Chapter Twelve
She jerked her arm free, turned, then for the first time saw me and smiled. It was a funny, half-embarrased smile.
“Dick.”
“Hello, Janis.”
I took her arm and piloted her up the aisle. “I’m on a movie spree,” I said. “This is my second picture this afternoon. I thought maybe I’d run into you at the Music Hall.”
She grinned a little. “zTwo a Day’?” she said. “How did you like it?”
“It’s a fine picture,” I said. “And they keep our little secret beautifully.”
“Secret?”
“That you’re an actress.”
“Oh,” she said.
We began walking slowly up Sixth Avenue.
“Every once in a while,” she said, “oh, about twice a year, I see it. Just to remind myself what it’s like to act.”
I didn’t say anything.
She mentioned the name of the actor who had played the head gangster. “What a wonderful guy he is. We really knocked ourselves out on those last scenes in the warehouse. The director never knew what hit him.”
At Forty-eighth Street we turned west automatically. I didn’t notice it myself till we were in the middle of the block. Then I started to laugh. Janis looked at me and then she caught on too.
There was a bar on Forty-eighth that we had always gone to. Automatically. We were there almost every night the winter before Janis went to Hollywood.
I hadn’t been in it since then.
They had changed it all around. It was a little on the leatherette and chrome side now. And the faces in the autographed pictures hanging on the walls had changed too.
We sat down at a booth in the back.
“Do you suppose Martin and Lewis come in here a lot?” I said, indicating one of the pictures.
“Sure,” Janis said. “With Farley Grainger and Liz Taylor and Piper Laurie. You should see this place on a Saturday night.”
“Is there really someone named Piper Laurie?”
“Sure,” Janis said.
We ordered scotch and water.
“I wonder what ever became of Toni Seven,” I said. “They used to have a picture of Toni Seven in here. Janis,” I said, “I have something important to discuss with you. Walter thinks Max killed Charles Anstruther and Jean Dahl. And he thinks you were there when he did it.”
“Walter is fabulous,” Janis said.
“I know.”
“Well, cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“You weren’t there, of course?”
“No,” Janis said. “I wasn’t. Walter will be so disappointed.”
“What about Max?” I said.
“What about him?”
“I really owe you an explanation. That little scene this afternoon in front of the Voisin. Max’s chauffeur was one of the two men who wrecked my apartment.”
Janis looked at me, saying nothing.
“I still don’t know what they were after.”
“The money, of course,” Janis said. “Jean Dahl had been blackmailing Max. He paid her money. I don’t know how much. Then he sent his boys to get it back. And probably to get rid of her at the same time.”
“Nice Max,” I said.
“He used to be a gangster. I knew that. What I didn’t know was that he still is one.”
“I thought you were in love with him.”
“I was.”
“But you’re not.”
“Not any more.”
We stopped talking while I ordered another drink.
“Darling,” I said softly when the waiter had gone, “what are you doing mixed up with these people? Walter. Max. Jean Dahl. What the hell are you trying to do?”
Janis lifted her glass, took a long drink, then put down the glass. “Hollywood,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
Janis lifted the glass again. In a moment she said, “You know how much I got for ‘Lure of the City’?”
I shook my head.
“One thousand dollars. Five weeks at two hundred dollars a week. Not to mention spending those five week ends with the director.”
“God!”
“He wasn’t bad, really. He was a lousy director, though. Do you know what I got for ‘Two a Day’? I made a one-picture deal for sixty-five thousand dollars.”
“It was a lousy picture too.”
“I know. Someday I’m going to make a good picture again. You start doing musicals and then they won’t put you in anything else.”
I ordered a third drink.
It was getting dark outside. The neon lights outside were going on.
The waiter came over to the table carrying our drinks.
“On the house,” he said.
Then he produced a photograph of Janis Whitney.
“Would you sign this for us, please?” he said.
Janis grinned. I handed her my pen and she wrote: “Good luck and many thanks for the memories, Janis Whitney.”
“Thanks, Miss Whitney.”
“Thank you,” Janis said.
When the waiter had gone Janis said, “Well, I finally made it. Do you think they’ll really hang it up?”
“Sure,” I said.
We were quiet for a long time. Thinking. Then I said, “Now I’ve got it figured.” And I had, too. It was suddenly all there for me.
“What’s your next picture going to be?” I said.
“I’ve already got one made. It won’t be released till around Christmas. Another musical.”
“And after that?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“It’s going to be pretty good.”
“What is?”
“Janis Whitney,” I said. “In Charles Anstruther’s The Winding Road to the Hills. That’s the deal, isn’t it? That’s what you got for your money, isn’t it? That’s how Walter talked you into this in the first place. Anyone who buys the film rights to the book has to agree that you play the lead. Isn’t that it?”
Janis finished her third drink. “You’re damn right, darling,” she said. “You’re damn right.”
We ordered a fourth drink. I was feeling lightheaded.
