Stuart Kaminsky - High Midnight

From the corner of my eye, I could see that Cooper was looking at me as if I were an alien life form. Then some touch of recognition appeared on his face. “I get something like that when I drive a fast car on a narrow road,” he said. I nodded, and we were quiet for a while.

I explained that I thought the visit might convince Lombardi to lay off. There was no guarantee, but it had been worth the effort. Cooper gave me the name of the town in Utah where he was going for the next few days. I didn’t write it down. I’d remember.

I dropped Cooper at the Goldwyn Studios, where he had an appointment with the people who were doing the wardrobe for the Gehrig movie. He reached through the car window to take my hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

“My job and pleasure, Mr. Cooper,” I said.

“Call me Coop,” he returned and strode away.

My confidence in front of Cooper was not matched by my nagging questions. Someone had tried to kill me and had put my kitchen knife in Costello. Even if we had convinced Lombardi, and I doubted if we had, he might have no control over the squat man or any of the others who had an interest in seeing to it that Cooper made High Midnight.

I went back to the Farraday Building. Shelly was sitting in his own dental chair, eyes inches away from the dental journal in front of him. He heard me come in and leaped out of the chair, removing his cigar.

“Now, Toby,” he said. “I can explain about last night.”

“Forget it,” I said, going past him and examining the coffee pot. It had something in it that looked like silt. I poured it into a cup that looked as if it had been cleaned within the decade. “Last night when you left the Big Bear Bar, a guy followed you, a big guy. Did you see him?”

Relieved, Shelly pushed his glasses back on his nose and said, “Right, yes, a big guy. I got into my car and he watched me. There wasn’t anyplace to hide on the street. Then another guy who had been in the bar came up behind him.”

“Squat guy, looked like a brick?”

“Right,” beamed Shelly. “That was all I saw. I pulled away. They stayed there talking.”

“Shel,” I said, sipping the sludge, “that big guy’s partner was killed last night, a knife in his back and his body left in my room. It could have been you. Maybe it should have been.”

Shelly wiped his hands on his smock and looked at the door as if the killer were right behind me.

“Being a dentist may not be as exciting as being a detective,” I said, pouring the rest of the glue into the spit sink, “but it is safer. Stick to the reconstruction of Mr. Stange’s mouth. It will stand as a memorial to your true calling.”

Shelly nodded morosely. I left him to think about it and went into my office to make a phone call or two. Call number one was to Mickey Fargo. There was no answer at what might have been a hall phone. I decided to try for him anyway. Shelly hid in his dental journal as I came out. We didn’t talk.

Tall Mickey Fargo lived in a building on Normandie not far from Slauson. The building was another one of those that were slapped up fast to absorb the people who were streaming into Los Angeles in spite of the war scare. The defense plants, airplane factories, boat yards and oil wells were promising easy money, and I knew how much people were willing to risk for easy money that seldom turned out to be so easy.

A guy about sixty-five or seventy and a woman the same age sat in wooden kitchen chairs on the front stoop of the building. I made my way through them and found Mickey’s mailbox. The card on it read, Tall Mickey Fargo, King of Deadgulch. Mickey or someone had drawn a steer skull in the corner. There was no bell, but it was easy to find the right door. I knocked, half-expecting to get no answer and considering the easiest way to break in and look around. But a voice answered my knock, and I recognized it as Mickey Fargo’s.

“Coming,” he said, and a few seconds later the door opened.

He was wearing an old denim shirt and dark slacks. A big wide belt with a massive silver buckle tried to hold up his stomach.

“You’re the guy who messed up my fall yesterday,” he said, stepping back to let me in.

“Sorry,” I said, accepting the invitation. “I didn’t mean …”

“Hell,” bellowed Fargo, his jowls bouncing merrily, “that’s all right. Max says he got enough. Damned fall, though.”

He limped into the room and pointed to a chair. I sat and looked around the room. The walls were filled with photographs of Fargo with men in cowboy suits. He watched me looking at the phctos and said solemnly, “They’re all there. I’ve worked with ’em all-Hoxie, Mix, Jones, both Maynards. Hoot, Harry Carey. You name ’em, they shot me.” He laughed, but something caught in his throat, and it turned to a gag. He hurried off red-faced for a glass of water.

He was back in two minutes or less, full of Western hospitality.

“What can I offer you and what can I do for you?” he said, easing into the chair opposite me.

“Nothing, thanks,” I said. “You can talk to me about High Midnight. ”

“Mind if I get a drink?” he said, grunting out of the chair and limping to a decrepit refrigerator in the corner. I wondered what the cowboy heroes looking down thought of the sagging furniture in the single room of their former nemesis. Fargo came back with a glass of something that could have been wine, rot-gut or flat Coke.

“Now,” he said, settling in.

“You think you can sit still long enough for us to get through this conversation?” I asked, amiable. “I’ve got an appointment I’ve got to get to by next Wednesday.”

A flash of red crept into Fargo’s eyes. Maybe it had been there all the time, but it caught something of his old screen villainy. I didn’t think he was capable of holding it for a whole scene. I was right. The effort of looking angry took too much out of him. His face twitched, gave in and sagged.

“You’ve got no call coming in here and talking like this,” he said, sipping his drink.

“You’re right. I’ve been rude. I apologize. Did you pay someone to try to force Gary Cooper to take the High Midnight role?” I said, being even more rude.

Fargo could take it as well as he had taken a fake punch from Tom Mix. He just sipped his drink and shrugged.

“Why would I do that?” he said.

“Because you want this movie, and there isn’t going to be a movie without Cooper,” I explained.

“Look around you,” he said, waving his drink at the furniture. “Does it look like I could afford to hire anybody to do something like that?”

“A friend, maybe,” I tried.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” he said, considering an indignant rise from his seat.

I went through the whole explanation about Shelly impersonating me and Cooper getting threatened and Costello getting killed.

“I want the picture,” said Fargo. “That’s a fact, but I’m not about to do anyone in for it, and if I was I wouldn’t have to do any hiring. I’d do it myself. I’ve put on a few pounds, but I can still use my hands, and I can still shoot. I remember one time Tom Tyler and I had-”

“Why does Gelhorn want you in High Midnight? ” I interrupted.

Fargo took another drink and looked off into the corner for another excuse to leave and gather what passed for thoughts. “We go way back, Max and me,” he said. “I respect him as a director, and he respects me as an actor. He knows I can take off fifteen, twenty pounds, get in shape for this.”

It would have taken more like forty pounds to make Tail Mickey Fargo look tall again, and I just didn’t think the mass in front of me had the will to do it. Fargo couldn’t handle either of the two major roles in the film. He might make it as the friendly blacksmith in one scene, but that wasn’t what he was talking about.