Murder on Location (3 page)

“Push the button for the penthouse,” he said and I did it. I got another look at his remarkable teeth as he tried to explain: “My plane got in at Buffalo, and they were waitin' for me with their cameras and sixguns. Followed
me here and I guess they'll make camp in the lobby and set up a siege. Name's Jim Sayre,” he said. “I make movin' pictures.” He shot out a hand at me, and I heard myself telling him my name and that I was a private investigator. I don't usually volunteer that last part without my arm being twisted, but Jim Sayre had an authority about his long, lean rawboned proportions that made me confess.

“Well, it's right handy you were standin' by. I'll have to thank the hotel for thinkin' of everythin'. Well, not quite everythin'. I'm about five drinks below par and I haven't got a drop in all them bags.” He turned to the bellhop. “Could you get me a quart of sourmash liquor, son?” The bellhop explained Ontario liquor laws as the car ascended, and the big man's eyes rolled in the direction of the penthouse. “I don't want to know the rules, son, I want a quart of sourmash liquor and I need it soon.” He looked at me for support. “Can you do anything, Ben? This fellow's studyin' for a lawyer. I don't want to know any more rules. How much should I give him?” I suggested twenty dollars, and the bargain was struck then and there without further palaver. Here the elevator doors opened and the three of us and the wagonful of baggage headed to the suite marked Penthouse Two. Sayre hadn't stopped talking or I might have stayed aboard the car. He carried us all into the suite without stopping to breathe.

“I've made movin' pictures in three or four dozen countries and they all have their rules. I don't give a
sweet sufferin' shrug about rules. I don't want to know them. I just want a quart when I need it. I'll study up on the rules later. I'm savin' them for when I retire.” He stood in the middle of the room, which was about the size of a small ballroom, without looking to the right or left. The bellhop opened a pair of French windows giving on a balcony. Jim Sayre looked annoyed. “Yes, I know the falls are out there. I'll take your word for it. Close the doors and get your ass down to the liquor store or package store or whatever they call it in this state before I take leave of my senses and join the parade to Alcoholics Anonymous. Scat.”

The bellhop caught a five-dollar bill growing off a high limb and disappeared. “Brr,” said Sayre, “I like weather, but I like it outside with the sun shinin' on it. Now, tell me, Ben, did the hotel sign you up to look out for me, or did the company? I want to be clear about this, if we're goin' to get along.” I told him that I hadn't been hired by either, that I was just trapped in the elevator as he had been by the reporters. His face cracked into a grin, which spilled into a generous laugh and then he started to cough. Once he started, he had trouble getting stopped. Under his tan, he turned pale. I made for the nearest tap and brought him a glass of smoky-looking water. He took it in his hand, then sat down hard on one of the six or seven velvet sofas that didn't begin to fill the room. Slowly he caught his breath and smiled to show that he was all right. We both listened to the silence for a minute. Then he was talking again.

“You travel a few thousand miles and when you get off you're back in the same hotel suite you left behind. Look at this place. How could anybody design a place like this? It doesn't come from life but from movin' pictures, like everythin' else. Ben, you don't happen to have a flask on you, by any chance? No? Well, it doesn't matter, our native runner will be back with the goods before we dry up and blow away.” He placed the glass of water on top of an elegant end-table. I guess it was elegant, it looked all wrong with that glass from the bathroom sitting on it. Sayre was still talking: “… They had the governor of the state out to the airport to meet us, but I couldn't hear a thing on that tarmac what with the wind and all. I just got feedback from the speaker system and the sounds of the jet engines.” He took a breath and began patting his chest, prospecting for cigars. He found one, rolled it around between his thumb and forefinger, sat back and lit it with what looked like great pleasure. “My back gets a lump in it every time I cross the Great Divide. And for me that's just east of Fresno.” He laughed again, but watched himself. He didn't want to lay down another coughing barrage. Then his big head shook at the pictures on the wall behind me. “Hotels are all alike. I asked for a quiet place near the main hotel. Is that what this is?” I nodded, and told him that the Colonel John was just behind the Tudor.

“Colonel John? Who the hell was he: some frontier hero?” I told him that he'd led a band of irregulars against the Americans during the Revolutionary War. It didn't
seem to take much to keep Sayre going, just a little priming from time to time.

“I made a picture about Benedict Arnold. That was the Revolutionary War. I guess he's a big hero up here?” I shrugged. Traitors to one side didn't automatically make heroes for the other. “I've done a peck of war pictures,” Sayre went on. “After a while you leave history to the costume department.” He looked a little lost for a second. His mouth moved like he was trying to decide whether to fish for a crumb on his lip with his tongue in public or not. He decided against it. Then there was a noise in the hall and a big-boned silver-haired woman in an Irish sweater and lemon trousers was standing in the doorway at the head of an army of bellhops and flunkies.

“Just leave everything,” she told them, sloughing a sheepskin jacket on a chair. Sayre glanced at her as she collected a few valuables and paid out rewards to the virtuous.

“So, you didn't get lost? By the good Lord Harry, I thought they had me that time.” A man in a three-piece suit and a knitted tie handed Sayre a file marked “Telephone Messages” and another marked “Telexes.”

“These are just the urgent things,” he said. “Mr. Raxlin wants you to phone him right away.” A blond man in a powder-blue leisure suit came into the room with an artist's portfolio under his arm.

“Fine,” said Sayre, scanning the messages quickly. “How are you, Skip? I hope that motel's practical by
tomorrow. I want to use it starting with the afternoon set-ups.”

“We're nearly finished landscaping. I want you to look over …”

“Just drop it on the table, Skip, I'll get to it as soon as I catch my breath. See you in an hour and a half. Leave your number on top. Dick, get yourself settled and don't worry about a thing until you're fixed up. You didn't bring that Jack Daniels by any chance?”

“That's long gone, Mr. Sayre. I'll see about getting another.”

“You do that. Now take all of these people out of here while I unpack. Not him,” he said, pointing at me. “He stays.”

Sayre got up and brought the woman centre stage with a big arm across her shoulders. “Ben, this is Adela. And Adela is my heart, my mind, my spirit and my one true love. She deserves better than an old reprobate like me. Adela, this is Ben Cooperman. He's a detective. Just saved me from a mob downstairs.” Adela put down a small blue flight bag on the broadloom and gave me her hand. It was cold, and I wasn't sure whether I should kiss it or hold it, but I decided she looked more American than anything else, so I shook it. She smiled at me, took in Sayre's mood and cocked an ear to the sound of the falls coming in through the balcony door, which the bellhop had failed to close tightly.

“Oh, Jim,” she said. “It's them. The falls!”

“I know, Adela. They keep up that racket twenty-four hours a day—like a broken-down air conditioner. I've sent the bellhop out for a bottle, hon.” Then the phone was ringing. “If that's Raxlin, tell him I'm in the shower.” Sayre waved Adela to the phone, and sent me a conspiratorial look.

“Miranda! Why yes! We just walked in this minute. I haven't even taken off my coat.” I could only think it was Miranda Pride at the other end of the wire. She wasn't hard to imagine and I enjoyed doing it. She seemed to fill up the empty spaces, turning it suddenly into a crowded room. I got up and mimed to Sayre that I'd better be going.

“Say, Ben, you don't know where I can get me a good rub in this town, do you? I have a regular fellow in Los Angeles, but I'm going to need a good rub in the mornings or I won't be fit to tangle with.” I gave him the name of a masseur who'd just left the physiotherapy department at the Falls hospital. Adela was letting out small shrieks of pleasure and annoyance as Miranda Pride recounted a long story. The conversation was too one-sided to listen in on, so Sayre went on talking with his usual enthusiasm. “Shot a picture about the falls once in Culver City with Danny Vickers and Victoria Wilcox. Danny's a senator now.”

“Oh, Miranda, you shouldn't!”

“Adela and Miranda are great friends,” Sayre explained as though I was deaf. “They're always burnin' up the wire whenever they're in the same town.” He glanced
for a second in direction of the noise from the falls, got up and walked to the window. “My friend Marilyn's goin' to get a kick out of seeing the falls. She's just wild about nature in the raw. She should have been a Victorian, I keep tellin' her. Maybe that rich boy-friend of hers will buy it for her.” I didn't know who he was talking about.

“Well, let's get together for dinner tonight. The four of us if the men can make it,” Adela was saying into the phone. “You bet your boots, kid. Well, if they do, we'll make it a twosome and find the action. Good? All right, settled. See you then.”

“I wonder where that bellhop got to? It won't be the first twenty dollars I've lost in a good cause. Say, Ben,” Sayre said, looking serious for a second and cranking a smile higher on the left side of his face, “if you've got business, don't let me chew your ear off. I've got nothin' to do but study the latest draft of a script. It's a whole lot more interestin' talkin' to you.”

“I'm sure the bellhop …”

“Don't give it a flicker, Ben. Adela always comes prepared for emergencies. Is that right, Adela?”

“It leaked out during the flight. Damn it, I'll have to have everything dry-cleaned.”

“Well, let's have a drink tomorrow night if you don't get stuck. Nobody to talk to around here but picture people. It'll be good to see a friendly face. Say down in the bar in the other hotel around eleven. If you don't have rules about bars.”

“At the Colonel John, you go up to the bar. They're peddling the view of the falls.”

“So, there's a falls?” he said raising his eyebrows with mock interest. “I heard tell.” I climbed to my feet and inched to the door through holes in the talk. Finally at the door: “Well, Ben, see you at eleven then, tomorrow night. I suppose that boy's gone clear over to the next county to find that liquor store.”

THREE

I found David Hayes at last. But when I got to him he wasn't much good to me. I guessed that he'd been holding up the bar in the top-floor lounge of the Tudor since the place opened. He was perched on a stool, his left arm propped on the dark mahogany and supporting his head. His long, lank brown hair nearly touched the rim of his glass, which he hugged with his free hand like a kid with a blanket. He was a tall man, about thirty, with a lot of youth still written all over him: his socks drooped on his ankles, his shirt was buttoned down, his tie slung to one side, the leather patches on the sleeves of his tweed coat were about to drop off.

I took the next stool to his and ordered a rye and ginger ale. I wasn't much of a booze-hound, but when I was working I had to make up the rules to suit the circumstances. Hayes didn't look up. It was a good face with a friendly ski-jump nose I couldn't imagine him wearing at eighty. His neck was skinny and his chin looked like he would stick it out when a more life-weary veteran might shrug. I asked him if he was the owner of the Jaguar blocking me in the parking lot. He nodded and offered me a drink to cool my annoyance. The bartender ignored him
on the grounds that he'd just served me one. He took his responsibilities seriously, that bartender.

Hayes wasn't much of a talker to start with. It was the drinking he was working on. Behind me, from one of the tables near the view over the illuminated falls, I heard a voice raised in the attempt to tell a funny story. When the voice came to the punch line all the others at the table laughed, the way people do when they are all on the payroll. I looked over my shoulder and was surprised to see it belonged to Dawson Williams. For a minute I forgot all about young David Hayes sitting beside me. I was suddenly back in the Granada Theatre on Saturday afternoons with Sam, my brother. Together we'd watch Dawson Williams fight the evil sheriff of Nottingham and follow the Khalifa's forces up the Nile to the Fifth Cataract. Nobody could swing across a fight-filled room on a crystal chandelier like Dawson Williams. Nobody could jump with such accuracy from saddle to stagecoach. Dawson Williams!

I sipped my drink and tried to get my head back on business. For instance, how could I get David Hayes to tell me about Billie Mason. The rye and mix had become sickly sweet after the ice melted. Hayes looked over at me with glassy eyes.

“It's the pits,” he said.

“What?”

“Life is the pits. Look at anybody you like. Hemingway, Shakespeare, Faulkner. It's the pits. That's what I think. What do you think about that?” I couldn't follow
him, but bobbed my head agreeably. “It wasn't the President of the goddamned Immortals that was sporting with Tess, it was that gimlet-eyed Hardy, that's who it was.” More nods, and another pause with the solo drone of Williams' voice behind us. Hayes picked up the tortured ends of his argument. “How many years have we got before the big bad nuclear war comes along? Twenty? Thirty? Maybe only five?” He was getting rather loud, and the voices at the tables around us lowered their own volume to take in what Hayes was saying too. “‘We'll live and be forgotten with the rest …'” he sang not badly off key, considering. I never thought I'd live to see it, but Dawson Williams sniggered. That's the only word for it. Hayes may have been a couple of fathoms in drink, but he recognized a snigger when he heard one. He turned in his place and looked at Williams. Williams looked at the other faces at his table in turn for some support. I tried to put my hand on Hayes' arm, but he brushed it off.