The Carpetbaggers (45 page)

He turned suddenly and fled from the room, the sound of her mocking laughter, mixed with the sound of the water from the fountain, echoing in his ears.

Remembering, he lifted his hands to his face. It was bathed in perspiration. His clothing clung to him stickily. His skin began to feel crawly. He decided to take a shower.

The hot needle spray of the shower began to relax him. It seemed to bring the inner warmth of the whisky to the surface of his skin. Luxuriously he lathered himself with the delicately scented soap his mother ordered from London especially for him.

He stepped out of the shower, rubbing himself vigorously. He looked down with satisfaction at his pink, tingling skin. He liked being clean. He looked for his robe, but it wasn't on its usual hook. "Would you get the blue robe from the closet for me, please," he called automatically, without thinking.

He took the bottle of cologne down from the shelf and sprinkled it lavishly into his hand, then began to rub himself down. Some instinct caused him to look up into the mirror. The boy was standing in the open door, watching him. The robe was thrown over his arm. He had taken off his yellow jacket, revealing a dirty white T-shirt.

Claude saw the thick black hair that sprouted wildly from the young man's arms, shoulders and chest. A feeling of distaste ran through him. "You can leave it on the chair," he said, covering himself partly with the towel.

Instead, the boy grinned knowingly at him and came into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him with his foot.

Claude turned around angrily. "Get out of here!"

The young man didn't move. His smile grew even broader. "Aw, come off it, old man," he said. "You didn't really bring me up here to help you with your packing, did you?"

"Get out or I’ll call for help," Claude said, feeling a strangely exciting fear.

The boy laughed. "Who'll hear?" he asked. "I was wise to you the minute you told me the servants were off."

"You horrible thing!" Claude screamed. He felt a stunning blow on the side of his head and he fell sprawling. He pulled himself to his hands and knees. "Please go," he whispered, his voice breaking.

The young man raised his hand threateningly. Instinctively Claude shrank back but he wasn't quick enough. The open palm cracked smartly across the side of his face, knocking his head sideways against the toilet bowl. He stared up at the boy with frightened eyes.

"You don't really want me to go, do you?" the young man said, his hand tugging at the black leather belt around his waist. "You're the kind that likes to get roughed up a little first."

"I am not!"

"No?" The boy laughed derisively, raising the belt. "Don't crap me, I can see."

For a fraction of a moment, Claude did not know what he meant, then he looked down at himself. A crazy thought went racing through his mind. If Rina could only see him now, she would know he was a man.

The belt cut down across his back, sending a thin shiver of agony down his spine. "That's enough!" he whimpered. "Please don't hit me any more!"

* * *

He raised himself wearily from the floor and looked out into the bedroom. The boy was gone, taking with him all the money Claude had had with him. Slowly he got into the shower again and turned on the hot water.

He felt his strength returning as the water soaked into his skin. What a horrible thing to have happen, he thought, remembering all the indignities the young man had subjected him to. A warm feeling of satisfaction came to him. If he had been the stronger, he would have shown him. He felt the excitement begin to beat inside his chest as he thought how he would have torn the belt from the young man's hand and beaten him with it until he bled. He felt the sudden surge of power to his loins.

It was precisely at that moment that the truth came to him. "Oh, no!" He cried aloud in shock at the realization. What everyone had said about him was true. It was only he who had been blind to it until his own body betrayed him.

A dazed kind of anger came over him. Leaving the water running, he stepped from the shower stall. He opened the medicine cabinet and took down the old-fashioned straight razor that he had used ever since he began to shave — the razor that had stood proudly for him as a symbol of his manhood.

A wild, crazy kind of anger rolled blindly over him as he slashed viciously at himself. If he was not to be a man, at least he could turn himself into a woman. Again and again, he slashed at himself. Until at last, his strength gone, he collapsed onto the floor.

"Damn you!" he cried. "Damn you, Mother!"

They were the last words he ever said.

David Woolf stood in the doorway of the bathroom, nausea rising in the pit of his stomach. There was blood everywhere, on the white-and-blue tiles of the floor and walls, along the sides of the white bathtub, sink and toilet bowl.

It was hard to believe that it was only thirty minutes ago that the door of his office had burst open to reveal his uncle, his face flushed and purple, as it always was whenever he was upset. "Get right over to Rina Marlowe's house," Bernie Norman said. "One of the boys in publicity just got a tip from the Beverly Hills police station that Dunbar committed suicide."

David was already on his way to the door.

"Make sure she's protected!" the old man called after him. "Two million dollars in unreleased negatives we got on her!"

He picked up Harry Richards, chief of the studio guards, at the gate on the way out. Richards, a former police sergeant, was in good with all the cops. He took the short cut over the back roads through Coldwater Canyon to Sunset. He was at Rina's house in twenty minutes.

Now the two white-jacketed mortuary attendants were lifting Dunbar's somehow shrunken body into the small, basket-like stretcher and covering it with a white canvas sheet.

The attendants picked up the stretcher and David moved aside to let them pass. He lit a cigarette as they carried the body through the bedroom and out into the corridor. The first acrid taste of smoke settled his stomach. A faint screaming came from the downstairs foyer and he started hurriedly for the door, wondering if somehow Rina had got away from the doctor. But when he got to the head of the staircase, he saw that it wasn't Rina at all. It was Dunbar's mother.

She was struggling to free herself from the grasp of two red-faced policemen as the white-covered stretcher went by. "My baby!" she screamed. "Let me see my baby!" The attendants moved impassively past her and out the door. David could see the crowd of reporters outside, pressing against the door as it opened and closed. He started down the staircase, hearing the old woman begin to scream again.

She had pulled herself partly free of one of the policemen and with one hand she held onto the railing of the staircase. "You murdered my son, you bitch!" The high-pitched voice seemed to fill the whole house. "You killed him because you found out he was coming back to me!" The old woman had her other hand free now. She seemed to be trying to pull herself up the stairs.

"Get that crazy old woman out of here!" David turned, startled at the harsh voice that came from the top of the stairway behind him.

Ilene stood there, a wild, angry look on her face. "Get her out!" she hissed harshly. "The doctor's having enough trouble with Rina as it is, without her having to listen to that crazy old bitch!"

David caught Richards' eye and nodded to him. Instantly, Richards walked over to one of the policemen and whispered to him. All pretense of politeness gone, the two policemen got a new grip on the old woman and, one of them covering her mouth with his hand, they half dragged, half carried her out of the room. A moment later, a side door slammed and there was silence.

David glanced back up the staircase but Ilene had already disappeared. He walked over to Richards. "I told the boys to take her over to Colton's Sanitarium," the ex-policeman whispered.

David nodded approvingly. Dr. Colton would know what to do. The studio sent many of their stars out there to dry out. He'd also make sure that she didn't speak to anyone until he had calmed her down.

"Call the studio and have them send a couple of your men out here. I don't want any reporters getting in when the police leave."

"I already did," Richards replied, taking his arm. "Come on into the living room. I want you to meet Lieutenant Stanley."

Lieutenant Stanley was seated at the small, kidney-shaped telephone desk, a notebook open in front of him. He got up and shook hands with David. He was a thin, gray-faced, gray-haired man, and David thought he looked more like an accountant than a detective.

"This is a pretty terrible thing, Lieutenant," David said. "Have you figured out what happened yet?"

The lieutenant nodded. "I think we've about got it put together. There's no doubt about it — he killed himself, all right. One thing bothers me, though."

"What's that?"

"We backtracked on Dunbar's movements like we usually do," the detective said. "And he picked up a young man in a cocktail lounge just before he came here. He flashed quite a roll of bills in the bar and we didn't find any money in his room. He's also got a couple of bruises on his head and back that the coroner can't explain. We got a pretty good description of him from the bartender. We'll pick him up."

David looked at him. "But what good will that do?" he asked. "You're sure that Dunbar killed himself; what more could he tell you?"

"Some guys think nothing of picking up a homo and beating him up a little for kicks, then rolling him for his dough."

"So?"

"So Dunbar isn't the only homo in our district," the lieutenant replied. "We got a list of them a yard long down at the station. Most of 'em mind their own business and they're entitled to some protection."

David glanced at Richards. The chief of the studio guards looked at him with impassive eyes. David turned back to the policeman. "Thank you very much for talking to me, Lieutenant," he said. "I'm very much impressed with the efficient manner in which you handled this."

He started out of the room, leaving Richards and the policeman alone. He could hear Richards' heavy whisper as he walked out the door.

"Look, Stan," the big ex-cop was saying. "If this hits the papers, there's goin' to be a mess an' the studio stands a chance of bein' hurt real bad an' it's bad enough just with the suicide."

David went through the door and crossed the foyer to the staircase. Bringing the old sergeant had been the smartest thing he could have done. He was sure now that there wouldn't be reference to any other man in the newspapers. He went up the stairs and into the small sitting room that led to Rina's bedroom. Ilene was slumped exhaustedly in a chair. She looked up as he entered. "How is she?"

"Out like a light," she answered in a tired voice. "The doctor gave her a shot big enough to knock out a horse."

'You could stand a drink." He walked over to the small liquor cabinet and opened it. "Me, too," he added. "Scotch all right?"

She didn't answer and he filled two glasses with Haig & Haig pinch bottle. He gave her one and sat down opposite her. A faint flush of color crept up into her face as the whisky hit her stomach. "It was terrible," she said.

He didn't answer.

She drank again from the glass. "Rina had a luncheon appointment so we got home from the studio about four o'clock. We came upstairs to dress about four thirty, and Rina said she thought she heard the water running in Claude's bathroom. The servants had the day off so she asked me to check. She must have sensed that something was wrong when I didn't come right back. She came into the bedroom while I was still phoning the police. I tried to keep her from seeing what had happened but she was already at the bathroom door when I turned around."

She put her glass down and hunted blindly for a cigarette. David lit one and handed it to her. She took it and placed it between her lips, the smoke curling up around her face. "She was standing there, staring down at him, staring down at that horrible mess of blood, and she was saying over and over to herself, 'I killed him, I killed him! I killed him like I killed everyone who ever loved me.' Then she began to scream." Ilene put her hands up over her ears.

David looked down at his glass. It was empty. Silently he got up and refilled it. Sitting down again, he looked into the amber liquid reflectively. "You know," he said, "what I can't understand is why she ever married him."

"That's just the trouble," she said angrily. "None of you ever tried to understand her. All she ever meant to any of you was a ticket at the box office, money in the bank. None of you cared what she was really like. I’ll tell you why she married him. Because she was sorry for him, because she wanted to make a man of him. That's why she married him. And that's why she's lying there in her bedroom, crying even though she's asleep. She's crying because she failed."

The telephone rang. It rang again. David looked at her. "I'll get it," he said.

"Hello."

"Who is this?"

"David Woolf," he said automatically.

"Jonas Cord," the voice replied.

"Mr. Cord," David said. "I'm with Norman— "

"I know," Cord interrupted. "I remember you. You're the young man who does all the trouble-shooting for Bernie. I just heard over the radio about the accident. How's Rina?"

"She's asleep right now. The doctor knocked her out."

There was a long, empty silence on the line and David thought they might have been cut off. Then Cord's voice came back on the line. "Everything under control?"

"I think so," David said.

"Good. Keep it like that. If there's anything you need, let me know."

"I will."

"I won't forget what you're doing," Cord said.

There was a click and the line was dead. Slowly David put down the telephone. "That was Jonas Cord," he said.

Ilene didn't raise her face from her hands.

He turned and looked back at the telephone. It didn't make sense. From what he'd heard about Cord, he wasn't the kind of man who spent his time making sympathy calls. If anything, he was exactly the opposite.