The Old Die Young

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “No, Mr. Simon?” Shapiro said. “Why?”

  “Oh, no special reason.”

  Shapiro waited, but Rolf Simon did not amplify.

  “But you were surprised when Mr. Branson started clearing up—as if the party was over?”

  “Well, a little, I guess. Not like old Clive. He always liked parties. Seemed to in Hollywood, anyway. But, as I said, I hadn’t seen him for several years. Maybe he’d changed. Wasn’t so hot for parties anymore. Look, how do I know? We weren’t buddies. He was—well, you can say he was working for me. And I threw the party sort of to keep him happy.”

  “He wasn’t happy, Mr. Simon?”

  “I didn’t mean that. Actors—well they take a bit of soft-soaping. Stroking of their goddamn egos. Clive less than most, come to that. But he was still an actor. Damn nice guy, but under that an actor. And a star, for God’s sake. And after all, it was his house. He could call the turn, if he wanted to. But I had to make the move, of course.”

  Shapiro said he saw.

  “Waited a few minutes after the cleanup act, so as not to make it too obvious, and—well, led the retreat. Clive saw us out and said all the right things and then, I guess, went upstairs to bed. And I came back here and did the same thing.”

  “Mr. Branson had an appointment to have some sketches made this morning,” Shapiro said. “With a Miss Hunt. Part of a layout for the Chronicle, I understand. Did you know about that, Mr. Simon?”

  “Knew Alex was setting something up like that, yes. Didn’t know the details.”

  “Alex?”

  “Alex Bernheim. Does my publicity. Could be, Clive wanted to get a good night’s sleep before having his picture taken. Might account for the cleanup act, I suppose.”

  “Drawn,” Shapiro said. “Miss Hunt does sketches. Well—” He moved toward the elevator door.

  “I’ll go down with you,” Simon said. “See how Bob’s making out. Whether he’s got Arlene to quit crying into her lines.”

  So the three of them rode down together in the small and evidently very private elevator.

  6

  In the lobby there was still a short line in front of the box-office window. The people in the line had changed, but their number remained constant. Again the man in the box office raised his eyebrows at Rolf Simon. Then he jerked up his thumb and nodded his head and smiled widely. Whatever the people in the line were there for, the box office man was cheerful about it. Simon nodded at the box-office window and went toward one of the doors opening on the orchestra.

  Shapiro and Cook went with him. With the door open, Simon checked and turned to look at Shapiro.

  “Yes,” Shapiro said, “but we’ll try not to take long.”

  Robert Kirby and Price were now alone on the stage. Kirby was sitting on a sofa, and Price, standing, was looking down at him.

  “That’s the winter solstice, darling,” Kirby said.

  “Yes,” Price said. “The minute you were born, darling, the—”

  “No,” Kirby said. “For God’s sake no, Ken. Look, you’re forty. Forty and six months. Your wife’s an even twenty. You’re trying to be her age. But not, for Christ’s sake, sixteen. Here, like this.” Kirby stood up and faced Ken Price. “‘The minute you were born, darling, the days started to get longer’ … Get what I mean?”

  “I think so,” Price said. He read the line again. There was a difference in the new reading.

  “Better,” Kirby said. “Soon as Collins comes back, we’ll take it from the top. Where the hell’s that coffee?”

  “Coming right up, Mr. Kirby,” a voice said from the wings. “Didn’t know you were ready to break.” A middle-aged man followed his voice from the wings. He had a mug in each hand and gave them to Kirby and Ken Price.

  Kirby said, “Thanks, Harry.” He carried his cup down from the stage, crossing a short, obviously temporary gangway and descending an equally improvised flight of steps. He started toward a seat beside the slight young man who had been there before, but he stopped when he saw Rolf Simon lumbering down the aisle.

  Simon said, “Well?”

  “Shaping up,” Kirby said. “Ken’s getting it. The girl’s still blubbering. Little Miss Broken-heart. I gave her a break. She went to her dressing room, I guess. Time to dry out. But the kid’s a trooper. She’ll come out of it.”

  “By tomorrow night?” Simon said.

  “We can hope. But yes, R.S., I think so.”

  The slight man got up from his seat and joined Robert Kirby, also facing Simon. “Arly will be all right, Mr. Simon,” he said. “A little in shock, and why not? Aren’t we all?”

  “To a degree, Mr. Askew,” Simon said, “I suppose we are. But we don’t have to start playing opposite a different man, do we?” Simon turned to Nathan Shapiro. “This is Bret Askew, Lieutenant. Man who wrote the play. Helped get Branson interested in the part.”

  “Clive Branson was a great actor,” Askew said. “But Price is getting it. Lieutenant?”

  Askew was a slim, rather handsome man, probably in his early thirties or late twenties; a man who, from the inflection of his voice, did not think Nathan Shapiro looked particularly like a lieutenant. Shapiro doesn’t, either. He explained what kind of lieutenant he was. Askew said, “Oh,” but not as if much had been explained.

  “In connection with Branson’s death,” Simon said. “Seems they’re going to raise some question about it. They’re asking about last night’s party. What Lieutenant Shapiro is here for. And Detective Cook.”

  Askew said, “Oh,” again. Then he said, “What the hell? They think one of us did Clive in?”

  Shapiro answered that. “We don’t know that anybody did Mr. Branson in, Mr. Askew. We’re merely trying to make sure that somebody didn’t. Very sudden, the death seems to have been. We don’t like sudden unexplained deaths, you see.”

  “Who does, Lieutenant? But who would want to kill old Clive? Swell guy and one hell of an actor. Price, there, is all right. Maybe a bit more than all right. But it was Clive Branson who had us going. Had my play going, is what I mean. Got what I was driving at. Not that Bob here doesn’t. And Mr. Simon of course. But there’s only so much a director can do, come down to it. Depends on the people he’s got to work with, doesn’t it?”

  Shapiro supposed it did, and said so. He also said it was not his line of country. He merely thought, but did not say, that Askew was talking a good deal, and rather nervously. Under a strain, presumably. His first Broadway play, Martha Abel had said, and a success; might run for years. And the actor who “had my play going” had ceased, overnight, to have anything going at all. Reason enough to be nervous; to be, like Arlene Collins, in shock.

  “You thought Mr. Branson was feeling all right last night, Mr. Askew? Not depressed, or anything like that?”

  “Never saw him better,” Askew said. “That’s right, isn’t it, Mr. Simon? Kirby?”

  “Top form, I thought,” Robert Kirby said, and finished his coffee. “Well, we may as well get on with it. With or without our pretty little crybaby. Only—well, eventually we’ve got to work them in together, don’t we? Ken can go on bouncing lines off me, but it will need more than that. And I told her to take a few minutes’ break. Not a few hours.”

  He turned and went back down the aisle, carrying his empty mug. He climbed to the stage, where Price had sat on the sofa and was finishing his coffee. He got up as Kirby came onto the stage.

  The sofa was one of several pieces of furniture in a living room where, upstage, the wall was sliding glass doors, through which the audience could see a terrace with bright-colored outdoor furniture on it.

  On the stage, Kirby said, “Harry!” his voice pitched high.

  Harry came out of the wings and took the coffee mugs from the two men.

  “And Harry,” Kirby said, “have them light the set, huh? May as well see what we’re doing.”

  Harry said, “O.K.,” and started back toward the door he had come through, downstage left.

  “And H
arry, you might drop by Miss Collins’s room and ask her if she’s up to going on with it.”

  Harry said, “O.K.”

  But Askew said, “Better let me do that, hadn’t you, Bob?”

  “If you want to,” Kirby said, without turning to face the playwright. “O.K., Price…. ‘That’s the winter solstice, darling.’”

  “The minute you were born, darling, the days started to get longer. And the sun got higher.”

  “Okay, Ken. You’re getting it. A little more upbeat on that sun bit. All right?”

  Price read the line again, presumably with more upbeat. Askew went down the aisle and climbed to the stage. Simon said, “Well, gentlemen?”

  “All for right now, I guess,” Shapiro said. “Could be we’ll be back.”

  “Depending, I suppose, on what turns up in the autopsy, Lieutenant?”

  Shapiro said, “Yes, among other things. Tony?”

  Tony Cook and Shapiro went out toward the lobby. As Tony was closing the door behind them, the light changed. They looked back. The terrace of the set now was flooded with what appeared to be sunlight. The light poured through the glass wall of the living room. “Nice setup the Derwents have,” Tony said. “Very upper class, looks like they are. Does it occur to you, Nate, that we haven’t had lunch?”

  “Yes. Also that we’d better check in.”

  There was a bar and grill across the street. They agreed it looked passable, or near enough, and crossed the street. Just inside, there was a telephone booth. Shapiro went into it. Tony went to the bar. A fat barman was the only occupant of the restaurant. It was, after all, between three and four in the afternoon, and a lull was to be expected.

  The barman was taking advantage of it in a chair behind the bar. He said “Help you?” to Tony, without sounding much as if he wanted to, and without getting up from the chair. No, they didn’t have draft beer. Yes, they did have Bud. Sure, it was cold. He stood up then and got two bottles of Budweiser from an ice bin under the bar. He slid the bottles to Tony Cook, who slid money back to him. The barman sat down again.

  All right, Chet could rustle up food for them, probably, although the kitchen was supposed to be closed. “Just ring from one of the booths.”

  Tony carried the cold bottles to the nearest booth. He found the button which presumably would ring Chet’s bell. He did not press it, waiting for Nathan Shapiro.

  Detective (2nd gr.) Thompson was catching in the squad room at Manhattan South. Yes, Captain—sorry, Inspector—Weigand had come in about half an hour ago. But at the moment he was on the telephone. “Sure, Lieutenant, I’ll put you on hold.”

  Shapiro stayed on hold for several minutes. Then Bill Weigand said, “O.K., Nate. Dorian seems to have got you into something.”

  “Could be,” Nathan said. “I don’t really know yet, Inspector. Congratulations, Inspector.”

  He was told to come off it.

  Shapiro said, “All right. But you had it coming, Bill.”

  Weigand said “Mmm,” and, “Had the M.E.’s office on the phone. A Dr. Nelson. Seems they’ve pretty much finished on Branson. Found a barbiturate. But not much of it. Probably ingested about a gram. More than the therapeutic dose, but not likely to be lethal. Alcohol in the blood, too, but not too much of that, either. Thing seems to be, the average person could just as well be alive. Nelson said they’d have been quite puzzled by it, but he’d heard the report from you that the deceased had a history of overreaction to barbiturates.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “His dresser—valet, whatever—said Branson had told him he’d found that out years ago. Couldn’t tolerate any sleeping pills.”

  “And may have told other people, Nate?”

  “Could be. We’ll have to ask around. By the way, did the pathologist make a guess as to Branson’s age?”

  “Middle to late fifties, possibly sixty. But, as they say, well preserved. Does it enter in?”

  “I don’t know. On the chance it does, maybe, I’m asking around—”

  “O.K.—because it’s our baby now. Precinct’s passed it along to squad. Formal referral. Cook’s with you, I suppose? Not around here, anyway.”

  “Tony’s with me. Sitting in a booth in this restaurant. We didn’t get around to lunch until just now.”

  “Late for it. Dorian will be pleased, by the way—not that maybe somebody killed Branson, of course, but that she didn’t set us to barking up a wrong tree. I mean one with no coon in it. By the way, Nate, I’m recommending that you take over here, when they decide where to put me. Will probably go through. And you’ll make acting captain if it does. At least acting.”

  Shapiro could think of only one response to that. It was, “Jesus.” He made it.

  “I know, Nate,” Bill Weigand said. “You think the department’s gone off its rocker.”

  Since Nathan Shapiro believes the New York Police Department has been off its rocker since it approved his entirely experimental application for promotion to lieutenant, he said merely, “Be checking in, Inspector,” and went off to join Cook in the booth.

  He approved the beer, since Tony had already bought it. They poured. Tony pressed the button which was supposed to ring for somebody called Chet. Chet apparently was also enjoying the lull, but in five minutes he showed up. He was as fat as the barman and wore a not especially clean white apron. He said, “Yeah?” and then that the kitchen was closed until six and he didn’t know. Nothing hot, that was for sure. Maybe a cold roast beef sandwich. All right, maybe two cold roast beef sandwiches. All right, he’d try to see that one of them was rare. He did not seem optimistic, and Tony Cook was not either.

  They had finished their beers and Tony was gesturing to the barman, who was resolutely not looking, when two customers came in. One was Bret Askew, author of Summer Solstice. The other was the very pretty young woman in a green pantsuit. As they came in, Askew took his arm from around Arlene Collins’s waist.

  Perhaps the rehearsal across the street was over. Perhaps Miss Collins had merely not rejoined it.

  The barman stood up for them. Askew said, “Hi, Joe. Couple of coffees. And Miss Collins could do with a dry sherry. Very dry. Tio Pepe, if you’ve got one chilled.”

  The barman said, “Sir.”

  The arrival of the two apparently familiar customers appeared to animate the barman. He reached under the bar and, to judge from his movement, pressed something. Chet’s summoning bell? Evidently, since it brought Chet. It did not bring cold roast beef sandwiches.

  Chet said, “Afternoon, Miss Collins, Mr. Askew. Get you something?”

  Askew said, “Coffee, Chet.”

  “Coming right up, Mr. Askew.”

  It was suddenly chummy in the bar and grill. Well, the restaurant was across the street from the Rolf Simon Theater. Convenient. Of course, Harry provided coffee to the theater’s stage. Perhaps the bar and grill provided better coffee. Possibly, it also provided escape and a measure of privacy. And Arlene Collins seemed to have cheered up; at least she was no longer crying.

  Askew picked up the bottle and the glass the barman slid to him. He held them both in one hand and touched the girl’s arm with the fingers of the other. He said, “O.K., baby.” They walked down the long, thin barroom to a booth at the end of it. They did not appear to see Shapiro and Cook in the booth they walked past. Askew kept his hand on the girl’s arm and looked down at her. She showed no indication of a desire to get away.

  “Well,” Tony said, keeping his voice down. “Looks as if she’s coming out of shock, wouldn’t you say? Off with the old, on with the new.”

  “Not all that new, at a guess, Tony,” Shapiro said, his own voice not much above a whisper. “But it doesn’t need to mean anything.”

  Tony Cook nodded in agreement. He did say, “Still,” dragging it out a little.

  Chet reappeared, this time with a tray. The tray had two cups on it and a glass coffee jug. He served the two in the distant booth and went away again. Tony went to the bar and got two more bottles o
f Budweiser. They were well into them when Chet brought two sandwiches, both of roast beef, but neither of them rare. Neither of them was even pink.

  They ate the sandwiches. Tony tried catsup on his, which didn’t help much. This time it was Nathan who said, “Well.” Then he nodded his head at Tony Cook, who got out of the booth and went to the bar. Joe had sat down again. Tony slid a twenty-dollar bill across the bar. He didn’t have anything smaller. The barman stood up, not very rapidly. He turned to the cash register behind the bar.

  “Not very busy today, are you?” Tony said.

  “Never are in the afternoon. Except Wednesdays—a few come in then. At intermissions, I guess. After the show, a few. But they’re mostly women go to matinees, you know. Evenings are our time, when there’s a show running across the street. Pretty busy then, some nights. Murph puts two barmen on then. Here’s your change.”

  He spread change on the bar in front of Tony. Tony let a dollar of it stay there. The barman looked at it and then at Tony, who nodded. The barman said, “Thanks, Mac,” and picked up the dollar bill.

  “Nice-looking girl just came in,” Tony said. “Come in often, Joe? Got a feeling I’ve seen her before somewhere.”

  “Actress,” Joe said, “in that show across the street. No, I wouldn’t say often. Now and then, last few weeks. Few weeks back, when they were still rehearsing or something, I guess it was, used to come in for a sherry sometimes.”

  He went back to his chair.

  “Alone?” Tony said.

  “Can’t say I remember she did. With an older man a few times. And once anyway with an older dame. A couple of times with Mr. Askew, like today. My hunch is, you won’t make any time with her, Mac, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”

  “Be worth trying,” Tony said. “Miss Collins, you called her?”

  “Yeah. In that play across the street. Summer something, they call it. Summer Success? Something like that anyway. Buy a ticket and you can go look at her, Mac.”