“And I was cursing her out—God!” Carlos looked down at Phil and patted his shoulder. “Walt’s going to keep watch on the stage door.”
“Is it open?”
“Yeah. Someone broke a key in the lock and jammed it.” Carlos knelt in front of Phil and touched the hands still masking his face. “Come on, Phil,” he said very gently. “Come with us.”
Phil rubbed his eyes with his fists and hiccuped back a sob. He stood, his eyes ringed with blood like some kind of vampire fiend, and mutely followed Carlos and Wetzon.
“Mort’s going to go crazy when—”
Carlos never got to finish his statement. Mort Hornberg, the esteemed director of Hotshot: The Musical, stomped on stage from the wings with a woman Wetzon didn’t know. They were followed by Sam Meidner, composer-lyricist, and JoJo Diamond, the musical director, even more slovenly than Wetzon had remembered and now sporting a short gray beard. Aline Rose, book writer, with the latest in her long line of precious boy assistants, brought up the rear.
Mort was agitation in motion.
Wetzon and Carlos, Phil in their wake, drifted down the aisle toward the stage. Wetzon could see Carlos’s dancers sitting in the first row, whispering and rustling, heads bobbing up and down. Twitching bundles of nervous energy.
Waves of hysteria, led by a high-pitched wail, rolled off the stage and careered through the house. The keening reverberated downward from the dome, fluttered the crystals of the chandelier, then ceased. Silence dropped a chill blanket over all.
Wetzon took an aisle seat, third row, and waited. Carlos had mentioned something about talking to Mort … She lost time somewhere. Now blue uniforms and other strangers filled the stage to overflow—or seemed to—spilling over the sides. She could hear voices coming from the mez above, but she didn’t look up.
Someone settled down behind her. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. “Detective Sergeant Bernstein, Miss. Walter ... um.” She heard him thumb over a page in his notebook. “Greenow. Walter Greenow says you were the first to see the deceased.”
She nodded, her heart sinking. There was no mistaking that voice. Turning in her seat, she recognized the bushy eyebrows that crossed the line between his eyes. She lowered her gaze. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her.
“Okay. Stay right here. I’ll be back.” The detective heaved himself out of his seat and joined the stream up the aisle toward the mez staircase.
It was the disagreeable Detective Bernstein she remembered from Manhattan North. Paunchy, gray curly hair, and she knew there was a yarmulke pinned to his head under his brown fedora. Three years ago he’d accused her of murder.
She shifted in her seat and looked up toward the mez, catching a flash of Phil in the last row of the orchestra talking earnestly to someone, a thick-waisted woman, whose back was to Wetzon. The mez was filled with blue activity and yellow tape. Now they were contaminating the crime scene, too.
When she turned front again, she saw Gerry Schoenfeld, chairman of the Shubert Organization, had arrived. He came into the orchestra and quickly up the aisle. There he was met by the woman Phil had been huddling with. She was standing near the last row, a faceless silhouette in the deep shadows cast by the mez overhang.
Wetzon heard Schoenfeld say, “There’s a room off the box office you can use. What do you think, Edna?” It was a statement rather than a question. “We’ll set up some chairs and I’ll send over some coffee. This is a terrible tragedy, terrible. We want to do everything we can—”
“Fine, sir. We appreciate that.” Bernstein was back. He squeezed Wetzon’s shoulder and whispered sotto voce in her ear, “Now don’t go away, ya hear?”
She stole a glance at him and he gave her a wink. Or was it an eye twitch? Charming, she thought glumly. Just charming. She wondered if the woman detective he’d worked with when she last met him was still working with him. He was such a sexist pig.
With a flurry of purple cashmere, Aline Rose flounced into the seat behind Wetzon after Bernstein left. The seat protested with a loud creak, to no avail. The voluminous folds of Aline’s cape didn’t conceal a stump-shaped body. “Bad stuff, huh?” Her red-framed glasses were missing one temple bar and sat crookedly on her nose, giving her the appearance of a pug with glasses. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Leslie Wetzon, Aline.” Wetzon offered her hand. “I used to—”
“I remember you. Carlos’s friend.” The book writer ignored Wetzon’s hand. “Over here, Edward!” An androgynous young man, whose leather motorcycle jacket didn’t hide bulging muscles, sat down behind Aline and began kneading the back of her neck. “There’s a dear good boy.” Aline nodded to Wetzon. “My assistant, Edward Gray.” It seemed she’d already forgotten Wetzon’s name.
Edward had little gold hoops in each dear little earlobe. He rolled his eyes over Wetzon. She saw him conclude she wasn’t important to him, which was fine with her.
“Ah, ah, don’t stop, Edward.” Aline’s head lolled. Her black eyeliner was a loop-the-loop on her lids, as if applied by Ray Charles. “They think it’s Dilla. Mugged or something. I guess when you deck yourself out with all that flashy jewelry, you become a target.”
“Yeah.” Edward kept kneading. His expression didn’t change.
“Of course, Dilla was still Dilla. She made a lot of enemies—Ouch! Not so hard, Edward.”
“Enemies?” Wetzon smiled. “Not our Dilla.”
“Anyway, she was all right last night when we left …”
“Huh? You mean you were here last night?”
“We all were. Well, almost all. Mort, Sam, JoJo, Edward and I. And Sunny Browning, Mort’s assistant. We were going over last minute staging … changes …” Aline’s voice trailed off.
“You forgot to mention Carlos.”
“Oh.” Aline looked blank. “Carlos? Of course.” She shifted in her seat to take full advantage of Edward’s hands. Her cashmere cloak separated and a bit of white gauze showed for an instant, then was gone.
There was a bandage on Aline’s right wrist.
3.
The cold was acid creeping into bones, mixing with fear, horror, and speculation. Up in the mezzanine the police activity inevitably created by a murder progressed in full view of those on the stage and in the first few rows of the orchestra. A theatrical performance in reverse.
Wetzon could feel her back stiffening from the endless sitting. Cold locked her fingers and her knees. She rubbed her hands together. Her gloves were in her pocket, but her fingers were crusty with a pale film of dried blood. She dug a Wash’n Dri from her cosmetic bag and surreptitiously scrubbed the blood from her hands. When she finished, she folded up the square and stuffed it back in its envelope and the envelope into her coat pocket. And out came her leather gloves, lined in cashmere. Immediate relief. The washup was something she probably shouldn’t have done, but she hadn’t killed Dilla, so why should she sit here suffering in the cold?
Bernstein hadn’t come back. She caught glimpses of the detective in the mez, moving back and forth, talking to people. Rising, she stretched her spine. Aline was still getting her massage from Edward, whose gaze seemed riveted not on the object of his ministrations but stageward, where Carlos, eyes closed, was dancing a slow dirge oblivious to everyone.
On the stage, Mort was leaning on the piano talking to Sam Meidner while Sam compulsively ran his hands over the keys without making a sound. The tenor of their conversation could only be assumed. Mort’s body language was rigid.
The piano exploded with sound!
Sam was playing the score for Hotshot at a furious pace, beating the rhythms with the foot that was not on the pedal. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the stage by the shock of the music. With Dilla lying murdered in the mez, there was something inappropriate about the rocking rhythms. But, Wetzon thought, it was also typical of the self-absorption of people in show business, wasn’t it?
When Wetzon turned away from the stage, Phil was no longer in his seat in the rear of the orch
estra. Now where had he gone? Had he seized just this moment to disappear? Or had he gone to the men’s room? The assistant stage manager’d been the only one of them to see Dilla’s body up close. And he’d moved it. Wetzon shook herself. Forget it. Phil was a kid and violent death had a way of—
“Darling—”
She spun around. On the stage, Mort was beckoning to someone. She looked behind her, and sideways, then hand on breast, mouthed, Me?
“Yes,” the producer-director said. “Come up here. I want to talk to you.” It was an order, and she obeyed.
She walked up the pass stairs and came on stage from the wings. Immediately she felt that peculiar, joyous lurch in her midsection, followed by the tingling anticipation she’d always felt when her feet touched the stage. She looked out at the rows of seats, fantasizing all the faces eagerly awaiting the dance number ...
“Darling!” Mort threw his arm around her as if not a day had passed and nothing was different. Yet more than a dozen years had elapsed since she’d worked in one of his shows. “Listen, Leslie, you know all these moneybags now.” Mort was giving her his most charming toothpaste-ad smile, walking her a little to the side. He’d had some dental work done, bonding maybe, for the gap between his two prominent front teeth was gone. He was wearing a blue sweater that set off his eyes, and jeans, his auteur costume when he went into his director’s mode. Producers—business people—wore suits and ties. A brown suede jacket covered Mort’s shoulders, and a semipermanent tweed cap covered his balding crown. He looked fairly trim, less paunchy than last year when she’d run into him at Lincoln Center.
“Overture ends,” Sam said. “Ah, the beauteous Leslie.”
“Hi, Sam.” She was astonished the composer remembered her. She’d only worked in one of his shows early in her career, and he’d been very nice. In New Haven he’d bought her a drink at Kaysey’s after the show and told her funny show business stories. And he’d been charming when she’d rejected him.
But he wasn’t charming now. “Not particular about the company you keep.” Sam’s hostility was venomous. He gave it off in great waves, and it shook her.
Mort moved her away from the piano, not happy to share her attention, even with Sam. “He’s pissed about Dilla,” Mort whispered loud enough for Sam to hear. “Afraid it’ll hurt the show.”
Wetzon stifled her response, which would have been, “And you’re not?” Sam hadn’t written the score for a musical in over five years. Something about writer’s block. He’d had two breakdowns and then a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic for substance abuse. His career had been a geographic map of dips and peaks, two hit shows—mega hits—and three flops, then years of not being able to get arrested. Hotshot was to mark his triumphant return to the Broadway stage.
“ ... moneybags,” Mort repeated in a half-seductive, half-teasing tone.
Wetzon was utterly confused. “What are you talking about, Mort?”
“Darling, all these financial types you know. Isn’t one of them interested in the Theatre?” You could hear the capital T.
“Some, of course.” Mort smelled of stale gin and Obsession for Men. She tried to ease herself out of his grasp. “What’s this about?”
Two spots of pink hit Mort’s cheeks just above the gray of his beard. “The truth is, Leslie, and I know you’ll keep this under your hat—?” He paused. The question hung between them.
“First act ballad,” Sam announced, and drove into the music. The sound was deafening.
“Give me a break, Mort,” Wetzon protested. “I’m out of the loop. Who would I tell except maybe Carlos, and I presume he’s clued in on whatever this is—?” It was her turn to hang a statement with a question.
Mort shrugged and looked down at his Bally loafers. Still the unreconstructed shitkicker, she thought. God, he’s not wearing socks. It’s freezing and he’s not wearing socks.
“The truth is, we’re short three-quarters of a mil.”
“You’re what?” Wetzon’s voice rose over Sam’s musical recital.
“Shsh! Keep your voice down.” Mort sneaked a look around over each shoulder, then adjusted the contents of his jockeys in full view of everyone. That, too, hadn’t changed. It was like a nervous tic. “You see, Dilla had a guy who was giving her the check today after the run-through.”
“‘Show Her Your Hot .45,’” Sam sang, pounding away. There was nothing melodic about the comedy patter song, at least not the way Sam was playing it. The spot over Wetzon’s right eye began to hammer. A raging migraine was in the offing.
“Why wouldn’t you still be able to get the money from him? Just talk to him—”
Mort was looking at her with actual pity in his eyes for her stupidity. “He was Dilla’s investor.”
“So? Spell it out for me, Mort. I’m not too bright.”
“She was keeping his name to herself. You know Dilla. Someone who owed her, she said.”
“Jesus, Dilla was a piece of work.” Wetzon shivered and hugged herself, rubbing her arms to keep warm. “Maybe he’ll make himself known.”
“Not bloody likely. And we can’t wait. We’ve got only enough left to get us to Boston. We have a decent advance for the first two weeks, but if the reviews aren’t good and business falls off the last week, we’re dead. You must know somebody.”
Wetzon thought, I do know somebody, and I’ll go straight to hell for this, bringing poor old Twoey into the theatre. On the other hand, I may be doing everyone a favor, and then I’ll get to heaven. So she said, “I may know somebody, Mort. He’s been a partner with a big Wall Street firm, and he’s going through a midlife crisis. The poor fool wants to be a Broadway producer.” In reality, Twoey’s crisis had been triggered by Smith’s dumping him the year before for the notorious and flamboyant criminal attorney, Richard Hartmann. Devastated, Twoey had taken a leave of absence from Rosenkind Luwisher and was determined to change his life.
“Leslie, darling!” Mort grabbed her elbows and lifted her off her feet. “You’re a sweetheart! Who is he? When can I meet him?”
The guiding principle of her partner Xenia Smith flashed in front of Wetzon’s eyes in bright red neon: NO FREEBEES.
Well, maybe in this instance Smith was right. While Dilla was already getting billing as associate producer, Wetzon knew damn well Dilla would also have demanded points—percentage points—of the producer’s share of the profits of the show. George Abbott, the legendary Broadway director, had maintained actors would always go for billing over money. Give ‘em billing, he’d advised. And he was right. Because it’s fame they’re after. But, Dilla had given up acting long ago. No doubt she would have preferred the money.
Leslie Wetzon, ex-actor and Wall Street headhunter, didn’t give a hoot about billing; she, too, would rather have the money. And as producers were extremely protective about points because points always came out of their piece of the profits, she would have to pry points out of Mort. She would do it with relish.
“Reprise!” Sam shouted.
“You’d better put me down, Mort,” Wetzon said to the top of his suede cap. “We have to talk seriously.”
“Sure, darling.” He set her on her feet and straightened her clothing for her, fussing. “What?”
She squelched a giggle. “I’m going to introduce you to someone who will put up the money you need ... on the condition that you let him hang around and learn.”
“Done! You’re—”
“And I want a finder’s fee.”
“Leslie—” Mort put his hand on his breast and looked pained.
“Come on, Mort. You were giving Dilla points, weren’t you?”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“She was working on the show. But okay. We’ll work it out. Set up a meeting.” He looked at his watch.
“First act finale. Everyone on stage,” Sam called to a void. He’d lost it.
“Two percent, Mort. I want two percent of the gross from day one.”
“Leslie, go
ddammit—”
“Deal, Mort?”
He shook his head in disbelief. She’d obviously wounded him to the quick. “You’ve gotten hard, Leslie.... Two percent of the net, after payback.”
“One percent of the gross from day one.”
“You’re holding me up.” She was silent. He sighed. “Very well. One percent of the gross.”
“From day one.” He nodded. “Deal,” she said, extending her hand. Peripherally, she could see Carlos was still dancing a morose funereal ballet.
“Second act opening!” Sam yelled.
“Okay, vampire. Dilla’s not even cold yet.”
“Did I start this, Mort?” She was pissed and moved away.
He came after her. “Okay, okay, that was unfair of me ...”
“Lunch tomorrow, twelve-thirty at the Four Seasons.”
“Christ, the Four Seasons—”
“Be a sport, Mort.” She grinned at him, emphasizing the cheap rhyme. Then, she saw Aline in the wings about to bear down on them, and Wetzon faded back. She dropped her bag at the rear wall and fell into step with Carlos as if they were still dancing together. Slowly, she began to tease him into the old Fosse combinations, splayed fingers, small soft steps, moving long from the hipbones. He was wearing a gorgeous new watch. She caught his hand and inspected it. Carlos lifted his head and smiled at her, one of her Carlos’s dazzling smiles. “Present from Arthur. Cartier Panthere.”
“Snazzy.”
“Birdie, what would I do without you?”
“What would I do without you?”
They held each other for a long moment. Then she pulled back and looked at him. “Aline mentioned there was a meeting here last night.”
“Yeah.” His smile faded.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I went ballistic, that’s why. I left early.” He put his hand on her shoulders. His eyes glinted. “If I’d stayed here I might have been tempted to kill her.”
Murder: The Musical Page 2