We'll Always Have Murder

by Bill Crider

“A pre-War Ford,” Stella said.

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  There’s nothing wrong with pre-War cars,” I said as we cruised down Sunset Boulevard in my old Chevy. I hoped I didn’t sound too defensive.

  “I didn’t say there was,” Bogart told me. “But that wasn’t any Ford that we were chasing tonight. Do we cross Bob Carroll off our list?”

  “He could have borrowed a car. What to you know about Wendy Felsen?”

  “Nothing other than what we found out tonight. Why?”

  “Bobbette,” I said. “Remember?”

  Bogart said he hadn’t thought about that, but that he didn’t think Wendy, or Bobbette, could afford a Packard.

  “Superior isn’t known for paying anyone very well,” he said.

  “There’s only one real star there, and that’s Barbara Malone.” He paused. “Barbara. Do you think that might be what Dawson was trying to write?”

  I said that I didn’t. Unless Dawson was a really poor speller.

  Bogart opened the Scotch bottle and took a small swallow.

  “Give the guy a break. He was dying. It took guts for him to leave us any kind of message at all. He couldn’t have been very concerned about spelling.”

  “You know anybody who can afford a Packard?” I said.

  “I can.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you. I was thinking about Charlie O.”

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  “We’ve already decided he didn’t kill Burleson. And there’s no way you can get his name into that message.”

  I wondered if Dawson had left a message at all. What if his hand had simply clawed at the dirt and left something that looked like letters there? I asked Bogart what he thought about it.

  “Couldn’t be. Those letters were fairly clear. Bob or bab, one or the other. You couldn’t get that by accident.”

  He was probably right. But if it was a real message, it had left us pretty much in the dark as to what it might mean.

  “Besides,” Bogart said, “Charlie O. couldn’t have killed Dawson. He was at his restaurant. I think it was Babson.”

  “Does he have a Packard?”

  “He’s a writer,” Bogart said, dismissively.

  “Can’t writers afford Packards?”

  “In Hollywood, a writer is a guy who owns a typewriter and has a big mouth. And Babson has one of the biggest.”

  “You don’t like Babson much, do you.”

  “No, and it would be just fine with me if he were the guilty party.

  I hope he does have a Packard, the little son of a bitch.”

  “Where does he like to be seen at night?”

  “Who knows? He’s as likely to be one place as another. We could try the Brown Derby.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “Not the one that looks like a hat. The one on Vine.”

  I was getting a tour of all the star hangouts, but I wasn’t complaining. Bogart was good company, and besides, Mr. Warner was paying.

  I took Sunset to Vine and then drove almost to the intersection at Hollywood Boulevard.

  It was getting close to midnight, but the streets were still busy. In fact, late at night was when I liked Los Angeles best, at least on nights like this one. There was an air of excitement, almost an audible buzz, as if big things were happening, or going to happen, and that lives could change at any moment for the better or the worse.

  Dawson’s life had certainly changed for the worse, and the thought of him lying at the edge of the Superior jungle took a little of the edge off the buzz for me.

  But the exhilarating feeling in the air came back strong around the Brown Derby. As late as it was, we were lucky to get a parking spot, 144

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  and the one we got was some distance away. We had to walk a block to get to the front door.

  While this version of the famous restaurant didn’t look anything like a hat, there was a derby-shaped sign on the roof to let people know they’d come to the right place. Not that the sign was needed.

  Actors and anyone else who wanted to impress somebody always seemed to know where to come to be seen, and the Brown Derby was one of those places.

  The decor seemed to consist mainly of caricatures. I recognized drawings of Bob Hope, Charlie Chaplin, and Bette Davis right off the bat, though I didn’t see any of them in the flesh. I didn’t see Babson, either, but I saw Stoney Randall sitting with Joey Gallindo and a woman I knew must be Barbara Malone.

  Bogart saw them too, and we walked right over to their table without waiting to be seated.

  Joey and Stoney didn’t seem glad to see Bogart despite the invita-tion to join them, and they didn’t noticeably brighten when I was introduced.

  Barbara Malone, however, smiled and showed off her dimples. She was wearing a dark skirt and jacket with a white blouse under the jacket. The collar of the shirt was out over the jacket collar. Her honey-colored hair was smooth on top, with a wave on the side and pincurls at the ends, where it almost touched her shoulders. She was very pretty, maybe even beautiful, but it was Hollywood beauty, not the girl-next-door kind. The camera, it seemed to me, would love her, and I wasn’t surprised that she’d finally gotten a break.

  Joey Gallindo was a tough-looking little guy, and you wouldn’t have any trouble believing him in the role of any kind of villain you could imagine. He’d been in a western or two, but he was most often cast as a mobster of the unsympathetic variety, the sort Bogart had played earlier in his career. He had all of Bogart’s edginess with none of his charm. It may well have been that he’d actually killed a couple of men, but he didn’t exactly exude a menacing air. He was just unappealing, the kind of guy you didn’t warm up to quickly. Or ever.

  I thought I’d heard them talking about Dawson when we walked up, so I asked about him. Stoney complained that the shooting hadn’t gone too well that evening and that he thought they’d have to do the fight scene again after Elledge saw the rushes.

  “Dawson made a wrong move and let his face get into the shot,”

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  Stoney said. He looked almost as tough as Joey, but whereas Joey just looked tough, I got the feeling that Randall really was. “Even Elledge won’t be able to live with something that blatant.”

  “He’ll figure something out,” Joey said. “He’ll cut that part of the fight if he has to. He never reshoots.”

  He lit a cigarette, and soon everyone in the booth was smoking except me. I might as well have been. It was sort of like sitting next to a car and inhaling exhaust fumes. But I tried not to let it bother me.

  “Dawson’s not usually that careless,” Bogart said. “Maybe he had something on his mind.”

  He looked at me and raised an eyebrow to make sure I appreciated what a smooth operator he was.

  “He wasn’t worried about a thing,” Barbara said. “He never worries.

  He’s one of the happiest men I’ve ever known. Happy as a lark all the time. Always with a little smile, a happy little smile. I like being around him.”

  I wondered if she hadn’t had too much to drink. It was hard to believe anybody was naturally that vivacious.

  “Maybe Dawson was worried about Frank Burleson,” I said. “He was murdered, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Stoney said. “We heard about that. I didn’t know him all that well, myself. I don’t know about Dawson.”

  “Burleson was trying out a little blackmail,” Bogart said. “On me, among others.”

  “Not on any of us,” Gallindo said. “But then we don’t make as much money as you do. Neither does Dawson. Nobody would blackmail him.”

  Somebody would kill him, however. Gallindo, Malone, and Randall were going to be mighty surprised when they found out that Dawson was dead, no matter what a wonderful fellow Barbara thought him to be. Elledge was going to have to do what he could with that fight scene or find himself anothe
r stunt man if he wanted to shoot it again.

  Of course I didn’t say any of that, and neither did Bogart. We weren’t supposed to know Dawson was dead. Besides, it wouldn’t have been right to bring the mention of death into such a happy scene.

  Not that it was really happy. There was something else going on, some undercurrent of anxiety. They were probably upset at the thought 146

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  of retakes, or of how angry Elledge was going to be if he had to make them because of Dawson’s mistake.

  Bogart eventually brought the conversation around to Babson.

  Nobody knew where he was.

  “He might be at your house,” Stoney said. “He seemed to want us to go there last night. I think he likes you.”

  We’d ordered drinks by then. I was drinking only Coke. Everyone had a little laugh at Stoney’s comment, though he hadn’t said it humorously. At any rate, it seemed that the animosity between Bogart and Babson was common knowledge.

  “You must like him, too,” Gallindo said to Bogart. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have visited him on the set today.”

  “He tried to get me tossed,” Bogart said, taking a drink. “That’s how much he likes me. And the vice is definitely versa.”

  “He’s trying to talk Barbara into letting him write a picture for her,”

  Stoney said. “You think he can handle it?”

  “Hell, no,” Bogart said. “Don’t listen to him, Barbara. If you get that nomination from the Academy that people are talking about, you’ll have a little clout for the first time in your career. Don’t throw it away on some deal with Babson.”

  “Clout,” Gallindo said. “We should all have some. Like you, Bogie.

  You have clout to spare.”

  “And look how long it took me to get it. Barbara’s done the same thing, worked her way up. That’s the way you have to do it, sometimes, unless you’re one of the very lucky ones. And there aren’t many of those.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Barbara,” Stoney said. “Now that she’s finally gotten somewhere, she’s not going to make any mistakes.

  If you say we should steer clear of Babson, we’re steering clear. We can’t afford any slip-ups. Not now that Barbara’s finally gotten her break.”

  Barbara looked at him admiringly, as if she didn’t mind at all his use of we, though she was the one who’d made it nearly to the top and he was still a stunt man. I wondered how long her attitude would last once a few more of the perquisites of stardom started coming her way. She might begin to think of Stoney as a has-been or a never-was who might harm her career if she stayed too closely associated with him.

  Or she might not. I’m sure there were some happy relationships in 147

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  Hollywood. Bogart seemed to have one with Bacall. But theirs was the exception rather than the rule, in my experience.

  We stayed and talked for a while longer, but we weren’t getting any closer to Babson or to finding out anything about him that was helpful except that he didn’t drive a Packard.

  “It’s a Chevy,” Gallindo said when I asked. “What do you want to know that for?”

  “Bogart and I had a bet,” I said. “Something about the kind of cars writers can afford.”

  “Yeah, well a Chevy is about the best one of those guys will ever have.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Lousy car like that.”

  “They’re not so bad,” Gallindo said. “I have one.”

  “So do I,” Stoney said.

  Maybe we could have started a club, but it didn’t seem like the thing to do. Bogart and I extricated ourselves from the conversation and left.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Bogart said when we were back in my lousy car. “Phil Marlowe never has this much trouble finding his man.”

  “Sure he does. Anyway, if he doesn’t, it’s because he gets to read the script.”

  “Yeah. Well, I don’t even think there is a script for this movie.”

  “There’s always a script,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just not easy to follow the lines. I wish there were something we could do about Dawson, though. I have the feeling that all this is tied together somehow.”

  “But you don’t know how, and neither do I. I liked Dawson, but there’s nothing we can do for him now except find out who killed him. The cops have taken care of his body.”

  He was right, but I still felt bad about it.

  “We might as well go home, then,” I said. “I could use a little sleep.”

  Bogart said it was early yet, but since we’d already been just about everywhere he could think of, it didn’t seem likely that we’d find Babson by continuing to look.

  So I drove back to the Garden of Allah, where Congreve and Garton were ready and waiting for us.

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  Iwasn’t ready for them. I didn’t even see them until they stepped out of the darkness at the side of the street and Garton jerked open the car door on my side. Then he grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the car onto the sidewalk.

  On the other side of the car, Congreve was much gentler with Bogart. After all, Bogart had clout, something I’d never had and would never have in Hollywood. Even though he was trying to be gentle, however, Congreve was plainly upset.

  “What the hell is this?” I said.

  “Shut up,” Garton told me.

  He was holding his pistol. I thought he’d been kidding at least a little bit when he said he wanted to shoot me, but now I wondered if I hadn’t been wrong. I realized that it had been a mistake to wink at him. So I shut up.

  Bogart didn’t. He said, “Yeah, what the hell is this?”

  Congreve said, “I told you and Scott not to mess in my case. You didn’t listen.”

  Bogart lit a cigarette as coolly as Philip Marlowe ever did. After taking a couple of drags, he said, “I don’t think that’s strictly true.

  You told Scott, but you didn’t tell me. Not that it makes any difference, since we haven’t been messing in your case, as you put it. We’ve been out on the town.”

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  As lies went, I thought it was a pretty good one. The good ones are always at least a little bit true, as this one was.

  Congreve didn’t fall for it.

  “Somebody killed a stuntman named Charles Dawson tonight,” he said. “At Superior Studios. And it seems to me that two murders of people working for the same studio in a couple of days is a little too much of a coincidence.”

  Bogart ran the ball of his thumb down his jawline and let smoke trickle up from the cigarette between his lips.

  “What’s that to us?” he said. “We don’t work for Superior.”

  “You were there, though,” Congreve said. “Somebody spotted you.”

  The man on the gate hadn’t been quite as absorbed in his pulp magazine as I’d thought.

  “We were looking for some friends,” Bogart said. “They weren’t there.”

  “I’ll bet they weren’t,” Congreve said. “But you’ve said enough in front of your pal here. You and I are going to have a talk in your place.”

  He gave Bogart a little nudge, but Bogart didn’t move. He said, “I’m not leaving Scott with that trained ape of yours.”

  Garton snorted. He sounded more like a horse than an ape, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be alone with him.

  “Ray’s harmless,” Congreve said, and I knew he was lying through his teeth. “We have to talk to you separately to make sure you’re not cuing each other. We’re not taking you downtown, not yet. It’s just a little matter of your telling us a few things, and then it will be all over.”

  And the moon is made of green cheese, I thought.

  “If Ray’s so harmless, why does he need a pistol?” Bogart asked.

  Congreve clucked his tongue and said, “Why I hadn’t noticed it.

  Put that away, Ray. You won’t
need it. These two are going to cooperate. Aren’t you?”

  “I need the pistol,” Garton said. “Scott has one.”

  For just a second I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I remembered.

  “Take it out of your pocket, Scott,” Garton said. “With two fingers.

  Be careful. I’d hate to put a bullet hole in that cheap suit of yours.”

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  I lifted the pistol out of my pocket and let it dangle. Congreve walked over and took it from me.

  “I suppose you have a permit,” he said.

  As a matter of fact, I did have a permit, and I told him so. He didn’t give me the pistol back, however. He slipped it into his own pocket.

  “Did you know he was carrying a gun?” Congreve asked Bogart.

  Bogart shrugged and looked bored. He was very good at it.

  “I don’t notice things like that,” he said.

  Congreve took Bogart’s elbow and steered him into the Garden of Allah, leaving me alone on the street with Garton, who was grinning as if he were about to have the time of his life. He put his pistol back into the holster. He probably didn’t think he needed it.

  I didn’t think he needed it either.

  “You and I are gonna have a little talk,” he said. “You’re gonna tell me about how you killed Dawson.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Sure you didn’t. They all say that. I don’t blame you. I’d say the same. But you’ll change your mind.”

  “And you’re going to make me.”

  His grin widened.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m gonna make you.”

  I didn’t know how he was going to do it. It was late, but there were still cars passing by every few seconds. Garton didn’t seem to care.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  I wasn’t planning to go anywhere with him or anybody else. I stayed right where I was.

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “We’re just going over to the car.”

  I told him I wasn’t afraid, and my voice was steady enough. Maybe I really wasn’t afraid. After all, it wasn’t as if he had spiders in the car.

  “We can sit and talk,” he said. “Beats standing up.”

  “All right,” I said, and I followed him down the block.