Mystery (37 page)

Leona Suss said, “You need to leave my house at once.”

But she made no effort to enforce the command.

I said, “Treat yourself—c’mon, make yourself comfortable.”

She remained on her feet. “You have sixty seconds and then I am going to call
my
police.”

Click
.

Close-up of a black-haired beauty wearing Hollywood’s improbably haute version of cowgirl garb. Rifle in hand. Sneer on glossy lips. “End of the line, Goldie.”

Camera shift to manicured fingers around trigger.

Ponderous music.

Then a long shot offering a full view of the brunette standing in front of a log-sided cabin. Obvious matte painting of mountains in the background.

New shot: rear view of two figures facing the femme with the rifle.

Shift to their POV: fresh-faced blond girl, equally pretty white-Stetsoned young man.

He said, “Don’t do this, Hattie.”

The brunette sneered, “Breathe your last, Rowdy.”

The brunette shouldered the rifle.

The blonde screamed.

White Hat quick-drew a six-shooter and fired.

A blossom sprang from the brunette’s left breast. A cardiac surgeon couldn’t have placed it more accurately.

She looked down at the spreading splotch. Flashed a crooked, oddly engaging smile. Relaxed her fingers.

Dropped the rifle.

Fell to the dirt.

Close-up on beautiful dying face. Murmurs.

“What’s that, Hattie?”

“Rowdy … I always … loved you.”

The blonde said, “Reckon she’s gone now.”

White Hat said, “But you’re here.”

Long, searching look. Longer kiss.

Fade to black.

Leona Suss said, “And the Oscar goes to …”

I said, “It does have a certain charm.”

“It’s swill, I told you that the first time. Now get the hell out.”

I clicked the mouse.

Another title page.

Passion on the Pecos
.

Same dark-haired girl, different weapon.

Long-barreled revolver. Her turn to quick-draw.

Bam
.

A man dropped from a tree.

Bam
.

A man dropped from the roof of a saloon.

Bam
.

A man darted from behind a wheelbarrow, managed to fire. Ricochet whistle.

The girl shot him off his feet.

Click
.

Saloon interior. A white-bearded geezer put down his whiskey glass. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, Miss Polly?”

Across the saloon table, the brunette spun the barrel of her gun, blew at the tip of the weapon. Licked her lips. “Aw, Chappie, it was nothing.”

“Sure looked like somethin’ to me. Who learned ya?”

Soft, feminine giggle. “A girl does what a girl needs to do.”

Shift to swinging saloon doors. White-Stetsoned man with oversized badge on his tailored vest.

The girl sneered, “You!”

“Now, just put that down and go peacefully—”

Bam
.

Fade to black.

Leona Suss said, “I’ll give you an autograph and we’ll call it a day.”

Click
.

“Enough!” she shouted.

I froze the frame.

The cat trotted in.

“Manfred,” she said, “this fool is boring me, go scratch his eyes out.”

Manfred sat there.

I said, “Guess he took the no-cruelty pledge at the pound.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“How about ‘Shut up, punk’? One of your best lines, in my opinion. In fact, here it is.”

Click
.

“You’re
boring
me!”

“This one’s different,” I said.

And it was.

o moving images. Text.

I recited.

www.iluvnoirflix.com

Death Is My Shadow (1963)
Starring Olna Fremont as Mona Gerome
Stuart Bretton as Hal Casey
Plus an assortment of eminently forgettable
mugs, molls, mopes and miscreants

This is one of those obscure treasures, hard to find but well worth the effort even if it means having to use a VCR (try the reissue lists of sites like blackdeath.net, mollheaven.com, entrywound.net).

In addition to being a budget-noir masterpiece released at least a decade too late,
Death Is My Shadow
is the swan song for Olna Fremont, ebony-tressed bad-girl queen of the oaters. And a glimpse at how Little Miss Evil’s career could’ve developed had she been born twenty years later. It’s also the only non-western Olna ever filmed and we think that’s a shame.

I mean think about it, can’t you just see Olna’s pheromone-dripping sensuality, Cruella de Vil persona and uncanny ability to—let’s be delicate—make ahem
love
to objects of destruction, placed in the capable hands of a Tarantino or a Scorsese?

We’re talking hot.

As in legs. As in lead.

The plot of this one doesn’t bear retelling in depth but suffice it to say that Olna’s at the top of her psychopathic game, shifting allegiances like the sexy chameleon she is and engaging in enough firearms foreplay to get an entire NRA chapter off. The climax—and we use the term near-literally—is an explosion of hot … bullets—that leaves the audience spent.

Unfortunately, Olna ends up permanently spent, herself. As usual. Because in the self-righteous morality game that Hollywood has always pretended to play, bad girls aren’t allowed to win.

But Olna doesn’t bite it before she blasts the inevitably wooden and incomprehensively cast Stu Bretton off his broganed feet. Not to mention a whole bunch of other slimy, bug-eyed denizens of the underworld straight out of the Grade D playbook.

Olna’s moist, gotta-do-you lips, nose-cone breasts and outrageously masturbatory gun antics (we especially appreciate the scene where she kisses her derringer) are worth the price of admission. Heck, just seeing Bretton’s dead face when it’s actually supposed to be lifeless justifies the eighty-six bloody, oft-moronic minutes you’ll spend with this unintended but no less entertaining masterpiece of grit, sleaze, and cardboard characterization.

Utterly lacking in redeeming artistic value.

Five Roscoes.

I said, “Everyone’s a critic.”

Leona Suss pointed her cell phone at me and mouthed
Bang
.

She glided closer, seemed to be studying the top of my head. Settled smoothly and silently on the sofa, inches from me. Flaring her nostrils, she tamped her hair and secreted Chanel. Close to seventy years old, beautiful, ageless.

“You’re a cutie,” she purred, mussing my hair. As she released her hand, she snuck in a quick, painful tug. “I still don’t get it, are you police or really some kind of doctor?”

“Bona fide psychologist,” I said. I recited my license number.

“Cop psychologist?”

“I work with them from time to time but I’m not on their payroll.”

“What does from time to time mean?”

“Complicated cases.”

She chuckled. “Someone thinks I’m crazy?”

“More like fascinating. I agree.”

She closed her eyes, sank back against downy cushions. “So you’re not on their payroll.”

“That’s the point,” I said.

“What exactly do you do for them?”

“Get paid for deep psychological insight.”

“What’s your insight about me?”

“That we can learn to play nice.”

She whistled silently. “You’re a playful fella?”

I said, “I can be.”

One eye opened. Her right index finger traced the outline of the ring on her left hand. Round-cut diamond, huge, white, lots of fire.

“Nice.”

“D Flawless,” she said. “I think the cut brings out its best qualities, don’t you?”

She took my hand, placed it on the rock. Her skin was cool, soft. She’d used some kind of cover-up for age spots and the blemishes floated like water lilies in a deep vat of milk.

I said, “I think everything about you works quite nicely.”

She drew away. “Sonny, I’ve been bullshat by the best. Don’t even try.”

“Aw shucks,” I said.

I angled the laptop toward her.

She said, “If you’ve got a game, name it. If you’re going to waste my time by making me sit through the crap I did when I was too young and too stupid to know any better, I’m cutting this little chat short.”

She sprang to her feet. “In fact, if you don’t get your ass in gear right now, I’m going up to my room and fetching my Glock. I’m sure you know what that is, seeing as you’re a police groupie.”

“Lightweight, well made,” I said. “Model 19?”

“A 22 and I know how to use it. You may be cuter than most girls can stand—you may know how to play dress-up—what is that, Brioni—no, Zegna, I know the stitching, Mark bought them like candy. But to me you’re a punk and you’ll stay a punk and that’s how
my
police will view you when I tearfully tell them how you wangled your way past my retarded maid then tried to attack me.”

I said, “That sounds like one of your movies. So does the crack about someone thinking you’re crazy. Wasn’t that what Mona tried in
Death Is My Shadow
? Acting nuts so no one would suspect premeditation?”

“Piece of crap,” she said. “That review was too kind.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

Click
.

She said, “Oh, Jesus, you’re an idiot.”

But she stayed there, eyes fixed on the screen.

Once an actress.

Text gave way to a slide show.

Leona as Olna in a white dress. Malevolently lovely face wrapped in a matching scarf. Graceful fingers clutching the stem of a Martini glass.

Olive and pearl onion bobbing in a crystalline bath.

Olna wearing that same outfit plus oversized sunglasses.

Olna, bare-shouldered and strategically draped by a bedsheet, smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder. The barest suggestion of teeth between glossed lips. Heavy-lashed eyelids drooped in postcoital torpor.

Next to her, the “inevitably wooden” Stuart Bretton lay staring up at nothing. Muscular arms pumped. Squarely handsome, wavy-haired visage blank as dirt.

Olna pointing a gun.

Close-up on the weapon: double-barreled derringer. Side-by-side barrels. Stubby, nasty-looking weapon, the snout barely long enough to extend past her gloved hands.

Close-up on Stu Bretton’s face. Caricature of surprise.

Close-up on Stu Bretton’s beefcake physique, facedown on the bed, a bloody blotch between his shoulder blades.

Close-up on Olna Fremont’s face. Surprised.

Long shot of cops, uniformed and plainclothed and armed.

Olna. Beautiful, peaceful. The bullet hole centering her smooth, white forehead the period on a final sentence.

I said, “Life imitates art but only to a point. They let you keep your face.”

Leona reached for the laptop.

I drew it out of reach, continued to give her a full view of the last scene she’d ever filmed.

She said, “Why the hell shouldn’t I go get my Glock?”

“I’m sure if you tried, you’d score a hit. Where’d you learn? Kansas?”

She smiled. “Rural life can be wonderful. And daddies love little girls eager to learn. Did you know gophers explode like little meatballs?” She rose to her feet, tussled my hair again. Took the time for a harder yank and studied my reaction.

When I moved to stay her hand, she pulled out of reach, flipped her hand like a geisha fan, and slapped my face.

Smiling as if she’d pulled off a first-take masterpiece performance, she glided toward the door. “Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll be gone when I return.”

I said, “Unless you’ve got a death wish, you’ll cool it with the D-list acting and pay attention.”

She came toward me, fists at chest level, poised to strike.

“Bad idea, Leona. Family’s the glue that holds society together.”

She stopped short but kept her arms up. “What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means you’ve done at least one thing well. Those boys of yours get along great. Be a shame to change that.”

One arm dropped, then the other. She gazed around her roomful of treasures.

Sat back down.