Scratch on the Dark (A Mike Faraday P.I. Mystery) Read online

  The dragon snapped her mouth shut. I sighed. She hadn’t taken that one too well either. I decided to save the gags in case I ever registered with Central Casting. We stopped in front of Manny Freeman’s office. It had a mahogany door with gold stenciling on it. I felt like Moses going up the mountain by the time I got to his desk.

  ***

  Manny Freeman had a triangular head and thick black hair that curled over his scalp and made him look like a Roman Emperor. It was his nose that spoiled him. It made the Roman Emperor look like he had Jewish connections. Right now his jet-black eyebrows, his full red lips and his pasty white complexion were contorting themselves into Manny Freeman’s idea of a welcome. But you had to work at it. I thought he was going to be sick. But then I didn’t know him very well. After I’d been with him a quarter of an hour I didn’t want to.

  He trimmed a square, black cigar with a gold cutter as big as a pair of hedging shears. When he got it drawing he blew out a cloud of poisonous blue smoke in my direction and gestured me down into a chair opposite him with a nudging motion of his disengaged hand. He made it seem like an insult. He wrinkled his eyebrows and squinted at the end of his cigar like he expected to see the figure of his next expenses check engraved on the tip of it.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Faraday?’

  His voice sounded like a cement crusher rolling over fresh gravel. They don’t make voices like that anymore. Not since Ned Sparks went out of fashion. And that was quite a while ago.

  I lit a cigarette out of my own pack and let him wait this time. He composed himself to examining the tip of his cigar. His eyes were half-hooded by his eyelids but he was studying me keenly through the smoke. Manny Freeman impressed me as a distinctly sharp character. He looked like a benevolent crocodile sitting there behind his heavy teak desk; and just as patient too.

  ‘Maybe nothing,’ I said when my cigarette was drawing. I blew out the match and put it down in a black earthenware ashtray as big as a soup-plate that stood on one corner of his desk. It already had half a dozen cigar butts in it.

  ‘Firstly, I’d like to find out the whereabouts of Miss Zarah Fayne.’

  Manny Freeman blinked his eyes through the haze.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ he asked.

  ‘I do,’ I told him. I flipped over my license towards him. He didn’t even look at it.

  ‘I know all about that, Faraday,’ he said. ‘You’re known around this town. That’s not worth the paper it’s printed on unless the owner has got what it takes to back it up.’

  ‘I haven’t had any complaints yet,’ I said.

  It was supposed to be a smile.

  ‘All right, Faraday,’ he said. ‘So Zarah Fayne took a four-week lay-off. So what? No call for a big production number.’

  ‘No-one’s mounting one,’ I said. ‘Got an address where I can reach her?’

  He flickered his eyelids again. ‘She asked me not to say.’

  I shrugged. ‘Let’s leave that, then. Chuck Esterbrook’s one of your clients, I believe?’

  He lifted one shoulder in an expressive gesture. ‘That’s the general opinion on the lot.’

  ‘I’m not asking you for restricted information,’ I said. ‘Do I get to see him or not?’

  He gave me a long look from under his eyelids, then disappeared into the smoke again.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not? I don’t have to wipe their behinds for them. Though I do just about everything else. I’ll give you an on-set permit. They’re turning out some awful crap down on Stage 4 today. A Western called ‘The Come-Uppance of Butt Malloy.’ Esterbrook’s lucky. He’s a lousy actor. Good once, though. He plays Butt Malloy. A six-part soap opera due to go out in the autumn. Today he gets his come-uppance.’

  He threw me a chit across the desk.

  ‘This I got to see,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Freeman.’

  ‘For what?’ he said.

  ‘For nothing,’ I said and went on out before he had time to think up his reply.

  Chapter Four – Point-Blank

  Stage four was only slightly less restricted than the more private sessions of the Politburo. A red light burned over the entrance, under a notice which said: POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE WHILE ON RED. A bulky studio cop with a revolver buckled around his waist stood against the side of the metal door and sneered as though daring me to tangle with him. He needn’t have bothered. I hadn’t any intention of trying to crash the light, even for The Come-Uppance of Butt Malloy.

  Presently the light changed to green and the big steel entrance doors rolled slowly back; a group of still cameramen came out in a chattering group. I noticed Art Rawlins the producer; he wore a red shirt and a blue silk cravat under a grey suede jacket. He nodded at me distantly with a Turkish cigarette in a long green jade holder. I felt I ought to apologize to him for being alive. I showed the cop my chit and he motioned me through. I went on down a vast airplane hangar of a stage; batteries of Klieg lights hung from banks of girders over my head. Bored grips scowled from the galleries and waited their lighting instructions.

  A camera crane went by, its rubber tires squeaking on the floor as the crew manhandled it round into position for the next take. The air was alive with hammering and sawing. I walked on down to the next stage which was tricked up like a Western saloon. Or at least like Hollywood and Vine’s idea of a Western saloon. Bill Hickok wouldn’t have recognized the crystal chandeliers and the red plush fittings as being remotely like anything from the squalor of his day.

  A green canvas chair had MR DE LANCIA stenciled on the back of it. Randolph De Lancia was the director of this opus. He was about twenty-eight, looked forty, had dyed silver hair and wore black cheaters. Right now he sat with a sheaf of script pages clipped to a board while a group of aides sat in awed and respectful silence around him. He had a portable viewfinder slung around his neck and his right hand was holding an electrically boosted megaphone. I looked for the beret and monocle but couldn’t see them. Sure as God made little apples though, he wore riding breeches.

  ‘I thought they went out with Cecil B. de Mille,’ I said.

  He looked up, recognized me, broke off the glare and turned a faint pink.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mike,’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The riding breeches,’ I said.

  The aides looked sourly at me; the script-girl, an elderly woman with square-framed spectacles, seemed bitterly offended.

  De Lancia smiled insincerely.

  ‘Sure, Mike,’ he said. ‘Always making with the jokes. Har.’

  His snicker sounded like a horse gulping broccoli while trying to whinny at the same time. He put down the script board and swiveled in the chair; I sat down beside him on a small bucket seat mounted alongside one of the big mobile camera trolleys.

  ‘Once again Brute Force confronting Art,’ he sneered to himself.

  ‘You talking about me or you?’ I said.

  Just then a plump blonde of about forty-five came up. She simpered at me. She was dressed as Louis B. Mayer’s idea of a saloon girl in the 1870s. Her breasts were squeezed tightly into the bodice of the sequined costume; she was about twenty years too old for it.

  ‘About that reverse angle shot, darling,’ she drooled at De Lancia. ‘Andre was showing me through the camera set-up. It might be better if we moved the lighting to accentuate my profile.’

  ‘Sure, Denise, anything you say,’ said De Lancia.

  He raised his eyes to heaven over her shoulder, then cut me in on a fast wink which he changed back to a blink.

  ‘This wasn’t a social visit, Mike,’ he said to me, still looking the plump number in the eye.

  ‘I’d like a quick word with Chuck Esterbrook,’ I said. ‘If it’s convenient. I hear it’s his big moment today.’

  ‘Sure it’s convenient,’ De Lancia said. ‘Just so long as it doesn’t interfere with the shooting schedule. We roll again in about fifteen minutes. You’ll find him down-stage.’

  I thanked him and went on
down the studio, treading carefully among the snakes of cable which littered the floor. Lights suddenly blazed up ahead, the blue glare silhouetting gantries and the shapes of crewmen; cigarette-smoke hung motionless in the warm air.

  ‘Hit that with a blackboard,’ said a grip from the shadows of the gallery. Then the lights died again. The normal studio lighting seemed dark after this and I groped my way past a series of flats which were being carried through. I had a job recognizing Chuck Esterbrook from his stills; he looked older for one thing, but he was still quite a fine figure of a man. About six foot three and broad with it. All dolled up as Butt Malloy he was quite something and I could see why Zarah Fayne might have been interested. He wore the classic check shirt and chaps of the Hollywood cowboy; two Colt .45’s dangled at his gunbelt which was festooned with more cartridges than they’d got through in The Long Trail.

  His dark, craggy face would photograph well and still seem young with skillful lighting; he could go on for years yet. Right now the make-up man was taking out the dissipation marks from under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth; what they couldn’t do was disguise them in real life. Close-up, his face looked rougher than a photograph just received by radio. He leaned back against a board while the make-up man fussed about; a woman with a sheaf of papers stood by.

  The make-up man moved away and Chuck Esterbrook straightened up. He crouched forward with a scowl and one of the Colts appeared in his hand as if it had suddenly grown there; he went through the motions of fanning it back. It looked pretty good. There was a thin smatter of applause from beyond the lights. Esterbrook turned and saw me standing there.

  ‘Something I can do?’ He didn’t sound unfriendly.

  ‘Maybe.’ I said.

  I showed him the Photostat copy of my license in the plastic holder. He compared the photograph with me and then handed it back.

  ‘You had a lousy lighting cameraman,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I told him. ‘You got somewhere we can talk?’

  He hesitated and glanced around him.

  ‘I’d ask you over to the caravan,’ he said. ‘Except that I haven’t got time. Can you stick around?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been to the movies in quite a while.’

  He grinned and then his face clouded.

  ‘This about Zarah?’

  I nodded. ‘You haven’t seen her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I thought you might have some news. We’ll talk later.’

  He went off down the stage as a loudspeaker blared. I recognized De Lancia’s voice through all the static.

  Lights blazed at the far end of the stage. I walked up towards the saloon set; it was alive with extras now. De Lancia looked up from his chair with an exasperated expression. He waved me down. I sat on a small leather stool beside him. The continuity girl had the canvas chair on the other side. An assistant director in a scarlet vee-necked pullover went up and down blowing a whistle like a madman. He was making twice as much noise as the people he was trying to silence.

  ‘Knock it off, Lee,’ said De Lancia. The hubbub finally settled down. The assistant director went off with a portable viewfinder and squatted down looking at various angles. Chuck Esterbrook was out on the floor; they had a big spot on him from the gallery and they were arguing about the lighting. A smalltime actor named Jess Ironsides was playing the marshal. He had on skintight pants in blue velvet that must have cost about two hundred bucks; they were supposed to look like faded jeans in the finished shots. He wore a tailored brown shirt that was nearly a hundred years out of period; pearl-handled revolvers that wouldn’t have been seen outside a dude-ranch and a red silk tie, slipped into the front of his shirt. Someone in the technical department was spraying something on his tin star to stop it flashing in the camera lens. It was well-known around town that he was a homo but he had a genius for looking and acting tough in front of the camera; the current joke in the studios was that it wasn’t his gun the villains had to look out for.

  Someone standing beside me had the same idea. ‘Don’t turn your back on the Sheriff,’ he advised Esterbrook. A titter went up from the technicians in the gallery. Ironsides turned pink and stopped twirling his revolvers. I turned to see where the remark came from. It was the director of photography; he had been quite a famous name in his time. Even turned some Garbo pictures. He got up and sat in the bucket seat behind the viewfinder and wrinkled up his face in disgust.

  ‘Cecil B. would do a whip-pan in his grave,’ he told the focus-puller. The other sat on a canvas stool at the side of the lens and slid the focusing lever around the lens barrel.

  ‘It’s a living,’ he said reflectively.

  The woman called Denise, who was evidently playing the tart with the heart of gold, stood in front of the extras clustered round the bar and simpered. I noticed she kept the best angle of her profile to the camera; she looked remarkably young under the lights. She and Esterbrook were the only real professionals on the set, apart from the technicians.

  De Lancia took them through the shot two or three times, while the director of photography adjusted the lights. He and the director went into a huddle. It took about half an hour before the lights were right for the one shot.

  ‘All right, rest them,’ said the assistant director. The lights went out and the men on the gallery started discussing baseball scores. De Lancia took Esterbrook and Ironsides aside and gave them some more instructions. I figured the actress called Denise, plump and out of condition as she was, knew her stuff backwards. Then they ran through the shot again cold. The camera-crane tracked back up into the ceiling to hold the long shot; it was the key scene of the film, in which Butt Malloy was shot. The rest of the scene, which would be built up to this finale, had been shot in fragments; close-ups, mid-shots, reverse shots, reaction shots and so on. De Lancia didn’t seem to be satisfied with the tension created by the grouping. When the camera got up among the chandeliers, with the marshal and Esterbrook at each side of the frame, the by-standers were supposed to melt away with Denise and the bar-tender the only people remaining in the middle. Even I could see there was something wrong. The whole thing was to be taken in one long shot; the fading away of spectators; the confrontation of hero and villain; and then the shooting. This would then be clipped up into short scenes as required by the editors.

  Eventually, after several more dry-runs, the scene began to flow more naturally and De Lancia expressed himself satisfied.

  ‘This’ll be a take,’ he announced through the loud-hailer. The lights glared on the scene, the actors took up their positions and the cameraman a final squint through the viewfinder. The whistle of the assistant-director shrilled with ear-splitting venom for the last time. De Lancia grinned at me and got up into another bucket seat on the right hand side of the camera; the crane went down until director, cameraman and focus-puller had the group round the bar in mid-shot at ground level. Despite myself I found it pretty impressive; the only trouble was that such expertise should be devoted to such trivial ends.

  The director of photography, who stayed near me, kept his eye on the general level of lighting and ran over the set for the last time. He raised his thumb to De Lancia; he winked at me over his shoulder.

  ‘Let ’em go,’ said De Lancia laconically.

  The clapper boy stepped out with his board in front of the lens; the camera whirred, the board clicked a couple of times and then the scene was in motion.

  ‘Action,’ called De Lancia softly and as the actors started to make with their lines the camera steadily pulled away from the scene and started to go up into the ceiling. I couldn’t see De Lancia’s expression as he started to ascend but I bet he felt like J.C. on wheels.

  The scene was going well. Esterbrook and Ironsides were beginning to build up quite a tension with their lines; much of this success was due to the woman Denise, who was being quite subtle within the limitations of the part. She covered up the inadequacies of the extras by drawing attention to herself. The camer
a was still craning up as the last extra faded from the background, leaving the marshal and Butt Malloy at the extremities of the shot with Denise and a worried-looking barman in the middle.

  There was absolute silence on the set and I saw the assistant-director raise his thumb to one of the technicians with a satisfied expression. The camera-crane reached the extremity of the shot. ‘And I’m tellin’ you for the last time. Unbuckle your gun-belt,’ the marshal was saying in deep, ringing tones. I had forgotten why I’d come here by this time and even the worn clichés of the dialogue couldn’t dispel the tension of the scene.

  It was really impressive when things started popping. I saw De Lancia’s hand go up in a wave and both men’s fingers streaked for their gun-belts. As rehearsed the marshal was the quicker, though the guns seemed to roar as one; I saw Denise fling herself to the ground. The air was full of smoke and the reports seemed much louder than they should have been. A big gilt mirror at the back of the bar splintered into starred ugliness; Chuck Esterbrook stood swaying with a stupid expression on his face.

  He felt the front of his shirt unbelievingly. Scarlet showed, running down his chest and trickling off the ends of his fingers. It was uncannily life-like; or perhaps I should say death-like, and I wondered idly whether the scene would get by in its present form on TV. It wasn’t exactly the way they’d rehearsed it, but then they hadn’t used the blanks or the blood gimmick. I noticed that Denise’s dress was spattered with ketchup.

  Then Esterbrook’s eyes closed and he came crashing down full-length on his face; bottles fell off the bar as he went and splintered impressively round him. Denise was screaming as the camera went on turning. It was a fantastically good finale to an outstanding scene. The crane started coming down and the camera operator switched off as the director called to cut.

  ‘Print it,’ said De Lancia with satisfaction. A ripple of applause broke out from the technicians in the balcony. There was a stir in the studio and I stood up to ease my cramped legs. In the background Denise went on screaming.