“You couldn’t possibly have tailed us here,” Hix told them. “I dodged any—”
“You forget that you’re one of the most famous hacks in Hollywood, Hix,” explained the larger of the intruders. “One of our people spotted you with this dame at the Carioca. We didn’t follow you, we just looked up your address in a phone book.”
“Ah, the price of fame. Now, I suggest you—”
That was as far as he got. The other hooded intruder had returned his gun to its shoulder holster, withdrawn a substantial-looking blackjack from a side pocket and lunged to bop Hix on the skull.
He heard Marlys scream as he was dropping down into oblivion.
Birds were twittering and chirping, in a cheerful Disney-like manner, to announce the advent of a new day. Morning sunshine was beaming in through the opening between Hix’s tacky yellow drapes. With an awakening groan, he sat up on his living room floor.
“Oy,” he observed, feeling suddenly dizzy. “One doesn’t usually experience a hangover after two glasses of ginger ale.”
Then he recalled that a hooded intruder had conked him on the coco last night. Slowly and carefully, he glanced around the small room. It didn’t appear to be in any worse shape than it had been prior to the intrusion.
“Marlys?” he said in a voice that vaguely resembled his own. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Marlys?”
Tottering some, Hix arose to a standing, albeit wobbly, position. He stumbled through the entire rest of his cottage. Outside of a scraggly stray orange cat who’d snuck in through the open kitchen window to explore the substantial collection of dirty dishes in the lopsided sink, there was nobody else in the entire place.
“Shoo,” he suggested half-heartedly as he returned to his living room. “I reckon I better call the police to report—”
His phone rang. It was residing on a sprawling stack of old copies of
Daily Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter.
After swallowing and blinking a few times, he made his way to the telephone and snatched up the receiver. “Forest Lawn Annex.”
Marlys, somewhat breathlessly, inquired, “Hix, dear, are you okay?”
“I might ask the same of you.”
“I’m fine, perfectly fine,” said the starlet, inhaling and exhaling. “That whole business last night was simply a misunderstanding.”
“Those hoodlums really meant to coldcock somebody down the street from here?”
“No, silly. See, they weren’t hoodlums at all. But a couple of Paramount Pictures executives.”
“Oh, so? Is that the current style for Paramount execs? Flour sacks over their heads?”
“Actually those were sugar sacks.”
“Even so,” he said. “What in the hell is going on, kiddo?”
Taking another deep breath, the young actress told him, “See, dear, they got the foolish idea that you had kidnapped me. What happened was a sort of rescue operation.”
“Your value to Paramount has apparently increased a lot since yesterday.”
“They reconsidered my proposition and decided it was in the best interests of the studio to comply,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”
“Sounds like.”
“Oh, and I wanted to let you know, dear, that I won’t be able to go with you to that Korngold concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday.”
“Are they shipping you off to Guatemala?”
“No, just to Arizona for a few weeks. They’re picking me up at noon,” she said. “I’m going on location. Paramount wants me to play the dance hall singer in the new Randolph Scott Western. It’s a real step up for my career. I get shot in the final reel.”
“A painful place to be shot,” he said. “Now explain what the devil is going on?”
“It turns out that quite a few people at Paramount were unhappy that I was unhappy. So they—”
“I bet you’re going to have to forget all about Alex Stoner and Dr. Marzloff.”
“Not exactly forget, just simply keep mum about what I may or may not know,” Marlys explained. “Oh, and you don’t have to worry, Hix. I convinced everybody at the studio last night that—”
“That’s where they dragged you?”
“I went voluntarily once I realized what was up. This is the first time I was at a meeting with so many important movie people,” she said, still sounding a bit breathless. “As I was explaining, dear, I convinced them that you and I were simply shacking up for a one-night stand. I never mentioned anything about Dr. Marzloff or poor Alex to you.”
“There goes my reputation for celibacy.”
“At least you won’t get conked on the noggin anymore . . . Gosh, I just looked at the clock, Hix. I really have to finish packing.”
“Well, it’s been swell having this little chat,” he assured the actress. “It’s sure taken a load off my mind.”
“One other thing,” she cautioned. “I don’t think it’d be a wise idea for you to talk to anybody about zombies for a while.”
“The word
zombies
will never cross my lips again,” he promised. “Bon voyage.”
“Same to you, darling.” She hung up.
Hix cradled the phone, picked up the receiver again, and made a series of calls.
A few minutes past two that afternoon, Hix was seated at one of the huge oaken tables in the vast dining hall of Camelot. He was finishing up the second half of the baloney on rye sandwich he’d found in his box lunch and conversing with the two former chorus girls who were working as extras in
The Holy Grail.
Like the writer, they were dressed as Hollywood’s idea of Middle Ages peasant folk.
“I hear,” Hix said, setting aside the remnants of his sandwich, “that Alex Stoner has been feeling poorly of late, Exine.”
“You can say that again, sweetie,” she replied as she scratched at her bosom through the coarse gray material of her tunic. “Yesterday they had to do thirty-seven takes of the scene where he’s supposed to be knighting Ray Milland. He kept dropping his goddamn sword.”
“Only thirty-three takes,” corrected the redheaded peasant girl on Hix’s left. “By the way, Hix honey, how come you’re working as an extra on this flicker?”
“I’m really not an extra, Mindy,” he explained, lying. “I’m doing research for an A-budget Hollywood murder mystery George Marshall wants me to script for Alan Ladd.”
Exine observed, yet again scratching her bosom, “That’s good news. It’s about time you quit writing those crappy Mr. Woo programmers.”
“Actually, the Mr. Woo films are considered by many an astute and discriminating critic to be stellar examples of the mystery cinema at its absolute best.”
“C’mon, where the hell would an astute and discriminating critic find a job in this pesthole of a town?” asked Mindy, who was now scratching her bosom, too. “Geez, everybody in the Middle Ages must’ve spent most of their time scratching their boobs.”
Before Hix could provide an answer, a uniformed guard came striding into the immense hall, causing some of the colored banners on the imitation stone walls to flutter. “Okay, kids, nobody’s supposed to eat their lunch in here,” he informed them. “Please, scram.”
“As soon as we finish our after-dinner mints,” Hix assured him.
The plump guard did a take. “Hix? What the hell are you doing in that getup?”
“I’m going through an unexpected slow period in my usually spectacular writing career, Nick.”
“Sorry to hear that, pal. You and the dames better toddle along, though,” advised the guard. “Stoner’s going to do the scene where he addresses the village peasants in about fifteen.”
Hix stood up, gathering the scraps from his meal and dumping them in the white cardboard box. Among the phone calls he’d made earlier was one to a photographer friend at the
L.A. Times.
He’d asked him to use his connections at Paramount to get him a job as an extra in
The Holy Grail
in some scenes featuring Alex Stoner. He wanted to see for himself if Stoner acted any differently now that he was dead.
He soon found out.
The fog machines were sending a gray mist swirling across the wide stone courtyard of Camelot Castle. A young extra put her fist up to her mouth and coughed loudly.
“Don’t do that when the damn cameras are rolling, sis,” warned a nearby assistant director loudly.
Hix, standing between a redheaded girl in a Gypsy costume and a bearded fat man who was clutching a shepherd’s staff, was watching a sort of reviewing stand a few yards away. The stand had a wooden throne in the center of a row of carved chairs and was bedecked with brightly colored pennants. He lifted his weathered peasant cap to scratch his frizzy hair.
One of the director’s assistants was assigning some of the bit players to chairs. There were lesser knights wearing chain mail, some ladies-in-waiting, and not one but two jesters.
The door of one of the dressing room trailers that sat just beyond the enormous set now swung open and Queen Guinevere, wearing a low-cut gown trimmed in ermine, regally descended the stairs. The crowd of more than a hundred extras murmured as she was escorted to the stand.
“So that’s Sylvia Thompson,” observed a pretty blonde milkmaid, shifting her grip on her pail. “Not all that pretty in real life, is she?”
“What makes you think this is real life?” inquired Hix.
The milkmaid glanced back at him. “Hix? Have you sunk even lower?”
“Doing a favor for DeMille.”
The door of another one of the other trailers came flapping open. Alex Stoner, a thin white-bearded man, came stumbling out into the misty afternoon. He teetered on the top step, then went tumbling down to land on a tangle of cables and wires at the set edge.
His ornate gilded crown popped free of his gray head and landed on the booted foot of a wide, broad man dressed as a yeoman.
“Drunk again,” said a chubby friar.
The milkmaid shook her head. “I think the poor guy’s sick. He’s looked like crap since Monday.”
“Booze can do that. I ought to know,” said a husky blacksmith.
Two large men in business suits came hurrying down out of the trailer in the fallen actor’s wake.
“Eureka!” said Hix to himself. “I’ll wager that these two gents are the same pair that broke in on me and the ambitious Marlys last evening.”
They tugged Stoner to his feet, restored his crown.
“Fell . . . down . . . getting worse,” muttered the actor.
“Chin up,” advised one of the men. He sounded like the one who’d done the talking last night.
Slowly the two alleged studio executives guided Alex Stoner to the stand. “I’ve got bunions,” the actor was saying in a fuzzy voice. “I never had bunions until Dr. Marzloff worked his—”
“Button your lip, sir,” advised the one who’d bopped Hix.
When Stoner reached the next to the last step of the wooden stairway, his legs suddenly went limp.
The two executives yanked him upright, hustled him over to the gilded throne he was supposed to sit on.
A lean prop man materialized to hand the swaying actor an Excalibur sword made of balsa wood.
Grabbing the sword, Stoner held it high, tip of the blade pointing skyward. “People of Camelot,” he started reciting, “I wish you to join . . . um . . . to join me . . . um . . . Now, what in the hell do I want these halfwits to join me for?”
Excalibur fell from his now shaking hand. He dropped to his knees. He fell forward and hit the planks with his face, producing a resounding smack. The jeweled crown left his head again, rolled off the stage and landed hard on the cobblestones of the courtyard, losing at least three sparkling fake jewels in the process.
The two executives picked up the now unconscious actor. They deposited him, with a thump, on the gilded throne.
The one who did the talking picked up a megaphone. “Mr. Stoner seems to have had a mild fainting spell.”
From where Hix was standing it looked as though Stoner had ceased to breathe. “They’re going to have to get him back to Dr. Marzloff,” he concluded.
The executive said, “We’ll be escorting Mr. Stoner to his personal physician. I’m sure it’s nothing serious. Today’s shooting is canceled. Call casting about what time to show up tomorrow. Thank you one and all.”
When night started closing in on the town of Santa Rita Beach, Hix, wearing dark gray slacks and a black pullover, was stretched out on a patch of hillside forest just above Dr. Marzloff’s small private sanitarium. The address of the two-story slant-roofed place he found simply by checking a couple of Greater Los Angeles phone books. The floor plans of the joint he borrowed from a former singing cowboy who’d gone into real estate after first Republic and then Monogram had tossed him out on his ear. The infrared camera and the night binoculars he got from the same
L.A. Times
photographer who’d fixed up the extra stint at Paramount. The bagel with cream cheese he’d just finished eating he’d picked up at Moonbaum’s delicatessen while passing through Hollywood en route to this beach town.
By the time the screenwriter had gathered up this assortment of stuff it was nearing seven in the evening. As the evening darkened it also grew increasingly overcast. Parked down in the white-graveled parking lot at the back of the sanitarium was a panel truck with the Paramount Pictures logo on the passenger-side door. There was also a big color poster for
The Road to Morocco
on the side of the vehicle, with portraits of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour.
Hix, while wiping bagel crumbs off his chin, said to himself, “Dottie Lamour would be perfect for
I Waltzed with a Zombie.
Sure, we could put her in front of a whole chorus line of sexy girl zombies in tight sarongs. Though maybe Paramount wouldn’t loan her out to MGM or Twentieth after I expose them as employers of dead actors.”
The presence of this Paramount truck indicated to Hix that the defunct actor had indeed been brought back to Dr. Marzloff for a tune-up. The problem was, how many times can you revive the same corpse? Even with voodoo.
There was a large skylight on the slanting left side of the roof. Lights were already on in the room below when Hix had come skulking along to watch the place. According to the floor plans, Marzloff’s laboratory and surgery were below that bright-lit skylight.
A dog all at once began barking, barking in a loud chesty way that indicated a large and mean-minded hound.