Murder on Location (23 page)

“He'd somehow—through Monty, I guess—got a summer job in Toronto working on a TV show. While the regular actor who played the mute clown was away, Neil
got a start. That was his launching pad. He got in with the writers and producers of the show, then he started writing a TV game show, then he wrote his first TV dramas. Next stop Hollywood fame and fortune.”

“But he came back to the Falls before he left for good?”

“Sure. He had bridges and matches.”

“Go on.” Billie stretched her arms out straight and bent them back as far as she could.

“Well …” Then she suddenly folded both arms across her chest, leaned her elbows into the table top and turned pink around the cheeks. “He told me it was all over. Said that he would always remember me. He tried the same song on Dulcie, but she wouldn't buy it. She wasn't quite as ready to cut the cable as I was. She told me that he couldn't just leave, that if necessary she'd find a way to make him stay. They went off to the Patriot Volunteer. They were both drinking. They had an argument. She drove off in his car and on the way down the road she drove off the pavement into a tree.”

“Did you ever hear from him again?”

“Not even a postcard.”

“Wasn't he worried about you being underage? He could have got into a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, he knew I'd never pressure anybody and I knew I'd had my time with him. How can I describe the way it was with Neil? With him people were temporary. Every so often he had to clear the decks of old friends and start over again. And the new friends were always able to help
him in his career in some way. His wife's the best example of that.”

“You knew that you were going to see him in the Falls when you left Lowell?”

“I knew and I didn't. I knew he'd be there, but I didn't know exactly where or when. I ran into him the second day after I arrived. I hadn't even begun my hunt. It was like some romantic movie of the forties. We pretended that we'd never met: Noonan introduced us and we shook hands. Later he gave Ed the high-sign to push off, and he did. Neil's wife was going to be away for the holiday, so I stayed with him until New Year's Day. I let him book me into a room at the Colonel John under another name. He said there'd be no difficulty getting work as an extra, but getting a bit part would take some doing. He told me to stay close to the telephone and called a few times, came up a few times. He looked worried to death most of the time: paced the carpet like a hungry grizzly. I think he was scared Tullio Solmi or one of his boys would pay a visit.”

“Solmi? What was his connection with Solmi?”

“When Neil first came to the Falls from Port, his old man was in a jam. He'd beaten up on Neil's mother—not that that was unusual—but this time he really hurt her and the police were involved. Solmi knew a lot of powerful people and so Neil went to see him. I don't know what happened exactly but his father didn't go to jail and Neil became palsy-walsy with Solmi. For a while he enjoyed
driving around in Tullio's big car and tried talking out of the side of his mouth. But he soon dropped all that.”

“But he could write quite a lot about Solmi if he wanted to?”

“About those days, sure. With authority.”

Inch by inch the front of Martha Tracy's housecoat had fallen open. Since it was Billie Mason who showed through, I found it hard to concentrate on my work. Billie discovered the source of my distraction, blushed and then covered herself with a businesslike pull at the lapels. It was just as hard to think afterwards as before.

“When did you see Furlong last?”

“The night before David was killed. He said his wife was in Toronto, so he came up and we had drinks and then went out for dinner over the river.”

“At the Patriot Volunteer. Right. Let's see … There's always the important last question and I usually forget to ask it. Try this. Last Wednesday morning you telephoned David in his room at the Tudor.”

“And you answered.”

“Did you talk to him before that? I mean after you ditched him?”

“I didn't … Oh, what's the use? I called him on Wednesday, about an hour earlier than when I spoke to you pretending to be David.” She let her lip curl on the word pretending. “I told him that I had to see him and he wanted to see me. I suggested late Wednesday night, but he begged off because Miranda Pride was coming over. He told me she'd been making a pest of herself and that
all he wanted was to see me again. I told him that I'd call him back when I'd cleared some time, and when I did, you took the call.”

“And you mentioned this to Furlong.”

“What if I did? They were long past the honeymoon those two. They couldn't even share a suite.”

“I see. Well, Billie, if you want my advice, I would forget all about getting into this movie.”

“But …”

“It's not worth getting yourself killed even if you have lines and a close-up. Do you want to be one of those people who show lots of promise but die young? Keep clear of the Falls until this mess is sorted out. Meanwhile you can stay here.”

“Eventually I'm going to need some clothes.”

“Good. You won't show your face in the Falls in one of Martha's mother-hubbards. Perfect. I like it. Print it.”

Back in my office again I dialled long distance for Information in La Jolla, California. In less time than I would have guessed I was the proud possessor of Claudia Horlick's phone number, and I put it to work right away.

“Hello?” said Peggy's mother in a voice that sounded like I'd got her out of bed.

“Mrs. Horlick? This is Ben Cooperman. I'm a friend of your daughter's.”

“Marilyn? She's up in Canada.”

“I know. That's where I'm calling from.”

“Is something wrong? Is she all right?” Her voice was quickly waking up. “Has there been an accident?”

“No, everything is fine. Peggy's fine. She sends her love.”

“You gave me a fright.” She asked who I was again and I told her.

“What I wanted to know—it's for an article I'm doing about Hollywood in the heyday of the fifties—is about the Writers' Building at Paramount in those days.”

“You should talk to the writers: Herb Schaffer, Joe Gillis, people like that. I was only a secretary.”

“But you worked with some of the big ones?”

“Sure. I even did the weekly shopping for some of them. I helped Mr. Gillis buy a car once. He took me over to Lucey's a couple of times. He liked Gibsons.” She went on about different writers she'd been assigned to, and when she showed no sign of coming to the part I was interested in, I interrupted.

“Did you work on
Donnybrook?”
There was a pause.

“Yes, I did.” Silence.

“When was that exactly?” I tried to put a smile in my voice.

“What's this article for?” The smile didn't get across the Mississippi.

“It's for one of the serious movie reviews.” I tried to think of a name, but all I could think of was
Silver Screen
and
Modern Screen
, so I didn't offer a title. I let her prate about a few more directors and writers that she'd been typing for and made appropriate noises whenever she paused for breath. Finally, she began to slow down.

“I don't know that there's much more I can tell you. I wasn't as young as a lot of the girls there then. And there were a lot of good-looking girls and some hanky-panky going on between the girls and the people they worked for. But I was married, so I wasn't involved.” She sounded like she was reasoning backwards. “You should talk to some of the younger girls.
Girls
, I mean they're old women now. Although I don't think of myself as an old woman. There were some crazy times what with the carrying on and the drinking.”

“Did you work closely with Jim Sayre?” Another silence that reached across the continent on my seventy-six cents a minute.

“Mr. Sayre finished
Donnybrook
early in 1954. I didn't see him after February of that year. I was reassigned to work with Mr. Geller, and after several weeks I went on to work with Emmett Lynch on
Walk East on Main
. Then there were a few odd jobs lasting a few months, and then I said goodbye in December. I didn't go back after Marilyn was born. But some of the girls kept in touch for a year or so.”

“So you left the studio in December of '54, right?”

“That's what I said. Just before Marilyn was born.”

“What was Mr. Sayre like in those days?”

“You're very interested in Jim Sayre, Mr. Cooperman.”

“That's right. He's one of the great directors of our time. I should do a book, not just an article, about the era
of his first important work. It must have been wonderful being in on everything.”

“He was a perfectionist. He wanted everything authentic. We all worked very hard. You could go out for a drink with him and he's as friendly as pie, then the next day he'd work you like you just came in as a temporary.” She paused, taking a second to lick old wounds.

“Not much of a man for sentiment?”

“No, it's not that. He was a very warm man. He just tried to keep the work moving steadily. He loved making pictures.”

“Could you have fallen for a man like that, Mrs. Horlick?” Another pause.

“If I'd given him any encouragement, he might have come on to me very strongly. But I never did.” This time I started the silence. But there was nothing further coming on that subject.

“I see. You said you weren't like some of the other, younger girls. The other girls were less stand-offish?”

“Some of them. But I had a few good friends: Erica Tilloch, for one. Blanche Tyler was another. We lunched whenever the men went off in a gang. They didn't want us around then. But usually we'd be working too hard to fool around. Blanche did very well for herself in the end. Her sister married Joseph Kindall Hurwitt's agent. You know, the mystery writer?”

“Basil Simpson, ‘the internationally known lawyer-sleuth.'”

“Well, Blanche became the executive producer of the TV series. It ran for years and years.”

“Any message for Peggy?”

“Oh, she calls me pretty often. We keep in touch. I tell her about my aches and pains and she tells me about, you know, what she's doing. Oh, yes, she keeps in touch. She's a typical Libra that way: easy to get along with, gentle. I never had cause to be ashamed of my daughter, Mr. Cooperman. She's a good girl and she came out of a God-fearing, church-going family. She was a happy child. My late husband took her everywhere with him. Have I answered all your questions? We got off the subject of the Writers' Building. We sometimes worked in relays around the clock. Oh, we had some wonderful times.”

“I want to thank you for your help, Mrs. Horlick. I've taken up a lot of your time.”

“That's all I've got now, since Mr. Horlick passed on. Say hello to Marilyn when you see her. Tell her to be careful. Somebody told me there's rattlesnakes up there.”

Before heading back to the Falls, I closed the office door and put it on the spring lock. I didn't want a client for the next five minutes. I slipped off my right shoe and sock, leaning back in the chair behind my desk. I then pulled the lace out of the shoe, tied a slip knot in the middle, slid the noose over my big toe and pulled. I tried it several ways, and shortly before gangrene set in I'd learned quite a bit about hanging toes and other things.

TWENTY

I parked the Olds in its familiar corner and walked over to the Colonel John. The lobby was alive. Half the newsmen in the country were making themselves at home on the dozen or so chairs and couches in the place. The other half were keeping watch near the locked door of the street-level beverage room, waiting for the first stroke of noon. How often do you get an international story like this with so many side-bars? All-star cast upset by suicide of time-honoured superstar. Peggy O'Toole pursued by America's most eligible bachelor. I wondered whether Fisher's papers had orders to ignore that part of the story. Probably. He hated to be in the headlines, unless it was for one of his deep-sea diving stunts. At twenty the guy led an expedition to the North Pole, where he tested some warm suits for the US Navy in the water under the ice at 90 degrees north. Then he took off for the South Seas to dive the wrecks of Truk. It was just my luck to lose Peggy to a guy like that.

I pushed my way through the crowd and took my chances with the weather outside. Across the park from the gift shop and the hotel a crowd of tourists were gathering, not to look at the falls, but at something in the river
gorge. I crossed the wet street—the falls had been spitting again, but it hadn't frozen—and bent over the parapet. Down below, arranged like a latter-day nativity scene, the tiny fixed figures of the film crew were standing under arc lights, reflectors and behind the camera. Four versions of the
Maid of the Mist
were drydocked just out of reach of the intruding ice. In front of the cameras two figures were moving—Dawson Williams and Peggy O'Toole—I could pick them out even at this distance. Behind was the piled-up mountain of ice, a dramatic backdrop even from where I stood.

I felt somebody looking over my shoulder, and I turned around. Nothing. Then I glanced up to the balcony of the penthouse on top of the Colonel John Butler and got my first sight of Hampton Fisher, boy publisher. It wasn't much of a look, foreshortened as it was, but it was the only view of him most people ever saw. There he was, with a poorer view of the proceedings than I had. I wondered if Hampton Fisher, with his phobias, his highly controlled escapades, could ever engage in anything so unrehearsed as a human relationship. I tried to imagine him with Peggy. It wasn't easy. So I blew a few germs in his direction and stepped out into the street to cross back to the hotel.

What further thoughts I might have had about Peggy's beau evaporated. The reason, a speeding dark blue Duster came down the street at me at sixty miles an hour. It sailed right through where I'd been standing and kept on going. I felt like a matador when the bull takes the nap off
his suit of lights. This Duster almost had my lights and my darks as well. I have the sound of that speeding motor in my head still. And not a hint of the screech of brakes.