Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (2 page)

“This may be a good place to pause,” Kendall said.

Both actors shaded their eyes and peered out into the darkened theater. The woman playing the actress said, “Ashley, I’m uncomfortable
with …” but Kendall interrupted at once.

“Take fifteen,” he said. “We’ll do notes later.”

“I just want to ask Freddie about one of the lines.”

“Later, Michelle,” Kendall said, dismissing her.

Michelle let out a short, exasperated sigh, exchanged a long glance with Mark Riganti, the actor playing the detective who
adored
Law & Order,
and then walked off into the wings with him. The actor playing the other detective stood chatting at the fingerprint table
with the bearded actor playing his prisoner.

Sitting sixth row center, Freddie Corbin turned immediately to Kendall and said, “They wouldn’t be wearing guns anywhere
near a
thief being printed.”

“I can change that,” Kendall said. “What we’ve
really
got to talk about, Freddie …”

“It spoils the entire sense of reality,” Corbin said.

His full and honorable name was Frederick Peter Corbin Ill, but all of his friends called him Fred. Kendall, however, had
started calling him Freddie the moment they’d been introduced, which of course the cast had picked up on, and now everybody
associated
with this project called him Freddie. Corbin, who had written two novels about New York City cops, knew that this was an
old cop trick. Using the familiar diminutive to denigrate a prisoner’s sense of self-worth or self-respect. So you think you’re
Mr.
Corbin, hah? Well,
Freddie,
where were you on the night of June thirteenth, huh?

“Also,” he said, “I think he’s overreacting when he discovers she’s an actress. It’d be funnier if he
contained
his excitement.”

“Yes,” Kendall said. “Which brings us to the scene
itself.
”

Kendall’s
full name was Ashley Kendall, which wasn’t the name he was born with, but which had been his legal name for thirty years,
so Corbin guessed that made it his real name, more or less. Frederick Peter Corbin III really
was
Corbin’s
real
real name, thank you. This was his first experience with a director. He was beginning to learn that directors didn’t think
their job was
directing
the script, they thought their job was
changing
it. He was beginning to hate directors. Or at least to hate Kendall. He was beginning to learn that all directors were shitheads.

“What
about
the scene?” he asked.

“Well … doesn’t it seem a bit
familiar
to you?”

“It’s
supposed
to be familiar. This is police routine. This is what happens when a person comes in to report a …”

“Yes, but we’ve
witnessed
this particular scene a hundred times already, haven’t we?” Kendall said.
“A thousand
times. Even the detective reacting to the fact that she’s an
actress
is a cliché. Asking her if he’s seen her in anything. I mean, Freddie, I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve done
here, the intricacy of the plot, the painstaking devotion to detail. But …”

“But what?”

“But I think there might be a more exciting way to set up the fact that her life has been threatened. Theatrically, I mean.”

“Yes, this
is
a play,” Corbin said. “I would assume we’d want to do it theatrically.”

“I know you’re a
wonderful
novelist,” Kendall said, “but …”

“Thank you.”

“But in
a play …“

“A dramatic line is a dramatic line,” Corbin said. “This is the story of an actress surviving …”

“Yes, I know what it …”

“… a brutal murder attempt, and then going on to achieve a tremendous personal triumph.”

“Yes, that’s what it’s
supposed
to be about.”

“No, that’s what it
is
about.”

“No, this is a play about some New York cops solving a goddamn
mystery.“

“No, that’s not what it’s …”

“Which you do very well, by the way. In your novels. There’s nothing wrong with stories about cops …”

“Even if they
are
crap,” Corbin said.

“I wasn’t about to say that,” Kendall said. “I wasn’t even
thinking
it. All I’m suggesting is that this shouldn’t be
a play
about cops.”

“It isn’t a play about cops.”

“I see. Then what is it?”

“A play about a triumph of will.”

“I see.”

“A play about a woman surviving
a knife
attack, and then finding in herself the courage to …”

“Yes,
that
part of it’s fine.”

“What part of it
isn’t
fine?”

“The cop stuff.”

“The cop stuff is what makes it real.”

“No, the cop stuff makes it a play about cops.”

“When a woman gets stabbed …”

“Yes, yes.”

“… she goes to the
cops,
Ashley. She doesn’t go to her chiropractor. Would you like her to go to her
chiropractor
after she’s stabbed?”

“No, I …”

“Because then it wouldn’t be a play about
cops
anymore, it’d be a play about
chiropractors.
Would that suit you better?”

“Why does she have to go to the cops
before
she’s stabbed?”

“That’s known as suspense, Ashley.”

“I see.”

“By the way, that’s a terrible verbal tic you have.”

“What is?”

“Saying ‘I see’ all the time. Somewhat sarcastically, in fact. It’s almost as bad as ‘You know.’ ”

“I see.”

“Exactly.”

“But tell me, Freddie, do you actually like cops?”

“I do, yes.”

“Well, nobody else does.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Nobody else in the whole wide world.”

“Please.”

“Believe it. No one wants to sit in a theater for three hours watching a play about
cops.“

“Good. Because this
isn’t
a play about cops.”

“Whatever
the fuck it’s about, I think we can effectively lose a third of the first act by cutting to the chase.”

“Lose all the suspense …”

“I don’t find a woman talking to cops suspenseful.”

“Lose all the character develop …”

“That can be done more theatrically …”

“Lose all …”

“… more dramatically.”

Both men fell silent. Sitting in the darkness beside his director, Corbin felt a sudden urge to strangle him.

“Tell me something,” he said at last.

“Yes, what’s that, Freddie?”

“And please don’t call me Freddie.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s Fred, I prefer Fred. I have a thing about names. I like being called by the name I prefer.”

“So do I.”

“Okay, so tell me, Ashley … why’d you agree to direct this play in the first place?”

“I felt … I
still
feel it has tremendous potential.”

“I see. Potential.”

“Must be contagious,” Kendall said.

“Because
I
feel it has more than just
potential, you
see.
I
feel it’s a fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival and triumph. I happen
to …”

“You sound like a press release.”

“I happen to
love
this fucking play, Ashley, and if you
don’t
love it …”

“I do not love it, no.”

“Then you shouldn’t have agreed to direct it.”

“I agreed to direct it because I think I can
come
to love it.”

“If I make it
your
play instead of mine.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ashley, are you familiar with the Dramatists Guild contract?”

“This is
not
my first play, Freddie.”

“Fred,
please. And, yes, I admit it, this is my first play, which is why I read the contract very carefully. Once a play goes into
rehearsal, Ashley, the contract says not a line, not
a word,
not
a comma
can be changed without the playwright’s approval. That’s in the contract. We’ve been in rehearsal for two weeks now …”

“Yes, I know that.”

“And you’re suggesting …”

“Cutting some scenes, yes.”

“And I’m telling you no.”

“Freddie … Fred … do you ever want this fucking play you love so much to move downtown? Or do you want it to die up here in
the boonies? Because I’m telling you,
Fred,
Freddie
baby
, that the way it stands now, your fully realized, highly dramatic theater piece that speaks to the human heart about survival
and triumph is going to fall flat on its ass when it opens three weeks from now.”

Corbin blinked at him.

“Think about it,” Kendall said. “Downtown or here in the asshole of the city.”

Detective Bertram Kling lived in a studio apartment in Isola, from which he could look out his window and see the twinkling
lights of the Calm’s Point Bridge. He could have driven over that bridge if he’d owned a car, but there was no point owning
a car in the big bad city, where the subway was always faster if not particularly safer. The problem was that Deputy Chief
Surgeon Sharyn Everard Cooke lived at the very end of the Calm’s Point line, which gave her a nice view of the bay, true enough,
but which took a good forty minutes to reach from where Kling boarded the train three blocks from his apartment.

This was Sunday, the fifth day of April, exactly two weeks before Easter, but you wouldn’t have known it from the cold rain
that drilled the windows of the subway car as it came up out of the ground onto the overhead tracks. A grizzled old man sitting
opposite Kling kept winking at him and licking his lips. A black woman sitting next to Kling found this disgusting. So did
he. But she kept clucking her tongue in disapproval, until finally she moved away from Kling to the farthest end of the car.
A panhandler came through telling everyone she had three children and no place to sleep. Another panhandler came through telling
everyone he was a Vietnam War veteran with no place to sleep.

The rain kept pouring down.

Kling’s umbrella turned inside out as he came down the steps from the train platform onto Farmers Boulevard, which Sharyn
had told him he should stay on for three blocks before making a left onto Portman, which would take him straight to her building.
He broke several of the umbrella ribs trying to get it right side out again, and tossed it into a trash can on the corner
of Farmers and Knowles. He was wearing a black raincoat, no hat. He walked as fast as he could to the address Sharyn had given
him, which turned out to be a nice garden apartment a block or so from the ocean. In the near distance, he could see the lights
of a cargo ship pushing its way through the downpour.

He was thinking he’d never do this again in his life. Date a girl from Calm’s Point. A woman. He wondered how old she was.
He was guessing early to mid-thirties. His age, more or less. Thirtysomething. In there. But who was counting? She would tell
him later that night that she had just turned forty on October the fifteenth. “Birth date of great men,” she would say. “And
women, too,” she would say, but would not amplify.

He was wringing wet when he rang her doorbell.

Never again, he was thinking.

She looked radiantly beautiful. He lost all resolve.

Her skin was the color of burnt almond, her eyes the color of loam, shadowed now with a smoky blue over the lids. She wore
her black hair in a modified Afro that gave her the look of a proud Masai woman, her high cheekbones and generous mouth tinted
the color of burgundy wine. Her casual suit was the color of her eye shadow, fashioned of a nubby fabric with tiny bright
brass buttons. A short skirt and high-heeled pumps collaborated to showcase her legs. She did not look like a deputy chief
surgeon. He almost caught his breath.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “you’re soaked again.”

“My umbrella quit,” he said, and shrugged helplessly.

“Come in, come in,” she said, and stepped back and let him into the apartment. “Give me your coat, we have time for a drink,
I made the reservation for six-thirty, I could’ve met you in the city, you know, you didn’t have to come all the way out here,
you said Italian, there’s a nice place just a few blocks from here, we could have walked it, but I’ll take the car, oh dear,
this
is
wet, isn’t it?”

It occurred to her that she was rattling on.

It occurred to her that he looked cute as hell with his blond hair all plastered to his forehead that way.

She took his coat, debated hanging it in the closet with all the
dry
clothes there, said, “I’d better put this in the bathroom,” started to leave the foyer, stopped, said, “I’ll be right back,
make yourself comfortable,” gestured vaguely toward a large living room, and vanished like a breeze over the savanna.

He stepped tentatively into the living room, checking it from the open door frame the way a detective might, the way a detective
actually
was
, quick takes around the room, camera eye picking up impressions rather than details. Upright piano against one wall, did
she play? Windows facing south to what had to be the bay, rainsnakes slithering down the wide expanse of glass. Sofa upholstered
in leather the color of a camel hair coat he’d once owned. Throw pillows in earth shades scattered hither and yon around the
room. A rug the color of cork. A large painting over the sofa, a street scene populated with black people. He remembered that
she was black.

“Okay,” she said from the door frame, “what would you like to drink?” and came striding into the room, long-legged stride,
he liked that about her, the fact that she was almost as tall as he was, just a few inches shorter, he guessed, five-nine,
five-ten, in there. “I’ve got Scotch and I’ve got Scotch,” she said.

“I’ll take the Scotch,” he said.

“Water, soda, neat?”

“Little soda.”