The Second Mystery Megapack Page 2

  Myers smiled. “That’s right, Ty, you worked for us out there. Back over thirty years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “I was a mere lad at the time.” Banner ran a hand over his handsome, though slightly puffy, cheek. “After I got out of the service, I headed for Los Angeles. I had two things I was interested in, acting and drawing, and L.A. seemed like a good place to try both.”

  “Three interests,” said Heinz. “You forgot to mention ladies.”

  “I did a little of that in Hollywood, too.” Banner sipped his drink. “At any rate, despite my charm and natural good looks I never managed to get more than a few days of work as an extra. My entire acting career consisted of three days in a B-movie called Pago Pago Princess.”

  “I bet you looked terrific in a sarong,” said Heinz.

  “I did for a fact. Even so, I decided I’d better start pursuing my art career. I was multitalented, but so far I was just multi-starving. I managed to land a job at Destry Studios, working in their comic book department. That’s where I met Ben Segal.”

  Zarley, sitting far forward in his chair, asked, “Do you know some backstage scuttlebutt, Ty? Some dark secrets that’ve been buried in the dim past for—”

  “I know how come Segal’s career made a great leap ahead,” he said.

  “So tell us,” urged Zarley.

  “You grew up, being the youth of the bunch, reading Segal’s comic books, Lucky Duck and all that crap,” said Banner. “You have an idealized version of the guy, based on his work. And he was a damn good cartoonist, nobody did better funny stuff than Ben. There was a warmth in his drawings that… Well, I don’t want to spoil that for you.”

  Zarley blinked. “Are you trying to tell me Ben Segal wasn’t a nice guy?”

  Old Myers chuckled and then turned it into a cough.

  “He wasn’t exactly a prince of good fellows,” said Banner.

  “Let’s hear the damn story anyway,” said Heinz. “I don’t care if Segal’s heart was as black as a hunk of charcoal, I like yarns where working stiffs put one over on management.”

  “He did that.” Banner nodded at Myers. “You might be able to tell this better than I can.”

  The old cartoonist gave a negative shake of his head. “Nope. You’re obviously a much better raconteur than me.”

  “Is there going to be violence, bloodshed, and foul deeds?” inquired Zarley with another bounce on his chair.

  Banner finished his drink and signaled our waiter to bring another. “Sort of,” he said. “At least there were some sneaky doings and…a girl died.”

  “Tell us,” said Zarley impatiently.

  * * * *

  I was going to say that Hollywood was different in those days (began Banner), but I suppose it was really just about like it is now. Spiritually, anyway. The air was much better and a lot of the buildings from the twenties and thirties were still standing. The apartment house I was living in was just barely standing, though, a three story structure the color of peanut brittle, on a little tree-lined street off Hollywood Boulevard. Well, tree-lined if you take into account two terminally ill palm trees and something that blossomed with goofy yellow flowers every autumn. My suite, which was what my ancient landlady insisted on calling all the cubicles, was on the top floor in the rear. Most of the cracks in its plaster were inadequately hidden by a thin coat of peach-colored calcimine, and the bed was one of those that folded in and out of the wall, usually. From my bathroom window I could often see potential movie starlets sunbathing on a second story roof across the way.

  Lon Destry Productions hadn’t moved out to Burbank yet. We worked in a huge sort of shed at the back of Destry’s animation studio facilities over on Gower in the heart of Hollywood. It was a real movie sort of studio, with imitation stone walls around it, the exact same shade as my suite walls, and huge wrought iron gates presided over by a uniformed guard named, so help me, Pop. I was impressed with myself all over again every time I drove my prewar Plymouth coupe through those gates and gave Pop one of my best Errol Flynn smiles.

  Ben Segal was about ten years older than me and six inches shorter. An energetic little guy already going bald. He’d grown up in Yonkers or some such outpost of civilization, but in Hollywood he wore polo shirts and fawn-colored slacks and, when he had a hangover, which was often, dark glasses. Segal moved fast, like a cartoon cat after a mouse, and he usually talked like a speeded up sound track.

  While the rest of the studio was turning out the animated cartoons and the occasional feature, we labored away in our big shed doing the artwork for the half dozen or so comic books Westmoreland Publishing printed every month. Television still wasn’t much of a threat then, and Lucky Duck and Bix Bunnyrabbit were selling a half million copies per issue. All of you know me for the excellent and totally serious draftsmanship I put into my Dr. Judge’s Family strip, but in those bygone days I was a pretty feeble cartoonist. I managed to turn out the stuff, though, and I worked cheap. That last was always important to Lon Destry. They had me doing backgrounds for the comic book pages. If Maxie Mouse came running out of his house chased by Klaude Kat, I drew the house, the picket fence, the shrubs. After some six or so months in the Destry sweatshop, I graduated to a four page feature of my own. About a couple of zany—that was Destry’s favorite word—lambs. What the hell were their names?

  * * * *

  Myers said, “That must’ve been Wild Woolly & Jelly Roll Mutton.”

  “Right.” Banner paused to sip his martini. “How could I have forgotten.” He frowned at the old man. “You know, Mac, I’ve been trying to remember you. I’m sure I saw you around the Destry lot, but I don’t recall your working on the comic book assembly line.”

  “I moved in after you left,” Myers answered. “Before that I’d been an in-betweener on the Lucky Duck animated shorts. Comic books, though, had always been what I really wanted to do.”

  Banner nodded. “Some days I can’t even remember the names of all my former wives, so—”

  “Get on with the tale,” prompted Zarley. “You promised murder, gore, and a pretty girl.”

  “Not a murder, a death.”

  “I’ll settle for that,” said Zarley.

  * * * *

  She was an actress (resumed Banner). Most of you probably remember her, if not for her movies then because of her suicide. It was a front page story because Carol Cinders was a very pretty girl and because there were rumors she’d been involved with someone very important in the movie industry. Scandal wasn’t quite the same then; it was, as we all remember, a time when suspicions weren’t so public. So nobody came out and suggested what had driven this terrific-looking blond actress to take her life.

  I’d met her about six months before she died. Destry was making a full length movie, mixing live action and animation. Carol Cinders had the lead and even did a tango with Lucky. When to Duck it was called and, don’t ask me why, it actually won three or four Oscars.

  Carol was dead and gone by that time.

  Here I was, twenty-four or so, and, despite the fact I’d grown up in Connecticut and was a handsome devil, I was still something of a rube. The first time Lon Destry and some of his publicity people brought Carol over to tour our shed, I must’ve looked like a cartoon wolf. Eyeballs popping, tongue unrolling like a red carpet, shoes curling up at the toes, and smoke tooting out of my ears. But Carol really was a beautiful woman, and she had…well, a certain class.

  I suppose I had what we used to call a crush on her. For some reason, she liked to drop in on our sweatshop while she was working on When to Duck. She’d spend some time with Ben Segal in his private office, but she’d also hang around and watch us. We had about six or eight guys working in the big room, all at drawing boards grinding out funny stuff for the Destry comic books.

  I can still remember her leaning over my board and asking me about what Jelly Roll Mutton, or whoever it was, was up to. All the women I’ve known since…well, none of them was ever quite like her.

  Of course
I barely managed to say more than a few words to Carol Cinders. I wasn’t as sophisticated and glib then, and besides, she was a star. Not a major star maybe, but by that time she’d had top billing in something like two dozen movies. Everything from Cave Woman and Skyrocket Steele Conquers the Universe to Belle of the Confederacy and The Big Doublecross. Remember the black satin dress she wore in that one?

  I never had a date with her. And it’s just as well I never asked. Because Carol was pretty heavily involved with Lon Destry himself.

  Now, Destry had been in the animation business since 1935. He wasn’t quite as big as Disney or Warners, but he was growing every year. He and his cousin, Elmore Destry, had a great knack for merchandizing, and by the time I was with the studio, Destry Productions was grossing several million a year.

  They were also, unfortunately, spending it. Mostly on new equipment and experimental feature films. Destry had in mind an ambitious new animated feature. As I recall it was going to have something to do with Wagner and Valkyries. He was very anxious about money and that was supposedly why he’d married his second wife about a year earlier. Her name was Bittsy, and her family owned upwards of ninety-six furniture stores on the west coast. She had quite a bit of dough in her own name, too. Destry was a rumpled guy in his late forties and not quite as charming as Maxie Mouse, but he had a way with women. Bittsy actually adored him.

  She loved him in a possessive way, a jealous way. Had she ever learned that Destry was fooling around with a stunning blond motion picture actress, she’d have packed up and left him. He’d have lost her financial support and all the furniture in their Beverly Hills mansion.

  But Bittsy was not a particularly attractive lady and had the complexion and personality of an avocado. When Destry met Carol Cinders, he, as they used to say in movies, fell head over heels. After she finished her stint in When to Duck, he kept on seeing her, sneaking off to visit her at the pseudo-Moroccan place she had on the edge of Beverly Hills. He’d visit her by day when both their schedules allowed it, by night when he could come up with an excuse that’d con his wife. It wasn’t a completely blissful romance, but Destry was relatively satisfied. He might have gone on like that if it hadn’t been for Ben Segal.

  For a guy who did such whimsical stuff, Segal was a sort of a bastard. He was never satisfied with the way Destry Productions treated him or the way they paid him. Somehow, though, he took a liking to me and we’d go out to lunch or coffee quite a lot.

  I got my first hint of what he was contemplating one afternoon about a month before Carol’s death. We were in a coffee shop off Sunset, called the Mug O’Java. A relic of the 1930s and actually shaped like a giant cup of coffee. We sat in a booth just under the spot where the handle connected.

  Segal was gazing out the window.

  “What a schmuck,” he observed, chuckling.

  “Who?” I asked, not certain he wasn’t referring to me.

  “Blind man over in front of the Actors & Standins Bank,” he said, little eyes twinkling. “He lets ’em swipe his pencil ’most every day. If I were blind, I wouldn’t get taken like that.”

  “Maybe we ought to help the old—”

  “Aw, screw him,” said Segal. “Look at the rear end on that blonde on the bicycle.”

  I looked. “Ben, she’s only about fourteen.”

  “So teenagers don’t sit down?” He laughed. “You’re still something of a rustic, Tyrone.”

  “I don’t like to be called—”

  “Did your mom or your pop stick that Tyrone tag on you, Ty?”

  “My mother. It’s an old family—”

  “A complete bumpkin, I can tell.” Segal stirred another spoonful of sugar into his coffee.

  “You want to help blind men, protect virgin bobby soxers, and defend your mother. You’re a regular Eleanor Roose­velt.”

  “I guess I picked up my moral code from Lucky Duck comic books.”

  “Funny, very funny.” He put both elbows on the table. “You know what I get per page on that crap?”

  “I suppose a pretty good—”

  “Sixty bucks a page.”

  I was surprised. “That’s three times as much as any of the rest of us—”

  “Sure, but I’m at least six times as good. And—” he stirred more sugar into his coffee— “I am going to be a vice president of Destry Productions.”

  “Congratulations. When did Lon tell you the—”

  “Lon Destry doesn’t know yet.”

  “Then how—”

  “It’s because I know something about him,” said Segal, grinning. “I know… Look at who just walked in over there. All washed up.”

  “How exactly are you going to become a vice—”

  “By using the old bean.” He tapped his head once more. “See, I keep my eyes and ears open, thereby picking up little tidbits of info. One such item…and don’t let this upset your boyish hopes and dreams, Tyrone. But the item concerns Carol Cinders.”

  “Oh, so?”

  “She is sleeping around with our esteemed boss.”

  “Carol and Lon Destry?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But his wife—”

  “Also exactly.” Segal stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. “Should Mrs. D. find out, the whole studio, including cartoons, features, comic books, toys, and all, would go down the chutes. Therefore, it’s worth something to Lon to keep the knowledge from her.”

  “That sounds like blackmail.”

  “Right.”

  “But you—”

  “When I’m VP, Tyrone, I’ll see you get a nice little raise.” He tasted his coffee, made a face.

  “Geeze, that’s too sweet to drink.”

  Segal had commenced suspecting the romance between Carol and Destry while she was still working at the studio. He took to following her, watching her house, and generally keeping track of her. Sure enough, he began spotting Lon Destry rendezvousing with her. There was a slanting hillside field just above her house, and Segal’d hunker down there among the scrub brush and wild grass. He started taking along a camera, a fancy one borrowed from the studio. With it he could make pictures at a long distance and even at night. He was gathering quite a file of material.

  One thing began worrying him, though. After a while, he suspected someone else was watching her. Not as regularly as he was, but now and then.

  “That could foul me up,” he said one afternoon at the Mug.

  “How?”

  “Use your noodle, Tyrone.” He dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee cup. “There’s some gink in a Panama hat who parks his jalopy in front of her joint some evenings. He’s got his license plates muddied, and I haven’t been able to get close enough to make out his puss. I just see the Panama topper and the Life mag he’s always hiding behind.”

  “Think he’s a cop?”

  “No, but maybe a private eye,” he said. “See, what if Mrs. Destry has tumbled? If she knows her hubby is fooling around, then I’ve got nothing to go to Lon with.”

  “Might be a good idea just to forget the whole—”

  “Like hell, Tyrone. I’m going to parlay this into something big,” he assured me. “But I’ll have to move fast.”

  Two nights later Carol Cinders killed herself. Her body was found by her agent the next morning, a gray misty morning as I recall. There was no note, yet it was pretty obvious she’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills. A nearly empty bottle of the things was found spilled beside her bed. There were traces of sleeping drugs in the bottom of the tumbler of scotch she’d mixed them up in. Her fingerprints were all over the bottle and the glass.

  BLONDE MOVIE BEAUTY A SUICIDE! is how the newspapers put it.

  Segal had been watching her that night, the night she killed herself. He was stationed up in that weedy field behind her house. Now I don’t know if he actually saw into her bedroom and witnessed her taking the pills or not. He always denied that part when I asked him. But, somehow, he was certain she was dead up th
ere.

  And he knew she’d left a suicide note.

  Carol was cutting costs at that part of her life, and there were no servants. Not even a watchdog. So it wasn’t tough for Segal to make his way down the hill and onto the grounds. He shinnied up a drain pipe onto the balcony outside her bedroom window and went on in.

  Segal didn’t touch anything except the note. Folding that up carefully and tucking it away, he got out of there.

  Carol’s note said she didn’t want to live any more if she was to be parted from Lon Destry. Apparently, Destry’s wife had grown a shade suspicious, causing Destry to decide he had to end the affair right there and not risk losing his wife’s financial support.

  I thought at the time that Carol had been tougher than that, not the kind to kill herself over a fouled-up romance. There was the note, though, naming Destry as the reason for her suicide.

  It could’ve ruined him.

  Segal pointed that out to Destry when he showed him a photostat of the original the next morning early. Destry agreed, and that’s how Segal became a vice president.

  * * * *

  Zarley was looking unhappy. “Gee, I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said. “You know, I saved all my Lucky Duck comic books, from when I was a kid. I think Segal was a genius…now, though, you tell me he was a moneygrubbing blackmailer.”

  “That doesn’t affect his work,” said Heinz. “Myself, I admire a guy who got something out of the system. He had Destry by the short hairs, and they both knew it.”

  Old Myers had been drumming one freckled hand on the table top. “Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

  Banner frowned. “You know some details I left out?”

  “A few,” the old cartoonist replied with an odd smile.

  “Let’s hear ’em,” said Zarley. “Maybe they’ll untamish his image.”

  Myers said, “I wouldn’t think so.” He sighed, tapping his fingers a bit more. “Since, as you said, Ty, just about everybody involved is dead and gone, I don’t suppose it matters now.”