What's Better Than Money Page 6

  ‘You have money? Where did you get it from?’

  ‘The Pacific Studios. They ’phoned just after you left. I had three hours crowd work.’

  ‘I bet you are lying. I bet you went down some dark alley with an old man with a beard.’

  She giggled.

  ‘It was crowd work. I’ll tel you something else. I know where we can get that five thousand you’re worrying about.’ I put down the comb and faced her.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  She studied her finger nails. Her hands were grubby and her nails black rimmed.

  ‘The five thousand for the cure.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I know where we can get it.’

  I drew in a long slow breath.

  ‘There are times when I would like to beat you,’ I said. ‘You exasperate me so much one of these days I’ll slap your bottom until you scream blue murder.’

  She giggled again.

  ‘I know where we can get it,’ she repeated.

  ‘That’s wonderful. Where can we get it?’

  ‘Larry Lowenstien told me.’

  I thrust my hands deep into my trousers pockets.

  ‘Don’t act cute, you dope! Who’s Larry Lowenstien?’

  ‘A friend of mine.’ She leaned back on her elbows, arching her chest at me. She looked as seductive as a plate of lukewarm soup. ‘He works for the casting director. He told me they keep more than ten thousand dollars in the casting office. They have to have it in cash to pay the extras. The lock on the door is nothing.’

  I lit a cigarette: my hands began to shake.

  ‘What’s it to me how much money they keep in the casting office?’

  ‘I thought we could get in there and help ourselves.’

  ‘That’s quite a bright idea coming from you. What makes you imagine they wouldn’t object to us taking it? Hasn’t anyone told you that taking someone’s money is stealing?’

  She wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

  ‘It was just an idea. If you feel that way about it, forget it.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice. That’s just what I’m going to do.’

  ‘Well, all right. Anything you say, but I thought you were so keen to get that money.’

  ‘I am, but not that keen.’

  She got up.

  ‘Let’s go and eat.’

  ‘You go. I have something to do.’

  She wandered to the door.

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m not stingy. I’ll treat you. You’re not too proud to be treated by me, are you?’

  ‘I’m not proud. I’ve something else to do: I’m going to talk to Rusty. I’m borrowing my fare home from him. I’m quit ing.’

  She stared at me.

  ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘I’m out of a job,’ I said patiently. ‘I can’t live on air so I’m going home.’

  ‘You can get a job at the Pacific Studios. There’s a big crowd scene tomorrow. They want people.’

  ‘They do? How do I get a job like that then?’

  ‘I’ll fix it. Come with me tomorrow. They’ll give you a job. Now let’s go and eat: I’m starving.’

  I went with her because I was hungry and I couldn’t be bothered to argue with her any more.

  We went to a small Italian restaurant and ate spaghetti which was very good and thin slices of veal fried in butter.

  Half way through the meal, she said. ‘Did Shirely real y say I could sing?’

  ‘That’s what he said. He said when you had a cure and when you were a hundred per cent fit, he would give you a contract.’

  She pushed aside her plate and lit a cigarette.

  ‘It would be easy to take that money. There would be nothing to it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that for you nor anyone else!’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to have a cure?’

  ‘Oh, shut up! To hel with your cure and to hell with you!’

  Someone put a nickel into the juke box. Joy Miller began to sing Some of these Days. We both listened intently. She was loud and brassy and often off-pitch. The tape I had in my pocket was much, much better than this disc.

  ‘Half a million a year,’ Rima said dreamily. ‘She isn’t so hot, is she?’

  ‘No, but she’s a lot hotter than you. She doesn’t need a cure. Let’s get out of here. I’m going to bed.’

  When we got back to the rooming-house, Rima came to the door of my room.

  ‘You can sleep with me tonight if you like,’ she said. ‘I feel in the mood.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ I said, and I shut the door in her face.

  I lay in bed in the darkness and thought about what she had said about all that money in the casting director’s office. I kept telling myself that I had to get the idea of stealing the money out of my mind. I had sunk pretty low, but I hadn’t sunk that low, but the idea kept nagging at me. If I could get her cured… I was still pecking at the idea when I fell asleep.

  The next morning, soon after eight o’clock, we took the bus into Hollywood. There was a big crowd moving through the main gates of the Pacific Studios and we tagged along behind.

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ Rima said. ‘They won’t start shooting until ten. You come with me. I’ll get Larry to book you.’

  I went along with her.

  Away from the main studio block was a number of bungalow type buildings. Outside one of them stood a tall, thin man wearing corduroy trousers and a blue shirt.

  I hated the sight of him as soon as I saw him. His white puffy face was badly shaven. His eyes were close set and cunning. He looked like a pimp alert for business.

  He gave Rima a jeering grin.

  ‘Hello, sugar, coming to work your stint?’ he said and then he looked at me. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘A friend,’ Rima said. ‘Can he be one of the crowd, Larry?’

  ‘Why not? The more the merrier. What’s his name?’ ‘Jeff Gordon,’ Rima said.

  ‘Okay. I’ll book him.’ To me, he went on, ‘Get over to Number three studio, pal. Down the alley, second on your right.’

  Rima said to me, ‘You go ahead. I want to talk to Larry.’

  Lowenstien winked at me.

  ‘They all want to talk to me.’

  I went off down the alley. Half way down, I looked back. Rima was going into the office with Lowenstien. He had his arm around her shoulders and he was leaning close, talking to her.

  I stood in the hot sunshine and waited. After a while, Rima came out and joined me.

  ‘I was taking a look at that lock. There’s nothing to it. The lock on the drawer where the money is kept is tricky, but I could open it, given a little time.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘We could do it tonight. We could get lost here,’ she went on. ‘I know a place where we can hide.

  We’d have to stay the night here and get out in the morning. It would be easy.’

  I hesitated for perhaps half a second. I knew if I didn’t take this risk I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I realised I would have to go home and admit defeat. Once I got her cured, both of us would be in the money.

  Right at that moment, all I could think of was what ten per cent of half a million dollars would mean to me.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to do it, I’ll do it with you.’

  II

  We lay side by side in the darkness, under the big stage of Studio Three. We had been lying like that for the past three hours, listening to the tramp of feet overhead, the shouting of the technicians as they prepared the new set for tomorrow’s shooting, the professional cursing of the director as they didn’t do what he told them to do and did what he told them not to do.

  All the morning and the afternoon, we had worked in the heat of the arc lights until dusk with three hundred other extras: that regiment of the lost who hang on to Hollywood in the hope, some day, someone will notice them and turn them into stars, and we had sweated with them a
nd hated them.

  We had been part of a crowd supposed to be watching a Championship fight. We had stood and yelled when the director had signalled to us. We had sat and booed. We had leaned forward with horror on our faces. We had jeered, and finally we had lifted the roof when the pale, thin looking kid in the ring who didn’t look as if he could punch his way out of a paper bag, had brought the champion down on his knees and forced him to quit.

  We had done all that over and over again from eleven o’clock until seven o’clock in the evening, and it was the hardest day’s work I have ever done in my life.

  Finally, the director had broken it up.

  ‘Okay, boys and girls,’ he had bawled over the loudspeaker system. ‘I want you all here tomorrow at nine sharp. Wear what you are wearing now.’

  Rima put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Keep close to me and move fast when I tel you.’

  We tagged along just behind the long line of sweating extras. My heart was thumping, but I wouldn’t let myself think what was ahead of me.

  Rima said, ‘Through here,’ and gave me a little push.

  We slipped down an alley that brought us to the back entrance of Studio Three.

  It was easy to get under the stage. For the first three hours we remained like mice, scared that someone might find us, but after a while, around ten o’clock, the technicians knocked off and we had the place to ourselves.

  By then I was aching for a cigarette and so was Rima. We lit up. In the feeble light of the match’s flame, I saw her stretched out beside me in the dust, her eyes glittering, and she wrinkled her nose at me.

  ‘It’s going to be al right. In another half hour, we can do it.’ It was then I began real y to get scared.

  I told myself I must be out of my mind to get involved in a thing like this. If we were caught…

  To get my mind off it, I said, ‘What’s this guy Lowenstien to you?’

  She shifted. I had an idea I had touched a sore point.

  ‘He’s nothing to me.’

  ‘Don’t tel me! How did you get to know a rat like him? He takes after your pal Wilbur.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk with your scarred face! Who do you imagine you are?’

  I clenched my fist and punched her hard on her thigh.

  ‘Shut up about my face!’

  ‘Then shut up about my friends!’

  I had a sudden idea.

  ‘Of course — you get the stuff from him! He’s got peddler writ en al over him.’

  ‘You hurt me!’

  ‘There are times when I could strangle you. He’s the rat you get your drugs from, isn’t he?’

  ‘What if he is? I have to get it from someone, don’t I?’

  ‘I must be nuts to have anything to do with you!’

  ‘You hate me, don’t you?’

  ‘Hate doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘You’re the first man who hasn’t wanted to sleep with me,’ she said, her tone bit er.

  ‘I’m not interested in women.’

  ‘You’re in as much a mess as I am only you don’t seem to know it.’

  ‘Oh, go to hell!’ I said, furious with her. I knew she was right. I had been in a mess ever since I had come out of hospital, and what was more, I had grown to like being in a mess.

  ‘I’ll tel you something now,’ she said softly. ‘I hate you. I know you are good for me: I know you could save me, but all the same I hate you. I’ll never forget how you treated me when you blackmailed me about the police. Watch out, Jeff. I’l get my own back for that even if we go into business together.’

  ‘You try anything funny with me,’ I said, glaring in her direction in the darkness, ‘and I’l give you a hiding. That’s what you want: a damn good hiding.’

  She suddenly giggled.

  ‘Maybe I do. Wilbur used to beat me.’

  I moved away from her. She was so corrupt and horrible it made me sick to be close to her.

  ‘What’s the time?’ she asked.

  I looked at the luminous hands of my watch.

  ‘Half past ten.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  That set my heart thumping.

  ‘Do they have guards here?’

  ‘Guards? What for?’

  She was already crawling away from me, and I went after her. A few seconds later we were standing together in the darkness, near the exit of the Studio. We paused to listen.

  There wasn’t a sound.

  ‘I’ll lead the way,’ she said. ‘Keep close to me.’

  We moved out of the Studio into the hot, dark night. There were stars, but the moon hadn’t come up yet. I could just see her as she paused to look into the darkness, the way I was looking.

  ‘Are you scared?’ she asked, moving close to me. I hated the feel of her slight, hot body, but my back was against the wall of the studio and I couldn’t get away from her. ‘I’m not. This sort of job never scares me, but I think you’re scared.’

  ‘Okay, so I’m scared,’ I said, shoving her away. ‘Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘You don’t have to be. They can’t do anything to you worse than you have already done to yourself.

  That’s something I’m always tel ing myself.’

  ‘You’re nuts! What kind of talk is that supposed to be?’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get the money. It’l be easy.’

  She moved away into the darkness and I followed her.

  All day, she had been carrying a sling bag over her shoulder. When she paused outside the casting director’s bungalow, I heard her zip the bag open.

  I stood close to her, listening, aware of the thudding of my heart beats, feeling my blood pounding through my veins and I was scared silly.

  I heard her fiddling with the lock. She must have been very expert. In a few seconds, I heard the lock snap back.

  Together we entered the dark office. We paused, waiting for our eyes to become used to the faint light from the stars we could see through the uncurtained window. After a few seconds we could see the outline of the desk across the room.

  We went over to it and Rima knelt beside it.

  ‘You keep watch,’ she said. ‘This shouldn’t take long.’

  I was shaking with fright by now.

  ‘I don’t want to go ahead with this,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Don’t be a quit er!’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not giving up now.’

  There was a sudden gleam of light as she turned the beam of a flashlight on the lock of the drawer.

  Then she sat on the floor and began to hum softly under her breath.

  I waited, my heart thumping, listening to the tiny scratching noise she was making as she worked on the lock.

  ‘It’s tricky,’ she said, ‘but I’l fix it in a moment.’

  But she didn’t. The minutes dragged by: the scratching noise began to get on my nerves. Now she had stopped humming and I could hear her swearing under her breath.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, moving away from the window to stare over the desk at her.

  ‘It’s a toughie, but I’l beat it.’ She sounded quite calm. ‘Leave me alone. Let me concentrate.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Oh, quiet down!’

  I turned back to the window, then my heart gave a sudden bound, leaving me breathless.

  Outlined against the starlit darkness I could see the head and shoulders of a man who was looking through the window.

  I didn’t know if he could see me. It was dark in the office, but he seemed to be staring directly at me.

  His shoulders looked immense, and on his head was a flat peaked cap that turned me cold.

  ‘There’s someone out there,’ I said, but the words didn’t get beyond my dry lips.

  Rima said, ‘I’ve fixed it!’

  ‘There’s someone out there!’

  ‘I’ve got it open!’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? Someone’s outside!’

 
‘Get under cover!’

  I looked wildly around the dark room. Sweat, as cold as ice, was running down my face. I started across the room as the door was flung open. The light clicked on.

  The impact of the hard, bright light on me was like a blow on the head.

  ‘Make a move and I’l blast you!’

  A cop voice: tough, hard and full of confidence. I looked towards the door.

  He stood in the open doorway, a .45 in his brown muscular hand, pointing at me. He was all-cop: big, broad and terrifying.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  Slowly, I put up my shaking hands. I had a horrible feeling he was going to shoot me.

  ‘I — I — I…’

  ‘Keep your hands like that!’

  He didn’t know Rima was crouching behind the desk. My one thought now was to cover her: to get out of the office before he found her.

  Somehow I managed to get some control over my shaking nerves.

  ‘I lost my way,’ I said. ‘I was going to sleep here.’

  ‘Yeah? You’l sleep somewhere a lot safer than here. Come on. Move slowly and keep your hands up.’

  I moved towards him.

  ‘Hold it!’ He was staring at the desk. ‘Have you been trying to bust into that?’

  ‘No… I tel you…’

  ‘Back up against the wall! Move!’

  I backed up against the wall.

  ‘Turn around!’

  I faced the wall.

  There was a long moment of complete silence.

  The only sound in my ears was the thud-thud-thud of my heart beats: then there came a violent, shattering crash of gunfire.

  The sound, enormous in the room made me cringe. I looked over my shoulder, thinking the guard had walked right into Rima and had killed her.

  He was standing by the desk, bent double. His smart cap had fallen off, showing a bald spot at the back of his head. His gauntlet gloves were pressed to his stomach, his gun lay on the floor.

  From between the fingers of his gloves, blood began to leak, then there was a second bang of gunfire.

  I saw the flash of the gun coming from behind the desk.

  The guard gave a strangled grunt: the sound a fighter makes when his opponent has sunk in one that really cripples. Then, slowly, he tipped over and spread out on the floor.

  I stood there, staring, my hands still in the air, sick enough to throw up.