The Man Who Couldn't Miss

by David Handler

  The lieutenant was a chesty fireplug with dark, hooded eyes and a head of mountainous, elaborately layered black hair that was reminiscent of John Travolta from his Saturday Night Fever disco heyday. He wore a cheap, shiny black suit that bore a striking resemblance to the cheap, shiny black suit that Pete Tedone, the fixer, had worn. In fact, he bore a striking resemblance to Pete Tedone, possibly because he was Pete’s younger brother, Carmine.

  This was made clear to me when Carmine Tedone pulled me aside for a private word after he’d been brought up to speed on who everyone was—not that he had the slightest trouble recognizing Merilee or Marty.

  I tugged at my ear. “So that would make Frank Tedone of the Organized Crime Task Force . . .”

  “My cousin, same as he is Pete’s.”

  “Just out of curiosity, Lieutenant, is there anyone in the Connecticut State Police who isn’t named Tedone?”

  “Oh, sure. There’s Bartuccas by the dozen, although we’re all related by marriage a couple of generations back. You see my sergeant over there?”

  I followed his gaze to the tall, gangly young plainclothesman who was giving instructions to a pair of troopers in uniform. He, too, wore a cheap, shiny black suit. Possibly they bought them in bulk—like rolls of paper towels.

  “He’s a Bartucca. My wife’s cousin’s boy, Angelo.” Tedone called him over and said, “Sergeant, there’s a tavern across the street from the stage door. Find out who went in and out during the time frame of the murder. The bartender will remember if anyone he didn’t know stopped in. Or if he saw a car idling by the stage door that took off lickety split.”

  “Right, Loo,” Sergeant Bartucca said.

  “Oh, hey, and ask him . . .” Tedone opened a file folder so that I could see it was his brother Pete’s file on R. J. Romero, complete with mug shots. “Ask him if this guy looks familiar.”

  “You got it, Loo.” He went loping off with the file.

  Lieutenant Tedone approached Mimi now and said, “Mrs. Whitfield, do you generally have someone guarding the stage door during performances?”

  “This is a summer playhouse, Lieutenant. Not the Belasco Theater.”

  “So someone could have wandered in and out unnoticed while the first act was under way?”

  “Yes, they could have.”

  “I’m told that you’ve let the audience go home.”

  “I couldn’t exactly ask the likes of Governor Weicker and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to remain in their seats for half the night, could I?”

  “Still, there’s a chance that one of them saw or heard something. Have you got a complete list of their names?”

  “Of course.”

  “Were there any no-shows?”

  “Not one. The house was packed.”

  “Did anyone leave their seat while act one was in progress and not come back?”

  “No one,” I said. “I was standing in the back of the house. If anyone had left I’d have seen him. And if anyone had tried to slip backstage Sabrina would have seen him from her perch in the wings. Lieutenant, you don’t honestly think that Greg was done in by Hume Cronyn, do you?”

  “There’s no call to take that attitude with me. I’m just covering my bases.” He glanced down at a small notepad in his hand. “That would be Sabrina Meyer?”

  Sabrina still had on her frumpy maid’s costume and gray wig. The police hadn’t let her go downstairs to change. She looked at him warily. “Yes . . . ?”

  “You were seated in that chair over there during act one?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Did you see anyone go downstairs to the dressing rooms during the first act? Think hard. It could be important.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Sabrina said without hesitation.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay over tonight, Miss Meyer. We’ll need your formal witness statement in the morning. And maybe you’ll remember something when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it. A trooper will escort you back to the Sherbourne Inn.”

  “Can I go downstairs and change first? I don’t usually look like this, you know. And my shoulder bag’s down there.”

  “Of course.” He gestured for a trooper to go with her. “Do you mind if my man searches your bag?”

  “For what?”

  “The weapon that was used.”

  “Do you classify a tampon as a weapon?” On Tedone’s stone-faced reaction Sabrina said, “No, I don’t mind.”

  She and the trooper left the stage together.

  Tedone consulted his notepad again. “Martin Jacob Miller . . .”

  Marty gulped nervously. “Jeez, you sound like Darth Vader. Call me Marty, will you?”

  Tedone smiled faintly. “I understand it was you who found Mr. Farber’s body in the men’s dressing room. And that you immediately called out to Mr. Hoag, who joined you in there.”

  “Along with Lulu,” I added.

  Tedone frowned at me. “Lulu . . . ?”

  She let out a low whoop at my feet.

  “Oh, right. Your pooch. How about the three of us . . . ?”

  “Four of us.”

  “Four of us go down to the dressing rooms and you show me how it all happened?”

  Marty climbed to his feet. “Whatever you say.”

  “Would you like me to join you, Lieutenant?” Merilee asked. “I was right next-door with Dini.”

  “Not necessary, Miss Nash. I understand she’s not feeling very well.”

  “Not at all well,” Merilee said with a sad shake of her head. “Doctor Orr sedated her and sent her home to the beach house they’ve been renting on Point O’Woods.”

  “I’ll keep a couple of cars parked outside of her house tonight. Make sure none of those tabloid creeps bother her.”

  “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “Just doing my job,” he said, coloring slightly.

  As we made our way toward the spiral staircase we ran into Sabrina, who’d ditched her costume and wig for a tank top and linen shorts, brushed out her gorgeous golden ringlets and reclaimed her shoulder bag. She waved goodbye to us as she started for the stage door with her uniformed escort, who’d been rendered gaga by her transformation.

  The sump pumps were going full blast down in the dimly lit corridor. The water level had gone down by two or three inches now that the rain had let up. Two crime scene technicians were taking Polaroid shots of the murder scene in the men’s dressing room. One of the technicians was photographing Greg, who remained draped facedown over the plank just as we’d left him. The other was photographing the numerous sets of wet, dirty shoe prints that were all over the other planks.

  Tedone asked the technicians to excuse us for a moment. They squeezed their way past us out into the corridor, leaving us crowded in there with Greg’s body, Lulu’s mackerel breath and Marty’s curried mutton scent.

  If Tedone was bothered by any of it he didn’t let on. Just stood there staring down at Greg. “I was told you found him between the planks.”

  “We did,” I said. “He was lying facedown in six inches of water with the back of his head bashed in. He wasn’t moving. We were afraid he’d drown.”

  “So we lifted him up onto that plank,” Marty said, nodding.

  “Talk me through the moments leading up to that.”

  “It was the intermission between acts one and two,” I said. “Everyone was in high gear. Stagehands were changing the set. Actors were changing their costumes. Meanwhile, the rain was coming down in torrents. I came down here to check on the flooding situation with Mimi, who was getting concerned.”

  “Did you see or speak to the victim?”

  I nodded. “When Mimi and I were out in the corridor. The dressing room door was open and he—”

  “Why wasn’t it closed?”

  “Because it was hot as hell in here,” Marty said. “And Greg was changing into that heavy tweed suit.”

  “How did he seem to you?” Tedone asked me.

  “Raring to go. He
really aced act one. Or at least I thought he did.”

  “He totally did,” Marty agreed. “Impressed the hell out of me.”

  “Were you in here changing your costume, too?” Tedone asked him.

  “Briefly, until I had to use the men’s john right across the hall. I get an uncontrollable case of the shits before and after act one of every performance I ever give. I’m somewhat legendary for it, kind of like the way Bill Russell used to throw up before every Celtics game.”

  Tedone looked at him with his mouth open for a moment before he turned back to me and said, “So the victim was alone in here when you and Mrs. Whitfield spoke to him from the corridor?”

  “I assumed he was, but I can’t say for sure. Someone else could have been in here. Don’t ask me who. I wouldn’t know. I also looked in on Merilee. She was afraid the show wasn’t going well, what with the rain pouring down onto the stage and all. She was also concerned about Dini, who’s been quite ill. In fact, Dini went into the ladies’ room and threw up while I was there. Her mother, Glenda, didn’t want her to go back out there for act two. Glenda’s a retired school nurse. But Dini was determined to keep going.”

  “Dini’s a trouper,” Marty said admiringly. “She’d go out there with a broken bone sticking out of her leg.”

  “Merilee and Dini needed to change costumes, so Glenda started back upstairs. Mimi had already gone back up. I was just about to go up myself when Marty called out to me that he’d found Greg.”

  “I’d just returned from the men’s john,” Marty explained.

  “About how long were you in the john?” Tedone asked him.

  “Five minutes, maybe. Long enough to smoke my way through a cigarette. I found Greg just like Hoagy said—lying facedown between the boards in all of that water with his head bleeding. I took a lifeguard course once. After we pulled him up onto that plank I did what I was taught to do. The water came pouring out of his lungs, but he didn’t cough or show any response at all. And his eyes . . .” Marty trailed off, shaking his head. “The dude was dead.”

  Tedone studied Greg’s head wounds more closely. “Those are some nasty blows. Three, maybe four. Wonder what we’re looking at in terms of a weapon.”

  Lulu let out a whoop from under one of the dressing tables.

  “Why is she doing that?” Tedone asked me.

  “Because she thinks she’s found the weapon.”

  “How would she know that?”

  “I can’t help you there. She doesn’t always tell me everything.”

  He let out a sigh. “Yeah, right. Pete warned me that you were an uno.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “One of a kind.”

  “He said that? I’m flattered.”

  “Being candid, I don’t think he meant it as a form of flattery.” Tedone moved over toward Lulu, who was sniffing delicately at a red brick on the floor that had been submerged in the floodwaters and was only now becoming visible. It was a brick stamped TUTTLE 1924, which indicated who’d made it and when. They used to do that with bricks. “We’ll bag and tag it. Check it for blood, hair, fingerprints . . .”

  “Lieutenant, let’s say someone did smash Greg over the head with that brick,” I said. “Assuming he was alive but unconscious when he pitched over, facedown, into the floodwaters . . .”

  “He was still alive. Marty just said that he had water in his lungs.”

  “How many minutes would it take for someone in his condition to drown?”

  “That’s a question for the medical examiner, not me. I’d strictly be speculating.”

  “So speculate.”

  “We’re talking multiple subdermal hematomas, possible skull fractures . . .” Tedone shoved his lower lip in and out. “I’d guess maybe three minutes. Why are you asking?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Curious,” he repeated, raising his chin at me doubtfully.

  Marty let out a sudden sob, his eyes filling with tears. “Poor son of a bitch. He had it all going on. Dini, the twins, his career. Who’d want to do this to him?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out,” Tedone responded.

  Marty glanced at him sharply. “Are you good at your job?”

  “I’m good at my job,” he assured him with quiet confidence. “And I’m sorry for your loss. Thanks for your help. You can get dressed now if you want.”

  Marty frowned at him. “I am dressed.”

  “Then in that case let’s go back upstairs.” Tedone started out of the dressing room into the corridor, pausing to look inside of the men’s room. “How come you didn’t flush the toilet?”

  “I was afraid the septic tank would be flooded and it would overflow into the corridor. Do you think it would have?”

  “Could be, but I’m a homicide investigator, not a plumber, remember?” Next he had a look in the ladies’ room, where there were traces of vomit on the floor next to the toilet. His jaw muscles tightened. “Marty, I have to ask you to stay over tonight same as Miss Meyer.”

  “Absolutely, Lieutenant. Whatever you say.”

  After we’d made our way back up the spiral staircase Tedone grabbed one of the troopers who was on the stage door and told him to escort Marty past the horde of media people and onlookers to the Sherbourne Inn. Off they went.

  Another trooper came in clutching several Styrofoam take-out cups of hot coffee from the Backstage Tavern. “Lieutenant, Sergeant Bartucca told me to tell you the bartender didn’t see anybody other than his regulars tonight,” he reported as Tedone took a coffee container from him. “And no one was idling outside of the stage door.”

  “Got it, thanks.” Tedone removed the plastic lid and took a grateful gulp, smacking his lips loudly, which immediately prompted Lulu to let out a sour grunt of disapproval. Merilee has an intense aversion to lip smackers that Lulu picked up from her. She’s picked up a lot of her mommy’s little aversions. People who pop their gum. People who click their forks against their teeth. People who say the word snot.

  Another Crown Vic pulled up outside of the stage door now tailed closely by a low-profile ambulance, as in no siren, no blinking lights, no prominent markings. A jowly, middle-aged man in surgical scrubs got out of the Crown Vic, pausing to grab a doctor’s bag from the backseat.

  “This would be the chief medical examiner of the state of Connecticut,” Tedone informed me. “Ordinarily, he sends his deputy to crime scenes. He only comes himself when it’s a big one—which this is, in case you had any doubts.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The guy driving the ambulance is one of his assistants. Actually, we call them ‘deaners’ out here. Don’t ask me why.”

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  The deaner, a tall, powerfully built young man who was also in scrubs, got out of the ambulance and joined his boss. Tedone went out and spoke to both men for a moment, paying no heed to the TV news cameras and lights and the reporters who were shouting questions at him from behind the perimeter. After they’d finished speaking, the deaner fetched a pair of oversize aluminum briefcases from the passenger seat of the ambulance. A trooper led the two men inside and downstairs to the dressing room.

  Tedone returned to me and took a gulp of his coffee before he looked me up and down as if he were studying me for the first time. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk privately for a moment about R. J. Romero. Pete’s brought me up to speed on his blackmail scheme. Also what he did to that poor rooster. Guy sounds like a real lowlife.”

  “Only because he is one.”

  “I understand he shares a history with the victim. The entire cast, for that matter. Could we be looking at one and the same case?”

  “You’re asking me my opinion?”

  “If you don’t mind,” he replied, turning a bit testy.

  “It did occur to me. R.J. resented the hell out of Greg’s success. Thought he was a total stiff and that it should be him up there on the big screen, making all of those millions and living the sweet li
fe. And here Greg was, smack dab in Sherbourne starring in a huge benefit performance in front of all of these theatrical legends. That had to piss R.J. off. But did it piss him off enough to kill Greg in cold blood without making so much as a sound? Because none of us heard an argument of any kind coming out of that dressing room.”

  “The sump pumps were running,” Tedone pointed out.

  “True enough. Maybe they could have masked the sound. But they couldn’t have made him invisible. How did he kill Greg without someone seeing him slip in and out? It would involve split-second timing and an incredible amount of luck. And we’re talking about a man whose luck has run out. He’s a drugged-out mess.”

  “He’s also an actor, isn’t he?”

  “And your point is . . . ?”

  “Maybe he was wearing a disguise. It’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “It is and it isn’t. Let’s say R.J. hatched a clever scheme to disguise himself as, say, Louise the frumpy maid, wig and all. You’re right, he would have been totally unrecognizable. But he still couldn’t have pulled it off.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Lulu would have been on him in a flash. She was up close and personal with Romero at the brass mill last night and in the parking lot at Walmart today. The sleazy bastard also paid a visit to Merilee’s farm last night and beheaded the aforementioned Old Saxophone Joe. Trust me, if he had shown up anywhere near those dressing rooms tonight Lulu would have started barking her head off as soon as she got one whiff of him.”

  “You have a lot of faith in your dog’s nose.”

  “Everyone has to believe in something, Lieutenant. I believe in Lulu’s nose. Romero wasn’t here tonight. In fact, I’ll bet he’s been hiding out from the rain somewhere and doesn’t know a thing about this.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. “So you think he’ll be waiting for you at that gate at eleven o’clock?”

  “Absolutely. He’s still on the run and he still needs that money.”

  “And are you still planning to pay him off?”

  “I’m planning to show up.”

  “That’s a big no. I want you to steer clear of that scene, understand?”