Beneath a Bloodshot Moon

by Sam Roskoe

  I walked over to the edge of the well-made bed and took a seat at its edge.

  “So,” I said, “why are you here, Miss Martin? Come to sing me a lullaby, did you?”

  She laughed hard enough for her head to rock back. When the rocking had finished, she started in with the mocking.

  “Coyness is all well and good for fumbling teenagers, but not between adults. You know why I’m here, Mr. Finch.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course you do. Now you tell me, how much is it going to cost?”

  “For what?”

  “For you to forget everything you know and leave town, of course. Remember, no coyness now. We’re not simple minded teenagers you and I.”

  “And what do I know?” I said.

  She wagged a finger at me as though I was a naughty child with a hand full of cookies.

  “Please, I’m not as fond of these back-and-forth games as I used to be. We’re not negotiating a contract here, and if we were you would have signed everything over by now.”

  I took a cigarette out and lit it. I let the smoke curl as I thought over what she was saying to me.

  She knew something I didn’t know, but she didn’t know I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was going to get a headache if I thought about the ins and outs too long.

  So I went with the truth instead.

  “Yesterday you had your apes toss me out on my ass because you didn’t believe a word I’d said. Today you’re offering me money. Somewhere between last night and now you started believing me. Why?”

  She pushed off the dresser and walked over to my side. She looked down on me, and I had the feeling she would be in the same position if I was stood on a stepladder.

  “I’m beginning to tire of the coyness. You know why and now I’m offering you the money that you so obviously wanted from the get go. Take the money and run, Mr. Finch. Consider your blackmail successful and yourself lucky that we didn’t go for a more painful resolution.”

  I blew smoke up into her face.

  She didn’t flinch.

  “So how much are you willing to pay me?” I said.

  The answer to the question would signal just how much trouble she was in, or at least how much damage she thought I could do.

  Kay Martin wasn’t going to be that straightforward.

  “Now we’re getting to the point I love the most, Mr. Finch. Why don’t you start where you think is fair and go from there.”

  “What’s fair and what’s right are two very different things. Why don’t you tell me what you’re willing to pay, Miss Martin.”

  “And what fun would there be in that?”

  I shrugged.

  “If I wanted fun I’d go to Santa Monica and ride the rollercoaster. Give me a number or I book myself another month in this lovely establishment and maybe buy a few gaudy shirts to wear around town while I’m here on vacation.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said.

  “Try me.”

  She gave me a look that could put a chill on a polar bear.

  “We won’t go more than a million. We can’t go more than that.”

  I struggled not to show the shock on my face. A million dollars’ worth of bribe money had to mean I could do a hundred times that much in damages to them. Whoever they happened to be. And as I sat there, I wanted to know about they more than anything else.

  Could it be that there was more than one person behind the death of Marla Donovan and the framing of Tarquin Meriwether? Who were they and what could they gain from the death of a starlet? Most of all, what did they and Kay Martin think I had on them, exactly?

  What I needed was more time and a few more questions to be answered.

  “A million is a good place to start,” I said.

  “And where it will end, we cannot go any higher, there’s no way that kind of money just disappears, even with the talented accountants we have at our disposal. You’ll have to take the million and be happy with what you get, Mr. Finch.”

  “And what do I have to give you in return? I mean, you’re not just going to send me on my merry way with a suitcase full of bills and happiness in your heart, are you?”

  Her face flushed with anger.

  “Don’t play games with me, Mr. Finch. You know what we want and you will give it to us one way or another. I’d prefer you give it to us because we pay you and then we can all forget you ever existed. But there are other ways to settle this matter, and I’m sure you can figure out what those ways might be.”

  I could figure with the best of them, and it all led to the same place. No more Elliot Finch.

  “Maybe I think you’re lying to me?” I said. “Maybe, and this is a big maybe, I think you’re just pumping me for information and that as soon as you get what you want from me, then it’s goodnight Finchy. Here’s a shallow bed under the daisies for you, sleep tight.”

  “You’re right, nobody would miss you, Mr. Finch and it would be easy enough for us to do what you suggest. But I don’t think you’re a stupid man, either. I think you must have made a copy of the script and put it somewhere safe.”

  A script? What was this about a script now? Whatever that script was, it was at the center of the whole mess and no doubts.

  “Well I’d be a fool if I didn’t, wouldn’t I?”

  “You’re a fool in any case, but you’re a fool who could do more damage than I’d like to admit. And a fool who knows how to rile people in just the right way. The note you left in your other suit was a very subtle way of letting us know you were on the level, I must say. More subtle than I thought you capable when we first met.”

  If it was subtle it was coincidental. The note, which could only be the list of names Meriwether had dictated to me, was somehow tied to the script they were looking for, and I had to know why.

  “Well, Miss Martin, I couldn’t just come out and ask for money, could I? That wouldn’t be very subtle of me.”

  She snorted derisively in my direction like a horse about to buck its unforgiving rider.

  “That’s what I don’t get with you, Mr. Finch? Such a convoluted way to inform us of your intent. I mean, reproducing the character list and adding real names to that list, that’s a very roundabout way for blackmail wouldn’t you say? Couldn’t you have just told us you had the script?”

  “What can I say, I’m complicated that way. Makes life more interesting.”

  I stood and walked to the table beside my bed. I took my time killing the cigarette and watching for any change on the faces around me.

  The two icebergs were just as cold as when they’d drifted into the room. If they were thinking anything it had to be something glacial.

  Kay Martin had resumed her position in a lean against the dresser. She tapped the edge of the dresser with her fingers.

  “So, I give you the script, and you…what is it exactly you will do for me?”

  “We give you the money. It will be a simple transaction.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you like.”

  “I’ll need time.”

  “How much time.”

  “A couple of days.”

  “Why?”

  “To retrieve the script from where I hid it. To figure out a safe way for you to give me the money. Let’s say, this Friday.”

  She nodded.

  “Then it looks like we have a deal, does it not.”

  “It does.”

  She clicked her fingers and the two icebergs in suits floated out of my room. At the door, Kay Martin stopped and faced me.

  “You know, all this trouble over a script is quite maddening. I mean, a lousy script, with that lousy superstitious title. Who would have thought Hollywood would ever be as screwed up as this?”

  “Not me.”

  She laughed.

  I was fit to bust. Knowing there was a script and that the script meant so much was good enough, but if I could find out the name, if I could put a name to all this then I’d have a better chance of finding
the truth.

  Kay Martin didn’t disappoint.

  She gave me that name before leaving.

  Chapter 14

  “I ask you,” Kay Martin said, “what kind of hack would dare use ‘Beneath a Bloodshot Moon’ as a title?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer.

  But I already had an idea what kind of hack I would be looking for.

  There were plenty to choose from in Hollywood. But I knew at least two I could ask up close and personal.

  One of them was within spitting distance and minding my dog for me.

  Chapter 15

  At least he should have been there.

  The driver’s side door was open wide with no sign of Tarquin Meriwether anywhere nearby. For a moment I wondered if Steinbeck was gone too, but then as I reached the car, I saw that dog of mine had stayed put.

  He was sprawled out on the backseat, his legs kicked into the air, waiting for another tummy rub. That damned dog and his tummy rubs.

  “You know,” I said to him, “your routine is getting old, pal.”

  He didn’t care much about what I thought. He let out a whimper and wriggled his butt around as though he had to reach an itch that his little doggy legs, or any other part of him, would never be able to scratch.

  “I should get myself a bloodhound, one of those mountain dogs that can track a criminal from a mile away. I don’t suppose you’ve been hiding your true talents, have you? Your great-grandfather wasn’t a bloodhound by any chance?”

  At that moment his true talent was completely ignoring me and writhing about on the rear seat.

  I slipped in behind the wheel and started a rudimentary pat down of the space where Tarquin Meriwether had been sitting. It took maybe a minute for me to figure out that he hadn’t left me any clues behind. There was no reason for him to be gone and no reason I could figure that he would take it on the hoof.

  Unless he hadn’t.

  The thought churned around in my head for ten or so minutes as I stared into the Hollywood night.

  If he hadn’t run, then maybe he’d been forced out of the car? The victim of an abduction or worse? Had Johnny Jackson finally made good on his promise of murder? Was Tarquin sprawled out in some dark alley with a new hole in his head that he would never breathe out of? Or maybe some lucky patrolman had spotted the old lush behind the wheel and hauled him in to face the murder charges?

  Sleeping off a drunk under the watchful eye of Hollywood Homicide was the best I could hope for in the circumstances. Or I could hope that his lust for liquor had pushed him out into the Hollywood night on a quest that would only be satisfied when he’d drained a bottle or three.

  There was too little hope at the point in time and none of it looked solid enough to follow.

  But I had no choice. When all you have are hunches then you’ll take them over nothing at all.

  I bounced around Hollywood the rest of the night checking every drunken shadow in every dark and lost little corner of the town until finally I got up the gall to put in a call to a detective somewhere near dawn.

  “Malone, Homicide. What can I do for you?” His voice was two types of tough, like someone rubbing sandpaper against a rock.

  “I’m working on a story, Detective, a tipoff I got earlier. Care to comment?”

  “I can’t comment on anything I haven’t heard.”

  “Well I heard you picked up the fella that murdered Marla Donovan. I heard that you have him locked up this very moment. I heard that some lucky stiff stumbled on him like it was Christmas morning and all the presents waiting under the tree.”

  He laughed.

  “You’ve been spun a web, Mack. A big fat web and let me tell you this for nothin’, you ain’t the spider, you’re the fly.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “You can tell me which paper you’re working for and then I can put you through to someone who’ll tell you the same as me, only without the pretty words I use.”

  “Didn’t I say?”

  “All you’ve done is crack a joke and not much of a howler to me. What’s your angle, Mack? Who you pushing ink for?”

  “So you don’t have anybody locked up in your cells at this time?”

  I thought I could hear his blood boiling over the wires. Which is exactly what I wanted from him. If Tarquin Meriwether was cooling his heels in a holding cell, my conversation with Malone would have ended before it had even begun.

  “What’s your name, fella? Who you working for?” Malone said.

  “Have you heard of the San Francisco Sun Intelligencer?”

  “Never have.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said, and hung up.

  By first light I’d chased every ghost I could think of and was still no wiser about the where and why of Tarquin’s disappearance. I knew only one thing for sure. Dead screenwriters couldn’t write checks.

  But they could haunt your every waking moment.

  I couldn’t get what Meriwether had said out of my head. How convinced he’d been of seeing a blood red moon when he’d first talked to me back at the Mermaid Café. Was that blood moon a reality or some part of the million-dollar script that Kay Martin wanted so badly?

  Beneath a Bloodshot Moon.

  It wasn’t any coincidence, I knew that. There was no such thing, every goddamned bit of life was tied up to every other goddamned bit of life and sometimes you just had to unravel the thread to find out where it all began.

  I needed a thread, but I wasn’t going to do any pulling without a few hours sleep.

  I dropped into the Motel bed just after seven that morning. The thought that Tarquin was dead and I’d not been able to do a thing to stop it, chased me down into a dark and restless dream.

  I dreamed of man with bloodshot eyes standing beneath a bloodshot moon, crying out for my help. I dreamed of a starlet face down in the bloody waters of a fountain, her body perforated and limp. I dreamed of a Neanderthal in a suit wearing a gray Fedora, his face twisted and malevolent as he came toward me holding a howitzer in each hand.

  The sweats were on me when I woke. I was that kind of shaky you only got after a bad dream or when you reach up under your chin and come away with your fingers stained red.

  Took me ten minutes to shower off the shakes and shake off the nightmare.

  By mid-day I was suited, booted and heading to the one place I thought I might get some answers.

  The Omniverse Studio lot.

  Chapter 16

  You put a uniform on a man, any man, and something happens. It’s quiet at first, nothing sudden. The back stiffens, the jaw juts out a little more, the shoulders don’t slope as much as they used to. One day soon after the same man is beating a kid over the head with a baton because that kid looked at him ‘funny’.

  Clothes maketh the man, they say, and a uniform turns many a man into a bully.

  I was pinning my hopes that the two out-of-breath bullies who’d chased me around the lot weren’t on duty when I pulled up to the front of the studio that afternoon.

  They were.

  I was all out of luck on that front, but anybody who knows Hollywood, knows there are a few ways to get what you want. Most of them are green.

  “Remember me?” I said, flashing a smile that would make a toothpaste company envious.

  The shorter and rounder of the two had his face buried behind a dime detective magazine in the guard booth. His taller, and sharper dressed comrade stood outside fingering the top of a nightstick in anticipation of something, anything happening to break up the boredom.

  They both remembered me.

  Shorty first.

  “Sure,” he said, doing his best to impersonate a man taller, slimmer and tougher than he could ever be. “I remember you. You’re the pain in the neck from the other day.”

  Long and tall joined in quick enough. “A real athlete, you are,” he said.

  “Not any kind of Einstein though, wouldn’t you say? Not really any kind of braniac this one,”
Shorty said, tossing his magazine onto the counter and standing up.

  He tried to look imposing. He tried to give me that cop sneer that it takes a good year of pounding shoe leather against pavement to grow.

  Long and tall didn’t have enough skin on his bones to do much more than sour his lips in my general direction.

  “No, no, clever man wouldn’t risk that neck of his coming back here, I’d say.” Long and Tall said.

  “Clever man would do well to keep his neck nice and clean and as far away from here as he could. Clever man wouldn’t want to put his neck on the line like this,” Shorty said.

  I glanced at Steinbeck, and he glanced at me. I couldn’t be sure, but I think the look in his eyes was one of bemusement. He didn’t take the guards any more seriously than I did.

  “Okay, fellas. So where do we go from here? I don’t suppose my neck would be any cleaner or safer if I just drove on in, would it?”

  Long and Tall took out his nightstick and pointed over my shoulder.

  “You can take it on your heels, buddy. Point this tin-can of yours around and get moving. You’re not getting in here today or any other day.”

  “That goes double for me,” Shorty said, “whatever you think is going to happen, isn’t going to happen while we’re around. Get gone.”

  I looked them both up and down. They were a piece over thirty, maybe thirty five each and despite the slovenly way they wore their uniforms, I could see that they liked the power the uniform gave them.

  But there were other things more persuasive than power. Greener things.

  “And if you’re not around?” I said.

  “Is that some kind of threat, mister? If it’s some kind of threat, then you’ll find me and my colleague here don’t take so kindly to them,” Shorty said.

  Long and Tall pounded his nightstick into his bony hand a couple of times hoping to impress on me just how heavy it was and what it might be able to do with just a little more force behind it.

  “I think it was a threat. Kind of threat that might make you or me pick up a phone and call the police in on this matter. I mean, it’s only right we protect the lot from violent criminals like this one here, isn’t it?” Long and Tall wasn’t talking directly at me, but to his shorter friend. The words were meant for me.