Unhappy Hooligan Read online

  “Would you please try, beautiful? Could we call his home?”

  “Mr. Keyes lives upstairs—he owns the building. He might be there, or somewhere back in the lab …” Her voice trailed away as she disappeared, with a certain swaying of her hips, into the interior.

  After some delay the sought-for gentleman appeared, wiping chemical-stained hands on a linen smock that had seen better days. He was an almost bald young-old man with a face like a benign gargoyle’s, a cigarette dangling from his loose lower lip, but there was a certain briskness and air of competence about him. “I’m Anton Keyes,” he said. “Now what can I do for you, mister?”

  “I need some color work, rush.”

  “Wait a minute,” the man objected. “We only do wholesale work here. We’ve an agreement with drugstores and camera shops and anywhere film is sold that they take in the work and we come and pick it up and process it. We’re not supposed—”

  “This is an emergency. You’re the boss—can’t you stretch a point? We need a color blowup, or several. And we must have the stuff by tomorrow around noon, come hell or high water.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “I’m working as an investigator for Mr. Agnews, the defense attorney.” Rook decided to lay his cards on the table—or at least the print and its negative on the counter. “It’s on the level,” he found himself apologizing. “I hope you don’t think I go for this sort of thing, I’m no pervert out for kicks.”

  Keyes was looking at the photo and then the negative, jaws agape. “Holy hell!” he whispered. “I’ve seen some nasty ones in my time—”

  “The original roll of negatives came through your shop, didn’t it? Via the Brentwood Pharmacy?”

  “Excuse me a minute.” Keyes disappeared inside again, but came back shortly. He seemed a man who could take anything in his stride. “Yeah, it’s our work. Old Barney Schwenk says he put it through some weeks ago—he’s been with us since my old man started the lab, and he doesn’t even look at the stuff any more. You see, I’ve got six men working here, and I’m out picking up stuff a good deal of the time. I don’t see much of the work.”

  “Well, you see it now. This may be important evidence in a criminal case. If you can rush it through in time, it may save a lady from going to jail!”

  Keyes was hardly listening. “But damn it, I think I know her! I know I know her! Or at least I used to. That’s Dee Delaney—its got to be!”

  “Mrs. Deirdre Charteris now,” Rook informed him.

  “The Dee-lovely Delaney, we used to call her. I was still photog and lab technician around the TV and movie lots until my father passed on and I inherited this place. Dee—why, Dee was the best-looking and the nicest of all the so-called starlets, back around ’62 and ’63. Half the props and grips and juicers were gone on her, and us cameramen used to fight for the honor of shooting her. She was special!”

  “She still is—but she’s in a jam.”

  Keyes was looking at the photo again, his eyes clouded. “I can see she’s in trouble,” he said grimly. “This photo spells that out.”

  “That particular trouble is over. Her husband was John Charteris, who got killed up in Brentwood Wednesday night by a hit-run driver. And the authorities are trying to pin it on her, which is why Agnews and I are on the job. The whole case, we think, hinges on this photo.”

  “Well, don’t you worry. You’ll get your enlargements, for damn sure. All you need and before noon tomorrow. And on the house!”

  “Thank you. Could we have half a dozen?”

  “Sure. And look, if there’s anything else I can do—I’m not just talking, I mean it—”

  “I don’t think—wait a minute! There just might be something. You were acquainted with Deirdre way back when, when she was trying to get ahead in show business. Was there some special man in her life that you remember?”

  “Wouldn’t that be for her to tell you?”

  “She doesn’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of her position. And she’s possibly trying to protect somebody.”

  “Well, then—” Keyes put out his mashed cigarette, then lighted another. “She was no tramp, understand. You only got fresh with her once. She wasn’t putting out, like most of those tomatoes. The word was that she was holding out for a wedding ring, or at least for a fat contract. None of us guys around the sets got to first base with her—she was the ‘I’ll have a drink but I won’t go upstairs’ type. I think somebody said she was carrying the torch for some man in the Service who went overseas. And there was a musician, only I can’t recall his name offhand.”

  Rook produced a card. “If you do think of it, call me at either of these numbers,” he told this unexpected ally.

  “I sure will. I’ll look through my old photos and scrapbooks, and maybe call a couple of the old crowd who used to work with me. We studio people stick with our own, Mr. Rook. And when you see Dee, tell her old Tony Keyes said hello, huh?”

  “Certainly.” As Rook left he saw the man holding the negative up to the light, staring at it with his gargoyle-face twisted in what might have been an expression of suppressed fury.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1956 by Stuart Palmer

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4804-1894-3

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