“Mr. Cooper is not going to do High Midnight,” I said.
“I see,” said Lombardi. “That’s too bad. Too bad for maybe you and Mr. Cooper. There are certain influential people involved in this movie who will be very unhappy to hear that, very unhappy.”
Lombardi looked at me for the first time. His smile grew on his marked face. “And you-you know that big mouth of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble. I can think of lots of things to do with tongues that wag.”
“Pickle them and sell them for thirty cents a pound sliced?” I tried.
“Something like that,” he said. Then he turned to Cooper. “You know we have a mutual friend, Lola Farmer.”
Now it was Cooper’s turn to smile. “I’ve talked to Miss Farmer. If you’re planning to let the newspapers know what happened back in 1933, go ahead. They’ve torn me up about Clara Bow and Lupe Velez and the Countess DeFrasso. You’re talking about a long time ago.”
“I understand there are other things besides our mutual friend that might make you consider this offer,” Lombardi said, taking a step closer to Cooper. Cooper didn’t back off. He met Lombardi’s smile with his own through clenched teeth.
“Not … a … chance,” Cooper said.
“We’ll see, Mr. Big Brave Cowboy Star,” hissed Lombardi.
There were a few seconds of silence, broken only by the sound of men in the next room grunting to install a machine.
“When you wanna call me that, smile,” said Cooper with a massive, teeth-clenched grin.
Lombardi was no Walter Huston. He backed away, his smile fading and the look of hate returning.
“Get off our back,” I said. “Tell your friends to get off our back. Find another star. Maybe Joel McCrea is free.”
The two guys in white stepped forward toward us, ready to attack us with coils of Polish sausage.
“It doesn’t end like this,” said Lombardi.
“I think we’ll all be better off and live longer if it does,” I said, motioning to Cooper to back away. The place was crawling with workmen, so I was sure Lombardi wouldn’t do anything. I wanted to give him time to think over what had taken place. If he was convinced that Cooper wouldn’t take the role no matter what, he might pass it on to the ones who were pushing it. I hoped they’d see that there would be no percentage in giving Cooper a tough time. They’d have nothing to gain except a lot of trouble.
“You did that line well,” I said to Cooper as we settled back into the car.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of practice. Do you go through this sort of thing a lot?”
“It happens,” I said, heading for Pico Boulevard.
“They had me scared,” he said. “I don’t mind admitting it.”
“You didn’t show it,” I said. “I was scared too. That’s part of what makes it worthwhile. That touch of fear. It brings out the fact that you’re living.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see that Cooper was looking at me as if I were an alien life form. Then some touch of recognition appeared on his face. “I get something like that when I drive a fast car on a narrow road,” he said. I nodded, and we were quiet for a while.
I explained that I thought the visit might convince Lombardi to lay off. There was no guarantee, but it had been worth the effort. Cooper gave me the name of the town in Utah where he was going for the next few days. I didn’t write it down. I’d remember.
I dropped Cooper at the Goldwyn Studios, where he had an appointment with the people who were doing the wardrobe for the Gehrig movie. He reached through the car window to take my hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
“My job and pleasure, Mr. Cooper,” I said.
“Call me Coop,” he returned and strode away.
My confidence in front of Cooper was not matched by my nagging questions. Someone had tried to kill me and had put my kitchen knife in Costello. Even if we had convinced Lombardi, and I doubted if we had, he might have no control over the squat man or any of the others who had an interest in seeing to it that Cooper made High Midnight.
I went back to the Farraday Building. Shelly was sitting in his own dental chair, eyes inches away from the dental journal in front of him. He heard me come in and leaped out of the chair, removing his cigar.
“Now, Toby,” he said. “I can explain about last night.”
“Forget it,” I said, going past him and examining the coffee pot. It had something in it that looked like silt. I poured it into a cup that looked as if it had been cleaned within the decade. “Last night when you left the Big Bear Bar, a guy followed you, a big guy. Did you see him?”
Relieved, Shelly pushed his glasses back on his nose and said, “Right, yes, a big guy. I got into my car and he watched me. There wasn’t anyplace to hide on the street. Then another guy who had been in the bar came up behind him.”
“Squat guy, looked like a brick?”
“Right,” beamed Shelly. “That was all I saw. I pulled away. They stayed there talking.”
“Shel,” I said, sipping the sludge, “that big guy’s partner was killed last night, a knife in his back and his body left in my room. It could have been you. Maybe it should have been.”
Shelly wiped his hands on his smock and looked at the door as if the killer were right behind me.
“Being a dentist may not be as exciting as being a detective,” I said, pouring the rest of the glue into the spit sink, “but it is safer. Stick to the reconstruction of Mr. Stange’s mouth. It will stand as a memorial to your true calling.”
Shelly nodded morosely. I left him to think about it and went into my office to make a phone call or two. Call number one was to Mickey Fargo. There was no answer at what might have been a hall phone. I decided to try for him anyway. Shelly hid in his dental journal as I came out. We didn’t talk.
Tall Mickey Fargo lived in a building on Normandie not far from Slauson. The building was another one of those that were slapped up fast to absorb the people who were streaming into Los Angeles in spite of the war scare. The defense plants, airplane factories, boat yards and oil wells were promising easy money, and I knew how much people were willing to risk for easy money that seldom turned out to be so easy.
A guy about sixty-five or seventy and a woman the same age sat in wooden kitchen chairs on the front stoop of the building. I made my way through them and found Mickey’s mailbox. The card on it read, Tall Mickey Fargo, King of Deadgulch. Mickey or someone had drawn a steer skull in the corner. There was no bell, but it was easy to find the right door. I knocked, half-expecting to get no answer and considering the easiest way to break in and look around. But a voice answered my knock, and I recognized it as Mickey Fargo’s.
“Coming,” he said, and a few seconds later the door opened.
He was wearing an old denim shirt and dark slacks. A big wide belt with a massive silver buckle tried to hold up his stomach.
“You’re the guy who messed up my fall yesterday,” he said, stepping back to let me in.
“Sorry,” I said, accepting the invitation. “I didn’t mean …”
“Hell,” bellowed Fargo, his jowls bouncing merrily, “that’s all right. Max says he got enough. Damned fall, though.”
He limped into the room and pointed to a chair. I sat and looked around the room. The walls were filled with photographs of Fargo with men in cowboy suits. He watched me looking at the phctos and said solemnly, “They’re all there. I’ve worked with ’em all-Hoxie, Mix, Jones, both Maynards. Hoot, Harry Carey. You name ’em, they shot me.” He laughed, but something caught in his throat, and it turned to a gag. He hurried off red-faced for a glass of water.
He was back in two minutes or less, full of Western hospitality.
“What can I offer you and what can I do for you?” he said, easing into the chair opposite me.
“Nothing, thanks,” I said. “You can talk to me about High Midnight.”
“Mind if I get a drink?” he said, grunting out of the chair and limpin
g to a decrepit refrigerator in the corner. I wondered what the cowboy heroes looking down thought of the sagging furniture in the single room of their former nemesis. Fargo came back with a glass of something that could have been wine, rot-gut or flat Coke.
“Now,” he said, settling in.
“You think you can sit still long enough for us to get through this conversation?” I asked, amiable. “I’ve got an appointment I’ve got to get to by next Wednesday.”
A flash of red crept into Fargo’s eyes. Maybe it had been there all the time, but it caught something of his old screen villainy. I didn’t think he was capable of holding it for a whole scene. I was right. The effort of looking angry took too much out of him. His face twitched, gave in and sagged.
“You’ve got no call coming in here and talking like this,” he said, sipping his drink.
“You’re right. I’ve been rude. I apologize. Did you pay someone to try to force Gary Cooper to take the High Midnight role?” I said, being even more rude.
Fargo could take it as well as he had taken a fake punch from Tom Mix. He just sipped his drink and shrugged.
“Why would I do that?” he said.
“Because you want this movie, and there isn’t going to be a movie without Cooper,” I explained.
“Look around you,” he said, waving his drink at the furniture. “Does it look like I could afford to hire anybody to do something like that?”
“A friend, maybe,” I tried.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” he said, considering an indignant rise from his seat.
I went through the whole explanation about Shelly impersonating me and Cooper getting threatened and Costello getting killed.
“I want the picture,” said Fargo. “That’s a fact, but I’m not about to do anyone in for it, and if I was I wouldn’t have to do any hiring. I’d do it myself. I’ve put on a few pounds, but I can still use my hands, and I can still shoot. I remember one time Tom Tyler and I had-”
“Why does Gelhorn want you in High Midnight?” I interrupted.
Fargo took another drink and looked off into the corner for another excuse to leave and gather what passed for thoughts. “We go way back, Max and me,” he said. “I respect him as a director, and he respects me as an actor. He knows I can take off fifteen, twenty pounds, get in shape for this.”
It would have taken more like forty pounds to make Tail Mickey Fargo look tall again, and I just didn’t think the mass in front of me had the will to do it. Fargo couldn’t handle either of the two major roles in the film. He might make it as the friendly blacksmith in one scene, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.
“What have you got on Gelhorn or whoever is backing Gelhorn?” I said.
“That’ll just about do it,” he said, working his way to a standing position. “You got ten seconds to get out of here and stay out.”
I had expected something more colorful from an old Western villain, something like, this closet isn’t big enough for both of us. There was no way Fargo could have thrown me out of the room, but I had no reason to humiliate him. My goal had been to provoke him a little and get a feeling about him. I had provoked him, but I wasn’t sure of the feeling.
“I’m going, partner,” I said, taking a quick step to the door so he wouldn’t have to be forced to try to throw me out. “Just think about what I said. I’ll be back.”
My next stop was Max Gelhorn’s office. It was getting a little late in the day, but I didn’t want another shot fired at me if I could head it off.
The chunky girl with the running nose and box of Kleenex looked up at me suspiciously when I went through the door of Max Gelhorn Productions.
“You are not Mr. Fligdish of the Fourth Commercial Bank,” she said accusingly.
“I am not,” I confessed. “I’m a pederast.”
She looked at me, puzzled, with bulbous cheeks that seemed to be concealing apples.
Gelhorn was watching the exchange from inside his office. He stood up behind his desk and shouted, “What the hell do you want? Didn’t you do enough yesterday?”
“Hey,” I said in as friendly a manner as I could, “remember I’m the one who works for Gary Cooper and you’re the one who wants him.”
“There are limits,” shouted Gelhorn, rubbing his cheek.
“Are there?”
“Come in,” Gelhorn grumbled, sitting again. I went around the secretary’s desk. She tried to muster a sneeze to aim in my direction but it didn’t come. I squeezed into Gelhorn’s office, past piles of scripts and stacks of trade papers. His desk was cluttered with photographs, more scripts and assorted props.
“Have a seat,” he said. He bobbed nervously behind his desk, touched a script, straightened it out and looked at me. I sat.
“Well?” he said.
“Not very,” said I.
“Hey, I can do without this dialogue. It’s bad enough I have to direct it. I don’t have to listen to this crap in my own office. Just talk straight and back to business.”
I took my time and admired a poster on the wall of an old Western that Gelhorn had produced and directed. The star was Kermit Maynard, and Tall Mickey Fargo was about the fifth name down the cast list. Kermit was pointing a gun out of the poster in my general direction. Kermit’s face was a silly pink.
“Where in your wildest dreams did you get the idea that Gary Cooper would agree to make High Midnight with you?” I said.
Gelhorn rose and pointed the closest thing he could find at me. It was a reel of film. The tail of the film unraveled and dribbled onto the floor.
“Look, you,” said Gelhorn, High Midnight is a good script and …”
“… and the only way you stood a rat’s chance of getting Cooper was if you scared or blackmailed him into it,” I finished.
“No,” he said, trying to gain his composure and rewind the film, which was unraveling at a wild pace. He dropped the whole mess on the floor. “I had Lola Farmer’s assurance that she could talk Cooper into it, that they were old friends. I had a good script. I had good money behind it, enough to make Cooper a good offer. He won’t be sorry if he makes this picture.”
“Max,” I sighed, “you know this business well enough to know that Cooper is under contract to Goldwyn.”
“He can get out for a picture if he wants to,” Gelhorn said, sitting and starting to sulk. “He’s gotten his way before, getting conveniently sick to raise his salary or get out of a picture he didn’t like.”
“But he doesn’t want to do High Midnight,” I repeated slowly, as if I were talking to an idiot.
Gelhorn didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear. A plea entered his voice. “Some people behind this aren’t happy with Cooper.”
“So they tried to kill me and maybe got rid of someone who was protecting me or looked as if he was. All a little warning to Cooper to give in.”
“For Christ’s sake,” laughed Gelhorn in hysteria. “Killing people to make a movie? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s been done,” I said, looking at Kermit Maynard for support.
“I didn’t kill anyone or have anyone killed or order anyone to kill or …”
“You know a squat guy with a high voice?” I said.
“Lots of them. Casting books full of them,” he said. “You making a movie?”
“No, looking for a killer.” I got up. “How’s the horse?”
“He’ll recover, thank God. I think our interview is over,” said Gelhorn. “Miss Lloyd, please show Mr. Peters the way out.”
“If I take a step backward, I’ll be out,” I said.
“Then,” said Gelhorn, “take a step backward by all means.”
Miss Lloyd lumbered behind me, spreading germs. I eased past her, got a last look at Gelhom’s glaring eyes and left the premises of Max Gelhorn Productions. Things were making a little sense. I needed the squat man to put it together. Sooner or later he’d find me.
I made a few stops. First I went to Levy’s to have a sandwich an
d a cup of coffee and tell Carmen the cashier sweet things. She was a buxom widow who made a pastime of frustrating me. She never quite said no, but something always managed to keep us from getting together.
“You’re really working for Gary Cooper?” she said while ringing up the bill on an early diner. The diner tried not to show that he was listening to our conversation. He was a thin guy with no chin.
“Cross my navel,” I said. “He’s been fooling around with a wrestler named Crusher Morgan. They want to get married, but Crusher’s wife won’t let him go. I’m trying to talk Crusher’s wife into letting the mug go so he and Cooper can go away together.”
The diner wanted to stay to hear more, but he had no excuse. He had to depart to retell the tale or maybe savor the secret knowledge for the rest of his days.
“Why do you do things like that?” said Carmen, lifting the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t know,” I said seriously. “It just comes out. We still on for the fights tomorrow night?”
“We’re on,” she smiled. I reached over and touched her hand. It was dark and a little rough.
“The manager’s giving me a sour look,” she said, glancing over my shoulder.
I took the hint and departed, stopping only at the A amp; P, unable to resist the sign in the window that said Ann Page Spaghetti was on sale, two 1-pound cans for 13 cents. When I got back to my rooming house, A amp; P treasure in hand, I was musing over ways to lure the squat man out for another try at me so I could trap him. Everything I could think of was dangerous.
Mrs. Plaut was nowhere in sight. Gunther’s room was silent. I guessed that it was around six. The day was dark, but the sun was still there.
My first reaction when I entered my room was that the cops had finished with Costello’s body and had returned it to me, but it wasn’t Santucci lying over my table. Even from a bad angle, I had a good idea of who it was. I closed the door behind me, went to the table, put down the package and tried to convince myself that this hadn’t happened before. I could see now that it was the squat man, his high voice stilled for good. A knife was in his back, a little higher than the one that had been in Costello, but just as deadly. It was also my knife. I was now out of sharp knives.
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