Blue Murder

CHAPTER 5

By now the last race had been run at Pompano Downs, and Shayne’s friend Tim Rourke must have moved on to the Fort Lauderdale party he had tried to persuade Shayne to go to with him. After three attempts, Shayne’s operator found someone who knew the number, and she placed the call.

Rourke’s subject was crime, not pornography, but he had talked his managing editor into letting him cover Tucker’s recent hearings. He returned to Miami three days later, Tucker having complained to Rourke’s publisher that his stories were biased, on the side of the pornographers. Rourke told his friends he was considering resigning. He decided against it after a night’s sleep. It was a good job as jobs went. Most of the time they let him alone.

A man picked up the phone in Fort Lauderdale. “What did you say?” he shouted. “A lot of noise here. What?”

He dropped the phone. After several confused moments, a woman came on. Shayne identified himself. The woman, apparently the hostess, insisted that he hop in his car and come up and join them. There were more women at the party than men, and she didn’t think that was fair. They had a rock group — this was no news to Shayne, he could hear it — several filthy, filthy movies, some great grass, and she thought at least one more case of champagne.

Shayne asked for directions. He was working, but if he finished before midnight, he would try to make it. Meanwhile, could he speak to Tim Rourke?

“Rourke?” she said doubtfully.

Shayne described him.

“Yes, indeedy,” she said with a giggle. “He’s been doing funny dives off the high board. Is he always this crazy?”

“Usually.”

“I’m delighted he came. Most of the others are so stodgy.”

She was gone for a time. Shayne was approaching the causeway, and he pulled over so he could concentrate on the conversation.

Presently Rourke’s voice said loudly, “I hear you’ve been asked. Don’t hesitate, man. Best party I’ve been to all winter. Lots of caviar. Girls. The works.”

His enthusiasm faded abruptly, and he said in a more ordinary voice, “That was for the lady’s benefit. As a matter of fact, people are finally beginning to loosen up. I’m doing what I can.”

“Putting on a diving exhibition, I hear.”

“Hell, it’s the vacation capital of the United States, right? Come on up, Mike, you could do worse.”

“Unless I had some other reason for calling you.”

“That’s a possibility,” Rourke conceded. “You’re in trouble? You need an expert’s advice?”

“Some information, Tim. I didn’t read those pieces you did about the Tucker hearings. Now I find I’m working for him.”

“For Tucker?” Rourke said, astonished. “For Congressman Nicholas Tucker? He’s one of the bad guys. What are you doing, digging up dirt on the porno people?”

“Not exactly. How are you situated? Can you talk?”

“I’m in bathing trunks, but I’ll sit on the floor and get the rug wet. Tucker. Something to do with the convention. Do you have the feeling he wants to be nominated for governor?”

“I do have that feeling. Tim, what do you know about an outfit called Warehouse Productions?”

“It’s basically just one guy, Baruch. I hear he’s under subpoena. Not much he can do about that except show up and take his lumps. Or is there?”

“I can’t answer any questions from a newspaperman. One reason Tucker hired me is to keep this out of the papers. If I told the crime man on the News that Baruch is trying to blackmail him, he wouldn’t like it.”

“Hey,” Rourke said softly. “I want to hear about that.”

“It’s still early, and a couple of things about it seem very strange. I keep remembering Tucker used to be an actor.”

“He’s also a prick. Bear that in mind. I have a personal axe to grind here, are you aware? The paper looks on this Tucker circus in terms of St. George versus the dragon, and naturally a big metropolitan daily isn’t supposed to be rooting for the dragon. I wrote the story as farce — they wanted melodrama. So I’d be pleased to have something nasty to print. If you don’t agree that this is one St. George who’s a bum and a hypocrite, you will after you watch him operate. Ask.”

“Do you know Baruch?”

“I’ve talked to him. Very loose. A talented guy. One of the two or three best directors in the country, and I don’t just mean porno directors… Frankie Capp,” he said suddenly.

“You know about him.”

“I begin to see,” Rourke said, relieved. “I didn’t like to think of you and Tucker on the same team. Is Capp in on the blackmail?”

“I’m not sure yet that it’s blackmail. But, according to Tucker Capp has money in Baruch’s business.”

“That goes back,” Rourke said. “It’s different now, practically legit, but in the old days blue movies were just one more illicit item. This is elementary stuff. How much do you want?”

“Go on. I’ll say when.”

“When I say illicit, I mean like heroin — all the money’s in distribution. The films themselves are cheap to make. One set, junky lighting, tawdry people. No copyright protection, naturally. Most of the prints you saw at parties had been taken off somebody’s positive, and each time it happened, the image got worse. It didn’t matter much. It was whack-off material, basically, they weren’t trying to win awards with it. It was all sixteen millimeter, black and white. They ran it straight, the way it came from the lab. If you wanted to rent a film — I’ve done it — you went to your neighborhood bookie, and if he didn’t handle them himself, he knew who did. People like Frankie, as a sideline. Then all of a sudden things changed. The first porno hits grossed a couple of million. It’s a new market now. But to get a shot at it, you’ve got to have production money. I mean like thirty or forty thousand bucks. The stuff has really improved. The lady here has a couple of Warehouse sixteens, and they’d surprise you. Basically it’s a bunch of guys and chicks balling, but what style. The dialogue isn’t all that bad. There was one great sequence—”

“You’re getting away from Capp.”

“I seem to be. All right, I mentioned thirty thousand a picture. They can’t raise that much from banks, which is where Frank comes back in. But it’s touchy. If they can’t get the picture into the theaters, they can lose the bundle. And that’s Tucker’s strategy. He’s working up vigilantes on a local level and pushing legislation to force the business underground again. And it’s been working. There’s no question they’ve been hurt.”

“And Frankie wants his money.”

“You know it. I’d guess the business conversations lately have been strained.”

“So if they can discredit Tucker—”

“Yeah, but it would have to be with something major.”

“This seems to be fairly major. Do you know Tucker’s wife?”

“I saw her in Washington, and speaking of sexy women… She used to do TV bits. Summer stock, maybe. Why?”

“How did she seem to you, outside of good-looking?”

“Normal. She smoked too much, but who am I?”

“Did she give you the impression of being on drugs?”

“Drugs?” Rourke said, surprised. “You mean those big bad addictive drugs that destroy people’s personality? I don’t know. Can you tell me more? Are they trying to get at Tucker through her?”

“That’s how it looks. What happens when Tucker gets Baruch on the stand?”

“He’ll show clips from some of the films and ask Baruch if he isn’t ashamed. The Frankie Capp connection could be big. Loan sharks. Organized crime. Sicilians with police records. This is a Congressional hearing, you understand, not a legal process. There’s no cross-examination, nothing has to be proved. Mike, I’m beginning to itch in these damn trunks. Capp, Gretchen Tucker, Baruch. That’s a weird threesome. I don’t see them all in the same bed.”

“Do you know anybody who knows her?”

“She’s not a Miami girl. Come to think of it, Tucker has been showing up places alone lately. Does that mean anything?”

“She told him she was reading for the blind. Somebody saw her in Capp’s Cadillac, and she was laughing.”

“Yeah,” Rourke said slowly. “I said she looked sexy. It’s not the way Tucker’s wife really ought to look. I hadn’t thought about that before. She ought to look like a good manager and a good cook and be able to carry on a two-sentence conversation on every possible subject. Wear bras. Smile a lot. Sexy, no.”

“Would it startle you if she appeared in a Warehouse film?”

“Startle me!” Rourke almost shouted. “It would startle me out of my shoes and socks. I’m going to pour the rest of this champagne in a wastebasket and look for a cup of coffee. Then I’m going to put on some dry clothes and come back to Miami.”

“I thought you might decide to do that if I made it sound interesting.”

“Gretchen Tucker in a skin-flick, that would be something to see. What’s your next move?”

“Tucker gave me the name of a girl who’s selling information to his committee. I thought you might go to the paper and look through the clippings, with these possibilities in mind. And don’t say anything to anybody.”

“You’re doling out information with an eyedropper, as usual. Has this film been made? Have you seen it? Or is it just being talked about? Mike, be kind.”

“I’ve seen stills. No, not stills — color slides made from the thirty-five-millimeter frames. Or that’s what I was told they were. One of the actors was doing a Nick Tucker imitation, with the white suit, the hat and the scar.”

“Man, if they can get that into the theaters, they’ll make a fortune. I’ll go to the paper from here. After that I’ll let your operator know where she can reach me. These are big names we’re throwing around. The one thing I don’t like is that Tucker’s the victim.” He added, “He’s a shifty bastard, Mike. Watch yourself.”