Show Business Is Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

kind of looks like the next to me.”
    â€œWow.” Patrick gave a long low whistle. “Imagine. Ruining somebody’s life and then adding insult to injury by forgetting you’d ever done it. Heavy.”
    â€œHeavy indeed,” said another, deeper, voice.
    It was the man Scotty said had followed Mendy out of the theatre. Birch might never have recognized him out of context, but in Ratner’s, while they were talking of Mendy, he was in context.
    â€œSit,” Scotty said, moving over in the booth. “Sit and explain.”
    â€œYou can’t think he’s going to confess?”
    Patrick looked at the old man and his blue eyes widened. “Are you who I think you are?”
    â€œPaul Dixon. The former Paul Dixon. The present Paul Damrosch, not that it matters. I can’t keep a job under any name.”
    â€œYou blame Mendy for that?”
    â€œHe wrote the letter.” The little old man’s breathy voice held a world of sadness. “My best friend, and he goes into executive testimony, talks just to the committee, no publicity, names names, and my name leads all the rest. Then he plants that phony story with Pegler, calls me a faggot. Makes sure I’ll never work again. To this day, to this goddamn day I got FBI guys following me around.”
    â€œHow do you know it was Mendy?” Scotty’s voice held a note of pleading. “Couldn’t it have been somebody else?”
    â€œYou ever hear of the Freedom of Information Act?” Dixon looked around the group. Patrick nodded and Scotty started to speak, then closed her mouth.
    â€œI got my files. I looked close, and even though they put black ink over all the names, I thought about where I was when, who I was with. Who took me to those so-called Communist meetings. I took out my old diaries I used to keep when I first got to Hollywood. Kept them so I couldwrite home to my mother, tell her all the glamorous people I was meeting.”
    â€œAnd you figured out that Mendy ratted on you,” Scotty said. A long blue cloud of smoke emanated from her lips; she crushed the butt into an ashtray. “He destroyed your career—but is that a good enough reason to kill somebody?”
    â€œMy wife couldn’t stand it. She was high-strung when we married, I knew that. But when we sold the house in the hills and moved to Compton, when I couldn’t even hold a job in a bakery, when she started seeing guys in black cars everywhere she went, she lost control. One night she took too many pills and died in her sleep and I will never, so long as the sun sets in the West, forgive Mendelson for that. He killed her with his big mouth.”
    â€œIf you were married, how could anybody believe you were gay?” Birch thought it was a good question, but Patrick rolled his eyes and Dixon gave a short, mirthless laugh.
    â€œKid,” the old man replied, “Rock Hudson was married. Every faggot in Hollywood—” he gave a brief, apologetic nod in Patrick’s direction—” pardon my French, makes damn sure to get married.”
    When Birch blurted, “Rock Hudson is gay?” Patrick almost fell out of the booth laughing.
    Scotty brought them back to the matter at hand. “Maybe he was just trying to save himself. Maybe he named you thinking the Committee already had your name.”
    â€œThat doesn’t excuse the call to Pegler,” the old man replied. “Mendy was jealous—he wanted the breaks I was getting and he thought if I was out of the way, he’d be cast in the roles I was up for. Happiest day of my life was when Gene Kelly said yes to Summer Stock, because that meant Mendy was screwed.”
    â€œWe figured out that you offered Mendy a saccharin tablet and he took it,” Patrick said. “Do you mean to tell us he didn’t recognize you?”
    A slow, sweet smile crossed the wizened face. “Oh, he recognized me, all right. That’s why