“Good. I’ll need a roll. Can you have the camera loaded and ready for me on the set tomorrow morning?”
“Sure,” Larry said. “What lens?”
“Five-hundred-millimeter telephoto. One last thing, Larry,” Perkins said. “Keep this under your hat.”
“Okay. Sure.”
And as we left, Perkins said, “That goes for you too.”
“I’d never breathe a word.”
“Not even to Mann?”
“Not if you say so.”
Perkins looked at me as if he thought I might not be a man of my word, even after all the time we’d spent together. I was insulted. I mean, for Christ’s sake, even publicity men have some standards. I just hoped Mann wouldn’t ask me in too much detail about what happened that day.
“What now?” I asked.
“The limousine driver,” Perkins said.
“What about him?”
“I want to talk to him.”
* * *
Max was not in the bar, or in the restaurant. I asked around while Perkins waited impatiently. One of the teamsters said Max had gone to the Snake Eyes Bar. I knew where that was.
The Snake Eyes was a teamster favorite. I should tell you that the teamsters on a movie company are not part of the general group. They do all the transportation, but they belong to a powerful union that is mostly non-movie, and they are a sort of different breed anyway. They tend to hang out among themselves, separate from everybody else.
And they liked the Snake Eyes. It was a go-go bar frequented by cowboys and other rugged local customers. I had been there once, the first week of production, and hadn’t liked it much. Going back now, I still didn’t like it. It was a rude place, air-conditioned too much. It was so cold in there that the girls wearing little buckskin bikinis had goose bumps on their arms and legs. The rest of the place was dark and bare—a few wood tables, a wood floor with sawdust. It was almost like a cheap imitation of the cheap imitation saloon we had on the set, except for the go-go dancers. We found Max hunched over a beer.
Perkins sat down and ignored the dancers. He had his back to them, while Max was facing them and never took his eyes off the girls all the time they were talking.
“I want to know about your trip to the airport to deliver the shot film to the plane.”
Max shrugged. “It’s the same every day. I leave around seven thirty. I put all the magazines in the trunk and drive to the airport. Then I come back.”
“Alone?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes somebody has a reason to go to the airport, and they hitch a ride.” He shook his head. “Look at the knockers on her.”
“Let me buy you a drink,” Perkins said. “What’ll you have?”
“I’ll have a highball,” Max said, and beckoned to the waiter. “Bourbon and ginger.”
“Two,” Perkins said, without the slightest grimace at all.
“Scotch and water,” I said.
“I usually drink bourbon and ginger or Seven and Seven,” Max said.
“Very smooth drinks,” Perkins said. “Now, on Tuesday night, was someone with you?”
“Yeah, Mr. Mann. He wanted to go to the airport.”
“Uh-huh. Had he ever gone with you before?”
