Hollywood and Levine (8 page)

Goldmark hung up and shrugged. “Sorry, but that was Bob Lester of the Fox story department.”

“I never heard of him but I'm impressed anyway. I'm impressed all the time out here.”

Goldmark thought that might be a joke, so he laughed. I lit up a Lucky and went on.

“Goldmark, I get the distinct impression that you believe Walter killed himself because he was some kind of a neurotic.”

“He
was
a neurotic.”

“Which is why he checked himself out?”

“Correct.”

“Well, that's not what the cops think.”

The agent took his foot off the script on the desk and rolled his chair forward.

“They don't think it was suicide?” he whispered.

“No, they think it was suicide, all right, but they chalk it up to something besides neurosis. They are claiming that Walter killed himself because he was a Communist, card-carrying variety, and terrified that he'd be ruined by the revelation. The cops hinted that some kind of major scandal is brewing.”

Goldmark's voice went as hollow as a dial tone. “Who told you that?”

“A lieutenant named Wynn, Homicide. You may be hearing from him, or maybe not. Depends on how fast he closes the books on this case.”

“Case?”

“Could be a murder, you know. Let me level with you, Goldmark. Maybe you'll do the same for me.”

He was leaning so far forward he was practically on the floor. “Sure Jack, what?”

“Reason I say it could be a murder is that there wasn't any note and there was a lump on the back of Walter's head that could have gotten there in any number of ways, none of them delicate, many of them illegal.”

I had no business telling Goldmark any of this, except that I entertained the logical hunch that a guy whose profession consisted almost entirely of knowing which way the winds were blowing probably knew a great deal more than he was letting on. He drummed his fingers on the desk top.

“Murder,” was all he said.

“Nobody believes it, Goldmark, but it's not an impossibility.”

“But the cops don't think so?”

“If they do, they're not letting on.” There was also the vague matter of FBI interference, but I saw no reason to go into that. I had been open enough for one day.

“You think it's murder, Jack?”

“I don't think anything. I'm just not counting it out. The fact is that I was only hired by Walter to find out who was causing him trouble. Now that he's dead, the nature of that trouble becomes a pretty serious matter, especially if it was murder. That's what I have to figure out.”

“You think I can help you?” asked the agent.

“I'm positive you can help me.”

Goldmark was getting very unhappy. A film of sweat glistened on his forehead and he started slapping through his pockets in search of a cigarette. I tossed him my pack and he dropped it on the floor.

“Relax,” I told him.

“You don't know what all this has meant to me. Walter's death….” He shook his head and lit up.

“It hasn't been a pillow fight for anyone, Goldmark. Now, just tell me who at Warners was giving Walter a hard time.”

“Johnny Parker,” the agent said bleakly. “He's a V-P for production at Warners. He rides herd on the writers.”

“Did he have it in for Walter? Personal grudge, anything like that?”

Goldmark thought it over, his brow furrowed behind a drifting cloud of smoke. The breezy Mr. Hollywood manner had been returned to the stage trunk.

“No,” he finally said. “I really don't think so. Fact is, Parker used to socialize with the writers, with Walter and Milt Wohl. Used to kind of run in their circle. Last year or so he's changed, become more of an executive. Maybe he figured it was bad for his reputation to hang out with writers.”

“When did he start making noise about the new contract?”

“Walter tell you about that, or Mrs. Adrian?” he asked guardedly.

“Walter.”

He nodded. “Couple of weeks ago he started making ridiculous, insulting counteroffers. Before then he had just been stalling. It's been going on since December.”

“Why the insulting offers? The cops right about the Red angle, was that it?”

Goldmark resigned himself to spilling the beans. He exhaled and placed his hands flat down on the desk. “Christ, yes, they're right. That's the whole ball of wax, Jack. You saw that bunch of people at Walter's house last night. They're terrified, quaking in their pants. Milt Wohl is coming to see me at five, just so I'll hold his hand and tell him it's going to be all right.”

“Is that whole bunch Red? Wohl. Arthur, Perillo, the cowboy?”

“Carpenter?” Goldmark shrugged, suddenly cautious. “I don't know
how
Red, Jack. Truthfully. I don't know if they carry cards or what. But they sympathize, at the very least. And if you breathe a word of this conversation to anyone at all, I'll deny it. And I won't speak to you again.”

“It's that bad.”

“Worse. The people you met last night are all political-minded, progressive people, and the fact of the matter is that their kind of politics is going out of style around Hollywood, like a restaurant with a ptomaine rap, that fast. Apparently—and this is strictly between us and the four walls—apparently, there is going to be some kind of a congressional investigation.”

“Of what?”

“Communism in Hollywood. And if in fact there is an investigation you can bet it'll be the publicity circus of all time. The new congressman from this district is a kid named Nixon—Republican, and by a beautiful coincidence he happens to be on the Un-American Activities Committee, which would be running the show.” He smiled a grim and lifeless smile. “Isn't that perfect? You think a freshman congressman would mind being on the front pages every morning, asking movie stars if they know any Reds?”

“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled. It appeared that LeVine had once again managed to step into a puddle and discover that the bottom lay a hundred feet below.

“Jesus H. Christ, Esquire,” said the agent. “Looks like Walter was the first victim.”

“Did he ever talk to you about it?”

“Indirectly.” The lit cigarette in his hand described a short arc. “He tell you anything?”

“Just loose talk about a bad time for progressive-minded people. He never got specific.”

“Walter didn't confide very well. It wasn't his style.” The agent seemed genuinely saddened. “That's why I accept his suicide. Walter bottled things up; for him to go before a congressional committee, with newsreel cameras and radio…. He'd die first.”

“He did die first.” I stood up. “Thanks, Goldmark. See you at the funeral.”

The agent arose and walked me to the door. “I'd like to help you some more, Jack, but maybe we could meet somewhere else in the future.”

“You think it's that risky?”

“I don't know, maybe.” He looked abashed. “I'm no hero, pal. Maybe that makes me a bum and a creep in your book, but it's the truth. I have a good business here. I can't go down with these guys. I gotta keep floating.”

“I understand.” I did, kind of.

We shook hands. He held on to mine and squeezed my elbow. “Where do you go from here?”

“To the gallows,” I told him, and left his office to examine the place where Walter had died.

It was not the best idea I ever had.

I faked my way back onto the Warners lot with the orange sticker I had been given the night before. The kid at the gate just waved me through. I drove slowly up the center strip, gawking at the daytime activity. Men pushed racks loaded down with costumes, trucks hauled props and scenery, and actors were knocking off work. It was five o'clock and I should have been doing the same. A crew of pirates emerged from a sound stage, taking off their eye patches and lighting up some smokes. They were followed by a covey of midgets in Brooklyn Dodger uniforms, a wonder to behold. I drove to the very edge of the back lot and allowed myself the not inconsiderable thrill of parking the Chrysler in an empty space reserved for John Garfield. I got out and hoofed it over to the Western Street.

It was as deserted as it had been the night before. I had expected to find actors and technicians drifting away from their day's labors, but apparently Westerns were going out of style. Everything was as it had been, including the gallows, which I had anticipated the cops might dismantle. But for the absence of the rope, it was untouched.

I walked over and began studying the area directly beneath the wooden scaffold, finding a few flecks of dried blood on some stones, but nothing else of importance. Even the stones were unimportant. They had obviously not been used as weapons, bearing no traces of violent activity. If you bash a person on the head with a rock, there is hair and unpleasantness left on that rock. And if you bash a person on the head and then drop him through a trapdoor at the wrong end of a rope, you do not deposit that rock directly below the victim's feet. It's common sense.

Directly over my head I noticed chalk scribbling on the wooden planks that constituted the gallows floor. There were check marks next to initials and letters: K.B., R., H.P., C.W., apparently left there by crew members who had erected the structure.

I climbed the wooden stairs and paced off the distance between the trapdoor and the metal lever that sprang it. Mathematical precision was not required: no man could spring the trap while standing upon it. This, of course, did not preclude someone pulling the trap beforehand and jumping through the hole. It seemed, however, an awkward way to go about ending one's life.

It was a warm afternoon and my exertions, mild as they were, had worked up my habitual veil of perspiration. I removed my jacket and observed that my white shirt was leopard-spotted with sweat stains. So I sat for a bit, on the edge of the platform, mulling over the facts of Walter's death. That note in his pocket, “Check pos. stables. Jail-house?” He had been out here working out a scene; that was on the note he had left me, the one I found on the floor. So that was what the stables and jailhouse were probably all about. But if they were about something else? A hunch, of course, but worth five minutes of my time.

I went down the stairs and started for the rear of the jailhouse.

Someone didn't want me to go there.

The first shot went a foot over my head, but I got the point and dove into the dust, rolling over and pulling my Colt from the pocket of the jacket that was draped casually over my shoulder. Another shot slammed dully into the dust, six inches from my argyle socks. I couldn't see who was firing or figure out which direction the bullets were flying from. For all I knew a drunken extra was firing blanks, but the only way to test that theory was to get hit and it didn't seem worth the bother. I didn't believe it was a drunken extra anyway; I figured the shots had something to do with a private detective snooping around the scene of what I, at this moment, knew to be a crime.

A third shot blew a brief gust of wind past my right ear. All I could do with my gun was exhibit it; I still didn't know where my attacker was perched. There wasn't much to do but run or get killed. Or both.

I jumped to my feet and went behind the gallows, just to put something between me and the artillery. Another shell blew past, but this one wasn't even close. I stood squinting into the sun, which was low in the sky and directly in my eyes, and determined that the shots were coming from the rear of the Frontier Hotel. If I could cut across the street, my friend's angle would be lost. Besides which, I was fairly certain that a person could not indefinitely fire bullets in a movie studio without arousing a certain degree of curiosity.

Both those assumptions proved correct. I aimed a shot at the general direction of the hotel and sprinted across the street, fleeing two more salvos, one of which came terribly close to making a puree of my brains, the other of which, my attacker's angle gone, went off an abutment on the side of the jailhouse. I reached the saloon and sailed through the swinging doors, landing on my belly, the wooden floor rattling my incisors.

I lay there, panting and listening to my heart pound, first like the rhythm section of a doped-up Latin dance band, losing a couple of beats to a rapid and blooded onetwoonetwo, and finally ebbing to normal like a breaker crashing and meshing flat and foamy into a gray winter sea. Back to life's fundamental, stately rhythms. One—two, one—two.

The shooting had stopped and I heard people running up the street outside. There was confused conversation, largely incomprehensible to me, but the gist was, what the hell's going on, shooting? The words hardly mattered; what did matter was that I didn't want to go out on the street and answer any questions, or be subjected to another tedious session with the law. There was, fortunately, a way to get out of the saloon without having to appear on the Western Street, a rear exit to a short alley adjacent to the Small-Town America lot. I crawled through the saloon on hands and knees, emerging dusty but pleased to have escaped, not merely alive but undetected. I slapped the grime off my clothing, returned the Colt to its designated pocket, and started back for the car, curiously pleased to have had my suspicions confirmed: I was working on a flesh-and-blood case, not merely a post-mortem.

I had secretly hoped that John Garfield would be standing next to the Chrysler, waiting to bawl me out for stealing his space. Garfield was absent, but a half-naked young man in a feathered headdress, loincloth, and war paint was seated on the car's back fender, studying a script.

“Hey, Chief,” I called. “Beat it.”

The young man was startled. “Is this your car?” he asked.

“That's right.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” A smile showed off his expensive cap job. “I got so wrapped up in this grotesque script. I don't even have lines. I stand around and look noble, but
that
I do beautifully.”