Kill All the Young Girls

Chapter 4

Kate, as a celebrity of sorts, had been welcomed to Miami Beach with flowers, fruit, and a quart of bourbon in a fancy package.

“Old Grand-dad,” she said approvingly. “They bothered to find out my brand — now don’t you think that was sweet of them? But we’ve got another bottle to finish first.”

She kicked off her shoes and went to check her appearance in the bathroom mirror. She improved her lipstick and did something additional to her eyes before coming back. Shayne handed her a glass.

“Some people think I drink too much of this stuff,” she said. “But I’ve always thought it was good for me. Which picture of mine did you see eight times?”

“I forget the name of it now. Cigarette?” He held out a package.

“I thought as much.”

“But if there’s anything of yours on TV tonight, I’m willing to watch.”

“Baby, thanks. Fans like you make all the difference.”

She piled pillows against the head of one of the beds, arranged herself, and took the top off her drink.

“It’s been a rough, rough day; and now I’m going to do some vigorous drinking.”

He lit her cigarette for her. She held onto his wrist and leaned forward to blow out the match.

“I just had a sensational idea, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. You seem to be a pretty competent guy. Poor Doc — but maybe it’s just as well. Because I not only need somebody tonight, I need somebody tomorrow. A private detective might be just the thing. Are you available?”

She released him, and he went back for his drink. “Available for what?”

“I know nothing’s going to happen, but just to be on the safe side. Well, I need sort of a bodyguard, Mike. But there’s no point in going into it if you’re tied up.”

He waited a moment.

“I’m afraid I’m working for somebody else. It’s never a good idea to take on two clients at the same time.”

“You’re working for somebody else tomorrow, or right now?”

“Right now.”

She put her glass on the bedside stand and took a short-barreled revolver out of the shallow drawer. Leaning forward, she pointed it at Shayne.

“Would that other client be Larry Zion by any chance?”

Shayne laughed. “What will you do if I tell you the truth — shoot me? That gun’s loaded with blanks.”

The muzzle wavered, pointing toward a Van Gogh print on the wall before coming back to Shayne.

“Are you willing to bet on that?”

“Sure. You’re smart enough not to fool around with live ammunition in a car moving at eighty-five miles an hour.”

A look of disgust crossed her face. She pointed the little gun at her own forehead, decided against that, and aimed it at a lamp and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp report, but the lamp stayed together.

“I knew it was loaded with blanks. How did you know it?”

“There weren’t any bullet holes in Larry’s car.”

She threw the gun. It sailed past his head and hit the wall. As she changed position, her tight, red skirt rode higher on her thigh.

“So that was a con job downstairs. I should have known. What’s going to happen to me now?”

“I hope nothing much. I’m working for Marcus Zion, not Larry. I took half the fee in advance; but if anything bad happens to you, I don’t get the rest of it. He hired me to keep the peace for thirty-six hours. After that you’re on your own, but he thinks you’ll be all right. You might as well lean back and finish your drink.”

She stayed as she was, giving off static. “Larry told Marcus about the gun? That means he’s conscious again. I couldn’t find out from the hospital.”

“He came out of the coma talking. And then he thought better of it and clammed up. This is all according to Marcus. Some of it didn’t have quite the right smell. Why don’t you give me your version?”

She breathed in and out slowly, then reached for her drink again. “Why did you blow it? You had me fooled. I really thought you made that move in the bar because you wanted to go to bed with me.”

“I do intend to go to bed with you. But later. He didn’t really tell me a hell of a lot. I’m in the middle, and that can be a bad place to be. I need to know more about it for my own protection. If a bellboy knocks, should I open the door or not? Should we stay here and eat on room service or get out of town? Marcus wanted to make sure I realized that his father’s a tough and determined man who got to be head of the studio by slamming everybody else out of his way.”

“God knows that’s true.”

“Marcus himself wasn’t coming across to me too well. But I think he wants to prove he can be just as ruthless as his old man, even though they’ve had him out in the back room counting money all these years. Sometimes that kind can be scarier than the real thing.”

“Marcus Zion? Scary?”

“He tried to get me to take a gun. The way he described the setup, a gun wasn’t called for. Guns make more problems than they solve, except in the movies. But maybe he doesn’t know that. What kind of a guy is he?”

“Marcus,” she said slowly. “He’s one of those people who are always leaning over backwards. I mean he’s more cautious than he has to be. Being Larry’s only son can’t be easy, but people don’t exactly feel sorry for him — he’s too cold a fish.”

He had given her something to think about. She was rattling the ice in her glass and frowning.

“Is Larry out and around?”

“I think so. There’s some kind of business reason why he doesn’t want to stay in the hospital. Marcus was being so careful not to be overheard that I didn’t catch all of it.”

She hit the bed with her open hand. “He was doing sixty at least when he went into that barrier. Ordinary people get killed if they run into a pole at five miles an hour. That car was spattered all over the landscape. And he came out of it with a broken leg and a concussion.”

“The Zion luck,” Shayne said. “Marcus thinks it may win him some votes.”

“Great, I’m delighted. But that wasn’t my object.”

Suddenly she came off the bed, bringing her drink. Stooping above Shayne, she kissed him lightly on the mouth. When she straightened, she moved slightly so her breast touched his face. Then she drew away.

“You hit a nerve, Mike… I wish I hadn’t had so many drinks… We’ll figure out a way to handle this. Ask me some questions.”

“Were you trying to kill him?”

“Of course not. Not that I look on him as an actual human being. Wiping out Larry Zion would be on the same ethical level as swatting a mosquito. The things he’s done…”

She returned to the bed and sat down with one foot tucked up under her. “I didn’t know that exit thing he ran into was going to be where it was, around the bend. All I wanted to do was convince him I wanted to kill him, Mike.” She concluded doubtfully. “There’s a difference. There really is.”

“You mean you wanted to scare him into giving you a part in this movie?”

“That’s right. He used to shoot lions in Kenya, and my theory about that is that he did it because he’s a coward.”

“What makes a part in this particular movie so important?”

“He promised it to me. That’s the only reason he bought the novel. And I need it badly right now. Dear God, I need it. And it’s a gorgeous part. The one woman on a ship filled with mangy, heterosexual pirates. It’s a gamble, a pirate picture in this day and age; but even if it bombs, whoever plays Doña Isabella is going to get great reviews. And Mike, it was set! The contracts were all drawn. Then all of a sudden…”

She drew the flat of her hand across her throat.

“Who got it instead?”

“His current discovery. Her name is Alix Hermes; and she’s half-Greek, half-Italian, and all bitch. She’s made a couple of artistic pictures in Europe which I’ve seen, unfortunately. Don’t expect any objectivity out of me. I’m told the New Republic critic adores her.”

“Do she and Larry travel together?”

“Everywhere. And Larry’s one endearing trait is that he always believes his current bed companion has great box-office potential. The idea is: if he wants to ball her, so will the audience.”

“Were you on that list?”

She gave him a quick glance. “Did Marcus say something? No, the girls I’m thinking about have been bracketed with him. Nobody thinks of Alix as anything but Larry’s girlfriend. It’s a long-standing thing, six months at least. By playing my cards very carefully, I stayed out of the category. Of course when I broke into pictures, it was a lot like the Middle Ages: the master had first refusal on every virgin on his property. I didn’t have the leverage to set a precedent and say no. It isn’t that important to me anyhow. We had one or two tepid weekends in the desert. Boat trips and so on. All I tried to be was barely adequate, no raptures or convulsions; and pretty soon he stopped phoning me.”

“Marcus says the director wants you for the part.”

“Baby, because he wants the picture to make money! He’s worked with me. He knows what I can do. There’s a big fight scene. I’m in man’s clothes, which get torn, naturally. I’ve got a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, and I could be absolutely tremendous! Nobody wants to take a chance with that Greek stick. They’ve argued and argued, but Larry’s in charge of production, and he makes the decisions. He switched me out, and he can switch me back in, but only if he’s really persuaded that I want it badly enough to kill him to get it.”

“And if he’d died in the wreck…”

“I’d be on the set tomorrow. I can see you think it sounds a bit extreme. Mike, let me tell you what that man did to me — and the fact that he’s done worse to other people doesn’t make me feel any better. He doesn’t have quite as much muscle as he had in the old days when he didn’t have to explain to anybody. He couldn’t yank me out at the last minute and drop Hermes in because she’s the new girl in town. But if he could make me look bad up there on the screen, where it counts… So he killed me in my last picture; and that’s the exact, literal truth. You know how movies are made. They shoot miles and miles of film, cut it up into slivers and put them back together in the cutting room. The dailies were marvelous. Everybody said so. But the cutter was under orders to make me look like a bum.”

“Are you sure you’re not imagining some of this?”

“Oh, I’m crazy,” she said seriously. “I admit it. You have to be slightly nuts to make it in this business. I grabbed the head cutter and gave him some of the best sex he’d ever enjoyed; and at the end of the weekend, he admitted that some of the really bad cuts had been made by Larry himself. You know — where there were four possible takes, he picked the one that put the wrong shadow in the wrong place or the one in which the way I spoke a line would make me sound slightly unpleasant. Damn it, Mike! You’re still looking skeptical. I know I can’t prove it. But I’m convinced it’s true; and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? And Larry knows I’m convinced because I told him so in Chasen’s and accidentally tipped a bottle of burgundy over on his new suit. That picture did terrible business, and I haven’t been working since. I did a little television at first, and then that closed down. There’s a rumor around that I drink Old Grand-dad for breakfast instead of coffee and orange juice. I think that rumor started in the New York Consolidated-Famous office, but there’s no way to fight it. All right, Mike, what would you do? Use your imagination. Somebody ruined your reputation so you couldn’t go on being a private detective. Would you give up and go to work as a short-order cook?”

She added, “Which doesn’t mean I wanted to murder the son-of-a-bitch. I’ll say that again. I was just trying to get a point across.”

“Did you know about his heart attack last year?”

Her eyebrows went behind the screen of her bangs. She asked for more bourbon.

“I keep forgetting I’m talking to a detective. I thought I might get away with suppressing that in the interest of a warmer relationship. Of course I knew about it. It happened in my house. He was trying to come twice in one night, and he’s too old for that sort of thing. Stop looking at me like that. I was not, I repeat not, trying to black him out so he’d lose control of the car. He’s completely recovered as far as that goes. But heart people are the world’s worst hypochondriacs. They think about it all the time. Larry’s carrying this big, vulnerable thing around inside his chest. I was trying to bluff him, that’s all; and the person you’re bluffing has to believe you mean it. Why aren’t you drinking?” she said nervously. “Let’s kill the bottle and open the other one and get stinking. Then maybe I can explain it to you.”

“I may be a little slow tonight,” Shayne said. “I don’t get these distinctions you’re making.”

“The main distinction,” Kate said, “is between Girl A, who tries to kill somebody and doesn’t succeed and is therefore automatically a loser, and Girl B, who’s merely trying to make her position clear. Now which of these two would you rather have sex with?”

“One at a time.”

She gave him a steady look. “Do you mean it? You aren’t going to get lofty and moral with me?”

He shrugged.

“Then will you help me, Mike? I don’t mean just help me stay alive. Help me make him give me the part. No, it’s too soon to ask you that. First I want to show you something weird.”

While she was on her feet, she poured them more bourbon. “Isn’t it lovely to know there’s an unopened bottle? Like money in the bank — not that I’ve ever had money in the bank.”

She pulled open a bureau drawer, empty except for a magazine which she handed to Shayne.

“This was left at the desk sometime this afternoon.”

It was a back issue, eleven years old, of a hugely successful magazine whose publisher, Oscar Olson, had made his reputation and fortune by creating a vast readership for a peculiar editorial mixture: blue cartoons, passable fiction, strong editorials on behalf of sexual freedom, and photographs of female nudes. This copy was smudged and dog-eared, as though it had passed through many hands. As Shayne took it, it broke automatically to the gatefold, a double page that opened out of the magazine so it could be unstapled and tacked on the walls of country stores and gas stations. It showed a naked girl lying on one hip on a bed under a canopy. The picture had been doctored. Her face had been replaced with Kate’s; and a comic-strip balloon came out of the lips: “How I wish I’d known when to stop.” A drooping white lily sprouted from between her buttocks.

“This happens to be a famous picture,” Kate said quietly. “Keko Brannon before she made her first movie.”

“Keko Brannon,” Shayne said. “According to Marcus again, Larry thought that was who was shooting at him.”

“I wanted to get that effect. There’s a famous story about how they met, and I was trying to confuse the bastard and upset him. Now as an expert witness, Mr. Shayne, what do you make of that goddamn lily?”

“It’s a threat. You’re being told to stop whatever you’re doing unless you want to end up dead.”

Kate shivered lightly. Shayne went on, “Somebody went to a lot of trouble. You can buy the current issue of this magazine for a buck, and it’s full of naked broads. Why go back eleven years for this particular one?” He closed the gatefold and checked the caption material. “Pussycat of the Month, Suzy Flynn.”

“Larry changed her name when he hired her. But millions of people would recognize the picture even with a different face. If you look hard, you can see a wisp of her pubic hair. We all have it; but in those days if it showed in the photographs, the magazine couldn’t be mailed. There was a big civil-liberties case that went on for years. When Keko turned into such a box-office smash, the picture got to be a collector’s item. Mike, I don’t know how much you know about this proxy fight. Has anybody told you that Oscar Olson is bankrolling the opposition?”

“I thought he was a magazine man. What does he know about movies?”

“Just that you can make money with them if you’re lucky. He’s been trying to finagle his way in for years. This is his big effort.”

Shayne tossed the magazine back on the bureau. “Now we start making connections. How well do you know Olson?”

“Nobody really knows Olson. I’ve been to his parties. When you’re in San Francisco, that’s one of the things you do. They run around the clock, and they get very dreary. Now the inevitable next question. I haven’t seen him undressed, and I don’t know if he has three balls instead of the usual number. He stops appreciating girls after they pass their twenty-first birthday, and I met him too late. I’m not fooling. Twenty-one is the age of compulsory retirement.”

“How old was Brannon when the picture was taken?”

“Seventeen, I think, a very young seventeen. She was part of the entourage for a while after that, but she never talked about it.”

“‘Entourage’?”

“Haven’t you read the articles? He likes to have chicks around. Secretaries and so on — some of them can actually type.”

“Keko Brannon and you. Were you friends?”

“Something else first. I talked to Oscar yesterday. I thought twice about it because even before I got that magazine I knew this whole thing was heavily booby-trapped. But I have a beau in New York who’s trust officer in a bank, and he has the voting of twelve thousand shares of Consolidated-Famous. I can influence which way he votes. I asked Oscar, if his people win control of the board, will I get the Buccaneer lead? He checked with the director and a few other people. The answer was yes.”

“Twelve thousand shares out of how many?”

“It’s a tiny percentage, but some people think this is going to be close. I wanted to try it both ways, via Larry and via Oscar. The reason I’m bringing it up is I guess it’s possible that Larry found out I’d gone to see Oscar. But—‘How I wish I’d known when to stop.’ It doesn’t fit. Stop what? It almost sounds as though I know something and I’m trying to blackmail somebody. I don’t, Mike; and I’m not.”

“Let’s get the dates straight. When did she die?”

“Seven years ago. You wanted to know if we were friends. I was her stand-in in one of her pictures, not one of her good ones. She was already starting to flake. The marriages were over; and there was a steady flow of men, terrible men. She was in a daze much of the time. What a stand-in does is wear the star’s costumes and move through her scenes so the crews can block out the breaks and angles. Keko was always nice to the stand-in, even when she was being awful to everybody else. She kept asking me to trade places with her. I would have been delighted! When the picture was over, she asked me to move in and take charge of her phone calls. It didn’t turn out to be too bad. Afterward, after she killed herself in the middle of a picture, some PR genius thought of reshooting her scenes with me in the role. The old show biz story — the stand-in takes over for the star on opening night and gets an ovation. It was strictly a salvage job to capitalize on the publicity. And a little grisly — the picture was supposed to be a light-hearted sex comedy. But for some reason it worked. I’ve always thought the fact that I was the leading lady had something to do with it.”

She finished her drink and said briskly, “Now come to bed.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m tired as hell. Fighting the bourbon. I don’t feel like talking any more.”

“You go to bed. I’ll join you later.”

“Hmm.” She set down her glass and slid off the bed. She pushed back an imaginary pair of sleeves and spat on her hands. “You’re going to make me work for it, are you?”

“You can’t be in the mood for making love. I want to start through this again. There’s still a lot missing. I’ll have some more questions for you, but I have to get it in some kind of sequence first.”

“So I can’t be in the mood, can I? I’ve been in the mood ever since you crowded Doc Black up against the bar. When two males battle over a female, she’s supposed to mate with the winner. I call your attention to the moose.”

“Kate, were there ever any rumors that Keko Brannon’s death wasn’t a suicide?”

“None that I heard. Mike, baby. Stop thinking.”

“Did Oscar Olson go on seeing her after she made it in Hollywood?”

“Probably, but not after she got to be twenty-one. He wasn’t part of the scene while I was around. Those guys were on a different level, very sleazy. Mike, to continue what I was saying: I take it that your assignment calls for spending all day tomorrow with me. So we have time. I have a very vague, very foggy hunch about that Pussycat of the Month picture. I want to lay it on you and see how it sounds. There might be money in it for both of us; and don’t give me that two-client crap, because this would be perfectly moral and ethical and in the nature of a public service. But right now…”

She turned away slightly, and her tone was suddenly less assured. “I feel so jammed up and jangly. I’ve been in a vise all day. I kept telling myself that the world would be a prettier place without Larry Zion in it, but I didn’t really want it to happen. The hospital wouldn’t tell me a thing. I couldn’t go there in person. It was nervewracking.”

“I see that. You were hoping he’d pull through.”

“Sarcasm, Mike — watch it. No, I wasn’t exactly hoping that, because if he still wouldn’t give me the part I couldn’t back down, could I? I’d have to raise the bet and try something else. Mike, I’ve been faking a little. You’re sexy, yes; but I can resist you if I have to. It’s funny about sex. I’m beginning to feel the way Keko did at the end. Yes, no, who cares.”

“What did that job of yours consist of — hiding the bottles and getting her to work on time?”

“How could I do that? I didn’t have any authority. Mainly I listened and tried to keep her looking halfway presentable. Now that’s really all about Keko for now. I had her full-time when she was alive, and people still think of me as that kooky funny-face who took her place in On Fire.”

She touched his neck. “You’re the male. In our society, the male decides. But can I tell you what I’d like?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll shower and get ready. If you decide you want to get in with me, I’ll make you welcome. Just don’t delay too long. My doctor tells me I use sex for reassurance, and tonight a little uncomplicated reassurance is what I need. I’d make it nice for you, Mike. Sincerely. Then we’ll sleep for a time; and when we wake up, I’ll bore you with various guesses and theories. And you can advise me.”

Before he could answer, she turned quickly and went into the bathroom. Presently the shower started.

Shayne picked up the eleven-year-old magazine and turned to the mutilated gatefold again. Kate’s head was askew, a trifle out of scale. Her expression was wrong for the pose. She was smiling, her eyes alive with humor and intelligence. Shayne wished he had seen her on the screen. What was there about that kind of success that made them so greedy for it?

She finished in the shower, and he heard her moving around. She came out in a dressing gown, her face scrubbed of makeup and seeming to be lightly oiled. She shrugged off the dressing gown as he watched, meeting his eyes unself-consciously.

“Any time at all, Mike.”

She opened the bed and got in. Before settling herself, she turned off the light between the beds. Shayne watched her settle herself.

“In a moment,” he said.

The Miami papers, in their original folds, were arranged on a low table. Starting with the Herald, Shayne found a lengthy account of the Consolidated-Famous proxy fight on the financial page. Larry Zion was predicting victory for his slate by a two-to-one margin. He had some harsh things to say about the pressure tactics being used by the professional solicitation firm retained by the opposition. Oscar Olson’s name wasn’t mentioned.

Both groups had taken half-page ads. The main points made against Zion were his advanced years and his insistence on absolute, one-man rule. He was pictured as a crotchety relic of another era, out of touch with the realities of the entertainment business. No one denied that he had once been superb, but recent balance sheets told a more somber story. Nepotism (his son) and favoritism (his mistresses) were alluded to obliquely. He paid himself an extravagant salary while he was producing pictures that lost oceans of money at the box office. He had committed two and a half million dollars to a pirate movie, exactly the kind of escapist nonsense that had emptied moving picture theaters all over the world. Only someone in the grip of senile nostalgia would have made such an astounding decision.

On the amusement page, Zion was interviewed about his plans for this picture. Audiences, he declared, were hungry for romantic entertainment. They were fed up to the teeth with ugliness, misery, and smut. The enthralling, real-life story of Florida’s own José Gaspar, known as Gasparilla, a pulse-quickening account of one man’s battle against injustice and oppression… It was press agent prose, and Shayne stopped reading after a few sentences and picked up the Daily News.

The News, too, carried both ads and a rewrite of the opposing press releases as well as a small boxed announcement that the stockholders’ meeting the following day would be covered by a team of reporters headed by Shayne’s friend, Timothy Rourke.

Putting the papers aside, Shayne reviewed what he had been told by Kate and Marcus Zion. There were discrepancies and holes. Any number of blinking neon arrows pointed toward the short, tragic career of Keko Brannon. But that had been long in the past, on the opposite edge of the continent. Shayne’s assignment was simple and clear-cut. If he could control his impulse to rake over old scandals, it could also be easy and pleasant. He was here to stand between Kate and trouble. With Shayne on the scene, she must know that she wouldn’t be given a second chance to get to Larry Zion. The best she could hope for now was to stay out of the way until he retired from the business or another heart attack carried him off. Would she agree to leave town? Probably not. That could wait until morning.

But there was an undercurrent of menace somewhere that wouldn’t let him relax. He smoked three cigarettes, lighting each from the stub of the last.

He got up quietly. Kate seemed to be asleep. She lay on her side with one bare arm flung up over her eyes.

Leaving only one lamp burning, Shayne began to undress, piling his clothes on a chair. Suddenly Kate exclaimed and sat up.

“Who is it?”

“A friend,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

She stared at him. She was sitting bolt upright, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms. He waited without moving until she recognized him. Her hand came up to brush back her hair.

“Mike. Is it going to be all right?”

“Why not?”

She looked at her watch. “I conked out. My God, I was tired. I nearly went to sleep in the shower.”

He pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the back of the chair. She slid down in bed, pulling the sheet back over her breasts.

“You know, you’re beautiful, Mike? What’s that scar on your shoulder?”

“Knife wound. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“Baby, people have really worked you over, haven’t they? Can I apologize now? I must have sounded like a madwoman. Make love to me; and I’ll give you a reward, a couple of morsels of information… Hey, will you scratch what I just said?”

“Sure.”

“It’s the way I automatically think, that lovemaking is something you bargain with. I never used to be that way.”

“Do you understand now that there’s nothing more you can do? You’re going to let Larry Zion alone?”

“I’ve made myself an enemy there.” She sighed. “Nothing like a refreshing half hour’s sleep. The awful thing is that I would have been good in that part! Adios, Doña Isabella. Now we concentrate on survival. And as for you and me, would you be willing to start over? You sleep in that bed; and I’ll sleep in this one, the way we used to do in pictures in the days of family entertainment. And tomorrow let’s not say a word about the movie business for the entire day.”

“We don’t have to stay in Miami.”

“No, we don’t, do we? Let’s go to the Bahamas and gamble. Mike, get the ice. We’ll have one last, innocent drink, in separate beds; and then we’ll sleep.”

Rolling on one elbow, she reached for the gift bottle of bourbon. The ice bucket was on the floor by Shayne’s chair. He bent down to get it; and at that moment, there was a terrific, slamming explosion in the room.