Shoot It Again, Sam Read online

  Down in a world of screaming, exploding, terrifying darkness.

  Someone, something—had lowered the boom on me.

  ". . . ohhhh! That will make him mad!"

  Christian Rub as Geppetto in

  Pinocchio. (1939)

  HOSPITAL

  □ When I woke up, there was no feeling of pain, no sense of cramped bones or flesh, nor even a sensation of loss. I was quite all right, in the head and in the body. In fact, I wasn't at all surprised to find myself in a hospital cot. For that is what it had to be. The room was very small, very white and there was a hum of nothingness in the air. An all quiet on the world front. I stared down at the white sheets creeping up to a neat fold at my chest. I was in pale brown pajamas, there was a small table with a beaker glass of water resting in the middle, no telephone and one solitary chair by my cot. There was no picture or chart or anything at all to break the monotonous harmony of cream-painted walls. I was alone in a little room with no window. I had no sense of time or trouble. A great peace had settled over me. I might have been drugged, I might not have been. It was hard to tell. At that moment in the supernally cozy order of things, I had no memory at all. No recall. I didn't know from a train, Dan Davis, an opening casket, a frightened conductor. I didn't know from anything. A great peace and lethargy had wrapped me and all my senses in yard upon yard of desensitization.

  It could have been Wednesday, it could have been Friday. I had no way of knowing. No way of caring, actually. I had lost more than all track of time. Though I didn't know that yet.

  Something had gone wrong in the night.

  Something important, very important, but I was in no position to care. I was lying peacefully in bed. My mind was somehow a total blank. The parade had passed me by and I was too well-rested to even wonder about the far-off, retreating persistence of the drums fading into my subconscious. It didn't even seem to disturb me that I was in a hospital and that there just might be something very wrong with me. And in that.

  I stared up at the ceiling.

  It was also cream-colored and harmoniously dull.

  Nothing happened in my brain.

  I wasn't thinking. I was just staring.

  "Well, hello," a smooth, unhurried voice said. "Up and about, are we? Good. You and I have a lot in common."

  My eyes came down from the ceiling. Very slowly.

  It didn't surprise me that the single chair in the room was now filled. From my bedside, loomed a man. Head and shoulders, white coat like a smock, pince-nez glasses twinkling above a bland, unwrinkled face which had all the flexibility of unmade dough. I blinked a little. Not because I hadn't heard him come into the room but because he was a dead ringer for Peter Lorre.

  Even the voice, an almost continental murmur of good will, shadowy purpose and suggestive tones, filled out the deception to a T. Or an M, to keep the allusion straight.

  "You look like Peter Lorre," I said.

  "Do I?" The glasses twinkled some more. It was difficult to see his eyes. "Everybody tells me that. I'm pleased. Especially when you say it. Everybody knows what a great authority you are on Hollywood and old movies."

  "They do?"

  "Certainly. Which is why I'm happy we'll have so much time together to talk. In fact, I'm overjoyed you are here. I want to talk about old movies with you. One in particular."

  "Which one?"

  He leaned closer to the bed. The Lorre face stood out in stark relief, as if challenging me to spot the cheek-putty, greasepaint and makeup touches that made it the face of one of the most effective menaces in the history of the screen. I stared back at him, still calm, still a robot. Still talking like one, too.

  "Morocco," he said. "You must remember that one."

  I did.

  "Von Sternberg," I said. "His masterpiece. Gary Cooper, Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou—the French Foreign Legion—about nineteen thirty . . ."

  "Good, good!" Lorre's face glowed. "You see? All they say about you is true. Who else would remember such an obscure gem from so long ago? Really, this promises to be a treat—"

  "For you or me?" I asked, without a trace of sarcasm. At least I couldn't hear any in my own voice.

  "For both of us, of course. What better way for two movie buffs who have to spend some time together than the discussion of old, enjoyable movies?"

  There was a clue in that, somewhere. I fought to find it, but not too hard. As I said, I was feeling too good.

  "We have to spend a lot of time together?"

  "Yes. Hospitals can be a dreadful bore, you know. So I want to make your stay as pleasant and painless as possible."

  "I see. And what's wrong with me?"

  He smiled, the Lorre smile. Half-knowing, half-apologetic.

  "It has a rather long name—skopophobia. Do you know what that is?"

  I shook my head. Rather dumbly, I suppose.

  "A fear," he said, mildly enough. "Specifically, a fear of spies. Does that mean anything to you?"

  I told him it didn't. It was news to me and all I could wonder was how such a phobia could evidence itself in a man who earned his living as an investigator and sort of an unofficial spy.

  "That's good," I laughed, when he talked on smoothly about me seeing a spy in every corner, even when I went to the bathroom and how I had run screaming down Times Square in the middle of the day, telling everybody how someone was following me, watching me. "Really, good. You sure you got the right man? I feel fine."

  His nod was long, slow and very sad.

  "I'm sorry. It's true."

  "All of it?"

  "All of it."

  "I see."

  Like the blind man, of course, I didn't. I stared up at the ceiling again. I wasn't worried or confused by his news. Simply skeptical. And I wanted to block out his Peter Lorre image while I tried to think. But I couldn't. Somehow, it was too much of an effort and not worth the bother.

  But some habits are hard to break, I guess. I asked all of the shop questions.

  "When did this happen to me?"

  "Two days ago. We gave you a sedative. You have been sleeping most of the time. It was necessary. You were debilitating all of your energies in useless running and hiding and dodging people."

  "Where am I now?"

  "Richmond Sanitarium. We are rather exclusive and very much out of the way." He chuckled in his throat. "In case you are wondering exactly where you are—Richmond is some thirteen miles outside of New York. Upstate. All you need to know for now."

  Something wasn't quite right about that statement, I knew, but I didn't argue about it or pursue the vague bee it sent buzzing around in my head. Instead, I asked another question.

  "How did I get here?"

  "You were arrested by the police for creating a disturbance in the street. Then a Captain Michael Monks intervened and managed to have you routed to here instead of Bellevue."

  That seemed logical. Mike was my oldest friend— he would have been concerned, all right—but the bee in my brain started to buzz even louder. I pulled my eyes down from the cream of the ceiling and looked directly at the doctor who was the spitting image of a dead movie star.

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  "I am Dr. Hilton."

  "And this is your hotel—" I sighed. "How long will it take you to cure me of this—what did you call it—?"

  "Skopophobia. Fear of spies."

  "Sounds like a terrible disease. How long?"

  "Don't trouble yourself about that. Let's talk about that old movie—Morocco."

  I sat up a bit higher on my pillow and pinned him with a longer look. His pince-nez twinkled like stars. Even in a windowless room. I couldn't tell where the light came from.

  "What's my name, Dr. Hilton?"

  "I beg your pardon."

  "Come on. It's a simple enough question. What's your patient's name? Who are you talking to?"

  He smiled at that and even the way his lips pulled back to show small, uneven, pointed little teeth was all Lorre, back from the g
raveyard. His voice floated out at me. Silky, smooth and layered over with pints and quarts of banana oil.

  "Now, I also see that your reputation for glib talk and fast reflexes is not altogether fictional," he shook his head, amused, and probed with one hand at the glasses on his nose. "All right. I'll play the game with you. You are Mr. Spade. Sam Spade to be exact. The very greatest name in the field of private investigation."

  He laughed some more.

  And I laughed.

  And the horror of it was that I had no reason to doubt him. Buzzing bees and all. If he was Peter Lorre, then why in God's name, shouldn't I be Sam Spade? That made it perfect.

  And the pity of it was, I suddenly and very really and truly didn't know who I was.

  That's the genuine terror of losing your marbles.

  It makes all things possible.

  "Sam Spade," I said, grinning at Dr. Hilton. "Sure, why not? Who the hell else could I be?"

  ". . . things go round and round up here too—sometimes."

  Sir Guy Standing as the C.O. in The Eagle And The Hawk. (1933)

  DREAM

  □ I remained in that hospital room I don't know how long. I have no memory of ever leaving the bed. Several times, Dr. Hilton injected something in my arm. I slept most of the time. I have no recollection of doing any of the necessary things that people have to do to keep the body going. Like eating food, drinking water, or going to the john. I supposed it must have worked out, somehow. All I know is I slept a lot, had many a chin-chin with Dr. Hilton sitting at bedside and it was all about movies, old stars and even the present state of the silver screen which we both seemed to agree was disastrous. I told him how I couldn't see how Dustin Hoffman and Elliot Gould remotely resembled movie stars and he was just as vehement about Raquel Welch, Candice Bergen and Mia Farrow. All in all, we got along fine. I don't remember seeing any other people during my stay at Richmond though at one interval when Dr. Hilton walked in from the corridor outside my sick room, he paused with the door open and I could see him in deep conclave with a gaunt, angular, stooped man also in a doctor's white monkey suit. Behind them, was a rather well-stacked blonde in a nurse's uniform. Since both the new doctor and the nurse could easily have passed for Boris Karloff and Jean Harlow, I kept my mouth shut and stared at the ceiling again. As blank as my mind was, I had a faint impression it wouldn't pay to tell Dr. Hilton I was seeing stars wherever I turned.

  Anyway, whoever and whatever those apparitions were, I was still feeling no pain. In fact, I was euphoric. Nothing seemed to bother me at all. And Peter Lorre Hilton was a fiend for talking about that favorite movie of his—Morocco.

  As we chewed on the memorable bits from Sternberg's classic of the '30's, even I was amazed by how much of it I remembered. What Dr. Hilton remembered was nothing short of extraordinary.

  ". . . so marvelous an evocation, Sam. The sets, the writing, the casting and the entire mystique of the film. A great effort all around. No doubt of it. The marvelous pauses, no hurry with the lines, the pieces of business. Remember the fat conductor with his coat off, collar awry, the overhead fan beating down, leaning over the balcony? The entrepreneur's line of dialogue about his customers: '. . . they'll have you believe that every private is a Russian count or playboy. Don't you believe it . . .' And that ship's captain, talking with Menjou about Marlene—beautiful, beautiful."

  "Yes," I said, remembering.

  I had a sudden image, as clear as crystal. The last scene. Fade in on the company banner, flapping in the desert morning wind, the military drums start beating with a marvelously flat cadence and the men line up. Then the camp followers, the pitiful women, start throwing sacks over their shoulders as the men move out. Marlene rushes to the arch, looking for Cooper, doesn't find him and then is startled with the sight of the Rear Guard moving up. Fighting the sand, pulling the goats. . . .

  A lump raised in my throat. Yes, I remembered. All of it. The perfect color, the sense of time and place. The utter feel of the scene. Sternberg, triumphant.

  ". . . like a Rembrandt, he was," Hilton carried on, his voice hushed, reverential. "Remember Menjou's line, after Marlene leaves the dinner party? Turning to his guests, he says, 'You see, I love her. I would do anything to make her happy.' And Cooper! In the scene before the last, saying to Dietrich, 'We move out tomorrow morning. You could come down to see us off' Then he looks at her almost pleadingly, gulping, 'Will you . . . ?' Ah, Sam, Sam. Those were movies they made in those days!"

  "Yes," I said, remembering again.

  The opening scene of the film. The Arab trying to pull his balky mule off the road. The troops walking under those lattice-like slats (better than glorious Technicolor!), then the Halt and Gary C. looking up at the veiled girl who pulls aside, momentarily, the veil, to show the Ace her face. And those Arab girls— just hanging around, mooning, even after Cooper's declaration of love for Marlene.

  Dr. Hilton was still wrapped up in his own dream.

  ". . . and Menjou giving Dietrich that gorgeous bracelet and she, saying: 'I can't accept this. It's too expensive' Remember his comeback, Sam? 'Anything of less value would be unworthy of you.' "

  "Yes," I said. "I remember that, too."

  "Do you recall the gruff sergeant? That fine character actor whose name eludes me—after Cooper goes with the Captain to get the machine gun nest—'You know, that lady killer wasn't a bad soldier at that.' Oh, Sam. It makes my mouth water to think of pictures like that one. A true work of cinematic art. They just don't make that kind any more."

  "No, they don't," I agreed.

  Dr. Hilton sighed. In the small room, it sounded like an explosion. I moved uneasily on the bed.

  "Something wrong, Sam?"

  "Yes," I said. "Don't call me Sam."

  "And why not?"

  "I don't know why not. Except I can't help feeling it's not my name."

  "It is, all right. But about Morocco . . ."

  "No," I said, not knowing where my defiance was coming from. "I don't want to talk about Morocco anymore."

  "Sam, Sam . . ." His voice was chiding. The way you talk to a child. I stared up at the ceiling again.

  "What's the matter?" I jeered. "Did I offend your sense of delicacy? Your doctor's detachment?"

  "No," he said, very slowly, fiddling with something at my side. "It's just that I'll have to give you another sedative. You're working yourself into a state again. Do you see any spies in the room, Sam?"

  "No," I admitted. "Just me and you. Two movie buffs."

  "Good. I'm glad."

  In a few more seconds, I was gladder than ever. He had shot something into my arm and my head slowly drooped on the pillow. Through the glaze of my eyes slowly closing, without a care in the universe, I saw him tip-toe out of the room. When the door opened, the doctor that looked like Boris Karloff, was standing there, grinning like a ghoul. There was no sign of the Jean Harlow nurse.

  The door closed softly and Lorre and Karloff vanished from view. I was happy about that too. I didn't want amiable monsters at all.

  As much as I liked them both, I didn't want to dream about them. Not when everything was going good. Soft and nice and easy with no cares, troubles or aches and pains. I was a bouncing feather in a mattress factory. And everything was ping-pong balls, balloons and marshmallows and cotton candy and strictly velvet.

  The balloons went up. Red and pink and purple and blue and yellow and magenta and orange and golden.

  I went up with them.

  ". . . Tom? That you, Tom . . .?"

  Jane Darwell as Ma Joad in

  The Grapes Of Wrath. (1940)

  JOB

  □ There was another room somewhere. Very dark, just one light. A steady, revolving, blinking strobe kind of thing. It went on and off at intervals and I was seated directly in its glare. Beyond the lights, voices came at me. One after the other. The voices didn't interrupt each other or cross over—nobody stepped on anybody's lines—and the speakers simply waited for my answers.
/>   I had a lot of them. Answers, I mean. I might have scored a hundred percent on whatever test they were giving me.

  I was very calm throughout it all. Composed, bland, detached if you will. As if answering questions were my main interest in life. The blinking strobe didn't bother me at all.

  They very well might have been, at that.

  The voices, I mean.

  Each and every one of them sounded like a famous movie star. My inquisitors could have answered to the names of Gable, Cooper, Cagney, Robinson and Cary Grant.

  The really odd thing was that none of this surprised me. I accepted such an unusual situation as if it were the sort of thing I ran into every day. All time seemed to have stopped, nobody was dead, and immortality was granted to anyone that wanted it. All you had to do was believe. In it, in them.

  So Gable had not died of a heart attack, cancer had not claimed Cooper and even Dan Davis was still alive and acting. And not dead at all.

  It was as easy as that.

  "What's your name, sonny?"

  The Gable query shot out of the darkness beyond the winking Strobe light.

  "Spade," I said. "Sam Spade."

  "I get it," Gable agreed. "A gumshoe. A shamus."

  "That's right," I said.

  Now, the Robinson voice barked at me from somewhere in the room.

  "What case are you working on now, Mr. Spade?"

  "I'm on assignment. Top secret. I can't tell even you."

  "Good." Edward G. sounded very pleased with me. "You keep it that way, see? And we'll get along just fine."

  Jimmy Cagney laughed in the stillness, then spoke up.

  "This job of yours. When do you do it?"

  "Before the end of this week. That's all the time I'll need."

  "It better be," Cagney suddenly sounded challenging. "You muff this one and your number will come up on the board. We can't afford any slip-ups."

  "I won't muff it," I said coolly, staring past the Strobe. "I always look out for Number One. I didn't stay alive this long playing the sap for anybody."

  "Sam—"

  The clipped, terse voice had to be Cooper's. I craned my head in the direction of the sound. A shimmering roll of screen images filled my brain. Mr. Deeds, Sergeant York, Gehrig, Robert Jordan, the French Foreign Legionnaire—