta pots containing the brown, shriveled corpse of a coleus. Back in the kitchen, he turned down the heat under the kettle and asked the others if they wanted any coffee. He poured out three cups and brought them into the bedroom, setting them down on the makeup table and taking an occasional sip as he helped the men clear out his aunt’s room.

It was shortly after ten in the morning. Eric had reported to work earlier, figuring Sam would not have let on that he had been fired by Berger the previous evening. He had been right, but was still told he wouldn’t be working today. Andrews, Continental’s grim-faced foreman, had told Eric and the others that the plant was going to be closed for the day due to the death of Mr. Berger. As Andrews had explained it, Berger had suffered a massive heart attack the previous night. Eric had been relieved by the explanation. After his encounter with Berger, he had set back all the overturned film cans and takeup reels and taped a poster over the hacked slits in the back door before putting the axe back, but he had been plagued by the nagging fear that he had left some telling clue behind. He had innocently asked Andrews a few more questions to assure himself that no one suspected murder, then had come home, ecstatic.

They finished the moving in a little over an hour, leaving Aunt Stella’s room barren except for the vanity.

“Well, I guess that will about do it, then,” the head man in white said as his co-workers carried out Aunt Stella’s wheelchair.

“Actually,” Eric said meekly. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you guys to help me move something in there.”

The head man wiped sweat from his brow. “I think we can manage that. I mean, you’ve loaded us up with as much stock as we take in some weeks. The ladies will probably be wanting to send you a plaque or something.”

When the other two workers came back up, Eric led them to a walk-in closet underneath the stairway. He opened the door and pulled a plastic drop cloth off a joined row of theatre seats. There were three of them, old, Art-Deco in style.

“These are from the old Fox Carthay Circle theatre,” Eric explained as he supervised the crew in moving the seats from the closet to the cleared bedroom. “They used to have a lot of important film premieres there back in the twenties. You know, over near San Vincente and Olympic? They tore it down years ago, like everything else. I got these at an auction.”

“Oh, really?” the head man said, disinterested.

They set the chairs down at the far end of the room, facing a blank wall.

“Okay, great,” Eric told them excitedly.

“Good,” the head man said. “Thanks again, now.”

Eric escorted them back out through the living room toward the kitchen door.

“Oh, wait,” Eric said, stopping near the fireplace. He took the urn off the mantle and emptied its contents into the fireplace before handing it to one of the movers.

“Ashtray,” he explained. “I gave up smoking.”

Once the workers were gone, Eric cavorted gaily through the house and plopped into the center theatre chair. He envisioned how he was going to turn the room into his fantasized viewing room. The chairs wobbled slightly, so he would have to bolt them to the floor. The wall behind him separated the bedroom from the elevator. He would put a few holes in the wall and turn the lift into a projection booth. He’d redo the walls. Degas ballerinas on wallpaper wasn’t appropriate. He’d make another collage of posters like up in his bedroom. He had enough stored one-sheets and other stills to fill up this room and then some. He could bring down some of the overflow from the anteroom, too. Aunt Stella had been right in that respect; it was overcrowded. And there were antique shops all over the city that sold the old model popcorn makers. He’d buy one and have it put in the corner next to the seats and he’d be all set.

When he started thinking about what kind of screen he wanted to put up along the far wall, Eric snapped his fingers, inspired. He’d buy a new television, one of those large new Advents with a six-foot screen like over at White’s Bar. Kill two birds with one stone.

Enthused, Eric ran up into his room and showered, then changed into his best clothes. He’d spent a few hundred dollars on a new wardrobe already. No more being called a jerk. Once he was positive Berger’s death was written off as accidental, he’d give his notice at Continental so he wouldn’t have to put up with their harassment anymore. The house was already paid for, and once he’d fixed up his viewing room, he’d live off what was left of the twenty-thousand dollars and what little he had in his savings account until he could hammer out a deal with Bially for his screenplay.

That reminded him.

He’d have to get an agent.

After consulting his phone book for an address, Eric took the bus to Beverly Boulevard and Doheny and walked the rest of the way to the high-rise office building housing the offices of the Writer’s Guild of America, West.