One Deadly Dawn Page 4

  “Hell, you have no idea what I’m like. Besides, it’s the truth. He’s the living has-been. It’s in his face when he sells toothpaste on TV.”

  Her eyes flinched. She sighed. “It hasn’t been easy for him. He was never prepared for failure. He never really believed it when he was a big star, but he can believe it even less now that nobody — nobody wants him anymore.”

  “Nobody but you.”

  “All right.” She paced my bedroom, looking at the study of the nude starlet with the overwhelming bosom. “He needs me. As long as he does, I’ll be there.”

  “You’re just one overactive mammary gland,” I told her.

  Her voice sharpened. “Looks as if you rather like the type.” She let her gaze move over the nude again.

  “Vitriol poorly becomes you.”

  She laughed through her agony. “I’m sorry, Sam. You’re entitled to all the women you want — and they’d surround you even if you weren’t.”

  I glanced at her to see if she were giving me the jazz, but she was too full of her thoughts.

  “Just the same,” I said, “they have that story And they have a telegram that amounts to a threat.”

  “He might have sent a threatening telegram — ”

  “Yes, that seems a safe enough distance for him.”

  She shook her head again. “But it wouldn’t mean anything. He detests violence.”

  I laughed. “Well, that’s the kindly way to put it.”

  “No matter how you rip him to pieces, he’s still innocent. Not all men are like you, Sam, walking through life, taking what they want, getting more than their share.” Again her gaze brushed the starlets. “For a man like you, the world is his oyster. But poor Jack — he’s afraid of life. He can’t help it.”

  “All right, why didn’t you keep him home last night? Why’d you let him run around loose after dark like that? Didn’t you know he was liable to get hurt?”

  She twisted her hands. “I couldn’t do anything with him.”

  “Oh, come now, Mama.”

  “No. It’s true. He was all worked up.”

  “You knew he was going to see Pawley?”

  Her face got pale and she ran her tongue along her dry lips.

  “I knew.” That voice was deep in her throat. “Pawley had that transcontinental scandal. You remember it?”

  “Sure. Transcontinental comedy is what it was. The dame’s husband boiling through the train and Jack hiding and quivering under his suitcases.”

  She sighed. “It was a long time ago, long before Jack and I were married.”

  “You needn’t remind me, I was there. I was laughing so hard I missed part of the dialogue, but I was there.”

  Her eyes clouded with helpless tears. “That man tried to kill him.”

  “As I said, I know. I was there.”

  “All right.” Her tear-choked voice had a sudden bitterness I’d never detected in it before. “That’s the story Pawley had and Jack went down to see him about it. That doesn’t mean Jack killed him.”

  “No. But it gives the police circumstantial evidence. You know what circumstantial evidence is, Betty? It’s not evidence that might be true — it is evidence that must be true. The police can make quite a story against lover boy.”

  She walked to the window, watched the rain trace wavering patterns down the pane. She turned, looking at me through tear-brimmed eyes.

  “Not if you find out the truth, Sam.”

  “Me?” I turned from knotting my tie. “I’m a public relations hack. That’s what I was when you married me and divorced me. I haven’t changed. I’m no detective.”

  “Sam, you must help him.”

  “Why? Give me ten good reasons why.”

  “Sam, if they have a man like poor Jack, whom they believe guilty, they won’t look for another — the really guilty one. You know that.”

  I shrugged, finished knotting my tie.

  Her voice was throaty, low. “They believe that Jack is capable of murder. You and I know better, Sam.”

  “Yes. You and I know better.”

  “Sam,” she pleaded, ignoring my attempt at sarcasm. “Jack was bad, wild and dissolute. He was a lonely, neglected child, denied everything. Suddenly, because he had a good baritone speaking voice and was handsome, the movies made him rich and famous.” She touched her hand to her lips. “Women threw themselves at him. Everybody wanted to drink with him. He was a little god. Certainly he got into trouble. Any man would under similar circumstances.”

  I turned, leaned against the dresser, staring at her. I shook my head, feeling my mouth twist. “It’s lucky for lover boy he had sense enough to hang on to you, that he didn’t throw you back when you threw yourself at him … Now, look at you. Up here making excuses for him. He’s no good and never was, and you’re trying to make that look like an asset. You’ve no pride any more, have you?”

  “What does pride buy you?”

  “You’d forgive that poor helpless little fraud anything, wouldn’t you?”

  She came close to me, touched my tie, straightened it; with her it was the involuntary action of the eternal little mother.

  “You still hate me, Sam, for leaving you?”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. You could have a hundred girls just like me.”

  “We’ve been through that routine.”

  She pulled in a deep breath, glanced around the room that stayed sleek because it was scarcely lived in. Maybe she didn’t see it that way. Maybe she saw it as a smooth bachelor’s hideaway, in which this particular bachelor did most of his entertaining. I don’t know what she thought. At last she said, “I was a virgin when I married you, Sam.”

  “I never disputed that.”

  “I didn’t have to be. I had offers, propositions. It was just that when you came along all I could think about was sex … for the first time in my life.”

  “How kind of you to say this. Perhaps you’d be willing to give me references.”

  “You don’t need them. That’s just it. You never needed anything from me — not even that sex that you stirred up in my insides like something crazy.” She shook her head, making a violent motion of it, her dark hair dancing against her cheeks for that moment. “That’s not important. What is important, I never had even a casual affair with anybody the whole time I was married to you.”

  “No. There was nothing casual about the Roland romance.”

  “Damn you. I was faithful. You think everybody is just like you are. Jack and I had nothing — absolutely nothing — until after we were married. I’m not being a prude about it. I’m not trying to pretend that makes me any better than anybody else. It just happens to be the truth.”

  “How nice for Jack. I’m glad he’s everything you want and need.”

  She swallowed hard at that. For an instant her eyes flashed, but she was very calm when she spoke, at least on the surface. “There’s never been anyone but Jack.”

  “It’s no federal case.”

  “It is with me. I just wanted you to know.”

  “So now I know.” I wouldn’t look at her.

  “Sam … would you like me back?”

  “What kind of talk is this?”

  She let her gaze move around the pictures again. “I know you don’t need me. You never did. But it’s all I have to — to offer.”

  “You’re talking crazy.”

  “Am I? If you will find out who really killed Fred Pawley, Sam, find out for sure and certain that Jack didn’t do it — if you’ll save his life, I’ll divorce him. I swear it, Sam. You accused me once of walking out on you, hurting you. I don’t think anything was hurt but your pride. But if that’s what needs mending, I’ll make up for the way I hurt you.”

  I walked past her, back into the living room. Suddenly I hated the looks of this place, the smart furniture, the pictures, the rain at the windows like bars.

  “Sam.”

  “Sorry, I don’t put on a wife and
take her off like I do a rain slicker.”

  She moved after me, caught my arm. “All right, maybe you don’t want me. But you’ve got to help him. He couldn’t stand prison, Sam. He couldn’t face the — the gas chamber. He’d be alone and afraid. Help him, Sam. Whatever you do for him, I’ll repay you…. You won’t ever be sorry.”

  I turned to look at her, feeling the blast of my heart against my ribs, feeling the pressure of the walls against me, feeling the crazy way my lungs were bursting with air hunger.

  The telephone rang.

  It shrilled between us like a visible electric charge. I walked back into the bedroom, picked it up. I kept it in there because it seemed nobody ever wanted me until I’d finally gotten to sleep.

  “Hello,” I said.

  It was Gaye Bain, personal secretary to Yol Myerene, production head at Twenty Grand. She said, “Just a minute, Sam, Mr. Myerene wants to talk to you.”

  I heard a distant buzzer. Then Yol’s gentle old voice came through. “Sam, have you heard about Roland? Jack Roland? Remember him?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “He married my ex-wife.”

  “Of course, Sam. I’m sorry. Could you come over to my office at once? I’ve instructed Gaye to send you right in no matter what’s going on. Could you do me that favor?”

  I told him I could. I smiled, knowing he was sincere in asking me as a favor to come to his office. He was a very great man, with an honest humility.

  I hung up. “Sorry, Betty, something has come up. I’ve got to leave now.”

  “Blond, or brunette?”

  “The day is past when you could ask that. So, since I don’t have to tell you, it was Yol Myerene. It’s a command performance, in his office immediately.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you. There’s a lot more I’ve got to say.”

  I shrugged. “You can ride over to the studio with me. I’ll show you how movies are made. Cameras. Sound equipment. Big operation.”

  She tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “Sounds exciting,” she said. Her hands were trembling.

  Chapter Five

  TWENTY GRAND PICTURES is the last of the big companies with sound stages on Gower Street. It is no news to anybody by now that motion pictures are seldom made in Hollywood. Originally, Twenty Grand was just another one of the quickies infesting poverty row; a few quick returns, a solid diet of program pictures and westerns, and a few specials a year. And then one year a Twenty Grand picture won Academy and Photoplay awards; two of their films placed first and second in an exhibitors’ poll. Horatio Alger had moved to Hollywood. Suddenly Twenty Grand was a big company with money-saving know-how.

  I slowed down and would have shown my pass, but the guard grinned and waved me through. We went along a palm-shaded avenue with false building fronts stacked three deep.

  I stopped my car outside the publicity building. It had stopped raining but there was no sign of the sun.

  “You want to wait in my office?” I asked Betty.

  She nodded. “What I want is for you to hurry. I’m all sick inside, Sam. I won’t be any better until I can talk to you some more.”

  We got out and met a lush blond thrusting her breasts ahead of her through the glass doors. When she saw me, her eyes twinkled.

  “Sam, darling.”

  “Hi, Toni.”

  “Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting to see you.” Then she saw Betty and her gaze shifted; I’m certain she found Betty old — Toni Drake was nineteen, and Betty hadn’t been nineteen for seven years. Lord, where did the time go?

  I patted her shoulder. “Give me a call, Toni. I’m in one big rush.”

  I tried to move Betty forward as Toni Drake walked away from us. But Betty was looking after her, watching the gears mesh, the hips knead, the burnished hair glister in the sunlight.

  “Lovely,” Betty said. “She certainly carries a torch for you.”

  “Betty, you’ve skipped. The girl is a starlet. I’m a publicity man. Why wouldn’t she give me the old business? I pay no attention. Hell, remember the way it was with you seven years ago?”

  “I never looked at anybody like that — not until I was in bed with you that first time.”

  “So they work faster now.” I shrugged and moved her along the silent corridor to my office.

  Julie Ferman looked up and gave me a smile when we entered my outer office. My offices are small, but Julie was the lush sort that made the walls seem form fitting even in a big room. She had come to Hollywood for the usual reasons, and she had all the equipment except a voice. When she read a part, you were embarrassed for her. Julie was a sweet girl; she never “wasted more than one night crying over it.

  “Myrene has been looking for you,” she told me. She saw Betty behind me.

  “I’m on my way over there now, doll. Julie, this is Mrs. Roland. She used to be queen of this lot when being a movie queen meant something.”

  Julie gave her a smile and a quick appraisal. “Pleased, I’m sure.”

  Betty was looking Julie over. This was a cruise; Julie had been designed by somebody with a craze for long pleasure cruises, and they’d included lots of curves and hilly country.

  “Mrs. Roland will wait in my office for me while I’m over at Myerene’s office, Julie. Make her at home, will you? Get-her some magazines — not movie mags — and some coffee. Okay? I trust you.”

  I glanced at Julie; she was biting her underlip, and her smile looked pasted on. I shook my head and walked out. A man could go nuts trying to understand women in this town.

  • • •

  Toni Drake was poised against my front fender when I came out of the building, headed for Yol’s. At first I looked around for the still cameraman. It made a lovely picture.

  “Sam.”

  She came close to me, too close, and I could smell the warm, exciting odor of her. I felt the small hairs at the back of my neck tingle.

  “I won’t take but a minute.”

  “That’s all I’ve got, Toni.”

  She jerked her head toward the publicity building. “Who was the elderly lady with you, Sam?”

  I grinned at her. “That’s Jack Roland’s wife.”

  “Jack Roland?” A faint line appeared between her brows. “Who’s he?”

  “Baby, you are young.”

  “And you’re cruel, chasing married women while us single gals are panting for you.”

  I smiled. “You’re trying to tell me something. What do you want this time? More publicity pictures? More cheese cake? You want the cover of Photoplay?”

  She didn’t smile. “That’s not what I said.”

  “Baby, that’s never what they say. They always come in at an angle. They like to be subtle. Like to make old Sam Howell think he’s irresistible.”

  She drew a deep breath. “All right, you don’t have to tell me how many women you have.”

  “I wasn’t, sugar. I was telling you how old I am.”

  “Well don’t. If you were old, you’d be trying to prove you weren’t. Besides, you don’t have to tell me anything. You have my address and phone number. You could show me anything you wanted me to know, Sam.”

  I pressed my hand against her cheek, grinning at her. She was joking, she was giving me the old pitch, but nobody knew it better than I. I held my hand against her cheek and she pressed her face tightly against it.

  “Honey, if you ever saw me coming near your place, you’d yell for the cops.”

  I started walking away. Her voice was sharp. “You fool.”

  I grinned at her across my shoulder. “Toni, I guarantee you all the publicity you’ll ever want, and you don’t need, to con me for it. Frankly, I think you’ve got it.”

  “Sure. And I can keep it.” She spun on her heel and strode away toward the sound sets. I tried to remember what she was working in at the moment, but all I could think of was rehearsals for the new Ceil Bowne epic in which she had a part.

  • • •

  Gaye Bain was a few years older
than I, but she had a youthfulness that was hard to believe, especially when you realized she’d had this same job as secretary to old Yol for fourteen years. By now she was practically an unlisted executive with the company.

  “He’s been waiting,” Gaye told me. “He has something on his mind — can’t seem to concentrate on anything this morning. I’m glad you got here, Sam.” She paused before she opened the massive, gray oak door. “We never see you much any more, Sam.”

  “Things have been quiet,” I told her. “You know when the brass wants to see me … when they’ve got it up to here.”

  “You’re a good man.” She let her unenchanted gray eyes move over me. “And I speak from hearsay, of course.”

  “Why Gaye, I’d chase you all over town if I thought it would do me any good. You know that.”

  She didn’t smile. “I don’t know anything. Words are cheap. Action is what interests me.”

  She opened the door before I could say anything else. I was off balance when I entered Yol Myerene’s office.

  Since everything else in this business is the damnedest thing imaginable, let me tell you about Yol’s office first. Mack Sennett used to have an office in a tower so he could watch everything that went on in every part of his lot. In a modified-way, Yol Myerene used the same approach. His office on the top floor of the executive building had an entire wall made of glass, giving him a perfect view of the studio that had been his life for the past thirty-seven years.

  Yol’s office had been done by one of the studio’s interior decorators. It was all glass and polish, and the only comfortable piece of furniture was the old fashioned judge’s chair that Yol sat in behind his oversized, blond mahogany desk. There were no pictures of his stars on the three solid walls. There was a single Matisse on one, and on his desk was a framed photograph of his dumpy wife and three stout daughters. Not even the swankiest beauty salons could do anything for those girls; but Yol loved them, and the stupid men they had married were one day going to inherit his fortune.

  Yol Myerene was a bald, gray man who had something of Laemmle, Zukor and Mayer about him. He was some years younger than those boys, but he had fought the battles with them and was scarred. He was not physically a big man, but he had something more, a way of carrying himself. He knew all that anyone would ever know about making pictures economically, but was not cheap in any personal way. He never stinted on the things that counted, but a one-story set was likely to be cut and trimmed to the inch in his studio.