Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

She stroked my arm. “That’s not true. You’re trying to solve that murder, resolve that life. You’re not trying to hold onto Roscoe Kane in some sick, subconscious way. You’re just following that sweet, silly romantic nature of yours-trying to make sense out of things, make life-and death- mean something. That may be a hopeless pursuit, but it’s a… noble one.”

“You talk like a character in a G. Roger Donaldson book,” I said, with a small smile.

The one-sided smile she gave me back looked sad in the half-light. “Maybe I’ve read too many mystery novels, too.”

I hugged her. “You’re the only real thing that’s happened to me at this place. Everything else is like a bad dream.”

She nibbled at my ear. “You said I was a dream come true, in bed.”

“Wet dream come true, I meant to say.”

“Gat, you say such sweetly tacky things….”

We stood and looked at each other; smiled at each other. Walked hand in hand back to the bed and crawled under the covers. Cuddled like spoons.

“I don’t know, Kathy,” I said to her back. “I think maybe I’ve just been running a scam on myself, a bigger scam even than Gorman’s.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “But that you believe is real. Gorman’s scam.”

“Sure. And I believe Roscoe probably ghosted that book for him; I’ll know for sure when I read it.”

She studied me.

I went on. “If Roscoe did ghost it, Gorman obviously wouldn’t want me, or anybody, poking around where Roscoe Kane is concerned, ’cause the scam might come out in the open-where, as Gat Garson would say, it’d unravel like a cheap sweater.”

“Wouldn’t it eventually come out anyway?”

“Timing here is everything. If the book goes to publication, and a controversy follows, so do major sales for the book. Years ago that happened with something called The Search for Bridey Murphy , which you’re too young to remember. But if the controversy precedes publication-if in fact, the hoax is exposed before publication-the book’s dead in the water. Pardon the expression. And so’s Gorman.”

“Wouldn’t people still want to read the thing?”

“Some people would; but not many. And it probably wouldn’t even go to press-the publisher would be too embarrassed about the incident. Remember the Clifford Irving/Howard Hughes ‘autobiography’?”

She turned over and faced me. “I see what you mean. And Gregg might’ve gotten concerned about his ghost, Kane, getting talkative… Kane was drinking heavily again, after all, and in public-and you did say Kane was talking wild in the bar, last night….”

I nodded. “And Gorman could’ve thought Roscoe’s loose lips might sink the Hammett ship-yeah. That’s a real possibility….”

“You’re not going to stop looking into this, are you, Mal?”

Bobby Darin was singing “Mack the Knife” in the background: Oh, the shark, babe …

“No,” I said. “I don’t have it in me to let this lie. I wish I did.”

“I’m glad you don’t.”

“I’m afraid, Kathy.”

“What of? Gorman and his goons?”

“Watch it,” I cautioned her. “Now you’re starting to sound like some dame in a Gat Garson novel.”

I motioned over at the cover painting against the wall; I’d turned it face out when we came in, earlier. In the half-light the girl on the Murder Me Again, Doll cover looked frighteningly like Kathy.

“After that scene in the alley,” she said, “I feel like a character in a Gat Garson novel.”

I put a hand on an ice-cream scoop. “You do at that.”

She smiled one-sidedly and said, “And I suppose you have Gat Garson’s recuperative powers?”

“Sexually speaking you mean?”

“Sexually speaking is exactly what I mean.”

“When Gat was asked something very similar, in Death Is a Dame , he said, ‘Baby, you could raise the dead.’ ”

“Why don’t you show me what happens next in a Kane novel, after such racy double-entendres ensue?”

“I can’t.”

“Oh?”

“No, doll. See, at this point Kane always fades out….”

Pretty soon I was being wakened by a light going on in the bathroom. I opened my eyes-or anyway, one eye-and saw Kathy in there, fully dressed, freshening up at the sink.

“Are you going somewhere?” I asked.

I gave her a start; wide-eyed, she said, “I, uh… need to go to Gorman’s party. Nightcaps after the movie, remember?”

I sat up in bed. “Why are you doing that, for Christ’s sake?”

She stood in the bathroom doorway, a silhouette against the light behind her. “He’s still my publisher, after all.”

I thought about that.

Then said, “What are you up to?”

“I have to make an appearance,” she said. “Noir ’s important to me….”

She was passing by the bed, and I latched onto her wrist. Not hard. But hard enough to stop her.

“You’re not that crass,” I said. “You’re pissed about what those angels of his did to us, and you’re up to something. What? ”

She pulled her arm away from my grip.

“Go to sleep,” she said.

“What are you up to?”

“Can I have a key so I can come back and join you, later? Or would you rather I slept in my own room?”

“Don’t leave, Kathy. Just stay put.”

Very firmly she said, “Can I have a key, Mal?”

“There’s one on the dresser. Take it. Want me to go with you?”

“So you can punch Gregg in the stomach again? No thanks. Trust me on this, Mal.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head no.

“Well,” I said. “Have fun.”

Wry smile #892. “See what I can do. Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“Before we got… sidetracked, you said… said you were afraid. What of?”

“Oh. Nothing.”

“Come on. Spill.”

I shrugged. “Finding Roscoe’s killer, if there is such a person. It’s not going to make anything right, you know. That’s when it’s really going to hit me. That Roscoe’s dead and all my fancy footwork didn’t really do him any good.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause it isn’t true. Do you really think Gat Garson would want this mystery left unsolved?”

I smiled uneasily. “I guess not. Or Roscoe either.”

“Right. I’ll see you a little later.”

And she was gone.

I tried to go back to sleep, without much luck. I checked the TV, and there was an old Bowery Boys movie on- Dig That Uranium -and I watched it and, God bless Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey, I forgot my problems (except during the interminable commercials, during one spate of which I slipped some trousers on and went out and got a couple of cans of 7-Up from the machine down the hall).

I was still watching when the door opened and Kathy came back in. She had something under her arm.

“What you got there?” I asked, sitting in my shorts, Leo Gorcey beating Huntz Hall over the head with his hat, on the glowing tube behind me.

“You said you thought you’d read too many mystery novels,” she said, tossing something at me. “Think you got it in you to read one more?”

It was a manuscript, in a brown folder. A photocopy of a manuscript, that is; running over two hundred pages.

“Be done with that by morning, will you?” she said, getting ready for bed by climbing out of her clothes and crawling in.

On the title page of the manuscript, it said, “ The Secret Emperor by Dashiell Hammett.”

She snored.

I read.