Westlake, Donald E - SSC 02 Read online

  "You found the killer?"

  "Not yet, but we've narrowed things down. We got in touch with the detective agency this morning, and they gave us their dossier. We have photographs of just about everybody Mrs. Penney saw in the last few days. We even have a picture of you. Want to see it?"

  Peter Lorre in M. "I'd be fascinated."

  He took from his jacket pocket a white envelope with a red rubber band around it. First he transferred the rubber band to his wrist, then he opened the envelope and took out a little bunch of photographs; small ones, about two-and-a-half by four-and-a-half. He selected one of these, chuckled at it, and handed it over.

  Not Peter Lorre in M. Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk. That was me there, seeing Laura chastely to her door, and this photograph did not suggest that I would next go upstairs with her and commit murder.

  "Nice picture," Staples suggested.

  I sighed. "The last time Laura was alive. May I keep this?"

  "Well, sure," he said. "We don't need it, because you aren't the killer."

  "This picture tells you that?"

  "No, the fellow who took the picture told us. He was on watch outside the apartment building until one in the morning, and he's willing to swear you never went back into the place during that time."

  Why wouldn't he swear to it? Never went back in; that was the simple truth. (And how it must have galled Edgarson that he couldn't put my head in the noose.)

  Could I still make a little trouble for him? I said,

  "Then the private detective must have seen the killer."

  "If he did," Staples said, "he didn't recognize him. Or it's possible the killer was already in the apartment, waiting for Mrs. Penney, and he used another way out of the building. Say through the side exit from the basement. Which would suggest premeditation."

  "From Sergeant Bray's description," I said, "it didn't sound like premeditation. It sounded more like a fight, an angry flare-up or something."

  Staples nodded. "Everything points to a sudden argument with a friend. That's why I'd like you to take a look at the rest of these pictures—" extending them across to me "—and see how many of the men you can identify."

  "Ah. You think it might be one of these." Half a dozen photos; I riffled through them and saw a succession of blurred but familiar faces.

  "We're not limiting ourselves to those," Staples told me. "At this point, it could be anybody."

  "Except me," I said, and the phone rang.

  Chuckling and nodding, Staples said, "That's right, except you."

  I got to my feet, crossing toward the desk, saying over my shoulder, "I'll turn on my answering machine, so we won't be interrupted."

  But, through the phone's second ring, Staples said, "I'd rather you did answer it, if you don't mind. I left this number at the office, so it might be for me."

  "Oh. Fine."

  And damned if it wasn't. When I picked up the receiver and said hello, a gruff male voice that might have been Sergeant Bray said, "Staples there?"

  "Coming up." I turned and extended the receiver, saying, "You were right."

  He came smiling over to take the phone and announce himself cheerily into it. To be polite I pretended absorption in the photographs—cold faces, bulky overcoated bodies, Laura in several unimportant public moods, cinema verite at its absolute lowest—while I listened to Staples' share of the conversation.

  It turned out to be the wrong share; the meat was with the other participant. Staples limited himself mostly to yeah and nope and got it, while making quick pencil notes in a small pad. Finishing with, "Be right there," he hung up and put his pad away.

  He was leaving? Good; exonerated or not, I still felt nervous in his presence.

  But even though he'd promised to be right there, he showed no hurry about moving on. Turning to me, he said, "Would you know a movie director named Jim Wicker?"

  "Two features," I said. "Neither very good. I don't know him personally, he's a West Coast type. Young, up from television commercials, hasn't shown much promise vet.

  "Well, he won't show any at all from now on," Staples told me. "Somebody just shot him."

  "Shot him?"

  "About four blocks from here, while he was watching his new movie." Chuckling in lus bubbly way he said, "I guess that's real criticism, huh?"

  "New movie?" I tried to remember what I'd read in the trades recently about Jim Wicker. "Oh, that would be The Sound Of Distant Drums, for Lanisch-Sanssky."

  "Lanisch-Sanssky? Do you know these people?"

  "I know who they are, they're in my field."

  "Would that be Hugo Lanisch?"

  "Yes, of course. He ran Twentieth Century Fox for six weeks three or four years ago. Why?"

  "Because it was in his house that Wicker got killed," Staples said. Then, apparently struck by a sudden thought, he said, "Listen, Mr. Thorpe, how would you like to come along?"

  "Come along? In what way?"

  "You could see the way a police investigation works in real life," he said. "And you could fill us in on who these people are. I wouldn't introduce you or anything, you'd just be that sort of quiet cop in the corner. What do you say?"

  I laughed; I couldn't help it. I had become the detective's sidekick. "I say, lead on!" I told him.

  * * *

  Edgarson was in a car across the street. He was bundled up in there, but I recognized him right away, with his glinting little eyes glaring out from around the sides of his nose.

  I turned my back, and Staples and I, barrel-shaped in our overcoats, stuffed ourselves into his battered green Ford with the police ID on the sun visor, and then we waited quite a while for Staples to get the engine going. He kept flooding it, but remained cheerful, with continuing comments about the cold weather. "I'd like to go down to Puerto Rico right after New Year's," he said, "and not come back till St. Patrick's Day."

  "Amen," I said.

  "If only I could afford it."

  "Amen again."

  He looked surprised. "Really? Not prying or anything, Mr. Thorpe, but I had the idea you were sort of well off."

  "I suppose I give that impression," I said. (And didn't

  I know it.) "But I pretty much live up to the hilt of my income. And then, I don't have a family to support. Or a car," I added, as the Ford's engine at last turned over.

  "That makes a difference," Staples agreed. He gunned the motor a lot, and finally we got under way, with Staples saying, "There's no point turning on the heater. Takes it ten minutes to warm up, and we'll be there by then."

  I'd brought the Laura photos with me, and now I said, "Did you want to talk about these pictures first, or the Jim Wicker business?"

  "Fill me in on Wicker," he said. "And this fellow Hugo Whatsit."

  "Lanisch," I said, and went on to tell him what I knew of Lanisch-Sanssky Productions and Jim Wicker. Hugo Lanisch and Gregor Sanssky, both old-line movie executives who'd been with the studios thirty or thirty-five years ago when the studios really meant something, had gone into independent production about fifteen years back, turning out whatever was popular at the moment. They'd made some science-fiction movies in England at one time, and more recently they'd done a few period murder mysteries. They'd done well enough, but they'd never had a major success.

  Nor had Jim Wicker, a young man of about thirty, a Californian who had served his apprenticeship grinding out television commercials, graduated to a season of television adventure shows, and then made two unremarkable theatrical feature films, the first for American International and the second for some independent producer down in Florida. Wicker was a technician, a man who did unexciting work but who always brought his projects in on time and within budget. He was a perfect choice for Lanisch-Sanssky; dependable and inexpensive.

  All the time I was telling Staples this unoriginal set of film lives I was also feeling the peevish stare of Edgarson on the back of my neck. Was he following us? I didn't dare turn around to look, and the doubt made it hard to keep trac
k of what I was saying.

  Staples asked a few questions about Wicker and Lanisch, but once he moved from the business level to the personal I was no longer any help to him. I didn't know if Wicker was married or even heterosexual. I didn't know if Lanisch was in debt.

  "Well, here we are," Staples said, and pulled in at a handy hydrant on 67th Street between Madison and Park. "It's that town house there. You just keep silent and leave everything to me."

  "Right."

  We got out of the car and I chanced a quick look back. I didn't see Edgarson anywhere, but I could still feel him.

  * * *

  Bray didn't like my presence, and he made no bones about it. Staples and I met him just inside the front door, where he'd been chatting with a uniformed policeman, and he gave me one quick disapproving glance before saying to his partner, "What's this?"

  "Mr. Thorpe can be very helpful, Al," Staples said "He knows a lot about these people."

  Bray studied me. "You know Lanisch?"

  "I don't know any of them personally," I said. "But I do know who they are."

  Staples said, "He filled me in on the way over. Don't worry, Al, he'll stand in the corner and he won't say a word."

  "He's your guest," Bray said, as though saying he's your responsibility. Turning away, he said, "They're all upstairs."

  Staples gave me an encouraging smile, which I hesitantly returned. Leaving the uniformed cop to his guard duty at the front, we followed Bray through a stark high-ceilinged living room to a small elevator with a porthole window in the door.

  The movie business had apparently been very good indeed to Huga Lanisch, if it had bought him this town house. It was quite some place, five stories high, done in a kind of Bauhaus-modern style, full of white walls and chrome balls and sharp diagonals. There was also this elevator, which the three of us crowded into and which rose at a slow enough pace for Bray to give us the full story en route. "There's a special room upstairs where they show movies," he said. "Six people were in there, including Wicker, and when the movie was over Wicker was dead in his chair. He'd been shot in the back of the head and the gun was on the floor behind him. No prints."

  Staples said, "Could anybody else get in during the movie?"

  "No. There's only one door, and anybody coming in has to walk right in front of the screen."

  "So the killer's definitely one of the five others watching the movie."

  Bray looked sour. "One of them," he agreed, and the elevator stopped. He pushed open the door and we followed him into a square high-ceilinged room with black carpeting and puffy white low chairs and another uniformed cop. "This way," Bray said, and the three of us trooped across the room and through an open doorway on the far side.

  The scene of the crime. Oh, my God, and the victim himself, lying sprawled in a white leather chair and looking perfectly ghastly. His eyes were open and staring ceilingward, but the eyeballs were sunk too deep in the sockets, as though everything inside there had shriveled. A great sticky-looking stain the color of beaujolais smeared the white leather back of the chair. My victim had been much more discreet.

  With difficulty, I forced myself to look at the rest of the place, which was a very plush little screening room. Ten of the white leather chairs, on chrome rollers, were scattered about the gray carpet, intermixed with small white formica parsons tables. The entire wall to the left of the entrance formed the screen, flanked by drapes which would probably close when no movie was being shown. Framed movie posters were mounted on the side walls, and a small but generous bar was built in at the back.

  Staples said, "I thought you said there was only one door." He nodded toward a second door, next to the bar.

  "Projection booth," Bray told him. "It's like a little closet in there, and no other way out."

  "Ah." Staples walked around the body in the chair, studying it from different angles. "Deader'n hell, isn't he?"

  Bray said to me, "If you're going to throw up, there's a John back past the elevator."

  "I'm not going to throw up." In fact, I wasn't at all queasy, though I preferred not to look at the dead man. Bray had simply been letting me know again that he didn't like my being here.

  Staples, having studied the corpse long enough to memorize it, now said, "Fine. Where's our suspects?"

  "Back this way."

  We went out through the other room again, past the elevator, down a short white hall, and into a bookcase-enclosed room done in shades of orange and brown. Tall narrow windows at the far end of the room showed the February nakedness of tree branches and the rear of some building on 68th Street. The low chrome-armed chairs in here were covered with brown corduroy and on them were sitting half a dozen distressed-looking people. I saw no one I knew, but two or three of the faces were familiar, probably from press parties. All of the faces were troubled and nervous, as though we were tax men here for an audit. Another uniformed policeman stood stolidly in a corner, pretending to be a guard in a bank.

  Bray addressed the group: "I'm sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, we'll try not to take much longer. I'm Detective Sergeant Bray, and this is Detective Sergeant Staples. We'd like to find out what happened. Does anybody have any suggestions?''

  The troubled faces turned toward one another, this way and that, but the only one who spoke was a tall slender ash-blonde woman in black slacks and a pearl gray sweater, who asked, as though hoping against hope, "I suppose it must have been one of us?"

  "It does seem that way," Bray told her. "I'm sorry. Unless someone has another theory?"

  But no one did. The faces remained troubled, and attentive.

  Bray said, "All right. Then we might as well begin."

  The interrogation that followed was informal in style but very thorough, starting with the names and functions of everyone present. The oldest man here, sixtyish, almost completely bald, stocky, with a vaguely Mittel-European accent, was our host, Hugo Lanisch, co-producer of the film they'd been watching. The slender blonde in the black slacks was his most recent wife, Jennifer; in her early thirties, cool and beautiful and well-bred, she looked as though she'd come with the town house, and probably she had.

  There was one black among the white faces, a bearded plump fortyish man named Gideon Fergus, who'd been hired to write the music for the film. I remembered his work from several black exploitation movies; mostly bongos and electric guitars.

  Then there were two people from United Films, the company that had financed the movie and would be its distributor. The stout black-haired mid-forties woman with the serious hornrim glasses and the overly loud way of speaking was Ruth Carr, the East Coast story editor and presumably the one who had interested United Films in the project in the first place. And the 35-year-old slender fag in the leather pullover and big yellow glasses and long blond hair was Barry McGivern, the company's assistant advertising director.

  Finally there was the projectionist, a neatly dressed young man of about 25 named Jack March. An executive in embryo, March had an earnest expression, short blond hair, metal-rim glasses and a modest California tan. He had apparently decided his role at a murder was to look very alert, in case anybody should want coffee.

  Having established names and pedigrees, Bray turned the floor over to Staples, who cheerfully but insistently worked out where everybody had been seated during the screening. With only six in the audience, they had not clustered together but had been fairly widely distributed through the room. Staples eventually had to produce paper and pencil and do a sketch plan of everybody's position, but when he was finished the layout was clear. Wicker had been the farthest from the screen, so that any of the others could have left his or her seat, traveled on hands and knees, and approached him from behind without being seen by anyone else.

  Except the projectionist. Young March had been watching the film through a small window next to the projector, but it turned out he'd seen the movie before—he was the messenger who'd brought it here from the cutting room on the west coast—and he hadn't
been completely attentive. He explained there were always things to be done in the projection booth, but that was undoubtedly a polite falsehood; the second time through, A Sound Of Distant Drums was probably more than a bit boring. Besides, if the killer had stayed on his knees behind Wicker the projectionist would have been unlikely to see him in any case.

  So now the characters and the setting had been established. A rich old movie producer, his rich young wife, a third-rate black composer, two studio functionaries and a reliable small-time director had gathered in a room to watch for the first time a film in which they were all interested. What they were seeing was a rough cut, still several minutes too long and with no musical score. In the course of this screening, one of the others had shot the director, for reasons yet to be established.

  But before getting to motive, Bray was interested in one more physical aspect of the crime: the sound of it. Taking over from Staples, he said, "Mr. Wicker was killed with a .25 calibre revolver. Now, that wouldn't make as much noise as a .45 automatic, but it wouldn't exactly be quiet either. Just how loud is this movie you were watch-ing?

  It was Gideon Fergus, the black composer, who answered: "Not very loud at all. It's much more of a mood piece than Jim's other films, probably because it's the first time he was doing his own original script. And there wasn't any music yet, of course."

  Barry McGivern, the advertising man from United Films, said, "Well, there was that one shot in the movie. Remember? Just after they get off the train."

  Ruth Carr, the stout story editor with the loud voice, loudly said, "Do I remember? I'll say I remember, it scared me half to death."

  Bray, the patient bulldog, said, "There was a gunshot in the movie?"

  There was general agreement; yes, there had been one gunshot in the movie. Barry McGivern drove home the obvious point: "The killer could have fired his gun at the same precise moment."

  "Very tricky to get it that close," Bray said. "But possible, I suppose. Did anybody hear Wicker make any kind of sound just after the shot?"

  Ruth Carr said, "I'm afraid nobody heard anything just after the shot, because I gave out a yell."