The Good Old Stuff (31 page)

“You can’t go now.”

“I’ll stay until morning, but this is a good time for goodbye.”

When he came in with Taff they were all in the enclosed patio. The wall lights were on, the bulbs of that odd orange that repels insects.

“Post mortem,” June Luce said. “A post mortem by my generous uncle who pays me two hundred a day to grace his lovely home.” She laughed. There was liquor in her laugh.

“Please shut up, dear,” Georgie said.

“Well,” Park said, “it all seems to be over. And I, for one, am satisfied with Norris’s conclusion.”

“I’m happy for you,” Prine Smith said. “You’re easily satisfied.”

Guy Darana stood with his big arm around Georgie’s slim waist. He rubbed his chin against her sleek golden head.

Taffy wore the look of a lost child. Mick, by the corner bar, was glum.

“He didn’t die easy,” Park said. “It was quick, but from the look of his face there wasn’t anything easy about it.”

“Is this discussion necessary?” June asked. “Even at my wage scale there’s a limit.”

“I’m switching to bourbon, Mick,” Stacey said.

June glanced beyond Falkner to the stone arch that led out into the side garden. She made a sound. It was not a scream. It was harsh and long and came from the deepest part of her lungs.

Park moved to one side.

Guy Darana had his arm around Georgie Wane’s waist. With one heave of his shoulder he flung her to the side. She spun, tripped, and fell hard.

Bill Hewett, ghastly pale in the archway, his mouth twisting so that lips were pale worms entwining, said, “I left some unfinished business behind, I think.”

Prine Smith stood without a movement, with no expression at all on his face. Stacey Brian stood with the glass in his hand. His hand shut and the glass made a brittle sound. A clot of blood dropped and spattered on the stone.

Guy Darana stood with his hands flattened against the wall behind him.

“No,” he whispered. “No!”

His big pale hand flickered in the light, disappeared, reappeared with the glint of metal. Bill Hewett took a slow step toward Guy. The gun spoke, a slapping, stick-breaking sound, metallic in the enclosed patio. He fired point-blank at Bill Hewett. He fired six times. The hammer clicked three more times. The gun dropped onto the stone. Hewett took another slow step toward Darana, grinning now, grinning in a ghastly fashion.

Darana’s big, handsome face lost its human look. The features seemed to grow loose and fluid. Knee bones thudded against the stone. It was as though he were at prayer, worshiping some new and inhuman god. His lips moved and he
made sounds, muted little growlings and gobblings that were zoo sounds.

Norris came in from the garden as though walking into a drugstore for a pack of cigarettes. “Okay,” he said, “print that. It ought to do it. On your feet, Darana.”

Guy looked up at him and said, the words pasted stickily together, “There’s nothing you can do to me because it is part of me to avenge and destroy. There is sin and weakness in the world. Weakness and sin. They have to be punished. I’m an instrument of death. The garden and the word. The time is now. All the rich orchard time of turning, and no man is known who can unbend the others.” He glared around at them, then slipped down onto his haunches and began idly patting the stone with the palm of his hand, cooing softly, crooning to himself.

“Ain’t it the way,” Norris said with disgust. “You go to all this trouble and what do you get? He flips just as you grab him. Well, maybe we piled it on a little strong. Help me, you guys. If he’s violent he’ll be tough to handle.”

But Guy Darana let himself be led out placidly. He looked vacantly at Georgie on the way out. She put the back of her hand to her lips, and her eyes were wide and terrified.

They gathered in Falkner’s room. It was two in the morning. The fireplace fire drove back the night chill.

Georgie’s burned knee and elbow had been bandaged. She had lost almost all her casual flippancy.

“What can you believe about people?” Prine Smith asked. “I had Darana pretty well evaluated in my own mind. A big handsome hunk with more of a spark of acting talent than he was willing to admit. I had him pegged to go a long way. Hollywood had nibbled once, but he didn’t like the offer. How do you figure it, Park?”

Falkner shrugged. “Women came running to him. He must have alternated between thinking he was a minor god and feeling a strong sense of guilt, probably the result of a strict childhood home life. Guilt can do odd things. He must have been on the edge when he made a play for Lisa. She turned him down. That was something new. He brooded over it. The one woman he wanted he couldn’t have, and Hewett’s happiness
with her was like a blow in the face. He was an actor. He could do tricks with that voice of his. We’ll never know for sure, probably, but I think he phoned her pretending to be you, Bill. I guess you can fill out the rest of the details. He justified himself by saying to himself that he was punishing her for a sin.”

Park turned to Prine again.

“Our precautions were very simple. Lew and Mick took turns going through your rooms, deactivating anything that looked lethal. Lew was the one who found the gun while Guy was swimming. He reloaded with frangible blanks that look like the McCoy. Mick found the unlabeled bottle. He emptied it on a hunch, washed it, refilled it in the kitchen. While we swam at night, Lew was out beyond the breaker line in the
Nancy
watching with night glasses to see that nothing funny happened. I saw Darana talk to Bill and then leave in the direction of the house. In a little while Bill followed along. I followed him. When I saw him go into my room I went down onto the terrace below mine and climbed up. Guy left the room as I came over the wall. Poor Bill thought he’d really been poisoned. When I convinced him that he hadn’t, he was willing to play ball with us. I called Norris and explained it to him. We needed a little more on Darana than Bill’s naked word. Well … we got it.”

Hewett said, “It’s over now, I guess. I knew all along she must be dead. But because I didn’t know who or how, I couldn’t relax. Now I can start rebuilding.”

“Can you use any help?” June asked, smiling.

Hewett grinned. “I’ll consider it.”

The group broke up. Park promised transportation after breakfast. Taffy and Georgie Wane lingered behind. Georgie gave Taffy a quick look and then she smiled at Park, saying, “Here I am, wounded. Look, does a girl get a chance to stay here for a few days? Recuperation, we could call it, and it won’t cost you. Only what I can eat.”

Park looked expressionlessly at Taffy. “Why, I suppose that it would be—”

Taffy gave Georgie the warmest smile in her book. “Darling, Mr. Falkner intends to give you a little bonus to take care of
that scraped knee and elbow. I really think it would be best for all concerned if you went with the others.”

Georgie shrugged. “Sorry, boss. I didn’t see any signs on him. ‘Night, all.”

Taffy shut the door firmly. She turned, her hands on her hips. “If you think for one minute I’d let you keep that—that female here after the others go …”

Park gave her a look of outraged innocence. “But you told me we were through!”

“Well, we aren’t. Any arguments?”

He didn’t give her an argument. He was too busy.

T
he swimming pool
, under the moon, was like black ink in a white stone tray. Beyond the fringe of trees, blatant and gaudy, were the lights of Los Angeles, that painted lady of the Pacific.

Up on the night hill, by the pool, it was a time of silence, of quiet voices and a blessed peace. Jimmy Hake, that round and comical man of television, that owl-faced, elfin, blundering character in whom every man saw a part of his own image, reclined on the wheeled redwood chaise and watched the way the faint light from both the moon and the house windows made mysterious the features of his beloved.

Jimmy Hake needed all his acting talents to keep his voice and manner relaxed. Murder makes the breath short, makes the palms sweat, the voice tremble, the neck muscles bind.

Murder is something that had been two years a-growing Murder is the answer to a question that couldn’t otherwise be answered.

It was a Sunday night. Tomorrow the final rehearsal, and then the network program itself at eight, live because the network and the sponsor thought a live show would be a good hype, a good kickoff for the series. Jimmy Hake, presented live by the makers of Shynaline Products, the cosmetics that bring out the natural beauty of your skin. Available at all fine department stores.…

Going back to a series was a gamble, after two seasons of guest shots, talk shows with Merv and Johnny, one motion picture that grossed medium okay, three well-paid beer commercials.
But his instinct told him this series would work. The character was perfect. The scripts were great. They had five good shows in the can, so they could follow up the live opener on the agreed weekly schedule.

Three people by Jimmy Hake’s pool: Jimmy, Bob Morrit, his head writer—and Anna, wife of Bob. In the early part of the evening they had gone over the script for the last time. In the morning Bob would get the right number of copies made and then, at rehearsal, last-minute changes would be made in all copies.

Bob Morrit was saying, “… and we’ll have the thing pinned down tightly enough so we can stay right in the same groove. Character established. Type of incident. Just switch the cast around from time to time.”

Jimmy knew that Bob had been largely responsible for the program pattern that had made him a success. Sure, Bob was clever, but what did he know about how to make a million bucks the hard way? That start, thirty years ago, eighteen and already a baggy-pants specialist in the burlesque circuit. Coffee money for years and years. Small clubs. Rough. Rough all the way.

Then one day you hit the top and what have you got? Weariness that feels like you have putty instead of marrow in your bones. High blood pressure. Shortness of breath. Dyspnea, to be exact. Technically you are forty-eight, but you feel seventy-eight.

Oh, that jolly, jolly Jimmy Hake! That comic fellow!

You have everything except the one thing in the world that you want. Anna.

Funny, sort of. There were always lots of women. Eager to help you spend the bankroll. Laughing women. Tender women. Bitter women.

Not one like Anna.

He watched her. He had watched her for three years. A deep, strong, calm, incredibly beautiful woman. Safe harbor for the rest of his years. Straight and true. And loyal to Bob Morrit. Married to Bob Morrit. All bound up in Bob Morrit. And time for Jimmy Hake only as a friend. A good friend.

When Jimmy Hake remembered the times he had tried to
tell her how he felt about her, he flushed. She had handled him so easily. “Please, Jimmy.”

Just that. A tone of voice. The tone of voice said two things. It said, “If you persist, I will go away.” It also said, “You are nice.” But Jimmy didn’t feel nice.

Silver-blond hair and sea-gray eyes and a face that would be beautiful at sixty. That sort of a face. You could tell by the line of temple and jaw, the set of the eyes.

You get to the top and have everything you ever wanted. Except Anna. And the need for her makes everything else worthless, tasteless.

There is no way out. No answer. There can be no deviation in her loyalty—except if there is no longer anyone to whom she could be loyal.

And like the simplest equation written on a school black-board, the answer becomes … murder.

In amusement parks there are small, silvery, streamlined boxes in which one sits and is strapped in. They hang at the end of a long bar. The silver cockpit goes around and around in a vertical circle. Jimmy Hake felt as though he had a very tiny such apparatus in his heart. It went around endlessly. Strapped in the seat, holding the crossbar in brittle fingers, sat a miniature skeleton. The shape of the skull was like that of lean, serious Bob Morrit.

During the two years that he had thought of murder, he had thought of many ways. Many methods. To murder and go free. Conviction would make the murder pointless.

At night Jimmy Hake would awaken, cold sweat oily on his body, his fists tightly clenched. Then, in the silence of the night, he would think of Bob Morrit.

Not of Anna. Of Bob and of death.

Ten months before, without the faintest idea of how he would use it, he had acquired, in Rio, a small amount of curare. Vegetable-base poison. Instant paralysis of the lungs. A few words whispered to a ragged guide. A large bill. A small tin aspirin box pressed into his hand. Inside, a grayish sticky substance.

He knew there was no way it could be traced.

He realized that Bob had just asked him something.

“What was that?”

Bob laughed. “It is getting late. I was asking you if you didn’t think this no-good wife of mine could be of more help in the programs.”

“How?”

“He’s got the idea,” Anna said wryly, “that I ought to listen to the programs. Isn’t listening to you two chew up the script enough?”

“You’re a good girl,” Bob said, “and we both love you, but you’re no darn help to us. You don’t even laugh any more at the script.”

“I used to laugh to make you feel good.”

“If you listened,” Jimmy Hake said, “you could tell us what sounded flat to you. You are our most unforgiving public.”

She sighed. “I always forget until after the program is over. Life is so full of a number of things. Besides, I hate the commercials and I hate the opening patter before you get into the meat of the script.”

“Then tune in late,” Bob said.

She yawned. “All right, you guys. Tomorrow at eight ten I will be your ardent listener. I will sit home and laugh like mad.”

She stood up, clean and straight in the faint light. She said, “Bob, darling, you are such a collector of gadgets. Why don’t you find a gadget that will get me home and into bed at night without any effort on my part.”

“I’ll look for one like that,” he said.

As Jimmy Hake stood up, she said, “Jimmy, what a life I lead! In the car, lighted cigarettes pop out at you. In the apartment the windows open and shut at regular hours. Things go off and on. Civilization, they call it.”