Brad’s mother died while Brad was still overseas. Finally, he was returned Stateside and discharged from the army. He had gone in a buck private and come out a P.F.C. He had a few battle ribbons, one slight scar over his right eyebrow where he had been grazed by a Vietcong sniper, and his termination pay. He was a hero at last, in a world that had stopped believing in heroes.
As soon as his discharge was final, Brad returned to the site of Rhona’s bungalow court and found that it had been replaced by a hi-rise apartment complex where rents started at 300 dollars and went higher than the penthouse. He located Harry’s new office on the Strip and never got beyond the pleasant but evasive receptionist. Mr. Avery was in Europe. Mrs. Avery was in Europe. Nobody knew when they would return. Brad then contacted a lawyer who examined the I.O.U., noted that it was neither dated nor witnessed and quoted a retainer’s fee which made Brad decide to shelve the matter until he could meet Harry face to face. By that time his termination pay was almost gone and his old studio contacts were lost. Through the U.S.E.S. he got a job parking cars at a Beverly Hills office complex and there he met Estelle Vance, who was an extremely smart fifty, traded her Cadillacs at twenty thousand miles and operated a highly successful real estate business. She needed a salesman and Brad needed a job. She coached him through the licencing period and practically gave him his first sale, with enough commission to buy some suits that didn’t look like 1964, pay cash for a used Mustang and take a furnished bachelor flat in a stylish new Mediterranean type apartment building in West Hollywood. It was a much better life than parking cars or picking up bit parts in TV westerns, but Brad was restless. Immobilization didn’t come with a piece of paper. He picked up a passport and toyed with the idea of taking a construction job abroad. The army had taught him a lot about machinery and communications, and he had a low tolerance for being charming with people like the retired Wittenbergs from Kenosha, who had already consumed two weeks of his young life trying to decide if a fifty-unit apartment building in Santa Monica was the investment they really wanted for the golden years. Entertaining the Wittenbergs in the notable spas on the Strip, a sales approach recommended by Estelle Vance, had left him exhausted and awakening with Rhona on his mind was like rubbing salt in an old wound. He had once calculated that Harry was now a millionaire several times over, and that it had all started with his own idea so that at least a quarter of that amount should be in the bank account of Omar Bradley Smith. It was a depressing calculation that he tried to keep out of his mind, but the subconscious wasn’t easy to boss around.
He went into the bathroom, took a bromide and changed into bathing trunks. Outside the sliding glass doors, that led to the private patio of his apartment, was a huge swimming pool usually unoccupied at 9 a.m. He vaulted the wrought-iron guard rail, sprinted across the decking and plunged into the pool. It was one of those rare clear days in the city. The sky above was almost as blue as the pool, and the caress of the water and the warmth of the sun reminded him that his body was whole: he had two strong arms, two good legs and firm flesh that hadn’t been blasted away by bomb fragments or so seered by napalm that, unlike many of the once young men who had come back from Vietnam, he wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of his life hiding in a veterans’ hospital because he was too ashamed to go home with a featureless face. He had his health and his youth. He was poor but he was alive. He swam with sure, strong strokes to the opposite side of the pool and emerged on to the decking. A Mr. Atlas he was not. In his celluloid cowboy days, one director had referred to him as the poor man’s Jimmy Stewart, which wasn’t too flattering when all he wanted was to be the rich man’s Brad Smith. But he was reasonably attractive, and the pounds he had added in Vietnam, all muscle, gave him the confident feeling that he had nothing to fear from appearing in public wearing only swimming trunks and a smile.
He had been alone in the pool, but he wasn’t alone on the decking. Two of the distaff occupants of the complex were sunning themselves poolside. One was blonde—slightly reminiscent of Rhona—who wore a tiny pink bikini and stretched voluptuously, full length on a foam rubber pad. The other, a brunette, wore a white chenille jacket over her suit and was studying a formidable looking text. Brad had noticed the pair on other mornings, and made a mental note to cultivate the bookish one. The blonde might be more fun, but it would be nice to have the company of a woman with whom he could talk. A bright beach towel was spread on the vacant chair beside her. He picked it up and swabbed his face and shoulders.
The girl on the foam rubber pad raised her head. “Hey,” she protested, “that’s my towel!”
“Thanks,” Brad said, and tossed it back on the chair.
It was all right for an opener. The brunette had looked up from the book and smiled at him. He would get back to that later. Now he crossed the pool decking to the glass doors leading into the lobby of the complex, ignored the “No Bare Feet” sign and went inside. A pleasant red-head of about thirty-five was on duty at the reception desk. He asked for his mail. She gave it to him and he asked for a dime for the paper-vending machine.
“You owe me for three papers already this week,” she chided, “and I’m all out of dimes. All I have are quarters—”
“And that’s exactly what I need,” Brad said. “Thanks. Put it on my bill.”
He plucked the quarter from her hesitating hand and stepped into the recreation room, where a coffee machine dispensed a cup of hot black and a dime in change. The dime went into the paper vender and he was then ready to return to the pool area and a chair far enough away from the two girls to avoid overhearing the blonde’s description of her latest session in nude group therapy and close enough to keep the brunette in view. He glanced at his mail: two throwaways and a credit card billing and an unexpected windfall—a reproduction fee from a long forgotten script he had written for a now defunct radio series. The cheque was for almost six hundred dollars. It gave a bright sparkle to the morning, and he thought of asking the brunette to have dinner with him, at the Century Plaza, because a first impression was always important. He tucked the letter with the cheque and the bill under the belt of his trunks and picked up the newspaper to look at the obituary columns. It wasn’t a morbid act. It was one of the tricks of the trade that Estelle had taught him.
“People die and leave estates to be settled. Check out the obits every day. You’ll be surprised how many leads you pick up.”
And so this was breakfast: a cup of coffee and the obituary column—but Brad didn’t get that far this morning, because a late bulletin on the front page magnetized his attention and sent time spinning backwards again.
LOCAL PRODUCER IN MISSING GREEK PLANE—ATHENS (AP) Harry Avery, Hollywood film and television producer, was reported to be a passenger on a chartered sports plane which failed to return to its base on the Greek island of Corfu last night. A brief radio message believed sent from the plane late yesterday afternoon indicated some unspecified trouble in flight.
Greek authorities have ordered a search of the mountainous area where the plane was apparently downed.
Mrs. Avery, the former actress Rhona Brent, is in seclusion in a hotel suite in Athens where Avery was preparing for the production of a major film.
Somewhere in Europe. Of course that bland receptionist at Harry’s office had known all the time where to reach him. But now nobody knew where to find Harry Avery, and that left Rhona sitting alone in an Athens hotel, possibly a widow, with all Harry’s money and nobody to protect her from the scavengers who would move in when she was most vulnerable. More important at the moment, she was the only person, aside from Harry, who knew the origin of The Bandits; she was the only person who knew what had happened to the carbons of the scripts he had left in the garage of her now-extinct bungalow court. Brad’s coffee turned cold while he thought about it. He wasn’t superstitious and he didn’t consider himself psychic; but he had survived the jungle by instinct and hunches, and instinct was giving him strong vibrations now. It seemed strange that he had awakened th
inking of Rhona. Strange how the unexpected cheque came in the mail. Strange how there was just one woman he could never get out of his mind.
Instinct was followed by impulse. Brad looked at his wrist watch. It was after nine now and Estelle, always the first one in every morning, would be at her office. He left the newspaper in the chair, chucked the coffee into a trash can and skirted the pool taking the long way back to his apartment. Once inside, he called the office. Estelle answered.
“I have a three o’clock appointment with the Wittenbergs this afternoon that I won’t be able to keep,” he told her. “I’ve got to see a doctor. My malaria’s come back.”
“I didn’t know you ever had malaria,” Estelle said.
“I did—and the only way to check it is to lie low for a few days. I’ll be in Monday if I can.”
“But the Wittenbergs—”
“Tell them I have to reconsider the deal.”
It was done. By the time he hung up the telephone, Brad knew he would go all the way. He turned on the radio to see if there was any additional information on Harry’s missing plane, on the nine-thirty news. He dressed while the newscaster repeated the story in the paper and then left the apartment. He drove to the bank, arriving as it opened, and cashed the windfall cheque. The next stop was an “adult” book store on Santa Monica Boulevard where another survivor of Vietnam continued to survive, by catering to a reading public with an I.Q. of 55 and under, and operating a cut-rate charter flight travel agency on the side. He had nothing on a direct flight to Athens for three days, but there was a cancellation on the 12.50 flight to London where Brad could catch a BEA for the final leg of the journey. That left just two and a half hours to pack a bag and get to L.A. International. Moving fast meant less time for thinking. There would be time for that in flight. He needed a story for Rhona. He could tell her that he was the London representative of an American business firm and had picked up the news about Harry on the BBC. Flying down to see if he could be of service from that city would seem more logical than an impulsive flight from Los Angeles. He wanted her to think he was settled and well situated—not just another ex-G.I. on the loose.
Once the plane was in the air, he had no misgivings. It was good to be mobilized again. The irony of man’s lot was that the brain worked better under pressure. He felt more alive than he had since he was under fire, and it didn’t matter if he never saw the Wittenbergs again. After several hours of flight he relaxed and went to sleep. He dreamed about the girls at the swimming pool, but now it was the blonde who held his attention as she got up from the lounging pad and walked towards him, and it seemed natural that she had become Rhona with her strange, waif-like smile.
Brad awakened and looked out of the window. He had slept a long time. The wing of the giant jet was bathed in moonlight.
Chapter Two
THE BE A NIGHT flight from London arrived at Athens Central Airport before dawn. It was a small but active terminal that was probably quiet at this hour on normal days, but a V.I.P. must have been tucked away, up in first class, because half a dozen reporters and a battery of photographers were waiting at the gate as the passengers passed through passport control. Brad had made good use of his time in London. His first act was to get the latest newspapers and read about the continued search for Harry Avery’s chartered plane. Then, after buying his ticket to Athens, he visited Regent Street and picked up a light-weight raincoat that made him feel and look the part of the travelling businessman. He wired for a room reservation at the Athens Hilton, because that seemed the logical hotel to find Harry Avery’s wife, and went sight-seeing until time to check in at the airport. But, in all his previous travels abroad, Brad’s transportation had been arranged by the United States Army, and so he neglected to request a limousine from the airport to the hotel. The folly of that error was apparent on arrival.
The press interrogation of the V.I.P. was brusquely terminated by the arrival of two swarthy civilians and a martinet in an officer’s uniform. As the few terse words of dismissal were spoken to the reporters, Brad had a good look at the target of interest. He was a tall man, about forty, conservatively dressed in expertly tailored British clothes. His rather longish face was relieved by a light blond moustache and shaggy blond eyebrows. He carried a black attaché case and an ebony cane and never once lost his bearing of bored composure. As the trio of Greeks whisked him out of the building and into a very long, black Mercedes, the correspondents broke for the taxi stand. By the time Brad had reclaimed his luggage, the sole remaining form of transportation was a Volkswagen van chauffeured by a Greek with a huge, comic-strip moustache, that was already in the hire of an agile young man wearing a green plaid sports jacket, flannels and a beret. Suitcases were being piled on to the luggage container as Brad approached, bag in hand. The man in the green plaid jacket looked up smartly and said:
“You have no car to meet you, yes? Please, be my guest.”
“I’m going into Athens,” Brad said.
“I, too, am going to Athens. So much room—why should it go to waste? It is impossible to get a cab at this hour. Our illustrious Mr. Lange has quite disrupted the service.”
The driver took Brad’s bag and tossed it into the front seat. Brad got into the van beside the man in the plaid jacket.
“Lange,” he echoed. “Do you know him?”
“Slightly. He is Mr. Peter Lange, the attorney of the missing American producer, Harry Avery. You have seen the newspapers.”
“I have,” Brad affirmed, “but I don’t recall reading anything about a Peter Lange.”
“You were in tourist class in the flight, yes? Well, I was in first class and I recognized Mr. Lange immediately, but that, you see, is because I know Harry Avery. Not that we are intimate friends. He was once a guest at my hotel.”
The van was under way now, headlights poking at the darkness as the unviewable terrain sped past the windows. Brad would have liked to watch the road, but his colourfully dressed companion was in a talkative mood.
“You are puzzled about my nationality, yes?” he said. “You have noticed that I am dark—dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin—” Brad had noticed none of these things. In the darkness of the van he had to take the man’s word for it. “You have noticed that I speak English with an English accent. I also speak French, Italian, a little Russian and—” He paused and leaned forward towards the driver. He spoke rapidly in a language Brad had never before heard. When he had finished, the little man leaned back in the seat and smiled. “—and Greek,” he added, “because, you see, I am Greek by birth. But now I am a citizen of South Africa. I have come from great poverty to become a man of means. You saw the Mercedes that met Mr. Lange? Well, I own one of those. Not so long and not so new, but I do own one and I own a small British roadster. I own a house and I own a hotel, in which Harry Avery and members of his staff stayed a year ago while on location in my adopted country. Have you been to South Africa, Mr. Smith?”
“I haven’t,” Brad admitted, “and I don’t remember telling you my name.”
“You didn’t. I heard it mentioned when you went through passport control. I was right behind you, in fact. You are an American.”
“Do you know my Social Security number?” Brad asked.
The little man in the plaid jacket laughed. “Touché, Mr. Smith. I am observing. That comes from being in the hotel business. Now that I can afford to travel, I come to Europe each year. I visit the hotels and see what they are doing that I should learn to do. I have a very small hotel near the water-front, but it is modern and clean. Very picturesque. That is where I met Mr. Lange, who prefers not to remember me on the plane. A very important man who is closer to Harry Avery, they say, than anyone—even his wife. And now this man, who has been in Rome, Paris and London, flies to Athens by night and is met by the police—not, as you Americans would say, the civil police, but, as you Americans would say, the military police. That is interesting, yes?”
Brad had no chance to reply. The van was enterin
g the outskirts of the city now. Dark forms of buildings and scattered lights appeared on either side of the highway. The driver, without taking his eyes from the road, turned his head and asked a question in Greek. The little man listened and turned to Brad.
“He wants to know if you are for the same hotel I am for,” he said.
“Tell him that I’m for the Hilton,” Brad said.
The driver heard and nodded knowingly.
The man in the plaid jacket sighed and settled deeper in the seat. “The Hilton, of course,” he said. “American. The British still prefer the Grande Bretagne.”
Dawn overtook the city of Athens as the van crossed Omonia Square and nosed out a small tourist hotel on a narrow side street. It was surprisingly humble, after the little Greek’s self-proclaimed affluence, but it was immaculately clean and plate-glass modern. The driver alighted from the van and took down a set of matched luggage from the rack. The little Greek opened the door and stepped briskly to the kerb. He looked about him, smiled, and inhaled deeply. There was a scent of strong coffee coming from a small sidewalk bar across the street, and of some other spicy odour that tingled the nostrils. The Greek seemed to read Brad’s unspoken question.
Shot on Location Page 2