The X-Rated Corpse Page 10

  There was a brief silence in that exquisite office. A place that was no place for a policeman worth his honest sweat. And eyes.

  "She must have been quite a woman," I said. "I wish I had known her better. I never knew anyone so easy to remember."

  "She was, man. She was. And she is. She is."

  There was another silence that might have gotten painful. I broke it because I had to. The funeral was over and tears don't help.

  "What happens now, Lieutenant Ogilvie?"

  "What do you want to happen, Mr. Noon?"

  "Justice, maybe. If there really is any."

  "Oh, that." Ogilvie murmured a low sigh. "Those kids will make their statements, thanks to being told if they cooperate by telling the truth, it will lighten their sentences. The case against B.Z. will take on a different color. A little less bluer, a little nicer for the Violet Paris Fan Clubs all over the world. Of course, B.Z. will stick to his guns. Claim our lady was crazy about him and all but—he may have to change that a little. Especially when the police psychiatrists report that he's just about a hair this side of senility. Which he is. Bad for this town, maybe. Bad for the glamour image. But Truth will Out. No matter what. And it won't mean a thing next week. Or a year from now. People will still go to the movies and dream their dreams. I oughta know. I had a pip of a dream once. Now, didn't I?"

  "There's never any harm in dreaming, Ogilvie," I said.

  "That's no lie." His sigh grew louder. "Hey, you still have to stick around, you know. We can't have you going back to New York. Not just yet. Sorry, man, but you're It. You're indispensable to The People versus Zangdorfer."

  "I know I am," I admitted, "and I wish I wasn't."

  Ogilvie changed the subject, all on his own. His tone was huskier.

  "God, I'm glad about that film, Ed. Real glad, man."

  "I know you are, Oliver."

  "Just makes all the difference in the world there is. Knowing she's not going to be shamed from now on. Like I thought she'd be. Like I never wanted her to be. She always deserved more than that."

  There wasn't anything to add to that. So I didn't try.

  Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie had enough memories for the both of us. Enough maybe to gladden a lifetime of blindness.

  We both sat in that office for a long time, quietly yielding to the spirit of a dead movie queen. A vivid symbol of something that was pretty special and important to us. In a way that couldn't be translated into words. Into speeches or songs.

  The Indifferent Drummer.

  Widows Walk Away.

  Gentry's Woman.

  Those explained far better what Violet Paris had been, and what Violet Paris had had going for her. Ogilvie and I couldn't.

  Daughter Of The Sands and Flame Over Saigon, (if it ever was released unfinished) wouldn't change anything.

  They couldn't, either.

  There never can be any proper, true explanation when someone is special. Unique. One of a kind.

  Any kind.

  The lady had been the genuine article. A non-pareil.

  Violet Paris would just never die.

  Not for Ogilvie.

  Not for me. Not for Richard X. Fairman.

  Not for millions of movie-goers.

  It was that simple.

  Immortality was her final lot.

  Dead, she was not.

  Dead, she would never be.

  Fade-Out on a Legend

  I didn't catch up with Richard X. Fairman until Friday of the same week. Maybe he'd gone into hiding but he didn't come around to the Hotel Dunlap looking for me. I wondered about that, figuring he had an awful lot of talking to do. Finally, I got the idea and put in a tracer call to his hotel. One thing led to another and at last I had a location where he might be.

  The Lantern, which proved to be a gin joint-night club combination about three blocks away from his hotel. A tourist trap.

  I caught up with him at a corner booth, dimly lit with old fashioned lamppost decor. He was drowning himself in a bottle of champagne. For a lad with the sort of heart he was supposed to own, it wasn't exactly a recommended cure for what ailed him. When I told him as much, he shook his handsome head, all golden and tousled and waved me off with an imperiously regal hand. "Go away, Noon. This is a private wake. Leave me alone."

  I'd never seen him out of formal clothes. In his sporty blue blazer and open-throat beige shirt with matching fluff of silk scarf, he looked richer than ever. Money became him far better than mostly anybody else I'd ever seen. He was born to the purple.

  "You saw this in a movie," I said, not going away and taking the far corner of the cozy booth. We were ten feet from the imitation band combo rendering a sad version of One For My Baby. "Bet you asked them to play that and everything."

  A pretty safe bet. The Lantern had about ten people in it, all eating and drinking. There was no one on the small dance floor.

  He raised his face up from the tall goblet of champagne and eyed me owlishly. His bronzed features were softened, made dull by the hootch he'd been swilling like it was water. Robert Redford sans tan.

  "I said go away. Case closed. Over and out. Okay?"

  "It's not okay if you drink yourself into a coffin. Or is your bad ticker another figment of your imagination?"

  I might have slapped him. His head jerked and he glared.

  "Some joke. Some figment. You want to see my doctor's certificate? Geez—how suspicious can a guy in your racket get?"

  "Plenty suspicious. Come on, Richard. Talk to me."

  "Don't call me that. The Senator always calls me that. I hate the Senator. You want to sit here, you don't call me Richard."

  "Rick, then. And I'm sorry."

  "About what? Me or her or everything?"

  "Make it everything." I sighed, studying him. It was amazing how his liquor consumption hadn't really affected his speech. It had slowed him down, naturally, those quick-trigger reflexes, but there was no blur or slur to his syllables. Amazing also was his final reaction to the Violet Paris business. Ogilvie would never have sought refuge in the grape. And nobody had a better excuse than Ogilvie.

  Richard X. Fairman filled his empty goblet with an unsteady hand.

  "Suppose you pass out again?" I said. "Just asking."

  "I've got my glycerines." He chuckled, suddenly. Like a little boy conniving something. "S'long as you're here, have one on me. You can take me home if I fall on my face. Okay?"

  "No way. I'm no drunk-babying service. Get yourself another boy. Or was it a glycerine pill you were offering me instead of a drink?"

  "Both." He giggled, shaking his head. "Oh, damn, damn, damn."

  "Doesn't work, does it?" The sound of him was a groan.

  "No," he admitted unhappily. "The more I put into me the more I see her. Oh, Christ. Why doesn't she let up on me?"

  "Let up on yourself, Rick. It's over. Ended. Done. I hate to be corny but this wouldn't exactly make her happy, either."

  "Yeah. You said it. S'true. I'm lousing up her beautiful memory. But, Noon—let me tell you—" Suddenly, he was guarded, looking around as if he were afraid someone might hear us. When his face got back to me, there was a wild light in each blue eye. "Something I didn't tell you. The last time—you know? That black cop found out. They told him. The jeweler's. About the dagger. The way I had it fixed up for her birthday. Geezis—I shoulda told you. But I couldn't—you know? "

  "I know. These things happen. Stop knocking yourself out. It wasn't your hand that drove—" I shut my mouth. Nothing was going to help him. Not even that kind of talk. "Come on, Rick. Get your hat and let's hit the street. This saloon air is bad for a couple of outdoor types like us. We can take a stroll and talk some more."

  "My fault. All my fault."

  "Sure."

  "If I hadn't made that blade for real—"

  "I know, I know."

  "—she'd still be alive—right now—this minute—"

  The champagne had hit him with the speed of a pile-driver, all of a sud
den. He was swaying, mumbling, as I helped him to his feet. His hat was a snappy blue velour with a feather in the band. His tab was about twelve bucks. I paid for it without a murmur. I couldn't see myself fishing out his wallet and emptying it in a public place. Besides, a guy with a bad heart had some breaks coming to him.

  Even if it's only free champagne.

  When we made it out to the sidewalk, there was a fine mantle of darkness over the city. The far-off neons were a gleaming string of pearls. The loud hum in the heavens was a passing jetliner. Going East.

  Richard X. Fairman leaned on my arm. He was heavy.

  Rich, drunk and heavy.

  A forlorn loser in the game called Violet Paris.

  I took him by the hand. Maybe I was a loser, too.

  "Come on, Rick. I'll take you home," I said.

  We walked down the long street together, toward his hotel.

  The night sky was filled with millions of stars.

  The real kind.

  All bright and twinkling and icily permanent.

  Stars you could never ever turn off.

  Like you can with a movie projector.

  Stars that would always be there, always remain, whether daylight ever came again or not. Fixed wonders in an eternal canvas of space.

  In that big movie show in the sky.

  Where there are no such people as Violet Paris. Or Good and Bad.

  Or pictures like Deep Throat.

  The Dark can be light enough.

  "You know, don't you, you sonofabitch?" Richard X. Fairman whispered hoarsely as we maneuvered unsteadily along the illuminated sidewalk. He was oblivious of curious passersby, of everybody, and everything but what was on his mind. Eating away like some rotten cancer.

  "Yeah, Rick. I know." It had been there from the start. The Truth.

  "Does it change things for you, Ed? The way it's been doing to me? It's got me half out of my noodle. I can't stand it."

  "Forget it. It's not the world you made. It's nobody's world. It's just the way things are. Nobody can change it. Not ever."

  "But why?" he whined, almost softly, like a heart-broken child. "Why would she do anything like that? Her—it's so—"

  I held his elbow firmly, piloting him along, talking to him as I would that heart-broken child. It wasn't easy killing a dream.

  "Rick, Ogilvie didn't want to see it, either. As blind as he is. Because he loved her once, too. And you didn't want to see it because it broke up your lovely memory of her. And I didn't see it because nobody talked about it much and B.Z. lied to me because of his old man's pride. But there it was all the time and it wouldn't go away. I'm just as much responsible as anybody, too. I turned her down and made her take the easy way out. The only way left to her."

  "That doesn't justify it," Richard X. Fairman said with sudden anger, explosive hauteur that was the Senator's son talking, not the man who had been in love with a beautiful movie star.

  "Doesn't it?" I was sadder about it than he would ever know. "Try to put yourself in her place. She worked hard to get what she had. The career, the Oscars, the glory. She was a devoted, dedicated actress. And all at once, out of the Past, an old benefactor is trying to pull the rug out from under her fabulous hard-earned world with some dirty movie. And she appeals to a private detective and he turns her down. Please remember the woman we're talking about and what her track record was. Violet Paris, Number One in Everything but a loser at Love and maybe, Sex, too. She loved a black man, once, really loved him, and he walked out on her due to studio pressure. Then she met Prince Charming and he turns out to have such a bad heart he practically has no life insurance policy. So what does a Violet Paris do? An old fool wants to recapture his youth with her. That's the price she has to pay to get the film back or at the very least, keep it out of circulation so it won't ruin her. What price character and sweetness and guts? Hell, if this was a movie plot, the heroine would do the very same thing. She'd settle for sleeping with the old fool until she could think of another way out. One more turn in the sack wasn't going to ruin the heart and soul of Violet Paris. She was too strong for that. I only met her once, but there was enough steel in that woman for ten battleships. I only made her cry because she was so damn unhappy about knowing she would do what she had to do."

  Fairman muttered a half-sob. A low cry of protest.

  "No matter what you tell me—it wasn't nice—I knew they found her in the nude that night. Naked as a jaybird. Nobody talked about it. And all I kept asking myself was—how could she be naked when the old guy stabbed her unless—" He couldn't say it. I didn't, either.

  "That was the tip-off," I agreed. "B.Z. didn't rip the clothes off her. There was no mention of blood on clothing or anything. She was knifed when she was in the complete nude. Which had to mean when she phoned B.Z. to come and see her after I left her that night, she was ready to make the all-out sacrifice. There's no other possible explanation for the condition she was found in. Naturally, when B.Z. confessed to me, he wasn't about to tell me why Violet had to be killed. As senile as he is, he wouldn't admit a thing like that on his deathbed."

  "The old bastard," said Richard X. Fairman. "I hope he rots."

  "He couldn't get it up and Violet made the classic mistake. Maybe B.Z. was able to cut the mustard once with Pearl Ellison when they made their lousy little movie, but the old man must have been in awe of Violet. To have her suddenly yield to his horny proposition and then be unable to follow through—well, think about it. I have."

  Richard X. Fairman halted, craning his handsome, flushed face in my direction. He gripped my wrist in a vise, almost cruelly.

  "Whadda yah mean—classic mistake?"

  "She laughed at Bennett Zangdorfer," I said.

  He thought about it and shuddered. It almost sobered him up. But not altogether. And the agony and the memory still etched his Redford face in savage, unhappy lines. He would never be more miserable.

  "Geezis," he moaned. "Geezis, Geezis, Geezis——"

  We walked the rest of the distance back to his hotel.

  The stars, the only true ones, followed us all the way.

  I knew he was feeling terrible and I also knew that his life expectancy was maybe just a little bit better than a combat infantryman's in far-off Vietnam.

  But he would live.

  Violet Paris wouldn't.

  Not to ever make love again.

  Or any more movies.

  Regardless of the rating.

  Posthumously Yours

  Flying back to New York, a full month later, on a Jumbo Jet, with the whole thing behind me, and Bennett Zangdorfer safely in the hands of high-priced headshrinkers and Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie and Richard X. Fairman relegated to ships-that-pass-in-the-night status, I had it all come back to me. The unexpected way. The careless, unplanned route.

  The whole messy case came at me in a rush of memory. And regret. Not the kind that had anything to do with the jailing of Homer Danbury and his poor pigeon, Pearl Ellison, either. As Kane had succinctly remarked—they got exactly what was coming to them. A year behind bars, with time off for good behavior. That is, if they had any left in them at all.

  No, that wasn't it.

  When you're about forty thousand feet above the wide good earth, how else can a memory catch up with you if she can't do it in person? If she can't sit down next to you and hold your hand.

  Flight 545 ran a film for the long air trip back to the big city. I couldn't have ducked it if I had wanted to. I was trapped.

  Somehow, I didn't want to.

  The film was Widows Walk Away starring Violet Paris.

  Coronet had re-issued it to cash in on all the publicity.

  Naturally.

  "Mrs. Hayes. Please—"

  "No, General Peabody. On the contrary. You please me. I want you to tell me exactly, this very second, without any of your protocol blather, your red tape nonsense, no, and none of—"

  It was easy to lose yourself in her magic, again.

  Some
thing like falling in love.

  Maybe that's why it feels so good.

  Watching a great movie, that is. With a superstar.

  I don't really know.

  And that is the true wonder of the whole thing.

  Because it can happen, over and over again, that magic.

  Nothing can kill a great movie.

  Or the magic.

  ENDNOTES

  Death at Twenty One

  * Modus operandi.