The Blue Movie Murders (8 page)

“They don't want trouble,” MCall said. “Nobody wants trouble but you. I'd guess you got them into this strike, and you can't stand alone.”

“I can damn well stand alone,” Tanner growled, and broke free from McCall's relaxed grip. He dived for the gun and yanked it from the striker's hand, whirling in the same motion towards McCall. But Jack Kozinski was faster. He fell on the big man, wrestling for the weapon. Tanner brought the barrel down with a glancing blow to Kozinski's scalp, but the youth hung on.

At that moment, as McCall struggled to separate them, another car turned into the dirt road. This time it was Lieutenant Powell, and he pulled up with a screeching of brakes and a cloud of dust. The other strikers ran for the field, leaving McCall struggling with Tanner and Kozinski.

“What's all this?” Powell barked. “What's going on here?”

McCall sent Tanner toppling to the ground and stood over him. “I want this man locked up, Lieutenant. Three times in two days is more than I have to take. Lock him up or we'll probably kill each other.”

Powell frowned uncertainly. “Are you pressing charges, McCall?”

“You're damn right, I am. Assault with a deadly weapon, among others.”

Powell helped Carry Tanner to his feet. “I'll have to take you in,” he said, almost apologetically.

McCall and April had gone to Jack Kozinski, who was holding his head where Tanner had grazed him with the pistol. “We'll get it washed off,” April said. “It doesn't look deep.”

“Take him with you!” Tanner spat. “He was always on your side anyway.”

Powell pushed Tanner towards the squad car, anxious to avoid further trouble. As he got in he called to McCall. “You'll have to come downtown and press charges.”

“Don't worry. I'll be there.”

When Powell had backed out to the highway they helped Kozinski into the other car, with April behind the wheel. “I'd better take him to the emergency ward, in case he needs stitches. You go on down with Powell and get that gorilla locked up.”

“I will.” McCall watched until they were safely on to the highway, then backed his own car out.

It might have been a council of war that assembled in McCall's motel room later that night, even though there were only the three of them present. Jack Kozinski wore a small adhesive bandage where the hospital had taken three stitches, and April Evans sat next to him chain-smoking cigarettes. McCall paced back and forth as he brought them up to date on developments.

“Tanner's locked up, at least overnight. A lawyer can probably get him out on bail tomorrow, but for the moment he's on ice. If Xavier Mann's negotiators move fast enough, perhaps they can settle the strike while he's behind bars.”

“There are others,” Kozinski said. “It's not that simple.”

“Did Tanner have anything to do with Sloane's murder?”

Kozinski shrugged. “I don't know. Until tonight I never would have thought him capable of murder.”

“Yesterday he tried to assault a black striker, George Watts.”

“I know Watts. He's a good man.”

“What did Tanner have against him, besides his colour?”

Kozinski shifted uneasily, touching fingers gently to the bandage on his head. “I don't know. I never heard anything except plant gossip.”

“And what was the gossip?”

“Well—the usual things. Watts was getting too much money. You know.”

“But there had to be something more. Watts as much as told me there was.”

“I …”

“Something about the movies they made there. You know about the movies, don't you, Jack?”

Kozinski hung his head. “I heard some of them talking.”

“Tell me.”

“George Watts was in one of them, because they wanted a big black man making love to a white girl.”

“I see.” McCall heard a suppressed gasp from April. “Go on.”

“Well, you know Tanner. First they take the jobs, and then they get paid for making love to white women. He couldn't take that standing still. He was out to teach Watts a lesson.”

“Did you see this film?”

“No.”

“Who was the girl with Watts?”

“Some prostitute from downstate. They used to bring girls in regularly.”

“Who brought them in?”

“The people that made the films.”

“I need names, Jack.”

“Ask Watts, not me. All I heard was talk.”

“Xavier Mann?”

“Yeah, sure. It couldn't have gone on all this time without him knowing about it.”

“Mayor Jordan?”

“Maybe, years back.”

“Sol Dahlman?”

“I told you, I never heard the name. It was before my time.”

“Did Tanner ever mention Dahlman?”

“No.”

“All right,” McCall said. He glanced at his watch. It was past ten o'clock, but he thought there was still time for one more visit. “Do you know where George Watts lives?”

“Sure. Over in Camptown, the other side of the city. You don't want to go over there, though. Not this late at night.”

“I'll take my chances. Give me the address, and then April will drive you home.”

“What about me?” the girl asked.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” McCall told her. “But there are some things won't wait. I want to see Watts while Tanner is still locked up.”

EIGHT

Thursday, May 13 and Friday, May 14

His dashboard clock showed a few minutes before eleven as McCall pulled up and parked in front of the address Kozinski had given him. It was a single house crowded in among its neighbours, with a grassless yard that had once been protected by a low picket fence. Now, in the too-bright glow of the overhead street light, there was nothing but a yard full of hard-packed dirt and a shadowed house with a tilting front porch.

As he mounted the steps and reached out a hand towards the doorbell, a rasping voice commanded, “Put your hands nice and high, or you're a dead man.”

McCall strained to see beyond the curtained window into the blackness of the room. “Watts? Is that you, George?”

“That's me, and I got two barrels of a shotgun aimed right at your gut.”

“This is McCall. Don't you remember? We talked yesterday.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Look, George, I've got news for you. Tanner is in jail. You've got nothing to fear now.”

“In jail?”

“That's right. At least for a day or two. And when he gets out on bail he's not about to stir up any more trouble right away.”

“So you came here to tell me that?”

“I want to talk with you, George. You'll remember our conversation was interrupted yesterday.”

“Go away. Not now.”

“There's no better time than now. Let me in, George.”

There was silence for a long moment, as the black man behind the curtain considered the request. Finally he said, “All right. But no tricks now.”

McCall heard the click of the door being unlocked and opened and then he stepped into the darkened house. “Are you alone here?” he asked.

“I sent the wife and kids to stay with her family for a few days. Anybody toss a fire bomb at this house during the night they'd all be dead in five minutes. I don't want that.”

McCall seated himself gingerly on a lumpy sofa. There was the flare of a match across the room, and he saw George Watts' pushed-in nose and gleaming teeth as the black man lit a cigarette. The shotgun was resting casually across his knees, pointed at the far wall. “Why would they toss a fire bomb at you, George?”

“You know why. Same reason Tanner tried to bash me last night.”

“Because you were in a film with a white girl, George?”

The room was dark again, but McCall heard the squeaking of springs as he shifted position on the sofa.

“Yeah, I figured you knew. I was goin' to tell you last night anyway. I don't want any of that business. I shouldn't of done it anyway.”

“What—made love to a white girl?”

“Hell no! Let them take pictures of me doin' it! Them dirty movies—they're no good.”

“Tell me how it was, George. Who approached you? How did it happen?”

“I guess it was about three months ago, during the winter. I'd heard about the movies. Word like that gets around. They used to shoot them after hours, up in the film-test studio. It was a real organized business, and they'd mostly bring in actors and actresses from New York or other places. Sometimes they even got people from Hollywood who wanted to do work on them.”

“Directors?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, like I say, they used mostly out-of-town people, but once in a while if they needed somebody special for a certain role they'd get a local guy. They asked me back in February, I guess.”

“Who asked you?” McCall cursed himself for not bringing his tape recorder along.

“I guess Tanner knew about it, but he didn't ask me. It was the plant manager—Chuck Verry—who said they needed a black actor. At first I didn't understand what he meant. Sometimes I know they use blacks to test the film, to see if it'll photograph them all right. You know, the lighting has to be different and stuff. The guy that directed me was complaining because blacks are hard to light for colour film, especially in scenes with white folks.”

“You're getting ahead of yourself. Just what did Verry offer you?”

“Five hundred dollars for one night's work. Hell, I couldn't turn that down—not and come home to my kids and this house.”

“Was Xavier Mann in on this?”

“He never showed, but we all knew it was his money behind the thing.”

“So you did it.”

Another match flared, and McCall saw the black face nod. “I did it. One night around the first of March. Verry told me to stay on for some overtime work. Then he took me upstairs to the colour labs and the studio. There were some people I didn't know and a photographer who works for Mann. They had a big movie camera, and they fooled around a long time with the lights. This girl came in. She was young and good-looking, but sort of hard. She didn't even speak to me before the scene. It was just a job to her.”

Watts paused and McCall had to urge him. “Go on.”

“Well, they told me to take off my clothes. There was this big brass bed in the room, and a set that looked like an apartment. The girl got into bed, and when I was naked they turned on the big overhead lights. Oh, they knew all the tricks. They even twirled hollowed-out ice cubes around her nipples, to make them stand up. And they sprayed me with stuff to make my skin shine.”

“How long did they film you?”

“It went on till after midnight. They said the picture would run over an hour, but there were other parts of it shooting on different days. They just wanted me for the colour of my skin.”

“How did Tanner hear of all this?”

“Maybe the cameraman mentioned it. Chuck Verry wouldn't have told.”

“The film was processed in the plant?”

“Sure. They have a special line for the test stuff and it was run off there. They made maybe a hundred prints of those pictures, and sent them all over the country.”

“Would you be willing to testify before a grand jury, and in court, if we find a law's been violated?”

“I don't know. I got plenty of trouble already.”

“You'd be protected. Your family would be protected.”

“I'd have to think about it,” Watts told him. “Hell, man, I could be dead by tomorrow.”

“I don't think you will be.”

“Ben Sloane's dead.”

“But for a different reason.”

“What reason?”

McCall grunted. “I wish I knew.” He got to his feet. “I'm going now. Will you be all right?”

“I'll be all right. I got me a gun, right here.”

“You have to sleep sometime.”

“I sleep sittin' up.”

“Well, Tanner won't bother you tonight, if that's any consolation.”

He left by the front door, and heard George Watts slam and lock it behind him.

In the morning the phone was ringing, and he knew before he answered it that Governor Holland was calling again. “Mike? How are things going up there?”

“Just fine, Governor. I think we've got a breakthrough.”

“On Dahlman?”

McCall sat up in bed, glancing at his watch. It was 7.45. “I don't think Dahlman is that important, Governor. I think Xavier Mann and Mann Photo are the key to the thing, and I've found their weak spot. I have a witness who actually participated in the making of a sex film at the Mann plant.”

“That sounds good, Mike.”

“Xavier Mann's been financing the films himself, probably most of his life. I don't know what charge we can get him on, with the obscenity laws the way they are these days. But he must have made a great deal of money out of it over the past two decades, and I'd be willing to bet he hasn't paid taxes on a nickel of it.”

“You think Sloane's murder is tied in with all this?”

McCall sighed. “That's the one blind spot as of now, Governor. I must admit my lines of investigation have been leading me more towards the blue-movie business than towards Sloane's murderer. Maybe the two are tied together, maybe they're not.”

“But he was killed soon after he arrived in Rockview. That must indicate something.”

“As far as I've been able to discover he never left the motel on Tuesday night. He made a few phone calls and someone came by early on Wednesday morning and killed him.”

“What could he have discovered that soon?”

“Maybe we've been looking at the whole thing backwards, Governor. Maybe he was killed for something he already knew. Maybe he was no stranger to Rockview.”

“What do you mean, Mike?”

“It's just a wild idea at this point, but let me pursue it. Let me hire a man I know out on the coast to dig into Sloane's background.”