“That’s accurate, I think.”
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked apprehensively.
“Well, I don’t have to find the two goons. They were dredged up by a trawler this morning in a similar condition to what they intended me to be.”
She shook her head. “Swell. What have I gotten myself involved in?”
“Kidnapping, murder, probably a number of other major crimes.”
“You don’t think I had anything to do with…what they did to you?”
“No; not intentionally, anyway.”
“Well, thank God for that much, at least. Please tell me what is going on, Stone.”
“I think you’re in a better position to tell me.”
“I’ve already explained myself on that point.”
“You’ve got to help Vance.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, right now, Vance is well on his way to getting his wife killed and destroying himself. Are you going to help him do that?”
“I don’t really know all that much,” she said, picking up her drink and finishing it off.
“You know more than I do,” Stone said. “If you’ll tell me what you know, maybe it will be enough to help me get Vance out of this.”
She stared off into the middle distance.
“Start at the beginning,” he said.
“I’ve always done what Vance wanted,” she said. “How do I know that what you want me to do is the right thing?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“The alternative is for me to involve the police and the FBI and for the gossip mills to get hold of it.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Wouldn’t I? Unless you help me, I won’t have a choice. My nose is pressed against a brick wall, and I have nowhere to go. If I don’t do something, Vance is going to get Arrington killed, and I can’t allow that to happen. I hope you understand my position.”
“If I tell you what I know, will you promise not to go to the police, the FBI, or the press?”
“No. I’ll do whatever I think is the best thing for Arrington. You might consider that that might be the best thing for Vance, too.”
“If there’s a way to help her without making this public, will you do that?”
“Yes. But I’ll be the judge of how to proceed.”
“Vance is a very brave man, you know. You might not know him well enough to know that.”
“He may well be a brave man,” Stone said, “but he’s also a very foolish one.”
“All that stuff I spouted about movie stars and how they behave-it’s true, of course, but not of Vance.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t he jeopardizing Arrington’s life in order to protect his career?”
“I honestly don’t think he is.”
“Then what is he trying to do?”
“I think he thinks he can beat them at their own game.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Stone moaned. “Not that.”
She nodded. “He figures this is between him and them, and he doesn’t really want any outside help.”
“Then why did he ask me to come out here?”
“He panicked, for just a moment. By the time you got here he had gotten hold of himself again.”
“Exactly what is he trying to do?”
“Save Arrington, save Lou Regenstein, save Centurion Studios. For a start.”
“What else?”
“I think he would very much like to kill Onofrio Ippolito.”
“That makes two of us,” Stone muttered.
“You’re too smart to do something like that, Stone, but Vance isn’t. Vance would kill him in a minute, if e could figure out how to do it without harming Arrington.”
“That’s about all that’s kept me from killing him,” Stone said.
“I hope you can help Vance. He’s a fine man, and I’d hate to see him pulled down by his own anger.”
“Betty, if I’m going to help him, you’re going to have to help me.”
A long pause. “All right,” she said at last.
“Start at the beginning,” he said.
And she did.
44
Betty started slowly, reluctantly. “I guess it was a couple of weeks ago, maybe a little more. Vance came into work, and he was nervous. Vance is never nervous. He has this glacial calm about him; I think it’s one of the things that makes him come over so well on screen. The only other actor I’ve ever seen with that kind of calm was Alan Ladd.”
Stone didn’t interrupt.
“But he was nervous that day-anxious, angry, nearly shaking with it. I’d never seen anything like it from him. I didn’t ask what was wrong; I knew he’d never tell me. Instead, I just watched and waited, to see if I could figure it out. He made a lot of phone calls that morning, and he dialed them himself, instead of asking me to get somebody on the line, as he usually did. Some of the calls were in-studio; I could tell that because the studio lines are separate from the outside lines. And then he did something odd: he asked me to get his Centurion stock certificates from the big safe.
“We have two safes in the office-a small fire safe that’s mostly for important documents and computer disks, and then the big safe that’s half as tall as I am. He keeps cash in there, along with some gold bars and some treasury bills. I think there’s a part of Vance that’s deeply insecure, that’s always ready to bolt. I think he has this fantasy of packing a briefcase, getting on a plane, and disappearing. Maybe it’s something in his past, I don’t know.
“Anyway, he asked me to get the Centurion certificates. Vance owns about twelve percent of the studio, and Lou Regenstein owns around thirty percent, so between them they can pretty much control the business.”
“How much of the studio do David Sturmack and Ippolito own?” Stone asked. It was the first time he had spoken since she began.
“They each own ten or eleven percent.”
“Not enough to take control, then?”
“I’m not so sure about that. I think somebody has been quietly buying shares. The stock isn’t all that widely held, and I think some of the smaller shareholders have been selling.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I think that’s why Vance wanted to see his certificates. He’s like that; he likes to touch and feel the things he owns. I’m not sure they’re real to him otherwise. I had the feeling he was thinking of selling them.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He wouldn’t. Not ever.”
“Go on.”
“Then Lou Regenstein came into the office, and he was looking very grim. He and Vance were in Vance’s office with the door closed for more than an hour. Vance hardly ever closes his office door, not the one that opens into my office. Then they left the office and went somewhere together, and Vance didn’t come back until late in the afternoon. When he did come back, he did something very strange: he told me to take the Centurion shares to the bank-not Safe Harbor, where he does all his banking, but to the bank that’s right outside the studio gates-and he told me to rent a large safe deposit box in my name and to put the shares in it and not to bring the key back to the
