Nothing More than Murder

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The Kill-Off

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I
’ll let you write in the box number,” I told the girl behind the counter. “Have to let you do something to earn your money.”

She smiled, kind of like an elevator boy smiles when you ask him if he has lots of ups and downs. “Yes, sir. What is your name, please?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to pay for the ad now.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, just as much as to say you’re damned right you’re going to pay now. “We have to have your name and address, sir.”

I told her I was placing the ad for a friend, “Mrs. J.J. Williamson, room four-nineteen, Crystal Arms Hotel,” and she wrote it down on a printed slip of paper and stabbed it over a spike with a lot of others.

“That runs one word over three lines. If you like, I think I can eliminate a—”

“I want it printed like it stands,” I said. “How much?”

“For three days it will be two dollars and forty-four cents.”

I had a dollar and ninety-six cents in my overcoat pocket—exactly enough if Elizabeth had figured things right. I pulled it out and laid it on the counter, and fumbled around in my pants pocket for some change.

I found a quarter, two nickels, and a few pennies. I dropped them into my coat as soon as I saw they weren’t enough, and reached again. The girl stared at my hands—the gloves—her eyebrows up a little.

I came out with a half dollar and slid it across to her.

“There,” I said, “that makes it.”

“Just a minute, sir. You have two cents change coming.”

I waved my hand at her to keep it. I didn’t want to try to pick up those pennies with my gloves on, and something told me she’d make me pick them up. I wanted to get out of there.

She hollered something just as the door closed, but I didn’t turn around. I hit the street and I kept right on walking without looking back.

I guess I must have gone a dozen blocks, just walking along blind, before I realized I was being a chump. I stopped and lighted a cigarette, and saw no one was following me. It began to drift in on me that there really wasn’t any reason why anyone should. I felt like kicking myself for letting Elizabeth plan the thing.

She’d insisted on my wearing gloves, which, I could see now, was a hell of a phony touch. She’d had me print out the ad in advance on a piece of dime-store paper, and that looked funny, too, when you put it with the other.

And then she’d figured out the exact price of the ad—only it wasn’t the exact price.

I went on down the street toward film row, wondering why, since she always fouled me up, I ever bothered to listen to Elizabeth. Wondering whether I was actually as big a chump as she always said I was.

I wish now that I’d kept on wondering instead of plowing on ahead. But I didn’t, and I don’t think it proves I wasn’t smart because I didn’t.

W
hen Elizabeth and I were married there was another show in Stoneville. It wasn’t much of a house—five hundred chairs, and a couple of Powers projectors that should have been in a museum, and a wildcat sound system.

But it was a show and it pulled a lot of business from us, particularly on Friday and Saturday, the horse-opera nights. Not only that, it almost doubled the price of the product we bought.

In a town of seventy-five hundred people, you hadn’t ought to pay more than thirty or thirty-five bucks for the best feature out. And you don’t have to if you’ve got the only house. Where there’s more than one, well, brother, there’s a situation the boys on film row love.

If you don’t want to buy from them, they’ll just take their product across the street. And the guy across the street will snap it up in the hopes of freezing you out and buying at his own price the next year.

The fellow that owned the other house was named Bower. He’s not around anymore; don’t know what ever did become of him. About the time his lease came up for renewal, I went to his landlord and offered to take over, paying all operating expenses and giving him fifty per cent of the net.

Of course he took me up. Bower couldn’t afford to make a proposition like that. Neither could I.

I gave Bower a hundred and fifty dollars for his equipment, which was a good price even if he didn’t think so. Motion picture equipment is worth just about as much as the spot you have it in. It’s tricky stuff to move; it’s made to be put in a place and left there.

Well, Bower had about the same amount of stinker product under contract that I had. Part of it he’d bought because he couldn’t help himself—we had block-booking in those days—and part because it would squeeze me.

Ordinarily, if he played it at all, he’d have balanced it up with good strong shorts. But there was a lot of it he couldn’t have played on a triple bill with two strong supporting features.

What I did was to take his stinkers and mine and shoot ’em into the house, one after another. And I picked out shorts that were companion pieces, if you know what I mean. Inside of two months the house wasn’t grossing five dollars a day.

The landlord was—he still is, for that matter—old Andy Taylor. Andy got his start writing insurance around our neck of the woods almost fifty years ago, and now he owns about half the county in fee and has the rest under mortgage. You could hear him crying in the next county when he saw what he was up against. But there wasn’t a thing he could do.

He had the choice of taking twenty-five a month or fifty per cent of nothing, so you know what he took. I left the house standing dark, just like it is now.

No one but a sucker would think of trying to open a third house under the circumstances, and he wouldn’t have anything to play in it if he did. I buy all the major studio product and everything that’s playable from the indies. Our house is on seven changes a week, and we actually change four or five times. The rest of the stuff we pay for and send back.

Our film bill only runs about thirty per cent more on the week than it used to, and our gross is about ninety per cent more. Of course, we’ve got to pay rent on the other house, and the extra express and insurance charges plus paper—advertising matter—runs into dough. But we’ve done all right. Plenty all right. We’ve got the most modern, most completely equipped small-city house in the state, and there’s just one guy responsible.

Me.

I only book a month at a time. But booking with me for a month is equal to booking with the average exhibitor for three months; and the boys on the row don’t exactly throw rocks at me.

I like to never have got away from the Playgrand exchange.

The minute I stepped in the door they rushed me back to the manager’s office, and he just pushed his work aside and reached for the drinks.

They had some shorts in that he wanted my opinion on, so after a while we went back into the screening-room, which is just like a little theater, and checked them over. They were good stuff, some of the brightest, snappiest shorts I’d seen in a long time. Even with all I had on my mind I enjoyed them.

I’ve known the manager of Utopian since the days when he was on the road, and it was pretty hard to get away from there, too. And we got to talking baseball over at Colfax; and at Wolf I had to sit in on another screening and have another couple drinks.

I almost didn’t book anything at Superior.

They had a complete new setup from booker to manager, and none of them knew straight up. They didn’t even know who
I
was. I gave the booker three feature dates and five shorts, and I explained about six times that that was all I had open for the month. But he wouldn’t give up. He reached over and took my date book right out of my hands.

“Why, here,” he said. “We’ve made a mistake, haven’t we? We’ve got an open date next Sunday.”

“I’ve got something planned for that,” I said.

“Now, let’s see,” he said. “What can we give you there? What do you say to—”

“That date’s taken,” I said.

“We’ll fix that, get the other pic set out for you. You don’t want an inferior picture in a Sunday spot when we can give you—”

Well, I don’t mind seeing a man try to do his job, and all the row guys are pretty fast talkers. I’m a shade fast myself. I’ve never poked my tongue in my eyes yet, though, and it’s not because I close them when I talk.

I was about to tell him off in a nice way when the manager came out. He came up behind me and kind of worked his hand over my back like he was giving me a massage.

“Getting along all right?” he said. “Everything going to suit you, Mr. Barclay?”

I could feel myself turning red. “My name’s not Barclay,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, stepping back a little, “I thought you were from Barclay Operating Company at—”

“I’m Joe Wilmot,” I said. “I’ve operated Barclay for the past ten years. The property’s in my wife’s name. Okay?”

He let out with a silly laugh, trying to pass it over, and made a grab for my hand.

“Mighty glad you came in, Joe. Anything we can do here for you, just say the word.”

“You can’t do a goddamn thing for me,” I said. “I won’t pull out the dates I’ve given you because I’m in a hurry. But it’ll be a hell of a long time before I give you any more.”

“Now, Joe. Let’s go back in the office and—”

“Go to hell,” I said.

He and the booker both followed me to the door. I slammed it in their faces.

Every film row I’ve been around, there’s at least one place like Chance Independent Releases, and one guy like Happy Chance. Not exactly, but you know what I mean.

They get ahold of maybe three or four features a year that you can throw in a middle-of-the-week spot, and a sex picture or two, and a few serials, and some stag-party shorts. They own the prints on the sex and stag stuff, and handle the other on commission for studios that don’t have their own exchanges. Hap seemed to get by better than some of them, but Hap would. I’ve known him for more than twelve years, since he was working the booth in a grind-house, and I was driving film truck. And if he ever missed skinning anyone, I don’t know when it was. He’d even skinned the Panzpalace chain; and when you skin a guy like Sol Panzer, who’s run a ninety-three-house string up from a nickelodeon, you’ve got to be good.

I don’t know why I liked Hap. Maybe it was the attraction of opposites, as they say in books.

“Glad you dropped in, laddie,” he said, after we’d sat down and the drinks were poured. “Been thinking about popping out to see you. How are things with the Barclay?”

“What’s the use of kicking?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“No, seriously. You must be coining it. How many changes are you on, anyway?”

I grinned at him over my glass. “All I need, Hap.”

“Some chap was telling me the other day you were on more changes than any house in the state.”

“I could be; I’ve got the product. I don’t often make more than four a week though.”

“Playing shutout with the rest?”

“That wouldn’t be legal,” I said. “They call that acting in restraint of trade.”

“Uh-hah,” he drawled. “Certainly. I should know you wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”

“The town’s wide open to anyone that wants to come in,” I said. “I’ll run all the good pix in the Barclay and all the stinkers in the Bower, and split the rest with the competition.”

“Uh-
hah!
” Hap let out a chuckle. “What’s your house worth there, laddie, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well, let’s see. Ten times the annual return—between seventy-five and a hundred grand.”

“It wouldn’t possibly be worth a million, would it?”

“Not without a Sunday-night audience. We’ve got some good-looking gals out there.”

“Just so, just so,” he said.

“What’s on your mind? Got a buyer for me?”

“We-ell—” He hesitated, frowning, plucking at the sleeve of his tweed suit. Hap goes for the English stuff right on down the line. And it doesn’t suit him so bad—or so good. He sat there all diked out and talking like a duke; and he turned his head a little and spit, and rubbed it into the carpet with one of his saddle-soaped shoes.

I wanted to laugh, but I knew I hadn’t better. Hap isn’t a good guy to have sore at you.

“Well, how about it?” I said.

“I guess not, laddie.” He sighed and shook his head. “The proposition isn’t quite big enough.”

He looked at me a minute or two longer, and I thought he was going to say something more. But he didn’t, and I didn’t prod him. It wouldn’t have done any good, and I thought I could see his angle, anyway.

“By the way,” I said, “what’d you ever do with that sixteen-reeler? What do you call it—‘Jeopardy of the Jungle’?”

Hap shrugged. “Oh, that goddamn thing! Why, it hasn’t been out of the can in months, laddie. It—” He broke off and gave me a sharp look. “Oh, you mean ‘Jeopardy of the Jungle’!” he said. “It’s going like wildfire. It’s booked practically solid for the next three months.”

I did laugh then. This was business, and I could.

“There aren’t that many penitentiaries in the country,” I said.

“Word of honor, Joe. The way it’s been pulling ’em in even surprises me. You know I didn’t care for it myself, even if it did have Gable and Bergman—”

“Yeah. A ten-frame shot of them sitting in the Stork Club. And what it has to do with the picture nobody knows.”

“—but you can’t argue with the b.o., Joe. The box office doesn’t lie. Did you see last month’s grosses in the
Herald
? The Empire grossed seven grand on ‘Jep’ the first—”

“I saw it,” I said. “The only other attraction was Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra.”

“Let me show you something, Joe! Let me get out the
Herald
. I can show you small-city grosses for two days during the fall—”

“What two? Thanksgiving and Labor Day?”

“Okay,” he said, “so it stinks.”

“You know it does.”

“But you want it.”

“Well—” I said. And then I swallowed, and it was just like I’d forgotten how to talk.

A puzzled grin spread over Happy’s face.

“Yeah,” he said, “you want it. But why? You’ve already got more stuff than you can use. Tell Hap why you want it, laddie.”

“Hell,” I said, “use your head, Hap. This is the end of the season. We always get down toward the bottom of the pot at this time of year.”

“Uh-hah. Mmm.”

“Ordinarily I do have more product than I can play, but I’ve already let it go back. I don’t have to have ‘Jep.’ I just thought I saw a nice spot for it next Sunday.”

“‘Jep’ on
Sunday?
”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m dumb. I was holding the spot for Superior, but they got me sore and I walked out.”

He looked disappointed but not as much as I’d like to have seen him. There were still traces of that puzzled grin.

We settled on a price, and I got up to leave; and I stepped into it again right up to my neck.

“Aren’t you forgetting something, old man?”

“You mean you want your rental now?” I said. “I don’t play that way; I pay on delivery. You know that, Hap.”

He shook his head.

“Well, what do you mean?”

“Paper,” he said, as though he were talking to someone else. “First he books a stinker for Sunday, and then he starts to leave without so much as a one-sheet. Why would Joe Wilmot forget to buy paper?”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “I guess that Superior crowd did get me upset.”

“Uh-hah,” he said. “Mmm.”

I was so rattled that I let him sell me twice as much paper as I usually use. A dozen three-sheets, eighteen ones, and two twenty-fours. That and fifty window cards and the stuff for my lobby display.

I was shivering as I walked back to the hotel. Even thinking about Carol couldn’t warm me up.