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[Continuing chapter twelve]
Saturday morning Casey said good-bye to Jeff Cunningham, who looked miserable but said little. Slinging his duffel over his shoulder, he walked to Monarch and picked up his first—and last—full pay packet. Opening it, he whistled. There was a lot of money in it: five hundred dollars, when he got it all counted. He left most of it with the cashier; Monday he’d open an account at a bank.
Assuming there were still banks in Hollywood. The morning papers were full of stories about Thursday’s stock market collapse, in which various experts and authorities proclaimed that nothing was really wrong and that the market would pick itself back up again. Indeed, prices had recovered a bit yesterday.
He bought himself a paper; now that he had a bit of money, he could indulge himself a bit. He’d take a room in the Roosevelt tonight, and stay there until he could find a room somewhere. Perhaps the Garden of Allah, out on Sunset Boulevard in the wild country between Hollywood and Beverley Hills. One of the actors had said it was a good place to live.
At a greasy spoon on Gower he settled down to breakfast and his paper. By the time he’d finished his eggs, though, he’d folded the paper and tucked it between himself the stool. There was no point in trying to read; he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened yesterday. Or last night.
No, he realized suddenly. It’s not about last night. He’d lost jobs before, most of them jobs he cared a lot more about than some ludicrous play-acting thing, no matter how well it paid. He’d still rather fly, and Ed Hogan hadn’t fired him. Not yet, anyway.
What bothered him was Hal Telford. Casey was certain that Telford had killed Lily Cross. But why? And why would Telford have said it wasn’t his idea? For that matter, Telford had actually denied killing Lily, hadn’t he?
There were other questions. For example, who was the mysterious Michael Buckley? What did he have to do with the murder—if anything? If Telford had killed Lily—for whatever reason—why had Buckley’s hood attacked him, then followed him to the Venice speakeasy? Who the hell is Michael Buckley?
Then there was the question of Lily’s behavior the last day of her life. She had fled the party—a party she had crashed to begin with—but hadn’t, apparently, gone home until four the following morning. And she had to have left the boarding house almost as soon as she’d arrived, in order to be any place that Telford could have killed her in time to dump her body at Glendale in time to wake Casey early Sunday morning.
None of it made any sense. He understood, a little, why McMahon might want to pretend that this was nothing more than a crime of passion, unrelated to anything except Telford’s momentary proximity with Lily. No doubt stories would soon appear about how Telford had been harassing Lily, the way Casey had seen him haranguing Eve Adams yesterday morning. But those stories wouldn’t be any more true than anything else that came out of Hollywood.
Casey left the greasy spoon, found a pay phone, and called Ed Hogan. “It’s Casey. I’ve been fired by Monarch,” he said when Hogan answered. “Am I still working for you?”
“Damned right you are,” Hogan said. “Whatever I may have thought about you a couple weeks ago, you’re a good pilot. And I’m not working for Monarch any more either. My contract was up with yesterday’s crash. So they have no say over who I hire. And I’m going to hire you, Casey. Not on a day basis, like on High Risk. I want you as a full-time pilot.”
“Gee,” Casey said. “Thanks. I’m grateful.” It was really something, he realized, to have a man like Hogan praise your flying skills. That was something that hadn’t happened to Casey in a long time.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hogan said. “One thing, though: you don’t get paid unless we’re working, and we don’t start our next job for a couple weeks. It’s a programmer for Condor, and so far it looks like an easy one. But I can’t give you anything to tide you over. You okay for kale for a while?”
“Money? Yeah, I’m set up all right. Got a decent packet from Monarch this morning. I might even have enough to buy a flivver of my own.”
“You’re gonna need one,” Hogan said. “In the meantime, I need you out here today, even if you have to walk. We’ve got to fly my buses back to Santa Monica. I can take care of the DH, but I want you to fly the Tommy for me.”
“Boss, it would be my pleasure. Why Santa Monica?”
“Home base is Clover Field. I share a hangar with some other movie stunt pilots. By the way, if you’re still looking for a place to live, you might want to look at Santa Monica or Venice. Beats driving or taking the Red Car.” There was a pause, and Casey heard what might have been paper rustling.
“Oh, and Conrad Hart wants you to phone him.”
“What? Why?”
“Do I sound like a social secretary? How the hell should I know, and why should I care? You’re lucky it was Mitch took the call and not me.” Hogan gave him the number, and rang off.
Next Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
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