'What happened?' I asked.
He stared vacantly at the typewriter that stood on the polished mahogany. He lurched slowly forward and removed the cover. Then he pulled the typewriter close to him and inserted a sheet of paper. 'Give me a cigarette,' he said. I put one in his mouth and lit it for him. He didn't speak for a moment. He just sat there with the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and his eyes fixed on the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. 'My God!' he said slowly. 'What a story! It'll make film history. A thriller that really hap pened. It's never been done before — not like this.' His eyes were alight with the old enthusiasm. His fingers strayed to the keys and he began to type.
'Joe woke with a grunt at the sound of the typewriter and stared at Engles with his mouth open, as though he had seen a ghost.
I watched over Engles' shoulder. He wrote:
SCENARIO OF A THRILLER THAT REALLY HAPPENED
The click of the keys slowed and faltered.The cigarette dropped from his lips and lay on his lap, burning a brown mark on the white of his ski suit. His teeth were grinding together and beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He raised his fingers to the keyboard again and added another line:
by Neil Blair He stopped then and stared at it with a little smile. A froth of blood bubbled at his lips. His wrists went slack so that the fingers raised a jumble of type arms. Then he gently keeled over and slipped to the floor before I could catch him.
When we picked him up, he was dead.