“Your nature is too trusting, mon ami; he is, after all, a film producer.” Poirot spoke the words in a tone suitable for pimps and heavy sauces.
“But why would Ken help Dike?”
“To fabricate accounts that would bear scrutiny, Dike and Greystoke would need production expertise. Such expertise would be worth a substantial price.”
I didn’t like this direction. “I’ve known Ken for years.”
“What is his fee for this photoplay?”
“He didn’t say. Come to think of it, he wouldn’t say.”
Poirot allowed a faint disdain to show. “You cannot deal with facts by ‘coming to think of them. You must observe, recall, connect everything!”
I wouldn’t believe it. “Purely circumstantial.”
His tone was sympathetic: “You have the proof beneath your very nose, my friend. You know his handwriting, n’est ce pas?”
“I’ve seen enough of it.”
“Then I should study those invoice worksheets.” Poirot began to disappear like the Cheshire Cat, pop: one section at a time.
“Wait a minute: when do you get to the sabotage?”
Pop: the portly tan pants were gone. “My brain can be no better than the facts you feed it.” Pop: only the elegant pink egg remained. “Until you have more facts about the sabotage, I can do nothing.”
A final tiny pop, as the plump detective vanished, leaving scents of starch and straw and gentlemen’s cologne.
* * * *
With characteristic enterprise, Ken Simmons had promoted himself the motel’s one “suite” a double-size room designed for traveling families. As I closed the door behind me, I noticed that someone had removed the unused beds and added matching draperies and bedspread and a comfortable chair. Bottles glinted on the kitchenette counter, soft sounds floated from a stereo, and to top it off, a determined ficus struggled upward from a tub below the window.
He glanced up from the production schedules on a long oak work table and snapped his little smile. “Leave the door open, will you? Kind of stuffy.”
“I think we’d better leave it closed.” Ken looked at me alertly. “You’ve seen these, of course.” I laid the invoice worksheets on his table.
“Well sure; you showed me last week’s invoice.”
“No, the worksheets.” He looked at them. “You’ve seen them because you filled them out to start with.”
“I don’t quite....”
“They’re in your handwriting, Ken. You’ve been supplying all these figures to the Crossbones.”
I waited for a reaction, but Simmons simply looked at me. “They told Molly to recopy them but they didn’t tell her why, so she knew no reason to conceal them from me.” I sat in a chair opposite. “You want to explain?”
“I don’t think so.” He picked the worksheets up and opened a drawer beneath the table.
“Those are copies, and I have last week’s too.”
Ken maintained a quiet, even tone: “These arrangements really don’t concern you, Stoney.”
“Mm-hmh, I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“That’s right.”
“I go along fat, dumb, and happy, while you help the bikers launder two million dollars in drug profits.”
His face admitted that that was about the size of it.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Ken. The sabotage is mixed up in this somewhere, and it’s getting out of hand. People could have died last night.”
He shrugged. “Don’t get so dramatic; it was just Molly’s cooking.”
“Maybe not. She said she used old meat in a second meatloaf but Diane never ate that. I know her second helping was from the first pan because I fetched it myself.”
“There’s no mad poisoner, Stoney. Trust me.”
“An unfortunate phrase, considering.”
His look said, What can I say?
I knew I couldn’t budge him. “All right, Ken, I’ll tell you what I intend. “I’m giving these worksheets to the feds. If I don’t and someone else gets hurt, it’ll be on my head forever.” I stood up.
“I think you ought to sit down a minute, Stoney.” Simmons’s voice was as quietly sincere as ever. I sat down. “It’s a shame about all this, and you do deserve an explanation, for two reasons: first because I really think you ought to reexamine your plans here and second, because we are old friends.”
Now it was my turn to show a poker face.
Simmons leaned forward, looking genuinely concerned. “You see, what we want to try for here is a win-win situation - you understand.”
I kept my counsel.
“First of all, no one can track the cash; no one. Greystoke shipped it offshore in a goddam crate or something, to Hong Kong or Macao or wherever. His import business agents there will use it for kickbacks, sweeteners - quiet things - and all in U.S. cash dollars. As a lump sum, it’ll never see the inside of any bank on earth.”
“Dike said Greystoke’s paying those invoices.”
“With his own money, Stoney: nice clean audited American profits, profits that won’t be taxed now because he’ll ‘lose’ them on this film.”
“And what do you get?” I asked. Simmons’s face closed down again. “I think you owe me that too.”
A pause and then he nodded. “I got a hundred K of the original cash and it won’t see a bank either. You can still buy a lot of things for cash.” He spread his hands. “So you see, the audit trail is perfect. There’s just no way to trace that money.”
“And nothing but my word that you said this. All right, your ‘win’ is obvious. Where’s my ‘win’?”
“Right. I think you know how biker clubs work. If you blow the whistle, you could lose the Crossbones two million bucks and get their boss locked up. And then four thousand bikers would put you on top of their list and keep you there as long as you lived.”
“I get the implications.”
“So you win by finishing the picture quietly, pocketing your money, and living a long, secure life.”
“Yeah. Okay, just one last thing, Ken: why? Are you gambling? Doing dope? Why?”
He looked at me as if I were a child too young to understand that I had asked an impolite question. “Just business, Stoney.” His tone was as mild as ever. “It’s simply a matter of business.”
As I stood up he added, “One more thing: I’m really sorry if you’re distressed by this, but I know you’re a professional and I can trust you to keep on delivering this show.”
In the context, his line was so bizarre that I could think of no reply.
* * * *
“Thursty, take your time and remember: this biker versus town thing is the most fun you’ve had in years. Okay, slate in.”
I squeezed the Arri’s trigger. “Rolling!”
“Speed.”
“Mark it.”
“Fifty-one Charlie, take two.” Clack!
“Action.”
Thurston Frye wobbled up en pointe to peek through the back window of the Calisher garage, his face washed by the quartz lights concealed inside. Without an 85 filter, the film would record these lights correctly, while the sun on Thursty’s back turned into bluish “moonshine.”
Thursty grinned and cackled to himself, delighted by what he seemed to see inside. Then he turned and took three sodden steps, remembered, returned, retrieved his bottle from the dirt below the window, and staggered off-screen in the left foreground.
Five seconds more of empty frame for the editor to play with, and: “Cut.”
Lee moved in to record the footage and Alf joined me at the camera. “Sun’s below the buildings, Stoney.”
“S’all right. That’s a wrap today, folks! Good take, Thursty.”
Alf bellowed “Save ‘em” and the lights inside shut off, Lee unscrewed the pan head from the dolly, and I wandered away, trying to remember if we’d covered everything.
I turned the corner of the garage and found myself face to face with Diane: barefoot, hair unbraided, face contorted,
skin like unbaked dough. “Stoney! What the hell are you doing?”
“You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“ANSWER ME!”
“Shooting pickups and establishing shots.”
She nodded incredulously, as if I’d confirmed that the world was ending. “Who said you could do that? Who?”
“We’re trying to keep on...”
“Did I give you permission? Did you so much as consult me?”
“You weren’t in consultable shape, Diane.”
She thrust a trembling finger at my face. “You shoot another foot of my film another fucking frame and you’re off this picture.”
“Diane, please listen to me...”
“No! This is my movie, understand?”
I tried to keep in mind that she felt lousy. “All right.”
She glanced around, forgetting that we were out of sight around the building. “Where’s the film?”
“Lee may have left for town with it.”
“Go after him no, never mind; we’ll just throw it out later. How could you do this, Stoney? I mean I thought maybe for once... maybe you....”
“Diane, I was trying to help.”
“Help!”The word became a wail and then Diane was sobbing with the heels of her hands on her jaw and her fingers over her eyes. “Don’t give me your help; don’t give me anything!” She wheeled and before I could stop her, raced up the road toward the motel. Fifty feet away, she turned and screamed, “Don’t do me any favors, Winston!”
Then she spun around again and vanished in the dusk.
* * * *
I spent the supper hour at the river, skipping stones and launching twiggy boats and swigging from a jug of Chenin Blanc. My anger at Diane had shrunk enough to look at. I admired her, liked her, by-god wanted her. But every time I reached toward her, she backed away.
I added a ship to my twig flotilla. Or maybe it was I who backed away, out of loyalty to my absent landlady - loyalty misplaced because she’d never asked for it.
Same problem with Molly, only worse, because she echoed Sally’s lush abundance.
Oblivious, I was walking through the river meadow, and by the time I noticed my surroundings again, I had somehow reached the river gate of Molly’s trailer court.
* * * *
Though Molly’s couch was an atrocity from Smilin’ Sammy’s Bars ‘n’ Stools ‘n’ Sofas, it was perfect for watching TV which proved that Sammy knew his customers as well as his apostrophes. I had squirmed among the floppy plush cushions until I was half supine, Chablis in hand, nodding over a disease-of-the-week movie: the heartbreak of obesity, I guessed, though that might have been Molly’s reception.
Molly was clattering at the trailer’s tiny sink, dressed in mini T-shirt number one and lemon shorts. She was freshly laundered and redolent of soap, her lush tan flesh more exuberant than ever.
“How come ya weren’t at dinner? Scared t’eat my cookin’ now?”
“Didn’t feel like it.” It had been eight o’clock when I’d wandered in. “Besides, you cooked me a dandy dinner. Thank you.”
“Anybody can’t cook ham ‘n’ eggs better shoot himself an’ git it over.” In fact, she’d served an omelet, gently spiced and soft, the way I like them.
She dried her hands, snapped off the sink light, and bounced over to the couch, slopping wine from her glass as she waved it at the TV. “What’s it about?”
“Fat, I think.”
“I don’t wanna see it.” But she plopped down on the couch, which billowed briefly. Feelin’ better?”
“Much.”
“More wine?”
“A little. Don’t want to fall asleep.”
“You’re jes relaxin.’” She refilled my glass. “You git so strung up about things.” Molly rolled toward me, draped an arm across my chest, and nudged into the space above my shoulder. She groped for the remote control and muted the sound.
“I like it jes quiet like this.”
“Mmmmm-hmh.”
Pause.
“I knowed you’d come around if I was patient.”
“Mmmm.”
“You think I’m proma skew us?”
After a moment to decode promiscuous, I hugged her shoulder gently. “No, I don’t. I think you have a lot of... warmth to give.”
“An’ no takers.” Her voice turned sour. “Ol Pits is off ridin’ up the coast for two days with the bros, per usual. Nothing’ gives him a hardon but a Harley saddle.”
“I don’t want to be spite for Pits, Molly.”
“Aw!” She sat upright and looked down at me, her pug face pink with irritation. “How in the world can you write movies an’ use big words an’ be so damn dumb?” She grabbed her T-shirt, stripped if off, cocked hands on hips, and stuck her chest out. “Do you read me, Stoney? Do you copy?”
I placed a palm on one large, shapely breast. “That’s a big ten-four, good buddy.”
Molly grinned.”Big enough, both of ‘em, but I never heard one called that before.”
* * * *
“Damn, you take long enough!”
“I, uh, hadn’t noticed any problem.”
Molly’s rowdy chuckle filled the trailer. “Not finishin,’ startin.’ But once you make yer mind up, you do okay.”
I lay on my back in an explosion of salmon plush, wondering if I was being damned with faint praise.
She leaned over me, supporting herself on her arms. From my angle, it was like gazing up at a ceiling by Rubens. “Whatcha thinkin’?”
“Recalling which ones are stalactites.”
“Stalactites. Stalac ...”
“Oh, don’t start that.” I pulled her down.
A warm, quiet interval.
“Why’n’t you stay here t’night.”
“Well...”
“I got clean sheets on the bed an’ Pits is gone for two whole days, thank God.”
“Mm. Tell me one thing: why do you stay with Pits if you feel that way?”
Molly lay still a moment, then: “‘Cause he’s dumb.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Our chapter of the club owns half this town. We got us maybe a hundred members from forty miles around. Thirty eight thousand dollars in the bank this week an’ now all this movie stuff.”
“I’m still lost.”
“Well who in hell you think runs all that, Pits?”
“Ahhh.”
“I do. I’m responsible. ‘n’ that means I’m worth something. Most ol’ ladies are nothin’ but slaves with a pair of legs and a warm hole between. I’m more.”
A silence while I digested this, then Molly burrowed into my neck and kissed it.”Stop thinkin’ so much; stay awhile.”
“All right, on one condition.”
“What?”
“If I’m going to move, you’ll have to get off me.”
She kissed me slowly.”We can trade places.”
When Molly eventually zapped the TV set she clicked off Johnny Carson. Time does fly when you’re having fun.
Chapter 15
I strode through the morning brightness toward my room, bursting with energy, wellbeing, and breakfast, which Molly had laid on in bulk. There is no feeling in life like waking to bird songs and crisp air and sunlight falling on a warm bed full of sweet female smells. The smells had evolved through toothpaste, bacon, toast, and coffee; then back to basic female at the door. When Molly had kissed me at the trailer entrance, I’d half expected her to hand me a briefcase and a list of city errands.
I arrived at my motel room to find a pink while-you-were-out push-pinned to the door: one Delmore Wong, and a number.
“This is Desert Haven Post Office.”
“Delmore Wong, please.” What did I have at the post office?
“Delmore Wong speaking.”
“Stoney Winston, Mr. Wong, returning your call.”
“Oh yes, thank you, Mr. Winston. I wonder if you could meet me down here this morning.” The voice had a kind of genial precision, a
s if its owner were the Shriners Club bookkeeper.
“I’m shooting a film, Mr. Wong. What’s this about?”
“I know you are; that’s why I want to talk to you. I’m with the Internal Revenue Service.”
“I see.”
“Shall we say half an hour? I’d like to return to Los Angeles by lunch time.”
“Half an hour.”
* * * *
Downhill to Desert Haven, which the Beetle managed well enough; then half an hour in a post office cubicle borrowed for the morning by Delmore Wong of Internal Revenue. The topic of discussion was Alan Greystoke, and my answers to Wong’s polite inquiries had me dancing between the raindrops, as accountants like to say.
Speaking of which, dingy clouds were gathering as I struggled back uphill to Calisher and joined the company at the stream location. No matter: they cast a pearly softness on the woods that would photograph beautifully.
Stogie’s crew had converted the mud hole to a forest pool by draining it, letting the water wash it clean, laying a bottom of plastic sheeting, and filling it again. This time the camera would film from the opposite side, so that the background would look different and the audience would not suspect that they had seen this place before. As film makers say of Griffith Park, a tree’s a tree; a rock’s a rock.
Diane was supervising preparations in six places at once, apparently recovered. She was civil enough when I asked for a five minute conference, but not exactly chummy. We collected Scuzzy from makeup, hiked over to the deserted eating area, and sat at a plank picnic table. Scuzzy poured us coffee from a Thermos.
“I’ve just been grilled by a Mr. Wong of the IRS. They’re taking a lively interest in Greystoke’s finances.”
Diane’s sigh said, “Here we go again.” Scuzzy watched me quietly.
“They’ve been building a tax fraud case for some time - several years, he told me. Now they’re ready to move.”
Diane frowned.”Why was he grilling you?”
“To check out this production. I satisfied him that we were just hired hands.”
“What are they planning to do?”
“He was very cagey I guess they have to be but he hinted they were going to move in and seize everything.”
“Us included.”
“Yes.”
The flesh tightened around her eyes. “Something told me I wouldn’t be allowed to finish.”
Scuzzy said gently, “And neither will twenty-four other people.” Diane started to reply, then paused and looked at him thoughtfully.
“Maybe.” I took a sip of coffee. “You see, I told Wong about the invoices.”
“I thought that was dangerous.”
“I didn’t mention the drug money. I simply said the invoices were all inflated by a thousand percent. He drew his own conclusions fast enough.”