L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories

SCHOOL FOR MURDER Francine Prose

All summer I kept hearing people say desperate. Actors are always eavesdropping on strangers, picking up phrases, gestures, stuff we can use. And wherever I went, whenever I listened in, I heard: desperate, desperate, desperate!

At the pharmacy, I heard a dame say, “Hon, if my landlord evicts me, things are gonna get desperate.” A buddy of mine said, “If my girl in New York doesn’t call pretty soon, man… I’m desperate.” I overheard a bum on Skid Row say, “That jerk better pay me back, I don’t care how desperate he is.”

The funny thing was, this was 1947. Desperation was yesterday’s mashed potatoes. Happy days were here again. The Depression was over, the war was over, we’d dropped the bomb, we’d won. Guys like me had defended our country, and girls appreciated that. I’d been in the battle of Okinawa. That was pretty much all I had to say and gals would feel like it was their personal mission to heal whatever was broken.

In L.A., the studios were popping out pictures like bunnies having babies. L.A. was the place to be! As soon as I got discharged, I spent a week with my mom in Seattle, then stuck out my thumb and headed south. Hollywood, here I come!

For a while, it seemed I was getting paid back for risking my life and seeing things I shouldn’t have seen. Horrors I kept seeing in those nightmares I’d wake up from, drenched and shaking.

At first, good things were coming my way. No great things, I wouldn’t say great. But I was making a living.

Everyone knew about the stars who’d started out as extras, or with one-sentence walk-ons that made some producer sit up and ask, “Who’s that? Get me his agent on the phone.” Bit parts were a foot in the door. I was glad to get them.

If you’ve seen enough pictures from those years, you’ve probably seen me. I’m the croupier in that scene where Barbara Stanwyck wins all that money. I’m a ranger out searching for the kid right before Lassie finds him. I give Bing Crosby directions in Road to Utopia.

For a while life looked rosy. Then… my luck turned. People lost interest. If I’d had a dollar for every time I heard the line, “My agent stopped returning my calls,” this story wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have needed the money. But it wasn’t about the money. Or maybe a little about the money. Maybe the reason I kept hearing people say desperate was because it described my state of mind—and my bank account.

At Gatsby’s, the actors’ bar where my unemployed friends and I hung out, the clientele was so desperate we never used the word.

Chuck was my agent at the time. The one not returning my calls. The boys at Gatsby’s gave me advice. They said, “Vince, you need to get heavy with the guy.” You could ask why I took the advice of other unemployed actors. But I did. I made a real pest of myself, called my agent twenty times a day. His receptionist hated my guts. But she had to pick up the phone.

Chuck finally called back. Maybe his receptionist had read him the riot act. He’d blackmailed someone into blackmailing someone into getting me a part.

I’d been drinking the night before, needless to say. Chuck called at nine and gave me the address of a studio. Not one of the majors—but not somebody’s garage in Pasadena, either.

I asked what the picture was called. He said, “Not Guilty.” Then louder, “Not Guilty! With an exclamation point!”

I asked when I could see the script. Chuck said he didn’t have one. I should just show up on the set and they’d take it from there. Then he said, “To sweeten the pot, the director is Harry Wattles.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

Everyone knew Wattles’s name. He’d been a rising star who’d fucked himself, or more specifically, the girlfriend of some big-shot producer. Now he’d been busted down to doing low-budget noir films. But everybody saw them. He had a reputation.

Chuck said, “You should be paying them for a chance to work with Wattles. Though I don’t know how I’d calculate my commission on that. Relax, big guy. I’m joking.”

The shoot was in Pasadena on a soundstage that smelled like a cross between a dead rat and a recent electrical fire. Everyone was running around—frazzled, yelling their heads off. But you couldn’t tell what anyone was doing, and they didn’t seem to know, either. In other words, a film set.

Wattles looked even stranger than he did in his photos. It was weird to have a name like Wattles and look like a hammerhead shark. It was also weird to look like that and get any girl you wanted.

Someone intercepted me on my way to Wattles, someone else intercepted that person, who was intercepted by the one who actually got to talk to Wattles. Wattles came over and shook my hand. He was surprisingly friendly, but like a friendly shark smiles before he chews your leg off.

He said, “Nice to meet you. Love your work.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry we couldn’t find you a part with some meat on its bones.”

“Gee, Mr. Wattles, I’ll take a skinny part.” I sounded like a moron!

“But I have to tell you, Vince.” Wattles was one of those guys who says your name every five seconds. I never trusted guys like that, but maybe I’d been wrong. “Your role is crucially important. It sets the tone for the whole picture.”

I was definitely wrong. Harry Wattles was a prince.

“Really?” My voice was climbing. I thought, You just screwed yourself out of a job unless they’re looking for boy sopranos.

Wattles said, “It’s not a speaking part. I assume Chuck made that clear.”

“He did.” I should have gotten an Oscar right then for pretending that I knew.

Wattles handed me on to a dame named Celia who outlined the plot of the movie. Jimmy Parker was playing the hero. Celia couldn’t believe a big star had agreed to do such a small picture. She guessed that it was Wattles. Actors wanted to work with him.

“So what’s my part?” I asked.

Oh, right. Well, apparently, Jimmy says goodnight to his girlfriend, gives her a kiss at her door. She invites him in for a nightcap, but he has to work early. The girl walks into her apartment. I’m there. I turn and see her. I grab her around the neck and strangle her dead. The rest of the movie is Jimmy Parker being accused of the murder he didn’t commit. I did the crime, but you don’t see me again. Grab, scream, I’m out of the picture.

Celia obviously hadn’t heard about my setting the tone.

I said, “Who plays the girl?”

“Iris Morell,” she said.

“Iris Morell gets eighty-sixed in the first scene?” Iris was the actress Wattles stole from the big-shot producer. The producer made a few calls, both their careers went down like the Titanic. The gossip was they were having problems, that lately she’d been seen around town with the big-shot producer again. Maybe they were working things out.

Everyone gossiped about everyone else, most of it was bullshit. On the other hand, Iris had starred in most of Wattles’s films, but now she was dying so early in the picture that if you were in the lobby getting popcorn, you’d miss her completely. That should have told you something—that is, if you understood that secret Hollywood language.

Celia weighed her annoyance at having to deal with me against her desire to show someone, even me, that she had the scoop on some hot gossip.

“Bettina Raymond plays the tough girl reporter who shows up after the murder and believes in the guy and helps him clear his name. People say that Wattles and Bettina are a hot item, but y’know, people say anything.”

“People are desperate,” I said.

Celia looked at me, wondering if I was nuts or just trying to sound interesting. She went for the second option—and sent me on to costume.

I don’t know why I expected Harry Wattles to stop by for a chat. I don’t know why I thought someone would give me some direction before we started shooting. I was asking the make-up girl. That’s how desperate I was.

“Don’t I need to know why I’m in the apartment? Am I stealing something? Looking for something? Was I hired to kill her? Why couldn’t I just push her and run out the door?”

She said, “You better ask Mr. Wattles.”

I did ask Mr. Wattles. He seemed irritated that I asked. Or maybe it was a bad moment. Iris Morell was on the set. I couldn’t help goggling at how gorgeous she was, and Wattles saw me looking. Which added a personal note to our professional discussion.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Wattles said. “But no one needs to know why you kill her. No one cares why you did it after the scene is over. The point is that our hero isn’t the killer. You are.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But while I’m in her room… am I doing something or just waiting?”

“Jesus Christ,” said Wattles. “Isn’t that the first thing they teach you in acting class? Don’t they teach you how to wait?”

It turned out I had plenty of time to wait. Wattles was famous for how long he spent getting the lighting—and the shadows—just right. He was a pretentious son of a bitch, but his movies looked great. That’s what I kept telling myself. I was lucky to be there.

Finally Wattles got what he wanted or else hallucinated the voices of the money guys yakking in his ear.

“All right, Iris,” he said. “Kiss kiss goodnight. Jimmy drives off. But you can’t get him out of your head. It’s been a fabulous date. And now you’re going to brush your teeth, put on the lacy nightie, crawl in bed, no funny stuff under the covers. That’s what you’re thinking as you walk into your apartment. But something’s a little… off. Maybe you smell something, maybe you sense it. You’re getting really nervous when the guy sneaks up from behind. He grabs you and turns you around. You look into his eyes. You’ve never seen him before. You scream and beg for your life. Cut to his hands around your neck with the maniac squeezing and—”

“Excuse me… So you’re saying I should play this like a maniac?”

“Hold everything,” Wattles said. “Laurence Olivier here wants to know our thinking about Othello. Look, buddy, just kill the dame and pick up your check so we can move on to the suspicious cops showing up at Jimmy’s. I’d like to not go over budget for once, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sorry,” I said. What if the word got out that I was hard to work with? But the word wouldn’t get out. Wattles wouldn’t remember my name.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I said.

“Thank God,” Wattles said. “All right. Let’s see how it looks.”

The cameras started rolling. Iris unlocked the door and walked through her living room into her bedroom. Her feet hardly touched the ground, that’s how in love she was with Jimmy.

I tried not to look at Wattles. I didn’t want to think about how I would feel if she was the girl I’d given up everything for, and now she was going back to her fat-cat producer?

Iris was wearing expensive perfume, I hadn’t counted on that. It threw me.

I thought about the six months since my girlfriend Caroline left. And she’d said I was starting to scare her. She wouldn’t say why, which made me even madder. I used to tell her, Honey, I’d be fine if I could just get some work and stop feeling so desperate.

Iris pulled her dress above her head. I crept up behind her. That beautiful face gazed up at me. Tears of fear and horror wobbled in her eyes.

“All right,” said Wattles. “Grab her throat.” The girl’s real-life boyfriend was ordering me to kill her, and I couldn’t do it.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Excuse me? I think I need a minute.”

Iris jumped back like I’d slapped her. Wattles stalked onto the set, his hammerhead slicing the air like the figurehead on a ship.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Can’t what?”

“Kill her. I can’t kill her.” I knew I was probably losing my job—probably the last work I was ever going to get in this town.

“All right,” Wattles said. “I get it. You need motivation. Okay. You are a maniac. An escapee from a mental asylum. If the girl reports you, you’ll be back in maximum lock-up. So you kill her. That’s it. End of story. Let’s take it from the top.”

We began again. The casual kiss between Iris and Jimmy wasn’t as casual as before. You could feel the strain. Iris was no longer the unsuspecting innocent coming home, but an actress trying to do a scene with a lousy actor. Me. You could see it in her eyes: not with fear of being murdered but the fear of not being murdered.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m not feeling it. Iris, Mr. Wattles. Can I talk to you privately for a second?”

Wattles looked as if I’d asked if I could stick needles in his eyes. He yanked Iris over to the edge of the set, and I followed.

“I have to tell you something,” I said. “It’s not something I usually tell people.” I crossed my fingers behind my back. Another Oscar, please. So what? It was true. I mean the story was true.

I said, “I was in Okinawa. I saw a lot of bad things. Really bad.”

“Like what?” asked Iris, all sympathy and concern.

Wattles looked blue murder at her.

“I had this crazy commanding officer. Lieutenant Mather. I saw him shoot an old Japanese woman point blank in the head.”

“Why?” asked Iris.

“He wanted to warn the people in town what he would do to spies.”

“That’s terrible!” said Iris. That’s what women always said. I loved women, I really did.

“And?” said Wattles. “What the hell does that have to do with my picture?”

“Harry!” said Iris.

“I have a condition… sometimes it all comes back. Just now… I think the memory was telling me I shouldn’t kill. Not even for a part.”

I fell silent and waited. I waited to hear Wattles tell me to get out. Instead he muttered to himself, “Is this guy kidding?” Then it was like a cartoon light bulb went on over his head. He thought a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s move on to the next scene.”

I hesitated. Was this the moment when I was supposed to thank him and leave?

“Stick around,” he told me. “Watch the shoot. If you’re not busy later, we can go for a drive.”

The rest of the afternoon passed, as they say, in a fog. I got to spend hours watching Harry Wattles at work, getting genius performances out of second-raters like Jimmy and Bettina. Every direction he gave them transformed the picture from dime store crap into art!

It was late when Wattles said, “I can’t see straight. Let’s start fresh in the morning.”

I was sure he’d forgotten me, but sure enough, he told Celia to find me and ask if I was ready. I watched him give Bettina a kiss and tell her he’d see her later, I watched Iris hurry off, probably into the big-shot producer’s arms.

Wattles and I stepped outside into the dark summer night. A fast, parched wind brought the smell of something burning in the distance.

“Crazy wind,” Wattles said. “Drives you nuts.” The valet brought his car around. A red convertible MG.

“Most guys like me have a driver,” he said. “But I like the feel of the wheel. You trust me, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I said.

“How long have you been in L.A.?” he said.

“Since Okinawa.”

“Right,” he said. “Okinawa.”

He drove down from Pasadena, west on Hollywood Boulevard, then onto Mulholland Drive. The city glittered beneath us.

“Pretty, huh?” he said.

After a while I got up the nerve to ask, “How come you didn’t fire me? You know I won’t to be able to do that scene.”

Wattles drove on, taking the curves a little hard and fast, maybe, but he knew what he was doing. He was silent for so long I thought he hadn’t heard.

Finally he said, “I saw something in your eyes. I don’t want to sound like a sap, but call it respect for human life. I thought, Jesus Christ, if I could bottle whatever that is and sell it, all the world’s problems would be solved. No more murders, no more wars. You couldn’t kill that girl, no matter how much you wanted the job. You couldn’t even pretend. And I admired that, I respected that. It made me admire you. And when I heard about your being a veteran… I have a bad ticker. Skips one beat out of a hundred. But it kept me out of the service.

“Like I said, I saw something in you. It made me want to help out. I can’t rewrite the script or give you another part. But I can help you play this one, and you can go on from there. I could list a dozen big stars, who got famous playing killers. Ever hear of Burt Lancaster? George Raft? Jimmy Cagney?”

“Sure,” I said. “Who hasn’t?”

“It’s something you can work on,” he said.

For a second I had the creepy feeling he was going to give me the name of a shrink who would get me over my traumas. Everyone in Hollywood was suddenly getting their heads shrunk, the most sought-after Hollywood head docs were starting to out-earn the producers. Me, I couldn’t see myself lying on some bearded guy’s smelly couch and boring us both with my problems.

“There’s a class,” said Wattles. “An acting class. This French guy in Santa Monica… he specializes in teaching actors how to kill. Because let’s face it: you watch enough pictures like ours, you might think no one likes anything better than murdering someone. Preferably another actor. But the truth is, and let’s be grateful, it doesn’t come naturally to most people. Not even actors. Good actors. Big talents. Most people don’t enjoy killing, and if you can’t get someone to do the crime and look like he enjoys it, how are you going to make crime films?

“So my man in Santa Monica, he finds himself a niche. He trains actors who have gotten parts or want to play killers. And they need a little help. A gentle push. Training. Motivation.”

“I’d like to take a few classes,” I said. “I used to take classes when I lived with my girlfriend Caroline. She and I took them together.”

“The beauty part is,” he said, “this guy I have in mind—it’s a one-shot deal. One class is all it takes. He’s a master at what he does, like some kind of magician. One class and you come back to the set and do what needs to be done. We won’t have to interrupt production, just juggle the schedule a little. I’ll call the guy for you and set the whole thing up.”

My heart sank. “How much is that going to set me back?”

“I’ll write it into the budget.” Wattles zoomed around a sharp curve. The MG spit and kept going. “I’ll level with you. I already set it up. I called before we left the set.”

“Gosh,” I said. “That’s so generous. I don’t know to repay you.”

“Just go to the class tomorrow, then come back on set the next day and prove me right. I meant what I said about you setting the tone for the picture.”

He asked where he could drop me. I was embarrassed for him to see where I lived, in one of the crappy bungalows at the Flamingo Gardens. I told him to leave me half a mile away, I said I wanted to walk, clear my head. He said he couldn’t imagine that hot wind clearing anyone’s head.

As I got out he gave me the acting coach’s card. He told me to be there tomorrow at ten, and I said I would.

I’d been having nightmares, on and off, since the war. But that night was the worst. Sometimes I was in Hollywood, sometimes in Okinawa. Sometimes the hammerhead shark face of Harry Wattles turned into the fat blubbery puss of Lieutenant Mather. I dreamed that Mather was ordering me to kill someone. Only this time the victim was Iris Morell and not the little old Japanese lady that Mather shot. The little old Japanese lady appeared in another dream. Directing a picture. Wattles, Iris, Bettina, Jimmy, and I were all starring together. This was a nicer dream, or it would have been if half the old lady’s head wasn’t half torn away, like it was on that day I’d been trying to forget.

I woke up with a headache, as if I’d been drinking all night, though I hadn’t touched a drop. I wanted to be clear.

By the time I found the school, the crisp business card that Wattles gave me was gray with fingerprints and creased by all my taking it out and looking at it and putting it back in my pocket, as if I couldn’t remember the few words in simple black type.

Professor Gaston Landru. A Santa Monica address.

There wasn’t even a phone number. That’s how classy the operation was. You had to know someone special to find out.

4130 Eucalyptus was a three-story office building, a pointed roof and a tower like a medieval castle. Peeling yellowed white plaster. I was half an hour early. I drove around the block. Not that I could afford the gas, but I couldn’t sit still.

The classroom was up a few flights that reeked of cheap-carpet mildew. The office—the school, I should say—looked like the place where a seedy PI or loser lawyer would work, in a picture like Not Guilty! On the door a sign in flaking black letters said, MAITRE G. LANDRU.

I knocked. No one answered. I pushed open the door to find a dozen men and women—mostly young, attractive—sitting in a circle of folding chairs. It looked like the AA meeting that Caroline dragged me to before she walked out. The last one of those I went to. I told her, it wasn’t for me.

Landru’s students turned around and gave me the hairy eyeball. I had the feeling they were expecting me. And then an even crazier feeling that they were actors paid to play actors learning how to act. It wasn’t a useful thought. It wasn’t going to help me get the most from the class.

I nodded and smiled and shook it off and focused on Professor Landru.

Hello, Central Casting? Can you get me an arty French guy? Slight, quick, pencil moustache, little goatee, paisley ascot. Even a beret. But even with all those clothes on, he was what they call a cool customer. The only one not sweating.

His thick French accent felt put-on. One of those guys, you wake him up in the middle of the night, and he speaks the king’s Brooklyn English.

In fact as he started talking—and talking and talking—the accent migrated from the Left Bank of the Seine to the Bronx River Parkway. He sounded like a friend of my dad’s. And why was I taking lessons from a guy who couldn’t even keep up an accent? Then I remembered. He wasn’t an accent coach. He taught people how to kill.

“Take zat chair,” said Professor Landru. I sat between a red-haired girl in a yellow dress and a young guy in jeans and a denim jacket. Neither of them looked at me. It was like they were afraid to.

The professor introduced himself. Then he basically ran through every film we’d ever heard of and a lot we hadn’t, every famous and obscure picture made in the last thirty years. That is, every picture that featured a homicide.

This strangling, that poisoning, that shooting. He boasted about his work. The machine guns that gangsters would never have picked up without his coaching! That woman pushed out the window. “Defenestration,” he said. “The defenestration of Miss…” He mentioned an actress whose name made everyone gasp. That was early in her career, but there were many actors—he listed a dozen major stars—who’d required his coaching.

“What would we make films about if there were no murders?” He gave a little giggle. “But you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t understand that most human beings don’t want to murder other human beings. It’s not as natural as we might think. It… goes against the grain.”

I sure didn’t think it was natural. That’s why I was there. The other students were all nodding. And scribbling in their notebooks.

“It’s something that must be learned,” Frenchie said. For personal reasons he preferred not to discuss, this had become his specialty.

Today we would run through a series of exercises designed to tap into certain feelings. We will draw on our own experience and recall sense memories we’d forgotten or never knew we had…

It was always easier to demonstrate than describe. The professor asked for two volunteers. Two girls waved their hands in his faces. Both had ponytails and smart little secretary dresses.

“You’re not sisters, are you?” he said.

“No sir,” they said. “We never met before.”

“Good. I want you to play sisters. Fiendishly jealous since childhood. And now you are both in love with the same man. One of you”—he pointed at one, at random—“is going to strangle the other.”

You could see why these dames needed lessons. The victim bugged her eyes and shrieked. The killer sister puffed herself up like a robin whose worm the blue jay has stolen.

Landru stopped them and said to the killer girl, “You do have a sister, don’t you?”

“Sure. How do you know?”

“I have my little ways. Now I want you to remember back to when you were a little girl, and your sister first came into the house. Back to when you first realized your parents loved her more than you. Back to when you found out they’d given her your crib, your stroller, your toys—”

“How did you know about that?” She looked as if she’d caught the professor reading her diary.

“Oh please,” he said. “Acting requires being something of a mind reader, don’t you think?”

I guess the girl must have thought so. The other “sister” must have, too. I saw a funny look in her eyes. Like she was actually frightened.

“Concentrate,” said Professor Landru. “Remember. Put yourself back in that girl’s shoes. That little girl who was you.” He paused. “Now play the scene again.”

This time the killer sister flew across the room like a cat and dug her claws into the other sister’s neck. It went on for quite a while before we realized what was happening. Then two guys got up and dragged one girl off the other, who was yelling with real terror.

When things settled down, when the actresses stopped hyperventilating, and our hearts stopped slamming around, Professor Landru said, “Of course an important part of the training is learning to keep things under control. Oh, and by the way… The scene you’re playing doesn’t have to correspond directly to a situation in life. You needn’t have wanted to kill your mother to play a son who murders mom for the inheritance. All that matters is the emotion. Shall we try another scene?”

This time it was harder getting volunteers. We’d seen what his method could do, and no one was so eager to stand up and kill or be killed. Almost kill or be killed. Still, it was school. Harry Wattles had paid my tuition. The others had probably paid their own way, and they were damned if a little squeamishness about murder was going to keep them from getting their money’s worth.

He called up two women and a man. He told them the man was going to poison his sisters because they wouldn’t let him marry the only woman he’d ever loved. They’d driven him into this corner from which he could only fight his way out. Fight to the death.

The actor who stepped up was the guy in jeans who’d been sitting next to me.

“Take a good look at this fellow,” said the professor. “You’re looking at a future star. The face of an angel grafted onto the soul of a street criminal.”

The rest of us checked him out. He wasn’t any better looking than half the guys in Hollywood. By now a lot of us were wishing he was the one getting murdered.

Professor Landru sat them down at a table, the man facing the two women. The girls had their backs to us.

The professor said, “Young man, was there ever a time in your life when you felt totally cornered? Completely trapped? With no hope of escape?”

The guy gave him a long look.

“Jesus Christ have I,” he said.

“This is then,” said Professor Landru. “Those women are trapping you. And there’s only one way they’ll let you go. This is their tea. This is the poison. Did I mention you’re a doctor? No one will ever find out, it’s the perfect crime. You just have to do it.”

I don’t know what I picked up on first. Some new tension in the women’s shoulders, the look on the guy’s face. That innocent kid in denim wanting them to die so he could get out of that corner. It was so real we couldn’t look. Everyone stared at the floor.

Landru said, “We don’t need to see the girls turn blue to know that our experiment has worked… Before we go any further, there’s another lesson, another part of the training I call ‘the wait.’ It’s not always in the script. As you know there are plenty of films in which the killer only gets caught in the last scene. But eventually he does get caught. Your childish film board insists.

“So there comes a moment after you have committed the crime, the moment I call ‘the wait.’ Either you will come to your senses and sink down into the nearest chair and wait for the cops to come. Or you will run till they catch you—and then wait to see what happens next. In both cases, the wait is the same. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later. And it takes practice. Because unless you can imagine the crime, as we’ve been doing today, you cannot imagine the guilt, or the expectation of punishment, the sorrow or the relief.

“Let’s start with the last gentleman. You committed the perfect crime. But somehow the cops found out, and they’re coming to get you. Slump in that chair across from your dead sisters and contemplate the enormity of what you’ve done and what lies ahead in the future.”

The actor slid down in the chair. It seemed to me I could see the history of Cain and Abel and of every crime that ever happened playing over his face. I was thinking about Okinawa—

“Thank you,” said Professor Landru. “And now before we stop, let’s do one more scene.”

I knew he was going to call on me. I knew it as well as I knew anything that ever happened. I was nervous, I won’t lie. But I thought, That’s what I’m here for. That’s why Harry Wattles is paying, so I can go back there tomorrow and pretend to kill Iris Morell and set the tone for the picture. And maybe there will be some producer somewhere who will see me and sit up in his chair and say, “Who’s his agent? Chuck? Get Chuck on the phone!”

I could practically hear the producer’s voice as I walked to the front. The professor asked a girl to come up, a girl who looked so much like Iris that I had to blink twice to make sure. That was a coincidence. But it made sense, in a way. Maybe Wattles had given the professor a heads-up about the dame I had to finish off.

“All right,” said the professor. “The two of you stand facing each other. A few feet apart.”

The girl and I looked at each other. I was going to fail. I couldn’t even pretend to hurt this innocent stranger.

“Who is she?” he asked me. “And why do you want to kill her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the problem.” I couldn’t kill a pretty blonde. I couldn’t even fake it.

“All right,” he said. “Take a little journey with me. I’m seeing a jungle scene; I’m seeing a little redheaded guy in a uniform. Short and fat and pasty. I’m seeing him with his mouth wide open, yelling, shouting, shaming people, insulting them, a regular bully. Concentrate.

“Now look at her. At the girl! It’s not her you’re seeing. When you look at her, you’re seeing him. Now tell us how you feel.”

“Dizzy,” I said. It was like the sound of his voice had hypnotic powers.

As I looked at the girl who looked like Iris, her face sort of melted away, and in its place was the face of Lieutenant Mather. Just like the professor said. I watched him yelling and shouting and bullying everybody—especially me. I saw him getting ready to shoot that old woman in the head. I realized, This time I could save her…

I dimly heard the professor’s voice, asking, “How you feel?”

I said, “I want to kill him.”

“Do it,” said the professor.

I lunged at the figure in front of me. I put my hands around his neck and squeezed.

The next thing I knew, they were pulling me back.

“All right, it’s done,” said Professor Landru. “You’ve killed her. You’re guilty. Now wait.”

The professor pushed a chair over to me, and I sat down and waited to be taken away to a trial, life in prison, execution. It didn’t matter. I’d done what I had to do. What I wanted to do. What I should have done in Okinawa.

I heard a guy say, “Are you okay?” But he wasn’t asking me. The girl I’d played the scene with—the one who looked like Iris—was rubbing her neck and glaring at me as if I’d actually tried to kill her.

“Hey, I got marks on my neck!” she said. “What the hell am I going to tell my boyfriend?”

“Tell him you played a scene with a real actor,” said Professor Landru.

I stood and faced the rest of the class, and they burst into applause.

“Bravo,” said Professor Landru. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that tomorrow you can go back on the set and do what has to be done.”

Maybe you would have thought I’d have bad dreams that night. But I slept like a baby. I woke up feeling terrific.

Walking back onto Harry Wattles’s set, I felt like a new man. Wattles asked how I liked Landru’s class. I said it changed my life. I couldn’t thank him enough.

He said, “Don’t thank me. When I’m watching the dailies, and I see you doing what I know you can do, and the picture takes off from there… that will be thanks enough.”

Just like yesterday, we set up the scene. Iris kissed Jimmy good night. I waited for her in the bedroom. She was back into her part again, this time she didn’t seem nervous. She’d fooled herself into forgetting me. She was an actress, acting.

I sneaked up behind her. I turned her around. She looked up into my eyes. I saw her face, and her face disappeared, and I saw Lieutenant Mather.

I lunged at her. I grabbed her throat and shook her. I squeezed till I felt something crack, and I kept on squeezing. I heard screaming and shouting, but I dragged Lieutenant Mather over to a corner of the set and kept squeezing until he was heavy in my arms, and I put him on the ground.

I looked at the body on the floor. It wasn’t Lieutenant Mather. It was Iris Morell. Everyone was running around and yelling. Harry Wattles came over.

“What have you done, you crazy son of a bitch? What the hell have you done?”

I kept thinking, He’s acting.

“She’s dead,” said Wattles. “Can’t you see that? You’ve killed her, you maniac!”

“Dead?” I said.

“Dead,” he repeated. “You strangled her, you fool!”

I had one of those moments of clarity.

Wattles had set me up. He’d sent me to Professor Landru’s. He’d sensed something about me, something dark and desperate. He knew that I could kill—that I wanted to kill, that I could kill with pleasure—if someone pushed the right buttons and pulled out all the right stops.

But what could I do? I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t blame acting class. It was me who’d killed her, all these people saw me do it. It was my fault. I was guilty. I’d just been so goddamn desperate.

There was only one thing to do. I sat down and waited.