Script for Scandal Read online

  ‘That’s because it’s only a partial rewrite.’ Luddy’s gaze was still on the shadows across the set. ‘When the rest of the pages are in, all will be clear. But we must shoot this today.’

  Fentress had had enough. He barreled his way into Luddy’s line of sight, the expression of malice on his face so intense I expected a prison screw to blow his whistle. ‘What the hell is this shit?’

  ‘I wanted a scene rewritten,’ Luddy replied blandly. ‘It was rewritten.’

  ‘Not by me, it wasn’t.’

  ‘You’re hardly the only writer on this production. Or this lot. Writers, Mr Fentress, are not a scarcity.’

  ‘I’ve had it with your high-hatting, Ludwig. We’ll see about this.’ Fentress pushed his way out of the crowd, extras and crew wobbling in his wake like pins in a bowling lane.

  ‘If we could hear the lines again, please,’ Luddy said, brooking no argument.

  MacMurray gave Brenda a reassuring glance, then raised his script pages and dove in. ‘Listen, baby, I can talk to this fella, make him back off.’

  Brenda’s lingering uncertainty added some texture to her line reading. ‘He won’t listen to you. Or to reason. He won’t stop until he ruins me.’

  ‘Don’t talk crazy. Why would he do that? What does he know?’

  ‘I … I can’t tell you. It’s something I’ve been carrying for so long it’s become part of me. I can’t—’ Brenda gasped for air so suddenly I started.

  MacMurray inched closer to her. Fierce longing shaded his words. ‘I don’t care what you’ve done. Whatever it is, it’s behind us. I’ll protect you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘I promise. Have I ever lied to you?’

  ‘Then you have to come with me. You have to talk to him.’

  ‘Didn’t I say I would?’

  ‘And if words aren’t enough?’

  MacMurray faltered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what if I’m right and he won’t listen to either of us? How far are you willing to go for me?’

  Something in MacMurray’s attitude made me think he’d seized Brenda by the shoulders, when in actuality he hadn’t moved. ‘All the way, baby. I’ll go all the way down the line for you.’

  He then wheeled toward his director again. ‘Honestly, Luddy, I’m at sea here. Where does this scene come in the picture? Why are we shooting it in the nightclub now?’

  ‘And who is Arlene talking about?’ Brenda asked.

  All good questions, I thought.

  ‘Once more, please,’ Luddy said in response.

  They had just finished their encore and asked a new round of questions when Fentress elbowed his way through, dragging George Dolan behind him. ‘I want you to hear these new lines,’ Fentress said.

  ‘Lines I didn’t write,’ Dolan added hotly.

  Luddy signaled his actors. MacMurray folded his arms across his chest. ‘How about we wait until the whole scene is written?’ Brenda, I noticed, copied his defiant stance.

  The director pursed his lips, preferring to issue edicts than make requests. Still, on his best behavior, he asked, ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  MacMurray, shaking his head in bafflement, started in again. He and Brenda were halfway through their incomplete scene when George Dolan, his face ashen, began making his way toward the elephant doors.

  He stopped when he noticed several newcomers standing there. Two uniformed police officers. A bemused Captain Byron Frady on one side of them. And Gene, amazingly, on the other. He had his arms folded MacMurray-style, his eyes on Dolan.

  The scribe pivoted deftly only to come to a dead stop when he spotted Ben Siegel, his arm around Virginia’s waist, waiting to go back to work. Dolan’s mouth opened a few times, no words coming out, then he walked toward Frady. Edith nudged me, and I followed.

  A sickly grin smeared across his face, Dolan said, ‘Detectives. You have to arrest me.’

  ‘Gladly.’ Frady looked not at the contrite figure before him but at Edith. ‘Suppose you tell us what for.’

  ‘I killed Sylvia Ward. Together we killed that man Conlin.’ He turned to Gene, throwing himself on his mercy. ‘Please, you have to arrest me now. Before – before he finds out.’ From the slight inclination of his head, it was obvious Dolan meant Ben Siegel.

  ‘We always try to oblige.’ Gene thumped him on the shoulder as if offering to buy him a beer. ‘Let’s talk outside.’

  Luddy strutted over to Edith. ‘Have I paid my debt to you and Max? May we draw the curtain on this charade and return to the actual making of this picture?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Luddy. Thank you for indulging me.’

  Frady tucked a toothpick into his mouth solely so he could snap it in two with his teeth. Gene looked from Edith to me and back again. ‘I suppose we might as well have you ladies come along for this portion of the show too,’ he said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  THIRTY-TWO

  We made a merry caravan, Edith paired with Frady, Gene keeping a downcast Dolan close at hand, me bringing up the rear. A few steps from the soundstage we came to an old wooden building that, judging from the punching bags dangling from the rafters, served as the studio gym. We stood on the structure’s broad porch, out of the sunlight and the scrum of traffic. We could have been in Old California, waiting for a stagecoach.

  At first Gene and Frady scrutinized each other as much as they did Dolan, unsure of the protocol in this lessening of hostilities between them. Frady told Dolan they’d be happy to hear whatever he had to say. Dolan glanced around in the vain hope of finding a rewrite man, then accepted his fate.

  ‘I told you Sylvia and I were seeing each other.’ An admission facilitated by Edith and me, not that anyone acknowledged it. ‘She came to me on a Friday, I guess it was, and said she was being threatened by this fellow Nap Conlin. He had information he was blackmailing her with. I volunteered to help – and did it with better dialogue than what you just heard on the set.’ He laughed. No one else joined in. ‘The spirit of it was close, though. Where did those lines come from?’

  ‘We’ll get to that,’ Gene said. ‘You were going to help how?’

  ‘By providing moral support.’

  Gene and Frady shared a look, working together now. Dolan threw up his hands. ‘All right. And muscle, I suppose you’d say. Sylvia was going to tell Conlin to blow, and she wanted someone there to protect her when she did it.’

  ‘Meaning she did it,’ Frady said.

  ‘Yes. Saturday night, she and I went to his hotel. Squalid place. We didn’t go in together. Sylvia kept saying I was only there in case things went wrong. She and Conlin went into his room. I waited in the hallway outside, as we’d planned.’ His lips twitched into a grimace. ‘I didn’t think until later Sylvia only suggested that so I wouldn’t hear what Conlin knew about her.’

  ‘I can guess what happened next,’ Frady said. ‘Things went wrong.’

  ‘She opened the door to his room and …’ Dolan drew in a breath, the memory restored to full, lurid life before his eyes. ‘I could see Conlin on the floor. Out cold, bleeding from the head. Sylvia said he’d attacked her and she’d struck him with an ashtray. It had split in two. She still had half of it in her hand. I moved to call the police, but Sylvia said it was too late, Conlin was dying and neither of us could afford to be found there. “Better to put him out of his misery.”’

  ‘This was a request she made,’ Gene said. ‘To you.’

  ‘Yes. One I carried out before I could think about it. I still don’t know why. I grabbed this statue from the hallway. Took it and the ashtray when we left.’ Dolan wiped his eye with a knuckle. ‘No one noticed a thing. Again, that kind of place. Self-defense by proxy, I thought. That’s what it was.’

  ‘You still didn’t know what Conlin was blackmailing Sylvia over,’ Frady said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘No. And believe me, I’m aware how ridiculous that sounds. You kill a man, you ought to
know the reason. I assumed she would tell me. But all she said was we probably shouldn’t see each other for a while. I saw the logic, but … my mind went to some dark places after that. A habit that comes with the trade.’

  ‘What places?’ Gene asked. ‘How dark?’

  ‘I started to suspect this hadn’t been an impulsive act, and I’d been deliberately enlisted as accomplice.’

  We listened to the distant clamor of crews on various soundstages. A breeze stirred a few scraps of paper on the gym’s porch. I saw Edith gesturing to someone and turned to see Billy Wilder strolling toward Stage 13.

  ‘I felt a strange sort of relief when you showed up a few days later.’ Dolan flapped a tired hand at Frady. ‘Followed by complete mystification when you asked Clyde about Conlin. I hadn’t the foggiest they knew each other. I was flabbergasted. That meant Streetlight Story had to be at the heart of this somehow, so I said to hell with it and sought out Sylvia.’

  ‘And?’ Frady prompted.

  ‘It took some doing to see her. She avoided me at first. Then she consented to meet.’

  This time Frady merely cleared his throat.

  ‘She told me everything. Probably felt she had to, in order to keep me close. That’s my guess, anyway.’

  ‘What exactly did she tell you?’ Gene asked.

  ‘That she’d been cooperating with the District Attorney’s office in a bid to bring down Bugsy Siegel. Conlin found out, and was ready to spill the beans.’

  ‘She also told you she was sleeping with Siegel.’ Frady opened his tweed jacket, thrusting his stomach forward, letting it bully Dolan. ‘Be honest now. That’s what made you see red.’

  ‘I wasn’t pleased about that. But that wasn’t it. I’d never been in her apartment before. She didn’t have any books. I asked her, what kind of writer doesn’t have books? She laughed at me. Said she wasn’t a writer at all.’ Dolan shook his head, aghast at his own credulity. ‘She’d lied about everything. She’d used me from the outset, and now we were bound together.’

  ‘Until you unbound yourself,’ Gene said.

  Dolan nodded, the way one does when the secretary pops her head in and asks if anyone wants coffee. For the first time, I could see George Dolan as a murderer. I stepped away from him, the board beneath me creaking.

  ‘May I ask one question?’ Edith said quietly. ‘What did you throw on the floor of Miss Ward’s apartment to conceal the remnants of your broken reading glasses?’

  Dolan peered at her in mild surprise. It was Frady who regarded Edith as if she were a witch.

  ‘A drinking glass,’ Dolan said. ‘My eyeglasses flew out of my pocket when I …’ His hands unconsciously gripped a phantom length of cord, and I braced myself against one of the beams supporting the porch’s roof. ‘The lenses shattered. I couldn’t hope to pick up every last sliver, so I threw a glass on top of them instead, hoping to confuse things. Did my new pair give me away?’

  ‘More the fact that horn-rims don’t complement your new wardrobe. But when you require an immediate replacement, you purchase whatever is available in your prescription.’

  ‘Sylvia did want me to get new glasses.’ Dolan directed the comment at me. I wrapped both arms around the wooden beam.

  He then cast a nervous eye toward Stage 13. ‘I don’t want to tell you fellows how to do your job, but Siegel’s on this lot to kill me. You have to get me away from here. Away from him.’

  ‘That can be arranged,’ Frady said. ‘Gene, why don’t you put Mr Dolan in the care of our officers?’

  ‘I still want to know where that dialogue came from,’ the writer said to Edith. ‘You were behind that, yes? Can’t miss with Shakespeare. “The play’s the thing/wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”’

  Edith frowned. ‘I confess that provenance didn’t occur to me.’

  ‘Might as well steal from the best. Working with Clyde taught me that. Everybody steals.’ Dolan then wandered docilely off with Gene as if about to begin a studio tour.

  Frady aimed his intimidating bulk at Edith. ‘Suppose you tell me, Miss Head, how you knew that business about the eyeglasses without setting foot in the girl’s apartment?’

  She gazed placidly up at him. ‘Lillian described the scene vividly, including the shards of glass. It wasn’t until I noticed Mr Dolan’s inappropriate new eyewear that I made the connection. As I’m sure your department already has. A cursory examination would reveal two different kinds of glass.’

  From the way Frady worried his watch chain, I knew the glass had gone uninspected. ‘Naturally,’ he huffed. ‘Did your interest in the shirt buttons we found in Conlin’s room spark any similar insights?’

  ‘Minor ones, to be sure. You said the buttons were like mother-of-pearl – abalone would be a good guess – and had been scattered on the floor as a result of a struggle. Meaning Mr Conlin had put on a fair quality shirt, which he took pains to fasten. From that we can deduce his guest was someone he aimed to impress, perhaps a woman. In this case, both. Miss Ward, lest we forget, was employed at Central Casting. Depending on the outcome of their conversation, she could still be a boon to his career. The serving of tea at that hour also strongly implied a female visitor, as I’m sure you’ve considered.’

  Frady took out his frustration on his pocket watch, which he twirled furiously on its chain. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Given the circumstances of the crime, it seemed odd Mr Conlin’s killer would exit the room to seek a weapon. That fact alone raised the possibility of a confederate, which you’ve doubtless incorporated into your inquiry.’

  His watch now a golden blur, Frady barked, ‘And you didn’t see fit to share these speculations with us?’

  ‘Please, Captain Frady. I wouldn’t presume to squander your time with guesswork.’

  ‘Until this afternoon.’

  ‘Circumstances demanded an exception, as I explained when I telephoned.’

  ‘You called Morrow first, I noticed.’

  ‘Detective Morrow and I have been acquainted for some time. And I felt it only right he be present, given his connection to Streetlight Story.’

  Frady grunted. ‘I won’t begrudge him that. In fact, why don’t I spell him so he can follow up with you ladies himself?’ Tucking the watch into his pocket, he hotfooted away at a pace indicating he’d be happy never to set foot on Paramount soil again. I turned to Edith, now studying the structure behind us.

  ‘This barn was the original Paramount building, you know. It used to be at the corner of Selma and Vine. Mr DeMille shot The Squaw Man there. The barn was moved here in 1926. So much history in these timbers. Shall we return to the soundstage?’

  I held my tongue a good three steps before exploding. ‘What happened back there? How did—’

  We rounded the corner to Stage 13. Billy Wilder slouched against the building, arms folded, trilby tilted to shade his eyes. ‘The operation was a success?’

  ‘Indeed it was, Billy, thanks to you.’

  Wilder nudged his hat back. ‘I was not happy with my dialogue.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. It was composed on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘I tell myself that’s when I’m at my best. It hurts to learn I’m not. Still, without context—’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ To Wilder I said, ‘You wrote the dialogue that was just read on the soundstage?’

  ‘At my behest,’ Edith said.

  ‘I can never resist a commission,’ Wilder added.

  ‘I was unsatisfied with Miss Muir’s solution,’ Edith explained. ‘Yes, Mr Siegel was the most likely culprit, but I had doubts. The person with the most to fear from Mr Conlin, I reasoned, was Miss Ward, assuming Mr Conlin had learned of the rather dangerous game she was playing. As he sold information, she would want to silence him.’

  ‘That’s why he was on the lot the day I met him,’ I said. ‘He wanted to tell Fentress what Sylvia was up to.’

  ‘Very likely. But while there were at least two viable suspects in
Mr Conlin’s murder, I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to eliminate Miss Ward other than Mr Siegel. Then I saw Mr Siegel on our soundstage. More importantly, I saw Mr Dolan see him – and flee at once. Why would his journalistic instincts desert him at such a propitious hour, with an infamous gangster in his midst, unless he had reason to fear Mr Siegel?’

  ‘Such as the fact he’d killed the woman Siegel was sleeping with,’ I breathed.

  ‘Not to mention relying on her for crucial information in his efforts to exploit the unrest involving the potential extras’ union. I was reminded of Mr Ramsey’s line about looking at the story from a new angle. The narrative made sense if Mr Dolan killed Miss Ward, and he would only have done that if he were at least implicated in Mr Conlin’s murder. The trouble is—’

  ‘You had no way of proving it,’ I finished.

  Edith nodded. ‘It was a gamble, but I thought if Mr Dolan believed someone knew his secret – someone like Mr Fentress, who could have conceivably learned the truth – he might panic. I asked Billy to provide a script for the occasion.’

  ‘Is it my turn? May I speak now?’ Wilder smiled. ‘I have no idea, of course, what either of you ladies is talking about. Edith knocked on my door and proposed my writing some dialogue. You told me what you wanted to say, and I said it. With a little more pizzazz, I hope.’

  ‘You did so beautifully,’ Edith reassured him.

  ‘I heard a few of my lines when I snuck onto the stage. Serviceable, at best. But now my scene is over, so I will return to my office and my real script, where I can actually follow the story.’ He glanced back at Stage 13. ‘I hope Luddy knows what he’s doing. He seems to be getting carried away with the shadows. I don’t know the world is ready for such a film. Although MacMurray was surprisingly good playing a heel. A nice idea, casting him against type. He should do it in a better picture.’ Wilder tipped his trilby at us and sauntered off.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Life on Streetlight Story’s set had stampeded along without us, our absence scarcely noted. Lives may have unraveled and mysteries been solved, but there was still a picture to be made. Addison, in his usual fashion, had become fast friends with his dance partner Eileen, the two of them laughing it up under the lights. He exchanged words with Siegel and Virginia. I resisted the urge to warn him away from them.