Free The War of the Worlds Murder by Max Allan Collins Page B

My current stage production is a train wreck, and my first responsibility was to be the engineer who got it back up on the tracks.”
    Gibson swallowed, nodded.
    Welles turned toward Houseman. “Now, Housey...please tell me that breakfast has been ordered.”
    Houseman nodded once, a quicker one than before. “But Miss Holliday informs me that you have run up a personal tab at Longchamps in the sum of two hundred dollars.”
    Welles waved that off. “I assume, after she stopped crying, that you gave her some money and sent her off like a good little girl.”
    Again Houseman nodded. He was leaning back now, the hands folded over his belly.
    Welles sighed grandly. “I suppose we must listen to this thing.... Does anyone have anything to say, first? How did it go in the studio?”
    Stewart shrugged. “It’s not our finest hour, but I think it’s shaped up—thanks to Howard, here.”
    Koch said, “Maybe we should have done ‘Lorna Doone,’ after all.”
    Welles shook his head. “No, this will work. I know it will. The potential here is for our most important broadcast.”
    This opinion seemed to amaze Stewart, whose eyes were unblinking marbles under the dark slashes of eyebrow. “Really?...Well, I was just hoping to get through the thing without any of our reputations suffering.... Now, of course, Orson, I won’t be refining the sound effects until Saturday. Ora has specifically requested that I tell you she will do her best to bring Mars to Earth, effectively...not to judge her by these preliminary, perfunctory efforts.”
    “Dear Ora,” Welles said wistfully, looking ceilingward, as if contemplating his first love, “she is a wonder. The best sound man we could ever hope for, despite a lack of cock and balls.”
    Gibson wondered if he’d actually heard that....
    From the doorway, Judy Holliday said, “Oh Mr. Welles, that’s terrible,” and burst into tears.
    Welles went to her, put an arm around her shoulder, and said, “There, there...you mustn’t let such boy talk upset you so. I had no idea a gentle flower had planted itself in this doorway.”
    “Can I...can I have the food sent up?”
    “I’ll fire your little ass if you don’t!”
    She disappeared, her feet travelling down the iron steps sounding like a barrage of bullets, punctuating Welles’s roar of hearty laughter.
    The other men were smiling and chuckling, except for Gibson, an Alice still trying to get used to Wonderland.
    Within minutes, a skinny, put-upon waiter in a white shirt and dark pants brought up a picnic basket, and left without waiting for a tip that he seemed to already know wasn’t going to come. Houseman played host and opened the basket on his card-table desk, lifting the metal hats covering each plate, passing out the food to its intended recipient. Miss Holliday reappeared with a coffeepot and cups, and distributed those as well. Welles disappeared with his two plates—two large steaks, one in the company of a single sour-cream-and-butter-slathered baked potato—behind the partition, to sit at the secretary’s desk there and eat unobserved.
    The table was a good height for both Houseman and Gibson to eat their breakfasts, while Koch and Stewart—still seated on the daybed—seemed at ease eating off the plates in their laps, old hands at this.
    Welles did call over a complaint about the single potato, until Houseman reminded him: “Your diet—remember?” To which Welles mumbled an unintelligible answer, a pouting child responding to a firm parent.
    Then Welles, from behind the partition, ordered: “Well, play the goddamned thing, Housey!”
    And Houseman placed the record on the record player, turned up the volume and they all ate while they listened to the rehearsal recording.
    Minus the excitement of the studio, Koch’s “War of the Worlds” adaptation played even less excitingly, seeming terribly flat and uncompelling to Gibson. They finished their breakfast about halfway through—Martians were killing