Events get started when a sudden scream is heard from the props room adjacent to several sound stages at the movie studio where all of the Player Characters are employed, or have business. As they investigate, lead by the studio detective, Mark Hawke, they hear the sounds of a woman and a man making intimate noises. The action picks up here as the woman flees abruptly, knocking Hawke over.
"Hey, hey!" calls the man's voice from within the props room, followed by a deep, infectious laugh.
"I guess you've caught me in the act there, detective."
The speaker steps forward, pulling up his pants and grins down at the unfortunate Hawke. After a minute, he good-naturedley reaches down to help the detective stand up.
"You working for St. Jayne? She send you to catch me out?"
The man is familiar to all of the hidden observers now that they can see him. Stan Brophy is an agent, well known in the movie business. His most important client is Jeanne St. Jayne, on the edge of being an A List movie star and rumored to be Brophy's lover. Behind him, hidden by Brophy's wide shoulders, a young woman scampers out of a rear entrance, careful to keep her face hidden, though all the witnesses get a quick glimpse of bare legs and back. It is definitely not St. Jayne.
Brophy stands square, ready to take whatever Hawke is there to dish out. He's a man's man, highly charismatic.
Mark Hawke speaks up, he's a detective working for the studio.
"No sir, no one has hired me other than the studio. We heard the , um, well, screams and came to investigate."
"Well, yeah, I suppose it did a bit noisy back there. My apologies -- though not really!" He laughs again, big and booming, moving forward now, pushing the fallen props aside as Hawke gets to his feet and then leading the man away from the retreating girl, towards the small group of onlookers who had come to investigate the noises.
As the two men emerge from the props room and Brophy realizes what an audience he has gathered, he does the only thing a true Hollywood producer could do, he produces a fist full of business cards from an inside pocket and hands them out.
"Hey, pleased to meet ya!" he shakes hands all round. "Brophy's my name. Stan Brophy. I'm a booking agent and a talent scout. This card will get you an interview at my office any time you think you've got an act to sell, or a part to play. My take is ten percent, off the top, but I can put you in front of the very best. Guaranteed."
He keeps moving as he hands out cards and unless anyone actually engages him in conversation, he will pass through the small crowd and then head for the nearest exit.
For the entertainers in the group, the business card is an opportunity. Brophy is a top talent agent and a chance to meet with him and perhaps get him to represent you will greatly increase your chances of success. For the others, the card still has some value. A connection with real power if you need it, or bragging rights at the very least.
Stan Brophy moved purposefully away from the small crowd gathered around the entrance to the property room and soon turned a corner out onto the studio lot and out of sight. Some of the gathered investigators giggled, others huffed, some just grinned.
"Lights!" the call came from the set and suddenly the scurry of day to day activity on the set was back in full throttle. Each of those who had witnessed the talent agent's discovery in flagrante delicto suddenly had real jobs to do and the crowd faded quickly away.
* * * * * * * *
Some days passed. The detective got busy tracking down a sneak thief on the lot who was breaking into the actor's trailers during filming sessions. The doctor was called to revive a number of fainting starlets. The young blonde actress was recalled to her shooting schedule with Tarzan. The hopeful red-headed actress continued to try to catch the eye of influential producers and directors, eager to be noticed in a virtual sea of beautiful young women who seemed to arrive in Los Angeles from all over the world in bus load parcels. The older actress used Mr. Brophy's business card as collateral to receive a free voice assessment session from a minor English peer who had parleyed a posh voice into a career. He gave her some helpful pointers.
It has been almost two weeks since the incident in the props room when each of the investigators receives a note, written in beautiful cursive, hand delivered by one of the studio pages.
"Please meet me at 6 o'clock tomorrow night on Sound Stage 14. I will make it worth your while. Ed Meyers."
Ed Meyers is one of the owners of the studio, a Hollywood legend, an award winning producer and a well known tough guy from New Jersey. His invitation is more in the way of a summons.
Sound Stage 14 is where they are filming Appointment in Zamora, a desert romance with a famed Latin Lover as the male lead. Ed Meyers is the principal money man in this film, which has been having some issues according to the studio scuttlebutt.
The sun is sinking over the Pacific Ocean as the investigators are vetted and allowed into the cavernous space. A handful of sets are in place: Some kind of castle wall and a massive gate, an oasis, a kasbah interior. A group of carpenters and sound engineers are working on details of the kasbah set, but they are hustled out by large men in dark suits who then take up positions by all of the entrances.
Ed Meyers is short and fat. He twirls a thick cigar, but it is not lit. He stalks up and down in front the investigators as he speaks, punctuating his statements with jabs of the cigar in their direction. His voice is grating, his accent is thick.
"Youse guys. You know who I am, right?" He does not wait to get anyone's agreement, but keeps on. He is clearly angry, but not necessarily at the investigators – yet.
"You know who Stan Brophy is too, right? My secretary," he points his cigar at a slim young man in chinos and a loose linen shirt who smiles and nods,"tells me that youse were seen with said Brophy in this here studio about two weeks back. Hob nobbing in the props department. Yukking it up. Maybe there was some slap and tickle?" He looks deliberately at the pretty girls but with a professional rather than a lecher's eye.
Again he does not wait for acknowledgment or discussion of these facts before he continues.
"I don't give a tinker's cuss about what happened back then, but I do need to find Stan Brophy. And youse? You know him.
"Said Brophy has taken money from me. Ten large." The cigar waggles violently.
"He promised me a star! A babe! Someone worthy of being in my new movie. Jeanne St. Jayne! That's who he promised me. And two days ago, when she was supposed to start filming, she is a no show.
"Eddie," he jabs the cigar at the elegant young secretary again, "he goes over to find her. You know. Stars sleep in. They forget what day it is. But she is not at home.
"No. She is on a sound stage at Universal filming another movie!" His voice is getting more dangerous and indignant now.
"She is my star! I paid Brophy for her to be in my movie, and she is now cheating on me with those Commie fakakas down the street."
He controls his rage with some effort and sticks the cigar in his mouth. Eddie strides forward swiftly with a lighter and soon a plume of blue grey smoke wafts up across the fake castle wall.
"This is not your fault," Meyers says finally. "But youse are going to help me fix it.
"Said Brophy, may he rot in hell for a million years, has vanished off the surface of the Earth. He is nowhere to be found. He is not at home. He is not at his golf club. He is not at his athletics club. He is not at his favorite hotel where he takes young ladies to . . ." he looks at the women in the group and tails off, puffing again on the cigar.
"Eddie tells me youse was seen talking with said Brophy. From this my keen mind deduces that youse knows him." He stabs at the them with the lit cigar.
"I will pay you to find him. I will pay you one hundred dollars today, each, and two hundred dollars again when you bring that welshing scumbag on his knees in front of me to explain what he has done with my money and why my star is not on my stage."
"Is money the only thing on offer for success?" Anna May Gibson asked. She was an aspiring young actress, and already her mind was imagining the script of an "...and introducing Anna May Gibson" on the screen. Her voice carried the training that had won her elocution prizes beginning in small town Michigan and then finally in Lansing itself before she came west.
Myers' eyes flickered in her direction with interest. He eyed her up, petite, slim, blue eyes, red hair and not afraid to speak up.
"You find me Brophy, sister, and I'll give you a part in my next picture. Not a starring role, mind you, but with lines and a couple of scenes. This I can do. Just for you, because youse asked first.
"The rest of you mooks, the cash is enough. Hear me?
"Eddie, give them the cash already. I'm late for dinner with Tyrone Power. He wants to do another Zorro movie! These old guys never think they're over the hill."
Meyers is moving away but Eddie remains to hand out money and answer questions.
Eddie spends a few moments peeling hundred dollar bills off of a thick wad and passing them out to the investigators. He doesn't seem to be paying much attention to who gets one.
In response to Hawke's question he informs you:
"Last time I saw Stan Brophy was when he was talking to the group of you two weeks ago. I was just passing through the studio and I noticed him. Time before that was two days previous in Mr. Meyer's office when he promised Ed that Jeanne St Jayne would star in his new picture. They shook hands on the deal. I'm amazed that Brophy is idiot enough to welsh on Mr. Meyers. He'll walk with a limp the rest of his life, very least, when Ed finds him."
"Eddie, did you know if Mr. Brophy was very hard-up for money?" Margaret Waithe asked. "He is taking quite the dramatic risk in bringing a client to another studio, so I am guessing the money was very, very tempting,"
Eddie replies.
"Nobody ever has enough money, toots. Brophy was always spreading it around, but he may have been in deep to some loan shark or other. I don't know. But stealing from Ed Meyers is a foolish way to solve your financial problems.
"Maybe you should go ask that St. Jayne broad – word is he was pretty sweet on her. And she on him."
As Eddie leaves, the decision is made to go to visit Brophie's office in the Homer Laughlin Building in downtown Los Angeles.
Feel free to read through the messages in this thread. they set up the investigation for you
link to a message in this game
We did some suggestions of investigations, one of which was not going so well, but I am going to get us all restarted at this point, leaving Brophy's office in an early evening in May 1952.
