Beneath a Bloodshot Moon

by Sam Roskoe

  “We all die eventually, Mr. Finch, it’s what comes before that death that makes the difference. And how long that something lasts for is crucial, wouldn’t you say?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s all about what comes before,” I said. “Take Miss Martin here.”

  “What is this now?” Kay Martin said, visibly shocked.

  “Well, you’re here in Hollywood, a place where everything isn’t quite what it seems. A town where you have to assume that every truth is a lie and every lie is partly the truth. This isn’t the kind of town where before even matters most of the time, not when you can conjure up a before any time you like.”

  “You’re making no sense, Mr. Finch,” Kay Martin said, but there was a sliver of something in here eye that told me I was making more sense than she’d ever heard before or ever wanted to hear again.

  “Everyone here is someone else, that’s what I’m getting at. Every busboy a prospective actor, every coat-check girl waiting to be the next Marla Donovan. I could throw a paper dart right now into that line outside and hit someone who was writing a screenplay or had written a screenplay or was up for a casting call tomorrow morning. Every last one of them desperate to be somebody else, somebody new, a somebody instead of another nobody.”

  Elsnick tapped his cane on the floor several times instead of taking any energy to use his hands for applause.

  “Beautiful, Mr. Finch, nearing the poetic. Maybe you should think about joining their ranks outside? I could loan you a typewriter and some fresh, white paper. I could even find you a spot on my lot where you can peddle such drivel to your heart’s content five days a week and collect a regular paycheck at the same time. But all this is just folderol, name your price and be quick about it man.”

  “No thanks,” I said, and rubbed the spot where a time long ago a typewriter might have ended my poetry before it began. “Me and typewriters have a complicated history, but it’s a real one, not any of it made up. Real, as in solid, unlike everything in this crazy town of yours.”

  Kay Martin puffed quickly and nervously on her cigarette. The fidgeting hand had travelled down a little toward her thigh, and was slowly, slowly crossing to the inner thigh.

  I reached into my jacket and pulled out the .38. I aimed it directly at Kay Martin.

  “That little Sailor’s Surprise you have strapped between your legs, forget about it,” I said.

  She froze.

  “I don’t have any—“

  “Yes you do. It’s a single shot, an old fashioned ballbuster. I seen it the moment I clapped eyes on you. Just forget it for the moment, Miss Martin, you won’t be needing it anyways.”

  Elsnick wagged his head at me.

  “So it’s like this, is it, Mr. Finch? Are we mere hostages now? The bidding over before you allowed it to begin?”

  I let the gun slowly travel from one of them to the other.

  “Bidding? Is that all you know? Can you do nothing without giving it a price?”

  “And you, are you any different? You’re the one who offered the script for money. You’re the one who started all this,” Elsnick said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not the one. This started when someone thought putting the frame on Tarquin Meriwether was a keen idea and one that wouldn’t have any blowback. I mean, who in the world would take the side of a washed up old lush? Who’d be crazy enough to do that?” I held up my hand. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t fishing for an answer.”

  Kay Martin’s eyes were wide with worry.

  “What are you saying, Mr. Finch? Are you telling us the script is no longer for sale?” she said.

  “Is that all that concerns you? I’m here talking about the murder of your biggest client and all you can think about is this lousy script?”

  It took her awhile to think it over and then, like all good liars, she came up with an answer that would have made a politician ask for lessons.

  “All I can do is mourn Marla now that she’s no longer with us,” she said, her words lacking any sincerity.

  I clenched my fist around the grip of the .38. I could have sworn I wasn’t going to get angry, I may have even promised myself on the way over that I wouldn’t see red.

  I broke that promise.

  “No, that’s not all you can do, what you could do is actually give a damn, but I know you don’t give a damn, and there’s the real shame. You didn’t shed a tear, did you, when you heard Marla was dead, but you were worried, weren’t you Miss Martin? All that money you were going to lose, all the prestige you gleamed from being around someone at the top of the ladder. That was all gone in a single moment. But you already were going to lose her, weren’t you?”

  “That’s a lie,” she said

  “No, it isn’t, not a bit of it. It took me awhile to figure it out, but once I had it was the only way any of this crazy mess could make sense.”

  Elsnick took the opportunity to butt in.

  “What in Hades are you babbling about, Mr. Finch? What has any of this to do with the script and our purchasing that item from you?” he said.

  “A lot more than I figured on when I first learned about the damned thing. I mean it couldn’t be that so many of you believed in its fabled powers, it just wasn’t possible. I had to really bend my mind around that kind of reality, but then I realized, this place, this town of yours doesn’t exist in any reality I know, or anybody else does for that matter. This is a town where dreams are made, and where you have dreams you also get nightmares. Flip a coin, and there’s always two sides. Turn over a rock and there’ll be something living in the shadows. I turned over a rock when I first came here. You know what I found?”

  Elsnick took his hand off the cane and rolled it in the air as though I were a jester in the court and he the King giving me permission to continue.

  “Illuminate us, Mr. Finch, please do,” he said.

  “I found more shadows, more lies. And when I came up against the simple truth it shed light into the dark, everything started to make sense.”

  “None of this makes sense, you’re stalling for some reason, Mr. Finch, and I don’t’ appreciate the veiled accusations you insist on throwing my way,” Kay Martin said, her eyes narrowed now and steely.

  I matched that look with one of my own. One part iron to two parts steel, and all of it strong.

  “I think you do know, Miss Martin. I think you have a very good idea of what I’m driving at here.”

  “And I think I’m going to walk away from all this right now.”

  She stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the desk with the kind of purpose that, if it had come from anybody else, I would have believed their intent. But with Kay Martin I didn’t believe her for a second.

  “No, you’re not going anywhere, because you want and you need that script I have. I don’t even need to point this thing at you, because you, the both of you are staying put and it won’t matter if I had a gun or not.” I dropped the .38 in my pocket.

  Kay Martin moved as if she was going to head for the door, but she stopped herself before she reached the edge of the desk.

  She sighed.

  “Okay, Mr. Finch, go ahead with your story, but know this, I only remain here because I hold some crazy hope that you’re going to get back to our original deal.”

  “Hope,” I said, my voice filled with sadness, “hope is the kind of crazy that got me here from there. It’s what made Marla want out of this town. Out for good. She hoped she could have a life away from all this with someone she loved. That’s a whole lot of hope, especially when you’ve risen to the top of a very slippery ladder. And you don’t get to the top of the ladder in this town without knowing how to climb, and she knew how to climb, believe me. She knew she wasn’t getting out without a fight.”

  “You’re conjuring all this from thin air, how could you possibly know any of this about Marla Donovan?” Elsnick said.

  My voice was low, hushed when I said; “A kid told me before someone killed him.”


  “What kid?” Kay Martin said.

  “Same kid who clued me in on how this mess came about, only that kid didn’t really know what was going on, see. That kid just pointed me in the right direction so I could understand all this.”

  “The kid, what was this kid’s name?” Elsnick said, his voice rising in annoyance.

  I ignored him, and pinned my peepers on Kay Martin.

  “See, Marla couldn’t just walk away. With a name like hers and a face like hers, she was money in the bank, guaranteed box office. She was a planet in this town, she had her own gravity. Once she walked away there were a lot of people floating around her who would crash down to earth. A lot of people who just couldn’t survive without her.”

  “Why are you looking at me in such a way, Mr. Finch?” Kay Martin said.

  “Because this, this started with you.”

  “You can’t be—“

  “Serious? Sure I am. Serious as you are about that script, that script you told me a ‘hack’ wrote. Why was that, why did you feel the need to throw that one in, Miss Martin?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “Yeah, you do, you don’t offer up a million without being real certain.”

  Elsnick tapped on his cane for attention.

  “You’d be surprised how much money is lost here on things that aren’t certain, Mr. Finch.”

  “Nothing surprises me about this place. Not a thing. You were willing to pay twice what she offered, but for a completely different reason, right?”

  “I couldn’t say what her reasons are for trying to purchase the script.”

  “I can,” I said, and shifted my attention back to Kay Martin. “It was Marla, right? Marla needed a way out of this damned town and she knew it would cost her one way or another. She knew that money alone wouldn’t cut it. You, neither of you would let such a cash cow walk away from you. So she came up with something better than money.”

  They both looked worried.

  They both had reasons.

  Kay was first on my list.

  “You see, Marla knew you, Kay.”

  “Only my mother gets to call me Kay, Mr. Finch.”

  “Bully for your mother, but I don’t care anymore, Kay. I’ll call you mud if I feel like it.”

  “And you’ll get what’s coming to you if you do,” she said, her hand twitching near her thigh again.

  “You won’t get a chance to pull the trigger on that thing, so don’t even try,” I told her. “I’m not some nothing trying to climb the ladder. You don’t scare me like you do everybody else in this town. Here and now, Kay, you’re on a level with something I’d scrape off my shoe.”

  She jumped toward me, her fists balling at her side.

  “How dare you!”

  I rose up to meet her, my hand reaching for the pocket where I kept the .38.

  “Take a seat,” I said, “before I make you take a seat.”

  “You wouldn’t—“

  “Try me.”

  She could see the future in my eyes. It was a future where she was hurting, a lot.

  Huffing and puffing, she returned to the desk. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She tried to blow smoke in my direction, but it just floated ineffectually above her head.

  “I’ll go on, shall I?” I said, never expecting a reply, and I didn’t get one. So I took my own advice and continued. “Marla needed something more than money, something that would guarantee a speedy exit without anybody chasing her down. So she did what this town does best, she grabbed hold of a dream and made it real.”

  “You’re talking out of your hat,” Kay Martin spat the words at me.

  “I’m not wearing a hat, but that don’t mean much of anything, because Marla Donovan knew you, Kay, she knew you believed in all that hokum about the script. See, you put enough actors and writers and agents together in a place like this and you’re bound to pile up the superstition. I bet there’s enough lucky rabbits’ feet in this town to fill the Empire State building. This script, this ‘Beneath a Bloodshot Moon’ was just the perfect fit for Marla. All she had to do was make you believe it was real and she had her bargaining chip.”

  “What are you saying?” Kay Martin asked.

  “There is no script, Kay. There never was, and Marla was just a good enough actor to convince you that there was.”

  Elsnick tutted.

  “Impossible, it’s impossible, you wouldn’t be daring, no, you wouldn’t be foolish enough to bring us both here if there wasn’t a script. You’d have nothing to bargain with, Mr. Finch, and I don’t think you’d be so reckless.”

  “He’s lying,” Kay Martin said. “He has a script, I know he has the script. I have…I have proof.” She reached into her purse again. This time she brought out the piece of paper I’d used to write down the names Tarquin Meriwether had given me a whole lifetime ago in the Mermaid Café.

  “That belongs to me, I think,” I said.

  She held up the wrinkled piece of paper. “See, this list here, it’s the same list from the script that Marla had. The ‘Beneath the Bloodshot Moon’ script.”

  I smiled big and wide.

  “No, no it’s not.”

  “It is, Marla told me the names that were on that script, she told me…that’s how she proved to me that…she…” I could see the doubt beginning to surface, so I decided to help it along a little.

  “The list you have in your hand is a list I had dictated to me by a lush with a lust for Bourbon. It’s a list he dredged from the pickle of his brain. A list that is half reminisce and half myth.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope,” I said, “somewhere in his days of wine and roses, Meriwether got close to Marla, you see. Close enough for her to whisper her plans in his ear and he to give her a lesson in the history of this damned town. They talked enough for her to come up with a few names that she could easily sell to you.”

  “No, no,” Kay Martin said, shaking her head, “she was…Marla had the damned thing, she—“

  “Tell me, Kay, did Marla ever show you that fabled script?”

  “No, but…she…but she knew the names, the…she had it and she was going to give it to me if—”

  “If you let her out of her contract with you, right?”

  Kay Martin didn’t say a thing, but in her silence there was answer enough.

  “She conned you. She made you believe what she needed you to believe, and you wanted to believe, believe me. You needed to think there was something out there with the power to make every one of your decisions golden, especially when you were about to lose your Golden Goose. She turned the power of this town in on you, Kay, and you fell for it.”

  Kay Martin sagged against the side of the desk. She wagged her head in disbelief.

  “Are you saying there is no script, Mr. Finch? Are you saying it was nothing more than a fiction conjured up by Marla Donovan?” Elsnick asked, a note of relief in his voice.

  “No script, no golden goose, no yellow brick road, no.

  His smile was as wide as it was relieved. He took his time pushing up onto his feet.

  “Well then, this entertaining diversion aside, I must attend the Premiere. Consider yourself lucky, Mr. Finch, that I’m in such a good mood.”

  “Lucky? And why would I consider myself lucky?”

  “I’m going to forget I ever saw you, that’s why. I’m going to walk out of that door and never think of you again. You’re lucky because I don’t feel like remembering you this night or any other that follows, Mr. Finch.”

  “Not so fast,” I said.

  “It’s over with, Mr. Finch, don’t try and confuse the matter anymore than you already have. Over and I’m glad of it.”

  I walked over to the door and blocked his way.

  “You seem awfully eager to get out of here?”

  “Is there any reason for me to remain?”

  I shrugged. “I figure you’d want to stay just a little while longer. At least until the law a
rrives.”

  “Law?”

  “Homicide. I figure they’ll have some questions they want to ask you.”

  He shuffled toward me.

  “If any officer wishes to contact me, they may do so through my lawyer. Not that they would have any reason to do so.”

  “Oh, they’d have reason. A lot of reasons. Tell me, Elsnick, you thought something was written on that script, didn’t you? You never believed in any of the hocus-pocus surrounding it, but you did think the script existed and you did want it enough to offer me two million dollars. What did you think was on that script?”

  He raised his white tipped cane to brush me aside.

  I grabbed it by the edge.

  “See, I thought you’d hired that Gumshoe to bring in some heavy iron on all this, rub out any trace of your connection to Marla Donovan. Framing Tarquin wasn’t enough, you had to make sure it would stick. You had to make sure that he was dead, and that pickle jar of a brain of his didn’t cough up something incriminating at an inopportune moment. So you brought in Johnny Jackson to kill him, didn’t you?”

  Elsnick pushed against me, but I kept hold of the cane, readying for the moment when I would turn it against him.

  “You’re crazy. You can’t prove any of that.”

  “No, not just yet I can’t, but I’ve got it figured, you see. I know how this whole thing fits. Just like Kay over there, you couldn’t afford to lose Marla, but it wasn’t that which drove you to murder, no. It was something a lot more human.”

  “Let me pass,” he said.

  “No dice, Elsnick, because here comes the punch line. It was your son that Marla Donovan loved. It was your son, the bastard secret that you tried to sweep under the rug, who Marla wanted to spend her life with. But you couldn’t have that, could you? You couldn’t have him taking from you what was yours? You couldn’t have him beating you in front of this whole town.”

  “What? What are you talking about? This is all a crazy—”

  “What did she write on the script you thought I had, because it’s as sure as eggs you didn’t think I had any magic script like Kay over there.”

  At the mention of her name she broke out of her trance-like disappointment.

  “I hate you, Mr. Finch,” she said.