The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  Cy shook his head. ‘With a ten-foot fence all around and no way out for Alex unless he learned how to fly with his hands and feet. He’s sure as hell around here somewhere, but I can’t think where. The only thing left to do is comb through every building and see what turns up. Mac will help me with that. You get Betty back to the hotel. She looks dead on her feet.’

  She did, Mel saw. And he could well imagine what she was thinking. As long as Paolo was in the clear—

  ‘Well, if you can get along without us,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll manage. Oh, yeah, on your way out, find some excuse to have the guard look into your car trunk. Make sure he gets a good look. And don’t worry about what he’ll find there, because I already checked it. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mel, ‘not as long as Alex wasn’t in it.’

  He was wakened early the next morning by a phone call from Cy at the lot reporting that he and MacAaron – and Paolo Varese, too, when he had finished the twelfth statue – had searched every inch of the lot and turned up no trace of File.

  ‘He’s gone all right,’ Cy said tiredly. ‘I even called his hotel just now on the wild chance he somehow got out of here, but they told me he didn’t show up all night and isn’t there now. So I figured the best thing to do was call in the police. They’ll be here in a little while.’

  ‘I’ll get out there right away. But wasn’t this calling in the police pretty fast, Cy? It’s only been a few hours altogether.’

  ‘I know, but later on someone might ask why we didn’t get the cops in as soon as we smelled something wrong. Anyhow, it’s done now, and the only question is what we tell them about that little fracas in the office just before Alex walked out. I’ll be honest with you, Mel. I think it would be a mistake to say anything about the film editing or about being barred from the lot after Friday. Betty was there, too, so if they want to start pinning things on us—’

  Mel glanced at Betty who was sitting up in bed and regarding him with alarm. ‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. No,’ he said in answer to Cy’s query, ‘I was talking to Betty. I’ll explain everything to her. She’ll understand. I suppose you already talked it over with Mac?’

  ‘Yes. He sees it the way we do.’

  ‘And how much do we tell about Paolo?’

  ‘Anything we’re asked to tell. Why not?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb, Cy. If the cops find out what happened when I drove the kid home in the rain the other night—’

  ‘Let them. As long as he had nothing to do with Alex disappearing, there’s nothing they can pin on him. And maybe you didn’t notice, but Wanda Pericola was standing right outside that office window when you were giving Alex hell about him and Varese’s sister. What’ll you bet Wanda spills the beans first chance she gets?’

  It was not a fair bet, Mel knew. It was too much of a sure thing.

  The police, two men in plainclothes, were already at the lot when he and Betty arrived there, and, as the day passed, Mel saw that in terms of the official attitude it was divided into three distinct periods.

  First, there was the cynical period when the two plainclothesmen smilingly indicated that this whole affair was obviously a publicity stunt arranged by File Productions.

  Then, persuaded otherwise, they became the sober investigators, ordering everyone to report to the sound stage for a brisk questioning and a show of identification papers.

  And finally, now thoroughly baffled and angry, they called headquarters for help and led a squad of uniformed men through a painstaking search of the entire lot.

  Close behind the squad of police came reporters and a gang of paparazzi – free-lance photographers, most of them mounted on battered scooters – and the sight of them gathered before the front gate, aiming their cameras through the wiring, shouting questions at anyone who passed within hailing distance, seemed to annoy Inspector Conti, the senior of the two plainclothesmen, almost as much as his failure to locate the missing Alexander File.

  ‘Nuisances,’ he said when Cy asked about holding some sort of press conference in the office. ‘They will stay on the other side of that fence where they belong. There can be no doubt that Signor File, alive or dead, is here inside the perimeter of that fence, and until we find him no one is permitted to enter or leave. It will not take long. Assuming the worst, that a crime has been committed, it is impossible to dispose of the victim beneath the pavement which covers the entire area. And thanks to your foresight, signore—’ he nodded at Cy who wearily shrugged off the compliment ‘—this place has been hermetically sealed since immediately after the disappearance. There can be no question about it. Signore File is here. It is only a matter of hours at the most before we find him.’

  The Inspector was a stubborn man. Not until sunset, after his squad had, to no avail, moved across the lot like a swarm of locusts, not until File’s records and correspondence had futilely been examined page by page, did he acknowledge temporary defeat.

  ‘You may leave now,’ he announced to the company assembled in the sound stage, ‘but you will make yourselves available for further questioning when called on. Until permission is granted by the authorities, no one will enter here.’

  By now Cy was groggy with exhaustion, but this brought him angrily to his feet. ‘Look, we’ve got a movie to finish, and if you—’

  ‘All in good time, signore.’ The Inspector’s voice was flat with finality. ‘Those of you who are not citizens will now surrender their passports to me, please. They will be held for you at headquarters.’

  Outside in the parking space, Mel saw that the door of File’s Cadillac had been closed but was discolored by a greyish powder. It took him a moment to realize that this must have been the work of a fingerprint expert, and that realization, more than anything else that had happened during the day, made File’s disappearance real and menacing. The questions asked by the police had only scratched the surface so far – there had been no need to mention either Claudia Varese or the editing of the picture, but there was further questioning to come, and next time it was likely to do much more than scratch the surface.

  Cy was pursuing a different line of thought.

  ‘First thing,’ he said, ‘is to make sure everybody we need for those last scenes stays on call.’

  ‘For what?’ Mel said. ‘Without Alex, who takes care of the payroll, the release, the promotion? We can’t sign anything for him.’

  ‘We won’t have to. Look,’ Cy said urgently, ‘that big Hollywood lawyer of Alex’s is empowered to act for him in his absence. He also happens to have a lot of dough tied up in this picture, and he’s damn near as tight as Alex about money. When I get in touch with him and tell him what’s going on here he’ll see to it we finish the job. I guarantee that.’

  ‘Only if Alex is absent,’ Mel said. ‘But what if he’s dead?’

  ‘Then we’re licked. The footage we shot so far is part of his estate, and by the time the Surrogates Court settles the estate we’ll all be dead and gone ourselves. But we don’t know Alex is dead, do we? Nobody knows if he is or not. So what we do is get his lawyer’s okay to finish the picture in return for an agreement to deliver it to him for release.’

  ‘Without being allowed back on the lot?’ said Betty. ‘And who knows how long it’ll be before we are allowed back? Further questioning, the detective said. It might take weeks before they get around to it. Or months.’

  ‘It might,’ said Cy, ‘but I have a hunch it won’t.’

  He was right. The very next morning Mel was called to his interview with Commissioner Odoardo Ucci at Police Headquarters and had as unpleasant a time of it as he had anticipated.

  The worst of it was when the Commissioner, after much deliberate nose scratching, suddenly introduced the subject of Paolo Varese’s hostility toward his employer, and when Mel hedged in his answers, Ucci revealed an astonishing familiarity with the scene played that rainy night on the Piazza Matrai. Which mean
t, Mel thought hopelessly, that Wanda had indeed spilled the beans at the first opportunity.

  Under such conditions, Mel knew, there was no use being evasive about it. So he described the scene in detail and took what consolation he could from the memory of Cy’s reminder that since Paolo had nothing to do with File’s disappearance, there was nothing that could be pinned on him.

  Ucci’s reaction jolted him.

  ‘If you had given this vital information to Inspector Conti at once—’ he said.

  ‘Vital?’ Mel said. ‘Listen, Commissioner, we walked out of that office a minute or two after Mr File. If Varese had tried to do anything to him out there—’

  ‘But the possibility did enter your mind, signore, that he might have tried?’

  ‘Yes, and I found out very quickly that I was wrong about it.’

  ‘I think I will soon prove otherwise, signore. Before the day is over, in fact. So you and Signora Gordon will please remain incommunicado in your hotel until then. As a favor to yourself, no telephone calls and no visitors, please.’

  It was Ucci himself who picked them up in a chauffeured car late in the afternoon.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Betty asked him as the car swung away from the curb.

  ‘To the location of your cinema company, signora, to demonstrate that the mystery of Signor File’s disappearance was never a mystery at all.’

  ‘Then you found him? But where? What happened to him?’

  ‘Patience, signora, patience.’ The Commissioner’s manner was almost playful. ‘You will shortly see the answer for yourself. If,’ he added grimly, ‘you have the stomach for it.’

  A carabiniere bearing a Tommy gun admitted them through the gate of the lot; another came to attention at the door of the carpenter’s shop as they entered it. In the sculptor’s studio behind the partition at the rear of the shop was a small gathering waiting for them.

  Cy and MacAaron stood at one side of the room and Paolo Varese, tight-lipped and smoldering, stood at the other side between Inspector Conti and the subordinate plainclothesmen. And in the center of the room, towering over them all on its pedestal, was a life-sized statue.

  Tiberius mad, Mel thought, and then recoiled as understanding exploded in him. There was a distinct resemblance between this statue and the one of Tiberius sane which had already been photographed and stored away in the prop room; but there was an even greater resemblance between these distorted features and the face of Alexander File in a paroxysm of rage.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Betty whispered in anguish, ‘it looks like—’

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Ucci, and when Betty mutely shook her head he said, ‘I am sorry, signora, but I wanted you to observe for yourself why the mystery never was a mystery. Once I had compared this statue with photographs of Signore File, the solution was clear. Wet papier mache molded to the face seems to reproduce it so that even a layer of clay over the mask, skillfully worked as it may be, does not conceal the true image underneath.

  ‘However—’ he nodded toward Inspector Conti’—it was my assistant who unearthed the most important clue. A series of these statues had been made before the disappearance. Only one – this one – was completed after the disappearance, and the use it was put to is obvious. Also, signora, highly unpleasant. So if you wish to leave the room now while we produce the evidence of the crime—’

  When she left, moving as if she were sleepwalking through a nightmare, Mel knew guiltily that he should have gone with her; but he found himself helplessly rooted to the spot, transfixed by the sight of the Commissioner picking up a mallet and chisel and approaching the statue.

  The sight stirred Paolo Varese to violent action. He suddenly flung himself at Ucci, almost overthrowing him in the effort to wrest the tools from his hands. When the two plainclothesmen locked their arms through his and dragged him back he struggled furiously to free himself from their grasp, then subsided, gasping.

  ‘You can’t!’ he shouted at Ucci. ‘That is a work of art!’

  ‘And a clever one,’ said Ucci coldly. ‘Almost brilliant, in fact. A work of art that can be removed from here at your leisure and sent anywhere in the world without a single person knowing its contents. A fine business, young man, to use such a talent as yours for the purpose of concealing a murder. Do you at least confess to that murder now?’

  ‘No! Whatever you find in my statue, I will never confess to any murder!’

  ‘Ah? Then perhaps this will change your mind?’

  The Commissioner placed the edge of the chisel into a fold of the toga draping the figure and struck it a careful blow. Then another and another.

  As shards of white-enameled clay fell to the floor Mel closed his eyes, but that couldn’t keep him from hearing the sound of those remorseless blows, the thudding on the floor of chunks of clay.

  Then there was a different sound – the striking of metal against metal.

  And finally a wrathful exclamation by Ucci.

  Mel opened his eyes. What he saw at first glance was Ucci’s broad face, almost ludicrous in its open-mouthed incredulity. Cy, MacAaron, the two plainclothesmen, all wore the same expression; all stared unbelievingly at the exposed interior of the statue which revealed the rods of an armature, a cylinder of wire screening – and nothing more.

  ‘Impossible,’ Ucci muttered. ‘But this is impossible.’

  As if venting his frustration on the statue, he swung the mallet flush against its head. The head bounded to the floor and lay there, an empty mask of papier mache, patches of whitened clay still adhering to it.

  Paolo pulled himself free of the plainclothesmen’s grasp. He picked up the mask and tenderly ran his fingers over the damage in it made by the mallet.

  ‘Barbarian,’ he said to Ucci. ‘Vandal. Did you really think I was a murderer? Did you have to destroy my work to learn better?’

  Ucci shook his head dazedly.

  ‘Young man, I tell you that everything, all the evidence—’

  ‘What evidence? Do I look like some peasant from the south who lives by the vendetta?’ The boy thrust out the mask toward Ucci who recoiled as if afraid it would bite him. ‘This was my revenge – to shape this so that the whole world would know what an animal that man was. And it was all the revenge I asked, because I am an artist, you understand, not a butcher. Now you can try to put the pieces of my statue together, because I am finished here.’ He looked at Cy. ‘As soon as I have packed my tools, signore, I will go.’

  ‘But we’ll be back tomorrow,’ Cy pleaded. He turned to Ucci. ‘You can’t have any objections to that now, can you?’

  ‘Objections?’ The Commissioner still seemed lost in a daze. ‘No, no, signore. The premises have been fully investigated, so you are free to use them. But it is impossible. I cannot understand—’

  ‘You see?’ Cy said to Paolo. ‘And all I ask is one more day’s work. Just one more day.’

  ‘No, signore. I have done the work I agreed to do. I am finished here.’

  As Mel started out of the studio, Cy followed him with lagging steps.

  ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I hate to do that scene one statue short.’

  ‘You can shoot around it. Hell, I’m glad it turned out like this, statue or not. For a minute, that cop had me convinced—’

  ‘You? He had us all convinced. When Betty walked out of here she looked like she was ready to cave in. You want my advice, Mel, you’ll book the first flight home tomorrow and get her away from here as quick as you can. The picture’s just about done anyhow, and Betty’s the one you have to worry about, not Alex.’

  The carabiniere on guard at the door motioned around the building, and they found Betty waiting for them there, her eyes red and swollen, the traces of tears shiny on her cheeks.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, as if dreading to ask it. ‘Did they—’

  ‘No,’ said Mel, ‘they didn’t. Paolo is out of it.’ And then as she stood there, helplessly shaking her head from side to side – looking, in fact, as if she were
ready to cave in – Mel put his arms tight around her.

  ‘It’s all right, baby,’ he said, ‘it’s all right. We’re going home tomorrow.’

  Cy Goldsmith died the first day of winter that year, a few weeks after the picture was released; so at least, as Betty put it, he knew before he went that the critics thought the picture was good. Not an Oscar winner, of course, but plausible, dramatic, beautifully directed. It wasn’t a bad send-off for a man on his deathbed.

  The mystery of File’s disappearance didn’t hurt at the box office either. The press had a field day when the story first broke, and even when interest had died down somewhat it didn’t take much to revive it. Every week or so Alexander File would be reported seen in some other corner of the world, a victim of amnesia, of drug addiction, of a Red plot, and the tabloids would once more heat up the embers of public interest. Then there was the release of the picture and Cy’s death soon afterward to keep the embers burning.

  Mel and Betty were in San Francisco getting ready to spend the Christmas week with her family when they saw the news in the paper – Cyrus Goldsmith died in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital after a long illness and would be buried at Elysian Park Cemetery – and it was the unpleasant thought of the reporters and photographers flocking around again that made Mel decide not to attend the funeral, but to settle instead for an extravagant wreath.

  Reading that mention of Elysian Park reminded him also of the time when he and Cy had stood on the portico of the make-believe palace in the backlot, looking down on the Appian Way, and Cy had confided to him how comforting it had been to arrange for the mausoleum he would soon be occupying. He had been like a relic of antiquity, had Cyrus Goldsmith. A devout believer in the idea that a chamber of granite with one’s name on it somehow meant a happier afterlife than a six-foot hole in the ground.

  Mel shook his head at the thought. Cy had no family to mourn him, the only person in the world close to him had been MacAaron, so MacAaron must have been in charge of the funeral arrangements. Too bad Mac wasn’t the kind of man to do things up in real imaginative style. Seen to it, perhaps, that, just as the Pharoahs had been buried with the full equipage for a happy existence in heaven, Cy should have been provided with his idea of the necessities for a pleasant eternity – a supply of Scotch, a print of Emperor of Lust, even a handsomely mounted picture of a futilely snarling Alexander File on the mausoleum wall to keep fresh that taste of the final victory.