I Wake Up Screaming

by Steve Fisher

  I asked her what she was going to do about the apartment and she said she was going to move downstairs in the same building to a single. A friend of hers was coming back from New York and would probably move in with her.

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Wanda,” Jill said. “She was an extra here. But she got sick of it. She was friendly with Hurd Evans, by the way. She hated Hollywood. She said you could starve and die here and she went to New York to become a big actress. Now she’s trying to scrape up enough money for bus fare.”

  I pointed out that it wasn’t a very good investment to take an apartment with a girl who was coming home from New York broke. There would be the rent to pay and food to buy.

  “Oh, she’ll manage to get a few days’ extra work every month.” Jill said. “And I’ve a job of sorts—three song spots a week with a local radio station.”

  I looked down at her. She was very pretty. “Jill—why don’t you wise up? This Paul. He’s got a million dollars and he’s young. He isn’t bad, is he?”

  “No.”

  “He wants to marry you?”

  “He says that.”

  “Then why don’t you—”

  She turned away from me. “I’ll have to be going now.”

  “Listen—”

  “No, you don’t understand, Peg.”

  “I don’t understand what?”

  “That girls keep waiting for—for dreams to come true. That they keep eating cheap hamburger and slapping cheap faces and waiting. There’re always lots of ways out. But they aren’t any good. Nothing’s any good unless you believe it!”

  I turned her around and I held her against me, and kissed her. I kissed her full and hard on the lips.

  “Go home, baby,” I said.

  “Peg—” Her eyes were wet.

  “Go home. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  I went in and got her slicker and came out and helped her put it on. She kept watching me.

  “I want to hold you and kiss you,” I said. “But I’m not going to. I don’t love you. It would be very splendid to love you, Jill. But I don’t. Go home now, kid. I’ll come and see you.”

  “Will you really?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Goodbye, Peg.”

  “Goodbye.”

  She closed the door and I walked around the room. The rain was black and heavy, and it came down in torrents.

  The room was wet and hot. I sat down on the bed. I was trembling. The smell of Jill was still sweet in the air. I couldn’t stop thinking of her.

  9

  THE D. A.’S OFFICE called me at the studio the next day, and I went down and hopped in my car and drove into Los Angeles as fast as I could. They had already started when I arrived in the room where they had told me to go. Hurd Evans was sitting down at a little wooden table and the assistant D. A. was standing over him asking questions. Besides me, they had sent for Lenny Craig and Robin Ray. There were two or three detectives in the room and one of them was Ed Cornell. He looked at me without expression and then he turned back to the proceedings. I edged in and watched.

  Hurd Evans’ eyes were almost glassy. His small face was specked with sweat and he kept wiping it away with a nifty red handkerchief. You could see the guy’s slave bracelet big as day. The assistant D. A. was the same one who had talked to me. But he was different now. He was nasty.

  “You say this idea occurred to you the day before Miss Lynn’s screen test?”

  “Yes,” Hurd Evans said.

  “And on the following day you phoned Johnny Wismer about it?”

  “Yes.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about but I saw Johnny Wismer. He looked gaunt and miserable. They had already worked on him and he was messed up a little. His collar was open. There was a pile of ten and twenty dollar bills on the table. Robin Ray’s handsome young face was intent. He was watching Hurd Evans. Lanny Craig looked worn out and disinterested.

  There was a solid hour of questions and it was a long time before any of it made sense. The assistant D. A. acted like he was in court. He asked Hurd Evans something, then he turned around and snapped out a question to Johnny Wismer.

  What had happened was this: On the day before Vicky’s screen test Hurd Evans had gotten the brilliant idea that if we insured her for fifty thousand dollars it would be a swell publicity story. He called Johnny Wismer on the following day and asked his opinion. Johnny had told him that it had been done before, but it was always good. Hurd asked if it was necessary to actuany take out a policy in order to get such press, and Johnny told him that he could break certain papers and columns with a story but if he wanted really complete coverage he would have to have the policy to back up the story in case anyone wanted to check on it. Hurd then said we’d want complete coverage. That it was a fine story. She was our investment and we were insuring her. He thought it was very Hollywood and very novel. It was the same as a ship builder insures a ship. He asked Johnny to find out how much such a policy would cost and said that we’d just pay the first premium.

  Johnny called Hurd back and told him how much it was. An hour later, Johnny got the money by messenger. He was supposed to take out the policy at once and start the story on the wires. But there was a little larceny in Johnny’s blood, and he decided he would try and fake the story anyway. So he had put the money in his safe. He had several of the news stories ready to break the next day when Vicky was killed. He naturally cancelled the stories. But he was bewildered and stunned by the tragedy and when Hurd Evans asked him if he’d already laid out the cash for the policy, Johnny replied that he had. It never occurred to him then that under the terms Hurd had ordered him to get, the insurance would now be due and payable. After Vicky was buried and Hurd called him and asked what the company was going to do about paying off, Johnny got scared and told the D. A. He confessed to the larceny and they were making no charge against him. This was a murder case and they had no time for larceny.

  The point the assistant D. A. stressed now was that Hurd Evans had gone ahead and told Johnny to get this insurance without consulting any of the other three of us. Hurd claimed it slipped his mind but the attorney quickly brought it to his attention that by his own statement he had conceived the idea for the insurance on one day and hadn’t called Johnny about it until the next. But Hurd Evans maintained he’d forgotten to tell us. With Vicky getting a screen test there had been a lot of excitement and he simply hadn’t remembered. He said he had intended collecting a share from each of us to pay off the premium. He had spent the cash out of his own pocket, knowing he could collect from us later. The attorney asked him if he had any right to spend our money without our permission, and Hurd replied that he hadn’t but that he had felt it would be all right.

  The important fact seemed to be that after the murder occurred Hurd Evans imagined the money would be paid off; and that at just this time he needed money very badly. The assistant D. A. had checked with the studio and he brought up the fact that Hurd earned two hundred and fifty dollars a week. That isn’t very much and Hurd flushed red. You never discuss salary in a studio. You might get two hundred or two thousand. But you never discuss it. Your agent won’t. Under ordinary circumstances, there is no way anyone can find out what you make.

  “Can’t you live on your pay?”

  “I live on it all right, yes.”

  “Then why did you need money?”

  “I have an ex-wife who is pressing me for alimony.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. There is a girl in New York who has written me for money a number of times.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Wanda Hale,” Hurd Evans said.

  “Why do you feel you have to give her money?”

  “I used to go with her. She knows a couple of people in Hollywood. I was afraid she might make trouble for me at the studio.”

  “What is your bank account, Mr. Evans?”

  “I have none.”

  “Y
ou’ve been living up to every penny?”

  “Yes, you have to. You have to give parties. I had some money saved but I spent it trying to promote Vicky Lynn.”

  “Promoting Miss Lynn was quite a strain on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t want your colleagues to know that you couldn’t afford it as well as they?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They didn’t know how much you earned and you felt you had your prestige to maintain?”

  Hurd Evans nodded.

  “So with your account depleted and between your exwife and Miss Hale you were—shall we say—desperate for money?”

  “I—yes.”

  “So desperate,” the assistant D. A. snapped, “that you killed Vicky Lynn!”

  “No. That’s not true!”

  “What did you do with Harry Williams?”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Where were you on the afternoon of the murder?”

  “At four o’dock I left my office and went over to Olam’s Bar.”

  “Is that a customary habit?”

  “No. I was upset about money.”

  “What time did you leave Olam’s?”

  “I don’t know. It might have been four-thirty.”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “I drove home. I live in a little house in the valley.”

  “Have you any servants?”

  “No.”

  “You live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there was no one that saw you at home? You might have been there or not. We have only your word?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t drive out on the Sunset Strip and pick up Vicky Lynn in front of Max Epstein’s office?”

  “I’m quite sure.”

  “What did you do with Harry Williams?”

  “I said I didn’t know anything about him”

  “Is that your money on the table?”

  “Yes, that’s the money I sent Johnny Wismer to pay the insurance premium.”

  “You thought for this small investment your share when the insurance was paid would be some twelve thousand odd dollars?”

  “It didn’t occur to me until after she was killed. In the beginning I thought it would be good publicity. I thought the price of the premium was worth the publicity.”

  Afterward I walked out with Ed Cornell. It wasn’t my idea, but he stuck beside me. We walked down First Avenue and over toward Broadway. He wore the same silly derby and a light trench coat. He kept his hands in his pockets.

  “Will they hold him?” I asked.

  “On what?”

  “He had motive.”

  “You can’t hold a man simply on motive,” Ed Cornell said. “Besides, there isn’t even that. He had a legitimate excuse to take out the insurance. You can only infer motive and that isn’t strong at all. If there wasn’t that publicity angle and he had taken out insurance on her, it would be a different thing.”

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s just that the attorney understands insurance. It’s very simple for him. He learned it in law school. Money as a cause for murder. But that isn’t the motive for the good murders. You didn’t murder Vicky for money.”

  “Listen, that isn’t funny any more.”

  “I’m not saying it for fun.”

  “Then why don’t you prove it? Hurd Evans and Lanny Craig both had wonderful motives but you won’t even look at them! You’re letting a murder case go to pot because of a personal prejudice!”

  “Jealousy is the best motive,” Ed Cornell said. “Jealousy causes sudden anger. You were jealous of Robin Ray. Vicky was half in love with him.”

  He said it very sweetly, and I was too sore to speak.

  “Come up with me to my room,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go to your room.”

  “Vicky’s there.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “She’s all around the room. There’re four pictures on the dresser mirror and six around the walls. I’d like to have you see them.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “I will very soon. In about six months. The doctor said six months at the outside. That’s if I take it easy.”

  I looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Six months,” he said. “That’s all I got. The cops don’t know. But even if you told them and got me out of the force, I’d get the evidence against you before then.”

  “Are you that sick?”

  “I’m walking into my grave,” he said. There was a wan smile on his white face. “I’ll be very happy in a coffin.” He looked up. “There’s something else in my room I’d like you to see. It’s an effIgy.”

  “An effigy?”

  “Of you in the gas chamber,” he said.

  10

  NOW, IN NOVEMBER, the darkness came at five, and the heat was gone, and the air tasted of cider; but the roses still bloomed and the leaves were green. It was like summer in autumn. It was pleasant and invigorating. There was a sweet, crisp wind, and the nights were deep and blue. It was a lovely Hollywood then. It was like a beautiful studio set full of the sound of music and laughter; it was gaudy with color and action. All up and down the Boulevard the shops were very bright and gay; and you saw the tremendous searchlights moving back and forth through the sky. A preview of a new picture; a new open air market; or a drug store that had just put in a soda fountain. They all hired arc lights.

  Fall, and the town was magic! The film trade papers kept you posted about where your friends drank cocktails, and whose wife had better watch her step, and whose option was picked up, or who had checked off the lot. The winding, glorious Sunset Strip sparkled with clubs, the best bands playing The Cloister. Everyone was there after a première. Everyone was someone because just anyone didn’t get in.

  The nights were getting longer, and the air crisper, and the lights brighter; on sound stages all over town cameras were whirring; dialogue and gunfire and comedy echoed from empty projection rooms; drama and beauty and youth were rushed into tin cans. Typewriters clicked endless reams of publicity. Song writers stood around pianos in their shirt sleeves and somebody played. All right, for the score over the titles, try this theme, swipe a little from Cole Porter. Give me something as good as All the Way or My Foolish Heart, not half as good, as good! Try it this way, no no! That sounds like something out of Peter Gunn; what I want is sweet music. No more original stories. Just books and plays. TV’s got all the original stories. TV can have all the original stories. But they can’t afford Exodus; they can’t afford South Pacific; they can’t buy a Look Homeward, Angel. That’s our edge. That’s our big edge. Big properties for the big screen. The Screen Writer’s Guild is having a meeting. Strike vote against independents that won’t pay residuals on old movies. What do those writers want these days? Blood? They were paid the first time around and paid good. The independents wifi make movies without them. Yeah, but how? I’ll tell you how. With Method Actors. Those jerks make up their own dialogue. The story, too? Foreign grosses are off. No more B pictures. More B pictures for drive-ins. Monsters and teen-age sex properties. I Was Raped at Hollywood High. It’ll gross a million. Gross a million and you can make it for spit. What do you mean no more B pictures? No more musicals. Except big musicals. They’ve got those old Astaire-Rogers pictures on TV now. Why don’t we invent a new Astaire-Rogers team? Why doesn’t Fox make up its mind whether it’s going to make features or turn itself into a TV factory? And what’s Metro up to any more? Does anybody know? And what’s with Paramount these days? It’s a kookie upside down town. But one good thing: everybody’s working.

  Glamour, personality, emotion, going into tin cans. Dale Robertson on a horse. June Allyson has turned to the TV tube. Entertainment. Grosses. Liz Taylor in a sarong would gross millions. Susan Hayward in a gas chamber broke all box office records. Grosses. Marilyn Monroe. Grosses. Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot
. Grosses. Who hates Hedda Hopper? Who loves Hedda Hopper? What’s Sidney Skolsky up to these days? So go to Schwab’s and find out. This’ll break Louella’s column. You get a screen credit. You get a big fine wide screen credit. Aren’t you lucky? People don’t want money. They want big, fine, wide screen credits. Grosses. Grosses. Grosses.

  “Hello, Robin. Robin Ray. It’s good to see you. Here, move over. Will you have a drink with me, Robin? I’m having champagne. The champagne’s so good here.”

  “I’ll have champagne, too.”

  “You’re looking good, Robin. You look bigger and healthier. You’ve got glamour, kid.”

  “I’ve got the jitters.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Let’s face it, old man. My roles are getting worse. My option’s running short.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get a break. It’s always like that.”

  “I heard you telling a star that. I heard you tell her that she was better looking than Suzy Parker and a better actress than someone else. And the next night I saw you having dinner with the someone else. You writers tell actors the same thing.”

  “No, Robin. I mean it with you.”

  “You were saying she was better looking than Suzy Parker, and it was a rotten lie. She’s heavier than Suzy Parker. I don’t suppose you remember. But it was my party. There were a lot of people there and you probably forgot it was my party. That’s all right because practically everybody else forgot it. Everybody except the people who sent me the bifi. I was hoping they’d forget. But they didn’t.”

  “You’re bitter, Robin.”

  “I’m bitter and blue. I’ve got the Hollywood jitters.”

  “Here, drink. Cheer up.”

  “All right, I’ll drink. I’ll drink to you. I’ll drink to the dope that put a new windshield in my car and didn’t make it shatter-proof glass so that I damn near killed myself. I’ll drink to him.”

  “Did you break your windshield?”

  “That was about a month ago. It just shattered. But I’ve broken it again since. I stopped too fast, and it broke. It was a sweetheart of a windshield. The next drink’s on me. Scotch. Scotch, bartender. Two Scotches. Haig & Haig.”