The woman smiled, exposing enormous teeth and a lot of gum, and offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“The same here,” Wetzon said, trying not to stare.
Phil’s mother was wearing a ring with a huge yellow diamond. She was also the woman Wetzon had seen getting into a cab in front of Susan Orkin’s building.The woman Susan had refused to see?
39.
Don’t hang up, goddammit!” It was Mort yelling. “Susan!”
Nudging the door gently with her toe, Wetzon peered into the ladies’ lounge. Its baroque and rococco carvings and murals seemed a more apt backdrop to murder than the hunting lodge severity of the men’s smoker.
Mort banged the phone box with his fist. “Shit!” The tickle in Wetzon’s nose became a sneeze, and Mort spun around and clapped his hands, “Just the person I wanted to see. Leslie, come in here. When are you going back?”
“Probably Sunday morning ... the Boston PD willing.” The lounge, too, had an odd odor, this one, like citronella. It must be the cleanser they used. She sneezed again and blew her nose.
Mort’s face was a garden of yellow and purple bruises; his breath was sour milk. “You wouldn’t consider going back tomorrow?”
“Before the opening? Why would I do that? I came up for the opening. Besides, they might not let me leave.”
“What do you mean they might not let you leave?”
“Excuse me? Sam’s been murdered—or had you forgotten?”
“Darling, that’s why I need the favor. For the good of the show. Carlos—all of us—need you to do something.” Mort reached out, ignoring her flinch, and took a lock of her hair. He rolled it over his fingers. “We need you, Leslie.” He was playing her for all he was worth. “And, trust me,” he continued, his voice husky. “I can get you out of Boston.”
“And if I say no is ya gonna try to strangle me and trow me out a winder?”
Mort looked wounded. “Come on, Leslie. I had a bad reaction to the medication. It happens. All I’m trying to do is get this show on. And everyone keeps getting in my face.”
“May I quote you?”
He grabbed her arms and shook her, hard. “Why do you keep twisting everything I say?”
She snapped, “Let go of me,” and brought her heel down on his toes in their soft Bally boots.
“Oh, Christ, oh Christ!” He let her go and hopped around clutching his foot.
Wetzon watched him, then heard herself say: “My mission would be ...?” What was she saying?
Mort stopped in midhop. His face lit up. “You’ve got to bring Susan up here. For the opening. If you go back tomorrow morning, you can do it. We need her here.”
“Susan? Susan Orkin? Why?”
“To tell the truth, I’m not sorry to lose Sam—of course I never would have wanted it that way—but it’s a lucky break for the show. Nelson is a real talent; he’ll take care of any new music we need, and Susan’s written more than half the lyrics already—She hung up on me just now.” He shuffled his feet and put his hands in his pockets. “She blames me for Dilla. Christ, I didn’t kill Dilla. I wouldn’t have. I needed her. Look at the loser I’ve got to work with in her place.” Removing his cap, he ran a comb through his paucity of hair. “Maybe someone will do me the kindness of relieving me of Phil.” He took a small mouth spray from his pocket and sprayed his mouth. Eureka! The citronella-like smell.
“Starring in Henry Two, Mort? If so, you’re playing to the wrong audience. Tell me, did you stay on in the theatre with Dilla the night she was murdered—after everyone left?”
“Leslie! How can you ask me something like that?” Funny how Mort was beginning to sound like Smith. Did she attract people like that? And he’d answered her question with a question.
Wetzon sighed. She was about to be a schmuck. “What makes you think I would be able to convince Susan to come back?”
“Carlos told me you and Susan were college buddies. He thought maybe you could be helpful.”
Carlos! The rat. “Carlos listens fast.”
“Leslie, will you try? Just try.” Crocodile tears welled up in Mort’s eyes. “I’ll be eternally grateful. I’ll owe you.”
“You would? I’d like to collect on that right now.”
“What do you want?” Mort slipped that everyone-takes-advantage-of- me look on his face.
“I want you to keep your bloody hands off Smitty.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Mort.”
“How dare you make judgments about me? Who do you think you are?” He splayed his hand at her as if he were casting an evil spell.
“I’ve known Smitty since he was a child, and I know you’ve made that boy a lot of promises.”
“Listen, you self-righteous bitch, who are you to sit and judge me? You’ve never been married. I bet you’ve never even had a decent relationship with anyone. You sit over there on Wall Street and make money on sleaze and dirt. You think you’re fucking Joan of Arc? You know what happened to her, don’t you, bitch?”
Wetzon turned her back on him and walked into the bathroom. She looked at her face in the mirror. Dried blood did not become her. Wetting a paper towel, she dabbed gently at the smudges. Mort’s threat rang in her ears. He’d stopped screaming “bitch,” but she could see him out of the corner of her eye raging, stamping around the lounge.
In truth, she would give just about anything to get out of Boston. The old joke danced through her brain—who do I have to fuck to get off this show?—and she laughed.
She went to the door and leaned against the door frame. Mort, eyes bulging with rage, stopped and looked at her. “If you’ll make me that promise, I’ll go in and see Susan tomorrow,” she told him.
“That’s easy enough to promise. The kid’s been getting a little tiresome anyway. Every time I turn around, he’s there underfoot.” He had sheepish, shitkicker written all over him. And the storm was over.
“Just remember, you’ll have to clear it with Madigan.”
She left him in the lounge, admiring his own image in the mirror. But he had drawn blood. Was there some truth in what he’d said? Was she self-righteous? Had she never had a decent relationship?
In the back of the orchestra, Detective Madigan was talking to two men, one carrying a medical bag and the other loaded down with cameras. Since they had already taken her statement, she ambled down the aisle. She could now try calling her office. Madigan beckoned to her.
“Oh, Miss. One moment, please.”
Damn. She retraced her steps.
Madigan was concluding his conversation. “Take a seat. Be right with you.”
She sighed. Write this day off. She envied Smith lunching in Gloucester, blissfully unaware of Sam’s murder. She did not sit down.
“Now then, just a few more questions.” Madigan had draped his coat over the back of the seat. He was looking through some notes, grunting. “You were the first person Juliette Keogh told about finding the body?”
Juliette Keogh? Wouldn’t you just know that the orange-haired fashionplate would have a name like Juliette? “Right.” She shifted from one leg to the other.
“Take a seat,” he said again. This time it was an order.
She sat on the edge of a seat, ready to fly.
“She said you were on the phone near the stage door.”
“I was trying to talk to my office, but there was so much traffic back and forth and out the door, not to mention everyone talking to me, I finally gave up. I think that was before she ... um ... Juliette ... went to check on the funny smell.”
“I want to know everyone who came in or went out.” Madigan had a small white scar in the middle of his left eyebrow, and his hair parted around it.
Her hand touched her own scar as if to see if it was still there. “Everyone? God, it was a regular army of people.” She thought for a moment. “Fran Burke, Phil Terrace, Poppy Hornberg, Walt Greenow, and a stagehand. One of the cast—Nancy, I think—was on the phone before I was. Almost eve
ryone passed through. Except Mort and Carlos.” Madigan reached out and fingered the matted fur of her coat. “Do you think one of them might have brushed up against me and got blood on my coat?”
“We’ll know after the lab takes a look at what Bryant picked off.” He looked down at his notes. “Anyone else?”
Mark. She sighed. There was no avoiding it. “Mark Smith. The one they call Smitty.”
“Are you an athlete? Do you lift weights, work out, play ball?”
“I take dance classes. Do you want to feel my muscles?” She gave him a stern look. “I didn’t kill Sam, Detective. I had neither motive nor means. And I’m five feet two inches tall and weigh ninety-six pounds. If I wanted to kill someone, I would use something that evened out my height and weight, like a car.”
He gave her a quick quarter-smile. Not much, just enough to acknowledge the logic of what she’d said.
Something began to tickle her memory. The men’s smoker ... She had played the Colonial.... Then it hit her. “There are two ways to get to the smoker,” she said. “One is from the stage; the other is through the lobby. Did you know that? The murderer could have come and gone through the lobby.”
Madigan nodded. “It’s possible. Let’s talk about what happened after Juliette Keogh spread the alarm—”
“Almost everyone turned up. Again, except for Mort and Carlos. And Sam, of course. Juliette thought it was Mort. Hell, we all thought it was Mort. The hat, you know, and Sam and Mort looked somewhat alike, and yet not. Juliette and I wanted to call the police, but they all wanted to see for themselves. It was a little sick. I guess they must have felt it was too good to be true.”
Madigan gave her a quizzical look. “I hear Mr. Hornberg’s not a very likable fellow. I understand he’s been pretty rotten to everyone on this show.”
“He’s an artiste,” she said. “Because he’s so talented, everyone still lets him get away with being an enfant terrible.”
“And you are not connected to the production?”
“No. I’m a headhunter. I move live bodies around Wall Street. But I used to be a dancer. I’m here as a friend of the choreographer, Carlos Prince.”
“Oh, yes. The one Mr. Hornberg tried to throw out the window this morning. He certainly had a good motive for wanting to see Hornberg dead.”
“No, he didn’t. Carlos wants Hotshot to be a hit. He wouldn’t have killed Mort, at least not before the New York opening.” She smiled grimly at her joke.
“So that’s the way it works?”
“Yup. Maybe you should look and see who wanted to get rid of Sam.”
“Maybe.” Madigan kept his shrewd eyes on her face. What did he expect of her? “Who disconnected the phone?”
“I don’t know. Everyone was crowded into that space. You might try fingerprints....”
“Thank you for the suggestion.” Madigan’s voice was solemn. “Do you own a gun, Ms. Wetzon?”
“No! Was Sam shot?”
“What makes you ask? Did you hear a gunshot?”
“No. You asked me if I owned a gun. Come to think of it, someone may have mentioned it.”
“We have to wait for the coroner’s report, but it looks like the back of his head was crushed by the usual blunt instrument.” He sounded discouraged. “Any ideas?”
“I suggest you call Detective Morgan Bernstein in New York, Midtown North, and get the report on Dilla Crosby’s murder.”
“And who,” Madigan said with extreme patience, “is Dilla Crosby?”
“Don’t tell me no one mentioned that Dilla Crosby, the production stage manager, was murdered a week ago just before the show left New York?”
“I’m not telling you.” He sat down behind her, barely fitting his backside into the seat. His thighs were like two overstuffed blue serge bolsters. “And do you think the two killings are connected?”
“That’s not for me to say.” Was he playing games with her? “I didn’t know either of them that well.” She turned her back to him and watched the uniformed cops. Having finished their interviews, they stood on stage looking around, like actors without their next lines.
“All right.” Madigan rose, and searched his pockets. He came up with a bent and none too clean business card and handed it to her. “You think of anything else, call me. If I’m not there, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
“I have to go back to New York tomorrow for the day ...” He was frowning at her. “But I’ll be here for the opening tomorrow night. If there’s going to be an opening.”
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Ritz.”
She felt his eyes on her as she walked to the pass door. Did he think she was involved? He gave even less away than Silvestri did. Silvestri. He would have a fit about this. As if it were her fault.
“Awful business, isn’t it?” Kay came out of the wings, Nomi following. “Poor Sam never hurt a fly. Someone was obviously after Mort.” They stopped in front of the lighting monitor.
“Obviously.”
When Wetzon got back to the stage door, a repairman was fixing the phone wires while Juliette Keogh told him about the murder in amazing detail.
“Oh, yeah?” the repairman kept saying. And, “No kidding?”
Wetzon waited impatiently for him to finish, gather up his tools and leave, but he was in no hurry. This was probably his last job of the day.
“The wife, huh?” the repairman said to Juliette-Cerberus, as Wetzon finally got to use the phone. When the operator intercepted, she said, “Collect. For anyone.” She looked down at the concrete floor. Someone had washed up the blood.
“Good afternoon, Smith and Wetzon.” B.B. sounded frazzled.
She waited for him to accept the charges. “Hi, B.B. What’s happening?”
“Oh, great, Wetzon. I guess you got my message.” Relief flooded across the telephone lines.
“No, I didn’t. I’m at the theatre. What’s up?”
“Lois Danzigger accepted the offer from Paine Webber.”
“That’s super. Congratulations. When does she start?”
“Two weeks from Monday.”
“Nice going, B.B. Be sure to walk her through the routine of Xeroxing, etc. Anything else?”
The only message that sounded pressing was from Artie Agron, and the number he’d left was his home number, which she knew from the 201 area code. Tearing a pink memo page from her Filofax, she jotted it down. “I’ll call him. Leave the rest for me on Monday. What about Smith’s messages?”
“Richard Hartmann.”
“Did you tell him Smith was at the Four Seasons?”
“Yes. Shouldn’t I have?”
“Call him back and tell him she’s at the Ritz.”
“He’s coming up to Boston.”
“Is he indeed?” She thought, deeee-lish. Hartmann v. Kidde. Sparks for sure.
“The other line is ringing. Can you hold?”
“Yup. But make it quick.” She waited, tapping her foot. Cerberus had lost her audience. Now she was up to her nose in the Boston Herald, which Wetzon noticed had a big photo of Mort, facing out.
B.B. said, “Are you still there, Wetzon?”
“Yeah. Anything else?” JoJo passed through with Joclyn Taylor, his hand resting on her ass. He was talking about her top note, but his tone and approach were seductive. The stage door opened, sending in a draft of raw cold, and the pair vanished into the alley behind the theatre.
“Yes. Max took a call from a Detective Bernstein this morning. Bernstein wanted to know where you were. I called him back and told him you’re at the Ritz and he said he’d tried you there and left word, but if I hear from you, you should call him right away, and—”
Her feet did an impatient time step. “Spill it, B.B. I’m running late.”
“You shouldn’t talk to any reporters.”
40.
“Thanks for siccing Mort on me, old chum,” Wetzon said, seating herself at Carlos’s table. A double martini sat untouched in fro
nt of him.
He grinned at her, a shadow grin. “I thought you wanted to help, dear heart.”
“I do. And I’m doing it for you, not for him. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t even be here. I hate this.” Her vehemence surprised her.
“I’m sorry, Birdie.”
“It’s okay. I think Susan is having a breakdown. She thinks she’s next on the killer’s hit parade. I don’t know if she’d chance coming up here where she’s certain the murderer is. I’ll call her and see if we can have lunch, but honestly, Carlos.”
“I’ll have a mushroom cheeseburger with the works, fries, everything,” he told the waiter. “What about you, Birdie?”
She looked at the menu. “This is Friday, isn’t it?”
The waiter nodded.
“New England clam chowder. And a vodka martini straight up, very dry.” She needed something a whole lot stronger than beer.
“I know, Birdie. Mort is a major shit, and I know we both have the sneaking suspicion that poor old Sam didn’t get his head smashed because he’s poor old Sam.”
“Probably.” She smiled one of Smith’s smug smiles and knew it. “Mort and I did a little old-fashioned trading. Sort of quid pro quo.” She sat back and folded her hands on the table like a schoolgirl. At the bar JoJo was running his fingers up Joclyn’s spine and Joclyn was looking as if she liked it.
But Joclyn was an actress and knew which side of her bread had the butter. One did not turn down the overtures of the musical director. So much for show business.
Carlos said, “Old-fashioned trading? Now I wonder what that would be.”
“I asked him to keep his paws off Smitty.”
“And he agreed?” Carlos sounded surprised.
“Yup. But not before he called me a self-righteous bitch who’s never had a decent relationship with anyone.”
Carlos gave her a searching look, then he took her hand. “And you believe him?”
She shook her head and pulled her hand from his. “Don’t want to talk about it.”
“Please don’t take it to heart, Birdie. It’s just Mort’s lousy way of keeping you off-balance.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yeah. I’m really proud of myself.”
Murder: The Musical Page 22