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

  ‘The shot’s over,’ someone called out nervously. The lights went off and there was a ripple of movement among the extras. A man swore and then there were more screams from women on the set.

  ‘What the hell …’ the assistant director was cursing. I saw Ironsides being helped through the crowd; his face was like muddy water. He collapsed into a chair and swallowed something from a flask one of the extras handed him. I fought my way through to the front of the set. The actress Denise lay on the ground, one hand stuffed in a corner of her mouth; she looked to be in a state of shock. I grabbed hold of her and pulled her up and away. All the front of her dress was running scarlet. I handed her over to one of the women dressers. Then I turned to Esterbrook.

  Blood ran out of the corner of his mouth and on to the floor of the set; holes were punched clean through his chest. I didn’t have to touch him to see that it was too late for a doctor. I found a studio cop at my elbow.

  ‘Get some help and keep these people back,’ I said. He clenched his jaw and looked at me.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, his eyes frosty. He turned and started pushing the mob of extras back towards the camera crane. De Lancia had got through to my side by this time. ‘For God’s sake, for God’s sake,’ he kept saying to himself, over and over again.

  ‘You’d better seal the set and get some law in,’ I said.

  He looked at me with a stupefied expression.

  ‘Right away,’ I added sharply.

  He shook his head like he was coming out of a deep sleep. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure.’

  He went back up towards the camera crew. The assistant director was made of stronger stuff. I noticed he had kept the studio doors closed. All the while the red lights burned outside it was effectively sealed.

  He shot me a tight grin. ‘Thank Christ we finished the film,’ he said. ‘Too bad about Esterbrook. He made quite a job of that last shot but I thought that death-scene was too good for a lightweight.’

  ‘Any other exits to this building?’ I said.

  He looked me up and down.

  ‘A couple,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ I told him. ‘Whoever switched over those blanks for the real thing won’t hang around for the premiere.’

  Chapter Five – Strictly a B Production

  The assistant director, whose name was Lee Ranee, led the way out of the sound-stage by the rear exit; we went up a wide inclined ramp to a storage area. There were large elevators here for transporting material to and from the different stages. What we were looking for was the prop department; I wanted to have a word with whoever was in charge of the revolvers Ironsides had been using today. Someone had been playing for keeps and it might be too late by the time the regular law arrived. Ranee led the way through a cavernous, shadowy barn of a place, threading a tortuous path past ship’s figure-heads, gaudy with red, blue and green paint; sedan chairs, sledges, cigar store Indians, even a one hundred and twenty-feet long Viking ship. I recognized some of the ingredients of most of the expendable epics of the small screen over the past two years.

  We went up another ramp past an office area where typewriters were making a metallic song from glassed-in cubicles; we went in a metal door under a sign which said: Property Department — Jet Productions. A squat, broad-shouldered man in shirtsleeves sat on a stool behind a counter piled up with papier-mâché heads and fooled with an indent sheet. He wore a green eye-shade and an unlit cigar stub protruded from a corner of his mouth. He bared yellow teeth in a silent grimace as he recognized Ranee and went on shuffling his papers.

  ‘I’d like a check-out on whoever handled the guns for Jess Ironsides this morning, Smee,’ Ranee told him.

  The man called Smee jerked a dirty thumb down the counter towards a corner where suits of armor made a miniature Agincourt.

  ‘You better see Vic DeSoto,’ he advised Ranee. ‘He’s handing out the stuff for the Western series these days.’

  Ranee thanked him and we went on down the long counter, treading cautiously among the mountains of junk. We soon found the man we wanted. A gorilla’s head poked up solemnly from behind an Aztec idol in the next aisle.

  ‘Anybody tell me the way to the Empire State Building?’ said a mournful voice from behind the ape skin.

  ‘Har,’ said Ranee scornfully. ‘Joke over, De Soto.’

  The ape’s head flew into the air and a disheveled, sandy-haired man appeared. He twitched the ape-head once or twice with a gesture of disillusioned sadness.

  ‘Why is it no-one gets to be frightened when I do my Kong act?’ he asked nobody in particular.

  ‘I understand you dished out the irons for the Butt Malloy melo this morning,’ said Ranee.

  The sandy-haired man scratched his head and put down the ape-skin on a chair behind him.

  ‘You heard right,’ he said. ‘Nothing wrong is there?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Ranee drawled. ‘Unless you call Chuck Esterbrook being pumped full of holes on the set floor anything out of the ordinary. Somebody was playing it for real.’

  DeSoto’s jaw dropped and a disbelieving look came into his eyes. ‘You’re joking,’ he said in an unconvincing voice.

  ‘I wish I was,’ Ranee said. ‘Go tell that to Esterbrook. This place’ll be swarming with bluecoats in a quarter of an hour. You better have a good story ready.’

  Ranee turned and jerked his thumb at me. ‘This here’s a private eye from L.A. He didn’t get to ask any questions of Butt Malloy. He might do better with you.’

  DeSoto turned a white face to me; he licked his lips mechanically. He put out his hand for me to shake.

  ‘Faraday,’ I said. ‘Mike Faraday. You might start by showing us where you keep the blanks.’

  De Soto blinked once or twice and tried to speak; his voice came out in a strangled croak. He sounded near to tears.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Ranee told him. The sandy-haired man backed away and sat down tenderly on the chair behind him.

  He looked like he felt it might crumble to pieces under him. Ranee reached out and pulled the ape skin from beneath him; he hung it up on a hook on the wall at the back of the suits of armor.

  ‘Honest to God, I don’t know anything about this,’ said DeSoto, looking from me back to Ranee.

  ‘You don’t have to convince us,’ I said. ‘But it might help to get your story straight. Anybody unauthorized been up here this morning?’

  A touch of color came into DeSoto’s pale cheeks. ‘As a matter of fact there was a stranger here this morning. About half past seven it was. But he had an authorization from the Admin. Building.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  DeSoto licked his lips again and added, ‘I was checking out the gun-belts for Mr. De Lancia’s big scene today. This guy seemed very interested and asked me how the guns worked.’

  ‘You loaded up while he was there?’ I asked.

  DeSoto nodded. ‘I got out the usual blanks from the locked section. We always keep the dummy ammo under lock and key and every round has to be indented and accounted for.’

  Ranee nicked his eyes at me. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The company’s pretty strict about that sort of thing.’

  I turned back to DeSoto. ‘So?’

  ‘So I loaded up,’ the sandy-haired man said. ‘This guy was very interested, like I said.’

  ‘Did you leave him alone with the guns?’ I said.

  DeSoto turned white again. ‘Now you come to mention it. I had a phone call just about then. But I wasn’t away from the counter more than a minute.’

  ‘Long enough,’ said Ranee softly.

  ‘Did he know which guns were to be used by any individual actor?’ I asked.

  DeSoto nodded. ‘He was particularly keen on finding that out. He said he was an old admirer of Chuck Esterbrook.’

  ‘Some admirer,’ Ranee said.

  ‘What did he look like.’ I asked.

  DeSoto shrugged. ‘Big fellow, fair-haired and tough-looking. I figured he might be an actor himself. He would have done for Western parts. You don’t think he might have switched the blanks?’

  ‘No might about it,’ said Ranee in a satisfied voice. ‘That lets you right in it, friend.’

  DeSoto sat down in the chair again, his face a muddy white. ‘Jeeze,’ he breathed to himself. ‘And me with only four years to go for a pension.’

  ‘You can kiss that goodbye,’ said Ranee unfeelingly. I wrote him down as not the most tactful of persons. For an assistant director, that is.

  I went over and had a look at the ammunition lockers; they were all locked, like the prop-man had said. There was a book on the counter wide open; it gave details of ammunition and caliber issued. I noted the entry that morning for the rounds issued for Esterbrook and Ironsides. I noticed that nothing had been issued for the extras. Presumably, because they wouldn’t be firing. I went down the lockers trying the doors, but they were all fast. Each door had on it the round capacity, caliber and maker’s name. Looked like the Jet people had a pretty good system; except when it broke down like now. I had an idea while I was doing that and came back over to DeSoto.

  ‘This character this morning,’ I said. ‘He didn’t give any name, of course?’

  DeSoto shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but it should be easy to check with Admin. He had a proper visitor’s chit which he showed me. I didn’t take much notice of the details. I was in a hurry to get the props ready for the shooting.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. I looked round this corner of the prop department. The King Kong mask glared back at me ironically.

  ‘This tall guy with the hard face and blond hair wouldn’t have worn a grey hounds-tooth jacket by any chance?’ I asked.

  DeSoto thought for a moment. Then his face cleared. r />
  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘now I come to think of it I believe he did.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That helps a lot.’

  ‘Like how?’ Ranee asked as we went back down the room.

  I stood gazing out a window which overlooked the boulevard. The thin wail of a siren split the air about a couple of blocks away. I stood and watched the law decant from a flock of patrol cars.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I told Ranee. ‘Whether he fixed Esterbrook or not, his manners could bear some improving.’

  ***

  The detective in charge was an officer called McGiver who worked out of Captain Dan Tucker’s office at County Police H.Q. I’d known him before he got his promotion to Lieutenant and he’d been helpful to me on more than one occasion. Right now he sat in one of the administrative offices with a couple of big cops standing behind his chair and sifted through the witnesses; it had been quite a session. I sat across the other side of the table from him and kept a watching brief. I’d filled him in on the few details I wanted him to know; I hadn’t gathered how much he believed and how much he had reservations on. He didn’t say. He was that kind of guy.

  DeSoto sat on a canvas chair and gazed gloomily in front of him; he’d already had an hour in the Front Office and McGiver hadn’t yet finished with him.

  ‘You’d better come on down to H.Q.,’ McGiver told him. ‘We’ve got some photographs we’d like you to look at.’

  DeSoto nodded. He seemed like a man who’d had a house fall on top of him and was expecting the sky to follow it.

  ‘You know where to find me,’ I said.

  McGiver nodded. He sat drumming his fingers on the table in front of him.

  He grinned suddenly. ‘Domestic trouble,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t sound like your line of work, Mr. Faraday.’

  ‘It’s been a bad year,’ I said.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said DeSoto to no-one in particular. McGiver smiled once more. He turned to the two officers behind him. ‘Guess that about wraps it up for now,’ he said. ‘You got all the addresses?’

  A sergeant with a chest as big round as a rainwater barrel inclined his head. He snapped his notebook shut with a nourish and fastened a thick elastic band around it. I walked out of the office with McGiver and back down the set. Esterbrook’s body lay under a sheet on a chromium-railed ambulance stretcher. Two attendants from the city ambulance department sat and played find the lady. I couldn’t see De Lancia anywhere.

  ‘You’ve made arrangements about today’s film?’ I asked McGiver.

  He gave me a wide-eyed stare. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d thought of that. We’ve sealed off the labs. De Lancia’s arranged a 16mm. print of all today’s rushes.’

  ‘Not often you get your murders on screen,’ I said.

  He smiled bleakly. ‘Nice viewing for the police smoker. Though I guess it won’t tell us much. I’ve arranged for a single frame projector. If we can analyze it frame by frame it might tell us something about the reactions of those on set.’

  ‘Like somebody who might have known the blanks weren’t blanks,’ I said. ‘Neat going, McGiver.’

  He shot me a shrewd look. ‘That was your idea, Mr. Faraday?’

  ‘I must say it had crossed my mind,’ I said. ‘That was what I should have looked for if I’d had your facilities.’

  ‘We’re going to have a look at the 35mm. print up in the projection theatre presently,’ McGiver said. ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I’ll take you up on that,’ I told him.

  McGiver walked over and stood frowning at the Western set. Two cops stayed behind. Flashbulbs popped occasionally. Men from the finger-print department went around dusting. I remembered something that had been at the back of my mind.

  ‘DeSoto really was called away from the counter?’ I asked him.

  ‘Meaning?’ McGiver said.

  ‘It might be worth his while to switch the blanks himself,’ I said. ‘If the stake was high enough.’

  ‘I checked that too,’ McGiver said. ‘A call came through from Mr. Freeman’s office for DeSoto round about the time he said. It isn’t conclusive, of course, but it tends to support his story. And we’re checking on the authorization chit.’

  He led the way up a curving metal staircase; another cop saluted him through a metal door with STRICTLY PRIVATE in red lettering painted on it. The projection theatre had about a hundred seats in blue plush. It looked pretty elegant. Right now it had harsh functional lighting glaring from the ceiling; there were about a dozen people in the room. I recognized two of the studio heads, De Lancia, of course; and half a dozen technicians. McGiver walked over to the middle of the group and they went into a huddle. I sat down in one of the padded chairs on the gangway of the center aisle and lit a cigarette.

  I put my used match in the chrome ashtray on the back of the seat in front of me and stared at the pattern of the screen curtains; they were blue too. I saw Manny Freeman sitting farther back, near the director of photography who’d shot today’s stuff. A buzzer sounded in the silence of the room; one of the studio chiefs went to a gangway seat halfway down and lifted an ivory-colored phone from a rest on the arm of the chair. He listened intently.

  ‘All right,’ he said crisply, in the tones of one accustomed to being obeyed. ‘We’ll start right away.’ He put the phone back in its cradle and turned to McGiver.

  ‘All ready to roll. Sit where you like.’

  Everyone started to scramble for seats as the lights began to fade. I noticed that all the studio personnel tried to get seats as near to the two studio heads as possible. A shadow crossed the screen curtains and McGiver sat down next to me. The curtains went up into a ceiling recess as an electric motor whirred; there was a shaft of white light on the blank screen and a loud humming. A clapperboard filled the screen and then we were into the first shot. The print wasn’t a married one and the sound was run wild; it was out of synch., which was ludicrous so far as the screen results were concerned. But this wasn’t the purpose of the performance. It was quite effective regarded strictly as a B production.

  There was about six minutes’ screen time in all, including the unusable material; they’d printed everything, just in case there was something which might help the police.

  ‘Too much grain,’ someone whispered behind me; it sounded like the director of photography. Seemed like he was worried about the print quality.

  The shooting sequence was quite something; tension built up in the little theatre as the scene neared its end. The camera craned back up and there were Esterbrook and Ironsides facing up to each other at the sides of the frame. Then the revolvers breathed smoke and flame; the reports came quite a while later, as Esterbrook was still crumpling and going down.

  ‘Good job it was in black and white,’ McGiver grunted. Even so, it was quite enough for some of the audience to take; I heard gulps from somewhere down in front of us.

  Esterbrook spun and went down in an eerie silence; the music and special effects would have been dubbed on to the sequence later, of course; then it was over. The woman Denise’s screaming went on and on; the camera kept turning.

  Then the scene flickered and black leader started running through the projector. The screaming continued; then it cut off and a metallic hum filled the theatre. I felt myself sweating.

  ‘You notice anything?’ I asked McGiver.

  He shook his head. ‘We don’t know what we’re looking for. But you never know. It might yield something, frame-by-frame.’

  The lights went up and there was a dull chatter of voices as the tension broke. A little man in a black shirt and cream trousers stood at the back of the room, near the box.

  ‘You want it run again, sir?’ he asked one of the studio heads.

  The latter turned to McGiver who said he didn’t. We all got up like it was a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese; I was half afraid someone would congratulate De Lancia on the quality of the production. The little man in the black shirt was at McGiver’s elbow.

  ‘Here’s the 16mm print you asked for, Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’ll help much, though.’

  ‘As long as it’s good and clear,’ McGiver said. ‘I’ll get the sergeant to give you a receipt for this.’

  He turned back to the studio executives. ‘We shall want the sound version of this on sixteen when you can manage it.’