Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7) (13 page)

If I were a betting man, I’d have to say that it wasn’t the first time the lights had ever gone off in the Canestoga Hotel because the shouts of confusion had barely stopped when Clyde Snapp was in the dining room with a box filled with kerosene lamps.

“Just a power line down, folks,” he said. “It should be fixed soon. Meanwhile, we’ve got some emergency lights here.”

I lit one and put it on the bar, and he lit another and put it on the table where Dahlia was sitting with Harden and Quine.

“There’s candles in all the rooms for emergencies,” he said to me. “I’m just going to put these lamps on the landings and I’ll tell everybody where the candles are.”

“You need any help?” I asked.

“Np.”

Drinking in the dark isn’t a bad experience. Smoking in the dark is worthless because, without seeing it, you can’t really taste the smoke. But vodka, I found, is vodka no matter what the lighting situation is. It’s one of those things that are good to know.

Outside, the lightning finally seemed to be subsiding and the rain was lessening in intensity.

Sheila Hallowitz came into the dining room, saw the people sitting at the table, and came to sit at the bar with me.

She looked nervous as she said, “You mind if I join you?”

“Of course not.”

She giggled nervously. “All my life I’ve been afraid to be alone in the dark. And that candle doesn’t really help in the room. I thought I’d hang out here with people until Biff comes back or until the lights come on.”

“No explanation necessary,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”

“Sure.” She thought for a moment. “How about Seven and Seven.”

As I made the drink, I said, “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

“How can you tell?”

“By the drink. No one who really drinks drinks Seven and Seven. It’s a kid’s drink, the first thing they learn to order because they think it makes them sound grown-up. And it’s sweet, to boot.”

I handed her the drink just as a gale of loud professional laughter came from Dahlia Codwell at the rear table.

“Seem to be enjoying themselves, don’t they?” I said.

“I guess so,” she said.

“But why do I get the idea that those two men are being conned by that woman?”

Sheila stared at me for a moment and then suddenly grinned, an honest smile that made her look pretty in the flickering light from the kerosene lamp. “Because you’re absolutely right. They are,” she said. She sipped from her glass cautiously, as if it might contain battery acid.

I had made the drink weak and it apparently passed muster because she smiled again. I waited for her to say something. Most people are made nervous by silence, and if you wait long enough, they’ll tell you things they didn’t really want to tell you, just to fill up the dead air.

“Dahlia’s trying to get her part puffed up,” she said.

“Sounds like she’s succeeding,” I said as another burst of laughter flitted across the room.

“She’s just spinning her wheels,” Sheila said. “Biff will be the judge of who says what and where the camera is.”

“I thought producers just signed checks,” I said.

“Not Biff. Not the new wave of producers,” she said. “These are people who’ve written scripts and learned to direct, so when they produce a movie, make no mistake, they’re in charge of everything about it. Dahlia’s wasting her time.” She had a vague accent-free voice that I thought stamped her as a native Californian. “Anyway, Arden won’t do anything to expand her part. He’s crazy about Tami.”

“I didn’t know she was Polish,” I said.

“Polish? What do you mean?”

“I thought only Polish starlets went out with the screenwriter,” I said.

“Oh, I get it. Little joke,” she said, but she didn’t laugh. I didn’t think there was much of a sense of humor there. “Arden actually discovered her, working in his lawyer’s office. He was doing a small movie for an independent producer and he insisted she get a bit part. Well, she got some work after that, one of the jobs in another movie he wrote, and he’s been chasing her all this time. He thinks she has some kind of obligation to him, and she doesn’t see it that way. But that’s why he acts crazy when he thinks she’s with McCue or anybody else.”

“The kind who’d kill for jealousy,” I said, and she nodded.

“Is he a good writer?” I asked.

“Mr. Tracy, my degree is from the University of Chicago in classical literature. I find it hard to call anybody who writes films a good writer.”

“Then no one likes him or his script. Why do you keep him around? He sure isn’t exactly a bundle of fun.”

“Would you mind if I had another drink?” she said.

“No. Sure.” I got up to make it for her. “You were saying?”

“Arden is bankable. People will put up money if they see his name involved with a film.”

“Even if his script is lousy?”

“Being bankable has nothing to do with talent. Some people get a reputation for being bankable even if they’re involved in nothing but flops. You get a better reputation being involved with a sixty-million-dollar movie that lost fifty-nine million dollars than you do if you were involved with a two-million-dollar movie that made ten million dollars. Try to figure it.”

“Too tough for me. I’m an Easterner. So his name has raised the money you need for the movie?”

“Well, his and Jack Scott’s have helped,” she said.

I made the drink twice as strong, and when I set it down in front of her, I said, “Last couple of nights, I’ve noticed Scott. Is there anything wrong with him?”

I watched her closely: her lips tightened and she seemed to be biting down on the inside of them.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I don’t know. We talked a little, but he didn’t seem pleased. He always seems like something is wrong with this film.”

Sheila didn’t answer right away. Then. she shook her head and sipped her drink. “He’s never mentioned anything wrong to me. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.”

She looked away but I saw a tear glistening in the corner of her eye, an orange dot illuminated by the kerosene lamp.

“Where you come from, do people always cry when nothing’s wrong?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her left hand. “Sorry. Just some personal problems,” she said. “Nothing to do with the movie. I’ve got to go now. I’m not feeling so good.” She stood up and swayed slightly, “I don’t know if I can really walk. I don’t ever drink.”

“I’ll help you up to your room,” I said. I led her up the two flights of steps to the suite she shared with Birnbaum. He was not in the room and the door was unlocked. A two-inch-thick candle burned on the dresser. I helped Sheila to the sofa and asked, “Will you be all right here?”

“Sure. I feel better now.”

“Okay. Have a good night.”

Just as I was backing out the door, the lights came back on.

“Thank God,” Sheila said.

“I can also pull rabbits out of hats,” I said.

“Fixing the lights is good enough. Thanks very much.”

As I walked back down the hall, the door to the last of the rooms opened and Tami Fluff looked out. She was wearing a long blue satin robe.

I nodded, not knowing what to expect.

But she smiled at me. “Hello, Tracy. Produce any good movies lately?”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “You know it wasn’t my doing.”

“I know. What are you doing now?”

“Walking down the hall, basically,” I said.

“Come on in.”

“Is it safe?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want Harden swinging his typewriter and kneecapping me.”

“He’s a great argument for pest control, isn’t he? Come on in.” She closed the door behind me and locked it. “There’s no significance to the door being locked,” she said. “I just don’t want Arden crashing in here without an invitation.”

“He does that, huh?”

“He thinks he owns me. You know he had nothing to do with me getting the part in this picture.”

I shrugged. I didn’t really know anything, and in truth I didn’t really care.

“He didn’t,” she said. “I auditioned and got it before he even knew about it. Birnbaum signed me. You want a drink?”

“Do I look like a drinking man?”

“All I’ve got is Scotch.”

“Do I look like a nitpicker? Scotch away.”

She had a refrigerator, I noticed. My room must have been part of the Canestoga Hotel ghetto. She had a refrigerator and McCue’s suite had a refrigerator. Maybe everybody did except me. No, I decided. I hadn’t seen a refrigerator in the suite Sheila shared with Birnbaum. That eased the pain a little.

She popped ice into two hotel glasses and poured Scotch over them. “Here,” she said, walking toward me. Her sleek legs peeked out from the front opening of the robe and I hoped this would not be a seduction scene. I was going straight. Why didn’t people believe that? Did I look like the kind of person who never went straight?

I took my glass and she said, “Well, here’s to Hollywood.”

“Here’s to you,” I said. “I hope dis pitcha makes you da biggest star in da whole foimament of Hollywood.”

“God, you sound like every casting-couch producer who ever lived. Any reason you wish me good luck?”

“Because I suspect that you’re the only person here whose success I wouldn’t resent,” I said.

She was still standing in front of me, uncomfortably close. “That include Tony?”

“I can’t wish him stardom. He’s already got it, and good for him. He’s a big kid but not malicious. But the others? That’s a different story.”

“You mean you don’t like Arden Harden, the Bard of Beverly?”

“A little nasty for my taste,” I said. “And the Brit with the wooden teeth acts like Nigel Bruce doing Watson. I wish the rock
had
fallen on his head. And I think Birnbaum’s a dork, and Scott and his wife look at me like I’m a leaky garbage bag that has to be taken out.”

“You must like Dahlia, though. She’s made a career out of getting men to like her.”

“She’s a user,” I said. “She’s downstairs now trying to get Harden and Quine to puff up her part.” I looked hard at her face for a reaction, but there wasn’t any.

She sipped her drink, then said, “She can have Harden and Quine. I’d rather have Tony on my side.”

“Is he?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I talked to him last night. He likes me better than he likes Codwell. I think he’ll resist any changes that give her a bigger role than me.”

“Good. Then I guess it was worth it.”

“What was worth it?”

“Sleeping with him,” I said.

She looked at me as if to see if I was bluffing. Then she nodded and said, “It sure was.”

“Thanks for the drink,” I said as I got to my feet.

She leaned forward against me. “Do you have to leave now?” she said.

“No, but I’d better,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because if I wait any longer, I don’t think I’ll be able to leave,” I said. “You’re very beautiful.”

“You have a woman?” she asked.

“She has me,” I said.

“She must be special.”

“She is. Very special. And I can’t stop drinking for her and I can’t stop smoking and I won’t exercise and I can’t stay out of trouble for her, but at least I don’t have to go around screwing around behind her back.”

“How very old-fashioned,” she said.

“I’m stuck with it,” I said. “At least this week.”

“If you change your mind, let me know.”

I nodded and walked out, feeling very righteous. And very stupid.

In the hallway, I met Clyde, who was picking up the kerosene lamps he had placed on the landings. He looked at me and winked. Somehow that made me feel even worse.

I was starting to worry a little. It was past eleven o’clock and no sign of McCue. I stood at the front door of the hotel, but his Rolls-Royce wasn’t in the parking lot. Then I saw Pamela Scott’s head appear from between parked cars and she walked toward the front door.

I held the door open for her. “Hello, Mrs. Scott.”

“Hello,” she mumbled. She was still wearing all that heavy makeup she’d worn for dinner.

“Nice night finally, isn’t it?” I said, but she didn’t answer as she walked away toward the stairs.

Well, hell, it
was
a nice night. The storm had stopped and the weather seemed warmer. I strolled out to the front gate and tried to talk to the guard for a while, but he hadn’t seen McCue since dinnertime, and I wasn’t a star and so he was more interested in reading his
Playboy
magazine than talking to me.

When I got back to the hotel, I saw Clyde Snapp crouched at the rear of a Cadillac in the parking lot.

“What’s up, Clyde?”

“Just changing a tire. Mrs. Scott noticed she had a flat.”

“Don’t let me stop you.” I hate changing tires and I hate even thinking about changing tires. Idly I decided to stroll the grounds a little.

The moonlight was hard, brittle, as I picked my way along the path behind the hotel, strolling down toward the lake.

In the clearing where Quine had been injured, the big round rock still lay. It had been up on top of the ledge for what…Snapp said sixty years. Now it” was down here and it’d probably stay
here
for sixty years, unless somebody had a good reason for moving it.

I scrambled up to the top of the shelf the round rock had fallen from, and squatted there, feeling the rock’s wet surface with my hand, thinking myself pretty much an idiot, because what could I hope to find?

The moonlight made the world look dead, I was thinking, and then I heard someone walking along the path, below and to the right of me. The moon passed behind a cloud and the night suddenly grew very dark and for a moment I don’t think I would have minded carrying Sarge’s big elephant gun.

Whoever it was was in the small clearing below me. The cloud swept clean the face of the moon and it seemed to shine brighter than it had before.

I looked over the edge of the rock and saw the face of Pamela Scott looking up at me.

“Hello, Mr. Tracy,” she said. She smiled; her teeth glinted like Dracula’s in the high moon’s light.

“Mrs. Scott.”

“Pamela, please,” she said. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

There was silence for a while and she said, “Are you coming down or am I climbing up there?”

I came down the side of the rock to the small clearing, and she said, “I thought I might as well enjoy the peace and quiet now. Once they start shooting next week, this place will be filled with platforms and lights and power lines and stuff. It’ll look like a freight yard.”

“It might be fun to watch,” I said.

“I guess so,” she said. “I was going to walk down to the dock. Walk along with me?”

“Sure,” I said.

We stepped side by side along the broad path and she pulled her light raincoat tighter around her.

“You know you’re the only precinct I haven’t heard from,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard what everybody else thinks about this film, except for you.”

“What
does
everyone else think about it?”

“They all seem to think that it’s an awful screenplay,” I said.

“Well, Jack and I don’t. Oh, sure, it needs some work. But we think it can be a blockbuster. We’ve got all our personal resources in this film. That tells you how serious we are about it.”

“By resources, you mean money?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“I thought producers never put up money. That you let other people take the risk.”

“And sometimes, if not enough of them are willing to take the risk, you have to commit yourself to it,” she said. “That’s what we’ve done. If Jack seems a little abrupt sometimes, now you know why.”

We had reached the dock and stood at its base looking out over the lake. Only the ripples reflected the moon-beams, like light peeking through rips in a piece of black fabric.

Pamela Scott shuddered from the cold.

“I’m surprised it was hard to raise money for this film,” Trace asked. “I thought with Tony McCue’s name, all you had to do was spread the word.”

“Sometimes it works that way, sometimes it doesn’t. This one didn’t, so we had to pick up the slack,” she said. “If it works, we’re golden. If not…Well, there’s always the typing pool to go back to.” She shivered again. “I’m cold,” she said.

“I am too,” I said. “The next time we make this trip, we’d better remember to bring a Saint Bernard with brandy.”

We walked back slowly and I left her at the front door to their suite.

A flight up, I heard voices and I paused on the landing to listen. They were coming from Tami’s room, and since I couldn’t hear well enough, I walked over closer to the door.

I recognized the voices as Tami’s and Arden Harden’s.

“I think you’ve got an obligation to me,” he said. There was an angry edge to his voice.

“I think you’re dreaming. Arden, you helped me get started. For that, thanks. But that’s all. No more. Don’t think there should be any more because there won’t be any more.”

“So you’re just going to sleep with anybody you think can help you,” he said.

“Something like that,” she agreed.

“You’re a bitch, Tami. Just a bitch. I’d like to wring your neck.”

I waited for a moment in case he tried to wring her neck, but instead I heard her say, “You ought to get out of here. Now.”

And he said, “I’m going. But I won’t forget.”

And I took off and ran up the steps to the next floor. The lock was still on Tony McCue’s door and I was beginning to think I should have gone with them, after all. For all I knew, Ramona Dedley was a whacko drunk driver and they were lying, pieces of unrecognizable chopmeat, in a ditch somewhere.

I walked back to my room just as Harden turned the corner.

“Oh, you,” he said.

“Just turning in,” I said.

“Did Pamela Scott find you? She was up here looking for you.”

“Yeah. I found her. Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” he said, went into his room, and slammed the door.

I lay down on the bed just to rest for a while and fell immediately asleep. Later, I heard a sound and glanced at my watch. One-forty A.M.

I shook my head to wake up. The sound was Tony McCue and he was singing:

“You can tell a brute who boozes.

By the company he chooses.

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.”

“Shhhhh.” That was Ramona Dedley’s voice.

They were in the hall. I heard thumping on the door of his suite and knew what had happened. The idiot, naturally, had lost the key to the lock. I got up from the bed and fished the spare padlock key from my jacket pocket and went out into the hall.

McCue was seated on the floor in front of his door, legs outstretched on the worn old carpet. “It’s no use, Ramona,” he said. “We’re hopelessly lost. Are you sure this is my room?”

Ramona saw me coming toward them and shrugged.

“Trace, old buddy,” McCue said. “Let’s have a drink.”

“You mean you left some in the world?” I said.

“Do I detect pique? Is that pique?” McCue said.

“That’s the grumble of a man who wants to get some sleep.” I reached over him and unlocked the padlock and stuck it and the key in my pants pocket.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

McCue wrapped both his arms around my left leg.

“Don’t leave me now,” he whimpered. “She wants to do terrible things to me. Help me. Save me.”

“Remington Steele episode. July 26, 1986. Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist,” I said.

“Aaaah, you’re a pain in the ass.” He waved an arm at me in disgust. “You know when you’re grown-up?”

“When?”

“When your friends don’t want to come out and play anymore.”

I looked at Ramona. “Can you handle him?” I said.

“I’m used to it,” she answered. “No problem.”

“Get some sleep, Tony,” I said.

I went back into my room, undressed, and turned off the light. Through the wall, I could hear McCue roaring.

“Not a goddamn ice cube. Just piss-warm water in the bowl. What kind of hotel is this?”

“If you want ice cubes,” she said, “you have to put water in the tray.”

“Bullshit,” he shouted. “That’s woman’s work.”

“Tony, come to bed,” her voice answered softly.

“Without goddamn ice for a goddamn drink, what goddamn choice do I have?” he yelled.

Then all was quiet for a while and I thought they had gone to sleep.

Then I heard Ramona cry out, “Oh Tony. Yes, yes.”

With all that booze in him too. Who ever said a movie star’s life was easy?