Murder on Location (8 page)

“I remember,” Furlong was saying. “Monty turned to Ned, it was at a dress rehearsal of
A Doll's House
at the Collegiate, and he said, ‘You know, Ned, we are the only people in this whole county who have ever heard of
The Yellow Book
.'”

“Neil, remember, fella, I'm an illiterate maker of movin' pictures. I grew up on the back lots. What the hell is
The Yellow Book
when it's at home?” Neil shrugged and I turned a little pink, because I'd laughed without understanding any more than Sayre. Furlong took out a silver cigarette case and took and lit a long, tipped cigarette after waving the contents at both of us.

“You wrote the script of this movie,” I said. “Have I got that straight?”

“Guilty as charged. It's an original, not based on a book. Jim's trying to find a kernel of sense in my gangland melodrama.”

“Lots of good action, Neil. Nothing to be ashamed of. I'm looking forward …” Sayre was cut off by another interruption.

“Hi, Mr. Sayre, can I join you?” We all looked around. It was girl in jeans; she looked about eighteen and as though she'd just discarded a school uniform. The words on the T-shirt read
Ice Bridge
. Sayre was the first to break into a grin.

“Marilyn, my dear, Marilyn. For the love of Mike. This is wonderful!” He got up and they hugged one another like she was his long-lost daughter. “It's good to see you, girl.”

“Hello Peggy,” said Furlong. “Did you have a good flight?” He sat up straight in his chair.

Before she could answer Sayre said: “This is Benny Cooperman. He's a hard-boiled private eye. Honest, he's real. Benny, this is Peggy O'Toole.” I nearly dropped my teeth, naturally. I'd been seeing her in the papers and on television for the last two days—you couldn't avoid her even if you wanted to—but I was completely surprised. She was so tiny, smaller than life. I couldn't believe it. And the Marilyn bit I didn't even try to deal with. Peggy turned and wave at a couple of women just settling at a table nearer the bar, flashed her smile with the chin tilted up slightly, then she sat down. Sayre fussed, moving glasses, and Neil tried to scare up a waiter. I tried to reconcile my picture of a flick-siren with the half-grown child in front of me. Neil glanced over his shoulder at the women, who were smiling in our direction.

“Wherever Peggy goes Lynn and Nicole cannot be far behind.”

“That's right,” said Peggy. “I have two shadows.”

“I can understand about Lynn,” Sayre said. “She's the best coach in the business—although I won't have her near the set—but that Nicole … Agents are nothing but meat hustlers. Why's she here?”

“It's in the contract, Mr. Sayre. They both look after me. A girl can be taken advantage of.”

“Nicole wouldn't hear of it,” said Neil with a smirk. “She's tough.”

“Adela can handle her. I've seen it happen.”

“I'm drinking green stingers tonight.” Peggy announced, deftly changing the subject. “In case I get sick, it'll match the rug. They put me next to you, Mr. Sayre. Isn't that cosy? We can roll from one suite to the other. I hope you don't mind about my having Penthouse One, Mr. Sayre? Nicole said it was part of the arrangement. Oh, have you seen the falls? Aren't they perfect? They give me goose-bumps. It's all so wonderful!”

I gave Sayre a look that said I should be running along, but he answered it with one that told me to hold my ground and enjoy the company. Maybe I was reading a lot into a look that lasted only two seconds, still they say more with looks in his movies than they do with the dialogue. Peggy O'Toole was staring at me.

“You're not a detective, Benny. Tell me what you really do.” She leaned across the collection of empty and near-empty glasses, so that I could see her freckles and the fine lines around her eyes, just beginning to testify against her.

“Marilyn, are you accusing me of mendacity?”

“Shush, Mr. Sayre, you sound like Tennessee. I'm talking to Benny.”

“Why don't you think I'm a detective? We don't all look like Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart. Come up to my office and I'll show you my licence.”

“And a bottle of Scotch in the second drawer from the bottom in your filing cabinet.”

“Last time I looked, there was a dried orange and a couple of apricot pits.”

“Have you unravelled any murders, really?”

“A few. My share.”

Peggy O'Toole was looking at me with the eyes of a ten-year-old trying to decide between two jaw-breakers and a piece of bubble gum. Sayre was resting his chin on his rust-spattered hands, while Neil Furlong sat back expansively, like he'd arranged the entertainment himself.

“Why do you call him ‘Mr. Sayre,' when you obviously know him better than anyone else in the room? And why does he call you Marilyn?” She took a deep breath.

“Well, first of all, Marilyn Horlick is my actual name. I was born two years after the real Marilyn made
Niagara
right here. It gives me goose-bumps just to think of it. She was wonderful. I've seen all her pictures. I came from a show-business family: my mother was a secretary at Paramount in the Writers' Building, and my father … what are you laughing at, Neil?”

“Your father came from a long line of circus people. Your grandfather told you there was a Horlick in the circus when Quick and Mead first started doing a show under canvas.” Peggy's eyes widened and then narrowed as Furlong continued. “You don't know how long ago that was, but you do remember that they had four wagons, nine horses and one hurdy-gurdy.”

“That's eerie! How do you know? Stop teasing.”

“It's all in your biography. Something the company's put together. You can read about all of us.”

“But you read about me. And remembered it.”

“I'm a quick study. Always have been. I know that Jim is a country squire in Ireland when he chooses to be.”

“Right now I owe too much money to horsetraders to be seen there. That's why I'm here making a movin' picture.”

Peggy still had a look on her face such as she might wear when taking a bath in a room with no lock. I asked her to explain the name.

“Mom named me Marilyn, but Dad called me Wink. I guess that's what I call myself. ‘Wink,' he'd say, ‘we're off to see the clowns!' Mom didn't like the nickname, so Dad only used it when we were alone. In school half the other girls were Marilyn too. Then Mom got religion and they moved to La Jolla. When I did my first picture, it was for Mr. Sayre. He was the first one to take a chance on me. By the time the movie was released, I wasn't Marilyn any more. My first agent, Johnny Crowe—like in the children's book Dad bought me—Johnny dug up the name Peggy O'Toole. He wouldn't tell me where he got at first, I had to worm it out of him: Peggy O'Toole was the name of a racehorse!”

“A winner, I hope.”

“That's exactly what I said! Everybody said it suited me, and Johnny and I were the only ones who knew about the racehorse. Now, everybody calls me Peggy but Mr. Sayre, and everybody calls him Jim, except me because I'm a professional.” She caught her breath like she'd just recited a long speech all the way through without a mistake.

Sayre bent his big head into the centre of the table and lifted his arms to Peggy's and Furlong's shoulders. “Careful, my children. Here comes Mr. Raxlin. I don't think he'd care to hear anything real or honest. The dude prefers plastic to wood and reproductions to the real thing. Ah,” he said, turning around. “Mr. Raxlin. We were just talking about you. Sit down. Come join the party.”

Raxlin was a man in his mid-thirties. He looked like a chartered accountant candidate who'd not made the grade. He was dressed from head to toe in imitation fabrics, the kind that never wear out, they just turn yellow and roll over. He didn't sit, but stood right next to Sayre. He enjoyed being close to Peggy O'Toole, judging by the shy ogle he gave her.

“My father was a streetcar driver,” Furlong said. “Fastest temper in Port Richmond's north end. Step out of line and it was off with the belt and who started it. We were talking about origins before you arrived, Mr. Raxlin. Did I ever tell you that my father drove the longest electric run in the world at one time?” Raxlin shifted uneasily. Furlong's charm seemed to have an edge to it. “This part of the world is full of history, you know. A few miles down the river the British beat the Americans hollow at Queenston Heights.”

“First Vietnam, and now this. Soon you'll be saying we never once won a war, Neil.” Raxlin's thick neck turned pink above the pink collar of his polyester shirt. “Anyway, I didn't come in here to join your party. There
are some problems to talk over, and I hope you'll spare me an hour in my suite in a few minutes. You'll excuse me until then?” Then he loomed at me for the first time. “Hello, I'm Marvin Raxlin. Your friends didn't introduce you.” I jumped and so did the others. Sayre and Peggy fell over each other getting my name wrong, and Raxlin looked worried when he heard that I was a detective. He nodded shyly to Peggy O'Toole and slunk off.

“Mr. Raxlin is our producer, Benny. He holds the hoops, sets them alight and we jump through them.”

“Tonight he was calling problems, problems. Yesterday he said we only had challenges,” Neil said with a wink at Peggy.

“The producer,” I asked Furlong, “he's the one that pays the bills, isn't he?”

“Sure, he pays. And sure, he does have problems. But a man like that is always out of his depth in any artistic endeavour. He turns to lead every bar of gold he touches. He would get three hacks to rewrite
Hamlet
in a week. Now there are other producers who'd do that. I'm not kidding myself there. But Raxlin is the only producer in the business who'd say he was making it better.” Sayre snorted appreciation. Even Peggy laughed.

“Benny,” Sayre said, trying to make disliking Raxlin all right, “when I made
Donnybrook
at Paramount in 1954, there were two producers assigned to the picture. Neither of them could read as far as I could tell, neither'd had the education or the background to enjoy reading for its own sake. But Sam Bruzer and Mort Skulnick, two
lovable, dear men, went to their graves wishing they'd had the opportunity I'd had. And I'm no scholar. I bought my last promotion when I socked the principal in my senior year of high school. But Raxlin and his kind, they think it's queer or soft to sit down to a good book. They grew up on television. What I dislike about him isn't his ignorance, we're all ignorant one way or another, it's his goddamned complacency. That bothers me. It makes me mad.”

Peggy hadn't said anything for some time. She wasn't taking sides. From the look of her, she didn't like to watch people doing battle, unless maybe it was over her. When the silence made it clear that it was her cue, Peggy said to Sayre, “I loved
Donnybrook
. Naturally, I didn't see it when it came out—that was the year I was born—but I've seen it on TV. It stands up wonderfully. You got the Irish background so wonderfully authentic. And the scenes!”

“Back-lot stuff and in the hills around Malibu. But we were workin' from a first-rate script by Fergus Kelly. He's in the Irish Dáil now, but he used to be a pal of Brendan Behan and Louis MacNeice, the poet.”

By now Furlong was beginning to look nervous. He and Peggy had been taking turns burning holes in a paper napkin held drum-tight across the top of a glass. A dime in the middle of the lacy tracery looked about to fall at the next turn. “Shouldn't we?” he asked Sayre when he passed the cigarette to Peggy. Sayre laughed and nearly started coughing again. He caught his breath and looked
fondly at Peggy, who had just tumbled the dime into the dregs of a green stinger. Sayre was well along the way to feeling first-rate and he had courage he hadn't used yet.

“Sit down a minute. He isn't going to bite your ear off. He only wants to play around with your script. Probably has a plan to show an airline logo in close-up. That's a way to hold the story up and pay a few bills.”

“Still,” said Neil, getting closer to the edge of his temper, “he does pay them, including your piece and mine.”

“What's the hurry? I've seen the schedule. We've got plenty of time. Some people never feel they're in charge unless they're callin' you in the middle of the night, or flyin' you in from Rome or Athens. The more money he wastes, the bigger producer he is.”

“Yes, Jim, but that's my script he's playing with!”

“Exactly. You're goin' on like he's fussin' over a script that's only slightly better than a second draft. We're on location, boy. I can shoot around any rewriting that has to be done. That's why he got me on this goddamned picture. This isn't the servants' hall. You don't have to jump when the bell goes.”

“I want this picture to work, Jim. I need that bad.”

“It better finish on schedule, Mr. Sayre, or I'll be in England,” said Peggy.

Furlong got to his feet.

“Sit down for God's sake! Tell you what. We'll go in another minute.” Furlong sat reluctantly and fingered his empty glass. He looked for a sympathetic eye in Peggy's
direction. Peggy was looking at the table. I tried to get the conversation rolling again.

“What came after
Donnybrook
? I have them all mixed up.” The others looked relieved.

“I did
Donnybrook
in the early winter of '53–'54. I was finished and scouting locations in Monument Valley by February. Let's see, in the autumn I was in North Africa doing scenes for
Devil Catch the Hindmost
. Then I went to England and Ireland for
Moll Flanders
. I didn't do another picture in Hollywood until
The Dain Curse
in 1958. I wanted to do
Red Harvest
, but they thought the title sounded too political. That was 1960. Then I collected an Oscar for
Blood of John Dillon
in '62. I was always lucky in my Irish pictures. My father was in
The Legion
in 1964. Did it on a dare. Year before he died.”