The Man Who Couldn't Miss

by David Handler

  “Are you planning to split up?”

  “Hell, no. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. The past few days have been a bit bumpy, but you know how that goes. You’ve been married.”

  I nodded. “And my marriage went kablooey.”

  “Well, ours isn’t. It just hasn’t been easy squeezing this show in between our shooting schedules.”

  “Merilee really appreciates you doing it.”

  “We’re happy to, man. We both made our stage debuts here, same as Merilee did. It’s just that . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Two weeks of rehearsal isn’t nearly enough time to master Coward. Performing his work is like playing chamber music. The tempo and interplay have to be pitch-perfect. Every hesitation, no matter how slight, is huge. The genius of the man is that he makes it look so damned easy. It’s not. It’s intricate and incredibly complicated.”

  “Speaking of complicated, you haven’t seen R. J. Romero hanging around here, have you?”

  Greg looked at me in astonishment. “R. J. Romero? Wow, there’s a blast from the past. Why would that bastard be around?”

  “He’s been calling Merilee lately, bugging her for money. He even wanted to know if there was a part for him in Private Lives.”

  “As who, Louise the maid?” Greg shook his head in disgust. “Everyone in our class thought he was such hot shit. I thought he was a fraud.”

  “I understand he wasn’t a huge fan of yours either.”

  “We weren’t exactly pals, if that’s what you mean. I’m real sorry to hear he’s started hassling Merilee. Anything I can do?”

  “Just let me know if you see him around. And please don’t mention this to the others. I don’t want him to become a distraction.”

  “Absolutely.” He gazed out the open stage door at the courtyard, where Sabrina was still studying her lines. “I thought the guy was human trash. Lying, cheating scum. Didn’t matter. The girls loved him. Dini had a huge thing for him. So did Merilee. The guys, we all hated his guts. Marty probably still does. R.J. used to call him Porky Pig. He used to call me Tom Brokaw because he thought I was such a droning stiff. I’d say the two of us have done pretty damned well for ourselves considering how fat and untalented we are. What’s he done?”

  “Become a petty criminal. Not so petty, actually.”

  “And I can tell you why. Because he’s trash.” Greg gazed at me, smiling. “I’ve missed talking to you, man. When I get back from Death Valley we ought to go out for beers.”

  I blinked at him in shock. Beers? “Absolutely,” I responded in dumbfounded amazement. Beers? “Let’s do that.”

  “SHALL WE PICK up where we left off in act one?” Merilee said brightly as the cast stood gathered on the playhouse’s stage. Per Coward’s stage directions, the set depicted the terrace of a hotel in the south of France. There were two French windows at the back opening onto two separate suites. The terrace space was divided by a line of small trees in tubs. Awnings shaded the windows. “Our newlyweds, Elyot and Sibyl, have just gone back inside their honeymoon suite from the terrace,” she continued, glancing down at her copy of the play. “There’s a slight pause and now Victor enters from the other suite . . .”

  And with that Victor (Greg) emerged onstage, followed a moment later by Amanda (Dini), his new bride, and the run-through began. This being Coward the dialogue was deliciously biting, witty and wise. This being Coward the situation was also fraught with farcical possibilities. After all, Amanda has no idea that Elyot, who just happens to have been her first husband, is honeymooning in the suite right next door. Elyot is equally in the dark about Amanda’s presence there.

  I sat a few rows back with Mimi and Sabrina, who wouldn’t appear until act two. It was a tiny theater—318 seats, to be exact, which made it less than half the size of a small Broadway house. Glenda and the twins had returned to their rented beach house. The twins thought rehearsals were stupid.

  As Dini and Greg played their scene together, I was quickly aware that Merilee hadn’t been exaggerating when she told me the show was in trouble. Despite being under the weather, Dini was delightful as the cynical, sharp-tongued Amanda. But Greg, well, totally sucked. It wasn’t just his dreadful accent, which I thought sounded like Tony Curtis doing Cary Grant in Some Like It Hot. His timing was way off. Dini kept gamely trying to pull him along, but I could see the desperation in her eyes. Every finely honed theatrical instinct that she possessed was telling her that total disaster was looming.

  The cast took a short coffee break when the scene ended. I made my way into the wings to whisper goodbye to Merilee. “See you later?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll be rehearsing all night,” she whispered gloomily. “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I get through to him?”

  “Greg’s a pro. He’ll come through for you.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Her green eyes shined at me. She was on the verge of tears. “Hoagy . . . ?”

  “Yes, Merilee?”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  Chapter Three

  Bruce Landau was summering nearby at his beach house in the ultraposh shorefront village of Guilfoyle, where he kept his thirty-six-foot Pearson 365 moored at the ultrasnooty Guilfoyle Yacht Club. Guilfoyle had a historic town green, complete with a Revolutionary War Memorial, that made Sherbourne’s town green look like a sad little weed patch. It had a steepled white Congregational Church from the 1700s. Galleries that sold all sorts of ugly, obscenely expensive art. Shops that sold all sorts of ugly, obscenely expensive antiques. And it had The Nook, a dark, narrow diner with booths of well-worn wood.

  I nosed the Woody into one of the diagonal parking spaces out front and strolled in, my eyes getting used to the dark. From the radio in the kitchen I could hear R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts,” which was that month’s officially designated whiny song. I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Michael Stipe mewling.

  Bruce hollered to me from a booth in the back, turning high-class heads left and right. He wasn’t much for couth. But you wouldn’t want to go up against him in court. The man was three parts pit bull and one part wild boar. He’d arrived straight from the yacht club, it appeared. His Izod shirt and tan shorts had varnish and paint stains all over them.

  We both ordered BLTs. Lulu opted for a tuna melt, hold the toast, and kept a safe distance from Bruce. He sprays a lot when he eats.

  Bruce took a gulp of his iced coffee and jumped right in. “Speaking as your attorney, my feeling is that Merilee has very little to worry about from this yutz. Should she have reported the accident at the time? Yes. Did she behave irresponsibly? Yes. But his uncorroborated testimony won’t be enough to prompt any district prosecutor to file charges against her. Or buy him any kind of deal.”

  “Even if he claims that she was driving the car?”

  Our sandwiches arrived. We dove in.

  “Strictly his word against hers,” he advised me between huge, open mouthfuls. “And we’re talking about a desperate sleazeball here. Trouble is, we both know it’s the media fallout that’ll kill us. No way we want it out there that Merilee Nash was ever mixed up in something like this.”

  “How do we contain it, Bruce?”

  “I’ve reached out to a fixer named Pete Tedone who happens to owe me a favor. Pete was a deputy superintendent of the Connecticut State Police until his sweet darling wife got caught shoplifting several valuable items from the Gucci store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. He was right there by her side the whole time and had no idea what she was up to, or so he claimed when store security landed on her. I managed to get the charges dropped. Pete took early retirement and went private, but he’s still got great contacts. His cousin Frank is on the Organized Crime Task Force. He’s the guy who phoned you this morning. Trust me, if Pete can’t make this go away no one can.” Bruce glanced past me to the front door, waving his arm in the air. “And here he is, right on time.”

  Pete T
edone was a chesty fireplug in his late forties with a shaved head and a twenty-inch neck. The cheap, shiny black suit that he had on was just a bit too snug in the shoulders. He sat across from me next to Bruce and asked our waitress for a root beer milk shake, which immediately intrigued me. I’d never heard of any such thing.

  “Okay, gents, here’s what we know . . .” He opened a file folder on the table. Inside there were incident statements, arrest reports, clippings. He arrayed them before us very neatly, all corners squared. “As to the alleged hit-and-run in Stony Creek, the details that Miss Nash provided correspond with the police reports from 1976. A Yale architectural historian named Frank Lawson was indeed fatally struck late one night while he was out walking his dog. The family posted a reward for information. No one ever came forward. Case remains classified as an unsolved vehicular homicide.” Tedone’s root beer shake arrived in a tall fountain glass. He took a thirsty gulp, wiped some tan-colored foam from his mustache, and moved on to the next document. “As to why Mr. Romero has chosen now to show up in her life again, the answer could be that until four months ago he was serving a nickel at Enfield Correctional for breaking and entering. His third fall, not for nothing. The man’s already gone down for receiving stolen property and for felony-weight coke possession. He has a wife and two kids in Providence, but I doubt he’s spent more than six months under the same roof with them in the past ten years. The man can’t stay out of trouble. He did manage to land that job at B & B Building Supply, but it wasn’t long before he was stealing stuff from the yard and peddling it at construction sites. As soon as they got wise to him he took off with a load of Marvin windows and they never saw him or their truck again.”

  “Is he hooked up with a crew?” Bruce asked.

  “Used to be loosely affiliated with a mob family in Providence,” Tedone replied. “But I hear they kissed him goodbye years ago. Word is he owed bookies and loan sharks money left and right, then snorted up the coke he was supposed to be peddling to pay them back. He’s lucky they didn’t ice him, but they always cut him slack because they thought he was going to be a big movie star someday.” He put the papers back in the folder and closed it. “If you want my sense of things, Hoagy, you shouldn’t get within five miles of this guy—because when he gets busted, and he will, you’ll need plausible deniability. Don’t talk to him on the phone. Don’t meet with him. And for damned sure don’t give him so much as one shiny quarter.”

  “He’s already been to the house. Merilee gave him ten thousand dollars.”

  Tedone grimaced. “Buddy, you may have a problem.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Let’s explore our options.” Bruce stabbed the table with a blunt finger. “Scenario one, Hoagy agrees to the payoff at the time and location of Romero’s choosing. We tip off Pete’s cousin Frank, the Task Force reels him in and—”

  “And he drags Merilee down with him,” I said. “That can’t happen.”

  Tedone leaned over the table toward me, lowering his voice. “There are ways to make sure it doesn’t.”

  “You can’t keep his lawyer away from the TV cameras.”

  “It’ll never get that far. You arrange the meet like Bruce just said. We tip off the Task Force, only I’m the one who shows up, not you. Romero’s a miserable bum without a friend left in the world. I’ll make it abundantly clear to him that should he ever say word one about Merilee Nash to anyone, including his lawyer, he will not survive his first night in custody.”

  “Why, what’ll happen to him?”

  “He’ll die while resisting arrest,” Tedone said offhandedly, as if making such a thing happen was no more difficult than ordering a pizza with three toppings instead of two. Apparently, for him it wasn’t. This was what made him a fixer. “There’ll be a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding his unfortunate death, but the officers involved will be fully exonerated. At which time you’ll be asked to make a suitable contribution to a fund for the survivors of the troopers in this state who’ve been killed on the job.”

  The very same $25,000 that Romero was demanding, I guessed. Except this way I could write it off as a charitable donation. The tax deductible hit. What would they think of next?

  Across from me, Bruce’s face was blank. He wasn’t saying yes. He wasn’t saying no.

  I looked down at Lulu under the table. Lulu was looking back up at me.

  “Let’s be very clear about something,” I said. “That’s not how I want to handle this.”

  Tedone shrugged his bulging shoulders. “No disrespect, but you don’t have a lot of wiggle room. If you want this guy out of your ex’s life this is how it’s done. Believe me, no one will be sorry to see him go. And there’s absolutely no way it’ll ever get back to you.”

  “What about that job application with my name on it?”

  “It’ll disappear.”

  Bruce cleared his throat. “Hoagy, if it’s any help, Merilee never has to know about this.”

  “Yes, she does. I’d never conceal something like this from her. She once cared about the guy. Still does, for all I know. Thanks but no thanks. I’ll handle it in my own way.”

  “You’ll pay him the money, won’t you?” Tedone shook his shaved head at me. “That’s a fool’s play. Also way too risky. This guy’s got nothing left to lose. He could shoot you dead. Or bop you on the head and hold you for a million dollars’ ransom.”

  Lulu let out a low moan.

  Tedone frowned. “What’s her problem?”

  “She feels I’m worth at least two million.”

  He peered at me doubtfully, as if it had just dawned on him that I wasn’t like other people. “I don’t agree with your decision, but if you’ve made up your mind then I have to respect it. Only, I’m watching your back from now on.”

  “No.”

  “Trust me, you’ll never even know I’m there.”

  “No.”

  “Be sensible,” Bruce implored me. “You’ve got to have backup.”

  “Lulu’s all the backup I’ve ever needed.”

  “Do you own a gun?” Tedone wanted to know.

  “Merilee keeps a .38 at the farm. She got it last winter when there was an outbreak of rabid raccoons.”

  “Pack it,” he urged me. “Fully loaded.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Guns go off.”

  Tedone drained the last of his root beer milk shake, sighing with exasperation. “You’ve asked me for my professional advice. You want to ignore it, fine. But take it from me, my friend. Your whole world is about to blow up in your face.”

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  I HAD SOME arrangements to make in Old Lyme, Lyme’s shoreline neighbor, before I headed back to the farm. Two stops at the shopping center. My first was at the local branch of New England Savings, or at least it had been New England Savings until it recently got itself devoured by an outfit called Citizens Bank. Banks were gobbling each other up like crazy lately. It was, the TV commercials kept promising, the dawn of a whole new era of consumer choice. I could barely contain my excitement. As it happened, a shiny new green and white CITIZENS BANK sign was going up over the door right as I walked in. I wondered if it was an evil omen to walk underneath a bank’s new sign. I asked the workmen who were bolting it into place, but they weren’t particularly helpful. Or friendly, come to think of it.

  After my stop at the bank I went over to Gull’s Way, the bustling travel agency where four middle-aged ladies worked the phones morning, noon and night making airline, hotel and cruise reservations for local residents. When I was done there I succumbed to my curiosity and steered the Woody across the Connecticut River to Walt’s Market in Old Saybrook for a gallon of Salem Valley Farms vanilla ice cream and a six-pack of zippy, old-fashioned Stewart’s root beer in glass bottles. Then I crossed the river again and headed back into the lush green hills of Lyme. Lulu rode shotgun with her front paws
on the armrest and her large black nose stuck out the open window, enjoying the exotic scents wafting from the dairy farms. When I reached Hamburg Cove I turned off at Joshua Town Road, a narrow country lane that twisted its way for miles through ancient forests and historic farms edged by fieldstone walls, until I arrived at the end of the road, where there was a large sign on a wooden post that said PRIVATE. Also a paddock gate that Merilee usually left open.

  After a half mile of rutted dirt driveway I pulled up next to the barn and got out. Lulu and I were immediately greeted by Old Saxophone Joe, crowing his fool head off as always. I went in the kitchen to put the ice cream in the freezer and the root beer in the refrigerator. As soon as I opened the refrigerator door Lulu parked herself in front of it. She wanted an anchovy. She likes them straight out of the fridge. The oil clings to them better. I gave her one, then got the Waring blender out and made myself a root beer shake, sampling it carefully.

  I found it to be altogether delicious. A definite keeper. Pete Tedone knew his fountain drinks. After I’d drained every last chilled drop I headed out to the chapel.

  The phone was ringing as I walked through the chapel door. The home phone line.

  “God, it’s so good to hear your voice,” Merilee said morosely.

  “Is it really going that badly?”

  “I swear, Hoagy, it’s beginning to feel like talent night at Camp Minnetonka. I’m hiding in Mimi’s office with the shades drawn. If there’s too much light I can see my career passing right before my eyes. How can I offer this lifeless dreck to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward tomorrow night? We simply haven’t got it—with the exception of Marty, which is rather bizarre considering that he’s the one who’s a completely screwed-up human being.”

  “The stage is his refuge.”

  “And Sabrina is spot-on.”

  “This is a major showcase for her.”

  “But Dini and Greg are somewhere else. I’m becoming convinced that Dini’s ten times sicker than she’s letting on. And Greg, I swear, just doesn’t get British humor. Truly, I don’t know what to do with him. But enough about this awful mess. Let’s talk about my other awful mess. Was Bruce of any help?”