Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  I pressed my ear to the door.

  I could hear people moving in the corridor outside. And I could hear voices.

  “Come over here, darling. Where are you?”

  Obediently I made my way toward the voice. I was doing fine till I knocked over a lamp.

  She laughed.

  “Maybe I better turn on the light. Just for a tiny second.”

  “Uh-uh,” I said, as forcefully as possible.

  “Aren’t you the cutest!”

  I moved toward her and after a moment a hand reached up out of the darkness and touched my face. “There you are!”

  The hand caressed my face and stopped suddenly.

  “Sweetie, you know Dr. Bryson told you to wear your glasses. Why haven’t you got your glasses on?”

  “Dark,” I whispered. “Don’t need ’em.”

  Then she pulled my head down and kissed me. It was a long, honeymoon-like kiss.

  There was a kind of madness about it.

  It didn’t seem real. It wasn’t happening.

  Then her hand took my hand and conducted it very carefully beneath the sheet.

  I tried to take my hand away. She held it there.

  “Lady,” I said, “please don’t scream. But I think you ought to turn on the light.”

  She gasped.

  I heard her fumbling for a moment and then the lights came on.

  She was a rather pretty blonde girl. About nineteen or twenty. She had pretty, wide blue eyes.

  She looked at me sitting on the edge of the bed holding a gun in one hand and her in the other.

  Her eyes widened even more. Then she closed them, gasped and fainted.

  I put the gun in my pocket, crossed the room, and darted out the door.

  A uniformed policeman and a man from the hotel were standing in the corridor.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Can you help me? My wife has fainted. Is there a doctor in the hotel?”

  “What’s the matter, mister?” The cop looked at me suspiciously.

  “My wife has fainted,” I said. Then I managed to stammer boyishly, “It’s our honeymoon, officer. I’m afraid we got a little overexcited.”

  I pushed the elevator button hysterically.

  “Will you give her first aid, Officer? I’ve got to get her some brandy. She has these attacks sometimes. Brandy is the only thing that can help.”

  The cop peered into the room. She hadn’t moved. The sheet was almost all the way off.

  “O.K.,” the cop said, rather cheerfully, I thought. “You get some brandy. I’ll see what I can do. Take it easy.”

  The elevator doors slid open and I got in.

  “Ground floor, please,” I said.

  On the ground floor I walked briskly through the lobby and out to the street.

  I walked very fast for several blocks. Then I got on a bus. I got off the bus and got into a cab. I could not think of where to tell the cab driver to take me. Rockefeller Center was the best I could think of.

  I stood for almost an hour watching the skaters down in the Plaza. For a while I stood there trying not to think about anything. Then I began to think about Janis.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had met Janis Whitney at a party.

  It was a terrible party. A lot of unemployed and largely unemployable actors were gathered at somebody’s apartment on West Fourth Street.

  The same faces you met all day long. At lunch in the mirrored basement at Walgreen’s on Forty-second Street. And in the afternoons in agents’ and producers’ offices.

  Some of the faces we knew in those days—it was the winter of 1940—have since become well known. Janis was one of the fortunate ones.

  But for every successful Janis there were fifty girls whose names I have forgotten who quietly gave it up and went back to wherever it was they’d come from.

  It’s hard to say what makes a Janis different from the others. Luck, maybe. But I doubt it.

  Talent? Possibly. But a lot of the others whose names I’ve forgotten were talented too. I think it’s something else. I think it’s some kind of drive. An almost monomaniac desire. A willingness to sacrifice your life, your youth. Anything. Everything.

  I don’t think Janis could tell you herself. I don’t think the question has ever occurred to her.

  I’d seen her, before the party, once or twice in offices. I even knew her last name. I don’t think anyone at the party actually introduced us.

  When we left the party we walked all the way uptown from Fourth Street. We held hands and I kissed her lingeringly at her door.

  Then I said to her, “Say, what the hell is your name, anyway?”

  I’m a little embarrassed to remember that line today. It was the tag-line of the first act of “Stage Door.” At the time it seemed very apt and very witty and very tender.

  I was proud of having said it at the right moment. I was twenty-two years old.

  It lasted all that winter, and in July Janis went away to summer stock. We picked up again in the fall, but there was something different about it now. I had stopped saying things like, “Say, what the hell is your name, anyway?”

  Janis had been promised tests by both Fox and the company that finally hired her. She was very tense that fall and one night in my apartment she began to cry. She couldn’t stop. Finally I had to walk with her to St. Vincent’s, where they gave her a sedative.

  Janis was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.

  We tried to write after she left for California but neither of us was a good correspondent.

  I saw her first picture. She had a bit part in a Cary Grant movie. She was only on the screen twice. Once for about a minute. And once for about half that long. I read somewhere that they got over fifteen hundred letters about her from those two short scenes.

  After that, though, I didn’t go to see her pictures any more. I couldn’t take it.

  I threw the cigarette away and walked slowly to Sixth Avenue. I stopped at the newsstand on the corner and bought a paper. Then I went into the drugstore, sat at the counter and ordered coffee. I looked through the paper. I wanted to see if there was anything more about the accident at the gay Fifth Avenue party. There wasn’t.

  And it was too early for there to be anything about the big agent from Hollywood who had handled so many big people.

  I turned the pages of the paper.

  I was not really reading, just turning the pages, when the name jumped out at me.

  I’d just been thinking about her and it seemed funny to see her name.

  It was in the amusement section. A big, half-page ad for the picture that was opening that day at the Music Hall. “Two a Day,” a musical extravaganza (it said) in new, glorious Technicolor. With that pretty young man who is always in Technicolor musicals, an ex-Broadway comedian, and Janis Whitney.

  I had a hunch. Perhaps I’d find Janis on a busman’s holiday.

  I finished the coffee and began walking the two blocks up Sixth Avenue to the theatre.

  The picture was on when I came in.

  I stood in the back for a minute watching the screen and letting my eyes get used to the darkness.

  The scene was a vaudeville theatre somewhere. There was a broken down backdrop and in front of it, Janis and the chubby young man, both dressed in high hats and carrying canes, were dancing and singing a song.

  Have you noticed that in Technicolor musicals everybody looks alike? I don’t know what it is, but all the character seems to disappear from their faces.

  Even Janis Whitney.

  She looked beautiful. That is, she looked like a wig-maker’s dummy with a beautiful painted face. She was wearing black tights and black sheer stockings. Her legs were obviously beautifully formed. But they were without any sex appeal.

  And in this case the Technicolor cameras were certainly lying. In the flesh Janis Whitney was, if nothing else, a very sexy-looking girl.

  My eyes had adjusted to the dark now.

  I stopped watching the pict
ure and began examining the last few rows of seats.

  I walked slowly around the back of the theatre, taking it easy and scanning the last dozen rows of seats carefully all the way around.

  There was no sign of Janis.

  I got back to my starting point, and paused for a minute to watch the picture.

  The number on stage was over and Janis and the young man were in their dressing room afterward. He was highly excited. It seemed that a big producer had been out front. And had caught the act. And apparently for masochistic reasons of his own wanted to bring it to New York.

  Janis seemed downcast by this news.

  The boy was sparkling with teeth and excitement. But Janis stood with her Technicolor eyelids drooping to indicate sorrow. Or nervousness. Or something.

  Then finally, with tremendous effort, she spoke.

  “You don’t understand, honey,” she said. And you could see something was killing her. Either this news or her feet. “You don’t understand, honey. He doesn’t want the act. He just wants me.”

  Then I wondered how they did it, how they could make a girl like Janis seem so utterly devoid of talent.

  I went back into the lobby and up the stairs to the loge seats, where smoking was permitted. Again, no Janis.

  As I said, it was just a hunch—and a lousy one.

  When I stepped out of the warm theatre onto Sixth Avenue the cold wind nearly took my breath away.

  I felt aimless and useless. I didn’t know what to do about anything.

  I began to walk down Sixth Avenue looking at the crummy stores and the twenty-five-cents-a-drink saloons and the broken-down movie theatres. I stopped in front of one of the movie theatres.

  The marquee was plastered with gaudy colored lithographs. They were showing a picture called “Passion Island” a documentary-type film about some South Sea Island. First time on any screen! Primitive Love Rites and Dances! Adults Only! The second feature was a little lulu called “Lure of the City,” which, according to the bills, fearlessly exposed the big city’s vicious love racket. Whatever that might be.

  “Lure of the City,” to judge from the stills outside, was a ten-year-old third-rate horror.

  There was a picture of a fierce-looking man pointing a gun at a girl who was pressed back against a wall with a terrified expression on her face. The hair was real long and skirts were real short. It looked so silly and out of date that it took me a minute or two to recognize the girl.

  I gave the cashier thirty-five cents. Who says the picture business is off? I personally was creating a one-man boom in the industry.

  The promise of primitive love rites and an exposé of the big city’s vicious love racket had not attracted many customers. The theatre was about a quarter full. Even in the semidarkness you could see that everything was dirty and needed painting.

  “Lure of the City” had just begun, the usherette who was perspiring, chewing gum, and scratching herself inside her uniform, told me.

  I stood in the back, watching it for a while.

  Janis Whitney played a little girl from the country who had come to the city and gone wrong. She had become involved with a group of unshaven gangsters who were going to knock over a bank. The youngest and least whiskery of the gangsters turned out to be an FBI man who was working to break up the vicious mob. There was no mention of a love racket, and I felt somewhat cheated.

  In many ways it was a splendid picture.

  By that I mean it was a terrible picture. But terrible in a far different way than “Two a Day.”

  “Two a Day” was big, slick, expensive, machine-made, so completely sterile from the very beginning that even as earthy a thing as Janis Whitney’s legs had no appeal.

  “Lure of the City” must have been shot in about two weeks. A lot of it didn’t even seem to be very well rehearsed. It was slapped together by someone who thought if he could make a movie fast enough and cheap enough he could probably make a few dollars.

  The story was absurd. The dialogue was very, very bad. But at least the whole thing wasn’t sterile.

  The head gangster was played by a fairly well-known Broadway actor. He was nobody in the movies. But fairly well known in New York. And he was giving a great performance. All by himself. His performance had nothing to do with the rest of the picture at all. But he was acting for his own amusement and having a fine time, playing the head gangster right into the ground.

  Finally the FBI man, who, on the other hand, was terrible in the plain old-fashioned sense, told Janis who he really was and gave her her big chance to go straight and get away from her miserable existence. All she had to do was help him. She agreed. Then when everything was all set and the vicious love racket was about to be busted wide open, the boss gangster found out about Janis and the FBI man.

  It was really great.

  Then, I looked away from the picture for a minute and saw her.

  I’d got myself absorbed in the picture and I hadn’t seen her sitting there. About four rows from the back, in the middle of the row, all by herself. She was watching the picture intently.

  I moved down the aisle and sat a couple of seats away from her.

  From then on, till the end of the picture, I alternated between watching her face and watching the screen.

  The FBI man was tied up and lying on a cot in an old empty warehouse that the gangsters were using. The head gangster had a gun and was threatening Janis.

  It was a wonderful scene. The words they were saying were foolish. The situation was idiotic. But Janis and the head gangster were having a wonderful time.

  They weren’t playing in a third-rate movie somewhere. They were acting for their own enjoyment—for personal kicks. I was pretty sure they weren’t even sticking very close to the script. There was no fancy cutting or camera work. The camera was just holding on them in a medium shot and they were standing up there acting.

  It was the damnedest thing you ever saw—and Janis herself was great.

  In spite of the lighting, which was very badly done, she looked wonderful and vital and physically exciting. For a minute or so, you almost believed the two of them were fighting for their lives in the deserted warehouse. Except that once in a while the camera would cut to the FBI man twisting in his bonds. You could see that if he could work himself just a little looser he was going to be able to reach the gun that the head gangster had carelessly left on the table. The FBI man was such a bad actor that he couldn’t even writhe very well. And the cutting to him took some of the edge off the Janis/head gangster scene.

  I could see Janis’ face as she watched the scene.

  She was tense and her eyes were shining. Her lips weren’t moving but I could tell that she was playing every line to herself.

  Then the scene was over. The FBI man worked himself loose, got the gun, the police arrived and after a short chase, rounded up the vicious love racketeers. Then the lights came up.

  Janis, looking a little dazed, started out past me. I stood up in my seat as she went by and caught her arm.

  “Hey, lady,” I said. “Didn’t I just see you in a picture at the Music Hall?”

  Chapter Twelve

  She jerked her arm free, turned, then for the first time saw me and smiled. It was a funny, half-embarrased smile.

  “Dick.”

  “Hello, Janis.”

  I took her arm and piloted her up the aisle. “I’m on a movie spree,” I said. “This is my second picture this afternoon. I thought maybe I’d run into you at the Music Hall.”

  She grinned a little. “žTwo a Day’?” she said. “How did you like it?”

  “It’s a fine picture,” I said. “And they keep our little secret beautifully.”

  “Secret?”

  “That you’re an actress.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  We began walking slowly up Sixth Avenue.

  “Every once in a while,” she said, “oh, about twice a year, I see it. Just to remind myself what it’s like to act.”

&n
bsp; I didn’t say anything.

  She mentioned the name of the actor who had played the head gangster. “What a wonderful guy he is. We really knocked ourselves out on those last scenes in the warehouse. The director never knew what hit him.”

  At Forty-eighth Street we turned west automatically. I didn’t notice it myself till we were in the middle of the block. Then I started to laugh. Janis looked at me and then she caught on too.

  There was a bar on Forty-eighth that we had always gone to. Automatically. We were there almost every night the winter before Janis went to Hollywood.

  I hadn’t been in it since then.

  They had changed it all around. It was a little on the leatherette and chrome side now. And the faces in the autographed pictures hanging on the walls had changed too.

  We sat down at a booth in the back.

  “Do you suppose Martin and Lewis come in here a lot?” I said, indicating one of the pictures.

  “Sure,” Janis said. “With Farley Grainger and Liz Taylor and Piper Laurie. You should see this place on a Saturday night.”

  “Is there really someone named Piper Laurie?”

  “Sure,” Janis said.

  We ordered scotch and water.

  “I wonder what ever became of Toni Seven,” I said. “They used to have a picture of Toni Seven in here. Janis,” I said, “I have something important to discuss with you. Walter thinks Max killed Charles Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And he thinks you were there when he did it.”

  “Walter is fabulous,” Janis said.

  “I know.”

  “Well, cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  “You weren’t there, of course?”

  “No,” Janis said. “I wasn’t. Walter will be so disappointed.”

  “What about Max?” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “I really owe you an explanation. That little scene this afternoon in front of the Voisin. Max’s chauffeur was one of the two men who wrecked my apartment.”

  Janis looked at me, saying nothing.

  “I still don’t know what they were after.”

  “The money, of course,” Janis said. “Jean Dahl had been blackmailing Max. He paid her money. I don’t know how much. Then he sent his boys to get it back. And probably to get rid of her at the same time.”