Authors: Gregory Mcdonald
“Pity you can’t get your grubby fingers on it all, Edith,” Sy Koller said.
“I’m tryin’, darlin’, I’m tryin’. Did you hear him in there asking the world for a bit part in a movie that’s not even being made? The poor dear. He needs looking after.”
“He’s as crazy as a mosquito in the dressing room of a chorus line,” said Sy Koller. “Gonzo.”
“It’s interesting to know him,” Fletch said.
“That’s because you don’t,” said Edith Howell. “Knowing Freddy is like having a rare disease: shortly the interest pales and what’s left is pain.”
Sy Koller laughed. “Apparently you’re willing to put up with the pain, Edith. For all those millions.”
“For a short while, darling. After all, Freddy’s liver can hardly be made of molybdenum.”
“Well, darlings.” Edith Howell picked up her drink and stood up. “If you’re not chatting you might as well be dead, I always say. Or asleep.” Sitting out in the night, she and Sy Koller and Fletch had been silent for two minutes. “So I might as well go to bed.”
After she closed the door to the house behind her, Sy Koller lifted his drink to Fletch and said, “I like my drink, too, you see.”
“You’ve had a hard day,” Fletch said. “Attacked with a knife by one of your actors. Orally attacked by one of your colleagues.”
“Ah, the perils of being a director.” Sy Koller chuckled. “Being a director is like being the father of a large family of berserk children who keep
slipping in and out of reality. We get paid for hazardous duty, but not enough.”
“I thought I should tell you,” Fletch said slowly, “that the police know that you and Peterman had a fist fight outside a Los Angeles restaurant three years ago.”
“They do? How do you know that?”
“Talked to Chief of Detectives Roz Nachman this afternoon. She called. She accused me of having hijacked all her prime suspects.”
“I’m a prime suspect?” Koller ran his palm over his stubbly chin and cheeks. “I shouldn’t be.”
“No?”
“Why should I put myself out of a job? Now that Peterman’s dead the future of
Midsummer Night’s Madness
is dubious.”
“You mean you won’t even finish filming it?”
“Well,” Koller snorted. “Peterman was the only one who seemed to believe in the property.”
“Didn’t you believe in it?”
“Not really. Peterman gave me the script and said he wanted it shot exactly as written.”
“You never even saw McKensie’s script?”
“No. Peterman said it was a pile of dung.”
“Do you think it would have been?”
“Probably not. But it was clear to me that McKensie had every reason in the world to sue Peterman, so how could I ask to use his script? It would confuse matters. You don’t know this business, do you?”
“No.”
“Think of having a career where you have to find a whole new job every six months.”
“Finding a job is the hardest job there is.”
“That’s the director’s life. And the actor’s life. And the set designer’s. It brings a certain element of the frantic to this business. And a great deal of hot air.”
“But don’t you get rich and famous after a while? Able to pick and choose?”
“Seldom. You make a pile of money, and you spend a pile and a half. Because you’re so frantic. You blow it on hot air, keeping up the image. The more money you make the more frantic you become, the more you blow it on hot air and the deeper into debt you go, which makes you more frantic.”
In the trees night birds were gossiping.
“Anyway, the police say you were fighting over a woman.”
“Is that what they say? I guess it’s what we said at the time.”
“That you had Peterman down on the sidewalk and were strangling him when you were pulled off.”
“Yeah,” Koller sighed. “It felt good.” Fletch said:
“She must have been one fantastical woman.”
“I wish I’d ever known a woman worth strangling someone over.” Koller lit a cigarette. “Methinks, mine host, you enquire as to why I was strangling Steve Peterman.”
“Just curious,” said Fletch. “Did he stick you with one of his telephone bills?”
Koller took a drink. “Happy to tell you. Because my strangling Steve Peterman three years ago is
the best evidence I’ve got that I didn’t stab him yesterday.”
Fletch waited. The tip of Koller’s cigarette glowed brightly.
“I caught him out in a fraud,” Koller said. “I resented it. I hated it. Peterman wasn’t the first to work this scam, and he wasn’t the last. But, Fletcher, this business can be so dirty… sometimes it gets to you. What he was doing was raising money for a film which didn’t exist, and never would. He had gotten ahold of something which looked like a filmscript, a story about some South American
patron
and his daughter and a priest and a revolutionary—a complete mess. Anybody who knew anything about the business would know it wasn’t a filmscript. It was just a hundred pages of people saying hello and goodbye and making speeches at each other. He had been out peddling this to people who didn’t know better across this broad land—you know, the doctors and the shoemakers, the widows and the orphans, all who dream of making a financial killing on a big movie while having their lives touched with glamor. They’d be invited to the opening in New York. Also the Academy Award ceremony of course. He told the suckers he just wanted start-up money, to be paid back when and if he got the film capitalized.”
“But not to be paid back if he did not get the film capitalized?”
“Of course not. Told them it was going to be filmed in El Salvador. Even had an El Salvadorean S. A. Had no intention of trying to capitalize it. You never heard of this scam?”
“No.”
“I figure he’d raised about a half million dollars, all of which had disappeared down this El Salvadorean hole.” Koller stubbed out his cigarette. “I hated this for two reasons. It’s bad for the business. The next guy who goes out and tries to raise start-up money for a film might be honest. The more of these little cheats there are running around, the harder it is for the honest guy.” Koller drank. “The second reason, of course, was that he was using my name. He had told these people maybe he could get Sy Koller to direct. That we’d had conversations. That we were in negotiations.”
“Not true?”
“I’d never met the son of a bitch. First I’d heard about it was when Sonny Fields told me he’d heard it was going on.” Koller lit another cigarette, his lighter flaring in the dark garden. “So, one night after more to drink than was good for me, I met Peterman in a Los Angeles bar, pulled him out to the sidewalk by his coat collar, proceeded to hit him upside the head. He fell to the sidewalk. I sat on top of him and proceeded to throttle him. It felt real good. His neck was soft. No muscle at all. Wonder I didn’t kill him before nosey people interfered.”
“Why didn’t Peterman press charges?”
“Why didn’t I have him arrested for fraud?”
“I don’t know.”
“We came to an amicable settlement. Peterman said he was just using this scam to raise money for a real film, somewhere down the road. My career
wasn’t looking too good. Aforementioned frantic need to gain employment. So…”
“So… ?”
“I agreed that if he ever had a real film to direct, I would direct it. We laid the fight off on a woman.”
“You blackmailed him.”
“We blackmailed each other. It’s the way much of this business works, old son.”
“And what happened to the half a million dollars?”
“It went into Peterman’s pockets. And then into his shoes and his wife’s furs.”
“So
Midsummer Nights Madness
came along, starring Moxie Mooney, whom Peterman by then controlled, and Gerry Littleford—”
“And Talcott Cross hires Geoffrey McKensie to direct. I called Steve Peterman.”
“Had you seen the script?”
“No. But I had a pretty good idea it wasn’t much good.”
“Why would you want to direct a loser?”
“Well. … In the three intervening years my career had sunk so low I was getting the bends. You understand?”
“How would directing a stinker help your career?”
“It would prove I could get employed. It would also provide me with some much needed money. You know about money?”
“I’m learning.”
“End of story,” said Koller. “As long as Peterman was producing, Koller was directing. Peterman dead: Koller dead.
Ergo
the one person absolutely guaranteed not to kill Steven Peterman is your’s
truly. Maybe it’s a shameful story,” Koller concluded, “but it’s a hell of an alibi.”
“Fletch?” Moxie’s voice came from the upper balcony of the Blue House. “Are you out there?”
“Yo.” He stepped under the balcony.
She said, “If you give me any of that Romeo crap, I’ll spit on your head.”
“If only your fans could hear you now.”
“Go find Freddy for me, will you? I was sort of rough on him.”
“Yes, you were.”
“If I want criticism,” she said irritably, “I’ll ask for it.”
“You’re asking for it.”
After a long silence, while Fletch waited, the man’s voice drawled over the phone, “Sorry. Chief Nachman says she can’t come to the phone now.”
“Please,” said Fletch, with as much dignity as he could enlist. “Tell her it’s her earwig calling.”
“Earwig? You mean that little no-see-’um bug?”
“Right.” Alone in the study at the back of The Blue House Fletch smiled. “Earwig.”
There was another long silence before Chief of Detectives Roz Nachman picked up. “Yes, Fletcher?”
“Thank you for answering, Chief. You’re working late.”
“Has one of your house guests become overwhelmed
with remorse and confessed to murder?”
“It’s a classier crime than that.”
“I know it is.”
“I have a line of investigation for you, though. Just a suggestion, really.”
“Suggest away.”
“Steve Peterman must have had some kind of a car. A rented car or something. Everyone was up and down that Route 41 so much, between the two beaches.”
“I suppose so.”
“I suggest you check Peterman’s car to see if it’s been in an accident. A hit-and-run accident.”
Nachman did not pause long. “You talking about McKensie’s wife?”
“Just a thought. Wouldn’t take much to check it out.”
“I see.”
“For what it’s worth,” Fletch said. “All right.”
“Is there still nothing showing up on all that film?”
“Nothing.”
“And the experts aren’t discovering anything funny about the set?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a real significant fact in itself.”
“Good night, Irwin. I’m busy.”
The inside, the bar area of Durty Harry’s, was virtually empty, but there was a huge crowd sitting and standing on the patio, all facing into the same corner.
Fletch got a beer from the bar and went out to the patio.
Quite a diverse collection of people had gathered. There were the tourists in the best light colored clothing one can really only buy in a big city but never really wear in one. Their faces and arms and legs were red and stiff with sunburn. There were the genuine denizens of Key West, the Conchs, who prefer to keep themselves as pale as Scandanavians in deep Scandanavian winters. They think of the sun as enemy, and run through it from building
to car and car to house. There were some art-folk of all ages, their faces and bodies looking as if they’d lived plenty, their bright, quick eyes showing they wanted to live plenty more. There were the cocaine cowboys in their stringy leather and denim; the girls in their full skirts and full blouses and dead hair. And there were the drunks, with the weird blue in their skin which results from mixing too much constant alcohol with too much constant sun.
And sitting in the corner, the object of everyone’s attention, sat and spoke Frederick Mooney. With his gray hair, stubble of beard, broad face and big eyes, he easily could have been the reincarnation of the person whom the people in Key West would most like to see reincarnated—Ernest Hemingway. Mooney was Papa, all right, and these were his children gathered around him.
Sipping his beer, Fletch leaned against the door jamb and listened.
“… not glorious, not glamorous at all,” Mooney was saying. “Anyone who thinks so knows nothing. Anyone who thinks acting is simply a matter of popping the eyes in surprise…” Mooney popped his eyes in surprise at the crowd; there was a titter of admiration. “… of doing a double-take …” Mooney did a doubletake; the people laughed. … “quivering the chin …” Mooney’s chin quivered apparently uncontrollably; the people laughed harder. “… to weep…” Tears swelled in Mooney’s eyes and dribbled down his cheeks; the people applauded. “… don’t know what acting is.” The virtuoso wiped his instrument dry and thrust it
forward at his audience. “An actor must learn his craft. And his skill is not just in learning to control every muscle of his face. Not just in learning how to set his shoulders expressively. Not just in learning that how he places his feet—even when they are out of sight, off-camera—invariably is more important than anything he does with his face, because how you place your feet, how you balance yourself, how you posture yourself says more about who you are, your attitudes than anything else.”
Sitting back in his chair in the attitude of a grandfather at the end of a full meal, Mooney reached for the bottle of cognac on the table, brought it to his lips, and took a good-sized swallow. “Thirsty work, this.” He anticipated a burp, worked it up from his innards, gave full sound to it. He blinked and smiled in happy relief at his audience, and they applauded.
“The craft, the skills,” Mooney said. “Barrymore once said, he’d rather have straight legs than know how to act. Of course, Barrymore had straight legs.” He paused to allow his audience to laugh, and they did. “An actor must learn how to move in his clothes. You know that a man moves differently in a toga than he does in blue jeans… than he does in medieval hose… than he does in black tie. But do you know an actor must learn these skills? Even if an actor does not smoke those dirty weeds…” Disdainfully, Frederick Mooney waved his hand at a woman smoking a cigarette, “… he must learn to handle a cigarette as if he were addicted. One handles a cigarette differently than one handles a cigar. Few actors are, in themselves,
violent people. No acting schools I’ve heard of have pistol firing ranges. Yet when an actor handles a gun, he must have learned to do so… so naturally that the gun seems an extention of his hand—not something strange and foreign to him, but something so much a part of his being, so necessary to his mental attitudes that the audience knows he can use it and will use it. My training was such, having been dragged up through the music halls of England and the carnivals of America as well, I not only learned the rhythms of Shakespeare, but how to handle a sword and fence with it as if my life depended upon it. I learned to ride a horse both like a Guardsman and an American Indian. John Wayne once said that he didn’t know much about method acting, but he sure knew how to stop a horse on the mark. Of course, John Wayne could stop a horse on the mark.” Again his audience chuckled. Looking at his audience, tying them all together by his gaze, Mooney saw Fletch. In his eyes there was only the barest flicker of recognition. He continued his lecture. “It may not seem it to you—oh, you who watch an actor act and think you can judge him, but who haven’t the slightest knowledge or appreciation of the skills he employs to entertain you—but an actor must learn to ride a horse and a motorcycle, to use a rope, a lariat, to drink from a wine flagon, and open a bottle of champagne, to hold a violin, and to perform a right uppercut to the jaw—perfectly.”