Shoot It Again, Sam

by Michael Avallone

  SHOOT IT

  AGAIN, SAM

  Ed Noon Mystery #23

  Michael Avallone

  STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

  BEVERLY HILLS

  2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Susan Avallone and David Avallone. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

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  Dedication:

  This one is for a couple of people

  who can never die, like Gary Cooper, because

  a part of my brain will always be Cooper territory.

  And for Ken Millar whose Lew Archer will

  exist wherever there are pages and printed

  words. And it is also lovingly dedicated

  to all people everywhere who still believe

  that nice guys don't finish last.

  CONTENTS

  COFFIN

  PASSENGER

  HOSPITAL

  DREAM

  JOB

  CITY

  FLAME

  MAN

  SPADE

  BRAIN

  TRANSCRIPT

  CLUE

  PLAYBACK

  STAR

  WIFE

  AGENT

  FRIEND

  PEOPLE

  HOME

  COP

  PRODUCER

  SCHEME

  FADEOUT

  COFFIN

  □ The casket in the special baggage car was a thing of funereal beauty. It had silver handles, box springs and its oblong length gleamed with all the natural charm of the finest Maple hardwood. Dan Davis was in it and Dan Davis was dead. And he was riding back to his native California where he had clawed and scratched out a movieland success story to make Horatio Alger turn green with second-place status. The chariot that was taking Dan Davis back to an eternal resting place in Holy Cross, high on a green hill in Los Angeles, was The City of San Francisco, a crack stainless steel Diesel. Train fare for a corpse, celebrated or not, is twice the price of a single first-class ticket for a live passenger. In this case, I was the live passenger. But there's a catch to that, too. Dead or not, somebody has to ride the vigil with the casketed dead. And I got the job. And for that job you ride free of charge. Funeral directors and railroad officials are very charitable about that.

  The interior of the car which held the ornate casket and me was long, roomy, air-conditioned and free of anything else. It was as if Dan Davis' star status in life had granted him all the privileges and respect of an emperor in death. A paradox which gave me no second thoughts as I sat guard during the slow tedious journey across the country. The City of San Francisco had picked up the box and me in Chicago, roared into the West, trundled across the wide flatlands of Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah and now bore steadily through dry Nevada before the last stop in sunny Cal. The trip could have been made by jet plane, faster, less expensive but it wasn't my show. Someone else was calling the shots. Dan Davis had obviously been something more than a movie star and something less than an aging boy wonder whose chief claim to fame was his Oscar, four wives, four children and penchant for racing Sebrings in all the international races that are playgrounds for millionaire cut-ups. Washington had asked me to take the trip with his dead body. Washington and the Man.

  That man.

  The one who supposedly runs the country.

  There was a lot of time to think about that and Dan Davis as the stainless steel horse gobbled up the endless miles of prairie, desert and open country.

  The baggage car, save for some wooden chairs, a table of some kind and the customary side door that slid open, as well as an overhead loading hatch, was tomb-quiet. The Maplewood casket, silver handles shining under the fluorescent lights, was regal and imposing. I had parked myself in a chair close to the middle of the car, trying to get interested in a month-old copy of Playboy. But even the miraculously naked Playgirl of the Month hadn't taken my mind too far from the assignment. I had lived too long as a man-hunter. Old habits are hard to break. If a dead man needed an armed protector, something was fishy.

  Assignment: Dan Davis had begun simply enough.

  Two sticks of obituary copy on the staid back pages of the New York Times. I would have missed it probably except I'm at that age when most of the people I know are cashing in their chips. Either naturally or unexpectedly. Dan Davis was a Somebody and the tube and the radio and the papers played it up pretty big but I was nowhere near most of those marvels on the Friday that he died. On a remote strip of sandy real estate in Cape Cod, I was tanning a pale Manhattan body. But the clerk at the motel brought me the Saturday edition of the Times.

  So I turned to the Obituary notices and there it was.

  Give or take a detail or adverb, it was big news:

  DAN DAVIS DIES;

  HOLLYWOOD IDOL, 60

  Services were being arranged today in Hollywood for Dan Davis, whose long career as a movie star spanned the last four decades of change.

  Davis, husband of screen sex symbol Lila Park, died yesterday in New York of complications resulting from a stroke which hospitalized him two weeks ago. He was on location at the time, shooting the screen version of Walker's prize-novel, "The Night Man." The film has been temporarily shelved pending a replacement for the title role. Davis appeared in many of the most notable films to come out of Hollywood. He is perhaps best remembered for his performances in "Sinners Cry," "The Alley Fighter" and "The Kid Comes Back." He won the 1947 Academy Award for his tour de force delineation of the aging boxing champ in "Come Out And Fight."

  He is survived by his wife, Lila, and four children, Pamela, Georgia, Thomas and Peter, from his previous unions with Rita Carlino, the dancing star, Winifred Talmadge, noted dress designer and his last wife, Joanna Conklin, heiress to the Fanton cosmetic fortune who died last year of cancer.

  On Sunday, I got back to New York and a telegram was waiting for me on the desk in the downstairs lobby of one of the biggest buildings on Central Park West. A square of yellow page whose message very suddenly made the end of Dan Davis concern me very much. The sort of out-of-the-middle-of-nowhere summons that can send you flying out into the night. And usually does.

  NOON:

  GO WEST WITH DD. GRAND CENTRAL.

  TRACK 17. ONE O'CLOCK P.M. MONDAY.

  CHICAGO BOUND EXPRESS. RIDE SHOTGUN.

  NO AMECHE. CONTACT WILL BE MADE.

  UNCLE SAM

  That was all. But I didn't need a diagram. The Man was asking me to take a train ride, no questions asked. And he wasn't going to phone me on the red-white-and-blue Ameche on my office desk to spell it out. Not just yet. So all I had to do was obey the Man from Uncle and clear out of town. I did.

  Monday, still somewhat in the dark, I was at Track 17 at one o'clock and the Diesel to Chicago was snorting in the long shed and I watched a long dolly-like car with the Maplewood casket on top, load up. Then a tall, quiet man in a porkpie fedora and sunglasses picked me and my Tourister suitcase out of the crowd and gave me the news of the day. I was to be the funeral guard for the mortal remains of the famous Dan Davis and sometime on the train ride before we hit L.A., I would receive the rest of my instructions. As simple as that. Nothing made much sense and from the lack of newspapermen about, and any relatives or studio personnel that might have wanted to wave goodbye handkerchiefs; it was apparent that Davis was riding out in a
certain amount of secrecy. Which didn't make sense. Another thing that didn't add up was this: Davis had died on Friday, Monday was three days after that and he still hadn't been interred. Whether he was a Catholic or not, that bothered me. Which also meant that the famous face and body had to be packed in ice or some such to weather the long ride to his home territory. Again, why hadn't he been flown out?

  But, I only work for the Man. I don't run him.

  And as the only unofficial private investigator who has a personal unknown status with the man who ran the country, I didn't fight about it. So I said goodbye to the porkpie hat who never gave me his name, climbed aboard, got comfortable in the baggage car and made ready to sit out the trip. And now, after a dull uneventful ride, it was Wednesday night and the journey was almost done and nobody—but nobody— had gotten through to me with any further instructions. I was up a tree. Me, the casket and dead Dan Davis. I had no idea what was coming up in L.A.

  Nobody further had gotten in touch with me.

  Not anybody.

  Which is why I have another story to tell you.

  ". . . when the furry little animal jumped

  out of the bag, he really jumped, didn't he?"

  Franchot Tone as Forsythe in

  Lives Of A Bengal Lancer. (1935)

  PASSENGER

  □ The train stopped at Reno about one fifteen in the dark morning. Beyond the tiny window of my car, dull lights glowed in the night. The station was almost desolate and only the lambent glare of neon above the train depot indicated the city-that-never-slept. As tired as I was, I kept a wary eye on the setting. Nobody got on at Reno and only two people got off. One was a fattish, dowdy woman with an array of suitcases and bags. She had all the earmarks of the lady who goes to Reno to get her quickie divorce. The other debarkee was a tall, angular man with a toggle coat and a pullover cap and no luggage. Neither of the two seemed to know each other. Within seconds they had both disappeared into the station proper, the fat lady being led by a hustling taxicab driver who had materialized from seemingly nowhere to help her. I yawned and looked away from my peephole. The City Of San Francisco was already pulling away from the platform, lumbering and purring loudly in its great throat. Reno was a dim memory within seconds. The streamliner roared through the night with a fine gathering of power. In no time at all, it crossed the Nevada border, in the tall shadows of the Sierras, and made its uninterrupted entry into the land of movie stars, the Freeway and sun-bleached existence. I shook the lethargy out of my body and mind and looked at the box that held Dan Davis' mortal remains.

  Life goes on, even with dead Hollywood heroes no longer around to thrill their adoring public with newer, greater films. But I knew the legend would survive. In a million reruns on the boob tube, numberless film festivals and no doubt, the birth of a Davis Cult. One to match the Jimmy Dean, Bogart and Monroe crazes that still persisted all over the movie-going world.

  But there was no real time to think of that. I had to wonder about the President, the reason for my riding shotgun for a dead movie star and just who, what and where my next bit of necessary information was coming from. L.A. was scant hours away now.

  Correction.

  San Francisco was. Which was another part of the mystery. If the Holy Cross Cemetery was in L.A., why was somebody wasting more of my time and Dan Davis' by going the long way around? Why hadn't they booked a train direct to Los Angeles?

  I didn't know. And in the not knowing, lay the mystery. And the problems. And all the questions I didn't have the answers for.

  Beyond the sleek confines of the air-conditioned car, the night was filled with those clackety-clack sounds all trains make as they eat up the miles and pound across railroad ties. For me, the repetitious rhythm seemed to say, over and over again . . . sanfrancisco . . . sanfrancisco . . . sanfrancisco . . . sanfran. . . .

  A new sound, a click of latch, a pullback on the big sliding door to the car turned me around quickly. I stared from my chair at the far end of the compartment. Stepping through the entrance, puffing a little, was a round jolly little man in a blue uniform, billed cap and gleaming brass buttons. Reflexively, my hand had glided up toward my shoulder holster. I checked the movement and relaxed. I had seen this bird before. He had passed inspection on me when the train ride started in Chicago. His name was Goolsby and he seemed to be a conductor. A regular old employee of the line. Thirty years experience shone out of his pink but graying face and his keen little eyes had the frost of authority despite the jovial outer facade. I was reminded of the late Percy Helton of a thousand movies. Goolsby had the same kind of wheezing, piping tone in his voice.

  He came forward, adjusted to the slight pitch of the train, squinted at the Maplewood casket atop its long solid table. Then he looked down at me where I was sitting in my chair and the frosty eyes in the jolly face narrowed even more.

  "So that's Davis," he piped up and not softly.

  "Dan," I said, "not Bette."

  "Do tell." His grunt was sarcastic. "Doesn't mean a damn, does it?"

  "What doesn't mean a damn?"

  "Money, big houses, swimming pool, all those beautiful females. Now, look at him. Boxed for delivery into the ground. Just like any other poor slob."

  He spoke without heat or real vinegar. I smiled up at him, sensing that unbridgeable space that always exists between people-set-up-on-pedestals and the man-in-the-street.

  "Don't be a ghoul, Goolsby. He was a man like any other. Just a little more famous, that's all. And he was a damn good actor and he made a lot of entertaining films. More than you can say for most of them."

  "That so?" He really didn't want an answer. I could see that. He stood before me, resting his pudgy fingers on a gleaming metal punch he had taken almost from force of habit out of his side pocket. "Can't prove it by me. Railroad men don't have time for movies. And they don't show pictures on trains the way they do on airlines."

  "I guess not," I said, dropping the subject.

  Goolsby suddenly yawned and a gold tooth sparkled in his mouth. His left lateral. He seemed surprised by his own tiredness.

  "Excuse me," he apologized. "Been on my feet so damn long, I get out of the habit of sleeping when I should."

  "That's all right."

  "How about you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Sleep, fellow. When do you do it? It's almost two thirty in the morning and you ought to turn in. This box isn't going anywhere, you know. No place except the cemetery."

  I hadn't moved from my chair. The big Maple-wood box shone like shoe polish behind me. I eyed the little man before me and further decided that he was perfectly harmless. And all that he seemed to be. But I've been in the people-not-what-they-seem-to-be racket too long to get careless at my age. Which was why I hadn't stirred, keeping him directly in front of me.

  "Don't worry about me, old timer. Just trot on back to your own bunk and leave me be. We'll be in Frisco soon enough. Plenty of time to sleep when I get there."

  He grunted again, stopped fiddling with the punch and checked the wrist watch on his right hand. He was obviously left-handed, which probably didn't mean a thing, except my old detective habits are hard to break.

  "Damn near," he agreed. "About two hours more. Suit yourself, Mr. Noon. I'll be moseying along—"

  That's what he said.

  That's what he started to do.

  That's what I expected him to do.

  What I didn't expect was the sight of him, suddenly stepping back, dropping his punch, forgetting the watch, and the little eyes in his face suddenly popping with an incredible, nameless terror that literally opened up his face like a new book. That and the silly way his mouth came apart and the gold tooth sparkled like a star. And the abrupt, deathly pale of his pinkish skin.

  It was like the old gag about seeing ghosts.

  I rocked forward in my chair, got up, started to say something, then the years of sixth sense training, turned me around like a spinning barber chair. To see what Goolsby
had seen just past my left shoulder.

  I saw.

  It was a scene from a nightmare.

  Just a few feet from my chair, the Maplewood box was not what it had been. The heavy lid was now flung back, resting on its smoothly oiled hinging and rising from its padded, gloomy interior was the tall, burly body of Dan Davis! In a heart-stopping flash of insanity, I saw the Davis face, the dead-white flesh, the blank, staring eyes, the utterly rigid and mechanical demeanor of something from a Frankenstein movie, something from one of those machine-made Universal horror pictures from the last generation.

  It wasn't laughable, it wasn't silly, it wasn't funny at all. It was gooseflesh and shudders and you could go mad or your heart could stop beating like the snap of a thumb against a forefinger. Behind me, Goolsby let out a half-choked scream. A rising, gurgling, pitiful bleat of complete terror that echoed hollowly against the counterpoint of the train wheels beating rhythmically over the tracks and ties in the night.

  As shocked as I was, as ghastly the apparition rising before me, I did what I had to do. I went for my gun. The .45 nestled in the crook of my left shoulder, where it had been for years, always ready to bail me out of trouble. And sudden death.

  And unholy, inexplicable terror.

  Goolsby was still moaning like a frightened child, Dan Davis kept on coming, reaching for me, his face without expression and I was dropping back, fighting to get my gun and to hold onto my sanity.

  When it happened.

  All the lights in the baggage car went out, plunging the compartment into darkness. It was an electrifying, lightning-like thrust even deeper into the part of one's mind that is still occupied by ghosts, goblins, hoodoos, witchcraft and that terrible piece of psychology known as fear of the unknown.

  But I had no more time left to think about it. To think about anything. Like presidents, weird assignments, problematical theories about riding shotgun for dead movie stars in the first place. Like—anything.

  The world exploded like a star in the night.

  Taking me, the setting, and the unreality with it.