Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

Donaldson, his face white where it wasn’t bearded, looked at me with those green death-ray eyes full of contempt.

“Excuse me,” I said to the crowd.

And I walked off the stage.

Kathy, running, caught up with me at the mouth of the down escalator.

“You were right about that jerk,” she said.

“I’ve sure been keeping my cool at this ’con,” I said, feeling ashamed and silly. I got on the escalator. She got on behind me.

“Tom Sardini’s right,” she admitted, putting her head on my shoulder, talking into my ear. “You are the talk of the convention.”

“As in, ‘What an embarrassing ass that guy Mallory is’?”

She shrugged. “Some of it runs like that.”

“Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Wait till this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “When I publicly announce Roscoe Kane ghosted the Hammett book.”

I knocked on Mae Kane’s door. Kathy was with me, feeling a little awkward, she said, about meeting Roscoe Kane’s recent widow. We were about to go out for some lunch, but I dragged her along with me to room 714, first. I needed to check in with Mae, as I’d promised Tom Sardini I would; had to make sure she’d be at the PWA awards ceremony at two o’clock.

Of course she didn’t answer right away; the do-not-disturb sign still hung on the knob, and she’d told me herself she’d gotten gun-shy from media people and well-meaning fans bugging her-and Tom had said she wasn’t answering her phone for anybody.

But I knew she was in there, so I kept at it.

“Mae, it’s Mal,” I said as I knocked.

And finally she cracked the door open; the Joan Crawford eyes were perfectly mascaraed and the red filigree largely gone. She smiled at me over the nightlatch chain, and she said, huskily, “Mal… I’d hoped you’d come by. But it’s a bad time….”

Then she noticed Kathy and her expression turned cool. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. To neither one of us in particular; just to the air.

“This is Kathy Wickman,” I said. “A good friend of mine. Kathy, this is Mae Kane.”

Kathy stepped forward and held out her hand, but with the door still only cracked open, nightlatch chain still in place, the well-intentioned gesture fell flat.

Kathy withdrew the hand, smiled sympathetically and said, “I’m very sorry about your husband. He’ll be missed.”

“Well, I’ll miss him,” Mae said, defensively, as if Kathy had implied she wouldn’t.

“Mae,” I said, wondering if she’d been hitting the gin, “are you all right?”

She found a warm smile for me. “Fine. Just kind of… tied up. Can you stop by later?” Kathy was obviously excluded from the latter invitation.

“Sure,” I said, and then Mae looked startled, and suddenly her face disappeared from the cracked door, which closed, abruptly, and the sound of the nightlatch being unchained hastily was followed by the door opening wide.

And Gregg Gorman was standing there.

Wearing, ironically enough, a black Noir T-shirt.

He pointed a finger at Kathy, thrust a finger at Kathy.

“What are you doing with him? ” he demanded.

He meant me, of course; he sounded like a Ku Klux Klan kleagle who found his daughter Ellie Lou listening to Johnny Mathis records.

Kathy raised her eyebrows in that equivalent of a shrug and said, “Just along for the ride. We were on our way to lunch.”

“Care to join us, Gregg?” I asked. “We’ll find a place with a trough.”

Some ’con attendees (badges pinned to chests) came wandering down the hall, talking about how terrific G. Roger Donaldson was. Mindful of a scene, Gorman made a hurried gesture toward Mae’s room. Mae was in there somewhere, presumably; she had disappeared from view.

We didn’t heed his gesture.

He tried again. “Step in,” he said. Forcing a civil tone into his thin, unpleasant voice. “I want to talk to you two.”

I looked at Kathy and she made a shrugging face at me again and I made one back, and we walked into Mae’s room.

Mae was standing in the bathroom, her face ashen; standing next to the tub where Roscoe drowned.

“Well, Gorman,” I said, “visiting the scene of the crime, I see. Morbid curiosity, or a return trip?”

He held two vaguely dirty palms up, like a referee. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear.”

“What are you doing here, Gorman? What’s he doing here, Mae?”

She stepped out of the bathroom; the arcs of silver hair swung with the rhythm of her body. Her supple body, as Gat Garson would say. Which today was sheathed in black, a clingy, attractive black; widow’s weeds weren’t what they used to be.

“Mal,” she said. “I know how you feel about Gregg. I wanted to avoid a confrontation…”

“What’s he doing here, Mae? What are you doing here, Gorman?”

Gorman shrugged; he was like a kid caught cheating on a test in school. “Business.”

Mae chimed in brightly. “It’s about Roscoe’s books. He wants to do a boxed set of Roscoe’s first six Gat Garsons. I suggested you for the introductions-”

“But,” Gorman said, picking up the ball, “I told her you’d probably turn me down. ’Cause you hate my guts.”

“I don’t hate your guts. I’m not that selective.”

Gorman’s face turned beet red, everywhere that wasn’t covered by his unsanitary goatee; oddly, his drinker’s nose seemed a lighter shade of red than the rest of his face.

But the anger I’d generated-or thought I’d generated-didn’t get vented on me.

Instead, he whirled toward Kathy and pointed a finger gunlike at her and said, “You little bitch, what’s the idea of-”

I took him by the small of the arm and walked him a couple of steps like a friend I was counseling; he looked at me with big eyes and open mouth, wondering what the hell.

“I’m having a bad weekend, Gregg,” I said, calmly. “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown or something. I’m punching people in the stomach, hitting people with garbage can lids, walking off panels in a huff-in a minute and a huff, as Groucho would say. I’m feeling so out-of-sorts, I’m liable to start breaking you up into kindling if you continue going ’round calling people ‘bitch’ and ‘asshole’ and the like.”

And I smiled and let him go, and he pulled away from me, gave me an indignant look. “You are cracking up. Do you know who you’re fooling with? Do you know?”

“I know,” I said. “I was in the alley last night, with your angels who deal in dirty pictures. They’re mob-dirty, too, but I don’t think anybody’s going to kill me just because I’m not nice to you, Gregg.”

“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “Don’t be too sure.”

Mae’s Joan Crawford eyes went ultra-wide. “Gregg! What are you saying ! I won’t have you talking to Mal that way-he’s my friend, and he was my husband’s protege, and-”

“Sorry, Mae,” Gorman said, the anger still pulsing in his red face. “Just lost my temper a second.”

Kathy, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, probably because she was scared out of her skin, found the presence to say, in clipped tones, “You wanted to ask me something, Mr. Gorman. What is it?”

Gorman smiled, pretending to swallow his anger; but there was too much of it to take in in one gulp. He was wholly unconvincing when he went to her and patted her shoulder, paternally, saying, “Mr. Gorman. What nonsense is that? We’re friends, we been friends for years. I’m sorry I snapped at you, baby.”

“Don’t call me ‘baby,’ ” Kathy said. Through her teeth.