Excerpt

“Rick! Rick, help me!” It was a man’s voice. Jack jumped from his table. Maybe the killer wasn’t finished. He tried to locate the sound. “Do something! Hide me!” The voice became more urgent. Jack chased after it. “Hide me, Rick! Do something!”
 
The sound originated from behind a closed dressing room door. Jack burst through and found himself facing two middle-aged women, one on the horn and the other pecking at a typewriter. “Excuse you,” the fleshy one looked up from her manuscript. “What are you doing?”
 
“Who’s in trouble?” Jack demanded.
 
“You mean that caterwauling? It’s just Peter. He’s rehearsing in the next dressing room.”
 
“Rehearsing?” Jack was incredulous.
 
“What were you gonna do? Rescue us from the tiny neighborhood opium fiend?” She imitated Peter Lorre’s characteristic snicker.
 
The other woman interrupted her phone call, “Are you the dance instructor?”
 
Before he could respond, a third woman entered. At first, Jack mistook her for Ana because of her general proportions and the fact that her hair looked the same as Ana’s light brown wig. But this woman wasn’t quite as tall. She had shining, sympathetic eyes and skin equal parts milk and honey. To describe her in a single word, stunning. In two, Ingrid Bergman.
 
“Who’s this?” Ingrid asked the woman on the phone, indicating Jack.
 
“Your dance instructor.”
 
“Oh, so fast? Hello, I’m Ingrid. Ingrid Bergman.” She held out her hand.
 
Jack shook it haltingly. “Jack Cornell.”
 
“Cornell? As in the university in New York state?”
 
“Father worried that Princeton would sound too pretentious.”
 
She smiled. “Charmed. I’m glad the studio sent you so promptly. About the dancing, I’m afraid I have a bit of a problem. Can I confide in you?”
 
“I’d like to believe you can.” Jack swallowed hard. Beautiful women rarely flustered him, but the voice on this one could soothe a class of kindergartners denied their Ovaltine.
 
“I have a scene coming up and I think… You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
 
“Loose lips sink ships,” Jack said.
 
“Yes, quite right. Okay, Jack. The secret is that there’s a certain co-star who is nervous to dance with me…”
 
The woman holding the phone interrupted. She had teeth tinted by Maxwell House and a cough sponsored by Chesterfield. “Ingrid dear, I have Kay Brown on the line from New York.”
 
“Please excuse me one moment.” Ingrid turned to her assistant, “What’s the news?”
 
“She says Paramount adores you, darling, but they already cast Vera Zorina for the part.”
 
“Zorina! Oh my, the ballerina?” Ingrid fretted. “But tell them I was born to play Maria. I just know it.”
 
The name Vera Zorina struck Jack. Where had he heard it before? He was sure it was related to the Szabo case. Zorina? Zorina? He couldn’t recall the context, but how many Zorinas could there be? The entire Zorina clan probably wouldn’t fill a booth at the Brown Derby.
 
Ingrid’s assistant rasped into the phone. “Kay, Ingrid wants the part quite ardently. Yes, we all know she’d be fantastic in it… Then you and David both need to keep the pressure on them… I’ll tell her that… Thanks again, Kay.” She hung up.
 
“Well?” Ingrid asked with bated breath.
 
“Officially, they think Zorina’s going to soar in the role. But off the record, Kay says she’s going to stay in Selznick’s ear about you in case Paramount develops cold feet.”
 
Ingrid pouted, “Oh foo, that’s an Oscar-worthy part! And I couldn’t stand another winter in Rochester.” After a moment, she regained her composure and turned to Jack. “I’m ever so sorry about that.”
 
“You don’t have to apologize on my account. I’m the fellow who busted into your dressing room.”
 
“Of course I do. That was dreadfully rude of me. You see, my story editor and agent are negotiating a role for me in a new picture.”
 
“But you’re in a movie now, aren’t you?”
 
“Technically, yes. But I’ll be done here in a month or so. Some days it seems to me that their job is not even a step above flesh peddling. Do you know that David Selznick traded me to Warner Brothers for Casablanca in exchange for using Olivia de Havilland in one of his own films? Imagine that!”
 
“Personally, I wouldn’t make that swap unless they tossed in a switch-hitting shortstop with a real sweet glove.”
 
“Paramount is going to make For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. Have you ever read it?” Jack shook his head. He considered himself a Daily Racing Form kind of guy but didn’t feel the urge to admit that to Ingrid. “Maria is my dream part,” she explained.
 
“What about Ilsa?” he asked.
 
“Ilsa who?”
 
“The part from your current picture.”
 
“Oh, Ilsa’s a fine role I suppose, except I don’t even know which character she’s in love with. There are some good jokes, too, but Maria is a part I’d die for.”
 
Jack smiled, “I wish you luck with that. With the role, not the dying.”