Come Back Dead (8 page)

12

I was the last to arrive at RKO Culver City. I learned at the antebellum front office that an ambulance had already called for Carson Drury and carried him away. I found Paddy Maguire at the scene of the accident, the soundstage where the
Albertsons
had been shooting. He was patting the hand of Drury's beautiful secretary, Sue, and doing it in a genuinely disinterested way. She appeared close to shock, and Paddy looked a little stunned himself. His homburg was pushed well back on his head, exposing the tuft of gray hair he liked to tug when he was puzzled. He'd already worked the tuft into something resembling a startled paint brush.

Behind them was the set Hank Shepard had described to me: a three-story staircase spiraling up into the rafters of the stage. It was built of dark, heavy wood and backed, on each landing, by stained-glass windows. It had to be a small piece of the Albertsons' mansion, after their fall from grace. Some of the windows had broken panes, and the stairway carpet was in tatters. If that wasn't giveaway enough, the whole set was covered by the dust of ages.

When he spotted me, Paddy passed Sue to a willing set hand and crossed the stage to meet me. His greeting was milder than the one I'd been imagining. “This is a damned odd business, Scotty.”

“Sorry I wasn't here,” I said.

“So am I, but not because I think you could have spotted this coming. If you'd been here, though, you could tell me what happened, and that would be a blessing. There had to have been a dozen witnesses on the set, no one of whom saw anything useful.

“What's certain is the camera crane tipped over. Drury was on the camera platform, alone, trying to work out the shot he wanted. The cameraman, Joe Nolan, should have been along for the ride, but he was working on some problem with the lighting. There was just the crane operator, a guy named Smith, who was seated on the controls down on the chassis.

“Smith raised Drury and the camera up and started to swing it to the right, away from the stairway set, for the start of the shot. The crane tipped over and landed in the empty center of the stage. No one ended up underneath it, thank God, or we'd be dealing with a death.”

“What happened to Smith?”

“He stayed at the controls as long as he could and then stepped off. Being down on the base of the thing, he was never in any danger.”

We walked across to where the crane lay on its side. It looked so much like a fallen animal that I had to fight the temptation to pat its battered side.

“How's Drury?” I asked.

“From what I'm told, he was conscious when they carried him out and dictating orders to everyone in sight. I guess he was thrown clear just before the crash. The camera wasn't so lucky.”

A man was examining the remains of the camera, a short man with broad shoulders and heavy forearms that were dark with hair. “Joe Nolan,” he said as he shook my hand.

“It's a total loss,” he said to Paddy. “Just like I guessed.”

“How about your other guess?”

“I was right there, too. This was no accident. Part of the crane's counterweight has been removed.” He led us to the base of the crane where racks of metal plates had been fitted to balance the weight of the camera.

“This is an old crane,” Nolan said. “Weights have been added over the years to accommodate a bigger platform and different cameras. There's a whole rack of weights missing that was here yesterday. I know. Jack Smith and I tested this rig just before quitting time.”

I could see sweat on his scalp through his thin, black hair. “My chair ended up under the camera,” he said. “If I'd gone up with Carson today, you'd be burying the camera and me in the same hole.”

“I've heard that this camera was the original one from
Albertsons
,” I said.

“And
First Citizen
,” Nolan said. “It was already a veteran in '41. But you couldn't beat it for the kind of shots Carson loves, those mile-deep shots where the middle ground and the background are as important as the foreground. I don't know how we're going to replace it.”

I turned to Paddy. “The camera may have been the real target. Not Drury or anyone else. Without that camera, he may not be able to match his new footage to his old film.”

“The target was never just the camera, buddy,” Nolan said. “Nobody sends a camera up on a crane by itself. Whoever did this was counting on hurting someone or didn't give a damn whether he did or not. We should be talking to the cops right now.”

“We'll let Mr. Drury make that call, if he's able,” Paddy said. “My associate and I are on our way over to see how he's doing.”

I waited until we were in the DeSoto and Paddy had completed his cigar-lighting ceremony before I seconded Nolan. “It's time for the police.”

“Past time for them,” Paddy said, “which is one of the things that makes calling them in so awkward. Another is that we don't have the first idea what's really going on. I don't mind helping the police now and again, as you know, but they're damned unpleasant people to have along when you're feeling your way through a mine field. Heavy-footed, if you get my meaning.”

As usual he ignored the dashboard ashtray and held his cigar arm outside the car, as though helping me signal for a right. This time he actually was.

“Turn east at the next corner and stay on Slauson. According to Drury's secretary, he was taken to a ritzy private hospital in Huntington Park. On our way there you can tell me what you've accomplished. You can skip the part about pasting Mr. Shepard. Drury filled me in on that this morning.”

“Sorry to get you involved,” I said.

“Don't give it another thought. If this Shepard had slighted Ella in front of me, he'd be sharing Drury's hospital room right now.”

I told Paddy of my breakfast with Whitehead and the long shot that had come in for me at Riviera.

“That's more like it,” Paddy said. “What's had me flummoxed from the start is the idea that anyone gives a damn whether Drury makes his comeback or no. That and the odd way this business has escalated. A script stolen, tires slashed. That's nuisance stuff. Then there's a fire that could easily have burned down an entire studio. Talk about upping the ante. Now we have an arranged accident that has double homicide written all over it. What happened to turn our vandal into an arsonist and would-be murderer?”

“Maybe we're dealing with two threats,” I said. “That penny-ante stuff could have been John Piers Whitehead's way of getting attention. But I can't see him destroying the negative or hurting anyone.”

“And I can't see two saboteurs working the same side of the street. It's too big a coincidence. We'll concentrate on this Lockard fellow. He can explain to us later why he started with half measures. Maybe he was testing the water, seeing how much security the lot really had.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Lockard's surely the answer to my first puzzler: Who on earth would take Drury and his movie so seriously? It sounds like Mr. Lockard has more invested in Drury's ranch than money. And he just may be the type to use strong-arm tactics.”

“But he doesn't know anything about the movies,” I said. “He wouldn't know how important that camera was to Drury's plans.”

“Forget the blooming camera. The target was Drury. The camera was an innocent bystander. I can't wait to tell the quiz kid that he borrowed money from the guy who'd most like to see his precious movie floating belly up. Don't spare the horses.”

Drury's ritzy hospital was called the Petry Clinic. It occupied an old mansion that must have been too heavy to truck east when downtown Los Angeles engulfed the neighborhood in the twenties. The place was built of roughly finished red sandstone and had an octagonal tower that ended in toy battlements. There was a lighted window at the top of the tower, standing out like a beacon against the evening sky.

“God appears to be in,” Paddy said as we climbed the front walk, Paddy climbing in a flat-footed, deliberate way.

“Joan Crawford wear you out?” I asked.

“That'll be the day.”

While I asked a nurse at the reception desk for Drury, Paddy collared a doctor. Dr. Petry himself, it turned out. He had Paddy's waistline, but not his height. His skin was so flat and perfect that I suspected powder.

“You'll be relieved to hear that Carson is in no danger,” he told Paddy as I joined them. He paused to let us express our relief and then hurried to fill the dead air. “He fractured his left fibula just below the knee. I'm preparing to set it now.”

Paddy seemed more interested in the interior decorating than Drury's fibula. The crystal chandelier that graced the entryway fascinated him in particular. “Aren't broken bones a trifle beneath your notice here?” he asked.

“Our specialty is a certain class of patient,” Dr. Petry said, “not a class of injury or illness.”

“What class of patient would that be?” I asked.

“They're gentlemen and ladies who require a high level of personal attention. And an even higher level of discretion.”

“Sounds as if we're laboring in the same vineyard, Doctor,” Paddy said. “That being the case, would you extend us a professional courtesy? I'd appreciate a word with our client while you're mixing your plaster.”

The doctor bowed ever so slightly and showed us to Drury's room. It wasn't, as Paddy had guessed, in the tower. It was on the first floor, overlooking a stone verandah and a formal garden lit by floodlights.

Carson Drury was sitting up in bed. Even so, his uninjured leg, stretched out in front of him, came close to touching the ironwork of the footboard. The broken leg was suspended above the mattress, being tugged back into alignment by weights and pulleys.

Hank Shepard was there, as I'd expected, standing at the head of Drury's bed. I hadn't expected the other visitor, Gilbert Traynor. He was standing by the windows, admiring the floodlit landscaping. The lighting made the ornamental trees and plants look like a garden at the bottom of the ocean.

“‘Enter old Polonius, with his man,'” Drury said. There was a bruise on his forehead–already purple–and he was pale, but he could still project from the diaphragm. “If you've come to offer me a refund, I'll take it.” He sounded serious enough, but he ended the crack with a friendly laugh.

Paddy didn't join in. “You might want to hear our report first.”

“You've found out who did this?” Shepard asked. He looked from Paddy to me, remembered our parting exchange at the Club Satyr, and looked away, embarrassed.

“We've a candidate in mind,” Paddy said.

Drury turned his head in Traynor's direction, and Shepard, Paddy, and I followed his gaze. Traynor, who was dressed for another evening on the town, reached up to finger his black bow tie–a floppy tie, I noted, like the one Drury had worn the evening before.

“You've not met Mr. Maguire, have you, Gilbert?” Drury asked.

Traynor crossed the room to shake Paddy's hand. Afterward, he kept crossing, sidestepping in the general direction of the door.

“Guess I'll be going, Carson,” he said. “Just came by to see how you were doing and to repeat my offer. I think under the circumstances you should really consider it. Not right this minute, I mean, but when you're feeling better. In the meantime, I'll just toddle off. Unless, of course,” he said to Paddy from the doorway, “I'm your man.”

“We'd have shot you long since,” Paddy said affably. “Enjoy your evening.”

“Now we can speak freely,” Drury said. “Give me the bad news, Maguire.”

“The accident was deliberately staged. Someone removed a portion of the crane's counterweight. In the wee small hours, most likely. I checked with the guards. Even if they kept to their schedule, they wouldn't have stopped by that soundstage more than a couple of times between midnight and dawn.”

“How about my camera?”

“It was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Drury nodded. “You said you had a suspect in mind. Do you also have a name?”

“Ralph Lockard.”

“The developer?” Shepard asked.

“And Mr. Drury's secret benefactor. Lockard owns the Alora Land Conservancy, as my associate here discovered. Lockard set it up to put some farmland on ice, but his scheme produced an unforeseen bonus. He was offered a choice parcel of ground called Eden as collateral for a loan, a parcel he's been lusting after since Truman beat Dewey. He figures to get it, too, when the borrower defaults. My guess is he's been trying to improve his chances.”

Not having lines in that part of the scene, I'd spent my time watching Drury's reaction and Shepard's. Like Paddy, I'd expected the Lockard revelation to give Drury yet another knock on the head, perhaps the one that finished him. It hadn't happened. After some initial unease, Drury had actually begun to smile. Hank Shepard wasn't bearing up so well. He was staring at Drury as though nothing in their long association had prepared him for this latest foul-up.

Drury must have felt the daggers. Without taking his eyes off Paddy, he said, “Relax, Hank. Everything's under control.”

“You knew all along, didn't you?” Shepard said.

“It wasn't all that hard to work out. Was it, Scotty?” He winked at me. “Ralph Lockard. His very name gives him away. Sounds just like the villain in a melodrama, the evil banker about to foreclose on the widow's mortgage. I guess that makes me the widow.”

Paddy had been upstaged again, and he knew it. “You figured the Alora scam out and borrowed the money anyway?”

“Of course. I needed to raise as much money as I could. A committee of bankers wouldn't have given me a nickel more than Eden is worth. In fact, they would have insisted on giving me a nickel or two less. Mr. Lockard was much more generous. Most people are willing to be generous if you can convince them they're cheating you.”