Crime on My Hands

by George Sanders

  “Well,” Curtis said, “I guess so. But it would be damned embarrassing for us if you didn’t. If anything should happen, I mean. You’d have to cover up for us.”

  “I will, if it’s necessary.”

  He thanked me, grinned, and went away.

  I went back to my vigil, which was beginning to seem useless. It was unreasonable to suppose that the murderer, if he hadn’t already been here, wouldn’t have seen my lights blinking on and off like battleship signals. And if he had intended to steal the film, he’d have given up by now. It would be like trying to steal a pet elephant from a Republican convention.

  I ran over the list. All of the principal suspects had wandered in during the evening, except Carla and Sammy. Listless, Riegleman, Paul, and, yes, Curtis. He didn’t look or act like a killer, but, being the boss cameraman, he would be able to wander about without arousing suspicion. Since his work was done before the cameras began to roll – in lining up the scenes – he could have found time to aim a gun.

  I considered the point raised by Paul. It did seem odd that Flynne, out of three hundred accredited persons, should have been in the way of that one shot. The fact admitted several interpretations, however. The death of Flynne, as such, could have been an accident. The murderer could have aimed at someone else and missed. Not daring to risk another shot, he could have got rid of the gun. In that case, he was biding his time, and we would have another killing.

  Another possibility was that the killer had arranged for Flynne to get his spurious work slip so that he would remain anonymous for a time after the killing, which time the killer would use either in escaping or covering up. I didn’t like this idea. If the shot had come from behind the camera, the killer was not an extra. He could, therefore, manage to get Flynne a bona fide job in time.

  These thoughts and their variations began to rattle around in my head, and I dozed off.

  The lights brought me awake, blinking in unison with my caller. Covering a yawn, I said, “This is a pleasure, Carla. I feared you were ignoring me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  She looked at me, and for the fourth time said, “But I can’t tell you, I just can’t!”

  We had had nearly an hour of this, and I had seen her become a frightened child. She was not Carla, the dark lady of mystery in Salted Wine; she was not the reckless wench of Calcutta Callie; nor a Barbary babe. She was a simple youngster with fear in her heart.

  “If you won’t tell me,” I said, “I can’t know what I’m protecting you from. Do you want me to guess?”

  She looked down at her trim feet. “What would you guess?” she whispered.

  “I’d guess that you had something to do with Flynne’s death. Shall I go further?”

  Her head jerked up in a marionette motion. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t! The last thing I ever wished him was harm!”

  “What kind of a guy was he?” I asked quietly.

  It caught her off guard. “He was sweet,” she said reminiscently. “He was sweet and full of dreams. He wanted to be a great engineer once. Then he wanted to be a great pilot. After that, a great financier, a star salesman, and last, a great actor. He was never a great anything.”

  She realized that she had told me that she had known him well. Her dark eyes had something of defiance, and something of dislike in them. “You tricked me,” she said.

  “Since you told me this much, you may as well tell me the rest.”

  “Let me tell you how it is with me,” she said slowly, and little bitter memories were in her voice. “I was a kid from Brooklyn, P.S. one-sixty-four. I was clerking in a dime store, and one day, when I was window-wishing on my lunch hour, Gary Blake came up and asked me if I wanted to go to Hollywood. I told him I’d call a cop and all three of us would talk it over, and he said swell. He called the cop. He really was a talent scout. A ham hawk, he said. He gave me some money and a ticket on a plane, and I didn’t even go home to mend the run in my best pair of stockings. That dime store still owes me a week’s wages.”

  She grinned wryly, and for a moment the fear had gone.

  “That’s how sick I was of everything,” she said. “So I got here in a bargain basement dress, no stockings, and a new name.”

  “What was your real name?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “I worked hard, George, I really did. I had to learn to speak English correctly. I had to learn to walk. I had to change my hands from stalks of limp bananas to useful objects. I found out that you could go hungry for three days and not die, and I know what it is to snag a stocking on the way to a screen test. Those are the things I learned. What I had, I kept – slim hips, full breasts, and a good face. I was built and looked like a siren. I had to learn to act one. But I did, George, and it’s the thing I’m most proud of. And I can’t stand to have it taken away from me. I can’t! That’s why I want you to help me.”

  “Who would try to take it from you?”

  “Everybody, if I’m connected with poor Sev’s killing. That deputy sheriff this morning practically accused me of shooting him. I know he could see how frightened I was. I was terrified, and from his viewpoint there wasn’t any reason for it if I was innocent. But I am, George, I swear it, and I want you to keep anybody from asking me questions. Because I don’t trust myself. I’ll go to pieces!”

  “I don’t like it,” I said. “You’re asking me to take you on trust, and although I’m inclined to do it, I can’t unless you do the same for me. I love beautiful women, baby. I think they’re Nature’s noblest. Every time I see one, I want to battle a windmill. But this is such a serious situation that I don’t dare, unless you tell me what it’s all about. I give you my word of honor that I won’t let out your secret.”

  She stared miserably at the floor, a slump in those lovely shoulders. Her polo coat hung slackly, and her fingers fiddled aimlessly with each other. She was looking at pictures. I could see them trooping out of the past, a parade of formless forms behind the dark veil of her eyes.

  I wanted a cigarette. I wanted a drink, and I was hungry as a flame. I dared not move. I even tried to hold my corpuscles still. Maybe she’d tell, and we could wind this up in a few moments.

  I felt that I had all the information that was necessary to point out the killer. Somewhere along the line of suspects who had visited me this evening, I had learned a disturbing fact. What it was I didn’t know, but it began to disturb me as I waited for Carla to make up her mind. Was it a word, a gesture, a start, an expression of attitude, a question? I needed a cue to the clue. Perhaps Carla could give it.

  I reflected that I could be overwrought and romanticizing, but still it stood to reason that if the killer was among my visitors, then he had come to see what I knew. He must have betrayed his purpose, and I must have observed that betrayal. Perhaps I had buried the observation deep in my subconscious for reasons of psychological distaste. I needed a spur to force it out in the open.

  Carla knew something important. That was obvious.

  “George.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. Not deliberately hoarse, not deliberately a whisper. She wasn’t acting, not now. What she had to tell was something she couldn’t say out loud. “It was years ago. Why can’t it be forgotten?”

  “A man is dead,” I reminded her. “One Severance Flynne. And you knew him well enough to refer to him as Sev.” In a spot like this, I remembered, The Falcon tapped a cigarette against his thumbnail. I tried it. It was an old cigarette, and half the tobacco spilled out. I threw it away.

  “Why shouldn’t I call him Sev?” she demanded, almost defensively. “He was –”

  A foot crunched in the gravel outside the trailer. Carla’s voice stopped as though someone had lifted a needle off a record. There was a soft, gentle tap on the door.

  I thought “Damn!” and said, “Come in.”

  A beard came in through the door.

  You get to think of them as beards. They seem to think of themselves as beards. Someone puts up a sign in the casting office, “
Beards this way,” and everybody with more than half an inch of fuzz on his face moves in that direction. They take on a curious anonymity. Beards, brown. Beards, white. Beards, long. Beards, trimmed.

  Severance Flynne had been a beard.

  So was this guy who’d tapped lightly at my trailer door. It took me a good five seconds to recognize him. “Mr. Sanders,” he said apologetically. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. But you are the star of this picture, aren’t you?”

  “So my agent tells me,” I said. I was still cross at the interruption.

  “Then. Then perhaps. Perhaps you can tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  The bewildered look in his eyes would have made nicks in a heart of stone.

  “See here,” I said. “Haven’t you been in pictures before?”

  He shook his head. “No. And it’s very confusing. You see, I don’t know just what I’m supposed to be doing here–”

  I confess that I drew a long breath, squared off, and prepared to deliver a lecture. Luckily that was the moment when Sammy came in.

  He stared around the trailer, focused on the beard, and said, “Oh, it’s you again.”

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed Mr. Sanders,” the beard said unhappily, “but it’s just that I don’t quite know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Just watch the director,” Sammy said.

  “Oh,” the beard said. He paused. “Oh. Thanks.” He walked to the trailer door and paused again. “Only you see. My agent said–”

  “Never pay any attention to what an agent says,” Sammy said in his friendliest tone. “You just turn in your slips and collect your pay and everything will be swell, see?”

  The beard looked as bewildered as ever, but he said “Thanks” all over again before he went out the door and disappeared into the night like a drop of water disappearing down a drain.

  “And now,” Sammy began.

  Carla rose.

  All the fright was gone. She was once more in character, smooth, suave, perfectly poised. “Hello, Sammy,” she said. She turned to me. “Thanks so much, George,” she said warmly. “We’ll see how the scene plays tomorrow.”

  Sammy looked after her for a moment. “Well,” he said, “did the trap work?”

  “This trailer,” I said wryly, “had all the aspects of a drug store telephone booth this evening. Everybody came, for one good-sounding reason or another.”

  I told him in detail. He shook his head. “I can’t make anything of it. Well, I’d better return that film.”

  ‘I’ll take it back,” I said firmly. “You go see Listless. I can see her hunched in misery over a pound of chocolates, listening for your step.”

  Sammy grinned. “Well, thanks. Keep ’em crying isn’t exactly my motto, but a little of it helps.”

  He left, walking, as I noticed, with an airy grace. I cut all the lights but one and sat in the dimness, thinking.

  I wasted no time on guessing at Carla’s relationship to Flynne. I tried to deduce from her attitude the fact or facts that would help tag the killer. I was convinced again that I had all the facts necessary to point out the killer, and deduction alone could do it.

  But I was tired, and my thought processes wandered into odd channels. Presently I found myself concentrated on my own telephone problem.

  One of the necessary evils of our civilization is that instrument invented by Don Ameche and Alexander Bell. You may be in the middle of your bath, but if the phone rings you draggle out to answer it, spotting rugs and, likely as not, answering the doorbell too. You can be jerked out of a sound sleep at three a.m. to fumble in the dark and tell some halfwit that this is not the Superba Doughnut Company; and not be able to sleep again for wondering what kind of hours they work at Superba. You cannot imagine any privacy which the telephone bell cannot invade.

  I have had my share of such invasions, and I had been working on a solution for several months before the Seven Dreams episode. I had installed a loudspeaker and microphone in each room of my Hollywood apartment, connected respectively to the receiver and transmitter of my phone, through an amplifier. When my phone rang, a relay was set in motion that, in effect, lifted the receiver. If I were in, say, my big chair, reading a script, all I needed to do was answer in a clear voice. The microphone in my living room ran it through the amplifier to the telephone to the caller. When the caller answered, his voice came through the loudspeakers located all over the place. So, I did no dripping from bathrooms or wandering in cold darkness.

  But I couldn’t hang up.

  I had been unable to devise a means of breaking the connection automatically. Until it was broken, nobody could call me. I thought about this, seeing in my mind’s eye the various circuits affected, trying to fasten on the answer.

  I hadn’t realized that I was tired until electrical circuits, murderers, guns, clues, and a few stray gremlins began to do an insane ballet dance against the darkness in the trailer. Then I closed my eyes. Tomorrow would just have to be another day, whether it wanted to or not.

  It wasn’t a sound that woke me, some time later, it was a presence. Someone was in the trailer, someone moving so quietly that there wasn’t the faintest shadow of a sound. I lay still for a minute or two, my eyes closed, pretending sleep. But whoever was in the trailer had already looked to make sure I wasn’t awake, and wasn’t paying any attention to me. I lifted my eyelids a fraction of an inch. Then I sat up, wide awake now.

  “Hey,” I said angrily. “What are you doing in here at this time of night?”

  Wanda Waite stared at me and turned white. She was dressed in stout walking shoes, a sheer nightgown, and a massive fur coat. She looked very beautiful, and very worried.

  “George – I came in to talk to you, and you were asleep. So I decided not to bother you.”

  “The way people wander through here, you’d think it was a public lavatory. Well, I’m awake now. What do you want?”

  “It can wait until morning,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll drag you back by the hair,” I threatened, and I think I meant it. “You’d better whip up an explanation. Twice tonight you’ve sneaked in here. Now, my heart is all for lady burglars. I think it’s a wide open field for females. But when I’m affected, I want to know why. Why?”

  “It wasn’t important,” she said nervously. “I said I was sorry I bothered you. Good night.”

  A new voice came out of the darkness outside. “Do you live here?” Lamar James asked, coming to the door.

  Wanda went into her act again. “Please, Mr. James, this was our secret. Don’t give it away.”

  “What secret?” I demanded.

  “Thank you, George,” she murmured huskily. “You don’t need to protect me. I’m not ashamed of it, and besides, Mr. James won’t tell. Will you, Mr. James?”

  James looked at her for a moment, his eyes an imponderable black in the dim light. “You’re under arrest,” he said formally. “It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you.”

  This was different. “What’s the charge?” I demanded. “She didn’t kill Flynne, and I can prove it.”

  “You’ll have your chance,” James said. “I tried to get her to cooperate, but all she did was act mysterious. She isn’t to be charged – yet. She’s to be held for questioning in connection with the killing of Severance Flynne. Her fingerprints were all over his room, and I want to know why.”

  This stopped me. I tried to remember what I had seen of her actions through the crack in Flynne’s closet door. Hadn’t she had sense enough to wear gloves, or wipe off fingerprints? I couldn’t remember her doing either.

  Wanda didn’t seem perturbed. She glanced down at her costume. “May I go to my room and change? You don’t want to take me to jail in my nightgown, do you?”

  James said, “All right. Come on.”

  “I’ll get you out, Wanda,” I said. “They can’t do this to you.”

  “Thank you, George,” she said. “I knew that you, if no one else,
would stick by me. Everything has been wonderful, dear, and I hope you sleep well. Dream of me – a little.”

  When you run up against something unexplainable, you give up trying. I sat there in a numb state until I thought of the time. I looked at my watch and leaped up. I had about ten minutes to return the film, under the deadline.

  I looked in the window seat that opens into a bed when you press the right button. The reel of film I’d counted on to prove my innocence was gone.

  I had a sudden, uneasy feeling that it had left the trailer under Wanda’s fur coat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At the crack of 7:30 the next morning, J. Brewster Wallingford came sorrowfully into my trailer. I was folding the electric grill back into its daytime role of writing desk. The little man fixed great brown eyes on me and shook his head.

  “It ain’t enough,” he said sorrowfully, “to get a poor extra killed and pay off his relatives. We got to lose a scene. Plenty I’ll give for a story to tell the bank yet. Tell me you got a lead on that can of film, George, tell me.”

  ‘I’m sorry, Wally,” I said. “I looked where I thought it had to be, and it wasn’t.”

  I thought of my search of Wanda’s room. I’d done everything but take off the wallpaper. The can of film wasn’t there.

  Wallingford dry-washed his hands. “Me, I pick my name for luck,” he said. “Brewster for Brewster’s Millions, and Wallingford for Get-Rich-Quick. And what happens? A scene gone, a coming star in jail, and a dead man on the sand. And besides, we lost the author. You can’t lose an author, but we did, and he’s got to do us a scene with desert sunset. Is this luck? I’m asking.”

  “You’re not obligated to pay Flynne’s relatives,” I said. “You’re not to blame.”

  “Did you ever lose a son, George?” he asked. “No, you didn’t. There ain’t anything so bad. I just got to give his family something. They can take a trip, or buy a house. It don’t bring back the son, but it takes their mind off.”

  “You’re a good chap, Wally,” I said.