Way of a Wanton (17 page)

She smiled brightly. “That's good enough for me. Oh! I must look awful. No make-up or anything.”
 

I pulled the sheet slowly down almost to the foot of the bed. “No make-up, maybe,” I told her seriously, “but you look marvelous. There are other adjectives.” I considered the problem. “Beautiful, unbelievable, fabulous...”
 

She blew me a kiss and swung out of bed. “Go on, you. Get dressed. I'll fix breakfast.”
 

Breakfast sounded dismal. But I needed strength. This might be a big day ahead of me. I groaned, and agreed.
 

Sherry fixed me much more than I can usually manage that early. Over coffee I said, “You're a pretty bossy little female.”
 

“I don't want you to go away from here hungry.”
 

“I don't want to go away from here. And I swear I haven't got any hunger left in me.”
 

“Are you complimenting my cooking?”
 

“I'm complimenting you.”
 

“I'm not hungry either.”
 

I grinned at her and finished my second cup of coffee. “Much as I hate to, honey, I've got to take off. Working man.” I looked at my watch. “Lord, it's already ten o'clock.” I pretended amazement. “Where does the time go?”
 

“Silly. You going out to location?”
 

“Yeah. Where is it exactly?”
 

She explained where today's shooting was, then said, “I'm supposed to be at the studio.”
 

“You're not going, I hope. Not after last night. You'd better stay locked inside.”
 

She nodded. “I believe I will.”
 

I said, “Try to think of anything else about Zoe that might help us. Look through her stuff again. Maybe you'll find some gizmo that wouldn't mean anything to me, or remember something that's missing. Let your subconscious work for you. Look all the stuff over, think about it, then forget it. Read a book or"—I leered at her—"paint a picture. Maybe something will come to you, bang, like that.”
 

“I'll do it. Maybe I'll even go to the police again, see if that helps.”
 

“If you do, have them pick you up here. I'll phone them and explain what happened.” I stopped. “Don't know how I'll explain why I didn't tell them last night.”
 

She smiled. “You'd better not explain.”
 

I got up and she walked to the front door with me. I pulled the chair away from the doorknob. “Put this back when I leave,” I said. “And don't leave unless you're with cops.” I thought a minute, then took my gun from its holster. “Here. You know how to use this?”
 

She took it in her hand and gave it a look of obvious distaste. “Just pull the trigger thing, don't you?”
 

I groaned. “Yeah, you pull the trigger thing. But you don't have to pull that one very hard, so be damn careful how you handle it. And there's no safety on that gun.” I let her look some more, then I said, “You simply point it at the man and pull the trigger. It makes a noise and he falls down. You don't even have to cock the hammer, but you can if you've got time. It's a little more accurate that way. Incidentally"—I pointed—"
that's
the hammer.”
 

I didn't really know why I was telling her all this. She'd have been almost as well off with a rolling pin. It's almost a foregone conclusion that if two people who don't know how to shoot well or pull a trigger stand twenty yards apart and blaze away at each other, they can blaze for half a day and nobody will get hurt except bystanders. But she'd feel safer, and probably be safer, with it. I took off my coat, dropped the holster on the chair, and shrugged my coat back on.
 

“All right,” she said, then placed the gun on the chair. “But won't you need it, Shell?”
 

“I'll be around a crowd of people out at the location, Sherry. I'll get the gun from you tonight, or when I get back. And look, don't let anybody in here, even though you've got the gun. Not till this mess is settled, anyway.”
 

She smiled. “Yes, sir.”
 

“I wasn't ordering you around, honey. But pretend I was. Well, so long.”
 

There hadn't been much point in her getting dressed, so she'd slipped into the blue robe when she got up. Now she put her hands behind her, squeezed her eyes shut, and bent forward with her head raised and lips pouting for a kiss. I sure surprised her. She squealed, then opened her eyes, threw her arms around me, and kissed me with everything she had behind it. And that was something, indeed.
 

“There,” she said finally. “To remember me by.”
 

I didn't like the sound of the words and a small chill crawled along my spine. “Don't put it like that, honey. I'll see you later. And I've got plenty to remember you by. O.K., stick the chair under the door. If you think of anything, can you call me at location?”
 

“There's a little diner a block or so from there. They'll take any calls up. ‘By, Shell. You be careful.”
 

She wasn't being very careful with that blue robe, and I almost went back in. But I managed to tell her good-by again and get out to the Cad. I waited till she shut the door, then drove away.
 

It was nearly eleven o'clock before I really got started toward location. I stopped and phoned Samson so he could have a radio car buzz by Sherry's once in a while. He said he'd fix it, then told me there was little new except obvious eliminations. It was looking more and more definite that one of those at the Thursday night party had killed Zoe, though which one was still a mystery. After talking to Sam I had a shave, then headed for the “Jungle Girl” company.
 

Sherry had told me how to get there: out Cypress, the street she lived on, to Royal Road, then left for another seven or eight miles. A dirt road led the last half mile or so up to the location, which was part of the old Andersen Ranch. There was a lot of trees and brush in that area, and the Genova crew had fixed up a large section of it to represent African jungle. I doubted that Louis Genova would be overly pleased when I drove up, but I wanted to talk to Swallow some more. And I had a few words coming up with Raul and King.
 

I drove out Royal Road to the railroad tracks at Aldous Street, by the old packing houses there, and stopped. One of the long, slow-moving freight trains that rumble through at eleven A.M. and at three and six P.M. was chugging past behind black-and-white striped wooden bars that blocked the highway, while the electric semaphore signal clanged and flashed red. I cut the motor and had a smoke, glad I wasn't in a hurry.
 

It was a beautiful day, the brown earth and green trees sun-splashed, and puffy white clouds in the blue sky. I stretched, feeling good, ready for anything; and never having visited a movie location, I was expecting almost anything. I've learned that's a good attitude to have in Hollywood, no matter what job I'm on. Relaxed, and in a reflective mood, I listened to the rumble of the train and thought about that angle a little bit.
 

It seems that about half the cases I get in Hollywood are so screwy they cold have happened in no other city in the world. There's a reason for that, though: Hollywood is a lovely place, but it's insane; if cities were locked up like people, Hollywood would be the first to go. Maybe that's why I like working here: The cases are screwy because the town's screwy. Maybe
I'm
screwy.
 

But no matter what they tell you, this town isn't normal. If you want to lamp a whole city that's off its rocker, come on out and look at this burg. It runs a perpetual fever, and the citizens grow frantically through all the ages of man from infancy to adultery. The place is crammed with abnormal people, subnormal people, and even people—everything from genius to idiot, with genius running a limping last. The place is crazy, all right, but the main reason is that Hollywood is primarily the Studio—and that includes both the major studios and the little independents like Genova's. There is the crux. The Studio: a never-never land where down is up and glamour comes off in the shower, and where there are more falsies per square inch than inches; the home of the option clause and the crisis, the Breen Office and the Code, the shooting script and the shot script; the place where hosts of story doctors almost invariably kill the patients, and where it seems logical that cancer specialists be hired to cure pneumonia; where if a thing is large it's gigantic, and if it's small it's invisible. Hollywood would be the first to deny that it's insane—thus evincing one more symptom of the disorder—but if it isn't, Webster was kidding us. In a place like that, as I said, anything can happen.
 

I finished my cigarette and the diagnosis of my home town simultaneously with the departure of the last car of the train, then gunned the Cad toward Genova's jungle. The last half mile was over dirt road leading off the highway, and when I got to the end of it there was a space where several cars were parked. I locked the Cad and headed toward activity I could see fifty yards away. As I walked closer I could see a little clearing on the edge of the trees and half surrounded by them, with the cameras, lights, reflectors, and the rest of the paraphernalia set up for a scene in progress.
 

I stopped fifty feet away from the action so I wouldn't stir up any dust, thus causing Genova to have a foaming fit, and waited till the scene was wrapped up. Half a dozen shapely women cavorted around clad in outfits similar to the one Helen had been wearing at the studio yesterday. A little grass hut had been built next to the trees, and people roamed in and out of it, one of them looking a great deal like a witch doctor. He had something that looked like a dragon's head stuck over his own head. He jumped up and down waving some kind of wand and chanting something that sounded like “Zoombala magga hotchahotcha. Zoombala.” Finally he finished, and the religious ritual was over.
 

I spotted Raul when the scene ended. The native priest took off his mask and scratched his head, all through saving souls for now. I walked up to Raul and patted him on the shoulder.
 

“Well, hi there, Shell,” he said cheerfully. “The glamour of Genova Productions got you? Wish you'd been here for the last scene, pal. You could have substituted for the pitcher. Wouldn't have had to use the mask.”
 

“The hell you say. You seem in high spirits. Drunk?”
 

He chuckled. “Nope. But may I be struck dead if Evelyn isn't back. She's back, Shell.” He was beaming at me. “Would you believe it? Came back last night. Don't know if she'll stay, but she says she'll stick around till this—you know, till it's cleared up. She heard about it on the radio. Waiting for me when I got home last night. Man, I
am
in high spirits. Blame me?”
 

“I'm damned glad to hear it, chum. No kidding. Hope it's O.K. from now on.”
 

He sobered a little. “It will be if there's anything I can do now to make it that way. Believe me, I'm reformed.”
 

I grinned at him. “I will when I see it.”
 

“You'll see it.” He was serious, and I almost believed he meant it.
 

“
You!
”
 

I didn't have to look; I knew who that was: Louis-the-fit-thrower Genova. I didn't even glance at him. He walked up beside me, then waltzed around in front of me and looked up. “What the hell are you doing here, Scott?”
 

I was getting awfully tired of this little man. I said, “You want me up here, or the cops, Genova? It's pretty damn obvious to everybody that Zoe was killed by somebody in your little group Thursday night. I mean to nose around some more.”
 

His voice seemed to get deeper. “I wasn't the only one there. Why do you keep following me?”
 

“I know you weren't. You got a persecution complex? I know who was there—including Raul here.”
 

“Well, you can leave right now,” he said. “Immediately.”
 

“You know,” I said, “you irritate me. And why the hell shouldn't I be here? I'm even a stockholder.”
 

The damn thing slipped out. I'd decided, knowing how little love was flowering between Genova and me, not to mention that Bondhelm had paid me in shares instead of money. But it was too late now.
 

Genova's black eyebrows went soaring upward, then descended farther down than they'd been before. “You're a what? A stockholder? Ah! A stockholder. You got it from Bondhelm. I knew it; I knew it.”
 

“Oh, shut up,” I said.
 

That started him. He glared at me and I dropped my gaze to his necktie. He saw me looking at it with a peculiar fixity of expression and he wet his lips. He looked around him at several of the cast and crew, and evidently decided he didn't want to dance with me in front of all these people.
 

He looked back at me and said loudly, “All right, Scott. But mark what I said: Keep away from the shooting.”
 

That was the voice of infinite authority. “All right,” I said. “I've got no intention of even breathing loud while you're working.”
 

“See that you don't,” he said. He nodded curtly and stalked away.
 

I turned to Raul. “Where's Swallow? He here? Or at the studio?”
 

“Studio, probably. But I know he intended to come out sometime today. We haven't been on location up to now and he wanted to take a look.”