The Blue Movie Murders (15 page)

“What you need, Cynthia, is a good man for one night.”

She twisted her lips in a sneer. “As good as you, McCall?”

“As good as me.”

His arms slipped easily around her, and his right hand moved up to her breast. It was one of his favourite manoeuvres, and it usually worked. But Cynthia Rhodes wasn't buying it. She slipped out of his hold as skillfully as a dancer. “I've been that route before, McCall. Reduce me to a simple sex object and I'm putty in your hands. Only I'm not having any!”

“Are you queer, like most of them?”

Her left hand shot out and slapped him, delivering a stinging blow across his right cheek. “I'll see you in the morning, McCall. You'd better have lots of cops there. Maybe Holland should even call out the National Guard!”

She turned and left the room, slamming the door after her. McCall sat down and rubbed his cheek.

A few moments later there was another soft knocking at the door. McCall was just enough of an egotist to decide it was Cynthia again, returning to apologize and perhaps even share his bed for the remainder of the evening.

He opened the door and April Evans walked in, angry. “I do so hate to interrupt you, Mike. You're probably resting up after that little encounter.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I was coming down the hall and I saw her leaving your room.”

“Did she see you?”

April shook her head. “The hall bends a bit every few rooms. When I saw her I hid behind one of the corners till she went downstairs. But what difference does that make? The fact remains I saw her leaving your room at seven o'clock in the evening!”

“A truly sinful hour,” he answered with a grin.

“Sinful enough. First you desert me in my hotel room to chase her down May Street, then I find her coming out of your room!”

“She was informing me of her plans for the group's demonstration tomorrow.”

“A likely story!”

“I think you're jealous.”

“Look—when a girl like Cynthia Rhodes is seen coming out of a man's hotel room there's only one conclusion to draw.”

“And it's the wrong conclusion.”

“All right,” she said simply. She obviously wasn't convinced, but was unwilling to pursue the discussion. “I have something more important to see you about, anyway.”

“And what would that be?”

“Do you still want to get into the Mann Photo plant?”

“Damn right I do!”

“Well, the maintenance people are working tonight, cleaning the machines for the start of production in the morning. I can get us in.”

“How?”

She put on her most mysterious look. “Through a friend. Coming along or not?”

“Just try to keep me away!”

It was dark by the time they reached the Mann Photo plant, but he could see by the lights in the office windows that the company was already back in business. If the production buildings with their blank, windowless walls still seemed empty and forbidding, he knew now that it was only an illusion.

They parked in the employee lot, along with a score of other cars belonging to the executives and maintenance people, and April led the way to a side door. A plant guard was on duty, sitting behind a makeshift desk and reading the afternoon newspaper. “Sorry, folks,” he said pleasantly. “Only maintenance crews are allowed inside. First shift tomorrow at eight.”

“We're here to see Mr. Verry,” April told him.

“Well, in that case—” He leaned back on his chair, balancing on two legs, and unhooked the phone from the wall behind him. “What's your name?”

“Tell him Miss Evans and Mr. McCall are here.”

“You believe in going to the top,” McCall said. “I didn't even know you'd met Chuck Verry.”

“I have to keep busy while you're romancing Cynthia Rhodes.”

But she'd said it with a smile. Her mood was definitely improving. The guard finished speaking into the telephone, listened a moment, then hung up. “Go right up here. Mr. Verry will meet you at the top of the stairs.”

“Thank you,” April said, and headed for the stairs.

The plant manager was waiting for them on the first landing. Without his sunglasses, and without the overpowering presence of Xavier Mann, he proved to be a short squint-eyed man who looked hot at all like a chauffeur. He nodded towards McCall, but did not offer to shake hands. The invitation, obviously, had been for April, and Verry wasn't exactly pleased to find McCall tagging along.

“Just what did you want to see, Miss Evans?” he asked.

“The whole place, and especially your film-testing facilities.”

Chuck Verry nodded with resignation. McCall couldn't help wondering if he had Xavier Mann's approval for what he was doing. They passed down a long corridor, through offices where cleaning people were at work, and finally along a covered passageway that led to the plant itself. Here the great film-coating machines stood idle, while technicians searched and scrubbed, preparing for tomorrow.

“The strike has been hell,” Verry confided. “Absolute hell. Every one of these big rollers has to be scrubbed down with chemicals before we can start the machines again. In the processing wing it's even worse.”

“What about the test labs?” April asked.

“They're upstairs. This way.”

He led them into a high-ceilinged area at the top of a short flight of steps. It was cut off from the rest of the plant by steel fire doors, and the inside gave the immediate impression of a small film studio. There were, perhaps, a half-dozen different sets—everything from a sandy beach scene to the interior of an opulent French boudoir. Banks of overhead lights ranged across the ceiling, and a trio of expensive 16-mm. cameras stood hooded against dust along one wall, secured by chains to a stand-pipe. It may not have been Hollywood, but it was an adequate small-scale approximation.

“There are even dressing rooms here,” April observed. “Or undressing rooms!”

Verry cleared his throat. “The private brand of Mann film is tested here against the industry standards. Dual cameras, operated in tandem, photograph the same scene using exactly the same lighting and camera angles. One camera is loaded with Manncolor or MP-Film, our two brand names. The other camera usually has Kodacolor or Kodachrome. They're developed here under exacting conditions, and then projected side by side.”

“We're more interested in the after-hours activities of the test centre,” McCall said.

“I know nothing about that. Xavier Mann only employs me by day. The test centre is not part of my responsibility, especially not after working hours.”

“But you certainly know what goes on here,” April challenged. Her tone of voice caused McCall to glance sideways at her. She was into the little plant manager like a prosecuting attorney.

“I've heard talk,” he mumbled.

“If things fall apart you're in this as deep as Mann.”

“I—” His squinty eyes narrowed. It was obvious now that he was badly frightened, and McCall decided to press the advantage April had somehow created. He didn't know how she'd done it, but she had the man right where she wanted him.

“What about records?” he asked the man. “You must keep records here.”

“Oh, we do.”

“Colour film has to be tested outdoors, under natural sunlight, as well as indoors.”

Chuck Verry nodded.

“If I know the routine, these expensive cameras have to be signed out to someone when they're taken on location for filming.”

“That's correct,” Verry admitted.

McCall tensed, ready to pounce. “And the night-time activities?”

“Oh—I'm sure no records are kept of that sort of thing.”

“The records you do have—how far back would they go?”

Verry pulled a small black-bound book from under a desktop. “This is the sign-out register. It goes back a few years. There's no reason to keep these things even that long, but they don't take up much space.”

McCall glanced through the book. The earliest date was four years back, and the pages were filled with dates and notations and scrawled signatures. “Let's look around for earlier books.”

“But I tell you the night-time—”

McCall interrupted, “I saw a film called
The Wild Nymph
, made here over twenty years ago. Many of the scenes were shot in daylight. Not evening or early morning, but close to high noon. They had to be shot during plant hours, or on weekends. Which means someone would have had to sign for the equipment used. Agreed?”

“Well, I suppose so. But you say it was over twenty years ago?”

“The summer of 1950, to be exact.”

“I'm certain we wouldn't have records that old, unless there was something in the store-room.”

He led the way to an unused room, windowless and forgotten, where a number of ancient wooden filing cabinets stood dusty and unlabelled. April began opening drawers at random. After a few moments of searching, she said, “Here are some other sign-out books, Mike. Really old ones!”

McCall caught his breath as he opened a page of the dusty volume. There was no reason they should have been kept, but as Verry had noted, the books took up little space. On some pages an entire month's transactions were recorded—equipment borrower, time out, time in. Day by day, month by month, year by year. Like so many grains of sand.

And McCall turned the pages, stepping back through the years. Felt-point pens gave way to ballpoints, and ballpoints to faded fountain-pen entries, as he flipped backwards in time. The earliest book in the drawer had been started shortly after the end of World War II. It ran forward to 1953.

He found the summer of 1950 without difficulty and scanned the names for a familiar one.

There was no Sol Dahlman listed.

Instead, listed like a shadow on the page, again and again, was a name that somehow seemed an echo of Dahlman's own.

Lash Damlon.

FIFTEEN

Sunday, May 16

McCall brooded.

He paced the floor of his motel room, barely glancing at the bed where April Evans was stretched out with the midnight edition of the Sunday paper. He scowled at the night and cursed his own cobwebbed brain. Then he went back and stared again at the sheet of paper on which he'd written the two names.

SOL DAHLMAN

LASH DAMLON

“So it's a simple anagram,” April said, reading his thoughts. “So what?”

“But why did he do it?”

“Who knows?”

“He had to have a reason, April. And that reason, more than twenty summers ago, might be the clue we're looking for to bust this case wide open.”

“Look, Mike, it's probably as simple as this. He wasn't a Mann Photo employee, and he couldn't use his own name to sign out the camera equipment. So he invented Lash Damlon.”

“But Damlon wasn't an employee either. So what did that gain?”

“Maybe only a bit of confusion, in case someone was checking.”

“It didn't confuse us for long,” McCall pointed out. “Lash Damlon sounds like someone out of a space opera, or a flagellation film.”

“Maybe that's why he chose it.”

“But
The Wild Nymph
was nothing like that.”

“Maybe he made other blue movies besides
The Wild Nymph
.”

“I doubt it.
The Wild Nymph
was no spin-off from earlier hard-core pornography.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I'm damned if I know,” McCall admitted.

“We've still got a murder on our hands.”

“Maybe two.” He told her about the missing George Watts.

“You think he's been killed?”

“I don't know. I hope not. One murder is about all I can handle at a time.” He reached for a cigarette in frustration. “I think I'd better solve the Sloane case before I hand the Governor another one.”

“What about tomorrow? The demonstration?”

“Cynthia's Raiders? I guess I can handle them.”

He tried the third number on his list again, but there was still no answer at Ron Kozinski's place.

People still went to church in Rockview on Sunday morning. Faintly surprised at the fact, McCall ate breakfast alone while the eight o'clock bells tolled somewhere in the distance, summoning worshippers to participate in the eternal rites. To McCall the sound of the bells brought a sort of longing he hadn't felt in years. The pace was slower here than in the capital, or in New York, and there was time to reflect on older values. These churchgoing citizens of Rockview would never wink at Xavier Mann's blue-film industry. Once the rumour became public fact, Mann would be finished here.

McCall drove to the Mann Photo plant, where the parking lot was almost filled with the workers' cars of the Sunday shift. At first he saw no sign of disturbance, but then as he left his own vehicle and headed for the main gate he heard the distant sounds of Cynthia's chanting raiders.

“Fight Filthy Films! No More Degradation!”

There were about thirty or forty of them, bunched near the main gate as if trying to break through. They were being held back, momentarily at least, by three uniformed plant guards. A single police patrol car was parked by the side of the road, some distance away, and as McCall passed, a voice said, “You involved in this too?”

It was Lieutenant Powell, seated in the front seat with a uniformed officer. McCall stuck his head in the open window and said, “I gather the local police are taking a hands-off attitude.”

Powell gestured across the street. “Too many reporters watching. Mann doesn't want the bad publicity, and neither does Mayor Jordan. We won't move unless the plant guards call for help.”

McCall stood up and surveyed the scene at the gate, where the women had pushed one guard to the ground and were working on the other two. “That might be any moment now.”

He left the patrol car and walked on, moving on the balls of his feet like some jungle animal scenting battle. It was not his style to battle women, but he didn't intend to stand by for the sort of beating they were giving those guards.