Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7)

by Warren Murphy

  “We’ll be back Sunday night for dinner,” he said. “That way I’ll be here when the press comes and starts to pester everybody.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was wondering how I’d deal with them.”

  On his personal-rating scale, Scott gave that one Smile Number Three. He said, “Is everything all right, Dahlia?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said.

  “I’ll see that Dahlia’s fine,” Harden said. “Somebody’s got to protect the only actor in this film.”

  That got a Number Two Smile from Scott, who left the table and a few moments, later left the dining room with Pamela in tow.

  “I’m writing new dialogue for Dahlia,” Harden told me. “Good, honest dialogue.”

  I guess my expression showed that I didn’t care if he wrote her the King James Bible because he turned his back on me and stared at her.

  “It’s not going to be that naturalistic dialogue, is it?” she asked him.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Harden said.

  “If people wanted to hear natural dialogue, they could sit on a bus and hear it,” she said. “People want to hear the great lines. They want actors to make speeches that they wish they could make.”

  “Speeches never sound natural,” Harden said. “That’s why Shakespeare stinks.”

  I always figure it’s time to leave when somebody at the table decides that Shakespeare stinks. As I was getting up, Roddy Quine came limping over to sit at the table.

  Clyde Snapp stood in the doorway, motioning to me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I got some crazy man on the phone downstairs. Maybe you ought to talk to him.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. He’s talking about Tony McCue and murder and I don’t know what all.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go see.”

  The voice over the phone snarled, “Is this McCue?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s out. Who is this?”

  “First of all, who is this?” the voice growled back. All of a sudden, I was beginning to guess who it was.

  “This is Devlin Tracy. At your service.”

  “Tracy, you moron, what are you doing there?”

  “Why, as I live and breathe, it’s Detective Razoni, isn’t it?”

  “Goddamn right, it’s Razoni,” he said. “I asked you what you’re doing there.”

  “My insurance company has a policy on McCue. I’m keeping an eye on him.”

  “Good. Then call him to the phone. I want to talk to him,” he said.

  “Sorry, but he’s gone out for the night. Can I help?”

  “Remember that accident the other night, the hit-and-run?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, the dead guy was wearing McCue’s coat and hat. I wanted to ask him about that.”

  I figured there wasn’t any point in lying anymore, so I told him, “I think McCue lost them to him in a saloon bet. Why?”

  “Son of a bitch. It took us two freaking days to trace that coat to McCue.”

  “What for?” I asked. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes this difference. The guy driving the car was a wise guy from up around Albany. We had some guys track it down and it looks like he went to New York City to do a hit. We had the idea that maybe the dead guy wasn’t the real target at all. Maybe it was the guy who should have been inside that white hat and coat. Is McCue safe?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve told you, he’s gone out.”

  “You’re one hell of a bodyguard, Tracy, when you let the guy you’re guarding out of your sight. Remind me never to hire you.”

  “I wouldn’t work for you,” I said.

  “How long are you going to be up there?” Razoni asked.

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks,” I said.

  “Or until McCue dies, which should be pretty quick with you on the job.”

  “Did you call to insult me?” I said.

  “No. Just remember, when you get back to New York, I’m going to want to talk to you and find out how you didn’t know the other night that that was McCue’s hat and coat. That cost us two days’ work, and in my book, that’s withholding evidence.”

  “Yeah? I can just see it now, us all standing in the middle of Fifty-seventh Street and me telling you, Why, I think that coat belongs to Tony McCue the movie star. Razoni, you’d have me in Bellevue.”

  “I may still have you in Bellevue, Tracy. You tell McCue to call me.” He hung up before I could say anything.

  Clyde Snapp was looking at me and I said, “Just some nut,” and he nodded. But as I walked to the bar, I didn’t feel so lighthearted. Where the hell was my head? Here I was thinking that there’d been three attempts to kill Tony McCue and I let him go out drinking, protected only by his psychiatrist. I had no future in this business; that was becoming pretty clear.

  I sat at the bar and watched the rain. Birnbaum and Sheila had left the dining room. I had a drink. The lightning storm was still crackling all around us, and when a bolt flashed, it lit up the ground outside the hotel as if a giant flashbulb had gone off.

  I was looking out the window when lightning flashed, and I saw two figures walking away from the hotel. More lightning came and I saw it was Jack Scott and Sheila Hallowitz.

  Intermittently, as the lightning blazed on, I saw them arguing. Scott was waving his hands, and his head bobbed up and down. She seemed to shrink visibly while he was talking, and I realized that he wasn’t talking, he was yelling. Then, wonder of wonders, I saw her yelling back.

  Scott obviously was not used to being yelled at. He should live with Chico, I thought. Scott listened for a few seconds, then stomped angrily away, walking rapidly back up the path toward the hotel.

  In the lightning flash, I saw Sheila standing on the path, looking after him.

  And then a crack of lightning hit and all the lights went out.

  23

  If I were a betting man, I’d have to say that it wasn’t the first time the lights had ever gone off in the Canestoga Hotel because the shouts of confusion had barely stopped when Clyde Snapp was in the dining room with a box filled with kerosene lamps.

  “Just a power line down, folks,” he said. “It should be fixed soon. Meanwhile, we’ve got some emergency lights here.”

  I lit one and put it on the bar, and he lit another and put it on the table where Dahlia was sitting with Harden and Quine.

  “There’s candles in all the rooms for emergencies,” he said to me. “I’m just going to put these lamps on the landings and I’ll tell everybody where the candles are.”

  “You need any help?” I asked.

  “Np.”

  Drinking in the dark isn’t a bad experience. Smoking in the dark is worthless because, without seeing it, you can’t really taste the smoke. But vodka, I found, is vodka no matter what the lighting situation is. It’s one of those things that are good to know.

  Outside, the lightning finally seemed to be subsiding and the rain was lessening in intensity.

  Sheila Hallowitz came into the dining room, saw the people sitting at the table, and came to sit at the bar with me.

  She looked nervous as she said, “You mind if I join you?”

  “Of course not.”

  She giggled nervously. “All my life I’ve been afraid to be alone in the dark. And that candle doesn’t really help in the room. I thought I’d hang out here with people until Biff comes back or until the lights come on.”

  “No explanation necessary,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sure.” She thought for a moment. “How about Seven and Seven.”

  As I made the drink, I said, “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By the drink. No one who really drinks drinks Seven and Seven. It’s a kid’s drink, the first thing they learn to order because they think it makes them sound grown-up. And it’s swe
et, to boot.”

  I handed her the drink just as a gale of loud professional laughter came from Dahlia Codwell at the rear table.

  “Seem to be enjoying themselves, don’t they?” I said.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “But why do I get the idea that those two men are being conned by that woman?”

  Sheila stared at me for a moment and then suddenly grinned, an honest smile that made her look pretty in the flickering light from the kerosene lamp. “Because you’re absolutely right. They are,” she said. She sipped from her glass cautiously, as if it might contain battery acid.

  I had made the drink weak and it apparently passed muster because she smiled again. I waited for her to say something. Most people are made nervous by silence, and if you wait long enough, they’ll tell you things they didn’t really want to tell you, just to fill up the dead air.

  “Dahlia’s trying to get her part puffed up,” she said.

  “Sounds like she’s succeeding,” I said as another burst of laughter flitted across the room.

  “She’s just spinning her wheels,” Sheila said. “Biff will be the judge of who says what and where the camera is.”

  “I thought producers just signed checks,” I said.

  “Not Biff. Not the new wave of producers,” she said. “These are people who’ve written scripts and learned to direct, so when they produce a movie, make no mistake, they’re in charge of everything about it. Dahlia’s wasting her time.” She had a vague accent-free voice that I thought stamped her as a native Californian. “Anyway, Arden won’t do anything to expand her part. He’s crazy about Tami.”

  “I didn’t know she was Polish,” I said.

  “Polish? What do you mean?”

  “I thought only Polish starlets went out with the screenwriter,” I said.

  “Oh, I get it. Little joke,” she said, but she didn’t laugh. I didn’t think there was much of a sense of humor there. “Arden actually discovered her, working in his lawyer’s office. He was doing a small movie for an independent producer and he insisted she get a bit part. Well, she got some work after that, one of the jobs in another movie he wrote, and he’s been chasing her all this time. He thinks she has some kind of obligation to him, and she doesn’t see it that way. But that’s why he acts crazy when he thinks she’s with McCue or anybody else.”

  “The kind who’d kill for jealousy,” I said, and she nodded.

  “Is he a good writer?” I asked.

  “Mr. Tracy, my degree is from the University of Chicago in classical literature. I find it hard to call anybody who writes films a good writer.”

  “Then no one likes him or his script. Why do you keep him around? He sure isn’t exactly a bundle of fun.”

  “Would you mind if I had another drink?” she said.

  “No. Sure.” I got up to make it for her. “You were saying?”

  “Arden is bankable. People will put up money if they see his name involved with a film.”

  “Even if his script is lousy?”

  “Being bankable has nothing to do with talent. Some people get a reputation for being bankable even if they’re involved in nothing but flops. You get a better reputation being involved with a sixty-million-dollar movie that lost fifty-nine million dollars than you do if you were involved with a two-million-dollar movie that made ten million dollars. Try to figure it.”

  “Too tough for me. I’m an Easterner. So his name has raised the money you need for the movie?”

  “Well, his and Jack Scott’s have helped,” she said.

  I made the drink twice as strong, and when I set it down in front of her, I said, “Last couple of nights, I’ve noticed Scott. Is there anything wrong with him?”

  I watched her closely: her lips tightened and she seemed to be biting down on the inside of them.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I don’t know. We talked a little, but he didn’t seem pleased. He always seems like something is wrong with this film.”

  Sheila didn’t answer right away. Then. she shook her head and sipped her drink. “He’s never mentioned anything wrong to me. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.”

  She looked away but I saw a tear glistening in the corner of her eye, an orange dot illuminated by the kerosene lamp.

  “Where you come from, do people always cry when nothing’s wrong?” I asked.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her left hand. “Sorry. Just some personal problems,” she said. “Nothing to do with the movie. I’ve got to go now. I’m not feeling so good.” She stood up and swayed slightly, “I don’t know if I can really walk. I don’t ever drink.”

  “I’ll help you up to your room,” I said. I led her up the two flights of steps to the suite she shared with Birnbaum. He was not in the room and the door was unlocked. A two-inch-thick candle burned on the dresser. I helped Sheila to the sofa and asked, “Will you be all right here?”

  “Sure. I feel better now.”

  “Okay. Have a good night.”

  Just as I was backing out the door, the lights came back on.

  “Thank God,” Sheila said.

  “I can also pull rabbits out of hats,” I said.

  “Fixing the lights is good enough. Thanks very much.”

  As I walked back down the hall, the door to the last of the rooms opened and Tami Fluff looked out. She was wearing a long blue satin robe.

  I nodded, not knowing what to expect.

  But she smiled at me. “Hello, Tracy. Produce any good movies lately?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “You know it wasn’t my doing.”

  “I know. What are you doing now?”

  “Walking down the hall, basically,” I said.

  “Come on in.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want Harden swinging his typewriter and kneecapping me.”

  “He’s a great argument for pest control, isn’t he? Come on in.” She closed the door behind me and locked it. “There’s no significance to the door being locked,” she said. “I just don’t want Arden crashing in here without an invitation.”

  “He does that, huh?”

  “He thinks he owns me. You know he had nothing to do with me getting the part in this picture.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know anything, and in truth I didn’t really care.

  “He didn’t,” she said. “I auditioned and got it before he even knew about it. Birnbaum signed me. You want a drink?”

  “Do I look like a drinking man?”

  “All I’ve got is Scotch.”

  “Do I look like a nitpicker? Scotch away.”

  She had a refrigerator, I noticed. My room must have been part of the Canestoga Hotel ghetto. She had a refrigerator and McCue’s suite had a refrigerator. Maybe everybody did except me. No, I decided. I hadn’t seen a refrigerator in the suite Sheila shared with Birnbaum. That eased the pain a little.

  She popped ice into two hotel glasses and poured Scotch over them. “Here,” she said, walking toward me. Her sleek legs peeked out from the front opening of the robe and I hoped this would not be a seduction scene. I was going straight. Why didn’t people believe that? Did I look like the kind of person who never went straight?

  I took my glass and she said, “Well, here’s to Hollywood.”

  “Here’s to you,” I said. “I hope dis pitcha makes you da biggest star in da whole foimament of Hollywood.”

  “God, you sound like every casting-couch producer who ever lived. Any reason you wish me good luck?”

  “Because I suspect that you’re the only person here whose success I wouldn’t resent,” I said.

  She was still standing in front of me, uncomfortably close. “That include Tony?”

  “I can’t wish him stardom. He’s already got it, and good for him. He’s a big kid but not malicious. But the others? That’s a different story.”

  “You mean you don’t like Arden Harden, the Ba
rd of Beverly?”

  “A little nasty for my taste,” I said. “And the Brit with the wooden teeth acts like Nigel Bruce doing Watson. I wish the rock had fallen on his head. And I think Birnbaum’s a dork, and Scott and his wife look at me like I’m a leaky garbage bag that has to be taken out.”

  “You must like Dahlia, though. She’s made a career out of getting men to like her.”

  “She’s a user,” I said. “She’s downstairs now trying to get Harden and Quine to puff up her part.” I looked hard at her face for a reaction, but there wasn’t any.

  She sipped her drink, then said, “She can have Harden and Quine. I’d rather have Tony on my side.”

  “Is he?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I talked to him last night. He likes me better than he likes Codwell. I think he’ll resist any changes that give her a bigger role than me.”

  “Good. Then I guess it was worth it.”

  “What was worth it?”

  “Sleeping with him,” I said.

  She looked at me as if to see if I was bluffing. Then she nodded and said, “It sure was.”

  “Thanks for the drink,” I said as I got to my feet.

  She leaned forward against me. “Do you have to leave now?” she said.

  “No, but I’d better,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if I wait any longer, I don’t think I’ll be able to leave,” I said. “You’re very beautiful.”

  “You have a woman?” she asked.

  “She has me,” I said.

  “She must be special.”

  “She is. Very special. And I can’t stop drinking for her and I can’t stop smoking and I won’t exercise and I can’t stay out of trouble for her, but at least I don’t have to go around screwing around behind her back.”

  “How very old-fashioned,” she said.

  “I’m stuck with it,” I said. “At least this week.”

  “If you change your mind, let me know.”

  I nodded and walked out, feeling very righteous. And very stupid.

  In the hallway, I met Clyde, who was picking up the kerosene lamps he had placed on the landings. He looked at me and winked. Somehow that made me feel even worse.