Magic Hour

by Susan Isaacs

  "Right. And so what was going on? Under the best of circumstances, Sy was a vengeful man if someone crossed him. And here was the object of his affection or obsession, his love, cheating on him. He was going to get even."

  "But ultimately, he couldn't get even." I told her what Eddie Pomerantz had said, that because of money, Sy would wind up keeping her on the pic­ture.

  Bonnie's eyes got huge. "That's even better!" She jumped out of the recliner, came right over to me. "Think!" she ordered.

  "Think about what?"

  "Vengeance is one thing. That's what I was con­centrating on. But how could he get vengeance and money?"

  I bolted up. "Jesus! The completion insurance!"

  Bonnie grabbed onto my jacket sleeve. "If lightning struck Lindsay, he'd get his money, he'd get his new actress."

  "And he'd get his revenge," I said slowly. "Okay, but let's slow down. The theory's good, but the truth of the matter is, Lindsay wasn't struck by lightning. Sy was. How does that figure?"

  "Stephen, ask yourself: Who was killed? Sy?"

  "Of course Sy."

  "Or someone in a white, hooded bathrobe who was standing at the edge of the pool, the way Lindsay Keefe did when she came home from the set and did her laps?"

  "Someone small," I said.

  And Bonnie said: "Yup. Small, just like Sy."

  *19*

  Bonnie was all juiced up, talking too fast, bopping in a U-shaped path around the bed, stopping each time at the shaded window to bounce on the balls of her bare feet and peek out. She was not at her best, excited in a confined space. "Okay," she said. "We've got to figure out if this really is a possibility, and then—"

  "Stop. I'm running this show, not you. I'm the lead detective. You're zero."

  "Be quiet. I know what I'm doing." She perched on the dresser and swung her leg back and forth fast, like a pendulum running amok.

  "With all due respect, you may be semi-smart, but when it comes to police procedure you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, and we don't have time to debate hierarchy, so I'm in charge." She put her fingers up to her mouth, as though hiding a yawn induced by being too, too bored by such child­ish jockeying for position. "Don't give me that yawn crap, Bonnie."

  "I'm not giving you yawn crap."

  "Now think; don't just shoot off your mouth. In the time you knew him, did Sy ever make threats against anyone, or wish a person dead in a way that made you fear for their lives? Beyond the 'I hope he dies' we talked about."

  She swung her leg some more and finally shook her head. "But that's not to say he wasn't spiteful. He had his hate list. If thirty years after the fact he could hurt someone who called him Peewee in junior high school, he definitely would. But he didn't think of revenge in terms of death. He didn't want to cause physical pain; he wanted to inflict maximum emo­tional pain on anyone who ever got in his way."

  I added another item to Bonnie's asset column, which now had about five million items: She didn't sway with each trendy breeze. The way things were looking, it would have been easy for her to portray Sy as a Man with Murderous Instincts, but she was too fair to do that.

  "All right," I said. "So what it boils down to is that Sy was just your average, malicious guy."

  "Except his malice got.more intense as he got older—or as he got more successful and powerful. Look, maybe the man I married was no cute little cuddle bunny, but the Sy I got to know again after I gave him the Sea Change script was much harder; he was so full of himself, so disdainful of other people. Anyone who crossed him was bad, selfish, stupid and ipso facto deserved whatever damage Sy decided to inflict. In his mind, when he got back at someone, he was only making sure justice was done."

  "All right, think about this: Did he have any morals at all?"

  Bonnie gave the question some serious, leg-swing­ing consideration. "He took decent political posi­tions: apartheid is bad, rain forests are good. But no, I never saw any evidence of morals, not in a personal sense."

  "So we could call him amoral." She nodded. "And we can say, maybe, that he'd have no reservations about murder; it just was unnecessary or dangerous."

  "Or unseemly. Dartmouth men don't kill."

  "But what if Sy had gotten past unseemly? Look, he was on a nine-year roll, making good movies, big money. He could do no wrong. Is it possible he got so conceited that he finally thought everything he did was by definition seemly?"

  Bonnie wriggled farther back on the dresser and sat cross-legged. She grew reflective, staring past me into space. "Sure. It's possible. He believed his own publicity; Sy Spencer was superior, creative, refined. He could never be crass like the West Coast produc­ers he was always going on about, screeching into their car phones or building bowling alleys in their houses. And he was so exquisitely sensitive he couldn't possibly be cruel. But forget Sy's idealized vision of Sy. I think all we've been talking about, all of what was going on in his life—thwarted love, his need for revenge, his need for money—played a part in pushing him toward the edge. What finally made him jump was that he got scared."

  "Of what?"

  "Failure. The studios hadn't gone for Starry Night, but he believed in it and so he went out and got the financing himself. Give Sy credit. He told me Starry would be the best kind of American movie, where characters grow and finally come to deserve each other. But Lindsay was ruining everything. Not only making a fool out of him with Santana, really wound­ing him, but destroying what he really cared about most: his movie, which was his reputation, his im­mortality."

  "So she was costing him an extra half mil, plus future profits. And cutting off his balls and breaking his heart with Santana."

  "More than that. She was making him lose status in the business. Sy told me this much: People were start­ing to say, See? We were right. Starry Night was a dog from day one. And the way Lindsay's perfor­mance was going—so lifeless—the critics and all his fancy friends would get into the elevator after a screening and say, Was that thing we just saw a Sy Spencer film?"

  "But you know about those old guys out in Holly­wood—those Goldwyn guys," I countered. "They made movies the critics said were lousy, and all their so-called friends laughed at them, and they just went on."

  "But they were tough. They could take it."

  "You're telling me Sy couldn't?"

  "Stephen, remember how we were talking about Sy being different things to different people, that he didn't seem to have any core? Well, it wasn't just something he chose to do when it amused him. Sy always let himself be defined by whoever he was with, and if those people were laughing at him—for being cuckolded by a fancy-pants like Victor Santana, or for making an adventure-romance that wasn't ad­venturous or romantic—he would allow himself to be transformed into precisely what they were laughing at: a failure, a nothing, a jackass."

  "So he wanted her dead for making him a laughing­stock. But he wouldn't have killed her himself?"

  "No. I can't see him injecting strychnine into her melon balls. Sy was much too squeamish to commit a violent act. And he wouldn't have dirtied his hands in the metaphorical sense. He was a gentleman; he never did anything nasty himself."

  "Somebody was there to do it for him."

  "Always."

  "So who did he know who would do that kind of dirty work?" I asked. She knew, but she didn't want to say it. "How about Mikey LoTriglio?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because if Mikey or one of his boys did it, Lindsay Keefe would be on the cover of People this week, with a '1957-1989' over her bazooms, and Sy would be rolling with Starry Night starring Nicholas Monteleone and Katherine Pourelle."

  I told her she was wrong, that La Cosa Nostra boys' invincible reputation was a myth, and in fact, half the time they were such a bunch of screwups they made the FBI look good.

  She said she'd read Wiseguy and knew all about sociopathic Mafia morons who couldn't make it in the legitimate world, but Mikey was as clever as they come, and with a different
background, he could have been CEO of Merrill Lynch.

  I told her she was a fucking dunce, and she smiled at me and said she wasn't.

  I had to go into the kitchen to call Thighs at Head­quarters, but I didn't feel like leaving Bonnie because I liked looking at her, especially in my undershirt, which was a washed-out cotton you could sort of see through. Also, if I left her alone she'd probably wind up lying on the floor, bench-pressing my stereo, so I picked up the phone on my nightstand. No word from Robby at the Lifecodes lab up in Westchester. And no leads at all to Mikey's whereabouts: he wasn't at home in his fifteen-room Tudor in Glen Cove, in Nassau County, or at Terri Noonan's apartment in Queens, or at the Sons of Palermo social club in Little Italy. I asked, What about that bar in the meat district where he hangs out, Rosie's? Thighs said, I asked the bartender if Mikey LoTriglio was there, and he said: Mikey who?

  "Rosie's?" Bonnie repeated when I hung up. "I remember hearing about Rosie's." She picked up the phone, got Manhattan information and asked for the number of Rosie's Bar and Grill on Ninth Avenue. Then she dialed and asked for Michael LoTriglio. I shook my head sadly, as in Pathetic. She was clearly hearing the same "Mikey who?" that Thighs had got. But she cut the guy off. "You may not know Mr. LoTriglio," she said into the phone, "but he comes into Rosie's every now and then." She sounded com­manding, secure, the way a good cop has to sound. "I'd like you to do your best to get a message to him. Tell him that Bonnie Spencer—S-p-e-n-c-e-r—called and said it's urgent that she speak with him." She gave him my number and hung up.

  "Good luck," I said.

  "Thanks."

  I told her I was going to go to the set in East Hamp­ton to try and harass Lindsay into cooperating, and tie up a few other loose ends. I started to enumerate them when the phone rang. I recognized the voice, gravelly, tough. "Get Mrs. Spencer," it ordered. I handed it over to Bonnie.

  "Mike?" Pause. "Fine." Pause. "I've missed you too." I stood beside her, tilted the receiver and put my ear right next to hers. "Actually," she went on, "I'm not so fine."

  "What's the matter, Bonita?"

  "I'm the major suspect in Sy's murder."

  "What?"

  "They issued an arrest warrant for me."

  Mikey laughed. Not amused. An incredulous snort. "That is so stupid it makes regular stupid look smart."

  "I know. But, Mike, let me tell you what hap­pened."

  "You don't need to give me no explanations."

  "I know. But see, I was sort of keeping company with Sy again. And the police found evidence of my being at his house right before he died—and we weren't downstairs having tea. So they have this physical evidence from a bedroom, and they have this theory that Sy rejected me or my new screenplay and that I shot him. And that's another problem. They know I can handle a rifle."

  "What can I do?" Mikey asked. "You got a blank check with me. You know that. Want me to find a nice, quiet place for you where you can not get no­ticed? Need money? Want me to ... Listen, I would never talk to you this way, but what we have here is not your standard situation. So you want me to say abracadabra? Make some rabbit disappear? Name it. You're a sweet girl, a lady, and you were a good friend to my Terri."

  "Terri's a lovely woman," Bonnie said. I couldn't believe this conversation. "You're lucky to have each other."

  "Thanks," Fat Mikey said. "I tell her she's too good for me, but she don't believe it."

  "Mike, let me tell you what I'd like you to do, and please, feel free to say no. You know me. I don't live in a world where people call in IOUs."

  "I'm listenin'."

  "There's a detective on this case, Detective Brady."

  "I met him."

  "He's on my side. He's trying to help me."

  There was a long pause where Mikey contem­plated the alternatives, including, if he had half the brains Bonnie credited him with, a setup. But he trusted Bonnie. He had to, because all he did was ask: "What makes you think he's on your side?"

  "He knows it's a weak case, and he thinks he can make a better one." There was silence. "And he's in love with me." I stepped away from the phone and stared at her. She just continued with the conversa­tion, so I stepped back and kept listening.

  "The cop's in love with you?"

  "I think so. So this is what I'd like, Mike—if you can see your way to doing it. I'd like you to talk to him. Anyplace you say. He seems to feel you might remember something now that slipped your mind during your interview." Mikey gave another one of his laugh/snorts. "He's sworn to me this would be off the record." I grabbed her shoulder, shook my head, but she just kept talking. "If you feel this would com­promise you in any way, please don't do it. I know how it feels to have the police after you, and it's not something I'd want for you or Terri or your family. It's a horror."

  "Where are you now, Bonita? The truth."

  "He's hiding me, Mike. I can't tell you where."

  "Tell him to meet me at the Gold Coast restaurant on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset in an hour." I shook my head, made a stretch-it-out signal with my hands.

  "I think it will take him more than an hour to get there," she said.

  "An hour and a half, then. Tell him to meet me in the parking lot in the back. Get out of his car, walk away from it and just stand there. Got it?"

  "Thank you," Bonnie said. "I won't say I owe you one, Mike. But I will say I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart."

  "I know you do, Bonita."

  "I love you?" I said.

  "I had to say something."

  "Do you honestly think I love you?"

  "Yes. Not that it means anything. You've decided you need a life with a Ford station wagon and kids with freckles and trim-a-tree parties and intercourse every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. It's preven­tive medicine, something you have to take to keep from self-destructing. I think you've convinced your­self that passion is a dark side that's too dangerous for you. Well, maybe you're right. Look at my life. Where has passion gotten me? What do I have to show for forty-five years of letting go? One movie nobody re­members and a warrant for my arrest for murder. Lis­ten, you made the right choice. What could I offer you? Two dried-up fallopian tubes and a few laughs? So forget what I said about the love business. I get delusional under stress. Don't think twice: she's per­fect. Grab her, marry her. Mazel tov."

  The restaurant was a block away from one of those sumptuous suburban shopping centers that attract people who need to spend eighty-five dollars for a cotton T-shirt.

  Another cloudless day. Heat shimmered off the hoods of the Mercedeses, BMWs and Porsches, dis­torting the air, making the lot look like a slightly out-of-focus downtown Stuttgart. No Mikey. I'd been waiting for ten minutes, away from my car. All I saw was an occasional woman who had exhausted every possibility in the way of hair, makeup, nails, jewelry and clothes; one of them should have been put in a glass case in the Smithsonian just to show what we had become after eight years of Reagan.

  I unbuttoned my jacket; all that accomplished was to allow more hot, humid air to circulate around my sweat-drenched shirt. Five minutes later, as I was loosening my tie, the door of a little red Miata con­vertible, top up, opened, and Mikey, with all the grace of sausage meat oozing out of its casing, some­how managed to emerge. He waddled across the blacktop. He'd obviously been watching me since I arrived. We nodded at each other. He was wearing sports clothes that looked more maternity than Mafia: white pants and a huge red, blue and purple flowered shirt.

  "Nice car." It was all I could think of to say.

  "Not mine." I wasn't sure if he meant stolen or just borrowed. "Take off your jacket and open up your shirt." He motioned me over to the far side of a gar­bage Dumpster and examined my chest and back for evidence of tape or wires. While I was buttoning my shirt back up, he checked out my holster and patted down my pants, taking out my wallet, shield and handcuffs to make sure they were what they felt like. After he finished, he rumbled: "Wanna go inside?"

  I shivered at the frigid
blast of air-conditioning. Mikey chose a table and, without asking me, told the waitress to bring us two club sandwiches and two iced teas. "You don't got to eat it. It's for looks," he explained. He had one of those Roman noses that begin at the forehead, but his nose, like the rest of him, was fat; you wanted to squeeze it and hear it honk. "So tell me about our mutual friend."

  "I don't think she did it."

  "No shit, Ajax." Even his earlobes were fat.

  "But unless I find out who did, there's a good chance she'll go for a long vacation."

  "What do they got?"

  "Circumstantial crap: a couple of people who'll say Sy wasn't going to make a movie out of some screen­play she'd written; they have a witness that he visited her house every day and they were having an affair. Either way, the D.A. could make a case for a woman who's been thrown over and who wants to get even." No wonder no one had ever been able to nail Mikey. He was too smart. He just sat there, a huge flower-shirted Buddha, but I could sense him analyz­ing, weighing alternatives, computing—and all the while not missing a word I was saying. "The physical evidence is more of a problem," I continued. "Four of her hairs got caught in one of those wicker head­boards where she was keeping Sy company no more than a half hour before he was killed. You know about the new DNA tests we do?"

  "I know more than you know, Brady. Keep talk­ing."

  "They just found another hair, right at the spot where we figure the killer stood when he fired."

  Mikey shook his head in disgust. His chins quivered. "Who put it there?"

  "It could be Bonnie's."

  "You wouldn't be here if you thought that."

  "It's not important who put it there. It's important that I get some help. She's going to have to turn her­self in by five o'clock, or they're going to declare her a fugitive. That wouldn't be a plus if she has to go to trial."

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "Look, I have until five o'clock. Either I sit here and talk philosophy with you—I know how you like to talk about Plato—or I try to save Bonnie Spencer's ass."