Death Was in the Picture (22 page)

“Laird is on contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,” I explained. “In Culver City.”

“Right. And I got to thinking it would be a pretty easy matter to get you behind the scenes there.” He spoke to Dex, but then seemed to include me almost as an afterthought. “Or both of you, if you wanted. Actually, figuring out what to do with her is even easier than you.”

“How so?” Dex wanted to know.

“Well, they’re always using extras, for one thing. Fact,
Journey of the Long Night,
the film I’m supposed be working on right now, is shooting and I know for a fact that they’ll have a need for a lot of young attractive female extras for that movie.”

I felt myself blushing—quick and hot.
Young and attractive
is what Laird Wyndham had said. And he’d said it about
me.
My head swam.

“What about me?” Dex asked.

“I figured it might be better for you to pose as someone whose role is behind the scenes,” Wyndham said. “I told you I have a lot of time to think, right?”

We nodded.

“So, Dex, I was figuring you could pose as a financier. Someone with money to spend on the business. People like that get an open door to just about anyplace they want to go.”

“You really
have
given this some thought,” Dex said.

Wyndham nodded and grinned. The cadaverous look he’d worn when we got there seemed to fall away a bit under this new animation. “Like I said … what else do I have to do?”

“That all sounds good. I mean, it sounds like we could get in there all right. Under the radar, like. What I need to work out is why.”

“Why?”

“Yeah. Like I said, it all sounds perfectly reasonable. That is, it sounds like something we could do. But I’m just not seeing how you figure it will help you.”

“Well, you said you wanted to talk to people. People who knew me, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m well known at the studio. I spend a lot of my time there. You could talk to people about me. Get the straight dope, as they say. And more, too, I’m thinking. One of the things you asked me first time we met was did I know anyone who had it in for me. Now I’ve been sitting here wracking my brain on that one, let me tell you. I can’t think of anyone. That’s the other reason I thought that you, a professional investigator, might be able to get more out of people than someone else could. And maybe you’d get a feel for it if, say, that someone had an axe to grind with me. Maybe even an axe I don’t so much as know about.”

“Actually, that does kind of make sense, Dex,” I said.

“I can see what you’re getting at, Wyndham. It’s just, this isn’t the sort of investigation I generally do. You understand that? I’ve already had to wear a mask. Now I’m going to have to play dress up? Play pretend? It all sounds a bit silly to me.”

“Well, maybe if I take you through it, tell you what I’ve dreamed up, you’ll see it’s not silly at all. See, for Miss Pang-born, she doesn’t really have to pretend anything, other than wanting to make some dough. It’s really just a matter of Steward telling her where to go and who to ask for. They hire extras by the busload at MGM. For you though, Dex, it’ll take a specific invitation. Steward will take care of that as well, of course. He’s done it before.”

“Helped people pose as something in the movie business?” Dex asked.

“No, no: introduced money people to studio people. On the up and up. So, you see, it won’t be much of a reach for him to do it in this case.”

“So, in a way,” Dex reasoned, “I wouldn’t have to really pretend to be something I’m not. I could just be me but rich.”

I couldn’t resist commenting on this.

“And that’s not pretending?”

“So you’ll do it?” Wyndham asked.

“Look, I’ll be honest. This kind of deep cover operation might look pretty in the movies, but in real life? It tends not to get you very far,” Dex said.

“So you won’* do it?”

“Well, I didn’t say that either. I’m just suggesting you not get your hopes too far up. I fully expect that the whole thing will be a big waste of time.”

Wyndham blinked first at me, then at Dex. He looked a little confused. Truth be told, I felt that way myself. But the disappointment had fallen away.

“So you
will
do it?” Wyndham said.

“Put it this way: you paying?”

Wyndham nodded.

“And,” Dex went on, “you’re prepared for us to turn up nothing at all. What I mean is: you’ll pay whether or not we find anything, right?”

Another nod.

“Well then, what the hell, right? If you’re buying, I’m selling. I guess we’re going to be in the pictures.”

DESPITE THE MATINEE idol looks he came by honestly, it was never in the cards that Dex should be a movie star. It’s even possible that the things about his features that women found compelling weren’t really the sort that the camera can pick up, that the things that burn in Dex, burn from within. How could a camera see that anyway?

No, if we were going to play this game, setting Dex up to be someone away from the lens was a good idea. He’s comfortable in all those roles: the watcher, the drinker, the guy who pulls the strings. He’d be less successful pretending to be the guy who dances to the music, the guy with the dangerous looks who does what he’s told.

We worked all of these things out at the office: me and Dex, Steward Sterling and Mustard, who Dex had asked to come along as extra eyes and ears.

We sat around Dex’s battered desk and tossed ideas around until deep into the night. I was tired and, truth be told, did less of the tossing than the others. It wasn’t expected of me, in any case. It was easy for me to lapse into the kind of silence I’d learned when I was a child and was often overlooked by adults deeply involved in their own conversations. So it was on this night.

Wyndham’s connections would, it seem, get us in just about any place we could ever want to go. Just as we’d roughed out in Wyndham’s company back at Number 11, the plan was for me to turn up at the studio the following day like any other extra, coming to the big front gates on Washington Boulevard with the others who were working on
Journey of the Long Night.
I would
be one of a huge crowd and thus the chance for detection was unlikely. It also seemed unlikely I’d ever be in a position to discover anything of note, but that was the chance I’d have to take. To me it seemed worth the chance, in any case: I’d get to see behind the scenes at the most important movie studio in Hollywood. And I’d get paid.

Dex’s part would require more finesse, which was fine by me. Sterling’s office was giving Dex a letter of introduction to the business office. He was going to roll up to the studio in a limo, posing as an investor—from Canada, of all places. So Dex would spend the day talking to bigwigs and getting the ten-dollar tour which would put him in a position to see all sorts of things and talk to all kinds of people. They decided that Mustard would ride along as Dex’s assistant—also from Canada, thus able to get to people and initiate conversations on a different social level than the ones Dex would be playing at. I was only sorry it was unlikely I’d ever be within earshot of the two of them to hear them overpronouncing words and showing off their legal whiskey, but there wasn’t much chance I’d even see them during the day, let alone get the chance to laugh at their antics.

Steward Sterling dropped me off on his way home to Hancock Park, the long Packard he drove reflecting the night.

“They seem quite filled with hilarity,” he said to me at one point on the short ride.

“Mustard and Dex? Yeah. And that’s not all they’re full of,” I said, thinking of the large quantities of bootleg bourbon they had made disappear over the evening.

“I just hope they take it seriously enough,” Steward said, sounding concerned.

“You can bet they will never take it seriously,” I assured him. “But that shouldn’t stop them from getting the job done.”

Steward laughed at this, but I thought he had a nervous
sound. Hoping for the best and expecting the worst, I would have said that summed up the lawyer’s mien on this night.

“You and Laird are pretty good friends, huh?” I asked, mostly just making conversation.

“Pretty good, yeah. We’ve known each other a long time.”

“He seems like a nice guy.”

“The best,” Steward said without hesitation.

“That’s how it seems to me, too. Which is why it’s been so odd, sometimes in this investigation, hearing stuff about him that doesn’t line up with how he seems.”

“How so?”

“A couple of people, I won’t mention any names, but a few of them have said, well, they’ve said Laird can have a bit of a temper.”

Steward didn’t answer right away. In fact, for a few moments, it seemed as though the road demanded all his attention, though from what I could see all was quiet and handling the car didn’t seem to be challenging his driving talents.

“That’s true of all of us, I guess,” he said after a while. But to me his voice sounded deliberately casual, as though he was working hard to inject just the right note. “Under the right circumstances, can’t we all be pushed to that?”

“That’s true. You’re right,” I replied. “That’s how it seems to me. This … this was a bit more than that, though. More than everyday aggravation, anyway.”

Another silence. Then, “Perhaps you’d best just tell me.”

“I can’t, really. I would but, as you well know, I’m nothing on this case. Dex’s secretary. Hardly in a position to tell you anything at all.”

“Yet you brought it up.”

We’d reached my house by now, though neither of us acknowledged that. Sterling pulled the car to the curb and we sat there, engine idling. Now Steward reached across me to the glove
compartment and pulled out a pack of smokes. He pulled one out and lit it in the mad glow of the car’s cigarette lighter. The light did odd things to his features. It seemed, for a moment, to pull them askew.

“I guess I did, didn’t I? Sorry. It’s just all so much on my mind just now. So you don’t think so, do you?”

“Think what?” Steward asked, rightly confused by the track change.

“Think Laird, you know,
did it.
You don’t even think he’s capable of it.”

“No. You’re right there. I know Laird pretty well—maybe as well as anyone—and I don’t think he’s capable of… well, of that.”

“Someone did it though.”

“Well of course,” said Steward, back on solid ground, “that’s what we hired you for.”

“He hit a woman,” I said it softly.

“Pardon?”

“I think you heard me.”

“All right. I did,” he admitted. “I just couldn’t believe my ears.”

“Couldn’t you? That surprises me. From what I heard, you knew all about it.”

“Hey, what is this?”

“It’s nothing, Mr. Sterling. Exactly nothing. Call it a probe, if you will. A test.”

“A test? How did I do?”

I opened the door in a single motion. Hopped out onto the curb.

“I’ll let you know,” I said, closing the door behind me, moving toward the house, not looking back.

It was after midnight when I let myself in. I was careful to be mouse-quiet and crept along the carefully oiled floors as soundlessly as possible. Though a part of me wouldn’t have been surprised
if Marjorie had waited up, I was hoping this would not be the case. I didn’t want to have to explain myself. I didn’t even want to have to talk anymore and I was more relieved than I would have thought to make it to my room without encountering anyone. In my room, I took off my shoes and sat at the very center of my bed with my legs crossed beneath me.

Sitting there, I calmed my heart; asked my pulse to be still. And I asked myself what I thought I was doing. No matter if Steward’s boss was shaping up to be a bit of a louse, it didn’t follow that he was a murderer. I’d had no business talking to a client like that, none at all. Especially since there had been no direction from Dex to probe in this way. Not even a single hint. Yet I’d wanted Steward to know what I’d discovered, at least the outside shape of it. I’d wanted to see his reaction when he heard the words, when I dropped my bomb.

What had I discovered with this little bit of independent detective work? As my heart moved toward its normal rate, I sat there and considered. When it came to me, it was humbling to realize, the only thing I’d discovered was this: I was not a shamus, a gumshoe, a P.I. If I were—and, say, if I were Dex—there might have been things about this interview with Steward Sterling that would have been enlightening. But I was no detective, and I certainly wasn’t Dex. If there’d been anything to discover in my talk with Sterling, I’d missed it completely.

WHEN I FINALLY fell asleep, it was not to peaceful slumber. Shadow figures followed me in and out of dreams. It was meaningless. Disconnected. I woke feeling less rested than I had when I lay down.

I contemplated going back to sleep, thinking it was still the middle of the night. But when I reached over and fumbled around on my nightstand for my alarm clock, I discovered it had fallen on its back like a sad little turtle. I righted it and gasped: It was six fifteen. I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep, but I’d slept longer than intended. I’d have to get the lead out if I was going to get to Culver City anywhere near the correct time.

By the time I got all organized with subways out of downtown and streetcars to Culver City it hadn’t gotten any earlier and when the Red Car disgorged me in front of the grand MGM gates on Washington Boulevard, it was close to eight.

“Extras is s’posed to get here at seven in the morning,” the guard at the gatehouse told me.

“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “That’s what they told me. But I slept in.”

The guy shook his head but let me pass, telling me to keep an eye out for Mary Watkins at Stage 17.

Watkins proved to be a rotund woman with a fluffy halo of yellow hair. A long cigarette dangled from her lip as she spoke and yellow stains on the index and middle fingers of her left hand told me the smoke wasn’t an aberration. Still, there was something warm about her. Something likeable.

“Krikey, but you’re late,” she admonished when she discovered who I was. She sounded lightly exasperated but not unkind.
I had the feeling this sort of thing happened on a regular basis and anyway, she told me, she was short a couple of girls.