“What? What did you say?”
“Really, you should be here, Ted, if only you could afford the room rent. Edith Howell is here. John Meade is in and out. Gerry Littleford. Sy Koller. Geoff McKensie.”
“You’re running a hotel for murder suspects! Fugitives from justice!”
“Ted, why take it so personally? They’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Not in my house, damn it. I want you and that whole gang of murder celebrities out of The Blue House and I mean now. Within the hour.”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean ‘no’?”
“You’re forgetting something, Ted.”
“I’ll never forget this.”
“You’re forgetting I didn’t borrow your house. I’m paying rent for it. If you had been kind, and let me borrow your house, of course I’d have no choice but to accede to your wishes. But as a rent payer, I have certain rights—”
“You’re not a rent-payer, you bastard. I never got the check.”
“No? The check is in the mail.”
“The deal isn’t complete. I never got the check. You don’t have anything to prove you sent the check.”
“But, Ted, I’m in the house. That means something.”
“It means you’re a guest. And I’m throwing you out.”
“Hell of a way to treat a guest.”
“I never got the check for the feed bills, either.”
“That’s coming in dimes and quarters. Look for the truck.”
“Fletcher, just hear me out. I let you have The Blue House—”
“At an outrageous rent.”
“I didn’t want you to have it at all. You never told me you were going to fill the house up with fugitives from a murder investigation.”
“Actually, that wasn’t my intention.”
“It’s my house. My home. I don’t want pictures of it all over the world on the front pages of police gazettes and scandal magazines.”
“Never knew you were so sensitive.”
“Get out. Get out. Get those people out of there. Get everybody out of that house. Instantly.”
The phone went dead.
Fletch looked into the phone’s mouthpiece. “Great instrument of communication,” he muttered to himself. “Designed for those who insist upon having the last word.”
Mrs Lopez was in the door of the study. “Anything you want, Mister Fletcher?”
“No, thanks, Mrs. Lopez.”
“Coffee? Cold drink?”
Fletch picked up the script of Midsummer Night’s Madness from the desk. “Maybe I’ll pick up a cold drink as I go through the kitchen.”
She smiled. “Everyone is napping now.”
“Everyone except Mister Meade. He’s about to run an errand.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Shopping. It’s nice having so many people in the house. So many people I’ve only seen in the movies.” The woman fluttered her hand in a girlish gesture. “That Mister Mooney! What a man. What a gentleman!”
“You know about the murder?”
She shrugged. “Last night there was another murder. Up the block. Behind the house.” Her hand indicated southwest. “A man was stabbed. So it goes. The tour trains are not announcing that murder.”
“Why was he stabbed?”
Again Mrs Lopez shrugged. “He said something. Or he said nothing. He did something. Or he did nothing. He had something. Or he had nothing. Why are people murdered?”
“Or because he was something.”
“Tambien. Any special foods you like me to get?”
“Good fruit,” Fletch said. “Fish. Some cheese?”
“Of course. For how many days should I buy?”
“For a few days,” Fletch said. “For a few days at least.”
15
While Fletch was reading of the Midsummer Night’s Madness filmscript, a woman screamed.
Sitting in the back garden of The Blue House he looked up at the second storey.
It had been Edith Howell who screamed. Now she was shouting. Despite the theatrical timber of her voice, Fletch could not make out what she was saying.
He turned.
It was a drowsy afternoon.
When Fletch was, Frederick Mooney stumbled around the corner of the house. He stood in a patch of ground cover.
“There is what says she is a lady in my bed,” Frederick Mooney announced.
“Is that a complaint?” Fletch asked.
“I’d rather a woman,” admitted Mooney.
“It’s Edith Howell,” said Fletch.
“Is that who it was? I thought I recognized her from some similar scene… let’s see, was it The Clock Struck One?”
“And down fell the other one?”
“Neither a lady nor a woman: Edith Howell.” Mooney’s feet tangled in the ground cover as he stepped forward. “Umbrage in feminine flesh.”
“She asked for you the minute she arrived.”
Mooney lowered himself into a shaded wrought-iron chair. “I think we did a play together once. Can’t think what. At least, I remember seeing her night after night for an extended period. You know, like a hotel bathtub.”
“You did Time, Gentlemen, Time together. On Broadway.”
“Oh, yes—that damned musical. How did I ever come to do that damned musical? I was miserable in it for months… although the audience seemed to like it. Bad advice, I guess. Are you a theater buff?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“Always amazing to me how much other people know about theater and films than I do.”
Fletch smiled. “You are theater and films, Mister Mooney.”
“I’ve done my job,” Mooney said. “Like anyone else. If I remember correctly, Mister Peterkin, you said you have nothing to do with the entertainment hindustry.”
“Right. I don’t.”
Mooney tried to read the title of the filmscript on Fletch’s lap. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he said. “Call you me fair?” he said in a sad, light voice. “I am as ugly as a bear. Marvelous the annual income Sweet Will still produces. He should be around to enjoy it.”
“Midsummer Night’s Madness,” Fletch said. “The film Moxie is now doing.”
“Oh, yes. Shakespeare in modern togs, I suppose. With this year’s psychiatric understandings thrown in.”
“No.” Fletch bounced the script on his knee. “There seems no relation between the two midsummer nights.”
“Just cribbing the title, eh? Wonder someone hasn’t written a play called Piglet, ‘bout a chap who sees the ghost of last night’s supper. Alas, poor supper, I ate you well…”
“Moxie hasn’t talked to you about this script?”
“Moxie does not talk to me.” Mooney hiccuped behind his hand. “Moxie does not seek my advice. I am her drunken father. ’Tis well and just, I say. There were many years when I was caused to ignore her.”
“What caused that?”
Mooney’s eyes approached Fletch from both sides of his head, and consumed him. “Talent is the primary obligation,” said he. “Many men can love a woman and produce children; few can love the world and produce miracles.”
Fletch nodded. “Mind if I seek your advice?”
Mooney said neither yes nor no. He searched the ground around his chair. He had not brought his bag of bottles. He had been convivial in the bars of Key West since before lunch, though.
“Why would anyone make a bad movie?” Fletch asked.
“It’s like any other business,” Mooney said. “People make mistakes. No. Allow me to amend that. No other hindustry operates with such a stupifyingly high mistake factor. Could you run your business, Mister Peterkin, with a ninety percent error factor?”
“How could that be?”
“Making a good film means bringing together exactly the right talents with exactly the right material. Not an easy job.”
“I still don’t get it. No business can keep running if ninety percent of everything it does is wrong.”
“And then I can point out to you—as a bitter, burned out old man, mind you—that any business of glamour and big bucks attracts to it more than its share of incompetents and charlatans.”
Fletch tried to wrap his eyes around Mooney. “Why should you be bitter?”
“Because I have had more than my share of incompetents and charlatans ruining my sleep and my waking, damaging my work, advising me ill, treating me badly, robbing me—”
“Ho down,” said Fletch. “Didn’t mean to heat your blood. Too hot a day for that.”
Mooney inhaled deeply through his nose. He turned his profile to Fletch and exhaled slowly. Fletch wondered if such was an actor’s exercise.
“I don’t see how any business—or hindustry, as you call it—can run with such a high failure ratio.”
Mooney’s smile was sardonic. “There are many ways this business operates. The simple answer to your question is that just often enough the right materials come together with the right talents. The miracle of art happens. Even people like you put down your barbells and rush out, money in hand, crazed to see what mammon has wrought. And its payday for the hindustry. A single flash of light in the night makes safe the dark.”
“I’m just reading this filmscript.” Fletch jiggled his knee under it. “I don’t know, of course. Never read a filmscript before. It strikes me as pretty terrible. The characters all seem to be like people you meet at a cocktail party—all fronts and no backs. They don’t talk the way people really talk. I do a little writing myself—on days when there are hurricanes. It seems to me, in this filmscript much time and space are wasted while the author is floundering around trying to arrive at an idea. All that should be cut away. Don’t you think writing should begin after the idea is achieved?” Mooney was looking at him like a bull bored with the pasture. “It treats controversial old issues in an insulting, offensive way. Instead of trying to create any sort of understanding, my reading of it is that it is trying to provoke hatred—deliberately.” Again Mooney was surveying the ground around his chair for the bottle bag. “Not a critic of filmscripts, of course,” Fletch said. “But I think anyone would have to be crazy to invest a dime in this rubbish.”
“Ah, Peterkin,” said Mooney, obviously sitting on his own restlessness. “You just said the magic word: dime. Like any other business, the film hindustry is about money. Lots of it. Consider this: never does so much money come together over the creation of an illusion.” Mooney moved to get out of his chair but did not make it. “Think about that, if you will. Count your illusions, Mister Peterkin.” Finally, Mooney succeeded in standing up. “The time for a nap has passed,” he announced to the banyan tree, which never napped. “I need a drink to smooth the wrinkles of my day. May I bring you one, Peterson?”
Slowly, he hoped in a theatrical manner, Fletch squinted all around him before asking, “Who’s Peterson?”
“Why, you’re Peterson, aren’t you? Oh, I’m sorry. Peterkin. You’re Peterkin. You just said that, I believe. You should have seen an early film of mine, Seven Flags.”
“I have.”
“Cast of thousands,” said Mooney. “And I kept every one of them straight.”
16
Lopez called from the back door. “Telephone, Mister Fletcher.”
Fletch hesitated. The phone had been ringing all day. Fletch had told the Lopezes to try not to answer it. He dropped the filmscript of Midsummer Night’s Madness onto the cistern and trudged to the back door.
“Sorry.” Lopez’s eyes sought sympathy, understanding. “It is the police. The woman insists you come to the phone. She threatened me.”
A babble of voices was coming from inside the house.
“Okay.”
Stella Littleford passed Fletch on her way out the back door. “Watch out,” she whispered.
In the corridor, Edith Howell asked, “Where’s Freddy?”
“Don’t know. Here somewhere.”
“Where’s John Meade?”
“Gone on an errand. He’ll be back.”
In the front hall, dressed only in bikini underpants, Gerry Littleford stood with his back against the wall. “I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know.”
Through the open front door, Fletch saw the waiting, staring crowd across the street had grown.
Frederick Mooney was coming down the stairs. He held a bottle by its neck.
Behind Fletch, Edith Howell exclaimed, “Freddy! Why, I do declare! As I live and breathe!”
Halfway down the stairs, Mooney focused on her. He pointed at her. “This old moon wanes…”
“Come make me a drink, lover. I’m parched.” She took his arm as he came off the stairs. “A gin and tonic would be nice.” She walked him into the living room. “I found some supplies in here. Sorry I spoke so harshly to you, when you burst into my bedroom, but, Freddy, it’s been so many years since you did such a thing…”
As they passed him, Gerry Littleford said to the floor, “I don’t know.”
“Madame,” Mooney’s voice rang regally from the living room. “I do not burst. I enter.”
In the billiard room, Moxie was turning in circles. “Fletch! I’ve got to get out of this house!”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t stand it!”
“You’d be mobbed. It wouldn’t be safe.”
She emphasized every word. “I have to get out of this house!”
Fletch went into the study and picked up the telephone receiver. “Hello?”
“Irwin Fletcher?”
Fletch sighed. “This is Fletcher.”
“One moment, please.”
From overhead came Sy Koller’s heavy voice. He was saying something about the Gulf Stream.
“Mister Fletcher,” a voice stated through the telephone.
“Yes.”
“This is Chief Nachman. How are you today?”
“Fine. Thank you. Yourself?”
“Fine. Hard works always makes one feel better, don’t you think?”
“Glad to hear you’re working hard.”
“Are you?”
“You bet.”
“My hard work may result in some conclusions you’re not going to like.”
“No way.”
“Which is why you flew Ms Mooney to the ends of the earth last night.”
“We’re not that far away.”
“You’re in a place where it is very simple for you to skip the country.”
“You noticed that.”
“Yes and no. Don’t push me too far, Irwin.”
“You don’t need to call me Irwin.”
“You don’t like the name Irwin?”
“Kids in school used to call me earwig.”
“All right, I’ll call you earwig.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“If, for example, you and Ms Mooney were to leave the state of Florida, or worse, much worse, continental U.S.A.—”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“—you would find out what a little ol’ Chief of Detectives can do. Your disappearing to Key West with a good many of my suspects in this murder case is an inconvenience for me—only that. Understandable, considering the people involved.”
“You’re being reasonable.”
“Furthermore, I think you may have done the right thing.”
“I have?”
“Yes. Maybe. I have a funny feeling you’ve done exactly the right thing. Now, if you’ll be good enough to tell me exactly who is with you down there in—what’s it called—The Blue House?”
“Moxie.”
“Did you know The Blue House is the name of the Korean presidential residence?”
“Frederick Mooney.”
“I’d love to see it someday.”
“Gerry Littleford. His wife, Stella. Sy Koller. Edith Howell. The Australian director, Geoffrey McKensie.”
“John Meade?”
“He’s in and out. He’ll be back tonight.”
“Didn’t you just love him in Easy River?” “Don’t think I ever saw it.”
“Anyone else?”
“Me.”
“I wouldn’t forget you, earwig.”
“Seeing you’re being so reasonable, Chief, would you mind telling me a few things?”
“If I can. Will I see it on Global Cable News?”
“Not if you don’t want.”
“Your loyalties have their priorities, right, Fletcher?”
“What has shown up, so far, on the tapes and films of the murder?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing. We’ve been up looking at them all night, over and over. Absolutely nothing.”
“That’s impossible.”
“The murder might as well have taken place in an alley in the dark of night, for all the good all those cameras have done us so far. We’re having experts come in to look at the films. Did you know there were experts to look at film? I didn’t.”
“And probably experts at choosing those experts.”
“That’s true.”
“Wouldn’t Sy Koller and Geoff McKensie be able to help? They must be expert at looking at film.”
“Great. Two of our prime suspects you want called in as experts. Peterman fired McKensie, you know.”
“And Koller?”
“Three years ago Sy Koller and Steve Peterman had a fist fight outside a Los Angeles restaurant. Koller had Peterman on the sidewalk and was strangling him when the police arrived. Peterman did not press charges.”
“Everybody loved Peterman. For sure. What were they fighting about?”
“A woman, they said.”
“By the way, Koller says Peterman and Dan Buckley knew each other. That there was some tension between them.”
“You see? You have the makings of a good earwig. Buckley was losing money in some investment Peterman had gotten him into.”
“A lot of money?”
“How do I know what’s a lot of money to these people? I live in a yellow bungalow six miles from the beach.”
“Okay. Point two. This morning Sy Roller said the set for The Dan Buckley Show could have been rigged. That is, the knife could have been made to fall from somewhere, could have been propelled from somewhere, mechanically. You know what I mean?”
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