“The clincher,” Max Shriber said. “That was supposed to be the clincher. That was supposed to adjust the rope around his neck. The size thirteen and a half noose.”
“Whose neck?”
Max Shriber clutched his side and held on for a minute. Then he said, “You’re slow. You’re slow on the uptake. Walter’s neck. That’s whose neck. She thought she knocked me off this afternoon. Little Sure Shot came pretty close. But she didn’t quite. She should have stayed around a little longer to make sure.”
I shook my head. My knees felt weak.
I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand anything. “Why was she calling Walter?” I said.
“She wasn’t calling Walter. She was calling you.”
“Me?” I said.
“Look, it’s easy,” Max Shriber said. “While she was in the bathroom-you thought she was sick. But she wasn’t sick. She was on the phone calling Walter.”
“The bathroom?” I said. “There’s a telephone in the bathroom?”
He nodded. “There’s a phone in every room in the house. She was in there talking to Walter down in the library.”
“But why?” I said again.
“The frame,” Max Shriber said. “The frame. She calls Walter and she uses my voice. She tells him he’s got to come to my place right away. It’s only a few blocks so he goes. He leaves his guests for ten minutes and he goes. He rides up in the elevator. He rings the bell. No answer. He waits. He rings the bell. No answer. So he rides back down in the elevator again and he comes home. O.K.?
“Only three days from now, bright and early Monday morning, they find Max Shriber on the bed with bullet holes all over him. So it’s all set. The elevator man remembers Walter going up and he remembers Walter coming down again. He don’t know Walter never got inside. All he knows is he saw Walter come up and go down.
“And they can prove good old Max was still alive when Walter got there because you were talking to good old Max on the phone just as Walter came in.
“And Little Sure Shot. She’s got the perfect alibi. She’s in there in the next room, passed out. From too much to drink.
“She’s a great actress. The toughest thing you can play is a good drunk scene.”
That reminded me of something. I walked to Walter’s liquor cabinet, took out the brandy bottle and tilted it. I didn’t bother with a glass, I tilted it. And then I handed it to Max.
He coughed and choked, but he swallowed three or four times.
“Why?” I said. “Why?”
Max looked at me. “Why did she do it?” His voice was quieter. It was harsh and guttural, but it was lower.
“I guess that’s what I mean,” I said. “She has everything. She’s beautiful and famous and rich. Why did she have to louse it up?”
“Sick,” Max Shriber said. “Everybody is sick. The whole damn world is sick. She’s sick like everybody else, only more so.”
He motioned for me to give him a cigarette. I lighted one and handed it to him.
“She’s an actress,” he said. “The greatest. But she’s in musicals, see? And that’s all she’s gonna be in. She’s got a term contract. Seven years and no outside pictures. Her musicals make money so they keep her in musicals.
“You’ve seen the pictures she makes. She’s not dumb. She knows how lousy they are. And look-she’s thirty- one. That ain’t old, but in seven years she’ll be thirty-eight. If she wants to do something else, it’s gotta be now.
“So look. We get a chance to buy this book. This is the way to do it. She owns a piece of the book. If they want to make a picture out of the book, they gotta take her with it. It’s the only way she could ever get the part.
“So she buys into the property. It takes every bit of dough she can raise. She hocks everything she’s got to raise the hundred grand.”
“She raised a hundred thousand dollars?” I said. “I thought it was a three-way partnership.”
“It was. She put up the dough. Walter and I put up our services.”
“You mean both of you were getting a free ride on her dough?”
He ignored me.
“So she buys in for one hundred grand. Walter was tough. He makes her buy in sight unseen. He says it ain’t quite finished and Anstruther won’t let nobody see the book yet. But Walter guarantees there’s a great part for a girl.
“Walter’s a great little salesman. He tells her this is going to be the picture of the year. This is going to be the dramatic part of the decade. Like Scarlett O’Hara in ‘Gone with the Wind,’ or Maria in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’
“So she buys in. You gotta understand ambition. How sick you can get with ambition.
“She reads in the columns, they’re talking about Hayworth for the new Anstruther. Or she reads Bergman is going to make it in Europe. And all the time she knows she owns it. It’s hers. She’s gonna make it. Her. She’s going to make it and be so great that they give her an Academy Award. In her mind she’s figuring out what she’ll wear at the dinner when they give her the award.
“So when she finds Anstruther and she finds there’s no book-she goes off her trolley. It’s not the money. She gets most of the money back. It was lying all over the floor when she shot him. It wasn’t that. She’d decided that if there was no book, they’d fake one. Nothing was going to stop her.
“So everything goes all right. Till Jean Dahl comes into the picture. She comes to me and tries to blackmail me. I give her a grand or so to stall things along. Then I go to Janis and tell her I know what happened.
“Then everything explodes…”
Max Shriber grabbed his side again.
“Sick,” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Talk to her,” Max said. “If you don’t believe me, talk to her.”
In a daze I started out of the room.
“Wait,” Max said.
I stopped.
He nodded down at the gun I had left on the floor.
“In case you find out I’m right,” he said. “Take it.”
I reached down and picked up the gun.
Then he slid forward, off the chair and onto the floor.
I stood for a moment, undecided. I started to help him. Then I stopped. “The hell with you,” I said.
I left the room without looking back.
Chapter Fourteen
I went back into the room.
I had the gun in my hand.
Janis was lying on the bed as I had left her. She was covered by the sheet. She was sleeping like a baby. Breathing gently. Her face in repose was beautiful again.
But I couldn’t forget how she had looked on the telephone.
I walked over and picked up the telephone.
I picked up the phone but I kept my finger on the button so that the phone was completely dead.
I dialed three numbers. The way you do to get one of Walter’s inside extensions.
“Is Mr. Heinemann there?” I said into the dead telephone. “All right. I’ll wait.”
I kept my eyes on her face while I was talking. Her eyelids didn’t move. Not a flutter. She could have been
