Columbo: The Glitter Murder

  Columbo: The Glitter Murder

  William Harrington

  A Tom Docherty Associates Book

  Copyright © 1997 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, Inc.

  COLUMBO: THE GLITTER MURDER A novel by William Harrington

  Based on the Universal Television series COLUMBO Created by Richard Levinson & William Link

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  * * *

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harrington, William.

  Columbo : the glitter murder / William Harrington, p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 0-312-86161-3 I. Title.

  PS3558.A63C647 1997

  813'.54—dc21

  First Edition: March 1997

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Reader

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Note to Reader

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters

  and events portrayed in this novel are

  fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  One

  1

  Thursday, July 2

  Everyone who saw it was intrigued by the name on the masthead of Glitz: Ai-ling Cooper-Svan, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.

  The name Ai-ling was of course Chinese. The famous Soong sisters had been Ch'ing-ling, who married Sun Yatsen, Mei-ling, who married Chiang Kai-shek, and Ai-ling, who married H. H. Kung. This Ai-ling was named for her great-grandmother, the daughter of an enormously wealthy Cantonese merchant. Ai-ling's grandmother, too, had been Chinese, the daughter of a Shanghai merchant. The dowries brought by these two Chinese brides had contributed hugely to the Cooper family fortune. The business alliances the marriages had cemented had contributed even more.

  Cooper was the name of a family of tough Yankee ship owners and traders who, generation after generation, had sent sailing ships, then steamships, to Canton and Shanghai. Svan was the name of the Swedish film director she had married. She had kept her maiden name and hyphenated it with Svan's because she had no intention of dropping the name Cooper for the name Svan.

  Most people called her Eileen, as they had begun to do when she was in college, because they were uncertain just how to pronounce Ai-ling—which was not so difficult; it was Eye-ling.

  Ai-ling Cooper-Svan sat behind her desk in the office of the publisher and editor-in-chief of Glitz. She was more often described as handsome than as beautiful. She had straight black hair styled to curve under her ears, dark eyes, and a compact body that was trim and taut. Her slender hips and legs and her flat bottom were the envy of women known as greater beauties. Her face was round, with a pug nose. Her erect posture and direct, blunt manner suggested hauteur. They were perhaps an element of her inheritance from people who had been immodestly proud: the Coopers for five or six generations, the Chinese ancestors for fifty.

  If she had a defect—and she did have a conspicuous one—it was that she smoked three or more packs of cigarettes a day. She was constantly lighting, puffing, flicking ash, and disposing of butts. She sprayed her breath often, but her hair, skin, and clothes stank of tobacco smoke. What was more, she hacked. But she couldn’t stop smoking; she was addicted. She was thirty-six and had been smoking for twenty years. For her, the warnings were too late.

  As publisher of a magazine that emphasized style, she was herself an image of style. This morning she wore a suit of Lincoln green: a soft hip-length jacket that had no buttons and could not be closed, with tapered pants; also a white shirt with open collar and French cuffs.

  She owned the magazine. She had bought it eight years ago, out of her inheritance, and had turned it from a Los Angeles tabloid into a slick monthly magazine, every issue filled with scented cards advertising perfumes, colognes, and aftershave lotions. Unlike her father, who lived idly, rapidly dissipating his inheritance, Ai-ling was dissipating hers only slowly. In the eight years she had owned it, Glitz had earned a profit only once. It had broken even, roughly, three years; and it had lost money four years. It had not lost much, though. What was more important to her, Glitz had made her someone to be reckoned with. She had never set out to ruin anyone and had never done it; but to be ignored by Glitz was a decided disadvantage in the film industry, in the world of art and music, and even in California politics.

  Her desk was a kidney-shaped glass table: a heavy glass top sitting on glass pedestals. Spread over it was a batch of photographs: twenty-five or thirty eight-by-ten color prints. She had divided them into three piles: accepted, possible, rejected.

  She picked up the telephone on the credenza and told her secretary to call Bill Lloyd and tell him she wanted to see him.

  While she waited for Lloyd, she lit another Marlboro and moved pictures from pile to pile.

  Her telephone, her ashtray, her carafe were on the credenza, together with half a dozen autographed pictures. She kept nothing on the glass desk but pictures and papers she was currently working on. People who worked for her knew better than to drop files on her desk. They handed them to her, and she put them where she wanted them.

  “Ah… William,” she said when Lloyd came in. “Look at these. What should we use?”

  Lloyd knew her well enough to guess at a glance which pile of photos was which. He leaned forward but did not put his hands on her desk and make smudges on the glass. He frowned and pursed his lips.

  They were pictures of Beverly Tree. She was playing the female lead in a picture being shot by Gunnar Svan, Ailing’s husband; and, as always with a Svan film, Glitz would give it big play. The actress had been summoned to a studio to pose for some of the pictures on display here. Others were from paparazzi, who found Glitz a lucrative market.

  A paparazzo had caught the statuesque Beverly rising from a pool filled with lily pads, where she had fallen or had been thrown during a party at a famous Hollywood watering hole. The cameraman had managed to get on the roof, from which with his telephoto lens he had caught more than a few celebs in situations they would have rather he had not photographed. Beverly, drenched and looking stunned, was obviously screaming.

  “Too much?” Ai-ling asked.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Lloyd.

  Ai-ling grinned. “File it. Maybe sometime.”

  Bill Lloyd was ten years her senior, and he was her mentor in print journalism. He was a bald man and wore gold-rimmed round glasses.

  “How ’bout this?”

  Ai-ling showed him another paparazzo shot, this one of Beverly Tree oozing her way out of a Lotus sports car, a maneuver that had shoved her skirt so high that her white panties showed. Her expression suggested that she was oblivious of what she was showing, probably because she’d had too much to drink. It was the kind of photo Glitz favored: mildly scandalous but not ruinous to the people pictured.

  “We could do that one,” said Lloyd.

  Ai-ling smiled. “Our tastes match,” she
said.

  That was not true. Bill Lloyd was her mentor in journalism, but he would never be her mentor about taste. Her esthetic judgment far surpassed his own. What was more, she had an instinct for what her target audience wanted. When she converted Glitz into a slick, upscale monthly, circulation had plummeted. Within a year, it had soared. If publication costs were not so high, it would be one of the most profitable magazines published in the United States.

  “Look at this one,” she said.

  This photograph portrayed Beverly Tree standing before a buffet table at what was obviously an elegant garden party. Her dignity was fully intact. She was smiling on the late Richard Nixon—who, with eyes bulging and mouth half open, was staring into her cleavage.

  “Go with it,” said Lloyd.

  Ai-ling shoved the color prints toward him, all but the rejected pile.

  Here was where a fine line had to be drawn. The actress had posed nude, but Glitz did not publish nudity as, for example, Playboy would do, much, much less as Penthouse would do. Beverly Tree had posed because she trusted Ad- ling Cooper-Svan to display her nudity only in the most modest and graceful way.

  “It's a responsibility,” said Ai-ling.

  Lloyd did not know if she meant a responsibility to the actress or one to her husband’s film. She had money invested in that, of course, and was anxious to protect it. He suspected even so that Mrs. Cooper-Svan felt a genuine sensitivity about how the magazine would show off the actress. He could see on the “rejected” pile all the photos that showed even a shadow of pubic hair. The “accepted” photos were almost all rear views. The problem with the “possibles” was nipples. Glitz published many nudes but only a few that showed nipples.

  Lloyd pushed one of the prints toward Ai-ling. Beverly Tree’s right breast was clearly shown, but it was in profile, and the nipple was barely discernible.

  Ai-ling nodded. “More than her public has ever seen of her, yet—I like it. Gunnar will like it.”

  Lloyd understood a distinction. Whether Gunnar liked the picture or not was immaterial. That Ai-ling judged he would like it was what counted.

  Bill Lloyd was not the only person who thought the marriage between Ai-ling Cooper and Gunnar Svan was strange. It was strange.

  He was a Swede, of course, the acclaimed director of low- budget art films, all full of woodsy-watery scenes with naked people cavorting around and doing nobody-was- sure-what to loud and soulful music. Ai-ling met him in Sweden, married him, and brought him to the States six years ago. She was his second wife. Since she brought him to Los Angeles he had directed four films, each a succes d’estime, none a commercial success. Ai-ling invested in each of these films. Her losses did not threaten to impoverish her, but they had been substantial. The word in the film colony was that Gunnar could not make films if Ailing did not subsidize him.

  What was more, he was a tyrannical director who squabbled constantly with his actors. Rumor had it that he was a philanderer as well.

  Bill Lloyd did not like the man at all. But Ai-ling did, apparently. She called him Top Gun, and the double entendre was deliberate.

  “Settled, then,” said Ai-ling. “Will you do the captions? I’ve got the draft.”

  2

  Gunnar Svan stood with his legs spread wide apart, hands on hips, and glowered at the people assembled on his set in the Arizona desert.

  “Gotterverdamn!” he shrieked. It wasn’t German, it wasn’t Swedish, and it wasn’t English. It was Svanish, some people said. “Vy you could not unnershtand dee most simplest, dee most clarische instructions? Iss my Innglish so difficult? Iss you can’t oonderstand!”

  The sweating, dusty people standing around in the blazing sun would have told him, if they dared, that his English was not just difficult but impossible—not just because it was badly expressed but because it was so often meaningless. If he had spoken English like Dan Rather he would have been difficult to understand.

  “Vunce again! Vunce again! Zeess pipples are not cow-boyss und Indeentss! Zey are real pipples! Dey got ’motions. Dey got fillingss! Giflf me—” He paused and grabbed up a paper cup filled with no-one-knew-what. He swallowed. “Drrrake! Giff me ’motions. Dese pipples not vood-carfed nootcrackers! You can act? Or not can act?”

  “What the hell would you know about acting, you Svendisch con man?” asked Drake Rogers in a low voice. “I can act rings around you any day, you asshole.” He raised his voice. “Whaddaya want, Gunnar?”

  “Truth… Beauty!”

  “Truth and beauty are waiting for him in his trailer,” muttered Beverly Tree. “Beauty is, anyway. I saw Ron put a broad in the trailer half an hour ago. That’s why he wants to get the scene shot, so he can hurry to the trailer and—”

  “The money, folks,” murmured John Doggs. “The money… Let us not forget why we are here.”

  The figure they all faced was something of an American icon. He was not very tall, but he was muscular and not in the least ashamed to show his body. That was a part of his self-created image, that he appeared on his outdoor sets without shirts, with a Hermes scarf tied around his neck to absorb his sweat. Where it was hot, he wore khaki safari shorts and bulky safari shoes, which were what he was wearing today. He was a fifty-years-later Cecil B. De- Mille, with a style everyone recognized, including those who did not in the least respect it.

  He was a Swede. The remnants of his hair were yellow. The heavy hair on his chest and legs was almost invisible because it was so light. His eyes were pale blue.

  What characterized him more than anything else was his furious pent-up energy. He was—some used the tired cliche—a coiled spring. No one denied that he exhausted himself. He threw himself into his work until the spring uncoiled and often left him limp.

  Rogers looked at Doggs. “ ’Tisn’t any money of his," he said.

  “Whose money ’tis means nothing. He controls it. We get some of it because he releases it to us.”

  “Look at the bastard. Who the hell does he think he is, would somebody explain?”

  “He thinks he’s Ingmar Bergman.”

  “Well, he isn’t.”

  “We tolerate him or walk off this set. To me, the money means more than the aggravation.”

  Drake Rogers yelled at Gunnar Svan. “What emotions, Gunnar? Exactly?”

  “Zees ees what you are supposed to know, mine friend! You are zee actor! Vat vould a man feel in zee situation describe in zee screep’?”

  “Nausea,” yelled Rogers. “Toward anyone who’d write a script this bad.”

  “You haf contract to play eet. Now play eet! Gottverdammnt!”

  Drake Rogers smiled on each of his fellow actors standing around him. “‘Play eet.’” He shook his head. “Okay, what’s my next line? Those men are an excrescence.’ Alright, let’s play eet. Like ‘nootcrackers.’ ”

  3

  Ingrid Karlsen watched the shooting of the scene from the broad window of the director’s trailer. She sat on the couch, sipping from a light Scotch and soda, her eyes narrowed, studying the action.

  Beverly Tree. God, what she would give to be Beverly Tree! Drake Rogers. If she were Beverly Tree, she would be kissed by Drake Rogers! She had the script open before her and knew he was going to kiss her in this scene.

  Or he might, if Mr. Svan ever allowed them to get to that point. He was unhappy. She could not tell what he was saying, but she could hear enough to know that he was yelling. Ingrid wished she dared open the window and hear what Mr. Svan was telling his actors. She might hear something extremely valuable, some wonderful tip that would help her become a star.

  Become a star—She was not naive. It wasn’t just a matter of talent, or a matter of beauty; she might turn out to have talent, and certainly she was beautiful, in everybody’s judgment; but Pam had explained it required something more. So, okay. She was ready.

  Suddenly Mr. Svan threw his arms in the air and walked away from the cameras and crew, toward the trailer. Ingrid rushed into the kitchen and dumped her dr
ink. She snatched a spray from her purse and sweetened her breath. She slapped at her hot-pink mini to smooth out any wrinkles she may have caused by lounging on the couch. She tugged down on her white polo shirt to stretch it more tightly over her breasts. She had only a second to run her hands down her long blond hair before the door opened and Gunnar Svan stalked into the trailer.

  He slammed the door behind him. Then he noticed her. He glared at her. “Who…?” Then the tension left his face.

  His eyes softened. “Oh, yes. Meess Karlsen. Yes. I vass expecting you. You are very beautiful, as was promised. Sit down. A durink, hmm?” He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks.

  “If you are.”

  “Yes. Dzheen? Wodka? Scots?”

  “A light Scotch, please.”

  Svan poured Scotch over ice and handed the glass to Ingrid. It was not a light drink. He mixed “dzheen” and vermouth to make himself a martini.

  “It was kind of you to have me brought to your trailer. Actually, though, I would have liked to be out on the set, watching your actors work.”

  “Ahh! Ven I get actorss, I haf you dere to see dem act. Vat I got out dere iss galoots.”

  “Well… Then I could have watched you work.”

  Svan grinned. “You are like a zephyr, Mees Karlsen. How oldt are you?”

  “I turned eighteen two weeks ago.”

  “And so beautiful. You are a true blondt, no?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

  He reached to a shelf behind his chair and picked up a script. He handed it across the coffee table, to Ingrid on the couch. “Eess a screep’,” he said. “Love story. Very nice. Young pipples. Beautiful. Might be you could play.” Ingrid flushed. She knew she had come to read for him, but was he actually suggesting she could have a part in his next picture? She began to look through the pages. Glancing as quickly as she could, she saw only one role for a girl as young as she was, and it was the female lead. My god!