Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

That’ll give you the air to go on, I thought, but said nothing. It was still a nice day. My shoes were reasonably clean, my rent was paid, and I had two boxes of cereal and plenty of coffee at home. The world was mine, and I had plenty of time.

“Come on,” said Hoff, and we hurried along again. In a few minutes, after passing a bunch of brown-painted girls with bananas in their turbans, we went through the door of a big building, a sound stage. The part of the building we were in was dark, but there were enough lights to guide us past props and pieces of sawed wood. We walked around a sticky coffee spill, and Hoff took a last drag before putting out his butt. Then we plunged on into a jungle of semi-darkness.

The burst of light was sudden, like the sunrise kicking past a cloud. It came after we walked around the gigantic backdrop of what looked like a seaport. Beyond the seaport backdrop, we stepped into Munchkin City, or what remained of it; Hoff pointed at the Yellow Brick Road and the body on it. His hand urged me forward, and I moved. Only a few of the lights were on in the ceiling above us, but it was bright enough. I knew that on a set like this during the shooting of a color film, there would be enough light to make the Hollywood Bowl dazzle at one in the morning.

Hoff watched me as I stepped forward, tilted my hat back, and rubbed my chin. I didn’t quite need a shave. I knelt at the body of the Munchkin and wondered what the hell I was doing here or supposed to do. I thought of informing Hoff that the little man was dead, but he seemed to know that. Other than that I had no information for him. I touched the corpse’s hand; it was cold.

I looked around at the set. It was big, lots of facades of Munchkin houses and a town square with the spiral of yellow brick leading not to a backdrop of infinity but to the big, grey wall.

While I knelt near the body I said to Hoff, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

I couldn’t tell whether the sound from Hoff was a polite laugh or the rumble of smoker’s cough.

“This picture was released more than a year ago,” I said, standing. “What the hell is this set still standing for? And why is this guy in costume? You making a sequel?”

“No sequel, not yet.” Hoff’s voice echoed through the set. He had refused to come closer than twenty-five feet from the body. “We still use some of the sets for publicity. You know, we bring visiting dignitaries and politicians here and take their picture with a Munchkin or Mickey Rooney, whichever is bigger.”

This time I coughed. He must have been feeding me a standing studio joke, and I didn’t want to appear out of things.

“The set will come down soon,” Hoff said, “unless we go ahead with a sequel. We’ll make a decision about that soon.”

Hoff included himself in the corporate “we” but I knew he wasn’t high enough up to be even a small part in a decision like that.

“These sets cost a quarter of a million,” he explained, “and we had to build them from the floor up. There were no standing sets we could convert. When the picture was finished, we couldn’t find anything to do with them so we let most of them stand until we need the space.”

That explained Hoff’s control over the crumbling set, but it didn’t explain anything else.

“Why is he in costume?” I said.

“I don’t know,” sighed Hoff nervously. “There was no publicity tour or any reason for it.”

“Right,” I said, but I didn’t know what was right or what was going on. “Who is he, and who killed him?”

I looked at Hoff. His eyes opened a bit as his lower lip raised and his shoulders went up. It was an enormous response of non-information. He didn’t know either answer.

“O.K.,” I said giving the body a last look and being careful not to touch anything. “Now, what the hell is going on here?”

Hoff gave an enormous sigh and collapsed into a chair from which he could see the entire lighted set. There was a chair next to him. I sat in it, and for a minute or two we looked at the remains of Munchkin City and the remains of a single military Munchkin. We were just like two old friends enjoying the sunset. All we needed was a couple of beers and the football scores.

“Miss Garland reacted in panic,” Hoff said, finally fishing out another Spud and taking a long time to light it. He didn’t want to make any mistakes in what he said. He was acting as if his career were on the line, and maybe it was. “She discovered the body and called you.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“She remembered your name from yesterday,” said Hoff, his eyes fixed on the Munchkin to be sure he didn’t suddenly rise and walk off. “It had been mentioned at a party. It seems you were spoken highly of by someone at Warner Brothers. We didn’t find out she had called you until just after she hung up.”

“Why didn’t she call the cops?” I asked, also watching the dead Munchkin.

“She has been working very hard since Oz,” Hoff explained very carefully and slowly as if he were practicing a press release. “I-we-think it has gotten to her, that she needs some rest. She just wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

I have learned that it’s sometimes a good idea to wait out a client or a suspect until he talks himself out, into a corner or into a frenzy. The corporate Hoff, however, was abusing the privilege of either client or suspect.

“Mr. Hoff…” I began.

“Call me Warren,” he smiled, fishing out another Spud.

“Warren, if you want me to just turn around and leave,” I said, “I’ll be happy to do so, and I’ll forget I ever saw our little friend over there.” Warren Hoff winced at the words, but I went on. “When I’m gone, you can shovel the body under the road, cart it off somewhere, or call the cops. All you’ll have to do is pay me $25, my expenses for a day, and say good-bye after I confirm all this with Miss Garland. She called me and I’d like to see her before I leave. Now I don’t have many principles, but…”

“We know a few things about you,” Hoff interrupted, pulling out a small, blue notebook from his matching blue jacket. He glanced at the book and spoke.

“You have a reputation for discretion, Mr. Peters…”

“Call me Toby,” I said.

“You know something about M.G.M. and have done some work for us,” he went on. So far it was all true, but he hadn’t come to the punch line. Then he did: “And you have a brother, a Lieutenant Philip Pevsner, who is a Los Angeles Homicide detective.”

I shook my head and smiled. He noticed.

“Is that information wrong?”

“No, it’s right,” I said, “but where you’re heading is wrong. You want me to talk to my brother about keeping this quiet, conducting a nice, silent, publicity-free investigation.”

“Well,” he began, “we…”

“Who is this ‘we,’ Warren?” He winced again, probably not too happy that I’d taken up his offer to call him Warren or question his corporate identity. It equalized us too much. The studio was his, but I knew more about death than he did. “I have no influence with my brother; less than none. You see this nose? He’s broken it twice when I’ve gotten in his way. You’d have a hell of a lot more influence with my brother than I would.”

I started to get up. “I’d like to collect some Metro money,” I said, “but I don’t see how. No offense, but it’s a little late to guard that body, and a lot too late for me to ask a favor of my brother.”

Hoff looked confused. The word must have been that I could be bought cheap and easy. Normally, the word was good, but this was out of my league. I’d just spend a quiet afternoon at the Y, and then listen to Al Pearce and the Loyola-San Jose State game on KFWB. I’d snuggle up with a bowl of shredded wheat and a Rainer Beer and think about my next weekend date with Carmen, the plump, widowed waitress at Levy’s. The plan seemed great to me, and I turned my back on the dead Munchkin.