Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

“Anyway,” Kathy said, “I guess your fair-to-middling Chicago savvy is supposed to fool me into accepting this basement as a restaurant, and these subway walls as atmosphere.”

“Are you really put off by this place?”

Wry grin #459. “Not at all. I love it, actually. It’s just not my idea of atmosphere. I think the word is more like… ambiance.”

Our beers arrived just in time for us to toast the joint.

“Spoken like a true editor of Noir magazine,” I said.

Her expression shifted; the shadow of the wry smile remained, but she was suddenly, vaguely, somber.

“I ran into my publisher,” she said, “when I was on my way down to meet you in the lobby, for dinner.”

“I ran into him, too. I punched him in the stomach, actually.”

She nearly did a spit-take; she said, “No fooling?”

“Hey, I’m not proud of it, really. I don’t go around punching people.”

Revving up the wry smile again, she said, “Why not? Gat Garson did.”

“Gat Garson’s a fun character in a book. But a less than sterling role model.”

“What happened between you and Gregg, anyway?”

“We just did some name calling, followed by an attempt to bury the hatchet-in each other’s heads. The usual. What was your conversation with him like?”

She paused, then said, “He stopped me in the hall and invited me up to a cocktail party in his room tonight.”

“When?”

“The ’con’s showing the first movie version of The Maltese Falcon at midnight, the 1931 version with Ricardo Cortez, and Gregg’s never seen it, so he’s rounding some people up to go and then after go back to his room for expensive nightcaps.”

“You’re sure you’re not the only one invited?”

She laughed, a little. “Gregg doesn’t have the courage to come on to me, not overtly. He likes to play little games. He’s into a more paternal trip, actually.”

“That’d make it incest.”

“No, really. Those little passes he makes, if I took him up on one of ’em, he’d fold up like a folding chair. He’s married, you know-his wife’s ill and he treats her like a princess. His one redeeming trait, it would seem. I’d also guess he’s faithful to her.”

“Doesn’t sound like the Gregg Gorman I know and love to hate.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Mal, and nobody’s perfectly rotten, either. Even Gregg. Of course, I could be wrong about his being a faithful hubby. Still, I don’t think he’d fool with me; I’m too valuable to him- Noir ’s a feather in his cap, and, not to sound too very egotistical, I am Noir . And, as Gregg might say, you don’t defecate where you dine.”

“That’s not exactly how he’d put it.”

“True. But, shit, I’m much more elegant than Gregg.”

This time I smiled wryly, and we toasted beer glasses again.

“He also warned me,” she said guardedly, “about hanging out with you. He said he’d prefer it if I didn’t.”

“Is that how he put it?”

“Not exactly. That’s the elegant version. But he says you’re just using me.”

“I’d kind of like to, at that.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, now, Mal. Here are our salads.”

We began eating, and I said, “What did he mean by that, exactly?”

“What?”

“What did he mean, I’m ‘using’ you?”

“Oh! To get at him.”

“To get at him, how?”

“He said you’re trying to pin something on him. That’s all he said.” She shrugged and returned to her salad.

“He means Roscoe’s murder,” I said.

She looked up from her salad, gave me a sharp, stunned look. “Murder?”

I sighed and poked at my salad. “Yeah. Murder.”

And I told her about it.

“Hell!” she said. “You’re playing detective, aren’t you? Just like your books…”

“Oh, please, don’t start.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everybody and his duck thinks I’m poking around Roscoe’s death looking for a book to write. That isn’t it at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“Come on, Kathy-Roscoe Kane was my friend. He was… more than that. He was… well, as other people have put it… my mentor.”

“He was your hero.”

“Yeah. He was my hero.”

“And a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“Bullshit. If the assistant coroner would’ve listened to me, and brought the cops in, I’d’ve done a fast fade by now. You think murder’s my idea of a good time? God!”

Eyeing me with poorly hidden suspicion, fork in her salad jabbing at the side of the bowl, missing the few remaining shreds of lettuce entirely, she said, “ Are you using me? Or planning to use me, to spy on Gorman or something?”

“It hadn’t even occurred to me.”

“Good.”

“Though it isn’t a bad idea.”

She smiled in spite of herself; one of her rare open-mouth smiles that showed a little too much gum, like Norma Jean Baker before she and Hollywood conspired to invent Marilyn Monroe.

“You,” she said, “are incorrigible.”

I shrugged. “Then don’t incorrige me.”

She smiled some more, but her smile was back to its usual wry-pixie self, and she shook her head and pushed her now-empty salad bowl aside. She said, “If you want some help, I might give it to you.”

“I’ll give it some thought. If I think of something worthwhile, I might ask.”

“I might answer. But you got to promise me something…”

“Okay.”

“Promise me you won’t turn this into a book.”

“All right.”

The pizza came, steaming hot and smelling very, very good. Kathy’d never had Chicago-style pizza before-except the pale shadow of a Pizza Hut variety-and she was an instant convert. Saucy, cheesy, with a pastrylike sweet crust, Gino’s pizza was an Italian-American atonement for the Mafia.

And nearly as fatal: one small pizza had stuffed us both and we sat and sipped a second beer, each sip painful.

“I never ate so much in my life,” Kathy said.

“You’ll be over it in a week,” I said. “Kathy, is something bothering you besides a full stomach?”

She sighed, nodded; said, “You don’t, uh… really suspect Gregg of…” She couldn’t say it.

I smiled. “The editor of a magazine devoted to fictional crime and violence, and you can’t say that simple word found in so many titles of the books you review: murder.”

She shivered. “Fantasy’s one thing… this is quite apart. Very disturbing.”

“Finding Roscoe’s body was no picnic, either.”

“Do you? Suspect Gregg, I mean?”

“I suspect him of something. Not murder-not yet, anyway.”

“What do you suspect him of?”

“Fraud.”

“How so?”

“The Hammett book. I think it’s a hoax.”

“You can’t be serious….”

“Dead. I think it was ghosted. Probably very cleverly, very well-ghosted. But ghosted.”

“Who by , for heaven’s sake?”

“There’s a couple of possibilities. Tim Culver’s the obvious suspect-he’s the modern ‘prime proponent’ of the Hammett style. His live-in-lady, Cynthia Crystal, had access to the Hammett papers-maybe including other fragments that might’ve proved useful. Also, Cynthia’s a fine writer, with respect for Hammett’s work-her work bears his influence, in a way. She’s a candidate for ghost herself. Or her and Culver together…”

“So you think one, or both, of them-”

“No. I think it was somebody else.”

“ Who? ”

“Who do you think I’d think it’d be?”

She thought. “You can’t be serious!”

“You said that before.”

“Surely you don’t suspect…”