"Shadow - 360215 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Hit The Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

the agency's black sedan roared past it.
At the gates, a uniformed attendant was waiting with hand lifted to stop them.
The sedan slowed as Jerry pressured the brakes. Big Tim, on the other side of the
redhead, glared like an outraged lion full into the scarred face of the watchman.
"We're expected," he growled.
"Orders not to let anybody in but police and the company," the studio
employee answered firmly. "There's been trouble here."
"Yeah. Trouble about a stiff named Boyd." Tim flashed the identification
badge cupped in the palm of his hand. "Eisman sent for me."
Instantly the man's manner changed. He stood aside.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Noonan. I took you for reporters. Only expected one of
you." His voice was deep and resonant, like a radio announcer's.
The disapproving word "reporters" rang out good and clear. Jerry nudged the
redhead in high glee. Time was when the Evening Banner had known no better
"sob sister" than Grace Culver.
"Mr. Eisman's in his office, Mr. Noonan," the guard informed. "First
bungalow on your left inside the lot, He's waiting for you."
Big Tim signaled and his young assistant drove on. When the brakes
squealed again, it was before the painted front of the building the guard had
indicated. A placard above the entrance further identified it with the name:
M E. EISMAN.
The agency trio tramped up the steps, with the grizzled chief a step in the
lead. He jabbed a rusty button. Inside, a bell warned metallically. The door
opened. A thin, horse-faced young man with the look of a secretary stood inside,
nervously inquiring.
"Timothy Noonan to see Mr. Eisman!" The giant ex-police inspector's boom
seemed to blast the little fellow back into the bungalow's cool interior. Moe
Eisman's callers followed.
At a desk between the two windows of the office's far wall, the producer
himself was turning toward them. Bald, flabby, the Hollywood tycoon lumbered
forward eagerly. His florid face was marked by worry. Purple patches rimmed
his glazed eyes.
"Thank heavens you have come, yet! For eight hours already, the village
police tear up my studio! They find nothing. Now I send for you. My company
gets maybe in such a panic I should have a walk-out, unless your agency finds me
who killed poor Boyd."
Big Tim took the floor.
"This Dinty BoydЧwho was he? Work here?"
Eisman nodded. "Sure, sure! Nobody, only they got business in 'Love Locked
Out,' has set a foot on the lot. Dinty was my gaffer. He-"
"Gaffer?"
"Our chief electrician, Mr. Eisman means," interpreted the secretary's timid
voice, somewhere in the background. "It's studio slang, sir."
"I get it. Go on. What happened to him?"
"Must be it early this morning. Six o'clock, maybe. Dinty was alone on the
sound stage, working on wires. We got people called for to-morrow, Sunday work
on account of Dore is in this Broadway show and only got mornings and Sundays
to give me. It must 've shot from behind of him, up on the grid where we got
overhead lights banked."
Noonan jerked forward.