“All right. I want to get started on this list right away. Who is this first guy, Siegel?”
Sid told me he was a kid in his twenties who had a reputation for montage and was getting into second unit directing.
“What’s the kid like?”
Sid shrugged. “Cocky. Too much confidence, too many practical jokes, but sharp.”
“Where do I find him?”
“That’s him.” He pointed at the young man who had just directed Flynn’s punching bit.
“Did you remember who recommended Cunningham to you?”
He didn’t, but said he would keep thinking. As he walked away, I turned to find Siegel. He was no longer in sight. I went into the darkness behind the saloon set and found the cameraman examining the camera for bullet holes. He said his name was Bob Burks and that Siegel was in the next building. I thanked him and found my way through a door and into the next building, a huge sound stage set up to look like a gymnasium, complete with bleachers.
There were only two people on the set. They were in a far corner playing ping pong. One of the people was Siegel wearing a blue tee shirt. The clopping of the ball echoed through the building.
As I approached I could see that he held his tongue in the corner of his mouth and was concentrating on playing. The other man, who looked like a lanky cowboy, was methodically running up points.
“Don Siegel?” I said.
He failed to return a moderately difficult serve and shook his head in disgust.
He paused to tell me that this was a set for the Pat O’Brien movie about Knute Rockne. He also asked me if the shooting had been a joke. While he was talking, he managed to return an easy serve but lost the point.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
“Gee,” he answered sincerely, “I’d like to, but I only have a ten minute break, and I’m playing Jim for a buck a point. I’d like to get some of my money back before we go back to work.”
Jim was clearly one of the slowest ping pong players in North America, and I was in a hurry. I had also won a table tennis trophy when I was a kid in Glendale.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll give you a couple of quick games for a buck a point, and then we talk for five minutes. O.K?”
He pursed his lips and reluctantly raised his eyebrows in agreement. Jim handed me the paddle. We played quietly.
There I was with a head full of stitches, my gun missing, trying to keep out of jail and protect Errol Flynn from a killer, and I was playing ping pong. Siegel managed to stay in the game with some lucky shots and actually beat me 21 to 19. But I had the feel of the paddle back.
“Let’s play the last game for two bucks a point,” I suggested.
“Whatever you say,” said Siegel.
The game lasted a little over two minutes. He beat me 21 to 1. He only gave me the single point to keep the game from being an 11 to 0 shutout. After that one point, the ball didn’t slow down enough for me to see it or hit it.
Jim the cowboy grinned, and Siegel looked at me sheepishly. I reached for my wallet to dig out forty bucks, but Siegel held up his hand.
“No,” he said coming around the table and shaking my hand. “I was just keeping in practice. I haven’t pulled a good table tennis hustle since I came to California five years ago. Let’s talk.”
Jim waved goodby. Siegel and I wandered over to the wooden bleachers and sat down.
“First, tell me where you were at two this morning.”
“A party,” he said with an amused grin. “Plenty of witnesses. You want some names?”
“No,” I said. Since Siegel had been in sight when Flynn was shot at, he wasn’t really a suspect.
“You were at lunch the other day when Flynn got a package.”
Siegel looked at me expressionlessly.
“I’m working for Flynn,” I explained, “investigating the attempted blackmail. You got a good look at the picture?”
“I saw the picture,” he said.
“What did you think about it?”
“Well,” said Siegel slowly, “I work a lot with stills. If someone had asked me, which they did not, I would have said it was probably a phoney. I’d like to see the negative, but even without it there were give-aways. Flynn and the girl were both looking toward the camera. It was too posed. And the man’s body was wrong, out of proportion. I’d say the body was three or four inches shorter than Errol’s.”
I looked at the young man with new respect.
“Did you recognize the girl in the picture?”
He said he didn’t, and I asked him if he remembered how the others had reacted.
“Peter, that’s Peter Lorre, seemed interested, but nothing special. Flynn was amused and Adelman was upset.”
“Beaumont?” I asked.
Siegel looked at me for a long time, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then spoke carefully.
“He’s a decent actor, a little showy, but pretty good. He did a reasonable job of hiding it, but he was shaken by the picture, badly shaken. Part of my business is watching actors.”
“You’d make a hell of a detective,” I said pulling out my notebook.
“If Jack Warner doesn’t give me a picture to direct in a few years, maybe I’ll look you up. How’s the pay?”
“Rotten.”
“Well, you can’t have everything. I really do have to get back now. I’ve got a tough sequence with Walter Huston and I only get him for an hour. Stay out of table tennis games with strangers.”
I went to Adelman’s office. He had gone home to Westwood to get some sleep, but Esther put aside her reading long enough to dig out some information: Harry Beaumont had a Beverly Hills address on Dayton Way and a Crestview telephone number. I wrote them both on the back of an old business card given to me by a taxidermist who had needed my face to frighten a neighbor with a bad temper.
Beverly Hills was a wealthy suburb long before 1940. I felt out of place as I eased my Buick past well-tanned men and women in white on their way to tennis matches or golf courses. The cars were gigantic, new, or both. Everything looked bright and prosperous but me.
My information on Beaumont was minimal. I remembered him in a few roles, a tall, somewhat softly good-looking guy with dark, wavy hair. He’d start a picture tough and end up in reel five a mass of jelly, begging George Raft or Jimmy Cagney not to hit him. He certainly wasn’t a star. I wondered where he earned enough to live in Beverly Hills.
Beaumont’s house didn’t give me an answer. It was big and white and stood alone on a hill with plenty of land and an ornamental steel gate and fence. The gate was open. I parked and walked up the driveway. Then I froze. Two massive Doberman Pincers had dashed at me from around the house. They sniffed at me growling, showing teeth and generally suspicious. I tried to say gentle things, but they weren’t buying any.
After a full minute of this, a woman’s voice called from the house:
“Jamie, Ralph, come.”
The dogs backed off reluctantly eyeing my juicy arms and disappeared around the house. I walked slowly up the drive and to the door.
A woman in a light blue dress stood there with her arms folded. As soon as I looked at her, I had the answers to several questions.
The beautiful blonde woman in front of me was Brenda Stallings, a wealthy society deb of a little more than a dozen years earlier. She had doubled for Harlow and then had a short, successful film career before marrying an actor. The actor, I now remembered, was Harry Beaumont. Her money accounted for the home.
I had not seen all of her pictures, but I had seen her in the one in Charlie Cunningham’s apartment that morning. The photograph of her and the dead blackmailer was in my pocket, and I touched it for luck. I also smiled.
“Yes,” she said coldly.
“My name’s Peters. I’m working for some people at Warners on a rather delicate matter. I’d like to talk to Mr. Beaumont.”
“He’s not in,” she said starting to close the door. I stopped the door from closing with my hand.