Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

“And that’s where I came in,” I said.

“So that’s why you’re here,” Willie said on the tape. “I needed insurance for my insurance, you know? Someone who would help finger Ray Brady for my murder. And you want to know how I feel about setting up Ray? It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Ask Linda to tell you about Ray if she hasn’t already. Or if that ain’t enough for you, go talk to a few people Ray and his goons have pushed around.” There was another cough. “So there you have it, Charlie. Think it over and I know you’ll do the right thing.” A laugh. “You might say I’m betting on it.”

And then the tape and Willie Boyd fell silent forever. Linda looked at me, twisting the wedding band on her finger.

“The night before he killed himself we went to the Rendezvous for dinner and took a walk along the river and then we came home and made love. It was wonderful. It was like it was when we first married, back when we thought the world was ours for the taking. I didn’t want to let him go. I told him it wouldn’t work, that the police would figure it out. But Willie said he would make it work.” When she looked up at me her eyes blazed. “And that’s exactly what he did.”

“He pulled the trigger twice,” I said.

She nodded with a grim and defiant pride. “People always underestimated him. Back in school you all called him Wee Willie as if he was a sideshow freak instead of a boy. Then people started calling him Bad Luck Boyd like he was born to be a loser. To hell with all of you. Deep down inside, where it counts, Willie was always a winner. My husband was a hell of a man.”

It was my turn to close my eyes, trying to imagine the effort it must have taken Willie to hold on to the gun after the first shot seared his chest and then to lift the barrel to his head and squeeze the trigger again. I thought of him on that football practice field being knocked down and picking himself up over and over again. And what about Ray Brady? Calling him an innocent man would have bordered on the ridiculous. I thought of the girls he pimped from his clubs, the women he’d beaten and raped, the faces he’d slashed with razors, the corpses he’d strewn across three states. For twenty-five years, Ray Brady had been on a winning streak, but it was about to end.

“You’re right,” I told Linda. “Willie was a hell of a man.”

On the tape Willie had said he was betting that I would do the “right” thing. As I left the Boyds’ house for the last time, I wasn’t sure that I’d call framing a man for murder the “right” thing to do. But I knew that for once, Willie Boyd’s luck had held.

Copyright (c); 2005 by Timothy Williams.

Robert Levinson’s latest novel, Ask a Dead Man (Five Star), drew this praise at the end of a starred review in Publishers Weekly. “This is a dense, dark, beautifully wrought tale of love and betrayal, sin and retribution, offering serious suspense, terrific twists, and full-blooded characters. Levinson may not have an Irish name, but he carries the soul of the Irish poets in his pen and in his heart — only a dead man wouldn’t relish this read.”

“You come back, you’ll be arrested for murder. Trial. Prison. Maybe the death penalty. Everything you’ve avoided all these years.” I told this to Alain De Guerre, but the Frenchman rejected my well-meant reminder the way France turns its back on almost everything American be-sides jazz, beautiful women, and Woody Allen. And Jerry Lewis, still, I suppose.

I told this to Alain De Guerre and he said, “ Oui, but I must, Neil. When I have explained everything to you, you will understand. You will help me. You will be so glad you did. We will collaborate and you will have an even better book than the one that became my brilliant film.”

“Brilliant, but it wasn’t my novel, Alain, not when you got through with it, not The Fatty Arbuckle Affair.”

“So brilliant, then why did the jury at Cannes choose instead a putrid piece of overripe dog poop by, by—? I cannot bring myself to say his name even, Neil.” The wonder man of the French cinema sighed and went silent for a moment, then, “If there had been no book by Neil Gulliver, there would be no film for me to realize. Your work, my old friend. I, merely humbled to bring it to the silver screen in all its glory.”

I visualized him with a hand at his heart, bowing his head in false humility.

I said, “Your screenplay, rewriting Fatty as a woman? A woman, Alain?”

“Not any woman. The woman. Deneuve. Deneuve was available. Who dares say no to casting Deneuve? Directing Deneuve? A favorite even of the lamented M. Truffaut. Le Dernier Metro? Le Dernier Metro, Neil.” Truffaut’s name, said like a god. The film title cited like a fresh Commandment down from Heaven.

“Soaking wet, Deneuve weighed less than one of Fatty Arbuckle’s thighs.”

He discredited my comment with an indecipherable noise. “You exaggerate, Neil. We did not show Deneuve’s thighs at all, not even in Deneuve’s scenes with Adjani.”

“The scenes that weren’t anywhere in my novel, those scenes, Alain?”

“Neil, Neil, Neil... What is fiction if not an excuse to present the truth as it should be? Can you come get me at the airport? Or, a limousine? A stretch with the wet bar, maybe? Your bosses at the newspaper, they still give you a fat expense account, is so?”

I sighed and said, “You didn’t hear me a minute ago, Alain? You’re on every airport list of wanted felons—”

“Non, non, non... Accused wanted felon.”

“You’ll be recognized and arrested the second you set foot on U. S. soil.”

“I will be disguised, traveling on falsified papers, but you’re right to be concerned for me. I will instead enter from Canada. Better safety than sorrow.”

There was no dissuading him.

I said, finally, “Give me one good reason now why any of this makes sense.”

“Jean Harlow,” he said without hesitation.

“Jean Harlow?”

“The Platinum Blonde Bombshell. The great icon of the silver screen many years before the great Marilyn.”

“I know who Jean Harlow is, Alain.”

“But The Jean Harlow Affair, yet to be written... You know of her husband, also, who they say committed suicide three days after their marriage?”

“Paul Bern.”

“Oui. Only this Paul Bern, he did not commit suicide, as always believed, mon ami. I have done my work home. This Paul Bern, he was murdered.”

“Rumored and written about for years, Alain. Like the one about him supposedly being shot by his ex-wife, Dorothy Millette, who appeared out of nowhere after several years and—”

“A distraction. A bit player walking through a scene. But I have found out the real truth. This Paul Bern, he was murdered by—” He laid in a long pause. “Paul Bern was murdered by—” Again, a pause. “Jean Harlow herself.” Revealed like the climax of an Agatha Christie novel, as if he expected me to swoon at the revelation.

I said, “Clearly, you don’t need me to write your fiction, Alain.”

“The real truth has been buried for years. Also the evidence of what I’m telling you.”

“I suppose you know where that is?”

“Yes. Why else am I preparing to risk everything and come to America? You will help me to get the evidence. You will expose the truth to the world in your newspaper, then you will write The Jean Harlow Affair and I will realize the film.”

“I see now where this is going, Alain. You’ll get caught. You’ll go on trial. Your lawyers will get you off by pleading insanity.”