Black Is the Fashion for Dying (16 page)

“I could be in New York.” Karl smiled coldly. “And still kill you, T. J.”

Involuntarily, Lorrance recoiled, staring.

Karl grunted. “Don't worry. I'm not going to kill you.” He went around the desk, lifted a cigar from the humidor. “Or anybody else.”

Watching him slide the gold band from the cigar, Lorrance had a malarial feeling of delirium. Of fever-produced unreality. Blood fresh on Karl's hands, a woman's blood, Caresse's blood, and no more reaction than a robot would reveal.

Karl dropped the gold band, bit off the end of the cigar, spat it on the carpet. “We were talking about scruples,” he said. “Remember?”

Lorrance nodded, barely hearing him, still gripped by unreality.

“Well, for your information, I felt no scruples about Caresse. She was a conniving, murderous, lying bitch, a jet-age Lucretia Borgia.” Karl tried the silver desk lighter, but it didn't work. “You know yourself of a dozen lives she ruined And there have been dozens more. And dozens still to come.” In a drawer he found a kitchen match “I felt no more compunction killing her than I would have crushing a black-widow spider under my heel.” He lit the match, held it to the cigar. “It was an act of public service.”

“
Murder
…?
”

Karl rolled the cigar in the flame, inspected it to be sure it was burning evenly, shook out the match and dropped it on the carpet. He sucked on the cigar, blew out smoke and words.

“All right. Call it murder.”

“But why … why tell me?”

“Scruples.” Karl's lips curled contemptuously around the cigar. “Those half-baked scruples that wouldn't let you steal for an inconsequential reason.” A puff of blue-gray smoke trailed the words. “So I've given you just about the most consequential reason possible.”

“But murder! I couldn't involve—”

“Nobody will be involved.”

“When the police …?”

“They'll never come within light years of a solution.” Karl removed the cigar from his mouth, eyed it sardonically. “You could tell them I did it. I could go to them, tell them I did it. And still they'd never solve it.”

“If
you
told them?”

“As long as I didn't tell how.”

“But how …?” Lorrance stuttered, gripped by a reluctant, horrible fascination. “How did you …?”

Karl chuckled, “I ought to patent it.”

“Did someone else?”

“No. No accomplices.”

“Some mechanical means?”

“None.”

“Then I don't see …”

Karl chuckled again. “The perfect crime. No swarthy gunmen. No witnesses. No opportunity. No apparent motive. No clues. No evidence of any sort anywhere.” His face hardened. “With one possible exception.”

“Exception?”

“Those ledgers.” He scowled implacably at Lorrance. “Which you're going to get.”

Suddenly reality was back again, and it was worse than any delirium. “No!” Lorrance heard himself cry shrilly, a sea bird lost in a night storm. “Oh, no!”

Karl put down the cigar, rose from his chair and started unhurriedly around the desk. “You're elected, T. J.”

“I can't be! Not murder!” In an agony of terror and revulsion, Lorranee stumbled backwards across the carpet. “I'll forget. Go away if you want.” His voice broke hysterically. “But never—”

The slap echoed like a pistol shot. He found himself sprawled on the leather couch, head against the arm rest, his hands fluttering in front of his face. But there was no second blow. Karl merely stood there, looking down impassively, a scientist watching the death struggle of a beetle.

His hands stopped fluttering, went to the pain in his cheek.

Karl said, “Time you learned the facts of life.”

He sat up, nursing the pain. In his mouth he could taste blood.

“Or maybe I should say fact,” Karl said. “Because basically, life depends …” Head turning slowly, he broke off, growled, “What are you doing here?”

Dazedly, Lorrance swung around, saw a plump, tremulously smiling woman in a fawn-colored suit that didn't quite fit. For an instant he thought she was someone, maybe a tourist, who had wandered into the office by mistake, and then the mist of pain and confusion cleared.

“Irene!”

She was standing by the door, her face at once warm and puzzled and concerned. Karl growled again. “Well, what is it?”

“Caresse …”

“What about her?”

The soft brown eyes went to Lorrance. “I thought if there was anything I could do, I …”

The “I” hung there, a hummingbird suspended in air. Karl promptly shot it down. “What could you do? Take her place in the picture?”

“The funeral …?”

“The studio is taking care of it.”

“I didn't know.”

“Well, now you do.”

The brown eyes went to Karl, then came back, asking a question to which Lorrance had no answer. But when she spoke, it was to Karl.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to bother you.”

She turned away, was reaching for the door when Karl spoke. “One thing you can bother about.” Hand on the bronze knob, she paused. “I want some people in the house tonight. Dinner and gin-rummy. Ed Colmar. The Klaubers. Anybody you can think of.”

“T.J.?” she asked softly.

“No.” Karl's voice was amused. “T. J. has other plans.”

Submissively, she said, “Yes, Karl,” and then the door, closing shut her out. Karl cleared his throat derisively, asked, “Where was I?”

Hunched down on the couch, still feeling Irene's eyes on him, concerned, compassionate, almost tender, Lorrance shook his head. He knew now that he was trapped.

“I remember,” Karl said. “Survival. The basic fact of life. Boiled down, the only fact.”

There was no escape. Not if Irene was to escape.

Words, now only half heard, continued to come from Karl. “I killed … to survive. And you're going to steal …”

And she must escape. Escape from being the wife of a known murderer. Escape from ever knowing she had given herself to a murderer. A hideous picture rose in Lorrance's mind, of Irene in bed, unclad, and Karl's thick hands tightening around her neck. He could see the soft white body struggling, could almost hear the agonized breathing. But no, Karl would never do that, if only because, as Benjy's daughter, she represented power.

“… iron lung?” Karl's voice demanded.

“What?”

“For Pamela,” Karl growled. “Your daughter. How much for nurses and the iron lung?”

“Eight hundred a month, but what has that …?”

“Survival, you idiot! Maybe you don't care. You don't look as if you do.” Karl smiled cunningly. “But how will Pamela survive if you lose your job?”

Shock brought Lorrance upright on the couch. “You'd actually use Pamela to force me … I”

“I merely asked how she would survive.”

“I have insurance.”

“Suicide?” Karl asked incredulously. “You'd commit suicide not to steal?”

For a frenzied instant Lorrance grasped at the idea. It could be the solution. Pamela would be safe then, and so in a way would he.

But not Irene.

Karl was chuckling. “You haven't the guts, and you know it,” he said. “We both know it.”

No escape, Lorrance thought wearily. Not if Irene was to escape. He rose slowly from the couch, said, “I guess you're right.”

“And so?”

“Where am I to take them?”

“My house. I'll wait up.” Karl's heavy face was mockingly triumphant. “Want me to give you Caresse's layout again?”

“No.” Head down, Lorranee went past him towards the door. “I've been there.” He fumbled for the knob, found it, pulled open the door and stumbled blindly into the faceless crowd outside.

Richard Blake

A shadow nibbled at the table where he sat with Josh Gordon under the grape arbor that made a ceiling for the court in back of Luigi's. He had been at the table only a few minutes since his arrival by taxi from police headquarters, but in that time Gordon had told him about the new ending for
Tiger in the Night,
the sun had slid part way down the tile roof on the apartment building across the street and he had begun a disjointed report on his own experiences.

“Thing is,” he declared, “I should have gone after the blanks.”

“Why?”

“Key to the whole business.”

“The blanks?”

“Instead of the bullets.”

Lifting his rye old-fashioned. Gordon studied it reflectively. “I don't seem to follow you.”

“I'm trying to explain.”

“Try from the start.”

The start was Orthman's. Blake told about the ammunition there, told how Mr. Orthman had converted one box into blanks. He mentioned the late Colonel Mortimer. He found his mind was still jumny, but he managed to get in most of the relevant details. He told how the detective had found a live cartridge in his pocket.

“What live cartridge?” Gordon asked.

“Didn't I say I opened a box?”

“What for?”

“I guess to see if it was full.”

“But why take a cartridge?”

“I don't know.”

“Go on.”

Blake went on. While he described being taken to the detective bureau, Gordon waved at Gary Cooper, walking with two men across the court. Gary Cooper called, “Tough break, Josh,” and went into Luigi's with the two men. Blake told how the ballistic tests had proved the two bullets fired from the Webley were the ones that had killed Caresse. From there he went into Walsh's theory. Either Lisa or the locked room, impossible as it seemed.

Gordon said, “Locked room, obviously.”

“Why?”

“Always is in detective stories.”

“This is a police story.”

“Yeah, maybe so.” Gordon eyed his half-filled glass, emptied it. “Where do the blanks come in?”

“Well, just before he let me go Walsh talked about them. The real bullets, too, for that matter.”

“Stay with the blanks.”

“Two blanks,” Blake said. “The ones taken out of the Webley to make room for the real bullets.”

“They haven't found them?”

Blake shook his head. “Checked everybody, Walsh says. With that electronic gadget we saw. Even had a doctor search Lisa. Searched the whole stage, too.”

“Boggles the imagination.”

“Sure does.”

Gordon ordered two more old-fashioneds. He waved at Bob Hope, walking with four men across the court. Bob Hope called, “Tough break, Josh,” and went into the bar with the four men. Gordon said, “Possible solution.”

“What?”

“Alf's packing case. Blanks put back there after Caresse was killed. In box they came in. So much going on nobody'd notice.”

“No sale.”

“Why not?”

“Walsh counted the blanks himself. Alf had fifty originally. Now, with the ones still in the Webley, there are forty-eight.”

“Ah ha!” Gordon said. “This I like. Blanks that disappear in thin air. A pistol that gets loaded by a ghost. Let's make a movie out of it.”

“All I want out of it is Lisa,” Blake said unhappily.

“We'll get her out, too.”

“How?”

Gordon glanced up at the approaching waiter. “Blood, sweat and rye old-fashioneds.”

The waiter took the empty glasses, wiped the table with a dishcloth, put down the fresh drinks. “Another round,” Gordon said. “Not for me,” Blake said. “Another round,” Gordon said. The waiter went away.

“Hard night ahead,” Gordon said, lifting his glass.

“If you think I'm going to get boiled …”

“Nobody's getting boiled.” Swallowing twice, Gordon emptied the glass. “Just easing the tension. So we can think clearly.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Got a couple of ideas already.”

Blake eyed him dubiously, wondering how long he had been in the bar. The message, relayed when he called the studio after being released by Walsh, had merely said Gordon would meet him at Luigi's at four-thirty. But that didn't mean Gordon couldn't have come earlier. From the looks of things he had come about five old-fashioneds earlier.

“What ideas?” he asked cautiously.

“Want to talk to Alf. Want to talk to people on set. Want to talk to head carpenter at the studio. Selig. But most of all want to talk to Ashton Graves.”

“That's going to take time.”

“Don't care if it takes all night. No place to go, anyway.”

“What about home?”

“Are you kidding?” Gordon bent over, picked a newspaper from the flagstone under his chair, put it on the table. “Take a look.”

The newspaper's banner line read: CARESSE GARNET SLAIN ON SET. In the center of the page was a photograph of Caresse and below it was a smaller one of Lisa. Under her photograph, two columns wide, was the caption:
RIVAL ACTRESS HELD IN MYSTERY DEATH
.

Stomach suddenly queasy, Blake began, “I don't see—”

“Here.” Gordon jerked the paper away from him. “Listen to this.” From the bottom of the page he read: “‘… immediately preceding the fatal shooting Miss Garnet, according to witnesses, quarreled violently with the picture's well-known director, Josh Gordon, accusing him of maintaining a woman friend in an apartment on Miller Place …'” He crumpled the paper, tossed it back on the flagstone paving. “By now, instead of a candle, Agnes has a machine gun in the front window.”

“What about Miller Place?”

“Machine gun there, too.”

“You can stay with me.”

“Fine. But first we got those people—” Gordon broke off, his pale eyes gleaming. “The naked blonde!”

“What about her?”

“Very odd.”

“Sure. Odd. But what …”

Gordon was waving at Frank Capra, walking across the court. Mr. Capra didn't see him. The waiter came with the fresh drinks, waited for Blake to finish his old one. It was starting to get dark.