Magic Hour

by Susan Isaacs

  "Don't talk about her like that. Show some re­spect." A busboy came over to pour some water. Mikey waved him off. "What do you want to know?"

  "You knew about Sy paying Lindsay an extra half million?"

  "Sure. The bookkeeper told me, as I'm sure you know. It bothered her, seeing the investors fucked, so she confided in me."

  "You bribed her and probably threatened her."

  "You're tellin' me about the five o'clock deadline, so don't waste your time on cop chicken shit."

  "Did you threaten Sy when you found out about the extra payment? I'm not chicken-shitting you now. I'm trying to figure out his state of mind."

  "I didn't threaten him. I just told him what a stu­pid, fucking dick he was. Okay, I told him in a loud voice, and he was scared of me. I won't deny that. But I never would have killed him or had him mussed up or nothing. We went back too far, and I'm a senti­mental guy."

  The sandwiches came. Giant, first-generation-rich sandwiches, showy with frilly lettuce, wasteful, so high they were held together with toothpicks the size of small swords. I ate half of mine, Mikey ate all of his and then the other half of mine. I didn't touch the iced tea because I was too jacked up from all the coffee I'd been drinking. Mikey talked and chewed simultaneously. Bits of bacon got spewed, and tomato seeds sprayed out of his mouth, but fortunately his lunch stopped just short of my plate.

  "Do you think Sy was fearful of you?"

  "Nervous. You know. Ever since we was kids, Sy would pee in his pants if I even made a fist. But he wasn't terrified or nothin' like that."

  "Did he say why he was giving Lindsay the extra money?"

  Mikey shook his head, rolled his eyes, as if unable to believe mankind's capacity for idiocy. "You wanna shit a brick, Brady? You ain't gonna believe this one. When I was yellin' at him, he broke down. Not cryin', but sittin' in a chair, doin' a lot of cringin' shit. He finally stopped the crap about that Lindsay got a better movie offer and needed a added financial incentive. He told me he gave it to her because she said—you ready?—'Sy, I hate men who hold back. I need a man who can give of himself.' "

  "What?"

  Mikey shoved some potato chips into his mouth and said: "I swear to God. Is that pussy-whipped, or what?"

  "That's pussy-whipped," I agreed. "So he was re­ally in love with her?"

  "Out of his mind nuts for her. I'd never seen him so hot for anybody."

  "Not even Bonnie or his other wife?"

  "The first was a stringy, ugly sourpuss wit' no tits and these big, ugly yellow teeth from some old family he married so people would think he was high-class. And Bonnie ... I could never figure out that mar­riage. It was like a snake marrying a puppy dog. Prob­ably had something to do with Sy's being all hot to get into the movie business, and she was in it then. And maybe he was tired of being a pretend WASP and got on a Jew kick, and she was a Jew but not too Jewey."

  "Do you think he would have married Lindsay?"

  "Sure."

  "Then how come he took up with Bonnie?"

  "Beats the hell out of me. When she called and said she'd been seeing him again, my mouth dropped open ten feet. You want my guess? The Lindsay thing knocked the shit out of him, and he was running home to Mommy." He paused. "You gonna eat your potato chips?" I pushed my plate over to him. He woofed down the chips and the crinkle-cut pickle slice.

  "You're telling me interesting stuff but not helpful stuff."

  "You sayin' I'm holdin' back?"

  "I don't know, but what you've given me isn't go­ing to help Bonnie. Do you want to help her?"

  He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. "Don't ask dumb-fuck questions. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "I found out about the extra half mil the second week of shooting. I confronted him. He wimped out right away, apologized, like I told you. Next day he messengered over a half mil in negotiable securities to me, and if you try to use that against me, you better hire somebody to start your car every morn­ing."

  "Mike," I said quietly, "no threats. I want to help Bonnie. That's all."

  "You married?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Anyways, that was that. Until the Tuesday before he died. He calls me up, says he can't leave the Hamptons 'cause of the movie, but he's got to talk with me. He'll arrange for a private plane, or send a car and driver. I told him I don't like aer-o-planes and I don't use drivers because they got ears and mouths, but I'd drive out there because I was his friend. So I get there to his house—Jesus, that was some beauti­ful house. He tells me Lindsay's acting is terrible, that the movie is in deep shit. I tell him I'd heard that from my sources and so what else was new, and that if I lost my investment, I was sure he'd make good."

  "That's a great way to invest."

  "The only way. So then he tells me Lindsay is cheatin' on him. I start to say some garbage like Too bad, but he didn't want that."

  "What did he want?"

  "He wanted her removed."

  "Killed?"

  "What do you think, Brady?"

  "He asked you to get rid of her?" Mikey nodded. His chins, dotted with potato chip crumbs, bobbed up and down. "Did he suggest how?"

  "No, because I stopped him right there. Oh, he did say it would be easy: There could be a letter to make people think it was some crazy fan who did it. But I just told him to shut his mouth and keep it shut and don't even think about anything like that. He was an amateur, and he didn't know what the fuck he was doin'."

  "Actually, it sounds like he did."

  "I got to admit, it wasn't a bad idea. But no way I was gonna tell him that. He wanted to kill her be­cause she was bompin' the director and because he wanted to start his movie all over again and needed the bucks. You think I'd get anywhere near somethin' like that?"

  "Did he offer to pay you?"

  "We didn't get that far."

  "Did he say anything else?"

  "No. I got up and before I walked out I told him he didn't have what it takes, that his plan was full of holes, that if he tried to arrange something stupid with some two-bit local hood, they'd grab him in less than twenty-four hours. And then I told him to be a man. If he had to take a fall on the movie, take the fuckin' fall. And then I got the hell out of there. I gotta tell you: you know how I scared Sy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, he scared me. I got a chill down my spine. What the hell's happenin' to this world if guys like Sy Spencer want to kill people? Tell me. What have we become?"

  *20*

  The tennis court of the East Hampton waterfront mansion that was Starry Night's main set had every­thing: white wood benches, a water fountain, piles of snowy towels on a white wrought-iron stand, blue spruce and cypresses to obscure the chain-link fence. Beautiful. Except no one in their right mind would have wanted to be there. It was at least a hundred in the shade, but there was no shade. Lindsay Keefe and Nick Monteleone were volleying—if you could call it that—in about a hundred-and-ten-degree heat. There wasn't even a hint of cool air. Beyond the court, the foam on the waves made the ocean look as if it were boiling.

  Every time Nick swung his racquet, he missed the ball and Victor Santana called "Cut!" Then a sweat-removal brigade would race over to the actors. Pro­duction assistants got there first. Some of them held umbrellas over the actors' heads, others held battery-operated fans. Then the makeup and hair people went to work, while still other attendants offered bot­tles of water with straws so Lindsay and Nick could sip without getting drinking-glass dents around their mouths.

  "One more take," Santana promised me. His dark skin was flushed almost maroon. The color looked great against his Outfit of the Day: green jungle fa­tigues. All Santana needed was a scruffier haircut, an M-16 and a couple of joints of skag, and he could have passed for one of my old buddies. He went on: "I must get enough footage of Lindsay because Nick..." He sighed in weary resignation. "This is going to cost an extra half day of long shots, with a tennis pro standing in for Nick. I simply cannot be­lieve it; we ga
ve him a full four weeks of tennis les­sons preproduction."

  "Monteleone has zero hand-eye coordination," I pointed out. "He'd need an instruction manual if he wanted to scratch his balls. Now look, Mr. Santana, I know making a movie is the most important thing in the world and it's not easy making a guy who doesn't know a tennis racquet from a pogo stick look like a jock. But I need more cooperation from you than I'm getting."

  "Please, just one more take for the master shot." The brigade was walking off the court. "I give you my word of honor."

  Lindsay was no natural athlete, but she could place a serve and look beautiful at the same time. Her dark eyes were shaded with a pink sun visor. Her pale hair, done up in some special curly ponytail, began to flutter as some guy in surfer trunks turned on a giant wind machine to the breezy setting. Santana called "Action " one more time.

  I watched the crew watching the actors. The guys were taking in the whole scene. But the women seemed to have eyes only for Lindsay. Were they con­templating what life could be like with those breasts, those legs, that perfect ponytail? Were they curious? Jealous? Raging, that such glorious gifts had not been bestowed upon them? I thought about Lindsay's com­petition—Bonnie.

  If Mikey had, in fact, nixed killing Lindsay, could Sy have persuaded his Annie Oakley of an ex-wife to pick up a .22? I'm aching to make your movie next, he'd have sworn. But I need some help getting over this rough patch. Or maybe: I want to marry you, bring you to Sandy Court

  , back to Fifth Avenue

  . My life will be your life, my friends your friends, my charge cards your charge cards. Remember how it was? Bonnie, darling, it was such a ghastly mistake, our splitting, and I know how profoundly lonely you've been. Let me make it up to you. But first, help me.

  Why the hell was I thinking these things? Did I believe Bonnie Spencer was capable of willfully tak­ing the life of another human being?

  No.

  The compressors in the trailer air conditioners had died under the strain of the humidity, so after Santana gave everybody a twenty-minute break, Lindsay and Nick, accompanied by assistants who, probably by tradition and job description, were paid to grovel, trekked up to the mansion—a modern interpretation of the White House cross-pollinated with the Taj Mahal—and went into two upstairs bedrooms. Before he went into his, my pal Nick gave me a for-your-eyes-only, homicide-cop-to-homicide-cop one-finger salute.

  I was about to walk into Lindsay's room, which seemed to be some sort of homage to mosquito net­ting, but one of her designated toadies tried to shut the door on me. "She needs to recoup," the girl whispered in hospital-corridor tones. I pushed past her, ordered everybody except Lindsay to get out and slammed the door.

  Filmy stuff formed a canopy and curtains around the bed. It covered the windows from ceiling to floor. For some reason, odd pieces of it were draped over chairs. There were three chairs and one of those chaise longues in the room, but naturally, given the choice, Lindsay stretched out on the bed. I pulled up a chair and pushed away some stuff, so I wouldn't have to interrogate her through gauze. Right away she started with the lascivious shit, running her hands slowly over her face and neck, arranging pil­lows so she was angled to achieve maximum tit power.

  On the table next to the bed, there was a six-pack of foreign water in blue bottles. She put out a languid hand to take one but couldn't quite reach it. She waited for me to get up and hand her one. I didn't. She got one for herself and drank, not sexily, but with the loud glug-glug noises of a cartoon character.

  "I feel sick from the heat," she said. I don't think she was acting. Her whole body was red and covered in a cold sweat.

  "It must be a bitch out there."

  I guessed she'd fulfilled her courtesy quotient by making a comment about the weather. She snapped: "Well, what do you want?"

  "I want you to stop lying. If you don't stop lying, you're going to find yourself under arrest."

  "You tried that tactic with my agent. He's old, los­ing his touch, so it worked. It won't work with me."

  "Want to bet? Fifty bucks says before I even bring you in for fingerprinting, you'll—"

  "Do you honestly think you can scare me?"

  "Beats me. But I do know I can interrupt your mov­iemaking. And when you come before the judge, I can arrange to have a lot of reporters at the court­house. You can explain to them how I'm not scaring you—even though I've arrested you for withholding information in the matter of the death of Sy Spen­cer."

  "You are a low-class shit," she said.

  "Yeah, but a low-class shit with the power to ar­rest."

  There was a too-long moment of silence. I felt like closing my eyes, relaxing, but in the interests of pro­jecting authority and macho intensity, I glared at her. At last, Lindsay propped herself on her elbow. "Sometimes I like low-class shits," she said, her voice lazy, husky. She extended her hand to me.

  "Ms. Keefe, let me be honest with you. As far as I can see, you're not in that much trouble that you have to fuck a cop." She pulled away her hand. "You just have to answer a few questions, and chances are, your answers won't get any further than me. All right?"

  "Yes." Brusque. The momentary fake desire was supplanted by her normal disdain.

  "Did Sy confront you about your affair with Victor Santana?"

  "Yes."

  "This isn't Twenty Questions. Tell me about it."

  She finished glugging the water and took a second bottle. "He didn't raise his voice, not once, the whole time. He told me, very calmly, as if he were giving me the next day's weather forecast, that I was a whore. That I'd lost my ability as an actor." She stopped. She didn't want to talk to me.

  "Keep going," I said.

  Finally, reluctantly, she did. "He wanted me off the film. He followed me around the house all that eve­ning and the next morning, calling me Whore, as though that were my given name. 'Going up to bed so early, Whore?' He kept telling me I was ruining Starry Night. Always in that calm voice."

  "When did this start?"

  "The week he was killed. Monday night."

  "Was he threatening to fire you?"

  "No. He wanted me to quit."

  "Why?"

  "Why!" she demanded. She gave a snort of con­tempt, as if I'd just asked the stupidest question of the twentieth century. "So I'd be in violation of my contract, that's why. So he wouldn't have to pay me. So he could get the guarantors to pay the completion insurance and start all over again."

  "Is that possible?"

  "Of course it's possible. And then the insurance company could sue me to recover their costs."

  "So you wouldn't quit."

  "Of course not. It was an insane suggestion."

  "Why would he expect you to quit if the consequences to you would be so bad?"

  "Because."

  "Because why?"

  "Because he was trying to make me so upset, so frightened of him, that I'd do anything he wanted."

  "What was he doing?"

  "Before he told me he knew about Victor, he'd already started being cold. Very cold."

  "He stopped sleeping with you?"

  She gave me a look that showed her distaste; I was getting off on her sex life. "He wouldn't touch me," she said. "Do you want to know more? Of course you do. When I tried to take his hand, he pulled it away—as though I had leprosy."

  "But he wouldn't say what was wrong?"

  "Not at first. Just horrible coldness."

  "Was he cold in front of other people? On the set?"

  "No. That threw me off. He was delightful to me on the set."

  "And how were you to him?"

  "Oh, grow up. What do you think? That I was going to let everyone know I was having terrible prob­lems with the executive producer? He was acting very loving to me, so I acted loving to him. I thought: Well, he hasn't made anything public; maybe we can work it out. I stopped seeing Victor—in a private sense—on Wednesday."

  "You told Santana it was over?"

  "No. I never burn
bridges. What if I couldn't fix things with Sy? I just told him I was having a messy, painful period. Very bloody."

  "That's nice."

  "I know men. It works. In any case, I did every­thing I could to heal the breach with Sy. If not per­sonally, then professionally. But it was so strange. And even when things got really terrible, we were still playing loving in front of everybody else."

  "Like the day he was killed, taking a wad of cash from him? Loving like that?"

  "Don't make it sound like I was picking his pocket! It was a homey, wifely gesture."

  "You said things got terrible. When?"

  "Thursday morning. My car came a little before six, and when I left the bedroom to go downstairs, Sy was out there in the hall, waiting." Her face, under the sweat and layers of makeup, went rigid. Her mouth began to move mechanically, like a mario­nette's. She was somewhere between unsettled and petrified. "He told me—he sounded so detached—that he had all kinds of friends. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I wanted to get away from him. He was standing right up against me. His face was less than an inch from mine. I could see each whisker where he hadn't shaved. He said some of his friends weren't very nice people, but they'd invested in Starry Night and they'd heard that the dailies were terrible. They were very unhappy, and they wanted me to quit. If I didn't, Sy said he couldn't be held responsible for the repercussions."

  "Did you ask what the repercussions were?"

  "Yes." Her body gave a fast, powerful involuntary shudder, almost a convulsion.

  "What did he say would happen?"

  "Acid in the face."

  "Jesus! What did you do?"

  "I told him I was calling the police. I marched back into the bedroom and picked up the phone, but he grabbed it from me. I let him take it. The whole scene was so predictable."

  "Did he make any more threats?"

  "No, of course not. He backed down. I knew he would. He actually lost his cool, the little bastard. Apologized all over himself. Begged me to forgive him."

  "And what did you say?"