Beverly Hills Dead

by Stuart Woods

  Tom could hear her tearing open a box. He brought his attention to bear on four two-drawer filing cabinets behind her desk, neatly labeled. One of them said “Membership.” All of them had built-in locks.

  The woman came back and handed Tom two envelopes. “There you have a pamphlet explaining our principles and also a membership application.”

  “Thank you, Miss…”

  “Wilson,” she said.

  “And Mr. Warchovski is…”

  “He’s the local representative of the national party.”

  “I wonder if I could speak with him for a moment?”

  “I’m sorry. He’s out of the city all day, today. May I make an appointment for you tomorrow?”

  “Could I call you later in the day? I’m not sure of tomorrow’s schedule just yet.”

  “Of course. I’m here all day, except between twelve and one.”

  “Thank you so much, Miss Wilson.”

  “Would you like a copy of yesterday’s Daily Worker?” she asked, handing him the newspaper. “I’m afraid we get it a day late.”

  “Why, thank you very much,” he said. Downstairs, he checked his watch: 11:40 A.M. He walked to the corner, leaned against the building and opened the Daily Worker. At one minute past noon, Miss Wilson emerged from the building, crossed the street and walked half a block to a café. The moment she was inside, Tom went back to her office.

  The fogged-glass door was locked, but Tom produced a zippered manicure kit from a pocket that contained, in addition to the normal tools, a set of lock picks made for him by a burglar of his acquaintance. It took him half a minute to open the door, and he went straight to the membership filing cabinet, prepared to pick that lock, too. Fortunately, Miss Wilson had not bothered to lock the filing cabinets before she left for lunch.

  For a long moment, Tom couldn’t remember Glenna Gleason’s original name, but finally it came to him: Louise Brecht. He went through the Bs three times, worrying until he found a manila folder with her name on it jammed down behind a lot of other B names. The folder contained an application and, stapled to it, a membership card.

  He was about to leave when he had another thought. He opened the M drawer and found a neatly typed mailing list. Louise Brecht’s name was there with the notation. “Hold all mail.”

  Hers was the last name on the page, so Tom found a pair of scissors in Miss Wilson’s desk drawer and snipped Louise’s name off the paper.

  He went into Mr. Warchovski’s office and went through his desk, looking for other related documents, and found another copy of the mailing list. He snipped Louise’s name off that, too, and replaced it, stuffing both strips of paper into a pocket.

  Tom tucked the manila folder into his belt in the small of his back and left, taking the time to lock the door behind him. A quick check of the nearly empty street, and he was out of there.

  He had to walk a dozen blocks before he found a cab, and on the ride back to the hotel he read the slim contents of the file. The application was filled out in block capitals and signed “Louise Brecht,” but the signature was simple script without the flourishes or scrawling that usually came with a person’s signature; it looked written rather than signed.

  Back at the hotel he found the pilot in the coffee shop, had a sandwich himself, then they checked out and headed for the airport. It was after midnight before, after a fuel stop in Denver, they landed at Clover Field.

  The following morning Rick was in his office when Tom Terry was announced. He came into the office and handed Rick a manila folder. “This is all they had on her,” he said, “and it looks to me as if Schmidt filled out the application and signed her name. It doesn’t look like a signature, you know?”

  “No,” Rick said, “it doesn’t.”

  “I also cut her name off two copies of a mailing list of members I found. There was a notation next to her name, saying to hold all mail. I couldn’t find any other evidence of Louise Brecht in the office.”

  “Did you speak to Schmidt?”

  “I missed him by a couple of days; a neighbor said he left Milwaukee for sunny California. It might be interesting to know if he turns up in L.A.”

  “It might at that. Please look into it.”

  “Might take a few days; give him time to get a phone number.”

  “No rush. Thank you, Tom. Did you have any additional expenses?”

  “No, you’ve already covered it. The pilot and I stayed at a commercial hotel and registered under other names. Nobody will ever know we were in Milwaukee.”

  “That was good work, Tom. Thank you again.”

  The two men shook hands and Tom left.

  Rick read the application carefully, then locked the file in his safe.

  32

  Rick yelled, “Cut! Print it! Wrap!” and everybody on the set cheered and applauded. Bitter Creek’s interiors were complete, and within twenty-four hours the entire picture would be in the can, ready for final editing, opticals and scoring.

  Eddie Harris yelled for quiet and made a graceful little speech, thanking everyone for their extra efforts, then food and drink from the studio commissary were wheeled onto the soundstage, and the wrap party began. It was nearly midnight.

  After everyone had had some food and a couple of drinks, Eddie pulled Rick, Vance and Susie aside. “Some more good news,” he said. “We’re going to have simultaneous openings, one at Radio City and the other at the Chinese Theater, here. Vance, you’re going to New York, and Susie, you’re going to headline the L.A. opening.” He saw Vance and Susie exchange a regretful glance. “Don’t worry, kids, the next day the studio will fly Susie to New York, and you’ll do a ton of publicity together there.” The two appeared to relax at that news.

  “That’s great, Eddie,” Rick said. “We’ll get lots of radio time and a double shot at the newsreels, too.”

  “Now,” Eddie said to Vance and Susie, “don’t you two kids disappear anywhere, because you’re going to be doing wall-to-wall press interviews, some together, some alone, between now and the opening. We open on Saturday, the thirteenth, twelve days before Christmas, and all these interviews are going to release the following day in newspapers and magazines all over the country. This will be the biggest publicity push in the history of Centurion Studios. That means we have to get everything right. The publicity department is going to brief you both on the points to make in the interviews and on how to handle things like your relationship with each other, your living arrangements, etc. You have to do this the way publicity tells you, so that there’s no slipup. One important point: Sidney Brooks is not to be mentioned; you never heard of him. This film was written by a man called Harlan Rawlings, who lives in Wyoming. You met him once; he was a quiet fellow, a typical westerner. Got that?”

  Both the actors nodded.

  “Okay, go have some fun.” Eddie pushed them toward the party.

  “They’ll do well,” Rick said. “They’re charming people, and the press will love them.”

  “I had a call from Hyman Greenbaum yesterday; he wants to renegotiate Vance’s contract.”

  “Of course, he does,” Rick said. “Are you going to do it?”

  “Yes. If this picture does anything like the business I think it will, Vance would be resentful if we held him to the terms of his original contract, even with the bonuses we gave him and the loan for the house. What I want is for us to lock Vance into Centurion for his whole career, and that means binding him to us emotionally as well as financially. If we’re anything but generous with him, that would damage the relationship. There isn’t a smarter agent in town than Hy, and he’s going to want a deal structured so that Vance participates from dollar one.”

  “Jesus, Eddie.”

  “Don’t worry; everything will depend on grosses, so if any picture tanks, we’ll be protected. What’s new in all of this is that Hy wants stock options for Vance.”

  Rick laughed. “Somewhere our beloved founder, Sol Weinman, is spinning in his grave.”

>   Eddie laughed. “You’re not kidding, pal, but Sol never ran into anything like this. When Gable came along around, what, 1930, they paid him a weekly salary, and although he’s making, what, five grand a week now, it’s still a weekly salary. But not Cary Grant; he went independent, and he’s going to make a lot more money in his career than Gable will in his. That’s what Hy is going for, and it’s exactly what I would be doing if I were Vance’s agent. We’re going to have to be a lot nicer to Susie, too, since we only have her for this picture. I love the Greenwich Village Girl treatment you sent me, and we certainly want her for that. We’ll do a three-picture deal, something like Vance’s original contract. If she turns out to have drawing power on her own, we can always work it out later.”

  “Eddie, I could never fault you on the big picture,” Rick said. “By the time we’re ready to ship prints of Bitter Creek, we’ll have a first draft of Greenwich Village Girl.”

  “You want to direct it?”

  “Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

  “Listen, kiddo, if you’re thinking that you want to be a full-time director, I can live with that.”

  “God knows, I love doing it.”

  “Well, if you’re leaning that way, what would you think of grooming Leo Goldman for head of production?”

  “Grooming Leo? He’s been grooming himself for that job since he was in the mail room at Metro.”

  Eddie laughed. “He reminds me of me.”

  “He reminds me of you, too. If I go that way, Eddie, I still want to keep a hand in management, and I will not work for Leo. We’d have to arrange things so that he’s still reporting to me.”

  “I can do that,” Eddie said.

  “Another thing: I know that you and I are of the same mind about the blacklist, but Leo definitely is not. He’s in bed with Cecil DeMille and Duke Wayne and that crowd, and I don’t want him making decisions for us in that regard.”

  “You’ve talked with Leo about this?”

  “Yes, while we were in Wyoming.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Eddie said. “Leave it to me, kiddo.”

  “I always do,” Rick replied.

  Late in the day, Rick got a call from Glenna.

  “You about done at the office?” she asked.

  “Just about. I’ll be through here in half an hour.”

  “Then meet me at the beach property.”

  “How’s it coming?”

  “Meet me there,” she said, then hung up.

  An hour later Rick arrived at the property and pulled into the driveway, which, to his astonishment, had been paved with cobblestones. Even more astonishing, a house stood where once there had been only pilings. The place had been shingled in cedar, which was a bright tan that would weather into gray.

  Glenna came out the front door. “What do you think?”

  “I think it looks fabulous.”

  “There’s still a lot of finishing work to be done, but come look around. The workmen are gone for the day, so we won’t bother them.”

  She led him from room to unfinished room, and it was better than he had pictured it in his mind.

  “We’ll be in in a month,” she said.

  “It can’t happen fast enough for me,” he replied, kissing her.

  They sat on boxes on the rear deck and watched the red ball of the sun sink into the Pacific.

  33

  The day after finishing the interiors for Bitter Creek, Vance Calder closed on his new house. All he did was take a check for eighty-five thousand dollars to David Sturmack’s office, sign some documents and watch while Sid Brooks signed them as well. Alice Brooks had already sent a power of attorney from New York, so her attorney signed for her. He rode the elevator downstairs with Sid, and they chatted in the parking lot for a moment.

  “The house is ready to move into,” Sid said, “and the housekeeper has spent the last three days cleaning it thoroughly and washing the windows. She can tell you anything you need to know about how the place works. You’ve got her number. And here’s the Japanese gardener’s number, too; you’ll need him, since the property is heavily planted.”

  “Thanks, Sid,” Vance said. “When will you take the things that you and Alice want?”

  “Already done,” Sid replied. “Now all I have to do is sell the apartment house in Santa Monica, and I’m done with Alice. I’ve already signed a lease for my apartment there.”

  “We finished shooting Bitter Creek yesterday, and I want to thank you again for that experience.”

  “Rick showed me the rough cut, and I think it looks great,” Sid said. “It’s certainly my best work so far. Rick sent me a publicity bio of Harlan Rawlings, which is the pseudonym they’re using for my screen credit. Seems Harlan is a first-time screenwriter who lives alone on his ranch in a remote part of Wyoming and doesn’t give press interviews.”

  Vance laughed. “Oh, I’ve met Harlan.”

  “It’s funny, especially when the writer is a nice Jewish boy from the Lower East Side who’s never been on a horse.”

  Vance held out his hand. “I hope things work out so that I can work in a lot of other Sid Brooks scripts. Good luck to you, Sid.”

  “Thanks, Vance, I hope for that, too. Oh, here are your keys.” He held out a clump of half a dozen, all tagged.

  The two men parted and went their separate ways.

  Vance found a pay phone and called Susie Stafford at her cottage at the studio. “Got a pencil?”

  “Yep.”

  “Write down this address.” He dictated it. “The place is a couple of blocks above Sunset Boulevard. I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  But Vance had already hung up. He had told her nothing about the house.

  Vance arrived first and unlocked the front door with his new key. He walked into the house and found everything in pristine order. He noticed a couple of blank spaces on the walls where pictures had hung, and some furniture was missing from the living room, but the place looked just great. He went and sat on the little front porch to wait for Susie.

  Susie parked her car beside Vance’s in the circular drive, ran up the front steps and gave him a kiss. “So what’s the big mystery, and whose house is this?”

  “It’s mine,” Vance said. “Come on in, and I’ll show it to you.” He led her into the living room.

  “You bought this place?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “We closed half an hour ago.”

  “But you haven’t been looking at houses; we’ve been too busy shooting.”

  “I bought it from Sid Brooks. He and Alice are divorcing and decided to sell.”

  “But you said you’d never go into debt for anything, not even a house.”

  “I won’t be in debt for long,” Vance said. “My agent and Rick are already working on a new deal for me after we finish two more pictures.”

  “Wow. It’s beautiful, Vance.”

  “Come on. Let me show you the master suite.” He led her upstairs and showed her the sunny bedroom and the two dressing rooms and baths. “Think you can fit your stuff in here?” he asked, waving an arm at the shelves and closets.

  “Are you kidding? I’d have to shop for a month to half fill it.”

  “You’d better get started, then.”

  She turned and looked at him. “What does all this mean, Vance? You’re not asking me to…I mean, it’s way too soon to…”

  “I’m not suggesting anything permanent; we have a lot to learn about each other. I just thought we’d learn it faster if we moved in together full time.” He kissed her.

  “We can’t let anybody know about this. If the columnists ever got hold of it they’d be telling the world we’re living in sin, and my parents would read about it in the Atlanta paper.”

  “The studio publicity department will handle all that. You think we’ll be the only couple in pictures living together?”

  “Come on,” she said. “Show me the rest.”

  He show
ed her the two guest rooms. “Plenty of room for your parents to visit.”

  “Are you kidding? They’d take one look and return me to Delano under armed guard!”

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture.”

  They looked at the study, the dining room and the kitchen.

  “I can cook here!” she enthused.

  “You cook? I thought you were only good at acting and sex.”

  She punched him in the stomach. “Come on, let’s see the backyard.”

  They went out the kitchen door, rounded a hedge and were confronted with a pool and a tennis court.

  “Holy cow!” Vance said. “I didn’t see this before!”

  “Who’s going to keep the place looking like this?”

  “Oh, it comes with a housekeeper and a Japanese gardener.”

  “I’m going to have to take tennis lessons,” Susie said.

  “So am I. I’ve been working since I was fourteen, so I’ve never had time to learn.”

  “By the way, buster,” she said, “I got a look at your passport the other day.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I got the shock of my life. Do you know I’m five years older than you?”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s only four years, because today is my birthday.”

  “I know it is,” she said, reaching into her handbag and coming out with a small, beautifully wrapped gift. “I saw your passport, remember?”

  Vance took her back into the house, they sat on a living room sofa and he unwrapped it. “A Cartier watch!” he said, surprised. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s called the ‘tank’ watch, because it was designed for the tank corps in the first war or something like that. Now, will you please throw away that ratty thing you’ve been wearing since I met you?”

  Vance unbuckled his five-dollar watch, tossed it into a nearby wastebasket and put on the new one. “Gorgeous.”

  “Now the watch is as nice as that one suit of yours,” Susie said. “By the way, it’s time you went shopping for clothes; you can’t rely on the Centurion wardrobe department to dress you for every occasion forever. I’ll go with you, if you like.”