Brett Halliday - Kill All the Young Girls

“Let’s get the dates straight. When did she die?”

“Seven years ago. You wanted to know if we were friends. I was her stand-in in one of her pictures, not one of her good ones. She was already starting to flake. The marriages were over; and there was a steady flow of men, terrible men. She was in a daze much of the time. What a stand-in does is wear the star’s costumes and move through her scenes so the crews can block out the breaks and angles. Keko was always nice to the stand-in, even when she was being awful to everybody else. She kept asking me to trade places with her. I would have been delighted! When the picture was over, she asked me to move in and take charge of her phone calls. It didn’t turn out to be too bad. Afterward, after she killed herself in the middle of a picture, some PR genius thought of reshooting her scenes with me in the role. The old show biz story — the stand-in takes over for the star on opening night and gets an ovation. It was strictly a salvage job to capitalize on the publicity. And a little grisly — the picture was supposed to be a light-hearted sex comedy. But for some reason it worked. I’ve always thought the fact that I was the leading lady had something to do with it.”

She finished her drink and said briskly, “Now come to bed.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m tired as hell. Fighting the bourbon. I don’t feel like talking any more.”

“You go to bed. I’ll join you later.”

“Hmm.” She set down her glass and slid off the bed. She pushed back an imaginary pair of sleeves and spat on her hands. “You’re going to make me work for it, are you?”

“You can’t be in the mood for making love. I want to start through this again. There’s still a lot missing. I’ll have some more questions for you, but I have to get it in some kind of sequence first.”

“So I can’t be in the mood, can I? I’ve been in the mood ever since you crowded Doc Black up against the bar. When two males battle over a female, she’s supposed to mate with the winner. I call your attention to the moose.”

“Kate, were there ever any rumors that Keko Brannon’s death wasn’t a suicide?”

“None that I heard. Mike, baby. Stop thinking.”

“Did Oscar Olson go on seeing her after she made it in Hollywood?”

“Probably, but not after she got to be twenty-one. He wasn’t part of the scene while I was around. Those guys were on a different level, very sleazy. Mike, to continue what I was saying: I take it that your assignment calls for spending all day tomorrow with me. So we have time. I have a very vague, very foggy hunch about that Pussycat of the Month picture. I want to lay it on you and see how it sounds. There might be money in it for both of us; and don’t give me that two-client crap, because this would be perfectly moral and ethical and in the nature of a public service. But right now…”

She turned away slightly, and her tone was suddenly less assured. “I feel so jammed up and jangly. I’ve been in a vise all day. I kept telling myself that the world would be a prettier place without Larry Zion in it, but I didn’t really want it to happen. The hospital wouldn’t tell me a thing. I couldn’t go there in person. It was nervewracking.”

“I see that. You were hoping he’d pull through.”

“Sarcasm, Mike — watch it. No, I wasn’t exactly hoping that, because if he still wouldn’t give me the part I couldn’t back down, could I? I’d have to raise the bet and try something else. Mike, I’ve been faking a little. You’re sexy, yes; but I can resist you if I have to. It’s funny about sex. I’m beginning to feel the way Keko did at the end. Yes, no, who cares.”

“What did that job of yours consist of — hiding the bottles and getting her to work on time?”

“How could I do that? I didn’t have any authority. Mainly I listened and tried to keep her looking halfway presentable. Now that’s really all about Keko for now. I had her full-time when she was alive, and people still think of me as that kooky funny-face who took her place in On Fire.”

She touched his neck. “You’re the male. In our society, the male decides. But can I tell you what I’d like?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll shower and get ready. If you decide you want to get in with me, I’ll make you welcome. Just don’t delay too long. My doctor tells me I use sex for reassurance, and tonight a little uncomplicated reassurance is what I need. I’d make it nice for you, Mike. Sincerely. Then we’ll sleep for a time; and when we wake up, I’ll bore you with various guesses and theories. And you can advise me.”

Before he could answer, she turned quickly and went into the bathroom. Presently the shower started.

Shayne picked up the eleven-year-old magazine and turned to the mutilated gatefold again. Kate’s head was askew, a trifle out of scale. Her expression was wrong for the pose. She was smiling, her eyes alive with humor and intelligence. Shayne wished he had seen her on the screen. What was there about that kind of success that made them so greedy for it?

She finished in the shower, and he heard her moving around. She came out in a dressing gown, her face scrubbed of makeup and seeming to be lightly oiled. She shrugged off the dressing gown as he watched, meeting his eyes unself-consciously.

“Any time at all, Mike.”

She opened the bed and got in. Before settling herself, she turned off the light between the beds. Shayne watched her settle herself.

“In a moment,” he said.

The Miami papers, in their original folds, were arranged on a low table. Starting with the Herald, Shayne found a lengthy account of the Consolidated-Famous proxy fight on the financial page. Larry Zion was predicting victory for his slate by a two-to-one margin. He had some harsh things to say about the pressure tactics being used by the professional solicitation firm retained by the opposition. Oscar Olson’s name wasn’t mentioned.

Both groups had taken half-page ads. The main points made against Zion were his advanced years and his insistence on absolute, one-man rule. He was pictured as a crotchety relic of another era, out of touch with the realities of the entertainment business. No one denied that he had once been superb, but recent balance sheets told a more somber story. Nepotism (his son) and favoritism (his mistresses) were alluded to obliquely. He paid himself an extravagant salary while he was producing pictures that lost oceans of money at the box office. He had committed two and a half million dollars to a pirate movie, exactly the kind of escapist nonsense that had emptied moving picture theaters all over the world. Only someone in the grip of senile nostalgia would have made such an astounding decision.

On the amusement page, Zion was interviewed about his plans for this picture. Audiences, he declared, were hungry for romantic entertainment. They were fed up to the teeth with ugliness, misery, and smut. The enthralling, real-life story of Florida’s own José Gaspar, known as Gasparilla, a pulse-quickening account of one man’s battle against injustice and oppression… It was press agent prose, and Shayne stopped reading after a few sentences and picked up the Daily News.

The News, too, carried both ads and a rewrite of the opposing press releases as well as a small boxed announcement that the stockholders’ meeting the following day would be covered by a team of reporters headed by Shayne’s friend, Timothy Rourke.

Putting the papers aside, Shayne reviewed what he had been told by Kate and Marcus Zion. There were discrepancies and holes. Any number of blinking neon arrows pointed toward the short, tragic career of Keko Brannon. But that had been long in the past, on the opposite edge of the continent. Shayne’s assignment was simple and clear-cut. If he could control his impulse to rake over old scandals, it could also be easy and pleasant. He was here to stand between Kate and trouble. With Shayne on the scene, she must know that she wouldn’t be given a second chance to get to Larry Zion. The best she could hope for now was to stay out of the way until he retired from the business or another heart attack carried him off. Would she agree to leave town? Probably not. That could wait until morning.