Death of a Blue Movie Star (14 page)

Rune felt Traub’s eyes on her. The feeling reminded her of the time her first boyfriend, age ten, had put a big snail down the back of her blouse. Traub said, “There’s something, I dunno,
refreshing
about you, you know. I see all
these women all day long—beautiful blondes and redheads to die for. Stunning, tall …”

Oooo, watch the tall, mister.

“… big tits. But, hey, you’re different.”

She sighed.

“I mean that sincerely. You want to come down to Atlantic City with me? Meet some wild people?”

“I don’t think so.”

“One thing I am is talented. In the sack, you know.”

“I’m sure.”

“Plenty of recreational pharmaceuticals.”

“Thanks anyway.”

He looked at his watch. “Okay, tell you what, Uncle Danny’ll help you out. You want to shoot me, so to speak, go ahead. But let’s hurry. I got a busy day.”

In ten minutes Rune had the equipment set up. She slipped a new tape into the camera. Traub sat back, popped his knuckles and grinned. He looked completely at ease.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything that comes to mind. Tell me about Shelly.”

He glanced sideways, then looked into the camera and smiled sadly. “The first thing I have to say, and I mean this sincerely, is that I was wholly devastated by Shelly Lowe’s death.” The smile faded and his eyes went dull. “When she died, I lost more than my star actress. I lost one of my very dearest friends.”

From somewhere, Rune had no idea where, Danny Traub produced what might pass for a tear.

CHAPTER NINE

The gruff man, in his sixties, with abundant white hair and cool eyes, looked down at Rune.

“So you think you can act?” he asked sternly.

Before she could say anything he turned and walked back into his office, leaving the door half-open. It was an old-fashioned office door, with a large window of mottled glass in it. The sign, in gold lettering, read:
ARTHUR TUCKER, ACTING AND VOICE INSTRUCTION
.

Rune stepped into the doorway, but stopped. She didn’t know whether she’d been dismissed or invited in. When Tucker sat down at his desk she continued inside and closed the door behind her. He wore dark slacks and a white shirt and tie. His dress shoes were well worn. Tucker was slightly built, which made him seem younger. His legs were thin and his face chiseled and handsome. Bushy white eyebrows. And those piercing green eyes … It was hard to hold his gaze. If Tucker
were a character actor he would’ve played a president or king. Or maybe God.

“I don’t know whether I can act or not,” Rune said, walking up to the desk he sat behind. “That’s why I’m here.”

The office on Broadway and Forty-seventh was a theater museum. The walls were covered with cheap-framed photos of actors and actresses. Some of them Rune had seen in films or heard of—but nobody was very famous. They seemed to be the sort of actor who plays the male lead’s best friend or the old wacko woman who shows up three or four times during a movie for comic relief. Actors who do commercials and dinner theater.

Also on the walls were props, bits of framed fire curtains from famous theaters now gone,
Stagebill
covers pasted on posterboard. Hundreds of books. Rune recognized some titles; they were the same as Shelly Lowe had on her bookshelf. She saw the name Artaud and she remembered the phrase again: the Theater of Cruelty. It brought a jolt to her stomach.

Tucker went through an elaborate ritual of lighting a pipe and a moment later a cloud of smoke, smelling of cherry, filled the room.

He gestured to the chair, sat. Lifted an eyebrow, saying in effect, keep going.

“I want to be a famous actress.”

“So does half of New York. The other half wants to be famous actors. Where have you studied?”

“Shaker Heights.”

“Where?”

“Ohio. Outside of Cleveland.”

“I don’t know any academies or studios there.”

“It was the middle school. I was in the Thanksgiving pageant.”

He stared at her, waiting for her to go on.

No sense of humor, she noted. “That’s a joke.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was also a snowflake once. And in high school I painted backdrops for
South Pacific
…. That’s another joke. Look, sir, I just want to act.”

“I’m a coach,” Tucker said. “That’s all I am. I improve, I don’t create. If you want to go to school, study drama, come back, I may be able to help you. But for now …” He motioned toward the door.

Rune said, “But my friend said you’re the best in the city.”

“You know one of my students?”

“Shelly Lowe,” Rune said and pressed the button of the little JVC camcorder in her bag. The lens was pointed upward, toward Tucker. She knew she wouldn’t get the whole angle, but she’d see enough. Also, she thought the little black border might give it a nice effect.

Tucker turned to look out the window. A pile driver in a nearby construction site slammed a girder down toward the rock that Manhattan rested on. Rune counted seven bangs before he spoke. “I heard what happened to her.” Tucker’s ruddy face gazed at Rune from under those bushy white eyebrows. Did he brush them out like that? Rune changed her mind: He’d be a much better wizard than a president. A Gandalf or Merlin.

Rune said, “Whatever else about her, she was a good actress.”

After a long moment Tucker said, “Shelly Lowe was my best student.” A faint, humorless smile. “And she was a whore.”

Rune blinked at the viciousness in his voice.

Tucker continued. “That’s what killed her. Because she sold herself.”

Rune asked, “Had she been coming to see you long?”

Reluctantly Tucker answered her question. Shelly had been studying with him for two years. She’d had no formal training other than that, which was very unusual
nowadays, when schools like Yale and Northwestern and UCLA were producing the bulk of the professional actors and actresses. Shelly had a superb memory. She was like a chameleon, slipping into parts like someone possessed by the character’s spirit. She had a talent for dialects and accents. “She could be a barmaid from northeast of London, then change herself into a schoolteacher from Cotswold. The way Meryl Streep can.”

Tucker spoke these words of admiration with troubled eyes.

“When did you find out about her film career?”

His voice was bitter again. “A month ago. She never said a word about it. I was stunned.” He laughed with derision. “And the irony is that when it came to her legitimate auditions she wouldn’t take just any job. She didn’t do commercials or musical comedy. She didn’t do dinner theater. She wouldn’t go to Hollywood. She did only serious plays. I said to her, ‘Shelly, why are you being so pigheaded? You could work full-time as an actress if you wanted to.’ She said, no, she wasn’t going to
prostitute
herself…. And all the while, she was doing those … films.” He closed his eyes and moved his large head from side to side to shake off the unpleasantness. “I found out a month ago. Someone was returning a tape at the video store I go to. I glanced at it. There she was on the cover. And, what’s more, it was under the name Shelly Lowe! She didn’t even use a stage name! When I found out I can’t tell you how betrayed I felt. That’s the only way I can describe it. Betrayal. When she came in for the next lesson we had a terrible fight. I told her to get out, I never wanted to see her again.”

He spun around to face out the window again. “Every generation has its candidates for genius. Shelly could have been one of those. All of my other students—” He waved his hand around the room, as if they were sitting behind Rune. “They’re talented and I like to think that I helped
them improve. But they’re nothing compared with Shelly. When she acted you
believed
her.”

Just what Tommy Savorne had said, Rune recalled.

“It wasn’t Shelly Lowe on stage, it was the character. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, the Greek classics, Ionesco, Ibsen … Why, she came this close to the lead in Michael Schmidt’s new play.” He held his fingers a millimeter apart.

Rune frowned. “The big producer? The guy gets written up in the newspapers?”

He nodded. “She went to his EPI—”

“What’s that?”

“Equity Principal Interview. It’s like an audition. She met with Schmidt himself twice.”

“And she didn’t get the part?”

“No, I guess not. That was just before our fight. I didn’t keep up with her.” Tucker ran the stem of his pipe along his front lower teeth. He was not speaking to Rune as he said, “My own acting career never went very far. My talent was for coaching and teaching. I thought that with Shelly I’d leave behind someone who was truly brilliant. I could make
that
contribution to theater….”

He stared at a photo on the opposite wall. Rune wondered which one.

“Betrayal,” he whispered bitterly. Then he turned his gaze to Rune. She felt naked under his deep eyes, shaded by the brush of his eyebrows. “You seem very young. Do you make those films too? The ones she did?”

“No,” Rune said. She was going to make up something, the sort of job a girl her age should be doing, but with those strange currents shooting out from his eyes—a green version of Shelly’s blue laser beams—she just repeated the denial in a whisper.

Tucker studied her for a long moment. “You have no business being an actress. Pardon my bluntness but you should look for another line of work.”

“I just—”

But he was waving his hand. “I wouldn’t do you a favor by being kind. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He pulled a script toward him.

It wasn’t much of a list.

Rune sat at her desk—Cathy’s old battered gray government-issue. She’d pushed it right next to the cracked front panel of L&R’s air conditioner, which was churning out about a tenth of the BTUs it once had. She closed the Manhattan phone book.

There were only two A. Llewellyns listed and neither of them was an Andy. That left only the remaining twenty million citizens to survey in the other boroughs, Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Shelly’s most recent boyfriend would have to go unquestioned for the time being.

Larry walked into the office and glanced at Rune. “Whatcha doing, luv?”

“Looking up things.”

“Things?”

“Important things.”

“Well, if you could postpone your search for a bit
I’ve
got something important for you.”

“Letters to type?”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to mention it but those last ones? They were ‘ardly the best typing job I’ve ever seen.”

“I told you I wasn’t a typist.”

“You spelled the man’s name three different ways in the same bleedin’ letter.”

“Was that the Indian guy? He had a weird name. I—”

“But his first name was James and that’s the one you misspelled.”

“I’ll try to do better…. You have my distributor for me yet?”

“Not yet, luv, but what I do ‘ave is the people for this advertising job, right? In the next room. Did the estimate go out yet?”

“I typed it.”

“But did it go out yet?”

Rune said patiently, “It’s going to go out.”

“So it ’asn’t gone out yet?”