Stuart Kaminsky - Bullet for a Star

“Ah, my friend,” said Flynn, “that’s the very time when amusement is most needed. My friends are there to help you if you need help. They’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

“O.K. maybe there is something they can do. Meanwhile, stay hidden for another day or so. I think I’m on to something.”

“Fair enough,” said Flynn lightly, and I thought I heard a female giggle on his end of the line.”

“I thought you were going to go somewhere alone,” I said.

“Well, old boy, I’d rather take the risk than do without. I subscribe to what Thomas De Quincey, my favorite author, once wrote, ‘I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others: I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness: and am little capable of encountering present gain for the sake of any reversionary benefit.’” He hung up and so did I.

“Sorry about that,” said Cabot.

Williams winked at me and grinned.

“You’re a good sport,” he said.

I thanked him and asked them to see if they could find out where Peter Lorre and Harry Beaumont were and then to take turns guarding Flynn, who seemed to have told everyone in Hollywood about his hiding place.

Cabot reached for the phone and made a call.

“Really scared you, huh?” said Williams proudly.

“Definitely,” I said.

Cabot hung up and told me Lorre was at the studio and Beaumont was on location but would be back the next day. I thanked him, and Williams leaned over my desk to give me a friendly clip on the jaw. My jaw ached.

“See you buddy,” he grinned.

“We’ll keep an eye on the Prince,” said Cabot, shaking my hand.

They left, and I looked at the names of the two people who had called me. Before I lifted the phone I tried to make sense out of what I knew. It didn’t work. On my desk was Sheldon’s Los Angeles Times. I read the important news. Cincinnati was still in first by 5? games in the National, and Cleveland by 5? in the American League. Big Stoop was bending iron bar to impress the Dragon Lady in Terry and the Pirates, and Lindy was making speeches urging us to stay out of the war in Europe.

I called my brother.

“Didn’t you go home?” were his first words.

“You’re my brother, not my mother,” I said.

“Toby, don’t start playing wise with me or I’ll be over there with sirens. How’s your head?”

“Fine. How is the family?”

“Let’s not start that crap again. I want to see you in my office at eight tonight. You be here.”

“I’ll be there.”

“The guy who got killed,” said Phil. “His name was Charles Deitch. He has a record. Two years in Joliet in Illinois. Peddling pornography, statutory rape, attempted blackmail. You know any of this?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t know any of it.

“You’re full of shit. Eight tonight. Be here.”

He hung up and I called Adelman. Esther answered, but Adelman cut in on her.

“Peters, where the hell have you been?”

“Working on getting your negative and the money. I still have $200 coming from you.”

“You remember what you told me this morning?” he said. He was not happy. “You told me that the fucking killer would destroy the photograph and negative and everything was fine? Well Philo Vance, you dumb sonofabitch, I got a call two hours ago. The price is up. Somebody wants $35,000 for the negative. You hear me?”

“I hear you. Was it a man or a woman?”

“A man, I think. He made his voice squeaky and high. He gave me one day to come up with the money. He’s calling back in the morning. I don’t care if he is a murderer. I’ve got to pay. We have full page ads in Variety this week for Sea Hawk. Newsweek ran a review with two pictures of Flynn. It’s doing great in New York. We can’t let anything happen.”

“How about another murder?” I asked.

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re fired.”

“I’ll work it on my own. The killer has my gun, and if I turn up that negative and your $5,000 you owe me $200. Besides, I’ve got a good lead. I know who the girl is in the picture.”

Sid was silent. I could imagine his collar wilting as he looked up at the photo on his wall of the former junk dealers.

“You got a chance of coming up with something by tomorrow?” he asked.

“A good chance,” I lied.

“You’ve got till tomorrow night,” he said hanging up the phone.

I called Brenda Stallings. She couldn’t see me tonight, but the next night would be fine, or the night after. I had a feeling I was being stalled, but I wasn’t sure she had anything else she could tell me, and that is all I was interested in. She did offer me fifteen thousand dollars for the photograph of her daughter, but I told her what I had told Sid. It would be a bad buy. Someone had the negative and could grind out more prints faster than MGM could turn out Andy Hardy pictures.

I hung up and looked at my father, Phil, me and Kaiser Wilhelm. My nose was already flat in the picture, and the big kid with his arm around me might smash it even further later that night. My father looked down at us proudly. He had thought we would be brain surgeons or crooked lawyers or, at least, dentists. He had owned a small, not very profitable grocery store in Glendale till the day he died.

My brother had a family, a lot of debts and a mortgage on a two-bit house in North Hollywood. My father was dead. Kaiser Wilhelm was dead. Trotsky was dead, and I owned the suit I was wearing. I didn’t even have a gun and I needed a shave. I decided to buy a gun, and a razor at Woolworth’s.

My window went dark. I could hear the distant rumble of thunder over the hills. In a few seconds the rain started. In less than an hour my bad back would start burning around my kidneys. It always did when it rained. It had started two years ago. A giant black guy gave me a bear hug when I tried to keep him from getting to an actor I was guarding. Some muscles around my kidneys never bounced back.

I didn’t feel very tough. I was tired and lonely and feeling damn sorry for myself.

Alfalfa was gone when I went through Sheldon’s office.

“What was going on in there?” he said from his dental chair, where he sat reading the newspaper.

“Why didn’t you come and take a look?” I said.

“I had a patient,” he said, returning to his paper.

I went downstairs past the sound of the snoring drunk and ran to the cafe on the corner. It was dirty and I had to sit on one of those round red stools at the counter, but it was close and the rain was coming down hard. I had a burger, some fries and a Coke. Then I bought a safety razor and a toy gun at Woolworth’s next door. I felt like an asshole and the girl who took my eighty cents looked at me as if she thought I was going to use the gun for a hold-up. She was about twenty, with a red mouth going over her lip line. Her dark hair was tight against her head.

“You remind me of Joan Crawford,” I said seriously.

She smiled proudly, and I went to the door and dashed for my car. A green Dodge pulled out across the street splashing a man with an umbrella.

In twenty minutes or so, I’d be back in Burbank and, with a little luck, I’d find Peter Lorre. I hadn’t put the pieces together, but I felt sure Harry Beaumont was important. Maybe Lorre could tell me something more about Beaumont’s reactions to the photograph of his daughter and Flynn. I stopped thinking.

My back started to ache. I popped a Life Saver in my mouth, turned on the car radio and sang along with Eddie Howard, “I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store.” My windshield wipers were doing a lousy job. I turned off the radio, said, “Shit,” and drove squinting through the rain. My back was in pain, and the green Dodge was fifty feet behind me. I was being followed.