10 Movie

by Parnell Hall

JASON looks around, smiles.

  JASON

  It’s perfect.

  (spreads his arms wide)

  It’s just perfect.

  CAMERA PULLS BACK AND PANS RIGHT TO INCLUDE:

  HOT BABE #2, Vivian of shower-scene fame, made up to look young in cotton pullover and jeans.

  HOT BABE #2

  (worried)

  I don’t know.

  JASON

  Hey. Trust me.

  HOT BABE #2

  I do, I do, but—

  JASON

  I tell you the place is perfect.

  (pointing up to ceiling)

  Look there.

  SNAP PAN TO:

  Pipe on ceiling.

  Back on JASON and HOT BABE #2.

  JASON

  You see that?

  HOT BABE #2

  See what?

  JASON

  That pipe.

  HOT BABE #2

  What about it?

  JASON

  You could run a rope over that pipe. Hang a sandbag. Drop it on the set.

  HOT BABE #2

  No!

  JASON

  Yes. It’s what we talked about.

  HOT BABE #2

  I know that, but—

  JASON

  That sound man—did you get his name?

  HOT BABE #2

  Yeah.

  JASON

  Is it the same one?

  HOT BABE #2

  I think so, but—

  JASON

  Fine. Then I’ll fuck up his tape recorder.

  HOT BABE #2

  If you have to.

  JASON

  (looks at her)

  Have to? What’s with you? Why are we doing this? Why did you get the job?

  HOT BABE #2

  To make trouble.

  JASON

  Right. To make trouble. So?

  HOT BABE #2

  Well, that’s fine with the tape recorder. That’s all right. But the sandbag. I mean, you could kill someone.

  JASON

  I don’t care.

  HOT BABE #2

  (looks at him in horror)

  You can’t mean that.

  JASON

  (strong)

  Oh, come on. Whaddya think this is, a game?

  HOT BABE #2

  No, but—

  JASON

  Well, it’s not. It’s real. It’s happening. And you know what? I don’t care if it kills someone. Hell, I hope it does.

  SOUND from out of frame, camera left. Rustle of cardboard boxes.

  JASON & HOT BABE #2 turn to see:

  STANLEY HASTINGS; dressed as homeless man, clambering to his feet from where he had been sleeping behind a pile of cardboard boxes. He gets to his feet, stands there, blinking at them.

  JASON & HOT BABE #2 react.

  JASON

  He heard us!

  HOT BABE #2

  It doesn’t matter.

  JASON

  What, are you nuts? He heard the whole thing.

  STANLEY

  (puts up his hands)

  Hey, mister. I didn’t hear nothing.

  HOT BABE #2

  (pleading)

  See?

  JASON

  He heard!

  STANLEY

  (shaking his head)

  No. I don’t know about no killin’.

  JASON

  Son of a bitch!

  HOT BABE #2

  (in anguish, grabbing his arm)

  No. Please.

  JASON

  (pushing her away)

  Let go!

  JASON wheels around, looks, sees:

  A two-by-four lying on the floor.

  JASON rushes to it, picks it up.

  JASON turns and swings the two-by-four, clubbing STANLEY to the ground.

  HOT BABE #2 rushes into frame.

  HOT BABE #2

  (grabbing Jason)

  My god, you killed him!

  JASON

  I had to. He heard everything.

  HOT BABE #2

  No, no. You didn’t have to do it.

  JASON

  (grabbing her by the arms and looking her right in the eyes)

  Yes, I did. I had to. He heard too much. He had to die.

  (then, turning from her and looking directly into the camera lens and speaking directly to the audience)

  Didn’t he, Dan?

  The film ran out.

  The reels revolved.

  The only sight was the white light projected on the screen.

  The only sound the flapping of the film ends on the reels.

  Someone switched on the lights.

  And there was Dan, standing next to the projector, transfixed, helpless, too overcome to even switch it off.

  Jake Decker stepped up, did it for him.

  And in the silence that followed, there came another heart-wrenching sound.

  The anguished sobs of the girl from the catering truck.

  40.

  IT WAS SAD.

  It occurred to me, the first case I’d been involved in with Sergeant Clark had that sort of ending too. Sort of unsatisfying, in that the wrong person was guilty. That you didn’t want them to be guilty. That you wanted the solution to be something else.

  I’m talking about the girl. The girl from the catering truck. Dan you could feel sorry for, I guess, but not really. Not like her. Is that sexist? Probably. Everything is. But in Dan’s case, I’m sure he was the driver, the mover, the actor, the one who did the deed. And she was just the accomplice. Equally guilty in the eyes of the law. But not in mine.

  Or in Alice’s.

  She was the one Alice recognized, of course. The girl from the catering truck. That had to be a shock—there’s Alice going through the lunch line and suddenly she recognized the girl dishing out the food. Well, not her, really, but her sister.

  Damn it, I’m doing it again. Telling it out of sequence. For what I hope is the last time. Surely when this movie is over it will cure me of the habit. Movies do that to you. You shoot ’em out of sequence, and it screws up your head. Time is out of joint. Nothing happens when it should.

  Funny, but in a way that was the solution to this case. Events happening out of sequence. Specifically, the murder of the bum in the warehouse. Which was why it didn’t seem to relate to anything. Didn’t seem to make any sense. The sequence was wrong. Because it was a crime committed to cover up another crime. Perfectly natural. Only, the crime it was committed to cover up hadn’t happened yet. The crime, the dropping of the sandbag, had merely been planned. It was that plan that had been overheard, necessitating the murder. The one that happened out of sequence.

  Damn. I’m still telling this out of sequence. I can’t seem to get out of it.

  Okay, where was I?

  Alice.

  The girl from the catering truck.

  Right.

  Alice went through the lunch line and recognized her. Actually, Alice had never seen her, but she’d seen her sister, and there was a strong family resemblance, and that was what she saw.

  The girl in the catering truck was the sister of the girl in Sidney Garfellow’s documentary Down and Dirty. The teenaged prostitute. The one Sidney got to cry on film.

  That girl was dead.

  No, she hadn’t committed suicide. That would have been too pat. If her parents had seen the documentary, disowned her, and as a result she’d killed herself, hell, there’d have been no need for such an underhanded attack. Her family could have sued Sidney, smeared him with adverse publicity, and practically ruined him if they played it right.

  But that wasn’t the case. What the girl had done was to sink deeper into prostitution and drugs and eventually die of an overdose. Not enough to hang on Sidney legally, but enough to crucify him in her sister’s eyes.

  And in Dan’s.

  You see, Dan was her boyfriend.

  She had come to New York from the Midwest, a runaway, got picked up in the Port A
uthority by a pimp and put on the game. It was while she was turning tricks that she’d been discovered and interviewed by up-and-coming documentary filmmaker Sidney Garfellow.

  Shortly after that she’d kicked the life, thanks largely to a young Columbia film student who’d taken an interest in her.

  Dan.

  She moved in with him and the relationship lasted several months.

  Long enough for her to decide to communicate with her parents.

  Long enough for her sister to get to New York to visit.

  Then the documentary came out.

  By Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sidney Garfellow.

  The film received critical attention. It played art houses nationwide and was screened on several college campuses.

  Including Columbia.

  It was in fact used for one of Columbia’s film courses.

  One Dan took.

  A month later, the girl had moved out, was back into prostitution and heavy into drugs.

  Two months later she was dead.

  Dan and her sister met at the funeral. They spoke of their anger and frustration. They directed it toward Sidney Garfellow. They resolved to do something.

  The rest you know.

  It was no problem for Dan, as a Columbia film student, to get a job as a gofer on the picture. Once hired, he began looking for a position for the girl. He got the name of the caterers, she applied to them, and damned if they didn’t have a job.

  It was as easy as that.

  Then came the fatal afternoon. Dan was sent to pick up the keys to the warehouse. Which in Sergeant Clark’s eyes made him the prime suspect—and Clark as usual was right. When Dan got the keys he called the girl, gave her the address, and told her to meet him there. She did and they went in and up to the second floor, which Jake had said would likely be the shooting stage because he’d been told the floor was wood.

  They looked around for things to booby-trap. Laid some plans.

  And found the bum.

  The real kick in the head, of course, was I heard them discuss it. That day on the bus. Don’t have to rub it in, hell. I was sitting there in the john and heard the whole thing.

  And then Dan turns toward the back of the bus where I’m hiding and, cool as cucumber, holds up the vanilla brownie and says, “I’ll put the blondie back.”

  What a performance.

  I wonder if he actually saw me. Recognized me as Stanley Hastings, I mean. As not just the screenwriter, but the man who was working with Sergeant MacAullif and Sergeant Clark. If he made the connection that I was his nemesis, that I was the investigator he had to fool.

  Or did he merely see the door move and know that someone was there, and cover his tracks just in case?

  In any event, the ad lib was brilliant. In one simple line, tying up and explaining away everything that had come before. Without turning a hair, without revealing a thing, without a moment’s hesitation he turns to the girl and says, “All right. I’ll put the blondie back.”

  Poor girl.

  If only it were that simple.

  If only there were some way he could have put the blondie back.

  But from the moment he swung the two-by-four it was too late. They had passed the point of no return.

  Poor girl.

  Yeah, like I said, it’s sad.

  But life isn’t like fiction, all clear-cut, black and white, the good guys and the bad.

  Take Sidney Garfellow, exploitive opportunist—was he the good guy in the piece? He was the one I wound up having to protect. And he was with us at the end. Hell, he held the camera when we shot our little scene. Cooperated fully, and did everything I asked.

  Yeah, I directed that scene. Wrote it, directed it, and acted in it too. I can take some pride in that. Even if the dialogue wasn’t that hot.

  Which wasn’t Jason Clairemont’s fault, by the way. He didn’t rewrite me there. No, the dialogue wasn’t that good because I wrote it there on the spot and there was nothing subtle about it—it had to be heavy-handed and right on the head. But for the record, Jason cooperated fully, said the words I wrote, and did his damnedest to make them play. And as I’ve said, the kid could act. I have to tell you, when he turned to the camera and talked to Dan, I felt a chill.

  I’m sure Dan did too. Not that he confessed because of it. No, he held firm till the girl broke. Which didn’t take long. After that he went noble, tried to take it all on himself.

  And how it will all turn out I have no idea. They got separate lawyers, filed motions, fought for delays, and the whole nine yards. The first trial he was found guilty on all counts and she on two, but that’s being appealed.

  In the meantime, they’re both out on bail.

  Is there justice there? I think of the girl and I feel glad. But every time I start feeling sorry for those kids, I have to remind myself about boom man Charles Masterson.

  And his wife and kids.

  And it occurs to me, the story of Dan and the girl wouldn’t make a movie. Totally unsatisfying. No happy ending. No winner.

  Except Sergeant Clark.

  He won his bet.

  And Richard Rosenberg, to his credit, conceded as much. He didn’t try to argue, as one might expect, that the bum in the warehouse had absolutely nothing to do with any of it, that he was just a poor soul who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, Richard was as good as his word. He accepted the solution for what it was, and didn’t try to get off on any technicalities. He called Sergeant Clark, offered his congratulations, and asked him where he’d like to dine.

  The answer, Lutece, must have set Richard back a bit, but he didn’t complain. As a matter of fact, I gather Richard actually got a kick out of hearing the solution to the case.

  As to that solution, most of it you know. However, in Sergeant Clark’s version, I gather, it was his brilliance rather than Alice’s recognition of the girl from the catering truck that cracked the case. Well, that’s not quite fair. I think the way he put it was the identification was merely confirmation of theories he had had for some time.

  To begin with, he’d always suspected Dan. Because Dan was the one who had picked up the keys and could have gotten into the warehouse. Jake Decker wound up with the keys, but not until six o’clock, which according to the medical examiner was the outside limit when the man could have been killed. As to the rest of the suspects: Sidney Garfellow, the art director, the gaffer, the AD, the DP, Murky Doyle and, yes, yours truly—all of whom had been in the office that afternoon and would have had access to the keys on Jake Decker’s desk—the big stumbling block was that they had only been in the office once. So they could have taken the keys perfectly well, but they couldn’t have put them back. And they had to have been put back, because they were there on Jake Decker’s desk when he went to look for them at six o’clock. (In response to the suggestion that in one visit to the office wax impressions of the keys could have been made, Sergeant Clark was reported to have said, “Yes, in a detective novel. The type I read and throw across the room.”)

  At any rate, it was Sergeant Clark’s contention that, from the very first, the gofer Dan Mayfield was strongly indicated.

  With regard to the murder of the boom man, Dan was also a prime suspect there. He went along on the preliminary location scout and was the one taught to run the construction elevator. As to who he was trying to kill, best guess was Jason Clairemont. Why? Because it would create the most havoc with the production. Why not Sidney himself? Because Dan didn’t want to kill Sidney—he wanted him to live and suffer. On the other hand, if Sidney were to fall ... what the hey.

  As Sergeant Clark said way back then, this was sort of a hopeful crime. Weaken the board and see if someone falls. Dan could have suspected it would be Jason Clairemont after reading the action sequence I wrote, even if he couldn’t be sure. But I don’t think there was any way he could have known it was the boom man. That was just coincidence.

  Don’t tell MacAullif. He doesn’t believe in coincidence.
But some happen. You can buy one. A small one.

  The coincidence is, it was the boom man, Charles Masterson, who happened to stumble into two traps. Neither of which was set for him.

  The short in the Nagra was intended for Murky Doyle. That bit of mischief was deliberate and specific. Because Murky Doyle was the sound man Sidney Garfellow used on Down and Dirty. And a documentary’s a lot different than a feature. There’s no huge crew. Just Sidney Garfellow with a handheld camera and Murky Doyle with a handheld mike. They were the pair who filmed the girl. That’s what I was referring to in my little movie—”That sound man—did you get his name?” “Is it the same one?” They got the sound man’s name from the credits of the documentary. Just as I did. Murky was one of the original perpetrators, making him a specific target. They shorted out his Nagra. Only, it was the boom man who got the shock.

  And the boom man who took the dive.

  That’s the coincidence.

  Too much?

  So sue me. Read a murder mystery sometime. As a coincidence, it’s pretty tame.

  But where was I? I keep getting lost in this case. Oh yeah, the various crimes.

  Well, there’s the sandbag falling. That’s the one I think of as the real crime. Because it’s the one the first murder was committed to cover up. Sergeant Clark’s opinion there was just the way I laid it out in my movie. Initially it was just an idea—you could hang a rope there, drop a sandbag on the set. No particular target in mind.

  Once the shower is built it gets specific. Jason Clairemont. Then when the little platform is built for him in the shower, it’s better still. You know exactly where he’ll stand.

  Did anything implicate Dan? According to Sergeant Clark, yes. His interviews of all the witnesses. Only one witness named Dan as watching the filming.

  The girl from the catering truck.

  And no one saw her.

  Why was that? Because she was lying. Lying to protect Dan. Neither one of them was there. She lied to give him an alibi.

  He didn’t bother to give her one because he figured if they alibied each other it would be too pat. Or he figured she didn’t need one. Or he just didn’t think of it. Or give a damn. Take your pick.

  Anyway, Sergeant Clark claims that’s how he knew they were conspirators. Frankly, I think that’s bullshit. I grant Clark a lot, but not that. Tell you why.

  Sergeant Clark also takes credit for the theory that the key to the vendetta against the movie could be found in Sidney Garfellow’s documentaries, and points to the fact that he was screening them days before the denouement. Yeah, but he was also screening To Shoot the Tiger. The way I see it, he was exploring possibilities, but he didn’t have them narrowed down.