Nothing More than Murder (3 page)

O
ur house, the show, I mean, is just four doors off of Main Street. On the corner, on our side and fronting on Main, is a dime store. On the opposite corner, cater-cornered from us, is the Farmers’ Bank. Down the street a block is the City Hotel, and next door to it is the bus station and a garage.

I’m not taking credit for picking the location, but I couldn’t have picked a better one if I’d done it. Any time you can get close to a bank, a hotel, a garage, a bus station, and a dime store—above all, a dime store—you’ve got something.

The average person might think a Main Street location would be better, but it wouldn’t. It’s too hard to park on Main.

I sat in the car a minute after I parked, feeling kind of good and proud like I always do when I look at the house. It’s not as big as some city houses, but there’s nothing to come up to it in a town of our size. And it’s my baby. I built it all out of nothing.

We’ve got a copper-and-glass marquee that you couldn’t duplicate for five grand, although naturally I didn’t pay that. I had the job done by an out-of-town firm, and it just so happened that they couldn’t get the work okayed by our local building inspectors. You know what I mean. So I settled for five hundred, and that, plus a few bucks for the inspectors, was all the marquee cost me.

The lobby is fifteen feet deep, spreading out fan shape from the double doors, with a marble-and-glass box office in the center. There’s a one-sheet board on each side of the box office, glassed in with gold frame. The lobby walls have a four-foot marble base. The upper half is glass panels for display matter, with mirrors spotted in every three feet.

There’s a carpet running from each door to the street.

That carpet would cost fifteen dollars a yard, but I got it for nothing. I was the first showman in this territory to lay a carpet through his lobby. I sold the equipment house on the idea, showed them how it would be opening up a big new market, so they put it in for me. Of course, I let them take a picture of me in front of the house, and I gave them a testimonial and an estimate on the number of miles that had been walked on the carpet without it showing any wear.

The house doesn’t have a balcony. The ceiling’s too low. I don’t mean we’re cramped. We’re twenty feet at the entrance, which is four feet higher than the average show ceiling. But it’s not high enough for a balcony.

We’ve only got a ninety-five-foot shot from the projection booth to the screen, and the floor can’t drop much more than an inch to the foot. I’d have to double the pitch for a balcony, and even now it hurts people’s necks to sit in the front row.

We get along pretty well without a balcony, anyway. I’ve got four rows of seats on tiers at the back of the house, extending up to the projection booth. Not full rows, of course, on account of the entrance and exit and the aisle down the middle from the booth door. It’s more like loges.

When I put them in my customer liability insurance jumped a hundred dollars a year, because you can’t tell when some boob might fall and break his neck. But the extra seating space is worth it.

Jimmie Nedry, my projectionist, was just making a change-over when I went into the booth. He started the idle projector and put a hand on the sound control. At just the right instant he jerked the string that opens one port and closes the other. He pulled the switch on the first projector, lifted out the reel of film, and put it on the rewind. There wasn’t a break of even a fraction of an instant. You’d have thought the picture all came in one reel.

“Well, Jimmie,” I said, “how’s it going?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, but I knew he was nerving himself up to it. I feel sorry for Jimmie. Any way I can I try to help him out. I’ve got his oldest girl ushering for me, and I use his boys as much as possible in putting out paper.

“Look, Mr. Wilmot,” he blurted out suddenly. “Grace and me were talking last night, and we was wondering if you couldn’t put her on selling tickets. She could sit down that way, and people wouldn’t see that she was—couldn’t see much of her. And—”

“I’d like to have Grace,” I said. “But you know how I’m tied up. I just about have to use women from the Legion auxiliary. If it wasn’t for that I’d jump at the chance to take Grace.”

“We got to have a little more money, Mr. Wilmot. If you could use the boys some on the door, or taking care of the—”

“I’ve got to spread that work around for the high school team. I’m doing all I can for you, Jimmie,” I said.

“Well,” he said. And he hesitated again. “I got to have some more money.”

“There’s no way I can give it to you,” I pointed out. “You’re classified as a relief operator. The union only allows me to work you twenty-four hours a week.”

“You mean that’s what you pay me for,” he snapped. “I’m actually workin’ about sixty!”

“That’s all I can pay you for,” I said. And it was true. The unions really keep an eye on social security records. “If you don’t want the job perhaps you’d better quit.”

“Yeah?” he grunted. “Where the hell would I get another one?”

“As a projectionist?”

“That’s my line. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done.”

“Well, that makes it tough,” I said. “If you had a couple grand for transfer and initiation fees, you might get into another local. But the chances are all against it.”

He gave me a sore look, started to say something, then turned back to the machines. I went back downstairs and outside.

I was standing out near the curb, just lighting a cigarette, when a big black roadster pulled up and Mike Blair got out. He was the last man in the world I wanted to see. He’s a business agent for the projectionists’ union, and I’d seen more than enough of him six years before when this town was in his territory.

We shook hands, neither of us putting much pressure into it, and I asked him where he was headed. He pushed his hat back on his head, taking his time about answering and giving me a mean grin.

He took the cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, and put it back in again.

“I’m already there, Joe. This town’s back in my district.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I mean—it is?”

“Nice, huh?” He waggled the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “In fact, it’s been back in my district for three days. I was over here last night, looking the old burg over, and the night before.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s funny I didn’t see you.”

“It’d been a hell of a lot funnier if you had. Don’t kid me, Joe. I like you in a nasty sort of way, but I don’t like to be kidded. You were out of town.”

“I couldn’t help it. I—”

“I don’t give a damn about that. You remember what I told you at the time I left here? What I told you a dozen other times?”

“Well—”

“I’ll tell you again for the last time. You’re an indie. You can run your own projectors and use a card man for reliefs, and we’ll carry you on the fair list. You do that or else. You do it or put two men in the booth. Full time.”

“Now, look, Blair,” I said, “let’s be reasonable about this. You—”

“We ain’t got time to reason, Joe. Jimmie Nedry’s already run over his twenty-four hours.”

“But how can I run the projectors and the house, too? Just show me how, Blair, and I’ll—”

“Maybe you can’t. I’ll send you down another operator, and you keep out of the booth. How’s that?”

He knew how it was without asking. Two full-time operators would cost me a hundred and eighty bucks a week.

“Look,” I said. “Where did you get that two men to the booth and ninety-dollar scale to begin with? I’ll tell you. Panzpalace framed it for you to freeze out city competition. They could carry four men at a hundred and fifty if they had to, but the indies couldn’t, so you guys threw in with them. I—”

“Look who’s talking,” he said. “Well?”

“I can’t pay it,” I said. “Goddamnit, you know I can’t.”

“Get up in the booth, then, and stay there. All but twenty-four hours of the week.”

“I can’t do that, either.”

He grinned, nodded, and walked off. I had to follow him out to his car.

“You’re going to pull the house?”

“You know I am, Joe.”

“After all I’ve done for union labor in this town, you’re going to—going to—” I couldn’t go on. The look on his face stopped me.

“Why, you chiseling son of a bitch,” he said softly. “You got the nerve to talk about what you’ve done for union labor. You get them to practically put you up a new house for nothing, and—”

“I paid scale all the way through the job.”

“Sure you did. With coupon books. And the coupons weren’t even good for full admissions; just a ten-cent discount. The boys put in an eight-hour day for you, and got out and sold tickets at night. That’s what it amounted to. They built you a new house and then kept it packed for you.”

“They all got their money. I didn’t hear any of them kicking about it.”

“Okay, Joe,” he said. “It’s none of my business, anyway. But this other is. You’re off the fair list starting tomorrow.”

Maybe you don’t know what it means to have a house struck in a town like ours. It means you settle fast or go broke. There’d be spotters from every local watching out front. Any time a union man or a member of his family bought a ticket, it would mean a twenty-five-buck fine for him. Consequently, in a place where everyone knows everyone else, there wouldn’t be any bought.

“All right,” I said. “But I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, Blair.”

“As many as you like, Joe.”

“When did your men take out cards in the bricklayers’ union?”

“Huh?” He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the job your boys did in the house over at Fairfield last week.”

“Oh, that!” He forced a laugh. “Why that wasn’t a bricklayer’s job. All it amounted to was putting a few bricks under the projectors. Leveling them up. They had to make a longer shot, see, and—”

“It was brick work, wasn’t it?”

“But the bricklayers couldn’t have done it. The operators had to!”

“Then you should have had bystanders in from the bricklayers,” I said. “You know what I think, Blair? I think the bricklayers are going to file a complaint against you with the state federation. I think that brick work at Fairfield is going to have to be torn out and done over by the proper local.”

He stopped grinning, and his face fell a little. “You get around, don’t you, Joe?”

“More than you’d think,” I said. “More than you do, apparently. Did you know that the projectionists at View Point installed over fifty seats in the house there?”

“Sure I know about it,” he snapped. “There wasn’t enough carpenters to do the job so the projectionists finished it up.”

“Why didn’t the carpenters work overtime?”

“Because the chairs had to be in for the night show!”

“I get you,” I said. “Rules are rules until they start pinching you. Then you throw them out the window.”

He stood at the side of his car, thinking, bobbling the cigar around in his mouth. The bricklayers and carpenters are our two biggest locals; they’re usually the biggest locals in any district. If they took a notion to—and Blair knew they would after I got through needling ’em—they could make him wish he’d never been born.

“Okay, Joe,” he said, finally. “Maybe I was a little hasty.”

“I thought you’d see it my way,” I said. “No hard feelings?”

“All kinds of ’em.” He looked down at my hand and shook his head. “I’m not through with you, Joe. Someday I’m going to hang one on you that you can’t squirm out of.”

O
ur house, our residence, sits out on the edge of town, almost a hundred yards from the highway. It’s all that’s left of the old Barclay homestead, just the house and a couple acres of ground and the outbuildings.

It was a little after midnight when I got there. I parked the car in the yard, in back of Elizabeth’s, locked it up, and went in the kitchen door. The coffee percolator was going, and there was some cheese and pickles and other stuff sitting out on the table. I went through the door to the dining-room and started up the stairs.

“Oh, there you are, darling!” called Elizabeth.

She was sitting in the living-room with a book in her lap, and the light turned low.

“Wasn’t it nice of me to wait up for you?” she said. “I’ve even fixed a lunch. I know you must be famished.”

She had on a little gingham house dress, and she was smiling, and for a minute I was crazy enough to think she wasn’t giving me a rib. Then I thought of all the times in the past she’d picked me up just to slap me down; and I went on upstairs without speaking.

I washed, combed my hair, and went back down again.

“All right,” I said, “spit it out. What’s up?”

“Don’t you want something to eat, Joe?”

“I’ve ate—eaten,” I said.

“Did you ate—eat—with Carol?”

“Pour it on me,” I said. “I’m used to it. Hell, how could I eat with Carol? I left the city this morning.”

“I hope you weren’t foolish enough to register in together, Joe.”

“No, we didn’t. I don’t know just when Carol registered. Just after the bus got there, I guess.”

She sat staring at me, not speaking; her head thrown back, her eyes half closed. I told her about the bonehead she’d pulled on the price of the ad; and she only shook her head a little, as if nothing I could say would be of any importance.

After a long time she said, kind of talking to herself, “No, it’s true. It
is
true.”

“What’s true?”

She held out her hand. “Let me see your date book, Joe.”

I tossed it to her. It fell on the floor and she picked it up. She turned the pages to the month’s bookings.

“I see Playgrand has been consulting you again,” she said. “I hope you received a suitable fee?”

“Those are good shorts,” I said. “After all, we’ve got to buy from someone, don’t we?”

“Now, what did we do at Utopian?” she said. “Did we give him a third of our feature bookings because he’s an old friend of ours? Or were we just a teeny-weeny bit—ah—intoxicated?”

“All right,” I said. “I do give my friends the breaks. What’s the difference as long as it don’t lose us any money? You never saw me lose money helping a friend, did you?”

“No, Joe, I never did. And you never lost any in striking back at any enemy. But tell me. What did they say to you at Superior? Didn’t they know you were the great Joe Wilmot—sole proprietor of his wife’s property?”

“They didn’t say anything. That was all the dates I had open.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, rahlly,” I said. “And I wouldn’t push that wife’s-property business too far. All you had when I met you was a run-down store building and a couple of hundred seats that weren’t worth the chewing-gum that was stuck on them.”

She shook her head, smiling that set, funny smile.

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Positively fantastic.”

“Goddamnit,” I said, “if there’s something there you don’t like, say so. We can change it easy enough.”

“But I do like it, Joe! I like—I wasn’t criticizing. I was only evaluating. Weighing things, I suppose you’d say.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “And that’s only half the story.”

“Stupid,” she said. “Yes, actually stupid. That with everything else. Vain, vindictive, lying, dishonest, a philanderer. And stupid. And yet—”

“You’ve left out a couple,” I said. “Repulsive and nauseating.”

She nodded. “Yes, Joe. I left them out.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, sitting there smiling at me, her hands caressing the arms of the chair.

“You’re slipping,” I said. “I’m going to eat something and go to bed.”

“Joe!”

I turned in the doorway. She was standing. It looked like she had started to follow me.

“Well, what?” I said.

“Nothing, Joe. I guess—nothing.”

I went on into the kitchen.

I fixed a sandwich and a cup of coffee. When I’d got away with about half of it the lights blinked, went dim, and came on full again.

It didn’t register on me for a second. Then it was as if something was holding me back when I tried to move.

It seemed like I was about to see something; I mean I could almost see what it was. And it scared me so badly my stomach rolled and my scalp crawled. I came alive and stumbled to the door. I half fell down the back steps and ran for the garage. I raced up the outside stairs and threw myself against the door.

The room was lined with sheet metal. Floors, ceiling, walls. The projectors and sound tables I’d got from Bower were stashed in a corner. In the center of the room was the metal film table, with a reel at each end and a quarter-horse motor at one.

There was a metal stool in front of the table, and Elizabeth was seated on it, bent over. Her face wasn’t six inches from the film that was traveling in front of her.

Two full reels were lying on the table next to the motor. They were partly unwound, and their ends dangled down into the open film can. There were seven more reels in it. It was a full-length feature, seven in the can, two on the table, and one in the rewind. A can with a two-reel travelogue and one with a one-reel cartoon were under the table. Close to Elizabeth’s feet. They were standing open, too.

The film was wet. As it passed through the reel it sent a fine spray over the motor. The spray formed a trickle that ran down the pear-shaped back of the motor.

The cord sparked.

The trickle of water seemed to catch fire.

There was a flash as if someone had tossed a barrel of yellow paint into the room.

I struck out with my hand, and something seemed to grab it and push my arm back into my shoulder. A streak of lightning shot across the table. There were a couple of pinwheels of fire at each end. Then, a loud
pop
and darkness; and the sound of the broken film whipping against the table.

And Elizabeth crying.

I found the cord and jerked it loose. I fumbled along the wall until I found the circuit breaker, and the lights came on again.

I turned them off and opened the door. I picked up Elizabeth and carried her back to the house and into the kitchen. I put my foot up on a chair, and pulled her over my knee, and whaled the tar out of her.

She stopped crying and laughing, and really began to cry.

Some way she got turned around and put her arms around my neck.