Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

Someone had murdered a Munchkin. The little man was lying on his back in the middle of the Yellow Brick Road with his startled wide eyes looking into the overhead lights of an M.G.M. sound stage. He wore a kind of comic soldier’s uniform with a yellow coat and puffy sleeves and a big fez-like blue-and-yellow hat with a feather on top. His yellow hair and beard were the phony straw color of Hollywood. He might have looked kind of cute in a Tinseltown way if it hadn’t been for the knife sticking out of his chest. The knife was a brown-handled kitchen thing. Only the handle was visible.

As I stepped forward, I could see that the blood made a dark red trail down the far side of the body. The blood flowed into the cracks of the Yellow Brick Road. Up close I could see that the yellow paint was flecking off the bricks. I looked up the road. It didn’t lead to Oz, but to a blank, grey wall.

Then I looked at the body and the grey wall again and wondered what I was doing here. It was Friday, November l, 1940. It’s easy to remember because the previous night just after eleven I had felt the tremor of a mild earthquake. Some Californians mark their lives by the earthquakes and tremors they experience. I just remember them and wonder how long I’ll live lucky.

At the moment I didn’t feel lucky. I felt stupid. An hour earlier I had been talking to someone at Warner Brothers when a call reached me. Someone said she was Judy Garland, and I should get to Metro. I got there as fast as my ’34 Buick would take me, which was not very fast.

At the M.G.M. gate on Washington in Culver City I was greeted by two uniformed security men who didn’t recognize me. There was no reason they should. After a few years on the Glendale police force, I had taken a security job at Warner Brothers. I’d held that for about five years and lost it when I’d broken the arm of a cowboy star. I’d propped him up a lot of times, and he let me down once too often by taking a drunken swing at me. His broken bones knocked two weeks off the shooting schedule of his latest picture and knocked me out of the studio.

Since then, I had almost made a living as a private investigator. I had met a lot of people, made almost nothing and did some freelance bodyguarding for movie people, most of whom didn’t need it. I’d done some work for M.G.M. but not much and not lately.

One guy at the gate said:

“Peters?”

He was a lanky cowboy type in his fifties with grey hair and a weather-beaten face. His looks more than his ability probably carried him into his security job. I knew the route. When people did use me, it was generally for the way I looked rather than anything they knew about me.

My nose is mashed against my dark face from two punches too many. At 44 I’ve a few grey hairs in my short sideburns, and my smile looks like a cynical sneer even when I’m having a good time, which isn’t very often. I’m reasonably tough, but there are a lot around town just as tough and just as cheap. I fit a type, and in my business I was willing to play it up rather than try to cover.

The cowboy at the gate waited for my answer. His metal name tag read “Buck McCarthy.” I smiled and acknowledged my name.

“I got a call from Judy Garland,” I said. “She wants to see me.”

“I got the word,” the cowboy said. “Slide over.”

I slid over, and the cowboy got in to drive after nodding to his assistant to watch the gate. Metro was class. Two guards on a gate. I wondered if Jack Warner knew.

The cowboy switched the Buick into gear and took off slowly between the huge yellow-grey airplane hangers that served as buildings.

“You need a new heap,” the cowboy said, trying to find second.

“I just had it tuned,” I said. A normal man would have given up and let me drive, but he played his part to the end. No mangy Buick was going to get the better of Buck McCarthy. Buck rode my maverick past a few buildings and pulled in next to a line of low green bushes. A little man with a big hat was solemnly watering the bushes. He turned to watch as Buck stalled my car in second.

Buck glared at the little man, who was part Japanese, but the little man smiled innocently and turned back to his bushes. It was a clear day. The sun was shining and he wanted no trouble. Buck turned his glare on me. I didn’t want any trouble either so I shrugged and accepted my car keys back.

Buck led the way into the cool corridors of the building, but the walk was short. We stopped at a door markedWARREN HOFF, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLICITY. Buck pushed the door open in front of me and a small, dark, pretty girl with glasses from the May Company basement looked up at me.

“Peters,” said Buck cowboy.

The girl flicked her intercom and repeated “Peters” into it. There was the faint touch of a Mexican accent in the word. She would never get rid of that accent, but she looked determined.

“Go right in, Mr. Peters,” she said. The accent was certain.

“See you, Amigo,” said Buck. I waved to him as he slowly sank through the door and into the sunrise.

Hoff was advancing to meet me when I walked through his door. He was taller than I was and reasonably well built, but the build was hereditary. He didn’t work at it because he didn’t need his body in his work as I needed mine. He was a few years younger than I was and a dozen pounds heavier, but I could tell that I could take him. In my business, your mind works that way. It’s not the most sociable way to think, but every now and then it saved a few breaks and bruises, and I can use the edge. I’ve had more than my share and your share of traumatized bodily functions.

Hoff shook my hand. It was firm enough and fit his well-pressed, pin-striped suit. He didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he put his other hand on my elbow and rushed me out the door.

The girl at the desk looked up as we passed, and I sought her eyes for an explanation. Hoff wasn’t even looking at me. He had the determined stare of a delivery man with a heavy bundle he wants to get rid of.

“I’m Warren Hoff,” he said, turning his somewhat bland face to me with a quick smile and touching his neat brown hair to be sure it was still there.

“I’m Toby Peters,” I said pulling my hand out of his grip. “And I’m not entered in this marathon.”

Hoff stopped. The Japanese gardener was looking at us. He looked reasonably sane, so I gave him a nod of the head to indicate what we both thought of the insanity of a movie studio. The gardener didn’t want to be my partner and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” sighed Hoff, nodding apologetically, “but I think we’ve got to move quickly. It’ll all be clear to you in a few minutes.”

He didn’t look like the white rabbit, and I knew too much about movie studios to think Metro was really Wonderland, but I let him lead me. I had a few dollars in the bank for a job I had just completed for Errol Flynn, but it wouldn’t last long and M.G.M. was the money studio. If an assistant Vice-President was leading me and apologizing, there must be a payoff.

“Andy Markopulis told me a few things about you,” Hoff said, hurrying through the lot. Within thirty yards, he was huffing and trying to catch his breath. I could tell he was not only out of shape, but a smoker. The Markopulis he mentioned was one of the M.G.M. security directors. Andy was the one who got me body jobs from time to time. Andy had been on security with me at Warners a few years back and had left for a better spot at the big studio. When I went private, he remembered me. Once in a while we had a beer, but he was a family man who lived comfortably in a house in Van Nuys.

I didn’t answer Hoff. I thought he would be better off conserving his energy, but he was the nervous type who had to keep talking. He stopped hustling me across the lot long enough to take out a deck of Spuds and light one. He inhaled deeply.