The McBain Brief

by Ed McBain

  “Something happened before you left, though.”

  “Nothing happened. I cleaned out the register and then blew. Period.”

  “Your knife had blood on it.”

  “Yeah? I was cleaning chickens last night.”

  “You stabbed the owner of that store, didn’t you?”

  “Me? I never stabbed nobody in my whole life.”

  “Why’d you stab him?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Where’d you stab him?”

  “I didn’t stab him.”

  “Did he start yelling?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You stabbed him, Steve. We know you did.”

  “You’re full of crap.”

  “Don’t get smart, Steve.”

  “Ain’t you had your look yet? What the hell more do you want?”

  “We want you to tell us why you stabbed the owner of that store.”

  “And I told you I didn’t stab him.”

  “He was taken to the hospital last night with six knife wounds in his chest and abdomen. Now how about that, Steve?”

  “Save your questioning for the detective squadroom. I ain’t saying another word.”

  “You had your money. Why’d you stab him?”

  Stevie did not answer.

  “Were you afraid?”

  “Afraid of what?” Stevie answered defiantly.

  “I don’t know. Afraid he’d tell who held him up? Afraid he’d start yelling? What were you afraid of, kid?”

  “I wasn’t afraid of nothing. I told the old crumb to keep his mouth shut. He shoulda listened to me.”

  “He didn’t keep his mouth shut?”

  “Ask him.”

  “I’m asking you!”

  “No, he didn’t keep his mouth shut. He started yelling. Right after I’d cleaned out the drawer. The damn jerk, for a lousy twelve bucks he starts yelling.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I told him to shut up.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “No, he didn’t. So I hit him, and he still kept yelling. So—so I gave him the knife.”

  “Six times?”

  “I don’t know how many times. I just—gave it to him. He shouldn’t have yelled. You ask him if I did any harm to him before that. Go ahead, ask him. He’ll tell you. I didn’t even touch the crumb before he started yelling. Go to the hospital and ask him if I touched him. Go ahead, ask him.”

  “We can’t, Steve.”

  “Wh . . .”

  “He died this morning.”

  “He . . .” For a moment, Stevie could not think clearly. Died? Is that what he’d said? The room was curiously still now. It had been silently attentive before, but this was something else, something different, and the stillness suddenly chilled him, and he looked down at his shoes.

  “I . . . I didn’t mean him to pass away,” he mumbled.

  The police stenographer looked up. “To what?”

  “To pass away,” a uniformed cop repeated, whispering.

  “What?” the stenographer asked again.

  “He didn’t mean him to pass away!” the cop shouted.

  The cop’s voice echoed in the silent room. The stenographer bent his head and began scribbling in his pad.

  “Next case,” the Chief of Detectives said.

  Stevie walked off the stage, his mind curiously blank, his feet strangely leaden. He followed the cop to the door, and then walked with him to the elevator. They were both silent as the doors closed.

  “You picked an important one for your first one,” the cop said.

  “He shouldn’t have died on me,” Stevie answered.

  “You shouldn’t have stabbed him,” the cop said.

  He tried to remember what Skinner had said to him before the line-up, but the noise of the elevator was loud in his ears, and he couldn’t think clearly. He could only remember the word “neighbors” as the elevator dropped to the basement to join them.

  Skin Flick

  We’d still be shooting that damn movie if it hadn’t been for Harry. And I want to tell you it was me who at the very beginning said Harry would be no good for the project, and don’t forget it. That’s because Harry is a dope. I am not talking about his acting ability. He probably was as talented in his own way as the rest of us put together. I am only talking about his capacity to understand a very good deal that could have made everybody extremely happy, if only some dope wouldn’t fall in love with a dizzy broad the way Harry did. I will never forgive Harry. I don’t know where he is right now, but someday I’m going to meet him someplace, I’m going to spot him coming down the street with his skinny face and his eyeglasses, and he’ll probably have that dumb blonde on his arm, and I’m going to walk up to him and say, “Hello, stupid, you happy now? You happy you blew the whole thing?”

  I don’t want to hear anything about morality; there’s no such thing as morality when you are making a pornographic movie. In fact, the only thing obscene was that Harry went off the deep end for that girl, and ruined my idea. Yes, it was my idea from the beginning, though I’ve been hearing around town that Ben says it was his idea. I don’t like to hear that kind of talk. It breaks my heart to hear that kind of talk. I give credit where credit is due, and Ben was the one who thought of the empty loft, but that was after I got the idea of doing the movie. Anyway, it was that dumb bastard Harry who blew it all, so what difference does it make whose idea it was in the first place, even if it was Ben’s? Which it wasn’t.

  And I admit that Solly was the one who found the girl, I’ll even admit he did the preliminary talking, he’s a very smooth talker, Solly, and a good dresser besides; I’ll tell that to anyone who’ll listen, you’ll never hear me bad-mouthing a friend. But it was me who convinced the girl we could make her a star. Even Solly will admit it was me who finally sewed up the deal that day in the R&M Cafeteria when she was sitting there at the table nibbling on a jelly doughnut and driving us all crazy just from the way she licked powdered sugar from her lips. She was no beauty, but she had something, all right; she had star quality. Solly recognized her star quality while she was giving him a massage in that place on Eighth Avenue. Solly’s got a good eye, no one can take that away from him.

  It was raining the day she came in the R&M, and she was wearing this soaking wet black raincoat, and she apologized for being late, but she’d just come from dance class. She took off the coat, and what she was wearing underneath was this black leotard with a short leather skirt wrapped around it, and black boots, and right away I got an idea for a scene in the picture, but I didn’t tell her about it just then because what we were there to do was sell her on becoming a porn queen. I did most of the talking; I’m the one who sold her. Ben was the one who explained the project to her, but I’m the one who finally nailed down the deal. In fact, it wasn’t even Ben who told her what we planned to do. It was Solly. Yes, that’s absolutely correct, what’s right is right.

  They had got to talking in the massage parlor, and she had apologized for not being so good at this line of work, but she was really an unemployed actress and had just taken the job to make ends meet. Solly had immediately told her we’d been looking for somebody exactly like her to play a role in a low-budget movie we were doing, and this had got her interested, and she’d agreed to talk it over with us the next day. And it was Solly who picked up the ball the minute she came to the table shaking rain out of her frizzy blonde hair and saying she was always starved after dance class, could she order something to eat, would that be all right? She ate like a friggin horse, that girl. I hope Harry, wherever he is, is spending a fortune on food bills. Solly explained that we were three movie buffs who’d managed to save a little money, not a lot, and who were now ready to take a chance on a lifelong dream, which was to produce a quality motion picture which, if everything went okay, would make us all millionaires, God willing. He went on to say that he himself had written a pretty good screenplay . . .

&n
bsp; “It’s a great screenplay,” Ben said. “Don’t knock it.”

  . . . and Ben would be cameraman on the picture, and I would be directing. We had none of us had too much experience, but we were sure we could make a movie that was a lot better than some of the junk being shown around these days, though plenty of those pictures, too, were making tons of money.

  “Like I told you in the massage parlor,” he said, “we’ve been searching for a girl about your age and build, who also has that nice quality of looking innocent and sophisticated at the same time together.”

  “Thanks,” the girl said. She had listened to all this while first she demolished a big bowl of clam chowder, and then a plateful of pot roast, boiled potatoes, and stringbeans, with two buttered rolls. She thought it over now while she sipped at a glass of milk and nibbled at a sugar-covered jelly doughnut—Jesus, that doughnut. Then she said, “How big is the part, and how much are you paying?”

  Now that was when Ben came in, I remember it distinctly, I always give credit where credit is due. It was Ben who put her on the defensive by telling her we naturally wanted somebody with acting experience, and preferably acting experience before a camera because after all we were going to be shooting a movie here and not doing some crumby little play downtown in some grubby little theatre. And I remember she got very offended when he asked her what her acting credits were. She told him she’d been doing plays even when she was a high-school freshman, and since her graduation four years ago, she’d done a lot of summer stock and could even show us some of the really very good reviews she’d got if we cared to see them. She’d never been before a camera except in home movies, but she was only twenty-two, and she figured she had plenty of time yet. Of course, things weren’t going exactly her way just then, which is why she’d taken the job in the massage parlor, but a girl with her talent was sure she’d make it sooner or later, so what was the hurry? And besides, how big was the part, and how much were we ready to pay her?

  Solly almost blew it right then and there; I think he was very premature in asking whether or not she had any objections to doing nude scenes. For a minute, I thought she was going to get up and walk right out, especially since by now she’d also finished the doughnut and the glass of milk. But she looked Solly straight in the eye, and she said in this very tiny sort of breathless voice she had, “What do you mean? Do you mean I’ll have to take off my clothes in front of a camera and everything?” And that was where I stepped in, and saved the day. I figured there was no sense kidding this girl, she had to know sooner or later what the project was. If we lost her, we’d just have to look for someone else.

  “Miss,” I said, “this is a pornographic movie we have in mind here.”

  The girl blinked and said, “Could I have another doughnut and glass of milk, please?”

  I sent Ben up to the counter, and while he was gone I patted her hand gently and told her I knew this must come as a terrific shock to her, but she shouldn’t think for one minute that we were going to make a dirty movie, so-called. The sex scenes would be explicit, yes, but Solly had written a beautiful screenplay with plenty of socially-redeeming value, and the film we planned to make would be something that no one would be ashamed to take his wife or his sweetheart to, or maybe even both together, something in fact that might be beneficial to poor unfortunates who had sexual hang-ups as well. I told her that the film would be shot on a closed set, no exteriors, we would never even consider asking her to take off her clothes in public. There’d be only her on the set, and a few actors, and Ben cranking the camera, and Solly there to make any necessary script changes, and me, of course, directing. I told her I was a man of sensitivity who would most certainly be aware of her innermost feelings, and the feelings of any actor working with her, and besides I’d be the first to take offense at any line or gesture that seemed merely dirty or obscene without being also artistic and socially-redeeming. This was going to be a story of quiet beauty and delicacy, I told her, and she said, “Gee, I don’t know, I’ve never fucked in front of a camera before.”

  Ben came back with the milk and the doughnut, and he began talking about the kind of salary she could expect. He explained that some very fine dramatic actresses like Linda Lovelace and Tina Russell and Marilyn Chambers had got their start in pornographic movies of taste and distinction, but that their salaries were very low when they were just starting out—Georgina Spelvin, for example, had got only five hundred dollars for the extraordinarily sensitive work she did in The Devil In Miss Jones—but of course now that she was a star, now that they all were stars, they could call their own tunes and were even being sought after for work outside skin flicks. Considering the circumstances, and realizing that we were interested primarily in turning out a quality film, which would mean making sure that every inch of footage was in good taste and carefully shot, the most we could offer her was double what these other actresses had got. In short, we could offer what was a high salary for a beginning actress in a starring role in her very first big movie, and that was one thousand dollars from the start of principal photography to the day of completion.

  “Gee, I don’t know,” she said.

  “We’ll pay you an advance of one hundred dollars on signing,” Ben said.

  “How long will it take to make this movie?” she asked.

  “Twenty weeks,” I said.

  “Twenty weeks is a long time for only a thousand dollars,” she said. “I make more than that in the massage parlor.”

  “You can’t become a star in a massage parlor,” Solly said.

  “That’s true,” she said, “but . . .”

  “I can understand what she means,” I said. “We’re offering her a thousand dollars for twenty weeks’ work. That only comes to fifty dollars a week.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “And suppose we run over?” I said.

  “We won’t run over,” Ben said.

  “How do you know we won’t?”

  “What do you mean ‘run over’?” the girl asked. “What’s ‘run over’?”

  “That means if it takes more time to shoot than we planned.”

  “More than twenty weeks?” she said. “This must be some long movie you’ve got in mind here.”

  “We want to do a quality job,” I said.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” she said. “If it runs over twenty weeks, I want fifty a week for as long as it takes. That’s if I decide to take the job, which I haven’t decided I’ll take it yet.”

  “Well, take your time,” Ben said.

  “Who’s going to be in this picture with me?” she asked.

  “We haven’t found a leading man yet,” I said.

  “How much will you be paying him?”

  “All we can afford is five hundred dollars.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “So that’s fifteen hundred for both of us, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you guys expect to make millions on this picture, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I want a percentage,” she said. “I want twenty-five percent of the profits.”

  “No,” Ben said. “That’s out of the question.”

  “Just a minute, Ben,” I said.

  “Out of the question,” he said.

  “And also I want script approval.”

  “No script approval,” Solly said.

  “Okay, I’ll forget about script approval, but I still want twenty-five percent.”

  “Make it five,” I said.

  “Make it ten,” she said.

  “Boys?” I said.

  Solly and Ben looked at each other.

  “This is highway robbery,” Ben said. “There must be a thousand young actresses in this city . . .”

  “Ben,” Solly said, “I want this girl for the part. She’s perfect for the part.”

  “Do you know what ten percent of a million dollars is?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, it’s one hundred thousand dollars,”
Solly said, “and I’m willing to give her that if she turns out to be only half as good as I think she’ll be.”

  “I think she’ll be very good, too, Ben,” I said.

  “I was hoping for a redhead,” Ben said.

  “What do you say?”

  “All right, all right,” Ben said. “Give her the ten percent.”

  “Have we got a deal?” I asked her.

  “We’ve got a deal,” she said, and grinned.

  Powdered sugar was clinging to her lips.

  We had budgeted ourselves very carefully because it simply wouldn’t have paid to undertake the project if it was going to come to too much of a weekly investment for the three of us individually. You have to remember that whereas this dream of ours had been taking shape over a long period of time, during which we’d had many meetings and discussions, we nevertheless knew very little about the movie business, and were a little bit afraid we wouldn’t be able to make the thing work. Ben, for example, though he had naturally taken a lot of photographs in his lifetime, both still and motion picture, made his real living as an accountant, and naturally had a lot to learn. Solly worked as a short-order cook in a delicatessen downtown, and had written his beautiful screenplay at night and on Sundays. And I personally was a lingerie salesman for Benjamin Brothers Apparel, but this doesn’t necessarily mean I did not have a feel for directing; I have always been very good with people, there are those who say I am maybe too sensitive when it comes to personal relationships.

  What I’m trying to explain is that the project was a risky one for three amateurs, and we all knew it would require a great deal of concentration and energy to bring it off and make our dream come true. And also, it couldn’t cost us too much because then the economics of it would have been self-defeating, if you know what I mean. We were paying the girl fifty dollars a week, and we were planning to pay her leading man twenty-five dollars a week, and also we had rented a big empty loft for another fifty dollars a week, which came to a bottom line cost of positively one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week, which was maybe not expensive for what we had in mind, but which was a considerable sum for us to be splitting three ways. If you figure it out, it came to almost forty-two dollars a week for each of us. And if the girl didn’t work out, we would have lost our initial hundred-dollar advance, which was supposed to cover the first two weeks of shooting the scenes with her leading man.