Black Is the Fashion for Dying (11 page)

“
Mama mia!
” Alf exclaimed.

“Yes,” Walsh said. “Real bullets. Expended, but real—.325 caliber ammunition.”

There was a long silence.

“A dilly,” Walsh said finally. “Pistol goes into scene loaded with blanks. Forty or so people watch scene being played. Nothing—
but nothing
unusual happens. But when the pistol's fired, out come two real bullets.”

“Impossible!” Blake exclaimed.

“Yeah,” Walsh said. “Ain't it, though.”

Lisa Carson

If only the man would go away. She wanted to cry. She needed to cry, but the bulky blue-serge back framed by the dressing room doorway made it impossible. She couldn't cry while he was listening. It was like being in a cell. A death cell, almost.

Murderess, she said to herself. You killed her. Murderess. She savored the word, feeling the icy bands tighten. But not really a murderess. She hadn't known the pistol was loaded. But she had wanted to kill Caresse when she fired it. Not as Ahri, but as Lisa. A death wish. Could she have wished the pistol loaded? No, that was silly. It was all so mixed up it seemed a kind of nightmare.

Yet there was no escaping the three things that kept floating up out of the nightmare. She had wished Caresse dead. And in wishing her dead she had fired the pistol, not from the tent entrance as she was supposed to, but from two or three feet off. And she had killed her.

Guilty or not guilty? If only the man would go. She needed to think. She needed to cry. She needed Dick. It was strange, but she no longer hated Caresse. She was actually sorry for her. Guilty or not guilty?

“Miss Carson.” The man's face was inside the door. “Captain Walsh wants you.”

First, entering the tent, she looked for Caresse. The cot was empty, thank God! Then she saw Dick, his face solemn but somehow reassuring, and she would have run to him if it hadn't been for the others. Josh Gordon and the thin-faced sergeant who'd questioned her, she saw, and an older man. Captain Walsh, she supposed it was.

“Sit down, Miss Carson,” he said. His eyes looked like pieces of brown sugar.

On a small table beside him, in a cardboard box, was the pistol, and she stared at it fascinated, barely hearing Captain Walsh say, “Grimsby's got a question.”

“An omission,” Grimsby said.

“Of what?”

“A remark to Mr. Gordon. About planning to kill Miss Garnet.”

Josh Gordon snorted. “A joke!”

“Was it, Miss Carson?” Captain Walsh asked.

Despite the eyebrows and the square jaw he didn't look very terrifying. He looked like the marshals in Westerns she'd made. The kindly old men the heavies either killed or wounded so the hero had to take over and clean up the town.

“It was a joke,” she said. “But I did daydream about killing her.”

“You were sore because she changed the story?”

“A second omission,” Grimsby said.

Josh Gordon said, “We'd better get you a lawyer, Lisa.”

“She doesn't need a lawyer,” Dick said.

“Well then …” Captain Walsh opened the script on his lap. “About this scene in the tent. Where were you supposed to wound Miss Garnet?”

“What about it?” Dick asked sharply.

“She play it like you wrote it?”

“Yes.”

“We don't think so.” Captain Walsh raised the script, read: “‘… Ahri appears in the tent entrance … McGregor starts for her but … the pistol explodes twice.'” He looked up at Dick. “That mean pushing past McGregor and firing point-blank?”

Helplessly, Dick stared at her.

She said quietly, “I killed her.”

“
Lisa!
”

“Why did you fire point-blank, Miss Carson?”

“Because I hated her. I don't now—”

“For God's sake, Lisa!” Dick was on his feet. “Do you know what you're saying?”

“Shut up, Blake.”

“Like hell! She doesn't mean murder. She means she was acting out how she felt.”

“Why don't you let her say what she means?”

“It's so mixed up,” she said. “What I was thinking and what happened. I shouldn't have come so close.”

“You knew the pistol was loaded?”

“No.”

“How do you know you killed her?”

“Didn't I?”

They didn't answer.

“Don't you
see?
” she said. “I wouldn't have killed her if I hadn't come so close. That's why I'm to blame. I'd have missed her.”

The two policemen exchanged glances. “Neat,” Captain Walsh said. Grimsby nodded. “Go well with a jury.”

“Now wait a minute,” Dick said angrily. “You don't even know if the bullets came from the gun.”

Walsh eyed the Webley on the table. “Just fired, the pistol was.”

“Sure. She fired it. Everybody admits that. But how can you be sure it wasn't loaded with blanks?”

From the cardboard box Walsh took an envelope, poured from it two brass shells. “Where'd these come from, then?”

He wasn't looking at Dick, but at her.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Two .325 caliber cartridges. Expended. Found by the cot here.”

She shook her head, not knowing exactly what that meant.

At the same time Dick spoke: “Okay. You've got a couple of expended shells. But you don't know if they killed Caresse.”

Walsh took a piece of paper from the envelope. “Ballistics report on slugs removed from the body.” He glanced at the paper. “Two slugs—.325 caliber ammunition.”

“We'd better get that lawyer,” Josh Gordon said.

“No!” Dick said angrily. “They still haven't proved the slugs came from the pistol.”

“Ballisties'll do that,” Sergeant Grimsby said.

Captain Walsh sighed. “It sorta looks that way.” He didn't seem too happy about it.

“Even so,” Dick said. “Proving the gun killed Caresse doesn't prove Lisa loaded it.”

“No.”

“Or that she knew it was loaded.”

“I didn't know,” she said quickly. “I killed her, but I didn't know.”

“Let me get this straight, Miss Carson.” Captain Walsh's eyes were sympathetic. “You feel like—well, like a driver who went through a stop sign and killed a pedestrian. You feel you wouldn't have killed him if you hadn't gone through the sign.”

She nodded. “If you add the pedestrian was somebody I hated.”

Captain Walsh frowned. “That's the rub.”

“Jury won't like that,” Grimsby observed.

Dick asked, “How many years for slugging a cop?”

“Just try it,” Grimsby said.

“Both of you,” Captain Walsh said. “Pipe down.” He turned, his voice softening. “Mind if I ask you one more question, Miss Carson?”

“Not at all.” She felt relieved, getting it out in the open. And the captain seemed to understand. At worst she was a hit-and-run driver. No, not even that. She hadn't run. She smiled at Dick's worried face. It was all right.

“Ashton Graves,” Captain Walsh said. “Did he touch the pistol?”

“When we fought over it.”

“Before that. When it was in the holster.”

“He didn't come near it.”

“Did anyone else touch it?”

“During the scene?”

“Yes.”

“I was the only one.”

Captain Walsh nodded. “Well, thanks, Miss Carson.”

“Then I can go?”

“No. I'm afraid we'll have to hold you.”

“Suspicion of murder,” Sergeant Grimsby said.

“Like hell!” Dick said and started for her, and then he was lying on his back on the tent floor, an overturned chair by his head. Grimsby, rising and striking in one motion, had knocked him down. Josh Gordon was shouting angrily. The interior of the tent began to whirl. Faster and faster it whirled, a confusing blur of cot, table, tent pole and moving figures, like a film taken by a camera panning too rapidly. She swayed and someone took hold of her arm.

Richard Blake

Right palm nursing his aching jaw, his body hunched over on the canvas cot in a painful S, he told himself he should have known better. He should have guessed the bastard was a boxer. They always were, the Grimsby kind. Even in civilian life. He should have learned that long ago. Would have if he'd hung around Y.M.C.A.s instead of pool halls. It was a rule. The less likely they looked, the harder they hit. The prim ones with bookkeeper's pallor. The polite ones with serious faces. The myopic ones with steel-rimmed glasses. The solemn ones with Baptist backgrounds. The grave ones with unctuous voices. The ones who helped old ladies across streets and gulls with broken wings. The ones with neatly pressed blue suits and collar pins and clean fingernails and matching ties and socks. Bible peddlers, door-to-door salesmen, hairdressers, lingerie clerks, hospital attendants, male secretaries and now, by God, they'd infiltrated into the police department. A man wasn't safe anywhere.

Tent flaps, opening, made a frame for Josh Gordon's face. “Counted your teeth yet?” His pale eyes were at once amused and solicitous.

“You're a fine friend.” Blake sat up on the cot. “Letting him sneak up behind me.”

“How'd I know he was going to slug you?”

There didn't seem to be any answer to that. Blake scowled, palm still pressed against his jawbone, and asked: “Lisa?”

“I called Abe Luskman.”

“Hell help?”

“Bail, lawyers and prayers in the synagogue.”

“She didn't do it.”

“Sure.” Gordon came into the tent. “But them folks with badges think different.”

“She didn't!”

“Can you stand up?”

“What for?”

“Urgent summons from King Fatso.”

Blake got to his feet. Pain made the tent walls shimmer, and then the dizziness began to subside. “Fabro can go fry his—”

Gordon's hands, shoving him towards the tent flap, cut off the sentence. The hand shoved again and he was outside the tent. The hand grasped his arm.

“Walk,” Gordon said.

Blake walked across the stage. Dimly lit and nearly deserted now, it made him think of a mortuary chapel. By the television monitors two detectives were talking, their voices hushed and solemn, like the voices of people at funerals. In the soft glow of reflected light the jungle-and-sky backdrop resembled a stained glass window. Even the air, now the blower units were off, had the stale feel of chapel air. He thought of Caresse, killed in what to her must have been a sort of chapel, the sound stage where for so many years she obtained her daily caviar and champagne.

He thought of Lisa.

“Look,” he said urgently. “I've got to get out of here.”

“They wouldn't let you see her.”

“I just want to be around.”

Gordon steered him past a clump of exotic purple flowers. “Here's where you want to be.”

“Why?”

“You say Lisa didn't kill her.”

“She didn't.”

“Then somebody else did.”

That wasn't exactly news, but Blake felt a prickle of interest. It was the implication. Somebody
had
killed Caresse, and nailing him, or her, might turn out to be the only way of clearing Lisa. And one thing was certain. As long as they had Lisa, the police weren't going to strain themselves looking for new suspects. Gordon was still speaking.

“… cameramen, writers, directors, stage hands, grips, extras, hairdressers, thespians, lesbians and crazy women.” His lips curled in a mirthless smile. “Could be anybody on the set.”

Rounding the end of the backdrop, they plunged into the dark tunnel leading to the stage door. At the far end some men were waiting, watchful faces lit by an overhead bulb.

“Anybody,” Gordon repeated.

“So?”

“So we hang around, figure out who.”

Emerging from the tunnel, they started for the door. A big man with a scar across the corner of one eye blocked their way. “Hold it.”

Back of the big man were two other men. One had a notebook. He said, “Names?” The other said, “Police.” The man with the notebook wrote down their names. The other said, “Checking everybody out.” The big man said, “Metal.”

“Metal?” Gordon echoed.

“Let's see what you got on you.”

Gordon produced a silver money clip, a gold fountain pen, some change and a wrist watch. Blake emptied his pockets. He had two quarters, a dime and three pennies.

“By the door,” the big man told Gordon.

As Gordon moved to the door, the man without the notebook put on a pair of earphones. Blake saw the wires led to a chromium box on a stand by the door. “Clean,” the man said. The big man motioned Gordon away, motioned Blake to take his place. A clicking noise came from the earphones and the man said, “Frisk him.” The big man slapped Blake's hips, unfastened his coat. “Belt buckle.” He pulled Blake's belt off, stepped back. The clicking stopped “Clean,” said the man with the earphones.

Outside the sound stage, Blake stopped to put on his belt. Gordon looked back at the door. “Electronics, they even got now.”

“What do you suppose they're looking for?”

“Metal,” Gordon said.

Murky water lay in pools on the asphalt between the sound stages, but the drizzle had stopped. Overhead, faint traces of blue showed through the clouds. Some French Foreign Legionnaires in dusty costumes passed by, and then five can-can girls.

“Blanks!” Blake exclaimed.

Eyes followed silk-clad legs, Gordon said, “Blanks?”

“That's what they're after. Blanks. The blanks from the pistol.”

Gordon abandoned the can-can girls, reluctantly focused his eyes on Blake. “Why?”

“Whoever put in the real bullets must have taken out the blanks.”

“Sure. But why couldn't he just toss them away?”

“Cops would have found them.”