Stuart Kaminsky - Bullet for a Star

“You told me about The Sea Hawk , Sid, and Newsweek.” Seidman was walking toward the phone booth. “I’ve got to go now. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

“Don’t kill anybody else.” He hung up.

“I’ll try not to,” I told the dead phone.

When we got back to Phil’s office, I decided to do my best to cooperate. Seidman gave me an encouraging nod, but my best wasn’t good enough.

“Who’s your client?” Phil said, putting down his pencil and making a new effort at being calm.

“Somebody at Warner’s,” I said, “somebody fairly high up. He said I could tell you everything but his name.”

“I don’t give a shit what he said,” stormed Phil, throwing his tie on the desk. “This is a case of murder, maybe two murders. I don’t need your client’s permission to carry on an investigation.”

“But I do,” I said. “Do you want what I have to give you or do you want to start throwing things at me?”

“Talk.”

I talked. I said Cunningham had been trying to blackmail someone at Warner’s with a photo. I had gone to make the exchange and been clobbered. The killer, I said, had gotten away with the photo and the money, and my gun. Phil wanted to know why the blackmail hadn’t been reported to the police. I said that was my client’s business, but I didn’t think he trusted the police. Delamater and his two clowns had, I went on, probably come to my apartment to get me off the case. They were probably working for the blackmailer.

“You can identify the two who got away?” he interrupted.

“I told you I could, but I don’t think they know who they were working for. Delamater looked like the thinker of the trio. He wasn’t good at it but he was the best they had. Someone probably hired Delamater, who picked up the other two.”

“Just the same,” said Phil, “you go through the pictures and we’ll try to turn them up. Now your story’s fine. What I need are some names. Who is being blackmailed? Who knows about it? Who are the two guys who were in your place when Delamater went out the window?”

“The guys in my room had nothing to do with the case,” I lied, “but you can check with them. They’re Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams.”

“The movie actors?” asked Seidman.

Phil and I looked at him.

“Right,” I said.

Phil made unveiled threats about my lying and had Seidman take me to the library in the basement. It was a musty room with two overhead 60-watt bulbs swinging from black cords. Seidman pulled out a pile of frayed, heavy green volumes, and I began to go through them looking for the mailbox and the giggler.

It took me over an hour. After a while the faces began to merge and look alike. Two or three faces looked exactly like mine, and dozens of them looked like Guinn Williams. But I found the two and indicated them to Seidman. The giggler was Judd “The Shiv” Chesler, and the mailbox was Steve Fagin.

When we got back to his office, my brother told me that Cabot and Williams had confirmed my story and would come in the next day to sign statements.

“Your client’s name, Toby?” he said evenly.

“Two days, Phil. Give me two days, and I’ll hand you the name and maybe the killer.”

“You’ll hand me the killer?” He actually laughed, but it didn’t sound as if he were having fun. “You can’t even hold down a job; you lost your client’s money and your gun, and everybody beats the shit out of you.”

“We all have bad days,” I said.

“You’re having a bad lifetime,” he said. “Get out. You’ve got two days providing no one else gets killed.”

I got up.

“Phil, I’m sorry about David.”

My brother didn’t look up. He just handed me my toy gun. “Don’t shoot yourself, Sherlock,” he grunted.

My car was in the same place it had been earlier in the morning. It had another ticket. I put it in the glove compartment and headed home.

There was a note on my door from the landlady. It said:

Mister Peters,

I am afraind I must ask you too move. You are paid entil the end of the month so you can stay till the end of the month and then you must leave please send me a check or cash money for damages to the apartment. Window, four dollars door two dollars for new lock lamp two dollars seventy five cents repair of wall from bullit three dollars repair of kitchen bathtub from bullit three dollars and thirty cents. Total of this is 15 dollars and a nickle.

Mrs. Eastwood

I took a hot bath, had a bowl of Shredded Wheat, checked to be sure the photograph was still in Bill Faulkner’s book and went to bed.

In my dream, in color, I was walking down a Western street with six-guns on my hips. On my left, faithful sidekick Guinn “Big Boy” Williams gave me a wink. On my right, Bruce Cabot gave me a confident smile. We walked down the street and my big white hat kept slipping over my eyes. Advancing on us were six men, the giggler, the mailbox Barton MacLane, Henry Daniell, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone. I didn’t feel confident. I reached for my gun when the distance closed, and I realized that it was the Woolworth toy.

Rathbone shot me in the hand and I tried to tell everyone about my bad back. Rains took a second shot at me and missed. Just as I was about to go down in a volley of shots, Alan Hale leapt off a nearby roof. All six of the advancing men were crushed and Hale got up flashing teeth at me.

When I woke up, sun was splashing through the broken window, and someone was sitting in my only undamaged chair. The someone was looking at me. It was Lynn Beaumont.

The girl looked around the room. I looked too. There was still some glass on the floor. The door was hanging loose. Two chairs were demolished. Pieces of ceramic lamp and a mashed shade were piled in a corner, and a small chunk was missing from the wall where a bullet had hit. Mrs. Eastwood’s inventory had been correct.

Lynn Beaumont caught me looking at her.

“This place is a mess,” she said with distaste. “Do you live like this?”

I sat up in bed, running a hand over my face and tasting the dryness in my mouth.

“Sorry, I would have told the Mexican maid to tidy up if I knew you were coming.” I pulled my legs over the side of the bed.

“I called you during the day and last night,” she said, glaring at me. “You didn’t answer.”

“I had a very busy night. Somebody tried to kill me.”

She was unamused.

“Can you make coffee?” I asked, heading for the bathroom.

She couldn’t. I tried toast. She thought she could handle that, but I remembered that I had no bread. There were no eggs either. There was some milk and a lot of cereal. I love cereal. I made the coffee while she glared at me.

I took a good look at her. She looked cute, clean and serious. Her dark hair was short and straight, and her dress was blue and conservative schoolgirl. She didn’t fit the image of the girl in the picture with Flynn.

While I brushed my teeth and washed, I screamed some questions at her. She screamed back. She had tried to reach me at Warner Brothers. They had told her I didn’t work there. Then she had tried my name in the phone book. I was there, the only Toby Peters. She had called. I hadn’t answered. So she got in a bus and came over from Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a long ride.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Lynn?”

“Please call me Miss Beaumont.”

“Miss Beaumont.”

Her glare was steady and stern. She looked determined and strong willed. Maybe that’s what comes of having parents who are actors. The question was whether she had the strength of her mother behind it or something her father passed on to her.

“I don’t want you to see my mother any more.”