20
Outside in the dark, Edith Howell and Sy Koller were sitting in the comfortable chairs on the cistern sipping large Scotches.
“Do you know,” Edith Howell said to Fletch as he sat down with them, “that Freddy has escaped the premises again?”
“Key West is a good place to go out.”
“He’s like a cat. When you think he’s in he’s out and out in.”
“Gone out for conviviality,” Fletch said. “Do you worry about him?”
“Freddy? Good God, no. He has millions.”
Fletch swallowed what to him was a
“Tens of millions. I know that for a fact.”
Fletch shook his head. “Somehow, I thought he was broke. I think Moxie thinks he’s broke.”
“Tens of millions,” repeated Edith Howell. “I know of what I speak. I have friends whose friends are friends of Freddy, if you know what I mean. He has millions all over the world, just lying around.”
“Pity you can’t get your grubby fingers on it all, Edith,” Sy Koller said.
“I’m tryin’, darlin’, I’m tryin’. Did you hear him in there asking the world for a bit part in a movie that’s not even being made? The poor dear. He needs looking after.”
“He’s as crazy as a mosquito in the dressing room of a chorus line,” said Sy Koller. “Gonzo.”
“It’s interesting to know him,” Fletch said.
“That’s because you don’t,” said Edith Howell. “Knowing Freddy is like having a rare disease: shortly the interest pales and what’s left is pain.”
Sy Koller laughed. “Apparently you’re willing to put up with the pain, Edith. For all those millions.”
“For a short while, darling. After all, Freddy’s liver can hardly be made of molybdenum.”
21
“Well, darlings.” Edith Howell picked up her drink and stood up. “If you’re not chatting you might as well be dead, I always say. Or asleep.” Sitting out in the night, she and Sy Koller and Fletch had been silent for two minutes. “So I might as well go to bed.”
After she closed the door to the house behind her, Sy Koller lifted his drink to Fletch and said, “I like my drink, too, you see.”
“You’ve had a hard day,” Fletch said. “Attacked with a knife by one of your actors. Orally attacked by one of your colleagues.”
“Ah, the perils of being a director.” Sy Koller chuckled. “Being a director is like being the father of a large family of berserk children who keep slipping in and out of reality. We get paid for hazardous duty, but not enough.”
“I thought I should tell you,” Fletch said slowly, “that the police know that you and Peterman had a fist fight outside a Los Angeles restaurant three years ago.”
“They do? How do you know that?”
“Talked to Chief of Detectives Roz Nachman this afternoon. She called. She accused me of having hijacked all her prime suspects.”
“I’m a prime suspect?” Koller ran his palm over his stubbly chin and cheeks. “I shouldn’t be.”
“No?”
“Why should I put myself out of a job? Now that Peterman’s dead the future of
“You mean you won’t even finish filming it?”
“Well,” Koller snorted. “Peterman was the only one who seemed to believe in the property.”
“Didn’t you believe in it?”
“Not really. Peterman gave me the script and said he wanted it shot exactly as written.”
“You never even saw McKensie’s script?”
“No. Peterman said it was a pile of dung.”
“Do you think it would have been?”
“Probably not. But it was clear to me that McKensie had every reason in the world to sue Peterman, so how could I ask to use his script? It would confuse matters. You don’t know this business, do you?”
“No.”
“Think of having a career where you have to find a whole new job every six months.”
“Finding a job is the hardest job there is.”
“That’s the director’s life. And the actor’s life. And the set designer’s. It brings a certain element of the frantic to this business. And a great deal of hot air.”
“But don’t you get rich and famous after a while? Able to pick and choose?”
“Seldom. You make a pile of money, and you spend a pile and a half. Because you’re so frantic. You blow it on hot air, keeping up the image. The more money you make the more frantic you become, the more you blow it on hot air and the deeper into debt you go, which makes you more frantic.”
In the trees night birds were gossiping.
“Anyway, the police say you were fighting over a woman.”
“Is that what they say? I guess it’s what we said at the time.”
“That you had Peterman down on the sidewalk and were strangling him when you were pulled off.”
“Yeah,” Koller sighed. “It felt good.” Fletch said:
“She must have been one fantastical woman.”
“I wish I’d ever known a woman worth strangling someone over.” Koller lit a cigarette. “Methinks, mine host, you enquire as to why I was strangling Steve Peterman.”
“Just curious,” said Fletch. “Did he stick you with one of his telephone bills?”
Koller took a drink. “Happy to tell you. Because my strangling Steve Peterman three years ago is the best evidence I’ve got that I didn’t stab him yesterday.”
Fletch waited. The tip of Koller’s cigarette glowed brightly.
“I caught him out in a fraud,” Koller said. “I resented it. I hated it. Peterman wasn’t the first to work this scam, and he wasn’t the last. But, Fletcher, this business can be so dirty… sometimes it gets to you. What he was doing was raising money for a film which didn’t exist, and never would. He had gotten ahold of something which looked like a filmscript, a story about some South American
“But not to be paid back if he did not get the film capitalized?”
“Of course not. Told them it was going to be filmed in El Salvador. Even had an El Salvadorean S. A. Had no intention of trying to capitalize it. You never heard of this scam?”
“No.”
“I figure he’d raised about a half million dollars, all of which had disappeared down this El Salvadorean hole.” Koller stubbed out his cigarette. “I hated this for two reasons. It’s bad for the business. The next guy who goes out and tries to raise start-up money for a film might be honest. The more of these little cheats there are running around, the harder it is for the honest guy.” Koller drank. “The second reason, of course, was that he was using my name. He had told these people maybe he could get Sy Koller to direct. That we’d had conversations. That we were in negotiations.”
“Not true?”
