Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

The call came to Hoff’s office from cowboy Buck McCarthy at the gate. Hoff told Buck to take the police to the Munchkin City set, and then he hurried to the door. I slowed him down and told him it would be a good idea to let the police get to the scene first. I folded the newspaper neatly, placed it on Hoff’s desk and got up. I was in no hurry to see Phil Pevsner. The only one who had ever successfully stood between us in battle was my dad, a Glendale grocer, who had died a long time ago. There were a couple of times even when he was alive that Phil almost lost control and went for me right over our father. Dad would have been flattened like a beer can in the Rose Bowl parade if Phil hadn’t gotten himself under control. It had been something I had said, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

When Hoff and I got to the Oz set, we walked in slowly, like a camera dollying in to the center of a Busby Berkeley musical number. Three people stood looking down at the dead Munchkin, who had not moved nor been moved. Two of them, Seidman and my brother, wore badly rumpled suits. The third guy was a big, bald, uniformed cop I recognized as Rashkow. Rashkow was only in his twenties, but heredity and my brother had robbed him of most of his hair. Seidman turned to me and Hoff with a sour look I recognized. Seidman was thin and white-faced. He hated the sunlight. Phil just looked at the corpse with anger, as if the little man had purposely conspired to ruin his day. For Phil, Los Angeles was strewn with corposes whose sole job was to complicate his life and make it miserable. He hated corpses. He’d even kicked one in anger once, according to Seidman. He hated murderers even more. The only thing he hated more than corpses and murderers was me.

Phil was a little taller than me, broader, older with close-cut steely hair and a hard cop’s gut. His tie always dangled loosely around his neck, and his face frequently turned red with contained rage, especially when I was present. M.G.M. had certainly picked the right guy to calm him down. By the time Hoff and I were within five feet, Phil’s lower lip was out, and his head was gently shaking up and down like a bull building up for a charge.

Seidman pulled out a notebook. I nodded to him and to Rashkow, who was afraid to smile.

“Toby,” Phil began plunging his hands into his pants pockets to keep them calm,” “I’m going to ask you questions, and you are going to answer without jokes. Then you are going to get your ass out of here. You understand?”

I understood and said so. I was determined to keep from irritating him.

“Who found the body?”

“I did,” I said. Hoff twitched next to me.

“Who’s he?” Phil asked, nodding at Hoff, “and what’s up his ass?”

“His name is Hoff,” I said. “He’s an assistant vice president for publicity. I was supposed to meet him here about working as a bodyguard for a premiere when I stumbled on the body.”

“I see,” said Phil, starting to walk in a small circle on the yellow brick road. “You were meeting on this set instead of in his office because it’s more comfortable and convenient here.”

“He wanted to keep our meeting secret,” I said slowly, “because the star I was assigned to doesn’t like protection.”

“That right, Hoff?” Phil said, moving no more than two inches from Hoff. Sweat popped out of Hoff’s pores.

“That’s right,” Hoff said softly.

“It’s bullshit!” Phil shouted in Hoff’s face. The shout had enough impact to send Hoff staggering back a few feet with numbed ear drums. “What’s going on here? Who killed the little turd?”

“Phil, we don’t know,” I said with my hands coming open and palms up. “I just stumbled on the body.”

“Who is he, the dead midget?”

“They like to be called ‘little people,’ ” I corrected.

“He doesn’t give a shit what we call him!” Phil shouted. “Who is he?”

Everyone looked at Hoff.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There were a few hundred little people on the picture. He might not even be one of them.”

“Well,” sighed Phil, putting his hand on Hoff’s shoulder, “do you think you could get someone in here to identify him? And then can you round up anyone who has been in this building in the last twenty-four hours and will admit it?”

Hoff said he could, and Phil told Rashkow to call for someone from the Coroner’s office. I thought of the Coroner from Munchkin City who had certified the death of the first Wicked Witch. He had stood right about where Phil was standing.

“What was the dead midget doing in here?” Phil asked Hoff. “And why is he wearing that costume?”

“We don’t know what he was doing in here and why he was wearing his costume,” answered Hoff. Phil looked at Hoff as if he were useless, and Hoff reached for a Spud. Seidman got Hoff’s office number and sent him on his way to get possible witnesses. Seidman and Rashkow began to look around the set, and Phil turned his back on me and walked over to the waterless Munchkin City fountain where he sat looking dyspeptically at the corpse and the set. He took a white tablet out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it furiously. Little pieces of it spat out when I approached him and sat down.

“You’re a goddamn liar,” he said, chewing away.

I shrugged.

“Phil, can you think about keeping this quiet for a while?”

He stopped chewing and looked at me blankly. I waited for the blank look to turn to rage and expected his thick hand to catch me before I could move away, but the look turned to a smile, and then a laugh. Both Seidman and Rashkow stopped to see what had happened. Phil almost choked with maniacal laughter. In the midst of his laughter, he grabbed my collar and stood up. Our noses were almost touching when he spoke.

“Toby, I’ve messed you before and I’ll do it again. You’re covering and you’re trying to use me. You didn’t have to call me for this. Don’t use me, brother. I don’t like it, and don’t play me for a fool. Don’t mistake a bad temper for stupidity. You’ve done that a few times in the past and what did it get you?”

“This nose,” I said. He liked the answer and let me go.

“You covering for somebody?” he said, sitting again.

“No,” I said, trying to unwrinkle my shirt. “But bad publicity on this thing could ruin the image of the picture, cause the studio trouble. No one’s asking you not to investigate, not to do everything. But you let this out and the newspapers will be driving you crazy, too. They’ll be on your back. You want that?”

“You’re concerned about me,” he said. “I’m touched.”

I hadn’t expected my argument to do any good. My next move was going to be to suggest he talk to Mayer. Maybe Mayer’s double-talk, power, and sincerity would get to Phil, though I doubted it.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

I almost fell in the dry fountain in surprise. He looked away from me.

“You know you’ve got two nephews, Toby,” he whispered angrily, “and one of them, Davey, the older boy…”

“I know Davey’s your older boy,” I said. He gave me a look of contempt, and I suddenly had the image of Davey and Nate, his kids, pounding on each other the way Phil and I had.

“Davey just got out of the hospital,” Phil went on. “It was close.”

I knew that, too, and he knew I knew, but I kept my mouth shut. Phil’s wife, Ruth, had told me once that Phil was a good father. I wasn’t sure what that meant. He certainly wasn’t like my father.

“In their room,” said Phil, “the kids have a poster from the movie. They saw it five times. I don’t want to be the one who tears down that poster.”

“Thanks Phil. I…”

He turned, boiling slowly.