“You take the shopfronts on the right; I’ll take the brownstones on the left.” Rick ran down the street as best he could and started checking doors on the brownstone mock-ups. The first three were locked.
“Everything over here is locked!” the off-duty cop yelled.
“Keep trying, and be careful.”
There was only one brownstone left at the end of the row. Rick got up the stairs, turned the doorknob and pushed. The knob turned, but the door was stuck at the bottom. Rick leaned against it and pushed; it swung open. Rick simultaneously stepped over the threshold and found nothing but air on the other side.
He clung to the doorknob with his left hand and looked down into a large hole in the ground, perhaps twenty feet below. Rick had a loud taxi whistle, and he used it. “Help me!” he yelled. He stuck the .38 into his belt and tried to swing the door shut, but it was stuck, and there was no room on the doorknob for two hands. He swung his body toward the door opening and got one foot on it, then swung back. He was starting to lose his grip on the knob.
Then the off-duty cop appeared in the doorway, grabbed Rick’s trouser leg and pulled him in until he could get a hand on Rick’s belt, then on Rick’s right hand. He braced himself against the doorway. “Let go!” he yelled. “I’ve got you.”
Rick’s hand slipped off the doorknob, and the man took all his weight, pulling him into the doorway. A second later he was safe but out of breath.
“Is that your guy?” the off-duty cop asked, pointing down.
Rick looked into the abyss and saw a man, lying face down, at the bottom, his revolver nearby. “That’s the guy,” he puffed.
Real police cars turned into the street, and cops began spilling out.
“Go around,” Rick directed from the top of the brownstone’s steps. “The guy is in a construction hole on the other side, and he seems to be unconscious, but his gun is there, too, so be careful.”
A sergeant directed his men toward the rear of the set, then trotted up the stairs and looked down. “Jesus,” he said, “did the guy run up here and through the door?”
“That seems to be it,” Rick said. “He shot our head of security twice in the commissary, then ran here.”
“Tom Terry?” the man asked.
“That’s right.” Rick heard the ambulance heading back toward the main gate, and he knew Tom was on his way to the hospital.
“You look a little winded,” the cop said. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m all right.”
The cop took the .38 from Rick’s belt. “Can I have this, then?”
“Yeah. It belongs to the studio, but you can unload it.”
The off-duty cop opened the cylinder of his gun and emptied the live ammunition into his hand. “I’m on the job,” he said to the other cop, “just moonlighting here a little.” He turned to Rick. “You used to be on the job, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “I did, and I’m glad I’m not anymore. Will you call the front gate and tell them they can open up again?” The man left, and Rick looked down into the pit where the cops had reached Jerry O’Toole. “Is he alive?” Rick yelled.
“He’s alive,” somebody yelled back, “but we’re gonna need a stretcher and some rope to get him out of here.”
“I’ll take care of that,” the sergeant said, then left.
Rick walked down the steps of the brownstone and sat on the bottom one to get his breath back. An electric cart driven by Sid Brooks came around the corner and stopped.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay. How’s Tom?”
“The doctor said he wasn’t too bad; only one shot hit him and not in a fatal place, apparently. The ambulance took him away.”
“Good.”
“Rick, what was that all about?”
“The guy who shot Tom killed Susie Stafford. The police are taking him away now.”
“Well, I’m glad nobody got killed.”
“Just Susie,” Rick said, “and a woman named Hank Harmon.”
Rick got home on time, after visiting Tom Terry in the hospital, where he was recovering from surgery. His eldest daughter climbed into his lap. Glenna was holding the baby.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked.
“All in all, pretty good,” Rick said. He started telling her about it.
Epilogue
1999
Rick Barron stood with a small group of people and an Episcopal priest in the marble hall of a mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Glenna stood next to him, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. The casket was slid expertly into the crypt, like a file drawer into its cabinet, and a man used a battery-operated drill to screw in a series of bolts, sealing the marble slab. Etched into the slab was:
Rows of similar crypts lined both sides of the hall, each with a legend of its own.
Rick was eighty-seven years old, and Glenna was eighty-four; they were great-grandparents. It was hard for Rick to believe that Vance had been seventy-one; he had looked older than his age when Glenna had spotted him at their construction site in 1947, and, remarkably, as he aged into his forties, Vance began to look younger than his age. That was a pretty good trick, Rick thought, especially if you were a movie star, perhaps the biggest ever. Vance had won his first Academy Award for Bitter Creek, the first of five Oscars and twelve nominations. Rick had won, too, as had the cinematographer. Susie Stafford had been nominated.
Vance’s young widow, Arrington, walked over to them, leading a man who appeared to be in his early forties. “Thank you for coming to the cemetery, Rick, Glenna.”
There had already been a very large funeral on a soundstage at Centurion, but only a handful of invited guests had come to the cemetery.
“I’d like you to meet my friend, Stone Barrington, who is a lawyer, from New York. Stone has been very helpful over the last week, since Vance’s death. Stone, this is Rick and Glenna Barron. Rick is the chairman of Centurion Studios, and Glenna is one of its greatest stars.”
“How do you do,” Barrington said, shaking hands with them both.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Stone,” Rick said. “I’ve been hearing about you.”
Arrington looked around. “There’s a place here for me, too,” she said, “next to Vance. He told me he bought these crypts fifty years ago. I suppose it’s a peaceful place to rest.” She turned to Rick and Glenna. “Do you need a lift home?” she asked.
“No, we have our car,” Rick replied. “You go ahead. I know you must be tired. Good to meet you, Stone.”
The two walked away, but Rick and Glenna remained for a moment. “Funny how everybody seemed to end up in this place,” Rick said. “Eddie and Suzanne Harris are right down there,” he said, pointing. Eddie had died of a stroke nearly ten years before, and Suzanne the year after. “Sol Weinman and his wife are a little farther down. It’s like Centurion Hall. And Leo Goldman, too.” Leo had blown his own brains out in what was thought to have been an accident, during the late eighties.[2] His wife had remarried soon afterward. Tom Terry had recovered from his gunshot wounds and was still alive in an old-age home out in the valley, having lost both legs to diabetes. Jerry O’Toole had been sent to the gas chamber at San Quentin in 1952.
Vance had died the largest stockholder in Centurion as well as its biggest star, having bought Sol Weinman’s widow’s shares. Leo had been a big stockholder, too, and upon his death, Rick had bought his shares from his widow.
“Yes,” Glenna said. “It’s Centurion Hall, and we have slots down there somewhere,” she said pointing.
“I forgot,” Rick said. “You ready to go home?”