Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7)

by Warren Murphy

  It was late in the afternoon when Pamela Scott entered the dining room, wearing a black dress and dark sunglasses.

  The sheriff was understanding. “I don’t have to talk to you now, ma’am, if you’d rather wait.”

  “No, no. I’m all right now. It might help me to talk.”

  “Could you tell us then about last night, Mrs. Scott?”

  “After we left dinner here, Jack and I went back to our room and talked for a while. We were planning to go back to New York today. Jack had some business that he wanted to take care of.”

  “What kind of business?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say, but I thought I’d go back with him and spend the day with friends before coming back up here for the start of filming. At any rate, we talked some last night and then about nine o’clock, Jack got a phone call and said he was going out for a walk.”

  “Was your husband drinking?” the sheriff asked.

  “Drinking? No, not Jack. Jack’s habit was to have one drink a night before bed.” She paused and looked away, as if trying to peer into the past. “A lot of ice, a little rye, and a lot of club soda. Jack was not a drinking man.”

  Tillis nodded. “And then?” he said.

  “I took a shower and went to bed. It was kind of fun, reading by candlelight. I haven’t done that since I was a Girl Scout. Then I went outside to get a book from the car and I saw that the tire was flat, so I asked Mr. Snapp to fix it. Then it seemed like a nice night and I went for a walk on the grounds. I met Mr. Tracy there.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, Tracy,” the sheriff said.

  “It didn’t come up,” I said.

  “And we walked back to the hotel together. What time would you say it was?”

  “I remember looking at my watch. It was almost midnight,” I said. Tillis was scribbling furiously in his notebook.

  “Mr. Tracy walked me to my door. I went inside, but Jack wasn’t there. I took a light sleeping pill. A Dalmane. I have insomnia, but Dalmane seems to work without aftereffects. I read a little more and fell alseep pretty quickly. Then I was awakened this morning by Biff and Mr. Tracy.” She looked painfully shy, sorry at not being able to help more, and then shrugged. “That’s all I know, Sheriff. Do you have any ideas about Jack’s death?”

  “That girl, what’s her name, Sheila, said she talked to your husband about business at about nine o’clock,” Tillis said. “A little after that, the Fluff woman saw him walking upstairs from your floor. But he didn’t go to anyone’s room up there.”

  “Where would he have gone, then?” she asked.

  “Maybe he was looking out the window or something for the view,” Tillis said. “But that was the last we know of his movements until we found the corpse…sorry, the body.”

  “A terrible accident. My poor Jack,” she said as she rose. “I have to go back to my room now, Sheriff. If you don’t mind.”

  “No. Go ahead, Mrs. Scott.”

  After she left, I said, “Well, Sheriff, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. If he was a drinker, it’d be easy. He got blotto and got hung up fooling around with the rope. But how an accident like that happens to a sober man, I don’t know. I guess it’ll just be a mystery.”

  If it was an accident, I thought.

  Sheila Hallowitz was sitting on the front steps of the hotel, drinking coffee, looking like a lost waif.

  I sat down next to her and said, “I think we should talk.”

  “Sure. About what?”

  “I didn’t say anything when you were talking to the sheriff, but I think you ought to be a little more forthcoming right now.”

  “Forthcoming?”

  “Dammit, Sheila, don’t be cute with me. You told the sheriff that you were talking to Scott last night on the grounds, technical stuff about the film.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “Did you and Scott always talk by yelling at each other?” I asked.

  She looked startled and I said, “I was watching. He was screaming at you. You were screaming back. Now I want to know what the hell that was all about.”

  Sheila looked off toward the horizon. Then she sipped her coffee. I was about to prod her when she said, “Jack was unhappy about our expenses. He said he wanted to discuss them with me.”

  “What expenses? How unhappy?” I asked.

  “He thought I was going a lot over budget in these early stages. He wanted me to do an accounting.”

  “And he yelled at you about that? Seems sort of an ordinary thing to me,” I said. “Why’d he yell?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He seemed really worked up, but I don’t know if he really was or if it was theater. A lot of men do that to women, you know. They yell, figuring they can browbeat us.”

  “You were yelling back,” I said. “Why?”

  “He wanted an accounting now. I asked him how I could do an accounting here when the offices are in Los Angeles. I told him I’d get it done as soon as I could, but it wasn’t going to be next week or even the week after. I’d do it when I got to it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the sheriff about the argument?”

  She looked at me with an earnest look in her eyes. “He wouldn’t have understood,” she said. “This kind of thing goes on all the time.” She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “And, you know, I’ve talked to the other people around here, and if I told the sheriff we had argued, I might have been a suspect. I was the last person to see Jack Scott alive.”

  “No, you weren’t,” I said.

  She looked at me quizzically.

  “You’re the last one who admits seeing Jack Scott alive,” I said.

  Sheriff Tillis was talking to Clyde Snapp near what would have been the front desk if the hotel were still a public operation.

  “Len was just saying he heard from the hospital. The medical examiner said it was a broken neck that killed Scott,” Snapp said.

  “Time to close this one up,” the sheriff said.

  “Still a lot of questions unanswered,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like where was Scott last night after he left his room?”

  “Hanging from that dumbwaiter rope, I guess,” the sheriff said smugly.

  I shook my head. “He left his room maybe around nine o’clock. His wife was still in the room. Then about eleven or a little after, she went out for a walk and came back near midnight. Scott still wasn’t in the room. So where was he?”

  “The way I figure it is he was off someplace drinking by himself. Then maybe when his wife went out, he came back. She wasn’t there and he was drunk and he opened the dumbwaiter door and got himself hooked up and died, and when she came back, she didn’t even know about it.”

  “He had the good sense, I guess, to close the dumbwaiter door after himself,” I said sarcastically, “so his dead body didn’t disturb his wife when she came back from her walk.”

  “Listen, Mr. Private Detective. You can try to make things as complicated as you want, but that’s the way it was and that’s the way it’s going to stay. You probably think I don’t know anything about this kind of work, but I’ve been doing it a lot longer than you have. There’s only three other entrances into that dumbwaiter. One is in the kitchen, but Clyde was down there all last night. The other two are in that Birnbaum’s room, right over Scott’s, and in McCue’s room on the top floor. I looked at those doors and they were both screwed shut, the way Clyde fixed them. I don’t know when Scott went through his own door in the dumbwaiter, but that’s what he did. And then he died. Case closed. Now maybe you fancy private eyes can figure out something else, but us working cops can’t.”

  “No criticism intended, Sheriff,” I said. “You did a good job, especially questioning those people inside.”

  “It’s my job, Tracy, and I do it every day.”

  “Don’t the state police usually come in on a case like this one?” I asked.

  “They come in to help
if it’s a murder or like that, and I told them this wasn’t. Or else they come in to pester you and get their pictures in the paper. State police are good for getting their pictures in the paper.”

  He turned to Clyde. “Well, Mr. Snapp, I think I’m about done here. I’d better get a move on. The missus is going to be sore anyway ’cause I was supposed to paint the garage today.” He held up his notepad. “And I’m not done yet. A lot of typing to do before I’m done tonight.”

  The telephone behind the front desk rang with a curious buzzing sound. Snapp picked it up, listened for a moment, and said, “Don’t let anybody in. That’s an order.” He leaned over the counter to put the handset back on the base.

  “There’s some television guys outside,” he told me. “I told Jerry at the gate to keep them out.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I’m leaving anyway. I’ll talk to them on my way out,” Sheriff Tillis said. He started for the door and I thought it was best to let Birnbaum know that the press wolves had arrived.

  Naturally, he was in his room, lifting weights.

  “Some press people have arrived. The sheriff just went out to talk to them.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Just what we need. Gomer Pyle explains the world.” He grabbed his Mets jacket off the back of a chair. “I’d better do what I can to salvage this.”

  “Was he on drugs? Was this a drug-related death?”

  “How the hell would I know if he was on drugs?” Sheriff Tillis answered back. He was standing alongside his car just outside the front gate, facing four men and a woman. The woman and one man seemed to be reporters because they were wearing neat clothing, suitable for filming. The other three men carried small video cameras. They looked like hair balls, which was even more proof that they were photographers than the cameras they were carrying.

  “You’re the sheriff, aren’t you? Aren’t you supposed to know things like that?” the male reporter asked.

  “That’s right. And what I know is that we had an accident and Mr. Scott died.”

  “But he was on drugs, right?” the woman reporter asked. “Or are you covering up the fact that he was on drugs?”

  “Honey,” the sheriff said, and she bristled. No one had been permitted to call her “honey” since her father had. No one had wanted to either, I’d bet. “I don’t know anything about any drugs, honey,” the sheriff said. “And the coroner didn’t say anything about them, so I think maybe you’re the one on drugs.” He smiled at her and I thought, Three cheers for Sheriff Tillis.

  Birnbaum stepped up to the closed gate.

  “Folks, I’m Biff Birnbaum, producer of Corridors of Death. If you will be patient, we’ll have a statement for you in a little while.”

  The five newspeople abandoned Sheriff Tillis and flocked toward the closed fence. Tillis looked at me and I winked and he smiled back.

  “Was Scott a heavy drug-user, or just a recreational drug-user?” the male reporter asked.

  “Jack Scott was my partner for ten years. He never took a drug in his life.”

  “He was a drunk, though, right?” the woman reporter said. “Everybody knew he was a drunk.”

  “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to miss, but your information is wrong. Everybody who knew Jack Scott knew he did not drink. Please. Hold your questions. I’ll have a statement very soon.”

  “Who’s in there? Is Tony McCue in there?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t know where Tony McCue is,” Birnbaum said. I thought maybe he went to a Jesuit college too because it was a neat mental reservation of the first order.

  “Who is in there?”

  “Yeah. Who?”

  “I’ll have a statement shortly,” Birnbaum said. He turned to the guard. “Please keep this gate locked and let no one in.”

  “Mr. Snapp told me that already,” the guard said.

  “We’re the press. We have a right to be in there. You don’t have any right to keep us out,” the woman reporter yelled.

  “Is Mrs. Scott in there?” the man yelled at Birnbaum. “I want to talk to Mrs. Scott. Send her out here.”

  “I’ll provide a statement in a little while,” Birnbaum said.

  “What kind of a name is Biff Birnbaum anyway?” the woman reporter sneered. “You sound like a porn producer.”

  “A statement soon,” Birnbaum said as he walked away.

  The sheriff drove off and the guard moved over to stand in front of the closed gate.

  “Who are you?” the woman yelled at me through the iron bars.

  “My name is Devlin Tracy.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “What’s your name again?” the male reporter repeated.

  “Devlin Tracy.”

  “I never heard of you,” the woman reporter shouted.

  “Too bad,” I said. “I’ve heard of you in every football locker room from here to Los Angeles.”

  I walked away. Behind me, I could hear the two reporters screaming.

  “We want McCue.”

  “We want Mrs. Scott.”

  “First amendment.”

  “Censorship.”

  “Let us in.”

  I wondered if sometimes the cameramen were embarrassed by the low caliber of the people they had to work with.

  28

  The crowd of reporters and cameramen outside the gate had swelled, and Clyde Snapp had put an extra guard on duty patrolling the grounds to make sure nobody sneaked in.

  I was watching them through the lobby window, and the mob scene, now grown to about twenty, reminded me of some band of rabble demonstrating outside the gates of an American embassy somewhere. The barbarians versus civilization. It was real strange. Only when stacked up against the press could these Hollywood types I was with be representing “civilization.”

  Tony McCue came to stand alongside me.

  “Listen to them,” I said. “You’re a big hit out here in the sticks.”

  He cracked the front door a few inches, and the sound of the gentlemen and ladies of the media drifted in.

  “We want McCue.”

  “Send out McCue.”

  “Where’s Tony McCue?”

  He let the door swing closed and looked at me with a shrug.

  “I guess they weren’t satisfied with Birnbaum’s statement,” I said.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said that there was a tragic accident, that one of America’s most beloved entertainment figures had died, that specific information on the accident would have to come from the police, that he planned to go ahead with this film as a monument to a great entertainer. He made some reference to Scott’s clean personal life—no drugs, no alcohol—and to their long friendship.”

  “The part about drinking’s true enough,” McCue said. “The little shit didn’t even enjoy taking a drink.”

  “And Birnbaum told them that his wife was under sedation and would make no statements until she returned to their home in New York City and everyone here would appreciate it if they would please leave and show some consideration for the grieving widow.”

  “And what’d they say?”

  “One of them said, ‘Fuck you, Birnbaum.’”

  “It’s amazing how the media can ruin even the best of times,” McCue said.

  “Best of times? You know, Tony, you don’t seem real broken up about Scott’s death.”

  “Come on, Trace. What’s one producer more or less? They’re fools and thieves. And there are new fools and thieves standing ten deep to replace him. The only creatures worse in the world are these bastards of the press. Do you know that for four years they have been dogging my footsteps wherever I go, rooting through my garbage, disguising themselves as waiters in restaurants so they can listen in to table talk. They bribed a maid of mine once to tell them about my sex life.”

  “They must have run that article as a series,” I said. “What’d she tell them?”

  “That I scr
ewed her and gave her plane fare back to Puerto Rico.”

  “Was it true?”

  “Yes. She was lousy in bed. Who needs that kind of maid? I gave the employment agency hell.”

  He pushed open the door again and listened to the reporters, who were still shouting. Then he walked inside the dining room and came out with a paper bar napkin that he stuck into his pocket.

  “I think it is entirely appropriate that I should talk to the press,” he told me. “After all, le cinéma c’est moi.”

  I followed him outside. He put on his reading glasses as he approached the gate, and the reporters cheered his approach.

  “Statement.”

  “Who supplied Scott with the drugs, McCue?”

  “Isn’t it true he died after an all-night drinking bout with you?”

  “Tell the truth, McCue.”

  “How much responsibility do you feel for causing his death, McCue?”

  McCue stayed inside the gate and raised a hand for silence.

  “All in good time,” he said. “I have a statement.”

  He took the bar napkin from his pocket.

  “I’d like to read this,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  The reporters all shouted at once and McCue shouted back, “Will you hold it down so I can read this? I’m reading it only once.”

  The reporters grumbled but started to quiet down.

  Using his deepest, most sober voice, McCue looked down and pretended to read from his cocktail napkin.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press.” He stopped for a moment and looked up. “Are all those cameras running? I’m not repeating this.”

  “Yeah, yeah, go ahead, McCue, go ahead.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat and pushed his eyeglasses farther down his nose.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I have been asked to comment on the tragic death of Jack Scott. My only comment is this: you people of the media are a disgusting batch of assholes. You are fucking vampires. If I had children who wanted to be reporters, I would send them out on the street to give blowjobs instead. America would be a richer country if it repealed the first amendment and threw all of you motherfuckers into concentration camps. You are shit. Your reports are shit. Your brains are shit. You may all go fuck yourselves.”