Craig Rice and Ed McBain
The April Robin Murders
One
The water in the oblong swimming pool of the Skylight Motel was that brilliant blue-green color Bingo Riggs had seen pictured in magazines, but had never quite believed. Yet here it was, the same delicious but probably fraudulent blue of the illustrations, and here he was beside it, comfortably reclining on a wheeled mattress-and-wicker affair which someone had informed him was a loafer-lounge — and this, at last, was Hollywood.
It didn’t disappoint him, no, not in the least.
He lit a cigarette and watched his partner, Handsome Kusak, execute a graceful dive, and observed, with a kind of fraternal pride, the admiring glances he was getting from the feminine idlers around the pool. Handsome was a good six inches taller than Bingo, his dark hair had just a slight wave in it, and somehow on the drive from New York he’d managed to acquire a downright magnificent tan.
Bingo sighed, and pulled his new white terry-cloth robe, with its big monogrammed BR outlined in brilliant orange, a little closer over his bony knees. His Hawaiian print bathing trunks were, he considered, infinitely superior to the conservative dark maroon ones that Handsome was wearing; but, after one thoughtful look at his skinny and decidedly pallid frame, he’d put on the robe, announced he had a slight head-cold coming on, and settled for the loafer-lounge beside the pool. And anyway, he didn’t know how to swim.
All that could be put right, he told himself, and he resolved to do something about it fast. Daily workouts in one of those gyms he saw advertised in all the newspapers, offering Corrective Body Building and Conditioning. Swimming lessons, too, in some secluded pool where he wouldn’t run into any of the friends he and Handsome were bound to make. A quart of milk a day. Maybe two quarts. They could afford it now. And he’d rent a sun lamp.
Otherwise, he felt thoroughly pleased with the world around him, especially with the swimming pool. Of course it wasn’t a very big or very elaborate pool, and it wasn’t beside some Hollywood mansion, nor part of a fashionable hotel or exclusive club. Nor for that matter was the Skylight Motel a really first-class motel. But it was a swimming pool, bright blue-green, and this was Hollywood, and he was happy.
He put out the cigarette, stretched luxuriously, and went back to reading the New Visitor’s Guide to Hollywood.
Handsome came splashing up out of the pool and sprawled on the smooth-colored tile beside Bingo, shaking the water out of his hair.
“Bingo,” he said, a shade unhappily, “what are we gonna do?”
Bingo, president of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America: New York and Hollywood (“We’re going to expand, aren’t we?”), put down the guidebook reluctantly, his finger marking the page headed “Chinchilla Farm... Chinese Theatre (Grauman’s)... Ciro’s.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “we got all afternoon yet. We could drive around a little and see things.”
“We’ve already drove around and seen things,” Handsome said. “We’ve already seen Hollywood Boulevard, and Sunset Strip, and we’ve passed by two movie studios and the Brown Derby. I mean, Bingo, what are we going to do?”
Bingo was silent for a minute. There was a cloud, a very tiny one, to be sure, but a cloud, on the horizon of this new paradise, but he wasn’t ready to admit it yet. He said, at last, “I’ll think of something. Handsome, don’t you trust me? We’re going to get rich.”
“Sure,” Handsome said, with perfect confidence. “Only, Bingo, how?”
Again Bingo was silent. He wasn’t ready to admit this either, but he had been wondering the same thing.
After a few minutes Handsome said wistfully, “You want I should go get us some beer?”
Bingo nodded absent-mindedly and fished in the pocket of his robe for a dollar bill. Then he gazed over the pool and thought things over.
It hadn’t been so very long ago, in the shabby furnished room in New York’s West Eighties which had served as office, studio and living quarters for the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America, that he and Handsome had set going to Hollywood and getting rich as their ultimate goal. Now they were in Hollywood, and getting rich shouldn’t prove to be an insurmountable problem. It was just a question of finding the right way to go about it, that was all.
Carrying two cold bottles of beer, Handsome came back from the little delicatessen next to the motel. “We’ve been here three days already,” he said reflectively. “I guess we ought to get our cards printed and get the cameras unpacked and start taking pictures.”
Bingo looked at him sternly. “That,” he said, “is all in the past. Oh, it was all right back in Central Park, when we were just getting started. But we’ve arrived, Handsome. You’ve got to remember, we’re big shots now. We can’t go around Hollywood taking sidewalk pictures and passing out cards to mail in with a quarter, and spieling, ‘An action picture of you has just been taken! See how you’d look in the newsreels—’”
He shook his head and drew a long breath, warming up to his subject. “We’re going to do big things.” What things, he didn’t know yet. “Just look where we are already. Practically yesterday we owed seventeen dollars back rent on a nine-dollar-a-week room. The cameras and two of my suits were in hock. Now—” He waved a hand toward the pool and the motel which, even though second rate, was still the most luxurious place they’d lived in yet. “And we’ve got a whole trunk full of clothes, and two suitcases besides plus the swimming things we bought yesterday, and a swell big maroon convertible, and almost three thousand dollars in cash.”
“Two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three dollars,” Handsome said. “And fifty-five cents. I took out for the beer.”
“Well then,” Bingo said, as though that answered everything. It hadn’t answered Handsome’s big question though, nor his own, and he knew it. He began firmly, “We’ll start right in looking for some smart investments—” and then stopped short. Handsome, though he never said so out loud, frequently took a gloomy view of Bingo’s smart investments. Even of those that had paid off remarkably well in the end, in spite of putting them through considerable hardship, not to say peril.
He began again. “We’ll start looking for a place to live. A good address. And then, a superexcellent office setup.”
Handsome stared at the pool and said nothing. Bingo was a little relieved at that. Because there was only one sentence that could follow his last one. “... And then find something for the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation to do in those offices.” He wasn’t going to say it out loud.
Oh well, he’d think of something. Or something would turn up. It always had.
He finished his beer, rose, and said as heartily as though he didn’t have a single worry on his mind, “Let’s get dressed and get started, while the day’s still with us.”
As always, it took him considerably longer to dress than it did Handsome. The selection of exactly the right clothes always took a little time. Something conservative for this occasion, he decided, and yet not depressing. He finally settled for the fawn gabardine slacks, the new avocado-green shirt and a lemon-yellow tie that he felt added just the right harmonious and carefree touch. He surveyed himself in the mirror as he tied it. Sandy hair, a sharp-featured, slightly freckled face, blue-green eyes and a wide grin. Oh well, not everybody could look like Handsome.
He folded a lemon-yellow handkerchief carefully and tucked it in his breast pocket, ran the comb through his hair one more time, gave himself a final approving survey in the glass, and went outside.