Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer (14 page)

“I’ve already got one made. It won’t be released till around Christmas. Another musical.”

“And after that?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“It’s going to be pretty good.”

“What is?”

“Janis Whitney,” I said. “In Charles Anstruther’s
The Winding Road to the Hills.
That’s the deal, isn’t it? That’s what you got for your money, isn’t it? That’s how Walter talked you into this in the first place. Anyone who buys the film rights to the book has to agree that you play the lead. Isn’t that it?”

Janis finished her third drink. “You’re damn right, darling,” she said. “You’re damn right.”

We ordered a fourth drink. I was feeling lightheaded.

“Nothing changes,” I said. “Everything stays the same. It seems like it changes but it never does.”

Janis nodded and seemed to know what I was talking about better than I did.

“You think you’ve changed, but you haven’t. You’re
prettier now than you were. And you’re a better actress. And you’ve got that goddamn southern accent. Where did you get that? I happen to know you were born in Utica.”

Janis smiled. “Max. Max invented the accent. Max invented me.”

“The hell he did,” I said. “I invented you.”

“Max figured out the accent. It’s distinctive. It’s not straight southern. Just a trace. Like I’d worked hard to lose it. It’s a very special accent. You can recognize it anywhere. And the best thing is it’s easy to imitate. Every cornball mimic in every broken-down nightclub can imitate three people: Hepburn, Bette Davis and me. Max’s idea.”

We ordered another drink.

They were putting tablecloths on some of the tables now, setting up for dinner.

“I owe everything to Max. He helped me. He got me jobs. Introduced me to people.”

“Nice people?”

“That’s Hollywood,” Janis said. “He invented my accent. He loaned me the money to pay the diction teacher. He got me into musicals. He made me take dancing lessons. Paid for them. He made me what I am today. I hope you’re satisfied.”

I suddenly realized Janis was a little drunk.

“Maybe we’d better get out of here.”

“One for the road,” Janis said. I signaled the waiter. “I can get sixty-five thousand bucks a picture for musicals.
I can’t get a dramatic part if I work for nothing. That’s the way it is out there. I’m a hell of an actress. I’m the best damn actress in the whole bloody world. But you’re trapped. They get you in a sixty-thousand-dollar-a-picture trap. You get rich, but you can’t get out of the trap. But I’m out of the trap now.”

“Buying the Anstruther book was Max’s idea?”

Janis nodded.

“Have you read it?”

“Of course. It’s a great part. A French girl in Paris during the war. She’s the mistress of a big Nazi. But she falls in love with an American aviator. She dies in the end. It’s a hell of a part.”

“Is it a good book?”

“How would I know?” Janis said. “It’s a great part. They want it for one of the glamour girls.” She laughed. “They’ll be surprised.”

“The book is a fake,” I said. “You know that, of course. Jimmie and Walter wrote the book.”

She nodded.

“It’s a great part,” she said. “That’s all I know. That’s all I care about.”

“I hope you win an Academy Award.”

“I will,” she said very seriously. “I will.”

We had another drink. We didn’t discuss the point. We just had another drink.

“What makes Walter think Max murdered Anstruther and that girl?” Janis said. “And what makes him think I was there when he killed Anstruther?”

“Walter is fabulous.”

“No, I mean it. What makes him think so?”

“You know Walter,” I said. “He has such a nasty mind. The story is that Jean Dahl was in Anstruther’s hotel room the night he shot himself. The doorbell rang and she ran into the other room. While she was in there she claimed to have heard you come in. She said she heard you argue with Anstruther. Then the doorbell rang again, and Max came in. She heard Max kill him a few minutes later.”

“That’s pretty good identifying, darling, only I wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t think you were,” I said, “but I thought I might as well mention it.”

Janis looked at me.

“Darling?”

“Yes?” I said.

“Did you mean it when you said you were still in love with me?”

I nodded.

“I’ve changed some. But you haven’t.”

“Nothing changes, really.”

“I love you, Dick.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“I’m drunk,” Janis said. “You got me drunk for some nefarious purpose.”

“Come on,” I said, paying the check.

Janis’ face had relaxed. The tension had gone out of it. She held onto my arm until we were out in the street and had hailed an empty cab.

I gave the driver my address.

Then I kissed her.

“Oh, darling,” Janis said.

It was dark as the cab pulled up to my front door.

But not too dark to see the police car parked in front of the house.

“Keep going,” I said to the driver. “Don’t stop.”

“What is it, darling?” Janis said.

“Nothing,” I said. “A little confusion. I saw someone I didn’t want to see. Let’s go somewhere else.”

The cab hit Madison Avenue and swung uptown.

“Where to, mister?”

“A good question,” I said. It seemed as if cab drivers had been asking me where to, mister, all day. And I never seemed to know.

“What is it, darling?” Janis said.

“A little trouble. Nothing serious. Can you think of some place we could tell this nice man to take us?”

“Walter’s?” Janis said. “He’s got people for dinner. We could have the upstairs to ourselves.”

I gave the driver Walter’s address.

Then I kissed her again.

The cab pulled up in front of Walter’s, when I remembered something else. “Keep going, driver,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” the driver said.

“There was a little trouble when I left here, too,” I said to Janis. “If I remember correctly I threw a drink at Walter, socked Jimmie, and kicked the butler.”

“You have had a busy day,” Janis said. “Did you hit
him? Walter, I mean? You said you threw a drink
at
him. You didn’t say if you hit him.”

“Right in the mouth.”

“Wonderful. You’re wonderful. Kiss me again.”

“It was nothing, really,” I said. “It was point-blank range. It would have been hard to miss. Much more skill involved if I’d tried to miss him, actually.”

“Where can we go?” Janis said.

“Just turn the corner,” I told the driver. “We’ll get out around the corner.”

The cab pulled to a stop near the service entrance.

“This is O.K.,” I said.

I paid the driver and we stood on the sidewalk without moving until he turned the far corner onto Madison Avenue and disappeared.

“Here we go,” I said.

We walked casually up the alley to the service door. In front of the door I stopped, caught Janis’ arm and pulled her close to me. I tilted her head back and kissed her.

When the kiss was over I said, “Say, what the hell is your name, anyway?”

She laughed.

“Come on,” she said. She caught my hand and together we picked our way through the darkened basement. The elevator was in use.

I pushed the button and after a long time it appeared. We got in, and I pushed the button to the fourth floor.

“Try to look inconspicuous,” I said. “Damn these open grillework elevators.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Janis said. She caught me and pulled my face down to hers.

We held the clinch all the way to the fourth floor. Both our faces were hidden.

On the second floor I heard a woman laugh and say, “Aren’t they cute?”

But no one paid any attention.

Not at Walter’s.

We got out on the fourth floor. The corridor was empty. Still holding hands, we dashed down the corridor. From below we could hear the sounds of Walter’s guests.

Inside Janis’ room, we locked the door.

“The stronghold of the enemy,” I said. “Is there a drink in the place?”

Janis went to the bar.

“Champagne, brandy, or gin?” Janis said. “Take your choice.”

I found two large snifter glasses and poured the brandy.

I lifted the glass and drained it.

It was beautiful brandy.

Then I looked at Janis. She did not look well. The first swallow of brandy must have started the trouble.

She drank the rest of the glass and then I could see there was going to be real trouble.

“Oh-oh,” Janis said. Her face was pale. “Too many
drinks on an empty stomach. Too many drinks.”

“Sit down,” I said. “Take it easy.”

“I don’t think so, darling.”

Then she dashed for the bathroom.

I followed her. “I’ll hold your head. I’m getting to be an expert at this,” I said.

“Get out of here, darling,” she said desperately. “Please get out.”

If people didn’t want expert advice and assistance it was all right with me. I left her alone.

I sat down, poured myself another drink and waited. Then, from the bathroom, I could hear that everything was going to be all right.

I sat down on the bed, took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves. Feeling very much at ease, I sat back on the bed and sipped the brandy.

Then I jumped up as if I’d been shot.

I got up off the bed and walked to the mirror over the vanity table. It looked perfectly innocent. Just like any other mirror.

I wondered, however, if Walter were sitting on the other side of the wall watching me.

I looked at the mirror and very clearly and very slowly, moving my lips so that they could be read even if the microphone was not on, I said a short phrase that used to be unprintable. I said it again.

Then the bathroom door opened.

Janis looked pale but she looked better. The crisis was obviously over.

She had brushed her hair, freshened her face, and was wearing a white terry-cloth shower robe.

“I’m all right now,” she said, “but I think maybe I better lie down a minute.”

I helped her and she sank weakly onto the bed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. I lit us cigarettes and we smoked in silence for a moment or two. Then I reached down and took her hand.

“Darling,” I said, “I love you. But I’ve got to know the truth. I have to know. Were you with Max that night at Anstruther’s?”

She looked up at me and when she answered there was no question in my mind that she was telling the truth. “No,” she said, “I wasn’t there.”

“Then you think Jean Dahl was lying when she said she heard you and Max?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Somebody knows,” I said fiercely. I caught her by the shoulder. “Somebody must know. Somebody’s lying. And I don’t think it was Jean Dahl. If you weren’t the girl with Max, who was?”

I pulled her to a sitting position.

Some of her color had come back.

“It’s hot in here,” she said. She pulled the shower robe open. She was not wearing anything underneath. She was very beautiful. I held her by the shoulder. I was trying to think. There was something she had said before that I’d forgotten. Something I wanted very much to remember.

It was something about nightclubs.

“What about nightclubs?” I snapped.

“What?”

“What about nightclubs? You said something about nightclubs.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Darling, you’ve got to remember.” I shook her. “What was it? What was it you said?”

Then I remembered what it was she had said.

“You said imitators in nightclubs. They imitate Hepburn and Davis and you. You said your phony accent was easy to imitate.

“What we’re trying to find out,” I continued, “is this: Who the two people at Anstruther’s were. Now maybe the reason we’re having so much trouble trying to figure out who the two people were is because there weren’t two people there at all.”

I let go, and Janis sank back to the pillow.

I began to pace back and forth across the room.

“Look,” I said, “who set up this crooked deal in the first place? Who’s really got the most to gain in all of this?”

I was beginning to shout a little now.

“Look,” I said. “Walter cooked up this deal with Anstruther. Now, then, when Anstruther took off with the check, all three of you were out looking for him. Only the person who found him first was Walter. Not you and Max. Walter knew that Anstruther wasn’t alone in the apartment. Jean Dahl worked for Walter.
It figures that Walter knew she was there. And he knew she was listening to everything that went on.

“You say your voice is easy to imitate. Well, I’ve heard Walter imitate it. I’ve heard him do it. He does it perfectly. I’ve heard him do Max, too. There weren’t two people there. There was just one. It was Walter doing two of his famous imitations. Anstruther was so drunk that it wouldn’t have bothered him if Walter had thrown in imitations of Hepburn, Davis, and Lionel Barrymore. Walter was the two people Jean heard murdering Anstruther.

“All right then, what was the motive? First of all, the motive was nearly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Walter got that. Look, look! Add this up. Maybe Walter already knew there was no book. Maybe he knew that all the time. Maybe the whole thing was a swindle that he and Anstruther cooked up to take you and Max for a hundred thousand dollars. How about that? But then he thought to himself, Why just stop at the hundred thousand? We can hit the jackpot. We can have the book, too, and make a million. And so he suggested to Anstruther that he let Jimmie write a new book.

“Now Anstruther was a bum. But he wasn’t that much of a bum. He wasn’t going to let somebody ghostwrite him a new book. So Walter had to face the fact that there wasn’t going to be any new book. The only way Walter could have a new million-dollar Anstruther book was over Anstruther’s dead body.

“And that’s the way he got it. It wasn’t hard for him to make it look like an accident. And in case the accident thing ever fell through, he had a witness planted who would be able to swear that you and Max were there. He really had this thing worked out.

“But then his hot witness turned out to be just as crooked as the rest of the people in this deal.