by Bill Crider
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“Mr. Lorre will be joining us,” Bogart said before the waiter could get away. He’d made a call of his own before we’d left his place. “You know what he wants.”
The waiter turned back, nodded, and left.
“I really must see to the dogs,” Romanoff said. “Good day to you, my dear Bogie, and to you, too, Mr. Scott.”
I said good day, and he walked toward a small table, the dogs following dutifully.
“He’ll feed them their lunch there,” Bogart said. “They eat better than most people in this town.”
“He’s quite a guy,” I said.
“He’s a fraud, but I like him. He entertains me. He’s had more aliases than I’ve played parts.”
“He’s good at his own role,” I said. “He’s very good.”
“You couldn’t ask for better,” Bogart said.
“Class. He seems to have it.”
“He doesn’t, though,” Bogart said. “I do, and I know what it is. He’s a good actor, but he doesn’t have real class.”
I didn’t say anything to that because he was probably right. One thing I knew for sure was that whatever class was, I didn’t have it.
So maybe I couldn’t recognize it, either.
The waiter came back with a martini for Bogart and one for me.
“I can’t use mine,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Bogart said. “I can.”
I pushed it over to him just as Peter Lorre joined us. I thought maybe Bogart would offer him my drink, but the waiter appeared with a bourbon and water and set it in front of Lorre, who at least waited until after Bogart performed the introductions to have a sip of it.
He was round and short, sad-faced and soft. Even his voice was soft. Just like in the movies. He had large dark eyes and thinning hair.
“So, Mr. Scott,” Lorre said after sipping his drink, “you’re a detective. What has our Bogie gotten himself into now?”
“He said you knew all about it. It happened yesterday outside this restaurant.”
“You mean that most unpleasant man who wanted to sell what he called information? I told Bogie he should have called for the police.”
“He didn’t call for the police, though, did he.”
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It wasn’t a question, but Lorre was going to answer me anyway.
He clammed up, however, when the waiter arrived with a plate of bacon and eggs for Bogart and one for me. He set them down in front of us and moved off.
“Sometimes I like a lamb chop or a hamburger,” Bogart said. “This week, it’s bacon and eggs.”
“There’s nothing like bacon and eggs to set off a martini,” I said.
“You got it, Junior. Dig in.”
I wasn’t ready to dig in. I wanted to finish my conversation with Lorre. I said, “You were just about to tell me what happened when Mr. Bogart didn’t call the cops.”
“None of that Mr. Bogart crap,” Bogart said. “Call me Bogie.
Everybody else does.”
That was fine with me, but what I wanted was an answer to my question. Lorre gave it.
“He told the unpleasant man that he’d kill him if he ever bothered him again.”
As if telling me had made him thirsty, Lorre ducked his head and took a drink of his bourbon.
“And what did Mr.—Bogie—tell you on the phone this morning?”
“Only that he wanted me to meet him here because there was a little problem to discuss. He mentioned a detective, but I didn’t know why he needed one. I still don’t.”
“Did you read the paper this morning?”
“No. I seldom read the papers.”
“Well, that’s all right. I just happen to have one with me.”
I’d torn the front page off the paper and brought it along. I took it out of my inner jacket pocket and unfolded it. Then I smoothed it on the table and handed it to Lorre.
“Your eggs are getting cold,” Bogart told me. “They’re not very good even when they’re hot. When they’re cold, you won’t be able to eat them.”
I thought he might have a point, so I shook on some salt and pepper and started eating while Lorre read the article. The eggs weren’t all that bad, but the bacon was a bit limp.
“There is no picture of the victime,” Lorre said when he’d finished reading. “Am I to assume that the dead man is the one who accosted Bogie yesterday?”
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“You can assume whatever you please,” Bogart said. “But it’s the same guy, all right. I can guarantee it.”
He didn’t say why he could give such a guarantee, and Lorre didn’t ask. He knocked back the rest of his bourbon and looked around for the waiter, who seemed to appear out of thin air with a fresh drink already in his hand. He set it on the table, and Lorre took a deep swallow.
“There’s no mention of you in the article,” Lorre said when he’d fortified himself.
“The cops don’t have any reason to give his name to the papers,”
I said.
“Yet.”
The police were always willing to play along with the studios up to a certain point. The point wasn’t always the same, but we hadn’t reached it in this case.
Bogart had finished with his breakfast, and he’d started on the second martini and a Chesterfield for dessert.
“And did you kill him, Bogie?” Lorre asked. “This Burleson, I mean.”
Bogart blew out a stream of smoke and said in the same lousy British accent he’d tried in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, “I did, old boy. Hit him squarely between the eyes with a stale crumpet. It was either him or me, you see.”
“You shouldn’t tease me, Bogie.” Lorre’s voice turned sinister. It was still soft, but it had an edge like a steak knife. His sad face became sinister. “You know I don’t like it.”
Bogart laughed. “You never could take the needle. You need to stick around Junior here. He doesn’t let things like that bother him.
Right, Junior?”
“Don’t call me Junior,” I said, trying to sound as much like Lorre as I could.
I wasn’t even close, but both Lorre and Bogart got a laugh out of it. Bogart was quick to tell me I’d never make a living doing impres-sions.
“That’s why I’m a shamus,” I said. “Now let’s get down to business.
Who else was there when you told Burleson you’d kill him?”
“As I said, I don’t remember. That’s why I called Peter.”
Lorre lit a cigarette of his own, breathed smoke, and said, “I don’t 63
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remember much about who was there. Nobody we know, I’m sure, or I would recall.”
“Nobody who’d have any reason to hurt Bogie for any reason?
Frame him for murder, maybe?”
“Who would want to do that? He’s such an amusing fellow.”
“Not to everyone,” Bogart said.
“Mr. Warner, for example,” Lorre said. “You don’t amuse him most of the time.”
“But he wouldn’t frame me for murder,” Bogart said. “At least I don’t think he would. All right, Shamus, since my lead didn’t pan out, what does the Detective’s Handbook say we should do next?”
“We talk to someone else,” I said.
“Who?”
“We might as well start at the top,” I said.
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CHAPTER
13
When Thomas Wayne built Superior Studios, he was widely regarded as a snotty upstart who wouldn’t last long.
One reason was that nobody was exactly sure where he’d gotten his financing. The most popular rumor was that it came from the mob. For all I knew, that was the truth.
Another reason people didn’t like Wayne was that he wasn’t part of the old-time crowd. Most of the studio owners had been in Hollywood since the Keystone Kops if not before.
Hollywood was a lot like a little town anywhere else. Everybody knew everybody else, knew where they’d come from and what they’d done. But nobody knew where Thomas Wayne had come from, and he made it a point not to tell them.
He built his studio near Paramount, a little to the south of Warner Brothers, and started cranking out movies. At first he didn’t have a lot of success, but then he hit on the idea of making the same movies that everyone else made except different. After that, the money started rolling in.
Before long he had stars and people to protect and secrets to conceal from the press and the public. Because in Hollywood, as in a lot of other places, a sin well hidden is half forgiven, people like me and Burleson had jobs with the studios, although considering his reputa-65
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tion, I couldn’t figure out why Wayne had hired Burleson. So I was going to ask.
While we drove through town, I asked Bogart to tell me who’d been at his party on the night that Mayo brought out the pistol. We’d have to talk to them, too.
It’s not easy to talk in a convertible, not with the hum of traffic, the horns, and the grinding gears, but Bogart hardly had to raise his voice, which had the remarkable clarity that it always had in the movies.
“I was wondering when you’d get around to that party,” Bogart said, flipping a cigarette butt over the side of the convertible. “I’m not sure I can remember all of them.”
“Give it a try,” I suggested. I had to talk a lot louder than Bogart did or he’d never have heard me.
“Well, there was Joey Gallindo, for one. Ever heard of him?”
I’d heard of him, all right. Bogart had mentioned him earlier. Like Thomas Wayne, he was rumored to be tied in with the mob. They said that about George Raft, too, but the stories about Gallindo were much more detailed. And the mob connection was supposedly one reason he was working at Superior.
“I heard he killed a couple of men back East,” I said. “Did he?”
“Joey doesn’t confide in me,” Bogart said. “He just comes by now and then and has a drink or two. Or three.”
It wasn’t hard to believe Joey had killed Burleson. His hot temper wasn’t a rumor. It was a fact. He’d been in several nightclub brawls and had put one man in the hospital. I couldn’t imagine what Burleson could have used to blackmail him. His reputation couldn’t get much worse, though it was possible Burleson had uncovered another murder, maybe even one that Joey could actually be proved to have committed.
“All right,” I said. “That’s one. Who else?”
“Carl Babson was there, the son of a bitch. I don’t know why he showed up. He hates me because I refused to do one of his scripts.
Mr. Warner suspended me, but it was a rotten script. Most of his are, and he’s sold only one since. It’s probably rotten, too. He and Gallindo might have been together. He wouldn’t mind seeing me take a deep breath in the death house, that’s for sure. He blames me for his troubles.”
“You make friends wherever you go.”
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Bogart gave me a wry grin.
“You might say that. Which reminds me that Robert Carroll and Stella Gordon were there, too.”
Carroll and Gordon had been married a year or so ago, one of the biggest weddings the town had seen in years, since it was between two of Superior Studios’ up-and-coming young stars. I’d seen the pictures in the papers. It was hard to tell who was the more beautiful, Carroll or his new wife.
“A pair of lovebirds if ever there was one,” I said.
“I’m not so sure,” Bogart said. “There’s something funny going on there, but I don’t know quite what it is.”
“You think Burleson had something on them?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. You’re the detective. I’m just a movie star.”
“Philip Marlowe,” I reminded him. “Sam Spade.”
“Just roles I played. I don’t know a damned thing about being a detective.”
“Then what good are you to me?”
“I can get you in places you’d have trouble getting in by yourself, remember?”
He had a point, so I asked who else was on the guest list.
“There was no guest list. I told you that. People just dropped by.”
“Fine. Who else dropped by?”
“‘The funniest man in Hollywood.’”
“Slappy Coville,” I said.
“You must not have seen his act.”
I’d seen his act, all right. His jokes were so old that they had dust in their wrinkles.
“He’s a hit on television,” I said. “Somebody must like him.”
“Morons,” Bogart said. “Slappy and television were made for morons. They’re perfect for each other.”
“They’re going to show the World Series on television this year, or so I’ve heard.”
“Free entertainment right there in your living room. Who’s going to pay for a movie ticket if they can get free entertainment?”
“Radio’s free,” I said. “And it’s in my living room. You’ve been on radio yourself. I’ve heard you in those movie adaptations you do.
People listen to those programs and still go to movies.”
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“Television has pictures that move. It’s not like radio. It’s different.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s made Slappy Coville a star. It must have something.”
“Yeah, but nobody knows what it is. Stoney Randall was there last night, too. You know who he is?”
I had to admit that I didn’t. I thought I knew all the stars and near-stars, but Stoney Randall was a new name to me.
“He’s a stuntman,” Bogart said. “He’s doubled for me in a couple of pictures, like The Oklahoma Kid.”
No wonder I hadn’t heard of him, even though he’d worked at Warner Brothers. The studios didn’t worry about stunt workers because the public didn’t care about them. They didn’t get into the fan magazines. Nobody outside the industry even knew their names. If Buck Sterling had been a stuntman, nobody would have cared about him and his feeling for his horse.
“I saw The Oklahoma Kid,” I said. “You didn’t look much like a cowboy.”
“Neither did Cagney, and he didn’t have to wear a moustache. I look like hell with a moustache, but they insisted. After all, I was the bad guy.”
“The man who shot Cagney’s paw.”
“I didn’t shoot him. I got him hanged, though, so you were close.
Do you know Barbara Malone?”
That was a quick change of subject, but I figured there was a reason for it. I did know Malone, who’d been around town for a while, doing mostly walk-ons and bit parts until Thomas Wayne saw something in her and signed her at Superior. She’d done a turn in some moon-light and magnolias historical epic reminiscent of Gone with the Wind that had come out a couple of months back, and she was good, so good that there was already talk of an Academy Award nomination.
“Her, I’ve heard of,” I said.
“She’s Stoney’s girlfriend. They’ve been going together for a couple of years, and I don’t think either one of them thought there was a chance of getting any closer to the top than they already were.”
“It’s not easy to do,” I said.
“I did it,” Bogart said. He wasn’t bragging, just making a comment.
“I told Barbara how I did it. It worked for me, and now maybe it’s worked for her.”
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“And what advice was that?”
“You take whatever parts they give you, and you don’t complain.
I did The Oklahoma Kid, I did Dr. X, I did The Amazing Dr. Clitter-house. I never complained. All I ever said was, ‘Hand me the script.’”
“You’re not quite as easy to get along with now. If you were, Babson wouldn’t hate you.”
“Babson’s a moron. He should w
rite for television. He and Coville would make a lovely pair. Anyway, I earned the right to be choosey, and Barbara’s on the way to earning it, too. I don’t think she’d have a reason to frame me.”
I couldn’t think of a reason either, but I told Bogart we’d have to talk to her just the same.
“That’s all right with me.” He turned the Caddy into the Superior Studio gate. “Here we are.” The man in the booth didn’t want to let us in.
“Look, buddy,” he said to Bogart, “I know who you are, but I don’t care. My job is to keep people out unless they have an appointment.”
“You haven’t read the Detective’s Handbook,” Bogart told him.
“Huh?”
“You never let the person you’re going to interview know you’re coming,” I said.
The guard shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind,” Bogart told him. “Just call Mr. Wayne and tell him Humphrey Bogart wants to talk to him. He’ll tell you to let us through.”
The guard was a big, broad-shouldered guy who looked as if he might have played a little football somewhere along the way. But the football had been a long time ago, and he’d seen and done a lot since those days. He wasn’t impressed by movie stars.
“I know you’re a big star and all, Mr. Bogart,” he said. “But I still can’t let you past.”
“I’m not asking you to, Junior,” Bogart said. “I’m asking you to make a phone call.”
His tone made it clear that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and to emphasize the point he lit a cigarette and leaned back against the car seat to wait.
The guard looked at him for a second, then looked at me. Then he 69
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shrugged and made the call. It didn’t take long. Bogart was Bogart, after all.
The guard stuck a piece of stiff red paper under the windshield wiper and said, “Go three blocks and turn right. It’s a big red building at the end of the street. If you run into the jungle, you’ve gone too far.”
Bogart thanked him and we took off, slowly, because the street was busy. We passed a couple of crusaders, a passel of cowboys, three Indians, a chorus line, and a guy in a gorilla suit. We passed a feudal castle, an old English village, and a bombed-out battlefield before we came to the turn. We went right and saw the back-lot jungle at the end of the street. The red building was on the left.