Show Business Is Murder (31 page)

“Awww, applesauce!” Grey broke in. “There wasn't no other copy. I looked all over.”

I graced Grey with a pitying smile. “But you didn't look in the right place, Cheetah. This copy wasn't sitting around, nice and neat, double-spaced on white paper. It was inside the typewriter.”

“Phooey!” Grey spat. “This is a buncha bunk.”

“Shut up, you oaf,” Van Dine snapped. His oily confidence was dripping away before my eyes. “You're talking about the ribbon,” he said to me.

I nodded. “That's right. Everything John Smith has typed for the last week or two or even three, who knows? It all hit that ribbon. And it's still there, just waiting for someone with the time and the patience to get it. In fact, I've got a friend—a friend with very bad eyes and very, very sensitive fingers—who's going over that ribbon right now. I gave it to him just before I came here. I'll bet he's half-way through the script by now.”

Van Dine stared at me. Or, more accurately, he stared through me. I could practically see the wheels in his mind turning, spinning faster and faster like pinwheels. And then they stopped.

“You have failed me, Mr. Grey.”

“What? Don't tell me you believe this two-bit gumshoe,” Grey protested, crooking a thumb at me.

“You know the penalty for failure,” Van Dine replied
coldly. His left hand slipped down toward one of the big silk pockets of his smoking jacket.

Fear twisted the thick flesh of Grey's face. “No! Don't!” he cried. “Please!”

“I'm afraid you leave me no choice.”

Van Dine pulled out his hand slowly. In it was a slip of thick paper.

“No screening pass for you this weekend,” he said. “If you want to see—” He glanced at the paper, then began tearing it up. “—
Bedtime for Bonzo,
you'll just have to wait a month and pay your fifty cents like the rest of the little people.”

Grey's whimper turned to a snarl as he whipped around to face me. “This is your fault, shamus! I'm gonna—”

“Untie him,” Van Dine broke in.

“But—”

“I said untie him!”

Grey glared at Van Dine for a moment before moving his bulky body behind me and fumbling with the ropes. My hands came free first. Within seconds, they were stinging with the pain of a thousand needlepricks as the bloodflow returned. A moment later, my feet felt the same way.

“Smart move, Van Dine,” I said, buying time while my hands and feet recovered. “You're playing this the right way.”

“If he double-crosses us, kill him,” Van Dine said to Grey.

Grey leaned in close to my ear. “With pleasure,” he said.

But the pleasure was all mine. Grey was a sloppy man. He'd done a sloppy job searching Smith's bungalow, and now he'd done a sloppy job untying me. He'd merely loosened the rope around my hands without bothering to take it away. And when he stuck his big ape head next to mine, it was simplicity itself to take that rope and wrap it around his neck.

It took all my strength to stand and take three steps forward, dragging Grey behind me. He toppled over the back
of the chair. The chair pitched forward, and Grey came with it. The chair came down with a crash. Grey came down with a snap. His body went limp.

I turned my attention to Van Dine—but he was gone. For the first time, I got a good look at the room around me. Several black monoliths loomed in the darkness. At first, I thought they were bookshelves. But as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that they were loaded with bottles, not books. I was in Van Dine's wine cellar.

I heard a quick shuffle-step behind me. I whirled around just in time to see Van Dine rushing me, a champagne bottle clutched in his hand.

I wanted to meet him on equal terms, but there was no time to go looking for a bottle of vodka. So I ducked. The champagne bottle cut through the air just above my head. Van Dine's momentum carried him forward, and I gave him a good shove as he moved past. He stumbled, off balance, and slammed into the nearest wine rack. He hit the ground amid a shower of mid-range cabernets.

“Defeated by the trappings of your own decadence,” I said, shaking my head. “Clifford Odets would pay me twenty bucks for a metaphor like this.”

Van Dine groaned from beneath the pile of bottles. I gave him a moment to reflect on his predicament before I grabbed a foot and gave it a twist. Van Dine's groans turned into a yowl. I pulled the foot—and the rest of the body it was attached to—out to the center of the tiny room.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Van Dine. You've given me the perfect set-up.”

I twisted the foot again. Van Dine howled again and kicked at me feebly. I twisted harder, then let go.

“I've been tied up. Beaten. Tortured. I've got the wounds to prove it.” I walked around Van Dine's cowering form until I was just a step from his head. I placed the heel of one
shoe on his face and gave it just a little bit of pressure. “So anything that happens now is purely self-defense. Because I'll be the only one left to tell the story. Get me?”

Van Dine was panting so hard I could barely make out his words.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘I get you,' ” he rasped.

“Good. Now I want you to tell me what happened to John Smith.” I put just a little more pressure on Van Dine's face. I could feel the cartilage of his nose bending almost to the snapping point. “And I don't want any fibs.”

Van Dine talked. When he was through, I slipped the rope from around Son of Kong's throat. I left Van Dine lying face down, his hands tied behind him, in a puddle of cabernet and champagne. That wasn't very nice, I know. But if he got depressed waiting for the police to arrive, he could always slurp his cares away. Anyway, I could've left him in a puddle of blood.

Upstairs, I ran into Miss Shapely. She gaped at me, stunned, from a sofa. A copy of
Film World Exposé
slipped through her suddenly slack fingers. I didn't have to be Criswell the Mind-Reader to know what thoughts were flying through her platinum-plated skull.

“Yeah, that's right, honey. All that screaming and yelling was your boss, not me.”

“I. . .I. . .I didn't. . .”

“Save the smooth talk for the cops, glamour-puss.” I went to the nearest phone—one of those old-fashioned gold-leaf and pearl jobs you always see Bette Davis gabbing on in the pictures—and asked the operator to give me police headquarters. Some lucky desk jockey was about to get the anonymous tip of a lifetime.

While I was waiting for the connection to go through, Miss Shapely jumped off the couch and made a beeline for
the front door. I took mercy on a poor working girl and let her go.

IT WAS DARK
by the time I got back to my office. That was fine. It fit my mood.

I'd been settled behind my desk all of five minutes when my client came through the door. My heart went pitter-pat. My head told my heart to get lost.

She sat down across from me.

“Have you found my brother?”

Oh, that voice. It didn't purr like a kitten. It didn't caress me like a silk glove. It chipped away at me like a jackhammer. It was a husky, no-nonsense, “¡Viva la revolucion!” kind of voice. I loved her even more.

But . . . There's always a but when you're a private dick. And my but was as big as they come.

“I've found John Smith,” I said. “Up until this evening, he was in a flower bed at the home of a movie producer named Dominic Van Dine.” I glanced at my watch. “By now, I'd bet he's on his way to the Los Angeles County morgue.”

I watched her for a reaction. She didn't disappointment me. She didn't have one. No false hysterics. No crocodile tears. Just a cocked eyebrow and a single word.

“Explain.”

I obliged.

“Van Dine knew about Smith's ties to the Communist Party. That's why he hired him to work on a script. Not because Van Dine's some kind of sympathizer. He's just greedy. Smith's past made him vulnerable: It meant he'd work cheap. But when the House Committee on Un-American Activities started tossing around subpoenas, Van Dine got nervous. If it came out that he'd knowingly hired a Red, he'd be finished in this town. So he sent a musclebound messenger boy out to collect Smith and his script. Smith told Van
Dine he
wanted
to appear before the committee. He wanted to . . . how did you put it this morning? ‘Throw their fascist grandstanding back in their fat faces'? But Van Dine couldn't have that. He's not one of those studio producers. He's an independent. He has to finance his projects himself. He already had a small bundle tied up in his next picture, and a small bundle's more than a guy like that can afford to lose. So he convinced Smith not to testify—convinced him with a piece of rope wrapped around his neck.”

My client's grey eyes didn't fill with tears. Sobs didn't erupt from her thin, colorless lips. Such displays would be beneath her—beneath
us
. Because we were both players on the same team. Maybe you've heard of us. The Los Angeles Reds.

“And the script?” she said.

I nodded. “Yes. The script. That's what you're really interested in, isn't it, comrade? Smith wasn't your brother. He was your stooge. And you need to get that script back to cover your tracks.”

I finally saw her smile. It broke up the marble smoothness of her face, revealing the animal cunning beneath. “Yes, comrade. You recovered the copy from Van Dine's residence?”

I nodded again. “I had time to do a little nosing around before the cops showed up. I found it.”

“Good. Give it to me and our work will be done.”

No more nodding for me. I shook my head. “I don't think so. Not until I get an explanation.”

Her face turned to stone again. “If you are a true revolutionary, you will give the script to me.”

“Why don't you let me decide that? Now tell me—what's in that script that's so important?”

She shrugged with a nonchalance so transparent you'd have to call it outright chalance. “Nothing. As you said, I'm just trying to tie up loose ends.”

I grunted unhappily. I don't like being lied to, even by
women I'd like to run off and make little proles with. “Then why is it written in code?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

A deep, sad sigh rose and fell in my chest. “Nobody in this town writes dialogue that bad on purpose—not unless they've got a hidden agenda. Or maybe a contract with Universal. I spent quite a few hours on buses today, so I had plenty of time to work out Smith's system. Take the first letter of each word of dialogue, add them together and voila, it's Western Union time. But I still don't know what it all means. ‘Rosenberg says no.' ‘The fluoridation is working.' ‘The Roswell prisoners are ill.' It's all Greek to me.”

As Spymaster Mary listened to my little speech, the smile I'd seen earlier started to return. I was hoping it would be a warmer smile, a more human smile, a throw-herself-into-my-arms-and-declare-her-undying-love kind of smile. But it was none of the above. It was a smug smile.

“And it will stay Greek, for the good of the cause,” she told me. “All I can tell you is this: That screenplay is the key to America's greatest secrets. It represents the accumulated work of our entire spy network here. How fitting it would have been to deliver it to our comrades overseas in the form of a Hollywood film—the ultimate symbol of Western foolishness. That can't happen now. But the script can still be smuggled abroad. With the information it holds, the Soviet Union will finally crush the United States like an insect.”

Under different circumstances, I would have swooned. Mary Smith—real name Maria Smithostovovich or some such thing—really knew how to get a red-blooded Red worked into a lather. But I'm not just Red. I hate to admit it, but under the surface I'm white and blue, too.

“Since you put it like that, it's no dice, sister.” I wanted to bite my tongue off with every word. Somehow I managed to keep going. “I'm a traitor to my class, but not my country. I'm not giving you that script.”

I didn't even get a raised eyebrow out of her, let alone a wistful tear. She simply pulled a revolver from her jacket and leveled it at me. My heart was broken. And in a second, it was going to be filled with hot lead.

“Now hold on. We can still talk this out, comrade.”

“You are no comrade of mine,” she hissed back at me. “You call yourself a Communist, yet you let nationalist loyalties come between you and your duty to the revolution. I should shoot you down like a dog.”

“But then you wouldn't get the other copy of the script.”

“Other copy?” The barrel of the gun wavered just a bit—from my heart to my gut. It wasn't much of an improvement, but I wasn't in a position to be choosy.

“When a typewriter key hits the ribbon, it leaves an impression. And I've got the ribbon from John Smith's typewriter. Or, to be more exact, a friend of mine has the ribbon. A blind friend. I gave it to him this afternoon after I left Smith's bungalow. He's had plenty of time to go over it. I'm sure he's got the whole script transcribed by now.”