Murder on a Hot Tin Roof

by Matetsky, Amanda

  When I returned to the workroom and began spooning coffee into the percolator, Mr. Crockett was satisfied. “Bring me a cup when it’s ready,” he said, stepping back inside his office.

  “Ditto,” said Mario, who was watching (or rather, ogling) my every move and making ugly smoochy faces whenever I glanced in his direction.

  “Me, too,” Mike chimed in, never looking up from the story he was pecking out, with two fingers, on his typewriter.

  Lenny didn’t ask me for coffee. (He rarely drank the stuff, but when he did, he got up and got it himself.) And he didn’t say anything else to me, either. He didn’t have to. His urgent, puzzled, anxious gaze was saying it all.

  I was sorry to be causing Lenny such worry, but there was nothing I could do to ease his concerns right now. If I went over to talk to him, Mario would start making more nasty—and loud—remarks, and then Mr. Crockett would come bursting out of his office to growl at us again. And that wouldn’t do anybody any good. Lifting my shoulders in an apologetic shrug, I winked at Lenny and tossed him another quick smile. Then I turned my back on the boys in the workroom and faced a different pile of problems.

  THERE WAS SO MUCH WORK STACKED UP on my desk I wanted to run back to the ladies’ room and hide out there till lunchtime. There were letters to open and sort, newspapers to clip, stories to edit and rewrite, galleys to proofread, invoices to record, photos to label and file. And it was already twenty to eleven! And I had to call Binky at noon! And if DD’s second-in-command, Brandon Pomeroy, happened to stroll into the office before I left on my lunch hour, he would see all the paperwork on my desk, and find out how late I’d come in this morning, and then he wouldn’t let me leave at all.

  Which would throw a big wrench in my plans to visit the Actors Studio.

  However, I wasn’t that worried about Pomeroy coming in early. Truth was, he hardly ever made it into the office before lunch. (When you’re a close relative of Oliver Rice Harrington—the powerful and wealthy publishing mogul who owns the magazine you work for—you can show up whenever you like. And when you’re a lazy, jaded snob who breakfasts on dry martinis, you like to show up late.) Nevertheless, Pomeroy had been known to pull surprises out of his hat from time to time, and I was praying that today would not be one of those times.

  After I served my boss and coworkers their coffee, I took another survey of my work load. The newspapers were taking up the most room on my desk, so I chose to tackle them first. Snatching the Daily Mirror off the top of the pile, I began flipping through it as fast as I could, looking for juicy crime stories to clip out for our files (one of my more mindless daily chores). There was one story about Gray, but it was even briefer and less informative than the article I’d read on Sunday. A wave of sadness washed over me as I cut the piece out and put it in the labeled and dated manila folder I had set aside for Pomeroy. (Reading the new crime clips was the only aspect of his job Pomeroy seemed to relish, and if the folder of clippings wasn’t sitting on his desk when he came in, he’d have a royal snit fit.)

  The other three morning editions also ran short articles about Gray’s murder, merely recapping the barest facts and reporting that the case was still under investigation. Two other homicides had occured in the city in the past week (one in Harlem, one in the Bronx), and they were rehashed as well.

  As I was cutting out these articles and putting them in the folder, I snuck a quick look at some of the day’s top stories: The national economy had shown a strong upsurge during the first six months of 1955, smashing all peacetime records; Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson had suffered a moderately severe heart attack while visiting a friend in Virginia; The grand opening of Disneyland Amusement Park in Anaheim, California, was scheduled for July 17th.

  But the biggest story of the day, bar none, was the heat. WE’RE HAVIN’ A HEAT WAVE! one headline proclaimed. NO RELIEF IN SIGHT! cried another. Actually, the temperature had dropped a bit—all the way down to 95.8 degrees!—but the humidity was so high nobody could tell the difference. So the papers were jammed with advertisements for products that promised to keep you cool and dry. I gazed with longing at the full-page ad for Ambassador Window Air Conditioners, knowing I’d never be able to save up the 169 bucks I’d need to buy one. But all was not lost; there was hope for me yet. For just seventy-nine cents I could “Beat the Heat with Mexsana Medicated Powder!” Maybe I’d go get some after work.

  When I finished clipping the papers, I opened, sorted, and distributed the mail. Then I fixed all the typos, misspellings, and bad grammar in two of Mike’s stories, wrote the captions for three four-page layouts, proofread about a dozen galleys, put the corrected stories, captions, and proofs in a large envelope, and called for a messenger to take them to the typesetter. I labeled all the photos and took them into the file room, but left them in a stack on top of one of the file cabinets, deciding I’d organize and put them away later.

  In an effort to clear my desk (or just make it look clear in case Pomeroy came in), I hid the batch of unrecorded invoices in my top left-hand drawer. Then, at twelve o’clock on the dot, after glancing over my shoulder and determining that none of my coworkers had me under close observation, I hunched over the top of my desk, stealthily picked up the phone, and dialed Binky.

  Chapter 24

  “YEAH?” BINKY ANSWERED, AFTER THE eightieth (okay, probably just the eighth) ring. His voice was so deep and gravelly, I figured I’d woken him up. “Who’s calling?” he growled. “What do you want?”

  “It’s Phoebe Starr,” I said, keeping my voice low and cupping my hand around the mouthpiece (I didn’t want Mario or Mike, or even Lenny, to hear what I was saying). “You told me to call you at noon. Remember?”

  He groaned. “I’d rather forget, but you won’t let me.” He sounded more than a little annoyed.

  “Sorry,” I said, “but I was hoping you could show me around the Studio today. And my lunch hour is starting right now. I’ll meet you anywhere you say.” I knew I was being too curt and aggressive, but I didn’t have any choice. My behavior was being controlled by the clock. And my lack of privacy.

  “Cripes!” Binky croaked. “Where’s the friggin’ fire? You just woke me up, little girl. I didn’t get home until six this morning, and the only place I’m going now is back to bed.”

  “Then can you meet me later, when I get off work?” I begged, still keeping my voice and word-count low.

  He groaned again, even louder than before. “A lot of actresses are pushy, but you’re the goddamn pushiest! Don’t you ever give up?”

  “No. I can’t afford to. This means too much to me.”

  “Oh, all right!” he surrendered, heaving a sigh the strength of a hurricane. “Meet me at the Studio at six thirty. I’m auditioning for Elia Kazan at seven. I’ll take you in with me and you can watch.”

  Elia Kazan? The director of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? What the heck is that all about!?

  “Thank you so much, Binky!” I said, projecting as much phony gratitude and excitement as I could without attracting the attention of the guys in the workroom. “I’ll see you at—”

  There was no reason for me to repeat the time or the place. Binky had already hung up.

  And the very second I hung up, Pomeroy walked in.

  I was shocked to the core—both by my lazy boss’s extra-early arrival, and by my good timing (which was an equally rare occurrence). “Good morning, Mr. Pomeroy,” I said, adopting my most polite (and, according to Abby, puke-provoking) demeanor. “Did you have a nice holiday?”

  “No, I did not, Mrs. Turner,” he said, standing tall in the front of the workroom, removing his beige linen suit jacket and hanging it on the coat tree. “Thank you so much for reminding me.” He took his pipe out of his jacket pocket and breezed past me, nose in the air, to his desk right across the aisle from mine. Pomeroy was just six years older than I, and we had worked side-by-side for over three years, but we still—at Pomeroy’s insistence—addressed each other by last names only. He eve
n expected me to call him sir.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Stop!” he commanded, stretching his arm out, palm first, in my direction. (He looked like an irate traffic cop.) “I don’t want to hear any more about it.” Pushing his expensive tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses higher on his handsome face, he sat down at his desk, brushed his fingers over his dark brown hair and mustache, and began filling his Dunhill with fresh tobacco.

  I could hear Mario snickering behind me. He was enoying watching me squirm. Pomeroy liked it, too. I could tell by the way his mustache was twitching.

  I didn’t like it at all, though, so—after smashing imaginary pies in both their faces—I got up and went into the file room to file the photos. About twenty minutes later, when I had finished that job, I went back into the workroom, thinking I would just snag my purse and go down to the lobby coffee shop for lunch. I was so hungry I felt faint. (Well, I hadn’t had any breakfast, you know!)

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Pomeroy asked, as I picked my purse up off my desk and turned toward the door.

  “Out to lunch, sir,” I said. “It’s twelve thirty. I always go out at twelve thirty.”

  “Not today you don’t.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned in his swivel chair to face me. “I’ve just learned that you came in very late this morning, Mrs. Turner. Almost two hours late.” He shot Mario a quick glance, then turned his attention back to me. “So I’m rescinding your lunch hour today. Tomorrow, too. You have to make up the time.”

  “But, sir, I—”

  “No excuses, Mrs. Turner. You’re supposed to be in the office by eight thirty. You may have forgotten this condition of your employment, but I can assure you I haven’t. And if you think—”

  Pomeroy’s tongue-lashing was interrupted when Harvey Crockett barrelled out of his office and came huffing up to the front of the workroom. “I’m going to the barber,” he told me, maneuvering his stubby legs and bulging belly over to the coat rack. He unhooked his cream-colored Panama and anchored it on his large hoary head. “After that I’m going to lunch with a new paper supplier at the Quill. If anybody calls, tell ’em I’ll be back at two thirty.”

  “Yes, Mr. Crockett,” I said to his back as he bustled up to the door and left.

  Mike and Mario were just a few steps behind. (They always go out to lunch together, and they always leave within two or three minutes of Mr. Crockett’s departure.) Grabbing their hats and jackets off the coat tree, they nodded to Pomeroy, leered at me, muttered a joint “see-ya-later,” and disappeared through the door. Even after the door had swung all the way shut, I could hear them laughing out in the hall. (It never fails. Whenever I get in trouble with Pomeroy, Mike and Mario get in a giddy good mood.)

  As soon as they were gone, Pomeroy went back to bullying me. “You seem to think you can come to work whenever you please, Mrs. Turner,” he said, taking up where he’d left off. “But you are greatly mistaken. We expect you to work a full eight-hour day, with just one hour off for lunch, and anything short of that is totally unacceptable. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “Good. Because I have the power to fire you, you know, and that’s exactly what I’ll do if you don’t obey the rules.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “And conduct yourself in a proper manner.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  “And complete all the work that’s assigned to you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Pomeroy.”

  (Before you throw up, please let me explain my nauseating obsequiousness: I really, really needed to keep my job. The few dime-store mystery novels I’d published hadn’t earned me enough to pay my Sears and Roebuck bills, much less my rent. And a single working woman needs clothes as well as a place to live, don’t you know.)

  Pomeroy rose to his feet and gave me a withering look. Then he picked something up from his desk, and stepped across the aisle to mine.

  “Did you know this man?” he asked, putting the stack of news clips about Gray Gordon down in front of me and spreading them out like a fan. “He was murdered, last Saturday, in his apartment down in the Village. You live in the Village, too, so I was wondering if you ever met him.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. At least not while he was alive. I was astonished that Pomeroy was discussing a murder case—especially this murder case—with me. Such conversations were always reserved for Mike, since he was the one who would be getting the story assignments.

  “Did you ever hear any talk about him?” Pomeroy went on. “Any gossip or anything?”

  “Uh, no,” I said, reluctant to answer Pomeroy’s questions until I knew why he was asking them. “But I did see an article about him in the Saturday Times,” I added, feeling the need to offer something. “He was an actor—an understudy—and when the star of his show was overcome by heatstroke, Gray Gordon stepped in to play the lead. He made his Broadway debut in last Friday night’s performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the Times theater critic said he was brilliant—that he was going to be a big star.”

  “I saw that article, too,” Pomeroy admitted, “and all the murder reports in the papers the next day. That’s why I came in early today; I wanted to see what the new reports would say.”

  “They don’t say much of anything.”

  “Right,” Pomeroy replied. “The police obviously don’t want any details about their investigation getting out. They must have asked the papers to lay off the story until the killer is caught.”

  “Yes, that’s probably what happened.”

  “So there isn’t enough information for Mike to write a clip story.”

  “No, I guess there isn’t.”

  “Which is why I’m assigning the Gray Gordon story to you.”

  What?! Are my ears working right? Did Pomeroy just say he was giving me the Gray Gordon assignment? He must be sick or something.

  “Since you live in the Village,” Pomeroy went on—actually speaking to me in a civil tone!—“it’ll be easy for you to poke around the area, talk to the locals, listen to rumors, and gather intelligence about the murder. Perhaps you’ll even dig up some clues for the police. At the very least, you’ll be collecting details and descriptions for your story’s background.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Pomeroy!” I said, jumping to accept the assignment before he could change his mind. “I appreciate your confidence in me, and I’ll do the very best I can. In fact, I’ll start my investigation this evening, just as soon as I get off work.”

  “See that you do,” he said, brusquely turning away from my desk and marching up to the front of the workroom. He took his linen jacket off the coat rack and put it on. “I’m going out to lunch now, Mrs. Turner. You will stay here in the office and do all the work you should have completed this morning. I expect you to be finished by the time I get back.” His civil tone had vanished completely.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, wearing a frozen smile and holding my breath till he disappeared through the door. Then I spun around to face Lenny, thrust my fist in the air, and shouted, “Yahoo!”

  Chapter 25

  “ I DON’T BELIEVE IT,” LENNY SPUTTERED, scooting up to the front of the workroom and sitting down in the guest chair near my desk. His cheeks were flushed and his glasses were crooked. “The creep finally broke down and gave you a real story—not just a lousy clip job!” He leaned closer and slapped his hand down on the desktop. “I never thought I’d live to see the day! What do you think happened to him? He must’ve had a three-martini morning.”

  “I don’t think so, Lenny,” I said, still elated about the unexpected assignment, but beginning to question Pomeroy’s motives. “He seemed perfectly sober, if you want to know the truth. And he came to work so early! And he said himself that it was all because of this particular murder story.” As surprised as I was that my misogynistic boss had given me an important (i.e., lurid and sensational) homicide to cover, I was even more shock
ed that it was the Gray Gordon homicide. Did Pomeroy have some knowledge of my personal interest in the case, or was the whole thing just a crazy coincidence?

  “The man must have grown a new brain,” Lenny said with a sniff. “But it sure took him long enough. I mean, how many exclusive, exciting, and true behind-the-scenes murder stories does a person have to write before Pomeroy gets the message?

  If it hadn’t been for Mr. Crockett, your three big inside stories never would have been printed in Daring Detective. And they certainly wouldn’t have been featured on the cover! And then those three editions would have had the same lousy forty-two-percent sales all the other DD issues seem to have, instead of selling seventy-four to seventy-eight percent of a much larger print run. God, Paige! Pomeroy should be shot for keeping you down the way he does. The way he treats you is a crime.”