The Blue Movie Murders (10 page)

“And Sloane's murder?”

“I know nothing about that, unless Tanner and the strikers killed him for some reason. They're the only violent elements in Rockview at the moment.”

“Sloane's coming to Rockview had nothing to do with the strike. I don't see how you can blame his death on it.”

Verry's steady, circuitous driving had brought them back within sight of the Rockview Motel once more. It seemed perfect timing for Mann, who signified the conversation was at an end by drawing a thick envelope from his pocket.

“It's been a pleasure chatting with you, McCall. We'll drop you here and go on our way. But I'd like you to have this. A little something for Governor Holland's next campaign fund.”

McCall ripped open the sealed envelope and saw a thick wad of fifty-dollar bills. “I didn't figure you for a bribe,” he said, dropping the envelope on the seat between them.

“It's not a bribe, merely a contribution.”

“Keep it. I have a feeling you'll be needing it for lawyers' fees.” He climbed out of the car and waited while it sped away.

It was almost four by the time his plane landed at La Guardia, and he phoned Sloane's secretary from the airport to say he'd be a little late. Manhattan traffic, never easy to cope with, seemed especially heavy on this bright May afternoon, trapping his cab in little pockets of frustration that crept along at a turtle's pace.

But when he reached the office of Sloane Enterprises, Suzanne Walsh was waiting for him. She seemed younger and somehow more alive in this environment than she had been in Rockview during those first hours after Sloane's murder.

“The traffic is terrible at this time of the day,” she agreed, leading him down a long carpeted corridor. “I'm sorry you had to fly all the way in from Rockview for this, but I just couldn't face another trip up there.”

“How long did you work for Ben Sloane?”

“More years than I like to remember—or admit. Probably close to ten now. He was out in Hollywood, at Fox, in those days. When the studios started cutting back, he did some television over at Universal before finally setting up Sloane Enterprises. And I followed along, all the way.” Her round face glowed at the memory as she motioned him to a seat in a plush oak-panelled conference room. “He was lucky, of course—or something more than lucky. He survived by spotting trends early, almost before they became trends. His youth pictures, his Academy Award winners, came at just the right time. I think he was a genius in his own way.”

“And he recognized the same sort of genius in this Dahlman film?”

“I think so, yes. I think he viewed it as the sort of thing he might have done in his own youth.”

“Did he?”

“What?” she asked, not understanding.

“Is there any possibility that Sloane himself might have been Sol Dahlman?”

“But then why would he be looking for Dahlman?”

McCall shrugged. “A publicity stunt, perhaps. Stranger things have happened.”

“But twenty years ago, when
The Wild Nymph
was made, Mr. Sloane was already an established producer and director.”

“Not in sex films.
The Wild Nymph
couldn't have been made the regular way, under Hollywood conditions. If a man of Sloane's ability wanted to make it, he might have done it in exactly this way.”

Miss Walsh shook her head. “No, you didn't hear him talk about the film as I did. It wasn't his, but he really wished it had been.”

She moved to a projector at the back of the room, a 16mm. sound unit with a large reel of film already in place. A half-dozen other film reels were piled near it on the conference table. “How long does
The Wild Nymph
run?” he asked.

“A little over an hour. I had it spliced into one large reel so we can view it without interruption. I saw parts of it today for the first time myself, and I can assure you, Mr. McCall, it's quite an experience.”

She dimmed the lights and flipped on the projector, and McCall settled back in the padded conference chair to watch. The first thing he saw was a grainy shot of a landscape at dusk, and he realized at once that the quality of the photography and processing was not up to Hollywood standards. Xavier Mann's colour film had been no world-beater twenty years ago, whatever its quality might be today. But as the dusky landscape dissolved to show the opening titles he gradually became aware that this was far from the usual stag-smoker fare.

The Wild Nymph
, the credits read simply,
a film by Sol Dahlman
. No cast was listed, no writers or technicians. The story which unfolded was a simplistic one, telling of the brief but passionate love affair between a locomotive engineer and a wild passionate girl he encounters one day in the woods. The director had obviously been strongly influenced by the novels of D. H. Lawrence, and the simple story line of the film was embellished by several sequences of bold erotic imagery. McCall felt the sleeping animal within him waking at the scenes of lust intermingled with the touches of poetry and true romance. If the imagery was sometimes trite—as when a quick cut from a climactic love scene showed the engineer's train plunging into a darkened tunnel—more often it rang with a trueness and beauty that astonished him. McCall had seen a good many blue movies in his day, but never one of such quality and essence.

He became aware, as the film progressed, of the heavy breathing on the other side of the table. He wanted to chuckle, or crack a joke—anything to break the swelling tension—but he could not. His eyes were riveted to the screen, as were those of Suzanne Walsh. They saw the leading man, sunlight glinting off his nude body, and the girl he loved running naked through the woods to join her lover at the edge of a pool, and it might have been Adam and Eve meeting for the first time. As they made love, rolling over and over on the ground, the girl threw back her head in moments of pure ecstasy. The scene came on again, and again, as the director repeated himself, reprinting the same strip of film with dazzling effect.

Finally it ended, and McCall rubbed his sweating palms against his trouser legs. A simple story, of love and loss, but surely it was something of the masterpiece Ben Sloane had claimed it to be. Suzanne Walsh switched on the lights and stood facing him. Her round face was flushed with something like embarrassment, and her eyes were shimmering.

“It's quite a film,” she said.

“It's all of that,” McCall agreed. “I can't imagine what they made out of it on the stag-smoker circuit.”

“It's after six. I have to be going.”

“Let me buy you dinner for your trouble. You've been a great help to me.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I don't suppose Sloane had any leads on the actor and actress in that film.”

“No, none. You probably saw a glimpse of the Mann Photo plant in one scene, though, as the train went by.”

“I caught it.”

But McCall was not interested at that moment in the setting for
The Wild Nymph
. Rather, he was pondering the faces and bodies of the two young people he'd watched on the screen for more than an hour. The face of the man, who was bronzed and muscular and the very image of a character out of Lawrence, was something of a blur, a face that to the best of his memory he'd never seen before.

But the girl was something else again. Twenty years was a long time, and people changed, but he'd be willing to make a small wager that the face and body of the girl he'd watched on that screen belonged to Mrs. Xavier Mann.

TEN

Friday, May 14 and Saturday, May 15

Over dinner and a bottle of lightly chilled white wine, McCall asked about the chronology of events prior to Ben Sloane's death. Suzanne Walsh sipped her wine, touched a napkin to her lips, and told him about it.

“As you know, we left Dora Pringle's party in the capital at about 6.30 or seven o'clock. Mr. Sloane was driving, and he drove fast. We chatted a little about the party and the people we'd met there, the way people always do. It must have taken us nearly two hours to drive up to Rockview that night. I know we checked into our rooms around nine.”

“There was some confusion about that. Apparently the motel misunderstood my phone call for reservations and they'd only saved one room for us. Mr. Sloane thought it was pretty funny, but we got it straightened out finally. He left me in the reserved room and took another for himself. The deskman thought he was in the original room and I was in the second one.”

McCall nodded. “That explains the confusion of room numbers. Go on.”

“Well, we ate dinner and then he told me he was going to telephone some of the men we'd sent letters to, and I suppose he did. But I'd had a long day and I went right to bed. My room was about three doors from his, and in the morning just after I woke up, I heard what might have been two shots.”

“What time was this?”

“Shortly before eight. I didn't think much of it at the time. You always hear noises in hotels. But after I dressed I phoned his room and there was no answer. I went down the hall and knocked on his door, but there still was no answer. I knew he wouldn't have gone out without telling me, so I phoned downstairs and got the manager. We opened the door and found his body.”

“What time was this?”

“About nine o'clock.”

“There was no sign that the door had been forced?”

“None. Mr. Sloane knew his murderer—or at least was expecting a visit at that hour of the morning.”

“Which gets us back to the letters and phone calls. You said there were several letters.”

“Four. As I told you the other day, Xavier Mann received one, and the mayor, and a couple of police officials.”

“Can you remember the exact names?”

“I think so. Xavier Mann, Mayor Frank Jordan, Police Chief Walter Burns, and State Police Major Philip Hart.”

McCall nodded. “I've talked to Mann and Jordan. It seems that Burns simply passed his letter on to Lieutenant Powell. That leaves Major Hart. I'll try to see him tomorrow.”

“I heard the Lieutenant say that Chief Burns was away at a police convention. I don't know about Major Hart.”

“He's around. He phoned the Governor to report the killing.”

“You can't think one of them killed Mr. Sloane?”

“It's hard to say. The word could have been passed along. Mann, for example, might have mentioned the letter to his wife, or to his plant manager.”

“What motive could his wife have?”

McCall decided not to tell her. He shrugged and said instead, “You'll keep that film in the safe?”

“Don't worry. Nobody will steal it.”

“Good. It could be of use later on.”

“You're going back up there?”

He nodded. “In fact, I have to catch a plane an hour from now. You'll excuse me if I dash off?”

Her round face bobbed up and down. He wasn't certain if the expression of seeing the film had aroused some sensual tiger deep in her, but he wasn't about to stay and find out. Suzanne Walsh just wasn't his type.

The small airport at Rockview was almost deserted when the plane from New York settled on to the runway at a little after eleven that night. McCall strolled quickly across the waiting room, heading for the lot where he'd left his car. A familiar voice halted him at the door.

“Mike! Over here!”

He turned to see April Evans running towards him. She wore bright red slacks and a tan car coat open in front. He didn't mind seeing her in the least. “Aren't you up late?”

“I wanted to meet you. But I'd just about given up hope. That was the last flight from New York.”

“My business took longer than I'd planned.”

“Got time for a drink?”

“Maybe. Back at my place. That hotel of yours gives me the creeps.”

She glanced towards the parking lot. “I have a car that I rented—”

“I'll bring you back for it, later.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

On the way back to the motel they passed a little carnival with a carousel and a few other rides. It seemed a sure sign that summer was not far off, and it gave McCall a feeling of rebirth.

They had the drink in his room, and then they had another one. Halfway through the second, April asked him, “Do you know why carousels always move in counterclockwise direction?”

“No. Tell me.”

“It's because the very first carousels were training horses for young European princes. They rode the wooden horses and learned how to handle a lance against small rings that served as targets. Since most of the young lancers were right-handed, the carousels were turned in a counterclockwise direction by their servants.”

He chuckled and put down his glass. “That may be the clue that'll crack this whole case.”

Then he went to bed with her.

In the morning he remembered that he hadn't called Governor Holland to report on his conversation with Xavier Mann. But he decided it might be better to wait until he'd had an opportunity to confront Mann's wife. Instead of reaching for the phone he walked to the window and stretched cat-like in the morning air, filling his lungs with the sweet scent of spring.

“Are you trying to freeze me out?” April complained from the bed, snuggling back under the covers.

“Don't you know it's spring?” he answered with a grin. But he closed the window and started to dress. They were on the second floor. The rooms occupied by Sloane and his secretary in the other wing had also been on this floor. The killer could hardly have entered through the window of Sloane's room, so that left only the door. And, as Miss Walsh had told him, that meant Sloane had known or at least expected the person who killed him. He glanced towards the door, trying to imagine what circumstances would have caused him to open it before eight in the morning.

“What are you thinking about?” April asked, finally venturing out of the rumpled bed.