Phantom Angel

by David Handler

  “So you didn’t threaten to back out?”

  “Not at all. I was just trying to convey the reality of our situation.”

  “And whose idea was it for you to convey this reality to him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that, little man.”

  “My name is Ben.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Did Henderson Lebow suggest you call him? Or was it Ira Gottfried?”

  “They both did,” Hannah answered.

  Matthew shot her an angry scowl.

  “Well, they did,” she said defensively. “At Zoot Alors. They said that Matthew and I needed to … what did Henderson call it? ‘Stick a firecracker up Morrie’s ass.’ The show has been stalled for weeks and weeks. Partly because of me and my stupid ankle. But mostly because of money.”

  “Or lack thereof,” Matthew said. “Which is utterly stupid. Ira has been offering to put up the bucks for months. And Henderson desperately wants back in as director. The only reason he’s out is because Morrie and he had a personal issue of some sort.”

  “My thing,” Hannah said to us, “was why can’t all of you men just set aside your ego bullshit and get along? Morrie was so territorial about Wuthering Heights that it made no sense. I mean, if Ira’s going to make the movie then why not let him help out now so we can get on with it? What’s the big deal?”

  “You didn’t know Mr. Frankel very well, did you?” I said to her.

  “As well as I wanted to,” she replied. “He was kind of a pig.”

  Matthew was peering at me. “What are you getting at, little man?”

  “The name is still Ben.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “He was old school. He believed that a Morrie Frankel Production was his and no one else’s.”

  Matthew continued to peer at me. “You say you worked for him?”

  “Briefly.”

  “As what?”

  “My firm provided him with legal services.”

  “So you’re a lawyer-type person?”

  “No, I’m a private investigator-type person.”

  He let out a laugh. “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “But you don’t look anything like a private detective.”

  “Who were you expecting, Sam Spade in a torn trench coat?”

  “Ben, I have been wanting to play a detective for as long as I can remember. I would love to follow you around some time, see what you do all day. What do you say?”

  “Not interested.”

  “I’d pay you for your time.”

  “Still not interested.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. He was Matthew Puntigam. People never said no to him. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m liable to lose my temper and mess up your face.”

  He glanced over at Legs, his brow furrowing. “Is he kidding?”

  “Who, Ben? No, he never kids. Doesn’t know how to.” Legs turned back to Hannah. “How did you get there?”

  She looked at him blankly. “Get where?”

  “To the dance studio on Warren Street.”

  “Rachel called a car service for me.”

  “And you?” he asked Matthew.

  Matthew reached for another of his Gitanes and lit it. “What about me?”

  “Where were you yesterday at one o’clock?”

  “Right here,” he said, nodding to himself.

  “Was Rachel here?”

  “No, she was out running errands or something,” he said, nodding to himself again. It was a definite tell. He did it every time he told a lie. And Matthew Puntigam was a truly terrible liar—especially when you considered that he was one of the three or four most successful actors on the planet. “I was doing my vocal exercises.”

  “How are your voice lessons going?” I asked him.

  “Voice lessons?” He was offended. “I’m not taking voice lessons. I’m working with a coach so that I’ll have the vocal stamina to carry off eight performances a week,” he explained, dragging on his cigarette.

  “Is smoking a good idea? If you’re concerned about keeping your voice strong, I mean.”

  “Smoking’s a great idea,” he assured me. “I want the raspy quality that Dylan has. Because Heathcliff is no public school gent, let me tell you. He’s a scruff. He needs to sing like one.”

  “And does he?”

  Matthew gave me his Me Tarzan frown. “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m told that Mr. Frankel and Mr. Lebow had a serious conversation about lip-synching you. Which Mr. Frankel was totally against.”

  “I don’t know where you heard that. There’s been no talk of lip-synching me,” Matthew responded, nodding to himself. “When my fans plunk down their hard-earned bucks to hear me sing, it’s me they’re going to hear, not some prerecorded fakery. My voice is fine. And Wuthering Heights is fine as well. As soon as the money thing gets sorted out we’ll open and be a huge success. Right, Hannah?”

  “Absolutely,” she agreed.

  “So the two of you intend to stay with the show?”

  “Of course we will,” Hannah said. “It’s our dream.”

  “It was Morrie Frankel’s dream, too.”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Morrie’s gone now.”

  Matthew stubbed out his cigarette. “Anything else we can help you with?”

  “No, we’re all set,” Legs said.

  “Good. I’ll show you out.” He got up off the sofa and led us across the vastness of their living space toward the door. It gave me a great deal of personal satisfaction to note that the 3-D screen world’s Tarzan was no taller than I was. In fact, he may have even been a half-inch shorter.

  “Listen, I want to be straight with you fellows about something,” he said to us under his breath. “I wasn’t working on my vocal exercises by myself yesterday. I was working with Henderson—at his apartment.” Matthew opened the big steel door, glancing back in Hannah’s direction. “He’s been coaching me privately, which she doesn’t know about. And I’d rather she didn’t. She’ll get very upset if she finds out he’s spending more time with me than her. Hannah’s like that when it comes to directors.”

  “But Mr. Lebow’s no longer directing Wuthering Heights,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course he is. He and Morrie were just playing games. They fought like mad, those two, but the reality is that Henderson’s still under contract to direct the show. And they would have have kissed and made up just as soon as the financing came through. So he’s continued to work with me, and he’s been a big, big help.” Matthew paused, clearing his throat uneasily. “We’re all men here. We can keep this between us, can’t we? I wouldn’t want Hannah to get the wrong idea.”

  I raised my chin at him. “You mean the right idea, don’t you?”

  He glared at me coldly before he closed the steel door in our faces.

  * * *

  “DO YOU WANT to tell me what that was just about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I was trying to make nice, remember? You were psyched and ready to go Hannibal Lecter on that dude’s face.” Legs unlocked his car and we got back in. “What got into you?”

  “He did. Matthew Puntigam is a self-infatuated, no-talent poseur. He’s smug. He’s disrespectful. He’s running around behind that gorgeous woman’s back. And did you see how short he is?”

  “Can’t say I noticed.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  The weather had changed while we were inside of Tarzan and Jane’s loft. Big gray storm clouds had moved in. The sky was getting dark. The forecast had called for a slight chance of thunderstorms. This looked like more than a slight chance.

  “Plus he lied to us straight up. There’s no way he’ll set foot on a Broadway stage unless they lip-synch him. Trust me, Legs, that midget will never expose himself to the kind of ridicule he’d get.”

  Legs sta
rted up the car and pulled away. “Exactly what kind of ridicule are we talking about?”

  “Cricket told me that when he breaks into song he sounds exactly like one of the chipmunks from Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

  “Which one—Alvin, Simon or Theodore?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. She wouldn’t tell me. Henderson Lebow is totally okay with the idea of lip-synching him. He thinks they can pull it off. Except there’s one mighty huge problem—it’ll only work if the public doesn’t know what’s happening. And they will. There’s no way Cricket will sit on a scoop of such magnitude. She’ll expose Matthew as a fraud and kill his career.”

  Legs mulled this over as he steered us to Sixth Avenue and started uptown toward the Village. Lightning crackled across the sky, followed by a rumble of thunder. A few fat raindrops plopped against the windshield. “Sounds to me like Tarzan’s got himself caught in a lose-lose situation.”

  “He totally has. My guess? He’d be thrilled if Wuthering Heights bypassed Broadway and went straight to the big screen, where lip-synching is considered perfectly acceptable. Hell, Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles and he didn’t sing one note. My guess? That if Matthew goes to Ira Gottfried and says he wants out, Gottfried would be fine with it. Panorama has no stake in the stage production. And it takes the studio’s two biggest screen stars out of circulation for months. Besides, the stage version was strictly Morrie’s baby. And there’s no way Morrie was going to let Matthew walk. He had him under contract.”

  “Until, that is, somebody gunned him down. Matthew Puntigam had himself one powerful motive, didn’t he?” Legs shook his head in amazement. “Damn, I can already see the headline in the Post: ‘ME TARZAN, YOU DEAD.’” His cell phone rang now. He glanced down at the screen and took the call. Listened. Listened some more. Then said, “Two o’clock works just fine. You’re the goods, Suzy Q.” And rang off. “Cimoli’s willing to have a conversation with us about Jonquil Beausoleil.”

  “That’s all? Just a conversation?”

  “Hey, take what you can get. You did call him a dickwad.”

  “You called him a clown cake.”

  “Only because he is one.”

  The sky was getting even darker. It practically looked like nightfall now. As we sped our way past Bleecker Street there was another booming rumble of thunder and then the rain came down—so hard and fast that it felt as if we were going through a car wash. The people who were out in it got thoroughly drenched as they dashed for cover under awnings. The gutters became rushing rivers.

  Legs drove on, his windshield wipers on high, paying it no attention. “You think Tarzan’s our killer, don’t you?”

  “I think he’s a fraud. All he knows how to do is swing from a vine and grunt. That is not my idea of a Broadway star. A Broadway star is supposed to be someone who’s larger than life. Someone with huge talent and charisma. Someone who—”

  “Oh, God, you’re not going to start in on Ethel Merman, are you?”

  “Actually, I was steering toward Zero Mostel. But if you want to talk about the one and only Miss Ethel Merman I’d be happy to.”

  “No, I really, really, don’t. I wonder if Henderson Lebow will back his story.”

  “Of course he will. Matthew’s his star and his lover. No way he’ll leave him flapping in the breeze.”

  Legs let out a sigh. “This is going to be one of those cases where everyone’s playing us, isn’t it? Sue just has to deal with mobsters. Subtle and complex, they’re not. We got stuck with show business people. They’re devious. They’re smart.”

  “I wouldn’t call Matthew smart,” I said as the rain continued to pound down on the roof of the car. “But he is devious.”

  “What’s her deal? Hannah, I mean. She comes across as barely with it. You’ve spent more time around actors than I have. Is she as spacy and dim as she seems?”

  “I think she’s adopted a persona that works well for her. Someone who exists on a higher astral plane than the rest of us grubby mortals. But you don’t get to where she is by being an airhead or a pushover. Trust me, underneath that perfect skin there’s somebody focused and driven. Hannah knows how to look out for herself. But she sure has lousy taste in men.”

  “Do we know that for a fact?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Maybe she’s got herself a slice on the side, too,” Legs suggested.

  “Maybe she does,” I said, mulling that over.

  The rain was starting to let up by the time we’d made it to midtown, those dark, menacing clouds disappearing just as quickly as they’d arrived. The hazy sun broke out again. Steam began to rise off the wet pavement. I rolled down my window but the air felt no cooler or fresher. The Heat Wave of the Century was still very much with us.

  Our destination was the shmancy Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue and East 76th Street. Or, to be more precise, the shmancy sixteen-story Carlyle House apartments that adjoins the hotel, which has its own entrance on East 77th Street, its own narrow lobby and its own doormen. One of those doormen called upstairs for us on the house phone, then directed us to the elevator.

  We got in and rode up to the penthouse, where the elevator door opened directly into the foyer of an English baronial estate, complete with suits of armor flanking the elevator and life-sized paintings of medieval royals lining the paneled walls. The foyer opened into an elegant living room that had floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a fireplace and a grand piano. A sofa and chairs covered in plush burgundy velvet were arranged before the fireplace. On the mantel sat the three Tony Awards that Henderson Lebow had won so far in his illustrious theatrical career.

  “Greetings, gentlemen!” The trim and fit director strode toward us with a broad smile on his tanned face. He wore a lilac Izod shirt with the collar turned up just so, neatly pressed white slacks and a pair of UGG rubber-soled slip-ons. The man was meticulously buffed and manicured. Not a glossy black hair out of place. The more I looked at him the more convinced I was that he’d had some work done on his face. The skin was drawn just a bit too tight for a man who was well into his fifties. “Please join us, won’t you?”

  Seated in one of the chairs was the gaunt, ascetic Man in Black, Ira Gottfried, who acknowledged us with a slight nod of his ponytailed head but otherwise remained still and silent. The world’s wealthiest and most powerful entertainment mogul wore the same outfit he’d been wearing the other night at Zoot Alors—a black silk shirt, black jeans, black suede Puma Classics. Which isn’t to say that he had on the same exact clothes. Supposedly, he had a closet full of identical black shirts, jeans and Pumas.

  “I’ve ordered us a light lunch,” Henderson said, gesturing toward a pair of room service carts that were tucked discreetly in the corner of the room. “I thought we could eat while we answer your questions, Lieutenant. I take it you haven’t caught Morrie’s killers yet.”

  “No, sir. Not yet. But we will.”

  “Please help yourselves.”

  There was a platter of sliced roast chicken breast, another of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and avocados. A basket of breads and rolls. A bowl of fresh fruit salad. A pitcher of iced tea.

  Legs and I filled up our plates. Henderson limited himself to a small portion of fruit salad. Ira didn’t join us. Possibly he subsisted on grubs and tree bark.

  “I want to assure you that this is an informal conversation,” Legs said after we’d settled ourselves on the sofa with our food. “Strictly routine questions.”

  “And yet you brought your bodyguard along.” Henderson’s eyes twinkled at me he sat in a chair facing us. “Smile, Ben. That was a joke.”

  Ira didn’t smile. Just sat there and listened, his hands folded together before him, index fingers forming a steeple for his chin to rest on. The man gave the impression of being some sort of wise and mystical swami. You’d never guess that his chief contribution to humankind had been to provide it with Tarzan in 3-D.

  “You may have legal counsel present if you wish,”
Legs said, munching on the sandwich he’d made for himself. “We’ve just spoken with Matthew Puntigam and Hannah Lane. They declined counsel. But the choice is yours.”

  Henderson speared a piece of mango with his fork and popped it into his mouth. “What do you think, Ira? Do we dare speak to these cagey ruffians without legal counsel present?”

  Ira closed his eyes for a long moment, as if he were in a deep meditative state. “I seem to recall,” he said finally, his voice barely more than a whisper, “that one of the people in this room graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School before he accepted an unpaid internship in the Panorama mailroom.”

  “In other words, we’re all yours, Lieutenant.” Henderson smiled at Legs warmly. “But only if we get to quiz you, too. Or Ben, I should say.”

  I took a bite of my sandwich, wondering how it was possible that plain roast chicken on Pullman white bread with sliced cucumber and avocado could taste so amazingly good. “What is it you’d like to know, Mr. Lebow?”

  “Why Morrie hired you.”

  “To find his angel.”

  “This would be the famously elusive Mr. R. J. Farnell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did you find him?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  “My turn now,” Legs spoke up.

  “Ah, yes, your strictly routine questions. Fire away, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ve been asked to establish the whereabouts of Mr. Frankel’s closest business associates at the time of his shooting. Hannah Lane told us she was at a dance studio on Warren Street, which is easy enough to confirm. Matthew Puntigam told us he was here with you, Mr. Lebow, for a—a … what was it he called it, Ben?”

  “A coaching session.”

  Henderson let out a snort. “Coaching. So that’s what the kids are calling it now? Yes, we were coaching here together.”

  “Can anyone else confirm that?” Legs asked him.

  “Of course. The doormen downstairs who let him in. They can also vouch for the time that Matthew left. I assure you that Matthew and I didn’t plot anything nefarious. We didn’t beg, borrow or steal a Lincoln Navigator. We didn’t draw straws to see which one of us was going to dress up like the Unabomber and plug Morrie in the back while the other played getaway driver. We’re not the sort of people who do that kind of thing.”