Brett Halliday - Blue Murder

“Capp introduced her by that name. You said you didn’t trust Capp.”

Baruch pulled at his beard. “I didn’t ask her to give me fingerprints—”

“Did you talk to anybody who knows her?”

“No! I didn’t take an ad in Variety to announce the picture, either. I was working under the table.”

“Then let’s try it this way. Are you sure the man is really the congressman? The hat, the white hair, the white suit. Those are props.”

“Mike, all I know for absolute sure is that I made a movie, called Domestic Relations, with some cute scenes. A lot of sex, a pretty good story, a fair amount of laughs.”

“What happened to it after you finished it?”

“We picked out the slide frames, to get a good synopsis, and stuck it in the vault, along with everything else. I thought that was what they were after last night. I used an actress from the Coast, and I got told this morning, a little late, that she’s Pussy Rizzo’s part-time lady. She had the run of the place while we were shooting, and that’s how they knew how to get in and out, how big a charge they needed to blow the vault.”

“Is that your own label on this can?”

“It looks like it. I don’t understand it, but I don’t understand a lot of things. Is this the time for a long explanation, Mike? Tucker’s your responsibility. Don’t you want to dash off and stop him before he does something he’ll be sorry about? I like her, damn it. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

He picked up a grease pencil from the table and made a savage X in the air.

“Why do you really think she made the picture?” Shayne said.

“To stop the buildup before it starts! He’s got a committee behind him, Shayne, six names that would curl your hair. Rightwing? Man, they’re over to the right of Adolf Hitler. They need a front, and they’re betting that Tucker can go all the way. Mike, will you get off your ass and move?”

Shayne heard the wail of sirens. “There they are. Let’s see if they have any news for us.”

The 16-mm. footage Baruch had shot at the shopping center had rewound itself on the core. Shayne snapped it off the spindle and took it with him.

The police converged on the Warehouse in three cars and a police helicopter from the Watson Park heliport. These various noises from outside had alarmed Baruch’s crew and actors, and one of the naked youths was hastily pulling on his pants. Tim Rourke and Lib, using locker-room benches in the unlighted set, were having coffee.

“Armand,” Lib called, “could you use a reporter in the picture? This is Tim Rourke, from the News, and he’s interested.”

“I don’t think they let people make pictures in jail,” Baruch said gloomily.

“Jail!” Lib exclaimed, starting up.

The sirens expired in front of the building. A moment later, Will Gentry’s party boiled onto the sound stage and fanned out, their guns showing. Gentry himself followed more slowly.

“Armand Baruch?” he said, picking out the movie producer by his robe. “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. It’s my duty to warn you—”

“There’s been a script change, Will,” Shayne said. “Armand’s decided to work with us. He likes Mrs. Tucker and he doesn’t want her to be killed.”

“He’s a bit late,” Gentry said dryly. “Apparently it’s already happened.”

The car had been seen entering a dirt road in the Everglades.

The Seminole proprietor of a small roadside stand selling cold drinks saw it go by. It slowed abruptly and backed up to make the turn. There were two persons inside, a man and a woman. It was a Detroit-made convertible, with a belly too low, the Indian knew, to get over that rutted road. He waited in some amusement, expecting to see them come limping out, leaving a trail of oil from a sprung pan.

A shot was fired. When the car emerged, minutes later, it carried only one person, the driver. Doing a citizen’s duty, the Indian had written down the license number.

“What was it, Will?” Shayne said. “KL 1905?”

“That’s it. A Pontiac, the property of Congressman Nicholas Tucker. And that makes three cars we’re trying to find.”

“You’ll find this one in Tucker’s garage. There’ll be bloodstains on the carpet. Where does the road go to?”

“It dead-ends at the water. The rangers are meeting us with a boat and grappling equipment. That’s why I brought the chopper.” He looked at Shayne more closely. “It seems to me I’m picking up something. You don’t think we’re going to come up with a body?”

“I think it’s damned unlikely. I want you to look at some film footage. Armand, can you screen it so we can all see it at once?”

“If I rewind it.”

“Then never mind. I’ll tell you about it, Will. Armand shot it from a van they use for this kind of work. Everybody tells me what a skilled moviemaker he is, but this was very clumsy and amateurish. It’s supposed to show Gretchen Tucker meeting her husband at a shopping center to discuss the terms of surrender. The husband slugs her, or maybe he doesn’t. We don’t know which, because a car’s in the way at the crucial moment. They get in his convertible, a Pontiac, and take off, with Gretchen seeming to be semiconscious in the front seat. I say seeming because they’re heading into the sun and light’s shining from the windshield. We never get a good look at either face. The man’s wearing a white suit and a certain kind of hat, and there seems to be a scar on his face, in the same spot where Tucker wears his. We get one good shot of the license plate, so that part of the scene is probably genuine.”

“Lib, honey,” Baruch said, “go in the office and call Manny Cohen. I want him out here right away.”

“I even wonder about that Seminole,” Shayne continued. “Will, how long has it been since you ran into a homicide with this kind of tricky circumstantial detail? I’ll bet you a steak dinner that both ends were staged. This is a movie studio, and there’s no problem getting actors. What we have to find out now is where the real Gretchen and Nicholas Tucker were at nine thirty this morning.”

Baruch’s first reaction had been alarm, but now he seemed genuinely puzzled. “I don’t dig you, Mike. You really think I set up that scene?”

“Tucker himself used to be an actor. He’s played a total of four scenes with me, and he was acting hard the whole time, using dialogue he worked out in advance. Gretchen Tucker was an actress when he married her. I did a long scene in a motel last night with Maureen Neal. She was faking every minute. When I showed up at your party last night, you knew who I was and exactly what I wanted. All you were doing was feeding me lines.”

“That’s true, to a certain extent, but I couldn’t throw you out, could I?”

“If you’d wanted to stop Tucker, or the actor portraying Tucker, from driving off with his wife, or the actress portraying his wife—”

“Mike, that’s ridiculous! I was there when he drove in. I couldn’t move the van to a different part of the lot so I could get a better picture. People don’t move around in those lots. They park, and that’s it. He picked a bad place, but it was good enough so I could shoot it. What’s my incentive?”

“Money, Armand. I’m finally beginning to see how you people worked it. Did you actually expose any motion picture film at all? Or just set up the actors and take stills?”

“Mike, listen! I thought of that, but the film was my protection. In the mood you’re in now you won’t believe this, but I was hoping all along that the deal would go sour so I could release the picture. It would have done turn-away business.”