Private Screening

by Richard North Patterson

  “Hello, Curtis.”

  His look was guarded. “’Lo, Mr. Lord.”

  “Your crew works fast. How do they know to put which box where?”

  Curtis shrugged. “You call tell by the shape, usually.”

  “And weight?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  Lord nodded. “I guess you’re setting up later than last time.”

  Curtis’s eyes flickered toward the discolored wood. “Stacy didn’t want to do a sound check.”

  “Doesn’t she need one?”

  He shrugged again. “I think maybe the band’ll run through it.”

  “Then I won’t interrupt you.” Lord followed Curtis’s gaze. “By the way, a little wax might help cover that up.”

  Curtis stared at him. Then he nodded, turning to the crew, and Lord took the catwalk to the loading dock. Through its entrance, he saw SNI’s satellite truck, then more cameras panning a long line of fans who stood with stolid patience in the drizzle. Behind a line of police, the crew off-loaded boxes from the truck to the freight elevator, passing through a metal arch wired to a detection device. A cop sat watching it.

  Lord climbed the catwalk three flights up.

  Standing above him, Johnny Moore checked vantage points with two police snipers. Lord turned to watch the crew.

  After a while, he heard Moore’s hard-soled shoes clanging down the steps. When they stopped behind him, Lord said, “Glad the bomb squad’s here.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen that way, Tony—not on my watch.” Moore spoke in an undertone that didn’t carry to the stage. “Still drawing a blank on that call?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Moore paused. “How about on DiPalma’s question?”

  “I don’t see any connection but the trial.” Lord turned. “I was hoping your gang of four hundred might be doing something more relevant.”

  “Oh, Phoenix was spotted near Gillette, Wyoming, today. Turned out to be a hunter in a ski mask.” He scowled. “We’re wallowing in tips, all of them bad, and no closer to helping the hostages than we were two days ago.”

  “Swell.” Lord leaned on the railing. “Only three and a half hours now.”

  “It’s a real event.” Moore slouched next to him. “I saw some asshole in the parking lot selling Phoenix T-shirts.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We ran him off. Incidentally, did you hear the tickets are free? Courtesy of Stacy and the Arena.”

  “At least she can’t get ripped off.” Lord kept watching the crew. “While we’re here, tell me how that happened last time. Because I’ve got no idea at all, let alone any notion of what Harry would stand to gain.…”

  “You’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that one, Tony.”

  “At the moment,” Lord answered quietly, “that’s not a very useful observation.”

  “My theory’s still evolving, actually. I can tell you what the police reports say—I was up all last night reading them.” Moore began to watch with Lord. “Once he was shot, all the security fell back around Kilcannon—no one watched the office when Damone ran in with the paramedics. So the cops think someone kicked the door open, grabbed the bag of money, closed the door again to look normal, and split in the general chaos.”

  Beneath them, Jesus Suarez took another box off the elevator. As he crossed the stage, Lord responded, “There’s no witness to anyone leaving with a satchel.”

  “According to conventional wisdom, Tony, her fans were too shocked to notice.”

  Jesus opened the box. Lord felt Moore’s gaze, moving from the roadie to him. As if he could see his thoughts.

  “Of course,” Lord said finally, “someone could have waltzed it out of here in a box.”

  Moore’s eyes glinted. “Which means the crew.”

  “After the shooting, did anyone check that out?”

  “More or less—given Kilcannon, the cops’ initial work on the robbery was pretty screwed up. But they questioned the crew and impounded the truck and any equipment boxes lying around. Nothing there.”

  “Sorry. Because that’s my best shot.”

  “Still, it’s a thought.” Moore kept watching Jesus. “It really is a thought.”

  2

  STACY got out of the limousine.

  She moved toward the loading dock, wearing blue jeans and a khaki work shirt, carrying a travel bag. It was like a dream repeating, except that the crowd was so silent, and she was alone.

  Police trotted her up the ramp, and then the iron grid of the freight elevator was closing behind her.

  It was 7:30, and she’d heard nothing from Lord.

  She rose past concrete and catwalk. On the darkened stage, Curtis waited with a flashlight.

  They looked at each other. Then Stacy nodded, and followed him toward the dressing rooms. Instinctively, she glanced at the wall beneath the telephone. No one was there.

  The band was in the tuning room. She hugged them, Leon Brennis last. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  “No problem, Stace.” Leon gestured at the others. “We went over what you told me. Think of anything else?”

  “Not yet. Let’s run through the list before I go on.”

  When he nodded, she kissed his cheek, and went to the dressing room.

  Opening the door, she half-expected Damone to turn from the mirror. Then she walked to the empty stool, trying to imagine that this was the last time she would sing.

  There was no sound at all.

  She began to do her makeup in a kind of trance. Vaseline, then kohl for her eyes, half-hoping that Lord would call with something to keep her offstage. Her watch read 7:50.

  Her hand slipped.

  “Damn,” she murmured. Reapplying kohl, she found that her fingers were trembling.

  Someone tapped on the door.

  She started. “Yes?”

  Lord leaned through the door frame.

  It gave her a momentary frisson. A split second’s hope followed, and then she saw that he was holding a dozen roses.

  “If you don’t like them,” he said lightly, “I’ve got peonies outside.”

  “No—they’re lovely. Come in.”

  “Just for a moment.” When he put them on the table, she noticed the small envelope.

  Leaning forward, she began to open it. “I don’t seem to talk to you too well,” he was telling her, “unless it’s about some disaster. So I thought I’d say this with flowers.”

  The card was in his handwriting:

  “Will you have dinner with me tonight?” it asked. Beneath this was a P.S.: “Truth is, I really like you. It’s just sometimes you make me a little nervous.”

  Smiling, she picked up the flowers and smelled them. “You buy dinner,” she said, looking up, “and I’ll forget the ten dollars you owe me.”

  The way Lord’s grin changed his face surprised her—it was careless and youthful and made her want to see it again.

  The thought startled and embarrassed her. “I’m really hungry,” he was saying, “so I’d better let you go. Good luck, huh?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  He stopped in the doorway. “Moore and the cops have covered this place like a blanket. So your biggest problem is knowing when to quit.”

  “I hadn’t quite gotten that far.”

  “SNI will give the audience telephone numbers for call-ins, and after that they’ll start a computerized count of contributors. I’ll be on the catwalk to your right, watching on a battery TV. Look up every once in a while—when SNI’s count hits five million, I’ll raise one hand.”

  “All right.” She hesitated. “The roses really are nice, Tony.”

  “’Tweren’t nothing,” he said, and closed the door.

  She stared at it for a while. Then she took an envelope out of her bag and scratched more notes on it.

  Outside, she found Leon and Greg going over the list. “Let’s do ‘Equal Nights’ second,” she told them, “so this doesn’t get too downbeat, okay?”

  Leon nodded.
“Anything else?”

  She gave him the envelope. “I’ve scratched some of my nightclub stuff in the margins. If I decide to change something, I’ll just tell you.”

  “Fine with me, Stace. Sure you’ll be okay without a set program?”

  “Tonight doesn’t have to be perfect—just different. We’ll see how it works out.”

  She followed them down the hallway.

  As she waited, Curtis led the others to the platform, then aimed the flashlight so that Leon could tape her envelope on his keyboard.

  Alone in the wings, Stacy looked around her.

  There was a cameraman near the telephone, poised to film over her shoulder as she went through the curtain. Lord’s dim figure stood above her on the catwalk. One flight up was a police sniper stationed to protect her; Stacy could see his cap and the outline of a rifle.

  She folded her arms, staring down as the sick feeling came to her again. Then she saw the beam of light at her feet, Curtis waiting for her.

  He glanced at his watch. She nodded, and then he was leading her forward. There was silence on the other side of the curtain.

  Stacy stopped behind it. Curtis retreated; she felt the camera waiting, the invisible audience twenty feet from her. She couldn’t move.

  Taking two steps back, she looked up to where the sniper was, then Lord.

  What the hell.

  She turned to Curtis. “Just open it,” she said.

  Lord could see how scared she was.

  Then she stepped into the spotlight, face appearing on the overhead screen, and began to sing “Reruns at Midnight.”

  For the first few notes, her voice was shaky. She sang without moving, a straight, slim figure beneath him, shirt-sleeves rolled above her wrists. On the screen, her gaze was blue and wide; the simple beginning had a quality of nakedness foreign to past concerts. In front of her there was darkness—smoke, massed bodies, silence. Three more cameras.

  Lord glanced down at the mini-TV. There were no numbers beneath her face. Her voice would break, he thought, or she would; something else would happen. He bent back to check the police sharpshooter standing above him.

  Below, she kept on singing. It came to him that her voice sounded rawer, older, a little smokier.

  When she finished there were still no figures on the television, and no applause.

  She gazed up at her face on the overhead screen. “This really isn’t it,” she said softly.

  The quiet in front of her was like a caught breath. She turned from them, backstage. “Could someone turn off that screen,” she asked, “and switch on the hall lights?”

  When the lights came on, her audience was standing, even in the tiers.

  She was staring at where Kilcannon had fallen; Lord realized that she saw the discoloration.

  Her eyes rose to the screen. “I look at that thing,” she explained, “and it’s like singing to a mirror. What I really wanted is to see you.”

  The screen went dark. She seemed to think, then went on in a clear, quiet voice.

  “I guess you know how strange this is for me. But I’m really glad you’re here. And I think I’d feel better about my being here if we had a moment’s silence.”

  On the television beside him Lord saw her head bend forward, her eyes close. The audience did the same.

  There were still no figures.

  Stacy looked up. “A few minutes ago,” she began, “someone told me I made him nervous. I think it was his way of apologizing for not being able to say things quite right and also, in a funny way, to put me more at ease.” She smiled a little. “So one thing I wanted to tell you is that you make me kind of nervous.”

  There was a soft, appreciative murmur.

  She flicked back her bangs. “Anyhow, backstage, I was trying to figure out how I got here.

  “One part was that when I was eleven or so, I had a crush on Paul McCartney. It got pretty convoluted—I even reset my bedroom clock to know what time it was in London.” A second fleeting smile. “And then I decided that Paul would never notice me unless I got famous, too. So I started writing songs.”

  In front of her, the audience seemed to relax.

  “But the part I didn’t know,” she told them in a softer voice, “was that I had thoughts and feelings I could only express that way. By hoping someday you’d be here for me.” Walking to the edge of the stage, she added quietly, “And here you are for me, still.

  “Only somewhere I stopped seeing your faces. And when that happened, I got afraid you wouldn’t come.

  “Being afraid like that gets lots of things screwed up. One thing that did was my idea of you.

  “So this is kind of my apology.”

  She was so exposed, Lord thought, that anything could happen.

  On his screen, SNI flashed $400,000, in print beneath her face.

  “But a second thing that happened,” Stacy continued, “was that the rest of life passed like shadows at the corner of my eyes—I was hardly looking. I guess that was what brought me here last June, to be part of something bigger. And you were here for me again.”

  She paused, looking down at the stage. “You know what happened,” she told them softly, “and while I was trying to come to terms with it, this stuff got started in the media about my tragedy. And now someone’s found a new way to exploit that.”

  Her head snapped up. “Even before this, it really hacked me off. ’Cause it’s so obvious that the worst thing about what happened isn’t what happened to me.

  “So that’s another thing I need your help with. If they put me on some magazine cover, and I’m looking sad, don’t buy it, okay?” She stopped, grinning suddenly. “Boycott tragedy.”

  There was startled laughter, then applause.

  Stacy cocked her head. “You know, when I did meet Paul McCartney, he was married.”

  As the laughter rose, Lord realized he was smiling.

  “I don’t know what that means exactly, but I think there’s a metaphor there somewhere.”

  She seemed looser now. “So this concert really is it for me,” she said. “Not to escape what happened here, because you’ve been great, and I’ve been luckier than I knew sometimes. But just because I’m old enough to find some other ways of saying what I feel. Maybe something private to be proud of.”

  She held the microphone close to her mouth. “But first,” she asked gently, “I’d be proud if you’d help me do one last thing I can’t do without you. And that’s help save John Damone from whatever this thing is.

  “He’s been my friend for ten years and in our way, we love each other. That’s why I’m here.”

  On Lord’s television, the figure had risen to $675,000.

  “Of course it all may sound like hell, but for once I’ve got some great excuses.” Stacy paused, gaze sweeping the crowd. “Still,” she finished quietly, “I really hope you like it.”

  Before they could applaud Stacy turned to the band and then they broke into “Equal Nights.” With a loose swing of her body, she began to sing.

  The band had slowed the tempo a bit, Lord noticed; her voice wasn’t as strong. But it sounded better now.

  On television, she was smiling.

  The figure below her face was $1.1 million. Some of the audience began singing with her; when the song ended, $1.5 million flashed on the screen.

  Lord wondered how long she could keep it up.

  The crowd was cheering. Stacy shook her hair back. “Thanks,” she said. “What’s next …”

  Lord heard three sharp pops.

  There were shrieks; Stacy straightened, then reeled back.

  Running down the catwalk, Lord saw her catch her balance. She stood there, staring out.

  To the right of the stage, the crowd had caved in on something. There was fighting, pulling; then police pushed through and extracted a skinny young blond man. “Free El Salvador,” he yelled.

  One cop held up a silver object. There were scattered cries of “Cap gun …”

  Like Chi
natown, Lord thought.

  She was utterly still, head turned toward the blond man. The audience seemed stunned, afraid of how she’d react.

  Climbing the catwalk, Lord saw her face on SNI.

  Her eyes flashed with anger as they dragged the man away. “El Salvador’s one thing,” she said to the retreating figure. “But you’re something else.”

  There was a nervous ripple of laughter.

  On the screen, the total jumped to $2.3 million.

  Stacy turned to the crowd. “Let me find something to sing, okay? Kind of get me back in the mood.”

  She said a few words to Leon, and then the band began playing “Love Me Right.”

  The tempo was an easier, swaying rhythm, and she sang without frenzy or artifice. After a while, her body caught the music, swirling her hair. On the television, Lord saw her smile again.

  Her voice slowed for the end:

  “You know the fire

  Lives through lovers

  This night the fire

  Burns in us.”

  The Arena echoed with applause and whistles, the reactions of a normal crowd.

  Suddenly, the figure jumped to $4.1 million.

  It startled Lord. One more song, and she could get off. He leaned over the railing.

  “So what do you want?” Stacy asked the crowd.

  A man called, “‘Desperado.’”

  With a mock grimace, she turned to Leon. “Can we do that?”

  “I can.”

  Quit screwing around, Lord thought. Leon played the first few notes, and then she began singing it as a soft, smoky love song:

  “Desperado

  You know you ain’t getting younger

  Your pain and your hunger

  Are driving you home.…”

  She missed some notes, a little unsure. Her only backup was Leon on the keyboard.

  Five million dollars flashed on the television.

  As Lord waited for her to finish, her voice became stronger. On the final slow stanza, it was high and clear and beautiful. The last notes seemed to float there.

  Applause came rolling over her. She bowed her head, then turned to look up at him.

  Lord raised one hand.

  Almost imperceptibly, she nodded. The crowd kept applauding.

  Stacy waited them out. “Okay.” She smiled. “So what’s next?”

  Lord stared in disbelief. “‘My Funny Valentine,’” a woman cried out.