We'll Always Have Murder

by Bill Crider

  Bogart parked his car in a reserved space and we got out.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll make somebody mad if you take his space?” I asked.

  “Who cares?” Bogart said, flipping his cigarette away. “I don’t work here. And if I did, I’d have my own spot. Did you happen to see anybody following us today?”

  “No, but then I wasn’t looking.”

  “Some detective you are. It was that Packard again.”

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I said, “but there are a lot of black Packards in Hollywood.”

  “That’s right. But this one was on our tail. I might not be a detective, but I could tell.”

  “It’s gone now,” I said. “So let’s not worry about it.”

  Bogart shrugged. “You’re the detective. Shall we go see Mr. Wayne?”

  We entered the building, where the security was at least as good as at Warner Brothers. But they were expecting us, and before long, and after only a minimum of trouble, we were entering Thomas Wayne’s office.

  The carpet was just as luxurious as Mr. Warner’s and probably cost twenty dollars a yard, but the office wasn’t quite as large, and the desk wasn’t nearly as clean.

  Thomas Wayne was behind it, and he stood up as we came through the door. He was tall and thin, with a pinched face and ears that stuck out like Gable’s. He wasn’t as handsome as Gable, though, and he didn’t have that winning smile. He didn’t have any smile at all.

  He came around the desk, shook hands with Bogart, and told him 70

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  how much he admired his pictures and how he hoped there was a chance that someday Bogart might do a picture for Superior.

  “I worked for Harry Cohn,” Bogart said. “And if I’ll work for him, I’ll work for anybody. Just come up with the right script, and we’ll see.”

  I didn’t know if he meant it or not, but it seemed to make Wayne feel good. He almost seemed to smile. Or maybe I just imagined that.

  Bogart introduced me. He explained that I worked for Warner Brothers and was a friend of Frank Burleson’s. Wayne asked us to sit down and went back behind his desk to his own leather chair. There was no hat rack in the office for some reason. Bogart and I had to sit with our hats in our laps.

  “In fact,” I said, “Burleson’s the reason we’re here. I wasn’t really his friend. It was more that we’re in the same business, but he didn’t have the same ethics I do. Yesterday he threatened Mr. Bogart with blackmail.”

  Wayne didn’t look happy to hear that, but he didn’t look surprised, either.

  “He’s dead now,” Wayne said. “So he won’t be blackmailing anyone.

  You don’t have to worry about him any more.”

  He obviously didn’t know the whole story.

  “He’s still a problem,” I said, though I had no intention of saying what the problem was. “Maybe even more of one.”

  Wayne didn’t seem to care. He said, “So what are you planning to do about it?”

  “I’m going to find out who killed him,” I said.

  71

  CHAPTER

  14

  If Wayne was pleased by my announcement, he didn’t show it.

  He said, “What business is it of yours?”

  “I don’t like blackmail. And while we’re talking about things that aren’t my business, why did you hire a man like Burleson in the first place? He had the morals of an alley cat.”

  “I don’t have to explain my hiring practices to people like you,”

  Wayne said.

  Well, I hadn’t really expected him to tell me.

  Bogart tugged an earlobe.

  “He must have had something on you,” he said, sounding exactly like Sam Spade.

  Wayne’s left eyelid twitched, but that was all the emotion he showed.

  “I think it’s time for the two of you to leave,” he said. “And as for you, Bogart, I don’t think I want you to make a picture here, after all.”

  “Gee, and here I was hoping to do something like Stan Shovel in the Case of the Baltic Eagle.”

  I thought it was funny. Wayne didn’t. He stood up and pushed a button on a console on his desk. His ears were getting red.

  The door behind us opened. Neither Bogart nor I looked around to see who was there. Tough guys never do.

  73

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  “Mr. Bogart and his friend were just leaving,” Wayne said.

  “We were?” Bogart said.

  “We might as well,” I said. “We got what we came for.”

  “I guess we did, at that.”

  Bogart stood up, and so did I. I put my hat on, smiled at Wayne, and said, “Burleson had something on you, all right, and we’re going to find out what it was.”

  “He’s dead. Just leave it at that.”

  “He might be dead,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean the information he gathered is gone. Somebody searched his place after he was killed.

  It’s possible, it’s even likely, that whoever killed him got hold of his notes or his pictures or whatever it was that he had.”

  Wayne’s mouth tightened, and I thought I’d scared him a little. If I had, he wasn’t going to tell us. He looked past me and Bogart and said, “If they don’t leave, throw them out the front door.”

  I nodded to Bogart, and we turned to leave. Just inside the door stood a couple of men, each of whom would have made two of either me or Bogart. The shoulders of their unpadded jackets were strained tight, and I thought that if either of them made a sudden move, the jackets would split right down the back. They weren’t carrying pistols, but then they didn’t need them. They were big enough to hunt hippos with a tack hammer. They probably had to turn sideways to get through the door.

  “We were just leaving, gentlemen,” Bogart said, with a mock bow.

  They stepped aside to let us out of the room, then followed us until we were outside. They stood watching as we got into Bogart’s Caddy and drove away from the building.

  Bogart pulled the car around the corner and stopped.

  “That went rather well, I thought,” he said. “You’re a really smooth operator. Did you learn subtlety by reading the Detective’s Handbook?”

  “I must have skipped that part. Anyway, we know Wayne has something to hide. We just don’t know what it is.”

  “But somebody does, at least if your guess about Burleson’s information being taken is right.”

  “It’s not a guess. It’s a supposition.

  “Which amounts to the same thing.”

  “Whatever you say. Anyhow, it could be that somebody will use that information the same way Burleson was doing.”

  74

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  “Or maybe the information was destroyed,” Bogart said.

  “If there was any information there to be found. As you say, I’m just guessing.”

  “I thought it was supposing.”

  “It doesn’t matter, since we really don’t know. I think we’d better assume that someone has access to whatever it was that Burleson had.”

  “All right. Let’s assume that. What’s our next step?”

  “Why don’t you take a guess. It’s your turn.”

  “We round up the usual suspects,” he said.

  “Absolutely right, and you didn’t even need the Detective’s Handbook.”

  “Maybe I have a feel for this kind of thing. Who do we start with?”

  “Whoever’s closest,” I said.

  Bogart started the car, but we hadn’t gone far before he stopped it again.

  “Hey, Charlie!” he said.

  Across the street a man looked in our direction. He was dressed in a safari outfit. He wore a pith helmet, a light-colored jacket with a lot of pockets. His pants were tucked into brown boots, and there was a machete at his belt.

  “Is that you, Bogie?” the man asked. He started across the street toward the car. “What the hell are y
ou doing down here in the slums?”

  “I thought I might make a picture here.”

  “Hell, you might as well. If you don’t, they’ll find somebody who looks like you and hire him.”

  “Nobody looks like me,” Bogart said as the man reached the side of the car. “Charlie Dawson, this is Terry Scott.”

  Dawson was nearly six feet tall, and he was lean where I was round.

  He had a weathered face and sharp black eyes.

  “Glad to meet you, Scott,” Dawson said.

  I told him the pleasure was mine, and Bogart said, “Charlie’s a stunt man. He’s worked on every lot in Hollywood.”

  “And plenty of damn’ locations, too,” Charlie said. “You an actor, Mr. Scott?”

  There was a certain amount of skepticism in his tone, for which I didn’t blame him. If I looked like anything at all, it wasn’t an actor.

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  75

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  His skeptical look didn’t change. I didn’t look like a detective any more than I looked like an actor.

  “You’re a good friend of Stoney Randall’s, aren’t you?” Bogart said.

  “We’ve done some pictures together.”

  “You know where he’s working now?”

  “Sure. Same place I am, back there in the jungle. You looking for him?”

  “We wanted to talk to him about Frank Burleson,” I said.

  “That son of a bitch,” Dawson said. “I guess Stoney’s the only person here who’ll miss him.”

  “Stoney knew him?” Bogart said.

  “Nobody knew him, but he was always hanging around. Nobody liked him, unless it was Stoney. They weren’t pals or anything, but he loaned Stoney a hundred bucks once, and Stoney’s never forgotten it.”

  “I remember that. He and Barbara took a vacation or something with the money. Nobody ever talks bad about Burleson when Stoney’s around.”

  “That’s the truth. What’s your interest in Burleson, anyhow?”

  “Scott’s looking into something for me. I’m just along for the ride.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “Hop in the back. We’ll give you a ride to the jungle.”

  “I’d get the car dirty. I’ve been wrestling with a lion this morning.

  Poor old toothless thing.” Dawson scratched his chest. “I think he had fleas, too. I’d better walk.”

  “What kind of scene are they filming now?” I asked.

  “Some action scene in the water, with a big rubber crocodile. Or alligator. I get those things confused. Anyway, Stoney will be doing the fighting because Robert Carroll doesn’t like getting his hair wet.”

  “So Carroll is in the jungle picture?” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s sort of ersatz Tarzan stuff. Jan of the Jungle, it’s called.

  It’s a remake of a serial based on some stories by a guy named Kline.

  Maybe he’s an ersatz Edgar Rice Burroughs.”

  The movie sounded perfect for Carroll, who was a handsome muscle boy with long hair, rippling thews, and a chest that the village smithy would envy. He would look right at home running around the jungle in a breechclout. I asked Dawson if Stella Gordon was in the movie, too.

  76

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  “You bet. She’s the princess of the Lost Kingdom of Mu. She gets to run around in some skimpy outfits that the kids are gonna love.

  At least the boys are. The men, too. Thomas Wayne’s a shrewd bird.

  He’s getting plenty of free publicity for the picture from the big wedding, so he’s hoping it’ll take off at the box office.”

  “Sounds like we’ve hit the jackpot,” I said. “If we can get on the set, maybe we can talk to all of them.”

  “We can get on the set,” Bogart said. “Isn’t that right, Dawson.”

  “Sure. Nobody pays much attention if you look like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Bogart said.

  I didn’t, but I figured I could fake it by watching him. So far no matter where we’d been or what we’d done, he’d moved with the confidence of a born actor. Or a born con man. Whether he was dealing with the cops or a corpse, his voice was crisp and his move-ments were precise, as if he were perfectly at home in the world, whatever it might be like at the moment.

  He turned the convertible around and steered it toward the back lot, which didn’t look much like a jungle at all, at least not from where we were. He parked the car, and we waited until Dawson caught up with us before we got out.

  “Follow me,” Dawson said, and started into the trees along a well-worn path. He wasn’t going to need his machete.

  We followed him. The trees got thicker. They were hung with vines that had never grown naturally in California. In fact, neither had some of these trees. Before long we could hear noises up ahead. We came to a place that was clear of trees but full of just about everything else. A couple of huge fans produced a jungle breeze, and carpenters and electricians were bustling around. There were Klieg lights and thick cables and cameras and booms. A script girl was reading over the script. A make-up man was touching up Stella Gordon’s beautiful face.

  I would have enjoyed touching up the rest of her, of which there was quite a bit exposed. She wore a short skirt that barely covered the subject and a brassiere that appeared to be made of gold coils. It showed nearly as much as it concealed, which I’m sure was its purpose.

  She was tugging on the skirt as if she’d just pulled it on and was uncomfortable with the way it fit.

  77

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  Off to the side a man was sitting with a chimp, and both of them were smoking cigarettes. That might be an unusual sight in a lot of places, but not on a movie set. Hell, in Hollywood you might even see it on the street.

  You wouldn’t see many tarantulas on the street, though, not even in the part of town I live in, but here there was a small wire cage full of them. I was sure they’d come in handy in a jungle movie, where there were usually more tarantulas per square inch than there ever were in a real jungle. I wasn’t fond of spiders, even little ones, of which there was an ample supply in the part of town I lived in, and the ones in the cage were as big as a cake plate. I wasn’t going anywhere near them.

  Robert Carroll was down by a big pool. A man was showing him a crocodile that was surely made of rubber. The man worked the croc’s jaws up and down and grabbed its tail to wiggle it from side to side.

  Carroll looked the way Johnny Weismuller wished he could look, all muscles and hair and teeth, though he was shorter than Weismuller.

  He was as tan as Cary Grant, and his stomach was ridged with muscle, unlike my own stomach, which was as soft as cookie dough. The breechcloth covered just enough to keep him modest.

  There was another man beside Carroll, also wearing a breechcloth, and he was paying a lot more attention to the manipulation of the croc than Carroll was. I figured he must be Stoney Randall, and Bogart confirmed that I was right.

  “That’s Harvey Elledge, the director,” Bogart said, pointing out a tall, cadaverous man walking in the direction of the pool.

  “Most of the fight will be on top of the water,” Dawson said. “They don’t have any underwater cameras.”

  Elledge spoke briefly to Randall, who nodded. Then Carroll, Elledge, and the man who’d been explaining the croc all walked away from the pool.

  “They don’t have to show the crocodile going into the water,”

  Dawson said. “They have stock footage for that.”

  I knew what he meant. Sometimes I thought all the studios used the same footage of crocodiles slithering off a mudbank and into a river.

  Randall got into the water and dragged the rubber reptile in with him.

  78

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER

  “Quiet on the set,” someone called out.

  Someone else slapped together a clapper with the scen
e number on it.

  There were a few seconds of silence and then Elledge said, “All right. Lights. Camera. Action.”

  Klieg lights came on to improve the daylight, and a couple of cameras ground away. Down in the pool, Randall and the alligator started whipping the water to a froth.

  From where I stood, the action looked pretty good. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the alligator was real. It seemed to me to be thrashing around and trying its best to eat Randall, who was slashing at it with a knife. It defied his efforts, and they rolled over and over in the water. Then Randall got on its back. It took him awhile, but he finally clamped its jaws together, pulled its head up out of the water, and “killed” it by slicing its throat.

  Elledge said, “Cut! Print it.” and Randall rolled off the croc and came out on the bank of the pool with water running off him.

  Someone ran up to him with a towel.

  “One take,” Bogart said. “Randall’s good.”

  “Sure he is,” Dawson said, “but Elledge never does more than a couple of takes, no matter what. Producers love him. So does Wayne.”

  I was about to comment on the likely quality of Elledge’s movies, but I didn’t get a chance. I was interrupted by a woman’s screams.

  79

  CHAPTER

  15

  Ithought at first that the screaming might be part of a new scene, but then I realized there’d been no set-up and no one had called for quiet. And after all, it was far too soon for another scene to begin. Moviemaking didn’t move at that pace. The change from one scene to another usually took quite a while.

  I looked around for the source of the screams and saw a beautiful woman, not Stella Gordon, covered with big, black, ugly spiders.

  She screamed again. I can’t say that I blamed her. If I had hairy, sticky-legged spiders crawling all over me, I’d scream too, and I was wearing a lot more clothing than she was. When I say a lot, I mean that I had on a jacket, pants, shirt, and shoes, not to mention a hat and tie, whereas she was wearing an outfit that might have fit a first-grader, if the first-grader had been of below-average size. I guess that in the jungle, skimpy clothing was the order of the day. Maybe that was even why jungle pictures did well at the box office.