The War of the Worlds Murder d-6

by Max Allan Collins

  To Gibson’s left, beyond the podium, a small orchestra was arrayed, seven pieces plus a grand piano; their leader, a bespectacled, rather odd-looking man, sat at the piano, frowning as he made notes on his score, paying no heed to the musicians filing in and taking their seats and going through little practice scales and other warm-ups.

  Across the room, beyond and behind the carpeted MICROPHONE AREA, lurked a sound-effects station, including a table with two turntables for Victrola records, a wooden door on a heavy frame (for opening or closing as a script demanded), a bench with an odd assortment of items (saw and hammer, milk-bottle rack, coconut shells, etc.), a flat box of sand on the floor, and a rack of electronic gizmos. A statuesque middle-aged woman, who in her floral-print frock might have been a housewife, sorted through the inventory of this area, assembling things in order-cellophane for the crackle of fire, a bundle of straw for noises in underbrush, a large potato with a knife stuck in it-her pleasant face mildly contorted with intensity.

  Though this was a fairly massive studio, it lacked audience seating. Gibson knew elsewhere in this building, the ground floor most likely, would be at least one theater-style studio, for programs like tonight’s Major Bowes Amateur Hour. Game shows and comedies benefitted from spectators: those presenting the dramatic fare The Mercury Theatre on the Air specialized in might find that a distraction.

  A door adjacent to the one he’d come in opened suddenly, and Gibson-mildly startled-whirled to see a small, dark man with salt-and-pepper hair lean out, his striped tie hanging like the flag on a football play. Indeed, the entire manner of this fellow was that of a referee, calling foul at this stranger’s interference.

  “Can I help you?” Though diminutive, the man had an intimidating bearing-including an actor’s strong baritone, and eyes that bored into you.

  “I’m Walter Gibson-I had an appointment with Mr. Welles.”

  The man-like so many here, in suspenders and rolled-up shirtsleeves-stepped onto the landing and his features softened but his eyes remained skeptical, a maitre d’ not convinced you should be seated.

  “Mr. Gibson, I don’t doubt what you say…. Orson is fairly cavalier about not keeping me informed about guests he’s invited…but we’re about to rehearse and record Sunday’s show.”

  “I take it Orson isn’t here.”

  The man twitched a smile. “No. He always says he’s going to participate in these recorded rehearsals, and we always wait half an hour past the time he sets, before starting without him.”

  “How often does he actually show up?”

  “So far, never.” Gibson’s reluctant host frowned, the cacophony of musicians, actors and sound effects making it hard to converse. “Step in here, would you?…I’m Paul Stewart, by the way.”

  The two men shook hands as they pushed through a portholed door. They entered a cubicle adjacent to the control booth, where a desk faced a window out onto the studio; this, Gibson knew, was where the network rep would likely sit.

  With no rep present, however, this cubicle made a good place to talk.

  Through a doorless doorway was the actual control booth, with its bank of slanted panels with switches and dials against a generous horizontal window onto the studio. An engineer in earphones was already seated there, ready to “mix” the show, i.e., bring voices and sound effects up or down. A chair next to the engineer, with a microphone and headset waiting, would be the director’s post, Gibson knew.

  But what, then, was that podium out there for? And where was their famous “child” director? As if reading his guest’s mind, Stewart spoke.

  “Mr. Gibson, I’m the program director, and my hands are going to be very full. Maybe you’d like to sit here and watch-there’s always an off chance Orson might stop by.”

  “I wouldn’t mind at that. I’m a writer, by the way-you may know me better as Maxwell Grant.”

  Stewart’s eyes narrowed. He sighed, shook his head, his expression softening with chagrin. “My apologies-Orson did mention you-the Shadow author. He’s planning a project with you, I’m told.”

  “That’s right.”

  Friendly now, Stewart put a hand on his guest’s shoulder. “You’ve made me a few pennies, Mr. Grant.”

  “Gibson. How so?”

  “I’ve played half a dozen villains on your Shadow show.”

  “Ah.”

  Stewart raised an eyebrow. “If this mug of mine ever gets in front of a camera, maybe I better get used to that. Gable doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

  The ice broken, Gibson said, “Uh, I can either sit and be an eavesdropper for a few minutes…this is my first time at a major network setup like this…or I can head over to the St. Regis. Whatever’s you pleasure, Mr. Stewart.”

  “Call me Paul, and I really would love to have you join us. Might even trouble you for an opinion or two-we’re having some real problems with this one.”

  “This week’s program, you mean? Why, what piece are you doing?”

  Gibson knew the Mercury usually adapted a famous literary work.

  Stewart was lighting up a cigarette. “One by that other Wells…H.G. War of the Worlds.” He waved his match out, made a face. “I’m sure it seemed fresh and frightening at the turn of the century, but we’re having no little tough time making it something a modern audience can appreciate.”

  “It’s a great story, Paul…and you people always do a fine job. I’m sure it’ll be a real crowd pleaser.”

  “Let’s hope.” Stewart snapped his fingers. “You know, there’s a couple people who’ll want to meet you! We’re a good fifteen minutes away from starting this thing…. Mind if I send ’em up?”

  “Not at all.”

  Stewart disappeared out the door, and Gibson sat at the network rep’s desk and looked out the window where his host was approaching one of those actors milling around. The director pointed to Gibson’s window and did some explaining, and the actor-a mustached fellow with slicked-back black hair, who looked like he might specialize in slightly gone-to-seed gigolos-was nodding and smiling.

  Then the actor-one of the few not in shirtsleeves, tie not even loosened-came Gibson’s way, heading up the small flight of steps, and within seconds the author was on his feet shaking hands with the man.

  “At last we meet!” the actor said, in a silky baritone.

  Gibson smiled a little. “I’m afraid you have the advantage on me, sir….”

  “I’m the Shadow!..The first Shadow, that is.”

  After a single laugh, the author said, “Frank Readick! The man who put me on the map. That voice and delivery of yours got me the Shadow assignment in the first place.”

  Readick chuckled. “Small world, huh? Two Shadows on the same show? And me, the original, working for my replacement, yet!..Ah, but I was just a glorified announcer, until you made a character of the guy, and then of course Orson brought him to life.”

  “But they’re still using your laugh and your opening: ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men!’ ”

  “Well, the Shadow may know,” Readick said, head tilted, “but don’t bring that up with Orson. It’s a sore point.”

  The two men sat, Gibson at the desk.

  “What’s your role in ‘War of the Worlds,’ Frank?”

  “Mostly I’m a reporter on the scene of the alien landing. I have a couple roles, actually, which is typical for voice actors on an ensemble show like this. But it’s a good part, the Carl Phillips reporter one, I mean. I’m the one describing the monsters, plus I get to be burned alive on the air!”

  “What fun,” Gibson said, appreciatively. “Not just your ordinary death scene. But Mr. Stewart doesn’t seem as enthusiastic about the piece.”

  “Well, Paul’s a tough taskmaster. But the thing is a little…I don’t know, it’s missing something. Just kinda lays there. You know, when Orson did ‘Dracula,’ that vampire came alive…or as alive as the living dead can come. But these monsters just aren’t making the grade. What the hell-it’s
early yet.”

  “Early? You broadcast on Sunday!”

  Readick shook his head, grinned. “Oh, Welles and his buddy Jack Houseman, and Paul…and for that matter Howard, their writer…they’re maniacs, polishing and goosing these things up till the last second.” He pointed out the window to the podium. “Hell, Orson rewrites and cuts and shapes while he’s on the air. He’s a madman! A wonderful madman, but a madman.”

  “Frank, one thing I don’t get-isn’t Orson the director? Paul introduced himself as that, and as far as I can see, he’s the one running things.”

  “Paul directs the rehearsals-he does the casting, gets these things on their feet. You see, Orson is busy with this latest play the Mercury is putting on-it opens in about a week-and anyway, the boy wonder is always involved in multiple things. But on Sunday, believe me, it’ll be Orson’s show, all right. Top to bottom.”

  “Then Orson is the director.”

  Readick’s eyes tightened. “I’d say more…conductor. He stands up there on that podium like Toscanini and wrings the ‘music’ outa these scripts.”

  “So it’s not an ‘in-name-only’ thing.”

  “You mean like Cecil B. DeMille on the Lux Radio Theatre? Not at all-ol’ C.B. just plays the director on that show. Strictly an actor. Orson…he’s a real DeMille around this place.”

  The author and actor chatted a few more minutes, then the latter took his leave. And his place in the mike-area rectangle.

  A few minutes later, while Gibson sat smoking a Camel and watching through the window-as Stewart moved around the room giving instructions to actors, sound-effects technicians and even the orchestra conductor-another figure slipped into the cubicle.

  An Ichabod Crane of a spindly six-two or — three, in his early thirties, with a spade-shaped face and unruly blond hair, in a rumpled tan suit and dark-brown tie, the fellow had the abashed manner of someone reluctantly knocking on your door for charity. He also had hollow, tired eyes and the pallor of one who rarely got outside.

  In other words, a writer.

  “Mr. Gibson?” The voice was earnest and even a little timid, which was almost a relief after all these sonorous radio tones.

  “Yes?” Gibson got to his feet.

  “I’m Howard Koch-the one-man Mercury writing staff.” He extended his hand, which Gibson promptly shook. “I’ve been turning these sixty-page shows out at a rate of one a week, all season so far. And you must be the only man on the planet who thinks I’m a piker.”

  With a burst of a laugh, Gibson sat back down, gesturing for Koch to pull up a chair and join him. “We pulp writers do make you hardworking radio writers look like you’re loafin’…but then, I don’t have to put up with the endless meetings and rewrites.”

  Koch rolled his eyes. “It does get a little hairy around here. Welles and Houseman consider sleep a luxury-their saving grace is they deny themselves, too.”

  “Even I don’t envy you your time schedule, Howard…considering you’re adapting and carving up huge novels, most of the time, to fill a little old hour.”

  Koch chuckled wryly. “It’s either that or pad out a short story to the same purpose. Butchered or bloated, those are the options.”

  “Say what you will, but my wife and I would never miss your show.”

  With half a smile, Koch said, “Even when you’re on deadline?”

  “Howard, I’m like you-always on deadline.”

  With a sigh, the radio writer said, “I just wish I had something better this afternoon, to share with you. This one’s kind of a…a mess, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t know why. Destroying the world ought to fill an hour perfectly well. And hell, you’ve got Martians doing it!”

  “That’s the problem. It’s so goddamn unbelievable. With what’s going on in the world right now, fantasy has its appeal, all right…but it can be a hard sell to people beaten down by horrific realities.”

  “Maybe the fact that it takes place forty years ago will make the fantasy go down smoother.”

  Koch shifted in his seat. “Walter, tell ya the truth, that was the first change I made: I thought that hurt the reality of it-radio has an immediacy. Sure, we can go back to the foggy London of Sherlock Holmes and lose ourselves there; or to Treasure Island with Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins. But to do science fiction, something futuristic, that’s set forty years back? I don’t think so.”

  “So, then, you’ve modernized it?”

  “Yes-it’s happening today, and it’s happening in America, not London.”

  “Ah!” Gibson stubbed out his Camel in a glass ashtray, with CBS in it. “So where do the Martians land, now? Times Square?”

  “Actually, I thought somewhere out in the obscure countryside would be better. Something rural, where the contrast would be great…and where an invading army might logically deploy itself.”

  Nodding, Gibson said, “I like that. You’ve thought about this, really thought it through. Sounds to me you’re doing fine-where exactly then did you have them land?”

  “Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”

  “Where?”

  The radio writer patted the air with both hands, his tone apologetic. “Let me explain-Monday’s my only day off. I was making a quick trip up the Hudson, to see my family, and I was on Route Nine West-”

  “Which took you through New Jersey.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, I stopped at a gas station and picked up a road map of the state, knowing the next day, at work, I’d have to be figuring out my…or I should say the Martians’…battle plan. So back in my office in New York, getting down to it, I spread the map out on the floor, closed my eyes…and dropped a pencil.”

  “On Grovers Mill.”

  “Right. I liked the ring of it-sounded like the real place it was. Plus, it’s near Princeton, and I have this astronomer character in the show, called Professor Pierson, who works out of the Princeton Observatory.”

  “Luck was on your side.”

  “We’ll see.” He spread his hands out in the air, his eyes gleaming, suddenly. “I can tell you that that map became my best friend. There I was, deploying the opposing forces over an ever-widening area, wreaking havoc like a drunken general…making moves and countermoves between invaders and defenders.”

  “It’s good to be God.”

  “You’ll have to check with Orson for the answer to that one! But…I did enjoy destroying New Jersey.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  He chuckled, like a kid about to share a terrible, wonderful secret. “If you hang around to listen, Walter, you’ll find I also demolish the very Columbia Broadcasting Building we’re seated in.”

  “Wishful thinking, no doubt. Howard, why are you recording this rehearsal?”

  “Well, I’m not doing anything-I’m just the writer. I’m somewhere about ten rungs in importance below Ora Nichols, the sound-effects gal. Why record it in advance? Timing, for one thing-Paul will be sitting by his script in the booth next to us, stopwatch in hand, to see if we’re long or short. But mostly it’s so Orson can attend without attending-so he can listen to the acetate tonight and make his notes for me to do revisions, and to make production demands of Paul, even music suggestions to Benny-Benny Herrmann, that is, our in-house maestro.”

  With Koch seated at his side, Gibson listened to the rehearsal and went through several more Camels; because they were recording, no stops could be made-the invasion from Mars went forward even with flubs.

  The adaptation of the Wells novella began imaginatively enough with a news bulletin interrupting a remote broadcast of a dance band. Then a second bulletin took reporter Carl Phillips (former Shadow, Frank Readick) to the Princeton Observatory to interview Professor Pierson, played by a small man with a big voice. Soon the two men were at the scene, and a more or less conventional fantasy melodrama played out.

  When it was finished, director Stewart emerged from the adjacent control booth to speak to Koch, with Gibson still at the radio writer’s side.

  �
��Well?” Stewart asked.

  “It wasn’t terrible,” Koch said.

  “No,” Stewart admitted. “It was worse than terrible: it wasn’t good.” The director pulled a chair up. He looked to his guest. “What do you think, Walter?”

  “I don’t know that my opinion matters.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “Well, you don’t have the sound effects perfected yet….”

  “No,” Stewart granted. “We’ll be doing that on Saturday. Ora’s the best-the effects’ll be first-rate by air.”

  “Good. And that one actor was obviously filling in for Orson.”

  “Yes. Bill Alland. He always sits in for Orson on these rehearsals.”

  “He’s not bad, but Orson’s a star, with the greatest voice in radio. He’ll sell this.”

  Stewart nodded. “What works for you? What doesn’t?”

  Gibson shrugged. “It starts out great. Those news bulletins are compelling. I like the bit, after the Holocaust, where the ham radio fella is wondering if he’s the last person on earth, alive.” He glanced at Koch. “All that plays into the immediacy of the medium that you were talking about.”

  Stewart grunted. “More bulletins, you think?” He seemed to be asking Gibson as much as Koch.

  Koch threw up his hands. “We better wait for Orson on this. He’ll have an opinion.”

  Stewart arched a dark eyebrow. “An opinion?”

  Everyone stood, and after some small talk, Gibson was about to take his leave when Stewart was called to the phone. Since good-byes hadn’t been exchanged yet, Gibson waited politely. Stewart returned a few minutes later.

  “That was Orson,” the director said. “He’s tied up at the theater working on Danton’s Death-the new play. I told him you sat through the rehearsal, Walter, and he’d like you to join us when we listen to the acetate, and help us brainstorm over how to fix this thing.”

  “Well…I’d be glad to. It’s an honor.”

  Koch smirked. “Not really. Orson loves to charm free help out of professionals.”

  Gibson lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m on expense account. What time?”