Chapter 5

Lights, Camera, Bizarre

BACK THEN, ALL cars were black. But some were more black than others. The car Max Kliener sent to collect me that afternoon was so black that light seemed to slide off it. The driver wore a dark uniform that looked pale in comparison. He introduced himself as Hank. I could believe that – he looked like a Hank.

He was about six foot six in height, and as wide as he was tall. Not bad wide, just wide wide. I suspected his uniform had been put together from at least two other normal-sized suits. He had strikingly blond hair that contrasted with dark eyes and a nose that in the past had seen both better days and – I would bet good money – the wrong end of a large fist. I would have asked him about that, but he wasn’t a great conversationalist. What he did say sounded like it had been filtered through gravel.

The result of which was that the journey to Starlight Studios was conducted in near silence. With the dark-tinted windows and an opaque partition obscuring the driver, I felt like I was being wheeled along in an isolation tank completely cut off from the real world. But New York’s a bit like that anyway.

The ride was so smooth I didn’t realise we’d stopped until Hank opened the door to let me out. I was glad of my dark glasses as the sun was angling in over the long, low sheds that were the film studios. Hank had parked the car outside one of them, and Max Kliener was standing nearby talking to a lean man with a clipboard. He had a cigar clamped in his mouth, though it didn’t seem to be lit. He removed it to gesture and prod the air, like it was a prop.

When he saw me, Kliener opened his arms and waddled forwards. I avoided an embrace and shook his hand instead. It was cold and clammy and damp, like shaking a fish that’s been dead for a couple of days. If you know what that feels like.

‘Melody Melody Melody,’ Kliener enthused. He stepped back to look me up and down. I’m used to being looked up and down but it was still a bit disconcerting. Like meeting your own undertaker for the first time.

‘Max Max Max,’ I reciprocated. ‘How kind of you to invite me to your quaint little place.’

His mouth smiled to show he took it as a joke. His eyes hadn’t quite got the message and glared angrily.

Hank stayed with us as Max led me through a side door into the studio. Inside was bigger than an aircraft hangar and hotter than a sauna because of all the lights.

The lion’s share of the lighting was reserved for the set where they were shooting. It was a ballroom furnished in the style of Renaissance Italy. I refrained from pointing out a few obvious mistakes. I doubt if accuracy was foremost in the mind of the designer or the costume department. It was a little strange seeing the room only half built – with walls omitted to allow the cameramen access. But I can cope with ‘strange’. It’s only when we get to ‘bizarre’ that I start to get tingly.

We watched Rock and Giddy rehearse their scene in front of the cameras. The director – all shirtsleeves and megaphone – interrupting every few minutes. It was like both of the stars were novices, having to be told what to do every step of the way. That might have intrigued me, if I hadn’t had Max Kliener whispering obvious explanations uncomfortably close to my ear. The main distraction was that he had to stand on tiptoe to do it.

As the cast took a break to set up the lights and cameras ready for the next shot, Kliener gestured to Rock Railton, beckoning him over. A make-up woman moved in quickly on Giddy Semestre – all powder puff and potions. She had the sort of severe features and iron-grey hair that would scare anyone into looking their best.

‘He wants to apologise,’ Kliener told me as Rock negotiated a path through cables and technicians. ‘Dunno what got into him last night. Making like he didn’t know you and all that.’

I said nothing. How did Kliener know what had happened? Railton must have told him – but why? That didn’t fit with my working hypothesis. Time for a new theory, perhaps.

‘He’s very highly strung,’ Kliener added in a low voice as Rock joined us. ‘Problems with his meds.’

Rock greeted me like a long-lost friend, pulling me into a bear hug that more than made up for the previous evening. If he’d been a really good actor, I might have been convinced. But while there was no doubt he could act, he was competent, little more.

So when he apologised for forgetting we’d met before the party and that he’d actually been to my offices, I smiled my forgiveness.

‘It’s been such a hectic schedule,’ he said. ‘So much going on. I don’t know what I was thinking – didn’t know if I was coming or going.’

‘That can be such a problem,’ I agreed. ‘Just so long as you remember me now.’

‘How could I forget you, Miss Malone?’

‘Well, quite.’ Railton and Kliener were smiling so hard it seemed a shame to puncture the moment. But if anyone is completely without shame, then I’m not ashamed to say it’s me. ‘And my coffee,’ I said.

‘Your… coffee?’

‘Best coffee you’d ever tasted, you told me. I’m sure you remember that. You asked whether I grind my own beans.’

His eyes widened slightly and his moustache twitched. ‘It was the best coffee I’ve ever tasted,’ he assured me. ‘Unique.’

‘You’re too kind,’ I told him. Which he was – far too kind. Because now I knew he was lying. OK, so maybe it was a failing on my part, but I didn’t even offer him coffee.

Even so we were still in the territory marked as ‘Strange’ or possibly ‘Weird’. But ‘Bizarre’ was just around the corner.

It arrived in the form of Giddy Semestre. She walked up to Rock and Kliener, working her hips so hard she swayed through about twice the distance she needed to travel. She put her hand on Rock’s shoulder, leaning slightly towards me. Somehow she seemed rather less confident and more ‘dizzy’ than she had the night before. Still, at least I could be sure she would remember me.

‘So, Rocky,’ she breathed, nodding at me. ‘Who’s your glamorous lady friend?’

It was like she’d never met me before – and not just because she used the term ‘lady’.

I needed some time to think about this, and maybe come up with another theory that could later prove to be completely wrong. So I accepted Kliener’s offer of a tour of the rest of the studio complex.

My brain was working so hard that I barely took in the details. Kliener’s voice was an unguent drone. One vast studio looked much like another, even with sets being built or dismantled. I confess I paid more attention when we got to the costume department. I passed a pleasant few minutes examining Giddy Semestre’s cast-offs, which hung in a wardrobe running the length of the back wall.

‘I guess you’re about the same height,’ Kliener said, wiping his forehead with a sweat-stained handkerchief.

‘I guess we are.’ It wasn’t something I’d considered.

‘About the same size too. So what do you weigh?’ He made a guess that was slightly on the generous side. Whether that was generous to me or to the weight, I’ll leave to your imagination.

But I told Kliener: ‘I never discuss my weight before the third cocktail.’

‘Maybe I can do something about that,’ he smarmed.

Maybe not, I thought. I was beginning to get concerned at the lack of clues in this case. Possibly a lack of client too, as Rock Railton evidently had no real recollection of hiring me. Or presumably agreeing my fee.

Perhaps my impatience was showing, because Kliener assured me there was just one more stop on the tour. Just one more thing he wanted me to see. ‘It’ll blow you away,’ he promised.

Well, we live in hope.

Hank was waiting outside the costume store. For some reason he’d ditched the dark (but not that dark) suit in favour of light tan trousers and a blazer. He cracked his knuckles alarmingly as we emerged and he became our shadow as Kliener led the way down an alley that ran alongside the building.

Our destination was a nondescript block away from the main complex. It looked insignificant in the way that only something that is supposed to remain unremarked can. The bolts and locks on the door were shiny from frequent use, but there was no sign of another living soul.

Inside was dark. Kliener fumbled for a light switch while Hank pulled the door shut behind us.

‘You considered a life in the movies, Miss Malone?’ Kliener said as the lights snapped on.

‘I think you asked me that before.’

‘Maybe I did. But your height and weight…’

‘What about them?’

Lights were flickering into luminescence all around. The whole building was one vast chamber, like the studios. Except this obviously wasn’t a studio.

‘I reckon you’d make a good double for Giddy Semestre.’

He had to be joking. Giddy’s figure, while perfect in its own way, was rather different from my own just-as-perfect figure. Sure, we both had curves in the same places. But not always in exactly the same direction or at the same angle. There were bits of Giddy Semestre that entered a room long before the rest of her, and believe me that would be a distinct disadvantage for a private detective who prides herself on being able to sneak into rooms all at roughly the same time.

But whatever witty retort I might have made was stifled by the sight of the inside of the building as the lights came on. The centre of the chamber was taken up with a large coffin-shaped tank. Pipes and tubes and cables and wires fed into and out of it, running to various pieces of advanced – for 1938 – equipment. More wires and cables emerged from the equipment and disappeared behind a heavy curtain close to one of the walls.

Stretching out beyond the tank were several rows of what looked like glass bell jars. Except they were enormous – maybe ten feet high.

I’d never seen anything like it. And things I’ve never seen anything like worry me. Because I have seen so many things. What surprises life has left for me tend, for some reason, to be unpleasant ones.

Instead of wasting my wit, therefore, I decided it was time to be on my way.

Hank was standing with Kliener off to one side, so my route back to the door was clear. Never one to miss an opportunity or inspect the teeth of a horse someone’s donated, I made my way rapidly back to the door and flung it open.

Only to find Hank standing on the other side. He cracked his knuckles and smiled. One of these actions made a noise like a gunshot. I had a horrible feeling it was the smile.

The obvious conclusion that any half-decent detective might come to at this stage, confronted with a Hank in the doorway and aware of another identical Hank standing behind her is that they were twins. One in a dark suit, the other in slacks and a blazer. I discarded this conclusion at once.

Partly this was because when I turned back to face Kliener and slacks-Hank, I saw that a third Hank was approaching across the chamber.

Mostly it was because as more lights flickered into life on the far side of the coffin-shaped tank, I could see what was inside the bell jars.

Leaning against the glass, for all the world like propped-up mannequins, were people. One in each jar. A whole line of identical Rock Railtons stood facing a whole line of identical Giddy Semestres.

‘Here’s the thing,’ I said to the Hank who had just grabbed my arms from behind and was holding me more tightly than a nervous bridegroom. ‘I may be wrong about this, but I’m willing to go out on a limb at least until you tear my limbs out. But I am guessing that you do not come from a family of identical triplets.’