The X-Rated Corpse Read online

  "I see it and I wish I didn't. What about the rest of B.Z.'s retreat? Or did he only collect dirty movies?"

  "You called it. Oh, he had the usual millionaire's collection of Oriental art and statues and artistic erotica but nothing you could drag him into court for. No real porno materials or screwball sex gadgets or whips and Iron Maidens. Nothing that way out. Only those red-hot and very blue Violet Paris reels. Worth thinking about, isn't it? Old bum like him with a great name and millions to burn and all he had was this passion for a skin flick that you said and he said and she said was made like ten years ago. What do you make of that, Noon?"

  We matched stares across the wide desk. I still couldn't see his eyes no thanks to the sunglasses, but he wasn't taking them off.

  "I'm thinking about the key you said I may have without knowing I have it." He laughed at that, suddenly, shaking his head.

  "That's not all you're thinking. You're stalling, man. You've got other things on your mind, too. Spill them."

  "All right, Lieutenant. I'm also thinking and trying to understand your position as well as your point of view. Morally, ethically and decently, I can see where you wouldn't see it as nice that a lovely dead lady would still be on view all over the land getting her kicks with an old satyr but—that's a personal feeling, isn't it? Emotional. Private. It's not Law. I'm trying to see why a police department, you specifically would be so upset about one blue movie. You've got your murderer. Officially, the case is solved. It will be a closed case soon enough. What do you care about the legend of Violet Paris? She's no skin off your nose, anymore. She's D.O.A. and nothing can change that."

  Lieutenant Ogilvie grunted softly and rocked forward in the swivel chair, making a tent of his black fingers on the desk.

  "I want you to tell me, from the top, everything that Violet Paris said to you on the night you went to her place."

  "It's no more than I gave Sergeant Madison. She didn't have any time for details or small facts. She told me about the film, asked me to go see B.Z. for her and I turned her down. You know all the rest, too. There isn't any more. I'd tell you if there was."

  "You have to be sure, man. Very sure. How sure are you?"

  For once, he sounded like he was pleading. Asking a favor.

  I frowned at him across the desk. Something wasn't Kosher.

  "Take off your sunglasses, Ogilvie, and level with me. I want to see your eyes, too. A man has less chance of lying to me if I can see his eyes. They don't call them cheaters for nothing."

  Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie took off his sunglasses.

  I got my second shock since coming to California. The first one had been seeing Violet Paris in the nude paying her dues. The second one was the face of Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie. Somehow, that was the more surprising of the two. It was even more unexpected.

  He was blind. There was no mistaking the sightless, fixed gaze of two smoke-colored unseeing eyes. The way his fine head cocked at me.

  "I'm sorry," I said, wanting to crawl under the desk.

  "Don't be. You're not the one who sent me to Vietnam two years ago. Caught a hunk of shrapnel across the forehead. Didn't go blind then. Optic nerve got cut and acted up when I was back here. Like two months ago. They won't put me out to pasture just yet. I worked too hard for this desk and that name plate. But that's all left field now, man. The point I want to make right here is this: Maybe I'm hung up on what people can see and ought to see. Maybe I'm hung up on a crusade. Can't be too sure about that, either. But I'll clue you in from my bottom line. We want to get our hands on those reels of film and burn them into nothing. I'd like to do that before they kick my ass out of here. You dig? With me, seeing was always believing. I think most people are like that. I don't want Violet Paris going down to glory with that lousy film still making the rounds years after she's gone."

  "Oh," I said, not understanding him at all.

  "You still don't sound convinced, Noon."

  "Then help me out. There's got to be more to it than just an idealistic motive. A damn good one, mind you, and I'd be cheering except you'd think I was putting you on." I took a deep breath. "Did you know Violet Paris personally, Lieutenant?"

  "Yes." The answer came surprisingly fast. Almost as quickly as he replaced the sunglasses, folded his arms and leaned back in the swivel again. "So now you know. I'm interested as a friend, too."

  "Only a friend?"

  He laughed softly, almost harshly and murmured in as gentle a voice as I have ever heard, "Man, you really are a cop, aren't you? Always questioning, always digging down deep. All right. I'll level with you. I was in love with Violet Paris. I still am. Her being dead didn't change anything. I'll go to my grave feeling that way. And before you can ask the next question—yes. She loved me, too. A long time ago. Before Vietnam, before these blind eyes." He paused, only for a second but the stillness of the office was like a time bomb still ticking. "She didn't give me the gate, man. Not because I was black or she was unreal. Or just a white woman checking out the Negro stud myth. No way. We went in different directions because there wasn't any other road to take. Her studio run me off and she wasn't strong enough to fight back. So I let her go on being a star while I faded into police work. But for seven months, man, she was my sun, my moon, my stars. A man don't forget a woman like that. Not ever. And now you know the sad love story of Oliver Ogilvie. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "I want you to help me. Help this Department. Find all that film and destroy it. Maybe it won't get you any medals—no, not even a fee. But you'll have done something for a dead woman who rates better than a stag movie for a lot of pimple-faced, sweating bastards in a dark room."

  I watched his intense face across the desk. The even lines, the plateaus, the facets, had all hardened, tautened into a mask. The Afro hairdo and the sunglasses made him altogether memorable.

  "Oh, Ogilvie," I sighed unhappily. "I'm with you all the way. But can't you see what you're asking? The impossible. You'd have to check out B.Z.'s friends and connections of the last ten years and they must number hundreds. You'd have to find the man who originally processed the film—and who might that be?—some film editor, director or cutter at the studio or maybe just some smart kid who can handle a home movie—maybe the old boy did the job himself. There's just no way of following this one up. It could take years, let alone a fortune in time and money. Why not just give it to your Vice Squad and let it go at that? Your wanting to do it is good enough for me. I think she'd understand that, too, if there's anything at all in ESP. You're a cop, Oliver, and you must be a damn good one to make Lieutenant's pay at your obviously youthful age. But you must know this is too big to handle. Four copies or a hundred, it's downright impossible."

  "Sure I know," he rasped, "but that's not going to stop me from trying, man. I owe her. I'll always owe her." His tone was flint.

  I didn't have the heart to pursue the point. It wouldn't have done any good, anyway. Oliver Ogilvie, Lieutenant, had Don Quixote fever. And there's nothing anyone can do about that condition.

  He'd have to tilt at all the windmills himself.

  "I'll do what I can," I said, standing up. "I haven't got the faintest notion where to begin but I'll think on it. I promise."

  "That's all I asked you, man."

  Standing up, too, for he had heard the chair make small noises, he extended a long arm across the desk. We shook hands.

  His head, Afro and all, was a good ten inches above my own and his frame was lanky, hard-muscled and fluidly athletic. Lithe.

  "You must have played basketball," I said, "or else it was a complete waste all around. You could hide one in those hands."

  "Four years, U.C.L.A." A thin smile passed fleetingly across his attractive face. "Class of '59. I passed up the Knicks for this job out here. I always wanted to be Fuzz. Guess I was curious."

  "How did you get to Vietnam?"

  "Took an official leave from the Department. I was curious abou
t that, too."

  "So now you know."

  "Now I know."

  In that brief farewell exchange, we became greater friends than we might ever be. I left him sitting at the wide desk, staring contemplatively in my direction as I exited from the office. It was obvious now he hadn't had a thing to do with the way the office was furnished. Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie, like Mike Monks, wouldn't have been comfortable in such a mish-mosh of colors, styles and accessories. A blind man doesn't have too many choices in anything. Sometimes, no choice at all.

  "I'll call you if I think of something, Lieutenant."

  "You do that, Noon. Be seeing you, man."

  "Sure. You'll be seeing me, man."

  I closed the door quietly and left the building. Walking slow.

  All I could think of was Oliver Ogilvie and Violet Paris and the love affair which had blossomed into a police Lieutenant who wanted to protect the name and fame of a dead beautiful actress. Sweet Jesus.

  The world is a very peculiar place, sometimes.

  You just never know, do you?

  Nobody does, really.

  Not even a slick, sophisticated cop from Times Square.

  Who had crossed over the line himself.

  A long time ago.

  I hadn't asked Lieutenant Oliver Ogilvie why he hadn't gone to Violet Paris' funeral atop the hill at Holy Cross Cemetery.

  That might have been hitting him between the eyes.

  Nobody needs reminders like that.

  Least of all a man with an impossible dream.

  I hadn't wanted to go, either.

  There wasn't anything I could do for her anymore.

  Not in this world or the next.

  The Goofy Lover

  By the time I got back to the Hotel Dunlap, I had thought of something else I could have told Lieutenant Ogilvie. Funny, we both hadn't reached the same obvious conclusion. Yet, with him blinded by love-loss, another form of sightlessness, and myself trying to keep gun and license together, we had both managed to ignore an apparent fact. If Bennett Zangdorfer had waited ten long years to proposition Violet Paris, the odds were plenty good that the four prints of the hot movie found in his mansion were all there really were in existence. Nobody like B.Z., for all his grand seigneur airs and eccentricities would have unloaded such a valuable bit of Americana on any underground stag movie circuit. Nor would he have shared such a delicious morsel with the mere hoi polloi. Maybe he might have had a private screening or two or three for some famous crony or V.I.P. in the industry, but I doubted very much if he had. Besides, he'd been at the very outset of his blackmail routine with Violet Paris and then he had killed her and I'd nailed him. Chances were far better than ever that the entire sordid business had been nipped in the bud. Before it could get off the bedroom floor. And out of the glittering, gold-plated gutter. The one they call Life-Style.

  I made a mental memo to call Ogilvie back and give him exactly that opinion before he lost any more sleep or pushed a dozen official buttons looking for those needles in the Hollywood haystack. Being blind was enough misery for one man's lifetime.

  There was a crimson, shining Thunderbird parked almost directly in front of the Hotel Dunlap. I checked it briefly before entering the revolving glass doors of my modest home-away-from-home. The machine looked custom-made and definitely out of place on the little street. It was a cinch the owner wouldn't have stopped at the Dunlap for a room. Not unless he or she was an eccentric or just slumming. Haven't you ever wanted to see how the other hotels lived?

  I had the answer as soon as I hit the lobby.

  Practically bolting out of a deep-cushioned rattan chair at sight of me, was a very tall, very broad-shouldered young guy whose impeccable cutaway coat, striped trousers and thick black cravat and matching dark Homburg contrasted like night and day with the tiled, potted-palm, Tiffany Lamp, shabby genteel decor of the Hotel Dunlap. Imagine a wedding cake in a frame shack. Something like that.

  The clothes were mourning duds, of course. And the bronzed, athletically-handsome face crowned with flowing, golden hair was etched in sorrowful, puckered lines. As if the young fashion-plate had been crying all morning. I glanced at my wrist watch. It was ten minutes past twelve. I'd been gone longer than I thought.

  "No autographs, please," I said, trying to step past the guy. He wouldn't let me. He barred the way, holding up both hands like a traffic cop regulating a jam at Times Square and Forty Second Street.

  "You're Ed Noon. I want to talk to you—"

  "Mr. Fairman, I presume? Richard X., no less?"

  Sudden surprise robbed his face of grief. His eyes leaped.

  "Then you know me. We haven't had the pleasure, have we—?"

  "No, we haven't had the pleasure. Just an educated guess."

  "I phoned first. The Desk said you'd be back around this time. I had to see you—" He was talking fast, at a machine-gun clip, as if he didn't want to be interrupted again. "Correction, I wanted to see you. It's very important and that's all there is to it. Can we talk?"

  "Here or upstairs in my room?" He was shooting rapid glances all around the deserted lobby as if on the look-out for reporters or anybody else he didn't want to meet. "You have the distinct air of a man who wants some privacy, Mr. Fairman."

  "Check." His voice was big and vibrant like the rest of him. His eyes were riveted on me like nails. I had the acute sensation I was in the presence of a very sharp, very sensible guy who didn't miss very much. "Level with me, Noon. How did you know me? I'm not in the newspapers at all, even if Advertising is my game. I prefer to lay back."

  He walked with me toward the single elevator. I measured him off as about two inches taller than me, also pegging him as a Robert Redford lookalike. He had the same copper-hard, youthful, glowing outer facade. I poked the white enamel button for the UP car. The lobby behind us was a vacuum of silence. The man on the Desk was off somewhere, out of sight. There was no elevator starter, either. The Dunlap couldn't afford such extras, which was why I had picked it out in the first place. I'd wanted a small, quiet hotel to hole up in. I hadn't come to Hollywood to dine in and entertain people.

  "Nothing amazing about it, Watson. Elementary. I saw that shining toy parked outside and it doesn't belong in this neighborhood. I enter my hotel and I'm greeted by a handsome young devil dressed like a Rockefeller but also wearing a very black tie. I know Violet Paris was buried this morning. I also know she was engaged to Richard X. Fairman whom I now see is a handsome young devil and must be as rich as Rockefeller. Also, the young man has been crying, obviously, and since I remember the funeral was something like ten o'clock and Holy Cross Cemetery is no more than a half hour's ride from here by fast Thunderbird—well, do you want any more?"

  "Time." He laughed as we entered the car together. "I'm impressed. You're right out of a Bogart movie."

  "You've got your genres mixed. How was the funeral?"

  He shuddered. "Mind if we don't talk about it? I hate Commercial Death. It's not my bag. When my end comes, they're going to have a lot of dirty little ashes to spread around."

  "Funny you should say that. A man who makes his fortune in selling things. Promoting products. The Commercial is your God, isn't it?"

  That got a frown from him. He settled the Homburg atop his head, patting it in place at a rakish angle.

  "You sound like the Senator now. He always picked me apart for being in the business of telling little white lies."

  "Sorry, kid. I don't want to remind anybody of their father. No matter how good a man he is. One floor more."

  "Don't call me 'kid'," he answered, without heat. "You don't look or act old enough. Anyway, what I want to talk about will mean a lot to you. I think. Money is still a God, speaking of same, to a man who's in the business of helping others, isn't it? Or is that a pragmatic remark that needs some justification?"

  "It's hitting a little low, but you don't know the territory so I'll take it for now. And here we are."

  My room was only two yard
s from the elevator.

  I let him in and he shouldered past me with brisk and rolling strides. Totally at odds with his formal dress. As he doffed the Homburg, casing the place, I saw the tell-tale dangle of his arms. He was hit hard by what had happened to Violet Paris, no matter what he might say or do. The breezy, open facade was a habitual cloak. A mask. The funeral obviously hadn't helped, either. I locked the door behind us, waved him to one of the two red, fabric-covered chairs and took the other one. Room Twelve-Five-Seven opened on the street side and there was the bedroom attachment and a small bathroom as well as sitting room. The window was riding half-upward, left that way by the maid I supposed, and a cooling breeze swept in, fluttering the pale gauze curtains.

  Richard X. Fairman sat stiffly in his chair, resting the finely-shaped Homburg on one tailored knee. His eyes were blue and morose.

  "Too early to booze it up," I said. "Do you mind?"

  "I want to talk to you about Violet, Noon. Liquor won't help."

  "That was not the point of the remark, Fairman. What about Violet?"

  His smile was slow but dazzling enough to light up his entire face. As the Ads go, he was a Winner from shoe-tip to crown.

  Any girl would have married him in a minute. He looked like Fort Knox with all the glorious masculine trimmings. He even had very white teeth and a Kirk Douglas cleft in his ruggedly strong chin.

  "Call me 'Rick', will you? And I'll call you 'Ed'. I never can get used to this Mister business, even allowing for the generation gap between us. This isn't going to be any formal business matter."

  "We'll cross that gap when we come to it. So—Rick?"

  He stopped tapping on the Homburg nervously and stared back at me, his eyelids lowering, his voice low and very unhurried. And grim.