Show Business Is Murder Read online

  “Six thousand? I don’t have that kind of—”

  “Yes, you do! I heard you say you sold some foreign rights to a screenplay you wrote four years ago, when you were only nineteen.”

  “That’s the only thing I ever sold,” Braddock said. “And if it weren’t for that money I’d have to get a j—j—”

  “Job,” Mitty said.

  “I have difficulty even saying the word,” Braddock told him, feeling a chill.

  “So did I when I was your age. That’s because our kind knows our calling, our business. Don’t you understand? I’m offering you the way in! Chaplin with his tramp outfit and cane! Laurel with Hardy! The three tenors! Braddock and Java!”

  “Why six thousand dollars?” Braddock asked.

  “It’s the cost of a fu—It’s the exact price of something I need.”

  “But I’ve never even heard Java talk.”

  “But he can! I swear to it!”

  “So show me. Make him perform.”

  “You can’t make a shy dog do something like talk if he doesn’t want to.”

  “Make him want to, if you want to make me want to buy him.”

  Mitty glanced at Edgar, who looked away and began polishing glasses with a gray towel.

  Mitty turned his gaze on Java, who also looked away.

  “I do not wish to appear the fool,” Mitty said.

  “That isn’t my intention,” Braddock said honestly.

  Mitty sighed, then tugged on Java’s leash and signaled with his hand for the dog to sit. Java settled back on his haunches, staring expectantly at Mitty with watery brown eyes. Spaniel eyes, Braddock suspected.

  Mitty looked around. He didn’t seem to want any more witnesses to this than was necessary.

  “He can’t pronounce just any words,” he said to Braddock.

  “Of course not.” Braddock wished he hadn’t started this. There’d been no reason to dare the old geezer, to humiliate him.

  Mitty found a sheet of yellowed paper from the assortment on the table, unfolded it, then put on a pair of half-lens reading glasses and referred to it. Braddock saw that it contained a handwritten list of about twenty words.

  “He can’t say all of these yet,” Mitty said, noticing Braddock staring at the list. “They’re Buddy’s old words. There’ll never be another Buddy.”

  “Of course not,” Braddock said, feeling smaller than Java. “Start with something easy.”

  “Awful,” Mitty said.

  “What?”

  But Mitty was staring intently at Java, who still had his moist brown eyes fixed on the old man. “Awful!” Mitty suddenly shouted.

  Java turned his head, looking away as if embarrassed.

  “Awful!” Mitty shouted again, with a note of desperation.

  “Arful!” barked Java.

  Mitty, his face flushed in triumph, looked at Braddock. “You heard! You heard!”

  Braddock was stunned, yet dubious. He remembered what Edgar the bartender had said about the government scientists. It was natural to be skeptical. “It might have been a bark. I mean, it started with the word Arf. But dogs say that all the time, even ones who can’t talk.”

  “A bark?” Mitty was incredulous. “Not a bark! No! You said start with something easy!” He stared hard again at Java and shouted, “AWFUL!”

  “Arful!” barked Java.

  Mitty beamed. “Awful!”

  “Arful!”

  “Awful!” Mitty was consulting his list, not even looking at Java.

  “Arful! Arful!”

  “Tree!” shouted Mitty.

  “Tree!” barked Java.

  “Car!”

  “Car!”

  “House!”

  “House! House!”

  “My God!” said Braddock.

  Edgar was leaning over the bar in shock. “I read about it, but I never seen it.”

  Mitty hugged Java, then collapsed back in his chair, breathing hard, exhausted but wearing his seamed smile. “I’ve got to be honest, that’s as good as I’ve ever heard him.”

  “He talked!” Edgar was saying over and over. “He really talked!”

  “He talked,” Braddock admitted, not knowing what to think, how to feel.

  “That’s why we were big, Buddy and me. It’s why you and Java can be big, Jim. Jim and Java. That’s even better than Braddock and Java!”

  Braddock’s heart was hammering as he stared down at Java. “Awful!” he shouted at the dog.

  “Arful!”

  That did it. “Will you take a check?”

  “From you, of course,” Mitty said. “Just make it out to Mitford Chambers for seven thousand even.”

  “You said six thousand!”

  “Did I? Make it five thousand then, Jim. I don’t want you to feel bad about this day. Not ever.”

  THAT NIGHT BRADDOCK folded a soft blanket in a corner of his tiny apartment for Java to sleep on. But the next morning Java was in bed beside him. The dog had drooled on the pillow.

  At breakfast, after Java had finished his dog food, Bradford swallowed a bite of egg and shouted, “Awful!”

  Java barked back something that sounded like Arful, though it wasn’t as clear as it had been yesterday at Savvie’s.

  “House!” shouted Braddock. “House!”

  “Shut up!” shouted Maureen Waters, his unemployed neighbor in the adjacent apartment. She was an aging character actress prone to violence.

  Braddock sighed, looked at the list of command words and instructions Mitty had given him, then made sure Java had plenty of water. As he left the apartment, he carefully locked the door behind him.

  Savvie’s wasn’t like yesterday. There were half a dozen customers at the bar and tables even though it wasn’t yet noon. Lou Savvie himself, a slender, jovial man who looked like the aged Frank Sinatra and knew it, was tending bar.

  “Ring-a-ding-ding,” he said, when he saw Braddock.

  Braddock sat at the far end of the bar and ordered a coffee with cream. “Edgar working today?” he asked.

  “He was supposed to,” Savvie said. “He didn’t show. That’s why I’m here.”

  Something stirred uneasily in the pit of Braddock’s stomach. He tried to ignore it. “Mitty been in?”

  “That old character? Nope. Haven’t seen him for a while.”

  “He was in yesterday,” Braddock said, sipping coffee.

  Savvie looked at him with his head cocked to the side. “Place was closed yesterday, election day. The law.”

  “But I was in here. Edgar was tending bar. Mitty was sitting at that table right over there. I sat with him.”

  Savvie grinned, as if wondering if this was a joke. “I think not, pally.”

  “But I bought a—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Mitty was telling me about his early show biz days, about him and Buddy. He said they were big.”

  “That I can tell you is true,” Savvie said. “Mitty and Buddy were huge in the business for a while. They played the Catskills and West Coast in the late thirties and forties, even into the fifties. They started in vaudeville, the resorts and lounges, did some gigs on early TV. They were hip. Chicks dug them, thought Buddy was cute. Everybody dug them. They were on Ed Sullivan four times!”

  Braddock was flooded with relief.

  “Mitty must have been some trainer. And some dog, that Buddy!”

  Savvie looked puzzled. “Dog? Naw, Mitty never worked with no dog.”

  “But Buddy—”

  “Was his dummy. Like Charlie McCarthy. Made outta wood. Sat on his lap. Mitty was a ventriloquist.”

  Braddock must have turned pale.

  “Hey! You okay?” Savvie asked, his face screwed tight with concern.

  “Yeah, sure,” Braddock said. His voice sounded unnaturally high. He was having trouble breathing. Five thousand dollars! He had to get to a phone and try to stop payment on his check! But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. The bank had been closed yesterday but open all morni
ng. There had been plenty of time for Mitty to cash the check, pay Edgar his cut, then leave town.

  Savvie glanced behind him at the beer advertisement clock. “I wish Edgar’d get here.”

  “He won’t be coming in,” Braddock said, laying a couple of bills on the bar for the coffee and a tip.

  “How do you know? A little bird tell you? A breeze named Louise?”

  “A little dog.” Braddock got down off his stool and moved toward the door.

  “You maybe oughta see a doctor, pally. You don’t look so well.”

  “You’re right,” Braddock said in his new, high voice. “I feel arful.”

  THINGS DIDN’T GET any better for a long time for Braddock. He waited tables for several months in a restaurant where other show business hopefuls ate cheap meals and left meager tips and sad stories. Night after night Braddock would drive a junk Ford he’d been able to afford to an even cheaper apartment than the one he’d been evicted from after the talking dog affair.

  Java still couldn’t talk, but Braddock sure could. And what he asked himself aloud every few days was the simple and ageless question, “How could I have been so stupid?”

  Braddock didn’t know why he kept Java around. Maybe as a reminder of his own gullibility. Or maybe it was because he’d somehow gotten fond of the shy little dog, who, after all, wasn’t a willing or even knowing party to the scam that had taken in Braddock. Java still occasionally wore that curious crooked smile that had so fooled Braddock into thinking there might be a glimmer of humanlike intelligence behind it. Of crude human ability. After all, if a dog could be embarrassed and actually had something like a sense of humor . . . But Braddock had to face facts. Java was merely a dog. And he, Braddock, was merely a dupe, another failure and Hollywood footnote so tiny and brief that no one would ever read it.

  It depressed Braddock to distraction.

  Then, inevitably, it angered him. He had to get even somehow, with somebody.

  So it was that six months later, and with great care, he chose that somebody. A man who was a modest success in show business. Guilfoil was his name. Ernest Guilfoil of Guilfoil Associates, whose embossed, cream-colored business card had an old fashioned movie projector printed on it and read simply, GUILFOIL: WRITE, EDIT, PRODUCE.

  “What have you produced?” Braddock asked him, in Guilfoil’s reasonably plush Wilshire Boulevard office.

  “Mostly European properties rather than home grown. There’s richer soil to nourish greater success right now in Europe.” Guilfoil, a short, plump, and seemingly completely hairless man whose smile was constant, smiled even wider as he spoke.

  Braddock wasn’t put off by this answer. He kept in mind the adage that you can’t cheat an honest man, and noted that the furnishings of Guilfoil’s office were fairly expensive. Deep enough pockets here, Braddock decided, but not so deep that if anything went wrong Guilfoil could afford topnotch Hollywood attorneys in a legal war of attrition.

  “What I’m looking for,” Braddock said, “is a promotional production featuring my grandfather’s dog, Java, who has a very unique talent.”

  Guilfoil appeared politely interested. “Which is?”

  Braddock couldn’t quite yet bring himself to say. “Let me give you a little back story first.” He reached for his briefcase that held the material given to him by Mitty, along with some freshly doctored photographs of “Buddy” the talking dog, in what appeared to be aged newspaper and billing images from two generations ago. Braddock had used a friend’s computer to improve on what Mitty had shown him.

  He watched while Guilfoil spread the material out on his desk and studied it.

  After a while, Guilfoil looked up. If he’d had eyebrows, they would have been raised. “Are you kidding? A talking dog? Take a walk, kid.”

  Braddock was ready. “I’m willing to put up a thousand dollars of my own money toward this production.” He laid a check on the desk, already made out to Guilfoil. “It isn’t much, Mr. Guilfoil, but it will show my sincerity.” Bait, borrowed from a loan shark in Central L.A. Braddock had been studying scams, and knew this was a necessary expense.

  He watched Guilfoil stare at the check. “But this dog here, in what you’ve shown me, has gotta be dead.”

  “Buddy has passed,” Braddock confirmed. “But let me tell you what my grandfather Mitty told me just before he, too, passed on. There are certain dogs of a certain breed and with palates of a certain type who . . . ” And he spun the tale told by Mitty months ago in Savvie’s bar.

  Guilfoil didn’t quite buy into it. Not yet. Braddock understood.

  “I’m not asking anything other than a percentage of the gross in any further film appearances or personal, so to speak, bookings,” Braddock said. “That’s how confident I am.”

  “I know you’re confident,” Guilfoil said, “but are you sane?”

  “I’ll let you judge for yourself,” Braddock said, standing up. Guilfoil drew back as if afraid, but Braddock merely walked to the door, opened it, and whistled softly.

  There was the whisper of paws on the waxed tile floor, and a small figure entered the office and stood just inside the door.

  “Mr. Guilfoil,” Braddock said, beaming proudly, “meet Java!”

  Guilfoil stood up. “Hello, Ja—” He caught himself. “And this is a direct descendent of Buddy of the Catskills?”

  “Direct, and ready to demonstrate the fact.”

  Braddock walked back toward the desk, and Java followed to stand beside him, facing Guilfoil.

  “I never saw a dog smile like that,” Guilfoil said.

  “Java, speak!” Braddock said.

  Java simply smiled at Guilfoil.

  Braddock knew it was time to bring into play the results of the other half of the money he’d borrowed from the loan shark. The part he used for his ventriloquism lessons.

  “Well?” Guilfoil said.

  Java said, “Arful!”

  Everything went smoothly after that.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Braddock sprang the trap. He showed up at Guilfoil’s office with Java and explained to Guilfoil that his mother in New Jersey needed heart surgery in a hurry, and asked Guilfoil for a loan against future earnings. Guilfoil, harder of heart and arteries than Braddock’s nonexistent mother, refused with transparent reluctance.

  “You don’t leave me any choice, Mr. Guilfoil,” Braddock said. “I can’t stay here in L.A.”

  “We have a contract to do a promotional film and work up a talking dog act,” Guilfoil reminded him. “I’m supposed to act as your agent.”

  “And I have to get to New Jersey, and fast.”

  “I’m not sure it’s legal to take dogs across state lines without making a lot of arrangements weeks ahead,” Guilfoil said, glancing at Java, who was seated near Braddock’s left leg. Java returned his glance and smiled at him.

  “You don’t leave me any choice,” Braddock said again, even more despondently. “I’m offering to sell you Java.”

  “And your end of the deal?”

  “You mean Java’s contract?”

  “That’s it, kid.”

  Java wasn’t smiling now.

  “Not for a million bucks!” Braddock said.

  “I was thinking twenty thousand.”

  Java seemed to be listening carefully, glancing from one man to the other as they spoke.

  “That isn’t nearly enough!” Braddock cried.

  “It’s enough if it’s the only offer you’re going to get. And it is, since we’ve been keeping this dog act under wraps before springing it on the public.”

  Braddock hung his head. “Okay. Twenty thousand. Cash, so I can catch a plane for Newark tonight. But it’s a lousy offer.” He gazed mistily at Java. “It’s a stinking damned world for people and dogs!”

  “Show-biz, kid,” Guilfoil said, reaching into a desk drawer for a contract form and cash box.

  “Take care of Java,” Braddock told him minutes later, trying not to break into a run as he went out the door.
/>   HE SHOULD HAVE left town five minutes sooner. Braddock’s suitcase was packed and he was hefting it down from the bed when there was a knock on his apartment door.

  His landlady to check on the place and make sure all the lights and gas burners were off, he figured.

  But when he opened the door, there was Guilfoil and Java. And a uniformed policeman. And a plainclothes cop who flashed an L.A.P.D detective’s badge and said he was from the Bunko Squad.

  Java couldn’t meet Braddock’s eyes. Guilfoil could. He looked furious. “You sold me ownership in a talking dog that doesn’t talk!” he said.

  “Maybe he just won’t talk for you.”

  The detective looked dubiously at Braddock, shaking his head. “It appears that what you did was illegal, Mr. Braddock.”

  Braddock couldn’t believe this. “Then I want to cross charges! Arrest this man!”

  “What?” Guilfoil said. “Cross what?”

  “This Guilfoil isn’t any kind of producer, like his card says! He wasn’t really going to do a film promo for me and Java.”

  “I never said I was,” Guilfoil told him.

  “That you were going to make a film?”

  “That I was a producer. You just assumed.”

  “Your business card says you’re a producer!” Braddock fished his wallet from his pocket, rooted through it, and pulled out Guilfoil’s card. He handed it to the plainclothes detective. “It should say con man.”

  “It doesn’t say producer,” said the detective, “It only says produce.”

  “He writes, edits, and produces,” Braddock said.

  The cop stared at him. “Produce, as in fruits and vegetables. Produce is what Mr. Guilfoil sells. He has a produce stand near Malibu.”

  “About to open a second,” Guilfoil said proudly. “With the all the money I’m going to have garnisheed from your future salary. We’ll see now who’s the con man!”

  “And you can have your dog back,” Guilfoil added, as Braddock was led away in handcuffs. “The kennel bill will be waiting for you.”

  BRADDOCK WAITED UNTIL after the arraignment, when he was out on bail, before finally admitting to himself that this had actually happened. His future was set, and it was bleak. As for his present, it was just as bleak. Here he was back in his crummy apartment with his dog that couldn’t talk, unemployed and maybe going to prison. The best he would get was probation and a ruined reputation. Maybe house arrest, if he was lucky. Difficult to land a job when you’re behind bars or wearing one of those electronic anklets.