The Ghost and the Femme Fatale (3 page)
Read The Ghost and the Femme Fatale Online
Authors: Alice Kimberly
Tags: #Mystery, #Ghost stories, #Private investigators, #Fiction, #Actors, #Women Sleuths, #Mystery And Suspense Fiction, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Murder, #Murder - Investigation, #Film festivals, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Mystery fiction, #Ghost, #Mystery & Detective - General, #Police Procedural, #Juvenile Fiction, #Women booksellers, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Rhode Island, #Actresses, #Detective, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Mystery, #Contemporary, #General, #Fantasy, #Suspense, #Biography & Autobiography, #Ghosts, #Fantasy - Contemporary
I eyed the way she was looking at Dr. Pepper on stage. “So...” I elbowed Brainert, “is Maggie Kline the mysterious ‘who’ that’s turned Dr. Pepper into a giddy schoolboy?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Once again, Brainert rolled his eyes. “They’ve been phoning and e-mailing for months—ever since Dr. Lilly suggested that Maggie Kline be contacted for a guest speaker slot. According to Pepper, they hit it off from the first phone call. Maggie even came out here a week early, just so they could spend time together. He’s besotted with her, although I can’t imagine why.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, automatically feeling defensive. After all, I myself wasn’t getting any younger. “She’s obviously accomplished—attractive, too, for that matter. Sure, she’s no spring chicken, but it’s not like Dr. Pepper up there isn’t eligible for an AARP card.”
“No, no, Pen. You misunderstand me,” said Brainert. “My objection has nothing to do with her age or looks. She lives in Arizona. End of story.”
“Excuse me?”
“What’s he going to do after she goes back there? Take a six- hour plane ride for a dinner date?”
“Love isn’t a function of convenience, Brainert. The heart doesn’t work like that.”
“Well, it should. Otherwise, what’s he in for? Heartache. Longing. Either that or jet lag.”
“What does it matter to you, anyway?”
“It matters to me because the second that woman leaves, the dean’s going to be in an even fouler mood than he was before, and he always takes his temper out on me! ‘
Parker
, I hope you fully appreciate what I’ve done, going out on a limb with the college, helping you secure that much- needed funding.’ ‘
Parker
, what’s your plan for the financial viability of the theater?’ ” Brainert massaged his temples. “I tell you, Pen, I can’t take it anymore.”
Before I could suggest reasonable alternatives to Dr. Pepper and Maggie Kline splitting up, Pepper’s voice boomed. “Now, without further ado, I’m delighted to give you
Wrong Turn
...”
The crowd applauded loudly and Bud Napp, the lanky, silver- haired widower and own er of Napp Hardware, hustled to move Dr. Pepper’s standing microphone back into the wings.
“What’s Bud doing on stage?” I whispered.
“Oh, Bud’s been a big help,” said Brainert, “along with his part- time construction crew.”
“I didn’t know he handled the restoration.”
“He didn’t. He just came in for some last- minute stuff— painting and wiring, hanging that public address speaker . . .”
Brainert’s voice trailed off as the house lights dimmed and the movie started. On the big screen, the Gotham Features logo appeared—white clouds parting to show the dark silhouette of the Empire State Building—and then came the view of a road at night, shrouded in shadowy fog.
Bright white headlights cut through the mist. A large black sedan rumbled by—the only vehicle on the empty road. Inside the sedan, the driver looked like an average Joe, coming home from a day of sales calls. He wore a cheap suit and battered fedora. His tie was pulled loose and his five o’clock shadow made him look haggard and beaten.
Then the sedan’s headlights lit up a stunning sight. Hedda Geist, the female lead, raced forward, onto the deserted Long Island road.
The crowd began to applaud. “Hedda, we love you!” cried a young man’s voice from the audience.
She was young and beautiful, with waves of gold flowing over shoulders as creamy smooth as a marble statuette. She looked scared and vulnerable running along in bare feet, wearing a form- fitting gown of shimmering satin, with a plunging neckline and a bow on the bodice.
“Stop, please!” she called. Her gown was torn off one shoulder. She held it up with one hand while waving at the oncoming car with the other.
The Joe in the sedan gasped, his leather shoe slammed on the brake, and his car squealed to a halt.
What’s the pitch, sister? Last time I saw this flick, it was 1948. Did somebody dial back the cuckoo or what?
The gruff voice I’d heard hadn’t come from the screen. And it hadn’t come from the audience. The voice had come from inside my own head. After a long day of slumber, the ghost of Jack Shepard had finally woken up.
CHAPTER 2
NICK BENKO
: You wait around long enough and sooner or
later everything falls right in your lap.
EDDIE WILLIS
: Like rotten apples.
—The Harder They Fall,
1956
“KEEP IT DOWN,
Jack,” I silently warned. “I’m watching a movie.”
I can see that, doll. I’m just surprised Hollywood took a turn for the worse. I thought by now they’d be making new pictures, not recycling the same old lamplit celluloid.
“Hollywood’s made plenty of new pictures since you... since you... you know...”
Since I got lead poisoning? Got my ticket punched? My lights put out? What is it with you square Janes? Always tiptoeing around the bare truth. You’re completely bughouse about prettying things up
—
“Jack, please! Why don’t you just settle back and watch the movie?”
Because I’ve seen it before, doll. And it’s a B picture
—
not
that the A pictures were that much better. At least New York was filming on the cheap. In my day, Tinsel Town was spending like drunken sailors
—
$600,000 for one movie. What a scam job. Leaking that kind of scratch for what? Costume and cardboard? A couple of chippies reciting lines off a pile of papers?
“Jack, we’re not in your day anymore. And I’m sorry to tell you that bud gets have only gone up. Six hundred thousand won’t even cover a Hollywood production’s catering bill, which is beside the point anyway. This film isn’t being recycled for lack of product. It’s part of a retrospective on the film noir genre.”
The film
what
genre?
“Film noir. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. I know you were alive when it first emerged.” I named some of the genre’s titles to jog his memory.
Yeah, Okay . . .
Jack admitted.
I remember seeing some of those movies, but I can’t believe twenty- first- century eggheads are getting hot and bothered about a bunch of B pictures that couldn’t afford color. Fancying them up with a French name’s about on the level with your generation’s buying water in a bottle.
“Film noir simply means that these films all shared the same dark style and sensibility, especially the black- and- white palette, the morally ambiguous narrative viewpoint, and the realistic locations. All of that was new, revolutionary.”
Realistic locations revolutionary? Listen, I knew some of those Poverty Row guys, working out in Queens. They set up in the streets instead of sound stages for one reason
—
because they were shooting on the cheap.
“Okay, but what about the films that featured anti- hero detectives like
The Maltese Falcon
or
The Big Sleep?
”
What about ’em?
“Weren’t you a fan of them?”
Sweetheart, I didn’t need to see 1,001 frames of Humphrey Bogart to tell me how the world turned. Sure, I watched those pictures
—
when I was tailing cheating spouses or sniffing out blackmailers and scumbag suspects. The balcony always was a nice, dark place for dirty deeds. And the only thing that made those movies worth my dime were the broads. I can’t deny those long- legged starlet types were serious whistle bait.
“You mean like Hedda Geist up there?”
I waited for Jack to answer. He didn’t.
“Jack?”
But there was no reply. The ghost had abruptly withdrawn— an annoying habit of Jack’s. Shrugging off his sudden departure, I turned my full attention back to the movie screen, where Hedda was playing one of her most famous parts, the femme fatale Sybil Sand.
With her shimmering, torn silver gown, Hedda flagged down the car driven by the haggard salesman “Joe.” He pulled his car over and she pulled him into a web of lies about her “abusive” husband. By the time she was done with him, Joe had murdered Sybil’s spouse for her, so Sybil could inherit the man’s fortune. Unfortunately, the husband’s older sister became suspicious, and Sybil once again called on Joe to kill for her.
In the last act, Sybil and Joe were on the run, staying one step ahead of the law until Sybil herself fingered the gullible salesman for the two murders, setting him up for the gas chamber, while she (nearly) walked away—except for that bullet in her back, when Joe finally got wise that he’d been played like a piano then tossed like a used toothpick.
As
Wron
g Turn
’s score swelled to a climax and the end credits rolled, I noticed a man moving down the far aisle, then up the side staircase to the theater’s stage.
The man wasn’t very old, maybe late twenties, with a bulky body and round, baby face. He wore his blond hair in a ponytail and a Hawaiian shirt over baggy jeans.
From the wings, hardware store own er Bud Napp loped back out onto the stage. He nodded at the twentysomething man, set up the standing mike, and returned to the wings.
“Testing, one, two...” murmured Ponytail Man, tapping the mike. The noise came out of the speaker high above his head. The man greeted the audience, and a spotlight shined down from the projectionist’s booth, making his gold loop earring sparkle.
“Who’s the clown with the earring?” Seymour asked, leaning forward to stick his head between me and Brainert.
“That’s no clown,” Brainert replied. “That’s Barry Yello, and he’s been a big help orga niz ing this weekend’s events—he and Dr. Lilly.”
“Oh, right,” I murmured, “Barry Yello. I should have recognized him from his book cover photo.”
After dropping out of film school, Yello had founded the influential Internet site FylmGeek .com, now read by film students and professionals in Hollywood who routinely left insider comments and opinions in the highly trafficked forum.
He’d recently published his first book, which—he announced to the crowd—he’d be signing at Buy the Book over the
weekend.
“Good plug,” Seymour whispered in my ear.
I gave a thumbs- up, even though his book—
Bad B
arry: My Love Affair with B, C, and D Movies
—was only trade paper. Unit for unit, the store made better profit on the hardcovers.
“Yello’s got a loyal following,” Brainert assured me. “You’ll be moving a lot of them.”
“And now,” Barry concluded, “to discuss
Wron
g Turn
better than I ever could, I’d like to introduce a first- rate film historian, Dr. Irene Lilly.”
I glanced through my program to refresh myself on Dr. Lilly’s bio. A San Fernando University professor, she was best known as the author of
Cities in Shadow
, an award- winning study of film noir (in hardcover). But in our e-mail exchanges over the past few weeks, she was quite adamant that her appearance at the festival would be devoted entirely to promoting her brand- new hardcover,
Murdered in Plain Sight.
There was nothing unusual about Dr. Lilly’s wanting to promote her front- list title. Traditional author tours and appearances were geared toward exactly that. But I did find it strangely dismissive of Dr. Lilly not to care about her backlist sales, too.
“Please, Mrs. McClure,” she had written, “do not bother stocking my backlist. The new title is the one I wish to promote and sell—and I’ll
personally
handle the order and delivery. Leave everything to me....”
When she took the stage, the slender, fortyish Dr. Lilly appeared relaxed and confident—and very Californian with straight, dark blonde hair tied back into a ponytail. Even Dr. Lilly’s attire was California relaxed: Her sundress was a loose shift of pale flowers, her necklace was hemp and natural beads, and her flat leather footwear had more in common with beach flip- flops than eve ning shoes.
With Dr. Lilly’s laid- back style, however, came no lack of energy. Her voice was strong, and her spirits obviously high as she addressed the crowd.
“What a treat it is to see
Wron
g Turn
on a big screen, the way it was first shown in 1948! Don’t you all agree?”
The crowd applauded.
“
Wrong Turn
is a classic example of film noir . . . but what is film noir? And why is this American cinematic style described with the French words meaning
black film
? To explain, I’ll have to take you back to the summer of 1946. For years, the French had been cut off from American cinema. Now that the war was over, ten American films were brought over to Paris and released in one six- week period:
The Maltese Falcon
;
Laura
;
Murder, My Sweet
;
Double Indemnity
;
The Woman in the Window
;
This Gun for Hire
;
The Killers
;
Lady in the Lake
;
Gilda
; and
The Big Sleep
.”
Dr. Lilly gestured to the screen behind her where a slide show of old movie posters was being projected. “The release of these movies in a concentrated time period caused a sensation. The French critics immediately recognized that a new style of film had begun to be made before and during the war. These were darker- themed pictures that dealt with crime, detectives, and middle- class murder. The films were sometimes based on, or similar to, the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain—novels that the French already had labeled
serie noire
or ‘black series.’ ”
I knew all of this already, but I listened patiently.
“As part of that movement,” Dr. Lilly continued, “
Wron
g Turn
was produced in the late 1940s by Irving Vreen’s Gotham Features—a Poverty Row studio, operating out of Queens, New York. The film’s leading lady, Sybil Sand, played by Hedda Geist, shows us one of the genre’s most powerful archetypes, the femme fatale. Tonight, in Sybil, you’ve seen the same kind of ‘sexy but dangerous woman’ that you’ll also be seeing in other films scheduled this weekend.”
“Hear that Jack?” I silently whispered, still wondering if the ghost was with me. “You’re not the only one who remembers your filmmaking friends in Queens.” I waited for Jack to reply. “Jack?”
The ghost still wasn’t answering me, and I wondered if maybe he couldn’t. I grabbed my purse off the seat’s armrest, shoved my hand inside, and searched the tiny soft pocket sewn into the lining. The moment I felt the hard, smooth coin, I breathed a sigh of relief. Jack’s nickel was there. I hadn’t lost it.
What’s the matter, baby? Miss me that much?
When the ghost first started haunting me, he couldn’t seem to travel beyond the four walls of my bookshop. Then I got hold of his case files and found an old buffalo nickel inside one of the dusty folders. Jack had carried that nickel around with him in life. And, now, whenever I carried it with me, he seemed to be able to travel in death.
“Jack.” I swallowed my nerves. “I thought I’d lost the nickel. Why didn’t you answer me?”
Dames
, he said in a disgusted tone.
Didn’
t you tell me to button my gabber?
“Yes, but . . . I changed my mind. I mean, the movie’s over. So it’s okay if you want to talk.”
The broad on stage is that boring, huh?
“It’s not that she’s boring. It’s just that I already know what she’s telling me. There are dozens of books in my store that say as much.”
Okay, baby, I’ve got an idea. Let’s blow this joint.
“What?”
I keep telling you, sweetheart, I can take you out on the town, if you let me. How about it? Dinner at the Copa? A room at the Plaza, just you and me . . .
I felt a thin, cool column of air swirl around me, tickle the back of my neck, brush past my cheek.
“Stop it, Jack,” I whispered. “You’re being silly now.”
Am I? When you thought I’d beat it, you couldn’t reach for that nickel fast enough.
“I was simply worried about purse snatchers.” I folded my arms and rubbed them, trying to ward off Jack’s little chill. “I hear it happens in movie theaters, you know? And there’s a lot of people here to night from out of town.”
The exasperating sound of decidedly smug male laughter rolled through my head as Dr. Lilly continued her lecture. Now she was explaining exactly why those noirs shot by Gotham Features studio were such a hit.
“While there were many films being produced at that time on the East and West coasts, the cluster produced by Gotham had made a small fortune because they had something the others didn’t: the blonde bombshell Hedda Geist.”
Dr. Lilly lifted her arm and gave a little wave toward the projectionist’s booth. Suddenly, a new slide appeared on the screen, the 1948 movie poster for
Wrong Turn
, which featured the arresting image of Hedda Geist’s beautiful face and form. Her hourglass figure was draped in the same shimmering, silver gown that she’d worn in the first scene of the picture, only it wasn’t yet torn. And her big green eyes appeared wide, startled, and a little bit desperate.
Dr. Lilly fixed a smile on a section of college kids in the audience—the group was mostly young and mostly male, many of them wearing fraternity jackets.
“So what was it about this type of story and theme that appealed to audiences back in the 1940s and ’50s, and continues to appeal to twenty- first- century film enthusiasts today?”
“Sex appeal,” one of the young men shouted.
“Hedda’s killer body,” yelled another.
“Sadomasochism!” someone else called out, and the audience fell apart.
“Maybe a bit of that,” Dr. Lilly said with a raised eyebrow. “But the truth is much simpler. The most subversive noir films—
Touch of Evil
,
Pickup on South Street
,
This Gun for Hire
—depict a world that is so morally bankrupt that it’s lost its way. Good languishes and evil dominates, the bad guy has money and power and status and the good guys are lowlifes, social pariahs who live on the raw edge of society.”
If that’s what this broad thinks, she hasn’t lived on the “raw edge of society” much. Someone should inform her there’s not a helluva lot of “good guys” there.
“She’s speaking relatively, Jack,” I told the ghost. “You lived on the edge, and you weren’t a bad guy.... Were you?”
No comment.
“Although the film movement began in the forties, filmmakers who came after, in the sixties and seventies, embraced its tenets. Movies like
Taxi Driver
and
Chinatown
may not have used the same stark, black- and- white palette of the early noir entries, but their cynical narratives were most definitely steeped in the same kettle. By the way, you’ll also find the poster of
Wrong Turn
on the cover of my brand- new book,
Murdered in Plain Sight
.”