Show Business is Murder

Everything went smoothly after that.

TWO WEEKS LATER, Braddock sprang the trap. He showed up at Guilfoil’s office with Java and explained to Guilfoil that his mother in New Jersey needed heart surgery in a hurry, and asked Guilfoil for a loan against future earnings. Guilfoil, harder of heart and arteries than Braddock’s nonexistent mother, refused with transparent reluctance.

“You don’t leave me any choice, Mr. Guilfoil,” Braddock said. “I can’t stay here in L.A.”

“We have a contract to do a promotional film and work up a talking dog act,” Guilfoil reminded him. “I’m supposed to act as your agent.”

“And I have to get to New Jersey, and fast.”

“I’m not sure it’s legal to take dogs across state lines without making a lot of arrangements weeks ahead,” Guilfoil said, glancing at Java, who was seated near Braddock’s left leg. Java returned his glance and smiled at him.

“You don’t leave me any choice,” Braddock said again, even more despondently. “I’m offering to sell you Java.”

“And your end of the deal?”

“You mean Java’s contract?”

“That’s it, kid.”

Java wasn’t smiling now.

“Not for a million bucks!” Braddock said.

“I was thinking twenty thousand.”

Java seemed to be listening carefully, glancing from one man to the other as they spoke.

“That isn’t nearly enough!” Braddock cried.

“It’s enough if it’s the only offer you’re going to get. And it is, since we’ve been keeping this dog act under wraps before springing it on the public.”

Braddock hung his head. “Okay. Twenty thousand. Cash, so I can catch a plane for Newark tonight. But it’s a lousy offer.” He gazed mistily at Java. “It’s a stinking damned world for people and dogs!”

“Show-biz, kid,” Guilfoil said, reaching into a desk drawer for a contract form and cash box.

“Take care of Java,” Braddock told him minutes later, trying not to break into a run as he went out the door.

HE SHOULD HAVE left town five minutes sooner. Braddock’s suitcase was packed and he was hefting it down from the bed when there was a knock on his apartment door.

His landlady to check on the place and make sure all the lights and gas burners were off, he figured.

But when he opened the door, there was Guilfoil and Java. And a uniformed policeman. And a plainclothes cop who flashed an L.A.P.D detective’s badge and said he was from the Bunko Squad.

Java couldn’t meet Braddock’s eyes. Guilfoil could. He looked furious. “You sold me ownership in a talking dog that doesn’t talk!” he said.

“Maybe he just won’t talk for you.”

The detective looked dubiously at Braddock, shaking his head. “It appears that what you did was illegal, Mr. Braddock.”

Braddock couldn’t believe this. “Then I want to cross charges! Arrest this man!”

“What?” Guilfoil said. “Cross what?”

“This Guilfoil isn’t any kind of producer, like his card says! He wasn’t really going to do a film promo for me and Java.”

“I never said I was,” Guilfoil told him.

“That you were going to make a film?”

“That I was a producer. You just assumed.”

“Your business card says you’re a producer!” Braddock fished his wallet from his pocket, rooted through it, and pulled out Guilfoil’s card. He handed it to the plainclothes detective. “It should say con man.”

“It doesn’t say producer,” said the detective, “It only says produce.”

“He writes, edits, and produces,” Braddock said.

The cop stared at him. “Produce, as in fruits and vegetables. Produce is what Mr. Guilfoil sells. He has a produce stand near Malibu.”

“About to open a second,” Guilfoil said proudly. “With the all the money I’m going to have garnisheed from your future salary. We’ll see now who’s the con man!”

“And you can have your dog back,” Guilfoil added, as Braddock was led away in handcuffs. “The kennel bill will be waiting for you.”

BRADDOCK WAITED UNTIL after the arraignment, when he was out on bail, before finally admitting to himself that this had actually happened. His future was set, and it was bleak. As for his present, it was just as bleak. Here he was back in his crummy apartment with his dog that couldn’t talk, unemployed and maybe going to prison. The best he would get was probation and a ruined reputation. Maybe house arrest, if he was lucky. Difficult to land a job when you’re behind bars or wearing one of those electronic anklets.

The decision wasn’t a hard one. Not in Braddock’s state of mind. Before they put something around his ankle, he put a rope around his neck. He climbed up on a chair and tied the other end of the rope to a sturdily mounted ceiling fixture.

It’s Hollywood, he thought. Everybody’s got an act, and mine wasn’t good enough. I fooled nobody.

Then he kicked the chair away.

He didn’t fall very far, but far enough.

He changed his mind in an instant. Too late. As he was choking to death, tearing at the inexorably tightening noose with clutching, helpless fingers, thrashing his legs about for a nonexistent foothold, he heard a rough, throaty voice not his own:

“I’d help you loosen that knot if I could, but what can I do with these? I got no opposable thumbs, pal.”

The last thing Braddock saw as the light faded was Java, sitting up on his haunches, holding out his paws.

Taking a bow? Smiling?

Blonde Moment by ELAINE VIETS

“KILLER,” SAID JASON the producer, as he admired the blonde in the blue dress.

“Kill her,” is what Evelyn Blent heard.

That’s exactly what she wanted to do. Kill Tiffany Tyler Taylor.

It was Jason who gave Evelyn the idea to kill Tiffany. It was Evelyn’s grandmother who showed her how to do it.

Tiffany. The little blonde was sitting at her new morning show set for the first time, but she looked like she’d been there forever. Breakfast With Tiffany the show was called, and the new set was created for her. It was all in shades of blue-sky blue and Dresden blue, peacock, azure, and sapphire-to set off Tiffany’s rich buttery blondeness.

Blonde ambition, that’s what Tiffany was. Five-feet-two inches of simpering, slithering ambition. Tiffany was after Evelyn’s anchor slot. Evelyn knew it. There was only one reason why she’d get it. She was blonde.

Whenever Tiffany Tyler Taylor walked through station KQZX, every man looked at her like he’d been marooned for a decade on a desert island. From the station manager to the mail clerks, the men stared at Tiffany with dazed looks and sappy smiles. But Evelyn knew the station manager-Mighty Milt, as his toadies called him-was the real problem. In TV, mistakes started at the top. If Milt didn’t treat Tiffany as his golden girl, that brown-noser Jason wouldn’t fawn over her.

Jason was Evelyn’s producer, too, but he had only perfunctory praise for Evelyn. “Nice job,” he’d say. Or,