The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  Marie answered, in a voice everybody could hear, “You’re a worm, Joe.”

  “After how I build you up!” he screamed. “Talking to me like that! Why, you little—” But he choked up trying to find a word.

  “Hold everything, Mr. Gatski!” Jack Harter hollered. “Don’t say it to her!”

  “Oh,” Joe answered, surprised, because featured players aren’t in the habit of speaking up to supervisors. “So you don’t want us to pick up your option, eh?”

  “I don’t give a damn,” Jack told him, and you could see he meant it. “I’m through with pictures.”

  “You said it,” Joe snapped.

  “And with you potbellied leeches that—”

  Sam Masterford broke in.

  “Come on, everybody. Our nerves are shaky. Let’s rest again. Get out and take a breath of air.” He hesitated and added quickly, “But no liquor, understand that!”

  “Give us fifteen minutes, Sam,” Marie begged.

  “Sure,” he answered, and the gaffer yelled to save ’em and the lights went out again, and Joe Gatski groaned, remembering he was paying the grips and the camera crew and the sound men overtime.

  “I’ll go over to Charley’s and get a cup of coffee,” Marie explained. “Come on, Jack.”

  We watched them leave the set, Marie and her ex-husband, arm in arm, and I couldn’t help thinking what a screwy business the movies turned out to be. How anybody can keep his senses!

  When they had gone, Joe Gatski said to himself, “A worm, eh? After all I done for her! And that louse thinking he could get away with taking her part!”

  He started to walk again, back beyond another set, at the other side of the sound stage, and his heels hit the floor, bang, bang, bang. Marie and Jack were gone about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. It was five minutes to eleven when they got back, according to Murphy’s watch. Murphy was the studio policeman at the stage door who checked every last person in and out.

  The way we knew they were back was that we heard Marie laugh. It was a genuine laugh. Not one of those things they turn on for the sound track. I remember thinking, “Well, it did her good to get that crack at Gatski off her chest.”

  When they came in, Lanny Hoard, the writer, was with them. This “Back of the Boulevard” was his. Lanny had a soft spot in his heart for Marie…everybody who read the gossip colyums knew that. She wasn’t his big moment, or anything like that, but he liked to write pictures for her. And didn’t often get the chance.

  Marie played triangle stories usually, because she’d got typed that way, and Lanny wrote mysteries. And nothing else. There’s a gag around the studio that he had a special key on his typewriter with “Gunfire!” on it. You know the sort of stuff. Melodrama.

  He was a young fellow, around thirty-one or two, and not bad-looking for a writer.

  Marie and Jack were in the middle of the set by now, after looking in their mirrors, and Sam Masterford yelled, “Burn ’em!” The gaffer lifted his hand and the lights all went on in a blaze, and Lanny ducked back into the shadows.

  At that moment, according to Archie Murphy, the cop at the door, there were twenty-two people on the set. No one could get in or out without passing him, and he had a reputation for keeping an accurate list.

  Well, Masterford looked around and saw that everybody was ready, and then he asked Rose Graham, “Okay?”

  You see, the script girl is responsible for any holes in the picture. It’s up to her to make sure that one scene hooks up to the rest without any change in costume, or the way the players have their hair combed, or in the length of the ashes on their cigars. Detail, you understand. Script girl has to see everything, and remember it.

  Now, when Masterford asked her if this scene was okay, she studied Jack carefully, then Marie, and finally she nodded sort of uncertainly. Masterford followed her eyes. He was a good director, remember, and I guess he saw the same thing she did. I know that I noticed it right away.

  It wasn’t anything you could put your finger on. But there was a change. Not in Jack, but in Marie. She was prettier, if anything, and it wasn’t make-up, either, and it wasn’t the lights. She was just naturally prettier.

  Of course, there isn’t anything you can do in a case like that, except pray that it will hold out till you get the shot made. But Masterford didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  “Well, are you going to shoot the scene?” Gatski wanted to know.

  “Sure,” Masterford said, and looked around again.

  The gaffer called, “Lights okay.”

  “Sound okay,” came out of the loud-speaker in the sound booth.

  Assistant Director Bill Cook hollered, “Everybody quiet!”

  “Look here a minute, Marie,” Sam interrupted. He sounded troubled, all of a sudden. Marie looked at him, and now she wasn’t pretty. I don’t know why, but when she took her eyes off Jack, she just wasn’t.

  “Okay,” Sam agreed after a minute, so she smiled at Jack again, and Jack smiled, making the prettiest two-shot you could imagine.

  “Turn ’em,” Sam said in a peculiar tone, like a sound track that’s picked up an echo.

  The camera chief pressed the button and answered, “She’s turning.”

  “Camera,” Sam called. “Action.”

  So there were Marie and Jack, under the lights, slipping closer and closer together, with the sound mike swinging over them to pick up their words.

  “Jack!” Marie whispered. That was her final line, okay. You see, Jack Harter was playing a character named Jack. The script had him answer, “You, Judy! You, forever!” as they clinched.

  But Jack didn’t say, “You, Judy!” He said nothing. He just took Marie and held her close while his lips met hers. The camera chief was counting, wagging his finger like a referee for this ten-count fade-out. Only it went more than ten. It went about fifteen before Sam Masterford yelled, “Cut!”

  Lanny Hoard whistled and called, “Atta boy!” He was a little fellow, not much taller than Joe Gatski, and he had a shrill voice.

  “We do it over,” Sam said. “You blew your line, Jack.”

  Lanny yelled, “What the hell if he did! It’s a natural the way he did it! Leave the line out! I wrote it, and I admit it doesn’t belong. His way, it’s a natural!”

  “A natural,” Sam repeated. “Oh, yes.”

  “It’s okay,” Gatski called. “Wrap it up and go home!”

  Sam stood a minute, rubbing the side of his nose, and I looked back at the stage, just to see what he was looking at, I guess, and there Marie and Jack were, still in each other’s arms, as if they hadn’t heard a word. I tell you, it made even me laugh, it was so comical. I wondered, “Why did she ever quit him for a lug like Clem Batting?”

  Of course she wasn’t married to Batting, now, either. That had lasted only a year, when Clem walked out on her, so, I thought, maybe Jack’s on the inside track again.

  I ran to my lockers, along the rear wall, where I keep my properties. You don’t dare turn your back to properties without putting locks on them. The mixer opened the door of his sound booth and came down the steps, lighting his pipe. Lanny Hoard called, “Marie, can I speak to you?”

  But she still wasn’t listening. I was standing where I could see everything, Marie and Jack still on the set, the chief pushing his camera aside, and the script girl still sitting. The stage was dim.

  Jack Harter wasn’t talking now. Neither was Marie. They were just looking at each other. Hungrily.

  Sam Masterford had walked off the set, looking back and sort of shrugging, and I saw him head toward the hooks on the east wall, where we hung our wraps. In the dark he bumped into Joe Gatski, but I was only twenty feet from them, and didn’t hear Gatski say a word. Sam told the police afterward that Gatski mumbled, “Excuse me,” which doesn’t sound like Gatski.

  Joan Nelson, the ha
irdresser, snapped shut her curler and eyelash box, and started toward the exit without saying good night to anybody. Lanny Hoard saw her go and walked quickly after her, as if he had an idea. The second camera man and one of the grips, a stage hand who’d been pushing the camera truck on the trucking shot, were at the door in plain sight of Murphy, the cop, when the shot sounded, so they were out, as far as suspects went. But where the gaffer went, nobody knew. And when the time came, he wouldn’t tell.

  I still was facing Jack Harter when it happened. It just went plop, not very loud. I couldn’t even tell which direction the report came from, whether from the floor or the scaffolds overhead.

  For ten seconds nothing happened. Neither Marie nor Jack moved an inch. Then Jack started to bend forward. Doc Herring, the studio night surgeon, said Jack died instantly. But he didn’t fall instantly. I guess he was looking too hard at Marie for that. He bent a little, then straightened, and slid to the floor. His head bumped the table, and he lay quiet on his back.

  Still nobody hollered. Marie dropped to her knees, whispering, “Jack! Oh, Jack! Speak to me!”

  I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Just looked. So did Rose Graham. Only she listened, too. And saw and heard more than the rest of us. Being a script girl, that was second nature to her.

  Lanny Hoard came out of the shadows with a strained, peculiar expression on his face, both mad and surprised. He was holding up his right hand, and I saw he had a coin in his fingers. It turned out to be a nickel.

  “What happened?” he asked. I heard Joe Gatski’s heels slapping the floor behind Lanny, and of course Joe took charge. He’s good at that. Maybe that’s how he held his job so long.

  He asked, “Why did the damn fool shoot himself?”

  Marie looked at him, and if I ever saw hate, it was in her eyes. But she didn’t answer; not with words. Just picked up Jack’s head and put it gently in her lap and kissed his forehead, and the tears made zigzag lines down her yellow make-up.

  By this time Gatski was hollering. “Don’t leave nobody get out! Where’s Sam Masterford?”

  “Coming,” the director yelled, running forward, trying to get his arms into his topcoat sleeves, and looking astonished and scared.

  Gatski hollered, “Call Infirmary! Doctor! Police! No, no! Studio police! Come quick! Tell ’em Joe Gatski says so. Lights! Watch your dress, Marie—that blood will spoil it! It’s charged to this production.”

  Nobody else said a word. But we were all there, thirteen of us. Twelve living, and Jack dead. Murphy the cop didn’t leave the door, just blew five blasts of his whistle, over and over, calling help.

  The gaffer threw some switches, and about a dozen lights flashed on, all seeming to point at Jack Harter’s face. There was plenty of excitement.

  Cap Wright, the night police chief, came at Doc Herring’s heels, with a brace of studio cops behind him. Doc didn’t even take out his stethoscope, just opened Jack’s eyes and looked at them, then dusted off his hands and pulled Marie to her feet.

  “Chair,” he said quietly, and when I brought it, “Sit down, Miss Fleming. He’s dead, of course. Who—” The doc didn’t finish.

  Cap Wright did that for him, though, right away.

  “Who knocked him off?” he asked. He was a big man, ugly, with bug eyes. Honest, everybody said, but not exactly jolly. He’d fought off too many gate crashers, trying to meet the stars, to have a nice personality.

  Joe Gatski answered him, and what he said shocked most of us. “Who knocked him off?” he repeated. “Why, Marie did it.”

  Cap Wright grunted, “Hell to pay! Why’d she do it?”

  Then I spoke up. I said, “She didn’t.”

  “Oh,” Cap Wright answered, sort of relieved.

  Joe Gatski got mad and hollered at me, “What the hell do you know?”

  Cap shushed him and asked, “Where’s the gun?”

  That hadn’t occurred to us. We all looked around the floor, but no gun. Gatski told Cap to find it quick, but Cap didn’t bother to answer. He lined us up, all except Marie. She still sat there, pinching her fingers and not looking pretty any more. Joe Gatski started to walk away, but Cap hollered, and he turned, sort of surprised, and came back.

  Cap asked Rose Graham, “Just where were you, miss?”

  “Sitting in that chair, right here,” she pointed with her foot.

  “That’s right,” the camera chief agreed. “All the time she set there.”

  Cap turned on him and asked, “Where was you, Dutch?”

  “Pushing my camera, here, like this,” the chief answered.

  I said, “That’s right. I could see them both.”

  “Could they both see you?” Cap asked suspiciously.

  Rose spoke up. “I could,” she said.

  “Did he have anything in his hands?” Cap wanted to know.

  She nodded. “A whisk broom. He was brushing his coat.”

  Cap laughed, it striking him funny I had a brush when he was thinking of a gun. He asked Rose, “Did Miss Fleming have anything in her hands?”

  “No,” she answered. “Miss Fleming didn’t shoot him. Neither did the prop man nor Dutch. And I didn’t. The shot came from back there.” She pointed toward the corner of the stage, past an unfinished set of a library interior, with a statue of some kind on a bookshelf.

  “How’d you know?” Joe Gatski asked.

  “The sound came from there,” she answered.

  Doc Herring asked her to repeat that, and she pointed again.

  “Where was Harter standing?” he inquired, and when I showed him, Doc said, “She’s correct. The course of the slug is from left to right. Whoever shot him stood over there—” he pointed, too—“some little distance.”

  We all looked toward the corner, which was light enough now, but had been plenty dark when Jack was shot. The two cops came back from prowling around and said nobody was hiding on the stage, and they could find no gun.

  Cap Wright said, “Well, one of you did it. For the moment we’ll count Miss Fleming out. And you, miss—” he nodded to Rose—“and Dutch and this prop man—” he pointed at me. “That leaves eight.” He began to count them off. “Mr. Gatski, Mr. Masterford, the gaffer, this detective writer, this fellow.” He pointed to the grip.

  Murphy, the cop, interrupted: “He’s okay, sir. Him and the second camera man were right inside the door when it happened. It wasn’t them.”

  “Um,” Cap answered. “There’s still six to pick from. Guess I’ll have to question all of you.”

  “Of course,” Sam Masterford answered sensibly. “That’s only right. Start on me.”

  But Cap didn’t. He started by looking at the gaffer. I looked, too, and what I saw surprised me. For the gaffer was drunk. Extremely. Liquor was sticking out his ears, you might say. He hadn’t been drunk when we wrapped up the picture fifteen minutes ago. We’d have known it, for he was a guy you had to watch; he’d even been warned that he’d lose his job if he brought another bottle on the lot.

  Cap said, “What’s wrong, Otto?”

  “Hell with you,” the gaffer answered, and Cap had his men search him, and while they searched, Cap asked, “Where were you, Otto, when the shot was fired?”

  But the gaffer just said, “I don’t like studio cops.”

  They found no gun on him, but something else. In his bill fold was a thing you’d not expect to find on a studio technician. A picture from some fan magazine. A picture of Marie Fleming.

  Cap asked Marie politely, “He a friend of yours?” and pointed to the gaffer. She shook her head. But it set Cap to wondering about the rest of us, and when his eyes came to Lanny Hoard, he frowned and remembered what the gossip colyums were saying about Lanny being that way about Marie.

  “Where were you, Hoard?” he asked Lanny suddenly.

  Lanny answered sarcastically, “Mr. Pinkerto
n grills suspect. Well, I was about to phone.”

  “No dirty cracks necessary,” Cap told him. “You’re so good at figuring things out, figure this one! Who saw you phoning?”

  Lanny looked startled, and said, “Why—no one.” He turned to Joan Nelson, and I remembered—he had followed the hairdresser off the set.

  “He was talking to me,” Joan backed him up. “Then he walked toward the phone and I started for the door.”

  “What did he talk to you about?” Cap asked.

  Hoard answered, and you could see him getting red: “I borrowed a nickel of her. Hadn’t a cent in my pants and wanted to phone for my car.”

  “That’s right,” Joan admitted, and Lanny held up the coin.

  “I’d just got studio operator,” he said, “and she told me to deposit five cents, and I heard the shot. I didn’t put through the call.”

  Cap grunted, and went and whispered to his two cops, and they left the set, one going outdoors and the other starting to hunt inside again. Gatski was getting nervous. He said impatiently, “Well, do something!”

  “All right. What were you doing?” Cap asked him, but Gatski had no time to answer. Marie, who hadn’t spoken yet, answered for him.

  “He was pulling the trigger,” she said in a flat voice.

  Sam Masterford went right over to her and began to talk soothingly, and Gatski tramped up and down and swore, and asked Cap Wright to search him, and called Marie names. So Cap got the story, prying it out of us, about the argument between Gatski and Marie and Jack.

  “Well, where were you, Mr. Gatski?” Cap asked again.

  “He should ask a supervisor where he was!” Gatski answered sort of jerkily. “I was by the water cooler. Taking a stomach tablet. I had the heartburn.”

  “Alone?”

  Gatski yelled, “Of course alone! Do I ask for the spotlight when I take a stomach tablet?”

  Cap said to himself, “Mr. Gatski alone at the cooler, this writer alone at the telephone, the gaffer nobody knows where, but drunk.”

  Masterford broke in quietly, “I was alone, too. I’d gone for my coat and hat and stopped to put on my rubbers. They went on hard. I was still working on them when I heard it.”