Black Is the Fashion for Dying (21 page)

“How did he kill her?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't want to know.”

She stared up at his impassive face, trying to read the expression that was no expression at all. She didn't believe. Couldn't believe. Yet what if it was true?

“Too bad you won't help,” he said. “With your stock I could save him.”

“And without it?”

“I told you. My only chance is to turn him in. My trusted friend … a Judas in the organization.” He smiled mirthlessly. “I could come out a sort of martyr-hero.”

“But the papers you burned. And Caresse's options. You'd be involved.”

“Pamela,” he said.

“Pamela?”

“I'm to take care of her.”

“In return for not being involved?”

“It was T. J.'s idea.”

The awful thing was that it seemed almost plausible. She shook her head desperately. “You're lying, Karl.”

Under the pudgy flesh the jaw muscles grew taut. But he spoke calmly enough. “There's one way you can find out.”

“How?”

He reached past her, lifted the pink telephone from the dressing table and began to dial. On the third ring signal, someone answered. Karl said, “T. J.?” and then after a pause said, “Irene's got a question,” and handed her the telephone.

She heard breathing at the other end. “T. J.?” The breathing quickened. “There's something I have to know.”

“Irene, I can't—”

“I have to know now,” she said. “Did you kill Caresse?”

A gust of indrawn breath hissed over the wire.

“Karl says you did.”

“He … he told you?”

“Just now.” She waited, then said, “Please, T. J. Tell me the truth.”

After an eternity, as though from a distant star, his voice reached her, faint and despairing. “Yes, Irene. I … I killed her.”

She heard a click. The phone was dead. And so was she. She sat motionless, head down, seeing nothing. She felt her body grow slack, slump with sudden old age. There would never be a time now, no matter how long she and T. J. waited. The dressing gown slid from her lap to the carpet but she didn't care. She felt Karl take the telephone out of her hands, felt him watching her.

Finally, she said, “If I sign …?”

“I'll save him.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” He put down the typewritten sheet. “On the second line. And at the bottom.” He gave her the pen. “I'll get it witnessed tomorrow.”

Holding the pen over the paper she suddenly saw Benjy's worn, kindly face with the laugh wrinkles at the corners of eyes and mouth. It meant an end with him, too. She could never explain. Not without giving away T. J.'s secret. Karl, standing behind her again, apparently read her thoughts.

“Benjy'll be all right.”

“It'll break his heart.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “He hasn't got a heart to break.”

“But he has,” she protested childishly. “I know. After all, he's my father.”

“And I'm your husband.” His palm moving on bare skin, was sticky-damp. “So sign.”

Phlegmy voice, caressing hand, this terrible thing she could hardly believe, all made her flesh creep. Quickly, she wrote her name. He didn't move. He was staring at her body now, his eyes moist and shiny.

“On the second line, too,” he said.

She filled in the space on the second line, pushed paper and pen away. “There …” The hand slid over her shoulder, slid under the nightgown, cupped her right breast.

“Karl!”

His arms came around her, pulled her close against hairy belly and chest. In the mirror she glimpsed the thick-lipped satyr face, sly, gloating, obscene. “Oh, no,” she said. “Please, no.” The arms tightened, began to lift her.

“Stop it!” she cried desperately. “Haven't I done what you wanted?”

The dressing table bench, free of her weight, overturned under her struggling bare legs. “Not everything,” he said thickly. “Not everything …”

Lisa Carson

The policewoman was a stylish stout in her fifties named Agnes Keeney. She wore corsets and low-heeled black shoes and walking made her breathe hard. She was thrilled to death to be in a movie studio. “Just thrilled to death, dearie,” she repeated, her large warm hand firmly fastened to Lisa Carson's arm. “On account I'm a real dyed-in-the-wool fan.”

They were walking along the dingy corridor that led past the Major executive offices. Within the various reception rooms yellow sunlight-colored carpets, but the corridor was dim. It smelled of dust and stale air.

“Still go every Saturday night,” Mrs. Keeney said. “Just like I used to with Mike, God rest his soul.”

“Mike?”

“My late husband, dearie. Sergeant Michael Keeney. Killed in a liquor store holdup. His favorite was Jimmy Cagney.” They rounded a comer. “And mine is—ah, there's Captain Walsh!”

The captain was standing by an open door. His brown-sugar eyes were tired. “‘Morning,” he said.

“And a good morning to you, Captain,” Mrs. Keeney said, her voice a gushing mixture of treacle and brogue. “Sure an' you're looking well.”

“Shouldn't be,” Captain Walsh growled. “Been up all night.” He gestured toward the door as Mrs. Keeney opened her mouth to speak. “Take Miss Carson inside, Agnes. She's to sit in the front row.”

Mrs. Keeney said, “Yes, Captain,” and guided Lisa through the door. Inside she halted, peered wonderingly at the rows of deep cordovan leather seats and the white screen beyond. “A real little theater!”

“A projection room,” Lisa said.

Mrs. Keeney released her arm, said, “You be a good girl now, dearie.”

Lisa went on alone to the front row, saw one of the two people seated there was Josh Gordon. She hoped the other was Dick, but it wasn't. It was the cold-faced sergeant who'd hit him in the tent. Grimsby. She sat down by Josh, who had turned to grin at her.

“How are things in Alcatraz?” he asked.

She felt herself smiling for the first time since yesterday. “Best tiling about it, it's free.” She caught sight of something white, a cast that encased his left leg from thigh to ankle. “What happened?”

“Slipped on some stairs.”

Sergeant Grimsby, leaning forward, said, “While house-breaking.”

“Housebreaking?”

Josh nodded cheerfully. “Sergeant here has identified me as the Beverly Hills cat burglar.”

“Now, Mr. Gordon—” Sergeant Grimsby began, and broke off to look over his shoulder. She turned, saw Mr. Fabro and Mr. Lorrance coming through the door. Mr. Lorrance's skin was ashen and his eyes were haunted. He looked like a very sick man. He cast a timid, almost frightened glance at her, then slumped down in one of the seats across the aisle. Mr. Fabro halted by her, laid thick fingers on her shoulder.

“They treating you all right, young lady?”

“Yes, Mr. Fabro.”

“We'll have you out soon.”

Fingers still on her shoulder, he looked across her at Josh. “I hear you've been playing detective.”

“Trying to catch you. Fatso,” Josh said.

The fingers tightened and then went away. Mr. Fabro took a seat beside Mr. Lorrance, leaving behind a curious odor that reminded her of a zoo cage. Other people came into the room and found seats: Mr. Billings, the chief cameraman; Jenkins, the TV man from GBS; Herbie, Phil Alton, Basil Trabert, Chuck Eastman and three or four more whose names she didn't know. Some of them spoke to her and some of them didn't. The room was nearly full when Dick hurried in, caught sight of her and dropped into the aisle scat beside her. He took hold of her hand, said, “Lisa, baby …”

“I'm all right, darling.”

“They didn't …?”

“They've been fine.”

“They wouldn't let me see you.”

“They wouldn't let anybody.”

“Material witness,” said Sergeant Grimsby, leaning over Josh. “Incommunicado under article five thirty-one of the Criminal Code.”

Dick seemed to become aware of him and Josh for the first time. He stared at Josh, exclaimed, “The naked blonde!”

“I read about it,” Josh said.

“Well, did you tell …?”

“Later,” Josh said.

“But that means—”

“Shut up,” Josh said. “The sheriff of Dry Gulch is about to address us.”

The sheriff was Captain Walsh. He had moved to the front of the room, was standing on the beige carpet that stretched from the first row of seats to the screen. He cleared his throat, said, “Like to say a couple of words.”

The low hum of conversation died away. Dick pressed her hand, leaned closer to her. She whispered, “What's all this …” and Sergeant Grimsby made a shushing sound and Captain Walsh began.

“First about what happened yesterday,” he said. “Miss Garnet's murder. There's no doubt the two bullets that killed her came from the Webley Miss Carson fired at her, like it said to do in the script. And there's no doubt the Webley was loaded with blanks when it was hung on the tent pole before the scene started. So in between the time the pistol was hung up and the time it was fired, it got itself loaded. But how we don't know.”

He paused for a second, his expression thoughtful, and looked around the room. His eyes rested on Josh and then on Dick. Then, smiling wryly, he went on.

“Some of you already been working on this, but Mr. Fabro here has come up with the first idea we been able to use.” He glanced at Fabro, who sat looking straight ahead, his heavy face impassive. “With his help we got the Technicolor people to process part of the film that was shot yesterday morning. The part that was taken before, during and after the killing.”

Murmuring voices, hushed and yet excited, filled the room. Captain Walsh raised his hand, said, “Hold it.” The voices faded away.

“Now here's what I want,” Captain Walsh said. “Anything you see that isn't right, isn't the way it should have been, you're to tell me. Mr. Eastman here—” Heads turned towards Chuck Eastman, seated back of the desk with the start and stop buttons. “—is going to ran the film. And at a word from any of you he'll stop it and we can run whatever you saw over again, decide if something's wrong or not. Now, any questions?”

From somewhere in the back Basil Trabert asked, “But what, exactly, are we to look for?”

“If I knew I wouldn't be here,” Captain Walsh said. “Main thing, though, is to see if anyone got to the pistol before Miss Carson did.”

He waited, but nobody seemed to have any more questions.

“All right, Mr. Eastman,” he said. “Whenever you're ready.”

He sat down beside Mr. Fabro in the front row. The lights went out. Lisa felt Josh Gordon move beside her, felt him reach across her with something that rustled. Eyes still blinded by the sudden darkness she felt rather than saw Dick take the something. “What …?” Dick began and the screen lit up and she saw the something was a long envelope.

“Important,” Gordon whispered.

Dick put the envelope in a pocket. Sergeant Grimsby said, “Quiet.” Josh said, “Yes, sir,” and looked up at the screen. So did she.

It was the scene, she saw, where the two litter bearers were on their way back to camp with Caresse. They were walking up a narrow, green-flanked path, their feet padding on the soft earth that looked purple in the unbalanced Technicolor print, their backs alternately toast-brown and cinnamon as they moved through pockets of shadow and light. At a tiny clearing they halted, lowered the litter to the ground and went down a grassy embankment to a dark pool of water. Instead of following them, the camera closed in on the litter, on Caresse lying under the wool blanket, her eyes shut, pretending to be unconscious. Still closer came the camera until Caresse's head filled the screen. Slowly the too-big eyes opened, glanced warily in the direction taken by the bearers, and at almost the same time the hammer cracks of two distant shots came over the sound track. Caresse's lips, pomegranate smears on pale skin, curled up into the twisted smile, gloating, evil, almost sexual, that showed her pleasure over the plot to get rid of her husband.

She was still smiling when the camera left her and panned down to where the bearers were drinking from the jungle pool. They drank greedily from cupped hands and then the younger of the two waded out into the pool to fill a canvas water bag, no doubt for Caresse. Suddenly, seemingly from close by, came three heavy explosions. Alarmed, the bearers exchanged glances, scrambled up the embankment and picked up the litter. The camera, which had panned back with the bearers, held on a final shot of Caresse. Eyes closed, face serene, she was pretending to be unconscious again. She let one arm slide off the litter, let it dangle helplessly, and then she and the bearers, dogtrotting now, were cloaked from view by the tangled undergrowth. Over the sound track came Josh Gordon's voice: “
Cut! And thank you.
”

Glaring white light flooded the screen for an instant and then numbers began to appear in a quick backward sequence: 10 9 8 7 6. Another piece of film coming on. Lisa felt a sudden queasiness in her stomach. This would be the camp scene. The murder scene. She must have clenched her fingers because she felt Dick returning the pressure. 5 4 3 2 1 the numbers read and the glaring white light was replaced by color. Back of the man holding the blackboard on which was printed “Scene 931A—
Tiger in the Night
—Director: Gordon,” she could see the campfire with the natives around it and the three tents in the background and the pole from which the holstered pistol was hanging. The man raised the hinged arm on the top of the blackboard, brought it down with a hollow thud and trotted away.

Now Ashton Graves should have come limping out of the hunters' tent, but he didn't. Nothing happened. The natives remained motionless around the fire. It could have been a color slide except for the smoke rising from the burning wood. Waiting tensely, Lisa had an eerie feeling of being alone in the dark projection room. She could hear nothing, not even breathing. She felt a chill wave of fear, worse than the fear that had gripped her during the long night in the dingy hotel room they had put her in. This could be her only chance. Why didn't something happen?