Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 151, Nos. 1 & 2. Whole Nos. 916 & 917, January/February 2018

The Public Hero by Robert S. Levinson

Frequent EQMM contributor Robert S. Levinson is the author of eight standalone novels and five books in a series starring newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife Stevie Marriner. His most recent novel, 2016’s The Stardom Affair, belongs to the Gulliver series. The L.A. author is the winner of a best short story Derringer from the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

The name’s Rufus Reed. I run a one-man detective agency in a cramped one-room office on the fifth floor of the Enterprise Bank Building, an easy walk to the Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, where I conduct almost all my meetings with clients. I’ve built up a nice business for myself since I opened Rufus Reed — Confidential Investigations and Related Services five years ago, in 1974, dealing mostly with high-visibility clients in the entertainment industry.

If you know the name at all it’s because it was all over the news not so long ago. I was in line in the bank, planning to make a cash withdrawal, when three silk-stocking-masked robbers armed with 9mm Uzis rushed in and got everyone’s attention shooting up the ceiling before threatening to take out anybody who got in their way.

Brave fool that I am, I leaped for safety over a teller’s counter, grabbed for the Glock I was carrying in my fishnet hip holster, and—

Blam!

Blam!

Blam!

— killed one of them and seriously wounded the other two before they could return fire.

That got my puss on television newscasts and the front pages of newspapers nationwide and earned me a trip to City Hall, to accept commendations from Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council.

It also got my phone ringing nonstop with potential new business.

The offer I accepted without hesitation came from Sky Diver and the Sky Dwellers, the Aussie band currently Number One on the Billboard, Cashbox, and Record World sales charts. I may have been their biggest fan, had all their gold- and platinum-certified albums.

They’d be headlining Saturday at the Forum in Inglewood and wanted added security, to protect them from the groupies and backstage crashers that dogged them at every stop on their current cross-country tour.

“You come highly recommended, mate,” Sky Diver himself, the band’s lead singer and founding father, told me. “We got a lot of birds after our skin and nutty blokes not past offering bribes to the gatekeepers to make it to our dressing-room suite, which is absolutely off-limits to anyone but our own people.”

“Count on me,” I said, and told him I’d be bringing Buster Williams. Buster is a good-looking, six-foot-six black dude built like the Jolly Green Giant I use as my outside man when I have the need and he isn’t busy working the entrance rope at some Sunset Strip rock venue or on the road with some hotshot band, using his slit-eyed scowl to scare off problem people. I figured to station him at the backstage loading ramp, where fans generally congregated, while I played inside man.

“No extra cost for Buster,” I said.

Sky shrugged. “Whatever’s fair,” he said. “Take it up with our business managers. The band can afford it.”

Come Saturday, the Forum was jammed to its 17,500 capacity an hour before showtime and buzzing with anticipation. The refreshment concessions and souvenir counters were doing a brisk business. Outside, scalpers were harvesting a fortune from fans hoping to score the tickets they failed to purchase when the date, an instant sellout, was announced two months ago.

Backstage, corridor traffic was light, mostly arena personnel and tour crews taking care of last-minute bits of business for the Sky Dwellers and their opening act, Teddy & Betty, two attractive redheads in their early twenties who dressed like devils and sang like angels.

The headliners were barricaded in their dressing room, behind doors posted with warning signs that read NO ENTRY UNDER PENALTY OF YOU DON’T WANNA KNOW. The only exceptions, besides me, were their tour manager, the curvaceous brunette who did their makeup, another curvaceous brunette in charge of costumes, and a guy who wouldn’t stand out in a crowd of one, except for his crafty, half-moon shoe-leather-brown eyes in constant motion.

They called him “Worm.”

He was their bagman, the source of the thick ganja cloud that floated overhead.

“We don’t go in for the hard stuff,” Sky Diver told me, “but we’re at our best when we load up on weed before a performance. You okay with that? I suppose I shoulda asked earlier.”

“I’ve smelled worse,” I said.

“I knew I could count on your discretion. You want a joint or two for yourself, you get it from Worm... Hey, Worm, whatever the man wants whenever the man wants it, dig?”

Worm answered with two raised thumbs.

I thanked Sky for his generosity, but limited myself to the refreshment tables filled with chips and dips, cold cuts, salads, dessert treats, and ice buckets for the soft drinks and a selection of wines; I was halfway into constructing a Dagwood sandwich when interrupted by a knocking at the door.

I quickstepped over and asked, in a loud voice ripe with challenge, who couldn’t read the Do Not Enter warning.

“It’s me, Rufus. Buster. Got a problem out here that needs your personal attention.”

I threw back the slide lock and opened the door.

“Spell it out,” I said, before I saw the problem for myself.

Buster wasn’t alone.

A uniformed Forum security guard was standing beside him and had a .45 automatic jammed into Buster’s rib cage. “Step aside or your boy here takes a bullet,” he said. “You too, you try one false move.”

I never argue with a loaded gun.

Out of uniform he could have been an average-looking Joe hawking vacuum cleaners or a Jehovah’s Witness peddling copies of The Watchtower door-to-door. He pushed Buster forward, followed him inside, and relocked the door before ordering us to assemble against the far wall. “Not you, Sky Diver. I want you front and center,” he said. His voice was brittle, matter-of-fact.

Sky Diver obliged and said, “What the hell is this about? If it’s somebody’s idea of a practical joke, it’s not funny. We got a show to get ready for.”

“I’m going to kill you and anybody who tries to stop me. If you find that funny, go ahead and laugh.”

Nobody laughed.

Sky Diver looked back at me with a scowl that silently screamed: Do something. That’s what you’re getting paid for.

I could have argued the point, stressing that our deal didn’t call for me to get killed, but I supposed I did owe him some effort on his investment. Or a refund, if we lived that long.

I signaled for the intruder’s attention. “Do you mind explaining why you’re going to kill him?”

“I don’t know you, never laid eyes on you in my life,” Sky Diver said, his eyes trained on the .45.

“Shut up, you miserable liar,” the intruder said. “He asked me, not you.” His blue eyes grew wide with irritation and his breathing accelerated. “Hell and damnation. If you want to tell him what happened after your concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas last year, go on.”

“What happened? We filled the place, like we do for every date. That’s what happened.”

“After, I said. When you and your band got back to the Fairmont Hotel with a bunch of groupies in tow. Now are you starting to remember?”

“That could’ve been anywhere on the tour. Groupies come with the territory. They don’t wait for an invitation. Me and the guys, we pick and choose and throw the rest back.” He sensed where the conversation might be going. “Listen up, man, if one of them was related to you, don’t blame me, blame her.”

The intruder said nothing for a few moments, then blew out a sharp laugh and swung his head left and right. “Not that, not that at all, we’re a God-fearing family, so I guess it is up to me to tell it like it was.

“I was waiting for you in the lobby, dressed up like a bellboy in an outfit I borrowed from the employee locker room, same as I found these duds when I managed to slip inside the Forum this morning and hid out of sight until it was safe to come out.

“The big fellow was no help in pointing me to the dressing room, wondering shouldn’t I already know, but my weapon convinced him to lead the way.” Buster nodded agreement. “I followed you and the two girls you had on your arms up to your suite and knocked, telling you I was room service delivering a special surprise gift.”

“Now I remember you,” Sky Diver said. “The singing bellboy. You begged me to listen to a song you’d written and handed over a copy of the words and music. I felt sorry for you, said, Go ahead, and offered you my Les Paul. When you finished, the bimbos applauded, but I had to level with you, tell you your song sucked big time, and send you on your way.”

The intruder’s face dropped a mile. “It was nothing I expected to hear, but you being Sky Diver with all them hits behind you, I took your word for it, took it like a man, right up until last month, when I heard my song being played over KWXI, and the ‘Quicksie’ jock saying it was the finest song you’d written in years, no question about it definitely being a leading candidate for a Grammy Best Single Award. I couldn’t turn on any station without hearing the song, over and over, every jock calling my song your song.”

“I picked up the Les Paul and played it for myself after you left,” Sky Diver said. “I heard elements I hadn’t heard before. I changed my mind. Took it into the studio, tinkered with it a bit. I had no idea who you were or how to reach you, or you would have had label credit for sure, and all that comes with it.”

“It was right there on the sheet music. My name. My address. My phone number. You knew exactly what you were doing when you stole my song. My song, not yours, Sky Diver. And now, as payback, I’m gonna steal your life.”

“I can correct my mistake. Gladly. It’s not too late to add your name to the credits on future pressings and on the band’s next album.”

“No. It is too late,” the intruder said. His voice was firm, determined. He moved into a shooter’s stance, both hands steady on the .45.

I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. “In front of all of us witnesses?” I said.

“So what? Who asked you anyway?” He moved the .45 in my direction.

I said, “You’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars. Is that what you want for your family?”

He answered by squeezing the trigger.

The bullet caught me in the shoulder, twisted me around, and sent me flying into the wall before I dropped to my knees.

“Anybody else?” the intruder said.

He was momentarily distracted by knocking at the door and someone calling: Fifteen minutes before we’ll need you fellas heading for the stage.

Sky Diver, possibly in a moment of panic, charged at the intruder.

Big mistake.

The intruder got off two quick shots, nailing him in the throat and chest.

Sky Diver clutched at himself, blood pouring over his hands, twisted around, and stumbled into a dead man’s swan dive.

Buster went for the .45-caliber automatic he had parked under his jacket in the small of his back. The intruder recognized the motion and clipped Buster in the arm before Buster could get off a shot.

The distraction gave me enough time to grab the Glock from my hip holster and pump out a bullet that caught the intruder between the eyes, a second bullet that tore into his belly.

The intruder was dead before he hit the ground.

I raced over to Sky Diver and dropped to my knees, checking for anything that passed for a pulse.

He was gone.

The room had exploded into giant sounds of relief.

The curvaceous brunette who did the band’s makeup sped to the door and called for help over a noisy crowd hooting, stomping, and clapping in unison their demand for Sky Diver and the Sky Dwellers to take to the stage.

The next thing I knew, I was blinking my eyes open and struggling to focus in a room at Cedars-Sinai, the sweet smell of floral arrangements competing for attention with the hospital’s medicinal odor. Hovering at my bedside was a guy in his mid to late forties with a mouthful of keyboard teeth and breath soaked in garlic. He was smartly dressed, a hand-tailored Sy Devore suit in the Sinatra motif joining a custom-made Sulka tie and matching pocket handkerchief, a silk scarf thrown casually around his swan’s neck, a trim moustache decorating his upper lip.

“Glad to find you awake, Mr. Reed. You don’t know me, but I most certainly know you. Hillhurst’s the name. Arthur Hillhurst. My friends call me Art, so please call me Art, because I do believe with all my heart and soul that we’re about to become the best of friends after I give you — how did Brando say it? — an offer you can’t refuse. I want to make you famous.”

Before I could reply, Hillhurst was off and running, talking at the speed of light, rarely stopping to inhale. He was a movie producer who’d been following my “Forum heroics” — his phrase, not mine — in the press with keen interest, reminded that I’d inspired similar attention earlier by single-handedly taking out armed robbers at the Empire Bank in Hollywood.

“You’re the stuff dreams are made of, how Bogart put it in The Maltese Falcon, sir, the kind of film hero the public thrives on. With your blessing, I intend to turn your brave exploits into a memorable film and, if you’ll permit me optimism, an award-winner come the Academy voting season. Can I count on you to allow me to reach that goal by telling your story? Will you let me do that, Mr. Reed?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Hillhurst.”

“Art.”

“I don’t think so, Art. I don’t consider myself a hero, never have. Bottom line, plain and simple, it’s not me. I’m just a P.I. for rent, doing his job the best he can.”

“I’ll tell you a story that’s stuck with me since I first heard it. Pablo Picasso, the artist, he does a portrait of Gertrude Stein, the writer. When he unveils it for her, she says, But, Pablo, it doesn’t look like me. And Picasso says, It will, Gertrude.” He grunted a laugh. “Do you get it? It will, Gertrude. The movie we make, in time, will be precisely how people remember you. It will, Rufus. It will. How you’ll go down in history. A hero for the ages.”

I said, “I’ll think about it some more and let you know.” Although my decision was set in stone, he didn’t have to know that.

“One more thing before I leave you to your thoughts,” Hillhurst said, clearly still angling for an answer. “Are you familiar with the name Jack L. Warner?”

“One of the Warner brothers.”

“The one with talent, as Colonel Warner would be the first to tell you. To be perfectly frank, I want to do this not for you or for me, but for him, for Colonel Warner, and I’ll explain why.” His eyes grew moist and the corners of his mouth drooped. His voice slowed to a sad struggle with his thoughts.

Hillhurst described how he was indebted to Warner for his career. Passionately in love with the movies from an early age, a time when Saturday kid matinees screened cartoons and serials as well as a double bill, he was barely into his twenties when he left home in Indiana for Hollywood, determined to work at Warner Bros., the studio whose range of films had become his favorites.

Unable to get past the studio’s heavily guarded gates off Warner Boulevard in Burbank, he navigated the 110-acre lot late one night until he found a vulnerable area, hopped the fence, and hid out in the bowels of an empty soundstage until daylight, when he set out to locate the office of Jack L. Warner, who was quoted in a Photoplay article saying: People who start at the bottom don’t understand that it takes just as much talent, grit, and determination to start at the top and succeed beyond their wildest expectation, the way I did.

That had become young Arthur’s mantra.

He visualized himself as Colonel Warner’s personal assistant.

He failed on his first three attempts, spotted by guards who unceremoniously tossed him off the lot with stern warnings not to come back, but he remained determined. Exploring the lot in the safety of night, he located the colonel’s prime parking space at the administration building, and hid nearby. When Colonel Warner’s limousine pulled up and the studio chief emerged, Arthur charged for him, shouting his name, but was stopped short and wrestled to the ground by Colonel Warner’s liveried chauffeur.

Arthur called, “Hear me out, Colonel Warner, or you’ll be making a big mistake.”

The colonel’s curiosity was roused. “What mistake would that be, young man?”

“Passing up the opportunity to hire me as your personal assistant.”

The colonel gave him the kind of look usually reserved for Camarillo inmates. “Why exactly would I want to take you on as my personal assistant?”

Arthur answered with Colonel Warner’s quote from Photoplay.

“I said that?”

“I have the clipping right here in my wallet, if you’d like to see it, sir.”

The colonel dismissed the offer with a wave, studied Arthur hard, and instructed his chauffeur, “Let my new personal assistant up, Nelson.”

Hillhurst pulled out the pocket handkerchief, dabbed at his eyes, blew his nose, and replaced it. “That, Rufus, as you surely must remember Bogart saying in Casablanca, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Colonel Warner rewarded my unwavering loyalty with his own. He saw to it that it I learned every aspect of the business and within a few short years rewarded me with my own production unit, turning out B programmers until he was confident that I could acquit myself with potential big-budget blockbusters. I never disappointed him, always careful to connect the best scripts with the best director and the best cast, and I always brought my movies in on schedule and under budget.”

His voice was quitting on him. He walked around to the service table and helped himself to a glass of water, gargled, and swallowed. Tested his voice. Smiled with satisfaction.

“Where was I?” he said, settling back in his chair. “Oh yes. It was a glorious ride I had for almost thirty years with Colonel Warner, right up until ’sixty-nine, when he grew tired of the business, or maybe the business was growing tired of him, and he sold his controlling interest in Warner Brothers to Seven Arts for thirty-two million. I could have stuck around, but when the colonel left I left with him. The colonel needed me more than the studio.

“He got the urge to make a movie that would show the new generation that he still had the old moxie, that he wasn’t about to turn into another D.W. Griffith, who wound up wandering the streets of Hollywood unemployed and mostly forgotten as the silent era’s innovative moving-picture genius, who almost by himself invented the lexicon of the medium.

“Colonel Warner invested his own money to acquire 1776, the Tony-award-winning best musical, and produced, in ’seventy-two, a movie version starring members of the original Broadway cast. The film flopped at the box office. The colonel put on a brave face in public, spoke of future projects with enthusiasm, but privately he sank into a state of despair. He suffered a stroke two years later, in ’seventy-four, that left him blind and enfeebled, unresponsive to friends and relatives. And me too, but before he descended into that black hole he was telling me how for his next movie he would return to his earliest triumphs with crime stories that resonated with the ping of reality. He had done it before with films like Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, Dead End, creating stars like Robinson, Cagney, Raft, Bogart, and O’Brien.

“I want to do that for him, as homage to Colonel Warner. I can do it telling your story on the silver screen, which I’m calling The Public Hero. I can do it with the cast I have already started assembling. Beginning with Newman as Rufus Reed—”

I reared back into a double take that became a triple take. “Is that some joke?”

He ignored me and went on sharing his cast list. McQueen as the bank robber. Hackman as the revenge-bent songwriter. Jim Brown as Buster Williams. He dropped names like Pacino, DeNiro, William Holden, Duke Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston, Richard Burton, and even Elizabeth Taylor for cameo roles, the way Mike Todd had pulled it off in Around the World in 80 Days, Stanley Kramer for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

“We’ll go Todd and Kramer one better, Rufus, you and me, with scenes for those stars who are still with us: Cagney, O’Brien, Raft, even Huntz Hall from the original Dead End Kids, and Mae Clarke, who took a grapefruit in the kisser from Cagney. Give me the green light and we’re on our way.”

I said, “Paul Newman? I hardly look like Paul Newman, Art.”

“You will, Rufus. You will.”

There was something especially appealing to me about the mutual loyalty he shared with Warner, maybe because it’s something I had yet to enjoy in my own life. I’d come close once or twice, but it never lasted — my fault sometimes, more often not — leaving only the bitter taste of a failed effort.

Was it something that I could achieve with Arthur Hillhurst?

Was it worth the effort on so little evidence as this one meeting?

Could this be marked down as the beginning of our beautiful friendship?

I felt like telling him, Okay, okay, okay, Art. Let’s do it. Go ahead, but I wanted another day or two to think through my answer. If this marriage was going to work, it had to work from the first, for more than Hill-hurst’s sweet-talking effort to leave with a deal in place. I didn’t want to give him the impression I was a pushover. I needed to signal equality.

I said, “I still need more time to think about this, Art — a day or two.”

The pushback I was expecting didn’t come. “Of course,” he said. “You take all the time you need, Rufus. How many times have we heard Fools rush in where angels fear to tread since it was first written by Alexander Pope in 1711, expressed by Edmund Burke in 1790 and Abe Lincoln in 1854, and almost a hundred years later, in 1940, set to beautiful music by Johnny Mercer and Rube Bloom? I will leave you to your thoughts. When you have an answer for me, I can be reached at my office at Warner Brothers I’ll leave your name with the switchboard, so the operator will know to put you straight through without delay to my private line.”

“Warner Brothers? Didn’t you say you left the studio when Colonel Warner left?”

“I did, yes, but right after the failure of 1776, the colonel called in a favor with someone in a power position at Seven Arts. I was welcomed back with a production deal far better, bigger, and richer than the one I’d left behind to remain at the colonel’s side. Left unsaid by the colonel and me, of course, was our understanding I’d rejoin him whenever he made the call. Sadly, it’s quite clear that’s never going to happen now, short of a modern-day medical miracle.”

Was this one last blast of subtle salesmanship by Hillhurst before he blasted me with the full range of his sunshine smile, proffered a handshake, and left?

I allowed him the benefit of the doubt.

The next morning, I escaped from Cedars-Sinai after a nurse who reminded me of my grandmother verified I had a temperature, a pulse, and a heart rate that met acceptable medical standards. I one-stopped at my apartment to shower, shave, and hop into a change of clothes before aiming for the office, where I spent most of the day catching up, searching through the mail for checks, and returning phone messages offering assignments that didn’t require tracking after straying husbands or wives to gather evidence of naughty goings-on.

By late afternoon, I felt enough time had passed to make my point with Hillhurst and give him the good news. I dialed Information and got the Warner Bros. general number in Burbank. The deep-throated operator who answered made me wonder if Lauren Bacall was moonlighting on the switchboard.

I said, “Mr. Hillhurst, please. Rufus Reed calling.”

“Who?”

“Rufus Reed.”

“I mean, who are you asking for?”

“Mr. Hillhurst. Mr. Arthur Hillhurst.”

“Moment.” She was back after a minute. “There’s no one here by that name, sir.”

“Can you take a message for him or, better, connect me with his secretary.”

“I mean there’s no one here by that name on our employee roster, sir.”

“Hillhurst.” I spelled it for her, putting a period after each letter. “He’s one of your producers. Maybe your roster is out of date. Could that be it?”

“It could be, but it’s not, sir, unless you consider a roster that was printed and circulated just yesterday out of date.”

We went back and forth like that for several minutes, my temper growing increasingly sharp. She disconnected me after suggesting where I could shove my threat of reporting her to her supervisor and added as an afterthought, “Have a nice day, sir.”

Damn!

I felt like a fool.

Had I been bamboozled by this Arthur Hillhurst?

If so, why?

What was his game?

The questions kept me up all night, kept my belly in spasms.

Come morning, I ate a handful of aspirin and resolved to become my own best client.

No one I spoke with in the movie business, press contacts, or the cops, past or present, had ever heard of Hillhurst. I scoured the files in the Hall of Records, found no evidence anybody by that name, living or dead, ever existed in L.A. I hit a brick wall with federal and state agencies, including the IRS. I came away empty-handed when I repeated the process in Indiana, where Hillhurst claimed to have grown up.

Finally, I surrendered to the obvious.

The “Arthur Hillhurst” I’d been searching for didn’t exist.

I forced myself back to business as usual, pretty much able to exile Hillhurst from my mind until I got involved in the kidnapping of actor Blake Spencer’s little girl Carolyn. The nine-year-old apparently had been snatched waiting out front of her private school, Hillside Heights Academy, for pickup by the Spencer family’s live-in housekeeper.

Within hours, a ransom note was left in the mailbox at the Spencer mansion in Beverly Hills demanding half a million bucks for the kid’s safe return, spelling out delivery instructions and warning against calling in the police or FBI if they valued Carolyn’s life.

Spencer knew me, and we got along well. I’d done a few turns for him at parties he and the missus, actress Hazel Orange, were frequently hosting in order to get their names in print in the trades, the Haber and Beck gossip columns, and the major movie magazines, publicity being the lifeblood of stardom and billing above a movie’s title.

We met at MGM, on the set of his new film, The Singing Buccaneer. He guided me to his trailer, swore me to secrecy, and spelled out the situation. Under the thick layers of Technicolor makeup that hid his acne scars was the frightened face of any father fearing for his child’s safety.

“We keep the law out of this,” he said and handed over an attaché case. “The money’s all there. You trade the case for my precious peanut and bring her home unharmed to Hazel and me, understand?”

“You have my word on it, Mr. Spencer.” That’s how I answered him, although common sense was telling me not to play the fool and to head straight to the cops. Damn it. I’d never been a slave to common sense.

That night, I got to the exchange site at the marina twenty minutes early. The dock was empty, dark except for a dim light shining inside some kind of motorboat, radio music cutting through the silence, with what I recognized as “I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC and the Sunshine Band seguing into Rod Stewart with “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright).”

I whispered under my breath, “Hope you’re right, Rod,” and headed for the boat.

“You got something for me?” The husky voice came from behind, stopped me in my tracks. “I asked, You got something for me?”

He had a face half hidden behind a bushy beard in need of a trim. Was wearing a thick knit turtleneck sweater, bell bottoms, a wool watchman’s cap, high-top sneakers. Was aiming a snub-nose .357 Magnum at me in a steady hand.

“Do you have something for me?” I said.

“I asked first, wise ass.” I held up the attaché case. “Ground it and pop open the lid, so I can have a looksee inside.”

“Not until I see the girl. Carolyn. That was the deal. I’m a stickler for deals.”

“I’m surprised that attitude ain’t got you killed already.” He stuck a thumb and middle finger at the corners of his mouth and blew out a shrill series of whistles. After a minute, there was activity on the motorboat. The cabin door creaked open. A woman stepped onto the deck, her hand on the shoulder of a little girl wrapped in a blanket.

I recognized the girl: Carolyn.

I also recognized the woman: Ida Menzies, the Spencers’ housekeeper. I’d seen her on those occasions I worked a social gathering at the Spencers’ home.

“You satisfied, wise ass?”

I hunkered down, set the attaché case on the walkway, unsnapped and opened the lid, and in a single motion snatched up the Glock I’d stashed inside and took aim. He cursed me and got off a shot before I could. The bullet from his Magnum tore through the case lid and crashed into my chest, propelling me onto my back.

The shooter stepped forward, still cursing, intent on polishing me off with his next shot. This time I was quicker. I pumped out a series of shots that stopped and dropped him for keeps. I’d been wearing a bulletproof vest as a precaution. He hadn’t been that smart.

By now the dock was alive with the SWAT cops and feds I put on notice after leaving Spencer at MGM. I hadn’t been about to take responsibility by myself for the safe return of the kid, who was unharmed and not entirely certain why Ida was being hauled away in handcuffs. When I gave Spencer my word about not involving the law, I was applying a concept I read or heard somewhere years ago: Your word is something you give. It’s a promise you keep.

By morning, the story was all over the news.

Once more I was being hailed in oversized front-page headlines.

My old encounters were being cataloged.

Phone messages from wannabe clients were piling up with the service.

I got to wondering if Arthur Hillhurst might call. Maybe come marching into my office, all smiles and good cheer, to bring me up to date on his progress with The Public Hero, hawking some excuse and apology for his disappearance when I pinned him to the wall with the question.

It didn’t happen.

I threw him out of my mind again.

It didn’t last.

Jack L. Warner was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in August of ’78 and died there on September ninth of myocarditis, leaving an estate estimated at $15 million. His funeral service was held at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, followed by interment at Home of Peace Cemetery in East L.A. Several months later, dozens of notables from inside and outside the movie industry joined for a memorial event called “The Colonel: An Affectionate Remembrance.”

I was an uninvited spectator every time. If Hillhurst showed up for any last displays of the heartfelt loyalty to Warner he’d spoken about to me with unimpeachable devotion, I wanted to be around to spot him, seize him, and pin him to the truth.

No such luck.

Friends say I’m obsessed, allowing myself to be consumed by the idea of finding a man who didn’t exist in the first place. Frankly, because it’s easier to accept their verdict than to argue, I haven’t bothered showing them the handwritten note I found after the memorial service, stuck under my BMW’s windshield wiper. It said: “Rufus, decided McQueen isn’t right for the bank robber in The Public Hero. Going instead with Nicholson.”