If the death of his protégé, Wanda Belkins, represented a big headache to Emerson Waldie, he was about to get a visit from someone who represented an even bigger headache.
He hadn’t been back in his office more than a few hours after identifying Wanda’s body when who should barge in like he owned the place but Morrie Goldstrohm, returning to Grove after two months sick leave.
As Waldie’s studio manager, Morrie was the unsung hero of Grove Pictures. That was because for all the years that the studio had been in business, it had been Morrie who’d kept the place together. Latterly, with the box office receipts of a dozen Maggie Graym flicks.
Emerson Waldie and Morrie Goldstrohm had come from the same New York tenements and had started their careers in the same way via the early one-reelers.
Morrie had hired Waldie to run some picture houses south of 23rd Street in Manhattan back in 1919. These were the days when you could make a lot of money on one-reelers and the good times were to last until talkies.
It was around 1929 that Morrie’s little empire came crashing to the ground and he had to sell off everything he had in order to cover his sizeable debts.
Waldie had worked for Morrie for seven years and had saved his money. He’d also, being the extremely sharp wheeler-dealer that he was, managed to buy some prime properties in Manhattan which had escalated in value.
These he sold to Fred Trump, and getting a good price for them, set his sights on something that would be his and his alone: a film studio. Waldie combined the money from his sale with his savings and bought a hundred acres out in California. These he transformed into a studio and named it, after the orange groves that had formerly occupied the land, Grove Pictures.
The first thing he did after founding Grove was to hire Morrie.
“I want you to work for me,” Waldie had told the man who’d worked him ruthlessly 18 hours a day for seven years, the man who taught him everything he knew.
“Work for you?” Morrie had said, as if he was hearing things.
“That’s right. I want you to manage the studio for me. If you can get my other employees slaving away the way you had me slaving away all these years, the place is bound to be an enormous success.”
“I’ll do it on one condition,” Morrie had said.
“What’s that?” Waldie had responded.
“That I’m my own boss. You don’t get in my hair. I run things my way or I walk.”
“Agreed,” Waldie had answered immediately. And in truth, nothing much had changed in terms of their relationship. Morrie still acted like the boss and Waldie let him. After all, it was to his benefit. Morrie did all the work, Waldie got all the credit.
And now, back from two months in the hospital with bleeding ulcers, Morrie Goldstrohm sat in Waldie’s office looking grim.
“Morrie,” Waldie said, greeting him, “you’re back!”
“Yeah,” Morrie said, “I’m back and I was feeling like brand new until I walked back into this place and found what I found.”
Morrie had always been a kvetcher, Waldie knew that. That’s why he had bleeding ulcers in the first place.
“So what is it, Morrie? What did you find? We didn’t do a good job for you while you were away? We let things slip?”
“Slip isn’t the word for it. Try suicide. That’s maybe a better way to describe what this studio has done to itself.”
“I don’t get you, Morrie,” Waldie said. “We hired the best people we could find to take your place when you had to go into the hospital. We hired three people in your place. Three people to do what you usually do on your own.”
“That’s all very fine and good,” Morrie said as if he was talking to a child, “but where, may I ask, are they?”
“What do you mean where are they?” Waldie said. “They’re where they usually are—in their offices—and I’m keeping them on at the studio to help you until you’re on your feet again and are used to things.”
“I’ve got news for you,” Morrie interrupted. “They’ve flown the coop. There’s no sign of them. They did such a lousy job, I’m not surprised they took off.”
“Took off? Don’t be ridiculous,” Waldie said, lighting up a Havana, “As far as I’m concerned, things are running very smoothly.”
“Oh sure, sure,” Morrie said sarcastically. “Things are running very smoothly with crews working all night and film stock being used up like there’s no tomorrow and productions not only going over schedule but their budgets looking like something out of Gone With The Wind. I tell you I never saw such a mess.”
Waldie took an expansive drag on his cigar, still under the impression that Morrie was exaggerating as usual.
“Morrie,” Waldie said, “maybe you’re not ready to come back to work yet. Maybe you’ve come back too soon. Take another two weeks. Take a month.”
“Emerson,” Morrie said, “remove the cigar from your mouth. I don’t want you swallowing it when I show you what I have to show you.”
“You want to show me something?” Waldie asked. He didn’t know what Morrie was getting at.
Morrie took a sheaf of papers out of a file and shoved them on the desk.
“Read them,” Morrie said.
Waldie looked down at the papers and then took them in his hands and started to leaf through them. They were the financial records of all the productions that had been completed during Morrie’s sick-leave.
It didn’t take long for Waldie to gasp.
The first budget, for a B movie that wasn’t supposed to exceed $90,000, cost $126,950.
The second budget, for a western for which $200,000 was allotted came in at twice that figure.
By the time Waldie was looking over the third budget, he was also looking very ill.
“How could this have happened?” he asked, his voice hardly audible.
“How the hell would I know?” Morrie replied. “I was busy bleeding internally at the time, remember?”
“Look at this,” Waldie said, searching through the expenses for Dixe-Bomber Rendezvous and not believing his eyes. “They did 12 takes on one faraway shot, 12 fucking takes on one fucking faraway shot, a nothing shot, how in the fucking hell did they get away with it?”
“All expenses were approved by that bunch of monkeys you put in my place,” Morrie said. “You know, the guys who took a powder that I was just telling you about?” He regarded Waldie in the same way one regards a child.
“Well, find them,” Waldie suddenly exploded. “I want them here in this office to explain how they did this to me and then I want them arrested and put in jail.”
“I gotta tell you something, Emerson,” Morrie said, interrupting Waldie again. “I’ve been trying to track down those bums ever since I got back today. The crooks have just disappeared into thin air. It’s like they were purposely trying to ruin you and ruin the studio and to tell you the truth, Emerson, I’m not sure they haven’t succeeded.
Morrie Goldstrohm’s speech was cut short by an urgent buzzing on Waldie’s intercom.
“There are two gentlemen waiting here to see you who say they’re from the FBI, Mr. Waldie,” Harriet said. “Do you want me to show them in?”
“What? The FBI?” Waldie stormed. “Who the fuck sent for the FBI?”
“I sent for them,” Morrie said. “Too much funny stuff has been going on in my absence. All this financial waste and mis- management, plus the murder of Erne Parkin, and then, this morning, the young girl that everybody thought was Maggie Graym, found dead in the pool. We’re still trying to find out who she was and what she was doing wandering around the Grove lot.”
“Her name was Wanda Belkins although I was going to change that to Aurora Dawn,” Waldie said. “I brought her in to take over from Maggie and I had big, big plans for her.”
“Oh, the old feud between you and Maggie, huh?” Morrie asked. “No wonder this studio has gone to hell what with you concentrating on getting rid of the only asset you ever had.”
“I was just trying to bring new blood into the studio,” Waldie said, defensively.
“Gimme a break, willya?” Morrie retorted. “Here you’ve got the biggest, most popular, number one box office goldmine of a star locked in a seven year contract and you become obsessed with replacing her. And in the meanwhile, everything around here is totally neglected. I come back from the hospital to find a major disaster. I tell you, Emerson, you and your damned ego.”
Waldie reached over and pushed the intercom button. “Tell those FBI guys to come in,” he said. Anything had to be better than listening to Morrie kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.
The door opened and Waldie’s secretary showed the two FBI agents in. One was short and paunchy and the other one was tall and talkative.
“Looks like you called us to come down here just in the nick of time,” the talkative one said right away.
“Huh?” Waldie responded, completely confused.
“The fact is,” the agent continued, “we were going to do a raid on your studio today.”
“A raid?” Waldie yelled, his face turning beet red. “A raid on my studio? What for?”
“Spies, Mr. Waldie, Nazi spies,” the agent said. “This place is riddled with them. According to our sources, your studio has been the center of an espionage ring operating in Hollywood for the past two years.”
“It’s all lies, all lies,” Waldie gasped.
“No, Mr. Waldie, it’s all spies, all spies,” the agent answered, laughing at his own play on words.
“So anyway,” the short, paunchy agent inserted, “just as we’re about to pounce on the whole gang of them, what do all these rats do? They disappear.”
Waldie was no longer listening to what the FBI agents were saying. He was too busy trying to loosen his necktie. He couldn’t breathe. All he saw was a blur of people standing around him as he struggled for air.
And then there was the excruciating pain in his arm and in his chest. His head dropped suddenly and heavily onto his desktop making a loud crashing sound. His open eyes stared at nothing.
“Emerson?” Morrie said, going over to the motionless figure. “Emerson?”