The Player (9 page)

“How should I answer that?”

“The truth. You are a big shot. You don't have time to get involved in something you can't change. Don't try to be their friend, Griffin, that's my job.”

“So what'll you do, meet them at your office and come up here?”

“Right, and I'll take them the good way, through the back lot. See you later.” End of call.

Griffin went to the bathroom, washed his face, and looked at himself in the mirror. He practiced a few insincere smiles, then washed his face again, this time with water so hot, it left his hands pink. He thought about Larry Levy, and feeding him the chocolate dessert, and wasn't so scared of the police anymore. He unknotted his tie and put it together close to the throat. He made a gun with his thumb and index finger and, with a wink, shot the Griffin in the mirror.

At a quarter to five he told Jan to hold his calls. The lights on his phone blinked a few times, briefly, while he changed his seat in the room, first behind his desk, then on the sofa, then in both of the big easy chairs. If he sat behind his desk with a script open, would he look too busy to lie? If he sat on the sofa and offered the police the easy chairs, would he look like an arrogant man trying to take advantage of these objects of his contempt? And if he took one of the
easy chairs, then Stuckel and one of the cops could take the sofa, but the second cop, in the other easy chair, would be too close. He wanted a barrier, either a desk or the coffee table, in the way of the police. He wanted them together, low, surrounded by fabric.

Jan called him when they arrived, and followed them into the room. Walter Stuckel introduced Detectives Paul DeLongpre and Susan Avery. Griffin realized he'd expected blue uniforms. DeLongpre was a young forty, with a mustache and shaggy hair. He looked like a baseball player. Avery was a little younger; she wore a light gray suit, and a gun underneath her jacket. She had blond hair, cut like a tight helmet over her ears. Griffin was impressed by the way she let the job dictate her presence. She was a cop. Griffin shook hands with both while Jan asked what they wanted to drink. No one wanted anything. Jan closed the door and gave Griffin a thumbs-up.

Stuckel took one of the chairs, Avery took the next, and Griffin sat beside DeLongpre on the sofa. He felt weak in this position, the police on either side of him. He decided not to wait.

“I'm sorry I didn't call you as soon as I heard that Kahane was dead.”

Avery began. “Why didn't you?”

“Walter asked me the same question. I wish I had a better answer this time, but all I can say is, it was like running into anyone, nothing special happened. I didn't see anybody following him, he didn't act like anything was going to happen to him, and it was as casual as it could have been.”

Now it was DeLongpre's turn. “You went out there just to see him, didn't you?”

“His wife told me he was seeing
The Bicycle Thief,
and I was feeling sort of itchy, so I thought I'd go see the movie, and if he was there, I'd talk to him about a job I was considering him for.” Griffin knew June Mercator was not Kahane's wife, but the police didn't
correct the slip, and Griffin thought he'd made the story perfect, like a Navajo rug with an intentional error to defeat the symmetry which is only permitted the gods. If he knew so little about the man, why would he kill him?

“You met him inside the theater,” said Avery, “and then you went to a Japanese bar, you had a few drinks together, and then he left before you did. Why didn't you leave together?”

“He said he had to go home.”

“Why did you stay in the bar?”

“Didn't they tell you about the song? He sang ‘Goldfinger' in Japanese, at the piano bar. It was an amazing place and I wanted to check it out. I mean, it would make a great backdrop in a movie.”

“Is that what you discussed with him?” DeLongpre.

“Not really, it was incidental.”

Avery. “If the scene was so important to you, why did you leave so quickly?”

“They closed up the piano. After that it was just a bar. And I don't drink.”

“You drank with Kahane.” DeLongpre.

“When in Rome.”

Avery. “You didn't know Kahane at all socially, did you?”

“No.”

“Were you ever in his house?”

“No.”

“Did you know anything about him personally?”

“No.”

“Do you think he might have been a homosexual?”

“We didn't get that friendly. Why do you ask?”

Avery looked up from her notes. “Some homosexuals in the neighborhood have complained of attacks.”

“Any murders?”

“We thought this might be related,” she said, and now the interrogation had devolved into conversation. He was safe.

Walter Stuckel shot his cuffs and slapped the arms of the chair. He was putting on a show, too, thought Griffin. “Maybe we can let you get back to work now.”

Avery wasn't so quick to get out of her chair. Griffin wanted to charm her. “Something's bothering you. What is it?” he asked.

“Did you follow David Kahane to the parking lot after he left you? Did you see him in the parking lot?”

“No,” said Griffin, “I parked on the street. And I hate to say it, but after this I'm never parking off the street, and if that means getting a cheaper car, maybe I will.” He tried to sound lightly shocked, as though he didn't really understand the question. She got up. As Stuckel herded the two detectives to the door, Griffin said, “It was a normal night. That's why this is so horrible. And that's why I didn't call you, I guess. It's scary, it was easier to deal with it by just throwing the newspaper away. I wish there was more I could tell you. I guess if you do arrest someone and you have a lineup, maybe you should bring me in, maybe I'll recognize someone I saw in the theater or on the street. I don't know whether I could connect him to Kahane, but maybe I can help put a puzzle together.”

They thanked him and left. On their way down the hall they stopped at a photograph of Glenn Ford, and Griffin closed the door as Walter Stuckel began an anecdote.

Immediately Jan knocked. He let her in.

“This hasn't been your week,” she said.

“It was worse for David Kahane.”

“I mean this, the postcards, Larry Levy.”

“Maybe I've been lucky too long.”

“Don't say that.”

“In the old days, after the police had been to your office, you'd have a shot of whiskey.”

“And now?”

“Now you get back to work.” She wanted more from him; he didn't want to give it. Maybe she'll quit, he thought. What would I have to do to make her leave me?

“Well, it's six o'clock,” she said, “and I'm going home.”

Griffin returned to his desk. He looked out his window and watched the office workers, all on their way home. Some of them were busy all day long, their bosses had ten film posters on the walls, their names on every one, tangible credits, they owned television shows, took calls from millionaire directors looking for good scripts, while others sat by quiet phones and read the trades because their bosses just weren't in the game deep enough, nursing one or two small projects along, encouraged to death by people like himself, Griffin knew, producers or writers making a hundred thousand dollars a year, the salary of a big-city mayor, worrying over an idea that no one really loved, supported, anyway, because the game demanded players. Eventually a script would be finished, submitted, read, rejected, and put into turnaround. Usually the studio demanded a full return on the money it had already spent to let another studio try the story; sometimes it gave the script away for a percentage. Whatever the terms, the script was for sale. George Butler, in the studio's Operations Department, would call the producer who now owned the turnaround and tell him the office was no longer his. The secretary went back into the general pool, or left for a new office with the producer, or was out of a job.

Griffin woke up remembering David Kahane's funeral. He rushed outside for the
Times
and found the announcement in the obituaries. The funeral was at two. He tried to recall the murder, out of a shudder of respect for Kahane, but the image he summoned, too neat and mechanical, drew him away from what he wanted, a hard connection between the name on the page and the way the name had gotten there. The only reason he wanted to go to the funeral was to see June Mercator. He thought she'd liked him a little, when they talked on the phone, on the first call. Yes, and she'd trickled into his mind a few times, and now he wondered what she was like. Kahane wasn't famous, but he had the glint of someone who lived with a thick-haired prize, a woman with long arms and a wide face, who could look you in the eye and startle you with arcane knowledge. His fluency in Japanese, and the new car, suggested that if he lived in a world partly indifferent to Hollywood—and wasn't June Mercator indifferent to Hollywood?—then she might have a measure for success different from someone who needed Hollywood's approval, and instead of the too eager smile of the wife of a loser—and how many had he met at screenings and parties, commenting on everything, not taking the presence of movie stars or an obviously expensive display for granted?—maybe she'd be quiet and impatient, almost sullen, until she'd decided that the party deserved her best
attention, and if it did, she'd be as fun as she'd been on the phone. Well, as fun as she was the first time he spoke to her; she sounded glum and mousy the second time. Of course, he thought, she had a good reason to be low. Her lover was brutally dead.

There was a meeting with the Marketing Department, at two-thirty, but that could wait until later in the day. How long is a funeral? He hadn't been to one in years. When he left for the studio, he still wasn't sure if he'd go, but he wore a dark suit, just in case.

His first call was from Walter Stuckel.

“You did good, boy, you did real good.” Griffin knew that the grating effect of the familiarity was intentional.

“Thank you, Walter, I was just trying to be a good citizen, you know?”

“Well, I think you fooled them.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something happened out there, didn't it? If I were a Pasadena homicide detective with enough time, I'd find out all I could about young bucks like yourself, and when I learned what a Walter Stuckel knows about them, I'd call you down to the station for another talk.”

“And what does a Walter Stuckel know?”

“He knows that young bucks don't hang out in theater lobbies looking for writers.”

“Then what do you think happened, if that's not the truth?”

“Did you know he used to be a drug dealer?”

“Really?”

“I checked up on him.”

“And he stopped dealing?”

“Who buys anymore? He was small-time, but he'd made enough to collect a few apartment buildings. He made a small killing in real estate. The police don't think this had anything to do with his past.
A few years ago it would have been obvious, a drug murder. You don't do drugs anymore, do you?”

“Come on, Walter, I haven't touched a joint in two years, and I've forgotten what cocaine looks like.”

“It's white.”

“David Kahane was never my dealer. I didn't know the man.”

“If you say so.” Stuckel hung up. Griffin wanted to say, “I can kill you, too, you know.”

He tried to throw himself into work, he returned three calls in ten minutes, said he'd read two scripts and talked to a friend of a friend who'd graduated law school but wanted a non-law job at a studio or with a producer.

Griffin was first in the screening room for dailies. When Levison opened the door, Larry Levy was with him, wearing jeans and a four-hundred-dollar sweater.

“I know he's not supposed to start for a few weeks, but I thought it'd be a good idea for him to see what we're doing now.”

“That is a good idea,” said Griffin with a big smile, and he stood to shake Levy's hand. He wanted Levison to see that he was already winning. Levy took a seat in the row in front of Levison and Griffin.

The forty minutes of film from the two movies were inconclusive. The footage from Chicago was of a car pulling up to a hotel, and the driver, a minor character, getting out. The footage from the set on Soundstage 12 was all close-ups of a gloved hand opening a drawer.

During the drawer shots Griffin called Jan for messages.

“Joe Gillis said he was confirming drinks, he'll see you tonight at the Polo Lounge. Late, he said, ten.”

“Joe Gillis?” said Griffin. “Who's Joe Gillis?” He knew he sounded confused. The name meant nothing to him. Levison snorted
and repeated the name at the same time Jan said, “He said you'd know.”

“Wait,” said Griffin. “You're both talking. Mr. Levison, sir, you first.”

“Joe Gillis, that's who William Holden played in
Sunset Boulevard.
You know, the writer who moves in with Gloria Swanson.”

“He said you have his number,” said Jan.

Griffin told Jan to cancel the afternoon meeting with the Marketing Department. Now he wanted to go to the funeral. He had to keep making cosmic amends.

“Someone called you and said he was Joe Gillis?” asked Levison.

“It's a friend of mine from college. He'd be a better friend if he weren't so annoying. He's always trying to be smart. Last week he left a message from Monroe Stahr.”

“Who's that?” said Levison.

“That was one I knew,” said Griffin. “He was the Irving Thalberg character in
The Last Tycoon.”

“I don't get it,” said Larry Levy. “This guy calls your secretary all the time using different names, and she doesn't recognize his voice?”

Levison scowled at him. “Let's not worry about it.”