The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  “I’m not stirring up anything. I just want the photographs.”

  “All I’ve got is a wallet photo. I’m lucky I’ve got a wallet.”

  Instead of getting mad, Emily said, quietly, “Don’t insult me, Lee.” Her voice was tired.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll look around. I don’t have them, though.”

  “I guess they’re lost, then. I’m sorry I woke you.” She’d lost the edge of hysteria; she sounded like the girl he’d first met at a Los Angeles Angels game in 1934. It stirred emotions he’d thought were dead, but before he could think what to say she hung up.

  It took him another hour to get to sleep.

  In the morning he showered, shaved, grabbed some ham and eggs at the Indian Head Diner and headed in to Homicide. The fingerprint report was on his desk. If the dead guy was a mob button man, his prints showed up nowhere in any of their files. Kinlaw spent some time reviewing other missing-persons reports. He kept thinking of the look on Louise Sturges’s face when her husband held her coat for her. For a moment she looked as if she wasn’t sure this was the same man she’d divorced. He wondered why Emily hadn’t gotten mad when he’d insulted her over the phone. At one time it would have triggered an hour’s argument, rife with accusations. Did people change that much?

  He called the Ivar Avenue number.

  “Mrs. Sturges? This is Lemoyne Kinlaw from the LAPD. I wondered if we might talk.”

  “Yes?”

  “I hoped we might speak in person.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I want to follow up on some things from last night.”

  She paused. “Preston’s gone off to talk to his business manager. Can you come over right now?”

  “I’ll be there in a half an hour.”

  Kinlaw drove out to quiet Ivar Avenue and into the curving drive before 1917. The white-shingled house sat on the side of a hill, looking modest by Hollywood standards. Kinlaw rang the bell and the door was answered by a Filipino houseboy.

  Once inside Kinlaw saw that the modesty of the front was deceptive. The houseboy led him to a large room at the back that must have been sixty by thirty feet.

  The walls were green and white, the floor dark hardwood. At one end of the room stood a massive pool table and brick inglenook fireplace. At the other end, a level up, surrounded by an iron balustrade, ran a bar upholstered in green leather, complete with a copper-topped nightclub table and stools. Shelves crowded with scripts, folders, and hundreds of books lined one long wall, and opposite them an expanse of French doors opened onto a kidney-shaped pool surrounded by hibiscus and fruit blossoms, Canary Island Island pines and ancient firs.

  Louise Sturges, seated on a bench covered in pink velveteen, was talking to a towheaded boy of eight or nine. When Kinlaw entered she stood. “Mr. Kinlaw, this is our son, Mon. Mon, why don’t you go outside for a while.”

  The boy raced out through the French doors. Louise wore a plum-colored cotton dress and black flats that did not hide her height. Her thick hair was brushed back over her ears. Poised as a Vogue model, she offered Kinlaw a seat. “Have you ever had children, Mr. Kinlaw?”

  “A daughter.”

  “Preston very much wanted children, but Mon is the only one we are likely to have. At first I was sad, but after things started to go sour between us I was glad that we didn’t have more.”

  “How sour were things?”

  Louise smoothed her skirt. Her sophistication veiled a calmness that was nothing cheap or Hollywood. “Have you found out who that drowned man is?”

  “No.”

  “What did you want to ask me about?”

  “I couldn’t help but get the impression last night that you were surprised at your husband’s behavior.”

  “He’s frequently surprised me.”

  “Has he been acting strangely?”

  “I don’t know. Well, when Preston called me yesterday I was pretty surprised. We haven’t had much contact since before our separation. At the end we got so we’d communicate by leaving notes on the banister.”

  “But that changed?”

  She watched him for a moment before answering. “When we met, Preston and I fell very much in love. He just swept me off my feet. He was so intense, funny. I couldn’t imagine a more loving husband. Certainly he was an egotist, and totally involved in his work, but he was also such a charming and attentive man.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, he started directing, and that consumed all his energies. He would work into the evening at the studio, then spend the night at The Players. At first he wanted me totally involved in his career. He kept me by his side at the soundstage as the film was shot. Some of the crew came to resent me, but Preston didn’t care. Eventually I complained, and Preston agreed that I didn’t need to be there.

  “Maybe that was a mistake. The less I was involved, the less he thought of me. After Mon was born he didn’t have much time for us. He stopped seeing me as his wife and more as the mother of his son, then as his housekeeper and cook.

  “Sometime in there he started having affairs. After a while I couldn’t put up with it anymore, so I moved out. When I filed for divorce, he seemed relieved.”

  Kinlaw worried the brim of his hat. He wondered what Sturges’s version of the story would be.

  “That’s the way things were for the last two years,” Louise continued. “Then he called me Sunday night. He has to see me, he needs to talk. I thought, he’s in trouble; that’s the only time he needs me. A few years back, when the deal with Hughes fell through, he showed up at my apartment and slept on my bed, beside me, like a little boy needing comfort. I thought this would just be more of the same. So I met with him Monday morning. He was contrite. He looked more like the man I’d married than he’d seemed for years. He begged me to give him another chance. He realized his mistakes, he said. He’s selling the restaurant. He wants to be a father to our son.”

  “You looked at him last night as if you doubted his sincerity.”

  “I don’t know what to think. It’s what I wanted for years, but—he seems so different. He’s stopped drinking. He’s stopped smoking.”

  “This may seem like a bizarre suggestion, Mrs. Sturges, but is there any chance this man might not be your husband?”

  Louise laughed. “Oh, no—it’s Preston all right. No one else has that ego.”

  Kinlaw laid his hat on the end table. “Okay. Would you mind if I took a look at your garage?”

  “The garage? Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  She led him through the kitchen to the attached garage. Inside, a red Austin convertible sat on a wooden disk set into the concrete floor.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s a turntable,” Louise said. “Instead of backing up, you can flip this switch and rotate the car so that it’s pointing out. Preston loves gadgets. I think this one’s the reason he bought this house.”

  Kinlaw inspected the garage door. It had a rubber flap along the bottom, and would be quite airtight. There was a dark patch on the interior of the door where the car’s exhaust would blow, as if the car had been running for some time with the door closed.

  They went back into the house. In the backyard the boy, laughing, chased a border collie around the pool. Lucy had wanted a dog. “Let me ask you one more question, and then I’ll go. Does your husband have any distinguishing marks on his body?”

  “He has a large scar on his abdomen. He had a ruptured appendix when he was a young man. It almost killed him.”

  “Does the man who’s claiming to be your husband have such a scar?” Louise hesitated, then said, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “If you should find that he doesn’t, could you let me know?”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “One last thing. Do you have any object he’s held recently—a cup or glass?”

  She pointed to the bar. “He had a club soda last night. I think that was the glass.”

 
Kinlaw got out his handkerchief and wrapped the glass in it, put it into his pocket. “We’ll see what we will see. I doubt that anything will come of it, Mrs. Sturges. It’s probably that he’s just come to his senses. Some husbands do that.”

  “You don’t know Preston. He’s never been the sensible type.”

  * * *

  Back at the office he sent the glass to the lab for prints. A note on his desk told him that while he had been out he’d received a call from someone named Nathan Lautermilk at Paramount.

  He placed a call to Lautermilk. After running the gauntlet of the switchboard and Lautermilk’s secretary, Kinlaw got him. “Mr. Lautermilk, this is Lee Kinlaw of the LAPD. What can I do for you?”

  “Thank you for returning my call, Detective. A rumor going around here has it you’re investigating the death of Preston Sturges. There’s been nothing in the papers about him dying.”

  “Then he must not be dead.”

  Lautermilk had no answer. Kinlaw let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.

  “I don’t want to pry into police business, Detective, but if Preston was murdered, some folks around here might wonder if they were suspects.”

  “Including you, Mr. Lautermilk?”

  “If I thought you might suspect me, I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by calling. I’m an old friend of Preston’s. I was assistant to Buddy DeSylva before Preston quit the studio.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Lautermilk. Suppose I come out there and we have a talk.”

  Lautermilk tried to put him off, but Kinlaw persisted until he agreed to meet him.

  An hour later Kinlaw pulled up to the famous Paramount arch, like the entrance to a Moorish palace. Through the curlicues of the iron gate the sun-washed soundstages hulked like pastel munitions warehouses. The guard had his name and told him where to park.

  Lautermilk met him in the long, low white building that housed the writers. He had an office on the ground floor, with a view across the lot to the soundstages but close enough so he could keep any recalcitrant writers in line.

  Lautermilk seemed to like writers, though, a rare trait among studio executives. He was a short, bald, pop-eyed man with a Chicago accent and an explosive laugh. He made Kinlaw sit down and offered him a cigarette from a brass box on his desk. Kinlaw took one, and Lautermilk lit it with a lighter fashioned into the shape of a lion’s head. The jaws popped open and a flame sprang out of the lion’s tongue. “Louie B. Mayer gave it to me,” Lautermilk said. “Only thing I ever got from him he didn’t take back later.” He laughed.

  “I’m curious. Can you arrange a screening of one of Preston Sturges’s movies?”

  “I suppose so.” Lautermilk picked up his phone. “Judy, see if you can track down a print of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and get it set up to show in one of the screening rooms. Call me when it’s ready.”

  Kinlaw examined the lion lighter. “Did Sturges ever give you anything?”

  “Gave me several pains in the neck. Gave the studio a couple of hit movies. On the whole I’d say we got the better of the deal.”

  “So why is he gone?”

  “Buddy DeSylva didn’t think he was worth the aggravation. Look what’s happened since Sturges left. Give him his head, he goes too far.”

  “But he makes good movies.”

  “Granted. But he made some flops too. And he offended too many people along the way. Didn’t give you much credit for having any sense, corrected your grammar, made fun of people’s accents, and read H. L. Mencken to the cast over lunch. And if you crossed him he would make you remember it later.”

  “How?”

  “Lots of ways. On The Palm Beach Story he got irritated with Claudette Colbert quitting right at five every day. Preston liked to work till eight or nine if it was going well, but Colbert was in her late thirties and insisted she was done at five. So he accommodated himself to her. But one morning, in front of all the cast and crew, Preston told her, ‘You know, we’ve got to take your close-ups as early as possible. You look great in the morning, but by five o’clock you’re beginning to sag.’”

  “So you were glad to see him go.”

  “I hated to see it, actually. I liked him. He can be the most charming man in Hollywood. But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that the studios are full of people just waiting to see him slip. Once you start to slip, even the waitresses in the commissary will cut you.”

  “Maybe there’s some who’d like to help him along.”

  “By the looks of the reactions to his last couple of pictures, they won’t need to. Unfaithfully Yours might have made money if it hadn’t been for the Carole Landis mess. Hard to sell a comedy about a guy killing his wife when the star’s girlfriend just committed suicide. But The Beautiful Blonde is a cast-iron bomb. Darryl Zanuck must be tearing his hair out. A lot of people are taking some quiet satisfaction tonight, though they’ll cry crocodile tears in public.”

  “Maybe they won’t have to fake it. We found a body washed up on the beach in San Pedro that answers to Sturges’s description.”

  Lautermilk did not seem surprised. “No kidding.”

  “That’s why I came out here. I wondered why you’d be calling the LAPD about some ex-director.”

  “I heard some talk in the commissary, one of the art directors who has a boat down in San Pedro heard some story. Preston was my friend. There have been rumors that’s he’s been depressed. Anyone who’s seen him in the last six months knows he’s been having a hard time. It would be big news around here if he died.”

  “Well, you can calm down. He’s alive and well. I just talked to him last night, in person, at his restaurant.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “So what do you make of this body we found?”

  “Maybe you identified it wrong.”

  “Anybody ever suspect that Sturges had a twin?”

  “A thing like that would have come out. He’s always talking about his family.”

  Kinlaw put the cinematographer’s monocle on Lautermilk’s desk. “We found this in his pocket.”

  Lautermilk picked it up, examined it, put it down again. “Lots of these toys in Hollywood.”

  The intercom buzzed and the secretary reported that they could see the film in screening room D at any time. Lautermilk walked with Kinlaw over to another building, up a flight of stairs to a row of screening rooms. They entered a small room with about twenty theater-style seats, several of which had phones on tables next to them. “Have a seat,” Lautermilk said. “Would you like a drink?”

  Kinlaw was thirsty. “No, thanks.”

  Lautermilk used the phone next to his seat to call back to the projection booth. “Let her rip, Arthur.”

  “If you don’t mind,” he said to Kinlaw, “I’ll leave after the first few minutes.”

  The room went dark. “One more thing, then,” Kinlaw said. “All these people you say would like to see Sturges fail. Any of them like to see him dead?”

  “I can’t tell you what’s in people’s heads.” Lautermilk settled back and lit a cigarette. The movie began to roll.

  The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek was a frenetic comedy. By twenty minutes in, Kinlaw realized the real miracle was that they had gotten it past the Hays Office. A girl gets drunk at a going-away party for soldiers, marries one, gets pregnant, doesn’t remember the name of the father. All in one night. She sets her sights on marrying Norval Jones, a local yokel, but the yokel turns out to be so sincere she can’t bring herself to do it. Norval tries to get the girl out of trouble. Everything they do only makes the situation worse. Rejection, disgrace, indictment, even suicide, are all distinct possibilities. But at the last possible moment a miracle occurs to turn humiliation into triumph.

  Kinlaw laughed despite himself, but after the lights came up the movie’s sober undertone began to work on him. It looked like a rube comedy but it wasn’t. The story mocked the notion of the rosy ending while allowing people who wanted one to have it. It imp
lied a maker who was both a cruel cynic and dizzy optimist. In Sturges’s absurd universe anything could happen at any time, and what people did or said didn’t matter at all. Life was a cruel joke with a happy ending.

  Blinking in the sunlight, he found his car, rolled down the windows to let out the heat, and drove back to Homicide. When he got back, the results of the fingerprint test were on his desk. From the tumbler they had made a good right thumb, index, and middle finger. The prints matched the right hand of the dead man exactly.

  * * *

  All that afternoon Kinlaw burned gas and shoe leather looking for Sturges. Louise had not seen him since he’d left the Ivar Avenue house in the morning, he was not with Frances Ramsden or the Woolfords, nobody had run into him at Fox, the restaurant manager claimed he’d not been in, and a long drive down to the San Pedro marina was fruitless: Sturges’s boat rocked empty in its slip and the man in the office claimed he hadn’t seen the director since Sunday.

  It was early evening and Kinlaw was driving back to Central Homicide, when he passed the MGM lot where Emily was working. He wondered if she was still fretting over the photo album. In some ways his problems were simpler than hers; all he had to do was catch the identical twin of a man who didn’t have a twin. It had to be a better distraction than Emily’s job. He remembered how, a week after he’d moved out, he’d found himself late one Friday night, drunk on his ass, coming back to the house to sit on the backyard swing and watch the darkened window to their bedroom, wondering whether she was sleeping any better than he. Fed up with her inability to cope, he’d known he didn’t want to go inside and take up the pain again, but he could not bring himself to go away, either. So he sat on the swing he had hung for Lucy and waited for something to release him. The galvanized chain links were still unrusted; they would last a long time.

  A man watching a house, waiting for absolution. The memory sparked a hunch, and he turned around and drove to his apartment. He found the red Austin parked down the block. As he climbed the steps to his floor a shadow pulled back into the corner of the stairwell. Kinlaw drew his gun. “Come on out.”

  Sturges stepped out of the shadows.