by Parnell Hall
He moved in next to her, got a cup of coffee, and said, “Hi.”
She said, “Hi,” and made room for him to get at the milk and sugar.
Cora squeezed in and got a cup too.
Cowley stirred his coffee and said, “You mind if I ask you a few more questions?”
She sighed. “Again?”
“I know, but you did find the body.”
She took a sip of coffee. “What do you want to know?”
“We’re back at the crime scene today.”
She frowned. “Yes?”
“I wonder if that triggered any memories for you. Sometimes with the passage of time, your mind has a chance to sort things out.”
“What?”
“Trust me, it happens. I gather it didn’t happen in your case. Well, stop and think. See if something comes to you. Was there anything that might be significant?”
“Believe me, I’m trying.”
“Anything come to you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It was a long shot.” Crowley took a sip. “You were also there when the light fell, weren’t you?”
The change of subject startled her. “What?”
“You were on the top of the Empire State Building. On the observation deck. There weren’t that many people allowed up. So you were watching when the light fell.”
“I was watching the actors, like everybody else. I didn’t see it happen.”
“You weren’t watching the director?”
“No.”
“And that’s why you were upset. Because you thought you should have been watching Sandy.”
“That’s my job. But during a take? Who’d expect something during a take?”
“So when did you know the light fell?”
“I didn’t. I knew something had happened, because I heard a noise and the actors reacted.”
“You swung around at the noise?”
“I looked, but I couldn’t really see.”
“You ran over?”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Well, not right away. There were people in the way. I suppose I just stood there looking stupid. Then I went over.”
“Who was there?”
“The camera operator. The director. The two dolly grips. For my money, one of them knocked it over.”
“But you didn’t see them do it?”
“No.”
“Did they look guilty?”
“They’re grips,” she said dismissively.
“And you couldn’t see Sandy?”
“No. He was on the ground.”
“That must have scared you. The fact that you couldn’t see him.”
“Yes. I didn’t know what happened. Then I saw him getting up. that was a relief. I knew he was all right.”
“And you didn’t react right away, not because you were stunned, but because you didn’t know what happened?”
“That’s right. Can I go now? I just got here. I have to check in.”
“Of course,” Crowley said.
“Do you believe her?” Cora said, as the gofer girl hurried away.
“Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know, but her description doesn’t match what I saw at the dailies.”
“So you think she’s lying?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just not happy with her story.”
“You’re not happy with anything,” Crowley said. “You’ve been unhappy about this whole case.”
“Can you name one thing I should be happy about?”
“No, I can’t.”
Cora cocked her head. “Tell me something. Have you solved any cases since you and Stephanie broke up?”
50
crowley was surprised when Angela came out of her trailer. “Why aren’t you in costume?”
She frowned, then smiled. “Oh, this? It’s what I wore for the Las Vegas scene. You weren’t there when we shot it. We’re shooting some close-ups here on the street. It’s really just for Steve. He wasn’t here when we shot it, either.”
“Of course,” Crowley said. “That’s what you were wearing in the dailies.”
“You saw the dailies, Sergeant?”
“Why not? I’m your number one fan.”
“Well, don’t expect to see me do anything special. They won’t even let me swing the golf club.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I’ll say. It’s my favorite part of the movie. Today I’m just background for Steve, in case they catch my elbow in the shot.”
“Don’t you have something in your contract that you don’t have to do that?”
“Oh, sure. I don’t even have to show up. Just send in my best wishes every day, and cash my paycheck.”
Steve came out, dressed for Vegas. The wardrobe mistress had done an excellent job making Fred’s costume fit him.
“Well, don’t you look like the handsome gigolo!” Angela said.
“Is that a compliment?” Steve said.
Angela jerked her thumb at Cora. “Don’t ask me. She married him.”
“Yeah, well I used to drink back then.”
“You quit drinking? Quel dommage!”
“It doesn’t affect you. I don’t quit drinking until you turn into Thelma Blevins.”
For a moment Angela’s mask of cordiality slipped. Then her eyes twinkled ironically. “Surely there must be another way to phrase that.”
The A.D. showed up with the second unit camera crew, and they all trooped off toward the end of the street where the teamster was waiting with the Vegas picture car.
“Gonna go watch them shoot?” Crowley said.
“What for?”
“See if he does it the way you taught Fred.”
Steve did. It was a good take, it played well in dailies, and there was no reason to change it. And Steve certainly didn’t want to give Sandy less than he’d had before.
It took several takes. Steve nailed it in one, but the A.D. was concerned with the background. He had a still shot of the car in front of the Hyatt Regency, and had to be sure what they were shooting would play. It didn’t have to match, exactly. It just had to not obviously not match.
When the actors were finally done, Crowley intercepted them. “Listen,” he said. “You guys were there when the light fell.”
“Can’t deny it,” Steve said. “We were in the shot.”
“What did you see?”
“Well, I didn’t see it happen,” Steve said. “We weren’t watching the director. We were playing the scene.”
“Oh, you were playing a scene, Steve,” Angela kidded him. “I thought you were in character.”
“So you didn’t see it either?” Crowley said.
“No,” Angela said. “I heard the crash. I looked. Sandy wasn’t there. So I ran to see what had happened.”
“You broke character?” Crowley said, mischievously.
“There was an accident!”
“Did you hear anyone say cut?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Angela said. “I don’t know if anyone did or not. I heard a crash, I went to look.”
“What did you see?”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
“Sandy was getting up from the ground. He was holding on to the camera dolly. That’s the first thing I saw. Then I saw the light on the ground and I realized what had happened.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Someone had knocked over a light.”
“Who were the usual suspects?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who was there who could possibly have done it?”
“The camera operator. One of the dolly grips. Or Sandy himself.”
“What about the script supervisor?”
“She was hanging back, out of the way. She came rushing up.”
“What about the gofer girl? Was she there?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember eve
ryone else.”
“What are you implying, Sergeant? The big time movie star doesn’t notice the lowly gofer girl?”
“Not at all. I was up there, and I didn’t see her.”
“Maybe she wasn’t there.”
“She says she was. Someone must have seen her.”
“Why would she say she was if she wasn’t?”
“Why, indeed,” Crowley said to Cora, as they walked away.
“You know she was up there,” Cora said. “You saw her in the shot.”
“So did you.”
“So there’s no question of her saying she was up there when she wasn’t.”
“No, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“What they said.”
“What do you mean?”
“We saw her in that shot. It was only a few seconds. Then someone turned off the camera.”
“Right.”
“So we don’t know what happened after that. She says she went to help.”
“Yes.”
“But nobody saw her.”
“Are you saying she didn’t?”
“I have no idea what she did.”
“She says she didn’t react right away.”
“Which is what we saw in the shot.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s explaining what she did.”
“So?”
“How would we know what she did?”
“We saw her in the shot.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“Huh?”
“She doesn’t know she was in the shot. She doesn’t know we saw her in it. Why is she trying to justify what we saw in the shot if she doesn’t know she was in the shot?”
“That’s not what she was doing.”
“That’s exactly what she was doing. We saw the shot. We were asking her questions based on what we saw in the shot. Any answers she made are going to be based on her translating our biases reflected in the questions due to the fact we’ve seen the shot.”
“My God,” Crowley said. “With that type of convoluted thinking, it’s a wonder you can’t do crossword puzzles.”
“Not so loud,” Cora said.
Melvin sauntered up.
“Melvin,” Crowley said. “Just the man I wanna see.”
“What’s up?”
“About the gofer girl,” Cora said.
“Come on, I was pulling your leg,” Melvin said. “You think I’d really hit on her?”
“Why not? She’s a female with a pulse. You are still insisting on a pulse, aren’t you, Melvin?”
“Nice one, Cora.” Melvin looked at Crowley. “Can you imagine being married to that?”
“At least you got a book out of it.”
“Crowley wants to ask you about the gofer girl,” Cora persisted.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“I’m talking about the incident. The falling light. No one saw it happen. That’s because nobody knew it was going to happen. They were all looking somewhere else.”
“I was watching the scene. Which was going splendidly before it happened. When I heard the crash, I immediately thought, whoever that is, he’s fired. Then it turned out to be Sandy.”
“Disappointing,” Cora said.
Melvin grinned. “Yeah. I suppressed my rage.”
“When you saw it was Sandy who else did you see?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who was there who might have knocked the light over?”
“I thought it was him.”
“Did you see him do it?”
“No, I was watching the scene.”
“So you don’t know it was him. You just assume it was him.”
“No, it could have been one of those dolly grips. They’re not exactly hired for their brains. It couldn’t have been the camera operator.”
“Why not?”
“He was on the dolly, operating the camera. He didn’t have a free hand to knock it over.”
“Who else?”
“That’s it.”
“The script supervisor wasn’t with him?”
“No, it was crowded. That’s why it had to be him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, get to it,” Cora said. “After it happened people rushed to see. You did. The actors did. I assume the script supervisor did then. What about the gofer girl?”
“What about her?”
“Did she run over?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Wouldn’t your sixth sense register the proximity of an impressionable young female?”
“Knock it off,” Crowley said. “We’re just trying to pinpoint everyone’s position after the accident took place. If you happened to know, we could check her off the list.”
Melvin frowned. “Why? What difference does it make? Suppose you do locate where everyone was after the light fell. What difference does it make?”
“He has a point,” Cora said, as Melvin wandered off in search of wannabe actresses to impress. “What difference does it make? Unless the gofer girl rigged the light to fall on the director. If you can come up with a scenario where that makes sense, you’re more convoluted than I am.”
“So, you don’t believe your own premise.”
“It’s not a premise. We saw the shot. The gofer girl looked guilty. It should mean something.”
“I can’t imagine what that is.”
“Me either. And all this hinting around isn’t going to get to it. We have to ask her directly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell her we saw her in the shot. She looked guilty. And ask her to account for herself.”
“She’ll say she doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”
“And you will exercise your authority as an officer of the law to make her watch the take of herself when the light fell.”
“Which will tell us basically what she told us already.”
“Yeah, but it will be nice to see her face when she does it.”
“Want me to pull her off the set?”
“No, at the dailies. Sit her down at the dailies and let them screen the take.”
“Will they do it?”
“Don’t be a wuss. Tell ’em to do it. I swear, if you were this wishy-washy when you arrested me, we never would have gotten together.”
Crowley ignored Cora’s reference to the fact that their relationship had started after he hauled her in as a murder suspect. She had wound up helping him solve the case.
“Just tell Sandy you want her at the screening and you want to see the take again.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Then we don’t have to do it now. I want to watch the filming.”
“How come?”
“They’re shooting the scene that got Fred killed.”
51
EXT: COPABANA–NIGHT wasn’t recognizable as the same scene. It was the same lines, the same location, the same camera angles, but it was a different actor. What was painful before was sad, witty, funny, poignant, heart-wrenching, all wrung out of a few simple lines, but suddenly the underlying motivations were clear. These were complex people in a complex relationship, playing a game of cat and mouse where it was never clear just who was the cat.
The producer showed up during the third take and watched like a proud papa.
“Isn’t he something?” Howard said. “Can I pick ’em, or what?”
Cora frowned. “You wanted Steve?”
“Oh, yeah. He was going to be more money, but he was worth it. You gotta weigh the checks and balances here. And he’s a good investment.”
“I thought you recommended Fred.”
“Are you crazy? I got him an audition. Big deal. Fifty actors get an audition. But the part? I was surprised he got the part. I figured he must have shown Sandy something I didn’t know. Whatever it was, he didn’t bring it to the set. Aside from that day at the Hyatt, the guy just sucked.”
&
nbsp; “Good thing he got killed,” Cora said.
Howard looked at her sharply. “That’s a little unkind.”
“It’s very unkind. It just happens to be true. You can’t really tiptoe around the situation when a man gets murdered.”
“Or commits suicide,” Howard said.
“Do you believe that?”
“No reason not to.”
“Why’d you get him the audition?” Cora said.
“Why not? It’s a movie. These favors, you pass ’em out like candy.”
“Who asked you to get him an audition?”
“I don’t remember. Probably some woman. That’s the natural order of things.”
“The script supervisor?”
“Betsy? I hardly know her.”
“Angela?”
“She wasn’t on the picture yet. Probably one of the gofer girls. They like to the pretend they’re important. Like they can get an actor into the movies.”
“You mean the dead girl? Karen Hart?”
“It was one of the gofer girls. Frankly, I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Can’t help you. I know how you can find out.”
“How?”
“Ask the one that’s still alive.”
52
cora and Crowley were already at dailies when Sandy came in talking with the producer. Neither of the men looked happy.
“Something’s up,” Cora whispered.
“I don’t understand,” Crowley said. “I thought it was going well.”
“The shooting was. It must be something else.”
“Something wrong?” Crowley asked.
Howard frowned. “I understand you have an investigation, Sergeant. But it doesn’t involve our personal business.”
“It’s no secret,” Sandy said. “He’s a cop. You tell him it’s none of his business and he’ll think you got something to hide. We’re over budget. Despite how well it went today. We lost a lot of time with the Fred fiasco, and we’re scrambling to make it up. Studio pictures do it all the time. An independent film, it’s more tricky. But nothing that concerns the police.” He nodded reassuringly and went and sat down.
“Exactly,” Howard said. “It’s nothing. It’s just going so well on the surface, I hate to present any other picture.” He smiled and joined Sandy.
“Well, that explains that,” Cora said.
“Explains what?”