Ed McBain_87th Precinct 47 (24 page)

“… a more realistic approach,” Riganti was saying. “To the scene.”

“Let me understand this,” Kendall said. “Are you saying that you and Andy got here early this morning … ”

“Eight o’clock,” Andrea said.

Carella had called Riganti at seven-thirty.

“… to read this scene we’re about to rehearse?” Kendall asked.

“To go over it,” Riganti said.

“To do an
improv
on it, actually,” Andrea said.

“An improv?” Corbin asked.

“Well, yeah. Actually,” Riganti said.

“On the new
scene?”
Corbin asked.

“Just to see if we could get a handle on it,” Riganti said.

“Find a way into it,” Andrea said.

“Find a realistic approach to it,” Riganti said,

“My new
scene?”
Corbin asked.

“Well … yes
.
Your … uh … new scene.”

“Which is terrific, by the way,” Andrea said.

“Really terrific,” Riganti said. “We were just trying to get a handle on it, is all.”

“By doing an
improv?”
Corbin asked.

“By trying … ”

“An
improvisation?
On my new
scene
?”

“Just to try for a little added reality,” Riganti said, and turned to Andrea for assistance.

“To go for that additional touch of realism,” she said, and smiled helpfully.

“I think it’s quite real
enough
, thank you,” Corbin said. “And by the way, improvs arc for acting classes, and this happens to be a play in rehearsal. So
let’s just run the new scene, if you don’t mind. The way I wrote it, please. My words, please.”

“I’m curious to see what they’ve come up with,” Kendall said casually. “How long will this take?” he called to the stage.

“Ten minutes,” Riganti said.

“Why don’t we see it, Freddie?” Kendall said. “What possible harm can it do?”

“What possible
good
can it do?” Corbin asked. “We’ve got eight new pages to … ”

“It’s just an exercise,” Kendall said. “Loosens them up.”

“Ashley … ”

“If it’s good for them. it might be good for the scene. Let’s see it, Mark!” he called to the stage.

“Ashley … ”

“What we tried to do … ” Riganti started.

“Don’t tell it, show it,” Kendall said.

“Thank you.” Riganti said, and nodded to Andrea, who immediately sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, and folded her hands
in her lap, and lowered her head. The stage and the theater went silent. There were just the two actors on stage with a work
light and a chair, getting ready to do an improvisation for a director, a playwright and a detective in a hushed darkened
theater. Riganti started circling the chair. Carella watched intently. Riganti didn’t say a word, just kept circling the chair.

“Look, miss,” he said at last, “let’s he realistic here, okay? Do you expect me to believe … ?”

“Those aren’t my words,” Corbin said in a whisper that carried clear to where Carella was standing at the back of the theater.

“It’s an improv,” Kendall said in an equally loud whisper.

“I won’t have them changing …”

“For Christ’s sake, let’s just
hear
the thing!”

The theater went silent again.

On the stage, the two actors looked out into the darkness, puzzled, waiting for instructions.

“Again, please,” Kendall said softly.

Riganti hesitated a moment. Then he nodded to Andrea, who struck the same pose she had earlier, hands folded in her lap, head
bent. Riganti began circling the chair again. Carella thought he did that very well, circling the chair. “Miss,” he said at
last in a voice that sounded gruffly familiar, “let’s be realistic here, okay? Do you expect me to believe you’re understudyin
the starring role in this play, and the girl gets killed and you never even once think
Gee
, maybe
I’ll get
to go on in her place?”

“I never once thought that, no,” Andrea said.

“Don’t you ever go to the fuckin
movies,
miss?”

“Of
course
I go to the …”

“Didn’t you ever see a movie where the star breaks her leg and the understudy has to go on for her?”

“These are
not
my words!” Corbin whispered.

“Shhh!” Kendall whispered.

“... and all these fuckin workmen are sittin up on these little catwalks,” Riganti said, “high above the stage where the lights
are hangin, and they all catch their fuckin breaths when she starts singin? And this old guy who pulls the curtain is standin
there with his fuckin mouth open in surprise,” Riganti said, circling the chair like a shark closing in for the kill, “and
a little old lady with costumes in her hands and pins stickin in her dress is standin there like
she
got struck blind, too, and all over the fuckin theater they’re
amazed by
what this understudy is doin,” Riganti said, and stopped dead in front of Andrea and pointed his finger into her face and
shouted, “You mean to tell me you never
saw
that scene, miss?”

“Yes, I saw that ...”

“... you never saw that movie, miss?”

“I saw that movie, but ...”

“Then let’s be
realistic
here!” Riganti shouted, and suddenly turned off the character he was playing, suddenly stopped being this raging detective
in the scene he was improvising, becoming in the wink of an eye simply the self-effacing actor Mark Riganti again, standing
there in jeans and a floppy sweater and Italian loafers without socks, smiling weakly and turning for approval to where Kendall
and Corbin were sitting in the sixth row center in the dark.

“Bravo,” Kendall whispered.

“Bravo, my
ass!“
Corbin shouted, and stormed out of the theater.

“If there is one thing I absolutely despise,” Kendall said, “it’s writers. I would truly be the happiest person on earth if
I could direct the telephone book. Give me a handful of trained actors and I could make a hit out of the telephone book, i
promise you.”

They were sitting in the delicatessen alongside the theater alley where Michelle Cassidy was first stabbed. Kendall had called
a half-hour break after calming down his actors and promising them their playwright would be hack after he’d got over his
little fit of pique.

“Which I’m not sure he really will, by the way—unless he’s a better actor than anyone in the cast.

““How do you mean?” Carella asked.

Both men were drinking coffee. Carella didn’t really give a damn about writers or telephone books, although he guessed
somebody
wrote even telephone books. But he let Kendall talk. When a person talked, you learned a little something about him. And
sometimes, incidentally, about the person who’d been killed.

“Well, this was a monumental explosion, this was rage of heretofore unseen proportions!” Kendall said, and rolled his eyes.
“How dare they
this,
how dare they that, I’m going directly to the DGA, I’ll have their heads ...”

“The what?”

“What?” Kendall said. “Oh. The DGA. The Dramatists Guild. Of America, that is. Where else, Poland? Freddie threatened to go
there and have all the actors fired, have me fired for encouraging them to subvert his play ... his exact word, by the way,
subvert … went out of the theater in high dudgeon. Now either this was the performance of the century, designed to let everyone
know exactly who’s in charge here and don’t fuck with
me,
mister, or else he really was enjoying a totally childish temper tantrum unproductive to the collaborative theatrical effort.”

“Which do you think it was?”

“A tantrum,” Kendall said. “The trouble with writers—
especially
writers in the theater, where they do, in fact, have outrageous control—is that they mistakenly believe
their con
tribution to the creative process is the most important one. Which, of course, is absolute drivel.”

“Mr. Kendall,” Carella said, “as I’m sure you know, we’re still investigating the murder of …”

“Yes, I assumed that’s why you were here,” Kendall said dryly.

“Yes. That’s why I am here, in fact. In fact, we can save a lot
of
time ... ”

“On the night Michelle was killed,” Kendall said, “I was with Cooper Haynes.”

“Who’s Cooper Haynes?”

“He’s the gentleman who plays the Director in
Romance.
I use the term advisedly. Gentleman, that is. Most actors aren
’t.
But Coop is a dignified, courteous
gentleman,
thank God for small favors. He thought
it
might be valuable if he had an in-depth conversation with
a real
director. This, mind you, all this time
alter
we went into rehearsal. Suddenly decided he ought to know what a
real
director was all about if he was to portray effectively a director
onstage.
They’re such children, really, even the best
of
them. So I spent several hours with him, holding his hand, trying to convey the essence of ... when I say holding his hand,
by the way, I don’t mean that literally. Coop is a happily married man with three children, straight as an arrow.”

“And you?”

“Is that a question? And
if
so, what does it have to do with Michelle’s death?”

“You raised the subject,” Carella said.

“So I did. I
am
homosexual, Mr. Carella, yes. I am currently living with a set designer named Jose Delacruz, who is similarly gay and fifteen
years my junior. I will be forty-seven in October. If my arithmetic is correct, the last time I looked he was thirty-two.
And, by the way, he was there
with us on
the night Michelle was killed.”

“There with you and Cooper Haynes, do you mean?”

“Yes. Well, not in the same room, we were working in the living room, and Joey was in his studio down the hall. He did the
revival of
Moon for the Misbegotten,
did you hap-pen to see it?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

“Anyway, that’s where I was, and that’s who was with me. As Casey Stengel used to say, ’You could check it.’ ”

“When you say that’s where you were ..

“My apartment. 827 Grover Park North.”

“Which you share with Mr. I)elacruz.”

“As of the moment, yes. I do not believe in long-term relationships. Life is short and time is swift.”

“Speaking of which ...”

“He got there at seven.”

“Cooper Haynes?”

“Precisely seven.”

“And left when?”

“Around ten. He would have stayed longer ifJoey hadn’t begun making ugly sounds about how late it was getting. They’re such
children, really.”

“Actors, do you mean?”

“Actors, writers, set designers, costume designers, any-one involved in the theater.”

Except directors, Carella noticed.

“Well, maybe not the technical people,” Kendall said. “Your stage managers, your lighting people, your musicians if it’s a
musical. But anyone on the so-called creative end, dear God,
spare
me,” he said.

“Did Mr. Haynes leave the apartment at any time between seven and ten?”

“No, we were together all that time.”

“Didn’t go down for a sandwich or anything?”

“We have ample food and beverage in the house, thank you.”

“Step outside for a smoke?”

“He doesn’t smoke. I don’t, either.”

“Did you happen to read anything, or see anything on television—or hear it on the radio, for that matter—about the
time
Michelle Cassidy was killed?”

“Sometime between seven and eight o’clock, wasn’t it?” “Then you know that?”

“I know that, yes.”

“You read it, or saw it, or heard it someplace.”

“Yes. I do not know the time from personal
experience,

if that’s what you’re hinting. I was
not
in Michelle’s apart

ment at the time of her murder.”

“Do you know where she lived?”

“No.”

“Never been there?”

“Never.”

“So you and Mr. Haynes were in each other’s company from seven to ten
^p
.m. on Tuesday night, the seventh of April.”

“We were.”

“And neither of you left the apartment during that time. “We were both there from seven until ten.”

“Did Mr. Delacnrz leave the apartment?”

Kendall hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “I have no idea.”

“Well, you said he began making ugly sounds around ten o’clock ...”

“Yes, but ...”

“So was he there all the time? Between seven and ten?” “You would have to ask him.”

“Well, you’d have known if he left the apartment, wouldn’t you? For a sandwich? Or a smoke?”

“Joey doesn’t smoke. Besides, he didn’t even know Michelle. So if you’re suggesting he snuck uptown to kill the lady ...”

“Nothing of the sort,” Carella said.

But he was thinking that Dclacruz was the only person who could vouch for the whereabouts of Kendall and Haynes at the time
of the murder. And both of them
did
know Michelle.

“Then
what?”
Kendall asked. “Oh,
I
see. It was Coop and I who did the deed in tandem, is that it? The real director and the make-believe director, running uptown
to Diamondback to kill our star for reasons known only to God. By the way, before you even ask, Mr. Carella,
I know
she lived in Diamondback because, as already noted, I do read the papers,
and
watch television,
and
listen to the radio. I don’t know
where
in Diamondback, but do you really believe there’s anyone in this city who does
not
now know that Michelle lived uptown with the man arrested for having stabbed her? And, I would have thought,
killed
her as well. But here you are, playing detective ...”

“No, sir, not play ...”

“... in a cheap little
mystery
that has Coop and me ... ” “No, sir, not a mystery ...”

“... stabbing Michelle ...”

“... cheap or otherwise.”

“No? Then what is it when you suggest ... ?”

“I’ve suggested nothing.”