“Was he having an affair here?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
I wanted to add, nobody would touch him. Maybe Perkins guessed that, because he said, “Was he well liked?”
“Not especially.”
“You’re not talking to a reporter now either. Was he well liked?”
“He was an obnoxious, unpleasant man.”
“Paranoid?”
“He was a writer.” All movie writers are paranoid. They’re all convinced that frivolous souls are degrading their brilliant screenplays. All writers are paranoid the way all stars are insecure and all directors are megalomaniacs. That’s just the way it is.
“I see.” And then Perkins just stared out of the window, apparently thinking. At least he didn’t say anything. We came into Tucson. Perkins looked out at the buildings. “They keep adding new buildings,” he said, “and making it worse.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s really a rotten town.”
“I always liked it,” Perkins said.
There was another long silence after that.
* * *
Checking Perkins into his room at the Holiday Inn—he said he preferred to “stay with the troops”—I heard a familiar voice from the banquet hall saying, “No, no, do I have to tell you a thousand times? No, I want it authentic.” That was Tom Franklin, the director.
Perkins was signing the register, so I excused myself and went into the banquet hall, which was empty except for Franklin, Mann, Claude Binyon, and about fifty Arizona coeds trying their damnedest to look like classic Western saloon girls. The coeds were lined up along one wall like chorus girls. Franklin paced up and down in front of them.
“Goddamn it, Claude, I told you last week they had to be realwomen, not teenyboppers.”
Claude rolled his eyes. “They’re only background.”
“Background, background. We’re not shooting Academy ratio anymore. We’re shooting two-three-one.” Franklin stretched his arms expansively. “We’re shooting Panavision, and I’m telling you, Claude, we’ll read the background, and it’s going to look like a bunch of surf bunnies playing dress-up.”
Throughout all this, the fifty coeds stared impassively forward. A couple of them giggled. Charles Mann stood in a corner and surveyed all that young firm flesh and puffed his cigar. Then he saw me and hurried over.
“Where’s Perkins?” he said.
“Checking in.”
“Stay with him,” Mann said, rolling the cigar around his lips. “Jason, I want you to stay with that son of a bitch night and day. See that he gets whatever he wants. And keep track of what happens. Report to me tonight.”
As I left the room, the last thing I heard was Franklin saying, “You know what we’re going to have? A bunch of strapless dresses showing offtan lines, that’s what we’re going to have.” Claude made some soothing reply about makeup, and then I saw Perkins standing by the elevator.
“More production problems?” he asked, not smiling.
“Just extra casting,” I said. We could hear Franklin shouting again. “Everybody’s on a thin edge.”
“I should imagine so,” Perkins said.
We rode the elevator to the third floor and went to his room. It was the same room as all the other rooms. He looked around, impassively.
“I will require an hour to clean up,” he said. “Then I want to see the room where the death occurred, and I will want to talk to the police officer in charge. Can you arrange that?”
I said I could.
“I will meet you here in an hour,” he said, and closed the door in my face.
