Beverly Hills Dead

60

Rick rounded a corner and began to limp. He wasn’t used to running without his knee brace, and his old war wound was starting to hurt. Halfway down the block a crew was setting up a street shot. Two police cars were blocking the street, and actors in cop uniforms were standing around, leaning against the cars and waiting for shooting to start.

Rick limped up to them. “Did you see a man run into this street?” he asked the group.

“Who are you?” an assistant director asked.

“I’m Rick Barron, and I run this studio. Answer my question.”

“I didn’t see anybody,” the AD said.

One of the actor/cops spoke up. “I saw a guy down at the end of the block where you just came from, but I looked away, and when I looked back he was gone.”

“Give me your gun,” Rick said.

The actor pulled his .38 from his holster and handed it to Rick. Rick opened the cylinder and extracted a cartridge, a blank, as he had expected. “Where’s the armorer?” he asked.

The actor turned and shouted at a man on the other side of his police car. “Hey, Frankie! The boss wants to talk to you.”

A man trotted over to the car. “Yeah?”

“Have you got any live ammo?” Rick asked.

The man shook his head. “Not here. I’d have to go back to the armory.”

“Go,” Rick said. “I need a box of .38 specials and fast, and call the studio police and tell them to get some armed men over here.”

The man hopped into an electric cart and raced away.

Rick could hear a siren from the direction of the main gate, then other sirens. That would be the ambulance and the cops. “You,” he said to the AD, “grab a cart, get to the main gate and lead the cops back here, and be quick.”

The AD drove away.

“What’s going on?” one of the actors asked.

“There was just a shooting at the commissary,” Rick said. “The shooter ran this way, and he’s got to be found.”

“Can we help?”

“The man is armed, and you’ve only got blanks.”

“I’m an off-duty cop,” one of the men said. “I work as an extra sometimes. What do you need?”

“Live ammo,” Rick said.

“Here comes the armorer,” somebody shouted.

The man screeched to a halt in his cart and handed Rick a box of ammunition. He gave some to the off-duty cop. “Okay, load up and let’s start searching. Remember, this guy has already shot one man, so be careful.”

“Okay. I’m with you.”

“You take the shopfronts on the right; I’ll take the brownstones on the left.” Rick ran down the street as best he could and started checking doors on the brownstone mock-ups. The first three were locked.

“Everything over here is locked!” the off-duty cop yelled.

“Keep trying, and be careful.”

There was only one brownstone left at the end of the row. Rick got up the stairs, turned the doorknob and pushed. The knob turned, but the door was stuck at the bottom. Rick leaned against it and pushed; it swung open. Rick simultaneously stepped over the threshold and found nothing but air on the other side.

He clung to the doorknob with his left hand and looked down into a large hole in the ground, perhaps twenty feet below. Rick had a loud taxi whistle, and he used it. “Help me!” he yelled. He stuck the .38 into his belt and tried to swing the door shut, but it was stuck, and there was no room on the doorknob for two hands. He swung his body toward the door opening and got one foot on it, then swung back. He was starting to lose his grip on the knob.

Then the off-duty cop appeared in the doorway, grabbed Rick’s trouser leg and pulled him in until he could get a hand on Rick’s belt, then on Rick’s right hand. He braced himself against the doorway. “Let go!” he yelled. “I’ve got you.”

Rick’s hand slipped off the doorknob, and the man took all his weight, pulling him into the doorway. A second later he was safe but out of breath.

“Is that your guy?” the off-duty cop asked, pointing down.

Rick looked into the abyss and saw a man, lying face down, at the bottom, his revolver nearby. “That’s the guy,” he puffed.

Real police cars turned into the street, and cops began spilling out.

“Go around,” Rick directed from the top of the brownstone’s steps. “The guy is in a construction hole on the other side, and he seems to be unconscious, but his gun is there, too, so be careful.”

A sergeant directed his men toward the rear of the set, then trotted up the stairs and looked down. “Jesus,” he said, “did the guy run up here and through the door?”

“That seems to be it,” Rick said. “He shot our head of security twice in the commissary, then ran here.”

“Tom Terry?” the man asked.

“That’s right.” Rick heard the ambulance heading back toward the main gate, and he knew Tom was on his way to the hospital.

“You look a little winded,” the cop said. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

The cop took the .38 from Rick’s belt. “Can I have this, then?”

“Yeah. It belongs to the studio, but you can unload it.”

The off-duty cop opened the cylinder of his gun and emptied the live ammunition into his hand. “I’m on the job,” he said to the other cop, “just moonlighting here a little.” He turned to Rick. “You used to be on the job, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “I did, and I’m glad I’m not anymore. Will you call the front gate and tell them they can open up again?” The man left, and Rick looked down into the pit where the cops had reached Jerry O’Toole. “Is he alive?” Rick yelled.

“He’s alive,” somebody yelled back, “but we’re gonna need a stretcher and some rope to get him out of here.”

“I’ll take care of that,” the sergeant said, then left.

Rick walked down the steps of the brownstone and sat on the bottom one to get his breath back. An electric cart driven by Sid Brooks came around the corner and stopped.

“You okay?”

“I’m okay. How’s Tom?”

“The doctor said he wasn’t too bad; only one shot hit him and not in a fatal place, apparently. The ambulance took him away.”

“Good.”

“Rick, what was that all about?”

“The guy who shot Tom killed Susie Stafford. The police are taking him away now.”

“Well, I’m glad nobody got killed.”

“Just Susie,” Rick said, “and a woman named Hank Harmon.”

Rick got home on time, after visiting Tom Terry in the hospital, where he was recovering from surgery. His eldest daughter climbed into his lap. Glenna was holding the baby.

“Did you have a good day?” she asked.

“All in all, pretty good,” Rick said. He started telling her about it.