“Out in the hall, he gave me a little crap, but I wouldn’t hit him again. He wasn’t worth it. We just stayed there arguing, and then Charles came along and said he’d take over, so I went to bed.”
“And you never saw him again?”
“That’s right.”
“You spent the night alone?”
“Well, I tell you,” Clete said. “When I got to my room, I found a little chick had wangled a room key out of the desk and was waiting there for me. So I didn’t spend the night alone.”
“The girl stayed all night?”
“Yeah.” His forty-eight-inch chest swelled at the recollection. “She did.”
“And she left the next morning?”
“Yeah. I told her to beat it around five o’clock. I had to get dressed and get going, you know.”
“You can give me her name, I assume.”
“I assume,” Clete said.
Now, all this was a big surprise to me. I had never heard Williams say anything about a girl in his room.
“You want her name?” Clete asked.
“Not now,” Perkins said mildly. “Tell me, during the rest of the night, did you hear any sounds next door? I believe your room is next to McDougall’s.”
“Listen, I was busy.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“You might say I wasn’t concentrating on next door.”
“I see. And the girl was with you from eleven or so until five in the morning?”
“That’s right,” Clete said, almost smug about it.
“Then I don’t see any reason to bother you further,” Perkins said, standing up and extending his hand.
Clete shook it, looking slightly surprised that the interview was over.
* * *
Perkins stood very still as he watched the next shot being set up. He didn’t say a word. I had a dozen questions for him, and I was trying to be patient because it was obvious the man was deep in thought. But just as my patience ran out and I was about to speak, I was interrupted by Claude. “Jason,” he said, “did you know Paul Fox is here?”
“No,” I said. “Where?”
Claude jerked his thumb in the direction of the trailers, and sure enough, there was Paul Fox, talking with Mann. I decided to amble over. Paul Fox was a thin man of about thirty-one, wearing wire-frame glasses and a tie-dyed shirt and jeans. He was married to the actress Andrea Weston, and he reviewed movies forNewsweek.
“So it happens,” Paul Fox was saying, “is that the hero is having an existential crisis, and he takes it out on his brother—it’s sort of a Cain and Abel parody—and he murders his brother, and that’s the last reel.”
He paused, then asked, “What do you think?”
“Is this a script?” Mann asked warily.
“Not yet. I’m working on the script now.”
“You want me to buy it as a treatment?”
