It Happens in the Dark (8 page)

“Bugsy? We don’t travel in the same circles. My wine bottles have corks. You need an informant in the screw-cap crowd.” He turned to the mirror, imagining the amusement of watchers beyond the looking glass.

Detective Mallory was also staring at the mirror, though it was not angled to catch her reflection. She walked over to the wall and straightened the frame, as if it might be off-kilter. If so, that defect had been invisible to any
normal
human eye.

So the mirror was only that and nothing more, not a window to another place, and apparently he was sitting in a lunchroom. Axel smiled at this good joke on himself as he watched Mallory reach out to the box of goggles and shift it so that one edge was parallel with that of the table.

A tidy and meticulous detective.

And perhaps a little crazy?

He hoped so.
Great
fun.

She sat down on the other side of the table and faced him with a look so cold. To screw with a line from Byron, there was something primal in her aspect and her eye when she said, “Tell us what you know about Bugsy.”

“Not much,” said Axel. “Never met him till the first day of rehearsal. Our erstwhile director, Dickie Wyatt—he’s the one who hired the gopher.”

Riker pulled out his notebook and pen. “Where can we find Wyatt?”

Asleep beneath the snow.

“No idea. His contract expired after the third week of rehearsals. You see, three weeks is all the time most plays ever—”

“Bugsy gave his full name as Willard Albright,” said Mallory.

“Seriously? Bugsy
was
Willard Albright’s nickname, but he’s fictional.”

Riker waved his pencil in impatient circles. “We already
know
he gave us a bogus name.”

“No, I mean fictional, as in—a
work of fiction
. Maybe a chicken and the egg kind of thing? What came first? The real-life Bugsy or a character from a play?”

The detectives exchanged glances, and then Riker’s pencil touched down on his open notebook. “What’s the name of this play?”

“I’m not sure. Could’ve been a film, I suppose. People are always sending me scripts for—” Axel snapped his fingers. “You know who you should talk to? Leonard Crippen. He’s the theater critic for
The Herald
.” Ah, a spark of interest from Detective Mallory, and now his smile was all for her. “I’ll tell you how Bugsy gets his gopher jobs. No matter what the play is—a Broadway show or a church-cellar production—if you hire Bugsy, that’s a guarantee that Crippen will review it. He may pan it, but he
will
show up on opening night.”

The detectives were done with him—and so quickly, both of them moving toward the door.

No kisses? No goodbyes?

ROLLO:
Fetch a chair for our guest! (One twin opens the closet doors and pulls out a wheelchair.) A souvenir from my leaner days.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act I

His long hair was curly and bright white—it
thieved
light—a dramatic contrast to the black coat draped over his shoulders. All of his clothing was black, but not slimming. Though he had been dragged here by uniformed officers, the man with three chins stood on the threshold, politely awaiting an invitation to enter the squad room. His chest heaved with a much aggrieved sigh to let them all know that he should not be kept waiting long.

Mallory rose from her desk and called out to him, “Mr. Crippen!”

“Detective Mallory?” With a flourish, the theater critic waved the card she had left under his door. He moved down the aisle of desks, preceded by fifty pounds or so of excess weight on his belly, and he carried this paunch with grandiosity. When he stood before her, he bowed and said, “At your service.” But this did not sound ludicrous, not from a man in his seventies.

She turned to her partner, who only smiled to say,
Nailed it, didn’t I?
And yes, he had. The critic was indeed old and certainly from the lost world of the low-tech people.

“Have a seat, Mr. Crippen.”

In a contest of sorts, he remained standing until she sat down, and then he settled into the chair beside her desk, shifting a bit, arranging his tie and his bulk. He emitted one more sigh, as though put out by this exertion.

“Thanks for coming in,” said Riker, with a touch of sarcasm for the runaway ticket holder. “We understand Bugsy has a lot of influence with you.”

“And we think that’s strange.” Mallory followed her partner’s lead, forgoing threats for the critic’s flight from the theater—
and
the police. “But everything about Bugsy is a little . . .
off
.”

“I know him well, and I’d love to discuss that dear little man. However, just this moment, I have a small problem.” Leonard Crippen paused for another sigh, and this one should have been reserved for a death in the family. “You see, I plan to go back for tonight’s performance. However, since the theater company didn’t anticipate a
third
review from me, all the best seats were taken by the time I called. The only one they had left is not very good. . . . They put me in the back row.”

The critic’s slow smile was an easy translation for Mallory. She recognized it from her own repertoire, and now she completed this blackmail transaction. “We roped off four seats in the front row. Would you like to sit in the dead man’s chair?”

“Oh,
would
I!”

•   •   •

Alma Sutter’s long blond hair was done up in a bun and secured by two pointed sticks, her idea of weaponry. She flicked a wall switch by the stage door, and fluorescent tubes lit up the long passageway to the backstage area, where she found another switch. More light, but not much. The young actress unbuttoned her coat as she walked toward the dark side. Before rounding the back of the stage set, she stopped and stood very still, holding her breath.

Listening—to nothing.

No footsteps, no chalk scratching on slate, but did she feel safe yet? No. And she never would. Not here.

The blackboard was lit by a rectangle of weak light shining through the door in the scenery flat, but the blocky chalk words were clear enough. And Alma wrapped her coat tight around her, though there was no draft, no sudden drop in temperature—except for what shock could do to the
innards
of a body.
That
was cold.

She pulled one of the sharp sticks from the pile of hair atop her head. Stupid flimsy thing. Next to useless. What was closer, the alley door or the prop locker with the baseball bat?

No matter now. Her knees were buckling, threatening to drop her to the floor.

She turned toward the scenery door. Onstage, a single caged bulb hung down by a wire, burning bright in an ancient custom to prevent the mischief that unworldly spirits did in the dark. The ghost light was only left on when the last living soul had left the theater.

So she was alone.

Screaming was futile.

Alma turned back to the blackboard. Cyril Buckner would never believe this. Every time she told him about a personal message from the ghostwriter, the stage manager counted it as a black mark against her, another sign that she was doing drugs. And she was. But not hallucinogens. Today she was doing cocaine, doing her best to be sharp and—

Focused
.

Alma fished her cell phone from a coat pocket. Working through the fright, she flicked by applications, hunting for the camera function before this new message could disappear. They were all so quickly there and gone.

No good. Her hands were shaking. The phone dropped to the floor.

Idiot.

She wanted to run, but her legs had gone to noodles that could not carry her anywhere. She could only stare at the five chalk words on the slate.

IT WON’T HURT MUCH, ALMA.

•   •   •

“I’m sure if you only ask him,” said Leonard Crippen, “Bugsy will tell you his full name is Willard Albright.”

“That’s the alias he gave us.” Mallory leaned toward the drama critic. “Do you have binoculars for your seat in the
back row
?”

“His real name is Alan Rains . . . or maybe that’s his stage name.”

Riker looked up from his notebook. “Bugsy’s an actor?”

“You no doubt see him as a cute little fellow with a Bronx accent. But he cut his teeth on Shakespeare at Yale Drama School.”

“So you
do
know him well.” Mallory made this sound like an accusation.

“Oh, yes,” said Crippen. “I’m his biggest fan. Whenever he gets a new job as a gopher, he pays me a visit and pitches that company’s play. And he acts out all the parts.”

“The whole play?”

“No, only scenes from first acts. Bit of a tease. If I want the end of a story, I have to go to the theater like everyone else. Then I review the play—so Bugsy will come back to me with another one.”

“You do it for laughs,” said Riker.

The critic expelled a puff of air—incredulous. “I
do
it for the pleasure of his performance. Bugsy’s brilliant. If he didn’t pitch the plays, I’d never get to see him act. Writing a review is a small price for that experience—even a tiresome play by Peter Beck. Though I must say I was pleasantly surprised. This one’s not at all Beck’s style. He writes tedious melodramas about family relationships. But the current play seems to have a touch of Hitchcock. Of course, I only know the first act. I’m sure you read the whole thing.” He turned from one detective to the other. “You
didn’t
?”

•   •   •

It was perverse. Of course it was. But the ghostwriter had made her a better actress, and this idea had once fed Alma’s theory that Dickie Wyatt had left her all those messages, pushing her into a state of terror, another country with a scream for an anthem. Who but Dickie would have cared enough to scare her?

Back in the safe cradle of her Ohio hometown, no one had ever been unkind to her. She had been loved—poor preparation for
this
town, for this role that required cold sweat and a skippy heart. But now she had the hang of fear; she lived inside of it, slept in it, woke to it. But today’s threat was different. It promised pain. Alma read the words over and over. Where was the ghostwriter now? Coming for her? Right behind her? She had pills for moments like this, but trembling hands could not manage the childproof cap on her anti-anxiety meds, and the pharmacy bottle dropped to the floor. She willed herself to walk toward the alley door. Then she ran.

Behind her, she heard the sound of fingernails screeching on slate.

She stopped.

And turned.

No one there.

Against her will, her legs walked her back to the blackboard.
No-o-o!
She screamed, or thought she did. Her mouth opened wide, but nothing came out.

The five words were gone, replaced by so
many
words filling out the slate, a zillion letters printed in the seconds it had taken her to cut and run.

•   •   •

“I don’t think they held out on you,” said Leonard Crippen. “I’m sure the theater company has no idea that Bugsy is Alan Rains. He only had one role in a Broadway play, and only for six months. Well, that was
years
ago. He’s very different now. His speech, the way he dresses—the way he
doesn’t
comb his hair. And he smells like a clothing rack in a secondhand store. All of that fits the role he played on Broadway. He even took the character’s name, Bugsy—a small, scared creature of desperate moves—a gopher. And now he’s Bugsy all day, all night. I’ve never known him to step out of character.”

“So he’s crazy,” said Riker.

“Aren’t they all? The theater’s a dicey way to make a living. No safety net. No guarantees that you’ll pay the rent next month. You’d
have
to be insane to want that life. Now this is where it gets very cruel.”

More detectives had straggled into the squad room. Some of them perched on nearby desks, and others formed a loose circle around the critic, listening to the story of a sorry little man who could not find his way out of a play.

•   •   •

Fingers fluttering, all in a panic, Alma Sutter fumbled with the key to open her dressing room door. One blind hand flicked on the light switch, as if that might save her. She slammed the door and locked it. Panting from her run up the stairs, she sank into the arms of a padded chair. Waves of hair fell down around her shoulders. Her topknot had come undone and so had she.

The closet was wide open, and the bright red dress she wore onstage should have been the first thing to catch her eye. But it was gone, replaced with another costume.

So the ghostwriter had a key to this room. There were no safe places. Where was he? Right
now
—where?

A row of glowing bulbs lit the makeup mirror on the wall. And below it, pots of paint and sticks of more color, brushes and tubes had been swept to one side, making space for a pair of scissors laid out on the table like crisscrossed knives.

Very sharp.

The first cut was tentative, sloppy.

Alma cried.

•   •   •

“It’s all about unacted desires.” The squad room was now full of cops. His audience complete, the critic stood up, swept back his hair and addressed them. “Allow me to set the stage.” He lowered his head as a modest bow. All eyes were on him when he raised his chin and said, “The curtains part, and you see a sparsely furnished bedroom in a New York high-rise. The back wall has a large window with a skyline view. There’s a lamp on a table, but no chairs. Scores of matchboxes are glued to the wallpaper. The main character, Rollo, a rather corpulent fellow—” As a concession to this particular crowd, he said, “A
very
heavy man languishes on a brass bed center stage.

“That role should’ve been played by a younger actor, but it’s Axel Clayborne, so who cares? He plays an invalid. Stage left, a door opens, and you see a young woman, Susan. She enters walking backward. She won’t take her eyes off two identical young men, who seem to be herding her into the room. The twins leave. She tries the doorknob. Useless. She’s locked in. The woman turns to the invalid on the bed. She’s timid, frightened. Susan tells Rollo she’s come to help him. And, given her current predicament—he laughs.

“They develop an instant rapport based on mutual terror of the twins, who keep popping into the room. Rollo asks them to fetch a chair for their guest. They go to the closet and pull out a wheelchair. Rollo explains that he outgrew it years after the accident. He tells her that the twins stuff him with food day and night. ‘One day,’ he says, ‘I won’t be able to fit through the door.’ Slowly he turns to the window, a wider exit. Then he tells her how his spine was damaged. This leads into the story of a family massacre, which his two brothers survived without a scratch. But other relatives? Not so fortunate.

“Now Rollo tells her about his dead dream. Before he was paralyzed, he had trained as a dancer. And that brings us to the Fat Man’s Ballet. In the middle of Susan’s line, the lights go out. She falls silent. Then a spotlight shines on Rollo, the only one not in shadow. Susan’s frozen like a statue. You hear the opening strains of the
Firebird Suite.
The lights flick on and off as the invalid rises from his bed, and he begins to dance in his pajamas and bare feet. . . . And he is
beautiful
. You wouldn’t expect that. There’s no comedy here. No one laughs at the dancing fat man. The audience sees his dream play out. The heart melts. Then he makes one fabulous leap onto the bed. You want to applaud. But then . . . he leaps out the window, shattering the glass. The audience gasps. The lights go out. You hear the city sounds of traffic in the dark. Then dead silence. The stage lights come up. The window is unbroken, and the invalid is back in his bed. The actress moves again and speaks the rest of her interrupted line.

“That was the first fantasy sequence. The next one was so frightening, it gave a fatal heart attack to a woman in the audience. . . . But I can’t bear to ruin it for you. You really
must
see the play.”