Private Eye 2 - Blue Movie

by David Elliott

  "Are you okay, Johnny?"

  The young man stirred and moaned. His fingers went to the small gash in his forehead. "What happened?"

  Cleary breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  "You almost lost that Duck's Ass of yours, head and all."

  Johnny managed to pull himself up. "Schooley! He's not—"

  "I know," Cleary said. "Where's Eva Miles?"

  For the first time, Johnny looked around his devastated trailer. He cringed at the splatter of blood and brains decorating the wall. "Man, this place is—-"

  At that moment, his eyes settled on the remains of the dead man's head.

  "Way out!" he said. It was a strange thing to say, or so Cleary thought, but Johnny was obviously shaken by the sight. He inched away from it.

  "Did you do that?" Johnny asked.

  "Yeah, before he buried that hatchet in my head. Where's Eva Miles?"

  Johnny looked toward the door and saw the startled faces of his neighbors. "Scram! Beat it! Jeez, they're nosy."

  "Eva, Johnny? What happened to her?"

  "I think she managed to get away. I remember fighting with him. While I was doing that, she split. I don't remember much. I guess I lost the fight."

  "You're fortunate that's all you lost. I'd say our friend there left you lying while he searched for the films."

  "My lucky day," Johnny said.

  "It's not mine. I still got nothing on Kaplan that'll stick. I need Eva Miles."

  Johnny pulled himself to his feet and became fascinated by the destruction Cleary's .45 had caused to the man. "You shoulda thought about that before you trimmed that flattop just above his eyes. Where do you think Eva would go?"

  "Back underground, Betts. I sure can't blame her."

  Johnny went to a faucet and dampened a washcloth. He started dabbing at the gash. Cleary was looking around the trailer and saw her small suitcase jammed beneath the chair in which she had been sitting. He pulled it out and began rummaging through it. His hands found a small, very hard scrap of paper in the bottom.

  "What is this?" He pulled it out and unwrapped the paper.

  "A key to a bus locker," he mused, answering his own question.

  "Maybe that's—"

  Cleary wrapped his fist around the key. "I can't think of a better place. One thing's certain. She can't get them without this."

  They both heard the distant sound of the approaching sirens. Cleary reached over and dropped the key into the high leg of Johnny's boots. "Keep quiet about it, Betts."

  "You know me, Cleary. I've hated cops ever since they caught me drag racing."

  "Drag racing?"

  "Yeah, back in Tennessee—actually, that happened down in Tupelo, which isn't in Tenne—"

  "Stow it, Betts, and listen to me. We don't have much time. As soon as you get shed of the cops, you know to go to the bus terminal and see what's in that locker."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I got another life to save."

  "And what do I tell the heat?"

  Cleary was already at the door. "Just tell them the poor guy lost his head over a woman."

  The dust from Cleary's Eldorado still hung in the air when the '55 Ford pulled to a stop in front of Johnny's trailer. Two black-and-whites followed it. Most of the trailer park's residents were gathered in front of the trailer. The uniformed officers cleared a path for Charlie Fontana as he hurried into Johnny's trailer.

  Johnny sat in a chair, sipping a sweaty beer. Flies were already starting to gather around the body and the gore spread around the trailer. Fontana took one look at the body and then turned to Johnny.

  "Where is he?"

  Johnny shrugged. "You just missed him."

  Fontana pointed to the body. "Who is that?"

  Johnny leaned forward. "He told me and Cleary his name was Orin Schooley, but he musta lied. Looks to me like he's that axe murderer you guys been knocking yourselves out to find."

  Fontana stood over Betts. "Come on, kid, I've got bodies piling up faster than I can file the reports. Where can I find Cleary?"

  "Hey, man, I don't know. Like I said, he just left, and said something about saving somebody else's life."

  Fontana threw up his hands. "Which probably means I'm gonna have more stiffs on my hands before the sun sets."

  "How do we handle this?" one of the uniforms asked.

  Fontana looked at the decimated remains. "If I were you, I'd use rubber gloves."

  SIXTEEN

  The poor maid didn't know what to make of the wild man who barged into Rita's home. Certainly he had been there before, but only once that she remembered. This time there was a crazy look in his eyes, and he was flecked with what looked like blood. Here he was, pushing his way by her, demanding to see Mr. D'Rosa—perhaps to kill him.

  "He's not here," she screamed in protest.

  The crazy man dashed up the stairs to the second floor. She could hear him moving from one room to the next, opening doors and then slamming them, violating the privacy of the people for whom she worked. She thought about calling the police, but Mr. D'Rosa, he had no use for them.

  The man came down the steps.

  "Is he out by the pool?"

  "I told you, mister. Mr. D'Rosa, he is not here."

  But the crazy man was now going out the back door into the pool and gardens. She followed him, flustered, not knowing at all what she should do.

  "You just can't do this," she called after him. "Not even if you are a friend of Mr. D'Rosa."

  "Miss Marlo? Where is she?"

  "She's gone, too. No one is here but me, and, if you don't leave at once, I shall call the police."

  "Do whatever moves you, lady, but first tell me where D'Rosa is. It's urgent."

  Cleary saw the terror in the maid's eyes. Silly woman—he certainly had no intentions of harming her. He understood her reluctance to tell him anything. She had been trained to discourage members of the public who threatened the sanctity of Rita Marlo's home. On the other hand, he had no time to try to reason with her. He was just about to mildly shake some sense into her when he saw the clutter around the pool deck. He went to it and picked up a few pieces.

  "Oh, my God. Those bastards!" The small bit of paper was obviously from a photograph, no doubt one of the photographs stolen from his office. It rested among three or four pink rose petals.

  There were others, rose petals and torn remains of photographs—a trail of them, in fact, all the way around the pool to the small cabana. Cleary followed them into the structure, where he discovered a movie projector sitting on a table. From the outside, the building had appeared unimpressive. Inside, it looked big enough to contain a respectable party crowd. A large screen formed the rear wall of the poolhouse. Obviously Rita Marlo viewed her own films here.

  A reel of film was loaded on the projector. He touched the lamp holder on the machine and found it still warm. Behind him, he heard the maid.

  "Please, mister, please go. You will cause me big trouble."

  He ignored her plea and flipped on the projector, rewinding the film for several seconds before playing it.

  The camera was in close on Rita's beautiful face, but there was a man's voice on the soundtrack. "I told you never to come back here."

  Then, Rita spoke her lines. "Take me with you."

  The unseen man: "I shoulda never started with you."

  A tear formed in Rita's eye and dribbled down her cheek. "I can't work. I can't eat. I can't even sleep at night."

  Cleary shook his head, trying to clear away what had to be an insane dream.

  "You don't know what it's like to be a woman," she was saying, crying more heavily now. "To love a man desperately and yet not to know if he's yours... I have to know—"

  Rita Marlo, playing herself, had spoken the same words to him.

  "You poor, lonely—" A thought whipped through Cleary's brain.

  He whirled on the maid. Her eyes twinkled with fear. "Have you seen this film?" he asked.

  "Wh
y—"

  "Have you seen it? The ending, I mean."

  "Many times. It's called—"

  "I don't give a damn what it's called. How does it end? What does Rita do—I mean, the character she's playing?"

  "She takes her own life."

  "Listen to me, senora, I'm afraid Miss Marlo may do that to herself—in real life. Now tell me where she's gone."

  "I don't know—"

  "Dammit, woman. If you care at all for Rita and D'Rosa, tell me."

  The maid broke down. "I do not know. Really. She got the envelope. A few moments later, she rushed out to her car and left."

  "So, where's D'Rosa?"

  "Please, mister—"

  His large hands gripped her shoulders. He shook her, not too hard, though. Just enough to make his point. "Somebody is trying to kill him!"

  She studied his dark eyes. "The house at the beach. I think he went there."

  At midday, the downtown bus terminal throbbed with feverish activity. Buses discharged hundreds of people, many of them arriving with a suitcase full of the same kinds of dreams that had brought a virginal Eva Miles to Los Angeles. Johnny spent some time watching the crowds, just to make sure no one was following him. He examined the faces of those disembarking. They stepped down tired and hungry from the smelly machines, expecting, no doubt, to see the fabled lushness of Hollywood. Instead they were met with the gray dinginess of the old bus terminal. From there the exiles would wander into

  Pershing Square—an amalgamation of dingy bars, garish strip joints, dismal tramps, dirty gray rooming houses, and the greasy stench left over from the old bus station. Many of them wouldn't keep their first California meal down.

  The police had done little more than take a statement from him about the incident at his trailer. In a way, their cavalier attitude had offended the young man. It was as if he wasn't important enough for them. Fontana wanted little more than to locate Cleary. After Johnny had issued at least a dozen denials regarding Cleary's whereabouts, the cop had finally allowed Johnny his freedom. When he had arrived at the terminal, he had stationed himself close to the long panel of lockers. Everyone looked suspicious, but then Johnny had always been a little paranoid, and he knew it.

  About thirty minutes after his arrival, two buses arrived at the same time. The terminal seemed to fill with people, many of them obviously disappointed newcomers who were wondering if they had disembarked at the wrong stop. He decided to use the chaos as a cover and moved toward the locker, the key to which he had in the pocket of his jeans.

  Continually glancing over his shoulder, he opened the locker and saw inside a piece of cloth luggage. His hand roved over its surface.

  "Wild," he said under his breath as he felt the rounded edges of the film canisters.

  With one last look over his shoulder, he pulled the contents from the locker and moved quickly toward the side door that opened into the parking lot. The Mercury had been parked as close to the door as he could get it. A hot autumn sun beat down on the lot, and Johnny was glad he had had the sense to leave his windows down. Otherwise, the dark interior of the car would have been an inferno, perhaps even a threat to the fragile celluloid he hoped was inside the cans.

  Once he was inside the vehicle, he dared to open the cloth bag. The silver canisters gleamed in the sunlight spilling through the windshield. He opened one and pulled out the film, holding it away from the sunlight.

  "Hot damn!" He couldn't make out the faces, but the positions of the bodies spoke volumes.

  "Enjoy it, Johnny," a female voice said.

  The cool barrel of a gun touched his skin just below the tail of his Duck's Ass haircut. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the face of Eva Miles.

  "I knew one of you would come," she said, "just as soon as you searched the luggage. I was hoping it wouldn't be that goon or Cleary, either."

  "What am I?" Johnny said, again peeved at being taken for granted.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing."

  "I guess you know that wasn't Orin."

  Johnny displayed the bloody crease across his forehead. "Yeah, I found out the hard way. If this keeps up, I'll need a new face. Orin's dead, Eva."

  "I already figured that part out. That's another debt Kaplan owes me."

  Johnny's mind had devised a plan already. "You want these, I guess." He started to hand them back—actually, throw them back-—to her in the hopes of disarming her.

  "Just stay put. Leave them where they are and start the car."

  So much for his plan. "Take them and go."

  "Uh-uh, Johnny. I need a lift. Start the car like I said."

  "I don't think you'll shoot me, Eva." He started to turn around.

  The sound of the gun being cocked stopped him. "Don't bet on it. You're a nice kid—at least, that's how you act. You look like a motorcycle hoodlum. Anyway, don't try me. I got some things coming to me, and I mean to collect—no matter who gets in my way."

  "Where to?" he asked, resigned to the situation.

  "Drive around Pershing Square."

  "Holy smokes, lady, the traffic will be murder. I know an easy route outta—"

  "Do it."

  "Yes, ma'am. Your wish is my command."

  As he concentrated on getting out of the terminal traffic, he saw her hand reach over to gather up the bag of films. A missed opportunity, he thought.

  The traffic in downtown L.A. was next to impossible at that time of day. He drove in circles on Los Angeles Street, Spring, and Main, dodging in and out of the traffic and frequently glancing into the rearview mirror. Each time, he found her watching him, the small gun—maybe a .32 caliber automatic—always aimed at the back of his head.

  "You can put that thing down," he said. "It makes me nervous."

  "Careful, too, I hope."

  "Yeah, for sure... that, too."

  As lunchtime neared its end, the traffic started to pile up. The Mercury slowed to a snail's pace. "Jeez, Eva! I'll never get out of this mess."

  That's when he heard the rear passenger door close. He glanced into the mirror. Her face was gone. Hell, she was gone. The traffic had started to pick up. He threw the Mercury into neutral and reached to open his door, but the traffic in the other lane had him hemmed in. He started to slide across to the passenger's side and bail out there to go look for her. But he hated to abandon the Merc, and a quick glance around the street convinced him that she was gone.

  He thought about Cleary and dropped his sore forehead on the steering wheel. That's when the cars behind him started to honk.

  A uniformed cop stuck his head in the open passenger window. "Hey, buddy. You okay?"

  Johnny lifted his head. "For right now."

  A pink '57 T-Bird, sporting an oversized Continental kit on its trunk, sped down the beach highway and screeched to a stop beside D'Rosa's Lincoln. Both of the cars occupied a no-parking zone on the narrow highway, but the police seldom harassed any of the street's residents with tickets. Most of them had friends in high places.

  The long black Chrysler Imperial lurking thirty yards south of the other two cars was parked legally.

  The man inside couldn't take the chance that some nosy cop might stop to check him out. Frankie Carbo used a pair of field glasses to watch the woman exit the T-Bird. He recognized her as Rita Marlo as she hurried into the beach house. Frankie lowered the glasses and lifted the dark hat he wore from his head. Sweat dribbled down his forehead. He wiped it from his bushy brow and cursed the southern California climate. He ached to step out of the Imperial and remove the heavy coat, but that wasn't a smart move. A Cleveland boy, Frankie resigned himself to the heat of the California sun.

  Besides, he had work to do, so he dismissed his discomfort and reached into the backseat for a long violin case. He opened it in the seat beside him and quickly began to assemble the hardware packed inside. With practiced ease, he screwed the short, hand-tooled barrel into the main body of the weapon, and then attached a short skeletal
shoulder rest to it. On top of the gun, he placed the scope and adjusted it. Then, he checked the action. It worked smoothly.

  Lifting the short gun to his shoulder, he aimed it at the beach house into which the actress had just disappeared, centering the cross hairs on the front door, more particularly on the door knocker, which was just about head height. Then, he swiveled toward the Lincoln and sighted in on the driver's window.

  Satisfied with his position, he dipped his hand into a coat pocket and withdrew a long brass cartridge. As clumsy and callused as his fingers were, they deftly inserted the shell into the gun's breech. With the flick of a wrist, he rammed it into the firing chamber.

  Frankie eased the gun down onto the floor where he could reach it in a hurry and settled back to ponder his good fortune and curse the afternoon heat.

  Carbo owed Nicky that bullet. He couldn't wait to settle the debt.

  Nick D'Rosa gaped at Rita as she came into the beach house. "What are you doing here?"

  "I thought I'd surprise you, hon. You're packing?"

  "Business," he said, and returned to his packing. "You gotta get outta here, Rita. I've made a few people mad, and they just might come gunnin' for me."

  "You, Nicky? As sweet as you are, who'd want to kill you?"

  D'Rosa was in a hurry—even more of a hurry to be rid of Rita. "Scram, Rita. I mean it. It's not safe here right now—"

  "Where are you going, Nicky?"

  "I dunno. Somewhere, but not for long. Trust me. Things will work out." He went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "I didn't want a good-bye scene, hon. I'm no good at those kinda things. 'Sides, I wanted to make it as easy on you as possible."

  "Oh, you did?" Rita pulled away from him. "You think this makes it easy, walking out without telling me about it? You know what I would have thought, Nicky—probably that you were lying out there in the bay. How do you guys say it—wearing a cement overcoat?"

  "I can take care of myself."

  Rita laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "Oh, yeah. Nicky The Rose can do that all right. He can take care of himself."