The lieutenant nodded. "I think we've about got it put together. There's no doubt about it – he killed himself, all right. One thing bothers me, though."
"What's that?"
"We backtracked on Dunbar's movements like we usually do," the detective said. "And he picked up a young man in a cocktail lounge just before he came here. He flashed quite a roll of bills in the bar and we didn't find any money in his room. He's also got a couple of bruises on his head and back that the coroner can't explain. We got a pretty good description of him from the bartender. We'll pick him up."
David looked at him. "But what good will that do?" he asked. "You're sure that Dunbar killed himself; what more could he tell you?"
"Some guys think nothing of picking up a homo and beating him up a little for kicks, then rolling him for his dough."
"So?"
"So Dunbar isn't the only homo in our district," the lieutenant replied. "We got a list of them a yard long down at the station. Most of 'em mind their own business and they're entitled to some protection."
David glanced at Richards. The chief of the studio guards looked at him with impassive eyes. David turned back to the policeman. "Thank you very much for talking to me, Lieutenant," he said. "I'm very much impressed with the efficient manner in which you handled this."
He started out of the room, leaving Richards and the policeman alone. He could hear Richards' heavy whisper as he walked out the door.
"Look, Stan," the big ex-cop was saying. "If this hits the papers, there's goin' to be a mess an' the studio stands a chance of bein' hurt real bad an' it's bad enough just with the suicide."
David went through the door and crossed the foyer to the staircase. Bringing the old sergeant had been the smartest thing he could have done. He was sure now that there wouldn't be reference to any other man in the newspapers. He went up the stairs and into the small sitting room that led to Rina's bedroom. Ilene was slumped exhaustedly in a chair. She looked up as he entered. "How is she?"
"Out like a light," she answered in a tired voice. "The doctor gave her a shot big enough to knock out a horse."
'You could stand a drink." He walked over to the small liquor cabinet and opened it. "Me, too," he added. "Scotch all right?"
She didn't answer and he filled two glasses with Haig Haig pinch bottle. He gave her one and sat down opposite her. A faint flush of color crept up into her face as the whisky hit her stomach. "It was terrible," she said.
He didn't answer.
She drank again from the glass. "Rina had a luncheon appointment so we got home from the studio about four o'clock. We came upstairs to dress about four thirty, and Rina said she thought she heard the water running in Claude's bathroom. The servants had the day off so she asked me to check. She must have sensed that something was wrong when I didn't come right back. She came into the bedroom while I was still phoning the police. I tried to keep her from seeing what had happened but she was already at the bathroom door when I turned around."
She put her glass down and hunted blindly for a cigarette. David lit one and handed it to her. She took it and placed it between her lips, the smoke curling up around her face. "She was standing there, staring down at him, staring down at that horrible mess of blood, and she was saying over and over to herself, 'I killed him, I killed him! I killed him like I killed everyone who ever loved me.' Then she began to scream." Ilene put her hands up over her ears.
David looked down at his glass. It was empty. Silently he got up and refilled it. Sitting down again, he looked into the amber liquid reflectively. "You know," he said, "what I can't understand is why she ever married him."
"That's just the trouble," she said angrily. "None of you ever tried to understand her. All she ever meant to any of you was a ticket at the box office, money in the bank. None of you cared what she was really like. I’ll tell you why she married him. Because she was sorry for him, because she wanted to make a man of him. That's why she married him. And that's why she's lying there in her bedroom, crying even though she's asleep. She's crying because she failed."
The telephone rang. It rang again. David looked at her. "I'll get it," he said.
"Hello."
"Who is this?"
"David Woolf," he said automatically.
"Jonas Cord," the voice replied.
"Mr. Cord," David said. "I'm with Norman- "
"I know," Cord interrupted. "I remember you. You're the young man who does all the trouble-shooting for Bernie. I just heard over the radio about the accident. How's Rina?"
"She's asleep right now. The doctor knocked her out."
There was a long, empty silence on the line and David thought they might have been cut off. Then Cord's voice came back on the line. "Everything under control?"
"I think so," David said.
"Good. Keep it like that. If there's anything you need, let me know."
"I will."
"I won't forget what you're doing," Cord said.
There was a click and the line was dead. Slowly David put down the telephone. "That was Jonas Cord," he said.
Ilene didn't raise her face from her hands.
He turned and looked back at the telephone. It didn't make sense. From what he'd heard about Cord, he wasn't the kind of man who spent his time making sympathy calls. If anything, he was exactly the opposite.
Unconsciously he glanced at the closed door to Rina's bedroom. There had to be more to it than that, he thought.
It was four months before he saw Rina again. He looked up from the couch in his uncle's office as she swept into the room.
"Rina, darling!" Bernie Norman said, getting up from his desk and throwing his arms around her enthusiastically.
The producer stepped back and looked at her, walking around her as if she were a prize heifer in a cattle show. "Slimmer and more beautiful than ever."
Rina looked over. "Hello, David," she said quietly.
"Hello, Rina." He got to his feet. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," she answered. "Who wouldn't be after three months on a health farm?"
He laughed. "And your next picture will be another vacation," Norman interrupted.
Rina turned back to him, a faint smile coming over her face. "Go ahead, you old bastard," she said. "Con me into it."
Norman laughed happily. "For a minute, I was wondering if it was my old girl who was coming into the office, so nice she was!"
Rina laughed, too. "What's the vacation?" she asked.
"Africa!" Norman said triumphantly. "The greatest jungle script I read since Trader Horn."
"I knew it," Rina said, turning to David. "I knew the next thing he'd have me do would be a female Tarzan!"
After she was gone, David looked across the room at his uncle. "Rina seems quieter, more subdued, somehow."
Norman looked at him shrewdly. "So what?" he said. "Maybe she's growing up a bissel and settling down. It's about time." He got up from his desk and walked over to David. "Only six months we got to the stockholders' meeting next March."
"You still don't know who's selling us short?"
"No." Norman shook his head. "I tried everyplace. The brokers, the underwriters, the banks. They tried. Nobody knows. But every day, the stock goes down." He chewed on his unlit cigar. "I bought up every share I could but enough money I ain't got to stop it. All the cash I could beg or borrow is gone."
"Maybe the stock will go up when we announce Rina's new picture. Everyone knows she's a sure money-maker."
"I hope so," Norman said. "Everywhere we're losing money. Even the theaters." He walked back to his chair and slumped down into it. "That was the mistake I made. I should never have bought them. For them I had to float the stock, borrow all that money from the banks. Pictures I know; real estate, phooey! I should never have listened to those chazairem on Wall Street, ten years ago. Now I sold my company, the money I ain't got no more. And I don't even know who owns it!"