by Marvin Kaye
Inside, Stockton looked at his hands and tried to say what was on his mind. He had difficulty getting started.
“Look,” I said, trying to help him out, “do you want to talk about the murder?”
He nodded.
“All right, but why with me? Why not save it for Inspector Betterman?”
“That’s just it!” Stockton exclaimed ruefully. “I’m supposed to see him in an hour, and I’m worried.”
“Is there a good reason why you should be?”
He began to reply, but a fit of coughing interrupted him. He hadn’t quite gotten over his pneumal congestion. When he recovered, he explained that what he was looking for from me was advice. “Harry mentioned you’re a private investigator.”
“That’s stretching it. I have a license, but I don’t use it much. I’m in PR, remember?”
“Still, you know about these things.”
“What things?”
“Police investigations.” He squirmed around so he could face me. “Look,” he said, “you have to give me your word that you won’t repeat anything I’m going to tell you.”
“Then don’t tell me anything,” I replied, shaking my head. “I can’t make any such guarantee. For all I know you’re about to confess that you shot Godwin.”
He chewed on his lip, not liking my attitude. He nervously twitched the ball of his thumb along the edges of his mustache, flicking the hairs against the grain and back into place.
I tried to reassure him, “I’m not about to blab around anything personal, unless it’s important to the investigation. But I’ll have to use my discretion as to what may be germane.”
“And what about your employer?”
“Huh?” The question startled me. “What about my employer?”
“Harry said she fancies herself some kind of sleuth. Do I have to take her into my confidence as well, or will you reserve what I have to say from her ears?”
“That depends,” I admitted. “The lady does pay my salary.”
He didn’t like that, either. As a result, he clammed up for several blocks. I reminded him that we were nearing our destination, and if he wanted to clue me in on his big secret, he’d better do it fast.
“Very well,” he sighed, his head rotating back and forth in mingled distrust and disapproval, “I suppose I might as well tell you the whole story.”
“I take it this concerns Godwin?”
“Yes—and me. We were going into partnership.”
“What about Grilis?”
“Michael was not happy with him, as you have surely observed. He and I—and Olvis Oakes—put up some money to go partners in a new scheme to stage plays as dramatic readings, take them on tour without scenery.”
I wondered what was so new about the idea, but kept my editorializing to myself.
“The plan,” Stockton continued, “was to form a repertory group of perhaps half a dozen reader-actors and work with them until they’d all achieved a common aesthetic vocabulary, so as to guarantee genuine ensemble performances.”
“Did you get started with it?”
He nodded. “Six of us—three men and three women—have been meeting Sundays for about a year. When anyone was out of town, the remaining members still got together and read scripts or solo versions of poems, stories, what have you. Recently—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “Do I know the people in the group?”
“Most of them: Michael, myself, and Oakes. Melanie and Pat Lowe. The sixth, Eva Martin, you’re probably not acquainted with.”
“Go on.”
“There isn’t much to tell. Recently Michael, Oakes, and I each invested a substantial sum in the project. We were going to incorporate directly following the opening of Macbeth. ...”
I sensed where he was going, and since we were only a block and a half away from the pub, I asked him point-blank what had happened to the money.
“I’m afraid I mismanaged it,” he murmured.
“Really? The whole bundle?”
“The bulk of it.”
“Do you mind if I ask how you accomplished this financial wizardry?” (Good God, I thought, I’m starting to sound like Hilary. Overexposure to sarcastic fallout.)
Stockton developed another coughing fit, though this time I figured he was forcing it to gain some thinking time. At last he told me that he’d lost it in the market, making investments which had seemed more than sound at the time but which turned out to be disastrously speculative. He had hoped to surprise his partners with a windfall, but fate had forced his enterprise awry.
I suspected it was all a mouthful of euphemisms for having lost the bread in a table-stakes poker match, but I pretended to believe him. “Did you tell Godwin or Oakes about it?” I asked.
“No,” Stockton answered. “I’ve been hoping to replace the loss before they knew it was gone, and Oakes wouldn’t question me, it’s not his nature. But Michael had begun asking some embarrassing questions concerning our bank account in the past few days.”
The cab angled toward the curb and stopped. Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t accept any remuneration from the actor. The others weren’t in view, and I supposed they’d already gone inside, since they’d gotten a cab before us. We hesitated in front of the door.
“All right,” I said, “now that you’ve told me, what do you want to know?”
“Whether I should mention it to the police?”
“If it comes up, certainly.”
He pushed his glasses with his thumb. “But, damn it, don’t you see how bad it might sound? I mean, I’m already aware that I’m a prime suspect just because I’m playing Ross. ...”
“Stockton, take my advice, tell Betterman about this money business. He’ll find out anyway, and it’ll sound a hell of a lot better coming from your mouth than if he has to pry it out of you.”
“You can’t be sure he’ll discover it otherwise,” he said skeptically.
“Look,” I snapped, losing patience, “you asked my advice, I gave it. I said I couldn’t guarantee I’d keep my mouth shut, and that still goes. If you don’t tell Betterman, I will!”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Sorry, my parents were Ohio farmers.”
“I thought Armand was overreacting,” he murmured disdainfully, “but I suppose he was right.”
“About what?”
“About trusting your kind.”
“What kind is that?”
“You know perfectly well,” Stockton said with contemptuous superiority. “Tender my apologies to the others.” He walked away.
I watched him as he marched down the street toward the subway. It’s getting harder to tell, I thought. Evans and Mills, and now Stockton. How many others? I wondered.
Unfortunately, not Harry.
It was a subdued group ringed around a corner table sipping beer: Evans, looking pale and stricken; Oakes, his face flushed, eyes valiantly trying to focus; Peters; and—blond hair drawn back, artificial color blotching her cheeks—Pat Lowe. She had a nervous habit of chewing at her lips and, in the process, removing the lipstick. A fleck or two still clung to them; otherwise, they were pallid.
As I took a chair and pushed it next to her, she gave me a brief, tentative smile which quickly faded.
“Where did Stockton go?” Oakes rumbled. “I wanted to talk with him.” I noticed that he’d been supplementing his brew with some harder potable whose glass stood empty before him.
“Had an appointment with the police.”
Evans mumbled something that I didn’t catch and I asked him to repeat it.
“I said, ‘Me, too.’ ”
“You have to talk to Lou Betterman?”
He nodded and sipped his beer. His eyes were bloodshot and his hand shook as he lofted the glass.
“They’re going to ask you about Mills, you realize?”
Again he nodded.
“Do you know where he is?”
He excused himself, got up, and headed for the men’s r
oom. I wanted to ask him several other things, but he was clearly unwilling to open up. I was certain he knew where Mills was hiding.
The waiter came and I ordered a shot of Bushmill’s, then turned to Pat and asked whether she’d been questioned further by the police. She shook her head.
“What else can I tell them?” she asked, eyes downcast. “Melanie and I were out at the time. I wish I could have stopped her from rushing onstage like that. It was ghastly!”
I agreed.
“The whole business is dreadful,” Oakes stated. “I urged Michael not to pick the Scottish play, but he wouldn’t listen to experience. I’ve done it time and again these fifty years, and never has it been kind to me or those I’ve worked with. Never.”
“I suppose,” Pat said wistfully, “that all chance of going ahead with our reading group is gone.”
“Perhaps not,” Oakes tried to reassure her, patting her hand, “perhaps not.”
She sighed. “I know it’s awful of me to be thinking of myself, with Michael dead, but it seems as though every break I get falls through.”
“There’s no reason why we can’t go ahead with it,” Oakes continued. “It may take a while to settle things, but there’s still a deal of money invested. If we have to recruit a new guiding genius, we shall.”
But the blond took little comfort from his words, and knowing what I knew, I could hardly second Oakes’ sentiments.
Evans rejoined us, finished his drink, and said he had to be getting to the police station for his appointment with Betterman. I told him to wait up, since I was headed the same way. Oakes was in no condition to make it home himself, so we put him in a cab with Peters and started off for the IRT. Pat walked along with us, and I wished she would get lost so I could pump Evans in earnest, but she stuck till we got to the station. Downstairs, it was too noisy for me to talk to him, and it wasn’t any better in the train itself.
As we climbed out of the Centre Street stop, the rain assailed us and we stood in the large plaza near City Hall waiting for the downpour to abate before venturing forth. Evans pulled his coat tight and removed his glasses, folding them and inserting them in a leather case.
“You’re going to have to guide me,” he said, taking my arm. “I can’t see without my glasses, but in this weather they don’t do me much good.”
I agreed to assist him. We began to edge our way along the projections of the municipal buildings, letting them act as umbrellas.
“Relax,” I said, sensing his nervousness, “they’re not arresting you.”
“I’m worried about Armand,” he said.
“They’ll ask you about him repeatedly. You can’t go running to the john every time they do.”
He nodded mutely.
“You know where he’s hiding, don’t you?”
No reply.
“Look, it doesn’t matter whether you do or not, they’re going to assume you do, in any case. Betterman might even threaten you with an accessory charge, you know. Want some advice?”
Evans nodded.
“You may or may not know where Mills is, but if you’re smart, you at least won’t reserve any other information from them. Lay your cards on the table. You’ll probably be helping Mills more in the long run.”
We stopped at the juncture of four streets converging and diverging around a series of traffic islands. We huddled beneath an overhang of some official structure and waited for the red light to change before dashing across.
“I don’t know what kind of mess Mills got himself into,” I continued, “assuming, of course, that he didn’t pull the plug on Godwin—”
“He didn’t!” Evans exclaimed.
“Let’s say you’re right. Can you think of anything to account for his disappearance?”
Evans mulled it over. “Several weeks ago,” he murmured, after a few seconds, “he started acting odd.”
“Odd? How?”
“It was after this private talk he had with Dana Wynn. At least I think it was she. He acted peculiar afterward.”
“Peculiar?”
“He began carting me around,” Evans began, then waved his hand in dismissal. “It’s not important.”
“Let me be the judge.”
Instead of answering, he motioned to the light. I steered him across the street, practically a creek. On the other side, I asked him the same question about Mills’ behavior, but he demurred from replying.
“It’s personal,” Evans murmured.
“Terrific! Tell the inspector that!” I pushed him into a sheltering doorway. “Look, let’s not play coy. I’m not five years old, and I won’t be shocked. But if you’re going to help Mills, you’d better stop playing the faithful frau!”
He pulled away, stuck his glasses on his nose, and started off, but I spoiled his pique with a question.
“Did you know Godwin was going to fire you?”
His head jerked around like a puppet’s. He stopped in his tracks.
“When?”
“Two days before you broke your ankle.”
Glasses streaming, but oblivious of the discomfort, Evans nodded, accepting the information without question.
“Godwin didn’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“He didn’t want me in the cast.”
“Then why did he hire you?”
“Armand said he wouldn’t play Macbeth unless I was cast as Seyton.”
It didn’t make sense. I recalled that Godwin wasn’t sold one hundred percent on Mills. Why would he let himself be coerced into accepting Evans, too, as part of a package deal?
Evans didn’t have the answer to that one, so I let it drop for the time being and headed him toward our destination. Soon, we reached precinct headquarters. Pausing in the lobby to remove our damp coats, Evans asked me whether I was going to repeat any of our conversation to Betterman. I said I probably wouldn’t. It was a lie, but I had to retain his confidence. It was a bet he wouldn’t open up to the inspector.
“By the way,” I remarked before he went off to keep his appointment, “could I ask you just one more personal thing?”
“I guess,” he said, not looking happy about it.
“The night before you had your accident, you didn’t come to rehearsal ...”
Before I could finish, he was blushing. “That has nothing to do with anything,” Evans stammered. “I was just a little—ill.” With that, he took off posthaste.
Ill? I had a hunch about the nature of the malady.
My meeting with Betterman was brief. Stockton had used his head and already spilled his financial indiscretions to the inspector. I mentioned a few things Evans had told me. The policeman agreed we had to handle him carefully, in hopes he might lead us to Mills.
The only bits of news Betterman had to offer concerned the bullets. One had been recovered from the wound in Godwin’s head; the other, which had evidently gone wild in the dark, had to be dug out of the wooden frame of the proscenium stage right. They’d been checked out with the gun found in the cloak and they matched. The gun also had been traced, and it was Mills’. Only one set of fingerprints were on the weapon, presumably Mills’. (They didn’t match anyone’s taken at the Forum the night before, but the police didn’t have the leading actor’s prints on file.)
I left Betterman and called Hilary at Bellevue, but learned she was no longer there. Glancing at my watch, I saw there wasn’t time to try her at the Godwins’. It was late and I had to meet Harry at the Forum.
I arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, but he wasn’t there. I damned his tardiness. Just before seven-thirty, he got out of a cab and ran across the street.
“Sorry,” he panted, out of breath. “Had to help Hilary.”
“To do what?”
“Get Melanie settled.”
“At the Godwin apartment?”
He ducked his head, too winded to reply. I waited till he caught his breath, then asked whether he’d taken the prompt script to Hilary.
“No,” he
said, “but what I did—”
“Christ!” I swore. “Didn’t Dana even put it down once?”
“Let me explain,” Harry protested, but just then Dana and Grilis rounded the corner of Thirty-third and Eighth. Sure enough, the prompt script was still under her arm. I didn’t want to arouse her suspicions, so I immediately turned in the other direction.
“Forget it, Harry,” I warned, under my breath. “I’ll get hold of it myself later.” If he made any protest, I didn’t hear it; I was too busy walking away. When I got to the far side of the Forum exterior, I figured it was safe to turn around. None of them were there any longer.
I swore to myself to bring the promptbook to Hilary that night, no matter what. Which meant I had a long siege ahead. I hadn’t had dinner, so I killed some time with a steak and bottle of bordeaux. Afterward, afraid to be away from Dana too long, I sneaked into the back of the Forum and sat in the shadows watching the rehearsal. She and Grilis were up front in the same area where they’d been sitting the previous evening. She had the promptbook open and was directing the new kid playing Banquo from Godwin’s notes. I gave her credit, at least, for not trying to ring in her own directing ideas at the last minute. Maybe Grilis wouldn’t let her.
The rehearsal broke after eleven, by which time I was half-asleep. After a few moments of conference on business matters, Grilis and his assistant started packing up to go. I scooted back to the lobby, keeping an eye on them through a door crack to make sure they didn’t leave the back way.
When I saw them heading down the aisle in my direction, I stepped outside, pulled up my collar so it covered my face, and huddled in a corner not far from the main entrance.
It wasn’t the brightest-lit block in Manhattan, and when they emerged into the night air, I was cloaked by shadows. If they even noticed me at all, they probably wrote me off as one of New York’s homeless thousands sleeping in the seclusion of the nearest wall.
I heard Grilis ask if she was sure he couldn’t drop her at her place. His tone made it clear he meant more than that.
“Can’t you trust me when I tell you it’s something important that can’t wait?” she asked, somewhat irked.