Black Is the Fashion for Dying Read online

  Black Is the Fashion for Dying

  Jonathan Latimer

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  FOR

  JO ANN

  Cast of Characters

  Richard Blake—An up-and-coming young Hollywood writer, he worked hard to revise the ending of his script, but it didn’t come off exactly as he’d planned

  The Naked Blonde—An ivory-skinned Dresden doll, the elusive Miss Omaha turned out to be a most enjoyable and very vital clue

  Karl Fabro—An odious, cold-blooded studio head, the atom-age Thalberg knew Caresse was box-office poison, and yet he couldn’t fire her—for very good reasons

  T. J. Lorrance—The only “maybe-man” in Hollywood, he was the only one Fabro trusted, and he could be counted on to do what he was told

  Irene Fabro—A plump, rather docile woman, Fabro’s wealthy wife couldn’t give him everything he wanted, but he got it anyway

  Edgar Allan Pixley—A “poet, genius, prophet and fanatic,” Caresse’s only real love survived long enough to reveal the truth

  Caresse Garnet—A self-admitted bitch fox, the star on the skids played her last scene to perfection, but didn’t live to hear the applause

  Ashton Graves—A pathetic, past-tense leading man, past husband of Caresse, he couldn’t make a comeback in either line

  Josh Gordon—A quick-witted, outspoken young direc tor, he was forced to improvise and he managed to supply a most unexpected ending

  Lisa Carson—A stunning starlet who had as much love for Blake as she did not for Caresse, she began by holding the gun and ended up holding the bag

  Mrs. Grumpert—A mere wardrobe woman, but a woman all the same, who had lost her husband and twenty years of her life to Caresse

  Richard Blake

  He first heard the sound somewhere around quarter to eleven. It wasn’t an unusual sound; an automobile engine running idle with the irregular beat that meant a faulty carburetor adjustment and the rattle that meant loose tappets, but he realized irritably, becoming aware of it, that his nerves had been hearing it for a long time.

  He spun a new page into the typewriter and savagely typed 127 at the top, thinking: why in God’s name, in his own house, couldn’t a man have a little quiet!

  Outside, the motor continued to idle.

  The long good-bye, he thought, imagining a couple wrapped mouth to mouth on a soiled mohair seat. Or burglars in the next house, with the getaway car waiting at the curb. Or a black sedan, mysteriously empty, key in the ignition, tank full of gas, the Mary Celeste of cars—

  Knock it off, he told himself. Get on with the typing. Troubles enough for one night, without inventing any. The unfinished script, Tiger in the Night, with two million dollars riding on the tiger’s back and one day of shooting left; the phone calls, petulant, insulting, demanding, imploring; and the big quarrel.

  Why wasn’t he a plumber?

  He scowled at the blank yellow page and wrote:

  EXT. JUNGLE CAMP—MED. SHOT—( NIGHT)

  By the fire the native cook and his helpers chatter as they prepare dinner. CAMERA PANS PAST them to Masterson’s tent as McGregor emerges, limping awkwardly on his game leg. He pauses a moment by the tent pole, to steady himself. (Note: Here establish that Masterson’s holster, with the Webley in it, is hanging from a nail on the pole.) McGregor’s face is preoccupied, somber, apprehensive. It’s not just that the hunting party is late: he feels intuitively that something has gone wrong. But what? He glances at the servants.

  MCGREGOR

  Be quiet!

  The chatter stops. The old hunter turns, stares out at the dark trees, listening. He is asking the forest a question, but there is no answer.

  No answer except from that damn engine! Why didn’t they shove off, Richard Blake thought impatiently; neckers, burglars or ghosts. He eyed the sunburst electric clock on the study wall. Almost eleven and at least four pages to go. He’d be up all night. He was bending over the typewriter again when the phone rang at his feet, the sound muffled by the heavy carpet. He untangled the extension cord and lifted the receiver.

  “Blake here,” he said.

  It was Lorrance, Karl Fabro’s executive assistant. His voice, as usual, was oily. “I hope I’m not inconveniencing you.…” he began.

  “You are,” Blake said.

  “Karl asked me to call. He’s worried about the script.”

  “Good! Maybe it’ll knock a few pounds off that big gut of his.”

  The oil got gritty. “There’s a certain option coming up next month, Blake. I suggest—”

  “And I suggest you—” Blake broke off, realizing that quarreling with Lorrance was like trying to swim in a sea of Jell-o. “Tell Fabro I’ve finished.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Every last word engraved on stone tablets right here in my study.”

  “He’ll be very pleased.” There was a moment of silence. “And, Richard, I’m sorry I mentioned the option.”

  Option! Blake thought as the line went dead. Who was Lorrance kidding? He knew the studio policy as well as Lorrance did. No more contract writers. He was the last one, the last shaggy buffalo of a nearly extinct herd, and they were only waiting until option time to shoot him, stuff him and hang him over the studio gates.

  He began to write again, conscious only intermittently of the motor outside. The words clicked in place as inexorably as the words on a Teletype machine. It was all in his head, but, even if it wasn’t, the dialogue had been immortalized before in Mogambo and The Macomber Affair and a dozen other epics. He brought the half-caste girl, Ahri, into camp, gasping out to McGregor her story of the plot to kill Adrian Phelps, and then wrote the scene by the jungle pool with the smiling close-up of Barbara Phelps as she hears the shots and thinks her husband is dead. He wrote the last half of the tiger hunt and was just carrying Barbara, pretending to be unconscious on her litter, into camp when the bell snarled at his feet.

  This time it was Herbie Adams, the picture’s assistant director. “How you doin’, genius?” he asked.

  “Round fifteen. Bloody but unbowed.”

  “New sets?”

  “Same people, same sets,” Blake said. “Tiger hunt, scene by the pool, and the big wind-up in camp.”

  “Zow! That’s a relief! I was afraid I was going to have to build the Taj Mahal or something.” Herbie paused, then asked cautiously, “You manage to cool off Lisa?”

  “I got the wrong bucket. Gasoline instead of water.”

  Herbie made a sympathetic clucking noise, said, “Try champagne next time,” and hung up.

  As the phone dropped into the cradle at his feet, Blake recalled Lisa’s last furious words before she had vanished into the L.A. smog. “You and Caresse!” she’d whispered, her voice husky with anger. “I could kill you both! And one shot would do it!”

  A shot below the belt, he reflected. Sure, he’d taken Caresse out a couple of times at the start of the picture, or rather she’d taken him out, a queen conferring favors on a lowly subject, but that was as far as the favors went. He’d never been near a bed with her. In fact, the one time bed was mentioned he’d—

  He shut that strange Freudian scene out of his mind and thought about the quarrel. It wasn’t really over Caresse; it was over Tiger in the Night. Over the ending. Boiled down, it was simply a matter of who was to have it: Lisa or Caresse. Lisa, as Ahri, the half-caste girl in love with the young white hunter, was convinced she should kill Caresse, playing Barbara, the murder-plotting wife of the rich American. This would be the next-to-last scene. Then Ahri would have the last scene, giving herself up to the authorities for having done something out of primitive innocence that was morally right, but contrary to the false
laws of society.

  In a way, Blake had to admit, Lisa was correct. The ending might give the picture a little meaning, make it something more than a tropical strip tease, and it might very well make a star of Lisa after six years of bit parts. The story’s original author had written it that way, but he, and Lisa, had failed to reckon with Caresse, who’d finally gotten around to reading the last pages yesterday.

  The explosion had been a memorable one; a six-hour tantrum that halted shooting, sent stage crew and extras scurrying for shelter, actors into hiding, and caused a series of pyrotechnic collisions between Caresse and Josh Gordon, the director; Caresse and Blake, Caresse and Lorrance, Caresse and anybody within reach. Unexpurgated, Caresse’s complaint was simplicity itself. Caresse was not going to be killed. Not and give the picture to a little tramp obviously recruited from a phone number on a toilet wall. Caresse had gone along with a lot of things; lousy direction, corny dialogue, costumes direct from a bargain basement, but this was the final straw. Caresse was not going to be killed!

  Finally Karl Fabro himself, unlighted cigar clenched between thick lips, a troglodyte out of an air-conditioned cave, had appeared on the set.

  “Don’t argue,” he’d growled at Blake. “She’s the star. You don’t argue with a star. Fix it like she wants.”

  So Blake, the eager drudge, had ad-libbed a new ending. Barbara merely wounded by Ahri and then, shocked into reality and repenting her evil ways, renouncing the young white hunter and returning to her husband. The old regeneration baloney.

  It had sounded fine to everybody except Basil Trabert, playing the husband, who wanted to know what kind of a goon would crawl into the hay with his wife after she’d tried to murder him, and Lisa, who produced some hysterics herself. Talked out of quitting the picture by her agent, Abe Luskman, she turned on her nearest and dearest, i.e., one Richard Blake. From accusing him of trying to wreck her career so she’d be forced to marry him (not a bad idea, at that) she progressed to charges of conspiracy with Caresse, based on a professed belief that he was secretly having an affair with her. It was on this preposterous note that she had left the house two hours before, whispering her Parthian “… one shot would do it!” line.

  Glancing at the sunburst clock, Blake wished for the twentieth time he’d been bright enough to put up some sort of a token argument with Fabro. It wouldn’t have done any good, but it would have placated Lisa. Mouse loses girl, he thought, at the same time noting with surprise it was only five minutes past eleven. Outside, the engine was still running.

  He pushed the quarrel out of his mind and began to write again.

  TWO SHOT—AHRI AND MCGREGOR

  Simultaneously, they catch sight of Barbara being carried out of the jungle. McGregor limps off towards the litter bearers. CAMERA HOLDS ON the half-caste girl. Her eyes narrow as she watches the arrival of the foreign woman who has not only destroyed her happiness, but made a murderer out of her beloved Masterson. She glances down at the holster on the tent pole beside her, at the Webley within the holster.

  WIDER ANGLE—INCLUDING AHRI, MCCRECOR AND LITTER BEARERS

  McGregor leads the bearers into the Phelps’s tent. Ahri remains motionless, watching.

  INT. PHELPS’S TENT—MED. CLOSE SHOT—(NIGHT)

  Barbara is still pretending to be unconscious. The bearers start to put the litter on the ground.

  MCGREGOR

  Gently! She’s a woman … not

  a sack of rice!

  The bearers place the litter on the cot. McGregor bends over Barbara and draws back the blanket to see where she is hurt. At the same time Ahri appears in the tent entrance, holding the Webley in both hands.

  AHRI

  A devil, perhaps … but not

  a woman!

  McGregor starts for her but before he can attempt to wrest the pistol from her it explodes twice, aimed as directly at Barbara as Ahri’s shaking hands can manage. The pair struggle, the crippled old hunter and the lithe half-caste girl almost equally matched, until from o.s. comes a hail.

  MASTFRSON’S VOICE

  Halloo there!

  Abruptly, Ahri stops struggling. The Webley, jerked from her hands by McGregor, spins in an arc towards the campfire. She turns and looks.

  MED. SHOT—FROM AHRI’S ANGLE

  Coming into the camp is the hunting party, headed by Masterson and Adrian Phelps.

  CLOSE SHOT—AHRI

  She realizes Phelps is still alive, that Masterson has not been able to go through with the plot. CAMERA PANS as she runs to him, throws herself into his arms.

  AHRI

  (hysterically)

  Ah, Masterson, you didn’t …

  you didn’t …!

  MASTERSON

  (holding her away)

  Now, now, Ahri. What’s all this

  about?

  MCGREGOR

  (very flat, as he limps up)

  Murder, I’m afraid.

  Masterson and Phelps stare at him. Then, slowly, their heads turn towards the tent where Barbara Phelps lies.

  MED. CLOSE SHOT—BARBARA

  Painfully, she raises herself on one elbow, looks out the tent entrance.

  BARBARA

  (calling)

  Masterson! Come here, please!

  Adrian, too.

  CAMERA PULLS BACK as the two men enter the tent, followed by Ahri and McGregor.

  BARBARA

  Don’t come any closer. I want …

  (a wan smile)

  I want to make a speech.

  Masterson and Phelps exchange puzzled, worried glances.

  BARBARA

  (slowly)

  Black’s the fashion for dying …

  and for remorse, too. I should

  be wearing black

  Black what? Hands poised over the typewriter, Blake frowned at the half-filled page. Black sackcloth? Black ashes? He read the opening line again. “Black’s the fashion for dying …”

  The engine outside spluttered, then resumed its irregular asthmatic chugging.

  Black for dying and for this particular night, he thought angrily. Black with sound effects. Looking at the clock, he saw the engine had been running for at least thirty minutes. What gave? He got up, banging his elbow on the typewriter, and went to the study’s French doors. Through crystal glass he could see the tiny terrace with the two redwood chairs and the redwood table and the descending streak of gray that was the driveway. Near the driveway’s street end, two-thirds down the hill, was a dark blob that shouldn’t have been there.

  He walked out onto the terrace, hearing the engine clearly now, and when he was past the shaft of light cast by his desk lamp, he looked at the driveway again. The blob was a car, all right, some kind of a coupe, parked opposite his living room. For an instant he hoped it was Lisa, debating whether to return and make peace, and then he remembered she had been driving her convertible.

  Queer, he reflected. What would anybody be doing on his driveway, motor running, for so long a time? Not neckers. They didn’t waste gasoline. And burglars would have been more careful. Cops? Waiting for something?

  Cautiously, he cut through the low bushes walling the terrace, circled the two dwarf lemons and approached the coupe across grass. His eyes, adjusting to darkness, could make out nothing inside. A few feet from the door he halted, squinted through the closed glass window. Empty. He opened the door, feeling the motor’s uneven beat through the chrome handle, and leaned in to switch off the ignition. At the same time the dash light came on, revealing under the steering wheel pale skin, silky fur and blond hair. A girl in a fur coat, curled up on the seat, long eyelashes shading closed eyes.

  Blake turned the key and hurriedly pulled out his head as the motor choked to a stop. The air inside smelled, all right, but he dimly remembered that carbon monoxide had no odor. He also dimly remembered cherry red, but maybe that was from some other kind of poison. At least what he could see of the girl’s skin wasn’t red. It was tallow white. It was also warm to his h
and. If she was dead, she hadn’t been dead long. He moved his hand from her face to the fur-covered shoulder and shook her gently.

  She wasn’t dead, but she didn’t seem to be very much alive, either. The eyes fluttered, then closed again, and she moaned softly. He reached into the car, holding his breath against possible carbon monoxide, and raised her to a sitting position. Her head fell against one shoulder and she mumbled something that sounded like “Lemme ’lone.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Got to get some air.”

  Hands under her arms, he dragged her along the seat, lifted her out of the car and tried to put her on her feet. Her knees buckled and she would have fallen if he hadn’t held her. He was wondering whether or not he should pick her up and carry her into the house when, suddenly, she began to support her own weight.

  “George?” she mumbled indistinctly. “You George?”

  “Not tonight, I’m not,” Blake said. “Come on. Snap out of it.”

  Stiffening, the girl tried to pull free of his hands, but he held on to her, afraid she would fall. She struggled for a second, then turned and peered up at his face. Her breath smelled of juniper.

  “Who you …?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Me?” The juniper got stronger. “Who me?” She giggled. “Guess.”

  Moses! Blake thought. Stewed to the eyeballs.

  “Do you know where you live?” he demanded.