Actor

by Parnell Hall

  At that point Louka enters and I exit.

  And not a moment too soon.

  I’ve often had the actor’s nightmare of being onstage in a play I haven’t rehearsed and of which I don’t know the lines. And here it was coming true. The scene I’d just played with Raina was an absolute disaster. The moment I got offstage, I rushed to find my script.

  I had stashed it in an alcove near the top of the stage-right stair. I pulled it out and sat on the top step to go over my lines. There was a certain cold desperation in this. My next scene was with Avery Allington, and I didn’t want to blow it.

  Sitting on the top step, my back was to the stage, but I could hear what was going on just fine. Raina had exited right after I had, but Nicola had entered and was having a scene with Louka. I was too concerned with my lines to pay much attention, but I vaguely heard him telling her she was destined for a life above her station, and he hoped she would patronize his shop when she was a lady.

  Though only half listening, I couldn’t miss it when Nicola’s voice was replaced by another one, booming, theatrical, and way out of line: the impossibly mannered Avery Allington. That incredible prick of misery intruded on my line study by coming on to Louka again in a voice that would have befitted Henry V rallying the troops. (I couldn’t help wondering why it had never occurred to anyone that everyone in the house couldn’t have helped hearing every word, but, hey, I’m not the director.) Anyway, she responded by telling him he had no chance with Raina, now that I had come back.

  As you might imagine, he had a good deal to say about that. But before I even realized it, he had said it and I heard my entrance cue. I dropped my script, sprang up from the steps, ran to the door and walked casually in, just passing Louka going out.

  Whereupon Sergius immediately challenges me to a duel: “You have deceived me. You are my rival. I brook no rivals. At six o’clock I shall be in the drilling ground at the Klissoura road, alone, on horseback, with my sabre. Do you understand?”

  And I, unperturbed, say, “Oh, thank you: that’s a cavalry man’s proposal. I’m in the artillery, and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun.”

  It got a laugh. The first genuine laugh in the play. Admittedly, halfway through Act Three is far too late to be getting your first laugh, but still. What a fucking relief. If you’ve never been an actor, you don’t know how good that felt. It was as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. As if a stigma had been removed from my name. I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars.

  And the lift that gave me is the only explanation I have for what happened next. No, it didn’t go well—I still had to deal with Avery Allington’s impossible overacting. And, as I say, the rest of the actors weren’t that hot. Me included. But I got through it. And I think I got through it without a prompt. I got through to the end of the act.

  If you’re not familiar with the play, briefly, here’s what happens. Raina and Louka enter and the four of us try to sort out who’s in love with who. Major Petkoff and Catherine enter, and he wants to know what the devil is meant by this picture of Raina that says “to her Chocolate Cream Soldier.” Which leads to a, one would hope, hilarious scene of sorting everything out, at the end of which I take charge, admitting to being the chocolate cream soldier, but saying that there can be no real harm done since this is just the infatuation of a schoolgirl of seventeen.

  Raina is incensed: Don’t I know the difference between a schoolgirl and a young woman of twenty-three?

  I’m astounded, but recover quickly and formally ask for her hand. I then wrap everything up, click my heels, and exit, leaving all the other actors still on stage.

  I must say I played that last scene well. It did not in fact get any laughs—and by rights it should—but I got through it and I got offstage and boy was there satisfaction in that.

  There was also satisfaction in that I then got to hear the play’s last line. It was delivered by Avery Allington, so I knew it wasn’t going to be delivered well. But that didn’t matter. What was neat was the line itself.

  He looks after me and says, “What a man! Is he a man!” It is the tag line of the play and ends the show. And much as I hated to have Avery Allington have the tag line, much as I knew his performance would suck, I wanted to see the son of a bitch have to say that about me. So I stood in the wings and watched.

  And Avery Allington turned, looked, then turned back, struck a hopelessly theatrical pose and said, “What a man!” He then went through several overdone and outrageous takes before striking another pose and saying, “Is he a man!”

  The performance was so bad I wasn’t really surprised when nothing happened.

  Then another beat went by and nothing happened.

  It wasn’t just that the audience didn’t clap. The stage lights didn’t go out. The curtain didn’t fall. The actors stood there, frozen onstage, and nothing happened.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Goobie Wheatly had missed his cue.

  It wasn’t his fault though.

  Goobie Wheatly was dead.

  11.

  “IT’S FROM THE SHOW,” Herbie said.

  “The show?”

  “Yeah. Not this show. The last show.”

  “The last show?”

  “Yeah. Zoo Story.”

  “Zoo Story?”

  What Herbie was referring to was the murder weapon, which was the knife that was found sticking out of the chest of Goobie Wheatly. It was a switchblade knife which, as Herbie said, was a prop from the last production of The Zoo Story. As such, it should have been struck from the set with all the other props from the show. The fact that it hadn’t was an oversight, and under normal circumstances the person responsible would have been disciplined. However in this case the person responsible happened to be Goobie Wheatly.

  We were in the auditorium of the theater being questioned by a man in plain clothes who didn’t look much like a cop but who seemed to be in charge. Three cops in uniform were prowling around onstage. To my mind, they were probably trampling over whatever clues might exist there, but no one was asking for my opinion. I was merely sitting there with the other actors, waiting my turn to be questioned.

  No, I had not jumped up when the police arrived and announced that I was a private detective. That’s the type of thing that happens in books. In real life, the police don’t give a shit. In fact, they prefer it if you aren’t. And since my being a private detective was entirely coincidental and not to be inferred, and since Richard Rosenberg was not licensed to practice in Connecticut, and even if he had been he handled accidents not murder, there was no reason to consider me anything more than a civilian like everybody else.

  If the cops would let it go at that.

  The cop in question was as I said in plain clothes. He was a middle-aged man, plump, balding. Or perhaps he looked middle aged because he was plump and balding. He was one of those people I automatically defer to and then am astonished to discover are younger than me. Anyway, for a small-town cop with a murder on his hands he didn’t seem particularly upset, just went about his business with a cool, methodical diligence that I might have found admirable if I hadn’t been so damn anxious to have him get on with it, so I could find out just what the hell was going on. The guy seemed in no rush, however; he just stood there and listened patiently while Herbie explained to him about the switchblade knife that had killed Goobie Wheatly being a prop from the previous show.

  “That’s where it came from,” Herbie said.

  He and the cop were standing in the audience just in front of the proscenium, and Herbie jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the stage-right wings. “Can’t we get him out of here?” he said.

  The cop shrugged. “I called Sy, but I had to wake him up. It’s gonna take him a little while to get over here.”

  “Sy?”

  “Medical examiner. Don’t wanna move the body till he checks him out.” The cop smiled. “Surely you’ve seen police shows on TV.”


  “Yeah,” Herbie said. “It’s just rather awkward.”

  “Of course.”

  We in the audience were divided into three groups: the actors, the apprentices, and Amanda Feinstein and her money people. The cops hadn’t segregated us, we had. I guess it was some sort of instinctual class banding in the face of calamity. At any rate, the actors were all in the first two rows, the money people were clumped in the middle, and the apprentices, who started out up front trying to peek into the wings, had been shooed away and herded into the back.

  While I watched, Amanda Feinstein detached herself from the money people and glided up to the policeman.

  “Pardon me, Bob, I’m sure,” she said, “but how long do these people have to stay?”

  “It shouldn’t be that much longer.”

  That was not the response Amanda was looking for. “I’ve got some important people here,” she said. “People I was counting on for backing. Getting them detained in a murder investigation isn’t going to help.”

  The cop smiled. “That’s why you’re over here askin’, Amanda. And every one of them watching now can see that their bein’ kept here is in no way your fault.”

  Amanda looked at him stone-faced. I understood her predicament. If she smiled, those people watching her would think their being kept here was her fault. Instead she gave the cop a deadpan, elevated her chin and sailed back to her.group.

  The cop turned back to Herbie as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Now, as I was sayin’, we’ll get him out of here as soon as possible and we’ll get them out of here as soon as possible, but back to business. You say you recognize the murder weapon?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Can you swear to it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How is it you’re so familiar with this particular knife?”

  “I directed the show. I approved its purchase.”

  “Purchase?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, well, let’s rethink that. You can’t buy a switchblade knife in this state, and if you can, I’d like to know where.”

  “Right. Well, all I know is I authorized twenty dollars for the knife.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a large knife. Seven- or eight-inch blade. Even if it weren’t illegal, twenty bucks is a steal.”

  “Exactly. It’s more like we rented it. Twenty is what I had to pay to have it in the show.”

  “You rented it from an individual?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you authorized it rented?”

  “That’s a rather fancy way of expressing it. I said, ‘Hey, get me a knife.’“

  “Who?”

  “What?”

  “Who’d you say, get you the knife?”

  “Oh. Him.” Herbie jerked his thumb.

  The cop looked up at the stage. “Oh. Figures. And do you know where he got it?”

  Herbie looked at the cop. The cop looked at Herbie. Their eyes met, they smiled slightly, and then, so help me god, Herbie and the cop said together, “In the chest,” just as if it had been a vaudeville routine. They looked at each other, shook their heads and smiled.

  I’m sitting there gawking, not believing what I just heard, when one of the cops came out of the wings and downstage to where they were standing. “Sir?” he said.

  The plainclothes cop named Bob with the casual manner and bizarre sense of humor said, “Yes?”

  “I’ve nothing further to report.”

  “Oh?”

  “We have a stabbing victim found with the murder weapon in place. The acter was not on the scene.”

  “Right,” Bob said, then put his hand on Herbie’s shoulder, leading him off to the side of the auditorium. “Let’s you and me talk this over,” he said.

  I was of course sitting in the front row close enough to hear, but my attention was no longer on them. As they moved away I stood up and stopped the uniformed cop, who was turning back to the wings.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  The cop, a burly type with a beer belly spilling out over his belt, turned around and eyed me with suspicion. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “What did you just say?”

  Now he really stared at me. “What?”

  “Just now. About nothing to report except the knife still in the body.”

  He frowned. “Who said anything about a knife?”

  “You said a stabbing victim. And the murder weapon in place.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “What did you say after that?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Please. Didn’t you say someone was not on the scene?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “No one in particular.”

  “You said the actor was not on the scene. What did you mean by that?”

  The cop looked at me as if I were a moron. “I mean he was gone.”

  “No, I mean who?”

  “What?”

  “You said the actor was not on the scene. Why did you say actor?”

  “Because he wasn’t shot.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “If he was shot, I would have said the shooter. Any other type of weapon—stabbing, strangling—you say the acter. The guy who did the act.”

  “How do you spell it?”

  The cop blinked. “What?”

  “Actor. How do you spell actor?”

  It was absolutely surreal, the whole thing. I mean, the cop had no reason to talk to me—by rights he should have told me to go to hell. But I’d lucked out, got him started by mentioning the knife, which made him suspicious of me, and before he knew it I’d turned things around so he was answering my questions instead of me answering his. And the only reason I could think of that he was doing it was because they were such innocuous questions he couldn’t believe I was that stupid.

  So we’re sort of sparring with each other and then I ask him this. Now he thinks I’m not only stupid but weird.

  He looked at me. “What do you mean, how do I spell it? I didn’t spell it. I said it.”

  “I know. But if you did spell it. Like, when you write up this report.”

  “I don’t write it up. The chief does.”

  “Okay. But if you did write it up. How would you write the word actor?”

  “A-c-t-e-r,” he said irritably. “Acter. The guy who acted.”

  I exhaled. “Son of a bitch.”

  He stuck out his chin. “Now then,” he said, “what’s this about the knife?”

  I was saved from having to answer by the return of Chief Bob, if that’s who he was, and Herbie.

  The chief strode right up and said, “I understand you found the body?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Now, Herbie tells me you’re a private detective.”

  Damn. That was the one thing I was hoping to avoid. As I said, my being a private detective had nothing to do with the situation and there was no reason it had to come up. But good old Herbie had felt he had to mention it. Great. It was bad enough being the one who found the body, but being a meddling private detective was enough to elevate me to the very top of the local law enforcement’s shit list.

  I took a breath. “That’s right, I am.”

  He nodded. “Good. Glad to have you aboard. Case like this, I can use all the help I can get.”

  12.

  “HERBIE AND I GO BACK a bit.”

  It wasn’t me that said that. It was him. The cop, I mean.

  “Oh?” I said.

  I was in the star’s dressing room. Not that they’d given it to me. The cop had commandeered it for his questioning. And I was first up to be questioned, what with finding the body and all. So here I was at last, in the room with the star on the door.

  Wondering why the cop was leading off talking about him and Herbie.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You were close enough to hea
r, weren’t you? What me and Herbie said—in the chest?” He shook his head. “Very unprofessional. Just couldn’t resist. See, I’ve done some work for Herbie. Acting, I mean. Here. At the playhouse. Just cameos, but what the hell, I get a kick out of ’em.”

  “And Herbie, he gets publicity. What with me being the chief of police and all. Always rates a piece in the paper—Chief Benson to appear in such-and-such. That’s me, Bob Benson.” He smiled. “Herbie’s always kidding me, Bob’s no name for an actor, I should call myself Robbie, then he could advertise Robbie Benson to appear; maybe someone would come. Thinkin’ it’s the actor, you know?”

  No, I didn’t know. Someone had just been killed, and I’m sitting there with a bald, plump guy in a brown suit and tie who looked more like the vice-president of a bank than the chief of police and who seemed more interested in discussing his acting career than the murder. So I was not relating particularly well. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single comment and contented myself with smiling and nodding.

  As if he read my mind, he put up his hand. “I know, I know,” he said, “We have this murder to contend with. First one here in four or five years. And the last one was a husband/wife thing, I knew who did it from the word go and so did everybody else. So much so they found the guy guilty and he’s actually doing time.” He shrugged. “This case, frankly, I haven’t got a clue.” He looked at me. “But I got a P.I.”

  I shifted position in the chair. “I’m not really that type of P.I. I chase ambulance for a negligence lawyer. Handle accident cases.”

  He nodded. “Most P.I.s do. That’s not the point. If you’re a P.I., you’re trained to observe details. You’ll see things other people won’t.”

  “I wouldn’t even go that far.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The point is, you were here when it happened, I wasn’t. So you’re my eyes and ears on this case, and I want to know what happened.”