Stardust

by Joseph Kanon

  She started, then pushed herself away from the slant board, no longer caring about the dress.

  “What are you talking about? You think Bunny would fix something for me? I’m not important enough.”

  “Did he know about you and Danny?”

  “I don’t know. He knows everything. He’s like that. But what if he did? You think the studio’s going to fall apart because somebody sees us necking in La Jolla?”

  “With Danny. Not Ty Power. He wouldn’t like that.”

  “Then he’d tell me about it. Not go flying around town playing Mr. Fixit. You think he’d do that for me? You don’t know what it’s like here. He can trade me in for a new model any time he likes.”

  “Not if you’re a star.”

  “That’s something to look forward to then, isn’t it? Bunny cleaning up after you. But he’s not doing it now. I’m just a big ‘maybe’ to him. You know how many chances you get in this town?”

  “One?”

  “Not even. Half, maybe. And nobody gives it to you. You just keep working and one day you get lucky.” She opened her hand to the set. “This is mine. If the picture works, maybe I get the other half, a real chance. That’s after ten years. A Greyhound from Newark. Nobody fixes anything for me. Anyway, fix what?”

  “You close a file, nobody asks any questions. Nobody’s embarrassed. That’s all.”

  “And I’m the embarrassment.”

  “Maybe Danny was. A married man. They have plans for you.”

  The buzzer sounded.

  “Ro?”

  “One sec.” She turned to Ben. “Look, what happened-this business about giving somebody the brush. He wasn’t planning to do that, was he? I mean to me. He didn’t tell you that.”

  “No.”

  She nodded, holding on to it. “Thanks. This is a funny kind of conversation to be having. I never thought of him as dead. I knew it wouldn’t last-but not like this.”

  “Why wouldn’t it last?”

  “Well, they don’t, do they? These things.” She shrugged. “They’re all still in love with their wives, I think.” She brushed the front of her skirt, smoothing it for the shot. “Anyway, they don’t leave them.”

  He had lunch with Hal, taking in the pecking order of the commissary. Lasner had nodded to them when they came in, a sign of favor from the head table, but nobody got up to ask them to join the group, sober gray and pinstripe suits except for Bunny in his camel hair jacket. The writers were more casual, hound’s tooth checks and plaids, noisy with laughter, as if they’d just moved the table over from the Derby on Vine. The actors stayed with their production units, eating salads in period dress and seating themselves by salary levels. Otherwise, technicians talked shop with each other. The room itself seemed the one place on the lot where Lasner, or Bunny, had been willing to spend money-chair backs of curved chromium tubes, lacquered tables and sleek sconces, a Cedric Gibbons set.

  “Who’s that with Sam Pilcer?” Hal said, nodding to a table near the window where Julie Sherman was huddled with a short man in a double-breasted suit.

  “That was fast. The ink can’t even be dry on the contract yet. You want me to introduce you?”

  “Later. Not in front of Sam.”

  Ben smiled but looked over again uneasily. Julie was leaning forward, her full attention on Pilcer. Is this how Danny had done it? A drink and a promise? Then a quick trip to the Cherokee-except they’d never gone there, only the once. A place paid for by the month.

  “They’re wrapping today,” Hal was saying. “Maybe I’ll run into her at the party. Without Sam.”

  “Rosemary’s picture? What about her?”

  “What about?”

  “Chances with her.”

  Hal shook his head, protective. “She’s not- She’s got talent.”

  Ben looked at him, surprised he’d made the distinction. “Talent.”

  “Watch her on the set. A pro. On time, knows her lines. No high-hatting, ever. Knows your name. She does the job.” He looked at Ben. “Then she goes home.”

  But not always. Sometimes she went to La Jolla.

  “The papers have her out with Ty Power.”

  “Yeah, well,” Hal said. “You know these pictures they put her in, she’s got the figure for it, but she’s not like that.” He looked again toward Julie’s table. “You want to get something going, ask her if she has a friend. What?”

  “Just thinking,” Ben said, then gathered up his tray. “I have to make a call.”

  On his way out he couldn’t resist another sidelong glance-Pilcer even closer now, smiling, telling her all the things he could do for her. What men must have said to Rosemary, too, while she waited for half a chance. But she’d believed Danny.

  Kelly was in a rush, claiming to be on deadline.

  “Quick question,” Ben said. “One sec.”

  “Long time no hear.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Yeah, I know. This one’s heading for the fridge. So what do you want to know?”

  “When did Danny take up the lease at the Cherokee? Did anybody ever say? Last spring?”

  “No, first of the year. They didn’t say, I asked. I’m a reporter.” A cheeky Dick Powell. “Why do you want to know?”

  Why would he?

  “I’m checking the loan-outs. Helps to have a time, when she might have been here.”

  “First of the year. You’re still on this, huh?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’ll tell you something. The way it works? At a certain point you think, I’m just spinning wheels. It’s getting late. I can feel the chill on this one already. How many weeks now? And all I got is one girlfriend who wasn’t there.”

  “What? Who?”

  “The Miller kid. On your contract list,” he said, a tiny delay, making a point.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I showed glossies to the night clerk, the real one, not Joel. He ID’d her. But not Joel. Never saw her. So I checked her out. And he’s right, she wasn’t there that night. So, nothing.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Keep your pants on. Tell what? We don’t have anything if she wasn’t there, a hit and run. If I ran an item on everyone who got laid, there wouldn’t be enough paper. So they screwed around and he’s dead, but where’s the connection? No story.”

  “But you ran it down anyway.”

  “It’s always nice to know. Something to put on the layaway plan. Might come in handy, you never know.”

  “If she makes it,” Ben said. “Then you can give it to Polly.”

  “Tch, tch, is that nice? Anyway, what’s in it for Polly? He’s dead. Sorry, I didn’t mean-but he is. And not a star. So the only way it plays now is if she is and he was the secret love of her life. Which doesn’t sound like it was. The clerk saw her once. You can’t do much with a one-nighter, not even Polly.”

  Ben said nothing. One night. La Jolla, the Biltmore, all the others still hers, not tucked away in anyone’s file.

  “Hey, speaking of which, you know the Fed at the Market you asked me to check out?”

  “Riordan.”

  “Yeah, the Technical Consultant. Turns out he was. Republic paid him. Worked for your brother on the series, just like he said. So.”

  “Why speaking of which,” Ben said, trying to follow.

  “Oh, Polly’s secretary. You said he came to the funeral with Polly, so I figured she’d know him.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I told you, they never retire, they just find other garbage to go through. He’s been freelancing for Tenney-you know the one with the committee. A bunch of old hands from the Bureau dig around for him. He sends stuff over to Polly, and sometimes Riordan takes it. That’s how Polly knows him. Tenney stays clear, so nobody figures where the stuff is coming from.”

  “So he’s a messenger?”

  “More like a supplier. Anyway, he’s who he says he is. And a little more. Christ, there’s the ME, I have to go.�
�

  “Wait, one more thing. The clerk who ID’d Rosemary? He saw her? They didn’t go through the back?”

  “No, he saw her. They must have come in the front. I gotta run. You want, I’ll keep poking around, but this is already going away. What I can’t figure is the studio. But maybe they got trigger happy-grabbed the phone before there was anything to cover up. It happens, you get nervous about people. Maybe they don’t like Rosemary screwing around. But that doesn’t get us anywhere. We need someone there that night. Or every night-the romance that broke his heart. But all we’ve got is a jump. Yesterday.”

  Check the loan-outs. Danny had rented the Cherokee months before Rosemary. Maybe for someone he didn’t bring through the front door. He started out for Personnel to get the monthly lists, but got sidetracked by Hal instead, excited about something.

  “I was thinking about the guards,” he said, leading Ben to the cutting room. “You know the faces are hard to see. Medium pan shots, nothing closer.”

  “It’s newsreel film. Army. They don’t do close-ups.” Heads tilted up to the light, long lashes making shadows.

  “Right. But take a look at this.” At the Moviola, a frozen frame of the guards being led away. “Just for the idea. It’s a work print. But they should have the camera originals in Culver City. Now look.”

  He took a lens and held it over a section of the viewer so that a single face leapt out of the frame.

  “Blow up the negative here. Show his face.”

  Ben looked at the spot enlargement, the guard’s eyes caught forever on a piece of film. In the full running shot he’d be turning away from the camera, a close-up of shame itself.

  “It’ll cost, though, the lab work. You’re not just splicing.”

  “What if the quality’s not good enough? The stock’s grainy.”

  “Wet-gate print it.”

  “What?”

  “Before you transfer. It takes out the scratches. We always do it with a sixteen-millimeter transfer. Come back here, I’ll show you.”

  Ben followed him, not really wanting to take the time but feeling obligated. He had felt in Hal’s eyes the line worker’s mild contempt for the foreman still learning the fundamentals. The whole technical side of film-making-the developing tanks, the chemical emulsions, the synchronized sprockets-were things handled by someone else. They went through heavy double doors to a big factory space of drying rooms and machines that made the transfer from light to image, Merlin’s workshop.

  “See, the transfer’s clear,” Hal said, leading him to a machine. “But you couldn’t close in on this. Depends on the exposure, what light was retained.” He pointed to the sample, an indoor shot of people lying in bunks. “You blow up these faces, you don’t have enough resolution. Like a night shot. See what I mean?”

  Ben looked at the faces, visible now as individuals, but slightly blurred, not good enough for full-scale projection.

  “I tried printing with more light, but you can’t get the background up. Too dark in the first place.”

  He reversed the process, the faces slipping back into a formless crowd.

  “But the other stock we can work with.”

  Shadowy faces in a crowd. Ben stood still, eyes fixed on the enlarging mechanism.

  “Hal,” he said, not looking at him, thinking. “You can do this with any picture, right? Bring up the background.”

  “Depends how it was printed. If you can work from the negative, you can pretty much get whatever’s there.”

  “The negative,” Ben said, elsewhere.

  “That’s right. Then you control the printing, kind of coax it out.”

  Ben looked at his wristwatch. “How long would it take? Blow up some negatives? Stills?”

  “No time. What stills?”

  Ben touched his upper arm. “I’ll be back. Keep the machine free, okay?”

  “What stills?”

  In the car he tried to remember the lighting in the pictures, windows shining down on the Cherokee alley, the glare of a police flashbulb, a few people standing near the body, the rest outside the circle of light, like dots in an afterimage. He tried to remember the women-a distraught neighbor, anyone from the studio, maybe even Rosemary herself, who hadn’t been there-but all he’d really looked at before was the body.

  Iris’s car was in the driveway so he parked on the street and walked around to the back of the house, the French doors wide open, another invitation to rifle through Danny’s desk. Liesl was in the kitchen grating potatoes, her face pink from the work, wisps of hair spilling down out of the pile on top.

  “Oh! What are you doing here?”

  “Just picking something up.” Wanting to go over to her, touch her arm, but aware of Iris at her ironing board. “I thought you were going to keep the doors locked.”

  “Well, at night. Oh, now you won’t be surprised.” She waved the knife. “I wanted to surprise you. My roast chicken.”

  He nodded to the mixing bowl. “What’s that?”

  “Kartoffelpuffer.” A hesitant smile. “I told you I could cook.”

  “What did Riordan say? About the locks.”

  “Who?”

  “The man I sent over to check the house.”

  “No one’s been here.”

  Ben looked at his watch. Cutting it close or not coming. Or maybe he’d been there without announcing himself, playing burglar.

  “That’s a lot of food. Are people coming?”

  “No, just us,” she said, looking at him, her eyes soft. “It’s going to rain, I think. So it’s cozy, eating in.”

  He held her stare for a second, trying not to smile in front of Iris, then headed to the study.

  The photographs were just as he’d remembered, Danny lying with a dark smear around his head, people huddled at the edge of the flash. Two angles with two backgrounds, one of the parking area, the other leading to the street. He looked carefully at the faces in front but still didn’t recognize anybody. They’d be neighbors, rushing out at the sudden sound, then the police lights, something more exciting than the radio. But who were the people right behind them? He slipped out the written reports, leaving the prints and negatives in the envelope.

  “When will you be home?” Liesl said, then flushed, the simplest domestic question now somehow suggestive. “I only ask because of the chicken.”

  “I’m supposed to see Riordan after work. If he shows. Eight, eight-thirty?”

  “Yes, all right. But you’ll call if you’ll be late? So I know.”

  This time he did smile, not caring whether Iris saw. Something any couple might say.

  Hal looked at the pictures, waiting for Ben to explain.

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “People you can’t see clearly in the prints.”

  “They’re dark.” He held up one of the negatives to the light, then turned it on its side, looking at the numbers in the margin. “These are police? Where’d you-?” He stopped, still waiting. “Who’s the victim?”

  “My brother.”

  “I thought-”

  Ben nodded. “I want to see who was there. Somebody from the building, maybe. Anybody I could talk to.”

  Hal looked at him, skeptical, then took up the negatives. “Okay, let’s go to work.”

  Ben watched, fascinated, as Hal manipulated the negatives, enlarging, then disappearing into the darkroom with its trays of solutions. But even the studio couldn’t produce a miracle. In the shot looking toward the parking lot, faces were barely visible, even blown up. The alley angle was better, street lamps at the end providing a kind of backlight. They looked at the enlargements together, Ben hoping that Hal, familiar with everyone on the lot, might suddenly recognize somebody. But they were all anonymous, caught unexpectedly in suspenders and house dresses, one woman in curlers, hand over her mouth.

  “You can tell the cops by the hats,” Hal said, examining a new print. “Everyone else just rushed out, I guess. Look, back there in the alley. You can always t
ell, can’t you?”

  “So why is he in the alley, not with the others? He’s just someone off the street. Who’s the woman next to him? Can we get in closer on her?”

  “Closer? Not much. A few more degrees, you’ll get a blotch. But let’s try one.”

  When the print was done, it was just clear enough. Ben looked, then went rigid, stunned.

  “She looked better in the dark,” Hal said. “But the hat-pure cop. You still think he’s in off the street?”

  “No, he’s a cop,” Ben said slowly. “Ex-FBI.”

  His parking space was behind Admin B, but when he got there he put the keys back in his pocket. He could use the walk to clear his head. He passed the choked line of cars at the gate, all heading home at once, then the small knot of picketers, and turned down Gower. Where they used to shoot Westerns, under roofs of cheesecloth. Today they wouldn’t need to filter the light-the day, cloudy before, was overcast and thick, already growing faint. How long had Riordan been in the alley? In the picture, he’d been craning his neck to see, just another curious bystander. But how could he have been? Someone Danny knew. Who had never made himself known, not on any of the reports, a hat in the crowd. Wanting to see, maybe wanting to make sure.

  Lucey’s was more than a few blocks, a longer walk than he expected, so he was late when he pushed open the door and took a second to adjust to the dim light inside. The after-work drinkers had already piled in from Paramount, but Riordan had managed to get a table and he signaled Ben through the crowd with a two-finger wave.

  “I went ahead and ordered,” he said, pointing to two glasses. “Try getting a waitress in this. Beer okay?”

  Ben sat down, putting the envelope next to Riordan’s hat. “So,” he said, letting Riordan take the lead.

  “So you need to do something about the pool doors.”

  “Oh,” Ben said, looking over at him, the same military short hair, steady eyes, but everything different now, someone who’d been in the alley. “Is that how you got in?”

  “They’d be easy to jimmy,” he said, not picking up on this. “I noticed at the funeral.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t bother going over today.”

  Riordan said nothing.

  “Or because you already knew how he got in Saturday. Did you do it yourself, or did you send someone else? In case.”